GOP Congressional Candidate Friends With "Execution By Stoning" Advocate
Bruce Wilson printable version print page     Bookmark and Share
Wed Jun 30, 2010 at 01:24:59 PM EST
Running for a seat in Oregon's 4th District, Congressional candidate Art Robinson has proposed dumping crude oil waste and radioactive waste at sea, and he advocates that children read a racist 19th Century novel (which Robinson prints and sells.)

Then there's the "Biblical stoning" issue...

Arthur Robinson has lots of ties to the Christian Reconstructionist movement, including being friends with leading Christian Reconstructionist theologian Gary North, who has described execution-by-stoning as a "community project," (rocks are cheap, plentiful, and convenient, North argues.) Art Robinson's Christian homeschooling curriculum even features a 51-minute interview with Christian Reconstructionism's intellectual founder, R. J. Rushdoony. So what is Christian Reconstructionism ? Let's start here:

As Walter Olson began his sardonic "Invitation To A Stoning", published in the November 1998 issue of Reason Magazine,

For connoisseurs of surrealism on the American right, it's hard to beat an exchange that appeared about a decade ago in the Heritage Foundation magazine Policy Review. It started when two associates of the Rev. Jerry Falwell wrote an article which criticized Christian Reconstructionism, the influential movement led by theologian Rousas John (R.J.) Rushdoony, for advocating positions that even they as committed fundamentalists found "scary." 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.

Christian Reconstructionism has come a long way since then.  

Gary North is a leading Christian Reconstructionist. As leading authority on Christian Reconstructionism Frederick Clarkson, describes in a Public Eye article titled, Christian Reconstructionism - Theocratic Dominionism Gains Influence,

Epitomizing the Reconstructionist idea of Biblical "warfare" is the centrality of capital punishment under Biblical Law. Doctrinal leaders (notably Rushdoony, North, and Bahnsen) call for the death penalty for a wide range of crimes in addition to such contemporary capital crimes as rape, kidnapping, and murder. Death is also the punishment for apostasy (abandonment of the faith), heresy, blasphemy, witchcraft, astrology, adultery, "sodomy or homosexuality," incest, striking a parent, incorrigible juvenile delinquency, and, in the case of women, "unchastity before marriage."

According to Gary North, women who have abortions should be publicly executed, "along with those who advised them to abort their children."

Art Robinson in 1986 co-authored with Dr. Gary North a book on how to survive nuclear war titled, Fighting Chance: Ten Feet To Survival. The book advocated bringing back the so-called "Duck and Cover" civil defense approach promoted by the US government civil defense film "Duck and Cover" shown in US schools to schoolchildren in the 1950's and 1960's.

As "Invitation To A Stoning" described North's view on, well, stoning,

Reconstructionists provide the most enthusiastic constituency for stoning since the Taliban seized Kabul. "Why stoning?" asks North. "There are many reasons. First, the implements of execution are available to everyone at virtually no cost." Thrift and ubiquity aside, "executions are community projects--not with spectators who watch a professional executioner do `his' duty, but rather with actual participants." You might even say that like square dances or quilting bees, they represent the kind of hands-on neighborliness so often missed in this impersonal era. "That modern Christians never consider the possibility of the reintroduction of stoning for capital crimes," North continues, "indicates how thoroughly humanistic concepts of punishment have influenced the thinking of Christians." And he may be right about that last point, you know.

Gary North is a former Congressional staffer for Texas Congressman Ron Paul (who has endorsed Art Robinson's congressional campaign.) In a November 23, 2002 post at the web site LouRockwell.com, North described how Robinson had purchased an industrial printing press to print hard cover copies of the G. A. Henty boys' novel series:

My friend Art Robinson, a scientist and the publisher of the Access to Energy newsletter, recently bought a used $3 million printing press and support equipment for about three cents on the dollar at an auction. The owner had gone out of business. There were few bidders for that press in a recession year. Robinson uses it to publish a series of over a hundred boys' novels, based on world history, written in the 19th century by G. A. Henty. Robinson had assembled a large mailing list of potential customers who had already bought all of Henty's books on Robinson's Henty CD-ROM for $99 - a terrific deal.

http://www.robinsoncurriculum.com

Now parents and grandparents can buy the hardbacks.

Gary North is a protege' of founder of the Christian Reconstructionism movement founder Rousas J. Rushdoony. In 1992 Rushdoony spoke at the inaugural event of the U.S. Taxpayers Party, later re-branded as the Constitution Party. In 2008 Ron Paul endorsed the Constitution Party candidate for president of the United States, and current Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul keynoted a Minnesota Constitution Party rally in April 2009.

Rousas Rushdoony advocated executing by stoning homosexuals, adulterers, and women who have intercourse before marriage, wanted to reimpose slavery, claimed that African-American slaves were lucky, was a Holocaust denier and a creationist, and maintained that the Sun rotates around the Earth.

Arthur Robinson's homeschooling curriculum, for "parents concerned about socialism in the public schools," contains several references to R. J. Rushdoony including a 51 minute audio recording of an interview with the now-deceased Christian Reconstructionist titan.

To read more about Art Robinson's view, see Art Robinson, Oregon GOP Candidate For Congress, Sells Book Comparing Africans To Retarded Children

[for more on Art Robinson see here and here]




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