Category: Ethnic considerations

McAtee & Wilson Converse on Kinism — And you are Privy — Part VI

DW ends on a playful note (BLM loves to play).

In a different article, Bret McAtee complains about the Leftist press anointing me as the titular head of the Christian Nationalism movement, and argues that I am going to use my immense powers the same way that William F. Buckley did when he “cleansed” the conservative movement, first of the Birchers, followed by others like Brimelow and Sobran.

BLM writes,

Honestly, one could read this article by DW as a way to cleanse his Christian Nationalist movement of the kinists he finds so problematic. Isn’t DW saying, “Christian Nationalism, yes …. Kinism as part of Christian Nationalism NO?”

In fairness though, I don’t blame DW for that since in my world DW’s kind of civic and pluralistic “Christian” Nationalism likewise would need not apply.

DW writes,

He bases his account of this on an article by Murray Rothbard, and one wonders why McAtee is demonstrating his leftward drift so openly, citing the work of a Jew like that. A little suspicious, no?

BLM responds,

I not only have read plenty of Rothbard, I’ve also read plenty of Neil Postmen, Jaques Derrida, and Bernard Bailyn — Jews all. Does this prove I’m not an anti-Semite?  I’ve even been known to read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as well as St. Paul. By DW’s reckoning I’ve been suspicious for a very long time now in terms of my leftist drifting.

DW writes,

However I confess myself as not being in charge of anything that other people might want to call themselves. I am only in charge of what I am willing to call myself. And if Christian Nationalism comes to be widely associated with ethnic animosity and/or ethnic vainglory, then to Hell with Christian Nationalism, and I would rather be dead in a ditch than to call myself that. I would drop it like a hot rock. But if Christian Nationalism gets successfully defined by Christians who understand how important it is not to go down that ungodly wormhole, then I am happy to be associated with it.

Bret responds,

I quite agree that I have no desire to be widely associated with a Christian Nationalism that is guilty of ethnic animosity and/or ethnic vainglory. I agree with Doug’s sentiment “to hell with that form of Christian Nationalism.”

But, as they say, “the devil is in the details,” and I’m not confident per our exchange here that DW and I are going to define ethnic animosity and/or ethnic vainglory in the same way. In the “for whatever it is worth” category I want DW to know that I find myself repeatedly pushing back against some of the ethnic animosity and/or ethnic vainglory he is rightly concerned about. I see this in some quarters where, for example, people want to argue that National Socialism was a positive good.

DW ends with,

But time will tell. I have not yet gotten my orders from the CIA.

BLM responds,

Well, we trust that DW will be honest with us when those orders from the CIA come in.

McAtee & Wilson Converse on Kinism — And you are Privy — Part V

Doug Wilson (DW) writes;

Suppose the apostle Paul had said something like, “‘Cretans are evil beasts, lazy gluttons, and liars.’ This testimony is true” (Tit. 1:12). Just suppose, all right? Would it be to the point to say, “some are, some aren’t, just like the rest of us”? Different cultures sin differently, even though we live in a time when it is almost illegal to state the obvious. Some cultures are laid back, some of full of cussedness, some are grasping, and some are lazy.

Me, back in 2008

But having said all this, it is crucial to note that the apostle Paul does not leave the Cretans to wallow in their wicked ways. He goes on to tell Titus to “rebuke them sharply” so that they wouldn’t be like that any more. There is no genetic determinism when it comes to sin.

Bret responds,

Right… the genetic determinism lies in the disposition for different peoples to have besetting sins in different categories. Obviously, the determinism is not so final that the old man can’t be put off, while the new man in Christ can’t be put on. Obviously, the determinism does not suggest that progress can’t be made in sanctification. But the genetic aspect clearly, while not deterministic in the fullest sense of that idea, does suggest that different peoples can have different dispositions towards particular expressions of sin. This is the teaching of Paul here in Titus.

I think we might agree here though we may be in violent agreement.

DW writes,

So as the gospel brings the world closer to the blessed day when the world will be filled with all the fruit of God’s kindness, the different ethnic groups are going to bring all their variegated glories into the New Jerusalem. And all of us, emptied of our vainglorious pufferies by that point, will praise and honor one another, each of us esteeming the other groups as better than our own (Phil. 2:3). This is not the self-loathing we see on display now, but rather the glory of Christian humility, which is something some white people really need to work on. Some whites do the self-loathing thing, and others do the chest-beating, and everybody ought to consider Paul’s more excellent way.

BLM responds,

Obviously, DW and I live in different worlds because as I look upon the cultural landscape right now I see whites doing the self-loathing thing (my Suicidal Altruism I mentioned earlier) more than the chest beating thing. Indeed, I see DW as seeking to get the white man to scurry back to his self-loathing mode. “How dare the white man quit with his self-loathing and agree with Churchill on the JQ? How dare the white man state the obvious that minorities are being used to be the one of the constituencies of the new proletariat to do the Cultural Marxist long march through the Institutions? Don’t they know they are supposed to be so busy self-loathing that they don’t see, let alone mention, the obvious? How dare they commit the sin of noticing?”

And when I say the above all DW can seem to hear me say is that, “Whites are perfect and have no sinful dispositions.” And no matter how often I deny that it seems to be what he hears me saying.

DW writes,

As the kings and chieftains are making their way through the gates of that New Jerusalem, there will be no thrown elbows, catcalls, or jeers. Differences yes, but the differences of all the varied instruments in a symphony orchestra, all playing a song composed by Moses in Heaven, and by the Lamb.

“And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints. Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? for thou only art holy: for all nations shall come and worship before thee; for thy judgments are made manifest.”

Revelation 15:3-4

Bret responds,

Yes, they do sing that song but they sing it as a great choral with each nation as a nation singing its distinctly assigned part. They do not sing as one homo-globo mass but as distinct nations who together in a confederated heavenly church choir sing their glories to God.

Praise God that DW and I seem to agree on that.

 

McAtee & Wilson Converse on Kinism … And you are Privy — Part IV

Doug Wilson (DW) writes;

Uniquely Sinful?

But I still need to pick up on something Bret says at the end of that previous quote. I believe that the temptations to animosity and vainglory are universally human because all humans are fallen, bent, and sinful, and this is one of the common areas where it is on display. I don’t believe that whites or blacks or Jews have an inside corner on this sin. Not at all.

Bret responds,

Who could ever deny this observation? However, allow me to contend that if ethnic animosity and vainglory can be besetting sins for all peoples so it can be the case that that an opposite sin — yet equally heinous sin — can be embraced by a people. Let us call that opposite sin “Suicidal altruism.” This sin would be the sin of accepting and carrying false guilt piled on a people via various enemy cultural outlets. It is the sin whereby a people find virtue in embracing false guilt and owning the all the wrongs done in the world to the point of becoming the world’s spittoon. 

Maybe an example will suffice. I remember some years ago reading a story of a WOKE young woman who went to Haiti. Once there all she could see was the white man’s oppressions. She wrote about it freely. One evening she was raped by a gang of Haitians and her response was to blame her rape on the white man who had oppressed those poor Haitian rapists to the point that they felt they needed to get revenge by raping a white woman. Voila… Suicidal altruism. 

I’m all for tamping down and rebuking the sin of ethnic animosity and vaingloriousness. Will DW join me in tamping down and rebuking the sin of suicidal altruism?

DW writes,

Again, the sins associated with all this are ethnic animosity and ethnic vainglory. The former is something we here in Moscow hate with the heat of a thousand suns. The latter is something we hate with the heat of 25 suns. The former diabolical and filled with spite and envy. The latter is filled with the bumfuzzledness of human blundering and stupidity, which on a good day can be somewhat endearing. Kind of like watching a Dufflepud Superiority Rally, where there is so much cringy fremdschamen material on display that one does not know where to look, and it is so bad that a sort of splendor creeps into it. So on the more entertaining days, I simply disapprove with the heat of a tanning booth set at medium high down at the Summer Solstice Tanning Salon.

Bret responds,

I suppose it is easier to have all this hatred for ethnic animosity and ethnic vainglory when one lives in Whiteaho (Idaho) where the ethnic breakdown is  White 82.9 %, Hispanic 11.9%, Black 0,6%, Asian 1.3%, Mixed 2.0%, Other 1.2%. This is not to excuse ethnic animosity and ethnic vainglory where it exists. It is to say it is easier to have white hot sun hatred for those sins when those sins are not going to be a danger of falling into because the opportunity for them to come into play just doesn’t exist as much because of demographics.

DW writes,

Yes. All of these (various races of) kinists are skinists. In my world, nobody gets a free pass to sin because they are sinning on behalf of a certain color swatch they got at Benjamin Moore. But they are skinists because this is a common human failing. Every ethnic group tends to think that they are the center of the world, and are regularly astonished at any form of cosmopolitanism. And there are two basic forms of cosmopolitanism. There is the form brought about by merchants, harbors, international traffic, supply chains, and foreign exchange students. This can be benign, but it often drifts into the supercilious attitude currently on display with our globalist elites, noses in the air, jetting off to Davos to save the planet again. That’s one kind. The other kind is a gospel cosmopolitanism, the kind established by missionaries, church planters, and Bible societies.

Bret responds,

1.) Keep in mind that we have not established, DW’s protestations to the contrary, that Kinism = skinism. Doug is just wrong here equating his skinism with the kinists — regardless of their race.

2.) I’ve read Roland Allen who is perhaps one of the greatest 20th century Missionaries and I can promise you that Roland Allen didn’t advocate gospel cosmopolitanism.

3.) Perhaps I need more of a definition from DW on just exactly what “Gospel Cosmopolitanism” is in his world. However, in my world I can’t imagine more of a contradiction occurring then what occurs when those two words are slammed together.

DW writes,

A biblical doctrine of sin and depravity would protect us from a lot of this foolishness. When I read of certain atrocious passages in the Talmud (and there are some), I don’t think of the unique perfidy of Jews. Rather I take it as just one more entry in Paul’s Romans 2 argument that the Jews are lost sinners, just like everybody else. When I read of the appalling treatment that Americans applied to certain Indian tribes, I don’t blame whiteness, or America, or the Founders. I reflect on the fact that Americans are descended from Adam, and have behaved exactly like that on more than a few occasions. When I think of the African kings who enslaved other Africans and took them down to the coast in order to sell them off to the slavers, I don’t attribute this to the blackness of their skin, but rather to the blackness of their hearts.

BLM writes,

1.) One has to concede immediately that all sin comes from our sin nature and that regardless of race. However, that is not to say that particular sins can’t be attached to particular peoples as St. Paul notes in the book of Titus. Sure, the sins of the Cretans were because they, like non-Cretans, were sons of Adam. However, that the Cretans were sons of Adam along with non-Cretans didn’t mean that they had a unique flora to their sin set.

2.) If DW can read the Talmud without at least wondering about the unique perfidy of the Jews then something is wrong. Has DW read John’s Gospel?

3.) Does DW ever read about the appalling treatment by the Indians upon those of European descent. All of this comes across as just more WOKE-ianity.

Allow me to emphasize again that I hold that white people apart from Christ are dead in their trespasses and sins. I hold we have the problem with WOKE-ianity precisely because the white people of the West are apostate, having abandoned the God who has been so generous to the in blessing them. I hold that if White people continue on the trajectory they are on Sodom will seem like a vacation paradise. I affirm that white people are not made of better dirt than non-white people.

I go out of my way to affirm all this so DW won’t call me a skinist or accuse me of having ethnic animosity or ethnic vainglory.

I get by with a little help from my friends — Rev. JS Lowther on Gnostic Nations

“The supposed ‘nation’ of which modern Christianity, to which group the authors of the book listed above (Torba & Isker’s ‘Christian Nationalism’) belong, is a ‘gnostical nation’ a ‘quasi-nation’.

The supposed ‘nation’ which ignores boarders of race, is no different than a gnostical religion which must ignore the boarders of doctrine and religion.

It has struck me, in the same way, that we know what a ‘brother’ really is in generative terms (2 or more male siblings of the same father and mother), and by that natural truth we then apply the concept of ‘brotherhood’ to non-natural spheres of life, albeit: military, sports or work and so on. Eventually the concept of brotherhood is estranged from the meaning of ‘brother.’ In the modern Christian sense, we have suppressed the consciousness of a natural brotherhood and nationhood from the pulpit and pen in its entirety in order to establish an idealistic quasi-spiritual brotherhood and nationhood devoid of all natural boundaries. Interestingly enough, this gnostical establishment looks no different than the world’s model of a ‘united brotherhood of man’, and for the same ends.

To the modern church a brotherhood and nationhood of non-natural relativity has become the primary meaning of the words ‘brother’ and ‘nation’ , though the fact remains that without the former natural meaning, which we all know, there is no basis to rest the later meaning upon.

Thus, the meaning of ‘brother’ and ‘brotherhood’, ‘nation and nationhood’ becomes in need of mental maintenance from an external force, the terms are now in our consciences a sociological struggle between the quasi meaning and the nature meaning; This struggle of definition and identification will be maintained by a tyranny, they will oppress in order to impose an illegitimate definition upon our minds and emotions, pummeling our conscience into submission- because it rebels against the falsehood of the claim by nature.

A ‘Christian nation’, without natural ethnic and racial cohesion will be a tyranny; and such a tyranny will push for amalgamation as a means to form a hybrid ‘nation’ in order to bring the natural in conformity to the quasi.”

The Confusion of Torba & Isker’s “Christian Nationalism”

Today I received Torba & Isker’s Christian Nationalism in the mail. I think it took me 30 minutes to read. It is more of a pamphlet then a book and so I probably paid too much for it. Below are a few random observations on a book that overall, left me discouraged, if only because I had others telling me that there was a good deal here to be hopeful about even if it was written for those just getting on the Christian Nationalist train.

I.) The Good

1.) Torba and Isker return repeatedly to the necessity for Christians to build parallel communities. This is something I have been saying for over 20 years. My only qualification on that has been to say that Christians need to be building parallel but not completely isolated communities. If and when we build our parallel communities we still want to be connected enough to the larger culture around us so that we can be salt and light in that context. This is why our parallel communities dare not be completely isolated. Think of the necessary communities I am talking about as ice cubes in a drink. The ice cubes influence the drink but are not influenced by the drink. The ice cubes are parallel to the drink but are not isolated.

2.) Torba and Isker take on the whole “Judeo-Christianity” myth driven for the most part as it is by a Dispensational theology.

“True antisemitism is overlooking Jews or failing to evangelize them because you believe they are ‘chosen’ by God and therefore get a free pass from rejecting Jesus Christ.”

Torba & Isker
Christian Nationalism

This was a brave thing for them to do since writing anything that distinguishes Christianity from Judaism is touching the third rail of social concourse. It is just not done without being electrocuted. I salute them for pointing out the contradiction in “Judeo-Christianity” and further insisting that Christians need to realize that Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews are enemies of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

3.) Torba and Isker clearly are postmillennialist in their eschatology. They understand that Christianity as a public square faith will never regain its traction until it is forever done with premillennialism and amillennialism — with defeatist and retreatist eschatologies. They remind their readers continuously that Jesus Christ has bound the strong men, that He came to usher in the Kingdom, that He, having all authority in heaven and earth, commissioned His people to disciple all the nations, that Jesus Christ is ascended to the right hand of the Father in order to rule until all His enemies have been placed under His feet. A Christian Church that does not have the mindset that it is to conquer all non-Christian kingdoms that rise up against the Kingdom of Christ is a Christian Church in name only.

4.) Torba & Isker take on the foolishness of Dispensationalism with its horse dung theology of rapturism and escapism. They point out rightly that supercessionism (which Dispensationalism denies) is the normative position of the historic Christian Church. (Supercessionism is the Christian knowledge that that not merely that the Old Testament Hebrew faith has been fulfilled by the coming of Jesus Christ and so being incomplete apart from Christ is ended. This means that God has no special relation with Judaism and is only the God of Jews inasmuch as they repent and trust Jesus Christ to forgive their sins.) Torba and Isker rightly point out that the God of the Bible is done with Judaism just as the God of the Bible is done with Islam, Hinduism, Mormonism, and every other false religion.

5.) We concede that Torba and Isker are reaching for something that might approximate Christendom. They have miles to go before they are ringing exactly the right notes but at least, unlike most of Christianity, they realize that where we are at now is only promissory of complete and utter destruction.

II.) The Bad

1.) Whatever Torba and Isker are peddling, at the end of the day, it is not any kind of Christian Nationalism that I would understand as Christian Nationalism.

First, of all the Christian part of their nationalism is iffy. Torba and Isker include Roman Catholics, and the Eastern Orthodox in their aspiration for a return to Christian Nationalism. Torba & Isker call the Quakers who settled Pennsylvania a heretical sect (and they were) but are silent about the heretical sect that were the Roman Catholics who settled Maryland.

This displays a gross ignorance of church history. Protestant Christians do not view Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox as being particularly Christian. Maybe Torba and Isker need to review their Reformation history. Maybe a review of the St. Bartholomew’s day Massacre in France? Maybe a few lessons on the filioque controversy between East and West. Maybe some teaching on the anathemas issued forth from the council of Trent against the Protestants. I’m sorry Andrew and Andrew but Christian Nationalism is not Christian Nationalism when you seek to include non-Christians into your Christian Nationalism. Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox need to repent before they can have any role besides bus riding in our Christian Nationalism.

Second, the Nationalism part of their Christian Nationalism is also iffy. Andrew & Andrew seem to fail to understand that the very idea of Nationalism includes the idea of racial/ethnic harmony.

“We (Our Christian Nationalism) don’t care about your race, ethnic background, or your past sins because neither does Jesus care.”

Torba & Isker

Christian Nationalism

“Christianity is not limited to any race, ethnicity or culture (I Cor. 12:13, Gal. 3:27-29). Therefore Christian Nationalism cannot be limited to any race, ethnicity, or culture.”

Torba & Isker

Christian Nationalism –p. 7

 It is not Nationalism if in the Nationalism one is trying to build  is characterized as a hodge-podge of peoples from every race and ethnicity imaginable just so long as they are “Christian” (even Roman Catholic and Easter Orthodox). Clearly, where we are at here with the twin Andrews is a kind of Civil Nationalism which has always been a bastard child of genuine Nationalism and as a bastard child never lives for long very well. In order for any Christian Nationalism as pursued by any people of any race/ethnicity there must be stable large percentage core of people who share a common race/ethnicity and so culture. Let’s go, for the sake of argument, 85%. After that core there can then be another assimilated 10% of peoples from other ethnicities and then the last 5% or so will find the unassimilated strangers and aliens that every Nation likely has.

Torba and Isker give a running account of how all the original 13 colonies began as explicitly Christian states. What Torba and Isker fail to mention is that each of those explicitly Christian states also had the commonality of all being comprised of white people. The Christian Nationalism we had in our beginnings was not mélange Nationalism.

So, the Christian Nationalism of Torba and Isker is fine as long as one isn’t expecting either a genuine Christianity that produces Christian Nationalism or a Nationalism that is particularly ethno-National. Besides that, it’s great stuff.

In the end what the Andrews are giving us is a Ecumenical non-Nationalism. I suppose, as I said above, they are going for a civic nationalism but I’m not sure they realize that.

Honestly this is weak sauce.

2.) I have to protest the painful reductionism of this pamphlet. As I was reading I found myself thinking; “This is Dick and Jane meets Political Philosophy.” Now, I get the idea of having to reach your audience and of writing for your audience but dear God in heaven above if we have been reduced to the 2nd grade reading level and sentence structure of this book I’m not sure I’d want to be part of any successful Christian Nationalism that grows up in such a populace. Can it really be that we have become the simpletons that Torba and Isker are writing for? Have we descended that far? I found myself thinking that this was such a far cry from the Federalist Papers which were written for the average farmer and newspaper reader in 18th century America that we perhaps should just surrender. I’m not sure I want to be a part of a Christendom that is inhabited and characterized by the kind of reader to which the Andrews are appealing.

I prefer instead to believe that the Andrews vastly underestimate their audience.

III.) The Ugly

1.) “We do not … think that America is ‘chosen by God…'”

Torba & Isker

Christian Nationalism

Actually, properly understood I do believe that America was chosen by God. I look at the arrival of those first explorers, Pilgrims, and Christians and I do believe that God chose America to be a covenanted nation and that indeed it was a covenanted nation by its relation through its ancestors to the Solemn League and Covenant. Indeed, one reason I think we are getting spanked good and hard is because we have rebelled against the God who chose us for His ends.

Now, I don’t believe that America is chosen by God when that is invoked by all the flag wavers who are forever wrapping the flag around the Cross in order to advance their latest anti-Christian project. I don’t believe that America was chosen by God when Billy Sunday revivals ended with the men who got saved signing up to fight in WW I. I don’t think America was chosen by God when Franklin D. Roosevelt led the troops in singing “Onward Christian Soldiers,” when on a Battleship in the Atlantic. I don’t think America was chosen by God when God was invoked on the side of the abolitionists or the temperance movement idiots. So, objectively speaking, “yes, American was chosen by God,” but subjectively America was not chosen by God to do any number of things that it has done as invoked by cracked head clergy.

2.) “American Christianity no longer looks like it once did at the founding of the Christian nation, but it is still nevertheless a nation of Christian people.”

Torba & Isker

Christian Nationalism

How anyone can say this with a straight face just leaves me dumbfounded. I allow it is possible that I don’t get out and around enough but in my world America is not even close to being a nation of Christian people. The fact that we have stood by while over 60 million infants have been tortured and slaughtered in my estimation gives the lunacy to the quote above.

3.) “The US was founded as a Christian nation. It was only the federal government that was founded as a secular entity, so as to not infringe upon the established religion of these Christian states.”

Torba & Isker

Christian Nationalism — p. 12-13

Yes, and we all know how that plan worked to allow the Federal Government to be a secular entity and how the FEDS indeed did not infringe on the established religion of the Southern States in 1861.

Torba and Isker seem not to realize that secular is not possible if by that you mean a position or institution that has no religious underpinning.

4.) Wherein Torba and Isker teach me that my forefathers were abolitionists.

“As Christian Nationalists, we generally do not seek to apply uniform laws across the entire US of America, except in the most egregious circumstances, such as for example the legal acceptance of slavery which our forefathers (abolitionists) sought to abolish…”

Torba & Isker

Christian Nationalism

How do Torba and Isker explain the Bible’s uniform acceptance of slavery as a Institution that is acceptable among Christians?

5.) File Under: Somebody notify Charlemagne;

“Christians do not believe in forced or coercive conversion to Christianity. This is inconsistent with our religion’s teaching on free-will (II Pt. 3:9) and all conversions to Christianity must be voluntary.”

Torba & Isker

Christian Nationalism — p. 10

Actually, the idea that Christianity can’t be forced or coercive is historically a relatively recent idea. Charlemagne believed in forced conversions. The Crusaders certainly believed in forced coercion.  The tribes set free by Cortez were glad for their forced conversions.

Look, I get it that we desire men to see the reasonableness of Christianity and so bow the knee to Christ willingly but I’m willing to go all Boniface on peoples if the need calls for it.

6.) “Christians are integralists and not theocrats, in that we have favored two separate institutions, one for religion (the Church) and one for government (the state).”

Torba & Isker

Christian Nationalism — p. 9

Actually, inasmuch as Christians expect both of those separate institutions to each be Christian they have indeed always throughout history been both integralists and theocrats. Where they have not been theocrats they have not been Christian.