[Vision2020] Re: Courage

[Douglas]

Visionaries

Just a brief response to Andreas:

I actually do think that R.L. Dabney had racist assumptions, and these 
assumptions sometimes came out in truly odd ways. My favorite is found in 
his Systematic Theology, where he takes on red-heads who do not know that 
they are inferior. These racist assumptions of his are the result of 
accounting for discrepancies in cultural advancement by pointing to nature, 
or, as we would say, genetics. But the real reason for the advancement of 
"the West" was the influence of the gospel. For whites to preen themselves 
on their native genius is downright silly. Not very many centuries ago, my 
ancestors were probably painting themselves blue in order to run naked into 
battle. The savagery and primitivism of northern Europe (bastion of all 
those "good genes"!) matched anything you could find anywhere else. Left to 
their own devices, the white race is just like every other race of men -- 
all screwed up. Thank God for forgiveness of sin. And thank God that this 
forgiveness is extended to all of us, (as I was taught to sing as a child), 
"red or yellow, black or white, they are precious in his sight."

In response to any Internet racists or racialists that you all might google 
up , let me just say this. Please be tolerant of their mistakes because it 
is the same mistake being made by so-called progressives throughout this 
flap. They think this is about race, and it is not. It is about the 
Christian faith, and the holiness of all the requirements of the Bible. One 
letter writer to the Daily News this morning had this point just right. A 
Wesley someone (forgot his last name, sorry) identified the crux of the 
issue. I do have a dog in this fight, but it is not defending the white 
race, or the old South, considered as such. I am a Christian, beginning to 
end. That is where my allegiance is. This is a much more insidious form of 
chauvinism, in Wesley's view. Be that as it may, it is much more potent 
than any racial pride hooey.

Give me a Nigerian archbishop of Canterbury any day this week, and you can 
run out the corrupt and apostate Williams' and the Robinsons' with a 
pitchfork. The future belongs to the black sheep, not to the white goats.

Cordially,


Douglas Wilson



At 06:28 PM 10/31/2003 -0800, you wrote:
> > 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
>
>
>
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