I've been thinking a lot about Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange recently. First, there was the interesting post on Pandagon about Pastor Ted and his Clockwork Orange restoration.

Ted Haggard is about to start his formal three-to-five year "spiritual journey" of restoration, though from the description in the LA Times, it sounds like the man's about to be put through a horrible emotional, perhaps even physical, wringer by these fundies who consider themselves peers and friends of the fallen pastor.

Scary sh*t, as Pam Saulding points out. Then in the Times this morning there is an article on how evangelicals are using taxpayer money to brainwash individuals in the nation's prison system.

The program ? which grew from a project started in 1997 at a Texas prison with the support of George W. Bush, who was governor at the time ? says on its Web site that it seeks ?to ?cure? prisoners by identifying sin as the root of their problems? and showing inmates ?how God can heal them permanently, if they turn from their sinful past.?

As I recall in the movie, the prison Chaplain was the one person to stand up to the Skinnarian politicians, arguing that their brainwashing took away the individual's free will.

Prison Chaplain: Choice! The boy has not a real choice, has he? Self-interest, the fear of physical pain drove him to that grotesque act of self-abasement. The insincerity was clear to be seen. He ceases to be a wrongdoer. He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice.

Minister: Padre, there are subtleties! We are not concerned with motives, with the higher ethics. We are concerned only with cutting down crime and with relieving the ghastly congestion in our prisons. He will be your true Christian, ready to turn the other cheek, ready to be crucified rather than crucify, sick to the heart at the thought of killing a fly. Reclamation! Joy before the angels of God! The point is that it works.

With all that is wrong in the Minister's project, I thought there was irony in the Chaplain's position then, and I think there is irony in the stories currently in the news. And the truly scary part is that today in the US the Chaplain and the Minister are working together. Scary ironic sh*t.

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