DW ends on a playful note (BLM loves to play).

In a different article, Bret McAtee complains about the Leftist press anointing me as the titular head of the Christian Nationalism movement, and argues that I am going to use my immense powers the same way that William F. Buckley did when he “cleansed” the conservative movement, first of the Birchers, followed by others like Brimelow and Sobran.

BLM writes,

Honestly, one could read this article by DW as a way to cleanse his Christian Nationalist movement of the kinists he finds so problematic. Isn’t DW saying, “Christian Nationalism, yes …. Kinism as part of Christian Nationalism NO?”

In fairness though, I don’t blame DW for that since in my world DW’s kind of civic and pluralistic “Christian” Nationalism likewise would need not apply.

DW writes,

He bases his account of this on an article by Murray Rothbard, and one wonders why McAtee is demonstrating his leftward drift so openly, citing the work of a Jew like that. A little suspicious, no?

BLM responds,

I not only have read plenty of Rothbard, I’ve also read plenty of Neil Postmen, Jaques Derrida, and Bernard Bailyn — Jews all. Does this prove I’m not an anti-Semite?  I’ve even been known to read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as well as St. Paul. By DW’s reckoning I’ve been suspicious for a very long time now in terms of my leftist drifting.

DW writes,

However I confess myself as not being in charge of anything that other people might want to call themselves. I am only in charge of what I am willing to call myself. And if Christian Nationalism comes to be widely associated with ethnic animosity and/or ethnic vainglory, then to Hell with Christian Nationalism, and I would rather be dead in a ditch than to call myself that. I would drop it like a hot rock. But if Christian Nationalism gets successfully defined by Christians who understand how important it is not to go down that ungodly wormhole, then I am happy to be associated with it.

Bret responds,

I quite agree that I have no desire to be widely associated with a Christian Nationalism that is guilty of ethnic animosity and/or ethnic vainglory. I agree with Doug’s sentiment “to hell with that form of Christian Nationalism.”

But, as they say, “the devil is in the details,” and I’m not confident per our exchange here that DW and I are going to define ethnic animosity and/or ethnic vainglory in the same way. In the “for whatever it is worth” category I want DW to know that I find myself repeatedly pushing back against some of the ethnic animosity and/or ethnic vainglory he is rightly concerned about. I see this in some quarters where, for example, people want to argue that National Socialism was a positive good.

DW ends with,

But time will tell. I have not yet gotten my orders from the CIA.

BLM responds,

Well, we trust that DW will be honest with us when those orders from the CIA come in.

Doug Wilson (DW) writes;

Suppose the apostle Paul had said something like, “‘Cretans are evil beasts, lazy gluttons, and liars.’ This testimony is true” (Tit. 1:12). Just suppose, all right? Would it be to the point to say, “some are, some aren’t, just like the rest of us”? Different cultures sin differently, even though we live in a time when it is almost illegal to state the obvious. Some cultures are laid back, some of full of cussedness, some are grasping, and some are lazy.

Me, back in 2008

But having said all this, it is crucial to note that the apostle Paul does not leave the Cretans to wallow in their wicked ways. He goes on to tell Titus to “rebuke them sharply” so that they wouldn’t be like that any more. There is no genetic determinism when it comes to sin.

Bret responds,

Right… the genetic determinism lies in the disposition for different peoples to have besetting sins in different categories. Obviously, the determinism is not so final that the old man can’t be put off, while the new man in Christ can’t be put on. Obviously, the determinism does not suggest that progress can’t be made in sanctification. But the genetic aspect clearly, while not deterministic in the fullest sense of that idea, does suggest that different peoples can have different dispositions towards particular expressions of sin. This is the teaching of Paul here in Titus.

I think we might agree here though we may be in violent agreement.

DW writes,

So as the gospel brings the world closer to the blessed day when the world will be filled with all the fruit of God’s kindness, the different ethnic groups are going to bring all their variegated glories into the New Jerusalem. And all of us, emptied of our vainglorious pufferies by that point, will praise and honor one another, each of us esteeming the other groups as better than our own (Phil. 2:3). This is not the self-loathing we see on display now, but rather the glory of Christian humility, which is something some white people really need to work on. Some whites do the self-loathing thing, and others do the chest-beating, and everybody ought to consider Paul’s more excellent way.

BLM responds,

Obviously, DW and I live in different worlds because as I look upon the cultural landscape right now I see whites doing the self-loathing thing (my Suicidal Altruism I mentioned earlier) more than the chest beating thing. Indeed, I see DW as seeking to get the white man to scurry back to his self-loathing mode. “How dare the white man quit with his self-loathing and agree with Churchill on the JQ? How dare the white man state the obvious that minorities are being used to be the one of the constituencies of the new proletariat to do the Cultural Marxist long march through the Institutions? Don’t they know they are supposed to be so busy self-loathing that they don’t see, let alone mention, the obvious? How dare they commit the sin of noticing?”

And when I say the above all DW can seem to hear me say is that, “Whites are perfect and have no sinful dispositions.” And no matter how often I deny that it seems to be what he hears me saying.

DW writes,

As the kings and chieftains are making their way through the gates of that New Jerusalem, there will be no thrown elbows, catcalls, or jeers. Differences yes, but the differences of all the varied instruments in a symphony orchestra, all playing a song composed by Moses in Heaven, and by the Lamb.

“And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints. Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? for thou only art holy: for all nations shall come and worship before thee; for thy judgments are made manifest.”

Revelation 15:3-4

Bret responds,

Yes, they do sing that song but they sing it as a great choral with each nation as a nation singing its distinctly assigned part. They do not sing as one homo-globo mass but as distinct nations who together in a confederated heavenly church choir sing their glories to God.

Praise God that DW and I seem to agree on that.

 

Doug Wilson (DW) writes;

Uniquely Sinful?

But I still need to pick up on something Bret says at the end of that previous quote. I believe that the temptations to animosity and vainglory are universally human because all humans are fallen, bent, and sinful, and this is one of the common areas where it is on display. I don’t believe that whites or blacks or Jews have an inside corner on this sin. Not at all.

Bret responds,

Who could ever deny this observation? However, allow me to contend that if ethnic animosity and vainglory can be besetting sins for all peoples so it can be the case that that an opposite sin — yet equally heinous sin — can be embraced by a people. Let us call that opposite sin “Suicidal altruism.” This sin would be the sin of accepting and carrying false guilt piled on a people via various enemy cultural outlets. It is the sin whereby a people find virtue in embracing false guilt and owning the all the wrongs done in the world to the point of becoming the world’s spittoon. 

Maybe an example will suffice. I remember some years ago reading a story of a WOKE young woman who went to Haiti. Once there all she could see was the white man’s oppressions. She wrote about it freely. One evening she was raped by a gang of Haitians and her response was to blame her rape on the white man who had oppressed those poor Haitian rapists to the point that they felt they needed to get revenge by raping a white woman. Voila… Suicidal altruism. 

I’m all for tamping down and rebuking the sin of ethnic animosity and vaingloriousness. Will DW join me in tamping down and rebuking the sin of suicidal altruism?

DW writes,

Again, the sins associated with all this are ethnic animosity and ethnic vainglory. The former is something we here in Moscow hate with the heat of a thousand suns. The latter is something we hate with the heat of 25 suns. The former diabolical and filled with spite and envy. The latter is filled with the bumfuzzledness of human blundering and stupidity, which on a good day can be somewhat endearing. Kind of like watching a Dufflepud Superiority Rally, where there is so much cringy fremdschamen material on display that one does not know where to look, and it is so bad that a sort of splendor creeps into it. So on the more entertaining days, I simply disapprove with the heat of a tanning booth set at medium high down at the Summer Solstice Tanning Salon.

Bret responds,

I suppose it is easier to have all this hatred for ethnic animosity and ethnic vainglory when one lives in Whiteaho (Idaho) where the ethnic breakdown is  White 82.9 %, Hispanic 11.9%, Black 0,6%, Asian 1.3%, Mixed 2.0%, Other 1.2%. This is not to excuse ethnic animosity and ethnic vainglory where it exists. It is to say it is easier to have white hot sun hatred for those sins when those sins are not going to be a danger of falling into because the opportunity for them to come into play just doesn’t exist as much because of demographics.

DW writes,

Yes. All of these (various races of) kinists are skinists. In my world, nobody gets a free pass to sin because they are sinning on behalf of a certain color swatch they got at Benjamin Moore. But they are skinists because this is a common human failing. Every ethnic group tends to think that they are the center of the world, and are regularly astonished at any form of cosmopolitanism. And there are two basic forms of cosmopolitanism. There is the form brought about by merchants, harbors, international traffic, supply chains, and foreign exchange students. This can be benign, but it often drifts into the supercilious attitude currently on display with our globalist elites, noses in the air, jetting off to Davos to save the planet again. That’s one kind. The other kind is a gospel cosmopolitanism, the kind established by missionaries, church planters, and Bible societies.

Bret responds,

1.) Keep in mind that we have not established, DW’s protestations to the contrary, that Kinism = skinism. Doug is just wrong here equating his skinism with the kinists — regardless of their race.

2.) I’ve read Roland Allen who is perhaps one of the greatest 20th century Missionaries and I can promise you that Roland Allen didn’t advocate gospel cosmopolitanism.

3.) Perhaps I need more of a definition from DW on just exactly what “Gospel Cosmopolitanism” is in his world. However, in my world I can’t imagine more of a contradiction occurring then what occurs when those two words are slammed together.

DW writes,

A biblical doctrine of sin and depravity would protect us from a lot of this foolishness. When I read of certain atrocious passages in the Talmud (and there are some), I don’t think of the unique perfidy of Jews. Rather I take it as just one more entry in Paul’s Romans 2 argument that the Jews are lost sinners, just like everybody else. When I read of the appalling treatment that Americans applied to certain Indian tribes, I don’t blame whiteness, or America, or the Founders. I reflect on the fact that Americans are descended from Adam, and have behaved exactly like that on more than a few occasions. When I think of the African kings who enslaved other Africans and took them down to the coast in order to sell them off to the slavers, I don’t attribute this to the blackness of their skin, but rather to the blackness of their hearts.

BLM writes,

1.) One has to concede immediately that all sin comes from our sin nature and that regardless of race. However, that is not to say that particular sins can’t be attached to particular peoples as St. Paul notes in the book of Titus. Sure, the sins of the Cretans were because they, like non-Cretans, were sons of Adam. However, that the Cretans were sons of Adam along with non-Cretans didn’t mean that they had a unique flora to their sin set.

2.) If DW can read the Talmud without at least wondering about the unique perfidy of the Jews then something is wrong. Has DW read John’s Gospel?

3.) Does DW ever read about the appalling treatment by the Indians upon those of European descent. All of this comes across as just more WOKE-ianity.

Allow me to emphasize again that I hold that white people apart from Christ are dead in their trespasses and sins. I hold we have the problem with WOKE-ianity precisely because the white people of the West are apostate, having abandoned the God who has been so generous to the in blessing them. I hold that if White people continue on the trajectory they are on Sodom will seem like a vacation paradise. I affirm that white people are not made of better dirt than non-white people.

I go out of my way to affirm all this so DW won’t call me a skinist or accuse me of having ethnic animosity or ethnic vainglory.