"four tribal markers that characterize the boundaries of American evangelicalism: abortion, homosexuality, evolution and environmentalism. Opposition to all four of those constitutes evangelical tribal identity." Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/05/05/the-big-four-markers-of-the-evangelical-tribe

By Matt Bai
Published: July 25, 2004 (look at Preston Manning links)

The presentation itself, a collection of about 40 slides titled ''The Conservative Message Machine's Money Matrix,'' essentially makes the case that a handful of families -- Scaife, Bradley, Olin, Coors and others -- laid the foundation for a $300 million network of policy centers, advocacy groups and media outlets that now wield great influence over the national agenda. The network, as Stein diagrams it, includes scores of powerful organizations -- most of them with bland names like the State Policy Network and the Leadership Institute -- that he says train young leaders and lawmakers and promote policy ideas on the national and local level. These groups are, in turn, linked to a massive message apparatus, into which Stein lumps everything from Fox News and the Wall Street Journal op-ed page to Pat Robertson's ''700 Club.'' And all of this, he contends, is underwritten by some 200 ''anchor donors.'' ''This is perhaps the most potent, independent institutionalized apparatus ever assembled in a democracy to promote one belief system,'' he said.

"Charles Murray's Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 is an important book that will have large influence. It is unfortunately not a good book—but its lack of merit in no way detracts from its importance. If anything, the book's flaws add to its power, by enhancing the book's appeal to the audience for whom it is intended. Coming Apart is an important book less because of what it says than because of what it omits

In 1971, Lewis F. Powell, then a corporate lawyer and member of the boards of 11 corporations, wrote a memo to his friend Eugene Sydnor, Jr., the Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The memorandum was dated August 23, 1971, two months prior to Powell's nomination by President Nixon to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Powell Memo did not become available to the public until long after his confirmation to the Court. It was leaked to Jack Anderson, a liberal syndicated columnist, who stirred interest in the document when he cited it as reason to doubt Powell's legal objectivity. Anderson cautioned that Powell "might use his position on the Supreme Court to put his ideas into practice...in behalf of business interests."

Though Powell's memo was not the sole influence, the Chamber and corporate activists took his advice to heart and began building a powerful array of institutions designed to shift public attitudes and beliefs over the course of years and decades. The memo influenced or inspired the creation of the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Accuracy in Academe, and other powerful organizations. Their long-term focus began paying off handsomely in the 1980s, in coordination with the Reagan Administration's "hands-off business" philosophy.

Most notable about these institutions was their focus on education, shifting values, and movement-building -- a focus we share, though usually with contrasting goals. One of our great frustrations is that "progressive" foundations and funders have failed to learn from the success of these corporate institutions and decline to fund the Democracy Movement that we and a number of similarly-focused organizations are attempting to build. Instead, they overwhelmingly focus on damage control, band-aids and short-term results which provide little hope of the systemic change we so desperately need to reverse the trend of growing corporate dominance.

We see depressingly little sign of change. Progressive institutions eagerly embrace tools like the web and e-mail as hopes for turning the nation in a progressive direction. They will not. They are tools that can and must be used to raise funds and mobilize people more effectively (and we rely on them heavily), but tools and tactics are no substitute for long-term vision, strategy and patient nurturing of movement-building.

So did Powell's political views influence his judicial decisions? The evidence is mixed. Powell did embrace expansion of corporate privilege and wrote the majority opinion in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, a 1978 decision that effectively invented a First Amendment "right" for corporations to influence ballot questions. On social issues, he was a moderate, whose votes often surprised his backers.

"Here's some background those befuddled Democrats need to know: One of the most robust and effective conspiracy theories on the right, the notion that "secularism" – or, just as often, "Secular Humanism" – is a religion is meant to be taken entirely literally: right wingers genuinely believe it refers to an actually existing religious practice. How do conservatives know? Because, they say, the Supreme Court said so. "

Indiana University School of Letters

"In this sense, what is in one way a parallel between now and the 70s is also a difference. Both eras brought into doubt a dominant economic paradigm - Keynesian social democracy is the 70s and neoliberalism now. However, because neoliberalism serves the interests of capitalists in a way that Keynesianism (by the 70s) did not, there’s less of a rush among the ruling elite to look for an alternative.

But this merely raises the question. Why - given that its living standards are falling now in a way they did not in the 70s - is the working class so quiescent compared to then?"