Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Skousen was a founder of NCCS and the All-American Society .. believed the formation of the
USA a literal miracle (as a virgin birth, i guess), believed God was a literal interventionist in the
affairs of the USA .. for ultra small government .. a McCarthyite anticommunist .. an end time guy ..

Fringe Mormon Group Makes Myths with Glenn Beck’s Help

By Alexander Zaitchik
Illustration by Daniel Adell

FAIRMONT, W. Va. — One fine Saturday morning last year, around 60 mostly middle-aged conservatives trickled onto the otherwise deserted campus of Fairmont State University. Clutching notebooks and coffee cups, they looked like groggy Continuing Ed students as they took seats in a modern lecture hall on the ground floor of the school's engineering building. In a sense, they were Continuing Ed students. The room had been booked months in advance for a one-day, intro-level history and civics seminar entitled, "The Making of America."

But this was no ordinary summer school. Randall McNeely, the seminar's kindly, awkward, and heavy-set instructor, held no advanced degree and made no claims to being a scholar of any kind. He was, rather, a product of rote training in a religious and apocalyptic interpretation of American history that has roots in the racist right of the last century. His students for the day had learned about the class not in the Fairmont State summer catalog, but from the website of the obscure nonprofit run by fringe Mormons. Founded as the Freeman Institute in Provo, Utah, in 1971, the outfit now goes by the name National Center for Constitutional Studies (NCSS), and works out of a remote farmhouse in Malta, Idaho (population 177).



This humble base of operations, however, constrains neither the outfit's national ambitions nor its missionary zeal. The NCCS has been touring the country and propagating its ultraconservative Mormon message for nearly four decades. Yet its message has never been in greater demand than in 2010. Since the rise of the Tea Party circuit, the all-volunteer NCCS has experienced exploding interest from Tea Party-affiliated groups such as the 9.12 Project and the Tea Party Patriots. On any given Saturday, several of nearly 20 "Making of America" lecturers are giving seminars across the country in spaces like the rented classroom in Fairmont, with $10 tickets and NCCS book sales paying for their travel and expenses.

Along with a busier schedule, the NCCS also has a growing list of allies. In the media, it has found a powerful voice in the form of Fox News' Glenn Beck, who is a Mormon himself and has used his pulpit to advocate for NCCS books and ideas. Through Beck's sustained and energetic advocacy, once-forgotten NCCS tracts of Mormon-flavored pseudo-history such as The 5,000 Year Leap have become unlikely online bestsellers. As a result, traveling volunteer NCCS lecturers like McNeely today have no shortage of students eager to learn his version of "truth."

"In our time together, we're going to learn the truth about American history and what our government is supposed to do—and not do," said McNeely, after opening the August seminar in Fairmont with a Christian prayer and a patriotic song of his own authorship. "We're going to learn sound principles. Once we have possession of these sound principles, we can solve nearly every problem in America, the way the Founders would have liked."

As the morning progressed, it became clear that the NCCS worldview and program were based on three major pillars: understanding the divine guidance that has allowed the United States to thrive; rejecting the tyrannical, implicitly sinful, nature of the modern federal government; and preparing for a divine reckoning that will bring down America's government and possibly tear society as we know it asunder, thus allowing those with sound principles — i.e., godly NCCS graduates — to rebuild the republic along "sounder," more pious lines.

America's return to extremely limited government, as they think God intended, is destined to happen, NCCS lecturers teach, because God has already shown an interventionist role in American history. According to the NCCS, the founding of the United States was nothing short of a "miracle" in the literal sense of the word. God is watching, in other words, and he is not happy. Teaching out of the seminar's 131-page illustrated workbook, McNeely argued that the current federal government is guilty of a "usurpation of power." It is, therefore, illegitimate, though McNeely never actually uttered that word. Governmental powers should be used sparingly, he explained, limited largely to the common defense and the elimination of "debauchery and vice."
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2011/spring/fringe-mormon-group-makes-myths-with-glenn-becks-help#.UXXnSEphqRQ

Never an official member of JBS (according to Wikipedia), but a rabid supporter (Ike a communist) and a speaker
for them until even their more moderate side distanced themselves from his extreme views, as the Mormons did ..

Political life

After losing his police job, Skousen founded a group called the All-American Society, which Time magazine described in 1961 as an "exemplar of the far-right ultras." Throughout the 1960s, Skousen was also admired by members and leaders of the John Birch Society, although members of the more mainstream conservative movement and the American Security Council snubbed him out of fear that his controversial views would hurt the credibility of the conservative movement. Skousen used Birch Society magazines as source and reference material, and was pictured on the cover of its magazine, American Interest. Although he was never officially a member of the organization, he was a member of its speakers' bureau and lectured at John Birch Society events throughout the United States for many years. A 1962 FBI memo described Skousen as affiliating with an "extreme right-wing" group which was promoting "anticommunism for obvious financial purposes". Skousen authored a pamphlet titled The Communist Attack on the John Birch Society, characterizing criticism of the Society as incipient communism.

In 1981, the first year of Ronald Reagan's presidency, Skousen was asked to be a charter member of the conservative think tank the Council for National Policy, founded by Tim LaHaye, author of the Left Behind series of books. Other early participants included Paul Weyrich; Phyllis Schlafly; Robert Grant; Howard Phillips, a former Republican affiliated with the Constitution Party; Richard Viguerie, the direct-mail specialist; and Morton Blackwell, a Louisiana and Virginia activist who is considered a specialist on the rules of the Republican Party. Skousen's proposals with the group included a plan to convert the Social Security system to private retirement accounts, as well as a plan that he claimed would completely wipe out the national debt.

Although Skousen was not a tax protester, he campaigned for several proposals to eliminate the federal income tax. One proposal, the Liberty Amendment, precluded the federal government from involvement in any activities that competed with private enterprise and returned federally-owned land to the states.

In 1970, the LDS Church was under considerable attack for its refusal to ordain blacks into its priesthood. In response, Skousen penned an article entitled "The Communist Attack on the Mormons," in which he accused critics of "distorting the religious tenet of the Church regarding the Negro and blowing it up to ridiculous proportions" and of serving as Communist dupes. The LDS Church altered its stance in the 1978 Revelation on Priesthood.

In 1971, Skousen founded a non-profit educational foundation, The Freeman Institute, which sought to provide students a place to read both sides of any political issue from original sources. In 1982, the institute became the National Center for Constitutional Studies (NCCS), a national organization headquartered in Malta, Idaho. .. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleon_Skousen

.. we are luxuriating 22C (72C) in robin egg blue in Sydney .. finally a garden day .. lol ..