I'm about to have a nervous breakdown.
My head really hurts.
If I don't find a way out of here, I'm gonna go to death first.
I'm crazy and I'm hurt.
Let off my shoulder.
I believe the Antichrist is alive and well.
I believe he knows who he is.
And I believe he awaits with glee his day of demonic reign.
This man is at least going to be partially Jewish, as was Adolf Hitler, as was Karl Marx.
He will not regard the desire of women.
That means he's going to be homosexual.
There's an army of 200 million marching down the river Euphrates coming toward the Persian Gulf.
There's going to be the meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion that is unplanned for on the charts of all of the dictators of the earth.
It's not an invasion from the north or the south or the east or the west.
It's an invasion from heaven and he will establish his kingdom and of his kingdom there shall be no end.
I am telling you that makes this message one of the most thrilling prophetic messages you've ever heard in your life.
You could get raptured out of this building before I get through finished preaching.
We were that close.
Alright y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Wharton and our next guest on the show today is Mikey Weinstein.
He's a former JAG officer and Reagan White House lawyer.
He runs the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and is the author of the book, With God on Our Side.
Welcome to the show Mikey, how are you?
Thank you, it's great to be here.
Thank you so much Scott.
Yeah, yeah, it's been I guess two or three years since we've talked at least and you know I always, well not always anymore, but I used to pretty often play that clip of John Hagee because I think it's so interesting that so much of American politics can be based on the insane rantings of a lunatic like that.
And apparently they are.
And your specialty I guess is the influence of these most craziest of evangelical Christians inside the U.S. military, particularly the U.S. Air Force, is that right?
Very much so.
Actually it's not even just the Air Force anymore, it's pretty much ubiquitous all over the United States military, which we refer to as the, Scott, you know the technologically most lethal organization ever created by humankind.
We got into this fight, and if anyone is listening it's just a simple matter to go to our website, which is www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org.
We represent just under 19,000, hundreds more each month, but currently just under 19,000 active duty United States Marines, Sailors, Soldiers, Airmen, Cadets, Midshipmen, Reserve and Guard personnel, Veterans, Coast Guardsmen, 96% of our clients are actually Christian.
Of that number roughly three-fourths are Protestant, one-fourth are Roman Catholic, so only 4% of our clients are not Christian.
Our Christian clients are being told they're not Christian enough, and what we're really facing, if you remember the famous statement from Eisenhower, Scott, in his farewell address where he warned America about what, you know the military industrial complex, right?
Sure.
What we're really facing is a fundamentalist Christian para-church military corporate proselytizing complex, and it's just ubiquitous, and this is what we fight every day.
I think that's so cool.
Tell us the name of it again, which kind of complex, I need a memory of it.
It's called a fundamentalist Christian para-church military corporate proselytizing complex.
No, right on.
Well, I'm going to have to listen to the rerun of that to get this memorized.
Para-something.
Hang on, we'll get back to that in a second.
But, yeah, I just think that's kind of hilarious in its own way, that this is just part of being an empire, is every part of every part of our culture gets militarized.
I don't want to pick on any particular denominations, because everybody's an individual and they believe lots of different things, even while they sit next to each other in pews at the same church and in the same branches and so forth.
But just generally speaking, can you help us understand whether we're talking about, you say 96% of your clients are Christians, and the vast majority of those even are Protestants.
So is it the mainline kind of Methodists and Baptists versus Pentecostals and sort of more fringy kind of Protestant denominations, or how exactly does that break down?
You mean of our clients?
Yeah, or just, you know, who's running, which sects are the kooks in the Air Force who are trying to force all the rest of these Christians to be more Christian?
Stop saying just the Air Force, because it's the Marine Corps, Navy, and Army as well.
That's why I say it, Scott.
Scott, do you have a pen near you, or a pencil?
Yeah, I got one in my hand right now.
Okay, can you hold it six inches over your desk for me?
I'm going somewhere with this.
Can I do what over the desk?
Hold it, suspend it six inches over your desk.
Alright.
Now drop it.
Alright.
Okay, everyone heard it drop, right?
Why did it drop?
Gravity.
It is exactly how systemic and ubiquitous, out-of-control, fundamental Christianity is throughout the entirety of the Department of Defense.
I used to say the Pentagon, but we now refer to it as the Pentecostal-gon.
Our clients are generally mainline Protestants, Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, you know, Presbyterians.
We have 21 different types of Baptists.
You know, we have Mormons.
We have Mormon Catholics.
We have a few Greek Orthodox.
And the people that are on the outside that are doing this are generally referred to as...
There's a number of names that are applied to this group of people.
Generally referred to as premillennial, dispensational, Reconstructionist, Dominionist, Fundamentalist, Evangelical Christians.
There are some that are called pre-tribulation, mid-tribulation, post-tribulation.
But the term that is generally used is Dominionist Christians.
In the book of Genesis, Scott, where God is supposed to have said to Adam and Eve, and their descendants, go and take dominion over all the fish that swim it, the birds that fly it, etc., etc.
Their view is they want to replace the U.S. Constitution with a Fundamentalist Christian theocracy.
The easiest way to describe it is they're the flip side of the Taliban.
They're the Fundamentalist Christian Taliban.
It's bad enough if they were in our public school system.
They are, you know, in our police department, etc.
When they're located in a significant position where all the nukes and laser-guided and conventional weapons are, that's really bad.
Yeah, that is really bad.
You know, I've been watching movies about nuclear war recently, too.
And I was thinking, those hydrogen bombs are really big when they go off.
And that ought to be our first priority as human beings, all six billion of us, is getting rid of the hydrogen bombs.
And yet, not only are they in the hands of crazy nationalists, they're in the hands of people who, you know, I don't like picking on people's religious beliefs, even though I'm not a religious guy myself.
Because, after all, I value freedom more than anything else.
And people's right to their own conscience and to believe in what they want.
And that's what America's all about and all that.
You know, I'm pro-mosque on Wall Street or whatever.
I don't care about that kind of thing.
But, you know, it's a problem, right, when we're talking about the Strategic Air Command believes that they might have to usher in Armageddon with those hydrogen bombs that they're in charge of.
Exactly.
And, of course, we actually don't have a...
It's actually not a Strategic Air Command anymore.
But I can tell you that...
I was thinking that as soon as I said that.
I forget what it's called now, though.
Well, it's actually called...
Well, there's Global Strike Command.
And there's a number of...
There's Air Combat Command.
We stopped a major significant commander in the flying part of our Department of Defense.
Let me say that.
For a few years ago.
He was putting together a PowerPoint presentation.
He wanted to go out to all 65,000 members in his command.
That showed the direct parallel between his version of the Book of Revelation and all of our combat movements in Basra, Baqaba, Mosul, Fallujah, Tora Bora, Sadr City in the northwest part of Baghdad, all over Kandahar.
It got out to about 2,500 people before we stopped it.
But we keep trying to tell people that the apocalypse is not an appropriate exit strategy.
And Armageddon is not an appropriate exit strategy for Iraq and Afghanistan.
All right.
Well, jeez.
I like to think of the Christian Zionists and the real wackos as being an unfortunate but definite segment of the Republican Party's voting bloc out there.
But the whole thing about them running the Pentagon, that really bothers me.
Can you tell me the names of some of the guys that really believe in this nonsense?
General McChrystal and them?
Well, McChrystal has not popped up to the same extent.
I'll start with a guy named Petraeus.
General David Petraeus actually blurbed a book called Under Orders.
I thought that he made it clear in the blurb, which is the endorsement on the jacket of the book.
I believe it was written by a fundamentalist Christian chaplain that said every soldier should keep this in their rucksack as they go into battle.
And it made it very clear the book makes a folly of the separation of church and state and makes it clear that if the soldiers don't have the appropriate Christian faith, they're going to be weak-linked and endanger their units.
Hold it right there, Mikey.
I'm sorry.
We've got this heartbreak built in here.
Music playing.
Everybody, it's Mikey Weinstein from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, author of With God on Our Side.
And we'll be right back.
And join us on Facebook at facebook.lrn.fm.
Music playing.
All right, y'all.
It's Anti-War Radio, wrapping up the show for the day and the week here.
Appreciate y'all tuning in.
Talking with Mikey Weinstein.
Is it Steen or Stein?
I'm sorry, Mikey.
Half the family says Stein, the other half says Steen.
I'm in the Steen half, Scott, but thanks for asking.
Okay, good.
Mikey Weinstein.
There you go.
He's the author of With God on Our Side.
And, you know, it was my pop that pointed out to me that, wow, when God is on your side, you can never be wrong.
And that could be really problematic for when you're doing wrong things and refuse to realize it.
Very, very, very true.
The problem is that the nice thing is that we actually have the basic aspect of American life, something we call the U.S. Constitution, which represents the first time in human history that any governing document did not invoke, any nation-state created a governing document, Scott, that did not, not, not, not invoke the name of somebody's particular deity.
Right.
In this country, we separate spiritual and temporal, church and state.
That's what we do here.
And although it doesn't say it specifically in the First Amendment, we have something called case law, federal case law, that has established the separation of church and state.
It doesn't use those words, but it clearly states those 16 golden words in the First Amendment that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
When I speak around the country, people, fundamentalist Christians love to say it, Scott, but it doesn't say separation of church and state.
I also then ask everybody, please raise your hand.
In America, if you're accused of a crime, do you have the right to a lawyer?
And if a policeman arrests you, do they have to read you your rights?
And what are those called?
Everyone goes, Miranda rights, Branda rights.
I said, yes, see, that came down, that's also not in the Constitution, but it came down in a Supreme Court case called Miranda.
And I also say, how many people out there in America believe that you have a right to a fair trial?
And everyone raises their hand, because this is America, right, Scott?
Yeah, well, I mean, I honestly...
Let me just finish.
Okay, great.
Now, where is that guaranteed?
Right, and then they'll all say, the U.S. Constitution, some of the less intelligent will say the Declaration of Independence, and I'll say, no, actually, there is no right to a fair trial in the U.S. Constitution.
It's a speedy and public trial, but through case law, through the years, you have the right to a fair trial.
So it's just like a law of cause.
You've been through this, Scott, I can tell.
Sure.
Well, you know, I would say that you don't even really need a broad interpretation of any kind of court interpretation.
I mean, respecting an establishment of religion, so, I mean, what else could that mean?
It means, could anyone believe that that means that, well, they can't make an official national church, but if you work for them, they can force you to go to church.
I mean, come on.
You don't even need any sort of expansive, living, breathing, Constitution sort of philosophy whatsoever to agree with that.
You know, the Establishment Clause, I think, is pretty all-encompassing, as stated, as far as government mandating such things.
I would like to point out that usually it's Baptists, at least where I'm from in Texas, who push for, you know, religicizing the schools and that kind of thing.
And I always think it's fun to point out that, you know, the majority in Texas are Methodists, not Baptists, and they're going to make your kid pray all wrong or whatever.
If you end up adopting prayer in school, it won't be your prayer anyway.
So why would anybody want to even get into a fight about, you know, that kind of thing?
People ought to be perfectly happy.
I think that's one of the greatest parts of America, is that, you know, religion is part of public life but not part of, you know, government life.
It's supposed to not be.
Right.
Well, we're not trying, you know, we're not trying to do anything to take anybody's, you know, religion away from anybody.
We're not trying to take anybody's right to prayer.
We hope that everybody gloriously and comprehensively celebrates whatever religious faith they want to take.
But, you know, we're saying you cannot engage the machinery of the state to do that.
Right.
That ought to be clear enough.
And now, you know, I'm pretty ignorant about religion is my problem.
So, like, I don't even know the difference between a Presbyterian and a Pentecostal other than there is one, and it's pretty big.
I guess the Pentecostals are more literal about the Book of Daniel coming true soon or something like that, huh?
You know, there are so many different fractional aspects to every denomination that our perspective is, like, I don't care what somebody's religious faith is.
I don't.
I mean, that's perfectly fine.
And the problem is that when you blur, when you leave nothing but smoke and debris of the separation of church and state in the United States military, you know, this becomes an extremely serious national security threat.
And the calculus of that threat can be described this way.
Look, here's what we've got.
A fanatical religiosity, not Wahhabist fundamentalist Islam, but out-of-control fundamentalist Christianity mixed in with actual God, weapons of mass destruction.
We have them, the other side doesn't, at least not yet.
Mixed in with tortured, misguided patriotism, a total abrogation of the oath that everyone in the military takes to preserve, protect, support, and defend the Constitution of the United States.
Mixed in with totally unfettered access because of this, you know, draconian specter of military command influence.
And then, you know, mixed in with a complete dearth of any restraint, oversight, and supervision, and you have yourself a national security threat that is so serious that it's almost impossible to believe that nobody can believe it unless you're complicit.
And that's how bad it is, period.
Well, now talk to me a little bit about the mechanism inside the Pentagon for these guys protecting themselves and making sure that like-minded people join them.
And I guess what you're saying is if there was a tipping point in there, whoever the old guard were already lost.
They're already gone, and these guys are already running things in majority.
Like I said, we have a number of generals and admirals who support what we're doing and many people up and down the chain of command.
The problem is that there are just too many who are afraid to stand up.
Look, it's hard to stand up and fight something like this because if that happens, you know, you become a tarantula on a wedding cake.
We all know how long tarantulas on wedding cakes last, right?
You know, they don't last terribly long.
Has that ever actually happened to you?
Having a tarantula on a wedding cake?
Yeah.
I've heard about it.
I just never heard that cliche before.
I like it.
I was wondering where it came from.
Well, that's, you know, there you've got it.
So it's a very, very hard thing to speak truth to power.
The average American, docile and supine as they are, don't have enough gut to tell somebody to shut the hell up if they're talking in a movie theater.
You know that.
Yeah.
Well, so now General Petraeus, he's certainly a political type, a perfume prince, as David Hackworth would have said, and clearly wants more power and has said over and over again, really, I think if you Google it you'll get 10,000 results now for Petraeus wants to be the president one day.
And you're saying now that he sucks up to these kind of religious kooks in the same way that he sucks up to Max Boot?
Or you're saying that he's actually one of these kooks who thinks that it's his role to force Jesus to come back sooner here?
I don't know the man.
All I know is that he's done at least one thing, and that was clearly, he's allowed massive violations of standing general order, what used to be 1A, now it's 1B, initiated by his predecessor, General Tommy Franks, back in the early 2000s, I think it was 2003, that created a complete prohibition in the AOR, which is how the Pentagon refers to Iraq and Afghanistan, of any total prohibition of any proselytizing of any religion, faith, or practice.
And under Petraeus this has been, I mean we have fundamentalist Christian missionaries that are passing out New Testaments written in Pashto, Dari, Swahili, Arabic, in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus he gave the blurb on the back of that book, and there's something we use here at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, called the 13th Stroke Theory, have you heard of that one, Scott?
No, please explain.
It's like a 13th stroke of a crazy clock that casts out not only upon that hour, but all that preceded.
So if we find that out there, we wonder, okay, what else is going on?
But we don't have to wonder too much, because we get called around the clock.
I'm sorry, Mikey, I kind of talked over the very beginning of that with my long version of my no, I've never heard of that.
Could you say that again, please?
We call it the 13th Stroke Theory, like the 13th stroke of a crazy clock, Scott, which casts doubt not only upon that hour, but indeed all that preceded.
Like when there's smoke, there's fire, and you wonder about what else is going on.
But there's large, large, large numbers of members of the military, and this is why we've filed federal lawsuits, state lawsuits.
We have new lawsuits that are very near to being filed again, and we're just going to keep firing away here.
Well, are you making any progress?
Have you got lawsuits going on?
Have you got injunctions?
Are any officers in trouble?
We often call up the commanders that are involved and say, this is the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.
By the way, for any listeners, please, please, I'm asking you.
We're a nonprofit charity.
Go check out our website, because you will not believe what you see there.
And it's, again, www.
MilitaryReligiousFreedom.org.
This is a direct response to Scott's question about, are you making progress?
We stopped Franklin Graham from being allowed to preach at the Pentagon, his Islamophobia, back in April on the National Day of Prayer.
We exposed the story of the Jesus rifles, that all of our rifles that are being used, the M4s and M16s, actually have biblical quotations.
Oh, that was you that got that out, huh?
That's us, man.
Yeah, that's us.
Oh, good for you.
You know, so we have had a tremendous amount of these, but we're a nonprofit charity, and if anyone's listening, guys, you know, we need help.
All we can offer you is that, you know, it's a complete tax deduction to support us, but you won't be the ones on the crosshairs.
But help us keep fighting against, essentially, the fundamentalist Christian version of the Taliban, again, inside our military.
So we have a tremendous amount of success.
It's just you don't hear about a lot of them, because we have to keep them as quiet as possible.
You have to, or the media does?
We have to.
We break them out when our clients let us take them out.
But many times the clients don't want us to even notify anyone.
Right, right.
Okay, everybody, that's Mikey Weinstein.
Thanks very much for your time.
You're welcome.
All right, everybody, militaryreligiousfreedom.org.
For the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, the book is With God on Our Side.
We'll be back here with more AI War Radio Monday.
Thanks for listening.
