[Vision2020] Wilson's Excuses

[Andreas Schou]

On 2/20/07, g. crabtree <jampot at adelphia.net> wrote:
>
> A,
>   You really didn't have to feel obligated to take my "got something new"
> remark quite so literally. While I'm glad that you've decided to give the
> "Doug wants to kill kids and queers" mantra a rest, moving on to the
> subversion of liberal democracy just because you think you've found
> documentation for it is an intellectually lazy technique for furthering this
> discussion.

G --

You've asked for two particular things: proof of a political agenda
and proof of a political agenda that advocates the death penalty for
homosexuality. I provided the former and you accuse me of changing the
subject. Apparently, providing evidence from Doug's associates and the
magazine he edits is not enough. So, here's evidence of Doug's
moderate views, from the Idaho Statesman, 10-12-2003.

"The Bible indicates the punishment for homosexuality is death. The
Bible also indicates the punishment for homosexuality is exile. So
death is not the minimal punishment for a homosexual. There are other
alternatives."

This sets the moral range of options for dealing with homosexuality
from "totally unacceptable" to "Holocaust." You might find it
unsurprising that I might find exile (or just stoning someone half to
death) to be unacceptable.

Doug's a smart guy. He doesn't like to rock the boat, because he has a
local constituency to appease -- he's not simply responsible for
pandering to mouth-breathing neoconfederates behind closed doors.
That's not the kind of guy he is: he realizes that it's difficult for
true radicals to take power. So he says one thing to his supporters,
when he feels like he's in private, and says quite another to the
media, when he feels like his views might become subject to criticism.

Not so with his Trinity Fest co-presenter George Grant, who,
apparently, has no particular desire not to be regarded as absolutely
nuts. Here's a quote from his 1987 book, "The Changing of the Guard":
"Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy
responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ - to have dominion
in the civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and
godliness.  But it is dominion that we are after. Not just a voice.
It is dominion we are afier. Not just influence.  It is dominion we
are after. Not just equal time."

You can find echoes of the same principles in Doug's work. Take, for
instance, this sermon from December 28, 2003: "In the 60s, my father
wrote a small but enormously influential book called The Principles of
War. In it, he applied the principles of physical warfare to what he
called strategic evangelism. This idea of warfare is necessary in
order to understand a central part of what is happening here, and by
this I mean the concept of the decisive point. A decisive point is one
which is simultaneously strategic and feasible. Strategic means that
it would be a significant loss to the enemy if taken. Feasible means
that it is possible to take. New York City is strategic but not
feasible. Bovill is feasible but not strategic. But small towns with
major universities (Moscow and Pullman, say) are both."

This isn't just theoretical. In the 90s, according to his bookkeeper,
Wilson was involved in channeling church funds (and using the
bookkeeper herself) to support the radical U.S. Taxpayers' Party. The
church email list is regularly used to support church-funded
candidates in local elections. These things are not irrelevant.

> What protestant religious leader (or any religious leader, for that matter)
> doesn't think that our country would be made a better, more righteous place
> if it were to internalize the teachings of *insert dogma here*. Rushdooney
> was hardly unique in this regard. The fact that Mr. Wilson thinks the world
> would be a better place if run from a more biblical perspective hardly comes
> as a major surprise, in fact, the surprise would be if he didn't. Given a
> choice between government run from a more biblical perspective and sharia,
> I'll stick with the one that has provided at least a modicum of the legal
> underpinning for this country for the last couple hundred years. Feel free
> to continue lose sleep over the impending crisis that is a country dominated
> by Douglas Wilson and his teachings. Personally, I think it's the least of
> your worries.

Here's the deal: we are in no danger of being overrun by Muslims and
being forced to submit to sharia. Why modern conservatives are
currently busy wetting themselves over the prospect of being forced to
submit to a form of law that absolutely no one in our country believes
in is -- well, it's completely beyond me. Likewise, it might surprise
you to know that I have very little fear of a country run according to
Old Testament law: we have a deep-seated small-l liberal democratic
tradition in this country.

What confuses me, Gary, is why you keep insisting that we ignore the
fact that people with a deep-seated aversion to basic principles of
accountability and, indeed, to liberal democracy itself are running
for elected office. Kirkers claim that their faith is not irrelevant
to their politics. I take them at their word: it is clear that their
faith is not irrelevant to the policies they recommend. When
threatened, they duck behind the 1st Amendment -- a principle in which
they do not even believe -- and take cover behind the
constitutionalist principles that they themselves would abolish if
they ever took power.

I am not required to reducio my own priniples to absurdium in order to
maintain absolute consistency. I believe in religious tolerance, but
my belief in religious tolerance -- that the state should do nothing
to prohibit their faith's peculiarities -- does not mean that I am
required to spend my money in ways that facilitate their efforts,
however quixotic, to put in place a social order not just
contradictory to absolutely every principle I hold dear, but
contradictory to the get-along-go-along Christian faith held by the
majority of our country's founders.

-- ACS

* Actually, Rushdoony was sort of unique. He's nothing like Robertson
or Falwell -- guys so irritating they make my teeth itch -- in that he
doesn't even see democracy as the appropriate way to establish the
idiotic and unethical social reforms he recommends.

Take, for instance, this quote: "One faith, one law and one standard
of justice did not mean democracy. The heresy of democracy has since
then worked havoc in church and state . . . Christianity and democracy
are inevitably enemies."

and

"Christianity is completely and radically anti-democratic; it is
committed to spiritual aristrocracy."