[Vision2020] Wilson Digs His Slavery Hole Deeper

[donald huskey]

Hi Nick and other Visionaries:

Thank you for posting the Daily News (aka The Daily New St. Andrews) article
about Dale's new book.  Could any of you clarify a point in the article for
me?  Doug is quoted: 

"But do I have regrets about thinking what I think about this? No. We are
not defending slavery as a positive good - like food, air, or sunshine - but
it was not the Holocaust either."

I don't recall Doug using this particular excuse before, is this a new
wrinkle?

Thanks,
Rose

P.S.  Ah, yes.  The Blue Bonnet Press, still flogging the Confederate cause.
http://www.bluebonnetpress.com/wbts_authors.html
I think we might identify this splendid little outfit as Canon Press South.
The authors for this press include (are limited to?) George Grant, J. Steven
Wilkins, Douglas Wilson (described as "another leading light in contemporary
classical Christian education"), and Tom Spencer, secondary principal at
Logos School.  Note:  Mr. Spencer was terminated several months ago.  I
believe it would astound all Doug Wilson's critics if he actually found a
press that wasn't connected ideologically or theologically with his far
flung enterprises .However, there is no danger of that happening. 


-----Original Message-----
From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com]
On Behalf Of Nicholas Gier
Sent: Thursday, November 02, 2006 5:21 PM
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] Wilson Digs His Slavery Hole Deeper

Greetings: 
 
I believe that this is more than three today, but I had to be the first
to post 
this for those who do not read the Daily News. 
 
Just to set the record even straighter.  The lifted passages in the slavery 
booklet did not come about because of "citation problems," or as
"transmission" 
problems, as Wilson once described it.  It was plagiarism pure and
simple, and 
Wilkins, the co-author, admitted as much in the evangelical "World"
magazine 
(May 1,  2005).  Wilkins has done this with at least two other books of
his.  
See my article on plagiarism at
http://users.adelphia.net/~nickgier/kidnap.htm. 
 
An attempt to set record straight; UI professor's book contradicts
writings of 
Moscow pastor 
 
By Kate Baldwin, Daily News staff writer 
Thursday, November 2, 2006 - Page Updated at 11:56:01 AM 
 
A new book released by a University of Idaho professor continues the
academic 
response to a controversial slavery booklet that rocked the community three 
years ago. 
 
Dale Graden, an associate history professor, said his book focuses on slave 
resistance as one of the key components of abolition in the Americas. 
 
"It undermines any concept that slaves are happy, passive or not
resisting their 
enslavement," he said. 
 
That premise contradicts the ideas forwarded by a local pastor in the now 
out-of-print work, "Southern Slavery: As It Was." 
 
Moscow Christ Church pastor Doug Wilson partnered with Louisiana pastor
Steven 
Wilkins to write and release the booklet in 1996. Their booklet defended 
biblical slavery, suggested that pre-Civil War slavery was not as bad as 
historians make it out to be, and indicated that in some cases it could
be a 
beneficial institution for slaves. 
 
It wasn't until October 2003 that the booklet surfaced in Moscow and
began to 
divide the community with the issues it raised. 
 
Less than a year later, a number of errors were found, including
problems with 
citations and attribution, and information that was taken out of context. 
 
Graden, 54, said both the ideas and the problems within that booklet
motivated 
him to take his research to the next level as he worked on his own book
about 
the history of slavery. 
 
He estimated that he read more than 20,000 documents in the process of
writing, 
"From Slavery to Freedom in Brazil: Bahia 1835-1900," which came out
this month 
after more than a decade of work. 
 
Graden said his assertions are based on hundreds of documents to ensure an 
appropriate interpretation of the historical evidence. 
 
"Getting into the lives of slaves and underclasses isn't easy to do,"
Graden 
said. 
 
There is little documentation and viewpoints often were suppressed at
the time, 
he said. 
 
While Graden's book focuses mainly on Brazil, he believes the slaves'
resistance 
efforts happening there were representative of the movements taking place 
throughout the Americas, including the southern United States. 
 
Slave revolts were a classic sign of resistance, he said. Sometimes the
revolts 
came peacefully with work slowdowns, and other times violently with the 
assassinations of masters and overseers. Slave escapes and runaways also
were 
prominent in both places, he said. That method of resistance was so
popular in 
the United States that the underground railroad became an institution of
its 
own, freeing thousands of slaves. 
 
"It's an issue of personal responsibility and social responsibility to
grapple 
with the racism, violence, and repression of what slavery was all about
and the 
legacies it has left," he said. "It makes me want to dig in and keep
working on 
history - social history." 
 
Graden wasn't the first academic to respond to the booklet co-authored by 
Wilson. 
 
UI professors Bill Ramsey and Sean Quinlan published an 11-page response
in 2003 
that was titled, "Southern Slavery As It Wasn't: Professional Historians
Respond 
to Neo-Confederate Misinformation." 
 
"Some of the assertions in the booklet were so patently, so obviously
false that 
they needed to be challenged," Ramsey said. "And nobody else was
challenging it, 
so I did it." 
 
Graden agreed. 
 
"It's important that historians like Quinlan and Ramsey, and myself in this 
book, are trying to make the historical record accurate," he said. "Thank 
goodness people within academia are not just doing theoretical work." 
 
While the Wilson and Wilkins booklet is out of print, it continues to
circulate 
in two places. 
 
Wilson said portions of the booklet appear in a textbook called "The War
Between 
the States: America's Uncivil War," which is published by Blue Bonnet
Press in 
Texas. A revised portion of the booklet also made it into a new book
written 
solely by Wilson that is titled "Black and Tan." 
 
Wilson uses this new book to reinforce the concept that the need to defend 
biblical slavery stems from a need to be able to interpret the Bible
literally 
and use it for addressing modern challenges caused by issues like
abortion or 
sodomy. 
 
Wilson said the position he argued in the original booklet is that
people need 
"a sense of proportion about our own history." 
 
"There is a difference between wanting to solve an obvious social
problem they 
had at that time and being willing to kill 600,000 people ... " he said, 
referring to the Civil War. 
 
"I certainly have regrets about the citation problems, that was an
inexcusable 
blunder," Wilson said. 
 
"But do I have regrets about thinking what I think about this? No. We
are not 
defending slavery as a positive good - like food, air, or sunshine - but
it was 
not the Holocaust either." 
 
Graden said arguments like those in "Southern Slavery: As It Was" are
appealing 
because they give credibility to white, Southern elites. 
 
"It makes them look better than they were," he said. "My book shows the 
fallacies of the pamphlet. Virtually every point they make in the
pamphlet, I 
disagree with." 
 
Ramsey tries to keep the debate in perspective. 
 
"I don't think the history of slavery is hinging on the Moscow
controversy," he 
said. "The fact that we have some local radicals who are not comfortable
with 
that unpleasant portrait of slavery doesn't undermine 50 years of academic 
scholarship." 
 
Meanwhile, Graden hopes to keep the dialogue open on "diversity and
equality and 
freedom . and what black Americans have been through." 
 
"We need to grapple with these issues," he said. "More is better than less 
discussion." 
 
Kate Baldwin can be reached at (208) 882-5561, ext. 239, or by e-mail at 
kbaldwin at dnews.com. 

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