Category: History

Darrel Dow Demonstrates that Rev. Toby Sumpter is Either Stupid or Evil

My good friend Darrel Dow (co-author of the anthology “Who is My Neighbor”) posted this on a social media site. I though it so good that I am reproducing it here.

The reason the headline says that Rev. Toby Sumpter is either stupid or evil is because if he is saying this stuff and knows it is not true he is evil. On the other hand if he is saying this stuff and doesn’t know better then he is merely stupid (ignorant, dumb, idiotic, torpid, jejune, moronic, etc.) Now, I can’t know which one of the two it is. I guess I hope that Old Toby is just stupid. I’d hate to think he is evil.

I’m posting this because, frankly it makes me angry that Old Toby is leading people astray like this. People who don’t know any better listening to Old Toby on this podcast just walk away thinking, “Yeah, Rev. Sumpter is clearly correct,” when in point of fact he is either stupid or evil.

Anyway, below reproduces Darrell giving Rev. Sumpter a facial.

Begin Darrel Dow;

On a recent Cross Politics podcast, Toby Sumpter made the observation that our Founders thought of themselves as “descendants of Adam” and not “White people.” Is that true? Did our Founders believe that race and ethnicity were unimportant, that we are all merely “image bearers” and “sinners”?

I’ll provide a sampler to help evaluate the claim. Note that I could have pulled MANY more quotes. I begin with Revolution Era figures and also provide a number of citations from later figures. Again, this could go on almost indefinitely.

Let us begin with legislation offered in the state of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson which was designed to define citizenship in the commonwealth.

“Section 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That any alien, BEING A FREE WHTE PERSON, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof, on application to any common law court of record, in any one of the states wherein he shall have resided for the term of one year at least, and making proof to the satisfaction of such court, that he is a person of good character, and taking the oath or affirmation prescribed by law, to support the constitution of the United States, which oath or affirmation such court shall administer; and the clerk of such court shall record such application, and the proceedings thereon; and thereupon such person shall be considered as a citizen of the United States. And the children of such persons so naturalized, dwelling within the United States, being under the age of twenty-one years at the time of such naturalization,”

In a letter, Jefferson explains his concern with having too many German immigrants and the need to disperse them (Benjamin Franklin held this same view.)

“Although as to other foreigners it is thought better to discourage their settling together in large masses, wherein, as in our German settlements, they preserve for a long time their own languages, habits, and principles of government, and that they should distribute themselves sparsely among the natives for quicker amalgamation, yet English emigrants are without this inconvenience.”

Letter to George Fowler
Sept. 12, 1817

Alexander Hamilton who disagreed with Jefferson on many important questions in the life of the early republic, agreed with him on the debilitating consequences of immigration.

“The opinion advanced in the Notes on Virginia is undoubtedly correct, that foreigners will generally be apt to bring with them attachments to the persons they have left behind; to the country of their nativity, and to its particular customs and manners. They will also entertain opinions on government congenial with those under which they have lived, or if they should be led hither from a preference to ours, how extremely unlikely is it that they will bring with them that temperate love of liberty, so essential to real republicanism? There may as to particular individuals, and at particular times, be occasional exceptions to these remarks, yet such is the general rule. The influx of foreigners must, therefore, tend to produce a heterogeneous compound; to change and corrupt the national spirit; to complicate and confound public opinion; to introduce foreign propensities. In the composition of society, the harmony of the ingredients is all important, and whatever tends to a discordant intermixture must have an injurious tendency.”

 

Benjamin Franklin likewise on this subject,

“[T]he Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably [sic] very small… . I could wish their Numbers were increased…. But perhaps I am partial to the Complexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind.”

“Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc.”

Giving more of the context from Franklin

“Which leads me to add one remark: That the number of purely white people in the world is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes are generally of what we call a swarthy complexion ; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English make the principal body of white people on the face of the earth. I could wish their numbers were increased. And while we are, as I may call it, scouring our planet, by clearing America of woods, and so making this side of our globe reflect a brighter light to the eyes of inhabitants in Mars or Venus, why should we in the sight of superior beings, darken its people? why increase the sons of Africa, by planting them in America, where we have so fair an opportunity, by excluding all blacks and tawneys, of increasing the lovely white and red? But perhaps I am partial to the complexion of my Country, for such kind of partiality is natural to Mankind.”

– Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc.

Here is the language of the Naturalization Act of 1790, which the FIRST CONGRESS passed.

“Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof on application to any common law Court of record in any one of the States wherein he shall have resided for the term of one year at least, and making proof to the satisfaction of such Court that he is a person of good character, and taking the oath or affirmation prescribed by law to support the Constitution of the United States, which Oath or Affirmation such Court shall administer, and the Clerk of such Court shall record such Application, and the proceedings thereon; and thereupon such person shall be considered as a Citizen of the United States. And the children of such person so naturalized, dwelling within the United States, being under the age of twenty one years at the time of such naturalization, shall also be considered as citizens of the United States. And the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens: Provided, that the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States .”

James Madison endorsed colonization and indeed later ran the colonization society.

“To be consistent with existing and probably unalterable prejudices in the U.S. freed blacks ought to be permanently removed beyond the region occupied by or allotted to a White population.”

Abraham Lincoln (who also supported colonization).

“I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.”

 

Stephen Douglas is quoted as saying;

“For one, I am opposed to negro citizenship in any form. I believe that this government was made on the white basis. I believe it was made by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and I am in favor of confining the citizenship to white men—men of European birth and European descent, instead of conferring it upon negroes and Indians, and other inferior races.”

End Dow

Now, Old Toby may not like that these words were once said but in manifestly demonstrates that his numbskull insistence that our Founders thought of themselves as “descendants of Adam” and not “White people,” is just well beyond the boundaries of ridiculous.

And remember, what has been provided here is just a sampling of the avalanche of quotes that could be reproduced in order to embarrass Old Toby, were he capable of being embarrassed.

If you doubt this, find a copy (if you can) of Achord & Dow’s book, “Who is My Neighbor.”

Now, here’s the real question. Will Old Toby recant and repent on his Cross-Politic podcast?

A Book Review — “The Life & Character of Abraham Lincoln; Monster or Messiah?

Last night I finished George L. Christian’s nifty little booklet entitled, “The Life & Character of Abraham Lincoln; Monster or Messiah”? Most of this I’ve come across before but there were one or two morsels that I had not come across before. One of those morsels was the incredible extent that men, who were previously Lincoln’s enemies, went to in order to grant apotheosis and deification to Lincoln upon death. Though the book does not go into this, connecting the dots allows one to realize that one reason they did that is that by doing so it covered their tracks as perpetrators of Lincoln’s murder. Another reason Lincoln’s deification was pursued by his previous enemies was that they understood that they needed a hero in order to cement both their Republican rule and their recreation of the nation into something that had not existed previously. By deifying Lincoln the narrative of the new USA became untouchable. So ridiculous had the Yankee mob been stirred up by the propaganda of the godlike Lincoln that Lincoln’s oldest friend Ward Lamon could write;

“For days and nights after his assassination ‘it was considered treason to be seen in public with a smile on the face. Men who spoke evil of the fallen chief, ventured a doubt concerning the ineffable purity and saintliness of his life, were pursued by mobs, were beaten to death with paving stones, or strung up by the neck to lamp posts.'”

The author takes pains to suggest that sane people no more grieve Lincoln’s murder than they grieve the state sanctioned murder of Mary Surratt (look her up).

Perhaps the best work in the book is where the author puts to rest the old chestnut that had Lincoln survived he would have certainly treated the South with a far greater kindness than the Black Republicans who were left in power upon his death. Author, Christian, powerfully demonstrates that such a notion that Lincoln would have been a friend to the South after its defeat is pure hagiography.

Anyway … the book is only 50 pages and so it is a quick read. If you’ve read others longer works on Lincoln this supplements that reading well. The longer biography of Lincoln one should read is Edgar Lee Masters, “Lincoln, the Man.”

After reading this book you will realize what a hypocrisy it is to have a Temple built to Lincoln in Washington DC.

Really good at exposing the charade that Lincoln was some kind of American hero. This myth continues to modern times as a reading of Alan Guelzo’s “Abraham Lincoln; Redeemer President.”

We complain about the current gaslighting that goes on in Washington DC, but the gaslighting that continues to this day on the matter of one Abraham Lincoln continues to be some of the greatest gaslighting in world history.

A few recommend reads on Lincoln. Remember, I am challenging the hagiographic Lincoln.

1.) Edgar Lee Masters — Lincoln the Man
2.) Walter Kennedy — Red Republicans and Lincoln’s Marxists: Marxism in the Civil War

3.) Al Benson — Lincoln’s Marxists
4.) Thomas DiLorenzo — Lincoln Unmasked
5.)Webb B. Garrison — Lincoln’s Little War: How His Carefully Crafted Plans Went Astray

Heinrich Bullinger on the Implications of the Unity of Scripture

“For the apostle Paul, speaking to the Hebrews, as concerning Christian faith, doth say: ‘These through faith did subdue kingdoms, wrought righteousness, were valiant in fight, and turned to flight the armies of aliens.’ Now, since our faith is all one, and the very same with theirs, it is lawful for us, as well as for them, in a rightful quarrel by war to defend our country and religion, our virgins and old men, our wives and children, our liberty and possessions. They are flatly unnatural to their country and countrymen, and do transgress this fifth commandment, whatsoever do (under the pretense of religion) forsake their country afflicted with war, not endeavoring to deliver it from barbarous soldiers and foreign nations, even by offering their lives to the push and prick of present death for the safeguard thereof.”

Heinrich Bullinger
From collection of sermons preached in Zurich entitled “The Decades”

Consider the implications of this quote from one of the Princes of the Reformation;

1.) Clearly David Van Drunen and Radical Two Kingdom theology would insist that Bullinger was being irresponsible (and probably sinful) as a minister of the Gospel to be enjoining that Christians fight to defend their homeland and religion. The clear implication here is that the country that is being fought for (defended) is a Christian country. For R2K, it is not possible to have a Christian country.

2.) Similarly, R2K would bring Bulllinger up on charges for implying that a people (nation) can be so Christian that the people of that nation are responsible to take up arms to defend it against those who would overthrow their land and their religion.

3.) Notice how Bullinger draws together country, religion, liberty, possessions and people into one net. They are distinct, to be sure, but they also are inter-related. There is no Christian country populated by Christian people without liberty and personal possessions. They  imply one another. For a Christian people (nation) to live without liberty and possessions is a giant oxymoron. A Christian nation is defined by the people therein having liberty and possessions.

4.) I am convinced that one implications of this Bullinger quote is that no Christian should be serving in the US Military since to serve in the US Military today would be to take up the cause to defend an alien religion and a people who have foresworn fealty to Jesus Christ. The current US Military is in the service of a god-state with aspirations to completely overthrow Biblical Christianity. It is in league with the New World Order.

5,) I am convinced that one implication of this Bullinger quote is that Christians should be taking up manly resistance against the current NWO State. We are now being forced  to defend, in Bullinger’s words, the enslavement of “our country and religion, our virgins and old men, our wives and children, our liberty and possessions.” If we do not rise up to resist the current NWO state we will be found to be violators of the 5th commandment, per Bullinger.

Churchill, FDR & Plans for the New World Order

“I beg of you not to keep aloof from the European situation once this war is over or in arranging a final settlement of the war. . . There will have to be a Council of Europe, a Council of Asia and a Council of the Americas. Over all will be a world council in which there will be a final appeal.’ Roosevelt should have a seat on all three councils, as should Britain, though Churchill would not be averse to Canada representing him on the council of the Americas.

Roosevelt was not keen on America being on the European council. Churchill reminded him: ‘We have had two wars into which you have been drawn, and which are costing America a lot. . . They will arise again unless some of these countries can be kept in proper control by the rest of the world.’

What they were looking for, said Churchill, was some kind of ‘world
dictator’; or, interposed Roosevelt, a ‘sort of Moderator,’ as in the old Presbyterian assembly…”

David Irving
Churchill’s War, Vol. II / pg, 773

Ultimate Cause of the War Against the Constitution — Part II

In America the Calvinist impulse that was the animating religion that founded America was eventually replaced, at the end of the 18th century by the Enlightenment faith characterized philosophically by Deism and religious by Unitarianism. God was seen as the Watchmaker who wound up the universe and then tottered away so as to be uninvolved in a universe that was operating independently according to natural principals. This impulse was to be seen even in many of the American Founding Fathers. Indeed, many argue that the US Constitution was a compromise document that could either be read through the portal of Enlightenment presuppositions or through the portal of Christian presuppositions. By the end of the 18th century Unitarianism had taken over the many of the public Institutions (Especially the Universities) and Christianity was being reinterpreted through the prism of Enlightenment Deism. With Unitarianism the epistemological (how do we know what we know) authority that was Revelation found in Scripture that was the foundation of Colonial Christianity was replaced by right reason and natural law. Right reason and natural law now served as the norm that normed all norms.

Then with the rise of the Democratic Jacksonian man a new shift is on the scene in the States – particularly in the North is away from Enlightenment Deism as well as the continued movement against Biblical Christianity. That shift also came from Europe where it was called Romanticism. As Romanticism came across to America and mixed with the cultural fauna in America it became today what we call Transcendentalism. It was Romanticism/Transcendentalism that fired the imagination of the Northern abolitionists to the point of desiring to wage war on the Christian South.

Keep in mind as we consider this “History of Ideas” that the philosophies/worldview that we are looking at are both contributory towards while also a consequence of the reality that there is a shift in theology so that a new god is being worshiped other than the previous God. That shift demonstrates itself by a different ethos among the people as well as creating a different type of person — a person with a different disposition, a different lean into life, a different prioritization of the things that matter most. Peoples with two distinct Worldviews, and so two different gods will never be able to live as neighbors to one another. Unrest and war is the consequence of trying to have two different worldviews living cheek by jowl in the same culture.

In Transcendentalism, man becomes his own measure. Yet unlike Enlightenment Deism/Unitarianism the Romantic and Transcendental writers shifted their epistemology from right reason and natural law to imagination and intuition, thus abandoning all allegiance to objective reason. This is a shift from non-Biblical rationalism to non-biblical irrationalism in epistemology. Man knows that he knows just by knowing that he knows. There is no outside source of authority. This is played out in many of the debates on slavery leading up to the War Against the Constitution. Many of the debaters on the issue from the South are clergy and they are making their appeal to Revelation as found in Scripture. Whereas their opponents appeal to an intuitive sense that slavery must be wrong just because it must be wrong.

Do not miss here that the North and the South are separated now in their allegiance to different authority sources. The antebellum South is still pinioned on a Christianity that looks to Revelation as the Norm that norms all norms, while the North (especially the abolitionists, and Jacobins) is looking to intuition of the individual as the norm that norms all norms.

So, in this worldview divide that reflects the fact that each region is serving different gods, we have an epistemological divide. We also have a ontological/anthropological divide.

Now before we press on here keep in mind that I am speaking in generalities. The South wasn’t perfectly righteous and every person in the North was not perfectly evil. I am speaking in terms of generalities and not universals. The Southern minister was more consistently someone in line with a Dabney, Thornwell, Girardeau, and Palmer while the Northern minister was more consistently someone in line with Theodore Parker, Henry Ward Beecher, Emerson and Thoreau.

Now back to the issue of the differences – North and South – in terms of ontology and anthropology. We need to keep in mind that the very word Transcendentalism refers to a spirituality that transcends the realm of rationality and the material world. This tells us that we are moving in the direction of irrationalism and a kind of spiritualism contra the materialism of Deism. Transcendentalism holds that man is fundamentally good but corrupted by society and that man should therefore strive for independence and self-reliance. It is easy to believe this given that the Transcendentalists also believed that individual participates in godness. Emerson the Transcendentalists tells us this when he wrote;

“Standing on the bare ground,–my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space,–all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Selected Essays

 This quotation highly demonstrates Emerson’s transcendentalist thought. Emerson finds himself away from all the imperfections of society where he is ultimately finding himself one with nature and becoming this so called “transparent eyeball” he speaks about. This transparent eyeball he speaks about is escaping the corruptions of society and finding a divine soul with nature. Abandoning the materialism of society, Emerson becomes one with God directly through nature, which ultimately is the entire message of Nature. 

The world proceeds from the same spirit as the body of man. It is a remoter and inferior incarnation of God, a projection of God in the unconscious.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

So man partakes of God and man is basically good. If all men partake of God and if all men are basically good then it is easy to see why the Transcendentalist is all worked up over slavery. Here you have men who are basically good and who participate in God and you have these wretched Southerners holding them in slavery. Something must be done. And the something that must be done is clamor for slave revolts.

Note here that this Anthropology North vs. South is stark. The South believes that man is basically sinful. The South believes not in the primacy of the individual as the Abolitionist Transcendentalist does but rather the South believes that man is to be understood as belonging to the covenantal entities of family, Church, and community as those are hierarchically ordered by the revelation of Scripture.

Note here that this Ontology (the question of existence, becoming and reality) North and South are at odds. The South is still working in a Biblical framework that supports the hierarchy that slavery is a part of. Note also that the slave is typically part of that family hierarchy in the South. If you doubt that I challenge you to read the slave exit interviews done in the 1930s by the Federal Government and read some of the descriptions of former slaves of their time as slaves. You’ll be surprised.

Very well then, North and South are serving different Gods which give them different regional religions. The South is still largely animated by Biblical Christianity. The North is animated by Romanticism/Transcendentalism and because of those different gods and different religions North and South become estranged brothers trying to live in the same house.

So, I have tried to make the case that what is mistakenly called the Civil War had as its ultimate causation the fact that the regions were serving different Gods and so had different World and life views – Romanticsm-Transcendentalism vs. Biblical Christianity. I have tried to show you via their different epistemology, ontology, and anthropology how those differences worked themselves out and how these differences were bound to make for hostility between the two regions.

So, before we start talking about the causes of the war mentioning slavery, tariffs, agricultural vs. industrial, the lack of enforcement of the fugitive slave laws, etc. we should say that the ultimate cause of the War of Northern aggression was the different theologies owned North & South.