Gary Sick

Say you've never heard about the Council for National Policy? Most people haven't, but the bland title conceals a high level club of fundamentalists, gun rights activists, oil oligarchs and far right Republican strategists who have been influencing US policy for four decades. They successfully married Christian fundamentalism with right wing Republican issues until the two -- religion and party -- have become indistinguishable. The secret to their success, apart from perseverance and lots of money, has been the collapse of small town media and its replacement with literalist Christian broadcasting and right wing talk radio. If you haven't noticed, you are not alone. It is an incredible story, with the gun lobby, the anti-abortion and anti-gay rights movements, lubricated generously by the money released by Citizens United, in a truly unholy alliance. The story is extremely well told by my colleague Anne Nelson, a terrific researcher and writer, who also teaches at Columbia University. This is a crucial and largely untold story of the takeover of a huge swath of American politics by a pretty unsavory group of people, many of whom want nothing less than a fundamentalist theocracy in charge of the United States. Ignore it at your peril!