[Vision2020] Re: Courage

[Andreas Schou]

> It's quite comic the connections that have been made by 
> members of the community between Christ Church and various filthy 
> racists. All the while, many in the community, who have the sense 
> to see through tabloid level propoganda, are willing to let those 
> sorts of allegations go, because it has been levelled at a 
> religious community which they disapprove of. The openmindedness 
> and tolerance of the liberal crowd has been less than what one 
> might have expected from their commercials. It's funny that one of 
> the major stinks that Credenda/Agenda got into recently was 
> Douglas Jones' assertion that Southerners need to burn their 
> Confederate flag and wear the ashes because the loss of the war 
> was God's judgment on her for her sin. 

You know, Southern Slavery: As it Was does the same thing you do. It says, “Oh, boy, some southerners did bad things,” before it launches into the remaining thirty pages, which is a tepid laundry list of superlatives about southern culture, southern slavery, southern Christianity, and southern masters. Unsurprisingly, it misses out on discussing the sterling nobility of the slaves themselves. 

The admission that some slaveholders were bad is nothing more than a fig leaf.

> Juging from the letters 
> that were received after that issue, I think it's fairly safe to 
> say that Credenda and the southern patriot types are not exactly 
> bossom buddies.

Oh. Really?

Then why are they still selling Doug Wilson tapes, promoting Doug Wilson’s books, and linking to his magazine? And why is Doug inviting someone from their board of directors to come speak at the Credenda/Agenda History Conference?

http://littlegeneva.com/index.php
http://www.dixienet.org/books/library.htm

> But that sort of thing makes it too difficult to 
> stereo-type the Christ Church crowd, so it would be best if we 
> ignored it. Thinking is such hard stuff.

No, you’re right. It’s difficult to stereotype Christ Church. Do I think Doug’s a racist? No. I think the League of the South is a haven for racists, but Wilkins and Wilson are a different breed: they’re chauvinists for the South, driven more by their theology than any particular hatred of African-Americans. It’s fundamentally the same impulse that drives leftists to do the same thing for Cuba or Stalinist Russia.

What makes neo- and theo-Confederates different, and in effect more dangerous, is that they have a direct effect on American policy. 

> As for Sanger, I'd be happy to not make any connection between 
> our modern Planned Parenthood devotees and their less than 
> glorious foremother. But when I go to the Planned Parenthood 
> webpage I find a glowing account of the greatness of Margaret 
> Sanger. And I see Planned Parenthood currently carrying out the 
> same agenda that Sanger began. However, if the locals who tithe to 
> Planned Parenthood wanted to distance themselves from her, then I 
> think we could certainly work at making a distinction. But, as 
> we've already seen, it's kind of hard to get them to make that 
> distinction. I've been calling Planned Parenthood to invite 
> someone to come and defend Sanger from these charges, but my calls 
> have not yet been returned. 

Tell me, Ben -- if we progressives have to repudiate Margaret Sanger based on her (in my mind, deplorable) racist history, can you Christ Churchers do me a personal favour and repudiate R.L. Dabney? He's the subject of one of Doug Wilson's seminars at the C/A HC, where he's noted for his "prescience" about modern problems. Having read several texts by Dabney, I'm beginning to wonder what modern problems Doug thinks he's prescient about. For instance:

"There are causes peculiar to the negro and the South, which leave us no hope that this so-called system of free schools will produce even as much fruit as in New England or New York. One is the fact which "Civis" has so boldly stated: The black race is an alien one on our soil; and nothing except his amalgamation with ours, or his subordination to ours, can prevent the rise of that instinctive antipathy of race, which history shows, always arises between opposite races in proximity. Another cause is the natural indolence of the negro character, which finds precisely its desired pretext, in this pretended work of going to school. Still another is the universal disposition of the young negro to construe his "liberty" as meaning precisely, privilege of idleness. It was easy to see that the free school must needs produce the very result which it is usually producing, under such exceptional circumstances; not education, but discontent with, and unfitness for, the free negro's in
evitable sphere and destiny -- if he is to have any good destiny -- manual labor."
	
Well, gosh, that doesn’t sound too prescient. Is it things this that he was prescient about?

“[...] the offspring of an amalgamation [between African-Americans and Confederate Southerners] must be a hybrid race [...] incapable of the career of civilization and glory as an independent race.  And this apparently is the destiny which our conquerors have in view. If indeed they can mix the blood of the heroes of Manassas with this vile stream from the fens of Africa, then they will never again have occasion to tremble before the righteous resistance of Virginia freemen; but will have a race supple and vile enough to fill that position of political subjugation, which they desire to fix on the South.” 

This quote, by the way, comes from A Defense of Virginia, and Through it, the South, which is the main source that Wilson and Wilkins relied on while writing SS: AIW. This is not, by the way, an isolated quote; the entire thing is thick with this kind of paranoiac racist accusation. 

Doug or Steve, or Doug and Steve, have overlooked a great deal of racism, both in their sources and in the antebellum South. Whether it’s intentional or just questionable scholarship is still up for grabs.

-- ACS