Bartholomew's Notes

As has been widely noted, next week will see Sarah Palin taking the stage with General William “Jerry Boykin” at Colorado Christian University:

Former Alaska governor and vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin will be the keynote speaker for Tribute to the Troops, a military and veterans appreciation rally at Colorado Christian University on May 2, 2011.

The rally will be held at CCU’s Lakewood Event Center. Also featured is Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, as well as cameos with members of all branches of the US Armed Forces.

Boykin gets around – a couple of weeks he was sharing a stage with Alan Keyes and neo-Pentecostal revivalist Rick Joyner to explain how Muslims “curse Jesus” when they pray (I’ve noted Boykin’s links to Joyner several times on this blog; Boykin is “Grand Chancellor” of a strange “chivalric order” of which Joyner is a member).

The “Tribute to the Troops” event is being organised by the Centennial Institute, a think-tank established at the university in 2009. Its president is former Colorado Senate President John Andrews:

John Andrews is Director of the Centennial Institute and a CCU cabinet member, as well as a Denver Post columnist and a TV/radio commentator. He was previously president of the Colorado Senate, chairman of the State Policy Network, and director of TCI Cable News. He has also served on a foreign scholarships commission for President George W. Bush, was a speechwriter for President Nixon and an education appointee under President Reagan, and founded the Independence Institute, a free-market think tank in Golden, Colorado.

Andrews also runs the “Backbone America Citizens Alliance”.

Boykin has spoken at CCU previously; according to an article by Andrews in the Centennial Review newsletter:

The Sharia Awareness Project, a campus lecture series, began when Centennial Institute opened its doors in 2009. Speakers have included John Guandolo, Brigitte Gabriel, Tawfik Hamid, Kamal Saleem, and Imam Karim Abuzaid, along with three lectures by Gen. Boykin.

Boykin, it should be recalled, contributed to the report Shariah: The Threat to America, published by Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy.

Andrews’ article complements a piece from Boykin, and he also has a warning about Muslims in America:

…when the question is asked, “Can a good Muslim be a good American?” we are inclined to say, “Of course, why not? “But if a good American is defined as one who gives high-est earthly allegiance to the Constitution with all its rights, liberties, representative institutions, and limitations upon government – and if a good Muslim is defined as one who gives highest earthly allegiance to the Koran with its absolutist code of Sharia law proclaimed as supreme above any civil law – the answer is not so simple. When you reason from those definitions, a clash of loyalties, potentially irreconcilable, becomes evident.

Jason Salzman of the Huffington Post called up Andrews and asked him about his use of the question-mark:

…I asked Andrews about whether it was true, what Andrews himself wrote in his Institute’s publication, that “the answer is not so simple” to the question, “Can a good Muslim be a good American?”

I told him that maybe I was reading too much into his statement, and did he really mean it? His use of the word “can,” I thought, left open the possibility that no Muslim could be a good American. Does Andrews really believe this?

“I’m not going to expand on what I wrote or comment further on what the general wrote,” he told me. “Both articles speak for themselves. They attempt to challenge thinking. I believe that’s one of the functions of any university. Some universities are better at challenging thinking in one direction. Some are better at challenging thinking in another.”

…Andrews said he told Palin’s staff that CCU’s Centennial Institute has worked several times with a “distinguished retired general” and wanted him to be part of the “uniformed services element” of the program, and Palin’s staff accepted this. It was agreed that Boykin’s remarks, as well as Palin’s, would be nonpolitical, Andrews said, adding that Boykin’s theme will be the sacrifice required to serve in the armed forces.

Incidentally, Boykin and Palin share the same ghost-writer, Lynne Vincent. Vincent has come to wider notice recently due to the success of Heaven is for Real, a book I discussed here.

Filed under: Uncategorized