Sen. Stephen Douglas had been excoriated by Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. Sen. Douglas let it slide confiding to a confidant,

“This damn fool is going get himself shot by some other damn fool.”

Not long after that comment Sen. Sumner lit out after Sen. Andrew Butler of South Carolina over issues touching on slavery. Sumner also excoriated Butler as he had Douglas previously but this time Sumner dropped innuendos about Butler’s taking delight in black slave female flesh in the boudoir.

The damn fool Sumner, contra Douglas’ prediction, wasn’t shot, but he did discover the Southern concept of “honor.”

Sen. Butler, being a gentleman, would not descend to defend his own honor against Sen. Sumner, however, unfortunately for Sumner, Sen. Butler had kin in political Washington D.C. Sen. Butler’s cousin, Preston Brooks was a US Congressman representing a district in South Carolina.

Brooks, hearing of how his cousin had been slandered on the floor of the US Senate, originally desired to challenge Sen. Sumner to a duel but was talked out of that decision by fellow South Carolina Congressman Laurence Keit upon the basis that dueling was only for gentlemen and Sumner was no gentlemen and as such it would denigrate Brooks’ honor by challenging such human refuse as Sumner to a duel.

So, on May 22 Brooks, having his back covered by Rep. Keitt who was wielding a brace of pistols to ward off the other Senators who tried to come to Sumner’s defense, gave Sumner the beating he was worthy of. With the caning Brooks was communicating that Sumner was nothing more than a cur dog that has to be shown its place when it snarls at the wrong person.

Immediately after the beating Congressman Brooks resigned his seat as a matter of honor and then stood in the special election to fill his resigned seat. Preston Brooks was overwhelmingly re-elected by the people of his district in August and then again elected when his seat came up again in the natural election cycle for that seat three months later.

The South had communicated, by its electoral stamp of approval on Brooks, that the South was done with the slander and libel of the abolitionist types like Sumner. The South, by voting for Brooks, metaphorically communicated that they only wished that they could have been there with Brooks beating the shite out of Sumner.

Two years later Preston Brooks died unexpectedly from the croup. His funeral fell on a day that was remarked upon for how foul the weather was. Thousands attended both the memorial service and funeral despite the weather.

And Congressman Brooks pistelero accomplice, Congressman Keitt?

Congressman Laurence Keitt also resigned his seat in Congress after being censured by the Congress for his covering Brooks back with pistols while Brooks was beating Sumner silly. Keitt, likewise stood for re-election of the seat he resigned and was resoundingly re-elected by the South Carolinians of his district. Keitt served in Congress until South Carolina seceded. Two years subsequent to his role with Brooks in caning Sumner, Keitt unsuccessfully tried to choke a Yankee Congressman from Pennsylvania for insulting him in the Well of the US Congress.

Keitt, upon leaving the US Congress served for two years in the Provisional Confederate Congress, whereupon he joined the Confederate military force and rose to the rank of Colonel commanding the 20th South Carolina infantry regiment and later the well known “Kershaw’s Brigade,” after Kershaw as promoted to the next level. Keitt was wounded at Cold Harbor on 01 June 1864 and three days later in the Southern Capital succumbed to his battle wounds.

Interview begins @ 14:40 mark

https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3RoZXBvbGl0aWNhbGNlc3Nwb29sLm9yZy9mZWVkLw/episode/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudGhlcG9saXRpY2FsY2Vzc3Bvb2wub3JnLz9wPTQxMjA3?hl=en&ved=2ahUKEwiqtfSQ-5HqAhVIeawKHTQECTkQieUEegQICBAG&ep=6&fbclid=IwAR2OfNXLQlrw2pNUe-GOLCLYiTbmpkTfbGa0l3Htz-u8DZCceVKNRL_Qr0U

U. S. Grant … Robert E. Lee … George Washington … Columbus … Albert Pike.

All recently having their statuary pulled down across the county.

Having read quite a bit on the Reformation there is a parallel here between now and then. In the time frame of the Reformation the Reformers were known as being iconoclasts. This meant that they were smashing Catholic statuary and idols everywhere. They hated the Roman Catholic statues primarily because those statues had violated the 2nd commandment. Still, in my estimation many went overboard in their zeal in destroying statues, paintings, and Christian art in general. Luther even had to rebuke Andreas Karlstadt for Karlstadt’s zeal in burning and destroying art.

The destruction of art, statues, and painting was especially prevalent in the area of the Radical Reformation where the Ana-baptists held sway. However both Zwingli and Calvin were iconoclasts and desired to get the art out of the Churches. A story is told about William Farrell (Calvin’s predecessor in Geneva) that Farrell came across some Priests carrying a piece of Roman Catholic statuary that people would bow down to as it passed. When Farrell came upon them providence had arranged that all were crossing a bridge. Farrell went into a frenzy, so the record goes, and tossed both the statue and the Priests carrying the statue over the bridge into the water below.

Because of such zealousness on the part of the Reformed Leaders the Reformed rank -n- file attacked statues and images. However, in most cases, civil authorities removed images in an orderly manner in the newly Reformed Protestant cities and territories of Europe.

Now, we have to keep in mind that during the Reformation era the statuary and art was being used to keep the people in bondage to the false God of Rome. As noted above, statues would be carried in processions so that people could bow down while the statue passed. Alongside this the Scripture clearly forbids, via the 2nd commandment, the kind of superstition that was being exercised by the Priests over the people. Weeping Madonnas, blood coming from crucifixes, phony miracles connected in some way with relics and art had contributed to the Medieval Roman Catholic destruction of the Christian faith. As such destruction of statuary, paintings and idolatrous art was understandable in the Reformation. Much of it was certainly being used in an idolatrous fashion.

One thing is clearly communicated though in the iconoclasts attack on the Medieval statuary and that was that there was a new God in town and the old art, representing the then considered wicked past was not going to be allowed to stand in the new social order that God was pleased to give in the bringing forth of the Reformation.

The linkage to what is happening now is clear. Though nobody is using statuary to reinforce homage to the old order such as was done in 1518, the Marxist Revolutionaries still understand the power of statuary, paintings, and art in sustaining an order they wish to rip up and destroy. As such the old order has to go and one way to initiate the departure of an order that the anarchists despise is to rip down its icons.

Such has been the action of every Revolution or Counter-Revolution of the past. Come with me to Paris of 1789 and watch the art fall. Come with me to Moscow of 1918 and see the Churches being pulled down and the sacred art destroyed. Come with me to the velvet Revolution in 1989 Czechoslovakia and watch the art come down. The same happened all across the former Soviet Bloc when Communism putatively fell. When Iraq fell before invading American Troops one of the first images that was broadcast over Western Television was the pulling down of Saddam Hussein’s statue. Indeed, so routine is the removal of statuary and art that when one sees it happening on a broad scale one can be sure they are living through Revolution or Counter-Revolution.

And of course what it all communicates is the Revolutionary or Counter-Revolutionary attempt to cut off a people from their past. Marx once presciently wrote, “Hitherto, philosophers have sought to understand the world; the point, however, is to change it.” One way that the world is changed, Marxists have always understood and routinely taught is to cut people of from their historical roots. If people have no past then they will have little ground to understand themselves and little guidance on how their future should look. Ripping down the statuary is one means by which Marxist sever people from their past. Because of this Marxist principle, I fully expect at some point in our current disheveling the anarchist / communist criminal class will start coming after the Churches.

So, for the epistemologically self-conscious among our current Goths, Mongols and Zulus criminal class, the purpose is clear. They are destroying Western Civilization by destroying its history. If they are successful then whatever history that will exist will be the history of the last 5 minutes as controlled by the Tyrant State. Communique will go out from the new American Soviet Supreme and history will be changed with every new communique. Some new art and statuary will slowly arise but even that will only mean whatever the State says it means at any given time. History and truth thus become transitory and mere tools for the State to keep people in line with the Revolutionary thinking. So, you’ll still get a Lenin as art here and there. You’ll get the kitschy Revolutionary “Internationale” or the corny Revolutionary art that finds the youth of the world in the painting bowing and throwing flowers at the feet of the great leader. Any other statues or art will be verboten.

Finally, keep in mind that in the desire to destroy the old order by destroying the art, what will eventually come is some formation of a “Committee on Public Safety,” to protect the new order from those who honored, respected, and cherished the old art. These people who can never be redeemed from their commitment to the old order ways must be destroyed every bit as much as all that old statuary. As such they will be guillotined, or gulag-ed, or just conveniently disappear. They will not rest with statuary destroyed. They will not be placated by your sincere apologies, kneeling, or reparations. They will not be fooled by you suddenly joining in the Revolution. Their desire is to steal, kill, and destroy. They will soon enough be coming for you.

____

Calvinist Minister John Witherspoon, as might be expected, earnestly and eloquently supported every measure adopted by Congress for securing independence. When the important moment came for signing the Declaration, and some of the members were hesitating to affix their names to it, he delivered an eloquent appeal, in which he said:

“That noble instrument upon your table, which ensures immortality to its author, should be subscribed this very morning by every pen in the house. He that will not respond to its accents, and strain every nerve to carry into effect its provisions, is unworthy the name of a freeman. For my own part, of property I have some, of reputation more. That reputation is staked, that property is pledged, on the issue of this contest. And although these gray hairs* must soon descend into the sepulcher, I would infinitely rather they should descend thither by the hands of the public executioner than desert at this crisis the sacred cause of my country.”

All honor to him and to the Church and the principles which he so eloquently represented ! That Church may well be proud of having her clergy so honorably represented among the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Witherspoon remained in Congress, excepting for a short period, till 1782, and contributed perhaps as largely as any one member to the patriotic cause.

Nathaniel McFetridge
Calvinism in History

How Calvinism has changed. Today if Witherspoon had been so involved in the affairs of State the R2K boys would have, at the very least, censored Witherspoon.

McFetridge gives account after account of Calvinists in American History who would have scorned and mocked R2K even more than I have done. The idea that the Minister had no business being involved in the common realm as a minister would have seen as complete and utter skubala.

McFetridge tells us of the Presbyterian Dr. John Rodgers the leading Presbyterian clergyman in New York city who,

“had to fly from New York city on the entrance of the British troops, who seized his church and turned it into a hospital. Congress acknowledged his patriotism and ability by employing him on an important mission to the South. He was chaplain in the army, and after- ward chaplain of the State convention of New York. He threw all his eloquence, influence and possessions upon the side of the good cause, and did more perhaps, in the beginning, to arouse the people than any other clergyman.”

McFetridge speaks of the Calvinist clergy in America as a whole,

“Thus I might trace through all that severe conflict the spirit of the Calvinists, and find it always the same—true to the cause of independence; indeed, the only unswerving champion of it.“

The Radical Two Kingdom theology of Van Drunen, Horton, D. G. Hart Clark, and T. David Gordon, is a lie. It has no connection whatsoever to the living, breathing Calvinism rooted in history and grounded in Scripture. What the R2K lads are offering up is anti-Calvinism. R2K is not a correction of Calvinism but rather it is a bastardization of Calvinism. The Calvinism of our Fathers was a faith that made men of boys. R2K makes effeminates of boys. The Calvinism of our Fathers put steel in the spine of its adherents and made them tough and unyielding as barbed wire. The Calvinism of R2K puts a “run away and surrender” spirit in the character of its adherents and makes them only tough when it comes to resisting historic Calvinism.

Over here we have Dr. Stephen Turley suggesting that the Left is dead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukEBAVXGbWs&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR0y-sFckDSNEv6vd4vsTiFLXL4lefxzY6iiTjQfyCHFNytGc3jQ_MSOzAA

I’m not a big fan of Turley. I find his pollyanna optimism grating. He too often reminds me of “Baghdad Bob” insisting that the Iraqis were going to crush the Americans at the very moment American tanks were rolling into Baghdad. Turley, like Baghdad Bob, has optimism in abundance but it is an optimism not based on facts.

Turley, it should be known, is a champion for Civic Nationalism. Civic Nationalism is the idea that in a multicultural / multi-religious social order the citizen can still find a higher allegiance in their commitment to the Nation-State that allows them to look past the cultural and religious differences and so find a National unity. However, in our current climate Civic Nationalism is a non-starter. We have become so balkanized in America that no one, from the different ethnic and religious outposts, are going to come together and hold hands in a Civic Nationalism that Dr. Turley envisions being restored. Civic nationalism might well survive the heterogeneity of the 1950’s but there is no way that Ilhan Omar, Jerry Falwell Jr. and Jonathan Greenblatt as examples are going to hold hands on the basis of civic Nationalism. The days of Eisenhower are forever gone. Civic Nationalism, in order to work, has to provide rallying points for people of differing faiths and ethnicities to find common ground. At this point in history in our current climate can anyone possibly imagine what those rallying points could be? I can’t.

Second, I could make the case, contra Turley, that Globalism is indeed a form of tribalism. It is the attempt of one Tribe to become the Tribe that rules over all other Tribes by convincing all other Tribes that they have no ethnic identity. Only one certain Tribe can have ethnic identity to the end of ruling all the former tribes who has now lost their respective identities. That has already largely worked here in the States to a large degree so that the majority people group no longer self identify with their people group.

Third, Even if the paragraph above is wrong, Globalism is NOT modernity. Globalism is post-modernity where everyone gets to make up their own truths. Postmodernity teaches that borders are imaginary. Postmodernity teachers that race is a social construct. Postmodernity says get rid of all people group identifiers with the purpose of uniting all people globally. So, I don’t agree with Turley when he implies that Globalism is the child of modernity.

Fourth, Turley says, “The left is dead. They just don’t know it.” Well, for being dead they sure are making a good deal of noise right now. I think we will have to wait for November to see if the Left is dead or not. I hope Turley is right. Everything I see around me suggests otherwise.