Month: August 2013

Lt. General Jerry Boykin Backs Out of Conference Sponsored by Institute on the Constitution (UPDATED – IOTC Appears to be Out)

UPDATE (8/9/13) – Alex Seitz-Wald also wrote about this situation and added some detail, including the fact that Glenn Beck had been promoting this conference.
See additional update following the post…
Yesterday, in my post on the radicalization of the League of the South, I linked to a conference sponsored by the Institute on the Constitution. I noted that

…several  mainstream evangelicals are speaking in September at a conference sponsored by IOTC and held at a major mega church in Texas.

If you click the links you will go to something called the Founding Faith Conference 2013 (now unavailable without a password). Until earlier today, Lt. General Jerry Boykin was slated to be a key speaker at the conference. However, I learned earlier this afternoon via a source at the Family Research Council (where Boykin is an executive vice-president) that Lt. General Boykin recently became aware of ties between the Institute on the Constitution and the League of the South and, as a result, has backed out of the conference.
For sure those ties are real. Founding Faith Conference speaker David Whitney is the chaplain of the Maryland chapter of the League of the South. At the 2013 conference of the League of the South, IOTC founder and director Michael Peroutka’s was selected to join the League’s board of directors. Then, at the end of his speech, Peroutka, pledged the resources of the IOTC to the efforts of the League.  Watch:

 
UPDATE (8/8/13) – IOTC is now missing from the sponsor page on the conference website (screen cap earlier today) and David Whitney is no longer listed as a speaker (screen cap earlier today). At this time, I don’t know what that means for the other speakers, except to note that they are still listed.
At the end of the Salon piece, Margaret Andrews supplied a statement about her response to Boykin’s departure. I can add that I contacted her on 8/6 before I wrote anything about the conference. She did not make any obvious changes until the afternoon of 8/8, after Boykin disclosed his intention to exit.
 

The Radicalization of the League of the South

There is a kind of feud breaking out between white nationalists and what white nationalists call “rainbow Confederates” over the movement of the League of the South into the white nationalist camp.
In a Monday column on her blog, Connie Chastain, who describes herself as a “Southern nationalist,” lamented the “radicalization” of the League of the South. In the post, she complains:

In early summer of 2012, the League’s radical new direction was brought home to me personally when I was removed without notice from the League’s Facebook group following my initiating a discussion that, apparently, was not politically correct. Since then, I have watched from a distance as the League has continued to radicalize, to accept the influence of white nationalists masquerading as Southern nationalists and to slowly develop an indifference to Southern tradition and Christianity.

and…

Basically, what you have here [in the League] is people who claim to love the South and its people and want to see them free — or preserved, depending on who’s talkin’. But what they really love is whiteness, which includes a built-in aversion to non-whiteness …  and any Southerners who don’t share their dedication to whiteness are heaped with scorn and derision.

According to Chastain, she has been a defender of the League and sympathizes with their secessionist aims.  She does not, however, support the changes she sees.
Chastain’s lament does not sit well with white nationalist Hunter Wallace at Occidental Dissent. He agrees with Chastain but sees the League’s movement into white nationalism as a good thing. Wallace proclaims:

It’s true that we are dedicated to “whiteness.”
We are pro-Southern, pro-Christian, pro-White, and pro-independence. Your suggestion that blacks are our people would have been considered outrageous to previous generations. We are a proud European people.

Wallace calls Chastain a “Rainbow Confederate” which he defines as:

A “Rainbow Confederate” is someone who 1.) claims to venerate and wants to preserve Southern heritage, usually in the form of flags, symbols, and monuments 2.) while simultaneously rejecting and abhoring the racial beliefs of previous generations, particularly with regards to slavery and segregation, which are deemed illegitimate, and 3.) who subscribes to a utopian fantasy of an integrated, multiracial South, in spite of the disastrous results of that Yankee experiment, and 4.) who usually, but not necessarily, projects post-1980 racial attitudes back on the historical Confederacy.

In contrast to “Rainbow Confederates,” Hunter believes:

Experience has shown time and again that segregation and white supremacy are necessary to preserve White majorities in a multiracial environment. The people who denounced segregation and white supremacy as illegitimate undermined the cultural foundation that preserved the White majority.

According to League member Wallace, the segregationists are the ones now joining the League:

By “radicalizing,” Connie means that lots of young people are joining the League of the South who have little patience for the Rainbow Confederate nonsense of the Baby Boomer generation.

Those who continue to harbor the notion that today’s League of the South is just about cultural heritage should read these two articles by these neo-Confederate insiders.
While I don’t have data on this, I suspect most evangelicals reject white supremacy and segregation and would not want to be associated with these ideas. My suspicion is the basis for my puzzlement over the emergence of the Institute on the Constitution among evangelicals. As I have noted previously, the IOTC’s founder, director and teacher Michael Peroutka is a board member of the League and has pledged IOTC’s resources to the aims of the League. Senior teacher David Whitney is chaplain of the MD chapter of the League.
In addition to the course offered in many evangelical churches, the IOTC course is featured on the National Religious Broadcasters network, Liberty University’s television network, Bradlee Dean’s the Sons of Liberty offers the course, and several  mainstream evangelicals are speaking in September at a conference sponsored by IOTC and held at a major mega church in Texas.
It remains to be seen whether or not the IOTC will continue to emerge as a respected organization among evangelicals. Given the radicalization of the League that critics and supporters now acknowledge and the relationship of the League to IOTC, it seems to me that it is troubling for churches and evangelical groups to trust IOTC to teach them about the Constitution.
 
 

Rand Paul Wants to Talk About Rand Paul Except the Part About Rand Paul's Choice of Staff

In an interview with John Harwood on NPR, Rand Paul reacted with frustration to continued questions about his choice of Jack Hunter to be his director of new media. Hunter resigned in July amid criticism of his former membership in the neo-Confederate group, the League of the South, and his radio persona, the Southern Avenger.
When Harwood asked Paul about Hunter, Paul cut him off and among other things said:

Why don’t we talk about Rand Paul, I’m the one doing the interview. You can go ahead and beat up on an ex-employee of mine, but why don’t we talk about Rand Paul and what I’m trying to do to grow the party, and then we might have an intelligent discussion.

To me, this seems like a typical political dodge. The interviewer wanted to talk about the Rand Paul who hired the Southern Avenger with ties to the neo-Confederate movement. Is hiring a League of the South member part of those efforts to “grow the party?” If so, what kind of growth are you seeking?
The interviewer made an effort to stay with the topic but was eventually shouted down by Paul. In listening to the interview, my impression is that Paul is going to have a hard on the presidential campaign trail if he can’t handle questions about his decision making regarding important staff.
Paul said Jack Hunter wrote a lot of stupid stuff but none of it was racist as if the absence of racism is the only measure of a good staff selection. It doesn’t commend Paul’s management style to say he hired a guy with a resume full of stupid stuff.
I suppose racism is in the eye of the beholder, but I think many would wonder about the racial attitudes of a guy who wore a Confederate flag as a mask. Whether one could call Hunter’s views on white persecution racist or paranoid is a matter for discussion. My point here is not to call Hunter or Paul a racist, but it is to say that Paul’s lack of discernment is a major concern and one that is only heightened by his defensive response to questions about his judgment.
 
 
 

Will the Real Institute on the Constitution Please Stand Up?

Last week, a representative of the Institute on the Constitution, John Lofton, touted a  new initiative to alert elected officials that they must administer God’s law rather than make their own laws. Called the God and Government project, Lofton wants followers to go to town council, school board and other local government meetings with 2-3 minutes speeches promoting the IOTC view of civil government.  You can read all of them at the link, but I will cite the first one.

Suggested Statement for Those Going Alone
(The greeting you are most comfortable with but one that is respectful)
My name is __________________. And I wanted to come here this evening to tell about what God says is the duty of those holding the public office you hold.
In the 13th chapter of the book of Romans in the New Testament, God’s says that those who govern us, such as this (yourselves, this Council, whatever) are ministers of God — that actual word “minister” is used. And that you are a minister of God to us for good, for good, as defined by God’s Word. And that you are, conversely, to bring wrath on those who are evil — evil as defined by God’s Word.
Thus, your job is ministerial and not legislative. Your job is to administer and apply God’s Law. And this means it is not the role of government to house or feed or clothe or give health care or education or welfare to anyone.  There is no Biblical authority for that kind of thing. The provision of those things is the job of Christ’s Church.
Romans 13 also tells us that a law is just or unjust depending on whether it is in accord with what God says or whether it is at odds with God’s Law. That is the teaching of the Bible, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, the British jurist William Blackstone and Martin Luther King in his “Letter From The Birmingham Jail.”
In that “Letter,” Dr. King said, and I quote: “A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God….An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law,” unquote. King said, and again I quote him directly: “We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal’.” The word legal in this letter is in direct quotes, King’s point being that what Hitler did in Nazi Germany was not  legal because it was against the Laws of God.
Thank you very much. And may God bless us all as we obey Him.

There is a lot wrong here, but I want to focus on the surprising citation of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Let’s review: The IOTC’s founder and director is Michael Peroutka who is a board member of the neo-Confederate, Southern secessionist League of the South. Peroutka pledged the resources of the IOTC to the League and even told a League audience that he acquired what he knows about government from the League. What does the League think of Martin Luther King, Jr.?
One could start with this review of a book on Martin Luther King, Jr., by John Lofton. After reviewing recitations of allegations about King’s character and morality, Lofton concludes:

In a nutshell,’ what Mr. Garrow’s book demonstrates is that King was one of the most grossly immoral hypocrites in American history.

and then

Well, indeed, Martin Luther King was not a saint, to put it charitably. And thanks to the scholarship of David Garrow, we now know that he was “perhaps worse” than even Buchanan imagined. But to think that this man is honored with a national holiday, and for as much as a week at a time he is honored as a saint in thousands of our public schools. What a disgrace! 

If he is such immoral person, then why quote him Mr. Lofton?
Then, in a press release in 2005 from the League of the South on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day we learn the League’s view. Written by Peroutka’s fellow board member and League president Michael Hill, the release leaves no doubt about the League’s position on King:

In a day when every facet of traditional Anglo-Celtic Southern heritage is called evil—including the thoughts and actions of Lee and Jackson—I am in no mood to mince words. The “Reverend” “Dr.” Martin Luther King, Jr., far from being the saint of recent liberal myth, was nothing but a philandering, plagiarizing, left-wing agitator. Conversely, Lee and Jackson were paragons of Christian manhood, though not without fault. But this year, as always, King is the object of veneration by liberals of every color and stripe, while Lee and Jackson are held in utter disdain. Even some so-called “conservatives” sing MLK’s praises, choosing to keep silent about Lee and Jackson, in hopes that they will not be called “racists” by the left-wing media.

and…

Only a sick and reprobate society would elevate Martin Luther King, Jr., and demonize Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The former sought to manipulate white guilt and use the power of national government for the ends of black racial advancement; the latter risked their lives on the field of battle to preserve the true principles of Constitutional government and the integrity of their homeland. To King and his ilk (both then and now), the U.S. Constitution and the Bible are nothing more than words to be twisted in service of the liberal vision of the good life. To Lee and Jackson, and those who honor them, they are the wellsprings of Christian liberty and prosperity.

There can be no compromise between the worldviews of those who follow MLK and those who salute Lee and Jackson. Moreover, there is no way that a man can, in good conscience, pay homage to both sides at the same time. 

At present, the IOTC appears to pay homage to both sides. On one hand, Michael Peroutka writes for League publications, speaks at League meetings, gladly joined the League’s board of directors and pledged the resources of the IOTC to the League. On the other hand, his organization favorably cites Martin Luther King, Jr. What a hypocritical ploy this is.

King’s letter from the Birmingham jail was addressed to clergy who opposed his non-violent resistance approach to inequality. The League of the South has no sympathy for African-Americans who suffered under Jim Crow laws and worse. In fact, Michael Hill defended Jim Crow laws. In a League essay, Hill said:

Whereas whites and blacks in the antebellum South had lived and worked together in close proximity, once the situation changed at the end of the war (especially with the passage of the Reconstruction amendments) some new arrangement became necessary if whites were to preserve their society. Few Southerners of the late nineteenth century believed that whites and blacks could live together in a state of equality without serious social consequences for both races. Therefore, postbellum Southern blacks were disenfranchised and “Jim Crow” laws resulted in a segregated South (today “Jim Crow” has been replaced by what might be called “Jim Snow” policies that discriminate against whites). Through these measures white Southerners were able to exert some control over a still primitive black population. Nonetheless, the “black community” of the late nineteenth century began to experience problems largely absent prior to 1865: black-on-black crime, illegitimacy, abject poverty, disease, and family disintegration, among others. Despite trillions spent on welfare and other programs, these problems–and many others–still plague the “black community” in the present day. Clearly there is an ever-present problem here that emancipation and money did not solve. 

In another essay (see also this one), Hill decried the civil rights movement led by King:

Sadly, our true interests were compromised and sold for a mess of pottage by our so-called leaders a long time ago. For instance, if the South had had real leaders of the people there would have been no second reconstruction known as the civil rights movement. 

Either the IOTC has betrayed the League or there is an effort to obscure the sentiment of the League to which the IOTC has been pledged.  If the IOTC really wants to celebrate civil rights and the legacy of King, publicly and decisively step away from the League of the South.