Biblical Reconstructionists own voting machine company!!!

[9215]

These guys are some real loonies. They want to end Constitutional government. Bush does too since he tramples it at every turn. Is Rushdoony linked to Bush?

This is a dated article.

google Ahmanson+voting+Rushdoony for more.

<http://reason.com/9811/col.olson.shtml>
snip
"Getting Cozy with Theocrats" by Walter Olson...Christian Reconstructionism...Among Reconstructionism's highlights, the article cited support for laws "mandating the death penalty for homosexuals and drunkards." The Rev. Rushdoony fired off a letter to the editor complaining that the article had got his followers' views all wrong: They didn't intend to put drunkards to death. Ah, yes, accuracy does count. In a world run by Rushdoony followers, sots would escape capital punishment--which would make them happy exceptions indeed. Those who would face execution include not only gays but a very long list of others: blasphemers, heretics, apostate Christians, people who cursed or struck their parents, females guilty of 'unchastity before marriage,' 'incorrigible' juvenile delinquents, adulterers, and (probably) telephone psychics. And that's to say nothing of murderers and those guilty of raping married women or 'betrothed virgins.'

"...Mainstream outlets like the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post are finally starting to take note of the influence Rushdoony and his followers have exerted for years in American conservative circles...Prominent California philanthropist Howard F. Ahmanson Jr., who has given Rushdoony's operations more than $700,000 over the years..."

More on Ahmanson and voting machine co. ownership:
http://www.panix.com/~hncl/HectorsJournal/archives/000275.html

[havocmom]

1. yes, that is one of the reasons we are so worried and fighting them

thanks for the link. Here a :kick:

[punpirate]

2. Actually, after looking extensively...

... at the Ahmansons' companies and holdings, there is some question about whether or not Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr., is an investor or not in ES&S. The difficulty in determining this is because ES&S is owned by a privately-held company, McCarthy.

The original investors in the precursor of ES&S were a related set of Ahmansons, who apparently have no connections to the Reconstruction movement. Both are retired, wealthy philanthropists in the LA area, and the Ahmanson Foundation (not to be confused with Howard F.'s Fieldstead Foundation) is specific about not donating to religious causes.

Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr., however, is a real piece of work. But, there's just no evidence that he went in with his cousins to invest in Information Services, which later became, along with another purchased company, ES&S. As importantly, I'm not sure that ES&S would be strongly influenced by a minority shareholder who's also a religious wacko. Howard F. definitely is not on the board of directors, a position he or his investment arm would require if he had a large stake in the business.

Not to say that it's not possible Howard F. has invested with ES&S--just saying that it's not provable.

ES&S has other suspect arrangements which are provable, though, such as Sen. Chuck Hagel's association with them before, during and after his being elected to the Senate.

Cheers.

[9215]

3. Thanks for this. nt

[blm]

4. Ahmanson is also involved with Battelle Memorial Institute, however.

The spook central company that just HAPPENS to be down the street from Diebold. They also just HAPPENED to have handled the exit polls for VNS in 2002. The polls that were mysteriously discarded.

[9215]

5. Nice. this is getting very

interesting. Good seeing you blm. :toast:

[SoCalDem]

6. They have a periferal connection to Ft Detrick & anthrax

looking for actual link.. I had this in an old bookmark..link is broken now


December 21st, 2001

According to the Washington Post, the FBI had still not investigated Porton Down for possible culpability in the anthrax mailings despite the fact they maintained the identical Ames strain of anthrax, and through ownership in Bioport was connected with Battelle Memorial Institute and the DoD's lucrative "Joint Vaccine Acquisitions Program".

The article also mentioned that U.S. anthrax experts, including those at Fort Detrick (USAMRIID), routinely consulted with Porton Down officials in efforts to prepare powdered weaponized Ames strain anthrax..."

[SoCalDem]

7. BINGO.. Battelle/anthrax connections here

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Battelle%2Banthrax


more involving the fact that they were under INVESTIGATION during the anthrax deal...and with links to ES&S

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&safe=active&q=Battelle%2Banthrax%2BES%26S&btnG=Google+Search


FOLLOW THE BREADCRUMBS ....there might be an old crone adjusting the oven temperature :evilgrin:

[9215]

8. This is getting even more interesting. Thanks SoCal

[9215]

9. Kick

:kick:

[leesa]

10. Keep it going. These people are the Devil's own.

[MadProphetMargin]

11. Rushdoony...LOL. He's a hoot. He'd be funnier, though, if he weren't so

damn scary.

[9215]

12. Here is an exchange I had with one of these loonies a couple

of years ago.

This was on another message board and I was particularly interested in how they would spin some of the stuff I was finding out about them. This person called himself "Christking" for christsakes. The italics are Christkings:

You asked about our adherance to and respect of our governing documents. I and the reconstructionist doctrine holds our founding documents of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution in the highest esteem and respect.

Would you be so kind as to supply me with the CR documentation that supports this?

Ashcroft wants to replace the Constitution with biblical law and Bush's nominee for the NLRB, that was quickly booted by Congress for his exteme views on religion, was a biblical reconstructionist. "This is a Christian Nation" Paul Weyrich is a primary financier of Right wing fascism in this country, and was involved in the blatant, vicious , smear campaign against Anita Hill the Clintons and other democrats cited in David Brock's book "Blinded by the Right" These acts do not lend much credence to your claims of respecting Constitutional government. Please also take a look at the information here: http://prosocs.tripod.com/cnp.html, for a pleasant blend of neo-fascists and Christians of all persuasions. Biblical Reconstruction by its very definition seeks to supplant Constitutional government with Biblical law and English common law, thereby making your claims that this movement seeks to maintain the Constitution false. ALL adherents, I repeat ALL adherents to CR are out to abolish the Constitution. If they are not then the are not CR's. You cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time; it is impossible!

Indeed these people of the CR movement are, by their decietful DEEDS contemptuous of Christian principles. They just use the Church as a smokescreen to insinuate themselves in politics.

The Declaration of Independence, being the first and foundational document, is of exceptional importance.

In this document Jefferson explains why governments are instituted on earth. He says that the purpose of governments comes from God. He says governments are instituted to protect rights given to us by God.

Now that is very consistent with the bible. We also believe that our rights come from God and not government. In this way only God can take away our rights not government.

If you take God out of this equation then our rights come from government. If government gives us our rights then government can take them away. Everyone, even atheists, agree that this is a very bad scenerio.

As you indicate in the following paragraph people are 'endowed with certain inalienable rights' and I don't care where they came from. Governments may try to take them away, but they do not give them to us. This shows your external locus of control and psychocentric view of the world so endemic to religious fanatics. You have learned to see yourself in the world as a predestined organizm with limited individual potential besides your mission to preach. Your baseless claims about the benign nature of CR and equivocations about what CR really is an attempt to appease my inquisitiveness. As the song says: "I won't be fooled again".

...that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights...That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men Declaration of Independence

We are 'endowed with certain inalienable rights' and I don't care where they came from. What is a fact, if we follow your rationale is that those rights sure as hell lay dormant for millenia until 1776. Did god then suddenly decide to let us start excercising them? Sure seems like a backassward way of doing things. Why didn't he 'endow' us with them from the get go and stop all of the tyrants dead in their tracks? OK, so he stopped Ramses at the Dead Sea, or Red Sea or whatever, and let Charlton Heston and the rest of his flock take over the land of milk and honey beyond the river Jordan, but the exception is hardly the rule. Please don't tell me that mankind was meant to pay for Eve eating the forbidden fruit. No, he leaves us to take care of the tyrants ourselves and then claims credit for it. Doesn't seem like a very square deal to me. Maybe that is part of the Christian indoctrination program to inculcate people slowly with the idea that they should just accept unfairness, inequality, and tyranny and worry about the next world while they get shafted in this one. Oh, I'm sorry, I am not allowed to question the word of god. Not questioning seems to be the primary MO. I don't buy your hocus pocus so I am not bound by its dictates.

This model of government comes from ancient Israel where God established a Republic for His people. That is a nation of laws with elected representatives.

You wouldn't mind supplying a source for this. The poly-theistic Romans and Greeks took a stab at a Republican form of government, but I haven't heard about that happening in ancient Israel.

Thomas Hooker, a puritan and founder of Connecticut, est'd the government of Ct. like this with a sermon on it's comparability with Old Testament Israel. Many of our founders referred to Hookers govt. in modeling the American govt. saying it was a "recent and profitable example".

Samuel Langdon, president of Harvard, preached an election day sermon in 1788 entitled "The Republic of the Israelites an Example to the American States." Langdon was prominent in securing the adoption of the federal Constitution as a delegate to the New Hampsire state convention in 1788.

Well I never claimed that people of the cloth cannot make good statesman and good citizens. My citing the Reverend Barry Lynn here (below) shows I am not prejudice towards those who practice religion, though they are often prejudice against me for not practicing and I am quite sure they would find a way of shutting me and other non-Christians up if they had their druthers.

We love our government!

People don't try to destroy the things they love. You cannot have love without respect. The relentless assault on the sacred principles of the US Constitution by the Christian Right and the now documented and proven 'vast Right Wing conspiracy' alluded to by Hillary Clinton and corroborated in ex-neo-conservative David Brock in his book cited above, especially the 1st Amendment and Separation of Church and State are too numerous to count. This shows a blatant disrespect of Constitutional government. At every turn and in every way imaginable the cons (short for conservatives) have tried to curtail Constitutional rights. I am a member of an org called Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. You or anybody else reading this should check it out and even join if the spirit moves youhttp://www.americansunited.com . Almost daily I recieve e-mails from the President and REVEREND Barry Lynn alerting me and other members of some new assault on Church and State separation by these whackos. How is it that a man of the cloth can be so adamantly opposed to the encroachment of the Church into government? It is not irony, he simply understands the mess we would be in if it was allowed. School vouchers for parochial schools, Ten Commandments in public places, Nativity scenes in public places, Prayer in schools and on and on and on. A steady chipping away. These issues have taken on a fever pitch in the last ten years or so since the Cretin Coalition and other Right Wing zealot orgs have become prominent. This is an assault on Church State separation and time after time what these zealots are trying to shove down America's throat has been shown in court to be in violation of Church/State separation. You don't try to destroy the things you love: you respect and nurture them as Barry Lynn does. I simply do not believe you when you say you or your friends love democracy/our government. Show me with action not words. Look at CR founder Rousas Rushdoony's take on Constitutional government below.

We also see the importance of seperation of church and state. This idea also was handed down by God to Israel. Moses was forbidden to be a Levite and the Levites were forbidden to practice in gov't.

Well, now maybe this god or somebody who fashioned himself a god had the right idea here. How about replacing Levite with Christian an easy enough thing to do since Christian is a derivitive of Levi? This might solve the problem we are having at present; that is if any of the Christians have any intention of practicing what they preach.

We believe God has ordained the church to teach and train all nations to embrace and follow Jesus Christ. We also believe God has ordained gov't's to protect our God given rights and to punish evil.

You will notice though that God has ordained both. Each with it's seperate roles and responsibilities, not to be mixed, but both ordained by God. In this Jefferson, Washington, Adams, Henry and other prominent founders agreed.

You go back to proselytizing here. I would like to see more of what the founding fathers, et. al said in this regard. What is evident in the Constitution and laws passed pursuant thereto is that whatever God may or may not have done to get the ball rolling the people that founded this country designed the Constitution so that the game should be played by THE PEOPLE, with a government OF THE PEOPLE and FOR THE PEOPLE. They understood the calamity resulting from theocratic government as they understood the critical importance of letting people believe what they want to believe and have freedom from religion as well as of religion. This cannot happen in a theocracy.

Now if you agree with this, be careful, you might be called a christian reconstructionist. lol

I have met Andrew Sandlin, Gary DeMar, Ken Gentry, and Joe Morecraft and I can tell you this is an absolutely honest and straightforward assessment of christian reconstructionism ("CR").

Are there fanatics in CR, of course, just like anywhere else. Are there liberals in CR, of course, and everything in between. But the significant greater majority hold to these views that I have detailed for you in this post.

I want to restate here: ALL Christian Reconstructionists are trying to replace Constitutional law with Biblical law and its derivitive English common law, unless you have a different definition from me of what reconstruction means. Your extremist Rushdoony is very prominent in this movement if not the most prominent.

Note: here is where the exchange ended.


Here is a sprinkling of what Rousas Rushdoony, the founder of this small Christian Sect says as cited in the publication Contra Mundum:





Contra Mundum
No. 13 Fall 1994
Interview With
R.J. Rushdoony

Rousas J. Rushdoony spoke at the Appalachian Conference to Rebuild America Conference (ACTRA) in Johnson City, Tennessee in September, 1994. Contra Mundum conducted this interview at the conference, the theme of which was "God's Law and the New Political Order".


CM: Can you describe the importance of common law?


Rushdoony: As Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy said, English common law is simply Biblical law. It has some additions, but it is basically Biblical law. The common law tradition still exists in almost all the states. In some that have an Hispanic or French origin for their laws, it is virtually nonexistent. But elsewhere it prevails, most notably in New York and California. This is why both states can have extremely liberal and extremely conservative decisions in law, because the judge is capable of overruling the statute law in terms of common law and common equity. Common law is no longer taught in law schools. It has very strong limitations on the powers of attorney and their fees, and so it is not popular. Many lawyers are not too knowledgable where common law is concerned. Herbert Titus, a professor of law, has pointed out that common law calls for prosecution where abortion exists. He has said that if there were a crusading and dedicated district attorney anywhere, he could prosecute these people because of the common law. The common law has not been repealed.

Go check out the site. You won't believe the arcane, asinine mental contortions these theists slave over. Somebody ought to calculate how much time and labor has been wasted by the people trying to get a grip on this crap. Opiate of the masses? Yea, for sure.What a waste.


PS: anybody know about these CR's that Christking mentioned here: Andrew Sandlin, Gary DeMar, Ken Gentry, and Joe Morecraft

[Octafish]

13. The BFEE yearns for Chimpageddon.

...And things have only gotten worse since this essay was written:

Evangelicals and Israel: Theological Roots of a Political Alliance

by Donald Wagner

Donald E. Wagner teaches at North Park University in Chicago. He is the author of Anxious for Armageddon (1995) and Dying in the Land of Promise: Palestine and Palestinian Christianity from Pentecost to 2000 (revised edition, 2003). This article appeared in The Christian Century, November 4, 1998, pp. 1020-1026. Copyright by The Christian Century Foundation; used by permission. Current articles and subscription information can be found at www.christiancentury.org. This article prepared for Religion Online by Ted & Winnie Brock.

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Washington this past January, his initial meeting was not with President Clinton but with Jerry Falwell and more than 1,000 fundamentalist Christians. The crowd saluted the prime minister as "the Ronald Reagan of Israel," and Falwell pledged to contact more than 200,000 evangelical pastors, asking them to "tell President Clinton to refrain from putting pressure on Israel" to comply with the Oslo accords.

The meeting between Netanyahu and Falwell illustrates a remarkable political and theological convergence. The link between Israelis Likud government and the U.S. Religious Right was established by Natanyahu's mentor, Menachem Begin, during the Carter and Reagan administrations. However, the roots of evangelical support for Israel lie in the long tradition of Christian thinking about the millennium.

In Luke's account of the ascension, the disciples ask Jesus, "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the Kingdom to Israel?" The question illustrates the early church's fascination with Israel and its prophetic role at the end of history--a fascination that continues to this day. Reflections on the end times draw on the Book of Daniel, Zechariah 9-14, Ezekiel 38-39 and various apocryphal books, as well as Matthew 24, the early Pauline letters (1 Thess. 4:16-17; 5:1-11) and the Book of Revelation.

An early version of Christian eschatology, called "historic premillennialism," held that Jesus would return and establish his millennial kingdom after the world had been evangelized. However, by the 18th century another model of eschatology emerged in England that emphasized the role of a reconstituted Israel in the end times. This eschatology was rooted in three streams of British Christianity: the piety of English Puritanism; the view that Britain was the "new Israel," a theme that dates back at least to the seventh century and the Venerable Bede; and a hermeneutic that interpreted biblical prophetic texts as having a literal, future fulfillment. Among the forerunners of this movement was Sir Henry Finch, a prominent lawyer and member of Parliament. In 1621, Finch wrote a treatise in which he called upon the British people and its government to support Jewish settlement in Palestine in order to fulfill biblical prophecy.

CONTINUED...

http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showarticle?item_id=216