I don’t believe in reinventing the wheel when it comes to dismantling nonsense. As such in this post I yield to my fellow Michigander and one of my best friends Darrell Dow as Dow just demolishes Rev. Rich Lusk’s claim that Colonial America was not Kinist in its conviction.
Before turning it over to Darrell allow me to apologize if some find some of my responses jagged. You have to understand dear reader I have been going at this hammer and tong for over a decade now. It gets a bit frustrating when you have to answer the same questions and accusations over and over again. Rev. Lusk now shows up trotting out the same old tired accusations and arguments as if now that someone of his stature is making them somehow those arguments which have been repeatedly dismissed by Kinists over the years somehow gain more traction because they have fallen from his fingertips. It is well past aggravating. We Kinists keep returning the same service of the Alienists and all they can do is keep serving the same serve that was smashed returned for game, set, and match. Now combine this with the insults that come in our direction of being racist, or of identifying more with our people group then with Christ, or of being heretics and it just gets well past old — especially when we are the orthodox ones, bowing to the weight of Scripture and Church history.
Anyway, having said that we turn it over to Dow’s spanking of Lusk. Seriously, once Dow is done here with Lusk it becomes instantly apparent that Lusk should go sit down, shut up, and never write another work on this subject as long as he lives. This response reveals that Lusk is no better a Historian than he is a theologian.
Rev. Lusk wrote,
The question has been asked: Did the original American colonists have a kinist vision of people and place? I think the answer is quite obviously, no, they did not. The Europeans who came to America to settle the “new world” came precisely because they put faith ahead of their love for people and place. Leaving their native land, including many family members, behind in order to found a new civilization, they put their faith and their commitment to a purified church above everything else. The Europeans who settled on this continent were ecclesiocentrists rather than kinists, and if they had been kinists, they would have never left Europe. No matter how important people and place were in their minds, they put their commitment to the church ahead of them, which is why they were willing to leave people and place behind (much as biblical saints like Abraham and Ruth did centuries before).
Darrell Dow Responds,
Rich Lusk has written an article on race and nationalism. It should come as no surprise but there are numerous half-truths and logical fallacies, and good bit of misrepresentation. Untangling the various threads will take some work, but I want to begin by unpacking just one comment and comparing it with the historical record.
Lusk is effectively asking in the quote above if America’s Founders on the whole could be described as ethno-nationalists rather than propositionalists. In short, was citizenship tied to blood? Lusk claims that the answer is obvious, though he does not provide a single citation from any American statesman or early documents to make his case. He simply asserts that is true and expects his readers to believe it to be so. But is it? I’ll provide a sampler to help evaluate the claim. Note that I could have pulled MANY more quotes (see the link in the first comment). I begin with Revolution Era figures and also provide a number of citations from later figures. Again, this could go on almost indefinitely.
Let us begin with legislation offered in the state of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson which was designed to define citizenship in the commonwealth.
“Section 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That any alien, BEING A FREE WHTE PERSON, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof, on application to any common law court of record, in any one of the states wherein he shall have resided for the term of one year at least, and making proof to the satisfaction of such court, that he is a person of good character, and taking the oath or affirmation prescribed by law, to support the constitution of the United States, which oath or affirmation such court shall administer; and the clerk of such court shall record such application, and the proceedings thereon; and thereupon such person shall be considered as a citizen of the United States. And the children of such persons so naturalized, dwelling within the United States, being under the age of twenty-one years at the time of such naturalization,”
In a letter, Jefferson explains his concern with having too many German immigrants and the need to disperse them (Benjamin Franklin held this same view.)
“Although as to other foreigners it is thought better to discourage their settling together in large masses, wherein, as in our German settlements, they preserve for a long time their own languages, habits, and principles of government, and that they should distribute themselves sparsely among the natives for quicker amalgamation, yet English emigrants are without this inconvenience.” – Letter to George Fowler, Sept. 12, 1817
Alexander Hamilton who disagreed with Jefferson on many important questions in the life of the early republic, agreed with him on the debilitating consequences of immigration.
“The opinion advanced in the Notes on Virginia is undoubtedly correct, that foreigners will generally be apt to bring with them attachments to the persons they have left behind; to the country of their nativity, and to its particular customs and manners. They will also entertain opinions on government congenial with those under which they have lived, or if they should be led hither from a preference to ours, how extremely unlikely is it that they will bring with them that temperate love of liberty, so essential to real republicanism? There may as to particular individuals, and at particular times, be occasional exceptions to these remarks, yet such is the general rule. The influx of foreigners must, therefore, tend to produce a heterogeneous compound; to change and corrupt the national spirit; to complicate and confound public opinion; to introduce foreign propensities. In the composition of society, the harmony of the ingredients is all important, and whatever tends to a discordant intermixture must have an injurious tendency.”
“[T]he Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably [sic] very small… . I could wish their Numbers were increased…. But perhaps I am partial to the Complexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind.” – Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc. “Which leads me to add one remark: That the number of purely white people in the world is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes are generally of what we call a swarthy complexion ; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English make the principal body of white people on the face of the earth. I could wish their numbers were increased. And while we are, as I may call it, scouring our planet, by clearing America of woods, and so making this side of our globe reflect a brighter light to the eyes of inhabitants in Mars or Venus, why should we in the sight of superior beings, darken its people? why increase the sons of Africa, by planting them in America, where we have so fair an opportunity, by excluding all blacks and tawneys, of increasing the lovely white and red? But perhaps I am partial to the complexion of my Country, for such kind of partiality is natural to Mankind.”
– Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc.
Here is the language of the Naturalization Act of 1790, which the first Congress passed.
“Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof on application to any common law Court of record in any one of the States wherein he shall have resided for the term of one year at least, and making proof to the satisfaction of such Court that he is a person of good character, and taking the oath or affirmation prescribed by law to support the Constitution of the United States, which Oath or Affirmation such Court shall administer, and the Clerk of such Court shall record such Application, and the proceedings thereon; and thereupon such person shall be considered as a Citizen of the United States. And the children of such person so naturalized, dwelling within the United States, being under the age of twenty one years at the time of such naturalization, shall also be considered as citizens of the United States. And the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens: Provided, that the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States .”
James Madison endorsed colonization and indeed later ran the colonization society.
“To be consistent with existing and probably unalterable prejudices in the U.S. freed blacks ought to be permanently removed beyond the region occupied by or allotted to a White population.”
Abraham Lincoln (who also supported colonization).
“I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.”
For one, I am opposed to negro citizenship in any form. I believe that this government was made on the white basis. I believe it was made by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and I am in favor of confining the citizenship to white men—men of European birth and European descent, instead of conferring it upon negroes and Indians, and other inferior races.”
“There are racial considerations too grave to be brushed aside for any sentimental reasons. Biological laws tell us that certain divergent people will not mix or blend…. Quality of mind and body suggests that observance of ethnic law is as great a necessity to a nation as immigration law.”
Author: jetbrane
I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling.
I am postmillennial in my eschatology.
Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity
Reformed in my Soteriology
Presuppositional in my apologetics
Familialist in my family theology
Agrarian in my regional community social order belief
Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief
Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic
Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern
Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview
One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics
Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place
Some of my favorite authors,
Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc.
My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture.
Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.
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