Dear Ms. ___________,
I have decided to submit a column to you, for the Statesman to run at the earliest opportunity you have. I have two concerns in doing this, but am proceeding cautiously nonetheless. The first concern is that I do not want you to conclude from this that I have in any way decided to write this column in lieu of taking other legal action to secure the retraction and apology owed to me by your paper. If your understanding is that to run such an “equal time” response from me constitutes an agreement with me to consider the matter settled, then I would ask you to not run the column. The second concern is that your paper’s cavalier attitude toward the reputations of others puts me in the position of treating the question of whether or not I am a “neo-Nazi” as a point/counterpoint sort of thing, where everyone has their opinion. But the harm done to me and the institutions I am associated with is a real and tangible harm, and something has to be done about this quickly. It appears that your paper is unwilling to do what needs to be done quickly, and so I offer the column below as a first step.
I would also ask that this column be run in its entirety. I am not granting permission to run a truncated or edited version of it (of course, excluding typos).
I understand that you are in a difficult spot personally, and do not want to be unkind to you at all.
Cordially,
Douglas Wilson
I am writing this as a minister of Jesus Christ, and I am in a position where I need to do this because we live in a time when virtually anything can be said about conservative evangelicals. So before denying that I am a neo-Nazi, let me therefore state at the outset that I am a minister of the gospel, and that Jesus Christ died to secure the salvation of all His people, gathered from every tribe, nation, and language. I hate all doctrines of racial supremacy, and have consistently opposed them publicly over the course of many years. I loathe racism, and always have. My most recent book entitled Black & Tan has an entire chapter showing the sinful and wicked nature of all forms of racial animosity or vainglory. All this is a matter of public record, and is easily ascertainable.
Why do I have to make such a statement? In the Friday edition of the Idaho Statesman, Nick Gier published an opinion piece that was egregiously reasoned by him, and outrageously introduced with a libelous headline, provided courtesy of this newspaper. That headline was false, misleading, libelous, defamatory, untrue, and ran like this: “Neo-Nazi Christians make presence felt again in Northern Idaho.”
The article goes on to argue (if you can dignify this travesty with the term argue) that I and a number of my colleagues are in fact those neo-Nazis — up here in the panhandle, making our presence felt. I was initially hesitant to respond to this libelous charge in this space because I do not agree that this kind of question is a point/counterpoint kind of issue. I have never been convicted of bank robbery either, and this is not a fact upon which there are two legitimate opinions. I have never been to Brazil, I do not pal around with Donald Trump, and I do not have a Kerry/Edwards bumper-sticker on my truck. These are things that reporters and journalists used to call facts. These are things that reporters, journalists and editors used to check on before they would run, say, an article that claimed I was wanted for bank robbery in three states. And suppose that had been the charge in Gier’s column, but it turned out to be entirely and completely false. Do you think it would be a sufficient response for the newspaper to offer me space to respond, so that I could clean up their mess? I didn’t think so.
Gier’s “argument” that we are neo-Nazis was of the “six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon” type. His article contained a number of simple factual errors (e.g. I do not hold the franchise for any schools), but the centerpiece of his reasoning was that Richard Butler (a real neo-Nazi type) performed the marriage ceremony of someone who belonged to an organization that had dealings with another organization which had a relationship with a man who is a friend of mine. On the basis of this kind of cracker-jack shoe leather reporting, on the basis of this scoop, the Idaho Statesman decided to run with the column, and they helpfully provided the inflammatory headline for it. But this is bad luck for the Statesman, because they are now publishing me, and if this kind of reasoning were valid, that makes the Statesman neo-Nazi too. They have only one more degree of separation from Richard Butler than I am.
I don’t get to supply the headline for this article, but I can still request one. If I had my druthers, the headline for this column would be “Idaho Statesman Admits Their Own Neo-Nazi Ties.” But I doubt they will run a headline like that (being more concerned for their own reputation than for ours), and so a fundamental fact remains. The Idaho Statesman still owes an apology to an awful lot of individuals and institutions who were falsely accused by that headline and column, and needs to publish a retraction immediately. The Ninth Commandment (the one against bearing false witness) applies to newspapers too.