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Greetings:<br><br>
Inspired by Frank McGovern's opinion piece on Wilson & Co., I
submitted the following letter to the <i>Argonaut</i>.<br><br>
To the Editor: <br><br>
I want to thank Frank McGovern for his hard hitting column on Douglas
Wilson’s religio-political views. The <i>Idaho Statesman</i> (8/12) was
wrong to characterize Wilson as a neo-Nazi, but McGovern was right to
call him a neo-Confederate Christian.<br><br>
I accept Wilson’s repeated disavowals of racism, but he cannot deny his
associations with the neo-Confederate movement. Here are the
facts:<br><br>
• At the Moscow Christian school that he founded, it is Robert E. Lee's
birthday, not Washington's or Lincoln's, that is celebrated. <br><br>
• A Confederate flag was once displaced in Wilson’s office and at his
school’s functions. <br><br>
• Wilson wrote an editorial defending the right of states to leave the
Union. <br><br>
• Wilson has spoken at Southern Heritage conferences and has written four
articles for a neo-Confederate journal. Wilson's most recent
article appeared together with an ad for a conference to bash Lincoln and
celebrate the joys of secession. The ad drew a faulty parallel
between former states leaving a self-dissolving Soviet Union and rebel
states leaving a solid Union.<br><br>
With regard to Wilson’s friend Steven Wilkins, he was indeed a founding
director of the neo-Confederate League of the South, but when we made it
an issue, he became a consultant to the Board of Directors, and when we
continued to make that an issue, he is became an Affliated Scholar. He
now claims no connection, but he has not openly disavowed any of their
principles. <br><br>
Wilson and Wilkins claim that they are good conservative Presbyterians,
but many of them have disowned them. Mississippi Presbyterian Church of
America has declared that their doctrines “are unbiblical. . . and are .
. . of a pernicious and fatal tendency.” On June 22, 2002, the
conservative Reformed Presbyterian Church of the United States declared
that these two men’s teachings were heretical.<br><br>
Nick Gier, Head Banshee<br>
Palouse Region, Planet Earth<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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