Label-phobia, Non-Labelism, or Un-Labelism

Recently, I am interacting w/ one of the Ph.D’s at my college Alma Mater. Dr. Schenck and I are about as polar opposite as one can imagine in our belief systems and our notions about the nature of reality. Recently, he wrote a brief bit about the dangers of “labelism” that you can read below. It suspiciously reads like it was a treatise born of a liberal and post-modern agenda. Now, certainly some of what Dr. Schenck wrote was true. It is absolutely true that we all need to be careful about hasty generalizations, false compositions, and false divisions. However his piece struck me as one that could as easily been written concerning the opposite dangers of “Label-phobia” (my new word to be submitted to the Webster Dictionary people) to describe many of Dr. Schenck’s positions.

I interact w/ Dr. Schenck’s material because I still have a soft spot for the Wesleyans in my heart. Nothing will ever change how much the Wesleyans did for me in my first 22 years of life. As such, I’d like them to be as orthodox as it is possible for Wesleyans to be. Dr. Schenck is dragging them away from that Wesleyan orthodoxy.

I am coming to have a growing admiration for Dr. Schenck for I find him to be a person who can get my creative juices flowing. Perhaps, I am finding in him a muse?”

Dr, Schenck wrote,

I have a suggestion for a new word for the dictionary:

labelism: The tendency to skew diverse particular ideas, events, people, and so forth by grouping them under overly generalized labels in the service of argument.

Examples:

* Those who favor women in ministry are liberals because radical feminists push for equal rights and pay for women.

* True conservatives are opposed to gun control because gun control is generally pushed by Democrats.

* Allowing the government to manage some area of its citizens’ life shows that we are becoming socialist like China.

* Taxing us to support the health care of the elderly shows that we are becoming communist like the Soviet Union.

* Making decisions that are unpopular shows that President Obama is a Fascist like Hitler.

* You can’t believe in the idea that Mark was a source for Matthew and Luke because that is an idea that comes from higher criticism.

* The students at Oberlin were transcendentalists like Emerson who didn’t believe in a personal God because they put a high emphasis on religious feeling like the Romantics.

All these statements are logically fallacious, even though they are the stuff of common rhetoric. They take diverse realia and oversimplify them because the human mind has difficulty processing complexity.

Logical fallacies involved: 1) hasty generalization, where differences between one observation and a general conclusion are ignored in the midst of argument; 2) fallacy of composition, where a whole is assumed to have certain characteristics because some parts have certain characteristics; and 3) fallacy of division, where all parts of something are assumed to all have certain characteristics because of some characteristic of the whole.

Explanation: The human mind is generally unable to process large amounts of particular facts without grouping them together into schemata, as Piaget called them. In deductive reasoning, where all the data can be accounted for and where all the data is usually of a simple nature, universal groupings can be fully coherent.

In inductive thinking, however, which is the nature of our lives in the world, all the data can rarely be accounted for, and the data is almost never a simple nature. People, events, and various other particular data are extremely complex and interwoven together. Simple ideas thus can hardly represent them without skew of some kind.

Beware of generalizations bearing fallacies! The Devil is in the details.”

Bret responds,

I have a suggestion for a new word for the dictionary:

Label-phobia: The tendency to skew related particular ideas, events, people, and so forth by refusing to properly generalize them in order to put them in the service of argument.

Further, this would be the state or condition of refusing to see patterns or the refusal to speak in generalities unless 100% compliance was held in each and every generality. Un-labelism or Non-Labelism or Label-phobia would flinch at Universals preferring instead to see the world only in terms of mass and total differentiated individuation. Label-phobia, Un-labelism or Non-labelism would be something consistent w/ a kind of post-modern reading of reality where, if universals exist, they only exist on a (you guessed it) an individual by individual basis.

Examples of such would be,

* A refusal to label those who hold to women in ministry as “liberal” since the un-labelists refuses to see that generally speaking people who embrace women in office also embrace a confluence of other liberal positions.

* A refusal to label Obama as a Marxist even though his past associations, his past employment, his administration appointments and his current actions all testify that Obama is a Marxist.

* A refusal to label the current government as socialist even though there has been a long and decided trend in US government (which has displayed Fabian waxing and waning) for 100 years. This refusal to label is defiant even in the most egregious of evidence to the contrary such as the State taking over much of the Financial infrastructure, the Auto industry, the health industry and the student loan industry.

* A refusal to identify and label neo-orthodoxy and higher criticism even when people clearly embrace a distinction between geschicte and heilgeschicte.

* A refusal to label the Oberlin College of the 19th century as Transcendentalist even though Finney had clearly drank deeply from the Transcendental / Romanticist zeitgeist. (Indeed, so deeply had the man quaffed from the spirit of the age that when you read his systematic theology you realize that it is all ethics and no grace. All what man does and none of what God does. There is no personal God in Finney’s theology.)

All this refusal to label might be seen as endemic to the post-modern mind which refuses to see universals or organize material into universal universals. Indeed, label-phobia might be seen as the mark of the post-modern.

Beware the refusal to generalize, and to label and recognize the presence of the Universal. The devil would love for us to be forever knowing but never coming to the Truth.

Beware of non-labelists or Un-labelists who create words like “labelism” in order to demonize those who do not have a post-modern bent mind.

Simple ideas such as label-phobia can hardly represent truth without skewing of some kind.

Murrin & McAtee On The Death Of The West

“Sometimes long term history impacts the now, and we’re in it. A schism — like two tectonic plates that suddenly shift after a hundred years of energy building up. This is really the end of the Western Christian Empire. (The Western Christian Empire) was bigger than the British Empire, bigger than the American Empire. This is the end of all the Christian Empires for 900 years, and America is the last one (i.e. — the last expression of that 900 year Empire). When the last one changes and declines — which it is in — (and it will be very rapid), that is the end of the old system. At the same time the system that rises challenges it (the old system) far quicker as it moves into the vacuum created by the collapse of the old system. And that is the East. And we all know that there is going to be a change. The surprise will be the rate of that change. We have viewed the new administration in Washington as new hope. Unfortunately, if you look at historical precedents of underclass and the mechanism of underclass coming to the fore demographically, it is not new hope it is the beginning of the end, and we are seeing that very quickly take place.”

http://www.cnbc.com/id/36013573

David Murrin
Head Of Emergent Hedge Fund
Author — Breaking the Code of History

1.) The Christian Empire always managed to survive somehow. When the Goths challenged brought the fall of Rome the Christians missionaries brought the Gospel to the Goths. When the Muslims challenged Christianity and Christendom God raised up Charles Martel and eventually Charlemagne. When the Muslims pressed to the gates of Vienna God closed the gap with the Christian Knights of the West. When Christianity and Christendom became corrupted by the Medieval Church God raised up the Reformation. When the British Empire fell at the end of WWI the Americans were there to take up the banner of Christendom. If America falls the doddering remains of what is left of Christendom is finished and Christianity as a faith that can inspire civilization goes into abeyance.

Some, as those foul and vile adherents of R2Kt, will say “good riddance.” But their chortling will be cut short with the first blade that is drawn across their throats as wielded by those who have triumphed over the Christian faith. Ironically, the very civilization R2Kt despised also protected their ability to rail against it. When that Christian civilization disappears, so will their ability to rail and so will their “churches”.

2.) If Murrin is correct and the West really dies there will be no place to go, no place to run, no place to hide. There will be no safe havens. If the West falls the window shade of civilization is pulled and we will return to a new dark age of tyranny, chaos, and bedlam. Most people do not realize that the command and control economies of the world only work as well as they do because they have been able to rely on the wealth generation that happens in America. For example, it is a well known fact that the Soviet Union would have collapsed years prior to 1989 if the West, w/ its wealth, had quit supporting the Soviet Union. Since this is true the collapse of the West means the collapse of the World in terms of the living standard around the world. The whole world is going to go into shock and wonder what happen when the golden goose is finally killed off.

3.) I don’t think I agree w/ Murrin about the rise of the East. China does not have the infrastructure or the economic heft to practice global hegemony. I think that that it is far more likely that we will return to an era where regional powers dominate certain geographic areas.

4.) There has been rumors that have circulated in Washington that the current administration sees its role as managing America’s decline.

5.) The question we all must ask is how do each of us prepare ourselves for the short term and long term change that is coming. I don’t know the answers to that question.

6.) Murrin’s comment about the underclass coming to the fore is a nod to the reality that w/ a wealth redistribution agenda that putatively serves the poor the consequence is fiscal catastrophe.

Creator-creature Distinction Denial & Where It Leads

“The essence of human sin is the refusal to honor the Creator-creature distinction.”

Peter Jones
The God of Sex — pg. 143

Fallen mankind can find several ways to deny the Creator-creature distinction (hereinafter referred to as C-c/d) and upon first encounter and upon initial examination those different ways look remarkably different. However, when these different ways to deny the C-c/d are looked at closely the differences that putatively mark them off as being radically different begin to evaporate to the point that these different ways of denying the C-c/d begins to look overwhelmingly the same.

One thing we need to note here before we begin to examine the different ways that the C-c/d can be denied we must understand that this denial is a denial that is limited to the religious component of a people but rather the way any given culture denies the C-c/d ends up shaping the whole life expression of the people who are participating in any one given specific denial of the C-c/d.

The first way that the C-c/d can be denied is found in classical animism where we have a kind of hyper divine immanentism. In pagan religion and societies that are animistic what happens is that C-c/d is denied by folding the Creator into the creature with the effect that all of nature becomes divinized. In animistic cultures you find streams, trees, animals, bugs, sun, stars, and people all seen as being alive w/ divinity. Often in these cultures the more status one has the more divine being it is thought that they contain. As in all the genres of the denial of the C-c/d that we shall be looking at what this leaves is a monism where all of reality is thought of and seen to be one.

In religions and cultures that are animistic the way that this C-c/d denial manifests itself typically by the presence of rigid caste systems. As mentioned earlier the belief typically is that the more status that some group has the more divinity that group therefore has. As such their status is locked into place so that the wealthy and highborn are seen as gods while the impoverished and the lowborn are perpetually locked into that status. Very little concern is evidenced for the lowborn since it is believed that they are in that position rightly due to the fact that they have so little divinity in them. This leads to a political system that is tyrannically pyramided with those castes w/ the most ontological being at the top and being in despotic control while the rest of the castes who have less divine being serving the purposes of their overlords.

Animistic cultures also are supercharged with the supernatural since everything is divine. Typically, this leads to lives spent consumed with placating the sundry gods and as such central figures in animistic cultures is the shaman or witch-doctor who is seen as being a kind of figure who has special control over the supernatural forces that everywhere are pressing in on people.

The second way that C-c/d can be denied is found in what appears to be the polar opposite of animism w/ its hyper divine immanentism. Instead of a hyper divine immanentism what this religious expression offers is hyper divine transcendence. Religious and culture expressions where we find this are those such as Islam and Neo-orthodoxy. Indeed, Islam came to the fore as a severe reaction against the animism that was prevalent in times of Mohammad the Prophet and Neo-orthodoxy found its footing in the early 20th century as a reaction against the hyper-immanentism of 18th and 19th century liberalism.

Now on first blush it wouldn’t seem that hyper transcendence would be a denial of the C-c/d since there is such emphasis on the Transcendence of God. However the denial of the C-c/d comes in due to the reality that the Creator becomes so transcendent from the creature that there is no longer any contact between Creator and creature. When the Creator is made so transcendent that there is no contact w/ the creature what happens is, as in animism, the creature is the one who becomes the Creator and the C-c/d is once again lost. So, even though these two worldview concepts of God are seemingly radically different (and they do present themselves differently to the discerning eye) in the end they come out to a very similar place, functionally speaking.

This functional similarity is seen in the kind of political structures that cultures build who deny the C-c/d via the hyper-transcendent. These cultures, not having a God concept will inevitably build political structures like animistic cultures that are tyrannical. With the loss of the Creator and his sovereignty, denizens of cultures that are hyper-transcendent will typically turn the State into God and the god-State will have the responsibility for creating reality, along with the necessary distinctions that reality requires to exist.

A third way that the C-c/d is denied was established by modernity. Modernity has been the approximately 225 year attempt to pretend that God does not exist. With the advent of the enlightenment man gave God his divorce papers and being at war w/ God man has closed down God’s embassy on earth. Putatively, God is neither hyper immanent nor hyper transcendent. God simply isn’t, or is irrational or God is dead.

However, in such a profession, god or some god concept does not go away. Like the other C-c/d denials we have looked at this C-c/d ends up en-goding man. Modernity is the age that has given us the great formal totalitarianisms of Robespierre, Marx, Lenin, Mao, Hitler, Gramsci, and a host of other. So, the common thread that we have thus far seen as evidence of the denial of the C-c/d is upheld. Religions and cultures that deny the C-c/d by pretending as if God doesn’t exist typically simply transfers the sovereignty and Creator status of God to the State.

Now one common strand we’ve seen between these three different ways to deny the C-c/d is the the political top down structures they each tend to build. However the similarities do not end there. Remember the effect of denying the C-c/d is the denial of the most fundamental of reality distinctions. When this most basic of distinctions is denied the effect of this macro-denial, when teased out to its logical and inevitable conclusion, is the micro-denial of all other distinctions. When the distinction between the C-c is denied then all other God ordained distinctions can be and often are denied as well.

When the C-c/d is denied then obviously God has been locked out of his creation and the consequence of that will be the increasingly widespread denial of all other divinely imposed and sanctioned distinctions. Concretely this means that in a culture that is working out the implications of its C-c/d denial is the most aberrant of embraces. In these kind of C-c/d denial cultures (quite regardless of just exactly how the C-c/d is manifesting itself) what happens is distinction like male and female begin to disappear and homosexuality becomes an increasingly familiar phenomenon. Distinctions like the uniqueness of marriage as being monogamous vs. polymorphous, polygamous, or polyandrous begin to be increasingly denied. Similarly, when the C-c/d is denied the distinctions between men and women as it relates to the God designed distinctions in terms of their physical, psychological, emotional distinctions are denied so that men and women begin to be seen as interchangeable parts in a monistic machine. This of course leads to feministic oriented cultures where women are seen as being perfectly capable of being head over men. Distinctions like the qualitative distinction between man and animal are denied w/ the result that organizations that advocate that animals have human rights begin to proliferate. When the C-c/d is denied then all bets are off for all other distinctions being maintained because when the C-c/d is denied the basis for all other distinctions lose their credibility.

Finally, another key distinction that become a casualty of the C-c/d denial is the distinction that distinguishes one religion from another religion. Biblical Christianity especially becomes the victim of this denial since Christianity alone teaches a hard exclusivity. (Indeed, I would suggest where hard exclusivity is sacrificed in Christianity it is a sign that the eroding drip of the C-c/d is doing its work.) This denial of the distinctions between religions thus allows room for a multi-culturalism that gives just a bare lip service on differences between faiths that create cultures and allows one mono-culture to be created by the defacto faith created from the assumed unity of many faiths.

In brief the denial of the C-c/d leads to an inescapable monism that leads to the autonomous imposition of reality distinctions by human agents who have been en-godded. Naturally, it is the consistent outworking of this C-c/d denial that has the West where it currently is, with its rampant Statism, Homosexuality, Gender confusion, Animal rights, multi-culturalism, etc.

In the next entry on this subject we will look at other ways in which the C-c/d can be played with and the implications that often follow from that.

DeathThreats On Democrats

All over the news it is being reported today that Democrats are receiving death threats. Of course, we just have to take their word for it as no evidence has been brought forward to substantiate this.

So, until there is real tangible evidence that can be verified, I don’t believe the Democrats. What I believe is that this is one more opportunity to manipulate the American people. By claiming that they are getting death threats the Democrats accomplish two political goals. First, they accomplish demonizing the opposition. Complaining about death threats subtly implies that all the opposition is deranged. Second, they accomplish making people feel sorry for them. “Oh, those poor poor people, is it just terrible Gert that they are having to live with death threats.

But let’s just concede, for the sake of pretend, that the Democrats really are getting death threats. What do they expect when they pass legislation that is a death threat of every living American? If Democrats are trying to kill the American people through legislation they shouldn’t act all surprised, shocked or grieved if people decide to return the favor by threatening their very lives.

Democrats complaining about death threats is like an assassin complaining about getting death threats. Given the occupation of the assassin who really takes his complaints seriously? Don’t want death threats? Then quit killing people.

Christ, Christians, Obama, Marxism & Health Care — Part I

“From the days of the Caesars to the heads of the democratic states and Marxist empires, the ungodly have seen what Christians too often fail to see, namely, that Biblical faith requires and creates a rival government to the humanistic State.”

~ R.J. Rushdoony

With the whole Death Care legislation that has been recently crammed down our throats I have had opportunity to make a great pest of myself to several “Christians” who have insisted that there is nothing inconsistent about someone being a Christian and supporting a Marxist agenda of which the recent Death care is a part.

Some of these people, like CH are very young. Others like the writer of this article,

http://pressonuntilglory.blogspot.com/2010/03/president.html

have drank deeply from the R2Kt heretical “Christian” religion. Yet others grew up in government schools and have never yet been able to deprogram themselves. That millions of “Christians” are supporting Obama’s Marxist agenda shouldn’t surprise us given recent studies conducted that revealed that well less then 10 percent of those who profess Christ have a Christian worldview.

So, this is a good opportunity to distill some thoughts on this subject with the hope that Christians will begin to see the disconnect between claiming Christ and supporting a Marxist agenda. I should say that I have no doubt that there are genuine Christians who support Obama’s Marxist agenda. Jesus can save people who don’t think straight but normatively sanctification is the means by which immature Christians become mature in their thinking. This article is for all those Christians who have not yet had the opportunity to escape the indoctrination that this present wicked age constantly pummels us all with.

First of all we should note that Marxism is a belief system. Indeed, it would be accurate to say that Marxism is a religion. The religion of Marx avows atheism. This is not true. The God of Marxism is putatively the collective expression of the people as given life in the State. For Marxists it is in god (The State) they live and move and have their being. So theologically speaking they are humanists in the collective sense.

Were we to continue to press on with the issue of theology for Marxism we would also note that for classical Marxist theorists (theologians) economics is their theology. This is to say that because all Marxists are materialists they confess that everything must be understood in light of economics. As such, just as Christians understand that all truth is what it is because of who God is, so Marxists understand that all truth is what it is because of economic structures. As such economics is the Marxist equivalent of Christian theology. However, it is not just any economics but economics that presupposes that man’s resources must be collectively pooled together in the god state in order to achieve Marxist heaven on earth (utopia). Because this is the cornerstone creed of Marxism, all economic (theology) theory is bent towards achieving that end. Everything serves the end of achieving the state god’s drive toward Utopia.

Now here we must pause a second to connect some dots. Because Marxism makes the state god and because Marxism believes that economics is theology and because Marxism believes that the state is charged with shepherding men into Utopia, and because in Marxism man only has meaning as he belongs to and is found in the the collective, Marxist regimes have always worked in such a way where the god state seizes more and more control from the individual for their own good and the good of the hive.

This is what is happening currently in the former united States of America. In this country, as seen in the collectivizing of health care, the Marxist agenda is seen in full bloom. We see the state as the collective expression of god taking up the prerogatives of the providing God of the Bible, in order to provide a collectivistic death care system with the purpose of creating a Utopian health social order. This is achieved by insisting that the 8th commandment does not apply to the god state. The state as god cannot steal since the earth is the states and everything therein. It is not possible for any god to steal for any sovereign god, by definition owns everything. Therefore it is not theft for the state to steal from individuals because the state owns the individual as well as all the resources of the individual. This is why in Marxist regimes there is warfare on private property. The individual owns nothing. The state owns everything.

Christians thus who support Obama-care are thus, in their support, denying the God of the Bible and are in full treason against biblical Christianity. They are denying the very God who bought them and have left their first love for another.

Because there is no extra-mundane God, and because god is located in the State, Marxist ethics are what we might call Statist relativism. What is meant by this is that right and wrong is dictated by the god state and right and wrong can change as the state changes in its agenda. What this means practically is that the god state can not be charged w/ evil doing since the god state is the god which defines right and wrong. The god state in Marxism turns to those who would question it and imperiously says, “Who are thou to question God O Man.”

As we pause to connect dots again we see all of this is in the current Marxist death care agenda. The current usurper Obama regime, despite howls of protest against it, knowing that it is the determiner of what is right and wrong and what is best for the American people — knowing it is god — has basically flipped off the American people and have taken the attitude against the American people of “Who are thou to question the state god O Man?” Christians who support the Obama death apathy legislation have sided with a worldview that holds that the state is god. They have abandoned King Christ for another King.

As we move on in this examination seeking to tie Marxism to Obama-care to its anti-Christ agenda we note the means that Marxism has historically used in order to displace any competitor is to promote class warfare. This is used in such a way as to make the have nots resent the haves so as to use them to tear down the haves. We have seen this in spades in the death care debate. The haves have been villainized and demonized and we have heard countless stories about poor wretches who are impoverished and infirm. Christians have heard this and in fits of ill reasoned compassion have supported Marxist death care. What these Christians have not paused to consider is whether or not Scripture gives any authority to the state to steal from the citizenry in order to “help” the least of these. What these Christians have not paused to consider is that subsidies from the state for health care will not only not “help” the least of these but it will make their plight worse since reason, history, and experience have revealed that whenever the state, through subsidies, increases the demand of a product (in this case death care) the result is a deterioration in both the quality and the availability of whatever product is being subsidized. So while it is true that more people will have access to health care it is also true that the death care that they will have more access to will be a health care that will be positively dark age. To support such a program then is a violation of the Sixth commandment which requires not only that we not murder people but also that we do all we can to look after the interest of our neighbor. When Christians support Marxist death care they are at the same time, doubtless w/ the best of intentions, supporting doing harm to both their loved ones and their neighbors. What started out as a pursuit of compassion ends in the reality of doing grave and serious harm and damage to people created in the image of God.