From: Phil Osborn (philosborn2001@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Jun 29 2002 - 01:05:48 MDT
Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com) wrote on
Thu Jun 27 2002 - 13:26:17 MDT:
>(Remember
Ronald Reagan saying that atheists don't deserve the
rights of christian
citizens?) The religious right seems determined to
push their
interpretation that we are a Christian Nation into
governmental
structure.>
When I was with the New Banner Institute in S.
Carolina, the local bible-pounders got very annoyed
with us, both for the atheism and probably even more
so for the fact that we had kids of all different
colors in our Montessori school - including children
of the two most powerful black politicians in the
state, I.S. Levi Johnson and Tom Broadwater.
The most powerful S. Carolina politician was John
Foard, County Solicitor of Richland County, who had
destroyed the local anti-war movement by arresting
them all on drug charges and then planting his own
people, posing as defendents, on the defense to report
their whole defense strategy back to the prosecutors.
(This was proven in court years later, after most of
the activists had served long prison terms.) The
general belief was that no one could possibly defeat
Foard politically and that he would die in office (one
way or another).
Foard coerced the 13yr. old son of one of the
Institute members to testify that he had been chained
to his bed and forced to iron shirts to pay off debts
he had incurred. (The debts were to the various
neighbors whose houses he and his little gang buddies
had burglarized.) Foard's people had caught the kid -
who had been raised by his mother after a divorce, and
then readopted by the dad when the mother gave up on
him - doing some more felonies, and threatened him
with hard time in Juvenile unless he went along with
their plot.
So one fine day around late '72, some 23 heavily armed
officers showed up at our school and arrested every
adult in site, with warrants for everyone in the
Institute (and probably some John Doe's in case they
missed anyone), charging them with "high and
aggravated assault" against this kid. They searched
the school with drawn guns while the 2-7yr. old kids
looked on. When the defendants went before a judge,
he set their bail at twice the legal maximum, and
Foard was heard by several witnesses saying that he
was not going to allow atheists to walk free on the
streets of Columbia. The deal he offered the
Institute was that they close their school and leave
town.
Instead they fought back and won. Because of the
parents at the school, including some of the most
prominent people in Columbia, Foard was defeated in
the next election by a liberal, and all charges were
dropped. The moral? If you can offer people
something valuable enough, then your customers will
defend you. The kids in our school were years ahead
of any kids anywhere else in Columbia, and the parents
knew it. In fact, our tuition was the highest for ANY
school in Columbia, including the University, and we
had parents taking a second job just to keep their
kids there.
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