Patriots, Not Haters
On the morning of Monday, June 28, 2004, Carol Jean Nicholson fell out of love. A professor of philosophy at Rider University, best known as Alma Mater to Woody Allen’s underage beloved, Dr. Nicholson would liken her experience to Bertrand Russell’s realization, while riding a bicycle, that he no longer cared for his wife. Nicholson wasn’t riding a bike but reading The New York Times, and the love she no longer felt was that of her country. On the eve of Independence Day she composed a Dear John (Adams? Kennedy?) letter for publication in Philosophy Now, a British monthly, with the title “Why I am not a Patriot” intended to recall Russell’s Why I am not a Christian, the latter a sadly weak work (especially when compared to his Principles of Mathematics) but still a bestseller, thanks, I suppose, to professors of philosophy.
“I am not,” she insists, “a terrorist or an evil person.” I never said she was, even as a too beautiful freshman of sixteen. “Having found no good justification for patriotism, I have chosen to withhold my love of the U.S.A. Love is one of the few things in life that cannot be compelled, and if I no longer love my country, nobody can make me do it.” How true. But what is this country she loves no longer? In an earlier essay for the same magazine on the “Pragmatic Patriotism” of New Jersey nihilist Richard Rorty she examined Rorty’s claim that “the American left, which has become as cynical and hopeless as Hegel’s weary old Europe, could benefit from a large dose of Dewey and Whitman’s optimistic romanticism. If the left could once more be imbued with a spirit of national pride, not based on military and economic power, but inspired by a moral vision of a decent and civilized society, we might have a chance of achieving our dream country.” This patriotism of the left is suspiciously like that of the neocons, despising the grubby reality of these all too real United States and their grotesquely imperfect population in favor of the dream of some vague ideal to be achieved after the hoped for (economic and cultural) revolution. Even late in 2003 Nicholson was suspicious of this rhetoric: “How can we ‘achieve our country’ in (James) Baldwin’s sense if the left becomes as arrogant as the right? Cant we strive for a dream country without having to be the best?”
To strive for a dream country: that is what so many of us were taught that patriotism is, just as the neocons strive for a dream world. By the next Fourth of July Nicholson had learned to choose reality, and who can blame her? “The best future we can hope for is one in which people love their families, friends, and neighbors and respect all human beings, but don’t waste their love on destructive and suicidal obsessions with national power. Love is too precious to spend on fuel for the raging fire that kills self-respect and independent thought and brings a curse upon the earth.” (Does one hear echoes of Ike and Tina here? “Don’t give your love to Sexy Ida, she is the sister of a black widow spider!”)
Love of family and friends, neighbor and neighborhood, and at least respect for those you don’t know well enough to love. To the traditional conservative, that’s what patriotism is all about, or at least that’s where it has to start — the circles of affection and sympathy widen out from where you stand. To the nationalist, on the other hand, patriotism is all about not having to earn your self-esteem yourself but getting it secondhand from mere membership in a group you believe superior to all other groups, and about unquestioning, inhuman loyalty to a State or Leader who embodies the Will and Destiny of that group, and about the desire to crush or at least humiliate all groups that seem to threaten one’s superiority. The American nationalist is an American. Period. The patriotic American, on the other hand, delights in diversity. He is an American, yes, but a Buckeye, Sooner, Knickerbocker, Tarheel, Nutmegger; a Greek, Turk, Jew, Bengali, Bavarian, Senegalese, Navajo, you name it, and if not all at once, he sometimes wishes he could be. Multicultural? Maybe, as far as some things go. But there is a common civic culture which unites us all, which mass immigration has not utterly destroyed, which has to do with the common decency of how you treat people. More than one immigrant who didn’t take to that culture went home in disgust. But a great many came here because they saw inklings of this common culture reflected in the popular entertainment available in their homelands, and they wanted to be part of it, even felt themselves to be part of it, long before they got on the plane. Acculturation would be more of a nightmare than it is if it hadn’t started many years and thousands of miles ago. If we often feel a greater sense of kinship with our fellow countrymen than with foreigners, it’s not because of what passport they carry, or are entitled to carry, but because we Americans tend to see some things similarly and speak the same language. When we try to reduce the common civic culture to propositional terms they seem to make a certain kind of sense in context, but when we abstract them from their living context and identify them as the essence of a nation, whatever a nation may be, or, worse, with the messianic destiny of an imperial state, we are betraying our real country even with the best intentions — and all too often with the worst ones.
What is the real America? And of course I mean my America; yours will be different, at least somewhat. Last Sunday, in my little Russian Catholic church in Little Italy, I was happy to hear the familiar voice of Father Juan singing behind the iconostasis. I call him Father Juan for your convenience; in his own language the correct spelling is “Joan,” which would be just too confusing, especially if he’s elected Pope, the first Byzantine in a good long time, but why not?
Back in Europe, he serves the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom in Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Romanian, whatever is needed at the time. But Father is an American, a citizen of the United States, retired from the Federal civil service. I assume he came here on a Spanish passport, though he would only learn the Spanish language as a prison chaplain in New York — his father, a proud and passionate Catalan nationalist, would not permit the language in his home.
But, as I said, Father Joan (there, I wrote it) is an American. Not only does he have a deep and abiding affection for our land and its people, he can recognize, as we all should, the aspirations of the men of 1776 as reflecting the social teaching of the Universal Church, much of which would not be fully developed or formulated for another century or so.
Does this make America a propositional nation of the sort Mr. Lincoln seemed to be describing at Gettysburg? I don’t think so. But I can’t deny that the vision of the Founders has a universal import, one which has drawn people from all over the world, and enabled them to weave themselves into the very fabric of our society. My grandmother was one such, and so were the Jewish families whose houses she cleaned, who treated her with greater kindness than her own flesh and blood ever had. She never forgot. Memories of such kindnesses are one thing that makes America.
The propositional nation is an unreal and dangerous abstraction, but race is a worse one. America is not the creation of political philosophy. Still less is it the expression of the genius of some sort of Anglo-Saxon race, or Anglo-Celtic race, as the Southerners like to put it. Our America is something which emerged in the course of history, under the guidance, we believe, many of us, of Providence. In this history English traditions had their part to play, especially that of Common Law, but so did the distinct folkways of the Celts, Scots, Scots-Irish, and, finally, what I can only call Irish-Irish. Not to mention the Welsh. And the Founders felt themselves under a deep debt of intellectual gratitude to the general culture of Western Europe. They believed America to be an integral part, if one specially favored by circumstance, of Western civilization, a civilization common to New England, New France, and New Spain.
America is more than New England, thank God! By 1776, the New Netherlands had been absorbed, but not without a trace and more than a trace, though New Sweden was but a memory, and a fading one at that. The New Amsterdam Dutch gave us more than Santa Claus and the Headless Horseman. They gave us an example of live and let live and mind your own business, a haven for refugees from New England like Anne Hutchinson and Lady Deborah Moody, for Jews fleeing the Brazilian inquisition, and even Quakers, at least after the farmers of Flushing remonstrated to the mother country (not their own mother country, they were English) against Pegleg Pete’s intolerance. In Lady Moody’s Gravesend, by the way, women voted. After all, she owned the place, and her word was law. I used to love taking my Puerto Rican students down to the Museum of the City of New York to see the magnificent portraits of the Latino grandees who were here before the Gringos. Their tombstones, I remarked, could still be seen, their inscriptions carved in the Hebrew alphabet. My part of New Jersey was settled by New Amsterdam Dutch who bought the land from the Lene Lenape at a fair price. And some of these Dutchmen, I learned much later, were Africans, or part African, and some of the original Africans had never been enslaved but had stowed away on Dutch ships, and prospered in the New World. (Sadly, when the English took over, people of color headed for the hills of the Ramapo and learned to call themselves Indians.)
And a continent away, the Russians were coming (the Russians were coming!) down the West Coast from Alaska, bringing with them, inspired by St. Innocent, future Patriarch of Moscow, a truly enlightened spirit toward the native peoples. (Indeed, the great struggle of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Alaska was to convert the Aleuts from a massively enculturated Orthodox Christianity to an Anglophone Protestantism in which they would always be nothing more than obedient or rebellious subjects.) There were many deplorable things about the Empire of the Tsars, but we can be proud of the way their pioneers brought Christian civilization—I am not ashamed to call it that — to the natives of this continent, whom we cannot censure for receiving it, though our “multicultural” masters do.
All that is history. What is patriotism now? What is my country, that I may love it, if love it I somehow ought?
For the Giulianis, patriotism is all about 9/11, and the endless quest for vengeance against the enemies of Israel. For most of them, Israel itself plays a secondary role in this. If the Jews of the Middle East have to suffer along with the Arabs, that’s just too bad. The point is to teach our enemies a lesson, or rather destroy them so utterly as to be a lesson to any potential enemy. And in this moment of history, the enemy is the anti-Israel coalition. When the Lazy-Boy warriors have satisfied themselves that Iraq, Iran, and anybody else who dares to raise his head from the desert floor have been crushed, they will cheerfully turn their back on Israel as well, and the Jews of America won’t know what hit them.
To the Straussians, America represents the One True Political System of (implicitly) atheistic democratic capitalism. Any country that resists that system needs to be taught a lesson. We will teach the world out of the goodness of our hearts, and to the profit of the multinational corporations. Because we have a monopoly of truth, we must have a corresponding monopoly of deadly force, and any power that might threaten to dispute our global hegemony, or the regional hegemony of our client states, must be ruthlessly crushed. Those within the borders of the United States who cling to outmoded understandings must be swept away swiftly by waves of open immigration and campaigns of “multicultural” indoctrination by the schools and the entertainment industry.
To the Left Behinders, America is God’s chosen instrument to provoke a world war over Israel, one which will bring Jesus back on clouds of glory—and, not so incidentally, place them on heavenly thrones of judgment over their unbelieving neighbors. The flags these people wave might as well bear swastikas, for these “Christians” are full of hate, mostly against fellow Americans — blacks and women who think they should be treated as equals, sodomites, whoremongers, Catholics, and Jews. Yes, Jews—who, except for a handful of converts, they believe, will be tortured to death and beyond death for all eternity, as the righteous secretly gloat. Let the gentle reader forgive me if I am less than charitable toward these purveyors of violent and sadistic pornography, who would not emerge from their prairie gopher holes if they weren’t heavily subsidized by the your tax dollars through anonymous donations laundered in the Levant.
To the patriots of my youth, the United States stood for, in Superman’s words, truth, justice, and the American way. The American way could not be imposed on folks who weren’t American, but people who weren’t American could become Americans—as many had—and still remain themselves on Sunday mornings, and even (we are a generous people) all day Saturday. It was a live and let live patriotism. On Memorial Day, my town publicly honored those fallen in war, but I did not attend the parade regularly until I joined the band; it was a day for each family to tend its own graves and put down fresh flowers; for that reason it was generally called Decoration Day. The big patriotic celebration was the Fourth of July, and, though the local National Guard provided suitably noisy tanks to delight the little boys, the volunteer fire department was the centerpiece, with the oldest member, white-bearded, driving the lovingly maintained horse-drawn truck, giving rides to the children after the parade. It was multicultural in a small way, the Masons marching in their white gloves and top hats and the Knights of Columbus with their swords and capes and magnificent plumes, and the Lions Club with a man capering about in a lion suit, which must have been awfully hot.
Our patriotism was a patriotism of aspiration, such as Professor Nicholson once wished for, and perhaps also a quite pardonable pride that our aspirations had been realized, though imperfectly, and a half acknowledged sadness about that imperfection. My father, for one, was disappointed in the slow progress of racial equity, and when his company was forced to hire African Americans for clerical rather than merely for housekeeping positions, he was very pleased to make them welcome. If his attitude impeded his promotion, as I suspect it did, some things were more important than money. I don’t recall any desire to compare ourselves to other nations, much less to wrestle them to the ground, punch them out, and make them holler Uncle… Sam. There was a certain anxiety, sometimes acute, about the Russians, but no great bitterness over previous wars. My cousin Lloyd recalled the beauty of the Bavarian Alps beyond the fences of his P.O.W. camp, and regretted that he could not get into a plane again even to see them, having been shot down once. The Jews, who had every reason to be bitter, were not; the other Eastern Europeans, whose extended families still suffered under Communism, were, a little, some of them more than a little. Next to the fear, which must not be discounted, it was bitterness of that sort rather than any desire for military glory that fueled the Cold War on our side. At least in my small town.
This was the sort of patriotism I grew up with. Patriotism, not nationalism. Love of country, this vast jumble of a country and the vaster jumble of folks in it, and the quirky history that had made it and made us. Not some Nation, possessed of a mystical Will embodied in an Imperial State and Warlord with a World-historical Destiny—but the land and the people in it, who, in the course of time, have developed remarkably similar ways of looking at things. One small town was pretty much like another, and this was so before the malls. And Jersey City, where my parents lived in the ‘20s and’30s, is still very much Jersey City, though Germania Avenue became Liberty Avenue in 1917 and the signs on the storefronts today are in Bengali, just like the signs in Astoria (except for the signs that are in Greek).
True patriotism is necessarily libertarian, at least with a small “l,” involving a suspicion of “gummint” bordering on polite, and even not so polite, hostility. Beginning with the neighborhood, the patriot sees that politicians never deliver the real goods, that maybe you can fight City Hall, sometimes, and even work with City Hall, occasionally, but that it isn’t often worth the effort, entirely apart from utopian theories about taxation being theft and so on. And what is true of City Hall goes for the State House in spades, never mind the White House, or that Tower of Babel up on the East River. You just have to do for yourself as best you can, and decent folks will pitch in with their neighbors as well, without a bayonet at their backs. If you are a Christian, or claim to be, the Gospel of the Samaritan is clear: Don’t ask who your neighbor is; just act like one. And if you are at all honest, you will think of good people who did just that, as often as not without a written scripture to guide them — though for some reason we take so much pleasure in rather remembering all the others. In excruciating detail.
Why is Carol Nicholson — and she speaks for a great many of our generation — not a patriot? I think it is because the idea of patriotism she has been taught is itself un-American, and she is too much of an American to buy into it. But there are other, older traditions of American patriotism, which it looks like that younger folks are beginning to recover, and I have some hope that they will flourish again when our generation, the shameful generation of George Bush and Hillary Clinton, is gathered to its sadly bemused fathers.
Comments
“Let the gentle reader forgive me if I am less than charitable toward these purveyors of violent and sadistic pornography...”
Your uncharity would indeed be excusable were there any truth to the charges. Where is the evidence of this “hatred” of blacks and women you speak of? Is this the kind of “hatred” of which all the good little liberals speak, in which opposition to some moral or political position held by the protected classes is held to be evidence of motivation by hate?
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How I wish I still agreed with Mr. McCulloch. I was a sheltered youth, and could romanticize the bulk of the continent beyond the Hudson. I can no longer. (Well, maybe a little.)
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Carol Jean Nicholson....Woody Allen… Richard Rorty… Ike and Tina… Knickerbocker… Navajo...Father Juan… John Chrysostom… Lincoln… Tsars… Giulianis… Straussians… Superman… George Bush and Hillary Clinton...
How much is Taki paying for this inferior merchandise?
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Still less is it the expression of the genius of some sort of Anglo-Saxon race, or Anglo-Celtic race, as the Southerners like to put it.
Russell Kirk said it is. Was he a hater?
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I call him Father Juan for your convenience
One guy practices divination, another plays with Tarot cards, your guy worships pictures on the wall. Hey, in America we tolerate weirdos!
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If you are a Christian… the Samaritan is clear: Don’t ask who your neighbor is; just act like one… you will think of good people who did just that, as often as not without a written scripture to guide them...
This isn’t Christianity—it’s universalism!
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I was a sheltered youth, and could romanticize the bulk of the continent beyond the Hudson
Like a good leftist hater, you think everyone in Flyover Territory is a crazed racist wacko. Get back on the S train with the rest of the strap hangers!
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his father, a proud and passionate Catalan nationalist
How come all nationalism is bad except in his case?
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A Buckeye, Sooner, Knickerbocker, Tarheel, Nutmegger; a Greek, Turk, Jew, Bengali, Bavarian, Senegalese, [and a] Navajo...
...make up the current cast of “E.R!”
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And Jersey City, where my parents lived in the ‘20s and’30s, is still very much Jersey City
Jersey City is a dump.
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If the left could once more be imbued with a spirit of national pride… we might have a chance of achieving our dream country.
Quoted from Perfectae Caritatis, Decree On Renewal of Religious Life, “Documents of Vatican II,” 1965.
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“The propositional nation is an unreal and dangerous abstraction, but race is a worse one.”
An interesting conjunction. Abstractions are not necessarily unreal as such, but some are more real than others. The proposition nation is unreal not because it is an abstraction, but because it is a lie. Race is an abstraction from concrete reality with a quantifiable basis - i.e., with the strongest possible empirical foundation. It is itself the foundation of nations - real ones that are not propositional. Mr. Purcell tempts one to think that he is confused about the correlativity of the concepts of nation, race and culture, and the priority of race within that trinity.
I was under the impression that this site was a reliable source opinion untainted by liberalism - am I wrong about that?
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I was under the impression that this site was a reliable source opinion untainted by liberalism - am I wrong about that?
Yes. Taki’s opposition to the neocons has more to do with personal animosity than substance. Since he has no love lost for these people, however, he is able to reject their idiocies. He is not a traditionalist conservative. I mean no disrespect to our host, but we should notice that by comparison to, say, Boyd Cathey, Taki is in another world.
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“Who would not emerge from their prairie gopher holes if they weren’t heavily subsidized by the your tax dollars through anonymous donations laundered in the Levant.” The same can be said of the Congress and the candidates for President. This is a bull’s eye seldom hit. Thank you for your courage.
According to newspapers such as the Washington Post over 50% of campaign contributions come from Jews, 2% of the population. That would indicate a concern for civic duty is 50 times greater among Jews than Christians.
This is an odd idea in that it does not correlate with military service, the highest call of civiv responsibility. Previously available statistics about the religious adherence of those killed, wounded or in service have been blocked by those who complain the publication is anti-Semitic which is in itself a confession of lack of civic virtue. The two contradict each other.
The utter corruption of the American political process by recycled foreign aid to Israel is largest elephant in the living room. AIPAC’s books must be opened to public inspection. It is not just spying and subversion that needs a thorough airing. There are too many well placed Americans who have no patriotic attachment to this land or its people.
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One guy practices divination, another plays with Tarot cards, your guy worships pictures on the wall. Hey, in America we tolerate weirdos!
You are intolerably ignorant on this point.
We redeemed Christian Catholics gather with the Priest (alter Christus) at the altar to offer the pluperfect sacrifice of the New Covenant and then we participate in the Heavenly Banquet when we eat the New Covenant meal The Eucharist, the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
The Last Supper was the First Mass and through the Priesthood of the New Covenant he established, it is Jesus (daily working through millions of Fr Joan’s) who is offering himself to God at Mass, as both priest and victim, as an act of propitiation on our behalf.
You protestants made a huge error back in the day when you abandoned worship as Jesus taught us and substituted your own ideological eisegesis as a basis for worship and now your worship services consist solely of your own works - some readings, hymns, and sermon - and you yourselves believe all works are bloody rags.
So, I can either choose to worship God as the God-Man Jesus himself instructed and commanded us to do as we daily renew the Covenant, or, I can worship God with bloody rags.
Whatever am I to do, Mr. Ramus?
I wonder which is more acceptable to God as worship? The Sacramental presence of Jesus in the Mass and the Sacramental representation of His Sacrifice or your bloody rags?
<I>Then Jesus said to them: Amen, amen I say unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you.
Convert to the true Faith and be revivified and receive life.
As it is now, your “life” consists in mocking those who merely obey Jesus.
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All I know about Peter Ramus is what I read in Father Ong’s Ramus and the Decay of Dialogue. It is enough to make one wonder about the writer who would take this name as a pseudonym. To delate Jesus Himself to the Inquisition for the heresy of universalism is breathtaking, but to go on and call oneself a Christian?
There are those who refuse to worship images. They say Satan was the first: he refused to bow before the Word of God incarnate in God’s created image, the divine manhood of Christ, the Vine of Whom the saints depicted in the icons of the Church are the branches.
By the way, I was not speaking of the Israel lobby, which is fairly open about what it does. I was suggesting that clandestine agents of the Israeli government are doing all they can to influence American public opinion, much as agents of the United Kingdom once did, and that they would be fools not to back those televangelists who preach their line. Of American Jews, a great many seem to be patriotic Americans, enough to make the Israeloids rage against them as self-hating traitors.
The Jews I know find more to love in America than the ideologues of race do. And I’m sure the latter will say that this very fact proves their point, that America is marked for destruction.
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Two other points, if I may. The headline about “haters” is Taki’s, not mine. Something must have happened to get the management worked up over the subject of hate.
And surely the agents of Israel must recognize the kind of conservatism Taki represents as adverse to their interests. What better way to discredit it than to flood his site with white supremacist comment?
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I doubt if even the term patriot, let alone patriotism is any longer salvagible. Here it has pretty much been taken over by the all war all the time, kill a raghead for Jesus and Israel crowd. I don’t think there is any specific word or ideological designation for someone who loves and cares for his family without denying or minimizing its “disfunction” and without claiming that his family is superior to and should dominate all others. Nor do we need such a word. I am a Higdon. I am not a Higdonist nor do I believe in or practice Higdonism. If we don’t deal ideologically with our own families, why should we do so with our country?
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It is indeed unfortunate that the virtue of patriotism should have been given that name, so easily hijacked by an “ism” of the more usual sort. Perhaps we might rather speak of “philopatry,” or attempt to rescue “piety” from its present connotations.
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I was under the impression that this site was a reliable source opinion [sic] untainted by liberalism [sic] - am I wrong about that?
It is a site untainted by Brownism, except 3 or 4 Stormfronters who use a variety of names to make themselves seem more numerous than the handful of cranks that they are. And the writebacker needs to learn what “liberalism” really means.
An outstanding essay, and lacking in a “hidden teaching”, which abellio correctly saw in yesterday’s essay. Mr. Purcell’s essay is right to distinguish evil nationalism and racialism from good patriotism, a distinction that John Lukacs also made. How the Browns do rage when they are, correctly, equated with statists, Hamiltonian Whigs (“Neoconservatives”), New England Theocrats such as Wilson and Nurse Ratched Rodam, and Cultural Marxists, and when they are correctly identified as not being Real Conservatives! Taki and the editor are to be congratulated.
I would make two further distinctions: Speaking as a Jeffersonian, I regard my patria NOT to be the one Lincoln founded by misinterpreting the Declaration and ignoring the Constitution. Mine was founded by Washington, Jefferson, and Patrick Henry. Would than Yankeeland endorsed the real Founders and what they really said. The Founders also, in principle, delegitimized slavery and racialism.
Speaking as a Burkean, my patria is Piedmont North Carolina, and extends, circle by circle to its limit: to places south of the Mason-Dixon line, the Ohio River, the Missouri River in Missouri state, and the Missouri compromise line out to the Black Mesa; and then direct south to the Rio Grande. That country includes Judah P. Benjamin, Stephen Mallory, H. K. Edgerton, and the Hispanics from north Florida and the Aboriginal People from Oklahoma who fought with the rest of us.
Because of these two distinctions, the rest of the Lincolnlands have become alien to me. Still, men like Mr. Purcell are welcome in Dixie!
An aside. Catholics and Protestants in the League of the South do and need to work together.
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correction: would that Yankeeland
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Somehow I doubt the original Peter Ramus was anywhere near as humorous as the one we have with us today!
Everyone has to admit, the guy is a laugh-riot!
His stream of posts on this topic is a classic!
Keep us entertained Peter Ramus!
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When you talk about loving one’s country, you might want to introduce into the discussion an old idea of Western Civilization: love is blind. For this reason, love was was usually depicted as a person with her eyes covered, who was guided by folly.
This symbolism denoted the phenomenon that people in love could not see any flaws in the beloved—literature abounds with sarcastic examples of this phenomenon. Worse still, love’s desire to protect was so strong it caused an instinctive reaction of rage at any criticism of the beloved.
These traits make strong love of one’s country—or of anything else—counterproductive. The only way to improve is to be open to possible faults, so they can be corrected. If love grows so strong that it gets us instinctively to reject all criticism, then we will inevitably start slowly sliding down. Worse still, the hostility to negative feedback makes that slide practically invisible “from the inside.”
It thus may be that, counterintuitively, a true patriot who really wants to advance the interests of the US should be very cautious about not loving the country too much. It seems to me this is one of the points you make in the article, and the old psychology of love provides strong support for your argument.
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Sid...I really wish you would not a priori label everyone
you disagree with as a “Brown” or a “Stormfronter.” I
find such use of labels disingenuous. One can maintain
that racial differences actually are real and palpable,
without being labeled (by you) as a “racist” or “Stormfronter.”
Such a tactic should really be beneath you and perverts
honest discussion on these threads.
Just the past Sunday (Nov. 11), for instance The (Raleigh)
NEWS AND OBSERVER ran a front-page article, taken from
THE NEW YORK TIMES, stating what most folks already know:
that racial differences are not just skin deep; that there
are indeed distinguishable, inheritable traits. Now, normally, I would
not quote The NYT...but that “the old grey lady” seems
a bit worried about the irrepressible biological facts
of race, should say something to anyone who can read.
Because someone states that there are biological DIFFERENCES
or that races are “not equal” (that is, not the same) in certain characteristics,
it does not follow tbat “hatred” or “racism” are then
necessary by-products. To recognize difference is not
to, ipso facto, express hatred....rather it should be
a motive to celebrate the variety of creation.
Lastly, as Catholic I desire the salvation of all mankind,
whether white, yellow, red, brown, or black. I believe
that all men have souls. But by the same token, none of
us is judged on how others act or think; we are judged
on how we match up to our own potential, in God’s eyes.
Egalitarianism the Church has condemned repeatedly.
The Church has never taught biological egalitarianism,
nor has any pope so taught (as pope). They may have or
may have had personal opinions, but biological differences
are outside the scope of theology and church doctrine.
If Philippe Rushton or Jared Taylor should suggest that
DNA and IQ testing indicates “differences” biologically
that does not in any way make them “Brown” or, for that
matter, “Stormfronters.” And for anyone to infer such
epithets is only worthy of a Morris Dees or other trendy
Leftie.
We need to regain, it seems to me, a balance on these
topics, and stop parroting the “p.c.” Left, and attempting
to “enforce” a “p.c.” wall on these threads. Sadly, some
even on the “Paleo” Right appeared to be infected, and
their desires parallel the worse excommunicatory excesses
of Dees and others like him.
We need to avoid such labeling...it is a poor excuse for
thinking and engaging in real discussion.
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I am reminded of the last line of an old poem or song, “Love might be blind, but the neighbors ain’t.” I seem to recall that the love that is blind is Eros. Philia need not be, and Agape must not be. Perhaps it might be noted that much of the love of country we see is erotic, and perversely so.
But to care in due measure about our native place and our neighbors in it is no mean thing.
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I’ll “come clean”:
Yes, there are differences between the races.
I would seem that people of western African descent can run faster than the various people from Europe. Also, they are physically weaker in upperbody strength, and mentally slower than the “Europeans”.
Now, how do these biological facts affect my day-to-day life?
They don’t.
I don’t live in housing projects, built to warehouse the “Negro”. I don’t work in an environment with [many] of the “Negro”. I deal with them at the drive-thru window at Hardee’s. If the properly Reconstructed Negroes, and Hillbillies for that matter, wish to kill themselves with guns and drugs that is something I really can’t do anything to stop. However, I WILL NOT refuse The Body from a priest who’s ancestory is West African. I WILL NOT refuse to be seated in the pew next to a person of West African ancestory. I WILL NOT refuse to help a neighbor of West African ancestory.
What is it that the “racialists” want? The enslavement of the Negro again? While that may be what is needed, it’s not reality. Reality is: support the Church, support the conversion of EVERYONE from their debased Culture of Death in America to the One True Faith.
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@Frank
Wonderful essay. Have you ever read Jose Antonio Primo
de Rivera? You may want to ponder his definition of a
nation “Unity of Destiny in the Universal”, a definition
independent of any ethnic, linguistic, or religious
characteristics. As long as the people involved work
towards the same goal of hte common good, then they are
in.
@Andy Capp
Yes, there are racial differences, but in the end they
are unimportant for the things that do matter. I follow
the advice of St. Peter Claver, that no matter what they
look like, or what you think of them, they have been
redeemed by precious blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and
we cannot dispise that blood without damning ourselves..
All the other differneces, are in the Buddha’s words
“matters not leading to Englightment” or in Christian,
towareds salvation.
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“military service, the highest call of civic
responsibility.”
For God’s sakes Stop. This nation will NEVER pry
itself from its self-appointed and self-righteous
role as globo-cop-world-hegemon until sentiments like
this are made anathema. The current glorification of the
military and the ever-more militarized fed, state
and local ‘law enforcement’ would make the Prussians
blush. The bootlicking has to STOP.
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Patriotism as in fatherhood and fatherland. If it is not a part of the model for boys to become young men to become real men, there are big problems as we see.
In the soul, the will is on the other side of reason from the passions, and too much futile time is spent in engineering and designing - reason - to try to accomplish things which cannot be done. Love of Father God, Father Country, or Father comes from the will. The Pharisees had a vast, complex, and soul-less list of rules and practices which missed the point, much as perfecting kata cannot make one an effective martial arts fighter. Your movements may be pretty and perfect, but it is a confusion of means and ends.
It is easiest when things are pleasant, rational, and good, but the actual test is when doing the ultimate good is unpleasant (dark night of the senses), or irrational (dark night of the soul).
Patriots love (agape, the will) America - the real fallen collective - in the way a good son loves his fallible father.
And we have had and ought to continue an open adoption policy. But adoption is very different than hiring a servant, or having a guest.
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Why should I lionize Masonic deists?
Around our house July 4th is my Grandmother’s birthday, not a day to heap praises upon a system and people that are in opposition to my family’s own.
To “love America”, that is, to be a patriot, is to love the land. The Blue Ridge Mountains themselves are beutiful, not the government nor the people it controls. What do I love? My wife, my kids, my family, our Land. Government, whether it be the governments of the stats of North Carolina, Georgia, or Alabama, or the federal government of Washington City all try to undermine the love between family members. Government is the enemy of the Family, even when they supposedly support the Family. As long as there is a government that is larger than the Family itself, that government will undermine the Family, whether they want or try to or not.
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i noticed that the tone of civility coarsened after the concept of race was introduced. Why is this the one subject that seems to be too hot to handle. As for IQ, I am a member of Mensa but I always found their meetings more boring than a barroom of rednecks. I feel happier at Octoberfest. Fueled of course by that wonderful elixir created by some primitive who was obviously a genius.
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The problem with the USA is that it is full of nationalists; internationalists, and wilsonian world savers. Acutal patriots who love their country and want to make it a better place are few in number.
Led by the South and the archtype Southerner Wilson, the USA has gone on an endless series of wars to enforce the American way of life on every country in the world. Perpetual war for Perpetual peace.
Its impossible to get the average American to tend his own garden. No, what happens in Israel, Afganistan, Mongolia, and Fiji keeps him awake at night, and itching to get his gun out and go kill somebody. And if anyone doesn’t care about saving upper Mongolia they are an “isolationist” and probably a “racist” to boot.
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Capp writes “What is it that the “racialists” want? The enslavement of the Negro again?”
For starters, we want to stop being blamed for black failure to compete.
We want to stop being forced to pretend we’re all the same while every other race continues to organize and compete along racial lines.
We want to end the slow motion white genocide called unlimited third world immigration into the West.
We want to start looking forward again.
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<<For starters, we want to stop being blamed for black failure to compete.>>
You take people like Al Sharpton too seriously!
<<We want to stop being forced to pretend we’re all the same while every other race continues to organize and compete along racial lines.>>
Nothing is stopping you from joining White race organizations!
<<We want to end the slow motion white genocide called unlimited third world immigration into the West.>>
Who forces you to rent or sell your property to Third World immigrants? If there are Mexicans in your area it is because someone wanted them there! If a Mexican is willing to do something you wouldn’t, like laying asphalt, can you blame someone for hiring them? Let’s all join the real world here.
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@ Peter Ramus,
Sorry you had to appear with your usual bile and mar
Frank’s excellent essay. This time with falsely quoting
Vatican documents;
http://www.ewtn.com/library/COUNCILS/V2RELIG.HTML
You really are to be pitied.
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archtype Southerner Wilson
He was a Klansman on race. Otherwise, in terms of culture he was a New Englander, whose witch-hunting perchance was re-enforced by his Backcountry bellicosity. He was an Anglophile first, and an American second, and in terms of religion, a “Liberal”, Social Gospel Protestant (a kind of thin beer Calvinism) out to fight a New Englander’s War For Righteousness. See Richard Gamble’s book of that name. If he’s a Southerner, then call his transmigrated soul, Nurse Ratched Clinton, an “archtype Southerner”
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Mr Cundiff, I think you would agree that “Woodrow the Worst”
was what could be called “an appropriately Reconstructed Southerner”.
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“Who forces you to rent or sell your property to Third World immigrants? If there are Mexicans in your area it is because someone wanted them there! If a Mexican is willing to do something you wouldn’t, like laying asphalt, can you blame someone for hiring them? Let’s all join the real world here.”
Posted by Andrew Capp on Nov 16, 2007.
Who forces me? The federal equal employment statutes. As for that nonsense about no one else wanting to do certain jobs, just eliminate the restrictions of immigration from Eastern Europe and watch those Czechs, Poles and Hungarians, all of whom will work hard and love America, come here. And they will learn English in no time, as my parents did. The only thing they may not want to do is support Bush’s insane wars.
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<<The federal equal employment statutes.>>
Looks like your argument is against government coercion, not immigration.
<<watch those Czechs, Poles and Hungarians, all of whom will work hard and love America, come here.>>
No, they won’t. I know Czech, Polish, AND Hungarian immigrants, and NONE of them, NOT ONE SINGLE OF THEM would have ever contemplated working up on Sand Mountain or in North Georia or the Piedmont of North Carolina to work in poultry processing plants.
For examples, a Polish immigrant I know is a truck driver. A Hungarian immigrant is a waitress. A Czech immigrant is a waiter, so is his wife. None of them had to learn English here, that language was taught in their schools from an early age. Your comments reveal your ignorance on the matter.
Also, I agree, immigration restrictions need to be lifted on European countries, not that it stops people from coming to America on visas and staying. I know many many Irish, Russian, Polish, etc. immigrants that are here just as illegal as many many many Mexican immigrants I know.
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Also, I know a Serbian, he is a butcher at Publix, I know another Hungarian, he is an engineer at a manufacturer here in East Alabama. In construction I know of a Romanian plumber, is employees are a couple of other Romanians, who oversee the work done by Mexicans. So on and so forth.
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Boyd Cathey has the courage to sign his own writebacks. I commend him. And what he has written is more commendable than what our racialists and Stormfronters have written. Much of what he has written I agree with. He is too optimistic that the evil will not take racial difference and do evil thins.
That said, compare:
racial differences are not just skin deep; that there are indeed distinguishable, inheritable traits. [...] The Church has never taught biological egalitarianism, nor has any pope so taught (as pope). They may have or may have had personal opinions, but biological differences are outside the scope of theology and church doctrine.
– Boyd Cathey
We cannot truly call on God, the Father of all, if we refuse to treat in a brotherly way any man, created as he is in the image of God. Man’s relation to God the Father and his relation to men his brothers are so linked together that Scripture says: “He who does not love does not know God” (1 John 4:8).
No foundation therefore remains for any theory or practice that leads to discrimination between man and man or people and people, so far as their human dignity and the rights flowing from it are concerned.
The Church reproves, as foreign to the mind of Christ, any discrimination against men or harassment of them because of their race, color, condition of life, or religion. On the contrary, following in the footsteps of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, this sacred synod ardently implores the Christian faithful to “maintain good fellowship among the nations” (1 Peter 2:12), and, if possible, to live for their part in peace with all men, so that they may truly be sons of the Father who is in heaven.
– NOSTRA AETATE, #5. Emphasis added. And for a pope:
47. But these efforts, as well as public and private allocations of gifts, loans and investments, are not enough. It is not just a question of eliminating hunger and reducing poverty. It is not just a question of fighting wretched conditions, though this is an urgent and necessary task. It involves building a human community where men can live truly human lives, free from discrimination on account of race, religion or nationality, free from servitude to other men or to natural forces which they cannot yet control satisfactorily. It involves building a human community where liberty is not an idle word, where the needy Lazarus can sit down with the rich man at the same banquet table.
62. There are other obstacles to creation of a more just social order and to the development of world solidarity: nationalism and racism. It is quite natural that nations recently arrived at political independence should be quite jealous of their new-found but fragile unity and make every effort to preserve it. It is also quite natural for nations with a long-standing cultural tradition to be proud of their traditional heritage. But this commendable attitude should be further ennobled by love, a love for the whole family of man. Haughty pride in one’s own nation disunites nations and poses obstacles to their true welfare. It is especially harmful where the weak state of the economy calls for a pooling of information, efforts and financial resources to implement programs of development and to increase commercial and cultural interchange. . . . and Racism
63. Racism is not the exclusive attribute of young nations, where sometimes it hides beneath the rivalries of clans and political parties, with heavy losses for justice and at the risk of civil war. During the colonial period it often flared up between the colonists and the indigenous population, and stood in the way of mutually profitable understanding, often giving rise to bitterness in the wake of genuine injustices. It is still an obstacle to collaboration among disadvantaged nations and a cause of division and hatred within countries whenever individuals and families see the inviolable rights of the human person held in scorn, as they themselves are unjustly subjected to a regime of discrimination because of their race or their color.
POPULORUM PROGRESSIO, emphasis added.
If Philippe Rushton or Jared Taylor should suggest that DNA and IQ testing indicates “differences” [i.e. discrimination] biologically that does not in any way make them “Brown” or, for that matter, “Stormfronters.”
Boyd Cathey
Boyd Cathey is correct. It makes them heretics. Boyd Cathey is also correct that the Magisterium does not say that individual persons are equal one to another, provided that “equal” were to mean “sameness”. The above documents show that race and discrimination by race can never be the criteria for such “un-sameness”.
As it is, “race” is a 19th Century fiction anyway.
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John Lukacs, who has made a career out of claiming there is some substantial difference between nationalism and patriotism, has nonetheless defended nativism. In fact, Lukacs has stated that a patriot is more likely to be a nativist than is a nationalist. Lukacs notes that most of the infamous “nationalists” in history are not even natives to the nations they claim (falsely) to champion. Napoleon wasn’t from France, Hitler not from Germany, Stalin not a native of Russia.
In point of fact, the definition of nationalism that Purcell uses here is much more applicable to the alleged victims of an alleged American nationalism than to the historic Anglo-Celtic American population. Any person who is alive saw the nationalism of the massive illegal alien population on display in the last two years. Black nationalism was on display in the Jena Six case. Then of course there is the nationalism of those attacking Ron Paul for being opposed to using American blood and treasure to fight a series of wars in the Middle East for un-American reasons.
In point of fact, what we should be discussing is the rise of primitive amoral tribalism, which pretty much describes what is going on. After all, the liberal nationalism of the 19th century that certain Catholic wackos object to so much bears no resemblance to Purcell’s definition. Whereas the primitive amoral tribalism that we actually see and experience with our “Lying Eyes” is the real threat we face.
As John Lukacs has argued, it is the Modern Age that is our most tangible historic heritage, and part of that is what Lukacs calls the “limited immortality” of the nation-state. It should be clear to all who have been reading Taki’s website that a certain kind of Catholic intellectual rejects Lukacs’ view, in favor of a rejection of the Modern Age and its Protestant basis. That makes them as much an enemy as the savages inside the gates.
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Pasteurization, Rabies Vaccines, Doppler Shifts, Relation between Magnetism and Electricity - all these are just inventions of the 19th century. Fictions of the 19th Century! They’re nonsense!
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“For examples, a Polish immigrant I know is a truck driver. A Hungarian immigrant is a waitress. A Czech immigrant is a waiter, so is his wife. None of them had to learn English here, that language was taught in their schools from an early age. Your comments reveal your ignorance on the matter.”
Posted by Andrew Capp on Nov 16, 2007.
When my landlord turned his apartment building into a coop in 1982, he used Polish workers over here on visas to do the plaster work and painting. They worked hard, did not piss on the sidewalks, nor steal auto parts from cars, nor play radios loud nor rob people. When they were finished, I opened a bottle of wine and we drank it like gentlemen. As for “Your comments reveal your ignorance on the matter,” what is the point of your belligerence?
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Let me say my last writeback differently. If I understand Boyd Cathey aright, he is arguing that
i. there are differences between the “races”
ii. AND such differences make no difference in how we treat people.
Though Boyd Cathey starts with a wrong premise (#i.), he and I comes out at the same place. Boyd Cathey, in other words, is saying that the obligation of charity renders nugatory #i. This makes Boyd Cathey a man of charity, a good Catholic, and a Christian gentleman. Our point of clash then would be that some men are not as charitable as he, and do evil things and justify their evil on #i.
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Sid--It does NOT make them heretics to state that there
are differences biologically between races. You are totally
off base to state “differences = discrimination.” My
ORIGINAL MESSAGE, WHICH YOU HAVE ALTERED IN YOUR WRITE
BACK DID NOT INCLUDE this: “[i.e., discrimination]” after the
word differences. Sid, you are being a bit dishonest
by altering my message and pretending that it is what
I wrote, when, as anyone can see who can read back, it
most certainly IS NOT what I wrote.
Here is the exact passage WITHOUT YOUR ALTERATION:
“If Philippe Rushton or Jared Taylor should suggest that
DNA and IQ testing indicates “differences” biologically
that does not in any way make them “Brown” or, for that
matter, “Stormfronters.” And for anyone to infer such
epithets is only worthy of a Morris Dees or other trendy
Leftie.”
To an increasing degree, DNA and IQ testing indicate
“differences” between the races; as I explained, it is
neither against Church teaching to state this, nor is is
it or should it be proscribed, as you apparently would
like to do.
The documents you cite all condemn discrimination and
hatred based on race; they say absolutely nothing about
biological differences. Period. Full stop, as you are
wont to say.
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Sid---I would certainly say that as Christians we have
an obligation to express charity towards other
men, irrespective of race or national origin. However,
we have, I believe, a primary obligation towards our
own family (first level), then our broader (and historic) community,
be that a state or nation (second level). By the same token, I can
take justifiable pride in my traditions, my state and
region, and...my race, as well. In fact, I should love
and defend them all---I just can’t turn them into my univocal
“god.” There is only ONE God, and He is a jealous God.
I cannot substiture “race” or “nation” or whatever in
His place; but, again, I CAN and should develop a healty
love for and pride in who I am, my family,my heritage, my culture,
my traditions, and, and yes, my race. And I should
defend these things against those who would attack them
or attempt to destroy them.
I recognize that it’s a fine line, sometimes.
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“Still less is it the expression of the genius of some sort of Anglo-Saxon race, or Anglo-Celtic race, as the Southerners like to put it.”
?!?! So, America as-it-is could have been created by Germans, Italians or Japanese? I don’t think so. It was created by Anglo-Saxons, with some influence by us Anglo-Celts, and it could only have been created by them.
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Boyd D. Cathey wrote: “Sid...I really wish you would not a priori label everyone you disagree with as a “Brown” or a “Stormfronter.” I find such use of labels disingenuous. One can maintain that racial differences actually are real and palpable, without being labeled (by you) as a “racist” or “Stormfronter.” Such a tactic should really be beneath you and perverts honest discussion on these threads. Just the past Sunday (Nov. 11), for instance The (Raleigh) NEWS AND OBSERVER ran a front-page article, taken from THE NEW YORK TIMES, stating what most folks already know: that racial differences are not just skin deep; that there are indeed distinguishable, inheritable traits. Now, normally, I would not quote The NYT...but that “the old grey lady” seems a bit worried about the irrepressible biological facts of race, should say something to anyone who can read. Because someone states that there are biological DIFFERENCES or that races are “not equal” (that is, not the same) in certain characteristics, it does not follow tbat “hatred” or “racism” are then necessary by-products. To recognize difference is not to, ipso facto, express hatred....rather it should be a motive to celebrate the variety of creation. Lastly, as Catholic I desire the salvation of all mankind, whether white, yellow, red, brown, or black. I believe that all men have souls. But by the same token, none of us is judged on how others act or think; we are judged on how we match up to our own potential, in God’s eyes. Egalitarianism the Church has condemned repeatedly. The Church has never taught biological egalitarianism, nor has any pope so taught (as pope). They may have or may have had personal opinions, but biological differences are outside the scope of theology and church doctrine. If Philippe Rushton or Jared Taylor should suggest that DNA and IQ testing indicates “differences” biologically that does not in any way make them “Brown” or, for that matter, “Stormfronters.” And for anyone to infer such epithets is only worthy of a Morris Dees or other trendy Leftie. We need to regain, it seems to me, a balance on these topics, and stop parroting the “p.c.” Left, and attempting to “enforce” a “p.c.” wall on these threads. Sadly, some even on the “Paleo” Right appeared to be infected, and their desires parallel the worse excommunicatory excesses of Dees and others like him. We need to avoid such labeling...it is a poor excuse for thinking and engaging in real discussion.”
Dr. Cathey,
Thank you so much for writing this. Many of us here are becoming so tired of Sid’s relentless hijacking of threads with irrelevant rants. He reminds me of my 12 year old nephew who, not getting his way, wants to ruin the experience for everyone else.
Please do not back down from Sid’s base defenses of political correctness. We need honest men like you to set the record straight.
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“Still less is it the expression of the genius of some sort of Anglo-Saxon race, or Anglo-Celtic race, as the Southerners like to put it.” - Purcell
Both Russell Kirk and Richard M. Weaver thought this. I suppose Purcell, like David Frum, thinks they should be excommunicated from the “conservative” movement for having un-PC thoughts.
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“i noticed that the tone of civility coarsened after the concept of race was introduced.” (HnS King)
Indeed. “Browns?” Let’s be perfectly clear about something; there is no cultural traditionalism that is race-blind. The only way one can become race-blind is to become blinded by an ideology. All others reognize that all men are no more alike than all dogs are alike. This is just commonsense realism. It is what is experienced when in the world with eyes open, and critical faculties engaged. It is touching and sad to read Dr. Cathey’s patient but wasted efforts on behalf of Mr. Cundiff. Why plead with such people to be civil, when it is precisely PC enforcement and incivility that he is pursuing?
If commonsense realism is to be labeled “brownism” on this site then turnabout is fair play. Nominal “conservative” race-deniers who attack the commonsense recognition of the importance of same should be labeled “pinks.” (Not “pinkos,” but there is some crossover.)Pinks are a deeply confused lot who recognize alot of important rightist themes, but who have accepted the fundamental guiding principle of liberalism - the principle of equvalence. Liberalism seeks to make equivalence between and among a range of things that are fundamentally inequivalent, but especially race. It is the refusal to make distintions, and the demand that one be utterly indiscriminate. Pinks make this demand in at least this one area. There - I’m happy now. If one side is to be labeled, so should be the other. “Liberalism” is of course the fundamental charge, but is perhaps too vague and ill-defined to have much sting, or so it seems.
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The real issue is Bush’s undeclared war on the middle class. It is one success to which Bush is not eager to claim. The arguments over patriotism and culture obscure the middle class’s struggle to preserve a dignified way of life.
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Some folks need to look up “discriminate” in the dictionary. When I say an apple is an apple and an orange an orange, I discriminate. If Boyd Cathey means that “to discriminate” doesn’t justify a meaning “to disadvantage”, he is correct.
Still, the authoritative Church documents quoted by me are using “discrimination” in the sense of “to disadvantage”. What the Holy Father and the Sacred Council clearly said I have posted for all the read and boldfaced. In particular:
No foundation [and that means any foundation, including putative “differences” in the “races"] therefore remains for any theory [e.g.racialism] or practice [e.g. slavery, Jim Crow, quotas, restrictions] that leads to discrimination between man and man or people and people, so far as their human dignity and the rights flowing from it are concerned.
Our Browns regrettably use “difference” and “discriminate” as an imperative to disadvantaging someone “as far as their human dignity and the rights flowing from it are concerned. (To be clear, Boyd Cathey certainly is not saying what such Browns are saying)
And again: “Race” is a 19th Century fiction, a fantasy of Arthur de Gobineau. It has no scientific basis. Skin color and eye color have nothing to do with anything important, or even trivial, about a human being. If the Church hasn’t said anything about biological equality or difference (find me an authoritative Church document that says otherwise!), it’s because the Church recognizes that such putative equality or inequality isn’t important, and certainly isn’t a basis for discrimination, as the document which I have quoted clearly say.
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Good essay.
As for the comments: Another mini-battle over race and racialism. Oy! How about you guys, racialists and anti-racialists, a.) put essays up for publication by Taki, demonstrating your point in a longer, more articulate format or b.) take the discussion somewhere else (somewhere where I can observe the lines of thought)where this issue can stand alone and be discussed civily by all interested parties.
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I concur with TS Eliot. I have read Isaac\’s book and he presents overwhelming evidence that the Greek and Romans invented the concept of race. I recommend it to everyone. Sid, $50 says that you have not even read Isaac\’s book.
BTW, Sid Cundiff = Andrew Capp. He uses KGB / SPLC tactics, coming here and intimidating people by hijacking the thread and telling them that if they do not accept the neocon \"race does not exist\” line, then they are browns / neonazis / fascists.
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Sid,
There is a Christian idea, which may be relevant to your argument, and which was immensely influential in (at least) the late medieval and early modern periods: every human is equal before God. This idea had powerful implications, because it meant that in the last judgment everybody would be evaluated by the same rules. The person’s ethnicity made no difference, neither did wealth, social position or personal connections. The Pope and the poorest laborer would have to answer the same questions, and they would be judged by the same laws.
The fact that God regarded all humans as equal implied that we humans have to do the same. I.e., we cannot treat anybody as a lesser breed. I’m currently trying to figure out whether this idea had something to do with the disappearance of slavery from western Europe between the 11th and 15th centuries.
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http://www.amazon.com/Invention-Racism-Classical-Antiquity/dp/0691125988/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195257374&sr=1-1
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Sorry you had to appear with your usual bile and mar Frank’s excellent essay. This time with falsely quoting Vatican documents
T’was a joke.
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I concur with T.S. Eliot.
He was Church of England and believed in eugenics. As a protestant, do I have to consider him unchurched for that second part?
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Now to the question, With whom is charity to begin? I certainly have sympathy with Boyd Cathey’s view of charity beginning at home, if not agreement. I have as much said so myself in my calling my country Piedmont NC, extending outward with circles of slightly less affection until I reach the border of Dixie.
The New Testament is also an authoritative Catholic Church document. It has some teachings which are, for me, “hard sayings”. With Whom (upper case) charity is to begin first is stated bluntly in the logon found in Luke 14: 26-27. The second place where charity is to begin, or to continue, is discussed in the parable found in Luke 10: 29-37.
To rip Bible verses out of context, so beloved by Reformational and Counter-Reformational polemics, is to do them violence. To capture the context and the co-text, I recommend to readers consequently to read the entire “Greater Lucan Insertion” of Luke 9:51-19:46, our Lord’s journey to the holy city, almost half of the gospel, almost all the pericopes found only in Luke. Contrast the logon cited to its other version, Matthew 10:37-39, where the logon is softened a bit. Luke-Acts (it is one work) has Luke’s “Replacement Theme”, i.e., Christianity replacing gradually Judaism, set in the form of a journey, beginning in a very Jewish setting in Luke 1, and ending at the very end of Acts in Rome (interesting place to end, eh?). Matthew has a “Fulfillment Theme”, Christianity fulfills the Jewish faith. (John, it seems to me, has a “Transformation Theme”, with Judaism as a proto-Christianity that our Lord transforms. Mark has more urgent issues than these particular themes, he writing to a church under fire).
With this context and co-text recovered, I still find the logon and the parable disturbing. The logon surely shocked the original audience, in a culture with so much emphasis on family and tribe. To recover how the original audience heard the parable, just replace “The Good Samaritan” with someone you utter despise, as Our Lord’s Jewish audience did the Samaritans. For some sad souls who writeback it would be “The Good Negro” who finds a Klansman beat up on the side of the Road. For some, it is “The Good Catholic” who finds an Orangeman (or vice versa). For many, it’s “The Good Neocon”. For me, I suppose it would be the “Good Gestapo Agent”. Seen this way, the parable, disturbing enough, demands a certain kind of obedience against our inclination, as does the logon. Yet not to find the Gospel disturbing is not to recognize one’s need for Grace. This obedience to the Gospel’s demands and the cost of discipleship, however difficult, ought be good enough for us. This life is indeed the time not of comfortable ideas, “warm fuzzies”, or entertainment, but of cross-bearing.
Mr Purcell himself has a broad definition of where charity is to begin. Behind him is a tradition.
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Social Gospel Protestant (a kind of thin beer Calvinism)
Social gospel is no beer and essentially Arian. Besides, Calvinism tends toward localism and decentralization. SC, like the Catholic Social Teaching it clones, seeks managerialism and redistribution.
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Kari Konkola beat me to the point! I thank her.
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I can either choose to worship God as the God-Man Jesus himself instructed and commanded us to do as we daily renew the Covenant, or, I can worship God with bloody rags.
Excellent! I am a sinner. All I have are dirty rags. Yet I have hope. Christ comes as a mediator as a substitute for man in paying the penalty of for covenant-breaking (passive obedience) and as a new covenant head, the second Adam, whose keeping of the covenant (active obedience) is imputed to those in him as Adam’s would have been had he kept the covenant.
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By ‘nationalism’… I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty than that of advancing its interests. Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.
* George Orwell, Essay: Notes on Nationalism 1945
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Convert to the true Faith and be revivified and receive life.
Rome has a faith that universal in name. We have the faith that is catholic in truth. Because we belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures us of eternal life and makes us wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.
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To delate Jesus Himself to the Inquisition for the heresy of universalism is breathtaking…
To affirm the Universal Brotherhood of Man and the Universal Fatherhood of God is ethical universalism. That’s what I’m talking about when I say that Rome might as well be the Fourth International.
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There are those who refuse to worship images. They say Satan was the first: he refused to bow before the Word of God incarnate in God’s created image, the divine manhood of Christ
They make images out of the imagination and ascribe mysticism to them. Yet Moses didn’t make a painting, he wrote a book. The apostles made no icons; they wrote letters. Regardless of the motives, iconoclasts are right on this point.
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Mine was founded by Washington, Jefferson, and Patrick Henry.
Anti-Catholic free masons created a masterpiece that Rome could not equal. Imagine that!
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Somehow I doubt the original Peter Ramus was anywhere near as humorous as the one we have with us today!
Quaecumque ab Aristotele dicta sunt, commentitia sunt.
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“If a community, or a section, or a race, or an age, is groaning under industrialism, and well aware that it is an evil dispensation, it must find the way to throw it off. To think that this cannot be done is pusillanimous. And if the whole community, section, race or age thinks it cannot be done, then it has simply lost its political genius and doomed itself to impotence.”
- “Introduction: Statement of Principles,” _I’ll Take My Stand_.
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And surely the agents of Israel must recognize the kind of conservatism Taki represents as adverse to their interests. What better way to discredit it than to flood his site with white supremacist comment?
The Israelis are just running dog lackeys of Scottish Presbyterians and Freemasons plotting to overthrow hierarchical society, destroy the Latin Mass and name Ian Paisley pope. A Guadalupe statue in an illegal alien’s window box told me so.
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kill a raghead for Jesus and Israel crowd
Those who shouted “Paris is worth a Mass” and “kill a Zwinglian for throne and altar” set the precedent.
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As it is, “race” is a 19th Century fiction anyway.
I’ll remind you, Sid, that you claimed Calvinism is not the same as, yet is still worse than, antisemitism.
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“I prefer the old Adam of strife and carnage to the new Prometheus of peace and human rights. Better a world torn apart by Husseins and Qaddafis, better a war to the knife between the PLO and the Likud Party, between Zulus and Afrikaaners, than a world run by George Balls and Dag Hammarskjölds, because a world made safe for democracy is a world in which no one dares to raise his voice for fear that mommy will put you away some place where you can be reeducated.”
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it is “The Good Catholic” who finds an Orangeman
I am a loyal protestant
from Belfast town I come
a story I will tell to you
about these rebel scum
they’ve tried for many years
with gun and bomb to wear us down
but we always will be faithful
to the red hand and the crown
whenever I was just a child
upon my mothers knee
she taught me told me
i must always fight to keep my liberty
the words and memory still come back
right to this very day
for freedom now is threatened
by the rebel IRA
and when at last these evil men
have been brought to their knees
we’ll drink a toast to ulster
and her loyal six counties
and to all loyalist prisoners,
God’s blessing on them be
to all those loyal brethren
grateful thanks from you and me.
(Mo, I’m not an Orangeman, but neither is Sid a conservative.)
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As many have noted, Sid’s “fiction” of race has spawned over 200,000 black organizations in the US, and the largest Mestizo organization is La Raza ("the race").
White libertarians like Sid amaze me. They stick their heads in the sand repeating thousands of times “race doesn’t exist.” Meanwhile, the rest of the world, all non-whites, organize along racial lines.
FYI - I am not arguing for any time of “hate” or “violence.” Politically, I am a paleoconservative, and I deplore nazis. I am just proud of and support my race, The White Race, and I am not going to deny this fact to please the PC crowd.
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“Anti-Catholic free masons created a masterpiece that Rome could not equal. Imagine that!”
Washington was not anti-Catholic and it is most probable he converted before dying.
By the way, have you heard about the state of Maryland?
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Washington was not anti-Catholic and it is most probable he converted before dying.
Amazing how that “probably” happens.
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As usual sneaky Mr. Ramus diverts the conversation with non sequiturs when faced with inconvenient points.
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“Those who shouted “Paris is worth a Mass” and “kill a Zwinglian for throne and altar” set the precedent.” - Peter Ramus
“Paris is worth a Mass” was allegedly said (not shouted) by King Henry IV of France when he made his final reversion to the Catholic Church in order to restore peace to his kingdom. His observation led to peace after a long period of war and was the exact opposite of a slogan of religious fanatics. As for the killing of Zwinglians for throne and altar, who was pushing that?
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FYI - there is a world of difference between racialists and neonazis.
Paleoconservatives like Sam Francis and racialists like Jared Taylor have tried to create a broad coalition of paleoconservatives, conservatives, libertarians, Christians and Jews, and racialists to support the West and keep off the path of self-destruction. All other races organize and support their own interests along racial lines. If whites do not start doing this, then the white race is doomed.
Neonazis (like Duke and Black) are furious that Francis and Taylor included Jews in their coalition, and have denounced them.
These two groups really do not get along.
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I have not heard that General Washington joined the Church before he died. I always assumed he did so afterwards.
I have imbibed a good bit of Kirk and Weaver in my day, along with a good bit else. I don’t imagine that either would “excommunicate” me over a disagreement about the matter of race. Nor would I wish to part company with either over any such difference. But if you see things differently from one of the racialists who hang out here, you are accused of being a commissar of political correctness, a David Frum — if not a Jew oneself, then a tool of the Jews.
This is truly tiresome, is it not?
And by the way, or not so by the way, surely good men have felt true patriotism toward a multinational state such as the Austrian Empire, and a deep personal loyalty to the dynasty ruling over it. Indeed, one can feel it even in retrospect, and when one’s own ancestry came from elsewhere entirely.
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To celebrate Orange hate as our village Calvinist, or any IRA member celebrating his hate, is spittle in the face of Christ. The IRA never has claimed sola scriptura. Mr. Ramus does. Let us be charitable and assume the logon and the parable that I referenced, the very words of Our Lord,are not in his scriptura. Sad.
Thank Grace (operating and cooperating) that the Peter Ramuses in Northern Ireland have made peace. Those who oppose that peace, Orange or Emerald, are spittle in the face of Peter Ramus hero, Ian Paisley, and in the face of Gerry Adams. Those two are now “patriots, not haters”.
Thanks again to Mr. Purcell.
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As for the killing of Zwinglians for throne and altar, who was pushing that?
Your side has forgotten August 24, 1572.
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I have not heard that General Washington joined the Church before he died.
Allegedly Darwin converted on his deathbed. Supposedly Sam Francis poped before he croaked, even though he had a Calvinist funeral. Who knows?
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are spittle in the face of Peter Ramus hero, Ian Paisley
My colors are neither orange nor paisley. I oppose terrorism in the name of superstition. That includes death in the name in the Koran, Mariology and Goddess Equality.
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Mr. Purcell, I can sum up your long article with one phrase. Carl Rove stood in front of an Hispanic racist organization and said, <i>"America is a nation of diversity”.
Well, a nation is defined as having “common heritage”, common language, common culture.
Well, a “nation of diversity”, Mr. Purcell is an Oxymoron. America is NOT a nation, it’s a country--just a place on a map! It says on its currency it is a “Novus Ordo”. Well, a novus ordo is a humanistic, masonic creation--it is NOT created by God! America is Nihilist since it is against the Old Order.
Loyalty to Nihilism?
Second, being a “patriot” requires the virtue of “loyalty”. Mr. Purcell, it seems that you can’t understand the modality of this virtue for “Loyalty” can ONLY have ONE object!!!! As Jesus said, “You can only serve ONE master; you will either love the one and HATE the other”. You can NOT serve two masters Mr. Purcell. You are trying to build a castle out of dog crap. Dog Crap is dog crap despite it being formed into a castle and your “love of America” is just that----dog crap.
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I am a European and loyal to my original European tribe--not to some “proposition” that many so-called Americans have dropped and abandoned!!!!
To say that I am the same as an African, or a Chinaman is absolutely ludicrious but that is exactly what the American proposition entails---making a European the same as an African or a Chinaman---how ridiculous is that!
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America is a modernist heresy---and should be condemned along with all other modernist heresies!
America delenda est!
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I am an American; to say that I am exactly the same as another American, even a twin, if I had one, would also be ludicrous. Delenda est? To wish for the destruction of one’s native land because of its racial impurities does not seem to me to be the last word in loyalty. To be sure there is only One who demands the ultimate loyalty, but One by Whom and in Whom all lesser loyalties are ordered. And this idolatry of race does appear, from any but an atheistic point of view, disordered.
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America is a modernist heresy---and should be condemned
Do you agree with the neoconservatives that America is a proposition nation, then? Or, like most Catholics, do you merely resent the Anglo tradition of civility, thrift and decorum?
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“Or, like most Catholics, do you merely resent the Anglo tradition of civility, thrift and decorum?”
More nonsense from Ramus, mixing apples and pears.
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Frank,
“What better way to discredit it than to flood his site with white supremacist comment?”
Sadly, the racialists who post here aren’t Abe Foxman plants. Sites like this do attract lonely souls who blame their estrangement and personal misfortune on the Other, and use the anonymous-posting policy to vent opinions that they otherwise must suppress. In a way, Taki is providing a social service for a range of personality disorders.
Can you imagine what life would be like for WLindsayWheeler, Peter Ramus and the looneys that use phrases for names without this outlet for their unhealthy obsessions?
The least we can do is endure their presence and hope they find some solace in our patience. November is a time to remember; All Saints, All Souls and Thanksgiving call us to do so with gratitude.
Read some of these rants and be grateful that you are not similiarly afflicted.
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Sadly, the racialists who post here aren’t Abe Foxman plants...Can you imagine what life would be like for… Peter Ramus
I’m Old Right, as in Midwestern isolationist, not racialist or white nationalist, as I’ve said several times before. My defense of religious orthodoxy is in reaction to the constant superstitious Latin Mass fetishism on this site.
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“Your side has forgotten August 24, 1572.” - Peter Ramus
The Huegenots were Calvinist, not Zwinglian.
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The Huegenots were Calvinist, not Zwinglian.
They were essentially the same people. The labels were applied by critics. Then and now, we prefer to be called “Reformed,” since we not slavish followers of one man. Anyway, Ramus and some others were labeled Zwinglians because of their low view of the Eucharist. Anyway, they are martyrs and the massacre is sort of a bloody shirt thing.
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Frank Purcell is a left-wing promoter of \"diversity.\" His article reads like something written by Jessie Jackson or La Raza. Heaven forbid that one be proud of his European ancestry! No, let\’s just all wear native American and Aztlan costumes and worship the sitting bull.
All non-whites organize along racial lines to promote their own betterment. If whites do not do the same, whites are doomed. It\’s as if the other races are using machine guns, and the whites have water guns.
I\’m not a racialist. I am a Burkean conservative and a Christian. But I do see the writing on the wall. Whites need to promote what is in their own interest before it\’s too late.
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As a protestant, do I have to consider him unchurched for that second part?
To exist as a Church, it is necessary that it preserved Apostolic Succession and The Eucharist.
Mr. Ramus. You do not belong to a Church.
As it is the case you do not belong to a Church (you belong to a community of believers) you can not unchurch anyone, Mr. Ramus
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Euro,
“But I do see the writing on the wall.”
I bet you do.
Modern life has lead to fragmented personalities like yours, grasping for some sense of meaning, a meaning once provided by faith, community and shared cultural precepts. I don’t think it a reach to say that a post-Christian consumerist society made up of autonomous individuals makes for a proliferation of mental illnesses.
You are so alienated, you can’t even use your real name. Instead, you cling to an ethnic and racial identity to give your life meaning. Yet, you know deep down there has to be more. There is. But it is not to be found by reducing your purported Christian faith to a political program or as an identifier on the internet.
As so many posts here prove, the madness that marks modernity is not confined only to; Cultural Marxists, the new Jacobins at Neo-Con Central, or the Libertarian school for applied autism. It is found crippling anyone who seeks salvation in ideology.
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We have the faith that is catholic...
Heh. Can’t even come-up with your own name.
I do recognise you had to ignore, Ramus,(pun intended) the actual words of Christ about eating his body and blood due to your protestant ideology.
The plain fact is you sola scriptura types are the most habitually opposed to the actual words of Jesus.
The apostles made no icons; they wrote letters.
St. Luke didn’t paint the Theotokos in several different poses?
Regardless of the motives, iconoclasts are right on this point.
Really?
Thence will I give orders, and will speak to thee over the propitiatory, and from the midst of the two cherubims, which shall be upon the ark of the testimony, all things which I will command the children of Israel by thee.
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Peter Ramus,
I’m Old Right, as in Midwestern isolationist...”
I think you’re just isolated.
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“Burkean Conservative” is neither. Burke opposed slavery, the slave trade, and thought human rights were for everyone and English rights were for all under the King’s reign. Want proof? Go read his “Code” for the West Indian Negroes for yourselves. He never uses the word race. His Code had the purpose of eliminating slavery and granting to Negroes the same rights as Englishmen. In other writings, he never uses “race” in the 19th Century meaning. How could he? He lived in the 18th Century. The later a meaning is fictive anyway.
And I’m ready if our Stormfronter does his broken record lies on Burke again.
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“Conciliarism has added to this confusion, denying that the Catholic Church has any right given her by her Divine Founder and Invisible Head Himself to be recognized by each civil state as its true religion or that the civil state has an obligation to help to foster those conditions wherein its citizens can better sanctify and thus save their immortal souls as members of the Catholic Church. As noted two days ago in Cut From the Same Cloth, the heresy of Americanism helped to pave the way for conciliarism, bifurcating a Catholic’s spiritual and temporal obligations, making it appear as though everything about the modern civil state, including the government of the United States of America, was perfectly compatible with the Catholic Faith. This has produced one accommodation after another to the needs of various career politicians as various evils have been enshrined under cover of law and promoted in every aspect of popular culture. The current crop of pro-abortion Catholics of both major political parties in the United States of America is merely the continuation of the long, long Americanist tradition of subordinating the Faith to the needs of this or that secular “savior.” fr: http://www.christorchaos.com/JustPlainTheateroftheAbsurd.htm
‘Americanism’ is a heresy! No good traditional Catholic or Orthodox for that matter can faithfully uphold the “propositions” of America to begin with. I was born here without my consent. America is Plato’s Cave, And I have just awakened and saw the light. America is a Lie; All of it! Everything about America.
Thomas Jefferson responding to a letter, wrote, “the introduction of the new principle of representative democracy has rendered useless almost everything written before on the structure of government; and, in a great measure, relieves our regret, if the political writings of Aristotle or of any other ancient, have been lost, or are unfaithfully rendered or explained to us.”
The Humanist Thomas Jefferson rejects the common European heritage of Greece and Rome! The FFofA did NOT institute a true republic but a psuedo republic. A psuedo republic for a psuedo country. They purposely rejected the heritage and civilization of Traditional Europe! For that----America delenda est! America is Nihilist and anything Nihilist destroys itself anyway! America is dying and is dead. There is NO such thing as a Novus Ordo Secularum!
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Frank Purcell is a left-wing promoter of \"diversity.\" His article reads like something written by Jessie Jackson or La Raza. Heaven forbid that one be proud of his European ancestry! No, let\’s just all wear native American and Aztlan costumes and worship the sitting bull.
I am proud enough of my European ancestry to use my own name, which some histories trace to one Diego Rodriguez Porcel of Castille. Granted, this might be one claim to membership in la Raza, were he not himself descended from a Frank called Karl the Great, as were other lines of my Purcell ancestry.
I do not know Mr. Jackson, who is reputed to be an anti-Semite. Is that the alleged connection? I admit that I once met a (great?) granddaughter of Sitting Bull, but she did not worship the man, at least as far as I know.
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Although Burke thought slavery was bad for the British Empire and wanted to end it, BURKE WAS NOT A RACE DENIER.
There are hundreds of sentences (like “Be it enacted, that no Black or European Factor or Trader into the interiour country....") where Burke makes distinctions based upon race.
And Burke (like Calhoun, Lincon, and Jefferson Davis) thought that if freed, slaves should return to Africa, the East Indies, or other country of origin.
Burke on Deporting Skilled Negroes from London: “When his apprenticeship is finished, the Lord Mayor of London is hereby authorized and directed to receive the said Negro from his master, and to transmit him to the island, from which he came in the West Indies, to be there as a free Negro; subject, however, to the direction of the Protector of Negroes, relatively to his behaviour and employment.”
Or what about....
“And be it enacted, that if any free Negro hath been twice convicted for any of the said misdemeanors, and is judged by the said Protector of Negroes, calling to his assistance two justices of the Peace, to be incorrigibly idle, dissolute and vicious, it shall be lawful, by the order of the said Protector and two justices of Peace, to sell the said free Negro into slavery: the purchase-money to be paid to the person so remanded into servitude, or kept in hand by the Protector and Governour for the benefit of his family.” - Edmund Burke, Sketch of a Negro Code, 1780
“ And be it enacted, that no blows or stripes, exceeding thirteen, shall be inflicted for one offence upon any Negro, without the order of one of His Majesty’s Justices of Peace.” - Edmund Burke, Sketch of a Negro Code, 1780
“And be it enacted, that the Minister shall have power to punish any Negro for disorderly conduct during divine Service, by a punishment not exceeding [ten] blows, to be given in one day, and for one offence.” - Edmund Burke, Sketch of a Negro Code, 1780<i>
Burke no where says “race does not exist,” and his quotes show that he does make distinctions between whites and blacks.
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Sid can live in make-believe land, but the vast majority of historians now accept the view that the Greeks and Romans invented the concept of race.
Read Benjamin Isaac’s The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity.
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Kevin,
Although I believe in the importance of race and that each race, including whites, should protect its own racial interests, this is not all I care about. I am a Christian and attend church services weekly.
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“Race does not exist.” - David Frumm, National Review, 2003
I too am a Christian and believe in the importance of race.