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.

“St. Patrick’s Day Family History”

My wife (Jane) is second generation Italian. Her Father came when he was an infant with his family to America in 1929. Recently, my wife’s Aunt (her Father’s Sister) sent a letter explaining the meaning of St. Patrick’s Day to the Lombardi family. I do not record this letter for solely sentimental reasons but also in order to make a point about what happens when centralized government controls a society and culture.

Beginning quoting letter from my wife’s Aunt Josephine (Jo),

“My father, your grandfather, Jane, never let us forget the meaning of St. Patrick’s Day for the Lombardi family. For Grandpa Lombardi St. Patrick’s Day was not a day to honor a saint, but rather it was a day to be remembered because March 17, 1929 was the day we arrived, as your Grandfather would tell his children, “to beautiful America.” Your Dad, Jane, was 10 months old, Aunt Jennie was 3.5, Aunt Anna was 2.5 and I was 6 years old. Aunt Lina was born the following September.

If my parents hadn’t decided to leave Italy because of the Fascist dictator, Mussolini, your Mom wouldn’t have met and married your father, and you wouldn’t be here. Think about it, the decision of my Father to come to America affected all his childrens’ lives.

Mussolini had imposed such a high tax on sugar that it was prohibitive and my father needed sugar to run his cafe. His cafe was sort of candy store where he served coffee. It was a social gathering place for the men of the town to sit and socialize with their friends that as they drank coffee.

Because Papa couldn’t buy sugar my father would travel to Naples where he could purchase saccharin on the black market. Saccharin was against the law because Mussolini wanted to collect taxes on the sugar. I know there’s no excuse for breaking the law, but my father’s livelihood depended on the business generated from the townsmen coming to drink coffee. Well, his brother-in-law also had a cafe on the same street, about two blocks away; and my father’s brother-in-law was practically going out of business for lack of sugar and customers.

My father confided in his mother when she questioned him. Grandma was sworn to secrecy about my father’s source of saccharin. Grandma’s oldest daughter was married to the cafe owner who was jealous of my father’s business. Grandmother told, my Aunt Elvira. I’m sure that Grandma meant it for good. Grandma wanted her son-in-law to go to Naples for saccharin with her son. Instead of going to Naples though, my father’s brother-in-law turned Papa in to the police. That was the deciding factor that forced my parents to leave Italy and come to America.

I can still picture the morning the the Police came to our home with their rifles drawn to arrest my father for having possession of illegal saccharin. However, Papa wasn’t there. My Father had been warned that his brother-in-law had turned him in to the police. My father went into hiding. I don’t know where he went to escape, but I do know as young as I was, I remember telling the police to get out of my house. I knew they didn’t belong there with their rifles drawn, looking inside closets and underneath beds, pushing doors open to other rooms and looking behind doors. Eventually they left. I also remember running from my home that was a short distance from my father’s store, crying until I reached the cafe and my mother grabbed me to quiet and comfort me.

I don’t know how many days after that we left in the middle of the night for Naples to board the ship, “The President Wilson,” to sail for America. My mother told me when I’d question her that they always kept their passports up to date. That’s why they were able to leave as fast as they did.

My father, (your grandfather) every year after would tell us this story and say to us in half broken English,

“I no want you to forget the day you arrived in beautiful America on San Patreeka’s Day, 1929.”

1.) Once upon a time people came here to escape tyranny and now we are turning this country into the kind of country that my wife’s Italian family sought to escape.

2.) Oppressive taxation always creates a black market.

3.) Immoral and Illegal laws have the the effect of making the citizenry involve themselves in moral illegalities.

4.) Heavy taxation destroys entrepreneurial activity.

5.) A Collectivist society will always turn into a society where all spy upon all.

6.) The sugar tax that would have destroyed the business communicates that collectivist societies are more concerned about the state’s livelihood vs. the businessman’s livelihood.

Addressing the Issue of Worldview With Jon Harris; A Conversation That Matters

We pause in examining the Mahler vs. Rosebrough debate to consider a 12 minute video that Jon Harris put out. Harris is a somewhat popular Christian podcaster and author that has joined the recent wave of Natural Law chaps to tut tut against the concept of worldview. In this video that I am responding (it’s on TwitteX) Harris explains why he no longer uses the term “Worldview” and in explaining that he is at the same time advocating to others that they perhaps should also give up on the reality of Worldview thinking.

Now, I am a convinced believer in the reality of Worldview. I was first exposed to the idea when I was a Freshman in Undergrad and I have pursued it and studied it and employed it ever since. I’ve read a great percentage of the material written on it as coming from the various Worldview schools and naturally enough I think Harris is dreadfully wrong here. Also, naturally enough, I have an interest in repudiating the dreadfully bad arguments that are now routinely raised against it. I am convinced that Worldview thinking is an inescapable reality. That is to say that I believe that this is the way that all people think.

I would submit the following few volumes that demonstrates convincingly that Worldview thinking is inescapable;

Thomas Kuhn — “Structures in Scientific Revolutions”
Vern Poythress — “Science and Hermeneutics”
Peter Novick — “That Noble Dream: The ‘Objectivity Question’ and the American Historical Profession”

First, Harris complains about the teaching in Worldview thinking that there is no such thing as a bare naked fact so that all facts are interpreted facts. Jon just doesn’t think that is true. The classic examples that suggests Jon is in error here is the discovery of a fossil as made by a two man team comprised of a Darwinian Evolutionist (DE) and a Christian Creationist (CC). The DE looks at this fossil they both discovered and concludes that this fossil is 100s of millions of years old and is a classic proof substantiating Darwinian Evolution. The CC, on the other hand, looks at the very same fossil and concludes that this fossil demonstrates that the earth is young and that God created in 6 days all good.

Now, the fossil is the fossil. It has not changed. What the difference between this duo of paleontologists is not the fact of the fossil they have before them. The difference is the different Worldview that each man adheres to before they were introduced to the fossil. The fossil is a fact to be sure but it is a different fact depending on the Worldview of the person examining the fact. Thus, we see that Jon is wrong and that all facts though they are facts in and of themselves can only be be facts as they are indeed interpreted as facts in keeping with the Worldview grid that appraises them.

Now, we are faced with the problem of “common notions,” that Jon brings up. Jon seems to think that both believers and unbelievers can have common notions. It is surprising to me given the cultural atmosphere that we live in that Jon would want to argue for common notions because if ever a time existed to prove that the idea of common notions should not be over-much banked upon, these are those times. Take for example, the once common notion that it was not possible for a woman to be born into a man’s body. Fifty years ago we could have rightly said, “now there’s a common notion if ever there was one,” and yet we all know today that in the West we are awash in people denying this common notion and insisting that, “yes men can be born into the body of women.” What about the notion that seemingly should be common that surgeons lopping off teen girl’s breast and prescribing testosterone to women because they are really men caught in the woman’s body? At one time the great common notion medical motto was “Do No Harm,” and yet we are living in a time where that common notion is no longer universally common and so is disputed. What about the common notion that was once more widely accepted that “women carrying babies in their wombs should understand that what they are carrying are indeed yet to be birthed babies?” As you know, this is no longer a common notion but instead what women are carrying are no longer un-born babies but instead are fetuses. We could give Jon a dozen more once common notions that are no longer common. How about the once common notion that it is boys can’t marry boys and girls can’t marry girls? How about the once common notion that we don’t provide litter boxes for furries (humans insisting that they are animals) in Government schools?

The reason that these notions are no longer common is because of the Worldview shift in the West. These once common notions were once common because the culture in the West was one where those who were not Christian in the West were still influenced by Christian categories and so had, with felicitous inconsistency, adopted Christian capital (assumptions / givens) into their thinking so as to assimilate in their thinking in line with a Christian Worldview. However, as the West has departed from its once Christian basis more and more people have become consistent in their anti-Christian Worldview and in doing so have deleted a good share of the Christian capital they once embraced with the result that common notions are getting less and less common, thus disproving Jon’s insistence that Worldview thinking is not true.

Jon also suggests that there are some bare essential truths (common notions) that come through to all people. Here we say that Jon is correct but only in a very constrained way. It is true that some bare essential truths come through but notice how the Confession phrases this when it writes about the Inadequacy of the Light of Nature;

There is, to be sure, a certain light of nature remaining in all people after the fall, by virtue of which they retain some notions about God, natural things, and the difference between what is moral and immoral, and demonstrate a certain eagerness for virtue and for good outward behavior. But this light of nature is far from enabling humans to come to a saving knowledge of God and conversion to him—so far, in fact, that they do not use it rightly even in matters of nature and society. Instead, in various ways they completely distort this light, whatever its precise character, and suppress it in unrighteousness. In doing so all people render themselves without excuse before God.

Similarly, Jon has against his notion of common notions Zacharias Ursinus in the commentary Ursinus wrote on the Heidelberg Catechism he wrote;

“Furthermore, although natural demonstrations teach nothing concerning God that is false, yet men, without the knowledge of God’s word, obtain nothing from them except false notions and conceptions of God; both because these demonstrations do not contain as much as is delivered in his word, and also because even those things which may be understood naturally, men, nevertheless, on account of innate corruption and blindness, receive and interpret falsely, and so corrupt it in various ways.”

Zacharias Ursinus
Commentary on Heidelberg Catechism

If fallen men, because of innate corruption and blindness, receive and interpret falsely notions and conceptions of God from natural demonstrations how much more so will men, because of the same innate corruption and blindness, receive and interpret falsely notions and conceptions about all other reality?

Now, in this video presentation of Jon’s, Jon suggests that Worldview thinking can make men lazy and instead of doing the leg work research that needs to be done on various subjects, instead just rely on a Christian Worldview to answer all subject matter. Here, Jon may be on to something. Once a Christian Worldview is firmly in place one does still has to do the research but here we would hasten to add that the research includes not only looking into the historical record of this or that event (as one example) but one also has to research the worldview of the people that they are researching about this or that historical event. So, when I do the leg work of researching the French Revolution (as one example) I am not only reading various historians on the French Revolution but I am also extraordinarily aware of the Worldview that the historian has who is chronicling the French Revolution. For example, I should trust the account of the Christian Hillary Belloc more than I would trust the account of Jaures who in his title tells us he is giving a Socialist view of the French Revolution. So, by all means, we agree with Jon that even once one has a Christian Worldview in place they must still do the research on any given subject in order to have a familiarity with the subject. Still, having a well based and thought out Christian Worldview is going to give one a ladder up in being able to quickly analyze all kinds of sundry information because they can read that information and instantly spot the Worldview that is undergirding the information in question. For example, if I know before I read a piece on hermeneutics (as an example) that the author in question embraces the Higher Critical Methodology I know that the author and I are likely going to disagree at significantly fundamental points. Similarly, if I read a piece on the Russian Revolution written by a Trotskyite, I know in advance that I am going to take exceptions to the history I am about to read. So, Worldview thinking can make one lazy I suppose, but it can also make one not have to work as hard wading through all the different perspectives on a host of different subjects since he knows rather quickly upon picking up any book, where presuppositionally speaking, the author is coming from. I know from the beginning the way he arranges his “facts” are going to be in accord with his Worldview.

Before we leave Jon’s insistence that there exists common notions as between believers in Christ and unbelievers in Christ let us ask ourselves what shared standard the Christian and the non-Christian has in order to share common notions? I mean, in order to have common notions, two people first have to agree that the standard by which they share the idea of “common” is indeed shared. What we see here is that the Christian and the heathen can not even have common notions about common notions since they each are living by different noetic standards. Jon is just wrong here.

Jon, in this video, insists that more often Christians need to gather data and do analysis in order to come to conclusions on this, that or the other. However, the problem is that this assumes that “the data speaks for itself.” I have no problem with the necessity to gather data. I do have a problem with thinking that data gathered is data that is Worldview independent. We refer to our fossil example above. The fossil is data gathered but that data gathered by itself does not inductively push us towards a conclusion that isn’t already deductively influenced.

Next Jon insists that too often what passes for a Christian Worldview among many is instead merely a cultural disposition that Worldview is being (wrongly) used to support. Jon is saying here (and I think rightly) that too often Christians use the idea of “Christian Worldview” to support cultural preferences that they have become accustomed to. This is a danger for all of us. It is the case that all of us want to bend God’s Word and the Worldview that extends from God’s Word so as to agree with our predisposition. I see the same thing Jon sees here. I see that many Christians have embraced the classical Liberal order and have overlaid that classical Liberal order with the authority of “this is supported by a Christian Worldview.” However, that just isn’t so. The classical liberalism that built the West and was largely a product in many respects of the Enlightenment project was never, at all points, consistent with a Christian Worldview. For example, the pluralism, that is inherent in the classical liberal social order is not Christian in the least and to be honest isn’t even genuine pluralism. Similarly, it can be easily argued that the first amendment is contrary to the first commandment. There is no freedom of speech to blaspheme God as just one example.

However, overturning this faulty Worldview “thinking” that Jon identifies   that finds people coating their errant cultural dispositions with the authority of a Christian Worldview has to be challenged by a truthful and Biblical Worldview as opposed it being attacked in a piecemeal fashion. It is the totalism of a Christian Weltanschauung that must oppose the totalism of the errant classical Liberal Weltanschauung that is masquerading as a Christian Worldview.

Unfortunately, Jon chooses the 2nd amendment to question the Christian-ness of the Christian Worldview. Jon seemingly thinks that it may not be as important to have a 2nd amendment provision in a Christian worldview, thinking as he does, that the 2nd amendment provision arose as being unique to an Anglo-Saxon culture. Unfortunately, as we have argued on this blog, I do think the duty to protect one’s self, one’s kin, and one’s castle is something that we find in Scripture and so needs to be part of a Christian Worldview among all peoples. However, there are other issues we have currently flying under the banner of “The Christian Worldview” that should be excised from a benuintely Christian Worldview. One example of that I would say is how what passes for a Christian worldview today insists upon egalitarianism. I am convinced from God’s Word that egalitarianism is diametrically at odds with a Christian Worldview and yet a major percentage of Churches and clergy in the West embrace egalitarianism in one form or another as definitively Christian.

Towards the end of the video Jon accuses those who embrace Worldview as being “Gnostic.” I take great umbrage at this characteristic. No one who is Worldview savvy is suggesting that salvation is dependent upon knowing the ins and outs of a Christian Worldview and in order to be Gnostic that is what we would have to be saying. Jon knows better than this. Instead, what Worldview thinking pursues is consistency across disciplines. Those of use who embrace the idea of Christian Worldview thinking understand that those who hold to a Christian Worldview are never as consistent as we’d like to be but we are striving to take all thoughts to make them captive to Christ and in making them captive to Christ we believe that there should be harmony that exists across the board in various disciplines.

Jon ends by suggesting that the fault of Worldview thinking is that it is too universalistic. Jon insists that he is too much of a particularist to embrace Worldview thinking that is singular, broad, and universal. We would note here that not all Worldview thinkers insist that one Christian Worldview has to be the same in all cultural expressions. We get, along with something Abraham Kuyper said long ago, that Christianity is going to have different expressions as existing among different people’s and cultures. They was a Samoan culture expresses a Christian worldview is going to vary somewhat from the way a Shona people own a Christian Worldview. One thing that the Kinists I run with understand is that since God is both eternally One and Many therefore there is going to be a Oneness and Mannyness temporally. There will be different variants of the one Christian World and life view as existing among different peoples and cultures. As such, we are along with Jon, particularists. We don’t expect all Christian peoples and cultures to be exactly the same. We do not insist that there is only one way of understanding the application of God’s Law in only one Christian World and life view. However, we also believe there will exist a singular Christian World and life view wherein there is found a harmony of interests as among the different expressions of that one singular Christian World and life view.

Jon is very congenial and insists that he is not pushing his views on dropping usage of “Worldview” on other people but clearly that is the effect of Jon publishing his reasons why he is dropping the usage of the word Worldview. He doubtless thinks that other people would be wise like himself if they would drop the usage of the idea of “Worldview” just as he has.

I merely disagree strongly with Jon and took the time to have a conversation that I hope matters.

 

McAtee On The Rosebrough vs. Mahler Debate V — Christians & The Authority of the State

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31nfDvZgTlQ

As we start part V we note that in the introduction of the debate Rosebrough went out of his way to say this interview was not a debate.  Rosebrough’s protestations at the beginning that this was not a debate with Mahler are irrelevant. This was a debate and the reason Rosebrough later wanted to insist that it wasn’t a debate is because Mahler wiped the floor with Rosebrough. It was bad and the real badness of it begins to be seen in this segment.

I will give Mahler this… he excels at what Lawyer’s excel at. He is a master at argumentation. We see in Mahler the classic example of lawyer advice on how to argue;

When the facts are against you, argue the law.
When the law is against you, argue the facts.
When the facts and the law are both against you, argue policy

I would also say Mahler’s ability to keep his composure in light of Rosebrough’s obvious exasperation and incredulity were points in favor of Mahler’s presentation. There were times when Mahler was clearly wrong but his ability to calmly drive his errant points home worked in his favor.

In this segment Rosebrough is exposed pretty badly by Mahler. In this segment we learn that both Rosebrough and Mahler are Statists. Though Mahler does not state it I’m pretty confident that he would contend that the colonists were in unbiblical rebellion for rising up against King George. Meanwhile, Rosebrough insists that the Colonialists were correct for rebelling against King George as following their lesser Magistrates. Yet, Rosebrough also said here that he would obey Stalin and Hitler. Rosebrough would obey Stalin and Hitler but not King George III? That is more than a little arbitrary. It seems that Rosebrough picks and chooses on his own authority what rules of Caesar he will obey and what he will not obey.

Actually, he and Mahler agree here seen in Mahler’s clear inference that Stalin should not have been obeyed. (Mahler references Solzhenitsyn’s counsel.) Mahler and Rosebrough just have different standards for what should and should not be obeyed. As for myself, I would have counseled Christians to disobey all these tyrants.

There was argumentation here on the meaning of Romans 13. Rosebrough was clearly in the wrong here as he seeks to suggest that Romans 13 teaches that Christians must submit to tyrants. In fairness to Rosebrough he seemed to be confused here. At one point he said that Christians should submit to tyrants on matters like speed limits and where they can. At other points he said things like, (paraphrasing) “if the Magistrate wants to kill me as a Christian the Lord will take care of him,” suggesting that the Christian should passively accept his unjust execution.

We’ve written a great deal here on Romans 13. Here are just two of the posts. There are others that can be found by putting “Romans 13” in the search engine here at Iron Ink.

Romans 13:1f … Then and Now

Romans 13 & The Possibility of Civil Disobedience

Rosebrough clearly stated that he would obey Hitler and Stalin but not George III. I would say that Christians had no business obeying Stalin, George III, or Hitler. Especially when Hitler said… “Bring your lame, halt and blind so I can kill them.” Roseborough actually said that it is sin to resist a murderous magistrate.

I would contend that if the Emperor wants to kill you for preaching the Gospel and you willingly surrender to the Emperor to be killed you have just violated the 6th commandment. Rosebrough is confused on this subject as seen in this statement;

“I am not called to armed insurrection on the basis of the fact that the state is opposing Christianity.”

So, the fact that the State is killing millions of babies does not allow us to rise in armed insurrection to oppose the State? The links posted above explain my reasons for so thoroughly and adamantly disagreeing with Rosebrough here.

Rosebrough does allow for a seeming exception with the Colonialists rebelling against George III suggesting that it was not sedition for the Colonialists to rise up against George III since the Colonialists were following lesser Magistrates.  I am pretty sure that King George III and British Parliament would have still called the Colonial rebellion “sedition.”

This section is very important in my opinion. I am of the conviction that pulpits across our land ought to be reverberating with the same kind of counsel that Reformed and Lutheran pulpits reverberated with when the clergy at that time was referred to “the Black Robed Regiment.” We live in a time when pulpits should ring with the counsel of rising up against the tyrant state that we are currently living under. Guys like Rosebrough counsel passivity in the face of the most God-awful and dishonoring behavior as coming from the State. God’s people need to be told by God’s spokesman while speaking from God’s holy desk that tyrants have no license from God to destroy the weak, to persecute Christians, or to tyrannize the public as they are currently doing and have been doing for quite some time. Debate can be had as to how best go about this and the timing of this but the necessity for it can not be disputed.

McAtee On The Rosebrough vs. Mahler Debate IV — Ham’s Curse, Penalty for Theft, Constitutional Oaths

Before listening to Mahler and Rosebrough debate I spent time listening to Deace goosestep Ray Fava through a struggle session. Having listened to those two back to back I was reminding how far ahead of the curve we Kinists were on these Christian Nationalism and “the Bagels are a problem” issues. We Kinists were debating these same exact issues against the proto-“Christian” Maxists 15-20 years ago. Even now you can go to the Iron Ink search engine and plug in “Bojidar Marinov” and find now dated and considerably  heated debate on the same subjects that Deace and Fava and Mahler and Rosebrough were debating. 15-20 years ago it was Kinists like myself, Dan Brannan, Mark Chambers, Davis Carlton, Justin Cottrell, Adi Schlebusch, and Colby Malsbury going hammer and tong against the “Christian” Marxist crowd of Stephen Halbrook, Bojidar Marinov, Daniel Ritchie, Joel McDurmon, R. C. Sproul Jr. and others. Back then those discussions were fierce fire fights between the same two camps now represented by Rosebrough/Deace on one side and Mahler/Fava on the other side. In the past I’ve gone at it with clergy like Joe Morecraft, Chris Streval, Doug Wilson and others on these subjects. The Kinists were here manning the walls on these subjects long before Spangler, Hunter, Garris, and other really good men showed up to lend support. We have been paying the same price for years that the more recent arrivals have sadly been having to pay also. That isn’t to say that all the folks arguing for Christian Nationalism or Kinism agree on everything, rather it is too note we have had the same enemies.

That was an observational aside. As far as the Mahler vs. Rosebrough debate I thought it was funny that at one point Mahler accused Rosebrough of being “Reformed.”  Mahler made it clear that, like all Lutherans, he believes that God knows the future without determining the future.

At one point Rosebrough wanted to dismiss nearly all of Church history on the subject of race and the Jews. Rosebrough noted that one can find all kinds of errant beliefs (he used the example of the perpetual virginity of Mary) held by Church fathers in history. Therefore, all because one can quote Church Fathers (and even Lutheran Church fathers like Luther, Walther, Maier and others) that doesn’t mean that their or the Christian Nationalist is correct. This of course is true. However, the problem Rosebrough has with this line of reasoning is that the testimony of the Church Fathers on this subject is so thick and so long-standing and so prevalent that it beggars the imagination that they were all in error. We have two anthologies out now that demonstrate that this doctrine of Kinism is one of those doctrines that has been believed by all people of all times in all places by the Church. If this subject is disputed let the Alienists produce a couple volumes of anthologies giving us quotes from the Church Fathers through history supporting the egalitarianism and the support of the Jews that is now characteristic of the Alienists. Anabaptists don’t count as Church Fathers and the quotes have to be older than 1960.

Next, Rosebrough demonstrated that he doesn’t understand the possibility that Scripture uses Canaan as a synecdoche for Ham when it came to the curse of Ham. Personally, I don’t have a settled position on the cursing of Ham but I recognize that it can play into this debate. Having said that I think one has to say it is possible that Canaan serves as a synecdoche for all the descendents of Ham. I would also add that merely because those from the lines of Shem and Japheth have themselves been enslaved over the centuries that does not negate the possibility that Ham and his descendants are uniquely cursed by Noah to that end.

Rounding off this section, there were a couple points that Mahler looked bad on.

First, Rosebrough was right in the whole hand amputation debate. If one takes Scripture as their standard it would be unbiblical to chop off of somebody’s hand for theft. Scripture does not teach that as a penalty for theft choosing instead restitution plus penalty for the crime of theft. Mahler was in error in arguing that the amputation of the hand for theft was a perfectly legitimate option in a Christian law order.

Second, Mahler is playing games when he says he has vowed to uphold the Constitution but then turns around and says there is nothing for him to uphold in his lawyer oath to uphold the Constitution since the Constitution has no meaning. If the constitution has no meaning and didn’t have any meaning when Mahler, as a lawyer swore to uphold it, then the man should not have taken an oath to uphold something that by his own definition can’t be upheld. Mahler kept insisting that “An oath to a document (Constitution) that can change doesn’t mean anything,” has to be met with two responses;

1.) Is that what they taught you in law school?
2.) Then how is it you weren’t bearing false witness when you took the oath since obviously the people requiring the oath believe that the Constitution has meaning?

Points for Mahler on the Ham curse possibility explanation. Points for Rosebrough on the discussion of penal sanction in the case of theft and for his exposure of Mahler’s weak position of taking an oath to uphold the Constitution.

McAtee On The Rosebrough vs. Mahler Debate III — Fascism Is A Marxism Variant

Rosebrough and Mahler next go back and forth on whether or not German Fascism was a form of Marxism. Here I score a point for Rosebrough because German Fascism was a form of Marxism. Now, certainly it was a different form of Marxism as expressed among the Communists but they both embrace shards of Marxist thought. Even Hitler admitted this;

“National Socialism derives from each of the two camps the pure idea that characterizes it, national resolution from bourgeois tradition; vital, creative socialism from the teaching of Marxism.”

Adolf Hitler
Interview with Hanns Johst in Frankforter Volksblatt
January 27, 1934

People need to realize that there have been countless variants of Marxism and that the various Marxists disagreed with one another hammer and tong over the decades.

In terms of Marxist variants I offer these just off the top of my head. More could be adduced;

1.) Syndicalists
2.) Mensheviks
3.) Bolsheviks
4.) Nihilists
5.) Max Stirner’s Libertarian Marxists
6.) Anarchists
7.) Cultural Marxists (Originating with Italian Antonio Gramsci)
8.) Trotskyites
9.) National Socialism
10.) Bundism
11.) Maoism
12.) Leninism
13.) Stalinism

Marxist thought has spawned countless movements much like larva spawn flies and if one has studied Marxism at all one realizes that they all hated one another like water hates oil, and yet, once one expression had reached an ascendency often people from the other elements would join that expression which had become hegemonic. This explains, why so many rank and file German communists eventually joined the National Socialist movement. It just wasn’t a stretch for them to enter into this slightly different expression of Marxism. Hitler hinted at this;

It is not Germany that will turn Bolshevist, but Bolshevism that will become a sort of National Socialism. Besides, there is more that binds us to Bolshevism than separate us from it… The petit bourgeois Social-Democrat and the trade-union boss will never make a National Socialist, but the Communist always will.

Adolf Hitler

The reason that a Communist always would make a National Socialist is because Communism and National Socialism has Marxism in common.

Look at it this way. There are a myriad of expressions of Christianity and among those different expression exist real and substantive differences. However, there also exist real and substantive agreements. In the same way the Marxist religion had all kinds of variants but in the end they all claimed Marxism.

Roseborough was correct, as against Mahler, that Fascism is an expression of Marxism. Communism and Fascism are merely variants of Marxism. Marxism, had TONS of variants, of which Fascism was one.

Score 1 point for Rosebrough.

Current tally …. Rosebrough 1.5 …. Mahler 1.5