Guelzo On Lincoln & Gettysburg … McAtee on Guelzo

In a New York Slimes piece on 17 Nov. 2013 Alan Guelzo wrote a piece lauding the cult figure Abraham Lincoln and Lincoln’s Gettysburg address. Now, it should be known before I take on Guelzo here that I’ve read Guelzo’s, “Abraham Lincoln; Redeemer President.” As such I’ve given Guelzo a fair shake on his take on Lincoln. It should also be known that Guelzo has connections to the Claremont Institute which is a Think Tank that has, as part of its purpose, keeping alive the Lincoln myth.

The piece I’m dissecting can be found here,

Guelzo writes,

“The warning Lincoln issues is his admission that the Civil War was testing whether or not democracies are inherently unstable — “whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure.” Today, many take democracy for granted as the endpoint of political development. But it did not look that way in 1863. The French Revolution, which promised to be the American Revolution’s beachhead in Europe, swiftly circled downward in the Reign of Terror and then the tyranny of Bonaparte; democratic uprisings in Spain in 1820, in Russia in 1825, in France in 1830 and across Europe in 1848 were crushed by newly renascent monarchies or subverted by Romantic philosophers, glorying in regimes built on blood, soil and nationality rather than the Rights of Man.”

McAtee corrects,

1.) Guelzo refers to us as a “Democracy.” We were never intended to be a Democracy. America’s Founding Fathers warned earnestly against a Democracy. James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 10, said of a pure democracy, “there is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual.” At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Edmund Randolph said, “. . . that in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.” John Adams said, “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” Later on, Chief Justice John Marshall observed, “Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.”

In point of fact the US Constitution’s Article IV, Section 4 itself offers,

“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government…”

We were never intended to be a Democracy though by the actions of Abraham Lincoln our Republican form of government was utterly destroyed in favor of an ever increasing Democracy.

2.) Lincoln, by his unconstitutional and anti-constitutional actions himself destroyed Old America. There was one Nation fighting to be self governed by the parameters of the Old Constitution and that was the Confederates States of America. Those who died on the Union Side of Gettysburg died, in order that the principles of the American Nation which our Founding Fathers conceived and to which they were dedicated, would be forever eliminated.

3.) The beach-head which Guelzo talks about was never the American experiment exported to France. Many have been the scholars who have clearly limned out the differences between the American Revolution, which was a conservative counter-Revolution, and the French Revolution which was the first Revolution of the coming of Modernity. No, Guelzo has it backwards here. The beachhead that was established was in 1861 by the French Philosophes with their World and live view as France exported the French Revolution to American via Lincoln’s Red Brigades (48’ers), assorted radical abolitionists, and philosophical Transcendentalists. The American experiment, that Guelzo appeals to, was crushed between 1861-1865 by those who hated all that Founding Fathers had created and envisioned America to be.

4.) Guelzo writes so glibly about “the Rights of man” without informing us that the whole French idea of the “Rights of man,” (has Guelzo forgotten the “Declaration of the Rights of Man” as that was inspired by those inspired by the likes of Robespierre and Danton?) was inspired by a Worldview that was opposed to the whole idea of the Creator as found in the US Constitution? Guelzo rails against blood and soil and nation while implicitly supporting a European mob who was seeking to remake Europe into a Internationalist Socialist Utopia. Guelzo relishes in the whole “Rights of Man” tradition but fails to mention that his cherished “Rights of Man” has now become “the Right to Abortion,” and “The Right to marriage your same sex partner.” The whole Right of Man fantasy was a disaster to begin with. Only God has rights. Man only has duties.

Guelzo writes,

“The outbreak of the American Civil War only gave the monarchs further reason to rejoice. The survival of the American democracy had been a thorn in their royal sides, unsettling their downtrodden peoples with dreams of self-government. That this same troublesome democracy would, in 1861, obligingly proceed to blow its own political brains out — and do it in defense of the virtues of human slavery — gave the monarchs no end of delight.”

McAtee Responds,

1.) In 1861 America was NOT a Democracy. It was a Republic of Republics. In 1865 America was something different. In 1865 America was a Democracy. But contra Guelzo, Democracy did not survive in America because it had never been in America. Democracy was forced upon the American people with Lincoln’s impersonation of Robespierre on the American people. Robespierre used the guillotine. Lincoln used the bayonet and the canon ball.

2.) The American “Civil War” put to the end of one people’s vision of self government. The Confederates States desired to be self governed but instead Lincoln, seeking to create a proposition nation, where blood and soil and nationality did not matter, was responsible for the deaths of almost 600,000 Americans, not to mention the man who sanctioned Total War against Southern Civilians with all its accompanying criminal activities.

3.) The war was not fought in defense of the virtues of slavery without at the same time being fought in order to enslave men. Mr. Lincoln’s war did more to enslave far more people than it ever did to release people from slavery. The war only accomplished taking some slaves from the Plantation Owners while empowering the State to make even more men slaves to the Federal Government. Repeating the same old canard that the war was fought over slavery is intellectual laziness on Guelzo’s part. Slavery was the occasion of the War but it was not the cause of the war.

Guelzo writes,

“Lincoln’s task at Gettysburg was to persuade his hearers, on the evidence offered by three days of battle, that democracy’s sun had not set after all. Gettysburg was not only a victory, but a victory won with the Union Army’s back to the wall, and its news came, appropriately, on July 4.”

1.) Lincoln’s task at Gettysburg was to fool his audience, by his rhetorical smoke, that the nation was founded upon the French Revolution idea of equality. Equality was never spoken of in the US Constitution which was the covenant compact of the nation. Equality as referred to in the Declaration was not the equality of Mr. Lincoln and the French Revolution but the equality of Englishmen. That this was and remains true is seen in the reference in the Declaration to Indian Savages. Does Guelzo really believe that, given that “savages” language in the Declaration, the Founders would have agreed with Lincoln, in his Gettysburg address, that the Founders formed this nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal? This is just an example of Guelzo, along with Lincoln, trying to read egalitarianism back into our origins.

2.) Oh … and Americans in 1863 were smart enough to know they were not a democracy.

Guelzo writes,

“Above all, the victory was the product of self-sacrifice — 3,155 Union dead, 14,529 wounded and 5,365 “missing,” rivaling British and Allied losses at Waterloo. These casualties were not professional soldiers, Wellington’s “scum of the earth” who had taken their shilling and their chance together, nor were they dispirited peasants, driven into battle by the whips of their betters, but precisely those ordinary citizens whom the cultured despisers of democracy had laughingly doubted could ever be made to do anything but calculate profit and loss.

McAtee responds,

1.) Well, I should hope that when one Army has the high ground, and the material advantage, they would be able to beat back those who are sacrificing themselves take said high ground.

2.) The New York draft riots occurring about 10 later suggests that men were being driven into battle by the whips of their “betters.”

3.) These men died to destroy the Constitution.

4.) Guelzo writes some variant of “Democracy” 15 times in the last few paragraphs. We were not and are not a Democracy.

Guelzo writes,

Looking out over the semicircular rows of graves, Lincoln saw in them a transcendence that few people, then or now, have been willing to concede to liberal democracy. And he saw something all could borrow, a renewed dedication to popular self-government, “that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion.” Like the jeremiad, it would point toward a renewal, a new birth, not of freedom from sin, but political freedom.

The genius of the address thus lay not in its language or in its brevity (virtues though these were), but in the new birth it gave to those who had become discouraged and wearied by democracy’s follies, and in the reminder that democracy’s survival rested ultimately in the hands of citizens who saw something in democracy worth dying for. We could use that reminder again today.

McAtee responds and ends by quoting H. L. Mencken,

“… let us not forget that it (the Gettysburg Address) is oratory, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it! Put it into the cold words of everyday! The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination — “that government of the people, by the people, for the people,” should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in that battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. What was the practical effect of the battle of Gettysburg? What else than the destruction of the old sovereignty of the States, i. e., of the people of the States? The Confederates went into battle an absolutely free people; they came out with their freedom subject to the supervision and vote of the rest of the country—and for nearly twenty years that vote was so effective that they enjoyed scarcely any freedom at all.”

Doing The Hard Work Of Nothing

In “Jesus + Nothing = Everything” Tchividjian writes, “Jesus won for me, I was free to lose” and “Jesus succeeded for me, I was free to fail” (p.24). Throughout the book Tchividjian encourages us to remove our attention from what we do in sanctification. He writes, “I think too much about how I’m doing, if I’m growing, whether I’m doing it right or not” (p.174). He tells us such thinking is wrong and will only make us “neurotic and self-absorbed” (p.174). After all, in Christ, he tells us, “it’s all said and done” (p.174).

____________

Contradiction alert

Here Tchividijan is writing a book telling people the right way to do it (growing in Christ) is by not worrying about whether one is doing it right. How is the prescription to do it right by not worrying about whether one is doing it right any different of a prescription then the one that teaches that doing it right is by worrying about doing it right? Tullian’s advice requires just as much work and is potentially just as promissory of failure. How does one know if one’s lack of worry is not enough lack of worry? Could we not begin to worry that we are not “not worrying” enough? Does Jesus’ not worrying about how His performance did or did not please the Father satisfy when we fail to preform well enough our not worrying work?

I know I regularly worry that I don’t not worry enough.

I fear Tchividijian is teaching me to be neurotic and self absorbed in all of his writing about the importance of my work of not worrying in sanctification.

The point is that Tullian is requiring me to do nothing and I am exhausting myself making sure that I do the good work of nothing in my sanctification.

If it really is all said and done then Tullian shouldn’t be writing books saying that we must not concentrate on the God pleasing work of “not doing.”

Further, if I’m free to fail and free to lose does that mean that if I win and succeed that somehow I have failed and lost because I didn’t fail and lose but if I was free to fail and lose and winning and succeeding is failing and losing then that means winning and succeeding is really something that I am free do to…. right? Or does this mean that God is only pleased with me when I fail and lose? And if God is only pleased with me when I fail and lose shouldn’t I try to please God by failing and losing all the time? But then I might worry that I am not losing and failing enough and God might be displeased with me… right?

The Return Of The Jedhi — Antinomianism Attacked

“Tullian Tchividjian commits the same errors as many seventeenth-century antinomians. He holds that “sanctification is the daily hard work of going back to the reality of our justification.” This way of theologizing impacts his exegesis of Philippians 2:12–13. According to Tchividjian, “We’ve got work to do—but what exactly is it? Get better? Try harder? Pray more? Get more involved in church? Read the Bible longer? What precisely is Paul exhorting us to do?”

Tchividjian’s answer: “God works his work in you, which is the work already accomplished by Christ. Our hard work, therefore, means coming to a greater understanding of his work.” How does this fit with Paul’s exhortation to work out our salvation with fear and trembling? Paul surely did not reduce Christian living to contemplating Christ—after all, in 1 Thessalonians 5, toward the end of the chapter, Paul lists over fifteen imperatives. But Tchividjian’s type of antinomian-sounding exegesis impacts churches all over North America. Of course, he also uses antinomian-sounding rhetoric himself. In his view, “a lot of preaching these days has been unwittingly, unconsciously seduced by moralism.” He adds, “So many contemporary sermons strengthen this slavery to self. ‘Do more, try harder’ is the constant refrain.” In fact, “Many sermons today provide nothing more than a ‘to do’ list…. It’s all law and no gospel (what Jesus has done).”

This may well be true, though I suspect that the last part is overstated. But Tchividjian’s theology is not the solution to the problem of moralism. Swinging the pendulum too far in the other direction has never effectively combated error. True, for a time, people may feel refreshed, but eventually the initial boost of the “Pepsi” begins to cause damage if that is the sum total of the preaching diet they are under! Sanctification is not “simply” the art of getting used to our justification, however appealing that dictum may sound.”

“In addressing the issue of rewards, Owen responds to the criticism that “to yield holy obedience unto God with respect unto rewards and punishments is servile, and becomes not the free spirit of the children of God.” Owen could perhaps have listed several prominent antinomian theologians who never tired of making this point. John Eaton, for example, castigates legal preachers for extorting good works out of saints by “hope of rewards.” This objection has again surfaced in our day, with even Michael Horton claiming that fear of punishment and hope of rewards, as “a sound motivation for Christian holiness” , is a “disastrous pattern of thinking.” If fear of punishment and hope of reward provide the only motivation for holy living, then Horton certainly makes a valid point. However, this is yet another area where the Christian life is both-and, not either-or, on the matter of motivation. The fact is, one will have a difficult time finding many classically Reformed theologians denying that Christians should hope for rewards as a motivation for holiness.”

–From Mark Jones’ “Antinomianism”

For years now I’ve been screaming about what I have called “public square antinomianism,” a component aspect of R2K. Now a book has come out that has substantiated my “Canary in the Coalmine” routine. Dr. Mark Jones takes on the antinomianism that is oozing out of the putatively Reformed Church. This quote above is dealing the New-Calvinism sported by types like Tullian Tchividjian but the book exposes the antinomianism we find rampant in many quarters today. The spirit of John Saltmarsh and Tobias Crisp lives on in much of the Reformed Church today.

Jones is so serious about this endeavor that recently he put out a video savagely and righteously mocking the White Horse Inn crew for their latent antinomianism. Since then that video has been pulled. You can get in a great deal of trouble for tweaking the nose of the Reformed Establishment. In the video Jones was wearing skinny tight pink jeans while sporting a bottle of Whiskey. He even “accidentally” said “White Horse Inn” in his commentary covering it up with a “er uh, I mean … ” He was mocking the libertinism of the antinomian crew.

Dr. Mark Jones gets it and understands the stakes of this new public square antinomianism. Still, with all the evidence there is Jones has to pull his punches because of the influence of the antinomian establishment. He says of Tchividjian “he uses antinomian sounding rhetoric himself” and references Tchividjian antinomian sounding exegesis. That is extraordinarily diplomatic and is a tip of the cap towards the powerful influence of the antinomian establishment.

Here’s hoping his book will help many other people get it.

And in the context of this post, this should be kept in mind.

http://patrickspensees.wordpress.com/2009/09/15/the-divisiveness-of-antinomianism/

The Extent Of The Atonement & The Ongoing Prayer Life Of Our Lord Christ

If one believes that the Lord Christ only intercedes for His people per Romans 8:34 and Hebrews 7:25 then they must, if they desire to be consistent, believe that Christ only died for those same people for whom He intercedes. Both the death of Christ and the Intercession of Christ are subsets of His great work as our Great High Priest. To suggest that Christ died for everybody as the Great High Priest but only intercedes for the elect is to introduce contradiction into the very being of Christ as Mediator.

If Christ only prays for His people then He, by necessity, only died for His people.

Not to worry though … if you don’t agree you can always invent a Mystery Box in which to throw your contradiction.

Colorado Obama-care Advertisements — Wickedness on Parade

A new add that the Obama administration is running in order to encourage young adults to sign up for Obama-care.

http://www.denverpost.com/portlet/article/html/imageDisplay.jsp?contentItemRelationshipId=5538569

A few points of analysis,

1.)A tyrannical government is always interested in involving the citizenry in true moral guilt for a citizenry that is burdened by its own true moral guilt will never be free to enter into righteous protest and if necessary rebellion against Governmental anti-Christ rebellion and against the Tyrant State for its own guilty actions against God and against the citizenry. People who have their own true moral guilt are helpless to hold accountable a State with a long record of its own true moral guilt. That is one reason why this poster makes sense. An immoral people will never overturn an immoral Government. As such it is in the interest of immoral governments to involve the citizenry in immorality.

2.) Notice that the female in the Obama poster is the aggressor and the pursuer. It is wicked enough to live in a culture where men do not honor women enough to not practice their natural male aggression to sexually triumph over women but it is doubly wicked when the State is contributing to the turning of the unwed female into the aggressor in pursuit of giving up her virtue with every “Nate hot to trot” they meet. Clearly Obama desires to turn our daughters into whores.

3.) It is not unimportant that the couple in the poster are white. In order for a Cultural Marxist social order to finally exercise total cultural hegemony more white people have to be compromised into that mindset. White people still are the majority representation in this country (for now) and everything possible must be done in order to strip them away from their Biblical Christian heritage. As such, the poster is pointed to young white people in order to turn them into Cultural Marxist voters thus assuring the death of Christianity in this country.

4.) Note the connection between enrolling in Obama-care and getting to have sex without consequences. The young lady has Obama care and so can get free birth control pills so she can go on the hunt for unsuspecting male prey. This is the continued work of separating sex from both marriage and children. Of course that in turn continues the divorce culture as the ability for young people who have slept find it difficult to create a marital bond that can last. Having been sexually bonded and unbonded so many times with so many different mates when marriage is finally entered into it can easily be dissolved since sexual coupling and decoupling has been repeatedly practiced prior to entering into marriage.

5.) Note the fine print at the bottom. The add insists that condoms protect from STD’s but that is a well documented lie. The microbes that carry STD’s are not always stopped by condoms. A person using condoms can still contract STD’s. Using condoms to stop STD is like playing Russian Roulette. Every once in a while your going to pull the trigger with a bullet in the chamber. The small print is a HUGE lie.

Clearly the Obama administration is at war with traditional Christian America. As such all Biblical Christians should be at war with the Obama administration lest they be found negligent in championing the cause of their great High King.