[Vision2020] Column Headline was not mine

[Joan Opyr]

Dear Visionaries:

In the world of print newspapers, headlines are never written by 
reporters or opinion columnists; they are written by copy editors.  
Headline-writing is the copy editors' purview, and they guard it 
jealously.  (Copy editors are to blame for those awful plays on words 
like "Hold that Tiger," when Tiger Woods is playing better golf than he 
has been this past week.)  Writers hate this cheesy tendency among copy 
editors; we revile them for being pun-happy.  Nick Gier did not write 
the Idaho Statesman headline that accompanied his article, and you can 
bet your sweet bippie that he didn't have any input regarding the use 
of the word Neo-Nazi.  That's unfortunate, but that's the way it works. 
  Greg Dickison and Doug Wilson should take up their concerns with the 
editors of Idaho Statesman and/or with Gannet, the massive conglomerate 
which owns the paper.

And I say good luck to them.  In my experience, libel on the editorial 
page is nearly impossible to prove.  The headline could have been 
"Moscow Pastor Consumes Own Dung Like A Mountain Gorilla" and Doug 
still might go to court and lose.  Public figures take public hits.  
Before you waste too much sympathy on Doug, consider the number of 
books, articles, radio op-eds and newspaper pieces that have been 
written about Bill and Hillary Clinton and the "murder" of Vince 
Foster.  Sheesh.

At New West Magazine (www.newwest.net) things work a bit differently.  
As New West's Northern Idaho Editor, I write the headlines that appear 
with my pieces; no copy editor is out there punning for me -- I punish 
myself.  It is also my practice to allow other contributors to the 
Northern Idaho node (like Nick) to come up with their own headlines.  
Welcome to the freedom of web-based publishing.  We have our own 
standards of practice and etiquette, and though we do make mistakes, at 
least they're fresh mistakes.

Just for the record, I agree with Nick that the Idaho Statesman 
headline was both inaccurate and unfortunate.  Neither Doug Wilson nor 
Steve Wilkins are Neo-Nazis.  Wilkins is most certainly a 
Neo-Confederate, and Doug, by choosing to associate with, publish with, 
and boogie down on Moscow's Main Street with Steve Wilkins to the rebel 
yells of "Sweet Home Alabama" is begging the question of whether or not 
he is himself a Neo-Confederate.  I know Neil Young's "Southern Man" 
hard to dance to, but if I were Doug's shoes, I'd damn sure give it a 
try.

Freebird!

Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment
www.auntie-establishment.com

On Aug 13, 2005, at 10:10 AM, Nicholas Gier wrote:

> Dear Mr. Dickison:
>
> As you well know, newspaper editors are solely responsible for the 
> headlines that they choose to print.  The title of my submitted column 
> was "The Cultural Wars Come to Moscow." I personally object to the 
> title the editors if the "Idaho Statesman" chose to use.  I certainly 
> would not have chosen it myself, because it is not an accurate 
> characterization of Wilson's religion.
>
> I have never called Wilson a racist or a neo-Nazi.  In my column I 
> simply related information that I gleaned from the Southern Poverty 
> Law Center concerning the League of the South's relations with two 
> other Southern political groups.  I would feel comfortable calling 
> Wilson a "neo-Confederate," because there is sufficient evidence to do 
> so.
>
> You may recall last year that I was quoted by Vera White stating that 
> I did not think that Wilson was a racist in connection with a parallel 
> statement that I did not think that Mel Gibson was an anti-Semite.
>
> In the past Mr. Wilson has seen fit to call me a "slanderer," 
> "libeler," and "banshee," and other crude names.  I believe that in 
> comparison I've taken the moral high road in this debate.
>
> I would also remind you that some time ago a version of this column 
> appeared on Vision2020, but Wilson and his associates did not raise 
> any objection at that time.  I further remind you that you are on 
> record in "Credenda Agenda" stating that Old Testament law and 
> custom--including the support of slavery--should be the law of the 
> land.
>
> I'm currently on the road at this time and do not have a copy of the 
> Statesman column, but I have appended the column as it appeared in 
> "New West" magazine with additional paragraphs from the essay on my 
> website.  Readers can now judge for themselves about the accuracy of 
> my statements.
>
> I trust that this clears up any misunderstanding and/or anxiety on 
> your part.
>
> Nick Gier
>
> The Culture Wars Come to Moscow, Idaho
> By Nick Gier, 6-25-05, New West On-Line
>
> "My Town," a new documentary on America's cultural wars, had its 
> premier in Moscow, Idaho on June 23rd. The newly refurbished Kenworthy 
> Theatre was filled to capacity with an enthusiastic crowd of 340 
> people.
>
> Michael Hayes, an education professor from Washington State 
> University, worked on the film for about 18 months, interviewing the 
> principal players in the debate about Douglas Wilson's religious 
> empire.
>
> Wilson is pastor of Moscow's 800-member Christ Church, which has 
> mission churches across the country. Wilson trains the ministers for 
> these new churches in a two- year program called Greyfriars. He also 
> holds the franchise for 154 classical Christian schools, his own Logos 
> School in Moscow being the model.
>
> In 1996 Wilson founded New St. Andrews College (NSA), and it now 
> enrolls 130 four-year students in a building in the heart of historic 
> Moscow. He also runs Canon Press in the same building as Greyfriars 
> and it grosses almost $1 million a year. Last year, two Moscow 
> residents, Rosemary Huskey and Saundra Lund, challenged the tax 
> exemptions on this building and the NSA site and they won their 
> appeal.
>
> The controversy about Wilson exploded in October, 2003, when some 
> students at the University of Idaho discovered "Southern Slavery As It 
> Was," a booklet published by Canon Press. Wilson co-authored the book 
> with Steve Wilkins, a Monroe, Louisiana pastor and founding director 
> of the League of the South, whose vision is new 15-state Confederacy 
> ruled by Calvinist patriarchs.
>
> Details about Wilson's ties to the Neo-Confederates have been given in 
> a previous column (appended below), so I would like to focus on what 
> new I learned from Hayes' film.
>
> In rejecting the charge of racism, Wilson claimed that it was 
> Christianity, not genes, that make a culture superior. He said that if 
> Christianity had moved south instead of west, Africans would now be 
> the most advanced people in the world.
>
> One might ask how Wilson defines cultural superiority. If it is 
> economic power, then Euro-Americans will be overtaken by Chinese and 
> Indians in 20-30 years. If it is moral superiority, how does Wilson 
> explain that fact that Christian America now imprisons 2 million 
> people, while the Japanese currently incarcerate 150,000, if you 
> adjust for population. We will be militarily superior for a long time, 
> but I remember Jesus saying that we should be as little children when 
> we come to him.
>
> History appears to disconfirm Wilson's view of Christianity‚s special 
> advantage. Medieval Europe is Wilson‚s ideal world, but the rest of 
> the civilized world at that time--China, India, and the Islamic 
> countries--was far more advanced than these Europeans. In fact, if it 
> had not been Mongols bringing Asian goods/inventions and the Muslims 
> preserving Greek philosophy/science and introducing algebra, Europe 
> would have remained stagnant.
>
> Wilson has the Mongols to thank for the pants he wears, and he should 
> be grateful to the Hindus for the zero. The Mongols were the source of 
> the gunpowder that Wilson's hero Robert E. Lee used against the Union 
> Army. Furthermore, it would be very difficult for Wilson to count his 
> book royalties with Roman numerals. We live in one great world culture 
> in which all people contribute. Even the wisdom of the Bible is based 
> on many Middle Eastern cultures.
>
> At Wilson's history conference in February, 2004, he and Wilkins were 
> joined by George Grant, who has called for the stoning of homosexuals, 
> and who has written this:
>
> "Christian politics has as its primary intent the conquest of the 
> land--of men, families, institutions, bureaucracies, courts, and 
> governments for the Kingdom of Christ. It is to reinstitute the 
> authority of God's Word as supreme over all judgments, over all 
> legislation, over all declarations, constitutions, and 
> confederations."
>
> In the film, Wilson prophesied that the conquest of Christianity would 
> hit secular culture like a tsunami hitting a folding chair on a beach. 
> When Wilson encouraged Americans of all beliefs to replace the public 
> schools with their own private schools, his tolerance for their short 
> tenure does not appear to be much of a virtue.
>
> Wilson's tolerance was also pretty thin when a reporter once asked him 
> how he would react to a future Muslim mayor. That is not possible, he 
> said, because soon everyone would be a Christian. For Wilson, the law 
> of the land will not be Shar'ia, but it will be the laws of Leviticus.
>
> Hayes' assistant had an opportunity to interview all three men 
> together at the February conference. Wilkins was asked if he really 
> believed that only propertied males should vote, and he answered 
> "Yes," while the other two nodded approvingly. Always the jokester, 
> Wilson said that democracy was just like two coyotes and a sheep 
> voting on what to eat for lunch. Wilson's "federal vision" for church 
> and society is that husbands would vote for their wives, who would 
> submit to them in all things.
>
> The three men were asked about slavery, but none of them condemned the 
> owning of one person by another. Wilson said that slavery is a sinful 
> institution, but rebellion is just as sinful. Slaves who have 
> Christian masters will at least be treated with love and respect. God 
> presumably will remove sinful institutions according to his own 
> counsel.
>
> This is a tough question for Wilson, because he has always said that 
> Christians should never be ashamed of what the Bible says. The other 
> problem is moral relativism: Wilson seems to be saying that biblical 
> slavery was moral but it‚s now immoral.
>
> For pastors such as Wilson and Wilkins who believe in the absolute 
> sovereignty of God, they should be the last ones to take divine 
> judgment into their own hands. Only God chooses whether we are saved 
> or damned, or whether all rebels are sinful.
>
> Wilson and Wilkins, however, are following in the footsteps of Jerry 
> Falwell who once declared that God does not answer the prayers of 
> Jews. Again this is surely for God alone to decide, not mere sinful 
> mortals. We humanists are always condemned for preempting divine 
> prerogatives, so what is going on here?
> Some conservative Christians make yet another division: an ethnic one 
> that declares that one culture is superior to all others.  Michael 
> Hill, founder of the League of the South, proposes that an independent 
> neo-Confederacy of fifteen states would have the duty to protect the 
> values of Anglo-Celtic culture from black Americans, who are "a 
> compliant and deadly underclass."  A key word for the League is 
> “hierarchy,” the God-given right for superiors (read “white males”) to 
> rule over inferiors.
>
>         Since 1998, the League of the South has had close ties with 
> the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who in 2000 elected Kirk Lyons to 
> its national executive board. An outspoken racist, Lyons was married 
> by neo-Nazi Richard Butler in 1990, when Butler still had his compound 
> in Hayden Lake. Lyons has led an amazingly unsuccessful legal campaign 
> to have Southern whites defined as a “protected class.”
>
>         The League and the Sons of Confederate Veterans organize 
> public protests with the Council of Conservative Citizens whose 
> website decries "negroes, queers and other retrograde species of 
> humanity." (Try replacing the “Cs” in their acronym with “Ks”!)  One 
> League leader said that we “need a new type of Klan.”
>
> Moscow pastor Doug Wilson and Steve Wilkins of Monroe, Louisiana wrote 
> a booklet entitled Southern Slavery as It Was in which they describe 
> the antebellum south as the most harmonious multiracial society in 
> history. Two University of Idaho history professors took time from 
> their busy schedules to refute this piece paragraph by paragraph. It 
> was later discovered that 20 percent of the essay was lifted from 
> Robert Fogel’s and Stanley Engerman’s Time on the Cross.
>
>
> Wilson still stands by the booklet’s thesis, but he has withdrawn it 
> from circulation.  The problem, however, is that there is remaining 
> stock in neo-Confederate book stores and at Wilson’s 154 Christian 
> schools across the nation. In December the principal of one of those 
> schools in Carey, North Carolina was forced to remove the booklet 
> because of local protests.
>
> Both Wilson and Wilkins deny that they are racists or 
> neo-Confederates, but Wilkins is a founding director of the League of 
> the South.  The League’s website uses small Confederate flags as hot 
> buttons for information about the board members. Even though a visitor 
> said that he saw a Confederate flag displayed in Wilson’s office, he 
> now claims that neo-Confederates should “burn the flag and wear the 
> ashes.” I would love to see Wilkins and Wilson do this when they meet 
> for a conference on the American Revolution in Moscow on August 8-10, 
> 2005.
>
>  If Wilson has no sympathies with neo-Confederates, why is he 
> associating with Wilkins, displaying the Confederate flag at his 
> Moscow school’s functions, celebrating Robert E. Lee's birthday at 
> this school, speaking at the Southern Heritage Conference, and writing 
> for Chronicles, a journal whose editors boast that they are all 
> members of the League of the South?
>
>
> Christian nationalist George Grant, who believes in the death penalty 
> for gays and lesbians, has joined Wilson and Wilkins at earlier Moscow 
> conferences.  Grant and Wilkins are promoting a novel entitled 
> Heiland, whose hero leads a violent overthrow of a "godless" federal 
> government. Heiland has been compared to the Turner Diaries, which 
> inspired the bombing of the Oklahoma Federal Building. The author of 
> the book, Frank Sanders, is a charter member of the League of the 
> South.
>
>            Grant's evangelism has as specific political goal: 
> "Christian politics has as its primary intent the conquest of the 
> land--of men, families, institutions, bureaucracies, courts, and 
> governments for the Kingdom of Christ. It is to reinstitute the 
> authority of God's Word as supreme over all judgments, over all 
> legislation, over all declarations, constitutions, and confederations. 
> True Christian political action seeks to rein the passions of men and 
> curb the pattern of digression under God's rule"(The Changing of the 
> Guard [Dominion Press, 1987], pp. 50-51).
>
>
>  Another parallel between Christian and Islamic fundamentalism is a 
> desire to make religious laws the laws of the land. In his regular 
> column in Wilson’s Credenda Agenda (vol. 3: nos. 9, 11), Greg 
> Dickison, member of Wilson’s Christ Church and a Moscow public 
> defender, states that "if we could have it our way,” then there would 
> be capital punishment for “kidnapping, sorcery, bestiality, adultery, 
> homosexuality, and cursing one's parents.”  Dickison also quotes 
> biblical passages (without qualification) that support slavery as 
> "ordained and regulated by God," death for apostasy (Deut. 13.6-9), 
> and cutting off a woman’s hand for touching a strange man's genitals 
> (Deut. 25.11,12). Behold, the Moscow Taliban!
>
>
> I have obtained my information about the neo-Confederate movement from 
> the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which has declared the League 
> of the South as a hate group.  Wilson and his associates belittle the 
> SPLC’s achievements, one of which was supporting the suit that lead to 
> the dismantling of Butler’s Aryan Nations compound in Hayden Lake.  We 
> are now faced with yet another national embarrassment in Northern 
> Idaho, and many Moscowans are already planning protests for the August 
> conference.
>
> I have fought religious fundamentalism all of my adult life, primarily 
> because I believe that it is one of the most destructive forces in the 
> world.  These views do not deserve our respect nor tolerance, but call 
> for our strongest condemnation. Come join us in Moscow in August to 
> demonstrate once again that “Idaho is too great for hate.”