In an Aug. 16 blog post entitled "In Praise of Our President," Douglas Wilson, pastor of Moscow's Christ Church, wrote that "Trump refused to be steered by mob action, and when two evil groups clashed violently, he refused to take sides."
Wilson commended President Donald Trump for identifying "the game plan that is being run on us all by the violent Left." That plan was the removal of monuments dedicated to Confederate leaders and their battle flag, but how could this be a leftist plot if Southern mayors, state legislators and governors have been at the forefront of this movement?
When Nikki Haley, Trump's U.N. ambassador, was governor of South Carolina, she signed a bill that removed the Confederate flag from the statehouse. A conservative House and Senate voted 130-23 in support of the legislation.
One of the "evil groups" at the Charlottesville protest was the neo-Confederate League of the South (LOS). In a July 24 tweet, LOS president Michael Hill declared: "If you want to defend the South and Western civilization from the Jew and his dark-skinned allies, be at Charlottesville on 12 August."
At one time, Michael Hill was a member of the Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church in Monroe, La. The church's pastor Steve Wilkins was a LOS founding director, and in 1996 he teamed up with our own Wilson to write "Southern Slavery As It Was." This sentence sums up the book's message: "There has never been a multi-racial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world."
On Jan. 16, 2004, Wilson wrote to his congregation about Wilkins and the League of the South. He explained that Wilkins resigned from the LOS board not because he thought the organization was racist, but because he had moved on to other priorities. The problem, of course, is the LOS has been racist from the beginning and continues to be, as LOS President Hill's statement clearly indicates above.
In his memo to Christ Church members, Wilson offers "mild" support for the LOS, and he disagrees only with their belief in secession from the union and reconstituting the Old South along white nationalist lines.
Wilson is not always consistent in his views. In his self-published book "Angels in the Architecture," he predicts that by God's will "the South will rise again." In a 2006 feature article in The Spokesman-Review, he admitted, "Confederate flags have adorned (his) office and school walls at times," and I possess an image of Robert E. Lee's portrait in Wilson's Logos School.
In his blog post, Wilson admitted to a respondent that he had indeed "equated Black Lives Matter with the Klan. Hatred and murder are to be reprobated, period." I challenge Wilson to find any leader of Black Lives Matter preaching hate or encouraging murder.
In stark contrast, here are the words of a Klan leader. In an interview with Univision's Ilia Calderon, Christian Barker, the imperial wizard of the Loyal White Knights of the KKK, called Calderon the "N" word, and declared that "we're going to burn you (Hispanics) out. We killed 6 million Jews the last time. Eleven million is nothing."
Wilson must reconsider his position now that Trump has backed away from his comments blaming both sides, claiming that the media distorted his remarks. Turning to his Dr. Jekyll persona, this is what he said about the Aug. 19 Boston protesters: "I want to applaud the many protesters in Boston who are speaking out against bigotry and hate."
We know that Trump is a rank opportunist and a dishonest man, but Wilson claims to be a man of God. Those who would still cast equal blame on both sides of this issue can be nothing but moral reprobates.
Nick Gier taught philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years. He can be reached at ngier006@gmail.com.
