Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #652 Palin by Comparison

MP3: Side 1 | Side 2
REALAUDIO

Intro­duc­tion: Eclipsed by the dis­as­trous finan­cial news of recent months, as well as rel­a­tive­ly super­fi­cial con­sid­er­a­tions-lip­stick, hock­ey mom, moose huntress-Sarah Pal­in’s polit­i­cal resume and her­itage is gen­uine­ly fright­en­ing. Although down­played or ignored by main­stream media, Sarah Pal­in’s pro­found rela­tion­ship with the Alaskan Inde­pen­dence Par­ty (AIP) augurs very poor­ly for Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. Anti-Amer­i­can, polit­i­cal­ly ret­ro­grade, deeply racist and ded­i­cat­ed to frac­tur­ing the repub­lic, the AIP is the Alaskan ele­ment of the Con­sti­tu­tion Par­ty. This fas­cist polit­i­cal par­ty has run can­di­dates endorsed by the Aryan Nations and ded­i­cat­ed to the suc­cess­ful re-estab­lish­ment of the Con­fed­er­a­cy. In addi­tion to echo­ing the neo-Con­fed­er­ate endorse­ment of South­ern Seces­sion, the AIP has active­ly sought the sup­port of the Repub­lic of Iran in attempts to sep­a­rate Alas­ka from the Unit­ed States. Ear­li­er in 2008, Palin sent a greet­ing to the AIP’s con­ven­tion, endors­ing their efforts. Those knowl­edge­able about Pal­in’s polit­i­cal her­itage assert that this greet­ing was pre­dictable. In fact, the AIP had much to do with shap­ing Pal­in’s polit­i­cal agen­da when she was may­or of Wasil­la and she con­tin­ued to per­mit access to her AIP men­tors when she became gov­er­nor. (Her hus­band Todd Palin was a mem­ber of the AIP until recent­ly and is described by acquain­tances as a “shad­ow gov­er­nor.”) For­mer Nixon cab­i­net offi­cial Wal­ter Hick­el became gov­er­nor of Alas­ka run­ning as the AIP can­di­date! Although he lat­er switched back to the GOP, Hick­el takes cred­it for Pal­in’s elec­tion. Of great sig­nif­i­cance is the AIP’s ide­o­log­i­cal affil­i­a­tion with oth­er seces­sion­ist ele­ments around the world, includ­ing ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with the UNPO, an orga­ni­za­tion that cham­pi­ons the inde­pen­dence of “unrep­re­sent­ed peo­ples.” Although it rep­re­sents itself as egal­i­tar­i­an and pro­gres­sive, the UNPO’s agen­da actu­al­ly works to under­mine the polit­i­cal and geo­graph­i­cal integri­ty of larg­er coun­tries that might present a rival to the Under­ground Reich. Of more than pass­ing sig­nif­i­cance is the fact that Palin quot­ed fas­cist colum­nist West­brook Pegler in her speech before the Repub­li­can Con­ven­tion. It is also worth con­tem­plat­ing what the Nazi ele­ments in the Bush admin­is­tra­tion will do with a seat­ed African-Amer­i­can Pres­i­dent.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The AIP’s sup­port for Tibetan seces­sion, the AIP’s sup­port for the Lako­ta seces­sion­ist move­ment; the AIP’s sup­port for Hawai­ian seces­sion; the AIP’s sup­port for Chechen seces­sion; the endorse­ment of Con­sti­tu­tion Par­ty Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Michael Per­out­ka; by Aryan Nations head Richard But­ler; Sarah Pal­in’s ori­gins in Sand­point Ida­ho-an epi­cen­ter of the White Suprema­cist move­ment.

1. The seces­sion­ist par­ty with which Sarah Palin is close­ly affil­i­at­ed has a vio­lent­ly anti-Amer­i­can agen­da.

“ ‘My gov­ern­ment is my worst ene­my. I’m going to fight them with any means at hand.’

This was for­mer rev­o­lu­tion­ary ter­ror­ist Bill Ayers back in his old Weath­er Under­ground days, right? Imag­ine what Sarah Palin is going to do with this incen­di­ary quote as she tears into Barack Oba­ma this week.

Only one prob­lem. The quote is from Joe Vogler, the rag­ing anti-Amer­i­can who found­ed the Alas­ka Inde­pen­dence Par­ty. Incon­ve­nient­ly for Palin, that’s the very same seces­sion­ist par­ty that her hus­band, Todd, belonged to for sev­en years and that she sent a shout-out to as Alas­ka gov­er­nor ear­li­er this year. (‘Keep up the good work,’ Palin told AIP mem­bers. ‘And God bless you.’)

AIP chair­woman Lynette Clark told me recent­ly that Sarah Palin is her kind of gal. ‘She’s Alaskan to the bone ... she sounds just like Joe Vogler.’

So who are these Amer­i­ca-haters that the Palins are pallin’ around with? . . .”

“The Palins’ Un-Amer­i­can Activ­i­ties” by David Tal­bot; Salon.com; 10/07/2008.

2. Vogler has allied him­self with Iran in order to gen­er­ate inter­na­tion­al sup­port for Alaskan seces­sion. In that con­text, one should not lose sight of the net­work­ing between the Iran­ian regime and Nazi and fas­cist ele­ments from the U.S. and Europe. By the same token, the net­work­ing between Islamists and fas­cists is a well doc­u­ment­ed phe­nom­e­non, man­i­fest­ing itself in the 9/11 attacks, among oth­er events.

” . . .Vogler was­n’t just a blowhard either. He put his seces­sion­ist ideas into action, work­ing to build AIP mem­ber­ship to 20,000 — an impres­sive fig­ure by Alas­ka stan­dards — and to elect par­ty mem­ber Wal­ter Hick­el as gov­er­nor in 1990.

Vogler’s great­est moment of glo­ry was to be his 1993 appear­ance before the Unit­ed Nations to denounce Unit­ed States ‘tyran­ny’ before the entire world and to demand Alaska’s free­dom. The Alas­ka seces­sion­ist had per­suad­ed the gov­ern­ment of Iran to spon­sor his anti-Amer­i­can harangue.

That’s right ... Iran. The Islam­ic dic­ta­tor­ship. The tak­er of Amer­i­can hostages. The rogue nation that McCain and Palin have exco­ri­at­ed Oba­ma for sug­gest­ing we diplo­mat­i­cal­ly engage. That Iran. . . .”

Idem.

3. Although the main­stream media have ignored or down­played the con­nec­tion, the AIP is very close to Sarah Palin and has helped to shape her polit­i­cal agen­da. AIP lumi­nary Mark Chryson has helped to forge the link between Palin and his par­ty.

” . . . Though Chryson belongs to a fringe polit­i­cal par­ty, one that advo­cates the seces­sion of Alas­ka from the Union, and that orga­nizes with oth­er like-mind­ed seces­sion­ist move­ments from Cana­da to the Deep South, he is not with­out pecu­liar influ­ence in state pol­i­tics, espe­cial­ly the rise of Sarah Palin. An obscure fig­ure out­side of Alas­ka, Chryson has been a polit­i­cal fix­ture in the home­town of the Repub­li­can vice-pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee for over a decade. Dur­ing the 1990s, when Chryson direct­ed the AIP, he and anoth­er rad­i­cal right-winger, Steve Stoll, played a qui­et but piv­otal role in elect­ing Palin as may­or of Wasil­la and shap­ing her polit­i­cal agen­da after­ward. Both Stoll and Chryson not only con­tributed to Pal­in’s cam­paign finan­cial­ly, they played major behind-the-scenes roles in the Palin camp before, dur­ing and after her vic­to­ry. . . .”

“Meet Sarah Pal­in’s Rad­i­cal Right-Wing Pals” by Max Blu­men­thal and David Niew­ert; Salon.com; 10/10/2008.

4. Chryson and the AIP net­work with White Suprema­cist and neo-Con­fed­er­ate orga­ni­za­tions. The AIP’s web site links to many of the site main­tained by groups sup­port­ed by the UNPO (as well as the UNPO’s web­site), such as the Tibetan, Hawai­ian, Lako­ta and Mon­go­lian inde­pen­dence move­ments. Note that the UNPO–represented as a pro­gres­sive, egal­i­tar­i­an organization–supports the rights of minor­i­ty peo­ples in order to weak­en and breakup larg­er states that might prove a rival to the Under­ground Reich. The pos­si­bil­i­ty that an eco­nom­i­cal­ly and polit­i­cal­ly dev­as­tat­ed U.S. might dis­in­te­grate is one to seri­ous­ly con­sid­er. Cer­tain­ly, hav­ing a major-par­ty Vice-Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date affil­i­at­ed with an orga­ni­za­tion such as the AIP is very dis­turb­ing. Note that the AIP’s web­site has a quote from Con­fed­er­ate Pres­i­dent Jef­fer­son Davis at the top of its front page. It is also sig­nif­i­cant that the Con­sti­tu­tion Par­ty, which counts the AIP as its Alaskan affil­i­ate, ran Michael Per­out­ka for Pres­i­dent. Per­out­ka is a mem­ber of the League of the South and his can­di­da­cy was endorsed by Richard But­ler, the now-deceased head of the Aryan Nations.

” . . . Yet Chryson main­tains that his par­ty remains com­mit­ted to full inde­pen­dence. “The Alaskan Inde­pen­dence Par­ty has got links to almost every inde­pen­dence-mind­ed move­ment in the world,” Chryson exclaimed. “And Alas­ka is not the only place that’s about sep­a­ra­tion. There’s at least 30 dif­fer­ent states that are talk­ing about some type of sep­a­ra­tion from the Unit­ed States.”

This has meant rub­bing shoul­ders and forg­ing alliances with out­right white suprema­cists and far-right theocrats, par­tic­u­lar­ly those who dom­i­nate the pro­ceed­ings at such gath­er­ings as the North Amer­i­can Seces­sion­ist con­ven­tions, which AIP del­e­gates have attend­ed in recent years. The AIP’s affil­i­a­tion with neo-Con­fed­er­ate orga­ni­za­tions is moti­vat­ed as much by ide­o­log­i­cal affin­i­ty as by orga­ni­za­tion­al con­ve­nience. Indeed, Chryson makes no secret of his sym­pa­thy for the Lost Cause. ‘Should the Con­fed­er­ate states have been allowed to sep­a­rate and go their peace­ful ways?’ Chryson asked rhetor­i­cal­ly. “Yes. The War of North­ern Aggres­sion, or the Civ­il War, or the War Between the States — how­ev­er you want to refer to it — was not about slav­ery, it was about states’ rights.”

Anoth­er far-right orga­ni­za­tion with whom the AIP has long been aligned is Howard Phillips’ mili­tia-mind­ed Con­sti­tu­tion Par­ty. The AIP has been list­ed as the Con­sti­tu­tion Par­ty’s state affil­i­ate since the late 1990s, and it has endorsed the Con­sti­tu­tion Par­ty’s pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates (Michael Per­out­ka and Chuck Bald­win) in the past two elec­tions.

The Con­sti­tu­tion Par­ty boasts an open­ly theo­crat­ic plat­form that reads, “It is our goal to lim­it the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to its del­e­gat­ed, enu­mer­at­ed, Con­sti­tu­tion­al func­tions and to restore Amer­i­can jurispru­dence to its orig­i­nal Bib­li­cal com­mon-law foun­da­tions.” In its 1990s incar­na­tion as the U.S. Tax­pay­ers Par­ty, it was on the front lines in pro­mot­ing the “mili­tia” move­ment, and a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of its mem­ber­ship com­pris­es for­mer and cur­rent mili­tia mem­bers.

At its 1992 con­ven­tion, the AIP host­ed both Phillips — the UST­P’s pres­i­den­tial can­di­date — and mili­tia-move­ment leader Col. James ‘Bo’ Gritz, who was cam­paign­ing for pres­i­dent under the ban­ner of the far-right Pop­ulist Par­ty. Accord­ing to Chryson, AIP reg­u­lars heav­i­ly sup­port­ed Gritz, but the par­ty deferred to Phillips’ pres­ence and issued no offi­cial endorse­ments. . . .”

Idem.

5. In her speech at the Repub­li­can con­ven­tion, Palin quot­ed West­brook Pegler, a reac­tionary colum­nist viewed as a fas­cist by many, includ­ing George Seldes. (See below)

” . . . ‘We grow good peo­ple in our small towns,’ Palin said, quot­ing some­one iden­ti­fied only as a writer, ‘with hon­esty and sin­cer­i­ty and dig­ni­ty.’ That ‘writer,’ Wall Street Jour­nal colum­nist Thomas Frank notes, is a man named West­brook Pegler. You have prob­a­bly nev­er heard of him, but he was a very pop­u­lar and very right-wing colum­nist from the first half of the 20th cen­tu­ry. How right-wing? He open­ly wished for the assas­si­na­tion of Franklin Roo­sevelt, for one. . . .”

“Palin’ Source”; Politico.com; 9/10/2008.

5. Author George Seldes devot­ed a chap­ter of his 1943 opus Facts and Fas­cism to Pegler.

“It is the opin­ion of many per­sons and orga­ni­za­tions that one of the most wide­ly known and read news­pa­per colum­nists, West­brook Pegler, is aid­ing the Axis rather than the Unit­ed States in this war; it is a fact that the New York News­pa­per Guild, the orga­ni­za­tion of thou­sands of Pegler’s col­leagues, so stat­ed when it sent Pres­i­dent Roo­sevelt a doc­u­men­ta­tion of twelve instances out of Pegler’s writ­ings.

It is a fact that news­pa­pers, colum­nists, radio ora­tors and oth­ers who form pub­lic opin­ion have served the Axis pro­pa­gan­da. It is also true that too fre­quent­ly those who know and who make these charges do not name names. They, there­fore, emas­cu­late their own words.

For exam­ple, here is the direc­tor of the U.S. Con­cil­i­a­tion Ser­vice, Dr. John S. Steel­man, who states:

‘Care­less recital of the dra­mat­ic side of strikes in the press and on the screen and over the radio has giv­en too many peo­ple the impres­sion that our war efforts are being held up in a seri­ous way because of will­ful strife in a major part of Amer­i­can indus­try. This is a dan­ger­ous lie that serves the pur­pose of the Axis, but serves no good end among us.’ Dr. Steel­man knows the cul­prits, but he is not in a posi­tion to name them. He is aware that Kaltenborn on the radio, Pegler in the news­pa­pers, the entire Hearst and Howard press are those guilty of care­less recitals about strikes.

On the oth­er hand here is the state­ment issued by the con­fer­ence direc­tors of C.I.O. edi­tors (Wash­ing­ton, April 11, 1942):

‘Labor has been sub­ject­ed to an infa­mous cam­paign of mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion, for the pur­pose of cut­ting wages, destroy­ing union orga­ni­za­tion, and in advanc­ing the prof­its of spe­cial inter­est groups. Most of the dai­ly press has joined in this cam­paign, togeth­er with such radio com­men­ta­tors as H.V. Kaltenborn and oth­ers of his type. This anti-labor pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign, if not direct­ly inspired by Axis agents and Amer­i­can appeasers, at any rate plays their game by strik­ing at nation­al uni­ty and under­min­ing labor morale.’

Again, the offi­cial organ of the Nation­al Mar­itime Union, The Pilot, states that ‘Pegler’s sales talk has the made-in-Berlin label.’ . . .”

Facts and Fas­cism by George Seldes; pub­lished in 1943 by In Fact Inc. [HC].

7. Whether rel­e­vant or not, it is inter­est­ing (and pos­si­bly sig­nif­i­cant) that Palin is a native of Sand­point, Ida­ho, an epi­cen­ter of the white suprema­cist com­mu­ni­ty.

8. It is also worth con­tem­plat­ing what the Nazi ele­ments in the Bush admin­is­tra­tion will do with an African-Amer­i­can Pres­i­dent.

Discussion

4 comments for “FTR #652 Palin by Comparison”

  1. Just FYI, if you’ve ever been exposed to the her­bi­cide paraquat (I’m look­ing at you, hip­pies) and you have a fam­i­ly his­to­ry of Parkin­son’s dis­ease, new research sug­gests that you may want to take extra pre­cau­tions to avoid any sort of head trau­ma. It appears that head trau­ma and paraquat expo­sure triple the like­li­hood of devel­op­ing Parkin­son’s.

    These find­ings, of course, also means you may need to avoid any US polit­i­cal news for the next, oh, four years or so. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 13, 2012, 2:39 pm
  2. Here’s a ques­tion that should be rhetor­i­cal but unfor­tu­nate­ly isn’t:
    What would be a more dam­ag­ing to a young mind? The Ted Cruz col­or­ing book or a biog­ra­phy of Sarah Palin for kids?

    Too hard? Ok, how about an Amer­i­can his­to­ry book for third graders star­ring a time-trav­el­ing Rush Lim­baugh or decep­tive TV news?

    Still too hard?

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | August 7, 2014, 9:09 pm
  3. With for­mer League of the South leader Michael Per­out­ka still the GOP’s nom­i­nee for the Anne Arun­del Coun­ty Coun­cil in Mary­land and Rand Paul con­tin­u­ing to flirt with a 2016 pres­i­den­tial run, here’s a look at the kind of future the GOP, and soci­ety, is flirt­ing with these days:

    Polit­i­cal Research Asso­ciates
    If Democ­ra­cy is a Crime Under Reli­gious Right’s Bib­li­cal Law, What is the Pun­ish­ment?
    By Fred­er­ick Clark­son, on August 21, 2014

    The League of the South, best known for its advo­ca­cy of white suprema­cy and the seces­sion of South­ern states in the name of South­ern Inde­pen­dence, has anoth­er less well known dimen­sion: The advo­ca­cy of Old Tes­ta­ment notions of the “law of the Bible” as the stan­dard for con­tem­po­rary civ­il law— includ­ing the pre­scribed crim­i­nal pun­ish­ments for non-believ­ers.

    The League and its lead­ers are not exact­ly house­hold names, although New York Times best-sell­ing author Thomas Woods is an unapolo­getic found­ing mem­ber and close con­fed­er­ate of Ron Paul. But they over­lap with the more extreme ele­ments of anti-LGBTQ and anti-choice move­ments, and led by ele­ments of the vir­u­lent­ly theo­crat­ic the­o­log­i­cal strain, Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ism.

    Con­tem­po­rary Chris­t­ian Right lead­ers have focused on mat­ters of sex­u­al­i­ty, notably homo­sex­u­al­i­ty and women’s sex­u­al and repro­duc­tive health and rights (SRHR). But it wasn’t until the noto­ri­ous “kill the gays bill” in Ugan­da, where the notion of the death penal­ty was for­mal­ly raised. But if the Old Tes­ta­ment Bib­li­cal Laws that are foun­da­tion­al to the con­tem­po­rary Chris­t­ian Right are to be the stan­dard, then it stands to rea­son that the bib­li­cal­ly pre­scribed pun­ish­ments would, in their view, fit the crimes. If that is so, then many of us who think that democ­ra­cy and reli­gious plu­ral­ism are good things may, come the theoc­ra­cy, find our­selves guilty of cap­i­tal crimes.

    League of the South pres­i­dent Michael Hill laid it out in stark terms in a recent col­umn.

    In a piece titled The League and Theoc­ra­cy, Hill claims that theoc­ra­cy is what God wants for us, and that any­one who says oth­er­wise is com­mit­ting trea­son against God’s Laws. While this is seri­ous enough com­ing from an orga­ni­za­tion­al leader, in the wake of the Hob­by Lob­by deci­sion of the U.S. Supreme Court, it is worth con­sid­er­ing that such views maybe more com­mon than usu­al­ly meet the eye.

    Hill argues that reli­gious plu­ral­ism is an affront to “the law of the Bible,” and any­thing oth­er than a theo­crat­ic approach to Chris­tian­i­ty and gov­ern­ment is, he declares, “watered-down, emas­cu­lat­ed, wimpy, lib­er­al-sot­ted ‘Chris­tian­i­ty-lite’.” A theoc­ra­cy, he insists, “is a gov­ern­ment ruled by the tri­une God of the Bible: Father, Son, and Holy Spir­it. More pre­cise­ly, it is a gov­ern­ment whose code of law is firm­ly ground­ed in the law of the Bible.”

    ...

    In light of this, Hill’s argu­ment may sound arcane and his rea­son­ing circular—but it is nev­er­the­less worth under­stand­ing because Hill is far from alone in such views, and arguably ver­sions of his the­sis are part of the dri­ving ide­ol­o­gy of the wider lead­er­ship of the Chris­t­ian Right and their agen­da.

    Hill con­tin­ues:

    “Sim­ply put, locate the source of law for a soci­ety and you have found its god. In a democ­ra­cy, for instance, the peo­ple serve as god – the ulti­mate source of sov­er­eign­ty…. All soci­eties are theoc­ra­cies, whether they real­ize it or not. But there is a major dif­fer­ence in what tra­di­tion­al Chris­tians (regard­less of denom­i­na­tion), on the one hand, and pagans, on the oth­er, have believed and that is this: a soci­ety that is not explic­it­ly Chris­t­ian is a theoc­ra­cy under the sway of a false god. The false god of the mod­ern Amer­i­can Empire is the god who demands tol­er­ance and plu­ral­ism…”

    In this way, Hill iden­ti­fies democ­ra­cy as idol­a­try (wor­ship of a false god) or apos­ta­sy (aban­don­ment of the faith.) Either way, as Hill under­stands it, these will not be mat­ters of reli­gious but civ­il law. And they may well be cap­i­tal offens­es. These, along with more than 30 oth­ers, were enu­mer­at­ed by the lead­ing theo­crat­ic the­olo­gian of the 20thcentury, R. J. Rushdoony—an Amer­i­can whose work has been pro­found­ly influ­en­tial in cat­alyz­ing the con­tem­po­rary Chris­t­ian Right. Beyond such crimes as mur­der and kid­nap­ping, death penal­ties apply, accord­ing to Rush­doony and the influ­en­tial Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ist move­ment he launched, are most­ly relat­ed to reli­gion and sex­u­al­i­ty. In addi­tion to idol­a­try and apos­ta­sy, there is blas­phe­my, and the prop­a­ga­tion of false reli­gions, and specif­i­cal­ly, astrol­o­gy and witch­craft. Crimes relat­ed to sex­u­al­i­ty include adul­tery, homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, and pre­mar­i­tal sex (for women only).

    In his foun­da­tion­al tome, Insti­tutes of Bib­li­cal Law, Rush­doony called idol­a­try, “trea­son” against “the one true God.”

    These things said, there are many con­tem­po­rary theocrats who do not fol­low Rush­doony down every detail of what ought to be the basis of a crim­i­nal code in the U.S. and every­where else in the world. But since Rush­doony was the first to sys­tem­atize what he calls “Bib­li­cal Law,” every­one inter­est­ed in the top­ic mea­sures where they are stand in rela­tion to him. (Bib­li­cal­ly approved meth­ods of exe­cu­tion, accord­ing to Recon­struc­tion­ists, include ston­ing, hang­ing and “the sword.”) How the law would be imple­ment­ed, would depend entire­ly on the inter­pre­ta­tion of the Bible, and the polit­i­cal predilec­tions of the lead­ing fac­tion at the time.

    Hill writes: “There is real­ly only the choice between pagan law and Chris­t­ian law and noth­ing else. There is no neu­tral posi­tion where one can com­fort­ably sit. The God of the Bible specif­i­cal­ly for­bids plu­ral­ism (“Thou shalt have no oth­er gods before me,” Ex 20:3).” Hill couldn’t be clear­er that in his view that reli­gious plu­ral­ism under the law, is idol­a­try. “The sim­ple choice that lies before nations,” he con­cludes, “is either plu­ral­ism or faith­ful obe­di­ence to God’s word, and the two are mutu­al­ly exclu­sive.”

    Like his fel­low mem­bers of the League of the South, Mary­land Repub­li­can can­di­dates Michael Per­out­ka and David Whit­ney, Hill argues that if gov­ern­men­tal lead­ers fall out of synch with Bib­li­cal Law—“If they rule unfaith­ful­ly, and thus tyran­ni­cal­ly, they are ille­git­i­mate and their decrees have no author­i­ty.” Per­out­ka and Whit­ney have pre­vi­ous­ly made this point regard­ing the Mary­land legislature’s endorse­ment of mar­riage equal­i­ty.

    So this is the prob­lem for con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­cans wran­gling with the def­i­n­i­tion of reli­gious lib­er­ty. Is reli­gious lib­er­ty to be reserved only for Chris­tians of the right sort, as defined by the likes of Hill, Per­out­ka and Whit­ney (or oth­er lead­ers of the Reli­gious Right and the Catholic Bish­ops)? Or is reli­gious lib­er­ty some­thing that belongs to all cit­i­zens with­out regard to their stat­ed reli­gious or non-reli­gious iden­ti­ty at any par­tic­u­lar time?

    Such ques­tions have, in cen­turies past, been the stuff of reli­gious wars. And some Chris­t­ian Right lead­ers are com­ing to see vio­lence as an inevitable result of con­tem­po­rary reli­gious and polit­i­cal ten­sions on these mat­ters. The ques­tion of whether, or to what extent, oppo­nents of con­tra­cep­tion and abor­tion get to define the stan­dard for reli­gious lib­er­ty in these mat­ters was not set­tled by the Hob­by Lob­by deci­sion. And who gets to be the arbiter of reli­gious lib­er­ty on mar­riage equal­i­ty is also deeply con­tentious, in light of the spread of the Reli­gious Free­dom Restora­tion Act, which has been pro­posed in sev­er­al states and signed into law in Mis­sis­sip­pi and allows busi­ness­es to dis­crim­i­nate against LGTBQ employ­ees and cus­tomers if their per­son­al faith does not approve of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. The leg­is­la­tion is mod­eled on a bill which was orig­i­nal­ly craft­ed in large part by the Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom (ADF, for­mer­ly known as the Alliance Defense Fund), and the Ari­zona polit­i­cal affil­i­ate of Focus on the Fam­i­ly. But in North Car­oli­na, the main­line protes­tant Unit­ed Church of Christ (UCC) has filed a fed­er­al law­suit against the state’s con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment ban­ning the per­for­mance of same-sex mar­riage cer­e­monies. The UCC argues that this law vio­lates the reli­gious lib­er­ty of their church, its cler­gy and its mem­bers. The mil­lion mem­ber denom­i­na­tion has offi­cial­ly rec­og­nized same-sex mar­riages since 2005. As it hap­pens, a recent fed­er­al court rul­ing in Vir­ginia over­turn­ing a sim­i­lar amend­ment, may also apply to North Car­oli­na which is locat­ed in the same fed­er­al court juris­dic­tion. At this writ­ing, it appears that will be the case.

    But even as the courts are rec­og­niz­ing mar­riage equal­i­ty and the debate over reli­gious lib­er­ty con­tin­ues, the view of doc­tri­naire theocrats that gov­ern­ments and gov­ern­ment offi­cials and oth­ers who do not com­port with God’s Law as they under­stand it, remains unchanged. How they rec­on­cile their views with the con­tem­po­rary strug­gles over the law is also a strug­gle whose out­come remains to be seen. How­ev­er, it is worth not los­ing sight of the fact that for some, there is no answer but armed resis­tance. Hill has called not only for the South to rise again, but to lead the res­ur­rec­tion with vig­i­lante death squads tar­get­ing gov­ern­ment offi­cials, jour­nal­ists and oth­ers who do not com­port with their par­tic­u­lar reli­gious and polit­i­cal views.

    We have become almost accus­tomed to hear­ing dec­la­ra­tions from the likes of these men jus­ti­fy­ing vig­i­lante vio­lence against every­one from abor­tion providers to gov­ern­ment offi­cials, said to be tyrants. But it is help­ful to remind our­selves that the soci­ety that they envi­sion is not only based on Bib­li­cal Laws, but on Bib­li­cal pun­ish­ments. And those who advo­cate for reli­gious lib­er­ty, and if the theocrats ever achieve their desired gov­ern­men­tal con­trol, are like­ly to find them­selves charged with a vari­ety of crimes, and pun­ished accord­ing­ly.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | August 21, 2014, 7:45 pm
  4. House Major­i­ty Whip Steve Scalise, a vehe­ment oppo­nent of gay mar­riage, issued a state­ment of sup­port for Alaba­ma Chief Jus­tice Roy Moore in his bat­tle with the Fed­er­al gov­ern­ment over gay mar­riage, call­ing for like-mind­ed cit­i­zens to get ready to stand with Moore. Oh wait, that was­n’t Scalise’s press office, but a dif­fer­ent like-mind­ed orga­ni­za­tion mak­ing that ‘call to arms’. Easy mis­take:

    TPM Livewire
    KKK Group Issues ‘Call To Arms’ Sup­port­ing Alaba­ma Chief Jus­tice

    By Caitlin Mac­Neal
    Pub­lished Feb­ru­ary 17, 2015, 3:16 PM EST

    Soon after Alaba­ma Chief Jus­tice Roy Moore ordered Alaba­ma pro­bate judges not to issue mar­riage licens­es to same-sex cou­ples, a Mis­sis­sip­pi Ku Klux Klan group issued a “call to arms” sup­port­ing Moore.

    “The Mis­sis­sip­pi Klan salutes Alaba­ma’s chief jus­tice Roy Moore, for refus­ing to bow to the yoke of Fed­er­al tyran­ny. The Feds have no author­i­ty over indi­vid­ual States mar­riage laws,” the Unit­ed Dix­ie White Knights’ Impe­r­i­al Wiz­ard, Brent Waller wrote, wrote in a post on the group’s web­site and on the white suprema­cist forum Storm­front.

    “We call upon all Klans­man and White South­ern Nation­al­ist to help in the mas­sive protest’s com­ing, Not by wear­ing your col­ors, but by join­ing in with the Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty’s protests that are surly com­ing against tyran­ni­cal Fed­er­al judges,” Waller said.

    How­ev­er, the group real­ized its sup­port may have made an impli­ca­tion about its rela­tion­ship with Moore and clar­i­fied that he is not a mem­ber of the Klu Klux Klan.

    “The UDWK has read many posts in the media put out most­ly by Homo­sex­u­al reporters and Athe­ists that claim Alaba­ma Chief Jus­tice Roy Moore is a mem­ber of the KKK, and activ­ly sought and gained our sup­port. To answer in short, these are lies and typ­i­cal of that crowd. We sim­ply agree with any­one, who stands against Tyran­ny, stands for the word of God, and believes in the Amer­i­can Con­sti­tu­tion as it was orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten,” Waller wrote on the group’s web­site.

    “We regret any prob­lems our post may have caused the Chief Jus­tice or his Fam­i­ly. Roy Moore is not a Klans­man, but he is a man, who believes in God,” Waller con­tin­ued. “This Coun­try is sick of the spine­less peo­ple who put out such lies. We need more Jus­tices who do not see the Con­sti­tu­tion as a liv­ing breath­ing doc­u­ment to be shred­ed (sic) and Amend­ed at will.”

    ...

    “We call upon all Klans­man and White South­ern Nation­al­ist to help in the mas­sive protest’s com­ing, Not by wear­ing your col­ors, but by join­ing in with the Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty’s protests that are surly com­ing against tyran­ni­cal Fed­er­al judges,” Waller said.

    That sounds like a call for sup­port, but it’s still stealth sup­port (no col­ors). Not loud and proud. Maybe the Mis­sis­sipi Klan is unaware of the pub­lic views of one of Judge Moore’s most promi­nent back­ers. Because if they were aware, they might not be so shy about being iden­ti­fied as a bunch of Klans­men sup­port­ing Judge Moore:

    Right Wing Watch
    Roy Moore’s Show­down With The Courts Over Gay Mar­riage Tied To The Work Of Neo-Con­fed­er­ate Leader
    Sub­mit­ted by Bri­an Tash­man on Thurs­day, 2/12/2015 1:30 pm

    Alaba­ma Supreme Court Chief Jus­tice Roy Moore threw his state into tur­moil this week when he ordered pro­bate judges to defy a fed­er­al judge’s rul­ing strik­ing down the state’s ban on same-sex mar­riage and refuse to issue mar­riage licens­es to gay and les­bian cou­ples. Moore, who has a his­to­ry of mak­ing extreme anti-gay state­ments, insists that the fed­er­al judge is the one who is real­ly break­ing the law since she vio­lat­ed divine law by rul­ing for mar­riage equal­i­ty.

    Moore’s call for statewide defi­ance of the fed­er­al judiciary’s “tyran­ny” stems from a belief that the Con­sti­tu­tion was made to pro­tect bib­li­cal com­mand­ments, so that any­thing that goes against his per­son­al inter­pre­ta­tion of the Bible is there­fore in vio­la­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion.

    Moore shares that belief with a pow­er­ful ally: Michael Per­out­ka, a neo-Con­fed­er­ate activist who is also one of the most influ­en­tial behind-the-scenes fig­ures in the Reli­gious Right’s reimag­in­ing of Amer­i­can law.

    Per­out­ka, who once held a lead­er­ship posi­tion in the neo-Con­fed­er­ate League of the South and remained a mem­ber of the group until it ham­pered his run for a local office in Mary­land last year, pro­motes this theo­crat­ic view of the law through his group the Insti­tute on the Con­sti­tu­tion. Speak­ing at an event at the Insti­tute in 2011, Moore gushed that Per­out­ka would help lead Amer­i­ca to a “glo­ri­ous tri­umph” over the fed­er­al government’s “tyran­ny.”

    But Per­out­ka is more than a friend and ide­o­log­i­cal ally to Moore: he has fund­ed Moore’s activism for more than a decade, and in 2012 bankrolled Moore’s suc­cess­ful cam­paign for the top seat on the Alaba­ma Supreme Court.

    After Moore was removed from his orig­i­nal posi­tion on Alabama’s high court in 2003 for defy­ing a fed­er­al court order to remove a mon­u­ment of the Ten Com­mand­ments from the state judi­cial build­ing, Per­out­ka paid for the oust­ed judge to go on a nation­al speak­ing tour to build sup­port for his cause. He also fund­ed a group that held ral­lies in sup­port of Moore.

    Over the nine years, Per­out­ka con­tributed over a quar­ter of a mil­lion dol­lars to two groups found­ed by Moore, the Foun­da­tion for Moral Law (which is now run by Moore’s wife Kay­la) and the now-defunct Coali­tion to Restore Amer­i­ca.

    In 2004, the far-right Con­sti­tu­tion Par­ty tried to recruit Moore to run for pres­i­dent on its tick­et. When he declined, Per­out­ka stepped in to run in his place.

    This neo-Con­fed­er­ate leader helped to lay the ide­o­log­i­cal ground­work for Moore’s cur­rent stand­off with the fed­er­al courts, a stand­off which many com­men­ta­tors have com­pared to Alaba­ma Gov. George Wallace’s deci­sion to defy fed­er­al law on deseg­re­ga­tion.

    Per­out­ka thinks states should defy and ignore fed­er­al rul­ings on gay rights since fed­er­al judges have “no author­i­ty” to rule in mar­riage cas­es, because mar­riage was already defined by God and the Con­sti­tu­tion was designed to enforce such divine arrange­ments.

    Per­out­ka said last year that such rul­ings would “coerce” state offi­cials to “declare that which is sin­ful and immoral” to be “valid and right,” even forc­ing them to “par­tic­i­pate in it.” Such “evil” deci­sions, accord­ing to Per­out­ka, must be “resist­ed at every lev­el of gov­ern­ment, even the low­er lev­els of gov­ern­ment, most espe­cial­ly the low­er lev­els of gov­ern­ment,” since local gov­ern­ments are the true “pro­tec­tors against those who would force these things on us tyran­ni­cal­ly from above.”

    For exam­ple, after a fed­er­al judge struck down Kentucky’s ban on same-sex mar­riage last year, Per­out­ka insist­ed that Sen. Rand Paul move to impeach the judge who made the deci­sion, defund the court, and press for his state to defy the rul­ing: “He should use every influ­ence he has in Ken­tucky to have peo­ple not obey this; the Ken­tucky leg­is­la­ture, the Ken­tucky courts, should not obey this, this is not law­ful.”

    Per­out­ka also believes that local offi­cials should defy their state leg­is­la­tures on issues like mar­riage equal­i­ty. After Maryland’s gen­er­al assem­bly vot­ed in 2012 to legal­ize same-sex mar­riage in the state, Per­out­ka declared that the assembly’s deci­sion to “vio­late God’s laws” effec­tive­ly inval­i­dat­ed its legal author­i­ty, since any law that con­tra­dicts divine law does “not con­sti­tute a law – even if it were enact­ed and signed.”

    Using an argu­ment sim­i­lar to the one Moore is now mak­ing in Alaba­ma, Per­out­ka said that low­er-lev­el offi­cials could ignore not only the mar­riage equal­i­ty law but any law passed by the state’s gen­er­al assem­bly, since it had inval­i­dat­ed itself by break­ing bib­li­cal decrees: “Is it pos­si­ble that those who are sworn to uphold the law, such as police and sher­iffs and judges and pros­e­cu­tors, may soon come to the con­clu­sion that the enact­ments of this body should be ignored because they are based not in law, but in law­less­ness?”

    For the same rea­sons, Per­out­ka believes Roe v. Wade is invalid is invalid and sup­ports reli­gious tests for pub­lic office, since athe­ists and non-Chris­tians do not believe in the basis of con­sti­tu­tion­al law…the Bible. He also deems the teach­ing of evo­lu­tion in schools to be “anti-Amer­i­can” because evo­lu­tion chal­lenges what his read­ing of the Bible says about the ori­gins of humankind. “The pro­mo­tion of evo­lu­tion is an act of dis­loy­al­ty to Amer­i­ca,” he once declared.

    ...

    “I always go back to these two stan­dards: What does God say and what does the Con­sti­tu­tion say?” Per­out­ka explained in 2013.

    He added that the Unit­ed States will have a small, lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment as long as it adheres to bib­li­cal stan­dards. But he believes that the Union’s vic­to­ry in the Civ­il War — or as he calls it, “The War Between the States” — enabled the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to great­ly expand its pow­ers, thus under­min­ing the author­i­ty of bib­li­cal law and lead­ing to such evils as same-sex mar­riage.

    “Ever since then, there’s been this huge black hole of cen­tral­ized pow­er that’s formed in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.” he said. “Peo­ple some­times talk about ‘The War Between the States’ as being about the issue of slav­ery. I believe that his­to­ry is writ­ten by the win­ners, it wasn’t about that at all. What it was about was con­sol­i­dat­ing pow­er into the hands of a few peo­ple.”

    “[T]he real effect of the war and the Recon­struc­tion after the war was to take the very foun­da­tion of our under­stand­ing of our rights away from us, that is to say that they come from God, and put them in the hands of men and say that they come from the Supreme Court or they come from the leg­is­la­ture or they come from the exec­u­tive,” he added.

    The end of the Civ­il War, Per­out­ka claims, pro­duced an “evil anti-God, anti-Chris­t­ian rev­o­lu­tion” that led to a “tyran­ni­cal con­sol­i­da­tion of pow­er” in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., under­min­ing the “bib­li­cal world­view that acknowl­edges Christ’s author­i­ty over all things.”

    Per­out­ka also con­tends that the gay rights move­ment isn’t just “fed­er­al­iz­ing homo­sex­u­al­i­ty” but “fed­er­al­iz­ing per­ver­sion,” even claim­ing that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment vio­lat­ed the Con­sti­tu­tion by impos­ing civ­il rights laws on the states.

    “[T]he so-called civ­il rights laws are not law,” he said in 2013. “They nev­er should’ve been passed. They’re not law now, they weren’t law then. They aren’t law now because there is no such thing as a civ­il right.”

    Since Per­out­ka believes “rights come from God” and not civ­il gov­ern­ment, he argues that all civ­il rights laws are ille­git­i­mate since “the term ‘civ­il rights’ is kind of an oxy­moron. There’s no ‘right’ in the sense of a per­ma­nent, fixed, thing that you have, that can be defend­ed, if in fact it comes from the civ­il gov­ern­ment.”

    Now Moore is once again putting Peroutka’s words into action, threat­en­ing state judges who law­ful­ly issue a mar­riage licens­es to a same-sex cou­ples. Because in the eyes of Moore and Per­out­ka, their per­son­al read­ing of the Bible takes prece­dence over the law of the land.

    As we can see, Judge Moore’s polit­i­cal sug­ar-dad­dy, Michael Per­out­ka, pub­licly cham­pi­ons views like:

    The end of the Civ­il War, Per­out­ka claims, pro­duced an “evil anti-God, anti-Chris­t­ian rev­o­lu­tion” that led to a “tyran­ni­cal con­sol­i­da­tion of pow­er” in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., under­min­ing the “bib­li­cal world­view that acknowl­edges Christ’s author­i­ty over all things.”

    ...

    “[T]he so-called civ­il rights laws are not law,” he said in 2013. “They nev­er should’ve been passed. They’re not law now, they weren’t law then. They aren’t law now because there is no such thing as a civ­il right.”

    And don’t for­get Per­outka’s views on states seced­ing in order to set up theoc­ra­cies. It’s all part of why, if any group is going to be issu­ing a ‘call to arms’ for Judge Moore, it might as well be the KKK. Although Moore no doubt has plen­ty of sup­port out­side the Klan.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 17, 2015, 2:28 pm

Post a comment