north, gary

<div>rand paul</div><div>theocracy plus libtard did oppose abortion murders of docs (bad pr?)</div><div>
</div><div>===</div><div style="font-weight: bold;">ALSO A SEQUEL
</div><div><a href="https://www.garynorth.com/public/10256.cfm">
</a></div><div><a href="https://www.garynorth.com/public/10256.cfm">https://www.garynorth.com/public/10256.cfm</a></div><div style="font-weight: bold;">
</div><div style="font-weight: bold;">ginni a big fan groundswell:
<h1 class="articleheadline">agenda: A Misleading Fundamentalist Video That Should Never Have Been Made</h1>

Gary North - October 29, 2012

Remnant Review (Oct. 29, 2012)There comes a

time to stop beating a dead horse. But there are full-time beaters of

dead horses who just cannot bring themselves to admit that the horse is

dead.A recent example of dead-horse-beating is a documentary, Agenda: Grinding America Down

(2010). It argues that Communism in America is not only alive and well,

it is about to conquer America. In fact, we are almost out of time.

Communism is about to take over.I assume that your initial

reaction is this: "This is nuts." That was my reaction when I first

viewed it. But, believe it or not, this documentary has begun to gain a

following among fundamentalists who believe that Jesus is coming soon to

set up His millennial kingdom. This theory of history teaches that

everything must get worse and worse until a time when Christians are

about to be overwhelmed by the forces of evil. Jesus will come and take

them all to heaven for seven years, and then Jesus, His angels, and the

resurrected perfect and immortal followers will return to set up an

international bureaucracy to run the world. This theory is called

premillennial, pretribulational dispensationalism. The fall of

the Soviet Union in 1991 created a major crisis for this system of Bible

interpretation. The "Beast from the North," the USSR, collapsed. This

ended the USSR's supposed threat to the nation of Israel, which is

central to this theory of world history. The nation of the north was now

gone. So, how could Jesus' return to whisk away his helpless church be

imminent? I wrote a book on this topic in 1993, Rapture Fever. It's here for free: <a href="http://bit.ly/gnrapture" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://bit.ly/gnrapture</a>.Then,

in 2010, a fundamentalist offered the answer. Communism really did not

die. Not at all. It is about to take over the USA. The visible collapse

of Communism was really part of a Communist plot.The fall of the

USSR was not a hoax. The collapse of Communism in America immediately

followed. Hardly anyone noticed. That was because American working class

members had never accepted the idea of bloody proletarian revolution as

an inevitable way of liberation. They hated Communism.Why would

anyone believe this documentary? Because it's slick. It is based on a

complete misreading of Communist history. It is also based on a series

of deceptions. Conservatives cannot believe that someone would

deliberately deceive them. So, they believe this message.But what

if the deception was based on self-deception? What if the producer is

simply misinformed? What if he is a self-taught man who picked up a few

unconnected (and erroneous) bits of information and tried to connect

them by means of a thesis that seems superficially plausible? What if

his sincerity is not backed up by the facts? What if the average viewer

of his documentary is ignorant about these supposed facts? Then the

viewer becomes a victim. I don't want you to be a victim. That is why I am writing this report.

THE LEGACY OF FRED SCHWARZThe documentary is dedicated to Fred Schwarz. This indicates the degree of the writer-producer's ignorance. In

1996, Schwarz, the anti-Communist lecturer who brought me into the

conservative movement in 1956 with one powerful speech, wrote a

testament: Beating the Unbeatable Foe: One Man's Victory Over Communism, Leviathan, and the Last Enemy. That

testament resonated with me. His one-hour lecture in 1956 was the most

important lecture I ever heard, before or since. I was confronted with

what seemed to be a well-organized, ruthless, and relentless enemy:

international Communism. It controlled the USSR. The USSR controlled

Eastern Europe. Communism controlled China. It had a vision of victory.

It had an agenda. It had a comprehensive theory of historical causation:

dialectical materialism. The USSR had enormous military power. It

looked unbeatable. Nevertheless, I signed up with Schwarz's

Christian Anti-Communism Crusade. I was not yet a Christian. I even sent

him $100 for a lifetime membership, which was about $850 in today's

purchasing power. I was 14 years old. I earned $1 an hour before taxes

at a local record store.A decade later, I began work on my book, Marx's Religion of Revolution. It was published in 1968. Download it here: <a href="http://bit.ly/gnmror" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://bit.ly/gnmror</a>. That book goes into detail on the philosophy of Marx and Engels. That philosophy is now dead. So is its economic analysis.On December 31, 1991, the Communist Party of the USSR committed suicide. It disbursed the funds and shut down. The war was over.Today,

all that remains are North Korea and Cuba. The defeat of Communism is

best seen in the satellite photograph of the Korean peninsula.<center>

</div>

</center>

Schwarz knew it was over for Communism by 1996. He admitted that he was amazed that it fell so fast.

THE LEGACY OF DOUGLAS HYDESomeone

else had known: Douglas Hyde. He had been a major figure in Great

Britain's Communist Party in the 1930s and 1940s. He converted to

Catholicism in the late 1940s. He wrote a classic account of his years

in the Party: Dedication and Leadership, which Notre Dame University Press published in 1966.In the mid-1980s, I was given a copy of his limited-printing book, Dedication and Leadership Techniques

(1962). I wanted to publish it. I wrote him for permission. He said no.

Why? Because the Communist Party no longer resembled the dedicated

Party of his youth. He said that the book would give a false opinion of

the Party as of 1985.I publish a modified version of it on this

site. You should read it -- not for what it says about Communism today

-- or in 1985 -- but in earlier generations.<center> <a href="https://www.garynorth.com/members/programs/fileinfo.cfm?id=28&action=display" target="_blank" rel="noopener">//www.garynorth.com/members/programs/fileinfo.cfm?id=28&action=display</a> </center>Communism is dead. It committed suicide: institutionally, morally, and economically. It deserves a public burial.

FIGHTING OLD BATTLESSadly,

there are conservatives who still live in the past, as if it were still

the glory days of Communism and therefore also anti-Communism. Some of

them cut their teeth on anti-Communism. I was one of them. Schwarz did,

too, more than anyone I have ever known. But by 1996, he knew that the

fight was over. The West had won. He turned his files over to David

Noebel, who ran Summit Ministries for years. Then Schwarz retired. He

deserved his retirement. He died in 2003.This brings me back to

the documentary. It unfortunately was not produced by someone who

understood the implications of what Schwarz did in 1996. He retired,

having fought the fight and having won.I am going to review this

documentary in detail. Let me say from the outset that the documentary

is not worth reviewing for its own sake. It is a very bad documentary.

It is misleading. Most of all, it is a documentary that will sidetrack

anyone who believes it. Why? Because it is like an aging boxer

who trains for an opponent he fought two decades earlier. That opponent

had a fatal heart attack in the middle of a fight. The old boxer is

making it more likely that his next opponent will flatten him. Why?

Because he never changes his defenses. He is predictable.

AGENDA: GRINDING AMERICA DOWN (2010)The documentary is here: <a href="http://vimeo.com/52009124" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://vimeo.com/52009124</a>.

It has been online for three weeks. About 9,300 people have clicked it.

I doubt that many of them stuck with it all the way through. It is an

hour and 20 minutes.It begins with a clip from a B&W

documentary on Communism that Ronald Reagan made 50 years ago. He says

that the story he was introducing might not have a happy ending. It was a

documentary on international Communism. It was a good documentary. It

is now a document of an ancient past.The story did have a happy

ending. The Berlin Wall came down. Then the Soviet Union committed

suicide in December of 1991. It was the greatest victory of my lifetime.

The most powerful empire in history simply shut down: no bloodshed, no

revolution. Not a shot was fired. Incredible.The economic irrationality of socialism had been made clear by Ludwig von Mises in his 1920 essay, "<a href="http://mises.org/pdf/econcalc.pdf">Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth</a>."

In 1989, Mises' prediction had become clear even to Soviet economic

planners. It became visible to all in late 1991. Mises was right. Marx

was wrong.None of this is mentioned in Agenda. It has

movie clips of Soviet parades with lots of tanks and weapons from the

1960s, as if the USSR were still a threat militarily to the West.

It also fails to mention declining birth rates in Russia. It mentions

abortion, but not abortion's demographic effects. The Russians are dying

off. Siberia is becoming depopulated. On Siberia's southern border is

China. At some point, the Chinese will start crossing that border. This

is Russia's #1 military problem. It has no solution short of nuclear

war.Agenda was made by a Bible-affirming Christian. Most

of the people he interviewed are Bible-believing Christians. Yet not one

of them thanked God onscreen for the greatest political victory of all

time. Worse: the ones he quoted said that the fight with Communism still

goes on, and that America is likely to lose unless the entire nation

turns around morally and religiously.In short, the documentary

claims that God did not provide the victory. It says, loud and clear,

that there was no miracle, no victory. Yet they call for God to work a

miracle. To which God might well reply: "What do you think I gave you?

Are you blind? You show no gratitude."Yes, some of them are blind. The ones onscreen who warned that the Communists are close to total victory are blind.

THE 1992 MEETINGThe

narrator-producer of the documentary gives this testimony. He says he

attended a meeting at the University of California, Berkeley. It was a

meeting of Communists. They were all gray heads. He thought that was

significant. It was, too. It was a meeting of old people who had visibly

lost the fight that had consumed their youth. They had wasted their

lives. No one was listening, except for the visitor, who misread the

meeting. He thought a bunch of kids at a meeting would have been silly.

But, no, these were only old people.If there are no kids at a meeting to plan strategy, it's irrelevant. The people at the meeting have no future.They

were discussing strategy. He thought this was important. When

Communists discuss strategy in a public room on campus, they are either

starting over, trying to pick up the pieces, or else it's a sham. It's

then a recruiting meeting. But it wasn't. There were no young people. No

young people at Berkeley? It's all over but the burial.He says

that this was one faction of the CPUSA, which had split. He never asked

the obvious question: How had it split? There was an obvious reason: the leaders were no longer getting instructions from the Communist Party of the USSR.

There was no CPUSSR. It had shut down less than a year before. The

Communist experiment in the USSR had ended in complete failure -- the

greatest single institutional failure in history.He also did not ask this: What was the other faction doing? What was it saying? Where were its members meeting?He

says he gave no more thought to this until 2008. Then, out of the blue,

it occurred to him that a meeting he could barely recall had somehow

forecast all of the moral breakdown in the USA. Conclusion: the

Communists -- anyway, the Berkeley faction -- had planned it all,

organized it all, and was still pulling the strings from behind the

curtain.There was a curtain. There was a wizard behind it.He

then spent two years studying everything, he said. Really? Two whole

years? I started studying this in 1956. Fred Schwarz started studying it

in 1945. In 1996, he said the Communists had lost. I have said the

Communists have lost ever since 1992. But the producer has concluded

that they have almost won. At 1:16:33 into the documentary, he

announces: "This is our last chance to push back."He reminds me

of Dorothy, the tin man, the scarecrow, and the cowardly lion after they

had defeated the witch. They were once again standing in the grand

hall, and the head was yelling at them. They were terrified of the head.Think of me as Toto.

TOWARD SOVIET AMERICAIn the documentary, a book is referred to repeatedly, <a href="http://archive.org/details/towardsovietamer00fostrich">Toward Soviet America</a>.

It was written by the head of the CPUSA in 1932. The author was William

Z. Foster. We are assured that this book holds the key to understanding

what is happening today. It doesn't. The book refutes everything in the

documentary relating to Communism.The documentary argues that

today's Left-wing movements are an extension of Marxian Communism. They

aren't. No book proves this more effectively than Toward Soviet America.The

author reflected Soviet opinion, meaning Stalin's opinion, in 1932.

What did Foster say about all Left-wing reform movements in capitalist

nations? Exactly what Marx said, Engels said, and Lenin said. They are

all parts of the capitalist system. In Chapter 3, "Attempts to Liquidate

the Crisis," in the section The Movement for Capitalist Planned Economy, we read the following.<blockquote>ALARMED

on the one hand at the breakdown of the

chaotic capitalistic economy in the crisis and on

the other at the forging ahead of the Soviet Union

with its planned Socialist economy, defenders of

capitalism, especially in the United States, are raising a great clamor

for a planned capitalist economy. "Give us a plan," they cry in every

key and

in manifest confusion. Many of them frankly

state that it is a case of either a planned capitalist

economy or Communism (p. 161). </blockquote>What are these people really doing? Opposing Communist revolution. This includes the A.F.L. (American Federation of Labor).<blockquote>It is characteristic that the Social Fascist and

Fascist leaders of the Socialist party and A.F.

of L., together with many liberals, are advocates

of capitalist "planning." They try to prove that

the revolution is not necessary for an ordered

economy and prosperity for the workers. As

agents of finance capitalism, these elements always

manage to find "progress" in every new step that

the capitalists find necessary for the exploitation

of the workers. The A.F. of L. leaders' demand

now for "planning" and the abrogation of the anti-

trust laws is just as much in the service of the

employers as their support of the tariff, the rationalization of industry, the present wage-cut drive,

etc.(pp. 163-64) </blockquote>The essence of Communism, Foster said, is the proletarian revolution.<blockquote>THE MAJOR social contradiction of the capitalist

system is the conflict in interest between the owning capitalist class and the producing working

class. This gives rise to class struggle, the capitalists always seeking to more intensely exploit the

workers, and the workers struggling to retain the

products of their labor. The class struggle, as we

have already seen, becomes ever sharper with the

intensification of the general crisis of capitalism,

and it eventually culminates in the proletarian

revolution (pp. 172-73). </blockquote>Foster had nothing but contempt

for these people. "Adapting themselves to the needs of the employers,

the reformist Socialist and trade union leaders have developed their

movement into an

organ of the bosses for the Fascist repression and intensified

exploitation of the working class" (p. 176). He hated the far-Left

non-Communists most of all.<blockquote>But the most insidious and dangerous to the

workers of all this crop of demagogues are the so-called "left" Social Fascists. The substance of

their activities is, while giving practical support to

the right Social Fascists, to criticize them in the

name of the revolution. They are the radical

phrase-mongers par excellence. Their objective

task is the confusion of the most advanced elements

of the workers and therefore the breaking up of

serious movements against the capitalists and their

reactionary labor henchmen (p. 195). </blockquote>What are Communists -- true Communists -- in favor of? This:<blockquote>THE

COMMUNIST PARTY bases its activities upon

the principles of the class struggle, both with regard to its every-day

struggles and its ultimate

revolutionary goal. It relentlessly fights against

the policy of class collaboration practiced by the

Socialist party and the A.F. of L. leaders. Worldwide experience has

fully demonstrated the fact

that the workers cannot go along with the bosses

as "friendly partners." The capitalists and the

workers are class enemies, with mutually hostile interests. The

exploiters and the exploited are natural political foes. The relations

between them

depend upon the question of power. The workers

can get from the employers only what they have

the power to take. The A.F. of L. theory (which

corresponds to the Socialist party practice) of the

"harmony of interest between capital and labor"

is the theory of the surrender of the working class

to the bourgeoisie (p. 252). </blockquote>What is their final goal? World Soviet government.<blockquote>The

American Soviet government will join with

the other Soviet governments in a world Soviet

Union. There will also be, very probably, some form of continental

union. The American revolution will doubtless carry with it all those

countries

of the three Americas that have not previously

accomplished the revolution (p. 272). </blockquote>Problem: in December 1991, the USSR committed suicide. It no longer exists.This

is why those gray-heads at Berkeley in 1992 were having a public

meeting. There was nothing left to conceal. They had hit the Communist

equivalent of the brick wall. The Communist movement was dead in Russia.

Someone needed to write Toward Soviet Russia. No one ever has.If you believe the message of Agenda, I suggest that you take the documentary's advice. Read Toward Soviet America.

THE NAKED COMMUNISTAt

the 8-minute mark, the narrator tells of his appointment to state

office in 2008. He began writing a monthly letter to the editor. He says

that he thought back to that 1992 meeting. Then someone told him of

Cleon Skousen's 1958 book, The Naked Communist. He says he read

it for the first time in 2008. He says this amazed him. He says the book

outlined the Communist Party's plans for capturing America by stealth.

The Party had 45 goals, and, he says almost all of them had been

achieved. He offers the list at 11 minutes into the video. The screen

scrolls:

Outlaw prayer in the schools
Discredit the family
Take control of the schools
Repeal anti-obscenity laws
Promote pornography
Promote homosexuality
Infiltrate the press
Infiltrate the churches; teach "social religion"</blockquote>I

bought that book in 1959. When I read this list onscreen, I did not

remember it. So, I got the book off my shelf. My memory was correct.

There is no such list in the book.The first 230 pages are devoted

to an accurate but conventional history of Soviet Communism. Chapter 8

discusses Soviet spies in the United States. There is nothing on the

Communist Party USA and its agenda for subverting American Institutions.

The final 90 pages also do not offer any information on

Communist tactics for America. It has a chapter on "What do defenders of

Communism Say?" It covers these issues: peaceful co-existence, illegal

operations, revolutionary violence, war and peace, the Communist

International, diplomatic intrigue. These were matters of international

Communism.Then the chapter gets to general moral issues. It shows

that Marxism says that Communists support proletarian ethics, not any

universal ethics, which does not exist, according to Marx. Under "The

Bible," Skousen quotes Engels. The Bible is not true, Engels said. No

surprise here. Nothing on "social religion." There are three pages on

"Religion." They are quotes from Soviet Communists on the need to stamp

out religion.There is no list of 45 tactics. There is no discussion of any agenda of the Communist Party USA.I do not think Bowers read the book. If he did, he did not understand what he read.I

hope he is not a self-conscious liar. I hope he is merely another

well-meaning schnook for Jesus, a man who did not do enough homework

before going public with his views. <blockquote>[Update,

October 30, 4:40 a.m. After several exchanges of emails with Mr. Bowers

on October 29, in which he could not explain this discrepancy, he sent

me an email in the evening in which he cited a 1962 edition in which he

said this list appears. I will take his word for this. In the text of

the video, he stated the following. A reader had contacted him in 2008

to tell him that "a book from 1958 had outlined a similar agenda." No,

it had not. That was how he introduced The Naked Communist. At

the 11-minute mark, he said: "Inside the book, it documented 45 specific

goals from 1958." No, it did not. But I took him at his word when I

wrote this review. I went on the assumption that he had verified his

claim. He hadn't. I looked up the 1960 edition, a reprint of the 1958

edition. The list was not there. Therefore, I hope that he will update

his documentary to reflect this . . . and take it down from the Web

until he does. Again, it is crucial that film-makers avoid making false

claims onscreen. Some reviewers may take them literally. They may follow

Ronald Reagan's warning: "Trust, but verify." I trusted. I verified.

His statement was wrong. He trusted his letter-writer regarding what was

in the 1958 edition. He failed to verify. Then he got caught. A

reviewer must go by what a document says, not the author's belated email

revision two years later.] </blockquote>Here is what appalls me: this is all done in the name of Jesus. The movie is a hard-core pitch for fundamentalism. The documentary is schlock for Jesus. Jesus deserves better.I was a friend of Cleon Skousen. After 1970, he ceased talking about Communism in his writings. In 1970, he wrote The Naked Capitalist. It was a summary of the brief section of Carroll Quigley's book, Tragedy and Hope

(1966), which revealed connections between J. P. Morgan & Co. and

American liberalism. From 1970 on, Skousen focused exclusively on this

issue: the Establishment and the New World Order, especially the Council

on Foreign Relations and the Royal Institute for Economic Affairs.Skousen dropped any discussion of the Communist Party USA. He had never talked about it much. In The Naked Communist, there was not a single footnote to a publication of the American Communist Party. I am thinking of the Monthly Review or Daily Worker. He saw the CPUSA as peripheral in American life, which it was. Bowers is either unaware of all this (likely -- he is poorly informed on everything else), or else he deliberately conceals it.

ANTONIO GRAMSCIWe

now come to the heart of this documentary. Here, the misinformation is

fundamental. It is shared by other anti-Communists. I do not understand

why.The movie talks at length about an Italian Communist of the

1920s and 1930s, Gramsci. It does not tell you that he left the USSR in

the 1920s to return to Italy. He knew he would be arrested by Mussolini

and imprisoned. He feared Stalin more, and for good reason. In

prison for years, he wrote notebooks. He was released in 1932 because of

poor health. He died in 1937. His notebooks offered a new form of

Communism, one tied to cultural issues. In fact, this was

anti-Communism. Gramsci was the most influential anti-Communist Communist of the 20th century.Marx

held that culture and ethics are a product of class interests. These in

turn are a function of the mode of production. This analysis is central

to Marxism-Leninism. Culture has no independent existence, Marxism

teaches. It is not fundamental.Gramsci reversed this. He

identified culture as the central pillar of society. He saw that culture

is an extension of religion: the first principles of a civilization. He

was correct. Marxism was wrong on this, the central pillar of its

theoretical system. In doing so, Gramsci undermined Marxism-Leninism.

This is why I never saw any positive references to Gramsci in pre-1991

American Communist literature. He was a "non-person." There was a reason

for this. He was the supreme enemy inside the "revisionist" camp after

Stalin had Trotsky killed. Wikipedia's summary is accurate.<blockquote>Orthodox

Marxism had predicted that socialist revolution was inevitable in

capitalist societies. By the early 20th century, no such revolution had

occurred in the most advanced nations. Capitalism, it seemed, was even

more entrenched than ever. Capitalism, Gramsci suggested, maintained

control not just through violence and political and economic coercion,

but also through ideology. The bourgeoisie developed a hegemonic

culture, which propagated its own values and norms so that they became

the 'common sense' values of all. People in the working-class (and other

classes) identified their own good with the good of the bourgeoisie,

and helped to maintain the status quo rather than revolting. To

counter the notion that bourgeois values represented 'natural' or

'normal' values for society, the working class needed to develop a

culture of its own. Lenin held that culture was 'ancillary' to political

objectives but for Gramsci it was fundamental to the attainment of

power that cultural hegemony be achieved first. In Gramsci's view, a

class cannot dominate in modern conditions by merely advancing its own

narrow economic interests. Neither can it dominate purely through force

and coercion. Rather, it must exert intellectual and moral leadership,

and make alliances and compromises with a variety of forces. . . .</blockquote>Gramsci

was opposed to classical Marxism. He rejected Marx's view of economics

as central. He saw the culture war as central, not the mode of

production. This had been the position of the Popes and conservative

Protestant theologians. Political conservatives have always believed

this. Gramsci rejected Marx's Capital on this point. <blockquote>In

a notable pre-prison article entitled "The Revolution against Das

Kapital," Gramsci claimed that the October Revolution in Russia had

invalidated the idea that socialist revolution had to await the full

development of capitalist forces of production. This reflected his view

that Marxism was not a determinist philosophy. The principle of the

causal "primacy" of the forces of production, he held, was a

misconception of Marxism. Both economic changes and cultural changes are

expressions of a "basic historical process", and it is difficult to say

which sphere has primacy over the other. The belief, widespread within

the workers movement in its earliest years, that it would inevitably

triumph due to "historical laws", was, in Gramsci's view, a product of

the historical circumstances of an oppressed class restricted mainly to

defensive action. Such a fatalistic doctrine was to be abandoned as a

hindrance once the working-class became able to take the initiative.

Because Marxism is a "philosophy of praxis", it cannot rely on unseen

"historical laws" as the agents of social change. History is defined by

human praxis and therefore includes human will.</blockquote>It went beyond this. He rejected Marxism's doctrine of historical materialism.<blockquote>By

virtue of his belief that human history and collective praxis determine

whether any philosophical question is meaningful or not, Gramsci's

views run contrary to the metaphysical materialism and 'copy' theory of

perception advanced by Engels and Lenin, though he does not explicitly

state this. For Gramsci, Marxism does not deal with a reality that

exists in and for itself, independent of humanity. The concept of an

objective universe outside of human history and human praxis was, in his

view, analogous to belief in God; there could be no objectivity, but

only a universal intersubjectivity to be established in a future

communist society. Natural history was thus only meaningful in relation

to human history. In his view philosophical materialism resulted from a

lack of critical thought, and could not, as Lenin claimed, be said to

oppose religious dogma. </blockquote>So, when Bowers went into the

1992 meeting at Berkeley, he encountered a handful of Gramsci's

disciples, who were not Marxists. They may have been socialists, but

they were not Communists. They were the sworn enemies of William Z.

Foster and orthodox Communists.He built his entire thesis on a

mistake. His vague memory of that 1992 meeting was of a meeting of

Communists. It was not. It was a meeting of anti-Communists.Thus,

the supposed Communist agenda that Bowers discusses was not a Communist

agenda at all. It was not Communism. It was not Marxism. It had nothing

to do with international Communism that Skousen discussed in The Naked Communist.Mr. Bowers is a well-meaning man who knows just enough to make really huge mistakes.

LATE-COMERS TO THE CULTURAL PARTYThe

movie says that the tiny band of gray-heads somehow captured the

feminism movement, the environmental movement, and the public schools

between 1992 and 2008.He says that the environmental movement was

a small thing in 1992. This is so ludicrous as to get conservative

activists giggling. That was the year that the United Nations

Organization held the Kyoto meeting and issued the Kyoto protocol. The

environmental movement came mainly as the product of Rachel Carson's

book, Silent Spring (1962). That was 30 years before the Berkeley meeting.The feminist movement was in full swing by 1969.As for the public schools, Bowers is unfamiliar with the history of progressive education. He needs to read Rushdoony's Messianic Character of American Education (1963) and John Taylor Gatto's The Underground History of American Education (2003).That

little band of Gramsci disciples arrived late to the culture wars. They

were also-rans in the clash of cultures. They wanted to take over what

was independent of Marxism. They failed. Marx is a joke on college

campuses today. A few hundred aging English professors may believe it.

No one in the social sciences does. Few ever did. There were few

Communists in the classroom in the USA, ever.The documentary

argues that the Communist Party has secretly infiltrated what it calls

the Progressive movement. Through it, the Communists are about to

capture America. But the documentary does not mention what William Z.

Foster said of the Progressives in 1933.<blockquote>ALARMED on the one hand at the breakdown of the

chaotic capitalistic economy in the crisis and on

the other at the forging ahead of the Soviet Union

with its planned Socialist economy, defenders of

capitalism, especially in the United States, are rais-

ing a great clamor for a planned capitalist econ-

omy. "Give us a plan," they cry in every key and

in manifest confusion. Many of them frankly

state that it is a case of either a planned capitalist

Fascist leaders of the Socialist party and A.F.

of L., together with many liberals, are advocates

of capitalist "planning." They try to prove that

the revolution is not necessary for an ordered

economy and prosperity for the workers. As

agents of finance capitalism, these elements always

manage to find "progress" in every new step that

the capitalists find necessary for the exploitation

of the workers. The A.F. of L. leaders' demand

now for "planning" and the abrogation of the anti-

trust laws is just as much in the service of the

employers as their support of the tariff, the ration-

alization of industry, the present wage-cut drive,

system is the conflict in interest between the own-

ing capitalist class and the producing working

class. This gives rise to class struggle, the capi-

talists always seeking to more intensely exploit the

workers, and the workers struggling to retain the

products of their labor. The class struggle, as we

have already seen, becomes ever sharper with the

intensification of the general crisis of capitalism,

and it eventually culminates in the proletarian

revolution (pp. 172-73). </blockquote>Foster had nothing but contempt

for these people. "Adapting themselves to the needs of the employers,

the reformist Socialist and trade union leaders have developed their

movement into an

organ of the bosses for the Fascist repression and intensified

exploitation of the working class" (p. 176). He hated the far-Left

non-Communists most of all.<blockquote>But the most insidious and dangerous to the

workers of all this crop of demagogues are the so-

called "left" Social Fascists. The substance of

their activities is, while giving practical support to

the right Social Fascists, to criticize them in the

name of the revolution. They are the radical

phrase-mongers par excellence. Their objective

task is the confusion of the most advanced elements

of the workers and therefore the breaking up of

serious movements against the capitalists and their

COMMUNIST PARTY bases its activities upon

the principles of the class struggle, both with regard to its every-day

struggles and its ultimate

revolutionary goal. It relentlessly fights against

the policy of class collaboration practiced by the

Socialist party and the A.F. of L. leaders. Worldwide experience has

fully demonstrated the fact

that the workers cannot go along with the bosses

as "friendly partners." The capitalists and the

workers are class enemies, with mutually hostile interests. The

exploiters and the exploited are natural political foes. The relations

between them

depend upon the question of power. The workers

can get from the employers only what they have

the power to take. The A.F. of L. theory (which

corresponds to the Socialist party practice) of the

"harmony of interest between capital and labor"

is the theory of the surrender of the working class

to the bourgeoisie (p. 252). </blockquote>What is their final goal? World Soviet government.<blockquote>The

American Soviet government will join with

the other Soviet governments in a world Soviet

Union. There will also be, very probably, some form of continental

union. The American revolution will doubtless carry with it all those

countries

of the three Americas that have not previously

accomplished the revolution (p. 272). </blockquote>Problem: in December 1991, the USSR committed suicide. It no longer exists.This

is why those gray-heads at Berkeley in 1992 were having a public

meeting. There was nothing left to conceal. They had hit the Communist

equivalent of the brick wall. The Communist movement was dead in Russia.

Someone needed to write Toward Soviet Russia. No one ever has.If you believe the message of Agenda, I suggest that you take the documentary's advice. Read Toward Soviet America.</div><div style="font-weight: bold;">
</div><div style="font-weight: bold;"><div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-weight: 400; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"></div></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-weight: 400; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">omg npi no pun
</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-weight: 400; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-weight: 400; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/extremist-christians/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/extremist-christians/</a></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-weight: 400; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-weight: 400; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">paul r salon</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-weight: 400; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-weight: 400; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">progressive policies and positions are supposed to be rooted in reality and hard evidence. But that's not always the case when it comes to the culture wars that have such an enormous impact on our politics — especially not since the unexpected evangelical embrace of Donald Trump in 2016, culminating in the "pro-life" death cult of anti-vaccine, COVID-denying religious leaders. If this development perplexed many on the left, it was less surprising to a small group of researchers who have been studying the hardcore anti-democratic theology known as dominionism that lies behind the contemporary Christian right, and its far-reaching influence over the last several decades.</div>One leading figure within that small group, Rachel Tabachnick, was featured in a recent webinar hosted by the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (archived on YouTube <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gegkj9S8A-4&t=1010s" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">here</a>), as part of its <a href="https://rcrc.org/learning-center/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Religion and Repro Learning Series program</a>, overseen by the Rev. Dr. Cari Jackson. Tabachnick's writing on dominionism can be found at <a href="http://www.talk2action.org/user/Rachel%20Tabachnick/stories" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Talk2Action</a> and <a href="https://politicalresearch.org/bio/rachel-tabachnick" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Political Research Associates</a>, and she's been interviewed by Terry Gross on <a href="https://www.npr.org/2011/08/24/139781021/the-evangelicals-engaged-in-spiritual-warfare" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Fresh Air</a>.<div id="story_page_incontent_p2_target" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-weight: 400; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><ins class="adsbygoogle" data-ad-client="ca-pub-5155643920455169" data-ad-slot="6339868799" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none; text-align: center; margin-bottom: 20px; display: block;" /></div>Her presentation sheds important light on at least three things: First of all, the vigilante element of the Texas anti-abortion law SB 8. Second, the larger pattern of disrupting or undermining governance, including the "constitutional sheriffs" movement, the installation of overtly partisan election officials and the red-state revolt against national COVID public health policies. While Donald Trump has exploited that pattern ruthlessly, he did not create it. And third, the seemingly baffling fact that an anti-democratic minority feels entitled to accuse its opponents — including democratically elected officials — of "tyranny."Some dominionist ideas — such as the biblical penalty of death by stoning — are so extreme they can easily be dismissed as fringe, others have been foundational to the modern religious right, and still more have become increasingly influential in recent years. Those latter two categories are what we need to understand most, say both Tabachnick and Jackson."One of the things that struck me, as a relative newcomer," said Jackson, a former Congregationalist minister, "was that there was not sufficient understanding about the theological frames used by many individuals who are opposed to abortion." She continued, "I'm a strategist in a lot of ways, and one important strategy, I believe, must be to understand what the teachings and the theological frames are" on the other side. Which links directly to the question of what progressive activists need to do differently in this changed environment.This failure to understand the nature of dominionism has hampered activists, not just in the realm of reproductive justice, but across an entire spectrum of political issues, both cultural and economic. Jackson discussed her own background, raised within a conservative Christian worldview."I was taught a very individualistic approach," she said, "taught that we shouldn't pay taxes, because doing so enabled people who were not working, and enables people whose lifestyle we don't agree with." There's nothing new about such views, but dominionism provides believers with an even stronger foundation for them.Jackson describes her current understanding of religious faith as highly intersectional: "We believe that to understand the attacks on abortion also invites us — or even requires us — to look at attacks on voting, to look at attacks on immigrants, attacks on prison reform, attacks on equal pay and on and on," she said. "It's all of the same cloth: They are all attacks on humans flourishing. That's my language. The God of my understanding wants all of us to flourish in who we are."the language of dominionism is strikingly different, to put it mildly. In her webinar, Tabachnick played a clip of one of the movement's leading figures, C. Peter Wagner, providing a definition:<blockquote style="font-family: sans-serif; font-weight: 400; font-size: small; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 1em 40px 1em -5px; border-left: 4px solid rgb(11, 13, 101); line-height: 32px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; width: 602.531px;">Dominion has to do with control. Dominion has to do with rulership. Dominion has to do with authority and subduing. And it relates to society — in other words what is talked about, what the values are in heaven [that] need to be made manifest here on earth. Dominion means being the head and not the tail. Dominion means ruling as kings. It says in Revelation chapter 1:6 that "he has made us kings and priests," and check the rest of that verse, it says "for dominion." So we are kings for dominion.
</blockquote>Later she provided a definition from Frederick Clarkson, author of the 1997 book, "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Eternal-Hostility-Struggle-Theocracy-Democracy/dp/1567510884" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy</a>":<div class="proper-ad-unit postContent11" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: medium; font-weight: 400; margin: auto; position: relative; width: 654.938px; min-width: 100px; text-align: center; box-sizing: border-box !important;"><div id="proper-ad-alternet_content_2" style="position: relative; margin: auto; box-sizing: border-box !important;"><blockquote style="background: rgb(245, 245, 245); font-size: small; text-align: left; margin: 1em 40px 1em -5px; border-left: 4px solid rgb(11, 13, 101); line-height: 32px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; width: 602.531px;">Dominionism is the theocratic idea that regardless of theological view, means, or timetable, Christians are called by God to exercise dominion over every aspect of society by taking control of political and cultural institutions.
</blockquote>Wagner, who died in 2016, is known as the founding father of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), one of the two main branches of dominionism, which grew out of the Pentecostal and charismatic traditions within evangelical Christianity. Dominionists in the other branch, known as "Christian reconstructionism," come out of conservative Calvinism, with a focus on bringing government and society under biblical law. They tend to be more circumspect, often obfuscating their true intentions and avoiding the word "theocracy" in favor of "theonomy," for example. But not Wagner, as can be seen in the title of his 2011 book, "<a href="https://bookshop.org/a/2464/9780768461640" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Dominion!: Your Role in Bringing Heaven to Earth</a>." The NAR talks constantly about taking dominion over the "seven mountains" of society: education, religion, family, business, government, arts and the media.But it's the other branch, the Christian reconstructionists, who have excelled at strategic organizing and providing blueprints across different right-wing constituencies for almost 50 years. They are the ones Tabachnick focused most of her presentation on, specifically two key figures: Rousas John Rushdoony, the movement's master theologian, and his son-in-law Gary North, a prolific strategist, propagandist and networker who was once a staffer for Rep. Ron Paul, the libertarian hero.[ayn radical indiv ~ jesus charity]Christian reconstructionism, Tabachnick explained, is "about bringing government in all areas of life under biblical law, a continuation of the Mosaic law in the Old Testament, with some exceptions." This dispensation would include, "according to Gary North, public execution of women who have abortions and those who advise them to have an abortion."<div class="proper-ad-unit postContent15" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: auto; position: relative; width: 654.938px; min-width: 100px; box-sizing: border-box !important;"><div id="proper-ad-alternet_content_3" style="position: relative; margin: auto; box-sizing: border-box !important;">In a recent private presentation, Frederick Clarkson asked a rhetorical question: "People have long said that there should be Christian government, but if you had one, what would it look like? What would it do? Rushdoony was the first to create a systematic theology of what Christian governance should be like, based on the Ten Commandments, and all of the judicial applications he could find in the Old Testament — including about 35 capital offenses."But the "Handmaid's Tale"-style extremism of dominionists' ultimate vision shouldn't really be our focus, Tabachnick told Salon. "Nobody cares about the theocratic, draconian future envisioned by reconstructionists because they don't believe it will happen," she said.What's happening right now, however, is that this ideology has had tremendous impact on more immediate politics. "Christian reconstructionism is the merger of a distinct brand of Calvinism with Austrian School economics," Tabachnick said. "In other words, it's an interpretation of the Bible grounded in property rights." The results have been far-reaching:<blockquote style="margin: 1em 40px 1em -5px; border-left: 4px solid rgb(11, 13, 101); line-height: 32px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; width: 602.531px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"><div style="text-align: left;">For more than 40 years, its prolific writers have provided the foundations and strategic blueprints for the attacks on liberation theology and the social gospel, as well as many other streams of Christianity which do not share the Reconstructionists' belief in unfettered capitalism as ordained by God and its fierce anti-statism.</div><div style="text-align: left;">The larger religious right's attack on public education, the social safety net and most government functions are largely grounded in the writings, strategies and tactics formulated by reconstructionist writers. Reconstructionism is not the only (and certainly not the first) source of interposition and nullification in this country. However, much of what is currently being taught today about using interposition to undermine the legitimacy of government is sourced in reconstructionism.</div></blockquote><div class="proper-ad-unit" style="font-size: small; margin: auto; position: relative; width: 654.938px; min-width: 100px; box-sizing: border-box !important;"><div id="proper-ad-alternet_content_4" style="position: relative; margin: auto; box-sizing: border-box !important;">This idea of "interposition" comes through what's known as the doctrine of the "lesser magistrate," which we'll return to below. But its significance — especially in the post-2020 Republican Party — has only recently become apparent. Reconstructionism's initial appeal was more immediately, as Tabachnick explained in the seminar:<blockquote style="text-align: left; margin: 1em 40px 1em -5px; border-left: 4px solid rgb(11, 13, 101); line-height: 32px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; width: 602.531px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">What Rushdoony provided is a package that included attacking what these fundamentalists hated and feared most in society, often expressed in terms of "This is communist. This is socialist." But Rushdoony provided a way to sacralize these ideas, and at the same time not just tear down the old order, but provide a blueprint for the new order.
</blockquote>Everyone didn't have to agree on the blueprint, she said: "Rushdoony's ideas went out in bits and pieces. The Christian right leaders took what they wanted and discarded what they didn't.""Christian reconstructionism, as articulated by Rushdoony, provided a standard by which everyone else had to measure themselves," Clarkson told Salon. "Not everyone on the Christian right agreed with Rushdoony and his fellow Reconstructionist thinkers on, for example, the contemporary application of capital crimes listed in the Old Testament. And followers were often at pains to distinguish themselves."<div class="proper-ad-unit" style="margin: auto; position: relative; width: 654.938px; min-width: 100px; box-sizing: border-box !important;"><div id="proper-ad-alternet_content_5" style="position: relative; margin: auto; box-sizing: border-box !important;">Clarkson cites the case of conservative Presbyterian theologian Francis Schaeffer, who disagreed with Rushdoony on the applicability of biblical law, but became a driving force behind the anti-abortion activist movement Operation Rescue. That "militant Schaefferism," Clarkson said, "led activists to think: What's next, beyond political protest and stopping abortion? This is where the conversation has been in the Christian right for decades."The doctrine of the "lesser magistrate," mentioned above, first emerged into public discourse out of Operation Rescue. But it did so as part of a larger, more complicated story.There's a long history of right-wing opposition to federal authority, particularly grounded in the 19th-century defense of slavery and continuing in the defense of Jim Crow segregation. In his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke specifically of the governor of Alabama "having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification."As detailed by Randall Balmer in "<a href="https://bookshop.org/a/2464/9780802879349" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right</a>," the religious right wasn't initially fueled by opposition to the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, but by opposition to a lesser-known decision in 1971, Green v. Connally, which threatened the tax-exempt status of racially discriminatory institutions, most famously the evangelical stronghold Bob Jones University.Anti-abortion activists have long sought not just to bury that past but to stand it on its head, somehow equating Roe v. Wade with the notorious Dred Scott decision of 1857 and claiming the moral heritage of abolitionism."Throughout these movements there is also an attempt to turn the tables on the claims of racism," Tabachnick said in her webinar. "This is one of the roles that anti-abortion activism as abolition plays. Also, there's a promotion of narratives that provide a different history and legal justifications for interposition, nullification and even secession. One of the things that Christian reconstructionism has added to this dialogue is the concept of the lower magistrate."As Tabachnick explains it, the "lesser magistrate" is a heroic figure who "resists the tyranny of a higher authority" — defining "tyranny" in biblical terms, potentially including any number of popular or common-sense laws or policies. This notion first gained salience in the anti-abortion context in the 1980s and '90s, as Tabachnick went on to explain."Many violent anti-abortionists have justified their actions in reconstructionist teachings," she said. "One of these was Paul Hill, who studied under one of the major reconstructionist leaders and corresponded with others." Hill went on to murder Dr. John Britton, a physician who performed abortions, as well as Britton's personal bodyguard, in 1994. Hill was executed in 2003, but the reconstructionist movement sought to cast him out well before that."Gary North responded, after the murders had taken place, in a book called '<a href="https://www.garynorth.com/freebooks/docs/pdf/lone_gunners_for_jesus.pdf" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Lone Gunners for Jesus</a>,'" Tabachnick said. His message to Hill was, "You're going to burn in hell, you've been excommunicated. This was because Paul Hill stepped outside the bounds of the guidelines set by the movement."To explain this, she quoted a passage from <a href="https://www.garynorth.com/freebooks/docs/pdf/trespassing_for_dear_life.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">another book</a> by North that offered qualified support for Operation Rescue: "We need a statement that under no circumstances will Operation Rescue or any of its official representatives call for armed resistance to civil authority without public support from a lesser magistrate.""On the basis of their belief of what the law or the word of God is, they are allowed — on the advice, on the interposition, of a lesser magistrate — to commit acts of violence," Tabachnick continued. North was seeking to control or curb anti-abortion terrorism, but without rejecting it in principle. Murdering abortion providers — or even murdering women seeking abortions — could be morally justified, with the blessing of a lesser magistrate.This is relevant to SB 8 in Texas in at least two ways. That bill bans abortions after six weeks and is enforced not by state officials, but by deputizing private individuals to sue anyone who performs the procedure or "aids and abets" it. First of all, giving private individuals these vigilante-style rights seems a lot like making them into "lesser magistrates," however narrowly constrained.Second, the Supreme Court's refusal to stay the law — which clearly violates the Constitution and existing precedent, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued in her dissent — can be seen as an example of the doctrine in action. In more normal circumstances, the court would have stayed the law pending consideration on the merits, even if a majority of justices intended to overturn precedent. That's how common law has worked for centuries.But biblical law isn't common law, especially as reconstructionists understand it. Under the doctrine of the "lesser magistrate," Roe is not precedent but an instance of tyranny — and the justices have a duty to God to resist it. Of course, not even Amy Coney Barrett or Clarence Thomas has said anything like that, but it's entirely consistent with their behavior — as well as with their silence, since openly making such an argument would clarify just how radicalized they have become. But adherents of the doctrine of the lesser magistrate must surely appreciate the drift in direction.Nor is the doctrine limited to abortion cases, as already noted. Matthew Trewhella is a pastor who was a prominent leader of violence-prone wing of the anti-abortion movement in 1990s, and author of the 2013 book, "The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates," which greatly heightened its visibility."Trewhella is now all over radio and the internet," Tabachnick said in her webinar, "claiming to meet with state legislators and attorney generals at the moment, with the cause of fighting the 'tyranny of mask mandates' and vaccination for COVID. So you can see how this is a concept that is not just limited to abortion. It is a concept that can be used in resistance of government authority all over the country in all different kinds of ways — FEMA, EPA, Bureau of Land Management and so forth."Trewhella isn't breaking new ground here. Clarkson's 1997 book "Eternal Hostility" describes him making similar arguments in a speech to an anti-tax group in Wisconsin. He was just one figure among many spreading the seeds of reconstructionist resistance to federal authority among militia members, "freemen" and anti-abortion activists at the time."This movement believes that rights come from God and not from any government," Tabachnick told Salon. "Therefore, any 'rights' that conflict with their interpretation of God's law are not actually rights. They are 'humanist' or a product of man's laws and not God's laws. This theme of 'human rights' versus inalienable rights from God has been at the center of the Christian Reconstructionist movement since its beginnings."She pointed to "What's Wrong With Human Rights," an excerpt from a book of the same name by the Rev. T. Robert Ingram published in "<a href="http://www.garynorth.com/freebooks/docs/pdf/the_theology_of_christian_resistance.pdf" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">The Theology of Christian Resistance</a>," a collection edited by North. Ingram sweeps aside the Bill of Rights as "a statement of sovereign powers of states withheld from the federal authority of the Union," and turns instead to the Virginia Declaration of Rights, authored by George Mason in 1776.The first section of the Virginia Declaration, beginning "That all Men are by Nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent Rights," is dismissed by Ingram for omitting any mention of God, as an "error of unbelief which falsifies all the rest that is said about human life." The second, beginning "That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from the People; that Magistrates are their Trustees and Servants, and at all Times amenable to them," he dismisses as well: "The meaning could not be more clear, nor more opposite Biblical thought. The ruling proposition of Scripture and Christian doctrine is that 'power belongeth unto God.'" In short, there are no human rights.The connection to the doctrine of the lesser magistrate is clear: Power comes from God, not the people. Whatever the people want is irrelevant. Whatever laws they may pass are irrelevant, too, if they go against God. "Tyranny" is whatever the Christian reconstructionist decides he doesn't like.Elsewhere, Ingram denigrates freedom of speech and the press:<blockquote style="text-align: left; margin: 1em 40px 1em -5px; border-left: 4px solid rgb(11, 13, 101); line-height: 32px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; width: 602.531px; background: rgb(245, 245, 245);">Freedom of speech and freedom of press are, in fact, applied seriously only to giving government protection to instigators of riot and rebellion, as well as those who would undermine human order by more subtle attacks on morals and customs.
</blockquote>As for the right to dissent, he calls it "not a lawful claim to own or to do something, which is the true right," but "a turning upside down of right and wrong, calling good evil and evil good." Similarly, there is no scriptural right to "resist authority," only that granted by the false doctrine of "human rights."Ingram's interpretation of the Civil War is that "Yankee radicals inflamed the Northern peoples to mount the Civil War in the name of a 'human right' to be free ... if they did not destroy the whole Southern Order, they did at least dismantle its vast and efficient plantation economy." The civil rights movement, unsurprisingly, is understood as a defiance of "Tradition, law, and custom, which preserved public peace and order in the bi-racial state of the union, both North and South," and became "the target of the right to resist in the 60's, the supposed human rights justifying the violent means."Tabachnick didn't dig into this text in her webinar, but it serves to illustrate her central principle: "This attack on the very concept of 'human rights' can be found throughout today's religious right."Jackson told Salon that the most important part of Tabachnick's presentation came "when she talked about humanism and the humanistic frame, from the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Those who are within the dominionist camp see that as contrary to God. I read those same documents and I say, this is pointing us toward the direction that God wants for us. They look at it and see that as counter to God, because humanism from their perspective is something very contrary to God."If we take such arguments seriously, then we understand why for dominionists there is nothing wrong with breaking any law at all, so long as "God wills it" and you have the blessing of a so-called lesser magistrate. This is the reconstructionist argument supporting a whole range of chaotic right-wing activity today, including baseless claims that the 2020 election was a fraud. After all, the fundamental reconstructionist argument is that all such democratic government is illegitimate."The goal of reconstructionism is to tear down the existing order and reconstruct a new society based on biblical law," Tabachnick said. "Even if we assume that this vision of a theocratic America will never come to fruition, it's important to recognize the movement's impact on the ideas, strategies and tactics of the larger religious right and its role in sacralizing the actions of other anti-statist fellow travelers."As I wrote almost a decade ago, the theocratic libertarianism of Christian reconstructionism has been surprisingly seductive to Tea Partiers and young libertarians — many of whom may not realize what is supposed to happen after the government is stripped of its regulatory powers."<div class="around-the-web"><div class="from-your-siteheadline" style="text-align: left; font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase;">FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.438px; list-style: none;"><li class="from-your-siteitem" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/how-the-coronavirus-pandemic-shows-that-christian-white-nationalism-is-a-much-greater-threat-to-the-us-than-radical-islam/" class="from-your-sitelink rm-stats-tracked" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: lighter; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">How the coronavirus pandemic shows that Christian white ... ›</a></li><li class="from-your-siteitem" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/christian-extremists/" class="from-your-sitelink rm-stats-tracked" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: lighter; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Christian extremist says 'righteous anger' made him confront women ... ›</a></li><li class="from-your-siteitem" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/confrontational-christian-nationalists-are-pushing-anti-vaxxer-extremism-report/" class="from-your-sitelink rm-stats-tracked" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: lighter; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">How 'confrontational Christian nationalists' are pushing anti-vaxxer ... ›</a></li></ul><div class="around-the-webheadline" style="text-align: left; font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase; margin-top: 10px;">RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.438px; list-style: none;"><li class="around-the-webitem" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2018/holy-hate-far-right%E2%80%99s-radicalization-religion" class="around-the-weblink rm-stats-tracked" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: lighter; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Holy Hate: The Far Right's Radicalization of Religion | Southern ... ›</a></li><li class="around-the-webitem" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_terrorism" class="around-the-weblink rm-stats-tracked" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: lighter; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Christian terrorism - Wikipedia ›</a></li><li class="around-the-webitem" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/02/04/qanon-christian-extremism-nationalism-violence-466034" class="around-the-weblink rm-stats-tracked" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: lighter; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">It's Time to Talk About Violent Christian Extremism - POLITICO ›</a></li></ul></div><div style="text-align: left;">=</div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>===<div>
</div><div>Gary Kilgore North (born February 1942), l is an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_people" class="mw-redirect" title="American people" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">American</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolibertarianism" title="Paleolibertarianism" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">paleolibertarian</a> writer, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_School" title="Austrian School" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">Austrian School</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history" title="Economic history" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">economic historian</a>, and leading figure in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_reconstructionism" title="Christian reconstructionism" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">Christian reconstructionist</a>movement.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-1" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[1]</a> North has authored or coauthored over fifty books on topics including <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvinism" title="Calvinism" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">Reformed Protestant</a> theology, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics" title="Economics" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">economics</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History" title="History" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">history</a>. He is an Associated Scholar of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Mises_Institute" class="mw-redirect" title="Ludwig von Mises Institute" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">Ludwig von Mises Institute</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-2" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[2]</a>He is known for his advocacy of biblical or "radically libertarian" economics and also as a theorist of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Theology" class="mw-redirect" title="Dominion Theology" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">dominionism</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theonomy" title="Theonomy" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">theonomy</a>. He supports the establishment and enforcement of Bible-based <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_law" title="Religious law" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">religious law</a>, a view which has put him in conflict with other libertarians.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-Olson-3" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[3]</a> Particularly controversial are his views on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment" title="Capital punishment" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">capital punishment</a>, which he believes is appropriate punishment for male <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality" title="Homosexuality" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">homosexuality</a>, adultery, blasphemy, and a wide variety of other crimes.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-Clarkson-4" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[4]</a><div id="toc" class="toc" style="border: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); background-color: rgb(248, 249, 250); padding: 7px; display: table; zoom: 1;"><input type="checkbox" role="button" id="toctogglecheckbox" class="toctogglecheckbox" style="direction: ltr; position: absolute; opacity: 0; z-index: -1; display: none;" /><div class="toctitle" dir="ltr" style="direction: ltr; text-align: center;" lang="en"><h2 style="background: none; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border: 0px; display: inline; line-height: 1.3;">Contents</h2><label class="toctogglelabel" for="toctogglecheckbox" style="cursor: pointer;" /></div><ul style="margin: 0.3em 0px; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none; list-style-type: none;"><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-1" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#Education_and_background" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">1Education and background</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-2" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#Career" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">2Career</a><ul style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 2em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none; list-style-type: none;"><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-3" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#Ron_Paul_curriculum" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">2.1Ron Paul curriculum</a></li></ul></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-4" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#Christian,Bible-based_economic_methodology" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3Christian, Bible-based economic methodology</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-5" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#Proposed%22Christian_theocratic%22_political_and_social_order" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">4Proposed "Christian theocratic" political and social order</a><ul style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 2em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none; list-style-type: none;"><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-6" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#Range_of_capital_offenses" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">4.1Range of capital offenses</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-7" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#Religious_liberty" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">4.2Religious liberty</a></li></ul></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-8" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#Y2K" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">5Y2K</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-9" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#Publications" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">6Publications</a><ul style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 2em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none; list-style-type: none;"><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-10" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#Institute_for_Christian_Economics" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">6.1Institute for Christian Economics</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-11" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#Books_and_newsletters" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">6.2Books and newsletters</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-12" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#Documentary_and_educational_film" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">6.3Documentary and educational film</a></li></ul></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-13" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#See_also" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">7See also</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-14" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#References" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">8References</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-15" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#External_links" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">9External links</a></li></ul></div><h2 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); line-height: 1.3;">Education and background[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gary_North(economist)&action=edit&section=1&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Education and background" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">edit</a>]</h2>North grew up in southern California, the son of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI" class="mw-redirect" title="FBI" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">FBI</a> special agent Samuel W. North, Jr., and his wife, Peggy.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-5" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[5]</a> North converted to Christianity in high school and began frequenting conservative book-stores in the Los Angeles area during his college years.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-all_began-6" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[6]</a> Between 1961 and 1963, while an undergraduate student at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_California,Riverside" title="University of California, Riverside" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">University of California, Riverside</a>, North became acquainted with the works of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_R%C3%B6pke" title="Wilhelm Röpke" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Wilhelm Röpke</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Wilder_Lane" title="Rose Wilder Lane" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Rose Wilder Lane</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelius_Van_Til" title="Cornelius Van Til" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Cornelius Van Til</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_School" title="Austrian School" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Austrian School</a> economists <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugen_B%C3%B6hm_von_Bawerk" title="Eugen Böhm von Bawerk" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Eugen Böhm von Bawerk</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Mises" title="Ludwig von Mises" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Ludwig von Mises</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.A.Hayek" class="mw-redirect" title="F.A. Hayek" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">F.A. Hayek</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Rothbard" title="Murray Rothbard" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Murray Rothbard</a>, and also read the works of Calvinist philosopher <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rousas_John_Rushdoony" class="mw-redirect" title="Rousas John Rushdoony" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Rousas John Rushdoony</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-all_began-6" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[6]</a> Later he married Rushdoony's daughter,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-7" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[7]</a> collaborated with him<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-8" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[8]</a> and eulogized Rushdoony in a blog post on LewRockwell.com.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-9" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[9]</a><h2 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); line-height: 1.3;">Career[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gary_North(economist)&action=edit&section=2&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Career" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">edit</a>]</h2>Starting in 1967, North became a contributor to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism" title="Libertarianism" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">libertarian</a> journal <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Freeman" title="The Freeman" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">The Freeman</a> where he had first read the work of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Von_Mises" class="mw-redirect" title="Ludwig Von Mises" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Ludwig Von Mises</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek" title="Friedrich Hayek" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Friedrich Hayek</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-10" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[10]</a> In the 1970s, he was the director of seminars for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_for_Economic_Education" title="Foundation for Economic Education" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Foundation for Economic Education</a> (FEE).<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-11" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[11]</a> North received a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ph.D." class="mw-redirect" title="Ph.D." style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Ph.D.</a> in history from the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_California,Riverside" title="University of California, Riverside" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">University of California, Riverside</a> in 1972. His <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissertation" class="mw-redirect" title="Dissertation" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">dissertation</a> was The Concept of Property in Puritan New England, 1630–1720.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-12" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[12]</a>He served as research assistant for libertarian <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.Republican_Party" class="mw-redirect" title="U.S. Republican Party" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Republican</a> Congressman <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Paul" title="Ron Paul" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Ron Paul</a> in Paul's first term (1976). North is a regular contributor to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LewRockwell.com" class="mw-redirect" title="LewRockwell.com" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">LewRockwell.com</a> website, which lists an extensive archive of his articles there.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-13" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[13]</a> North's own website, Garynorth.com, posts commentary on religious, social, and political issues and offers paid access to investment advice and other premium content.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-14" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[14]</a> North also publishes a blog called Deliverance from Debt which provides advice about relief from debt.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-15" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[15]</a> Another North website, "Free Christian Curriculum", seeks to provide a free Christian <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling" title="Homeschooling" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">homeschooling</a> curriculum for children from age 3 through grade 12.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-16" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[16]</a><h3 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom: 0px; line-height: 1.6;">Ron Paul curriculum[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gary_North(economist)&action=edit&section=3&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Ron Paul curriculum" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">edit</a>]</h3>In addition, North offers the Ron Paul Curriculum, a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_school" class="mw-redirect" title="Home school" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">home school</a> online curriculum associated with former U.S. Congressman <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Paul" title="Ron Paul" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Ron Paul</a>, which is free for grades K-5 and available to paid members from grades 6–12.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-17" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[17]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-18" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[18]</a> As Director of Curriculum Development, North has outlined four goals of the educational project: providing a "detailed study" of the "history of liberty"; teaching a "thorough understanding of Austrian economics"; serving as "an academically rigorous curriculum that is tied to primary source" material rather than textbooks; and teaching "the Biblical principle of self-government and personal responsibility", which North calls "the foundation of the market economy".<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-19" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[19]</a><h2 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); line-height: 1.3;">Christian, Bible-based economic methodology[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gary_North(economist)&action=edit&section=4&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Christian, Bible-based economic methodology" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">edit</a>]</h2>North has written that the "starting point for all economic analysis" lies in the fact that "God [has] cursed the earth" in Genesis 3:17–19; this "made scarcity an inescapable fact of man's existence".<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-:1-20" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[20]</a> In his 1982 Dominion Covenant: Genesis, North wrote that mainstream modern economics, whether libertarian, conservative or liberal, is "in disintegration" because it is "humanist" in its approach and consequently rejects the notion that "biblical revelation" is necessary for sound economic theory. He also wrote that economics "must begin with the [Biblical] story of creation" if it is not to collapse into "total chaos".<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-garynorth-21" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[21]</a><h2 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); line-height: 1.3;">Proposed "Christian theocratic" political and social order[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gary_North(economist)&action=edit&section=5&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Proposed " christian="Christian" theocratic="theocratic" political="political" and="and" social="social" order="order" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">edit</a>]</h2>A 2011 New York Times article identified North as a central figure in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_reconstructionism" title="Christian reconstructionism" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Christian reconstructionism</a>, the philosophy which advocates the institution of "a Christian theocracy under Old Testament law [as] the best form of government, and a radically libertarian one."<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-:1-20" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[20]</a> North has written: "I certainly believe in biblical theocracy."<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-22" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[22]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-23" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[23]</a>The article also described North as "the leading proponent of 'Christian economics,' which applies biblical principles to economic issues and the free market." North supports the abolition of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking" title="Fractional-reserve banking" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">fractional-reserve banking</a> system and a return to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard" title="Gold standard" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">gold standard</a>. According to the Times, North believes that the Bible forbids inflation, welfare programs, and also writes that "God would prefer gold money to paper".<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-:1-20" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[20]</a><h3 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom: 0px; line-height: 1.6;">Range of capital offenses[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gary_North(economist)&action=edit&section=6&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Range of capital offenses" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">edit</a>]</h3>North favors <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment" title="Capital punishment" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">capital punishment</a> for a range of offenders, including murderers, blasphemers, children who curse their parents,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-24" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[24]</a> male homosexuals, and other people who commit some of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_capital_crimes_in_the_Torah" title="List of capital crimes in the Torah" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">acts deemed capital offenses</a> in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Testament" title="Old Testament" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Old Testament</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-BD23-25" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[25]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-26" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[26]</a> (North believes that the death penalty for sabbath breaking and some other crimes no longer applies.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-BD23-25" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[25]</a>) North stated that the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bible_and_homosexuality#Leviticus_18_and_20" title="The Bible and homosexuality" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">biblical admonition</a> to kill homosexuals in Leviticus is God's "law and its morally appropriate sanction", arguing that "God is indeed a homophobe" who "hates the practice [of homosexuality] and those who practice it" and "hates the sin and hates the sinner."<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-boundaries-27" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[27]</a>North has said that capital punishment should be carried out by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoning" title="Stoning" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">stoning</a>, because it is the biblically approved method of execution and it is cheap due to the plentiful and convenient supply of stones.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-Clarkson-4" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[4]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-28" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[28]</a><h3 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom: 0px; line-height: 1.6;">Religious liberty[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gary_North(economist)&action=edit&section=7&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Religious liberty" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">edit</a>]</h3>North has said: "We must use the doctrine of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion" title="Freedom of religion" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">religious liberty</a> to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God."<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-Olson-3" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[3]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-29" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[29]</a>Adam C. English suggests that this quote implies that "religious liberty is a useful tool to Christians in the present, yet is ultimately to be denied to anyone who is not Christian once the Christians are in power".<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-30" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[30]</a>English argues that although this may seem inconsistent (advocating religious liberty but denying the reality of the notion), North and his fellow reconstructionists understand "liberty" in a theological sense. According to the reconstructionists, "anyone outside of the Christian faith is in bondage," and so "government by rigorous theonomy is not oppressive but liberating".<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-31" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[31]</a><h2 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); line-height: 1.3;">Y2K[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gary_North(economist)&action=edit&section=8&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Y2K" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">edit</a>]</h2>North was also a prominent promoter of the Y2K scare during the late 1990s,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-32" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[32]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-33" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[33]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-34" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[34]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-35" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[35]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-36" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[36]</a> earning him the nickname "Scary Gary."<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-37" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[37]</a> His main Web site became dominated by links to extremist predictions for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y2K" class="mw-redirect" title="Y2K" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Y2K</a>damage, including widespread collapse of governments, financial institutions and more. North declared on his home page that Y2K "may be the biggest problem that the modern world has ever faced" and labeled 2000 as "The Year the Earth Stands Still".<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-38" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[38]</a>Critics said the motivation for North's predictions was linked to his Christian reconstructionist aims, which require widespread <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societal_collapse" title="Societal collapse" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">societal collapse</a> to set the stage for a new theocratic order. North made the connection explicit in communications with fellow reconstructionists: "The Y2K crisis is systemic. It cannot possibly be fixed. I think it will wipe out every national government in the West. Not just modify them—destroy them...That is what I have wanted all my adult life. In my view, Y2K is our deliverance."<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-39" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[39]</a><h2 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); line-height: 1.3;">Publications[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gary_North(economist)&action=edit&section=9&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Publications" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">edit</a>]</h2><h3 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom: 0px; line-height: 1.6;">Institute for Christian Economics[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gary_North(economist)&action=edit&section=10&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Institute for Christian Economics" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">edit</a>]</h3>North is the founder of the Institute for Christian Economics (I.C.E.), which publishes online books and magazines focusing on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_ethics" title="Christian ethics" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Christian ethics</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-40" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[40]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-41" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[41]</a> ICE, along with Dominion Press in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyler,Texas" title="Tyler, Texas" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Tyler, Texas</a>, are important sources for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_reconstructionism" title="Christian reconstructionism" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">reconstructionist</a> publications.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-42" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[42]</a><h3 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom: 0px; line-height: 1.6;">Books and newsletters[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gary_North(economist)&action=edit&section=11&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Books and newsletters" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">edit</a>]</h3>North has authored or coauthored more than fifty books, many of which are available for free download.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-43" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[43]</a> For many years, North has been the author and editor of the newsletter The Remnant Review. He also provides Gary North's Reality Check, a free e-newsletter.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North(economist)#cite_note-44" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[44]</a><h3 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom: 0px; line-height: 1.6;">Documentary and educational film[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gary_North(economist)&action=edit&section=12&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Documentary and educational film" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">edit</a>]</h3><ul style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px 1.6em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" csvg="Csvg" width="%225%22" height="%2213%22%3E" ccircle="Ccircle" cx="%222.5%22" cy="%229%22" r="%222.5%22" fill="%22%23222%22/%3E" c="C" e="E" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" xmlns="%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22" xmlns:data="data"><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Unknown History of the 20th Century (DVD) (2006) <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCLC" title="OCLC" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">OCLC</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/213272975" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) right center no-repeat, url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" csvg="Csvg" width="%2212%22" height="%2212%22%3E" cpath="Cpath" fill="%22%23fff%22" stroke="%22%2336c%22" d="%22M9.995" h5.982v10.5h1.5z="h5.982V10.5H1.5z" e="E" h11v5.39l9.427="H11v5.39L9.427" l-1.31-1.31l5.393="l-1.31-1.31L5.393" l-2.69-2.688="l-2.69-2.688" l4.2="L4.2" z="z" l.022="l.022" l8.2="L8.2" l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z="l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z" c="C" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" xmlns="%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22" xmlns:data="data">213272975</a></li></ul><h2 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); line-height: 1.3;">See also[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gary_North(economist)&action=edit&section=13&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: See also" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">edit</a>]</h2><ul style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px 1.6em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" csvg="Csvg" width="%225%22" height="%2213%22%3E" ccircle="Ccircle" cx="%222.5%22" cy="%229%22" r="%222.5%22" fill="%22%23222%22/%3E" c="C" e="E" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" xmlns="%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22" xmlns:data="data"><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_School" title="Austrian School" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Austrian School</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_right" title="Christian right" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Christian right</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Theology" class="mw-redirect" title="Dominion Theology" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Dominion Theology</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Calvinism" title="Neo-Calvinism" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Neo-Calvinism</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolibertarianism" title="Paleolibertarianism" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Paleolibertarianism</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-libertarianism" title="Right-libertarianism" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Right-libertarianism</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theocracy" title="Theocracy" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Theocracy</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theonomy" title="Theonomy" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Theonomy</a></li></ul><h2 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); line-height: 1.3;">References</h2></div>