This post constitutes my third and final reply to Thomas E. Woods, Jr.'s critique of my series on his neo-Confederate activities. In my first reply I explained why, his protestations not withstanding, he is indeed a neo-Confederate. My second reply focused on how Woods twists his opponents' statements into self-serving red herring.

Now I get to what is as the heart of Woods's neo-Confederate/libertarian agenda: defending the right to oppress; a critical component of which is the combination of nullification and secession.

[update, Sept. 12, 2013: here's a page, on Gary North's personal website, with videos of North talking about his role in the new Ron Paul homeschooling curriculum. North's website is peppered with extreme anti-gay rhetoric, including these quotes, from North's free book "Boundaries and Dominion - An Economic Commentary on Leviticus":

[page 26]"God is indeed a homophobe. He hates the practice and those who practice it, which is why He destroyed Sodom. God warned Israel; practice such an abomination, and the land will vomit you out, just as it vomited out its former inhabitants (Lev. 18:24-29)" [page 221] "Homosexuals do not reproduce. They recruit. There is an inescapable competition for bodies and souls: homosexuals vs. heterosexuals. If the homosexuals should win this competition, the human race will end unless test-tube babies become a cost-effective reality. This is not just a war over civilization; it is a war over the survival of the human race."

In 1976, Ron Paul's first year as a U.S. Congressional Representative, serving Texas' 22nd District, Paul brought in Christian Reconstructionist Dr. Gary North - who has advocated stoning as a capital punishment for homosexuality [see footnote 2] and argued for the enslavement of non-Christians [see footnote 1], to serve on Paul's Congressional staff as an economic analyst and newsletter writer. The relationship has continued to this day - North helped develop, along with Neo Confederate Thomas Woods, Ron Paul's new Christian home schooling curriculum, launched last April 2013.

The Family (aka the Fellowship) is a secretive, elite power network that has been operating at the highest levels of American and world politics, business and religion for most of a century.  In recent years it has faced exposure -- thanks mostly to journalist, author, and occasional Talk to Action contributor, Jeff Sharlet.  His 2008 book, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power and a follow-up book, C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy published in the wake of a Congressional sex and influence scandal, have reshaped how many of us understand the dynamics of the Religious Right.  More recently still, we learned how the Family played a role in the development of the Christian nationalism of Uganda and the infamous "kill the gays bill."  

Jeff has now published one of the untold stories of the Family at Killing the Buddha.  Titled, Ditto Boys, its about the role of Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California as a feeder school for The Family.  Excerpts follow:

One of the few international hindrances to unilateral United States military actions has been it's membership in the United Nations. Although an imperfect institution, the UN is serving now as the crucible for a newly emergent multilaterally-supported alternative to a United States strike on Syria. As the Washington Post reports, France is backing a proposal, already supported by both Russia and China and also accepted by the Syrian government, to place Syria's enormous stockpile of chemical weapons under international control.

Among prominent voices speaking out against American military intervention in the ongoing Syrian civil war has been Former U.S. Congressman Ron Paul, who over the past decade has emerged as a steadfast opponent and critic of U.S. military interventionism.

Thus the irony -- in 1997, Representative Paul introduced a bill, the American Sovereignty Restoration Act, that called for a complete United States withdrawal from the United Nations. In the unlikely event that Paul's bill had cleared the Congress and Senate, and been signed into law by then-President Clinton, constraints that the United Nations, and the U.N. Security Council, impose on the unilateral American use of military force would have been swept away.

This is my partial transcript of the 1998 30-minute John Birch Society video "United Nations - A Look Into The Future", produced in support of then-U.S. Representative Ron Paul's 1997 American Sovereignty Restoration Act, which called for a complete U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations.

For more on this subject, see Rachel Tabachick's story, Ron Paul, the John Birch Society, and Fatima Center Founder Fr. Nicholas Gruner... in 1998! (Video).

Media Matters recently posted an article exploring Russian President Vladimir Putin's new folk-hero status among the political Right. This is described as a product of extreme Obama hatred, but there are other underlying narratives in sectors of American society that portray the former "Evil Empire" as the great hope of the Right, a bastion of family values, and future leader of world peace.

Talk2action.org contributors have dedicated many recent posts to the upcoming conference titled Fatima: Path to Peace. The event  is hosted by the Fatima Center, an organization that is fixated on a Russia-centric narrative.  The September 11 date of Ron Paul's keynote speech has special significance to the movement and its agenda for "peace."

Upcoming Conference Is Not Ron Paul's First Project with Fatima Center Founder

Ron Paul will give the keynote speech at the week-long Fatima Center conference on September 11.  The schedule includes an assortment of "New World Order" conspiracy theory peddlers who distort rational discourse with tales of a coming U.N. and Jewish-led one world government.   Scheduled presentations include "We're Being Led to a One-World Government and One-World Religion" by John Birch society president John McManus and one titled "Masonry in European Politics," recently removed due to the cancellation of Italian neofascist Roberto Fiore.

This is not the first time that Paul has been involved in a conspiracy-themed project with Father Nicholas Gruner, the founder of the Ontario-based Fatima Center.  In 1998 the John Birch Society produced and marketed a film promoting the American Sovereignty Restoration Act, a bill sponsored in the U. S. Congress by Ron Paul calling for withdrawal from the United Nations.  The film includes the participation of Fr. Gruner and a total of five speakers who are also speaking at the Fatima Conference.  In the film Paul claims that the United Nations is coming to get your guns and your property. Resistance will be futile, Paul warns, and "If the United Nations has their way, there will be curtailment of our right to practice religion."

The late William Pierce, once head of the National Alliance and the author who inspired Timothy McVeigh, used National Vanguard Books as a publishing tool of the hard right in the nation.  Current leadership has struggles with infighting and is not as influential as it was.  Its theories on contemporary American culture are examples of conspiracy mongers and racists among the far right.

[for related coverage, see links at end of this story & transcript]

On September 11, 2013, Former United States Congressman Ron Paul is scheduled to give a keynote address at a "Gala fundraising dinner" for the Fatima Center, a radical Catholic Traditionalist group which promotes conspiracy theory alleging a vast, shadowy Judeo-Masonic plot to implement a global "New World Order" - ruled, ultimately, by the Devil - that will eliminate 90% of the Earth's population and enslave the remainder. Fatima Center leaders, as the transcription below demonstrates, weave climate change denialism seamlessly into the alleged conspiracy - against God, humanity, the Catholic Church, and all deemed good and Holy - by citing crank pseudo-science such as the disproved claim that yearly volcanic emissions of CO2 dwarf the yearly CO2 emissions of human activity.

Welcome to readers from the Lake Erie States Progressive Summit held on August 25 in Erie, Pennsylvania.  Following are the promised website links referenced in my presentation titled "The Infrastructure Behind the Right Wing Juggernaut."

In September 2013, former U.S. Congressman Ron Paul will deliver a keynote address at a week-long conference in Ontario, Canada, titled "Fatima: The Path to Peace". As researcher Rachel Tabachnick describes, the conference "features New World Order conspiracy theorists, holocaust deniers, racists, and an openly fascist speaker". The conference will also feature two "geocentrists", who claim the Sun and all the heavens revolve once per day around the Earth - in a frank rejection of the Copernican Model of the Solar System accepted by the Catholic Church several centuries ago.

The most recent promotional material for the Fatima Center's upcoming conference announces that Father Karl Stehlin, Society of St. Paul X District Supervisor of Eastern Europe, will be a speaker. Fr. Stehlin is the schismatic priest who fueled the controversy of the crosses at Auschwitz in 1998.