Windows Into Worldviews

The Racial Casting Of The Gladiator II – A Film Review (Spoiler Alert)

I am a bit of a film buff. Part of the reason for that is that film is so influential in our culture in shaping worldviews. As such, I like to view films to see what exact paganism is being communicated by writers, directors, and producers in our films.

For quite some time now a large part of my analysis of films is racial. That is I look for what race is being cast into what role and then ask “why was that racial profile cast into that particular role?” When one does that one can often see how routinely white people are being replaced in our myth telling. Also, white people often play the villain or doofus part in Hollywood films with minorities playing the hero roles who stop the bad guy white man. A classic example of this was the remake of the Magnificent 7 which found Denzel Washington playing the chief good guy minority coming to the rescue of a bunch of sheep white townspeople. Denzel Washington, in that film is joined by a bevy of 3 other minorities (A Mexican gunslinger, an Injun outcast, and a Chinaman knife specialist), along with a coward White Southerner (who finally finds his courage at the very end of the film), a White right hand man who is always picking on the Mexican minority gunslinger and a White Mountain man who is clearly portrayed as a Jesus freak who hates injuns.

Recently, a film that did not receive particularly good reviews, seemed to find a anti-Woke, pro White message. That film was “Gladiator 2.” Once again we find Denzel Washington in a key role in the film but this time Washington ends up playing a villain whose death, at the hands of the white hero of the film, ends up re-establishing the heroic White man as the head of a renewed Roman Civilization.

If one interprets “The Gladiator 2” through this racial prism it is not a wonder that it was given such bad ratings. Interpreted via a racial grid the film suggests that while minorities almost overthrow white civilization in the end they fail after white man embraces his heritage identity.

The film gives us a Rome that has white twin brother Emperors who are both obviously effeminate with one obviously sodomite. These twins are destroying white Roman civilization with their perverted excesses. At one point in the film one brother says of the other brother; “the sickness in his loins as gone to his brain.” Clearly, the message of the film to this point is that the white man has lost his way as seen in this perversion and its wicked colonizing of other nations. As the film opens Rome is attacking Numidia. A famous Numidian of the era “Juguruth” has been cast as a black man and the white Romans make the injured “Juguruth” a gladiator and kill him off in a battle in the Coliseum.

The character that Denzel Washington plays connives to murder the twin white effeminate Emperor brothers so that he might become the ruler of all of Rome. Washington’s character’s (Macrinus) murder of the white Roman emperors is particularly vicious and looks a great deal like the violence we see today by blacks against whites.

The Denzel Washington character (Macrinus) is through and through Machiavellian in his rise to power. First Macrinus outwits a stupid White Senator to get into position to get next to the effeminate Emperors and then he outwits the whole white Senate as well as the effeminate Emperors so as to be on the cusp of ruling white Rome.

Much as where the West is now, the white man in the film has become feminized and minorities look to seize the throne from the white man with his effeminate leadership.

However, hope blooms because there remain some white Romans who retain their heritage white identity. The heroes in the film are two white men and a white woman. The son of Maximus (and Grandson of Marcus Aurelius) from the first Gladiator film, (Lucius Verus Aurelius) is a man of integrity and is opposed to both the white effeminate brother Emperors and the black gladiator entrepreneur (Washington’s character) who is seeking to rule Rome. Joining Lucius in the attempt to stop the bad guy Emperors and Macrinus (the Black character) is a Roman General (Acacius) who has done the bidding of the effeminate white brother Emperors in conquering countless nations but has hated them every step of the way for how they have ruined Rome with their sexual perversion and invading of other nations.

These two men are joined by the mother of Lucius Verus Aurelias and wife of Acacius — a white woman with the character name, “Lucilla.” Like every major character in the film she hates the white effeminate Emperor brothers and she plots their overthrow. Lucilla and Acacius end up giving up their lives in order to overthrow the effeminate Emperors in hopes that Lucius will reign because of his royal bloodline. However neither know that Macrinus is about to seize power. It is left to Lucius to defeat the evil bisexual black man (Macrinus) in order for white rule to be maintained over white Rome. In the mano vs. mano final battle Lucius kills Macrinus while all of the white Roman army looks on waiting for who they will follow.

In this film the bisexual black man (Macrinus) is cast as the chief villain who is seeking to kill off white rule so that he can rule over the white empire of Rome. However, the film, while clearly showing how vile and stupid white rule in Rome has become, still suggests that minority rule can be stopped by the rise of two white men and a white woman who still retain their original white Roman heritage identity.

It is not a wonder why the ratings were so low for this film.

On Building Basic Reality Maps or Striving To Be Epistemologically Self-Conscious

“The only reasonable approach to understanding the world is to read old books, build a basic reality map from the old models, and then use your reality map to navigate the deluge of new content.”

I saw this quoted on TwitteX, though there was no author cited. Of course C.S. Lewis also famously said something similar when he offered the palliative to overcoming the current intelligentsia zeitgeist was;

“to keep the clean breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.”

I basically agree with this though I would like to add a twist. The twist has to do with the opening quote with its talk about building a basic reality map in order to provide a kind of map key to understanding the ongoing conversation.

It is true that reading old books is key to rising above the fog of the current intellectual scheme. However, I would add that not only reading old books is key but every bit as important is reading books that deals with the history and progress of ideas. Some have referred to this as reading widely and deeply in Intellectual and Social History. Old books will present one to new ideas that challenge the current zeitgeist but books dealing with the history of ideas allows one to see the how ideas have arisen and fallen in history and how those ideas have impacted men and historical movements.

Of course any book dealing with the History of Ideas is only as good as the beginning point and Weltanschauung of the author. As such, one will have to read more than a few books by different authors on the history of ideas. Once one begins to understand the workings of ideas and how they influence men and cultures one can find some traction in building a mental reality map that can be used in order to understand other mental maps when one encounters them. By building one’s own mental reality map one reinterprets all reality through that reality grid and is not themselves reinterpreted by unfiltered and unknown ideas that could well be alien to the Christian faith.

Having a well functioning mental reality map also helps in knowing how to frame an argument. I have often thought it is like a surgeon knowing which size scalpel (blade) to use for a necessary incision. If we have a understandable reality map and if we know how different ideas work then we are prepared to analyze almost any argument we encounter as well as knowing how to best frame an argument.

However, none of this does any good unless we first have our own mental reality map by which to navigate the wild seas of the intellectual zeitgeist. To try to be somewhat concrete here I am arguing that as Christians we have to have the mental reality map that can identify someone advancing, for example, Mysticism, Romanticism/Transcendentalism, Deism, Monism, Nihilism, Gnosticism, Darwinism, Spencerism, Existentialism, Phenomenology, Postmodernism, etc. This sounds intimidating and of course it does take some time and practice but it really is not as difficult as it might first sound to build a Christ honoring reality map.

It helps to know at the outset that once worldviews are boiled down to their essence there exists really only two worldviews, though there are countless variants to those two worldviews. There is the Christian World and life view and there is the Humanist world and life view. There are only two and there can be no others, though, once again, the variations can be endless. For example, within Christianity the different variations are Reformed, Lutheranism, Baptist, Holiness Churches, Pentecostal, etc. The purest version of the Christian World life view is non-Baptistic Calvinism. All other variations are weakened because they have in their systems some admixture of humanism and so are inconsistent and often incoherent. Still, a epistemologically self conscious Pentecostal is going to have a worldview that they understand is on a collision course with Existentialism (for example). Well, at least I think they would. I’ll let you know if I ever meet an epistemologically self-conscious Pentecostal.

As we keep building our basic reality maps over the course of our lives (and it is a lifetime adventure) we become better equipped to demolish arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and to take every thought captive to obey Christ.

It should to without saying that this basic reality map cannot be restricted or contained to any one sphere of thought. Basic reality maps are by necessity totalistic. That is, basic reality maps map out every area of life. Of course this means that all “Christian” dualisms that arise are going to be ruled as a basic reality map that is spurious. (Yes, R2K, I am looking at you.)

When we begin to get our basic reality map down then every book we read, every lecture we listen to, every conversation, every bit of music becomes both subject to our basic reality map and potentially a new bit of information to add to our basic reality map.

Now, returning to old books, they can be helpful in all this because they are going to be written according to a reality map that we likely are not going to see much of any longer, though, and this is important, old books can easily be just as full of errors as recent books — only as coming from a different direction than what we might be used to seeing in our own thought conditioned age. For example, reading Aquinas might be profitable for someone with a muscular basic reality map, but it will ruin someone whose reality map is not yet mature. (I’ll get in trouble for that observation.) Still, even if you don’t like my example, you can think of other examples that might prefer. A more acceptable example might be spending time reading Lyman Beecher — who if taken seriously would really scrooge up anybody’s basic reality map.

In the end, it is not the age of the book that matters so much as the ideas that are being presented. The advantage of old books is that they could well present to us ideas that are now obsolete given the fact that idea grids come and go in terms of popularity.

As an aside here, it is because basic reality maps are now in flux and changing that accounts for so much of the conflict in what is thought of as being the conservative church. The basic reality map that guided the era of the Enlightenment, advancing in muscularity so that it found its greatest strength in what is now called “the Post-War consensus,” is being ripped up by a younger generation who has come to see the falsity of many aspect of that basic reality map. Naturally enough, I see some of that as exceptionally good and some of what is being offered by way the new reality maps replacing the old as horrid.

Good old books that help in building good basic reality maps;

Augustine – The City of God
Augustine – De Magistro
Athanasius – On The Incarnation
Francis Turretin – Elenctic Theology (3 volumes)
Jean-Henri Merle d’Aubigné – History of the Reformation
John Calvin – Institutes of Christian Religion
Johannes Althusius – Politica
Samuel Rutherford – Lex Rex
Martin Luther – Bondage of the Will
John Owen – The Death of Death in the Death of Christ
Erasmus – In Praise of Folly
John Bunyan – Pilgrim’s Progress
John Milton – Paradise Lost
Three Forms of Unity / Westminster Confession

Authors tracing the history and/or impact of ideas that help in building good basic reality maps

Harold Berman – Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Two Volumes)
Gordon H. Clark -Thales to Dewey / A Christian View of Men & Things
C. Greg Singer – From Rationalism to Irrationality
Stow Persons – American Minds: A History of Ideas
Glen Martin – Prevailing Worldviews of Western Society Since 1500
Francis Nigel Lee – Communist Eschatology
Erik Von Kuehnelt-Leddihin – Leftism Revisited: From De Sade and Marx to Hitler and Pol Pot / Liberty or Equality: The Challenge of Our Times
Henry Van Til – The Calvinistic Concept of Culture
David Naugle – Worldview; The History of A Concept
J. Gresham Machen – Christianity and Liberalism
Cornelius Van Til – The New Modernism
R. L. Dabney – Secular Discussions
R. J. Rushdoony – The One & The Many / Institutes of Biblical Law
Colin E. Gunton – The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity / The 1992 Bampton Lectures
John Frame – History of Western Philosophy and Theology
Carroll Quigley – Tragedy and Hope

Clearly, I can’t give an exhaustive list and there are many other books that need to be on these lists.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zacharias Ursinus

Commentary on Heidelberg Catechism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adolf Hitler

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

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

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

Score 1 point for Rosebrough.

Current tally …. Rosebrough 1.5 …. Mahler 1.5

McAtee On the Rosebrough vs. Mahler Debate II — On The Individual vs. The Collective

Rosebrough grilled Mahler regarding Mahler’s insistence that there is no such thing as the individual. Instinct rises here to agree with Rosebrough but when Mahler makes clear what his definition of “the individual” is one has to agree that Mahler is correct. Mahler is not saying individuals do not exist and all that exists is a hive. Mahler is saying that no individual can claim that he or she are what they are independent of any other considerations. All of us, as individuals, are what we are because of descent as well as the multitude of interrelationships that we develop over the course of our lives. Mahler is merely saying that no man can claim to be sui generis in his individuality.

Mahler, given his definition of individualism (which is admittedly incredibly atomistic) is correct that individualism doesn’t exist.

Now, there are implications though here that need to be examined. Is Mahler saying that because there is no such thing as the individual, given his definition of the individual, that therefore Government arrangement that only emphasize the collective are therefore the best. Corey Mahler did say that he believed in property rights and if that is the case it does strike me that Mahler allows for the existence of what most people would call “the individual” in this political theory. Having said that, Fascism as a political system, which Mahler seems to prefer, has had as a weakness the loss of the individual as that is commonly understood in Western political history. The loss of the individual in a political ecosystem would be a severe loss. To be honest this is one of my concerns about any collectivist political system, but this concern has to be set against the fact that our system of so called individual freedom has, for whatever reason, failed and because of the collectivist agencies in our culture (public schools, churches, media) the rugged American individual largely no longer exists. Our population is as characterized by mindless bots (cogs in a machine) as any collectivist political system you’d like to name. Because of that, Fascism becomes less scary though one could still like to daydream about a system, influenced by the Christian categories of the temporal “One and the Many,” based as it would be on the eternal one and the many could still predominate so that a genuine individualism could exist alongside a healthy collective impulse.

Because, we as a people are no longer Christian, and as such have surrendered how belief in the Trinitarian God permeates a social order, we have surrendered the Trinitarian idea of God’s plurality as expressing itself in our social order/culture in favor of a Unitarian conception of God as located in our State organs. Having given up the God of the Bible in His One and Many expression, we have embrace a Oneism in our social institutions that is no longer complimented by a genuine plurality of authority in our various other institutions. As such we are a collectivist people who believe that in the State we live and move and have our being. This is not a whit different than what one can find in collectivist social orders. The idea that Americans, speaking generally, know anything about true biblical individualism is a joke. This is because all our cultural mediating institutions that once existed in order to drive a true individualism because they were not beholden to a Statist arrangement have been co-opted by the state.

There is no use in Rosebrough arguing for a Democracy where the individual can exist because those days are long gone with the advent of the government schools as combined with the constant conditioning that comes from pulpits and media outlets. All of these work in harmony to collectivize the American mind so that no individual really does exist today. Rosebrough himself, in this debate, reveals over and over again that he is just another collectivist clergy bot reinforcing the collectivist narrative.

Give Rosebrough 1/2 a point for valuing the individual. Take 1/2 point away from Rosebrough for not realizing that the individual no longer exists. Give Mahler a point for being able to read the tea leaves on this subject. Take 1/2 point away from Mahler for not valuing the individual enough.

Final analysis … Mahler + 1/2 point.

Total so far … Rosebrough 1/2 point …. Mahler 1.5 points.