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God’s laws override government’s, Patriots told

Staff writer

Government doesn’t have the right to impose laws in some areas, even if a majority wants it to, members of Patriots for Liberty were told at a meeting Sunday at Marion County Lake hall.

A total of 30 people — including county commissioner Kent Becker, who gave the benediction, and successful state representative candidate Scott Hill, who said the group’s support had been essential to his victory — listened to a pair of related videos from controversial self-styled historian David Barton.

Barton, whose works have been labeled “pseudoscholarship” and “outright falsehoods” by detractors in some religious and scholarly communities, criticized “Ph.D.s and professors” as overly interpretative and emphasized what he said were the Christian principles on which America was founded.

“Government exists to enforce God’s laws,” Barton said in one of his videos, which frequently cited old textbooks quoting from original sources. “There are certain things on which you do not vote. That’s moral law.

“We’re not a democracy. God didn’t want that. Only if it’s not covered in Scripture can we decide what to do and the will of the majority should prevail.”

No one mentioned laws allowing abortion, but the implication was clear.

Comments about abortion dominated discussion later in the meeting when one audience member repeated a longstanding but widely debunked rumor that Pepsi products contained “aborted babies” in the form of an additive called HEK-293.

Pepsi has for years denied using the sweetener, which some anti-abortion groups that later withdrew their protests contended contains cells cloned in 1973 from the kidney of an aborted human embryo.

Another audience member suggested that embryonic stem cells also are used in several widely used vaccines.

“There’s murdered children in these vaccines,” the audience member said. “We’ve got murderers at large that are running things.”

Patriot leader Rose Davidson, who also leads the county’s Republican precinct committeemen and committeewomen, cut such discussion short after the videos aired.

However, she added: “We can’t just be polite anymore. We have to stand up for our rights.”

She spoke earlier in the meeting about how a small but dedicated group could influence public policy by being insistent in making its voice heard.

She mentioned “recent bad news” including an FBI raid seeking to uncover unauthorized classified documents at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort home.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” she said, but she urged people concerned about the raid and other government actions to call their elected representatives “once a week to keep it in the front of people’s minds.”

She also spoke about yet another video that “tells about the election fraud and proves it — kind of, a bit.”

“We want to stand up and fight,” she said, later adding: “With everything that’s going on, be prepared — whether it’s storms that are coming or whatever.”

Members of the group are known for their support of the right to keep and bear arms. However, only one holstered sidearm — along with an emotional support dog — was visibly present during the meeting.

One audience member criticized local churches, saying: “What we are getting is a lot of social justice. We need to be sure we are reading God’s word. We can’t even under the problems completely unless we read God’s word.”

Daryl Enos, who introduced the videos and distributed a seven-page study guide for them, said he planned to conduct an eight-week series of two-hour classes on interpretation of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence later this fall.

One audience member added during a break: “Why aren’t teachers here to hear this?”

As usual, the event was publicized on the City of Marion’s electronic sign, which co-supervised by Gene Winkler, who attended the meeting.

The group’s next meeting will be in October.

Last modified Aug. 25, 2022

 

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