[Vision2020] Wilson Digs His Slavery Hole Deeper

[Art Deco]

Rose, et al,

Please pardon the confusion of an old man perhaps past the first blush of senility, but Cultmaster Douglas Wilson is quoted by The Daily News as saying:

"But do I have regrets about thinking what I think about this? No. We are not defending slavery as a positive good..."

But in Wilson's and Wilkins's infamous religious tract Southern Slavery: As It Was they assert:

"...slavery was a harmonious institution, one characterized by racial affection and patriarchal benevolence."

 

"...slave life was to them a life of plenty, of simple pleasures."


Hmmm.

The latter quotes sound suspiciously like a defense of slavery as a positive good.  Who wouldn't want to live a "life of plenty" and "simple pleasures" in a society characterized "by racial affection"?

But of course, it may be that the uninitiated like myself are not able to correctly decode Wilson's simple words just as we are not able to correctly decode, as Wilson and his Cult policemen allege, the simple words of the Bible.  But mistakenly we uninitiated take words in context with their ordinary meanings.

But granting my possible lack of decoding ability, perhaps someone can clearly explain why the quotes from Southern Slavery: As It Was above are not attempting to point to slavery a positive good.  Maybe some of those nice boys and girls (or their masters) at New Saint Andrews will clear this matter up for us.


Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
deco at moscow.com



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "donald huskey" <donaldrose at cpcinternet.com>
To: "'Nicholas Gier'" <ngier at uidaho.edu>
Cc: <vision2020 at moscow.com>
Sent: Friday, November 03, 2006 12:29 PM
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Wilson Digs His Slavery Hole Deeper


> 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. 
> 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20061103/b6584f6e/attachment-0001.htm