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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 10/4/2003 1:33 PM (GMT -6) |   | A theocratic agenda for California
http://www.workingforchange.com/art...fm?itemid=15748
Bill Berkowitz
WorkingForChange
Tom McClintock's big little secret
Senator's deputy campaign manager, John Stoos, has a theocratic agenda for California
Will the October 7 California recall election present an opportunity to "reverse 25 years of failed socialist Democrat policies that have brought our state to the brink of ruin," as John Stoos claims. Speaking on behalf of State Senator Tom McClintock's campaign, Stoos told "Changing Worldviews" host Sharon Hughes during a recent radio interview that his candidate is "the rising star in this campaign," and "the one conservative [left] in the race."
"[Sen. McClintock] is Reaganesque," Stoos told Talon News. "He doesn't run from his core values, and he's not afraid of populist issues which is why a lot of the establishment folks don't care for him." Lurking behind the Senator's "populist" ideas is a conservative social agenda extremely out of step with the views of most Californians, and in-sync with the objectives of some of the state's most influential fundamentalist Christian organizations. With his 20-year involvement with the state's right wing, John Stoos, as Sen. McClintock's deputy campaign manager, provides the campaign with a seamless link to the state's far right political constituency.
To date, most of the debate around the recall election has focused on the state's economic crisis. And that's where the far right of the state's Republican Party prefers the spotlight remains.
During the debates, McClintock has forthrightly answered questions on a host of social issues: He is opposed to a woman's right to choose; opposed so-called special rights for gays and lesbians, and opposed gun control; he is against extending driver's licenses to the state's illegal immigrants; he supports Ward Connerly's Proposition 54 -- a controversial measure limiting the State's ability to collect race-specific data, including critical demographic and health data, which is also on the October 7 ballot; and he vigorously supports the death penalty.
But the Senator gets far more animated, however, when talking about his economic agenda -- rolling back the car tax, worker's compensation reform, eliminating so-called waste from the state budget, and solving the state's fiscal crisis without raising taxes. He also made it clear that he supports privatization and the contracting out of state jobs. "That's what the recall is about; the ruined fiscal condition of California," Stoos told me in an early September telephone interview.
While we know a great deal about Sen. McClintock's political positions, we don't know much about John Stoos, and what his vision is for California. Stoos is not your ordinary right-wing ideologue: He is a politically savvy campaign strategist who has worked the California political landscape for more than 20 years. He was a former vice-president of the right-wing California Republican Assembly and helped engineer the takeover of California's Republican Party by Christian fundamentalists. Stoos has been a key player in the recall movement, coordinating the DavisRecall.com campaign. According to The Hill, "the Newspaper for and about the U.S. Congress," Stoos was active with People's Advocate, "the group that launched the recall effort earlier this year."
Stoos has a close, long-term association with Chalcedon, a Vallecito, Ca.-based Christian Reconstructionist organization. He is a regular contributor to its flagship publication, the Chalcedon Report, "the extended voice of the most important Christian theocratic theologian of the twentieth century, the late R. J. Rushdoony," said Frederick Clarkson, author of the highly acclaimed book "Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy And Democracy" (Common Courage Press, 1997).
"Christian Reconstructionism is a religious and political ideology that believes in the creation of a theocratic state governed by Biblical law," Clarkson told me in a recent telephone interview. While this ideology includes a range of beliefs, Stoos by "publishing in the Chalcedon Report, exhibits a fundamental agreement with the principles of Christian Reconstructionism and the people who are currently the standard bearers of CR undoubtedly see Stoos in that light."
In March of this year Stoos wrote: "There are many in the political realm who want to divide the 'social' or 'family' issues like abortion and homosexuality from the 'economic' issues like taxation. The reality is that all of these issues are family issues and must be treated as such. It is easy to see how the issues of abortion and homosexuality are attacks on the integrity of the family, but on the economic side, we must remember that the power to tax is the power to destroy a family."
In an article appearing in the June/July 2003 issue of Chalcedon Report titled "Freedom Under The Fear of God," Stoos writes: "All religions are not equal, and only Christianity reveals the truth about God's nature, creation, man's fall, and the great salvation available through faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ. The freedoms and liberties that Americans have enjoyed are the product of this faith, and if we fail to understand the foundations upon which they are built, the United States will lose them in very short order."
Stoos: "Now this may sound simplistic, but these are the only two choices. Either people understand that basic rights come from God and choose to live in a proper fear of God by acknowledging His sovereignty, or people reject God and look to the wisdom and understanding of man to establish what is right and wrong. There are no other choices."
In "Democracy and the Depravity of Man," a February 2001 Chalcedon Report piece which analyzed the November 2000 presidential election, Stoos' expressed thanks for the electoral college, and "that our Constitutional Republic has survived": "There was a major theological reason that our Founders chose a Constitutional Republic over other forms of government such as a type of monarchy, but especially a democracy. At the time of our nation's founding, almost everyone affirmed a critical Biblical doctrine that many churches today try to keep hidden away like the crazy aunt in the attic: The Depravity of Man." Stoos uses Biblical quotations to argue that you can't have a "pure democracy when you have only fallen creatures to choose from."
Stoos claims that "with the evil of abortion-on-demand and other godless actions today, Americans must wonder how much longer God will stay His hand of judgment. Therefore, I hope and pray that all those who love the Lord and are called according to His purposes will set themselves like flint for the work of building God's church, raising strong families, and being faithful to His calling in their lives."
"Christian Reconstructionists know that restructuring America along Biblical lines is a long struggle," Clarkson said. "They understand that they need to be politic and circumspect, maybe even covert, because they know they are up against the forces of Satan and they don't want to give away their politics. Therefore they often try to play the role of mainstream conservative," despite the fact that their publications reflect their true views.
When asked about these views, and whether Sen. McClintock subscribed to them as well, Stoos said that they were his "personal views" and that he wasn't sure if they were "the Senator's views." For that, he said, you'll have to ask the Senator. He added that the Senator was probably too busy to discuss these issues at this time.
Stoos has long-standing involvement with a number of right-wing organizations: He was the former Western representative for English First, characterized by longtime human rights advocate and activist, Leonard Zeskind, as "one of the most radical organizations in the right-wing's campaign against bilingual education and immigration;" he was also the former executive director of the Gun Owners of California; a former adviser to the California chapter of the Christian Coalition; and he headed up the California chapter of former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich's Conservative Opportunity Society.
According to the Web site Seek God, "an independent Christian research and apologetics ministry," Stoos is a member of the Council for National Policy, a secretive and powerful fundraising and activist organization. He said he considered himself an "inactive" member because he hasn't paid his membership fees in several years. Founded in 1981 as a 501(c)(3) non-profit educational organization by the Rev. Tim LaHaye, then of the Religious Roundtable, and now the very well-known co-author of the wildly popular "Left Behind" series of apocalyptic novels, "few people, outside its members, seem to know what the group is, what it does, how it raises money, and how interlocked it has become in the matrix of conservative activism," ABC News' Marc J. Ambinder has reported.
At a 1995 forum sponsored by the Center for Ethics and Social Policy of Berkeley, California's Graduate Theological Union, Stoos "revealed that Jews would probably feel out of place in the Christian society he and others are working to implement," longtime writer and researcher Jerry Sloan reported. In the April 1995 issue of the Institute for First Amendment Studies' Freedom Writer Sloan stated that Stoos allowed that Jews and other non-Christians would be "tolerated." Fellow panel member Marty Kassman of the ACLU objected and challenged Stoos: "I don't wish to be tolerated in this country. I was born in this country. I don't think it is any more your country than mine. Or any more a Christian's country [than] a Jew's." According to Sloan, Stoos "shot back that in his vision of Christian society "you would not have total acceptance. You would feel more at home in Israel."
It was later reported that Stoos had told the Contra Costa Times that "There is no such thing as a pluralistic society. You can't say we are all going to agree to disagree and go on our way because that [leads] to relativism and chaos." Stoos denied having said those things and claimed the Times had later issued a retraction.
Can Sen. McClintock be elected? In 2002, the Senator lost to Democrat Steve Westly in the race for state controller by less than 23,000 votes out of over 7 million votes cast. In fact, writes Bobby Eberle of Talon News, the Senator "garnered over 100,000 more votes than the 2002 Republican gubernatorial nominee, Bill Simon." The beauty of the California recall for someone representing a relatively small, but loyal constituency is that a candidate doesn't need a majority but can win with a plurality.
Senator Tom McClintock is not John Stoos, and Stoos in our recent interview clearly tried to distinguish his views from the candidates'. However, the prominence of Stoos in the McClintock campaign should be of concern to California's electorate. "If Stoos is an example of the kind of people that Sen. McClintock chooses to surround himself with then Constitutional democracy could be in trouble. The hiring of Stoos is a reflection of Sen. McClintock's judgment as well as his ideology," Clarkson pointed out. While the election may be battled out over who has the best answers to the State's economic woes, the next Governor could also have a significant impact on a number of critical social policies.
In the past, stealth campaigns have been a major weapon in the Christian right's electoral arsenal. However, a return to the slam-bang politics of the culture wars may not be acceptable to California voters no matter how serious the state's economic woes.
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