Apologetics – Page 3

Alienism & Kinism … Some Considerations

Recently, the Alienism that stems from accepting the principles of Cultural Marxism has found itself trying to sweep Kinism off the scene by pejoratives. One podcaster did a podcast titled, “Kinism; Luciferian and Wicked.” Another “clergy” member in the RPCNA spent 56 mindless minutes haranguing and screeching his congregation in a sermon titled; “Against the Heresy of Kinism.” We definitely have their attention and personally I am flattered that they find us so dangerous that now they have to go to these silly extremes in order to try and quench the prairie-fire that is endangering their post-Endarkenment consensus “Christianity.”

I am actually hoping these harpy clergy continue on this path. Their rants are so mindless and so absent any substance that their arguments against Kinism are actually providing arguments for Kinism for those who aren’t completely brain dead. Their argument by vacuous assertion and impressive straw men, as well as their steady refusal to deal with all the quotes from Church Fathers and Church history can only strengthen the position of Biblical Christianity. Sooner or later the Alienists are going to have to deal with quotes like this recent one I just came across thanks to Dan Brannan.

We see here that St Isidore of Seville (6th century) argued that it was within the fundamental rights of a nation to prohibit miscegenation as recorded in his Etymologies (Origins) of Isidore of Seville;

vi.) What the law of nations is (Quid sit ius gentium) 1.) The law of nations concerns the occupation of territory, building, fortification, wars, captives, enslavements, the right of return, treaties of peace, truces, the pledge not to molest embassies, the prohibition of marriages between races. And it is called ‘law of nations (ius gentium) because nearly al nations (gentes) use it.”

In light of all this condemning Kinists to the deepest level of hell the question has arisen as to whether one can embrace Alienism (born of Cultural Marxism and the polar opposite of Kinism) and still be considered Christian. Now, of course distinctions have to be made here. We concede that while Alienism is, by definition, not Christianity, it certainly is likely that many Alienists are Christians. God’s grace reaches beyond all of the lack of sanctification that is doubtless characteristic of all of us.

We also have to make distinctions between the Alienists who are ideologues and so true believers –that is they who are epistemologically self conscious about their Alienism and those others who are merely useful idiots for the Alienists. We have great hope that many of the useful idiots for the Alienists are indeed Christian despite their useful idiot status. For example, I have great hope that Drew Poplin (the chap who preached that “Kinism is Heresy”) is indeed someone who, despite his utter and embarrassing nonsense is in Christ. I say this despite at the same time insisting that he has no business being within three blocks of a Reformed pulpit.

However, having said all that we Kinists still must insists that all those who are Alienists — epistemologically self conscious or useful idiots — that what they are espousing is NOT Christianity. And they must be told … “Shall we go on sinning that grace might abound? God forbid!” The doctrinal position of Alienism is anti-Christ. It is against the Christian faith and where consistently held to it is anti-Gospel inasmuch as tears at the structure of the Creature-Creator distinction with its egalitarian norms. Such egalitarian norms are either a consequence of a monism that is birthed by denying the Creator-Creature distinction or alternately is certain to lead to the eventual denial of the distinction between God and man. If there is no distinctions between creatures, born of monism, eventually there will be a energetic denial of the distinction between God and Man. The distinction between Creator-creature cannot survive a mindset that levels all God ordained distinctions between creatures. So whether the denial of all distinctions between creatures leads to denial of the Creator-Creature distinction or whether all distinctions between creatures is the consequence of the denial of the Creator-creature distinction the result remains a monism that in no way can co-exist with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. One can not be a Christian while embracing a monism that denies the Creator-Christian distinction. How deep can one be in this error and still consistently hold to the Gospel is not something I know the answer to. I do know that it is all Christian’s responsibility to say that “Alienism and the Gospel cannot consistently co-exist together.”

This is the same kind of issue that Machen was facing in the 1920s except then the issue was not Alienism born of cultural Marxism but rather the issue was Liberalism born of denying the transcendence and supernatural character of God (Actually, that stemmed from a monistic impulse as well.) Machen never tried to give a person by person examination as to just how deep the infection of liberalism was too deep in order for one not to be Christian. Instead, Machen wrote and preached that Liberalism was not Christianity … just as Alienism is not Christianity and cannot coexist with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

We see St. Paul do the same kind of thing in his epistles. He makes it clear in Colossians and in the Timothys that Gnosticism is NOT Christianity and is against the Gospel. Now, as to how much Gnosticism was too much Gnosticism in every individual case was not something we get in his writings. What we get is the Gnosticism is anti-Christ and so can not exist consistently with the Gospel.

We all know of congregations are flat up full of Cultural Marxism and the Alienism it produces. We would not blink an eye in saying “those people need to hear the Gospel.” On the other hand we know of congregations that are less infected and to those places we might say, “Well, while I don’t doubt that there may well be Christians among them, it is still the case that what they are holding in principle is against the Gospel and if given its head will overturn the Gospel in that place.”

What we believes about the whole of the Christian faith matters and this tendency to want to somehow cordone “the Gospel” from the totality of the whole Christian faith is not healthy and is unwise. The Christian faith is an organic whole and a severe error in one place is going to warp the Gospel — and warp it enough in some cases to drain the Gospel of being the Gospel.

So, on one hand we want to be generous with people in their confession of personal faith in Jesus the Christ, but on the other hand we do not want people to think that doctrine is unimportant so that “it really doesn’t matter what you believe about Christ as long as you believe.” God is not egalitarian and egalitarian Christianity if given its head means that a Gospel defined by Alienist/ egalitarianism is not a Gospel that can save.

Drew Poplin Preaches 56 minute Sermon Against Kinism — What a Spectacle (I)

It boggles my mind that some young torpid clergy member would take 56 minutes to preach a sermon against Kinism and yet that is exactly what one Drew Poplin did in a RPCNA church in Durham, NC.

Below are from his posted notes.

“Defining the Term: Kinism is a heinous and heretical philosophy rooted in four general principles: (1) Race is narrowly defined and focused upon skin color and ancestral heritage rather than recognizing the reality of present societies; (2) Kinism holds to the permanence of race, following false evolutionary premises; (3) The belief that the intermarrying of races and peoples is immoral; (4) At the root of this is the abominable belief of white supremacy.”

Rev. Drew Poplin

1.) Kinists do not reduce race to the idea of skin color as if skin color is the only factor in race. Kinists do recognize Ancestral heritage believing as they do in the simple reality of real live biological genetics. God has made peoples to differ and part of that difference is encoded in particular gene patterns that end up making up different races.

Now, as Poplin continues he says that Kinists don’t understand the differences between ethnicity and race but it is really Poplin who is playing the thick one here. Kinist’s understand that ethnicity exists and that different ethnic peoples exist as belonging to distinct races. We get it Drew, that there are Germanic, Anglos, Saxons who are distinctly ethnic peoples but we go on to say that a broader category exists wherein each of these fall and the broader category is called “race.” Germans, Anglos, and Saxons are ethnic groups who belong each to the broader category of White people just as Hutus, Ndebele, Shonas, and Zulus are particular ethnic peoples who belong to a shared race. And all of them Drew belong to the largest category of the human race.

2.) Poplin makes a false assertion when he insists that Kinists follow evolutionary philosophy. Sigh. Poplin seems not to realize that long before the rise of Darwin or Evolution people examined the issue of races. Shakespeare examined the theme in some of his plays. Shakespeare’s dates predate Darwins. The Early Church Fathers wrote about race. Here is just one example;

“The ancient fathers… were concerned that the ties of kinship itself should not be loosened as generation succeeded generation, should not diverge too far, so that they finally ceased to be ties at all. And so for them it was a matter of religion to restore the bond of kinship by means of the marriage tie before kinship became too remote—to call kinship back, as it were, as it disappeared into the distance.”

Augustine – (A.D. 354 – 430)
City of God, book XV, Chpt. 16:

Hey Drew … not everyone who believes in the reality of race is sniffing around the remains of the really dumb evolutionary theory. What other really dumb assertions do you want to toss from the Holy Desk Drew?

Indeed, Drew, Kinists don’t even hold that race is permanent understanding that over enough generations one line can go from one race to another race. However, this also proves that race is real as that breeding has moved a line from one very real distinct race to another very real distinct race.

Are you following me Drew?

3.) Kinists agree with all the Church fathers prior to 1950 or so that interracial marriage is at the very least normatively unwise and can often be sinful and immoral. I could give you a gazillion quotes but here is one from Machen’s friend, defender and colleague Dr. Clarence MacCartney;

“Love imagines that it can overleap the barriers of race and blood and religion, and in the enthusiasm and ecstasy of choice these obstacles appear insignificant. But the facts of experience are against such an idea. Mixed marriages are rarely happy. Observation and experiences demonstrate that the marriage of a Gentile and Jew, a Protestant and a Catholic, an American and a Foreigner has less chance of a happy result than a marriage where the man and woman are of the same race and religion….”

Dr. Clarence MacCartney – Presbyterian Minister
1879-1957

Does it give you any pause Drew that you are peaching from a pulpit a doctrine that no Church fathers, save possibly the heretical Anabaptists, taught or believed in? Any pause at all?

4.) Poplin again makes a dumb assertion when he ties Kinism with White supremacy. I know many non white people who are Kinists. Muhammed Ali (he was a famous black Boxer Drew) held Kinist principles, insisting that blacks should only marry blacks.

But, I will say it is true that Whites are supreme in some areas while clearly inferior in other areas. For example, I have concluded that modern day whites named Drew are vastly inferior at being Presbyterian clergy.

McAtee Contra Rev. Jim Cassidy’s Putrid R2K

“The anabaptist view of church and state is not two kingdom, but one. They want to apply Christian morality to the sphere of the magistrate. And since Christ said love your enemy and turn the other cheek, the state is to be wholly pacifist.

Unfortunately, the anabaptists are sorely mistaken. The Reformed have always recognized the legitimate role of the state to use coercive force, and to punish according to the lex talionis principle. They also recognize that Christian morality in love of enemy and forgiveness of sin is required of believers.

How do these two things sweetly comply? Only according to a Reformed version of two kingdom theology as you find, for example, classically defined in James Bannerman.

The basis and powers of church and state are distinct. The church’s basis is love and service empowered by the Word. The state’s basis is retributive justice empowered by the sword.”

Rev. Jim Cassidy

OPC Minister

Once again we see the Clergy get matters all bollixed up. Really, are we even surprised any longer?

1.) AnaBaptists, not wanting anything to do with”the world” were clearly two Kingdom. They understood that there was their own community and that there were those who were not part of their community. They believed one set of principles guided their own Kingdom they lived in while believing that another set of principles governed over those “outside the faith.” Can you say “Two Kingdoms” Jim?

This is the same reasoning R2K uses. There is one set of principles for the church realm, as set by God’s special revelation, and another set of principles for everywhere else as set by Natural Law. The only difference is that R2K calls that realm ruled by Natural Law “common,” whereas the Anabaptist call that realm not ruled by their community, “wicked.” In the end, R2K’s “common” looks a great deal like the Anabaptist’s “wicked.” We only have a changing out of the word used.

Now to be sure, inside the Anabaptist Kingdom the Anabaptists believed that God’s word applied to all matters but as they were (and are) terrible heretics are we surprised that they got that all bollixed up? All because the heretical Anabaptists misapply God’s Word to their living in their communities is that reason to think that God’s Word can’t be properly applied to all areas of life. Cornelius Van Til put it this way;

“All proper human activity is therefore activity within the Kingdom of the Christ.”

CVT

Christianity and Barthianism — p. 228

And again;

“You cannot expect to train intelligent, well-informed soldiers of the cross of Christ unless the Christ is held up before them as the Lord of culture as well as the Lord of religion.”

Cornelius Van Til

I quote CVT here because Cassidy likes to think of himself as a CVT fan. Cassidy clearly doesn’t understand CVT.One more from Van Til’s nephew;

The radical, totalitarian character of religion is such, then, that it determines both man’s cultus and his culture. That is to say, the conscious or unconscious relationship to God in a man’s heart determines all of his activities, whether theoretical or practical. This is true of philosophy, which is based upon non-theoretical, religious presuppositions. Thus man’s morality and economics, his jurisprudence and his aesthetics, are all religiously oriented and determined.

Henry Van Til

Calvinist Concept of Culture

2.) Cassidy is wrong to suggest that in the Reformed view the Magistrate has to always follow Lex Talionis in adjudication. That is clearly seen in Reformed Magistrates practicing commutation and pardoning for those who, according to the Lex Talionis, should received punishment. That this is Biblical is seen in Jesus parable of the unforgiving debtor where the Magistrate forgives the debtor his great debt.

3.) Love of enemy and Lex Talionis doth sweetly comply when in each case we exercise what is required of God’s law towards both our enemies and towards those who are before the magistrate, inasmuch as we do unto them what is assigned to us in our particular jurisdictions.

4.) When the State gives retributive justice empowered by the sword it is at that time practicing love and service empowered by the Word.

That is not to deny that Church and State have distinct functions. It is true that the Church proclaims grace while the State provides justice but there is false dichotomy in Cassidy’s thinking. When the Church practices discipline there is justice going on and when the State practices discipline there is love and service going on. It is merely that these look different in different jurisdictional realms. The State does not have the keys and the Church does not have the sword but they still, in a Biblical order, doth sweetly comply.

Cassidy’s R2K is heterodox at best.

The Hatred & Love Of Enemies

When Jesus tells us to “love our enemies,” He is in no way in contradiction to the inspired Psalmist who says

21Do I not hate those who hate You, O LORD, and detest those who rise against You? 22I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them as my enemies.

Clearly, the Psalmist counts those he hates with a perfect hatred as his enemies.

However, there is no contradiction here.

First, to love our enemies simply means that we treat them consistent with God’s Ten Words. When I act consistent w/ the 10 Words towards the enemy I hate, at that time I am loving my enemy.

Second, part of the problem here is that “love” today is interpreted as “giving in or yielding to the depredations of the wicked.” Such is not the definition of love. In point of fact loving my enemies necessitates resisting their intention to do harm to others. I do not love my enemy when I allow them to do evil to others and I do love my enemy when I take measures to make sure they don’t sow their wickedness. I also demonstrate love at such a time towards the judicially innocent and most importantly I demonstrate love to God is giving the wicked a love they will call “hate,” but is actually genuinely love to them.

We so associate love today with “surrender” or “passively witnessing wickedness” because we view love in sentimental categories. However, when I protect the judicially innocent against the unrighteous intent of the wicked I am at that point loving not only the judicially innocent but I am also loving the wicked since I am treating them within the bounds of God’s Decalogue.

Visiting justice upon the wicked is no more a lack of love than visiting my children with a spanking when they act in a wicked manner against God’s standards.

Now, some will ask if this explanation is harmonious with Jesus command to “turn the other cheek,” and “to go twain mile when asked to go one,” and “to give cloak also when tunic is asked for.” I believe in these situations our Savior was giving practical advice on how to behave when confronted with superior wicked force that can do us great harm if we were to respond with an “eye for an eye” at such a time. In all of those examples from the Sermon on the Mt. the premise is that the person who is being told to go the extra distance is faced with a superior force that can’t be resisted. In such a time the way to calm the waters so that one isn’t completely destroyed is to offer up a extra compliance that calms the superior force from doing extremity.

The idea that these examples require us at all time to let wickedness and evil multiply and prosper flies in the face of passages like “hate that which is evil, cling to that which is good.” We also find examples in the NT where such policy was not followed such when Paul demanded the magistrates to come and release he and Silas from unjust imprisonment and when Paul worked to escape custody while in Jerusalem. Of course there is the classic example of what hating our enemies might look like when we view Jesus whipping the Bankers out of the Temple.

Passivity against wickedness in all circumstances is not taught in the Scripture and so such pacifism is not the definition of love. Finally, hate is a good thing when it is hatred against those who are seeking to destroy that which is lovely, honorable, good, wholesome, and God pleasing.

Fisking Humanist Manifesto III; Antioch Declaration (Part V)

Continuing the fisk the Humanist Manifesto III (Antioch Declaration). We start with a quote by John Calvin;

“I have had much conversation with many Jews—I have never seen either a drop of piety or a grain of truth or ingenuousness—nay, I have never found common sense in any Jew.”

— John Calvin (1509-1564)

Humanist Manifesto III (Antioch Declaration — hereinafter AD)

“We deny that scapegoating is a legitimate practice for Christians to participate in because God has already provided the final and perfect scapegoat in Christ Jesus who alone is the true sin-bearer.”

Paleocon

Agreed.

However, where is the proof that anybody is scapegoating… well, unless it is the scapegoating the Boomer-Cons are doing in making all these wild and veiled accusations.

Humanist Manifesto III (AD)

“We deny that our rejection of antisemitism requires us to ignore or minimize the destructive impact that various God-hating individual Jews have had in human history, just as our rejection of the hatred of Europeans and Anglo-Saxons does not require us to ignore the cultural devastation that many God-hating individual Gentiles have produced. Every ethnic people have members to be ashamed of, and every ethnic people have members to be grateful for.”

Paleocon

Y’all haven’t rejected antisemitism. You’ve redefined antisemitism to mean “somebody who commits the sin of noticing regarding the history of the Jews.” Also, what you have done is embraced philosemitism. Your refusal to talk in generalities proves that. If you can find one exception you suggest that proves folks who notice trends are anti semitic. For example if I say, “it is a problem that Jews, generally speaking, as a group, vote consistently for Democrats and that therefore means we have a problem,” you consider that observation anti semitic by trotting out the exceptions to that observation.

I will be glad to admit that the WASP is the one finally responsible for where we are. If we had not rebelled against Christ we would have never listened to the Bagels. So, the bad is on us before it is on the Bagels. But repentance means that we begin once again to be willing to commit the sin of noticing exactly what our Fathers noticed in all of Church history. This is something you are not willing to do and in not willing to do that you are pulling down the house of Christian civilization down around our ears.

Thanks ever so much.

Humanist Manifesto III (AD)

“We deny that Jews are in any way uniquely malevolent or sinful, that Judaism in its multifarious expressions is objectively more dangerous than other false religions, or that it represents an exceptional threat to Christianity and Christian peoples. By nature, the Jews are objects of wrath just like the rest of us, which is condemnation enough (Ps. 14:2-3), and are equally recipients of God’s grace (Rom.11:11-32).”

Paleocon

1.) Of course not everyone agrees with your interpretation of Romans 11. There is always the partial Preterist view of Romans 11.

2.)

“Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not. Which of you convinceth me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me? He that is of God heareth God’s words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God. Then answered the Jews…”

— Jesus Christ

“…the Jews: who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men: forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost.”

— Paul the Apostle

“For they [the Jews] being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.”

— Paul the Apostle

“For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision: whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre’s sake.”

— Paul the Apostle

“Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son. Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father.”

— John the Apostle

Finally you may not think the Bagels are any kind of extra existential threat to the Church or Christian civilization but please realize that is not the report of the Church throughout Church history.

Humanist Manifesto III (AD)

“We deny that world affairs are governed by conspiring Jews or that there is a global Jewish conspiracy to corrupt and destroy Western society.”

Palecon;

Have you ever considered the extraordinarily large percentage of Bagels who comprised the top echelons of the Soviet Union during the Bolshevik Revolution? This is especially interesting when we consider that Russia was 2-3% Bagel at the time. I suppose that was just a coincidence.

And what about this quote from Winston Churchill?

“This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognizable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.”

Clearly at the time of his writing in the London newspaper, Old Winnie did not agree with you. Neither did Nesta Webster. Neither did Chrysostom, Calvin, Luther, Ambrose and countless others. I’ll stick with these guys and go right on thinking y’all are mentally unstable on this subject.

Humanist Manifesto III (AD)

“We affirm that the Jews are as all other men—alienated from God and in need of the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ. As a people they have nevertheless remained an object of God’s providential care. With the Puritans of old, We affirm that in God’s good time, multitudes of Jews will come to faith in Christ and be added to the true commonwealth of Israel, inheriting the same blessings as Gentile believers. Hence, the cancerous and counterproductive sin of antisemitism has no place among God’s people.”

Paleocon

1.) Christ made it abundantly clear in the NT that he was done with the Bagels as a people.nation in connection to the matter of redemption. He cursed the fig tree, which was representative of Israel, and said, “May you never produce fruit again.” In the parable of the barren fig tree Jesus spoke of cutting down the tree if it refused to produce fruit. It didn’t produce fruit and it was cut down.

Now, it may be the case that in God’s economy in the future individual Jews may well own Christ but the idea of a great rush of Jews coming into the Church was bad exegesis from the beginning and remains so. In AD 70 God gave Israel its divorce papers. Individual Jews may come to Christ. We pray that many do. But as a people/nation God is done with them. The Puritans were just in error here.

Now, that doesn’t mean that therefore we should take up anti-semitism. It merely means that we quit with this preoccupation with Israel. It and they are irrelevant to eschatology that has yet to unfold.

Humanist Manifesto III (AD)

“We deny that there is more than one message or way of salvation. Salvation is through Christ alone, by faith alone, and by grace alone for both Jew and Gentile, out of whom God has made one new people, removing the dividing wall of hostility (Eph 2.11-21).”

Paleocon

The dividing wall is a reference to the Mosaic Law. Christ tears down the “dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances” (Eph 2:14b-15a). When Christ died, God no longer imposed on Jews the rules that once separated them from Gentiles. The purpose of those aspects of the law has now been fulfilled. The laws that specifically divided Jew and Gentile are now done away with. It is not just the ceremonial laws that are now gone, but the old covenant to which they were intricately attached has been replaced by the new covenant. Under the new covenant God no longer imposes these expectations on his children. This arrangement grants Gentiles wide open access to enter the kingdom of God.

Further, Paul is not talking about generic ethnic divides but specifically the aspects of the law-covenant that divided Jew from Gentiles. Therefore, someone cannot impose ethnic distinctions onto Paul’s words. The apostle has something uniquely covenantal in mind.

Second, the dividing wall was originally the will of God. To take the word “hostility” in and apply it to racism is dangerous. The dividing wall to which Paul is referring is the Mosaic Law, and the Mosaic Law was God’s idea. He made the wall; then he removed it in Christ. The division was God’s will, not the by-product of human sin. “Racism,” on the other hand, is the result of human sin and never is the result of what God commands. By applying Ephesians 2:14 to ethnic strife today you effectively turn God into a “racist.”

Third, did Christ remove by his death the various differences between cultures today? Not at all. Before Christ’s death, one culture may prefer beer. Another culture may prefer wine. After the death of Christ the first culture still likes beer and the second culture still likes wine. The death of Christ was not intended to move the needle on these types of cultural differences (except for the aspects of man’s culture that are sinful). Nor did it overturn other aspects of human relations grounded in creation and nature.

More fundamentally, the church and nation are two different entities governed by Christ in different ways–with different laws and rules of citizenship. Perhaps you should read Stephen Wolfe’s book and get these distinctions in your head rather than collapsing every institution into the church.

We affirm that God has ordained the existence of peoples and nations (Acts 17:26-28) and as such our cultural heritage is something to be grateful for so that, in view of God’s good gifts to our people, national pride, along with a healthy patriotism, are appropriate for Christians. At the same time, it is important to reject every form of identity politics, whether of the left or right—or whether the form it takes is malicious or vainglorious.