Wilson Draws Antithesis in Wrong Place

Doug Wilson — the self professed archetype of all things conservative in the Reformed Church today, writes an article titled “From the Pit” in which he makes some good points and some not so good points. It is because Wilson is now seen by many as the touchstone for all things Biblical  Christianity that I constantly return to tweaking Doug.

I must say, before I start, that I find Doug to be a funny man. His writing is clearly a gift from God. He has a marvelous way of turning a phrase. I think because of that people may well lose Rev. Wilson’s bad argumentation in all that cleverness. There are a only a few things I take exception with Doug in this article.

Doug Wilson writes

When young white straight men are continually harangued for their whiteness, and their straightness, and their men-ness, and are constantly told that they are the cancer of the cosmos, and that the world would be a better place if they all just went and filled up a bucket and stuck their collective head in it . . . well, certain things tend to follow. One of the things that happens is that these young men get angry, and do not see that this is a trick. It is a trap. It is a stratagem, a subterfuge, an inveiglement, a ploy, a gambit. Don’t do it. It is a machination; it is a ambuscade.

McAtee responds,

First, lets be clear that it is not young white straight men that are harangued for their whiteness and their straightness and their men-ness. Doug misses a HUGE reality here. The enemy that Doug rightly locates (CRT /  commies) are only penultimately interested in whiteness, straightness and men-ness. Ultimately the commies are interested in destroying whiteness, straightness and men-ness is because those categories are normatively where the Biblical Christians can be found. (This is not to say that there are not POC who fall into the categories of straightness and men-ness. It is only to say that if you’re going to after the straightness and men-ness category most the people you are going to find in it by sheer numbers is white men.) If the commie enemy could wipe out the Biblical Christians without naming whiteness, straightness and men-ness you can be sure that they would do so in a skinny minute.

Now the reason this is a HUGE whiff on Doug’s part since Doug wants to suggest that since the commies are going after whiteness, straightness, and men-ness that therefore this is not an Christian antithesis issue. However, this attack on whiteness, straightness, and men-ness is a antithesis issue and so the response of white, straight, Christian men is proper when they push back against that bilge by defending all white, straight, Christian men. This includes the bilge pumped out by Wilson himself when he attacks white Christian men who support Biblical Kinism. When Wilson attacks Biblical Kinism (is there any other kind?) he is at that moment joining league with the very commies he rightly denounces in his column.

Young men (and we old men) should be angry. Just as angry as we get when we read how the Commies went after Christians in Russia (Lenin), China (Mao), Zimbabwe (Mugabe) Ethiopia (Mengitsu), Cuba (Castro) etc. If white straight Christian men are not angry then there is something wrong with their Christianity.

Let white boy summer roll into white boy Autumn, Winter, and Spring.

Doug Writes,

Because they do not see the trap, they react in the other direction. Told that whiteness is a cancerous disease, they react into the just-as-silly idea that whiteness is somehow a virtue. But no. They are not being tricked into denying their whiteness. They are being maneuvered into adopting the structure of their way of understanding the antithesis. They are being tempted to push the vertical line over in order to make it horizontal. If the lines are horizontal, it doesn’t matter at the end of the day which side of that line you are standing on—the whole thing is fruitless and stupid. As Sartre once put it in a moment of lucidity, without an infinite reference point, every finite point is absurd.

McAtee responds,

Here Doug is just wrong. I run in these crowds and I can tell you that the disposition is not the embrace of the silly idea that whiteness is a virtue just on that basis. No, what is happening instead is that Christian white men are having their “When the Saxons Began to Hate” moment. Young Christian White men (and some of us not so young) are beginning to hate because they love Christ and hate what Christ hates. Very few of Christian white men are wearing their whiteness like a chip on their shoulder. Instead, they are realizing, properly so, that by God’s grace alone they are the inheritors of a glorious history of which they do not need to be ashamed. As existing among Biblical Christians this snap back isn’t about thinking there is automatic virtue in being white. These guys we are talking about believe in total depravity and original sin. These guys we are talking about merely desire to say … “My Fathers, though sinners, were used of God and though being dead still speak to me and I’ll be damned if I am going to be ashamed of them simply because the commies — POC or White — pour slime all over them.”

So, Doug, we participants in White Boy Summer, are not haters in the commie sense of that word. We have plenty of comrades who are POC. We are not throwing them under the bus that wants to take us to the gulag. We are just hating that which is evil. Neither have we drawn the antithesis in the wrong place. We understand just fine — thank you very much — that the enemy is not non-white people but instead the enemy is the Commie — “Red, Black, White, Yellow, or Brown.” We also understand however that for reasons that have been examined elsewhere POC have largely, though not exhaustively been enlisted in the Cultural Marxist’s long march through the institutions.

The question is Doug; “Do you understand who the enemy is. Have you drawn the antithesis in the proper place? Do you understand that white, straight Christian men are being attacked primarily because they are Christian?”

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. View all posts by jetbrane