[Vision2020] From the Argonaut

[DonaldH675 at aol.com]

If Nate Alford is looking for any good reporters let me recommend Frank  
McGovern!!!  
    Moscow still racist after  all these years   (javascript:void 
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,directories=no,location=no');)     Written  by Frank McGovern -Argonaut      
Friday, 02 September 2005    
Prejudice is sneaky. It creeps up on you like The Shadow and clouds  your 
mind with a multiplicity of faces. Unfortunately, the worst sort of  prejudice isn
’t the easily dismissed, mouth-breathing skinhead variety.  The most devious 
tentacle slithers in initially smelling like logic. 
Barbara Richardson-Crouch, executive director of the Moscow/Latah  County 
Economic Development Council, recently announced that she and her  husband were 
leaving Moscow because our town had grown, and was growing,  increasingly 
racist. The thing is, Richardson is absolutely right; Moscow  has changed since my 
arrival. At the risk of assigning blame unfairly or  intolerantly, I’ll try to 
be diplomatic about this. The catalyst of this  change, indirectly or not, is 
Christ Church and its direct affiliates.  
For those of you unfamiliar with Christ Church, it is a local  fundamentalist 
denomination whose umbrella shelters a collection of  businesses and schools. 
The capo de capo of Christ Church is Doug Wilson,  a neo-Confederate minister 
and publishing gadfly. Wilson has enjoyed a  great deal of local infamy over 
the past several years due to the  publication of a booklet titled “Southern 
Slavery as it Was.” 
“Southern Slavery” defends its titular institution as an interracial  utopia 
peopled by happy, content slaves and their good Christian masters.  It 
included the following gems: “Slave life was to them (slaves) a life of  plenty, of 
simple pleasures, of food, clothes, and good medical care,” and  “There has 
never been a multiracial society which has existed with such  mutual intimacy 
and harmony in the history of the world.”
The booklet is a devious, mini-magnum opus of manipulation employing  
cherry-picked, distorted citation and decades-defunct history, defended by  Wilson as 
a Biblical justification of slavery. The co-author of the  booklet is Steve 
Wilkins, a founder of the League of the South (LOTS), a  group advocating the 
re-secession of the South. Incidentally, they are  labeled as a hate group by 
the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Despite the absolutely blatant assertion that white people owning  black 
people was not only acceptable, but a paradise of subservience to  Caucasians, the 
authors are quick to point out that they’re not  supremacists. It’s true 
that nowhere in “Southern Slavery” are racial  slurs or beat-you-over-the-head 
declarations of white power present, but  the lines leave a wide enough berth 
to be read between, that one could  drive a truck through them.
As an indicator of LOTS’ politics regarding race and history, check  out the “
suggested reading” section on its Web site. There are three books  suggested; 
two of them are revisionist love letters to Nathan Bedford  Forrest, 
confederate general and principal founder of the Ku Klux Klan.  The other is an attack 
on abolitionist John Brown and, according to the  review, the “fanatacism and 
cowardice of the Abolitionist movement by  their use of others to do their 
dirty work.” 
It’s odd to think of a man who gave his life to free human beings  from 
slavery and those who supported him as “fanatics” and “cowards,” but  I guess I’m 
just an intolerista. Once again, for those of you new to  Moscow, the word “
intolerista” is Wilson’s creation.  It’s A Rush  Limbaugh-esque (Feminazi) 
frantic flailing for some pithy addition to the  local lexicon. 
I’m sorry, but this tired, double-speak semantic tap-dancing that  
broad-strokes anyone who calls him on his ugly bigotry is worn out. It’s  not intolerant 
to call for tolerance.
Refraining from using the n-word or declaring white supremacy is not  an 
absence of racism. Maybe Doug Wilson isn’t a racist; maybe he believes  it’s God’
s will that people of all colors and creeds should be able to  own, beat and 
rape each other as long as they pay lip service to the  Bible. The fact remains 
that Southern slavery, as it was a nightmare for  the blacks who were owned 
by white people, should never be celebrated. And  the celebration of it is 
drawing a line in Moscow, with those who  sugarcoat and glamorize a shameful 
American holocaust on one side, and us  intoleristas on the other.

 
Rose  Huskey
"And he took his staff in his hand, and chose him  five smooth stones out of 
the brook, and put them in a shepherd's bag which he  had, even in a scrip; 
and his sling [was] in his hand: and he drew near to the  Philistine. "
1 Samuel 17:40

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