Okay, I am going to say something a little bit controversial. These are uncharted waters for me, so try to work with me on it.
First, before I say it, in no way is this a walking back of the gospel truth I stated yesterday. Whites who hate blacks because of their skin color are also hating God, the image of God, and the gospel which restores the image of God—red and yellow, black and white. Blacks who hate whites because of their skin color are in the same boat, hating God and hating their fellow man. There is no room for genuine racism in the church of God. There is, however, more than enough room in the church for things that are called racist these days. So, that said, I reiterate all that I said about the unifying power of the gospel, and the fragmenting power of every form of secularism. So start from there.
That said, I want to praise our president for two things he did in his impromptu news conference yesterday. These are two things that every magistrate ought to be able to do, and which precious few of them today are even willing to think about. Trump refused to be steered by mob action, and when two evil groups clashed violently, he refused to take sides. He stated his case inelegantly, but he was clear on the essentials, and I was very gratified by his refusal to budge.
He said two things that were manifestly true, undeniably true, and that vast paludal flatland that is our sorry excuse for media went, as the saying goes, nuts. When he said there was evil on both sides, this was, as I look around for another word to use, incontrovertible. And when someone like Trump says something incontrovertible, what must one do? One must douse his hair with lighter fluid, set it off, and then run in tight, little circles.
What do I mean by refusal to be steered? He saw and identified the game plan that is being run on us all by the violent Left. He said today it was Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson. But who is next? George Washington? Thomas Jefferson? Tell me, oh ye who have surrendered the essential principle involved here, why will there not be demands to cleanse our public spaces of all reminders of those slave owners, Washington and Jefferson? The natural common sense and internal self-restraint exhibited by the Left? Your naiveté could make a cat laugh. Francis Scott Key, the man who wrote our national anthem, owned slaves. How about that? The progressive Left loves Orwell’s memory hole. They love airbrushing people out of the pictures. They think they can surgically change a man into a woman, so they certainly think they can erase our history and change it into something more edifying. There will be no need to tear down the Washington Monument, because it is a memorial and not a statue. All they will need to do is rename it something like The People’s Gay Phallus, and get those rainbow floodlights going. Declare a national holiday.
Back in the day when well-intentioned Christians were scrambling to denounce the Confederate flag, I pointed out that another flag was next—a flag that flew over slaves in bondage for many more years than the Stars and Bars ever did. Is there anything about what is happening now that shows that my prediction was off? Anybody who thinks the target in all this is the Confederacy, and not America, needs to sit down and think it through for a minute. The Confederacy is just an initial soft target on their way to other and greater things.
The second thing the president did that was worthy was that he denounced the criminals and thugs on both sides. This is what you want from magistrates. If the white supremacists get a permit, and they are marching to Hell in an orderly fashion, they ought to be allowed to march there unmolested. If antifa thugs show up with baseball bats and attack, they ought to be treated as the violent instigators they are. If one of the white supremacists drives his car into the crowd on the other side, that is not self-defense, and he needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Policemen, and the magistrates behind them, are in the business of maintaining public order, which means that they do not get to approve of anarchy from one side only.
If there is outrage over Trump’s denunciation of both sides, then it is plain and obvious that someone is attempting to steer us. In response to my post yesterday, someone breathlessly announced that I had equated Black Lives Matter with the Klan. Why, yes, I did. Hatred and murder are to be reprobated, period. Movements that excuse them are to be reprobated, period. But when your moral compass is governed by the skin tone of your tribe, instead of letters in granite inscribed by the finger of God, then you are going to get the kind of identity race war that we are in the process of getting.
I don’t expect the president to fix this kind of thing because he cannot. Going back to yesterday, the only one who can deliver blacks from their resentments and hatreds, and the only one who can deliver whites from their resentments and hatreds, is the Lord Jesus. He can do this because He was commissioned and sent into this world in order to bear our resentments and hatreds on His shoulders, bearing the Father’s rational wrath on account of our irrational wrath. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities (Is. 53:5).
Jesus died, in short, for people on both sides of that street in Charlottesville. In that melee, we may assume that the elect of God were scattered amongst them, sinning along with the rest. Apart from the gospel of Christ, that is America’s future.
As a minister of Christ, I want our magistrates to resist the roar of crowds, and to identify bad actors in whatever crowd might happen to be yelling at the moment. But that is all I want them to do. I want them to do that in order to maintain public order, so that we who possess the gospel might have the opportunity to set before the people a different vision, in Christ, for loving each other.
“I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:1–4).
But, we weren’t asking for a full parceling out of events in Charlottesville. Everyone is very aware of the violent left protesters. The issue is that we want our President to make clear that Nazi, white-supremacist thought has no place in this country. The red herring of “who was more violent” in Charlottesville is a question no one cares about (save for the situation of the woman killed by a white-supremacist). We want a repudiation of the THOUGHT present there. The violent left was to blame for the violence. Not the Nazi-ism. Can we reject that, without a “but whatabout?”.… Read more »
“Everyone is very aware of the violent left protesters. ”
We are? Have they been condemned across pulpits and the MSM the way the white nationalists have…since the 1960s? When they were attacking buildings and Trump supporters (who didn’t fight back), there was some coverage, but it was absolutely dwarfed by anything related to “alt right.”
Then thank God that we live in the age of internet because we can get all the information we need to make truly informed decisions despite what the media chooses to not tell us or how they spin their stories.
That’s true, but unfortunately most people believe the headlines they see on Yahoo/CNN and their Facebook feeds.
So, let me get this right. The ideology that has been condemned thousands of times in the last 50 years needs to be condemned again, but we can’t talk about the violence of the Left, because Neo-nazis?
Kilgore, people are so polarized that many of us are simply not seeing the same videos and hearing the same speeches. The Tiki Torch paraders marched around like people in a medieval mob shouting “Jews will not replace us.” When Trump said that some of these were good people, everyone who is not on the far right was appalled. For a lot of sincere people who do not support violence but who hate Nazism and white supremacy with every fibre of their being, the president’s remarks suggest an unwillingness to give up the support of people like David Duke. It… Read more »
What is interesting about these discussions is how people see what they want. Ask a liberal about this protest and they see an effigy being lynched by people who hate those darkies, chanting death to Jews, we love Hitler. You ask an alt-righter and you see some peace loving protesters who are upset about their statue being taken down. The truth is in the middle, but we can’t trust the media to give us the right story. They bias everything to the Left down to the angle of the camera shots. But honestly, I am not Neo-nazi, white supremacist, or… Read more »
It is all horrible beyond words, Kilgore, and it makes me despair. Nothing is as simple as we would like. I have been following the fallout from the ACLU filing suit on behalf of the alt-right demonstrators. The city wanted to move the protest to a park that would be easier for law enforcement to control, the organizers were not willing to move, and the ACLU stepped into protect their constitutional right to free speech and peaceable assembly. I remember the uproar when the ACLU sued for the right of Nazis to march through a neighborhood of holocaust survivors. We… Read more »
I’ll have to admit to get my feather ruffled up once in a while, too. But I am always comforted by the sovereignty of God, who is love. I don’t always understand all of this, but I do trust the one who does.
Jill, the police, and the leftist giving the orders didn’t give a damn about making the situation “easier for law enforcement to control”. They *intentionally forced* the people — only a few of whom are Nazis, not that you seem to care about the fact — to pass through the crowd of violent fascist “ant-fascists”.
But you go, girl! You keep up that virtue-signaling, for all the good it will do you when they come for you.
They won’t come for me. I’m an old lady with impeccable anti-racism credentials, and I can always play the helpless foreigner card.
That won’t do you a bit of good. As you admit yourself, you’re “old”; worse, you’re white; worse yet, you’re one of those EVIL Christians.
I will hand over my half-Jewish daughter to buy myself time to escape.
Durden wrote: What is interesting about these discussions is how people see what they want. … The truth is in the middle, but we can’t trust the media to give us the right story. They bias everything to the Left down to the angle of the camera shots. Well said. The media has completely misrepresented Trump’s comments, and ignored his explicit rejection of racism. This is not new for them, but the degree to which they are sinking is a new low this week. Durden wrote: But what I see is that a bunch of Leftist anarchists are using the… Read more »
This deserves a hearty upvote.
There seems to be a buzz in the air. The fight is brewing, and that isn’t good for anybody.
“For a lot of sincere people who do not support violence but who hate Nazism and white supremacy with every fibre of their being…” As Kilgore said, that ideology that has been condemned ad infinitum. In school, in pop culture, in church, everywhere we’ve heard how evil the Nazis and KKK were. Movies from the Sound of Music to Schindler’s List to American History X and dozens more have talked about it. What we don’t hear about nearly as much are the equally horrendous acts of the Communists and violent Left: Stalin, Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot, Castro and even… Read more »
Trudeau took a lot of flak from his fellow Canadians for that particularly stupid remark. I suppose you can’t quarrel with the larger than life part, but he should have mentioned that Castro’s regime included the vicious suppression of dissent.
Everyone knows about the Nazis, but that doesn’t seem to stop some people from trying to resurrect their cause. The violent left should be condemned, but I don’t think we can ever safely assume that the hatreds which fueled Nazism are gone for good.
Nor can we assume that “anti-fascist” fascists can’t quickly be radicalized into murderous sociopaths who will slit the throats of peasant farmers…or Trump supporters. The hatred, envy, class warfare, etc. that fueled the Bolshevik Revolution is still in ample supply. It, in turn, feeds the Nazis. If we had a true doomsday scenario, it’s hard to imagine what angry, Leftist mobs would do in light of Ferguson, Baltimore, Berkeley, etc.
“The violent left should be condemned, but I don’t think we can ever safely assume that the hatreds which fueled Nazism are gone for good.”
People need to abandon the utopian idea that we have evolved beyond the barbarism of our ancestors.
Wait, WHEN and WHERE did you possibly grow up that you didn’t get fed anti-Communist rhetoric in school and church on a regular basis?
While you’re right that the Asian stuff doesn’t get covered, that’s simply because….Asian stuff doesn’t get covered. But anti-Soviet communism was a gigantic part of my upbringing, far more real than anti-Nazi propaganda.
Sure, there was some anti-communist stuff in the Cold War era, but over my lifetime, throughout all mediums (school, media, movies, books, TV, internet, etc.), I’ve been fed a LOT more anti-Nazi teachings. I even noticed this in the latter days of the Cold War.
I think you must be a young ‘un, CHer! Even in Canada I got a steady dose of anti-communism. That was back in the day when Catholics were taught to regard communism as akin to Satanism, but probably worse!
Well, tell me this then: if we were all “brainwashed” with anti-communism, why is no MSM outlet talking about the dangers angry, violent Leftists carrying commie flags? There are hundreds if not thousands of articles on the threat of a tiny group of nazis, but mainstream media totally ignores threats from the left. What’s more, there are no nazis in academia or places of power/influence, but Antifa has a huge group of anti-free speech thought police in academia and even the media. When you have both boots on the ground, and this kind of garbage in academia, you qualify as… Read more »
Correction: “but Antifa has a huge group of anti-free speech thought police in academia and even the media” – I meant to say “comrades” instead of thought police. Most leftists in academia aren’t actually part of Antifa, though at least a few are:
http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/05/24/berkeley-college-professor-arrested-as-assault-suspect/
Yes, he must be a young ‘un … and the young ‘uns were indoctrinated in how wonderful Communism is.
Jilly, you said:
And now you have a pope who’s a communist. Go figure.
As far as church goes, I have heard about the evils of communism in church settings numerous times. I can’t recall ever being in a church where the evils of Nazism were brought up – it probably happened, but certainly not as often as communism. As far as school goes, in high school I read “Animal Farm” and “1984” as assigned readings, and both were portrayed as being a statement against Communism. I do not recall ever reading an anti-Nazi book, though at some point I think at a younger age we discussed “The Diary of Anne Frank.” Media was… Read more »
Obviously it’s easier to make movies about a present threat (Islamic terrorists now, the Soviets from the early 50s until around 1990). However, there hasn’t been a real Nazi threat since 1945, yet a tiny group of neo-nazis prompted movies like Dead Bang, American History X, Supremacy, Betrayed and many TV episodes. There were 3 movies last year: Imperium, Green Room and Denial. How many movies were made in 2016 about the rise of violent Antifa types? But the real question is what I asked Jill. If we were all spoon fed with so much anti-communist teachings, why is the… Read more »
CHer, I can’t answer that except to say that a lot of people in the target age group have not been taught much about communism period. It is not like it was in my day. As you might remember, I tutor AP Euro to very bright kids. Most of them could not tell you about much about Lenin or Mao or Pol Pot. The fall of the Berlin Wall is ancient history to them. So I don’t think they are anti-communist, but neither do I think that most of the young people themselves could define communism, or give you a… Read more »
Thanks. That doesn’t surprise me at all, but it’s pretty frightening when you consider that it killed 94 million people…and is far from dead.
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/20th-century-death/
CHer, what nobody seems to be taught is that you can’t kill innocent people, even to usher in Utopia. Not that it has ever worked out that way. But, even if it had, it would still be just as wrong.
John Paul II was very good at reminding Catholics about this.
I’ve seen American History X, I’ve literally never heard of a single other movie on your list. I’m guessing you wouldn’t have heard of most of those either unless you got that list from somewhere trying to make a point. They definitely aren’t driving culture. In fact, I just looked up the 3 movies you claim were made in 2016. It turns out that one was a low-budget horror film from 2015, and the other two were “limited release/video on demand” films that basically no one saw. One of those two was a true story about a scholar who denies… Read more »
“I’m guessing you wouldn’t have heard of most of those either unless you got that list from somewhere trying to make a point. ” Bad assumption on your part. I was a high schooler in the late 80s and knew about Dead Bang, Betrayed and the others. “Someone who has openly supported the White Nationalists is in power right now. The White Nationalists know that themselves and state it clearly, even if you deny it. Whereas we’ve never had a Communist president” This is very typical of you–and shows how disingenuous you are. Trump has never said “I openly support”… Read more »
Besides those three films, you would also have other movies like the two Indiana Jones movies, which showed Nazis as bad guys. Can we forget Schindler’s List? Now, I am too young for these, but my dad grew up in the era of movies like the Great Escape, and the like. From 1945 to 1975, there were countless movies about WWII. Lest we forget television and our favorite sitcom, Hogan’s Heroes. These were all part of showing Nazi Germany, long after Hitler was dead and buried. And when Hitler died, essentially, Nazi Germany did too.
well, the first Indiana Jones film shows why the Nazis are very good bad guys. Their faces melt when they see the Face of God! Petting the Arch of the Covenant against the greatest haters of Gods chosen people makes sense.
It was meant to be “putting”, not “petting” above.
Nazism and communism got equal time in the chhrch in which I grew up. Which is to say, none at all. We did hear a lot about how Jesus was coming back soon, though…
Antifa has plans to have all those Robert E. Lee statues replaced with ones of Che Guevara.
Okay, I admit that is just wild conjecture. Somehow I just can’t bring myself to put out bald face lies as leftists do continually. Mostly I just wanted to sign in so I could upvote.
Just quickly for the record, they chanted “YOU will not replace us”, not Jews. It was a reference to the decision to tear down the statue of Robert E Lee and erase Southern history and heritage.
Just for the record, they quite clearly switched it to “Jews will not replace us.”
https://news.vice.com/story/vice-news-tonight-full-episode-charlottesville-race-and-terror
Vice.com. Yeah, nice to see where our SJW lites spend their free time.
Vice.com may be a bastion of leftism, but the question is whether the claim is true?
The audio is extremely clear. The three slogans chanted repetitively were “Jews will not replace us,” “Blood and Soil,” and “White Lives Matter.”
I did not quite understand the Jewish reference. Replace them where? Do they seriously think that most Jews are in hot competition with them for their jobs, their girls, or their trucks? Take a look at them. Are we really to believe that they would have gone to Harvard and would now be senior execs on Wall Street were it not for the Jews?
The so-called “alt-right” (who actually are leftists, but not Nazis … yet), and of course the actual Nazis (*) (who also are leftists), like to tell one another that the Hate-America-First *leftist* conspiracy to destroy the American Republic and to replace the American people (and the peoples of the European nations, for that matter) is really a plot by Teh Joos.
(*) Who, once again, were few in number … and most of whom are probably FBI “infiltrators” of one another’s dens
I know literally nothing about vice.com, and can honestly say that I have NEVER typed “vice.com” into my browser in order to peruse their site. Ever. I got to the video by typing, “Jews will not replace us” into Google and it is the #1 result under a “The Guardian” link. It’s a quite simple step for anyone who actually wanted to verify the competing truth claims that were being made.
You can apologize and repent for your false claim about me now.
Jonathan, you are deluding yourself if you think that The Guardian will be seen as an improvement!
If you didn’t at least go to Vice.com and look around before citing them, that’s on you, not me. There’s the “NSFW FEMALE GAZE,” “No One Knows if Porn is Bad for You” and “Stop Saying Alt Left” for starters. The article may or may not have been accurate…just like you may or may not be telling the truth about Vice. You’ve certainly lied before.
I didn’t “cite them”, and I didn’t read any article. I went to The Guardian and opened a video that clearly showed the White Nationalists saying, “Jews will not replace us” within the first few seconds of the video. I don’t need to wander around some website aimlessly in order to link a video I found on the Guardian that shows exactly what Jilly had said happened. This diversion is silly. Scot was wrong, and you tried to hide it by stating a falsehood about me, and now you’re somehow trying to make your weak and false attempt to divert… Read more »
Yes, you are a liar. Your “multiple times” claim in the other thread is an outright lie.
You also come off as amazingly insecure and in need of validation. All of this crying about “not my fault” “falsehoods about me,” etc. Perhaps you should find something more productive to do instead of digging yourself out of holes you’ve made. The last thing the world needs is another keyboard warrior princess.
Except that I was able to actually list the exact times, including the first one which you have now admitted to. I call you out when you post specific false claims about me, and produce the exact false claims. I also call you out when you falsely call me a liar (usually without any specific reference at all, in this case with a completely incorrect reference). As far as “warrior princess”, that’s almost a compliment, but it fits other posters better. As far as the ridiculous claim that I am “in need of validation”, if that was true, why would… Read more »
I want to be a warrior princess, armed only with rhetoric and righteous indignation! I will be truthful, fearless, and bold. Malefactors on the left and right will quake when they see me coming. Then they’ll all be furious with me for being a centrist.
Meanwhile, back to reality. I asked my daughter to drive me to a protest, and she refused, telling me kindly that people with bones as brittle as mine must leave these matters to the young and able-bodied.
Exactly. Other than the typical “womanhood as insult”, I has having a hard time seeing how warrior princess was effectively insulting.
Oh, well, then! That justifies physically attacking all of them, whether or not they were Nazis.
Leftist shill.
Me, on the other hand, you can call Leftist Jill.
That’s what I heard, too, in the bit of video I watched.
Then watch a bit more – the link I posted is undeniable evidence that they’re saying, “Jews will not replace us.”
Doubt you watched the press conference b/c President Trump clearly called out the neo-nazis…. he also called out the neo-left wing fascists. Thank him for doing so for antifa needs exposure. They are more dangerous at this point in US history.
AARON D BRITTON wrote:
The President already made that clear. It wasn’t good enough for the leftist media, and Trump even predicted at the time that it wouldn’t be good enough for them. That BRITTON isn’t aware of this is very telling about the poverty and deceit of our media coverage in this country. Or else it is very telling that BRITTON just won’t accept it no matter how many times it is expressed.
We weren’t asking for anything when the president spoke first. He made his comments, condemning any group of any idealogy that acts violently. The media, as usual, found a criticism and ran with it, repeating it ad nauseam. Then the public took up the criticism and ran with it, too, without considering what Trump meant by his comments. Parrots parroting parrots. We don’t need the president to repudiate the views of the KKK, etc. We already know they’re repugnant and most Americans are against their ideas. It doesn’t even do as much good for public officials, who are always worried… Read more »
“We don’t need the president to repudiate the views of the KKK, etc. We already know they’re repugnant and most Americans are against their ideas.”
Yep, at this point it’s about like saying you’re against child abuse and murdering puppies. Still, I’m surprised how many people think it makes them “bold” to speak out against racism, real or imagined.
We weren’t asking for it, but the media did.. The questions were about why the President didn’t call out white supremacists on Saturday. And as you read the full transcript of the presser, Trump repeats his repudiation of the thought. There are two issues, I think. The violent interaction stands on its own. Trump’s condemnation of white supremacy and hatred across the board also stands on its own. They both come out clearly in the transcript. He’s clumsy, though, and very poor at finessing the message vs. directly answering the questions.
Well said. The clear and apparent social manipulation here is being ignored by many who should know better.
“Leftism is inherently antichrist, where rightism is only potentially so.”
“Is there anything about what is happening now that shows that my prediction was off?”
“Anything” as in, for example, the thing you predicted not actually happening?
Matt wrote:
Matt seems to like the taste of his own feet.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/11/21/massachusetts-college-stops-flying-american-flag-after-it-becomes-focus-of-dispute-over-trump/?utm_term=.c6aa9d455317
The hypocrisy is that progressives are supposed to be all about free speech … unless they feel triggered, and then everyone else is expected to go silent to appease their sensitivities. If everyone else doesn’t go silent, their speech will be destroyed by burning and violence. Because property destruction is somehow the new free speech. Such outrageous hypocrisy.
I believe the term for this is “non-central fallacy”.
Matt wrote:
According to the triggered progressive thought process:
The above would indeed be an example of a noncentral fallacy, but since Matt almost never shows his work, it’s not clear that’s the example he meant to label as a fallacy.
Katecho, would the following reasoning be fallacious?
Nazism existed in Germany and resulted in the deaths of millions of innocent people, the oppression of many more, and has been condemned by almost everyone as a monstrously evil regime.
The flag of this regime flew over Germany and every nation it occupied, filling people with terror and disgust.
When people living today carry this flag through American streets while chanting Nazi slogans, decent Americans should have the same emotional and intellectual reaction to this flag as they hold toward the philosophy and history that it represents.
Jill Smith wrote: When people living today carry this flag through American streets while chanting Nazi slogans, decent Americans should have the same emotional and intellectual reaction to this flag as they hold toward the philosophy and history that it represents. Having an “emotional and intellectual reaction” to a flag doesn’t seem like an appeal to reason on any level. It might be an appeal to identity politics, sentiment, or honor, or whatever, but not to reason. What Smith seems to deliberately leave out of the equation is that the Confederate flag represented a much broader Southern cultural identity than… Read more »
Katecho, I was not intending an exact analogy. I wanted to know, first, whether in all cases you see a negative reaction to the flag of an odious regime as illogical or illegitimate. I assume that you do. But many people, not all of them unintelligent, do recognize a flag’s semiotic value. If I choose to parade a Nazi flag through the streets of Los Angeles, would you believe me if I said that the flag represents my admiration, not for the persecution of the Jews, good heavens no, but for a regime that made the trains run on time,… Read more »
@Jill Smith , it depends how much the association is. For Nazi Germany it is hard to say that the flag symbolises anything but the destruction from Nazism. But I would not object to Indians who use it in their own country (from whom Hitler stole it). Some supremacists may use the confederate flag for its association with slavery. But the fact that it was far more broadly used for a long time including recently shows that it is not just , or even predominantly associated with slavery. Therefore, you must be careful about the cultural warriors who want to… Read more »
bethyada wrote:
Well said.
No, Hitler did not steal the swastika from the (dot, not feather) Indians. It’s a hugely ancient symbol of the ancient Indo-European tribes … from which the various cultures both of (northern) Indian and of Europe descend. I recall visiting a church when I was a child, which was built in the 19th century, which had swastika tiles scattered in the floor of the vestibule and stair-cases. I was scandalized until I understood that the Nazis had co-opted a much older symbol. Last year, when I was still working in a city distant from my home, I moved to a… Read more »
It took me a minute to figure out dot not feather. Around here, it’s curry not casino.
Thanks. I don’t know the full history, but I know it antedated Hitler. My point was that you can’t remove the swastika from the Indians because of the Nazis.
Jill Smith wrote: I am well aware that the Confederate flag represents more than slavery to many people who admire it, but excuse my cynicism when I am asked to believe that avowed white supremacists have no racial feeling when they accessorize it with white robes and pointy hats. Who is asking Jill to believe that no one has ever carried the Confederate flag out of flaming racist ideology? Can Jill name one such person? If she can’t even name one such person, then she should spare her cynicism for when it’s warranted. Jill wrote: It is not fair to… Read more »
Katecho, this is not an easy question for me because I don’t see it from either extreme (those who would defend it in all places and circumstances, and those who would burn every one of them). And bear in mind that I cannot possibly have an American understanding of this issue. The only Confederate flags I ever saw in Canada were in movies, and they served the purpose of letting the audience know that a corrupt southern sheriff was about to collude in the lynching of some unfortunate black person. My feelings about the flag were entirely negative, and I… Read more »
How about this? Communism existed in the Soviet Union (and still exists in China, N. Korea and Cuba) and resulted in the deaths of millions of innocent people, the oppression of many more, and has been condemned by anyone with a moral compass as a monstrously evil regime. The flag of this regime flew over the Soviet Union and every nation it occupied, filling people with terror and disgust. When Antifa and others carry this flag through American streets while chanting communist, Anti-American slogans, decent Americans should have the same emotional and intellectual reaction to this flag as they hold… Read more »
Brilliant example of open hypocrisy regarding flags.
CHer, I absolutely share your repugnance for flags associated with murderous communist regimes, and I agree with you that anyone who marches under such a flag is evil.
Please look up the definition of that term.
It simply doesn’t apply to Katecho’s post.
No Matt, I think Katecho is correct, you appear to be a casualty of “tasty foot syndrome”.
Also known, in large animal veterinary circles, as “Hoof in mouth disease”! ; – )
I had a relative dressing an elk suspended from a bove. The elk twisted in the wind, and it’s hoof hit my relative in the mouth, and gave him a fat lip.
Thereafter he said he had “hoof in mouth disease”! ; – )
That’s what comes of trying to put clothes on elk carcasses.
Which reminds me of one of my favorite “Julius Caesar” jokes. The mob surrounds Brutus’s house, shouting “Redress!” So he got out of bed and put his toga back on.
Well Jilly, if “they” ever banished us to a tropical desert island, because they were jealous of our awesome corny jokes and bad puns, that would be their loss!
????????☀️????
Well stated. I don’t have much good to say about Trump, but one of the more effective things he has done is help to break the media narrative. Our mainstream media needs to be called out as little more than a progressive propaganda tool at this point. It has done more to agitate fear and anger among the gullible than anything else. The sad part is that these reporters don’t even seem to care about how flogging the race issue, day in and day out, is prompting even more violence. Violence begets more reporting opportunities for them, I guess. Our… Read more »
I figured out in college, decades ago, just by watching the behavior of the journalism students and and how they ran the university newspaper, that stirring up problems is how journalists get their drama fix.
“There will be no need to tear down the Washington Monument, because it is a memorial and not a statue. All they will need to do is rename it something like The People’s Gay Phallus, and get those rainbow floodlights going. Declare a national holiday.” Indeed, it could be our nation’s central Ashera Pole. Which will all be fine and well until someone discovers that, engraved on a metal pyramid at the very top of the monument are the words, “Laus Deo.” (“Praise be to God” in Latin.) Then the whole thing will have to come down and be burned… Read more »
Washington obelisk?
Anthony Wiener?
Uh oh!
Fate, please don’t take that as a temptation! ????
Very few folks know the inscription is there…good to remind Cap’n.
What many people don’t get (including hipster pastors/priests in conservative denominations), is if the racist alt-right = nazis, then Antifa/violent Left = communists (the real kind, not academics who “identify” as Marxists). If the violent members of the alt-right could work in concentration camps, then Antifa could slit the throats of peasant farmers and torture dissenters for the Gulag. This all started because Antifa was attacking peaceful Trump supporters , including women and the elderly. They’re as violent and full of hate as anyone on the right. Yet so few people are acknowledging this. http://abc7news.com/news/video-trump-supporter-pepper-sprayed-at-milo-protest/1733004/ http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-04/tolerant-left-berkeley-antifa-cowards-pepper-spray-elderly-trump-supporter-and-egg-h I’d say Antifa, violent… Read more »
The alt-right doesn’t want concentration camps for innocents. We want our people to survive. BTW our people includes white protestants such as Pastor Wilson’s congregation. And yet he denounces us, virtue signalling about how he won’t make the rational decision because being alt-right feels “un-Christian.”
And who taught us what feels “Christian” and what doesn’t, in spite of five thousand years of “racist” “sexist” warrior cultures following God? Who taught the church it has to be touchy feely complentarian? The left!
If I was able to assure you that White people will certainly survive, would you feel safe and not need to support such marches anymore?
But, you’re a leftist, and intellectually dishonest. But I repeat myself.
Ya’all seem to think this is a game, and if so, you aren’t very good at it.
Pepe, respectfully, I don’t think the issue is that you want white people to survive since white people are in no real danger of going anywhere any time soon. I think the issue is you don’t want to have to share power and resources with people of other races.
Ah! So that (*) is why leftists have been publicly crowing, since at least the 1980s, about the comeing “browning of America”.
(*) “that” being that it isn’t happening quickly enough to suit them.
Well, hey, if a bunch of ideologues are being triumphalistic about something, it must be happening! That’s how it always works, right?
Except the Nazis and Alt-right believe that they have an ally in Trump. Bannon provided the internet home of the Alt-right at Breitbart. If rouge Presbyterians were shouting “heil Wilson” while burning Baptists at the stake, a discourse on total depravity and saying “we are sinners and there is wrong on both sides” while true, wouldn’t be what is needed or appropriate.
Trump has done a lot more to distance himself from the Nazis than the Obama Administration did with the radical/violent Left.
Case in point: Eric Holder did nothing to the New Black Panthers who stood outside of voting polls in 2008 with baseball bats in hand. Imagine if an alt-right did that. That should’ve been prosecuted as voter intimidation, but nothing was done.
Perhaps, but Obama is not president anymore and being better than Obama is not a very high standard.
Washington and Jefferson may have owned slaves, but they didn’t lead a war for the specific purpose of maintaining slavery.
Does it matter? The narrative is fluid and once the the charge is made it cannot be dismissed through mere reasoning and logic. The Andrew Jackson and George Washington statues must be removed in Chicago.
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2017/08/16/jackson-washington-park-protest-presidents-slave-owners/
Chip, Lincoln said he freed the slaves, yet he didn’t free any slaves at all in the North during the war when he could have done so. We must also tear down the Lincoln Memorial in D.C.
It would seem like there’ a rather obvious distinction between celebrating someone because they did something wrong and celebrating someone despite the fact that they did something wrong
Whether Abraham Lincoln called for the freedom of northern slaves in 1864 or 1862 has little impact on why people celebrate him. But if Lee had no chosen to fight on the treasonous side for the sole purpose of maintaining the institution of slavery, it’s quite likely that not a single one of those statues would ever have been erected.
Who knew that someone’s spleen could be so full of question-begging bias? In any case, we should conduct an experiment to get some white supremacists to erect a few statues of Charles Darwin, with plaques honoring him for his family’s direct contribution and leadership in the eugenic racial purity movement. Then sit back and see how long before the SJWs blindly tear down all the statues of Charles Darwin across our land. The cognitive dissonance should be epic. It won’t even matter what else the Darwins did. It will only matter that white supremacists honored him with a statue. Right?… Read more »
If your question is, “Should we remove public statues celebrating eugenics”, then the answer is yes. “Even” if the figure in the statue happens to be Darwin.
Jonathan wrote: If your question is, “Should we remove public statues celebrating eugenics”, then the answer is yes. “Even” if the figure in the statue happens to be Darwin. I don’t think Jonathan followed his own logic. We aren’t talking about removing a few statues of Darwin. They must all come down, everywhere, regardless of anyone else’s motives in putting them up, or in wanting them to remain. Someone, somewhere was triggered. Darwin has now become tainted forever. Right? Anyway, Jonathan’s statement needs to become a meme, and go viral, just to see the reaction and damage control of the… Read more »
If you consider what you just said to be, “my own logic”, then you didn’t read my logic well. Let me repeat my exact statement: “Whether Abraham Lincoln called for the freedom of northern slaves in 1864 or 1862 has little impact on why people celebrate him. But if Lee had no chosen to fight on the treasonous side for the sole purpose of maintaining the institution of slavery, it’s quite likely that not a single one of those statues would ever have been erected.” Your scenario where someone suddenly decides to put up a few Darwin statues for nefarious… Read more »
Jonathan, RE Lee was not treasonous at all. The treason That is SJW rhetoric and stretching history books to reflect current trends not the actual facts. The articles signed at the end of the American Revolution allowed states to withdraw from the union. The books calling RE Lee a traitor overlook that fact as did the Northern push for punishment of those who followed the Constitution and left the union. Why is RE Lee studied and celebrated around the world? Because he was the best American general and leader in our history. Lincoln has all sorts of new history writers… Read more »
I just noticed your ridiculous claim that Lee being treasonous was “SJW rhetoric and stretching history books to reflect current trends”. That’s absolutely ridiculous. Have you not read the Constitution? The exact definition of treason is the Constitution is “levying war against the United States.” Even Lee himself, before he resigned, said that secession was nothing but revolution and inappropriate. Lee was indicted for treason AT THE TIME – you don’t need a history book or current trends to call him treasonous. President Johnson was fully in favor of trying Lee for treason and clearly would have been convicted. President… Read more »
Also Article 1, Section 10: “No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War” And the U.S. Supreme Court has confirmed that unilateral secession is unConstitutional. See Texas v. White, 1869, which declared that the secession of Texas was never a legal reality and secession is illegal without the consent of the States. That was confirmed in Williams v. Buffy in 1877 and has been the consistent interpretation… Read more »
Now hold on. Even if Darwin had been a proponent of eugenics — which he was not — being wrong about one thing doesn’t mean he’s wrong about everything else. Hitler loved dogs, but I hope you don’t infer from that that loving dogs is a bad thing.
Krychek_2 wrote: Even if Darwin had been a proponent of eugenics — which he was not — being wrong about one thing doesn’t mean he’s wrong about everything else. Wait a minute, if Darwin can be excused, so can Lee, right? Krychek_2 is revealing a tremendous lack of self-awareness of his own arguments, not to mention a suppurating double-standard. Did Krychek_2 just concede that: “Even if Lee had fought solely as a proponent of slavery — which he did not — being wrong about one thing doesn’t mean he’s wrong about everything else, and therefore we don’t have to take… Read more »
Katecho, assume your Darwin quotations to be accurate — and I will admit to being skeptical — and assume him to have been the most evil person to have walked the face of the earth. None of that tells us if evolution is true. Evil people occasionally get things right, and the validity of evolution stands or falls on its own apart from whether or not Darwin was a decent human being. And your statues analogy isn’t an apples to apples comparison. The reason Darwin is honored is because he was a great scientist, not because of his views on… Read more »
Krychek_2 wrote: … assume him to have been the most evil person to have walked the face of the earth. None of that tells us if evolution is true. Red herring. I never claimed that it tells us anything about evolution. Krychek_2 wrote: The reason Darwin is honored is because he was a great scientist, not because of his views on eugenics. On the other hand, the specific reason Lee is honored is because he fought to maintain a racist confederacy. No one can beg the question like Krychek_2. He apparently doesn’t know what it means to show his work.… Read more »
Katecho, if Lee were being honored for generically being a great military leader, you would have a point. But he’s not. He’s being honored specifically for being a great military leader who used his skills to support a racist regime. Goering was also a great military leader but there aren’t many statues of him in Germany, and there’s a reason for that. Are there no Goering statues because of those pesky SJWs, or is there some other rationale at work? On private property, if someone wants to erect a statue of Osama bin Laden, or Robert E. Lee, I’m fine… Read more »
Krychek, Katecho has quoted this paragraph correctly. What he has not done is put it into the context of the chapter. Nor he has distinguished between predicting an outcome and endorsing that outcome. If I tell you that, in the competition for scarce resources, the poor and unskilled are hopelessly outmatched by the rich and clever, you would be willfully misunderstanding me if you concluded that my sympathies are with the rich. If I tell you that smoking three packs a day might give you cancer, you would be deliberately obtuse if you take that to mean I am longing… Read more »
Jill, that was magnificent. Thank you.
Katecho, if the white supremacists honored me with a statue, I would certainly want to know what bad deed I did to get their attention, but more to the point, Darwin publicly repudiated eugenics so I’m not sure why you think he should be tarred with that brush. His cousin was a big supporter of it, but I’m sure you have family members you’d rather not be associated with too.
Krychek_2 wrote:
Citation needed.
Certainly. Darwin saw the possible social utility of eugenics programs but rejected them on moral grounds. He writes in The Descent of Man: “With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick, thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant… Read more »
Jill Smith, quoting Darwin, said: Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.” I was looking for a repudiation of eugenics, not an endorsement. Sorry. Darwin wrote: The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy … Darwin doesn’t say how incidental instincts suddenly become noble. He seems to be saying that we are stuck with these hard-wired sentimental instincts even if we are urged by “hard reason” to check them. Ultimately, the aid that he describes for the maimed/helpless/imbecile looks a lot… Read more »
Katecho, the assignment was not to find a repudiation of eugenics based on moral reasoning with which you happen to agree. The clearest reading of Darwin’s statement is that we could not lose these instincts toward sympathy–even if they are merely hardwired into us– without also losing the nobility of our nature. You may find his reasoning morally incoherent, but that does not alter what he said: that even if eugenics programs appear to make sense, we cannot engage in them without damaging our basic humanity. The Victorian era was the great age of the asylum. Many of them were… Read more »
This place is becoming odious. You posted an absolutely clear factual support of your point, and it means nothing in the argument. Literally nothing.
Not to mention the quickness with which character slander is being pulled out nowadays, not by any one person but by so many. I feel like it’s pulling down me as well, and I’m at the point where I’m embarrassed by the tenor of my posting.
(more character attacks in response to this comment coming in 3…2…1….)
Jonathan, I feel that way too, but it’s not just here. It’s everywhere, and this board is more restrained than most places. For both the left and the right, the question “Is this factually true?” is less important than the question “Whose narrative will this serve?” If I say that I think Trump mangles the mother tongue and clearly did not pay attention during geography class, I am obviously siding with Antifa. If I say that I don’t think Trump is personally anti-Semitic, then I am clearly siding with the Klan. Any attempt to be fair minded is regarded as… Read more »
While, “more restrained than most places” might be taking it too far, you are certainly correct overall. I am dismayed by the trend.
I think it is the devastation wrought by our embrace of the concept of alternative facts and relative truth. Very few people on either side seem willing to pause to establish the facts about anything. If something does not comport with your political views, it must be false. That, plus the belief that if our guy did it, it can’t be wrong or it doesn’t matter. Anyone who thought Clinton’s lies delivered under oath were no big deal has a problem now, and it was utterly predictable. Now nobody cares if a president is lying every time he opens his… Read more »
Yes, absolutely. I was saying this during the campaign – the decline in standards that Trump was promoting and encouraging, and his supporters were allowing, was far more important in the long run than whether or not Trump won.
How can anyone ever take another president’s lies seriously, and hold him to the truth, or even expect him to ever tell the truth under any circumstances, if Trump can continue to lie continuously about the most obvious things and keep getting away without rebuke from his “supporters”.
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” ― George Orwell, 1984
How lovingly ironic when we’re talking about Confederates.
Dave literally promoted the “The Civil War started because of Lincoln’s support for railways” and “Irish people were enslaved worse than the Blacks!” myths just in the last few minutes. Both of which came about LONG after the historical times they supposedly happened in.
Jonathan, you are being overly zealous again and lack the historical education to back your platitudes up.
Please stop misrepresenting what is typed and making things up. You display an inability to reason clearly and really do not display a Christian character when you twist what is said.
Dave, your exact words, where you repeat the “tariffs not slavery” myth for the cause of the Civil War that began being advanced in the 1890s: “Jill, current history tries to make the civil war solely about slavery, but that was not the case at all. The big problem was money because the Federal budget was filled by tariffs from both Northern and Southern states. A portion of that money was to be used for infrastructure improvement in rail systems, but the vast majority of the money went to Northern railroads, of which Lincoln was a large stakeholder and gained… Read more »
Is that an attempt at the best non non sequitur of the day? This has nothing to do with the Confederates, and everything to do with the monument-removers (both legal and illegal).
It is ironic concerning the Confederates because from the moment they regained power in the South and resubjugated Black persons, all the way up to their desperate attempts in the present day, they have constantly attempted to destroy or falsify records about slavery, about their reasons for seceding, about their racist actions to stop Reconstruction, all the way up through the very nature of the Segregation Era. Have you not read: “Southern Slavery As It Was”?
yeah..they did. The revolutionary war was to separate from GB ..true enough… but all the while MAINTAINING slavery… so GW and TJ were girding slavery for decades to come
“Washington and Jefferson may have owned slaves, but they didn’t lead a war for the specific purpose of maintaining slavery.” … um … yeah the did. The revolutionary war was fought to separate from Great Britain – certainly. But in doing so they (GW & TJ) purposefully and SPECIFICALLY maintained the rights of slave owners to continue the practice. Folks who don’t know their history are the most likely to want to re-write it.
Scott, no, they didn’t. The Constitution wasn’t written until ten years after the Revolutionary War ended.
The South was attacked. They left peacefully, but the North would let it happened. Who lead the war exactly?
The war between the states was about much more than slavery.
If California secedes and Doug leads an Idaho Army into the state, who is the violent one?
Correction: the North would NOT let it happen PEACEFULLY.
In an enormous miscalculation, the south actually fired the first shots and went on the attack. Had the south not attacked Fort Sumter the northern public may have rebelled against the war, but the attack galvanized public opinion against the secessionists. Look at local newspaper opinions before and after the attack, the effect cannot be overstated. It was at least as galvanizing as pearl harbor in 1941. “If California secedes and Doug leads an Idaho Army into the state, who is the violent one?” It depends, was there a contingent of Idahoans stationed near Sacramento, in a base built by… Read more »
A friend once said that all our government schools teach any more is American history. I understood the point he was trying to make, but, unfortunately, they don’t even teach that.
I’m familiar with the Fort Sumter debacle, and yes the South technically fired first. But the aggression was coming from the North.
I didn’t actually know that about the local public opinion. It is interesting how history hangs on these tiny little shifts.
Where do you fall on the ownership question of the Army Fort?
“Where do you fall on the ownership question of the Army Fort?” It is a difficult question. I am generally in favor of the right of a state to seceed if they so desire. However, they don’t have a right to seize military installations lawfully installed by the federal government. The right thing to do would have been for the seceding states to broker a deal to turn over all of their arms, cannon, ship etc. which were federal property in exchange for the government turning over the fort sites – disabled if they so desire, to the confederacy. However,… Read more »
Should they have waited until the Union Army arrived to slaughter them?
Waited for them to arrive where? Was the Union Army headed somewhere to slaughter them when they preemptively attacked?
The Union Army was sending weapons and supplies to Fort Sumter to fortify the position against the South. Either South allowed a well armed military on their, admittedly disputed, territory who has made their hostility and aggressive known, or the South preempts them by attacking first.
So the Union Army was about to “slaughter” the Southerners…by sending fortifications to an island SEA fort.
The Southern population was much more amphibious than I had been aware of.
I believe that once they seceded without having a deal brokered (which was likely impossible itself) war was inevitable. But yes, I believe they should have done whatever it took to make the Feds fire first. In war pretext, propaganda value, and public opinion can be more important than tactics and logistics, doubly so for civil wars. Of course, the south couldn’t even wait for formal orders to fire on Sumter. They fired on the convoy with small arms from the Citadel. When the firing began at Sumter, the fashionable set in Charleston threw parties and made toasts. They should… Read more »
What about federally installed highways?
Kilgore, your question assumes that the South had the right to secede. The normal pattern in most of human history is that unilateral attempts to secede from pretty much any country have been greeted with military intervention; can you cite me to any authority that says the South had that right? I’m skeptical in part because the Constitution and Bill of Rights were written with state’s rights in mind, and it seems to me that if the intent had been to allow secession, they would have said something about it. They sure included lots of other provisions about states rights;… Read more »
My point is that the South tried the peaceful route, and the North wanted nothing of it. Stay or else. The blame for the war doesn’t fall squarely on one side or the other, but peace was pursued and the North refused.
There were plenty of peaceful options to avoid war that the South refused as well. Neither side is without sin on that account.
Aside from capitulation to the North, what might those have been?
They could have not seceded in the first place, when neither they as states nor the institution of slavery faced any existential threat from Lincoln’s election. They could have actually worked on the Crittenden Compromise to avoid war. Their absolute refusal to budge on fugitive slave laws or even entertain the idea of giving up on coast-to-coast slavery were the two moves that kept it from going anywhere. They could have considered the Corwin Amendment a good-faith move that proved the north was legitimate in its assertions that it was not trying to end slavery and come back to the… Read more »
Hindsight is far easier than present-tense politics. it’s easy to say that the Civil War was a giant blunder by the South, and sure, it is in some sense possible that the underlying factors that led to war would have just gone away without the weaker region (the South) either being utterly subordinated to its far stronger counterpart (the North) or destroyed. But does that really seem a likely alternative to you, in the long run?
The South lost the war and still did not get subordinated to the North in the long run. Southerners continue to maintain significant power in every branch of government. Most of our presidents in the last 50 years were either from the South (Carter, Clinton, Bush) or sympathized strongly with the South (Reagan, Trump). Public education curriculum across the nation for the entire 2nd half of the 20th century was more influenced by Texas narratives than by any other source. If there had never been a Civil War, never been 600,000 dead, never had not only the taint of slavery… Read more »
The Southern cause, the possibility of states’ rights trumping federal jurisdiction, was totally destroyed. In other words, they lost hard, and (like the other Northern states, which at the time were using the federal government as a cudgel) are now in large part reduced to provinces.
I grant that thanks to Lincoln’s influence the south was not utterly squashed. But there was definitely some major subordinating that happened.
The Corwin Amendment gives a very strong case that “State’s Rights” were not the central cause of the war. There’s never been a more pro-state’s rights move in U.S. history, and it was ignored by the seceding states.
But… it was observably too little, too late. Evidently, the south no longer trusted the good intentions of the north, or southrons viewed it as a bandaid for a chest wound, or something. The fact that the South didn’t accept Corwin is prima facie evidence that by their lights it was insufficient.
Yes, it was insufficient because ANY argument focused on state’s rights was insufficient, because the core issue wasn’t state’s rights. If the issue was state’s rights, what could you possibly do that would have been stronger than the Corwin Amendment? The South wanted certainty that fugitive slave laws would be enforced in the North and that the slave states would maintain their power as a voting block by continuing to approve new slave states across the West. Those are federal issues, not state issues, and they are focused around the long-term viability of slavery. The South was not willing to… Read more »
But “stay or else” is only illegitimate if leaving is a right. So, back to my original question: What is the basis for the claim of a right to leave? And if such a right did exist, why wasn’t it mentioned in the Constitution?
Isn’t it kind of implicit in the DOI? If you can lawfully rebel against your king because you think (rightly or wrongly) that he is a tyrant, surely you can sever the ties that bind you to the federal government.
While disagreeing with almost every thing 40 Acres said, I could argue with him because he was willing to concede a good point whether it was factual or rhetorical. Because of this, I was receptive to his evidence as well. I had not realized that there was vicious mistreatment of blacks outside the South.
I was also never quite sure whether he was trolling me!
The DOI does not form the U.S. government though, it preceded it. The Constitution itself forbids secession without the consent of the States, as the Supreme Court has consistently argued.
It would be perfectly fine to have hypocritical disagreements between the DOI and the Constitution, but if you wanted to make it non-hypocritical, you could say that secession was justified in the American case because they had no representation, but in a representative government you are duty-bound to get the consent of the body.
I’ll leave the constitutional debate to the lawyers.
The South wanted out, peacefully. The issue that drove the North was money. They stood to lose “bigly” in tariffs and strategic military positions. So, they forced the war. Your original assertion was that these men led a war. They tried to avoid war, it was the North that was the aggressor. The phrase, “War of Northern Aggression” is not blind propaganda.
Except for the part about the South firing the first shots and the South being in violation of the Constitution, I agree.
It’s implicit in the concept of self-government, e.g. “liberty”. Compelling the South to remain in a political union it wished to destroy was a violation of a supposedly inalienable right.
I’m not sure where you get that it was an inalienable right, as least not by the rules that they were playing with. Lee said himself secession was inappropriate and nothing less than revolution, before he was forced to go along with it anyway for sentimental reasons. Article 1, Section 10: “No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War.” And the U.S. Supreme Court has confirmed that… Read more »
Moreover, is was the administration before Lincoln’s — a Democratic Party administration — that began the war by its refusal to evacuate federal forces from the territory of the sovereign State of South Carolina. Lincoln continued the refusal.
I have a hypothetical question for you. How many White Idahoans would California have to kidnap and enslave or kill before the claim that California was acting “peacefully” became a farce.
Not that the South’s willingness to go up north and enslave/kill people was the main reason the North and South went to war. But in most cases where war is considered justifiable and Black people aren’t considered subhuman, one country openly sending people into another to kidnap/enslave human beings who had fled there couldn’t possibly be justified as “peaceful”, and would be a perfectly legitimate reason to declare war.
You do know that the North had slaves, too, right? That fact undercuts this whole scenario.
Not at all. The only reason you can say, “the North had slaves too” is because no all the slave states chose to secede. The fact that there may have been sufficient reason for war with an ally doesn’t mean that there isn’t sufficient reason for war with an enemy. If Saddam really had illegal WMD’s, would that be considered insufficient reason for war because Israel and India have illegal WMD’s too? FWIW, I do NOT think that the Civil War was justified. But that’s because I believe that Jesus Christ is against us killing people. If you are okay… Read more »
Krychek_2 wrote:
Neither did Robert E. Lee.
Lee wasn’t the commander of the confederate forces during the Civil War?
And yes, I realize there were other issue involved, but the protagonists were very clear at the time that slavery was the big one. I just finished reading Ulysses Grant’s memoirs and he devotes an entire chapter to it.
South Carolina’s declaration of the causes of secession leads with slavery. It states that the federal government was hostile to the institute of slavery, encouraged slaves to run away, and failed to return them when they did. I see no reason for pretending now that slavery was not the central issue.
I don’t think anyone denies that slavery was a central part of the war, but let’s not pretend that it didn’t entangle other very important issues, issues that the North was wrong about. Blame for this cannot fall neatly on one side, and to denigrate one side and not the other is wrong.
“I don’t think anyone denies that slavery was a central part of the war …”
I vehemently deny this. While slavery was a very important part of the reasons the Southern States seceded, the *war* had nothing to do with slavery.
Ilion wrote: While slavery was a very important part of the reasons the Southern States seceded, the *war* had nothing to do with slavery. The great majority of Southerners didn’t even own slaves. The Confederate soldier on the ground was fighting from a patriotic motivation for his state. How else does Krychek_2 try to explain black Confederate regiments? On August 22, 1862, Lincoln wrote a letter to the New York Tribune saying: “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do… Read more »
Jill, current history tries to make the civil war solely about slavery, but that was not the case at all. The big problem was money because the Federal budget was filled by tariffs from both Northern and Southern states. A portion of that money was to be used for infrastructure improvement in rail systems, but the vast majority of the money went to Northern railroads, of which Lincoln was a large stakeholder and gained income from those railroads. The second problem was state’s rights and secession was authorized by the original documents signed in France at the end of the… Read more »
The idea that the South succeeded because Lincoln had stake in railways is one of the more ridiculous revisionists histories. Please, PLEASE link me to any original documents from the time making that claim. It is absolutely absent from the documents of secession. In fact, the most recent tariff act had been the Act of 1857, and it was basically written by the South and gave a massive DECREASE in tariffs. Tariffs hadn’t been a secession issue since the 1830s. The myth of a tariff-focused secession was invented in the 1890s when the South began rewriting the public history of… Read more »
Jonathan wrote:
Speaking of revisionist history, Jonathan has provided us with another case of “tasty foot syndrome”.
Apparently Jonathan is ignorant of the Morrill Tariff. It played a direct role in the secession ordinance of South Carolina, coincidentally dated December 25, 1860:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrill_Tariff#Secession_and_tariffs
The Morrill Tariff wasn’t even passed when the South seceded, and couldn’t pass because the Democrats controlled the Senate and the Finance Committee. They maintained the majority after the election too. The only reason the Morrill Tariff even passed was because the Southern senators left the Senate. As far as the influence the “thought “of higher tariffs could have on secession, as your own link points out, only two states even mentioned it at all and both of those states still focused on slavery, not secession. That’s how far behind you’re fighting from right now. Dave claims that the “Big… Read more »
Jonathan seems to be attempting damage control and goal post moving at this point. He had claimed that: Tariffs hadn’t been a secession issue since the 1830s. That was shown to be trivially false. Tariffs were a major issue mentioned directly in secession ordinances of key states. Jonathan claimed that: The myth of a tariff-focused secession was invented in the 1890s when the South began rewriting the public history of the Civil War. Again, Jonathan was shown to be the one attempting the rewriting of history. He tried to claim that tariffs hadn’t been a secession issue or focus since… Read more »
No, it was not a “major issue”. None of the attempts to avoid war, not the Crittenden Compromise nor the Corwin Amendment, even mention tariffs. The very link you posted stated, “Slavery dominated the secession debate in the southern states” and mentioned only two states where the non-passed tariff even played a part at all – and in one of those two the mention of tariffs didn’t even make it into the secession ordinance, but only into a screed that accompanied it. And Virginia even went so far as to do the opposite and add another tariff. Tariffs were not… Read more »
And your claim that Lincoln didn’t call for slavery to end during the war is absolutely false. Not only did he call for it, the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery was passed by the Senate on April 8th, 1864, more than a year before the war ended. Lincoln officially endorsed the Amendment when he accepted his nomination for a 2nd term in June 1864. With Lincoln’s extremely strong backing it passed the House on January 31st, 1865. Lincoln had been publicly calling for an end to slavery, full stop, since at least 1863. You really shouldn’t be insulting people’s knowledge… Read more »
Jonathan previously wrote:
How does Jonathan reconcile that statement with his claim that:
How can both of those statements be true?
Jonathan wrote:
Jonathan probably has no idea how hilariously condescending and ironic that sounds coming from his keyboard.
Um, probably because one statement is a statement of the factors leading up to secession, and the other is a good two years after the decision to secede was already made and they were in the middle of war?
As far as your insults, they are tiring. Also laughable, considering the way these conversations have progressed so far. If it is “hilariously condescending and ironic”, then go ahead, cite all the historical gaps that I’ve been proven wrong on, with citation. And I’m asking for provable citations, not just silly assertions.
Jonathan wrote:
Apparently the words, “never once”, actually mean, “multiple times, only two years later”. Now we know.
Katecho, when discussing causes of secession, we are limited to things that happened BEFORE the war. That was the obvious context of my statement. I don’t expect you to argue honestly but this is just getting ridiculous. Who do you think such silliness is helping?
The past tense in J’s statement was clearly limited by context (never = never up to the relevant point in the discussion). It’s a foul to take a contextual statement as an absolute (particularly when, as a description of Mr Emancipation Declaration Abe Lincoln, such an absolute statement would be ridiculous), then charge the speaker with hypocrisy over your misinterpretation.
Katecho is too intelligent to argue this way. His dislike of Jonathan’s positions is leading him into unfairness.
Is he a dude? I always assumed “Kate Cho” was a girl. Possibly with a mid-back-length ponytail, although I wouldn’t commit to that last detail.
Its from the Greek. And come on, the guy writes like a dude
There was a man here a couple of years ago who posted a link to an app which could supposedly identify the gender of a writer. You pasted in a block of original text, and the app responded male or female. When every block I inserted identified me as male, I grew idly curious and pasted in samples of writing from Jane and Valerie. Also male.
The app measured, among other things, the use of qualifiers and softeners. I think I use them when I want to be more conciliatory than direct. But obviously not enough to be genuinely womanly!
Well, we can always look at your avatar. Very feminine. And your daughter is very pretty. Hard to tell but does she have a hint of the Jewish nose?
A bit, but I would rip out my tongue before I would let her hear me say it. Looking like a stereotypical dumb blonde has been very useful to me throughout my lifetime. Especially when playing Trivial Pursuit for high stakes.
I’ll admit I thought his style a trifle unfeminine.
My guess is that he has taken his nick from “catechesis”.
haha – I thought the same thing too when I first came here, but like bethyada points out, he definitely writes like a dude.
Like someone else pointed out once though (perhaps also bethyada?), katecho would gnaw off his own leg before he would reveal any biographical information.
Thank you Farinata, and also you Jilly, for the support.
Your welcome. I still think you’re wrong about the tariffs, though. I find the whole notion of a trial over the motives of the south post eventum extremely dodgy top to bottom. It was millions of people moving in a similar direction – obviously there was a whole complex of motives.
South Carolina declared *secession*, not war.
At the time of the war the southerners played up threats to slavery as the casus belli. Mainstream northern sources (non-abolitionists) downplayed slavery as the cause.
In the years since this dicotomy has flipped. Southern sources and their sympathizers downplay slavery as though it was a small concern in a long list of grievances, and the north and their descendants make the war out to be a moral crusade to crush the wicked institution of slavery.
I guess as the times change our history does too!
I think that at the time, both were right, and the revisionists in both cases are wrong. The South seceded and accepted war because they wanted to maintain slavery indefinitely and were afraid that moves would soon come (like Western states being admitted in as free states) that over time would reduce slave state power and lead to them being forced to give up slavery against their will. The North was willing to go to war because they wanted to maintain control over the entire Union. While many Northerners (including Lincoln) were honestly opposed to slavery, there wasn’t nearly the… Read more »
The specific purpose of the American revolution was independence from Great Britain and self governance for the states.
For slave states, the revolutionary war maintained slavery, among many other things.
Sometimes the good guys can’t get everything done all at once. ; – )
Neither did the Confederates. You know this, but you don’t care.
Amen!
Under intense political pressure, to say something different, our president instead said things that needed to be said. Yes…He has flaws. But I applaud him for attempting rational discussion – rather than mob rule. And I am praying for him.
I’m disappointed to see you lump all of the rally attendees into the category of “white supremacist.” The very fact that the mainstream media are using “white supremacy” as a catch-all label should be enough to make you question it. I know enough about the alt-right, or at least it’s most public figures (Enoch, Spencer, etc.), to tell you that most of these people are not “white supremacist,” but rather ethno-nationalists, or if you prefer, “white nationalists.” Here are the kinds of things you would hear a typical alt-righter say: 1) “I prefer the company of whites.” 2) “Whites are… Read more »
Personally, I prefer the company of Christians, though I am more than happy to spend time with potential Christians. But if a person really prefers the company of whites, and wants to live in an “ethnically homogeneous country” then they will really hate heaven. I don’t suppose many of them will have to worry about that though.
“for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation” Rev. 5:9
I’m not trying to defend white nationalism, I’m simply trying to show how white nationalism does not equal white supremacy. Wanting to live separated from other races is quite a bit different than wanting to rule over them.
Garner wrote: I’m not trying to defend white nationalism, I’m simply trying to show how white nationalism does not equal white supremacy. Fortunately, Wilson didn’t say that white nationalism equals white supremacy. Garner wrote: Wanting to live separated from other races is quite a bit different than wanting to rule over them. Wanting to rule over other races can also be separated from thinking one is superior to them. Not sure what that has to do with Wilson’s arguments though. Garner wrote: The following statements ARE legitimate white supremacist statements: 1) “Blacks are less human than whites” 2) “Whites should… Read more »
But when the reason is that one race supposedly are better than another, then it is a kind of supremacy.
Ben Garner wrote: I’m disappointed to see you lump all of the rally attendees into the category of “white supremacist.” Garner is seeing things. Wilson was making a larger point regarding civic justice that even if we assume, for the sake of argument, a group of nothing but white supremacists, marching to Hell, the fact that they’re white supremacists still doesn’t justify thugs showing up with baseball bats to instigate violence on them. In order to make this point, Wilson didn’t need to declare that everyone marching in the rally in Charlottesville was actually a white supremacist, and so he… Read more »
There is a difference between asserting a) “whites are better than blacks at a certain activity” – say, coding or writing poetry or perpetuating European culture, and b) “whites have greater ontological value”. B) is clearly heretical, whereas A) is a question of fact. It may be accurate or not, and it is possibly the sort of thing that one cannot really know. But superiority at one activity does not imply superiority sempliciter.
Uberti wrote: There is a difference between asserting a) “whites are better than blacks at a certain activity” – say, coding or writing poetry or perpetuating European culture, and b) “whites have greater ontological value”. B) is clearly heretical, whereas A) is a question of fact. Unfortunately, the ability of a statement to be resolved as true or false doesn’t end the discussion. For example, gossip can be committed using only true statements. That doesn’t make it any less sinful. This demonstrates that there is more to be considered than facts. Motives are critical. This is particularly the case when… Read more »
That is true. The sin of detraction consists of saying true but unkind things either with bad motive or without necessity.
Sure, any word under the sun can be spoken pridefully, or with some underlying sin – doubtless few words are otherwise in this vale of tears and treachery. But just as surely (and I imagine you would agree), we can’t simply infer base motives, can we? We don’t know the speaker in most cases, and even in those cases where we do, how are we to make that judgment? I suppose some speakers make it easier than others by also acknowledging that they hate black people. If you want to oppose those people I agree with you. But their sin… Read more »
No, and I think the temptation to ascribe better motives to ourselves than to others must be resisted. But I was actually drawing on Catholic moral theology. If I know for a fact that my neighbor did time for drunk driving, I commit a really serious sin if I reveal that knowledge without urgent necessity. The truth of the statement is not a defense. My motive would have to pass the test of whether my disclosure was essential to prevent harm greater than the damage to my neighbor’s reputation. This falls under sins against justice, and obviously does not apply… Read more »
My experience is that such “hatefacts” (as Steve Sailer calls them) come up in one of two ways: academic study of whichever phenomenon happens to be in view, and justification for some disparate-impact policy or personal decision. E.g. “Why do you think the airport screeners should apply stricter scrutiny to young men named Muhammed than elderly grandmothers named Ethel from Nebraska?” “Why shouldn’t banks charge responsible people with good credit lower mortgage rates than irregularly employed people with poor credit?” The obvious answer to such questions is a firing offense at my job.
If intensive, second-level screening at airports is supposed to be random, I wonder why I am always selected for it, especially in Canada where my hair seems to draw unusual attention. I have been required to let gloved inspectors separate my thinning blonde locks down to root level while my daughter, who looks Middle Eastern, sails on through. A bobby pin is visible in my hair, let alone a block of high grade plastique. I could pass as an elderly member of the Bader-Meinhoff gang. But I think that the Mossad has already sent them to the hereafter.
I stipulated “Nebraskan grandmothers”. You’re a shifty-eyed foreigner so extra scrutiny is only to be expected. Don’t forget we keep trying to invade Canada and failing. America is a very sore loser: we can’t be proper friends with another country until we crush them fair and square.
Generally agree with your 2 response but I think you are talking past each other (see my earlier comment).
My one dispute is that I don’t think 2 is (necessarily) a statement of white supremacy. It is an observation (true or not) of white superiority in one metric. But one can hold to racial or sexual or cultural superiority in various metrics and acknowledge their inferiority in other metrics. Male superiority in certain things (and female superiority in others) is not, from a Christian perspective, a claim to supremacy. Although it may be a temptation to it.
bethyada wrote: My one dispute is that I don’t think 2 is (necessarily) a statement of white supremacy. It is an observation (true or not) of white superiority in one metric. Actually, that’s not accurate. It was a list of several metrics, not just one. Each metric listed in statement 2 was of broad social import. How many (or which) metrics does one have to claim racial superiority in, in order for a statement to be regarded as a claim of racial supremacy? Stated the other way, is someone not a white supremacist if they say whites are inferior to… Read more »
@Katecho Would that admission of inferiority somehow render them no longer a white supremacist?
No it would not. That a supremacist can think his race is inferior in a couple of minor metrics (true) is not the same as saying the man who believes there are superiorities among races must be a supremacist.
Ben, I agree with Katecho that your second point is a statement of white superiority, however nicely it is dressed up. I have done a fair bit of reading on alt-right blogs since I was first made aware of them, and I think your second point has been more frequently expressed in more direct terms–i.e. “The 15 point IQ difference between blacks and whites is responsible for black culture, black crime, black underachievement, and black behavior in general, and makes it impossible for white people to live with them on terms approaching equality.” That is a summary, not a direct… Read more »
I might express it as the ability to have preferences in things like table manners or intelligence or civility without having that preference be taken for proxy racism and made illegal. I don’t want racist laws that discriminate on skin color. But if it is true that, i.e. a literacy test for some jobs (or, say, higher education) will tend to screen out more blacks than whites, I want that not to count as evidence of injustice ipso facto. I agree that unity of the Church requires loving our brothers there, even the ones we might naturally find boring or… Read more »
Uberti wrote: But if it is true that, i.e. a literacy test for some jobs (or, say, higher education) will tend to screen out more blacks than whites, I want that not to count as evidence of injustice ipso facto. Well said. As long as we acknowledge mans tendency to design irrelevant tests to goal seek the result he wants. So we also don’t want to see any whites crying because the NBA recruiter imposed a test for vertical leap. Vertical leap is kinda relevant to the game. Race stereotypes and aggregate statistics are irrelevant when the individual is being… Read more »
I agree with all that, Farinata.
The problem comes with Christianity, which is explicitly transracial – Jews and Greeks. If you want to be a Christian, you have to jettison racial vainglory.
I think Ben is correct here, at least partially. These things do not intrinsically mean racism. Thinking that men in general are better at being engineers and women better at nurturing children is hardly sexist (though you will be accused of misogyny by making this claim). It is hardly racist to note bare facts of the world, or to say you would rather live in Romania than Somalia. 1-5 are not intrinsically supremacist (though for a Christian, 1 and 5 are probably sinful if that is the level of thinking). Though some of these could be. 2. seems generally true… Read more »
Bethyada, my problem is not the sometimes repellent ideas that people hold, or with their holding views that are based on evidence that may be essentially true but distorted to support a particular agenda. Nothing can be done about that, and I doubt that most people are open to having their views challenged. My problem is that holding these views tends to co-exist with a demand that they be the basis of public policy. A desire to create an all-white homeland within the borders of the United States cannot be fulfilled without the complete oppression of nonwhites. Either they will… Read more »
You say that separating the races is oppression, but I think it’s the opposite; keeping the races together through government force when there are deep incompatibilities among them is oppression. Let’s take blacks for example. Blacks on average are less intelligent than whites, they have a higher time preference (i.e. less ability to delay gratification), and they vote overwhelmingly left. Their preferences for how society ought to be run are vastly different from those of whites. Yet they’re forced to live in a country built and maintained by whites and for whites, and to therefore conform to the particular standards… Read more »
@Ben Garner Separation of the races would have to be by force, if it were even possible. But it isn’t possible because not many black Americans have no white American ancestors. They are part of your culture now, inextricably, like it or not. To make two separate nations (or three if you want to exclude South Americans as well) you would have to draw arbitrary lines for how white/black/hispanic you have to be to be a part of each nation. There would be millions of Americans who fall somewhere in between and who would struggle to categorise themselves. It would… Read more »
So it is sympathy for black people that makes you want to exclude them forcibly from white society? Do Clarence Thomas and Ben Carson get to stay? You are treating whites as a monolithic group. High IQ socially privileged white people also vote left and have very different ideas from yours on how society ought to be run. I expect that you might have more in common with a socially conservative black person than with a California liberal, even one with a nice IQ and impeccably white ancestry. But all of this is irrelevant. You don’t want to live with… Read more »
I think Garner’s comment was mostly a distraction. Wilson wasn’t arguing that everyone who came for the rally was a white supremacist anyway, so Garner’s (rather sloppy) attempt at technical clarification wasn’t even needed. For the record, I don’t know anyone here who believes that every isolated statistical observation about races is automatically a claim of racial supremacy. Such observations should put us on alert for potential bad motives and ecological fallacies though.
The following statements ARE legitimate white supremacist statements:
1) “Blacks are less human than whites”
2) “Whites should rule over blacks.”
White I find White Nationalism to be odious in itself, it’s interesting that I can think of at least 3 recent regulars here, possibly 4, for whom these overtly “legitimate white supremacist” statements also apply.
I might not have been here long enough to know if this is true or not, but I call your bluff. Care to identify them?
Even that one guy, 40 acres or some such name, who was probably the most blatant in his race opinions, once admitted that he thought blacks were made in the image of God. The others here who defend Trump would not hold that blacks are less than human.
His racial views were dreadful but I grew fond of him and was sorry he got kicked off. His great strength was that he was always willing to concede a good point.
I got this at second hand from someone on this board who board who exchanged emails with him. I found his open racism easier to swallow than racially coded equivalents dressed up as “science”.
40 Acres said that Black people were not descended from Adam and Eve.
ashv and Timothy both stated that Whites should rule over blacks, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Barnie believes that as well.
Actually, I’ll be slightly wary of myself there. ashv certainly said it. Timothy said that Black people were inferior in capabilities and should be taught that and tracked into lower-level tasks, and a lot of other horrific things about Black people’s character and Christianity and violence, but I’m not sure if he ever used the term “rule”.
But he loved Motown.
You wound me with your misrepresentation.
I have always been a black nationalist, and would gladly donate to a Retake Liberia campaign.
You have stated on multiple occasions that Black persons are not capable of civilization and that White persons should be ruling over Black persons. You know, like: “My point is that my views on race aren’t founded on an emotional reaction, but on the evidence that Black Americans aren’t capable of building or maintaining a civilisation at the same level as Whites, and that if they are going to live together peaceably in the same country, this will necessarily involve Whites ruling over and providing for Blacks, including White suppression of Black violence.” “Then why were blacks doing so much… Read more »
Ashv, your views on race are deplorable but no one can call you humorless.
Thank you Pastor Wilson. The President is to commended for pointing out the obvious and renounce both sides. Obama’s failure to call out BLM with their cop-killing was pathetic. President Trump was left with a lot of junk to clean up, not the least of which was coddling leftist fascism.
I pray that more evangelical pastors show the same boldness and courage and lead all of us to repentance.
Amen. President Trump’s remarks were awesome. I think he sees the whole picture and he understands what’s happening. Praise the Lord. Just to level up the controversy here, if you really want to reflect Christ, you don’t whack a neo nazi upside the head, you take him out for pie and listen to him. Even the lost and broken are HURTING, their grievances are real. We change a whole lot more hearts by dialoguing with people than we do by virtue signaling our own disgust. I whack people myself so I get it, but just the same that’s not how… Read more »
Sure, taking Hitler to lunch would really have changed things. I don’t think that “hurting” is any kind of excuse for doing evil. Not every grievance in this world is legitimate. You recognize that when it comes to men who abuse women. You accept no excuses for any man who even questions whether we should try the alleged rapist before tossing him into prison. Why so soft on neo-Nazis?
“Why so soft on neo-Nazis?” So says the gal who just yesterday told me, it was unfair and unjust to assume that the 3 black supremacist groups marked by the SPLC might have any ill intentions? I never said hurting was an excuse for doing evil,but just the same, when people are hurting they tend to do evil. Also, I’ve taken quite a few pedophiles and wife abusers out for pie. I’d prefer to just punch them in the head, but I’m a bit smaller than most of them and just hating on them doesn’t seem to help win hearts… Read more »
MeMe, you are deliberately misquoting me. I said it was unjust to assume that their intentions were genocidal. Just as it would be unjust of me to assume that every white supremacist group is planning genocide. Please quote me correctly. On the other hand, some of the Nazis you would like to take out for pie have made their genocidal intentions clear beyond all doubt. Christopher Cantwell, who has been caught on video crying like a little girl because there is apparently a warrant out for his arrest, said the following: “Like I’m not even a Hitlerite but I’m like,… Read more »
Daryl Davis
I’m not misquoting you Jilly, I’m paraphrasing you. And I’m not paraphrasing you to play gotcha games, I’m doing it to point out how subjective and biased your perceptions and opinions are. We all have biases. The thing is, right and wrong don’t change just because you happen to really dislike neonazis.
But it was a very inaccurate and misleading paraphrase intended to convey that I exonerated black separatist groups of any bad motives or ill will or wrong doing. Once again, I said that it would be unfair to assume they intend to commit genocide. Surely you must be able to see a difference. Yes, of course, I have biases and perceptions. It is my duty to make them conform, as far as I am able, with objective standards of right and wrong. “The thing is, right and wrong don’t change just because you happen to really dislike neonazis.” This is… Read more »
I never said your dislike of nazis was moral defect. But your emotional over reaction to them is an intellectual defect.
Like I said in my original comment, if you really want to do something about them, take them out for pie and listen to them.
Yes, because obviously feeling sympathy for Nazis is a sign of a keen intelligence at work. That must be why they’re unemployed dropouts rather than Harvard grads. I do not think it is possible to overreact to people who have the stated intention of murdering Jews. You obviously disagree. You presumably read the quotes I cited from Christopher Cantwell, and do not see the evil that is so evident to me. I honestly don’t know how to react to this. Tell me why I would want to listen to them. Shall I listen patiently while they tell me their fantasies… Read more »
@Jill Smith Tell me why I would want to listen to them
Because you love your enemies and you want them to repent and become part of the kingdom. Read my Davis link.
Jill, a significant number of women are murderous. We can treat them like you suggest we treat Nazis, or we can sit down with them and try and get them to see the evil of their actions.
Perhaps it was the buy them pie and listen to their genuine grievances because they are “hurting” that I find intolerable. That kind of talk makes me queasy even when it ‘s not applied to would-be mass murderers. Imagining yourself to be hurting and broken is an excuse for exactly nothing, and sympathizing with the racial grievances of Nazis is immoral. I would infinitely prefer to spend my time and resources supporting their victims. I expect this is something that no one else can understand. When people talk casually about gassing Jews and finishing the job that Hitler started—when they… Read more »
“I expect this is something that no one else can understand.”
I suspect you are wrong. I think all of us wrestle with these issues. For you it’s nazis, for me it’s pedophiles. Some would execute a scared 13 yr old child for having an abortion. That made me feel a bit ill. The point being, we are still called to love our enemies, no matter how repugnant they seem to us.
Also, you’ll never change the world,never protect your daughter from your imaginary fears, by hating on nazis.
Yes, any time a person worries about the possibility of Nazis harming Jews, his or her fears are clearly imaginary. Only a fool would ever take their rhetoric seriously. And only a hater would actually object to their innocent statements. After all, they’re only poor lost boys whose lives are worth much more than those of the Jews they have threatened to kill. The Nazis get your empathy, and the mothers of their intended victims get your derision. How silly of me not to get that. The reason I don’t live in constant fear when I read the statements of… Read more »
I suspect I view modern “Nazis” differently to the Germans. The later is clearly an evil regime that was nationwide and should have been opposed. Moderns who identify seem do not carry the same power and I suspect are driven by other things. As far as the young supremacists we are now seeing, they have had years of cultural/racial identity teaching and told they are evil purely for being white. Rightly or wrongly theirs seem to be a little of a reaction. Reviling is a sin, but those who opine loudly can be less of a concern than those who… Read more »
Not sure what you are asking here, but I would oppose Germany Nazism yet would consider taking a modern day supremacist out to lunch.
Bethyada, my computer had a seizure and I’m not sure what got posted. First, some definitions. Nazi is not a label I assign lightly. For me, it does not cover ordinary anti-Semites who publish conspiracy theories (let alone people who simply tend to dislike Jews), white supremacists who do not advocate the persecution of minorities, and people whose politics are far to the right of my own. I call someone a Nazi when he joins a Nazi party or when he expresses violent intentions towards minority groups, or when he states his regret that Hitler didn’t manage to kill every… Read more »
It’s a pity that he’s so ill-educated that he doesn’t know that Communists and Nazis are both Socialists. I’m sure he’d be able to find common ground with the “kikes” if he knew that they supported universal basic income and government-run healthcare, just like Richard Spencer does.
“I think he sees the whole picture and he understands what’s happening. Praise the Lord.” Statements like that blow my mind. When Trump happily states that he will give police departments all the military equipment they want, whenever they want, while not moving to do anything whatsoever about police violence, he really sees the whole picture? When he retweets claims that 81% of White murder victims are murdered by Black people (actual figure: 15%), or literally hundreds of tweets from the “White Genocide” movement including from accounts literally called, “White Genocide”, he “understands what’s happening”? When he claims that Ferguson… Read more »
I read somewhere that 25% of Americans will defend Trump regardless of what he says or does because they are too heavily invested to even contemplate that he could be mistaken. About anything at all, including easily checked factual matters. I am sure there were people who felt the same way about Obama. But it is a mindset so foreign to me that I can’t begin to comprehend it. I recognize that even my darling Justin Trudeau can say stupid things, make dumb decisions, and spend money that the country doesn’t have.
It might be even worse than you think:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/conservative-christians-disagreement-trump/516132/
This as well: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/christians-tempted-by-trump-idolatry/
We defend Trump because he is on our side. Yes he’s wrong sometimes, yes we don’t like everything he does, he’s hardly perfect. But he is looking out for our interests, and that’s more than can be said of any other occupant of the White House in the past few decades, and more than the Republicans in Congress are doing now.
Why would it matters if Trump told the truth? His enemies do not deserve the truth.
Looks like I didn’t even really need to post links.
Truth is something everyone deserves. Or rather, the value of truth is intrinsical, and thus it does not matter if a person deserves truth. Truth has a value of its own. And if Trumps enemies doesnt deserve truth, what about his followers.
The idea that anything goes is somebody is on your side is the folly of Boromir: “It is a gift. Let us use it against Him”.
When he retweets claims that 81% of White murder victims are murdered by Black people (actual figure: 15%)
I do not know the numbers but I wonder…
Of all the whites murdered, how many were murdered by blacks (as opposed to whites or Latinos)
Of all the murders by black people, how many of them are white victims.
These ratios could be vastly different but both make the above claim.
Here’s a link to the claim, there’s no ambiguity whatsoever. It says:
Whites killed by Police: 3%
Whites killed by Whites: 16%
Whites killed by Blacks: 81%
There is no way to justify those numbers – all three are absolutely false. And again the question – WHY would Trump post that? And how could he be so ignorant of American homicide figures as to actually believe it?
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/nov/23/donald-trump/trump-tweet-blacks-white-homicide-victims/
Thanks. Looks like Trump should delete his tweet.
So why do you think he posted it in the first place, and another 100+ other tweets from the purveyors of the White Nationalist movement?
And are you disturbed that he appears to be unaware of the falseness of such a clearly distorted fact? He’s out there talking about how to make America great, while literally believing that 80% of White murder victims are being killed by Black people, rather than 15%?
Your history is shameful, so are these monuments, and so is your celebration.
the voice of cultural genocide… and actual genocide once the last whites lose their last few rights
Every culture goes away at some point. Looks like your time has come old man.
“old man”?
Omigosh! Ageism! Helllp! Police! ; – )
The snorting chuckle I got from this was grand.
Snowflakes who need safe spaces talking all tough to the old men with guns. How funny.
Funny, I have never spoken to anyone demanding their rights to guns who wasn’t also morbidly obese. Real tough guys don’t need guns. But don’t worry, we will take your guns soon enough, might encourage you to hit the gym and to forgo evening snacks :)
The laughs keep a coming.
Said no successful military force ever.
No, no, Kilgore. We all need to hug-a-thug and tell him we have been insensitive to his valuable perceptions. Then we can all sing Kum Bai Ya, and call it a day.
I am really glad that World War II was fought by people who didn’t confuse fighting evil with group therapy.
Yet quite a few successful revolutionary forces have.
Decent trolling Scott. 4/10. You could have ramped it up without being so obvious…we will take your guns soon. Lolz. How will the unarmed take them from the armed?
I might have overdone it in places, but I gotta have my fun somehow. You have no idea how little I care about this silly stuff. But these guys just loose their mind. It’s wonderful.
Michael Moore has guns? ; – )
Um, aren’t you kind of defeating your own claim there? On one hand you’re saying that they’re snowflakes who need safe spaces, on the other hand you’ve been whining about their violence as they get right in the face of their armed enemies. It doesn’t seem like both claims can be completely true.
Duh. You aren’t this stupid. They choose to not fire on their opponents because they don’t want to kill, and it looks bad. It’s not worth killing someone even if they throw rocks at you. It hurts, but rocks aren’t bullets.
They’re also different people. Some need safe spaces. Some are violent. You don’t need this explained to you.
So who are the different people here? How is Kilgore distinguishing which is which at this moment?
I can see, though, how simultaneously claiming that your opponents are violent and that your opponents run from violence can be very useful in a debate where you just go and tar the person you are speaking to with whichever brush works best at the moment, regardless of evidence.
you and your AnTiFa’ buddies should get yourselves a great and glorious monument one day….. a good start would be a bronze 6’4″ white man with covered face and spraying pepper spray into a young woman’s face, from behind.
Don’t worry, we will provide your grandchildren with a better education than you ever received. They will be able to think with clarity beneath tall statues of tomorrows heroes. I can even see it now, Barack Obama cast in bronze, standing proud beneath a blue sky, the American flag waving in the background.
You would use the American Flag? Do you know how much RACISM has occurred under that flag? Good grief, try to be sensitive Scott.
I plan on just painting it white.
Painting a WHITE flag behind Obama? That post should have had a trigger warning attached.
literally whitewashing an historical monument to Black man?
You are not woke at all, man.
Report to the nearest Re-Education Camp for Mandatory Diversity and Sensitivity Training.
So’s your mom.
Daniel 2:43 And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay. (Dan 2:43 KJV)
Doesn’t this imply that the great American mixing pot/multicultural experiment is doomed to failure? Unity is only possible in Christ.
Trump said we are all first of all Americans. NO, I am first of all a Christian. Trump’s solution is the idolatry of civil religion, a system without a Savior from sin.
When two/three/four lunatic sides start beating on each other that is a turning point…something’s going to give fairly soon.
I believe we are witnessing what I call the “give us Barabbas” crowd, they are so far out in left field they can’t see straight…at this point they’ve hit the warning track but flat out don’t care, and with reckless abandon appear to be speeding up, running straight into the fence. It’ll get worse.
Kudo’s to the President for calling them all out, including the rabid media for getting even more daft than they already are.
Your supposed slippery slope seems to ignore the distinction of celebrating someone despite their evil, and celebrating the actual evil deeds that they did or the very evil ideas they celebrate.
Do you really not know when these various statues went up, and why?
Pray tell, Jonathan. When and why were the statues placed?
Dave, I was wondering that myself (although I could be resourceful and look it up!). Surely not right after the war because that is not something that the victors were likely to have allowed.
Mostly between 1880 and 1930, after anti-Black elements in the South had reestablished White dominance over Black people through power and violence. In many places the statues/monuments were erected at the same time that new pro-segregation laws were put into force. Statues and monuments were chosen that celebrated signs of White superiority – such as monuments to figures that led the battle to preserve slavery during the Civil War or who fought against Black citizenship afterwards – and those celebrations were often made explicit in ceremonies blessing the monuments or even in inscriptions on them. Often the opening ceremonies for… Read more »
Jonathan, the RE Lee statue in question was designed by a New York sculpture and placed in 1924. RE Lee was a huge figure in Virginia before, during and after the war. Not everything about the Confederate side of the Civil War is anti-black. Give it a break.
That was the same year Virginia passed the “Racial Integrity Act”, right? I’ve caught you in three false claims about racial history in this conversation alone – the claim that the “big issue” that started the Civil War was tariffs and Lincoln’s railroad interests, the claim that Lincoln didn’t call for free the Northern slaves, and the claim that there was large-scale Irish slavery that was worse than Black slavery. You also began to make the completely ridiculous claim that well-intentioned leftists began ruining Black peoples’ lives in the early 1600s. I think you really need to reassess who you’ve… Read more »
Jonathan, I post here so that others will see it and not just you. You really do not know history and claim that I make false statements. Stop saying thing such as that until you actually read a multitude of books. You need to read and understand the English language before engaging your computer keys. “Some would say as far back as early 1600s, but realistically, for today’s impact, with abortion and LBJ’s Great Society. ” (Dave) That is not “. . .well-intentioned leftists began ruining Black peoples’ lives in the early 1600s.” (Jonathan) The meaning in my statement was… Read more »
You were clearly saying it started in the 1600s and reached today’s impact in LBJ’s time. If you don’t believe it started in the 1600s, why even mention the 1600s?
Jonathan, “Some would say . . .” means just that. If you read about the slave trading, you find its roots in the very distant past. You asked for an opinion and I gave it to you. Some historians would run the present impact back to that time. That is why I mentioned it. “Some would say . . .” is not clearly saying that I believed it started in the 1600s. “. . . but, realistically, for today’s impact, . . .” is where in my opinion the downfall began.We are using basic English sentence structure here not Klingon… Read more »
Jonathan wrote: Your supposed slippery slope seems to ignore the distinction of celebrating someone despite their evil, and celebrating the actual evil deeds that they did or the very evil ideas they celebrate. What utter nonsense from Jonathan. How completely upside down and backwards. Far from ignoring this distinction, Wilson is standing on it, pointing to it. He doesn’t dispute that some want to keep the statues and flags because they are white supremacists, but Wilson is able to grasp that not everyone is motivated by that agenda. Some are motivated by a love of what was good in the… Read more »
First off, no, I have never argued anything like what you are claiming, on either end. But I would make a different argument, probably the same one that you are trying to make without the hyperbole – that if a symbol has come to have one dominant meaning, and is primarily used for that meaning, then it is prudent to be sensitive to how that meaning will affect it’s interpretation and respond likewise. For instance, maybe you can imagine a situation in which German Hindus would want to promote a swastika symbol for relatively innocent reasons. But I would argue… Read more »
Jonathan wrote: The Confederate Flag was explicitly flown in order to preserve slavery. I consider it a great honor to publicly and non-violently express my rejection of Jonathan’s blanket assertion. Jonathan’s bullying to a conclusion just failed. I think many SJWs need to get used to more of that, but the public rejections from other directions won’t always be so non-violent. Jonathan wrote: If there was no belief in and desire for White supremacy, there would have been no Confederacy. Another misfire from Jonathan, which I’m honored to publicly reject. Apparently Jonathan has no conception of patriotic state loyalty, which… Read more »
Katecho, I don’t see any actual point you made in your rhetorical attempts there, so I’ll just repeat myself with more specificity. The Confederate Flag was explicitly flown in order to preserve slavery. That was very much the reason for its existence. Do you have an alternative reason for it not existing? If the South hadn’t desired to maintain White Supremacy over Black people, then there would have been no Confederacy. They seceded to preserve slavery. The primary documents make that quite clear. Now, you quoted those two statements of mine and replied by making statements that seem to have… Read more »
Apparently Jonathan wants to repeat himself so that I can repeat the honor of declaring his failure to persuade. Jonathan wrote: The Confederate Flag was explicitly flown in order to preserve slavery. That was very much the reason for its existence. Do you have an alternative reason for it not existing? I think Jonathan meant to say “for it existing”. In any case, here’s one: “Every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late… It means the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained… Read more »
Katecho, the average soldier in ANY war is not the one who decides why they go to war. When French and German troops lined up across from each other in World War 1, they fought because they were French and German, not out of great ideological differences between peoples. Cleburne (who was not the least bit public in opposing slavery until 1864, AFAIK) fought because he lived in the South, and the South was fighting. While I believe every Christian is certainly called to do it, is a rare idealist who leaves his tribal allegiances in order to choose sides… Read more »
Jonathan wrote: Katecho, the average soldier in ANY war is not the one who decides why they go to war. Apparently Jonathan has reserved that role for himself. Jonathan wrote: When French and German troops lined up across from each other in World War 1, they fought because they were French and German, not out of great ideological differences between peoples. But when the Southern troops lined up, they fought only because of a great ideological difference with black people? I think Jonathan just made my point for me. It’s insulting how Jonathan assumes that the entire French and German… Read more »
The vast majority of your post is simply running round in circles with an imaginary strawman opponent, so I’ll just make one point. No, I do not believe that all individual Confederates went to war with maintaining slavery as their primary motivation, just like i don’t believe that all Iraqis went to war in order to save Saddam Hussein’s realm. That, of course, doesn’t change the fact that the Civil War was fought over slavery any more than it changes the fact that the Iraq War was fought in order to depose Saddam Hussein. The only reason you think that… Read more »
Katecho, I can’t speak with any authority about why the average French or German soldier volunteered for the first world war. They may have been well educated and highly principled men with a keen understanding of the intricacies of rival treaty alliances, how the League of the Three Emperors became the Dual Alliance, the decline of the British policy of “splendid isolation”, political aspirations to take control of the Dardanelles, and the Kaiser’s refusal to renew the Reinsurance Treaty. I have no information on that point. However, because Britain became the first modern state to track and monitor the motives,… Read more »
Thank you Jilly for a very strong example.
Jonathan wrote: The reason the Confederate flag existed was because the Southern states were frightened that they wouldn’t be able to indefinitely preserve slavery. That was THE reason the Confederate flag existed. Jonathan isn’t getting any more persuasive in his strained projections and assigning of motivations. He’s still failing miserably with me. I’d rather consult Southerners in their own words. Here’s another sample that upsets Jonathan’s narrative: Richmond Examiner editorial — August 2, 1864 Mr. Davis, in conversation with a Yankee spy, named Edward Kirk, is reported by said spy to have said, “We are not fighting for slavery; we… Read more »
I love the fact that you’ve been reduced to taking a Confederate newspaper’s report of what a Union spy said that Jefferson Davis said in a private conversation when it was clear they were losing the war as your “evidence” for why the war started. And even that newspaper admits that the evidence elsewhere is lacking and all they have is a rumor from an enemy spy to go on! How about you survey what the newspapers at the actual time of the secession were claiming the secession was about? Or the national conversation leading up to secession for years?… Read more »
Also, I don’t know what your cutoff line is for the claim, “vast majority”, but over 30% of secessionist state families owned slaves, and it was as high as 50% in Mississippi.
Jonathan wrote:
It’s like pulling teeth, but Jonathan seems to be conceding that nearly 70% of Southern families didn’t even own slaves.
Katecho, I love dealing with the facts of the case. 30% of White secession state families owned slaves, 70% did not. I am the one who brought that fact to the table, on my own accord, and the fact that you think it somehow works against my argument shows yet again that you have literally no idea what I have been arguing.
Katecho, I make no claim about what about what the Confederate flag means to modern Southerners. But I am not sure we can argue that it had little connection to slavery. What do you make of the remarks of William Tappan Thompson, editor of the Savannah Morning News, about what a Confederate flag should look like? “As a people, we are fighting to maintain the Heaven-ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race; a white flag would thus be emblematical of our cause.[5]… Such a flag…would soon take rank among the proudest ensigns of the nations,… Read more »
Jill Smith wrote:
Has someone argued that it had little or no connection to slavery?
Jill sometimes tries too hard to miss the point. My point was that the Confederate flag was a broad symbol of the South, which was, much to the dismay of Jonathan (and perhaps Jill), much more than slavery, Jill’s quote-mining of Thompson notwithstanding.
The Confederate Battle Flag was not a “broad symbol of the South” until the South began to use it to promote their fight to maintain slavery and White Supremacy. Just like the Confederate monuments, popularizing of the Confederate battle flag was centered around two historical periods – the 1880s-1920s and 1950s-1960s – when Southerners were fighting against Black Civil Rights. Confederate veterans themselves had rarely flown the flag after the war, Mississippi didn’t add it to their own state flag until 30 years after the fact, the same year as Plessy v. Ferguson. Georgia didn’t add it until 1956, the… Read more »
We now live in a country where might makes right. The only free speech is what is acceptable speech to those who have the might. The experiment called America is over because those who have the might have decided that they can never be offended. They decide what is offensive. If you don’t agree, sit down and shut up. To me this sounds a lot like Germany in 1939. Who are the real Nazis today?
We do not live in a country where might makes right. We live in a country where the rule of law prevails,where our President actually leads,and where our people are heavily influenced by Christian values.
That’s the country we once lived in, and God grant we may yet again. But, it is not the country we live in today.
We’ve lived in that country for at least a century, if not more. After all, America is the home and birthplace of communism.
Embrace identity politics, or be crushed by other groups who did while you didn’t. Prisoner’s dilemma.
This isn’t God’s kingdom of heaven we’re living in, and we’re not in a position to bring about the end times either. We can’t make a utopia society where everyone gets along. Cultures have to be distinct from one another, or they will poison each other.
Pepe, a ‘culture’ (much like the concept of ‘race’) is not an immutable concrete thing. Culture changes and shifts at the pressure of any number of variables. The One who transcends culture brings that unity to Christians whatever their earthly circumstances.
We can’t make it so, but if everyone was a Christian, we would all get along, although our cultures would still vary. That is the unifying power of Jesus Christ. We don’t need separate enclaves for different cultures. We need Christ.
“he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place…”
If separate nations and countries are un-Christian, are separate houses un-Christian too? Maybe those hippie communes were the true Godly model…
ashv, good to see you again! Separate nations and countries are not un-Christian, and you know I didn’t say they were. They are inevitable, and it is not wrong to love one’s own heritage and country. But (as I know you believe) our loyalty to our own tribe and nation and people and language is secondary to our loyalty to the body of Christ. You may remember that my kids go to school in a pretty successful multi-ethnic Christian community. I am in a position to testify to the transcendent power of the gospel, and when someone is more preoccupied… Read more »
I can be friends with and share the gospel with foreigners, but I would prefer to live alongside people like me in a country filled with people like me.
According to the media this makes me a frothing mad sub-60 IQ nazi dark lord who breathes zyklon B to gas millions of innocent minorities.
I would love to live in a country filled with people like me, if by “people like me” you mean Christians. By comparison, no other quality is more than superficial.
Indighost wrote:
This.
Indighost-
Time to kick out Antifa then. I hope you didn’t support the Middle Eastern refugees of the past two years either. Bet get building that wall between the USA and Mexico too.
Hi mys, from a purely religious perspective, why the wall? I understand that well over 90% of Mexicans in Mexico identify themselves as Christians of some stripe. They might as well build a wall to keep all the heathen Americans out.
Which country has better Christian values? Even if we look at the good old USA with the worst glasses possible, it does not compare to the corruption and ruin of “Christian” (read, nominally Catholic) nation of Mexico.
History says otherwise.
Pepe, I am not trolling you, but I can’t understand this point of view. White people in America are incredibly diverse in background, education, values, and manners. It is not as if we have one European culture, or even one common form of the Christian religion. If you come from an upper class Anglo background full of repressions and good form, why would you automatically feel comfortable with a white person from a completely different ethnic background? I don’t see why Sicilians and Swedes are going to be any more comfortable around each other than blacks and whites.
Pepe, I don’t quarrel with your basic preferences. I am a lot more concerned about what people who think as you do might be planning to do about them.
Indighost wrote:
Hear, hear. Secondary loyalties are fine, when they are secondary.
I fled my hippie commune right about the time I learned I was expected to share my eating utensils and let strangers hug me. There are limits.
ha!
@ Pepe “Embrace identity politics, or be crushed by other groups who did while you didn’t. Prisoner’s dilemma.” Why does it have to be only those two options? History is full people living in difficult, even violent times, who managed to hold on to their humanity and Christian faith and witness. “This isn’t God’s kingdom of heaven we’re living in, and we’re not in a position to bring about the end times either.” Of course not. I don’t know anyone who’s claiming that. ” We can’t make a utopia society where everyone gets along.” That’s also true. But we had… Read more »
I agree wholeheartedly with this blog. I want to also make an observation. I think this uproar, which includes criticisms by the Right also, is in part due to a mis-connection. I believe the president was referring to violent protests and rallies, etc, that have been occurring over the past few years, pretty much since Ferguson, and the critics are arguing solely about the events in Charlottesville. So their criticism is mis-placed because they’re not arguing against what Trump was talking about.
Take note, for whatever it’s worth…. Antifu is a violent fascist movement and the MSM is refusing to condemn it, as are Marco Rubio, John McCain and Mitt Romney. Take note that all 3 of these so-called Senators did not and will not ever win a national election. Thank you Lord.
After [currently] 321 comments on this one post (going round and round over…what?), I am very glad I do not live in town… the space between here and there offers a significant buffer from the fray. As I watch and listen to the media and government officials, to me the important thing is the growing minority from within who wish to take apart all our country was and is, all the while using a warped modern lens as justification for their asinine and destructive behavior. The rabble have once more “upped the anti” of depravity, and that should be alarming… Read more »
While I wouldn’t go as far as praising the president, I agree with your main points here. “In response to my post yesterday, someone breathlessly announced that I had equated Black Lives Matter with the Klan. Why, yes, I did. Hatred and murder are to be reprobated, period. ” THANK YOU! A thousand times, thank you. I think you are the first Christian leader that I’ve seen actually saying this! I am not saying you are the only one. Perhaps there are others. But I have not seen that yet. What I see is everybody, everywhere, denouncing these white racists,… Read more »
“It has left me utterly stunned as a Christian. So much so, that I haven’t even been able yet to formulate a coherent response when I see / hear it happen in real life.”
I believe you just did. Well said.
@ paulm01
Thanks.
..
Thank you for this post, Pastor Wilson. I absolutely agree and was equally impressed and elated with what President Trump said at that news conference. I’ve shuttered to think of what would have been said (or left unsaid) had Clinton or Obama been in office. You’re right, the President cannot fix this problem, but I’m feeling grateful that we have someone in office who’s not looking the other way to ignore what’s really happening.
Lovedd the both the title of your blog, and the read. Thank you :)
The thing about you Christians is that you customarily are able to read texts that establish that the South fought for slavery, that the Confederate Battle Flag was created expressly to assist in that fight, and yet despite the utter clarity of those texts, you can look your black Christian brothers in the face and tell them that the Confederate symbols are not racist and that they will just have to continue paying for honoring The Confederacy with their lives via public funds. You people care more for your silly and obviously racist symbols than for the harm you do… Read more »