To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost that claims that only the Gospel can provide a remedy for Racism. This appeared in Heidelblog.
I agree with everything in this article until we get to the last paragraph. That is because the last paragraph, in conjunction with the title of the article, implies that society might as well not address racism. After all, we have a pluralistic society with an increasing number of unbelievers while Clark claims that only the Gospel can eliminate racism. For Clark writes:
Only the gospel changes hearts. Only the gospel brings peace. Everything else we do and say to address sin only makes things worse.
Now it is obvious that Clark was writing about what pertains to the Church, he doesn't mention society. But there is even a problem with what Clark claims in that last paragraph. For that last paragraph seems not to be supported by history. We see that both activism by a variety of groups and laws did help in alleviating some racism while many conservative Christians opposed those efforts. In addition, many Christians defended slavery back when it was legal. Prominent Christians like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield both owned slaves and defended slavery.
Even now, 81% of Evangelicals supported Donald Trump for President despite his appeal to White Supremacists and his racist remarks such as his descriptions of Mexicans and his calling some of the White Supremacists who took part in the Charlottesville protests 'fine people.' Certainly, if those Trump supporting Evangelicals took Clark's above article to heart, they should experience a change in heart regarding racism for most of his article is very good. But any racist views on their part and history show that Clark overstated his case in the last paragraph.
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April 13
To Bradley Birzer and his blogpost on how America’s imperial moments were only started by progressives. That appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.
It is good to read the Birzer spoke against empires and imperialism. That a nation cannot maintain both an empire and a republic was an observation made by the American non-conservative historian Chalmers Johnson. He made that observation about the Roman Empire and the British Empire and that sooner or later, a nation has to decide between the two.
But it is puzzling when Birzer says the following:
Just how much imperialism is in the DNA—so to write—of the American character?
or
Whether Prof. Nugent is correct or not in believing that Americans had always been expansionistic, America had certainly experienced at least one devastating and blatantly imperial moment prior to the 1890s—in the Mexican War, 1846-1848.With the latter quote, we should note the interchangeable use of the terms 'expansionistic' and 'imperial moment.' For what we should note is that our founding father saw America as an empire from the very beginning. George Washington referred to America as an 'infant empire' (see http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/letter-to-marquis-de-lafayette-5/ ). Thomas Jefferson spoke of America being an 'empire of liberty' that puts a check on Britain's Canada (see https://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/empire-liberty-quotation ).
Now that Birzer may not have been aware of how some of our founding fathers referred to America as a budding empire is not disturbing. What is disturbing is that Birzer, could not see the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans from the land for an expansionist America as well as plans to expand the territories where slavery is allowed as providing other examples of American imperialism. It seems that, according to Birzer, unless America is taking land from an established European-based nation, America is not being imperialistic when it takes land from Native Americans and extends the use of slavery. And though that slavery was halted did not take away from the fact that American expansionism costed Native Americans their land, culture, and way of life. Somehow, taking such land means America was taking what belonged to it in the first place.
Of course by denying that the expansion of America which came through taking land from Native Americans was imperialistic, Birzer could use a charade that only Progressives start empires. And as a result, Birzer illogically claims that there never has and never will exist a 'humane progressivism.' His claim is illogical seeing how empire has been a part of America, not just progressivism, from the beginning and that such a claim for the future cannot be proven by example as Birzer set out to do. Also we might question Birzer as to the roots of America's current empire. Were progressives the only ones who established our current situation? And we might also ask Birzer about his definition of 'progressive.' After all, it was the progressive Woodrow Wilson who put the Socialist Eugene Debs in jail because he opposed America's entry into WW I. Now if Birzer doesn't see Debs as a progressive, what does he see him as?
In any case, Birzer's intentions are obvious. His intentions are to scapegoat progressives for the ugliness of America's past so that conservatives could rhetorically ask: Can there be any good coming from progressives? The answer that is obvious to Birzer would give conservatives permission to rule over progressives rather than share power with them. And yet, since imperialism is in America's DNA, which means that it is not unique to progressives, such a position held by conservatives would be delusional and would cast such conservatives into the role of the Pharisee from the parable of the two men praying.
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April 17
To Edwin Benson and his blogpost describing how well-meaning progressives still share the same ideological faults as power hungry progressives. This article was posted in the Imaginative Conservative.
One problem with Benson's article is that it still regards even the nice and sincere progressives as having little to nothing to teach traditionalists/conservatives while having everything to learn from them. And that makes any rule by traditionalists/conservatives into a tyranny of the past. That is because for the most part, conservatives/traditionalists view the present with its problems and solutions solely in terms of the past. And the problem with that is not that conservatives/traditionalists look to the past for understanding the present and helping in providing solutions per se. The problem is with how conservatives/traditionalists look to the past; it is exclusively..
Another problem with Benson's article is that the progressive's reliance on the state is stated without qualification or acknowledgment that conservatives rely heavily on the state as well. In terms of national defense, I see no conservatives who are advocating the replacing of our standing armies and air force with militias. And yet, according to our founding fathers, government's reliance on militias, which were put under the command of the President, btw, was the real hedge against federal tyranny. It was not the right to bear arms that was to protect us from federal tyranny.
But the conservative complaint is that there should be no reliance on the government outside of national defense and the prosecuting of criminals. To do so was to rely on the state rather than on God even though God ordained the leaders of the state (See Romans 13). The problem with the conservative approach here is that the definition of the state is implied and never spelled out. What if the state is a working democracy? Would reliance on such a state to provide protection from poverty or exploitation be wrong? Wasn't the real issue between socialists and capitalists not the reliance on the state per se but who had control of the state? After all, Karl Marx happily noted how some of the states in the USA allowed for the election of non-landowners. He described that the ideal abolition of private property because it consisted of freeing the state from the control of those who own private property. And the same applies to the abolition of religion. Thus, Marx's version of the abolition of religion and the abolition of private property assumed both religion and private property to exist.
As a leftist, one of the same criticisms I have of conservatives is one I also have of progressives. Both believe in elite-centered rule. Thus, their conflict is over which elites should rule. And for religiously conservative Christians, the ruling elites should be from the Church. This points to a possibility that the objections religiously conservative Christians have to progressives is really caused by a turf war over who is in charge of society.
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