[Vision2020] Vandalism at NSA

[Nick Gier]

Hail to the Vision!

I have condemned the vandalism at NSA on this list when it happened last 
year, and I now express my disgust that the low lives who wrote "Hitler 
Youth" at one of NSA's doors.  But I also resent the accusation by Roy 
Atwood that I or any other UI faculty member was responsible for this.  His 
current  attempt at fixing blame is just as pathetic as his previous 
gesticulations.

This morning I had a good chat with Chief Weaver and Assistant Chief Duke 
at the Moscow Police Department.  I wanted to make sure that they were not 
taking seriously Atwood's and Courtney's charge that my mistitled column in 
the Idaho Statesman (appended below) incited the vandals.

First, the only Moscow copies of the Statesman are found in our libraries 
and the UI President's office.  The on-line copy was removed soon after 
Wilson's attorney Greg Dickison objected to it, and it is still not posted, 
even though I've pleaded with them to repost it with my title.

Second, most of my students never read a newspapers, so I'm sure the 
miscreants who did this did not learn about NSA by reading anything.

Third, since there are no suspects to charge for malicious harassment Mr. 
Duke now considers the case closed.

Nick Gier, Head Banshee (so says Wilson),
Palouse Region, Planet Earth

P. S.  Dickison objected to the word "franchise" in my column, so let me 
correct this to say that Wilson sits on the national board of the 
Association of Classical and Christian Schools (head office in Moscow) and 
Logos School is a member.  At least one of these schools in Cary, NC 
requires that all board members read Wilson's book on Christian education 
and the slavery booklet was assigned until someone in the community 
discovered it.

My title: The Culture Wars Come to Moscow
Their title: Neo-Nazi Christians make presence felt again in Northern Idaho
Idaho Statesman 08-12-2005

"My Town," a new documentary on America's cultural wars, had its premier
June 23 in Moscow, Idaho. 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 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, and it now enrolls 130
four-year students in a building in the heart of historic Moscow.

The controversy about Wilson exploded in October 2003 over his book
"Southern Slavery As It Was," which describes the Antebellum South as the
most harmonious multiracial society in human history.

Wilson co-authored the book with Steve Wilkins, a Monroe, La., pastor and
founding director of the League of the South, whose vision is a new 15-state
Confederacy ruled by Calvinist patriarchs.

In rejecting the charge of racism, Wilson claimed that it was Christianity,
not genes, that makes a culture superior. He said 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 the Chinese and Indians will overtake Euro-Americans in 20-30
years.

If it is moral superiority, how does Wilson explain that Christian America
now imprisons 2 million people, while Buddhist Japan currently incarcerates
150,000, if you adjust for population?

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 and inventions and
the Muslims preserving Greek philosophy and science and introducing their
numerals and algebra, Europe would have remained stagnant.

In the film, Wilson prophesied that the conquest by Christianity would hit
secular culture like a tsunami hitting a folding chair on a beach.

When Wilson encourages Americans of all beliefs to replace public schools
with their own private schools, his tolerance for their short tenure does
not appear to be much of a virtue.

Wilkins was asked in the film if he really believed that only propertied
males should vote. He answered "yes," while Wilson nodded approvingly.
Always the jokester, Wilson said democracy was just like two coyotes and a
lamb voting on what to eat for lunch.

Wilkins and Wilson were asked about slavery, but neither of them condemned
the owning of one person by another. Wilson said 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.

Since 1998, Wilkins' 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.
The League and the Sons of Confederate Veterans organize public protests
with the Council of Conservative Citizens, whose Web site 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."

People in North Idaho applauded when the neo-Nazis were forced to leave
Hayden Lake, but now Wilkins is telling his friends that Moscow would be a
fine place to live.

Nick Gier taught religion and philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31
years. For more on the Wilson controversy see
www.tomandrodna.com/notonthepalouse.



"The god you worship is the god you deserve."
~~ Joseph Campbell

"Abstract truth has no value unless it incarnates in human beings who 
represent it, by proving their readiness to die for it."
  --Mohandas Gandhi

"Modern physics has taught us that the nature of any system cannot be 
discovered by dividing it into its component parts and studying each part 
by itself. . . .We must keep our attention fixed on the whole and on the 
interconnection between the parts. The same is true of our intellectual 
life. It is impossible to make a clear cut between science, religion, and 
art. The whole is never equal simply to the sum of its various parts." 
--Max Planck

Nicholas F. Gier
Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, University of Idaho
1037 Colt Rd., Moscow, ID 83843
http://users.adelphia.net/~nickgier/home.htm
208-882-9212/FAX 885-8950
President, Idaho Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO
http://users.adelphia.net/~nickgier/ift.htm

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