Tag: League of the South

Michael Peroutka Should Elaborate on Reasons He Quit the League of the South

I heard early yesterday that former League of the South board member Michael Peroutka and leader of the theocratic Institute on the Constitution quit the organization. In an article dated today in the Baltimore Sun, Peroutka is quoted as saying he quit the League. He declined to give reasons.
Update: Somehow I missed this section from the Sun article (comments in italics added on 10/18)

Peroutka, a Millersville Republican, said he left the group prior to Labor Day because he discovered statements members made on the subject of being opposed to interracial marriage were “contrary to my beliefs.” He would not elaborate.

I saw the article as soon as it was posted the night before; perhaps this section was added. In any case, I apologize for the omission.
Peroutka’s “discovery” is suspicious. The League has made no secret about white separatist views and Peroutka has been going to and speaking at League of the South meetings since at least 2004 when the organization endorsed his candidacy for president. 
After defending the League of the South early in his campaign for Anne Arundel County Council, Peroutka now suddenly announces he is no longer a member and he doesn’t want to talk about it. To me, that is not sufficient. Peroutka needs to further explain his reasons for first defending and then quitting a group which defends white separatism, especially since that group does not hide those views. Although Peroutka says the move was not for political reasons, without a more plausible explanation there is no reason to believe him.
Peroutka also told the Sun that he was taken out of context when he led the audience in singing the song “I Wish I Was in Dixie” at a League of the South meeting. He called the song the “national anthem.” The entire video is on You Tube (see below). He wasn’t taken out of context. That he continues to spin the situation is an indicator that he is still not being straightforward.
Peroutka even wrote League of the South president Michael Hill when he won the GOP primary for county council and asked for League support. Perhaps the League didn’t come through.
Furthermore, I have heard from a source close to the situation that Peroutka continues to support candidates who have ties to the League of the South, most notably the GOP candidate for sheriff Joe Delimater.
David Whitney, the co-teacher at the Institute on the Constitution, is still listed as chaplain of the Maryland-Virginia chapter of the League of the South.
It is quite possible that Peroutka quit the League in order to preserve his connection to Ken Ham. Ham is supposed to present his creationist position on behalf of Peroutka’s Institute on the Constitution this coming weekend. Ham’s organization denied Peroutka was a member of the League and refused to address clear evidence that Peroutka did belong to it. Perhaps, Ham threatened to back out if Peroutka remained a member.
If Peroutka wants this move to be taken seriously, he needs to do better than he has so far and explain his departure from the League.
Watch Peroutka lead the League of the South in Dixie, or in Peroutka’s words, the national anthem.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/mPhRtS0WdcU?t=50m36s[/youtube]
 
 

Ken Ham's Organization Denies Facts About Conference Sponsors

Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis is misinforming questioners about Michael Peroutka who is sponsoring of next month’s creationism speech at a church in Severn, MD. According to AiG representative Troy Lacey, Michael Peroutka never was a part of the League of the South. Acting on a tip from a reader who first wrote AiG earlier in the day, I wrote the organization and asked:

I understand that Ken Ham is speaking at an event in Severn, MD sponsored by Michael Peroutka. Mr. Peroutka is a member and former board member of the League of the South, a Southern nationalist secession group. 

Is Mr. Ham aware of Mr. Peroutka’s affiliation with the League of the South?

Mr. Lacey answered on behalf of AiG:

Hello Warren thank you for contacting Answers in Genesis. Ken Ham is speaking at Severn Christian Church in Severn, MD on October 18th; not to an organization. He was invited by the church leadership to speak there on Creation evangelism topics. The group that is sponsoring the conference appears to be a conservative constitutional reform party, but nothing more that I can see. As an organization we do not involve ourselves in politics.
To answer your question, to our knowledge Michael Peroutka was not a member of nor ever a former board member of the League of the South organization.
I hope this has been helpful,
Troy Lacey

The ad for the event lists the Institute on the Constitution as the sponsors, not the church. I wrote the church to ask for comment with no response.
kenhamdebate
 
The church may be doing more than providing the venue, but it is clear that Ham is being featured by the IOTC which is a DBA label for Michael Peroutka.
There can be no doubt that Michael Peroutka is a member and defender of the League of the South. He refused to distance himself from them at his news conference last month, he wrote the League’s president Michael Hill and asked for support from them, he proudly served as a board member for nearly a year, and he pledged the resources of the IOTC and his family to the aims of the League.
Clearly, AiG is misinformed or hoping to mislead questioners. Ham is speaking at an organization sponsored event and Michael Peroutka was and is a member of the League of the South.
The question now is what will Ham do about it? The denial of Peroutka’s membership seems to imply that the League of the South connection could be a problem for Ham and AiG (as it was for General Jerry Boykin).  We shall see.

Capital Gazette (MD) Columnist: Michael Peroutka is Not a Republican

Mike Collins, columnist for the Capital Gazette, has a helpful summary of Michael Peroutka’s statements which build to the conclusion that Peroutka can be called many things, but Republican is not one of them. Peroutka is running for a seat on Anne Arundel County Council, founded the theocratic Institute on the Constitution and is a member of the Southern secession group League of the South.
In an odd twist, I suppose you could call him a RINO.
Collins exhorts his fellow Republicans to consider the impact of their vote:

Before Election Day, I ask Republicans in District 5 — and throughout the county—to think through some questions: Do you want this wretched man to take on the proud label of Republican? Does he truly belong in the party of Lincoln and Reagan? Does he have a real allegiance to our party?

You need to do so because a vote for Peroutka will make him not only your representative, but also your responsibility — and our party’s.

 

League of the South President: Relish Being a White Supremacist

In what is probably one of the clearest statements of the white supremacist views of the League of the South, organization president Michael Hill penned an article calling on League members to relish the white supremacist views of their Southern heroes. Anne Arundel County Council candidate and proud League of the South member Michael Peroutka told a news conference audience that he repudiated racists in the League and would pray for them. Well, he does know Michael Hill so he has some repudiating and praying to do. After reading the essay, I think Hill would just laugh at Peroutka’s prayers.
Hill reminds his readers that historically Confederates and their sympathizers saw the South as “white man’s country.”

1n 1928, historian Ulrich B. Phillips called the South “a white man’s country.” [“The Central Theme of Southern History,” American Historical Review 34 (October 1928), p. 31.] From the beginning of their history in the early 17th century, Southerners had taken this statement as an unchallenged fact, and the presence of an alien race in their midst drove it home with added emphasis. Few if any Southerners, or for that matter Northerners, believed in racial equality at the time of the War for Southern Independence nor in the decades to follow. That Phillips made his non-controversial (at the time) statement more than six decades after the end of that war speaks volumes about the stubbornness of what is now vilified as “white supremacy.” Thus, I think it is safe to say that our Confederate ancestors and their descendants for at least two generations would qualify as “racists” and “white supremacists” by today’s definitions of the terms.

That is just fine with Hill, and as it should be.
Hill cites the racist statements of Southern heroes such as Jefferson Davis, Robert Dabney and Alexander Stephens to demonstrate that the Confederate cause was to advance white people as superior to blacks. Dabney is an interesting case. Hill quote Dabney, a Presbyterian minister, as follows:

The offspring of an amalgamation must be a hybrid race incapable of the career of civilization and glory as an independent race. And this apparently is the destiny which our conquerors have in view. If indeed they can mix the blood of the heroes of Manassas with this vile stream from the fens of Africa, then they will never again have occasion to tremble before the righteous resistance of Virginia freemen; but will have a race supple and vile enough to fill that position of political subjugation, which they desire to fix on the South.

Dabney should be familiar to Peroutka supporters. He is a hero on the Institute of the Constitution website. In fact, Peroutka hosts an article on the IOTC website authored by Dabney which justifies unequal treatment based on the supposed inferiority of the African. From the IOTC website, Dabney is quoted as follows:

Hence, the general equality of nature will by no means produce a literal and universal equality of civil condition; for the simple reason that the different classes of citizens have very different specific rights; and this grows out of their differences of sex, virtue, intelligence, civilization, etc., and the demands of the common welfare. Thus, if the low grade of intelligence, virtue and civilization of the African in America, disqualified him for being his own guardian, and if his own true welfare (taking the “general run” of cases) and that of the community, would be plainly marred by this freedom; then the law decided correctly, that the African here has no natural right to his self–control, as to his own labour and locomotion. 

Just to be clear, this passage is not from the League’s website, but from Michael Peroutka’s IOTC site. There is also this gem, which justifies discrimination based on race and religion. Peroutka needs to decide what side he is on.
Perhaps, Hill is talking to Peroutka when he closes:

So when they call you a “racist” or a “white supremacist,” remember that they would have called your Southern ancestors that as well. Thus you are in good company with Lee, Davis, Stephens, and a host of other honorable men. Laugh in your accuser’s face and relish that good company!

Thus far, Peroutka has relished the company of the League, and has pledged his family and business resources to their aims.  Maybe he saves his laughter for when the cameras are off.

League of the South Leaders Lament "Cultural Genocide"

In this National Geographic article, Maryland/Virginia League of the South president Shane Long declares his belief that the South belongs to a particular group of people.

Shane Long, vice chairman of the Maryland chapter of the League of the South, takes a more radical position. Child or adult, legal or illegal—it doesn’t matter, he says. He asserts that “a large amount” of native Virginians and Marylanders share his belief that all of the above intrude on Southerners’ right to exist as a distinct people. “Any act or nonaction by the federal government to bring about such large influxes of non-Southern peoples is genocide and is viewed as [that] by native Southerners,” he says. “It is, in effect, an act of war upon our people.”

In the comments section, League president Michael Hill takes the sentiment further:

Shane Long and The League of the South are correct: this is an act of war against the Southern people. It is an invasion, the result of which will be the ethnic replacement of Southerners with Latinos. Such an aggressive campaign to bring in illegal aliens is nothing less than cultural genocide, and the US regime is complicit. These aliens need to be sent back to their countries of origin, and they need to stay there. The South is for Southerners; it is our homeland.

Let’s remember what Hill means by the “Southern people”:

We are for the survival, well-being, and independence of the Southern people. And when we say ‘the Southern people,’ we mean white Southerners. We are an ethno-nationalist movement and we want a free and independent South for our people, as our homeland. That’s pretty much what we are fighting for.

Anne Arundel County Council candidate Michael Peroutka’s lead trainer at the Institute on the Constitution is David Whitney who is chaplain of Shane Long’s League chapter. Michael Peroutka refuses to back away from the League.