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Hail to the Vision!<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
Third, since there are no suspects to charge for malicious harassment Mr.
Duke now considers the case closed.<br><br>
Nick Gier, Head Banshee (so says Wilson),<br>
Palouse Region, Planet Earth<br><br>
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.<br><br>
My title: The Culture Wars Come to Moscow<br>
Their title: Neo-Nazi Christians make presence felt again in Northern
Idaho<br>
Idaho Statesman 08-12-2005<br><br>
"My Town," a new documentary on America's cultural wars, had
its premier <br>
June 23 in Moscow, Idaho. The newly refurbished Kenworthy Theatre was
filled <br>
to capacity with an enthusiastic crowd of 340 people.<br><br>
Michael Hayes, an education professor from Washington State University,
<br>
worked on the film for about 18 months, interviewing the principal
players <br>
in the debate about Douglas Wilson's religious empire.<br><br>
Wilson is pastor of Moscow's 800-member Christ Church, which has mission
<br>
churches across the country. Wilson also holds the franchise for 154
<br>
classical Christian schools, his own Logos School in Moscow being the
model.<br><br>
In 1996 Wilson founded New St. Andrews College, and it now enrolls 130
<br>
four-year students in a building in the heart of historic
Moscow.<br><br>
The controversy about Wilson exploded in October 2003 over his book
<br>
"Southern Slavery As It Was," which describes the Antebellum
South as the <br>
most harmonious multiracial society in human history.<br><br>
Wilson co-authored the book with Steve Wilkins, a Monroe, La., pastor and
<br>
founding director of the League of the South, whose vision is a new
15-state <br>
Confederacy ruled by Calvinist patriarchs.<br><br>
In rejecting the charge of racism, Wilson claimed that it was
Christianity, <br>
not genes, that makes a culture superior. He said if Christianity had
moved <br>
south instead of west, Africans would now be the most advanced people in
the <br>
world.<br><br>
One might ask how Wilson defines cultural superiority. If it is economic
<br>
power, then the Chinese and Indians will overtake Euro-Americans in 20-30
<br>
years.<br><br>
If it is moral superiority, how does Wilson explain that Christian
America <br>
now imprisons 2 million people, while Buddhist Japan currently
incarcerates <br>
150,000, if you adjust for population?<br><br>
History appears to disconfirm Wilson's view of Christianity's special
<br>
advantage.<br><br>
Medieval Europe is Wilson's ideal world, but the rest of the civilized
world <br>
at that time - China, India, and the Islamic countries - was far more
<br>
advanced than these Europeans.<br><br>
In fact, if it had not been Mongols bringing Asian goods and inventions
and <br>
the Muslims preserving Greek philosophy and science and introducing their
<br>
numerals and algebra, Europe would have remained stagnant.<br><br>
In the film, Wilson prophesied that the conquest by Christianity would
hit <br>
secular culture like a tsunami hitting a folding chair on a
beach.<br><br>
When Wilson encourages Americans of all beliefs to replace public schools
<br>
with their own private schools, his tolerance for their short tenure does
<br>
not appear to be much of a virtue.<br><br>
Wilkins was asked in the film if he really believed that only propertied
<br>
males should vote. He answered "yes," while Wilson nodded
approvingly.<br>
Always the jokester, Wilson said democracy was just like two coyotes and
a <br>
lamb voting on what to eat for lunch.<br><br>
Wilkins and Wilson were asked about slavery, but neither of them
condemned <br>
the owning of one person by another. Wilson said slavery is a sinful
<br>
institution, but rebellion is just as sinful. Slaves who have Christian
<br>
masters will at least be treated with love and respect.<br><br>
Since 1998, Wilkins' League of the South has had close ties with the Sons
of <br>
Confederate Veterans, who in 2000 elected Kirk Lyons to its national
<br>
executive board.<br><br>
An outspoken racist, Lyons was married by neo-Nazi Richard Butler in
1990.<br>
The League and the Sons of Confederate Veterans organize public protests
<br>
with the Council of Conservative Citizens, whose Web site decries
"negroes, <br>
queers and other retrograde species of humanity." (Try replacing the
"Cs" in <br>
their acronym with "Ks.")<br><br>
One League leader said that we "need a new type of
Klan."<br><br>
People in North Idaho applauded when the neo-Nazis were forced to leave
<br>
Hayden Lake, but now Wilkins is telling his friends that Moscow would be
a <br>
fine place to live.<br><br>
Nick Gier taught religion and philosophy at the University of Idaho for
31 <br>
years. For more on the Wilson controversy see <br>
<font color="#0000FF"><u><a href="http://www.tomandrodna.com/notonthepalouse" eudora="autourl">www.tomandrodna.com/notonthepalouse</a></u></font>.<br><br>
<br>
<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=2>"The god you worship is the god you
deserve."<br>
~~ Joseph Campbell<br><br>
"Abstract truth has no value unless it incarnates in human beings
who represent it, by proving their readiness to die for it."<br>
--Mohandas Gandhi<br><br>
"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." --Ma</font><font size=1>x Planck<br><br>
</font>Nicholas F. Gier<br>
Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, University of Idaho<br>
1037 Colt Rd., Moscow, ID 83843<br>
<a href="http://users.adelphia.net/~nickgier/home.htm" eudora="autourl">http://users.adelphia.net/~nickgier/home.htm</a><br>
208-882-9212/FAX 885-8950<br>
President, Idaho Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO<br>
<a href="http://users.adelphia.net/~nickgier/ift.htm" eudora="autourl">http://users.adelphia.net/~nickgier/ift.htm</a><br><br>
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