[Vision2020] Why do we do the things we do?

[Saundra Lund]

Ms. Jordan,

Thanks for asking the questions because I think they are important and
interesting ones, and I'm looking forward to reading what others think.

Having done some reading at the time, what popped into my mind with regard
to your query was the so-called charismatic "Reverend" Jim Jones, The
People's Temple, and the Jonestown massacre.  The fact that the mass
murders/suicides, including Congressman Leo Ryan & members of his
delegation, didn't take place here at home certainly doesn't lessen the
impact of the tragedy, and there were plenty of signs beforehand that all
was not well within The People's Temple.

I understand that doesn't directly answer your question about whether
religious sect/cults have taken over a town, county, or state, but Jones
created his own "town" such as it was.

And, there are *tons* of examples of where communities looked the other way
with respect to religious sects/cults and lived to regret their "tolerance,"
although I'm not specifically aware of cases where towns were taken over.
Just to name a few, there's Charles Manson and his Family, Jeffrey Lundgren,
David Koresh & the Branch Davidians (although there's enough unknown about
that situation that "revisionists" have lots of fun putting their own spin
on things), the Heaven's Gate group, etc.

Those are extreme examples to be sure, but then there's the child abuse
within the Hare Krishna ISKCON "schools", schools founded because of the
belief that public schools were "slaughterhouses" that "indoctrinated
'children in sense gratification and mental speculation.'"

On a more local note, I'd say Christ Church's absolute hysteria over female
breasts is an example of a take-over of sorts.  A well-organized *extremely*
vocal minority brought such pressure to bear on our local council that a
very discriminatory and legally unsound ordinance was enacted.  The minority
pressure was such that even when nearly 2000 *registered* voters (far more
than the vocal hysterics) expressed their complete lack of support for the
reactionary ordinance, the council refused to reconsider the error of their
ways.

In a similar vein, communities around the country are being attacked by
"stealth candidates" who *purposefully* hide their religious agendas,
affiliations, and theocratic desires until elected.  There are those
fundamentalist Christians who try to deny the whole thing, which is utter
nonsense -- our brains have obviously NOT been as addled by public education
as they'd hoped  :-)  This community successfully weathered just such an
attack on our school board, but other communities haven't been so fortunate:
San Diego, CA in 1990 faced just such an attack and didn't fare nearly so
well due to the pure deceit of the supposed "Christians" and voters who
weren't adequately educated.

But, can we really blame the voters too much?  In my mind, that's kind of
hard to do because those kind of people are willing to do whatever it takes
to win, including twisting outright deceit into a moral Good or imperative.

Besides, as we've aptly seen in this forum, asking questions that lead to
education in this community is called "intolerance."


JMHO,
Saundra Lund
Moscow, ID

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do
nothing.
-Edmund Burke 

-----Original Message-----
From: vision2020-admin@moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-admin@moscow.com] On
Behalf Of hayfields@moscow.com
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 9:58 PM
To: Vision2020@moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] Why do we do the things we do?


Visionaries,

I like many have been reading the various and sundry posts back and forth
about 
Christ Church, Auntie E, and Rose and others. I have seen many posts about 
intolerance, diversity,liberalism, crime and punishment. 
I have been most interested in the posts that say (paraphrasing of course in

the interest of brevity) "Shuddap, move on, leave them(unspecified)
alone...."
Of particular interest to me is the line of thinking that goes- "what Christ

Church and its members espouse is only words, a set of beliefs...it cannot
hurt 
you, they are not enacting actual violence,so why worry about it?" I am 
probably the least likely in my family (yes, I am the daughter of
Donaldh675)to 
ascribe sinister motives. So I wonder, are there instances where a 
population/community looked the other way at a religious sect (or cult if
you 
prefer)and lived to rue the day?  Concrete examples would be best.
Something 
modern would be great.  Can they really take over a town,county, state? I
guess 
what I am trying to find out is...what happens when we all as a group 
say..."Yeah you are right, we should all mind our own business." Is that the

community that we want for Moscow? What are the possible realistic
consequences?

Heather
Jordan