Introduction
David Hume set loose some bad juju into the world when he denied, in effect, that we can know that the cue ball caused the eight ball to thwack into the corner pocket. All we can say with any degree of certainty is that the one event followed the other in time. We cannot see or measure anything called causation. All we see is one thing happening, and then another thing happening. Philosophy can get pretty deep sometimes.
But Sometimes Ethical Slopes Are Slippery
But the reason careful thought on this subject still matters is because people get upset—as some folks recently did with my friend Toby Sumpter—when you make assertions about general causation or trajectory that have a moral component. “You can’t say that!” is a common response when you argue, as I do in fact argue, that there are moral consequences to urging people to “be whatever you want to be,” as applied to clothing, hairstyles, and making yourself more metallic than your maiden aunt would perhaps desire. All this is the cultural prelude to that very same exhortation being applied to some poor sap’s genitalia by means of a surgeon’s knife. No one who says yes to the first, for the reasons stated, can consistently say no to the second demand, provided those same reasons are trotted out in all their tawdry glory.
Cartoon footnote here.
Which Brings Us to the Civil War
Change the subject for just a moment, not to change the subject, but to show that the principle is one with universal applications. Once we have “all-together-now-agreed” that statues of Robert E. Lee simply must come down because he-was-a-slaveowner-period-end-of-discussion-you-hater-and-any-moment’s-hesitancy-in-agreeing-with-our-most-righteousy-demands-reveals-a-seething-racism—perhaps you are familiar with this line of argument?—we will almost immediately discover that the very same rationale applies to the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial. And there you are, looking pretty silly as you try to buy a new refrigerator on President’s Day because the clerk tells you, with a knowing glance, that it is now the Supreme Leader’s Refrigerator Day Sale. Furthermore, he is required by law to report you for the thought-crime of referring to our erstwhile presidents without so much as a hint of condemnation in your voice. No deal on a refrigerator and time in the slammer. Slammer is perhaps a poor way of putting it. I meant Glorious Sunrise Camp for the Inspiration and Reeducation of the Ideologically Wayward.
What is wrong with these people? Even if you differ with my read on the history of the Late Unpleasantness, do what the great Anthony Esolen does. “We want to know what it was like to be a good man on the wrong side: the godly and beloved and dauntless Stonewall Jackson; the man of impeccable honor, Robert E. Lee” (Out of the Ashes, p. 65). Emeth, from The Last Battle, knew how to honor an honorable enemy. But as for you, hapless Christian, trying hard not to blow over in this gale-force lunacy—know this. As soon as it is forbidden to honor what is honorable, you must grasp that it will almost immediately be mandatory to honor what is dishonorable. “What are you talking about, you extremist hedge preacher? . . . oh, excuse me, wait—corporate has ordered little rainbow flags for all our desks. Gotta pass them out. The overseers with the whips won’t care how much we know until they know how much we care.”
Foreshadowing: More about that word extremist in a week or so.
So while I am here, conservatives like to complain a lot about all the “snowflakes” out there, and I take their point. But think about this for a moment. They are weepy, melty, limp-wristed snowflakes all right—but they are still beating us up. Maybe they are tough guy snowflakes. Or perhaps they are the wimpiest persecutors ever, and they are still kicking our butt. Draw your own conclusions.
Back to the Closet
So back to the sartorial catechism for the pomosexual revolution. The issue is not this odd configuration of cloth, or that weird display over there. People have always been weird. I am of course thinking of an example like the Elizabethan ruff, sometimes called a picadill. Whoever came up with that one was probably pretty high though, but not a lot of damage was done. No blood, no foul. But there is a vast difference between outré fashion like that, on the one hand, and decadence on the other.
Decadence is deliberate. It is not just a fashion, but is rather a fashion that holds to the telos of the drag queen. It wants to keep the white bread suburban thing going—khakis and button-down—so that it has a bland backdrop to be outrageous against. However, the revolution has been too successful, and this is why the cool kids keep running into trouble. They are having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that they are the Establishment now, and they are having a hard time coming up with an America to revolt against. Everybody wants to join, which kind of ruins the whole thing.
Even the edgy Christians, always an easily bewildered bunch, think they can adopt the uniform and yet not go along with the problematic parts of the program. Thread the needle, as it were. Wear the Hitler Youth armbands, but boycott the big rallies. This is how there are plenty of Christians involved in all this who do in fact say yes to the early exhortations (“Armbands are cool, where does the Bible say we can’t wear armbands?”) and no thereafter (“The rallies can be mean-spirited, I hate meanies”). That happens, and I am cheerfully prepared to acknowledge that it can happen quite a bit. Christians can be pretty elastic and bendy in the joints, and not every raindrop intends to be part of the flood.
But the fact that people can have multiform reasons for putting on the diversity uniform doesn’t change the fact that it remains a uniform. For those who think diversity uniform is oxymoronic, it would be better to say that diversity is a dark joke. And as a uniform, it means. As something that communicates, it brings other things about. Human communication causes things to happen. There. I used the word causes.
Fixin’ to Tear It All Down
Now of course we want to be very careful with this whole subject because there really are different kinds of causation—as Aristotle taught us all—provided of course that Hume was being a perpilocutionist. If he were not, then Aristotle taught us nothing. We just happened to know stuff after he did.
Without doing any formal philosophy, we can say that placing apples, cinnamon, sugar, a knife, flour, and a pie plate out on the counter is not something that “causes” a pie. But we can say, because an intentional being is at work in the kitchen, that the cook—as they say down South—is fixin’ to bake a pie. All of this is preparation. It is build up. It is setting out the tools and ingredients. Somebody is doing something. Somebody else, if they have an astute eye, can look at them and tell that they are fixin’ to do it.
Now things get a little more complicated if you are looking at what an entire culture is fixin’ to do. But the fact remains that many things are done by entire cultures and that those same cultures prepared themselves beforehand to do them. The fact that such broader issues are more complicated than simply making a pie does not make them impossible to understand or see. Seduction takes time, and seduction of an entire culture takes even more time. And it seems to me that our feckless generation, in the back seat with clothes off, is not really in a strong position to deny that it was in fact a seduction.
But we want to rationalize anyway because we instinctively know that sin makes things always murkier—and thus the rationalizer has way more scope. There is a whole class of behaviors that we want to indulge in and we want to indulge in them while covered over with a cloak of plausible deniability. This desire for deniability is even more intense among Christians because we do possess an ostensible standard that has the category of “sin” in it. This makes us more susceptible to the enticements of hypocrisy, not less. And such convolutions of hypocrisy are a sight to behold.
Christians and non-Christians both do this, but the problem is often far more acute among Christians. Take, for an everyday tiny example, an article of clothing that was designed to get men to look at a woman’s breasts. The pattern was thought-through, engineered, designed, and calculated. We live in a time where we want the designers to do this, but we also want the women wearing said article to be able to be shocked and dismayed when some oaf she doesn’t like takes her up on her standing offer. Christian and non-Christian women both reserve the right to be shocked and dismayed, but they do it in different ways. Christian women in this trap do it all the time (because they are supposed to be Christians all the time), while non-Christian women usually reserve the deniability clause for work situations. Christian women who do this have to be hypocritical all the time, while non-Christian women just have to be hypocritical from 9 to 5. “I am a trained professional, and it is totally unprofessional when that guy in marketing leers at me. The way I want all the guys to leer when I wear the same outfit to the clubs. In the evenings, which is my social life. After work, which is totally professional.”
The issue here is plausible deniability, but in our society the plausibility is frequently provided, not by the facts of the situation, but by the dire threats of a societal beat down that our culture presents to the poor chump who dares to point out that the emperor has no clothes, and that the lady who walks through marketing every day has less clothing than she pretends.
Not Billiard Ball Physics But . . .
Making observations about cultural or historical causation is not an exercise in billiard ball physics. I grant it. It is not a science, or at least not that kind of science. But there is a line between screaming girls at a Jerry Lee Lewis concert and the promiscuity at Woodstock. There is a line between the centralizing court decisions after the Civil War and Roe. There is a line between the theological liberalism of the early twentieth century and the theological liberalism currently trying to take root in the PCA. The only thing modern evangelical Presbyterians don’t have in place yet is a missionary named Pearl S. Buck. There is a line between Bauhaus architecture and the loss of humane letters.
But given the nature of the case, because we are dealing with more than two billiard balls, anyone who wants to draw such a line can always be challenged. The world of sinful hearts is not lacking for clever minds. They are not about to run out of their twists and turns. You see, Jeremiah, what you don’t seem to understand, in your flat and unhelpful way, just like all those other boring and pedestrian prophets, is that we are all down here in Egypt, suffering these grievous ills, because we did not burn incense to the queen of heaven enough (Jer. 44:17-19). You and your simplistic and entirely predictable denunciations are what got us into this mess. The moral majority is dead, Jeremiah.
Breaking the Embargo
All this much should be obvious to those who have eyes in their heads, and who have not been successfully cudgeled into silence. And then there is me. Excuse me, predicate nominative. Then there is I, sounding as pretentious as all get out. I myself have not yet been cudgeled into silence, but I have been embargoed.
Why is there a formal embargo in the Reformed and evangelical world on goods shipped from Moscow? This is a limited query, not a complaint. I say formal embargo because we are still doing a brisk business on the ecclesiastical black market, selling things off the back porch. We are thankful for all the ministerial moonshiners out there, in cars like the General Lee, supplying jugs of controversial common sense to all those dry counties of Christendom. We are an underground theological speakeasy, and business is good. And man, common sense can have a kick. Not like the tap water of overdone liberal platitudes.
But the reason for the embargo is that I draw certain lines of causal connection down through American history in a way that embarrasses the established narrative. I have been saying for decades that he who says A must say B. Now here we are. B is looming large, and some Christians are swallowing hard, gearing up to say it, and other recalcitrant Christians are wondering how the hell they got here, and a handful of other Christians are wondering how we got to the point where a Christian writer who says how the hell is way more controversial than the ones who tearily empathize the gaudy gayness of it all.
Here is a little something I wrote, over twenty years ago. And if I had time to rummage I could probably go back a decade or two more.
“If those who hate the Word of God can succeed in getting Christians to be embarrassed by any portion of the Word of God, then that portion will continually be employed as a battering ram against the godly principles that are currently under attack. In our day, three of the principle issues are abortion, feminism, and sodomy.”
This battle is a battle of narratives, and you cannot fight this plot point or that one without challenging the narrative. Too many Christians are in love with the narrative established by the bad guys, but want to retain (don’t ask how) a couple of key plot points from a story that our people used to tell once. This is like agreeing to be the director of a remake of Pulp Fiction, while insisting on inserting a couple of touching moments from The Parent Trap.
We Can Still Slice It Thin if We Want
But for those who would like to remain coy, for those who want to pretend that the collapse of our culture is not the most obvious feature of our time, let me offer some words from Ambrose Bierce, words to reflect on.
TECHNICALITY, n. In an English court a man named Home was tried for slander in having accused his neighbor of murder. His exact words were: “Sir Thomas Holt hath taken a cleaver and stricken his cook upon the head, so that one side of the head fell upon one shoulder and the other side upon the other shoulder.” The defendant was acquitted by instruction of the court, the learned judges holding that the words did not charge murder, for they did not affirm the death of the cook, that being only an inference.
xkcd for the win!
Doug: here’s the original if you want to cite it: https://xkcd.com/552/
Gary, thanks. Done.
A more nuanced statement is that correlation _usually_ implies causality, but ambiguously so. The second part meaning that you can confuse cause and effect, and/or there is a third, unknown factor which ties the others together.
Learned not only from statistics, but a career in analyzing experimental data, both my own and others.
As the comic’s author said: “Correlation doesn’t imply
causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture
furtively while mouthing ‘look over there’.”
Nonsense, it simply stares down your top like the oaf it is. No need to complicate things.
Exodus 32: 7And the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. 8They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them. They have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’” 9And the Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. 10Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may… Read more »
I would watch a Pulp Fiction/ Parent Trap mashup.
It is a pretty good observation. As much as people love to mock the snowflakes, they are beating us up.
As one who was born in the foothills of the Ohio River valley where moonshining and General Lee are still quite popular, consider me a proud ministerial moonshiner, pastor.
So, you are back?!
Hope your deployment / task went well!
I am and happy to be so.
It went as well as can be expected.
Time is still tight, having started ministry and all, but I couldn’t resist a post like this.
Woke, triggered, and stupid is no way to go through life, son
source
Re the snowflake thing – this has to be recognised as the old Mutt & Jeff act. The professionally aggrieved wail and gnash their teeth, and the sensible, reasonable governing authorities Hear Their Concerns… as justification to do what they wanted to do anyway. The snowflakes aren’t the ones beating people up.
The actual snowflakes are useful idiots.
I have been informed that Pastor Wilson is simply a warthog with polished bristles. ME, being fond of shiny objects, have foolishly allowed myself to be brainwashed by the shine of those bristles. Were I actually capable of critical thought, I would obviously be happily helping to dress our Lenin statue in drag for gay pride. “They are weepy, melty, limp-wristed snowflakes all right—but they are still beating us up.” Well, here is a real blow to the pride, that is because the limp wristy ones actually hold the moral upper hand on account of the perpetual defense of all… Read more »
“Even the edgy Christians, always an easily bewildered bunch, ….”
So true.
picadill = piccadill
“They are weepy, melty, limp-wristed snowflakes all right—but they are still beating us up. Maybe they are tough guy snowflakes. Or perhaps they are the wimpiest persecutors ever, and they are still kicking our butt. Draw your own conclusions.” Luke 16:8 (TLB) 8 “The rich man had to admire the rascal for being so shrewd.[a] And it is true that the citizens of this world are more clever in dishonesty* than the godly* are. My conclusion is that Godly people are restricted to practicing what they preach, don’t let their moral standards melt and do not practice the evil of… Read more »
Hope we’re at the Elijah stage and not the Jehu stage.
Who doesn’t like a Mount Carmel experience?!????
Unless of course, one happens to be a propet (sp? no.) of Baal!????
I want to say the cartoon is really good. I mean, I read it, and I know how I felt after. But why…
I’ve read through quite a few of the heated arguments about removing the statues in New Orleans, and I have not seen anyone suggest they needed to come down because Robert E. Lee or any of the others owned slaves. What I have read is that the statues were seen as representing, in the mayor’s words, the cult of devotion to the lost cause of the confederacy, or as a celebration of confederate values and beliefs, including a belief in the righteousness of chattel slavery. Whether or not that is accurate, it’s a different argument from saying that all statues… Read more »
“What I have read is that the statues were seen as representing, in the mayor’s words, the cult of devotion to the lost cause of the confederacy, or as a celebration of confederate values and beliefs…”
Many “confederate values and beliefs” are actually Christian values and beliefs. What some call the “lost cause of the confederacy” is actually symbolic of the essence of American freedom.
… namely, a society founded entirely on the glories of slavery? The Cornerstone speech by Vice President Alexander Stephens ( http://civilwarcauses.org/corner.htm ) is rather well-known for outright stating that the intrinsic rightness of slavery made it an excellent foundation for the Confederacy (and in the same passages, that the dispute over this was in fact the “immediate cause” of the secessions).
That’s true–if the essence of Christian values and American freedom is one person’s right to own another, force him to work for no wages, physically mistreat him, and sell his children down the river. I wouldn’t have said that most Americans think that represents a freedom worth fighting for. I find it a little odd that you do.
Very well said. :)
An overlooked aspect is that these monuments were established as a means of seeking unity between the parties to the war. As Pastor Wilson says, it represented a desire to respect honorable behavior on the losing side. New Orleans has decided that’s worth nothing, and is ready to rub salt in old wounds. For a short period of time, I’m sure that will seem like a fantastic strategy. But every one of the people involved in that decision is now marked for life.
I saw that one of the workers contracted to handle the removal stopped after he got death threats and had his truck torched.
A pity that sort of thing couldn’t be conducted in a more consistent and humane manner.
I’m pretty sure that’s a completely false rewrite of history. The statues went up in 1884, 1891, 1911, and 1915, after we’d already seen the New Orleans Riot of 1866, the Colfax Massacre of 1873, the Liberty Place Insurrection of 1874, and the Coushatta massacre of 1877. I highly encourage anyone who isn’t familiar with post-Civil War history in the South to look up each of those incidents. After years of violence against freed Black persons and anti-slavery Republicans, in 1877 the federal troops protecting freedmen pulled out and the Democrats and their White Supremacist allies took the governorship of… Read more »
Interesting. I’d just like to point out that it’s possible to hate both slavery and Yankee abolitionism.
Yes, I think that there were much more Godly paths for both sides of the conflict to take.
Interesting. I admit my knowledge of post-Reconstruction New Orleans history is rather casual. But given how Sheridan treated that city it’s hardly surprising.
Violence begets violence, no?
Not really. Sometimes mercy begets violence too.
I would say that, most of the time, conflict plus uncertainty begets violence.
Yes, conflict plus uncertainty begets violence. Looking at shared history helps to create some certainty and a connection to those who went before you.
They march in lockstep with their “Celebrate Diversity” banner.
Pastor Wilson, do you feel that only the Robert E. Lee statue should have stayed up, or that all four statues should have stayed up? Also, do you understand why Black persons in New Orleans would have an issue with statues that for much of the last century had been used to openly promote a White Supremacist narrative that considered them less than full citizens, often less even than full human beings? All four statues were erected at a time when a mixture of mob violence and political maneuvering was disenfranchised and segregating Black persons away from political power and… Read more »
What I would say is that this whole thing is an exercise in futility from the start. Go back three years ago: hardly anyone cared except for maybe a few fringe groups. Now, suddenly, removing Confederate statues and banning the Confederate flag are considered among the highest virtues… because of Dylan Roof. If there had been no Dylan Roof, nobody would care. Although poor blacks kills other poor blacks en masse everyday, but strangely nobody calls for the banning of gangsta rap. It’s all a very peculiar, but whatever. Liberals, and perhaps you, and been deluded into thinking that removing… Read more »
I tend to look for actual solutions, I don’t spend my time participating in campaigns to remove statues. I agree that little concrete is done by such a gesture. But however useless the gesture, at least the reasoning of those who wish to remove the statues is defensible. I don’t see that on the other end. Arguing to keep the statues does absolutely nothing to address any rift between Black persons and White persons. In fact, arguing to maintain such signs is something that deepens the rift, and opposing the removal deepens the rift further. The fact that it took… Read more »
“Arguing to keep the statues does absolutely nothing to address any rift between Black persons and White persons.”
Well,it kind of does. Sanitizing history makes us forget and when our shared history is forgotten, we lose all the lessons to be found there. “Never forget” used to be a principle held around things like the holocaust because knowing where we’ve been is what helps us to feel connected to the past and to other people.
Except that the statues themselves and the defenses of them were the sanitization of history. As Pastor Wilson just pointed out, the purpose of the statues to this day continues to be to honor and celebrate, not to hold up as a disturbing object lesson.
Take what I just said about the history of the area that led to the statues being erected, something that one of our local White separatists and almost certain Pastor Wilson were unaware of. How did keeping the statues there support any sort of adult conversation about that history?
If these monuments weren’t there, how would you have the opportunity to tell us all this? :-)
Opportunity didn’t come until the monuments were pulled down. ;)
“… the purpose of the statues to this day continues to be to honor and celebrate…”
Yes, to honor and celebrate! Only a fool would look at those statues and believe they were all about honoring and celebrating slavery.
White Supremacy, more specifically than slavery. And as I already pointed out, the cause which inspired the statures, the climate in New Orleans during the building of the statues, the ceremonies to inaugurate them, and the clear inscription celebrating “White Supremacy” on one of the statues, all lend evidence to the suggestion that, yes, they were up there to honor and celebrate White Supremacy. Whether or not that all the White Supremacists who look at the statues and think that are fools is a separate matter. But I don’t think everyone who understands their history and realizes their reason for… Read more »
Well at least we now know that “Ignorance is Strength” as Orwell told us.
Jonathan doesn’t see it, doesn’t understand it, but once we’re all white supremacists, once we’re all racists, none of us will be. Those words will have lost their power, the offense they cause will have been torn down.
Jonathan: Speaks out against a statue that specifically, overtly, in those exact words, celebrated “White Supremacy” ME: “once we’re all white supremacists, none of us will be. Those words will have lost their power.” One of us is certainly denying the power of words and trying to create a relativist situation where arguments no longer have any meaning. But I don’t think I’m the one. “Once we’re all white supremacists, none of us will be” is not a catch-all answer that you can use to rebuke anyone who uses the word “White Supremacist”. Because some things really are White Supremacist.… Read more »
“Once we’re all white supremacists, none of us will be” is not a catch-all answer that you can use to rebuke anyone who uses the word “White Supremacist”. That’s not a rebuke, it’s an objective truth. The “relativist situation where arguments no longer have any meaning,” is the one where we declare white supremacy to be so huge,so prevalent, so powerful, that catching a glimpse of statue is sure to trigger it, but by then we won’t even know what “it” is because so many people will have been labeled racist that actually being racist will no longer carry any… Read more »
How would the continued presence of the statues give us protection from the charge of being white supremacists? I’m not clear on how this relates to the statues.
Again, “White Supremacy” is a tendentious term since its primary enemy was other whites. To make an analogy: when two NFL teams kick, carry, throw, and fall upon a football, it is neither out of compassion or animosity towards the football, and it would be nonsensical to describe the outcome of a game as “NFL-Player Supremacy”.
That’s an incredibly off-base analogy. The massacred Black people. They called themselves “The White League”. They affirmed that their goal was White Supremacy. Once they gained power, they worked to restrict the rights of Black persons in almost every way possible. And they continued oppressing and killing Black persons for decades after they gained power. Even fifty years later, they were bragging about how they had gained “White Supremacy” through their struggle. The fact that we even have to argue about this is ridiculous. I need to recall that when this argument started, you claimed: These monuments were established as… Read more »
Well, in the case of these New Orleans monuments you were right about why they were put up. (I don’t think this was the case for every Confederate monument, but whatever, we’re talking about the New Orleans ones and I was wrong about them.) Anyway, yes. For the people on the ground, they perceived the conflict as white vs black, because their military occupation had the immediate effect of political elevation of blacks. My point is that we have the benefit of hindsight and can see that political elevation of blacks by Northern whites was primarily a move in the… Read more »
If this was a discussion of the righteousness of Northern abolitionists, then your comment would fit. But the discussion has virtually nothing to do with them. It’s about the statues, which were put up by Southern White supremacists, not Northern White abolitionists. And the Southern White supremacists had been supporting White supremacy and political dominance over Black people for many decades before Northern Whites went to war against them, and would continue to do so for many decades past when war with the North was any kind of threat. The statues were a symbol of the White Supremacy that existed… Read more »
And the Southern White supremacists had been supporting White supremacy and political dominance over Black people for many decades before Northern Whites went to war against them, and would continue to do so for many decades past when war with the North was any kind of threat. Certainly. But again, in hindsight, black supremacy was never a live option, and still isn’t. The winners of the war weren’t interested in it, our globo-homo ruling class still isn’t interested in it. So “White Supremacy” isn’t uniquely represented by these monuments or the people who erected them, nor is it at all… Read more »
Excuse me? What do you think the statues honor and celebrate? Dedication to the overthrow of unfair tariffs?
You and I are not black Americans. When the majority of black Americans living in New Orleans tell us that they think the statues celebrate slavery, are you really dismissing them all as fools?
Shared history unifies us only when there is a common understanding of what it means. If the statues are seen by some whites as celebrating a time when black people were slaves, and as symbolic of the heroic crusade to keep them that way, then they are a symbol of divisiveness and oppression for the descendants of those slaves.
“Shared history unifies us only when there is a common understanding of what it means.” Utterly and totally wrong. In fact, that is very totalitarian and fascist. History reveals the truth about the nature of ourselves,the events and things that happened to us as a people. History is not a subjective experience, one to be molded into something we find more appealing. History is divisive,offensive, sure to offend someone, sure to be romantisized by others, but it is not a thing to be edited and erased because our delicate sensibilities are offended. Next I suppose Jilly will have Roots burned… Read more »
Nah, jillybean is right about history; it’s not just a collection of facts, it’s an interpretation of facts. As such, it serves the interests of one group of people or another. Naturally, some interpretations are more accurate than others, and some judgements of events are wiser than others. The point I’d take contention with jillybean is her use of the word “oppression”. It’s not clear to me that Black Americans are less “oppressed” now than they were in 1930, or even 1830.
“Nah, jillybean is right about history; it’s not just a collection of facts, it’s an interpretation of facts.”
Well fortunately we no longer need worry about the facts at all,since we have determined “the facts” to be offensive and simply torn them down.
ME, a statue is not a fact. By definition, it is an abstraction that shows a particular point of view. If a statue of Robert E. Lee had conveyed him as a devil with horns and a tail, nobody would be asking to have it removed. Clearly, the statue was done as iconography. You can’t make a statue without conveying an opinion of its subject.
A statue of Robert E. Lee as a devil with horns and a tail would have been long ago pulled down.
I agree that they are still oppressed, currently by misguided and destructive policies.
Is that a reference to welfare?
While welfare needs to be reformed and has perverse incentives which have negative effects (I assume that it what your reference is to), I don’t know if that reaches the top-five in terms of oppression faced by Black communities even in the modern day.
Not only welfare but anything that tends to destroy a two-parent family and which tends to promote illegitimacy.
What would your definition of the word “oppression” entail?
Good question. The general sense I get from the use of “oppression” in Scripture is economic exploitation, and not providing justice. I think there’s a lot of discussion that needs to happen around this because it’s a word that occurs many times in Scripture and covers a lot of territory. When considering oppression of Black Americans, two questions come to my mind: first, why do most cities that once had thriving black business districts now have bombed-out ghettos in their place now? Second, what did the bastardy rate and the murder rate look like for Black Americans in 1830 and… Read more »
In terms of both economic exploitation and in terms of not providing justice, I would say that oppression of Black Americans is still meaningful, but not as high as it was in 1930 or 1830. At least now the expectation is there and “some” African-Americans can succeed just as well as any White person economically as well as be treated with equal justice under the law in many cases. In 1930 and 1830 even the most privileged African-American in the South could not expect to be able to attain the same things that a White person could attain. When considering… Read more »
At least now the expectation is there and “some” African-Americans can succeed just as well as any White person economically Is this good for Black Americans in general, though? I’m sure it’s good for their elites. In 1930 and 1830 even the most privileged African-American in the South could not expect to be able to attain the same things that a White person could attain. If you think this is tied to “oppression”, please state your case for it. Undoubtedly race riots occurred, but notorious cases tell us little about the median experience, hence my question about rates. The rest… Read more »
Is this good for Black Americans in general, though? I’m sure it’s good for their elites The fact that they even have elites is evidence that something changed. I agree with you that far more needs to happen. In 1930 and 1830 even the most privileged African-American in the South could not expect to be able to attain the same things that a White person could attain. If you think this is tied to “oppression”, please state your case for it. Are you serious? You think a case needs to be made for government-sanctioned slavery in 1830 and government-sanctioned segregation… Read more »
The fact that they even have elites is evidence that something changed. Nonsense. There’s a spectrum of ability in every population, regardless of sociopolitical arrangements. I simply mean that Douglass’ “talented tenth” may have benefited, but that doesn’t mean the rest of black America did or can. I think it’s far more plausible that this increased social mobility was bad for Black Americans as a whole because it resulted in natural leaders being removed from their communities and absorbed into the globalist elite. (White communities have definitely suffered from similar effects, though not in the same way.) I think you… Read more »
Read the two articles. I would believe that what was going on in New Orleans and Chicago was uniquely extreme, as bad as it could possibly get of those issues, but that other majority black communities in America dealt with the same issues.
The idea of paying “reparations” to the likes of Tennessee Coats is ludicrous. I commend to him the words of Muhammad Ali: “Thank God my granddaddy got on that boat.” I agree with you that black dysfunction is largely the same, with minor variations, in most places. Thus my lack of interest in stories about lead poisoning in this or that community. It’s not as though white communities haven’t had lead poisoning problems too. The richest black neighborhoods have higher crime rates than the poorest white ones. Your just-so story about white violence against black businesses doesn’t hold up either.… Read more »
The idea of paying “reparations” to the likes of Tennessee Coats is ludicrous. I commend to him the words of Muhammad Ali: “Thank God my granddaddy got on that boat.” I’m guessing you must have only read the title and not the article. The idea of reparations isn’t even part of my argument. And whether being kidnapped and enslaved improved someone’s life conditions (quick note – on average it certainly didn’t do that for the actual people kidnapped and enslaved) has nothing to do with whether their descendants were treated justly or not. I agree with you that black dysfunction… Read more »
Pardon me if I don’t find The Atlantic to be a particularly reliable source of anything but journalism. “Neighborhoods” is a contentious sort of measure so, my apologies, I should have been more precise. Ryan Faulk has collected multiple analyses that show race being a better predictor of crime rates than wealth. http://thealternativehypothesis.org/index.php/2016/04/15/race-poverty-and-crime/ Indeed, as this report discusses, racial composition of an area is the single best predictor of its crime rate. As Karl Boetel points out, there isn’t just a disparity in arrests or convictions, the National Crime Victimization Survey shows that victims’ reports of crimes are proportionate to… Read more »
Ryan Faulk has collected multiple analyses that show race being a better predictor of crime rates than wealth. Indeed, as this report discusses, racial composition of an area is the single best predictor of its crime rate. As Karl Boetel points out, there isn’t just a disparity in arrests or convictions, the National Crime Victimization Survey shows that victims’ reports of crimes are proportionate to convictions: If you have better data or analyses that shows the deficiencies in this, I’d be interested to hear about it. Again, I’ve already linked significant explanations to you twice, and so far your only… Read more »
“Neighborhoods” is a contentious sort of measure so, my apologies, I should have been more precise. The statement as you worded it was obviously false. What more precise statement would have been true? Ryan Faulk has collected multiple analyses that show race being a better predictor of crime rates than wealth. That is absolutely false, and false in such a way that makes the point for me. Faulk never once shows how wealth predicts crime rates anywhere in the whole link. He only uses the word “wealth” once, and its clear that he used it incorrectly there. What Faulk actually… Read more »
I’ve presented some facts and you don’t like ’em. Let’s see the ones you like instead.
Laziness? I’m not the one promoting the opinions of America’s most foremost comic-book author.
One of us is able to give the exact facts that are wrong and the exact factors that are missing in the other person’s claims.
The other one of us is refusing to even deal with the opposing argument and is making nonsensical insults instead.
” It is a giant disparity built on the legacies of slavery, sharecropping and segregation, and systematic discrimination against Black people in mortgages, education, housing choice, and every other means of building wealth for the last 300 years.” Utter garbage. I realize this stuff was drilled into your head at “one of the best colleges in the nation” — but it’s bunk. I (and thousands of others) have been on the other side of affirmative action for decades. Despite objectively better performance, we’ve been the ones discriminated against. Scholarships. grants, promotions, you name it. People from Vietnam and other S.… Read more »
Utter garbage. I realize this stuff was drilled into your head at “one of the best colleges in the nation” — but it’s bunk. These random ad hominem attacks are useless. My physics degree has no bearing on my position on justice. My position on this issue comes from spending my entire adult life researching the issue on a number of different levels (including courses taken outside of my own science-and-engineering school, as well as some work in grad school, but more quite a lot of independent reading and Church conferences and conversations), and includes spending about half of my… Read more »
That’s quite a leap for you to make. As I had not yet expressed a personal view on the removal of the statues,it is unreasonable for you to assume that I am into burning books. (My personal view, spoken as an outsider with no strong emotional connection to either side, is that the statues belong in a lovely museum where they can be appreciated in their context and balanced with other items of historic interest. Such as branding irons.) Facts mean little unless they are connected and interpreted. Our attachment to the original Thanksgiving story comes from generations of Americans… Read more »
Actually, do explain why that concept’s objectionable.
I would argue that much of our current sorrows are a result of people not knowing their place — especially the elites of America.
Okay, I was just thinking about you in connection with another post. As a Canadian, I have little trouble with the general idea of knowing your place–deferring to others, not making a nuisance of yourself, being gentle in your manners and speech, and observing common courtesies. That is a lovely basis for an orderly society, as long as everyone observes it, attention is paid to those in need, and everyone gets an occasional chance to be the Birthday Girl (or Boy). But it is not lovely when the parts are assigned, in perpetuity, on the basis of race, class, or… Read more »
The proposition that “people are equals” is wicked nonsense.
I’m not concerned with manners here, but instead responsibilities. Those on top in society have a responsibility to care for and protect those lower than them, who in turn have a responsibility to obey and serve their superiors. I agree that some of the customs you refer to seem harsh and unpleasant to our sensibilities in the current year. On the other hand… there was no reason to fear anyone asking you where you were from.
Calm yourself–I did say “theoretically” and the proposition is right there in the DOI. Before the law (and before the government in all its forms), all men should be presumed to be equal. You are describing a feudal society which will never return. And from what I have read, black people in parts of the South in the fifties and sixties lived in constant fear of violence from whites. And, violence aside, if their wages were not paid, they had no recourse. If their daughters were attacked, the police did nothing. I don’t know how much caring and protection the… Read more »
You are describing a feudal society which will never return. As the kids say these days: Citation needed. We both probably also thought a reality TV star wouldn’t be elected President. And from what I have read, black people in parts of the South in the fifties and sixties lived in constant fear of violence from whites. Maybe so. Was there more of it than the violence that manifestly exists now? How many murders per year did New Orleans have in 1960? But, even if it had worked beautifully, it’s not right to decide that one race gets to dominate… Read more »
Maybe so. Was there more of it than the violence that manifestly exists now? How many murders per year did New Orleans have in 1960? It was almost impossible to tell, considering murdered Black folk were often ignored by the law. When the feds finally got involved with the murder of three civil rights activists in Mississippi (which had been carried out by a collaboration of the sheriff’s department, city police, a local minister and the KKK), both the mayor and the government claimed that there hadn’t been a murder at all up until when the body’s were discovered on… Read more »
LOL. So the 5x-10x increase in homicide rate (and commensurate increase in other crimes) was merely due to better reporting in recent years? Your faith in the power of racism is amazing.
Maybe the KKK was covering up three murders a week in the Big Easy! How could we possibly know???
Well, they were the terrorist wing of the Democrat party, so it’s not beyond the realm of possibility. I’d ask Robert “Sheets” Byrd, but he assumed room temperature several years ago.
Jonathan, don’t even think about bringing up the words “Southern Strategy”. I’ve already given a refutation for such a notion — a refutation for which you’ve given no answer.
Maybe the KKK was covering up three murders a week in the Big Easy! How could we possibly know??? Well, they were the terrorist wing of the Democrat party, so it’s not beyond the realm of possibility. I’d ask Robert “Sheets” Byrd, but he assumed room temperature several years ago. Jonathan, don’t even think about bringing up the words “Southern Strategy”. I’ve already given a refutation for such a notion — a refutation for which you’ve given no answer. I’m not sure what you’re trying to argue. On this blog, in the Civil War/Segregation era, the Southern Democrats are definitely… Read more »
I’ve already refuted this.
You’re ignoring the issue that there is no doubt among this blog population that the Southern Democrats of the pre-Civil Rights South were the upstanding citizens of US history. No one was talking about “Southern Strategy” before you – whatever you want to call it, the Southern Democrats were in the right and Lincoln was in the wrong. And the voting among the White Southern population obviously switched from Democrat to Republican during that time, one way or another. That was the issue at question. That’s exactly what Atwater was talking about – he was TALKING about grabbing the Wallace… Read more »
And yet you still ignore the question, which is: So, about this Southern Strategy: where’s the plan, the policies, how it was implemented, and whether or not it succeeded? All I’ve seen so far are opinions. You have any facts to back up your assertions?
I hadn’t realized that was the question, but for such a detailed question, I’d simply reference you to the wikipedia entry on “Southern Strategy”, which is quite extensive.
Names, Jonathan. There are only two Dixiecrats that I know of that shifted: Strom Thurmond and Mills E. Godwin, Jr.
Again, I’m going to ask re: the Southern Strategy: Where’s the plan, the policies, how it was implemented, and whether or not it succeeded?
Wikipedia’s not good enough. You’ll have to do better.
LOL. So the 5x-10x increase in homicide rate (and commensurate increase in other crimes) was merely due to better reporting in recent years? Your faith in the power of racism is amazing. Unsurprisingly, your facts are wrong AGAIN. The reported murder rate in New Orleans in 1960, the year you want to highlight, was 27 per 100,000, if I am reading the chart right. The murder rate in New Orleans in 2015 was 48 per 100,000. So the difference between 1960 and “manifestly now” is about 1.8 times, not “5x-10x” like you claim. For the murder rate in 1960 to… Read more »
Reading which chart right? This Sheriff’s Office report shows the 1960 homicide rate around 14 per 100,000.
But yes, let us suppose it has merely doubled or tripled.
But I suppose those deaths were just the necessary price of Progress and Civil Rights. Gotta break a few eggs to get an omelet, etc. Of course.
I’m having deja vu. Were you the same one last time that linked a 20+ year old report to try to support your position on Black crime rates, or was that Timothy or someone else? Hmm…I wonder why you would try to use a number from 1995 instead of 2016? Perhaps because in the year before the report you linked, there were 424 murders in New Orleans. In the last five years the number has fluctuated around 150-175. You know why it was so high in the early 1990s, right? Your link gives the murder rate for the “Greater New… Read more »
I didn’t say anything about 1995.
Where did you get that figure for 1960?
I disagree with you about that. I think that most people are by far more comfortable with those whose intelligence is in the same range. If you consider only the bonds you have formed through enjoying people’s company, wouldn’t it be true to say that they are probably your intellectual equals?
Probably the crime rate was lower. But it is possible to pay too high a price for a low crime rate, and the subjection of an entire race of mostly innocent people is too high.
This strikes me as the most un-Christian thing I have ever heard you say.
In Jesus’s words, that does indeed sound like how the “gentiles” work.
Obviously the local legislators are focused on the essence of American freedom as well:
ME, part of the problem is that nothing resembling a “Never Forget” movement occurred after the war. In fact, we doubled down on the racism – hence the statues.
al sends
The reasoning for taking them down is the same as your account of the reason they were put up: To demonstrate who rules.
There is no “split” to “heal”. There are distinct groups with distinct interests and desires. In a multicultural society, law and government will be controlled by one culture or another.
Arguing about whether to keep the statues or not does accomplish something of value: it demonstrates who is my ally and who is my opponent.
mastodon says: Robert E Lee may be gone. You may feel really good about yourself. But none of it achieved anything of value, other than to deepen the split between blacks and whites. ashv says: The reasoning for taking them down is the same as your account of the reason they were put up: To demonstrate who rules. There is no “split” to “heal”. There are distinct groups with distinct interests and desires. In a multicultural society, law and government will be controlled by one culture or another. Arguing about whether to keep the statues or not does accomplish something… Read more »
OK. I do agree with mastodon to a large extent, so let me expand on what I meant. Obviously the well-being of Black Americans has been much better than it is now in many ways, and conflict between Black and White Americans is at higher levels than some points in the past. It certainly could be better, and we should aim for that when possible. But – from what I can see, the primary way that this conflict reduction has happened is by getting incentives aligned between the two cultures as much as possible. And, perhaps most importantly, the conflict… Read more »
After all, the Liberty Place Insurrection was not primarily fought against Black Louisianians. It was primarily fought over the desire to subjugate Black Louisianans and keep them out of politics. http://www.knowlouisiana.org/entry/the-battle-of-liberty-place Remember that the Liberty Place Insurrection was a follow-up to the Colfax Massacre. Both were openly about White Supremacy, the only positive for the Liberty Place Insurrection is that they didn’t massacre the Black prisoners the second time around. http://www.knowlouisiana.org/entry/colfax-massacre So, I think it’s possible and desirable for the black and white residents of the South to coexist peacefully in a society that is structured to promote the well-being… Read more »
Yes, of course. My point is that the effective enemies of “White Supremacy” were Northern whites.
Jonathan wrote:
At what point can Jonathan apologize to Wilson and simply say, “I”m sorry for believing and promoting, contrary to everything you’ve said, the worst about your views toward blacks.”
But there is an interesting dynamic that takes place in these kinds of controversies. Prior to anyone complaining about RE Lee statues, no one really cared about them. It wouldn’t have made any sense to say that anyone was “celebrating White Confederates” by leaving them up, because no one even thought about it–they were just statues. Once someone complains, and it gets elevated to the level of a controversy, suddenly that’s not an option anymore. You can’t just retreat to the previous apathy, because the question has been raised and you must have a definitive answer. This puts people in… Read more »
They cannot allow southerners to have their folk hero, because what they are trying to erase is not hurt feelings or slavery, they are trying to erase southern culture. Pulling down the statues and symbols that might inspire someone to see it in a favorable light must go.
This is cultural displacement 101.
The whole jihad against Confederate statues and symbols is an exercise in futility from the start. Before Dylan Roof, nobody cared. Nobody gave a crap. Then, Dylan Roof. Suddenly, opposing Confederate symbols with righteous fervor becomes a new feel-good cause for the Left. (I guess the cathartic high of Obergefell was wearing off.) But will it close the ever-widening gap that has formed between urban blacks and everyone else, especially whites? No. All this serves to do is make white liberals feel good about themselves while accomplishing nothing, which of course, is what at least 50% of liberalism is all… Read more »
RE. Snowflakes: Blizzards are made of snowflakes. Blizzards can do damage, along with the potential flooding when they melt…
…but they disappear in the end.
Probably not cynical enough
That was a rather confusing way to describe history. Before the Civil Rights Era, Southerners tried to white-wash history about the Confederacy and Reconstruction and the Democrats generally were okay with them doing that. After the Civil Rights Era, Southerners tried to white-wash history about the Confederacy and Reconstruction and the Republicans generally were okay with them doing that. Yes, the power in the South shifted, but their positions on racial issues there didn’t shift, and other than that I’m not sure what point the link was trying to make. Perhaps only that for whichever party generally controls the White… Read more »
Googling “not cynical enough” turned up this gem:
“I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are good people and bad people. You’re wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
I think Pratchett was an atheist of some kind and this quote comes through one of his odder characters but I would not be surprised if he actually believed it. It is a startlingly Christian take on politics.
He sometimes sounded startlingly Christian in his books. He certainly believed in the reality of good and evil, which is a big head start on today’s garden variety atheist.
I don’t want to paint too rosy a picture. I have all the same challenges that all ministers face with regard to the culture. And in some ways the military provide extra challenges. There are some added benefits, too, but if a commander is a SJW set on enforcing the secular paradigm, they have lots of power to do so. While I may have lots of legal protection, the spiritual battle still rages.
Keep praying for us and if you know any promising candidates for military chaplaincy who love Christ and believe His word, encourage them in our direction.
http://www.newsweek.com/christian-fundamentalists-us-armed-forces-national-security-threat-613428
That article could have been in The Onion.
Makes me proud. I love making SJWs lose sleep.
BJ, I don’t know if a way to contact through Discus but I would be interested in knowing where you are assigned so I could possibly get in touch. I’m AF as well and I have witnessed a significant cultural shift in the last decade, one that has been imposed causing much confusion among the ranks. A solid Chaplaincy could bring about a stabilizing influence that’s not really possible through the normal military structure. I had considered the Chaplains corps effectively neutered until I read your post. It would be encouraging to chat with you if our paths cross.
…
Got it, thanks! I’ll be in touch soon.
More on correlation/causality.
https://intergalacticwritersinc.wordpress.com/2011/03/28/ice-cream-consumption-linked-to-shark-attacks/
Along the same lines: http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
I live in Kentucky and have always suspected a correlation between the Marriage rate and falling off of a fishing boat. Alcohol
consumption has to fit in there someway. Anyway I suspect in both cases someone was heard to yell “Hey, y’all watch this! “
This has aged well.