March 9
To Barbara J. Elliot and her article on how Ronald Reagan stood up to what he called the 'Evil Empire.' This article appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.
According to the above article, Ronald Reagan qualifies as the leading candidate to play the role of the Pharisee from the parable of the 2 men praying. Not being aware of his own sins that include a more subtle support for racism home and more explicit support abroad with his approach to South Africa, exporter of terrorism to Central American nations, supporter of dictators like Pinochet and Saddam Hussein, and acting as the enemy of unions at home. Reagan modeled how many politically conservative Americans wished to see their country. For they made an idol of their city on the hill nation and, as Chris Hedges has pointed out, the endgame for idolatry is actually self-worship.
And of course, one could easily so see the world back then, and even now, when one so focuses on the sins of others so far away that one's own sins quickly, and seemingly forever, become out of focus. And that approach to turning a blind eye to one's own sin lives on today among many conservatives only their focus is on domestic groups and ideologies. For in order to preserve the desired image of their own city on the hill, they label groups like BLM and theories like CRT as belonging to a foreign source, Marx to be specific, and thus with their focus so fixated on that, again they become blind to the sins that now have been spotlighted before their very eyes.
It isn't that the Soviet Union wasn't evil, it was. But it wasn't only evil. The Iron Curtain was there primarily not to control but to protect from a repeat of history. It was there to protect from the repeating of past western invasions.
On the other hand, that city on the hill continued after WW II to do what it did prior to WW I: use military might to serve the interests of homegrown wealth such as in coups that replaced left-leaning democracies in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Greece (1967), and Chile (1973) to name some examples, with dictators who did what our government wanted them to do. One only needs to consult former Marine Corp General Smedley Butler for a list of foreign interventions that the US engaged in to protect wealth at home. And none of that includes the dictators we supported who got into power without our help.
And none of that also includes America's history of practicing various levels of systemic racism at home. For much of the time while people in East Berlin were being shot for trying to escape to West Berlin, people in America were being hung and/or beaten and otherwise discriminated against because of their race. In fact, some are still being shot today because of their race.
So who was the Evil Empire? Perhaps the fault of that question lies in the use of the singular.
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To R. Scott Clark and his article on racism and why Christians from the past have embraced it and how to challenge racism. This appeared in the Heidelblog.
How do we Christians address racism? Doesn't the answer to that question depend on who are audience is? If our audience are members of the Church, then certainly we should answer with the Scriptures. But what if our audience are unbelievers or society at large? With Church history being what it is, can we honestly say that we should rely solely on the Scriptures to address racism? After all, since many famous renowned heroes of the Church believed not only in white supremacy, but in slavery as well, our argument against slavery at best borders on being impotent if we rely solely on the Scriptures to challenge racism and slavery.
While the validity of the Gospel revolves around Jesus rather than us believers, what we do and say, as well as what we refrain from doing and saying, affects the credibility of the Gospel to unbelievers. In addition, God's Word is not the recognized universal standard for truth for most unbelievers. So how do we address racism? And what about all of the other injustices not mentioned above like economic classism, denying climate change, nationalism, war and so on?
It's not that we should avoid using the scriptures to address racism and the rest of the justice issues listed above; it is that we have to employ a broader appeal using a wider scope of sources than just the Scriptures to address racism. Even then, knowing how some prominent Christians from the past held on to racism and slavery and that we ourselves are vulnerable to promoting other injustices, we should meet resistance to our message with some understanding of the dangers that earthly loyalties pose to all people.
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March 11
To Bradley Birzer and his article on war and how the US might want to respond to the invasion of the Ukraine. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.
I very much appreciate Birzer's sentiments about war, especially war now Russia's current invasion. But we should note that our founding fathers were mere mortals who spoke from a different context than the one in which we now live. And if we want to invoke George Washington for advice here about avoiding foreign entanglements, then perhaps we should pay even more attention to The Constitution when it prohibits the long term existence of a standing army.
We should note here the most prevalent fault of traditionalists and old people is that they rely too much on the past to understand and respond to the future. Of course we also need to remember that we can rely too little on what we have learned from the past. But we should also note that unlike in days of our founding fathers yore, devastating wars can begin and end so quickly that Congress has no time to respond.
Unfortunately the world's eagerness, at times, to rely on war not only threatens the national sovereignty of targeted nations as well as the livelihood and well being of its people, a war any place can eventually threaten the lives of people in all places. Why? It is because technology makes the proliferation of WMDs inevitable.
The Russell-Einstein Manifesto was just concerned with WMDs consisting of nuclear devices when it stated the obvious (see https://www.spokesmanbooks.com/Spokesman/PDF/85russein.pdf ):
Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war? People will not face this alternative because it is so difficult to abolish war.
The abolition of war will demand distasteful limitations of national sovereignty.
Yes, Russia started the current war, not the US. But how much was Putin's willingness to go to war is being based on past US interventions and invasions that were prosecuted with impunity? Why didn't the world respond to the US invasion of Iraq or its war on Libya's former regime run by Muammar Gaddafi? Why did the world not respond with sanctions on Israel for its occasional invasions into Lebanon and its sometimes vicious attacks on the Gaza Strip or its confiscation of land from Palestinians living in the West Bank?
Yes, Putin invaded the Ukraine, in part, to restore Russias glory days. But how much of Putin's concept of glory days for today has been influenced by seeing a need to keep up with the US and its freedom to wage wars and interventions?
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