[Vision2020] Wilson on "religious bigotry"

[Saundra Lund]

(Apologies in advance if this appears twice - the original send seems to
have disappeared into cyberspace, something I've noticed more and more of
since Adelphia became Time Warner/Roadrunner.)

 

Hi Keely & Visionaries:

 

Thanks for your comments and for bringing the newest Kirk pack of lies to
light.

 

Not everyone is familiar with Wilson's blog, so here's a link to the post in
question:

http://www.dougwils.com/index.asp?Action=Anchor
<http://www.dougwils.com/index.asp?Action=Anchor&CategoryID=1&BlogID=4678&Da
ta=3003#posts> &CategoryID=1&BlogID=4678&Data=3003#posts

 

Once again, Wilson is counting on the adage, "If you tell a lie - or in this
case, a pack of lies - enough times, people will believe it."

 

I like to think this community is too smart to fall for that old trick, but
given some of the comments I've seen here in the Viz from otherwise
intelligent folks, it seems my optimism might be a tad bit . . . too
optimistic  L

 

But, again, Wilson depends on folks being willing to swallow his lies and
spin hook, line, and sinker  L  For me, the question remains why so many
people are so willing to swallow such a load of bull?

 

 

Saundra Lund

Moscow, ID

 

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

~ Edmund Burke

 

***** Original material contained herein is Copyright 2007 through life plus
70 years, Saundra Lund.  Do not copy, forward, excerpt, or reproduce outside
the Vision 2020 forum without the express written permission of the
author.*****

 

 

 

From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com]
On Behalf Of keely emerinemix
Sent: Sunday, October 28, 2007 9:44 PM
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] Wilson on "religious bigotry"

 

Visionaires,

I can't help but comment on the irony of Moscow's most well-known bigot
calling for the defeat of City Council incumbents Ament, Lamar, and Pall on
the basis of "religious bigotry."  One would expect that anyone as familiar
with the practice of true bigotry as Christ Church Pastor Doug Wilson would
hesitate to elevate mere neophytes to the masterful status he himself as
reached, but his "Blog and Mablog" shamelessly instructs his Moscow readers
to do the right thing simply by voting against the incumbents, who, Wilson
says, deserve defeat because of their orchestrated campaign of unfair
treatment of his flock.

Wilson is indeed a man of many contradictions.  He denies that he is a
racist, an unabashedly sexist patriarch, a virulent homophobe, and an
unnecessarily divisive, bitter presence in our community, and yet
consistently demonstrates more fluency in the language of bigotry than in
the language of the Gospel.  He is an affluent, powerful and greedy consumer
of white, Calvinistic male privilege and all it offers, and nonetheless
bleats the wailing lament of the truly persecuted when the marketplace of
ideas rejects his.  Appearance is everything to this Oxfordian pretender and
hearty man of chest, and yet little of his public persona and behavior can
be taken at face value.   His blog is a proper venue for his political
counsel; I couldn't possibly care less if he preaches politics from his
pulpit, as I understand Christ Church has chosen to not take advantage of
the tax-exempt status afforded houses of worship.  It's not the platform
from which he speaks that angers me.  It's the continued "running with
scissors" approach to community engagement that I object to every time I see
tales of woe cut from whole cloth while shards of truth flutter impotently
to the ground.   It seems not too much to ask that Moscow's most well-known
pastor simply deal with the issues head-on, acting with integrity and honor,
and his position as well as the public nature of his Blog, even if intended
for his followers only, requires that he avoid even the appearance of
deception.  

But deception often exists long before out-and-out lying ever makes an
appearance.  Counting on the desire of his flock to prove themselves worthy
of his approval, and taking advantage of their belief in his unassailable
wisdom coupled with a heavy dose of political naivete, Wilson exhorts his
congregants and supporters to remember that all of the incumbents are
anti-religious, anti-Kirk bullies.  Families peppered with the demands of
young children and busy schedules no doubt appreciate the helpful mnemonic
he's devised to help them remember the right way to vote.  Simply combine
"Lamar" with "Ament" and you get -- oh, this is goooood! -- "LAMENT."  (An
aside -- one wonders why he didn't go whole hog here by suggesting that a
liberal council would be a "PALL" on the City of Moscow . . . ).  His
helpful voter's guide then lists several instances of "religious bigotry"
that he insists spews forth from the incumbents.  The list includes, of
course, Aaron Ament's regrettable "Education-free zone" and "Androids"
comments regarding New St. Andrews, and then continues with the
NSA-in-the-CBD boondoggle and a host of lesser-known offenses that together
make a compelling case for a wholesale clean sweep in City Hall.  That is,
if they were founded in truth and integrity.  

They're not.

Wilson and I agree that Ament's remarks were intemperate.  "Poorly-chosen,"
if you want to be polite.   "Stupid," if you don't.  Where Wilson and I part
company -- indeed, where he departs from the Biblical standard of bearing
truthful witness -- is in his delineation of the current Council's alleged
and intentional sins against the Gospel, or at least that part of it Wilson
convinces his flock he represents.  An example might be Wilson's story of
the Council's insistence that NSA provide a specific number of parking
spaces outside of the immediate CBD for students and staff.  He knows that
suggesting that "no other business" in the central business district suffers
under such extreme hardship is disingenuous at best; no other business on
Main Street, much less in the CBD adjacent to it, is comprised of nearly 200
staffers or students.  Indeed, the assumption that schools can only function
by attracting large numbers of students -- numbers greater, say, than the
number of ladies getting perms at the Plush Brush -- is a key argument for
why they ought not be permitted in major pedestrian-oriented retail zones.
He insists that the foaming-at-the-mouth religious bigotry of  Pall and
Ament  is what led to the removal from the CBD  two years ago of the Atlas
School for Boys.  (Tom Lamar, who joined the council too recently for the
Kirk to fully suffer from the flex of his anti-Christian muscle, would've
been in on it all, too, Wilson supposes.  This is because liberals are icky,
mean-spirited haters of all that is good and decent; I'm paraphrasing, of
course, and in doing so I'm likely granting Wilson too much). This
experiment in under-the-radar, world-changing classical Christian education
illegally, not to mention secretly, occupied part of the NuArt theater, a
violation of code made more egregious not only by Wilson's foreknowledge,
but also by the safety risk posed to children studying in second-floor rooms
not designed or outfitted as classrooms.  Atlas and its supporters shrugged,
but the City didn't.  Fire safety, occupancy loads, zoning, liability,
access -- these things aren't the stuff of proper municipal oversight to
Wilson.  They're simply the thorn in the side of good Christians everywhere
who want only to educate their children as they see fit -- the law be
damned, it seems, as it would be in the most literal sense according to a
Wilsonian eschatological and social worldview.  And, of course, he makes
much of the boarding houses vs. party houses debate that occupied much of
Moscow's summer, although it's not really a debate, not "apples and oranges"
as much as it is "spatulas and carburetors."   The boarding house
prohibitions focused on the integrity of city code-protected neighborhoods;
the party house issue speaks to the "public disturbance" aspect of living in
community.  Any overlap here is simply another bit of irony in an argument
already dripping with it.  

Wilson's litany of complaints against the liberal incumbents is far too
lengthy for me to fully analyze here, and I'd invite Visionaires to examine
it on Blog and Mablog.  Wilson's appreciation and analysis of fiction is
evident there in his disgust over the revelation that Harry Potter's
Dumbledore is into the "guy-on-guy" thing, but I'd remind the good pastor
that something higher than civic honor requires that he correctly identify
fiction from nonfiction in his political commentary.  Dumbledore isn't real;
his "sins" make no difference whatsoever in any of our lives.  Ament, Lamar,
and Pall, on the other hand, are real, and leveling accusations of vehement
religious bigotry against them is a kind of fiction that makes a great deal
of difference in the lives of every one of us who call Moscow home.

keely



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