psychoceramics: Politics: Kooks on Kooks

[acb @ cs.monash.edu.au (Andrew C. Bulhak)]

Looks like Kooks against Kooks; the far-right Christians are now
denouncing the Natural Law Party as Satanic...

 -- acb

----- Forwarded message from Harold Hubschman -----

To: silent-t--@w--.std.com
From: Harold Hubschman <haroldh @ ksgbbs.harvard.edu>
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 1996 11:52:20 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Levitate Christian Soldiers



<Forwards levitating>

I haven't been following the natural law party here in the US, but in Canada
they had quite a presence during the last federal election. Doug Henning,
the internationally known magician, was one of their candidates. He ran a
campaign add that said (and to quote Dave Barry, I'm not making this up)

"I can make a live elephant disappear on stage. Imagine what I could do to
the federal budget deficit."

One of the key planks in their platform was that they would convene 7000
yogic flyers in Ottawa, who would bring on improved government and general
well being through mass levitation.

They didn't win any seats in parliament and the deficit hasn't gone down.
hmmm.....

hh

ps -- in the following, "brigades" refers to the Buchanan Brigades, of
pitchfork fame. They are an entertaining bunch.

I believe eagles refers to members of phylis shlafley's eagle forum, a less
entertaining bunch.


> 
> ------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
> From:          JRSW64A--@p--.com ( UNITED   CHRISTIAN WAY)
> Date:          Tue, 18 Jun 1996 09:28:46, -0500
> To:            l--@i--.com
> Subject:       NATURAL LAW PARTY 6-15 INQUIRER,PHILADEL
> 
> Linda and all Brigades and Eagles,
> 
> The following is an article from this last Saturday's  6-15-96
> Philadelphia Inquirer "Boxed" right inside on page 3, about the
> "NATURAL LAW PARTY". It takes up 2/3rds of page 3.
> 
> After reading the following article, I am sure that you will quickly
> conclude that the "NATURAL LAW PARTY" is not a Godly movement, but
> just the opposite. It is a direct work of Satan! It is a "NEW AGE"
> "NEW WORLD"  "RELIGIOUS CULT PARTY."
> 
> They already have more Qualified States on the Ballot than USTP or
> even the REFORM Party. The Libertarian Party is the 3rd Party Leader
> with about 30 Qualified States on the Ballot.
> 
> "WE MUST FIGHT EVIL HEAD-ON WITH THE WORD OF GOD"
> 
> IT IS TIME TO STOP KEEPING GOD TO OURSELVES !
> IT IS TIME TO BE "VERY OPEN" AND SPREAD GOD'S
> WORD BY MOUTH AND BY DEEDS TO ALL THE WORLD!
> 
> "ONWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS MARCHING ON TO WAR"
> 
> ===============================
> 
> His Party Was Begun By A GURU'S followers.
> It has its critics.
> 
> A MAN FOR A STRESSED ELECTORATE
> 
> Philadelphia Inquirer Washington Bureau
> 
> Saturday June 15, 1996 by Brigid Schulte
> 
> FAIRFIELD, Iowa -- Dressed in a tan business suit and tassled
> loafers, John Hagelin looks like a regular pol running for office. He
> waves serenely as supporters in this rural farming town call out,
> "Hello, Mr. Future President!"
> 
> The difference is in Hagelin's mind, which, he says, has unusually
> "coherent" brain waves.
> 
> And in his prophetlike speech: "Let everyone pay according to what
> they earn. But let them not pay too much."
> 
> In what he wants government to do: expand human consciousness. And in
> the way he wants to do it: Transcendental Meditation.
> 
> Does that mean, if elected, he would make everyone meditate?
> 
> The Harvard-educated physicist-turned- presidential candidate smiled
> beatifically. Twangs of afternoon Gandharva music filtered from the
> town's radio station. He finished the last morsels of a strawberry
> cheesecake and decaf mocha cappuccino and said with otherworldly
> calm:
> 
> "That would be nice."
> 
> Then he left to meditate --"levitate" actually - not far from
> Maharishi University of management in one of the town's two Golden
> Domes of Pure Knowledge. Just off Taste of Utopia Way.
> 
> Never heard of the balding, soft-spoken Hagelin, 42, and his Natural
> Law Party? You will. The fledgling third party is outstripping
> billionaire Ross Perot and his Reform Party's effort to get on the
> ballot in all 50 states. (The Natural Law Party is officially on 19
> state ballots. Perot's is on 13.)
> 
> And your tax dollars, about $110,000 in fed- eral campaign funds so
> far, are helping Hagelin and about 300 other NLP candidates spread
> the word and enlighten the voters.
> 
> The party was founded in 1992 by the followers of the octogenarian
> Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, one- time guru to the Beatles and a man
> Hagelin reveres as "a saint." And it is one of about 42 Natural Law
> Parties springing up from Austria to New Zealand.
> 
> The Natural Law Party is based on the notion that people are so
> stressed that they have gotten out of whack with natural law, which
> governs everything from the movement of atoms to the rotating of solar
> systems. The only way to get back in alignment is through TM.
> 
> According to TMers, by reciting a Sanskrit word, meditators calm down
> enough to reach what they call the "unified field," the field of the
> collective consciousness that they say unites all of nature.
> 
> What they promise is nothing short of Shangri-La. Perfect health.
> Smaller government. World peace. If only everyone would do TM. Or pay
> the TMers to do it.
> 
> Already, they claim that large groups doing TM "yogic flying" --
> hopping about while in the lotus position -- have eased tensions in
> the Middle East, cut crime in Washington, and ended civil wars in
> Mozambique and Senegal.
> 
> Although Hagelin knows he hasn't a prayer of winning, third parties
> have always brought new ideas, such as universal suffrage and child
> labor laws, into the mainstream. That's what he wants to do.
> 
> Critics warn that the Natural Law Party is nothing more than a front
> to get publicity and more converts to the Maharishi's 35-year-old
> movement. And they argue that TM is a Hindu religion that has no
> place in politics. Hagelin denies all of that.
> 
> Still, voters are signing up in droves. On Hagelin's maiden
> presidential run in 1992 he got barely 40,000 votes. In 1994, the
> party ran 100 candidates for state and local offices.
> 
> Some got as much as 20 percent of the vote.
> 
> The party is now attracting not only self- described TMers and the
> "granola vote" - people who may shop for bee pollen at health-food
> stores or get an occasional acupuncture treatment. College students
> and young voters are flocking to the party. This is the group that NLP
> leaders are targeting because their "clear" minds are "open to new
> ideas." Students make up more than half the membership in California.
> 
> "It's a deep party," said Erica Senecal, 26, a new member from Santa
> Cruz. "Last time, I voted for Ross Perot just because he was funny.
> But this is something I can put my heart into."
> 
> Senecal is just the kind of voter the Natural Law Party wants to
> attract. She does not meditate. "I like stressing out," she said.
> 
> What draws Senecal and other young voters to the party platform --
> its support for renewable energy and preventive health care and its
> stand against genetically engineered food -- has nothing to do with
> TM.
> 
> About the only thing that gets the unflapp- able Hagelin close to
> flapped is the suggestion that his is the "TM Party."
> 
> Hagelin and party spokesman Robert Roth go to great lengths to
> explain how the party's platform has broadened beyond TM. Hagelin has
> made it through hour-long news conferences without even mentioning
> it.
> 
> The party calls for a balanced budget by 1999, cuts in defense
> spending and a 10 percent flat tax by 2001, far lower than the 17
> percent GOP proposals floating about. It supports campaign-finance
> reform, disavows negative campaigning and, like the GOP, wants to
> return power to state and local governments.
> 
> But, depite Hagelin's protestations, the key is still TM.
> 
> Most of the party's big backers are current and former employees or
> board members of the TM nonprofit organization, the Maharishi Vedic
> Educational Development Corp., worth about $38 million, or its
> for-profit subsidiary, Heaven on Earth Inns. Many donors, who give
> anything from pocket change to the maximum $20,000, are TM teachers,
> work for Maharishi University or are wealthy developers, oil and gas
> producers and businessmen who say they have practiced TM for years.
> 
> A close reading of the platform shows that the only way the Natural
> Law Party can balance the budget and cut taxes by the turn of the
> century is if everone does TM, calms down, expands his consciousness
> and becomes more self-governing. Enlightened citizens in touch with
> natural law won't have problems, you see, and won't need government.
> 
> TM is ey to one of the party's central proposals. "Group for a
> Government" calls for the federal government to fund a sort of rapid
> reaction force of anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 yogic fliers. This
> "Super Radiance" group, lie the permanent one in Fairfield, would be
> deployed to hot spots around the world to meditate and emit positive
> brain waves to chill things out.
> 
> Hagelin himself recently proposed that the Clinton administration pay
> $2 million to send just such a group to Bosnia.
> 
> If TM is central to the party, why not admit it?
> 
> "The Maharishi has said the party has to grow to encompass everyone,"
> Roth said. "This is 100 percent a publicity ploy --- all cooked up by
> the Maharishi," said Curtis Mailloux, a former TM teacher and
> graduate of the Maharishi University in Fairfield. "He doesn't even
> believe in democracy. He believes in a monarchy with an enlightened
> leader."
> 
> Mailloux, now a mortgage banker in Virginia, said publicity means new
> converts, which, at $1,000 a head to learn TM, means more money for
> the Maharishi and his plans for amusement park-like Veda Lands,
> universities specializ- ing in the Science of Creative Intelligence,
> and Heaven on Earth resorts around the world.
> 
> "The flying sutra cost me #3,000," Mailloux said bitterly. "And the
> mantra I got, each syllable cost $400 a pop: `Shree Shree,' count
> $800. `Eing Eign. Na Maa.' There's a lot of money in those words."
> 
> John Hagelin remains serene when such allegations are brought to him.
> 
> Hagelin claims no connection with the Maharishi and the Maharishi
> European Council of Natural Law Parties. But Benny Feldman, a
> high-ranking official in the TM movement who lives in Holland near
> the Maharishi, shed some lght:
> 
> In the spring of 1992, the Maharishi announced he had discovered the
> Constitution of the Universe, the ultimate political theory. That,
> Feldman said, "inspired" every- one to put the theory into practice.
> 
> "The theory is that government should be a preventive agency above
> all," Feldman said. "It has already failed because its role should
> be to avert dangers that have not yet arisen." 
> 
> And the only way to do that? "Expanding the coherence in the
> collective conscious- ness." You got it. TM. 
> 
> ====end=======
> *****{{{{{{{{{*****************}}}}}}}}}*****
>     Un-Official News and Opinion from 
> Linda Muller Web Author l--@i--.com
>   Member Northern Alabama Kitchen Militia
>  Use the Ballot Box - Not the Cartridge Box!
> ''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
> Pat Buchanan Internet Campaign Headquarters
>      http://www.buchanan.org
> ''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
> US Taxpayers Party Internet Headquarters
>      http://www.ustaxpayers.org
> ''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
> GO PAT....GO BRIGADES....GO USTP!!!!!!!!
> *****{{{{{{{{{*****************}}}}}}}}}*****
> 

----- End of forwarded message from Harold Hubschman -----

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