Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For August 25, 2021

Around Aug 18

To Bradley Birzer and his article that reviews a new book about war and propaganda in the US. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative Blog.

The Left here has been writing about propaganda and war for a long time. It is often mentioned in the writings and talks given by Noam Chomsky.  Chris Hedges has written and talked about government efforts to control narratives since WW I. In fact, Leftists like Helen Keller and Eugene Debs spoke out against entering WW I with the latter being incarcerated for sedition. Norman Solomon's book on the subject titled War Made Easty appeared in 2007.

Not that the above should make obscure the book reviewed here, it is that this is not a new subject to certain groups of people.

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Aug 19

To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost that uses multiple news items to talk about Christians and the government. This appeared in Heidelblog.

The conservative political bias on this blog is not usually as strong as it is in the above article. Take the part on Afghanistan. Absent is the fact that Biden was acting on Trump's peace deal with the Taliban. Also absent is the fact that Carter approved covert aid to the Mujahideen in July of 1979, 6 months before the Soviet invasion. Such aid raised the probability of Soviet intervention.

But what is also not noted here is that the Mujahideen was fighting then because of social reforms, which included rights for women, introduced by Soviet friendly Afghan regimes. We could place a lot of blame on Carter for that, but we should also note that Reagan greatly upped the ante in support for the Mujahideen. We should note here that after the Soviet Union left and quit providing aid for Afghanistan, it eventually fell to the Taliban. And guess who made up much of the Taliban back then. It was the Mujahideen that was supported by both Carter and Reagan.

What is absent from the rule of natural law mentioned above is that it is a Christian view of natural law developed when Christendom was the rage throughout Europe. And not only that, it is theology that tells us that natural law should govern nations, not the New Testament. This should be noted when it comes to laws we have regarding marriage and sex. As much as advocates for natural law were saying that we have 2 kingdoms, a lighter Christian dominance of society than Christendom over society  was, and still is, being advocated for.

We might also want to talk about the good old days when Christians could ignore government. The problem is such an approach to government demonstrates a lazy democracy rather than a working one. And the fact that we have expansion in gov't roles is sometimes a function of a working democracy as people put limits on others, such as business, for how they will interact with and affect their lives. 

Thing about democracy is this, we can talk about it as either a set of political  mechanisms employed by society to make corporate decisions, or we can talk about it as a state of being in which each group in society shares the state as equal to the other groups. In other words, the rule by majority is not used to oppress some minority. Thomas Jefferson warned against such oppression in his 1801 inaugural address. If we consider our democracy a stewardship so that there are minority groups being oppressed, as there were when Christians could ignore government, then practicing a lazy democracy is not an option for the Christian. For during the good old days that Clark mention was the Jim Crow era.

Finally, claiming that Fox News gives a Christian worldview, as claimed by a Baptist minister cited by Clark, can only be true if we conflate a white, American patriotism with the Christian faith. The trouble with that is that such a conflation  causes us to compromise the Scriptures.

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Aug 20

To Pat Buchanan and his review of what was going on in Afghanistan 10 years after America sent troops in in the year 2001. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

Any commentary on Ameria's part in the Afghanistan War is deficient and incomplete without starting with Carter's July of 1979 decision to send covert aid to the same group that the Taliban would recruit from when it was formed in the 1990s. We should note that Carter's decision and aid took place before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Why did Carter send covert aid? First, he was sending that aid to the Mujahideen who opposed the social reforms such as rights for women started by some of Afghanistan's Soviet Union friendly leaders. Those reforms and rights were the same that the US was defending once we sent our troops in in 2001. While Carter's aid was relatively small, it helped the Mujahideen survive. Then Reagan upped the ante considerably and referred to these same Mujahideen as 'freedom fighters.' Again, theses same people opposed social reforms such as rights for women. 

So why was it right for the US to send aid to help those who opposed rights for women while sending troops to fight those who opposed those same rights for women? Apparently, the difference rests in which gov't is promoting and working for those social reforms including rights for women. If the wrong side is providing them, then we must support those who oppose such social reforms. If we or  our allies are promoting and working for such rights, then we defend those reforms and rights against the same evil people who would take them away..

Such is missing from Buchanan's look at our involvement into Afghanistan.

 

Comments WHich Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For September 16, 2020

 Sept 12

To R. Scott Clark and his lengthy blogpost quote of Ayaan Hirsi Alli that claims that like the 9/11 attackers, those who are currently woke, have ulterior motives than simply trying to correct the injustices they see. This appeared in Heidelblog.

Link for Alli’s article that was quoted from by Clark:    https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-islamists-and-wokeists-have-in-common-11599779507

I could not read much of Alli's article because I don't have a subscription to the Wall Street Journal. So I will only address what I read.

Much of what is in the above post and the part of the article I could read, written by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, represents the view of the privileged. For example, the view that the 9/11 attacks were motivated solely by the religious beliefs of some, perhaps a very small percentage depending on the location, Muslims. Accordingly, we are infidels and they are ordered by the Koran to kill infidels is his take on the 9/11 attacks. Thus the person quoted in the above post does not believe that foreign policies or other factors motivated the attacks.

We should note that the privileged often take their own actions or the actions of their own nation for granted. We should note that knowledge of resentment of the US was known to our government back when Eisenhower was President. The reason for the resentment? It was because the US backed brutal dictators in the Middle East and thus prevent people from practicing self-rule. The US support for the Shah of Iran serves as an example for during the Eisenhower Administration. And that is especially true since the US and the UK orchestrated a coup to overthrow Mohammad Mosaddegh, who was democratically elected by his people, because Mosaddegh was working to nationalize Iran's oil resources. That tradition of backing brutal dictators in the Middle East continues from then to this day with the backing of the Royal Family in Saudi Arabia, the backing of Saddam Hussein during the 1980s, and the previous backing of Hosni Mubarak and the current backing of el-Sisi in Egypt. In addition, there is the almost automatic support for Israel's brutal Occupation of the Palestinian Territories and the sanctions on Iraq after Hussein invaded Kuwait. Those sanctions are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousand of Iraqi children.

But of course, foreign policies that support brutal dictators, that visit wars on countries, that support a brutal occupation, and maintained murderous sanctions could never serve as a motivation for people to want to attack us whereas the fear that a nation with a leftist government was all the reason the US needed to attack through coups and terrorists groups nations in Central South America. These nations included Nicaragua, Chile, Guatemala or for attacking Cuba before the Cuban Missile Crisis.

And even when journalists who live in or traveled throughout the Middle East and report that foreign policies and conditions there served as reasons for why Al-Qaeda attacked us should be disregarded because of the above article. Robert Fisk, for example, interviewed Osama Bin Laden. From that we learned that the US was not Bin Laden's first enemy.  During the 1980s, enraged by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he went to fight there to repel the invasion. We learned from a Soviet veteran of the conflict some of the tactics used by Al Qaeda then were terrorist attacks.

Jason Burke, a journalist who traveled throughout the Middle East in reporting for the Independent, a British newspaper, noted that Middle East terrorists were a diverse group, including the 9/11 attackers. Not all of them were religious Muslims.

Likewise, by trying to associate wokeism with radical Islamic terrorism, it seems that Alli, remember that I do not have full access to the WSJ, at the least suggests that the reason, note the singular, for wokeism has nothing to do with the pervasive injustices that have been a core part of U.S. history. Nothing from the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans from the land to slavery, Jim Crow, and the current systemic racism in our nation to the history of women's suffrage and their continued struggle for equality to the history our nation's labor conflicts to the struggles first for decriminalization and then for equality for the LGBT community could ever be construed as a legitimate reason by itself for what Ali calls 'wokeism.' Rather, he uses guilt by associating it with his limited view of radical Islamic terrorism to try to discredit wokeism.

By quoting Ali's article, Clark embraces a privileged view of what is causing the conflicts of today. And that privileged view, like the proverbial <i>Bull in a china shop</i>, imitates those who are privileged who assume that whatever actions they have taken or supported have not contributed to any of the damage that is right before them.

Church history has provided too many tragic examples of the Church adopting the views of the privileged. Such has always tarnished the reputation of the Gospel and has sometimes caused the Church to suffer unnecessary persecution.

From what I could read, Alli complains about the lack of freedom  allowed by both the 9/11 attackers and many who are currently woke. But again, as wrong as that is, how could past policies and practices not be considered the primary reason for the 9/11 attacks and what Alli sees. Didn't those past policies and practices also prohibit the freedom of expression or is that not worthy of mentioning?

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Sept 13

To Lincoln Matthews and his article on how the 1619 Project is communicating misinformation to many Blacks and thus should be opposed. This article appeared in The Imaginative Conservative Blog.

I do not know of anyone who has said that America is the only racist nation. Being uniquely racist, however, could refer to the way racism is practiced here. Regarding slavery, history does show that some other nations ended slavery before we did. And, in fact, one of the reasons for the Revolutionary War included the preservation of the institution of slavery. Overseas slave trading was coming under examination. Slavery was being question in the UK prior to our Revolution. For example, in one 1772 case, it was determined that slavery was not based in English law and was a violation of Habeas Corpus. And there was a previous case that came to the same conclusion. Thus, indicators of the end of slavery were apparent before the Revolutionary War.

Another reason for the Revolutionary War was that the British had stopped westward expansion. In essence, the British were protecting Native Americans and their lands from the English colonists.

Yes, others practiced slavery. But America's practice of slavery was race-based, cruel and demeaning. Even with the Civil War and the Emancipation Declaration, many abolitionists, especially white abolitionists, though opposing slavery, still believed in white supremacy. And the slave mentality and belief in white supremacy extended in different forms after the Emancipation Declaration. During Jim Crow, prison labor replaced slave labor and laws were written to make it easy not just to segregate the races, but to arrest Blacks.

All of that was part of what Jim Crow was about. And even after Jim Crow, we find systemic racism. We find that wealth disparity between the races has continued to grow under our current form of Capitalism. We see systemic racism in voter suppression, housing, employment, banking, and so forth And there are well-documented instances where Black business success was met with terrorism and violence by whites. The Tulsa massacre of 1921 serves as an example.

Wealth also comes into play here. For  much wealth is inherited. But the median wealth for Black families is around 1/10 of the median wealth for White families. And that is despite the economic statistics cited above (see https://money.com/wealth-gap-race-economic-justice/). That article discusses other disturbing statistics to such as employment discrimination. It doesn't mention redlining which greatly contributed the wealth disparity between Blacks and Whites.

The above article by Matthews has somewhat of a case to make if one restricts the time of slavery to that of  Juneteenth. But practices and cultures like Jim Crow and the discrimination that continued after Jim Crow was ended could be seen as a continuation of certain aspects of slavery.

It is one thing to say that the 1619 Project needs some corrections. But the overall message from that project rings true. And it is a project that needs to be available to more and more people.

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To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost that not only criticizes Mark Galli for becoming a Roman Catholic,  he claims that Reformed Theology provides everything that Galli was looking for in a Christian theology. This was posted in Heidelblog.

The pedestals we build sometimes indicate the idols we hold to. I think that is true for  Clark, with some others, and reformed theology.

Clark writes as if Reformed Theology provides the complete connection to the Apostles and the rest of the Biblical writers. It is as if Clark is saying that Reformed Theology has everything to teach all other theologies and nothing to learn from them. At this point, we need to stop to see how high the pedestal Clark has built for Reformed Theology. Has Clark crossed the point where the Reformed traditions are starting to compete with the Scriptures? Is he not aware that, unlike the Old Testament Prophets and New Testament Apostles, the words of the Reformed traditions were not God-breathed though they were interpreting the Scriptures? Thus, those traditions have flaws and errors while the writings of Evangelicals, Romanists, Eastern Orthodox, and even some mainline Protestants can also provide valuable insights not considered by the Reformed writers.

Does not Clark understand that thinking that one has an absolute or near monopoly on understanding the Scriptures makes one very vulnerable to arrogance? Doesn't Clark realize that our Reformed traditions are to us what the traditions were to the Pharisees in Mark 7?

I follow Clark om that I would not become a Romanist. At the same time, I've learned Biblical lessons from Romanists that were not be taught by Reformed theologians. And it doesn't take much reading to note where some of our Reformed heroes fell way short of God's standards. And one doesn't have to be brilliant to observe that today's world presents challenges to believers that our Reformed heroes never considered.

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Sept 14

To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost that expresses fear that the influences of Revoice doctrine, Critical Race Theory, and the Social Gospel are infiltrating the PCA and will lead to its demise. This appeared in Heidelblog.

The following statement is not applied consistently by Clark or anyone in the PCA who rejects the current changes:

'Importing secular ideologies into our churches will poison and ultimately kill them.'

The 'them' is referring to churches. But we should note that the Church imported Jim Crow culture in the South and it wasn't until recently that the PCA apologized for  its sins there. Many in the PCA passionately embrace capitalism and small government conservatism and these are secular ideologies. We don't see any warning against those secular ideologies here.

The above post speaks in all-or-nothing terms regarding the influence of the Revoice Doctrine, Critical Race Theory, and the Social Gospel. But is that to say that there are no elements in any of those ideologies that, by the common grace of God, do not speak truth? Or is there only room in Clark's PCA for political conservatives who embrace Capitalism? A side point here, the kind of Capitalism that our nation now employs is different from the form of Capitalism that was employed following WW II.

If everything from Revoice doctrine, Critical Race Theory, and the Social Gospel must be rejected, then it seems that the answer to the last question is a resounding 'YES!' And thus we are adding to the marks of the Church. And perhaps that is being done solely because people tend to glorify what they have a positive familiarity with and that familiarity becomes canon, along with the Scriptures, for discerning truth.

And even if that isn't the case, if Clark means to throw out everything from Revoice doctrine, Critical Race Theory, and the Social Gospel the all-or-nothing thinking that is being employed is preventing us from comparing the details of each of those ideologies with the Scriptures to see what should be accepted and what should not.

Change is threatening especially in orthodox circles. The fear that too much change will sever us from a revered past can cloud our judgment as much as protect us. The fear of change assumes that there are no new circumstances that we face that others have not faced before and thus there is no need to listen to current voices. Thus that fear can at least partially take the place of the Scriptures when we judge what is right or wrong. And that is part of the tyranny that traditionalism forces on us.

So though I share some of Clark's concerns, I am afraid that traditionalism is writing the above post. And here we must remember that traditionalism is at least the life imprisonment sentence for the marginalized as much as it is the ultimate source of security for the privileged.