Liveblog with Max Blumenthal, Author of "Republican Gomorrah" Hotlist

by mcjoan
from DailyKos

Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party
By Max Blumenthal
Hardcover: 416 pages, $25
Nation Books: New York
September 2009

This isn't a book for the faint of heart. The deep underbelly of the Republican right is far weirder, and far more disturbing, than most observers recognize. The corruption, the sex scandals, the lust for power--it's all here, presented in a fast-moving romp that's part sociology, part psychology, part gossip column.

But that's gossip in a good way. It's well-documented gossip, not just rumors, and the personal and political stories behind the personalities that fill these pages is critical to the web that Blumenthal constructs, showing the ties that you didn't know existed from notorious serial killer Ted Bundy who James Dobson used to amass part of his forture, to Gary Bauer to Blackwater's Erik Prince to Ralph Reed to Jack Abramoff to Tom Delay to Tony Perkins to David Duke to Tom Coburn to Bill Kristol to Sarah Palin. They're all there, and the story of how all these players have become connected with an extreme and pathological "religious" philosophy to take over the Republican party is fascinating.

Blumenthal explains where the current Republican Party came from, who it's foundational thinkers were, and just why it's still so dangerous. While the conventional wisdom is that the Southern Baptists are at the core of the religious right movement, Blumenthal shows that the movement actually grew out of the works of R.J. Rushdoony, the son of survivors of the Armenian genocide, who devoted his life to nothing less than replacing America's constitutional democracy with a theocracy based on Leviticus case law.

(More here.)

You have read this article with the title Liveblog with Max Blumenthal, Author of "Republican Gomorrah" Hotlist. You can bookmark this page URL http://ogbcommunity.blogspot.com/2009/10/liveblog-with-max-blumenthal-author-of.html. Thanks!