Ohio's Code of Ethics & J.K. Blackwell

Directy from an older, but nevertheless interesting Yurica Report comes a rather fascinating examination of a "Code of Ethics" embedded in the Ohio Secretary of State's government website representing J. Kenneth Blackwell:

J. Kenneth Blackwell has stepped to the forefront of the American culture wars. Standing with his feet securely rooted in a form of Orwellian "Double-Think," he has posted his official endorsement of a 20-point religious moral code claimed to be "a shared vocabulary of character-building ethics" on Ohio's official Secretary of State web site. Blackwell wrote, "Character is the cornerstone of American citizenship. And good citizenship is the foundation of community. It is also the foundation of both good business and good government." (Note that he places business before government.)

Interesting indeed...

Yurica Report goes on to say:

The 20-Rules to "good" character is titled "UncommonSense" which Blackwell recommends "as a character ethics model for Ohio's business and government leaders." Blackwell invites candidates for office to join him in launching "a revolution of character-building in our great state."

Blackwell speaks candidly. It is a revolution in a deceptively pretty package. Hidden in its paragraphs are concepts of submission, obedience, inspection of the personal lives of people, and the loss of personal rights and freedom that would make America's founding fathers stand on their heads in their graves. In short it is a Dominionist document: a religious treatise in secular terms, but dominionist to the core. It's a brilliant little package to get millions of evangelical Christians and their friends to accept authoritarian government without even a whisper of protest.

emphasis mine

Woah.  Seriously.

Big Brother anyone?

My personal favorite of the Codes is the following:

LIBERTY: High-character people preserve their public rights by fulfilling their personal responsibilities. In order to preserve public freedoms, every person must exercise private restraints. Therefore, free people embrace self-control so the need for public controls is minimized. As a result, high-character people communicate and live out character ethics and intentionally exhort others to do likewise as an active act of preserving liberty for everyone. (Observable Virtues: temperance, self-control)

In other words, surpress whatever tendencies the people in power consider innapropriate, or they will do it for you.  Or the line about "high character people" "exhorting" others to follow in thier footsteps?  That reeks of Evangelical philosophy if ever there was any, in my opinion.

Nice.

It never ceases to amaze me how the Religious Right has managed to become so adept at taking so many civic talking points and turned them on thier ears to suit thier own agenda.  And they do it right under the noses of the average citizen.

•  High-character people

  would not be in charge of election in which they are running for Gov.  He should step down from one or the other.

  by Mary Anna on Mon Jan 30, 2006 at 01:19:25 PM PDT

•  not only on the website

  Anyone who runs for any office in Ohio gets that crap from the SOS office.  My dad is on the county school board and he got that crap and Blackwell includes with it a pledge that you can sign as well stating that you have read uncommon sense and you uphold the crap.  He thought it was something he had to do-- I told him to throw it away, just as I did when I ran for state rep.  I kinda forgot about that shit, and I didn't realize the origins of it.  what a turd.

  by bacchusbucks on Mon Jan 30, 2006 at 01:20:18 PM PDT

•  See also

  the article "Cult of Character" by Silja J.A. Talvi for a truly scary, detailed description of the "good" character and training for it that Blackwell is promoting "'as a character ethics model for Ohio's business and government leaders.'" Originally published in In These Times, it can now be found as a printable document at:

  http://www.truthout.org/...

  This is a must read for anyone interested in the Character Training Institute (CTI) or the International Association of Character Cities (IACC).  It describes "[h]ow the 'secular' Character Training Institute is working to build evangelist Bill Gothard's vision of a First-Century Kingdom of God--one city, one state, one school board, one police force and one mind at a time."

  by lcrp on Mon Jan 30, 2006 at 01:31:40 PM PDT

  •  Spooky

    I read that article a bit ago and it made my stomach churn.  These folks scare the hell out of me...

    by Brubs on Mon Jan 30, 2006 at 01:36:41 PM PDT

•  Blackwell and Hackett, two cultural warriors

  What Ohio really doesn't need in 2006

  http://www.ohio.com/...

  (edited down for copyright reasons...please read it all at the link.  Steve Hoffman, Beacon Journal editorial writer wrote this quite well.)

  Not that it was very far from the surface, but full-throated cultural warfare has broken out in Ohio. The prime mover, of course, is J. Kenneth Blackwell, secretary of state and leading Republican candidate for governor.
  But the battle has been joined by Democrat Paul Hackett, the tough-talking lawyer and Iraq war veteran who is challenging U.S. Rep. Sherrod Brown in the U.S. Senate primary.

  ...

  Blackwell first turned up the heat by leading the 2004 campaign for passage of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. That galvanized the religious right and energized George W. Bush's re-election campaign in Ohio, which gave the president the second term his father couldn't grasp. As the 2006 Republican primary approaches, Blackwell has continued a close alliance with the religious right.
  But Sunday, a group of 31 Columbus-area pastors said they had had enough. They filed a complaint with the IRS, alleging that the Rev. Rod Parsley's World Harvest Church in Columbus and the Rev. Russell Johnson's Fairfield Christian Church, and related organizations, were illegally engaging in partisan politics

  ...

  Blackwell and Hackett have to answer to the voters. As John Green, director of the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron, suggested to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Hackett could suffer a backlash from the religious right were he to win the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate.
  What about Blackwell? His move to the right is smart politics in a Republican primary, but what about the risks in a general election?
  Blackwell seems to have concluded that he can run to the right and keep running, winning the primary and then gaining a narrow but rock-solid victory in November.
  But it's worth remembering that George H.W. Bush had trouble with ``the big mo'' (for momentum) as his re-election campaign steamed out of Houston in 1992 to face defeat by Democrat Bill Clinton. Then, as now, uncertainty about job stability, pensions and health care was high. Those were exactly the issues on which Clinton focused his campaign.

  by LakeThomas on Mon Jan 30, 2006 at 01:54:51 PM PDT