[Vision2020] My letter to the News&Observer, Raleigh, NC

[keely emerinemix]

Thanks to Nick, Rose and Tom and all of you who've told the story as it is.  Your truth-telling on this is a blessing.

keely
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Nick Gier 
  To: vision2020 at moscow.com 
  Cc: dougwils at moscow.com 
  Sent: Monday, December 13, 2004 11:28 AM
  Subject: [Vision2020] My letter to the News&Observer, Raleigh, NC


  To the Editor:

  Pastor Douglas Wilson's booklet "Southern Slavery As It Was" was once used at the Carey Christian School, and I would like to comment on this former student of mine at the University of Idaho.

  When we awarded Wilson an MA in philosophy in 1977, all that we required of him was that he use his degree responsibly.  Sadly, that does not seem to have been the case.

  We became aware of the booklet in October, 2003, and we were shocked by its irresponsible scholarship.  Even scholars within the conservative Presbyterian movement have urged him to withdraw it from circulation.  

  Professor Robert McKenzie, an expert on civil war history at the University of Washington and a member of Wilson's mission church in Seattle, has criticized the booklet.  If a professional historian had written this, says McKenzie, he or she "would be totally humiliated."

  It has now been demonstrated that at least one quarter of the booklet was plagiarized from Time on the Cross, a controversial book that suggests that slaves were treated better than previously believed.  Wilson's defense of "sloppy editing" is undermined by the fact that the booklet's co-author, Steve Wilkins, has lifted passages from at least two other books in his own publications.

  Wilkins sits on the Board of Directors of the League of the South, a neo-Confederate organization that proposes that 15 southern states set up their own God-fearing nation.  Wilson claims that he is not a neo-Confederate, but his school here in Moscow, Idaho celebrates Robert E. Lee's birthday, and a visitor to Wilson's office saw Lee's portrait and Civil War memorabilia there. 

  Even though McKenzie made Wilson aware of problems with the slavery booklet sometime in 2002, Wilson did not pull it from circulation until early this year.  Wilson promised that after the footnotes were fixed, he will reprint it.  We hope that he does not do that, but if he does we will once again to have declare that its thesis is not only indefensible but detestable.

  For more on the Wilson saga see www.tomandrodna.com/notonthepalouse.

  Nick Gier, Professor Emeritus
  University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho





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