By: Randy Edwards Re: Bushwacked! The USTP and the Far Right Copyright 1995, Planned Feder

By: Randy Edwards
Re: Bushwacked! The USTP and the Far Right

Copyright 1995, Planned Federation of America - Public Policy
Institute

_FRONTLINES RESEARCH In Defense of Reproductive Health,
Education, and Democracy_, Volume 1, Number 3, November 1994

BACORR had asked that this be put on-line. This is without the
footnotes.
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** BUSHWACKED!  The USTP & THE FAR RIGHT **

by Sandi DuBowski and John Goetz

     The U.S. Taxpayers Party is the new political home to a
growing and unusual convergence of militant anti-abortion
leaders, elements of the violent and racist right, the John Birch
Society, and far-right politicians.

     The U.S. Taxpayers Party (USTP) platform is a mix of radical
libertarianism, conspiracy theories, obscure constitutional
interpretations and the most militant anti-abortion plank of any
political party in the country. The USTP would abolish most
non-military functions of the federal government: notably the
IRS, the FEC, welfare, and the Federal Reserve System. There is
also a theocratic strain. Randall Terry for example, says that
the party believes all civic law should emerge from biblical law.
The party platform further claims, The U.S. Constitution
established a republic under God, not a democracy and Rights come
from God, not the State!

      You Are Above the Law! the USTP advises.  And, according to
USTP any juror can nullify bad laws and decide not only the facts
placed in evidence but also the validity or applicability of
every law.
               HOWARD PHILLIPS -- BUSHWACKED!

     Howard Phillips ability to forge a political party out of
previously fractious factions arises from his history in
politics.

      Phillips briefly headed the U.S. Office of Economic
Opportunity (OEO) under President Nixon in 1973. During his
tenure Phillips led a nationally publicized drive to terminate
the agency and its programs.  After he left OEO, in 1974,
Phillips  founded The Conservative Caucus -- his organizational
base ever since.

     Phillips, along with Paul Weyrich, Richard Viguerie, William
Rusher, and other leaders of what was then called the "New
Right," sought to get Ronald Reagan to run as an independent in
1976 against then-President Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.  When
Reagan refused, they sought a merger with the American
Independent Party (AIP), which ran Alabama Gov. George Wallace
for President in 1968, winning five states against Richard Nixon
and Hubert Humphrey.  AIP, which has historically included
elements of the Ku Klux Klan, and the John Birch Society, also
refused.

      Phillips radical right resume also includes creating  the
Moral Majority in 1979, with Paul Weyrich and Rev. Jerry Falwell,
and co-founding the Council for National Policy in 1982.  In the
1980s, the Conservative Caucus started the drum beat to Defund
the Left, a campaign to end federal funds to such groups as
Planned Parenthood and the National Council of Churches.  However
by the late 1980's the Caucus had drifted away from more
mainstream conservatism publicly worrying about Trotskyists in
the Reagan White House.  Phillips also openly supported apartheid
in South Africa, opposing for example, efforts by the Bush
administration to negotiate free elections in Namibia.

     Phillips graduated from Harvard as a protege of William S.
Gill, who was a featured speaker at the USTP- related U.S.
Taxpayers Alliance (USTA) national Issues Conference in July.
Gill is a member of the Populist Action Committee, a political
arm of  Liberty Lobby,  which, according to the Anti-Defamation
League is the nation's leading anti- Semitic propaganda
organization.

      Phillips founded USTA in 1990, and USTP in 1992 as an
alternative for those who felt betrayed, (or Bushwacked as they
are fond of saying) by the GOP of the Reagan and Bush years.
Phillips' dream merger with AIP was finally consummated at the
USTP National Convention in New Orleans in 1992.  Phillips was
nominated for President and Brig. Gen. Albion Knight (Ret.) for
Vice President. The party qualified for the ballot in 21 states
in 1992, and in 1994 is running 68 candidates in 8 states.

               THE ANTI ABORTION RIGHT
     The USTP is a 100% pro-life party -- meaning they oppose
abortion in all cases. Thus the partisans and leaders of USTP
include some of the most militant anti-abortion activists in the
country:

* Rev.  Michael Bray -- A signer of Paul Hill's Defensive Action
statement, which argues that the murder of abortion doctors is
justified. Bray served four years in federal prison for
conspiring to bomb 10 abortion clinics in Delaware, Maryland,

Virginia, and Washington, D.C. in 1984.  Bray has said Just as
there is a time to separate from apostate churches, so there is a
time to separate from renegade political parties. We need a new
one. Work to build the U.S. Taxpayers Party.

* Randall Terry -- The founder of Operation Rescue (OR) stumps
the country for USTP. This I can promise you, he declared last
summer, you will never, ever see a pro-death, pro-sodomite
moderate in the U.S. Taxpayers Party.

* Joseph Slovenec -- USTP candidate for U.S. Senate from Ohio,
Slovenec is a former leader of OR. Longtime OR activist Wendy
Wright is Slovenec's campaign spokesperson.

* David Shedlock -- USTP National Committee, Iowa.  Shedlock,
communications director for OR of Iowa, has frequently been
arrested in connection with his anti-abortion activities.

* Lowell Patterson -- USTP National Committee, New Jersey.
Patterson is the director of ABBA Pregnancy Crisis Center in
Cinnaminson, NJ.

* Julie Makimaa -- National Secretary, and USTP National
Committee, Florida.  Makimaa is the founder of Fortress
International which fights for the rights of unborn babies
conceived in sexual assault.

* George Grant -- Author of False Choices: The Legacy of Planned
Parenthood was a featured speaker at the USTP founding convention
in 1992. According to USTP literature, he chairs the Taxpayers
Party of Tennessee.  Grant recently co-signed An Open Letter to
Pro-Life Republicans attacking Planned Parenthood and the
Republican Party as evil.  We are supporting the U.S. Taxpayers
Party they declared, because it's right. (Emphasis in the
original)  No wavering, no waffling, no mumbling, no juggling, no
mixed signals, just the truth.

                    USTP and the GOP

     Although the USTP seems to have attracted few Republicans so
far, its very existence pressures the GOP to toe a conservative,
and anti-abortion line.  While Pat Robertson's Christian
Coalition is basically aligned with the GOP, Coalition Executive
Director Ralph Reed, says that people of faith might form a third
party, if the GOP changes its anti-abortion position.   The USTP
hopes that day will come and is preparing.  New Right
fund-raising specialist Richard Viguerie  has joined the USTA
National Committee and such prominent Republicans as Pat Buchanan
and former Members of Congress William Dannemayer (R-CA) and Ron
Paul (R-TX) have spoken at USTP events.

     Reed's outburst echoes a  history of similar threats.
Christian Right leaders Gary Jarmin and Robert Grant in 1988
threatened to lead the Christian Right out of the GOP if George
Bush did not stop "Christian bashing" Pat Robertson.  The USTP
gives some credence to Reed's threat, suggesting that the
Christian Right has a place to which to bolt.

     Meanwhile,  the USTP has another message for the GOP.  Joe
Slovenec as the USTP candidate for U.S. Senate from Ohio, says
that if his campaign causes Democrat Joel Hyatt to win over
Republican Michael DeWine, that would send a message to the GOP
not to run "weak," candidates.

               USTP: Little Big Tent

     While the GOP struggles to keep itself together under the
big tent theory, the upstart USTP has managed to erect a small,
but spacious tent of its own. The USTP is home even to the armed,
the racist, and the anti-Semitic:

* Rev. Matthew Trewhella --USTP National Committee, Wisconsin. A
signer of  Paul Hill's Defensive Action statement, Trewhella
leads the anti-abortion group Missionaries to the Pre-Born. At
the USTP Wisconsin state convention, he called for the formation
of armed militias, such as the one he leads through his church.
Newsweek reports that one member of the Missionaries  (who lived
in Trewhella's basement for five months in 1990) kept a journal
which included apparent plans for a guerrilla campaign of clinic
bombings and assassinations of doctors.  What's more,  a 100 page
guerrilla army manual was sold by the USTP of Wisconsin at their
May convention.  Among the manual's justifications for armed
resistance to the federal government is legalized abortion.

* William K. Shearer -- Member, USTP National Committee,
California. Was a member of the National Executive Committee of
the Populist Party, in 1984 when the group was dominated by
Neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan leaders.

* Dr. Curtis Caine -- USTP National Committee, Mississippi. He
embarrassed the Southern Baptist Convention's Christian Life
Commission in 1989, when he defended apartheid in South Africa
and called Martin Luther King a fraud.  Caine also heads the
Jackson chapter of the John Birch Society.

Convention in May 1994, Dale led sessions on The Problem with Our
Debt Money System and Alternatives to the Debt Money System.
Dale was in the early 1980's a confidant of Posse Comitatus
leader Gordon Kahl, according to the Bismarck Tribune.  The Posse
was an anti-tax, anti-government organization that swept the Farm
Belt in the 1970's and 1980's. Gordon Kahl, killed two federal
marshals in a shoot-out in Medina, North Dakota.  Dale told
federal marshals that he would hide Kahl, if he appeared, and
threatened to fight foreclosure on his ranch by shooting as many
of the sons of bitches as he could.  At one USTP event, Dale sold
The Revelator, a publication that rails against Anti-Christ
Banksters (sic) whose basic strategy is to instigate war and
finance both sides, especially if it involves Christians killing
Christians.

* Jeffrey Baker -- Chair, USTP of Florida, declared at the
Wisconsin USTP convention, Abortionists should be put to death.
They are murderers. Baker was identified as a speaker on a recent
conference program, as representing, 10th Amendment Militia,
Church Status.

     Leading theocrats called Christian Reconstructionists are
also prominent in USTP. For example, R.J. Rushdoony, the founder
of the Reconstructionist movement addressed the USTP's founding
convention. Reconstructionists believe that the modern world
should be governed by Old Testament Biblical Law.  Randall Terry,
for example, has been deeply influenced by Reconstructionism.

     USTP is also home to anti-gay organizing.  A notable example
is the Western States Area Chairman, Dan Hansen, and his sister,
Janine Hansen Hawkins who represent Nevada on the USTP National
Committee.  At a July USTA meeting, Howard Phillips held up
Janine Hansen's publication The Independent American, headlined:
Homosexual Agenda Exposed.  The Hansens, along with Lucille Lusk,
head of Las Vegas Coalition for Concerned Citizens, directed
Nevada's failed anti-gay ballot initiative.

     CONSPIRACIES R US

     One unifying element among the seemingly disparate factions
is a strong belief in vast conspiracies taking over the country.
Many are obsessed with what they call the New World Order.  At
USTP events, there is talk of invasions of the United States by
United Nations troops, and black helicopters harassing American
citizens.  The black helicopters have become a unifying symbol of
conspiratorial government control over the American population.

     Jeffrey Baker sees the plot best expressed as a star of
David, where the dark forces of the Illuminati, the Council on
Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission have united to
destroy the U.S.  Baker also believes that much of Karl Marx's
Communist Manifesto has become law in the United States. He is
not alone in such a view. Joe Slovenec for example, believes that
both the Republican and Democratic parties are socialist.

     Whatever the USTP's electoral future, it's significance lies
not so much in its current numbers, but in the new political
configuration it represents, especially as the new political home
to some of the most militant members of the anti-abortion
movement.

Sidebar:  A Pro-Life IRA?

     Back in March, Paul Hill, the leading proponent of the
murder of doctors who perform abortions, said to a reporter, I
could envision a covert organization developing- something like a
pro-life IRA, referring to the Irish Republican Army.  Could USTP
be what he had in mind?

      The IRA was closely linked to the above ground political
party Sinn Fein. Indeed, it was the head of Sinn Fein, that
recently negotiated a cease fire on behalf of the IRA. Imprisoned
members of the IRA, or martyrs, had outside support networks.

     This has structural parallels to USTP - a legal political
party, with ties to paramilitary organizations, notably USTP
National Committee member Matthew Trewhella's church militia.
Trewhella's, anti-abortion group Missionaries to the Pre-born
also sponsors a project called Prisoners of Christ, to provide
material and financial support to people convicted of
anti-abortion violence, and to their families.  Among the
Prisoners of Christ, are Shelly Shannon, who shot Dr. George
Tiller, convicted murderer Michael Griffin, and convicted
arsonist John Brockhoeft.

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