With God on Their Side: How Christian Fundamentalists Trampled Science, Policy, and Democracy in George W. Bush's White House

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Summary: Americans in a Secular Society
Review: This book is full of lies and distortions, and is written by a Christian and Bush hater! If Christians "fundamentalists" and President Bush have so much control over the United States, Why is it that children can't pray in schools? That the KORAN can be taught in schools and NOT the Bible? That our founding documents can't be taught in schools (because they reference God?) That Christians can't pray in parks or in public places (because it offends people?) That Christians can't voice their opinions on homo-sexual marriage without being arrested and facing 47 years in prison? (WHEN IT'S FREE SPEECH!)

With this Liberal propagada book - One might believe Christians were the outspoken extreme, radical ones in control. When it is really the anti- American, anti- Christian left!

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Summary: Just the Facts, M'am
Review: A useful reference for tracking the fundamentalist assault on American government. Chapters survey specific areas of public policy, and show how personnel changes by Bush administration are resulting in strong rightward shift led by fundamentalist zealots. Details are presented cleanly and without embellishment. All the usual suspects are present, from godfather Richard Vigurie, to tv huckster Pat Robertson, to cop-on-the-beat John Ashcroft, along with names you may never have heard. However, the book's main virtue, its unembellished factual account, also militates against the impact and staying power. Put simply, With God on Their Side lacks both analytic depth and perspective, the sort of context that would properly frame the threat this neo-theocratic movement presents to liberal democracy and individual rights. After all, Grover Nordquist, the darling of the Business Roundtable, may want to repeal 100 years of progressive legislation, but many of these folks would like to dump the last 500, and replace natural history with the Book of Genesis, the Constitution with the Ten Commandments, and humanity's future with the fiery Apocalypse. Now let's see how this agenda sells among their Wall Street facilitators. The movement is so rife with money-grubbing hypocrisy and anti-science cant, I wish Kaplan had become more personally engaged. Nonetheless, With God on Their Side remains a useful source for presenting the facts and nothing but.

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Summary: Solid reporting on a scary subject
Review: Although its content scared me silly, I enjoyed this book. Kaplan is a skilled reporter who exhaustively probes the pervasive influence of the religious right on the Bush Administration. (And I have to take exception to an earlier, negative review posted here. You would think that someone who supposedly earned a Ph.D. from Harvard would know how to spell "dichotomy" and "mantra.")

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Summary: Great Guide on how to win the Presidency
Review: As soon as you become the nominee of either major political party, you almost automatically have 40% of the vote. All the campaigning is to get 11% of the remaining 20%. When George's daddy was president he had done enough "non-Christian" "non-right wing" things that his 40% base was by no means certain. As a result he had to spend time and money solidifying his base rather than going after the center. Clinton's base was solid and he could go after the center. He did and he won.

Along about then George 2 decided that whatever he did he was going into the second election with a solid base. As a result, yes, he pandered to the "Christian right." Yes, I wouldn't doubt that millions have been spent to promote sexual abstinence and marriage (and not for gay marriage). But is this any different than the $2.8 Billion that the congress took out of the operations and maintenance budget for their pork barrel projects (while the shortage of armor for Humvees is making the headlines today)? Needless to say, George's plan worked.

Ms. Kaplan has done a great job with this book. It is well researched, well documented. It does a beautiful job of laying out what the next Republican presidential will need to do to win the next election.

WHAT! That wasn't her intention?

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Summary: Esther Kaplan is prescient
Review: Esther Kaplan is prescient. If this book had come out before the recent presidential election, and her thoughts had been widely diseminated, the American public would have a very different view of what was, in fact, happening in our country. On November 3, every democrat was running around screaming, "how did this happen?". Esther Kaplan already knew.

The extent of intermingling between this administration and the hardcore right wing is novel, and bizarre, when one considers the dearth of media coverage on this very issue. Esther Kaplan gives the reader a map to who really controls this government and their plan. A must read.

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Summary: "Yes, Virginia, It Is A Holy War:
Review: Faith-based foreign policy from Israel to Iraq." So opens, Chapter 1, of this detailed, well-documented investigation and expose on how the Bush White House has partnered with the Christian right to put their fundamentalist worldview and political agenda at the heart of foreign policy and public health policy. The following chapters include "Christian Nation: From Bush's faith-based initiative to creationism in our public parks, the administration edges toward theocracy; Most Favored Constituency: How the Christian right came to dominate the Republican Party and the administration of George W. Bush; Weird Science: Faith healers, fake data, censorship, and other hallmarks of Christian science in the Bush administration; Good-Bye Roe: How to gut abortion rights in four easy steps; Whose Gay Agenda?: A president who was soft on gays finds religion and joins the antimarriage crusade; Aids, Born Again: AIDS was never a Republican issue, but Bush gave it a Christian makeover; The Purity Brigades: The Bush administration's one-size-fits-all abstinence agenda saves soles, not lives; The Global Crusade: Taking cues from the Vatican, Bush exports 'family values' abroad; Staking The Courts: Building permanent conservative rule on the federal bunch." This constantly amazing and frightening must-read ends with the well-supported conclusion that "Our governing Republican Party is unmistakably in the grips of its own Christian theocratic base...but there has so far been too little public debate about its corrosive effects on our democracy."

This book will help you understand the Christian right's coded language of "moral values," their goals and motivations, their political strategies and tactics, their political organization and methods, their political influence and power. You will better understand the resulting insidious effects on our society, the diminution of our personal freedoms, the undervaluing of empirical rationality and its benefits, and the loss of commitment to religious tolerance, cultural diversity, and democratic plurality. After reading this book, you will be better informed and motivated to actively join the growing debate.

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Summary: What is this?!
Review: I found the book to be an extreme leftist view and I am perhaps the leftist person I know. Having a PhD in political science from Harvard and my bachelor's degree in pre-law from Notre Dame, I appreciate a quality view of American politics when I find one. This however seemed to weaken the force of the democratic party by presenting views that were not well founded, contradictory, and absurd in many ways. The problem with bi-partisan politics (and sadly I must admit democrats as a whole) is the false dichotemy that has developed in which everyone's views are lauded, unless of course they are the views of the right-winged conservatives. Ms. Coulter has a more savvy presentation of politics, however undeserved and has picked up on the democratic montra "If you don't agree with us, you're dumb". I think if another writer decides to pick up on the extreme views of the right-winged regime, he'll have to do a better job of presenting arguments that are not of an ephemeral quality, those that are deeply rooted in the democratic values that our forefathers held to the highest esteem.

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Summary: Vast Right Wing Conspiracy at the Esther's Door
Review: I will admit I was thoroughly amused by the book and read the whole thing. It was almost like eating a Big Mac... poor contents but hard to put down.

Esther makes no bones about it from the beginning-- she does not like the principles of Christianity and she wrote the book for political impact in 2004. Both points are redundantly proven throughout the book as she takes us from one vast Christian right wing conspiracy to another all under the Bush Administation. One must wonder what Esther thinks of the Founding Fathers and their deep faith and repeated references to the Almighty.

The book makes errors (claiming Roe v. Wade was decided in January 2001 when it actually occurred in January 1973), intentionally omits key information (the audit of AIDS groups was incited by liberal activists like Michael Petrelis of San Francisco and Act-up/DC-- neither of which are mentioned any where in the book), contains totally trivial information (a congressional staffer phoning Washington to tell someone he is being treated rudely at a conference), is completely one sided (AIDS lobbyists and other liberals are treated as saints-- sorry for the Christian reference-- while Christians and conservatives are predictably portrayed as coniving and evil), and lacks depth (is there nothing nice, new or interesting that Esther learned about any of the people she is out to hatchet that would give us some insight into their true character or are they all the same, one brained, mean spitited Christians that don't share her world view?). One thinks Esther must be totally naive to the U.S. political process if she believes this "conspiracy" between a Presidential Administration and special interest groups has never occurred before. Does anyone not believe Clinton worked closely with liberal interests and the previous Republican Administrations did not do the same with conservative groups? This may be a shocking revelation to Esther, but not to anyone else who follows politics.

This book serves little if any significance other than trying-- and failing-- to be a shelf size version of a Michael Moore flick. I am sure the White House will have a good laugh reading it as they prepare for the Inauguration.

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Summary: i had not realized
Review: the extent of evangelical incursion into our government until I read this book. Their influence has not directly affected my life yet, (perhaps because I am straight, white, male, and not sexually active), but as an athiest I cringe at the thought that (supernaturalistic) wishful thinking is driving governmental policy, and my tax dollars are going to support disguised missionary work. However, debit one star for the "Intelligent Design" = Young Earth Creationism blunder, which hurts Kaplans credibility a bit.

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Summary: Bush administration = religious fascists
Review: This book documents the religious right's attack on America through George W. Bush's reign of terror. Even Ronald Reagan (who was the first modern president to court the religious right in order to win the Republican presidential nomination) never had attempted to divide America through religion to this extent.

From John Ashcroft's tenure as Attorney General to the establishment of a White House office for religious outreach, this administration has reached new lows in religious zealotry. Good government policy has thus become defined as only what conveniently matches the Bush administration's own religious convictions.

The unprecedented errors in government publications are allowed because the religious right honestly is not interested in having a realistic public policy discussion. They want to condemn and punish ANYBODY who does not share their totalitarian world view. This includes people of faith who WANT everybody to enjoy religious freedom.

Bush may be sincere in his own religious convictions, but I cannot see this same belief system being of actual moral use if he is trampling the First Amendment rights of myself and other citizens--who are also a part of the America he is supposed to work for.

For all Bush's fancy education, he has selectively forgotten that the First Amendment also protects the religious rights of other people, and also people who do not want to engage in any religious practices (organized or otherwise).

The First Amendment was enacted because the framers had personal experience with theocracies in England and the colonies; a person who was outside of the state-sponsored religion automatically became less of a person, and (virtually) ceased to exist as a being.

If the president of America is not interested in learning from American history, we are in deeper trouble than initially imagined.