Posted on 01/09/2010 9:09:37 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
...Romney’s argument with the Iowa talk-radio host starts with the two discussing their shared affinity for W. Cleon Skousen. “You and I share a common affection for the late Cleon Skousen,” the radio host says. The former governor agrees, affirming Skousen was his professor."
Who is Cleon Skousen you might ask? In answering that question, it’s hard to even know where to begin. Skousen was by turns an FBI employee, the police chief of Salt Lake City, a Brigham Young University professor, consigliore to former secretary of agriculture and Mormon president Ezra Taft Benson and, well, all-around nutjob.
Skousen was active with the John Birch Society throughout the 1960s, even going so far as to write another book titled The Communist Attack on the John Birch Society, accusing those that criticized Birchers as promoting Communism.
Skousen’s Communist paranoia may have reached it’s apotheosis in 1970 when the Mormon church and BYU in particular began receiving a tremendous amount of external pressure to change the church’s policy on denying the Mormon priesthood to blacks. Skousen, then a professor at BYU, published an article entitled “The Communist Attack on the Mormons” and noted that critics were employing Communist tactics which were “distorting the religious tenet of the Church regarding the Negro and blowing it up to ridiculous proportions.” The Mormon Church reversed course on its discriminatory practices in 1978 and began ordaining black men to the priesthood.
..."I sincerely doubt that Mitt Romney believes anything near as outlandish as many of the things Cleon Skousen espoused, and to be fair Skousen wrote on numerous topics with wildly varying degrees of intellectual sobriety."
(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...
Darkwolf, even though I posted this thread and trust Palin’s judgment on things like this, I still don’t know much about JBS. I would like to know more about the controversies surrounding them out of curiosity. Can you please tell me more or lead me to an article with more information? That’d be great!
JBS was out-of-control perhaps, but I believe a fear of communism is healthy (200 million dead last century, compliments of the left).
“a regimented breed of Pavlovian men whose minds could be triggered into immediate action by signals from their masters.”
Oh, do you mean islamofascists?
“accused the Council on Foreign Relations and the Rockefellers of puppeteering the election of Jimmy Carter to pave the way for One World Government”
Wow, that is just SO out there. Not!
Those who don’t think communism is a threat are going to experience a very uncomfortable awakening. They may not proudly refer to themselves as ‘communist’ but the ideas are alive and well, and in the White House.
I don’t know how anyone can look at the past ten years, especially the last year, and think that the hard-left is no threat to us.
I wonder if the Wikipedia can be trusted on this topic....it sure couldn’t be trusted on AGW.....
Try the book “Unholy Alliance” for some hair raising insights.
Ripliancum, I read the Wikipedia article already and for all I know it stays edited by JBS especially with all the scrutiny now. LoL. It doesn’t go into too much detail about what exactly taints its legacy.
Hi Boucheau, I agree with many of your points. And as I said, the intentions of many of its members may be good...but at the same time, conspiracy theories can be taken a wee bit too far. While I understand Palin’s reasons for her foreign policy views, I don’t think anyone who “questions” our policies regarding Israel are automatically anti-Semites—the problem remains though that many actually are.
I would personally like to know more about the organization’s religious affiliations, and if they play a significant role in defining the overall worldview and agenda of the organization. So, the founder was supposedly a Christian, that’s no red flag, but are most of the members active Mormons or Masonic even?
Okay now I’m beginning to sound conspiratorial :p. Okay either way, its legacy is too tainted and it’s co-sponsoring an even with a bizarre combination of other groups, and that’s not cool.
This post made me think back to a photoshop I did of a young Myth Romney and MLK. LOL
My parents were Birchers, in the late 60’s, not radicals just mistrusting of the government.
Not Hippies,just ordinary people, that were classified as Birchers because they didn’t trust or have full faith in the government.They were very conservative,believed in owning guns,self-reliant,always had food stockpiled.
Taught us kids to be independent,to know that if someone says Don’t worry be Happy,we will take care of everything,be afraid, be very afraid!
The JBS is an ally for US sovereignty and freedom.
“As more journalists and bloggers dig into Skousen’s ties, the more we'll find that as much as he's seen as a “nutjob” and “crank” by conservatives like Mark Hemingway and David Frum, he has been more influential to the conservative movement than they would like to admit.”
—Sarah Posner
Romney has zilch in common with the JBS. JBS may be a bit conspiracy minded, but they are conservatives and pro-sovereignty.
The problem with totalitarians is they think they can control every aspect of life. The problem with the Birchers is they think totalitarians can control every aspect of life.
If I subscribed to the Bircher vision of an omnipresent conspiracy pulling every string and commanding every leader in the never ending plot to (redundantly) take over the world I don’t know why I’d bother with politics at all. What would be the point?
The main thing wrong with the JBS is that the RINO community in the Republican Party considered them too extreme to be "politically incorrect" and put so much pressure on actual conservative Republicans that some prominent ones "dissed" the JBS'ers under powerful duress.
They are about as ridiculous and radical as Dr. Ron Paul's foreign policy and another congressman JBS'er got shot down by the Chi-Coms in that Korean Airlines attrocity during Reagan's Presidency. Not that that makes any difference or has any relevance to what's being discussed here. I just don't recall Reagan ordering them out of the Garden of Eden!!! (Republican Party)
The only place these far-out fringe elements hurt the conservatives is in the insidious MSM and DBMedia!!!
I dislike it when people post one article reflecting their own point of view as “proof” when asked to back up such opinions, so do a search yourself and make up your own mind. I’d suggest such search terms as “John Birch Society” and “William F. Buckley” or “Illuminati”. They’ve been charged with racism and anti-semitism by many, but to be blunt, I was so against them that I never bothered to even investigate that stuff much, because I’d personally heard enough Birchers say racist things that it didn’t matter to me much whether these were isolated cases or indicative of the group—I’d already decided my own opinion on them and didn’t need to think about that stuff where they were concerned.
Ping
Glenn Beck interests me because I want to know whether he is more attached to his Mormonism or more attached to the Constitution. Will Beck ever endorse a candidate like Romney on that alone?
If Beck admires Clouser for his right-wing principles, that’s great. It’s clear that Romney has more in common with Clouser’s high rank within the LDS church than with any constitutional ideas.
This all makes JBS’s sponsorship of “CPAC” confusing, but I suppose it’s because Ron Paul is there. And again, the fact that Paul and Romney are appearing together at an event, for a party trying to build a cohesive message and front is all the more confusing. So yes, it’ll be interesting to see what the Tea Party Convention’s implications are in light of all the CPAC madness.
Anybody can git on that screwey site and slip any mis-information they want into anything and it just lays there till some good citizen corrects it. (which is happening less and less)
Let the statements and actions of the individual stand on their merit, and similarly, let the group's current behaviour be measured by the group and not one or two members.
After all, "There is one in every bunch".
If you read the words and view the actions of even some relatively popular Republicans, and with critical thinking ask where their Constitutional authority was for their actions--even some popular actions--then you might look at history a little differently.
The Democrats, especially the New Left, are even worse.
I guess if your 'friends' stab you it doesn't bleed as much, but the Constitution hasn't really been followed since before 1860 and most even here would scream bloody blue murder if it was.
All the lip service paid the people with the 'R' after their name won't change that.
Nor will demeaning those who defend the Constitution, regardless of what others have done in the past.
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