1 Boring Old Man

It took me a while to figure out why the fall of Dr. George Rekers  so stuck in my mind. In his case, it was more than just his hypocrisy, it was connected to a memory of my own [a memory…]. With Mark Souder, I woke up this morning knowing the part that bothered me about his story. Before they were removed, there were a number of interviews of Mark Souder by [his lover] Tracy Jackson on Youtube. Representative Souder was self righteous, sarcastic, disdainful about Congress and Washington, and his topics were mostly Religious Right topics like Abstinence-Only sex education. Then in his resignation speech, he had the same attacking, snarky attitude – making claims about partisan slanders that hadn’t even had time to emerge. One was left with the obvious question as to how this holier-than-thou guy was able to rationalize his affair and continue to be such a self righteous crusader. Independent of the hypocrisy involved, how was he able to bring it off in his mind?

I guess we have the same question about Dr. George Rekers. How do you preach such a loud public gospel and yet live its opposite? With Souder, I think there was a hint in the mass of info about him yesterday. He was elected in the 1994 tide – Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America. Guess who else was in the class of 94 with Souder? Mark Sanford. Yes, the one that is Governor of South Carolina. It seems that part of the Contract with America had something to do with Congressmen serving too long, so the Class of 94 pledged to serve a limited number of terms. Mark Sanford promised to serve only three, and that’s what he did. He dropped out and then ran for Governor, winning in 2003. Mark Souder also promised to serve no more that 12 years when he was elected – signing the Contract with America like Sanford did. Well, for Souder, that’s not what he  did. Before resigning yesterday, he was running for his 9th term. What does that mean? He said he would only serve for six terms. It was part of the Republican theme in 1994, electing citizen representatives rather than career politicians.

Name, state	Year elected	Pledge length
Barbara Cubin, Wyoming	1994	12 years
Jeff Flake, Arizona	2000	6 years
Gil Gutknecht, Minnesota	1994	12 years
Timothy Johnson, Illinois	2000	6 years
Frank LoBiondo, New Jersey	1994	12 years
Mark Souder, Indiana	1994	12 years
Zach Wamp, Tennessee	1994	12 years

He wasn’t alone. It was reported in 2006 that at least seven of the House Republicans who had once promised to leave Congress were running for re-election. And Souder was still running day before yesterday. Who knows why he didn’t stick to the contract he signed? That’s not the point. I expect that if you asked him, he’d have some perfectly plausible story to explain why he didn’t keep his pledge. In fact, I’m sure he was asked the question during his later campaigns. I’ll even bet his answer was something pretty lofty. And as a matter of fact, his complaints about life in Washington in his resignation speech seem contrived. If Washington was detracting so much from his life, why didn’t he just keep his pledge and go home to Indiana to "walk with the Lord," as he says?  One of the reasons might be in that picture up there – the fair damsel, Tracy – who started working with him in 2004. But that’s not the point either. The point is, for all his moralizing, Mark Souder has a remarkably well developed ability to rationalize. A negative [and perhaps more accurate] way to say that would be to say Mark Souder believes his own lies.

The wedge strategy is a political and social action plan authored by the Discovery Institute, the hub of the intelligent design movement. The strategy was put forth in a Discovery Institute manifesto known as the Wedge Document, which describes a broad social, political, and academic agenda whose ultimate goal is to "defeat scientific materialism" represented by evolution, "reverse the stifling materialist world view and replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions". The strategy also aims to "affirm the reality of God." Its goal is to "renew" American culture by shaping public policy to reflect conservative Christian, namely evangelical Protestant, values.

Said Souder, "I personally believe that there is no issue more important to our society than intelligent design" [you can read about his active participation in the move to add creationism to school’s curriculum here]. Both Souder and Rekers are part of the movement to theocratize America. Both Souder and Rekers are able to believe wrong things because they fit with their foregone conclusions. And both Souder and Rekers are capable of living in a way that is diametrically opposed to their main message for the rest of us. They are the people that Scott Peck describes in his book, People of the Lie.

Peck discusses evil in his book People of the Lie: The Hope For Healing Human Evil and also in a chapter of The Road Less Traveled. Peck characterizes evil as a malignant type of self-righteousness in which there is an active rather than passive refusal to tolerate imperfection [sin] and its consequent guilt.