<div>This past week, the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC featured a piece on "The Family," as you describe it... I can't but wonder if you saw this broadcast, or just coincidentally mentioned this subject/book this week:</div>
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<div>It's already on YouTube, I guess:</div>
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<div><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dox4jdW4UyQ">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dox4jdW4UyQ</a></div>
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<div>Ted Moffett <br><span class="gmail_quote"></span></div>
<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 7/10/09, <b class="gmail_sendername">Tom Hansen</b> <<a href="mailto:thansen@moscow.com">thansen@moscow.com</a>> wrote:</span></div>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">I have just finished browsing an extremely abridged version of a book that<br>I find to be revealing and very thought-provoking.<br>
<br>"The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power" By<br>Jeff Sharlet<br><br>>From the book's introduction:<br><br>"The Avant-Garde of American Fundamentalism<br><br>This is how they pray: A dozen clear-eyed, smooth-skinned 'brothers'<br>
gather in a huddle, arms crossing arms over shoulders like the weave of a<br>cable, leaning in on one another and swaying like the long grass up the<br>hill from the house they share, a handsome, gray, two-story colonial that<br>
smells of new carpet, Pine-Sol, and aftershave. It is decorated with<br>lithographs of foxhunters and pictures of Jesus, and, in the bunk room, a<br>drawing of a 'C-4' machine gun given to them by their six-year-old<br>
neighbor. The men who live there call the house Ivanwald. At the end of<br>a tree-lined cul-de-sac in Arlington, Virginia, quiet but for the buzz of<br>lawn mowers and kids playing tag in the park across the road, Ivanwald is<br>
one house among many, clustered like mushrooms, nearly two dozen<br>households devoted, like these men, to the service of a personal Jesus, a<br>Christ who directs their every action. The men tend every tulip in the<br>cul-de-sac, trim every magnolia, seal every driveway smooth and black as<br>
boot leather. Assembled at the dining table or on their lawn or in the<br>hallway or in the bunk room or on the basketball court, they also pray,<br>each man's head bowed in humility and swollen with pride (secretly, he<br>
thinks) at being counted among the select corps for Christ, men to whom He<br>will open his heart and whom He will remember when he returns to the world<br>not born-again but remade, no longer an individual, but part of the Lord's<br>
revolution, His will transformed into a weapon for what the young men call<br>'spiritual war'."<br><br>I could purchase it through Amazon at:<br><br><a href="http://tinyurl.com/mfhky6">http://tinyurl.com/mfhky6</a><br>
<br>But, I prefer buying this book locally (ya listenin', BookPeople).<br><br>Does anybody know where this book is available locally?<br><br>Thanks,<br><br>Tom Hansen<br>Moscow, Idaho<br><br>"The Pessimist complains about the wind, the Optimist expects it to change<br>
and the Realist adjusts his sails."<br><br>- Unknown<br><br><br></blockquote></div>