History – Page 5

Ultimate Cause of War Against the Constitution — Part I

Pertaining to war one of the more famous quotes is from the Prussian Military genius Carl von Clausewitz who said;

“War is the continuation of politics by other means.”

What von Clausewitz didn’t say but should’ve said — something which is every bit as true — is that politics is the continuation of theology by other means.

We bring this up in order to argue that in order to understand the War Against the Constitution one has to begin with theology since theology is the foundational point as to why wars — any war — is made.

War is the continuation of politics by other means and politics is the continuation of theology by other means.

Men come into conflict for a host of reasons but always laying at the foundation of those reasons is that they have conflicting views about the nature and reality of God. Because this is so, the contesting participants are being animated by different world and life views which are themselves dependent ultimately upon each contesting participants view of God or the gods.

The ancients understood this better than we did. They understood that people’s warring with one another was just a reflection of the gods of those people going to war with one another.

This is perhaps most vividly expressed in the OT when Israel and Egypt are in conflict regarding Israel’s release. The Scripture clearly communicates in the plagues that God of the Hebrews is making war on the gods of the Egyptians. Since the God of the Bible wins out Israel wins out in their contest over Egypt.

So, what I am saying here is that the ultimate cause in the War of Northern Aggression is that North and South each had different World and life views which were themselves reflective of the fact that each were serving different God/gods.

I can sustain this observation with just a few quotes;

The first is from famous Southern Theologian James Henley Thornwell. Thornwell supports my contention that in the War for Secession that first and foremost cause was a difference in the Gods who were owned by North and South. Thornwell offers,

“The parties in this conflict are not merely abolitionists and slaveholders—they are atheists, socialists, communists, red republicans, Jacobins on the one side, and the friends of order and regulated freedom on the other. In one word, the world is the battleground—Christianity and atheism the combatants, and the progress of humanity at stake.”

Clearly, Thornwell sees the conflict first and foremost as between the Gods. The South is fighting for a God described as one who accounts for regulated freedom, while the North is fighting for their god who is but man said loudly.

Benjamin Moran Palmer, another one of the South’s great Theologians concurred with Thornwell. This is from Palmer’s famous 1860 Thanksgiving day Sermon,

“In this great struggle, we defend the cause of God and religion. The abolition spirit is undeniably atheistic. The demon which erected its throne upon the guillotine in the days of Robespierre and Marat, which abolished the Sabbath and worshiped reason in the person of a harlot, yet survives to work other horrors, of which those of the French Revolution are but the type. Among a people so generally religious as the American, a disguise must be worn; but it is the same old threadbare disguise of the advocacy of human rights. From a thousand Jacobin clubs here, as in France, the decree has gone forth which strikes at God by striking at all subordination and law. Availing itself of the morbid and misdirected sympathies of men, it has entrapped weak consciences in the meshes of its treachery; and now, at last, has seated its high priest upon the throne, clad in the black garments of discord and schism, so symbolic of its ends. Under this suspicious cry of reform, it demands that every evil shall be corrected, or society become a wreck—the sun must be stricken from the heavens, if a spot is found upon his disk. The Most High, knowing his own power, which is infinite, and his own wisdom, which is unfathomable, can afford to be patient. But these self-constituted reformers must quicken the activity of Jehovah or compel his abdication….

This spirit of atheism, which knows no God who tolerates evil, no Bible which sanctions law, and no conscience that can be bound by oaths and covenants, has selected us for its victims, and slavery for its issue. Its banner-cry rings out already upon the air—”liberty, equality, fraternity,” which simply interpreted mean bondage, confiscation and massacre. With its tricolor waving in the breeze,—it waits to inaugurate its reign of terror. To the South the high position is assigned of defending, before all nations, the cause of all religion and of all truth.”

Benjamin Morgan Palmer
Sermon: The South, Her Peril and Her Duty, November 1860

That this mindset of the War Against the Constitution was a religious war … was a war that was first and foremost a war where the God’s were at war was an opinion also shared by the North. Thomas Fleming in his book, “A Disease in the Public Mind” brings this out. Quoting Fleming;

“The abolitionists convinced themselves, based on their evangelical experiences, that smearing the South’s reputation in every possible way would create the “anxiety” that would lead to a mass conversion of the North to their crusade. In an analogy that was tortured at best, and blasphemous at worst, the South was portrayed as a province ruled by Satan that would consume the North’s soul if her citizens did not vow to expunge the sin of slavery. It was the evangelical camp meeting on a National scale, accusing the South of four unforgivable sins: violence, drunkenness, laziness, and sexual depravity…. Abolitionist clergymen developed a jeremiad on the Slave power. They identified it as the Anti-Christ, come to terrifying life in America after their Protestant ancestors had defeated this evil being in a centuries-long struggle with the Catholic Church in Europe. The South was the ‘apocalyptic dragon’ of the book of Revelations, rising to strangle freedom in the North as it already extinguished it in the South…. Senator William Sumner of of Massachusetts summed up his rampaging hatred with three questions he roared at the rapt audience in Boston’s Faneuil Hall. “Are you for freedom? Or are you for slavery? Are you for God or the Devil?

Thomas Fleming

A Disease In The Public Mind — pg. 177-178

So before the cause of the War was about Tariffs, before the cause of the War was about what would be the nature of American labor, before the cause of the war was about slavery, before the cause of the war was about how the Constitution should be interpreted, the War of Northern Aggression should be first understood in terms of what caused the war, in terms of the conflict that existed as between the different God(s) that were worshipped, North and South.

I would contend that the South existed as one of the last if not the last vestiges of Christendom in the West. The Southern Army was a Christian army as seen by its Christian leadership and its Christian piety. The Christianity of men like Lee, Jackson, Dabney, and Polk and many others is well known. The book “Christ in the Camp,” vividly demonstrates the centrality of Christianity in the life of the Southern army. The Confederate Battle Flag, which, as you know, is the St. Andrew’s Cross bear testimony that the Southern Army was a Christian Army.

In contrast the Northern Army demonstrated the God they served by not only their actions (Sherman’s Bummers / Burning down of Columbia) but also in their battle song. Time does not permit us to expose the god of the Battle Hymn of the Republic but I assure you that the God of the Battle Hymn of the Republic is not the God of the Bible.

So there you have it. The primary cause of the War Against the Constitution was the fact that each contestant — North vs. South, were defending their god and their gods. There would have been no war were it not the fact that the North were not serving and beholden to a false god.

Eugene Genovese supports my thesis when he wrote in his “Southern Front,”

“Shortly before his death Thornwell went further. Cautiously, in his ‘Sermon on National Sins,’ preached on the eve of the War, and boldly in a remarkable paper on ‘Relation to the State to Christ’ prepared for the Presbyterian church as a memorial to be sent to the Confederate Congress, he called upon the South to dedicate itself to Christ. He criticized the American Founding Fathers for having forgotten God and for having opened up the Republic to the will of the majority.

“A foundation was thus laid for the worst of all possible forms of government — a democratic absolutism.’

To the extent to which the state is a moral person, he insisted, ‘it must needs be under moral obligation and moral obligation without reference to a superior will is a flat contradiction in terms.’ Thornwell demanded that the new constitution be amended to declare the CSA in submission to Jesus for, ‘to Jesus Christ all power in heaven and earth is committed.’ Vague recognition of God would not do. The State must recognize the Triune God of the Bible — Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Eugene Genovese

The Southern Front — p. 40

Now, as to how the service of these different gods expressed themselves we turn. In the North, the prevailing religion that serviced the god of the North was called “Romanticism/Transcendentalism.” This was the religion of the God of the North.

End Part I

Dennis Prager Gives God Ultimatum

If Holocaust Deniers Don’t Go to Hell, There Is No God

Tuesday, Dennis Prager decided to instruct God telling Him that if God doesn’t send “Holocaust Deniers” to Hell then He (God) does not exist.

It was reported that God was mulling His options given Prager’s threat.

However, allow me for a moment, if you please, to speak as God’s consigliere on this matter.

1.) As salvation is a matter of by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, I’m pretty sure that someone who does not agree on the historical particulars regarding the “Holocaust” as long as they trust in Christ alone can have their name written in the Lamb’s book of life.

2.) Prager does not tell us just exactly what a “Holocaust Denier” is. Is a “Holocaust Denier” someone who questions the final magic number of six million? (Keep in mind that throughout the early 20th century before WW II the six million number was bandied about repeatedly in the media in terms of the predicted outcome of the sundry terrors the Jews were facing.) What if someone said… “I think the number is more likely 4 million?” — Would that make them a “Holocaust Denier” who has to go to hell, lest God not exist?

3.) Can we be careful about calling this historical event “The Holocaust?”

The Holocaust and The Holocaust Offering

Matthew 24, The Tribulation & the Holocaust

4.) Prager writes, “in the pantheon of evils, among the worst is Holocaust denial.”

Honestly, this is over-wrought to an extreme. I can think of tons of things are are worst than Holocaust Denial. For example, the men who were attacked by Israel on the USS Liberty might think that evil attack is greater in the pantheon of evil than Holocaust denial. The people who were bilked out of their life savings by Sam Bankman-Fried and Bernie Madoff may think those grifters are higher up in the pantheon of evils than Holocaust denial. Even the evil of Jonathan Pollard’s spying might be higher up in the pantheon of evils than Holocaust denial.

5.) I would quite agree with Prager in his column that anyone who denies that many Jews suffered during WW II would be vile. I would also quite agree that anyone who denies that many Christians suffered during WW II would be vile. I would also ask for everyone to realize that one reason War is to be avoided if at all possible is because in wars people suffer.

6.) Prager then quotes Eisenhower and Patton about the horror of the camps. Nobody doubts that the camps were horrific. Just as the Allied camps were horrific as described in the book by James Bacque; “Other Losses.” War is horrific. What people do doubt at some level is the reason behind the horrors that Ike and Patton witnessed. Keep in mind that when a combatant enemy as a nation is suffering severe depredations that it is obvious that those who will suffer the most are camps filled with those deemed the enemy.

7.) Much of what Prager asserts cannot be and has never been substantiated as beyond question. Let’s keep in mind that the narrative for decades insisted that the Nazis were responsible for the Katyn Forrest massacre and yet finally one day the lie of that was overturned. Why is it beyond the pale to think that there will be aspects of the “Holocaust” narrative that will one day be seen to be as false as we now know the Katyn Forrest lie was? Keep in mind that much of the “evidence” for the “Holocaust” comes to us from the Communists. These are hardly reputable people.

8.) Prager asks; If the Holocaust never happened, why would Germany maintain that it did?

He’s not really serious here is he? One only has to look at the way David Irving has been treated or look at the way Ernst Zundel was treated or look at the way Ursula Haverbeck has been treated and one knows the answer to that question.

9.) Can you name one other historical event that will result in prison time if you do not agree with the official narrative? Just one? Can one go to jail for denying the Holodomor in any country? Can one go to jail for denying the slaughter of the Armenians by the Turks in any country?

10.) Because #9 is true, I refuse Prager’s conclusion that it is antisemitism to question the particulars surrounding what we call “the Holocaust.”

11.) Again, just to be clear. I don’t deny that the Jewish people suffered greatly during WW II. I don’t deny that millions were killed. However, if Auschwitz in the early 90’s could revise their camp death totals down by over two million I don’t know why it is not possible that some day likewise total numbers of Jewish deaths might not be revised downward as a result of further historical investigation.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1992-05-07-9202100662-story.html

Historical investigation is not antisemitism and neither is it a “slap in the face of the soldiers who fought in WW II,” quite to the contrary of Prager’s claim.

Singer & McAtee on Historiography

“Without the Biblical doctrine of God, a valid interpretation of the realm of history is impossible. It is the sovereign God who created the world, and by His creation brought history into being. In creation, God gave meaning and purpose to the world. It is ONLY in this setting that man can meaningfully interpret and understand history. In his understanding of the Trinity, Augustine furnished the Christian study of history with an insight lacking to classical students. The Trinitarian God in Augustine solved the problem of the one and the many in ancient philosophy and made history possible to a Supreme Being rather than to fate or chance. It is this Supreme Trinitarian Being who created man in His image and thus conferred meaning and purpose upon human existence. History is not subject to the dictates of fate, which is neither the beginning nor end of the historical process and which cannot give to it any purpose. In these doctrines, Augustine rescued historiography from the grip of the classical concept of determinism which could only render history meaningless and irrational.”

C. Gregg Singer

Christian Approaches; Philosophy / History – p. 28-29

Without a Sovereign God determining history and meaning, all man is left is history by impersonal fate or impersonal chance. Interestingly enough, when God is eliminated from Historiography then fate and chance together work as limiting concepts that provide the framework in which history is penned. So, despite the idea that fate and chance are opposites, fate and chance work together as two wash-women taking in each other’s wash off the line. Pure chance will finally slip into fate and pure fate will finally slip into chance.

All of this means that we must read history through a definitively Christian theological grid which means that we will come to different conclusions from historians who are not epistemologically self-consciously Christian. Historical events then will be for the Christian historian interpreted diametrically differently than for the non-Christian.

A Few Anti-Revolutionary Authors

The rise of the Christ haters is only but the latest instantiation of the fruit of modernity as it started with the Fall of the Bastille. For over 200 years now the Revolutionaries of the West have sought to eliminate the Ancien Regime of Christ’s rule.

Christians, we must be anti-revolutionary. We must join the great company of those who have fought the anti-revolutionary fight since the “Enlightenment.”

Should you want to join that fight you must steep yourself in the anti-Revolutionary writings. You must read,

The Southern Clergy

R. L. Dabney
James Henley Thornwell
Benjamin Morgan Palmer
John Giradeau

The Southern Agrarians

Donald Davidson
John Crowe Ransom
Flannery O’Connor
Andrew Nelson Lytle
Allen Tate
Richard Weaver
Wendell Berry

The Continental anti-Revolutionaries

Groen Van Prinisterer

Abraham Kuyper

Herman Bavinck

Jean-Henri Merle d’Aubigné

Thomas Chalmers

Distributists

Hillaire Belloc
G. K. Chesterton
Dorothy Day

The anti-federalists

Patrick Henry
Samuel Adams
John Hancock
Fisher Ames
John C. Calhoun

The Presuppositionalists

Cornelius Van Til

Gordon Haddon Clark

Francis Schaeffer

R. J. Rushdoony

C. Greg Singer
Gregg Bahnsen

The Novelists & Essayists

Arthur Queller Couch
C. S. Lewis
Dorothy Sayers
J. R. R. Tolkien
John Buchan

Four themes one finds in the writings of the anti-revolutionaries

1.) Love of Home

2.) Sense of rootedness

3.) Sense of purpose in time.

4.) Hatred of the Nanny State

Challenging Thabiti Anyabwile’s Marxist Narrative

“What we’re getting here is a “both sides” view of history that suggests all parties are equally guilty of racism. Now, I agree that something like racism, ethnic bigotry, and other species of alienation and animus and idolatry of self exists among all people. But I was talking about 1950-’60s America. I was making a comment about a particular setting in which it cannot be said that both sides were equally guilty in the animus. African Americans have never carried out lynchings. African Americans have never passed “Jim Brown laws” to retaliate for Jim Crow laws. We have never systematically ostracized and oppressed white people as a group. The sin of the period was unilaterally and systematically directed from whites toward blacks.

One of the amazing things about African Americans is that we have survived for so long without giving fully into the racial animosity that could exist given how we’ve been treated. It’s a wonderful providence and humanly speaking we have millions of mothers and fathers and the likes of the Dr. Kings of the world to thank for teaching us not to give in to hate.

Until we get these basic points of history correct we’re not having the same conversation. And when we appear to equivocate about where the guilt and responsibility actually lie, we make it far too easy for strains of that former behavior, attitude, and complicity to continue unchecked.”

Thabiti Anyabwile

We are dealing with a different fact set in this discussion and so the good Rev. is quite correct about not having the same conversation. The good Rev. is embracing a particular Marxist history because of the influence of Marxism on his worldview. In Marxist history, the leverage point is the conflict between in groups and out groups. In classical Marxists history, the bourgeoisie is oppressing the proletariat. In classical Marxist feminist history, males are oppressing females. In recent Marxist history of gender, heteronormativity oppresses LGBTQ normativity. In classical Marxist racial history, whites are oppressing minorities. Elsewhere Rev. TA has said,

“For a long time, I’ve just let the phrase (Marxist) and its variants go. But it seems like it’s not dying, and no one seems to be producing any actual writing or research to substantiate the term. “

However, the term is substantiated if only by the history that TA is appealing to. The Worldview that is pushing TA’s history is Marxism. Secondly, observations that TA is practicing a kind of Marxism narrative is seen in his recent support for the candidate Bernie Sanders who is an avowed Socialist (Marxist). Third, that TA is pushing a racial Marxist narrative is seen in the fact that his facts are disputed. Consider the following,

Myth #1 –African Americans never carried out any lynchings

In this link below, there are all kinds of examples of African-Americans carrying out lynching along with photos. Most of the information below is cut and pasted from this link.

https://theinjusticefile.blogspot.com/2012/01/blacks-who-lynched-blacks-truth-behind.html

There was without question a determined effort in the South among White people to have the Black race live separately. However, there was, prior to 1964, nothing illegal or even immoral in this desire. Nor was it an act of racism. One distinct people living separate from another distinct people was not just the norm in American history (up until 1964) but human history as well. Regarding lynching… When a White person was attacked (rape or murder) and the perpetrator was Black, this was seen as an attack on “the group” and White people responded more often than not with uncharacteristic ferocity. Blacks were rarely ever assaulted (rape or murder) by a White person in the South. 99.9% of the cases I have found where violence crossed racial lines, it was Black- on-White … and the result was a raging and maddened mob out for revenge. These were the times in which they lived. The vast number of attacks by Blacks on innocent southern White people, including rape, in this type of atmosphere, boggles my mind.

Myth #2 — Blacks didn’t give into hate in a systemic fashion

Again, this is just not true as seen in just the Whitman’s sampler below. See link provided above for active links.

. Atlanta, GA. – 1900: Black male bully sat on a white male’s lap while riding a on street car, deliberately trying to humiliate and antagonize him. A fight ensued and the black male pulled a concealed gun and gunned down the young white male. Oh, and in the state of Georgia in 1900, the color-line mandate was not being enforced, so blacks could sit where they pleased.

2.Shreveport, La. – 1901: Black Supremacist organization advocated violence against white people. One white male was murdered. Link

3. Columbus, Ga. – 1900: Negro crawled into the bedroom of young white girl thru an open window and attempted to rape her. Link

4. Columbus, Mo. 1901 – Negro raped his employer’s wife…then shot her in the head
Brother-in-law of murder victim: “I want to speak to him, how many times we cared for him and how kind Mary was to him, and ask him why he killed her. Then, when he has answered that, I want to see him burned.” Link

5. Tuscumbia, Ala. – 1901: It’s a MASSACRE – Negro petty criminal ambushed sheriff and deputy and murdered both – he then gunned down seven more white males – four dead. Link (note: the death count was later revised)

6. Dublin, Ga. -1908: Two Negro employees invaded the home of their [white] employer, beat him senseless with an ax, gang raped his wife … then slashed her to pieces demanding to know the whereabouts of household money Link

7. Satton, W.Va. – 1908: Home Invasion By Negroes – White male homeowner was tied to a tree then whipped — negroes then gang raped his wife (no, I’m not kidding) Link

8. Hot Springs Ark. – 1908: Negro cook decides he gonna have a little fun with hungry young white male – taunts him with food offer – makes him work in the blazing heat until he can’t work any longer… Negro then guns him down. Link

9.Eufala, Ala. 1911: Prominent American woman was stalked by a negro sexual predator as she walked from a neighbor’s home to her home. The negro finally grabbed her and wrestled her to the ground. As the negro started to tear her clothes off … to rape her… her desperate screams for help saved her. White males quickly came to her rescue. Link

10. Stephensport, Ky. – 1904: Negroes “Lynch” Young White Male – If Emmit Till murder was a “lynching” than this one should also be judged a lynching as well. Two negro brothers went after a young white male who , their sister claimed, “insulted her”. When they found the young white male … they slit his throat from ear to ear. source

Let us consider the 86 years of American segregation (1882 – 1968). During that time period, there were 4,743 lynchings in America according to the black founded and run Tuskegee Institute. Of those, 1,297 (27%) lynchings were of white people. Why was this? Contra Hollywood and modern history textbooks, the purpose of lynchings was not “racism”, but the public and guaranteed punishment of crime. That is why 695 (14%) of lynchings took place in one of the 33 non-segregated states. Lynching was a method of criminal justice when a particularly grievous crime had been committed and/or the citizens were unsure if they would get justice through the courts.

We are not speaking about if we *agree* with the practice, we are speaking about the historical realities of it. Lynching was about punishing criminals, not “uppity blacks who were getting out of hand” as [ as many put it]. This is seen in the reasons the Tuskegee Institute lists for the lynchings: homicide 41%, felony assault 4%, rape 19%, attempted rape 6%, robbery/theft 5%. Only 85 lynchings (less than 2% of total) over the entire course of those 86 years in the entire country are listed as “insult to white person” as the reason.

The average law-abiding Southern black had nothing to worry about, the noose was for rapists and murderers. The fact that only 3,446 blacks were lynched out of the millions of blacks living in the South during that time period puts to rest the stereotype of a noose on every tree. To put this in perspective, there are currently 7,000 blacks murdered by other blacks every year in America. So every year blacks kill twice as many blacks as were lynched in total over a 86 year time period.

Rev. Anyabwile is correct when he says that “until we get these basic points of history correct we’re not having the same conversation.” If the facts were what TA says they were then, of course, his point would stand but those “facts” that he is citing are disputable and the worldview he is using as his interpretation of facts is likewise more than disputable. TA is playing an old and dangerous game right now and the success of his endeavors is likely to continue since most of the people he is speaking to, ignorant of other historical narratives, just accept his version and worldview of the facts.

Let it be clearly noted that I’m not denying that there were white people who did shameful things to black people. However, I am denying that it was uniformly happening in the way TA places it in his Marxist narrative.

That blacks were not the innocents that TA suggests is dismissed by any reading of the Reconstruction period from 1865-1877, as well as by considering what was provided above.