Lincoln Follies
by Clyde N. Wilson
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A few of us now decrepit pre-Reagan “conservatives” can remember the brief flicker of hope of saving the republic that we had around 1980. Around about that time we were heartened by the founding of the Washington Times, which, it was thought, might become an effective foe of the mainstream media—despite its connection with the vile Moonie cult. Like everything else in the spurious “Reagan Revolution,” the Times was soon just another firing post of the disguised (but non-spurious) Trotskyite revolution of neoconservatism.
I suppose the paper has had a few good reporters and done some minor good here and there, but our naive hopes died aborning. The first editorial page editor, William Cheshire, a man of integrity, quickly learned that no professional could tolerate the position. I had long known Cheshire, my fellow Tar Heel. In the early days, before he resigned in disgust, he offered Yours Truly a job as editorial writer. I was in no position to make a move at the time. I suggested my Chapel Hill friend Sam Francis. The rest, as they say, is history.
Obviously, any hopes that we had for the Times were over when the neocon third-stringers who controlled the paper fired Sam Francis, one of the few intelligent, learned, principled, and honest writers they had. In fact, the only writer on the Times’ editorial page who had anything to say other than Republican boilerplate.
I remembered this when someone sent me a link to the Washington Times’ Lincoln Day editorial (unsigned). This silly exercise in fantasy pretending to be serious commentary would be a D- paper in any respectable freshman history class.
The readers are told that there have been two occasions when “the very existence of the United States was in grave doubt.” The first time we were saved by the Founding Fathers and the second time by Lincoln. This is to skip over the minor consideration that the existence of the United States was not in doubt when the Founders acted—because the United States did not exist in the way this writer means. That is why they are called Founders. (The Founders did not create the United States either. The United States was created by the American spirit of liberty and self-government and the thirteen free and independent States that already existed when they acted.)
Interestingly, in light of some discussion that has gone on on this site in regard to Lincoln’s reading, we are told that his treasured books were the Bible, Shakespeare, the Constitution, and the Statutes of the United States. This is a lawyer’s arsenal, not a statesman’s.
Our editor goes on to quote someone named Michael Beschloss, “perhaps America’s most noted historian.” I am considered a bit of an historian myself, but I have to admit I have never before heard or seen the name of Mr. Beschloss. There follows a long barf-making quotation from Carl Sandburg, whose name is misspelled by the way—which illustrates the folly of our pervasive Lincoln worship better than any critic can possibly do.
Not often in the story of mankind does a man arrive on earth who is both steel and velvet, who is as hard as rock and as soft as drifting fog, who holds in his heart and mind the paradox of terrible storm and peace unspeakable and perfect.
Gag!
And then we reach the peroration of this learned editorial: “Thank God for Abraham Lincoln. May our nation always be worthy of him.” Well, Mr. Washington Times pundit, the way things are going you don’t have to worry about that.
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1 Comment by Eileen Og on 16 February 2009:
Gag! indeed Dr. Wilson! The same Lincoln-worship was abroad in my own church yesterday…the pastor being a typical yankee who is here to teach the stupid Southerners a bit of our own history. I am livid and wish that it was within my own power to leave said church and never darken its doors again. Actually, I am beyond livid…I just don’t know a word to use at this moment. At any rate, this is your usual great writing. Thank you.
2 Comment by Harold Crews on 16 February 2009:
Yesterday, the Gospel reading being from Mark on Jesus healing the leper; the homily was Christ’s healing us from sin, the importance of Confession and not receiving the Sacrament outside the state of grace. You can still find the Gospel preached even these days. No mention of Lincoln fortunately.
3 Comment by Juvenal on 16 February 2009:
The sentiments are so gushing and the prose so bad, it might have been written by Jeffrey Kuhner, the loony Croat nationalist that some very foolish Chronicles editors once hired but apparently managed to unload on the Washington Times.
4 Comment by David N. on 16 February 2009:
Michael Beschloss writes books on the American presidency. His first was “Kennedy and Roosevelt: The Uneasy Alliance” (1980). This book was about the relationship between Joseph P. kennedy and FDR. One of Beschloss’s projects is editing a series of books based on the transcripts of LBJ’s secret taping system.
Beschloss is a talking head on TV concerning the presidency. He is the presidential historian for NBC News. This information comes from Wikipedia.
5 Comment by Leo on 16 February 2009:
Beschloss had a shot at being a pretty competent historian. His early books on Kennedy and Khruschev or on the life and administration of Eisenhower were neither obscure nor controversial,just competent mainstream stuff.The public does tend to know who he is,but it is a little uncomfortable to me to hold popularity against another.There is no particular virtue or fault in being lightly read either,Chronicles readers!! Nevertheless he fancies himself the new Arthur Schlesinger…the court historian for the Obama administration and his work,like Schlesinger’s, will be official,approved and hagiographic.Still, maybe Obama will throw him in a pool or play hoops with him,and he will transform from bookish academic to a touch-football playing real man like Arthur thought he did.No one should expect him to return to scholarship while he has a chance to be in Obama’s “Rat Pack”.Eventually,like Schlesinger,he will be considered unreliable by even the public.
6 Comment by Red Phillips on 16 February 2009:
Times are changing. If “conservative” writers on conservative websites write stuff praising Lincoln they can no longer expect it to go unchallenged. They are no longer speaking in an echo chamber.
7 Comment by Ted Van Oosbree on 16 February 2009:
I think the day is not far off when Lincoln will no longer be respectable but not for the reasons you gentlemen might hope for. He is, after all, a dead white male and was a racist (a moderate one for his time but still…). Furthermore, he was a nationalist and we all know what that means. When the leftists of today no longer have use for him he will go the way of the Jefferson-Jackson celebrations the Democratic Party once indulged.
8 Comment by Juvenal on 16 February 2009:
Who cares. If we must have heroes and gurus, let them at least be big men of serious abilities, no matter what their flaws: a Dr. Johnson or General Lee. Even great villains like Napoleon are preferable to an ignorant railroad lawyer. My only doubt as to all these attacks on Lincoln is whether or not the creep is worth so much attention from better men than he was.
9 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 16 February 2009:
Re: #1
“Gag! indeed Dr. Wilson! The same Lincoln-worship was abroad in my own church yesterday…”
And mine as well. It is even more blasphemous considering I go to a Catholic Church. So I had to listen to Father giving his homily on the greatness of the pseudo-atheist from an anti-Catholic party.
10 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 16 February 2009:
I doubt if Mr. Beschloss would make the top 100 historians on any list except one compiled by the neocon pseudo-scholars who spell Sandburg as “Sandberg.”
11 Comment by Tom Flinn on 16 February 2009:
Unfortunately, the powers that be in our society tend to define “great” presidents as those who got us into wars (generally without good reason) and who did everything in their power to centralize as much power in Washington as possible. Thus, Lincoln, Wilson, both Roosevelts (especially FDR), LBJ (except for Vietnam) are all considered great presidents. No doubt Obama is next on the list. Wait, I forgot. He already IS a great president. Wait, I forgot again. He was a great president BEFORE he even got elected.
12 Comment by robert m. peters on 16 February 2009:
I did not know my great grandfather, C.W. Peters, who served in the 12th Louisiana. When he came home from the war, after having walked from the northern march of North Carolina to Louisiana, he became a preacher. He died in 1923, twenty-six years before I was born. In 1958, while on a trip to visit my father who was working construction in Pennsylvania, my mother bought me a book about the Presidents of the United States. Upon our return to Louisiana that summer, I wanted my grandma, C.W. Peters’ daughter-in-law and confessor, to read though the book with me. When we came to Lincoln, she told me that Lincoln was the only man whom my great grandfather had admitted to have hated. At the time, steeped in the “understandings” delivered by the education system, I did not comprehend why my great grandfather might have had such strong feelings against Lincoln. Over fifty years later, I am much closer to comprehending.
13 Comment by Rob on 16 February 2009:
With all due respect for Dr. Wilson, the reason the likes of Beschloss and Doris Kearns Godwin and Ambrose have done so well is the academic historians are so lost in the footnotes that they write for an audience of three and can not see the forest, let alone the trees. They’re too busy with the acorns. Are the likes of Eugene Genovese and Forrest McDonald important historians? Sure. But they write for a small audience of tenured bureacrats and their indentured students in grad school. Say what you want about David Hackett Fischer or David McCulloch. You can at least read their books without falling asleep. Can we say that about say Lacy Ford or Eric Walther?
14 Comment by Mark Higdon on 16 February 2009:
“…Sam Francis, one of the few intelligent, learned, principled, and honest writers they had….”
And may he rest in peace.
That said, I come not to bury or praise him, but to point out what I consider to be his one great flaw. Using a term I hardly ever use–and believe I never misuse–I say this: From his writings, Sam Francis was clearly a racist.
I once pointed out to him at some length, in an email, that all human beings are descended from only two first parents (even a growing body of scientists are catching onto this fact). Therefore, there is only one “race”: the human race. To sort, classify, quantify and qualify many races is an exercise in politics or sociology (neither of the latter a science), not biology. Science, by definition, is exact.
Sam’s response to me was characteristically terse. He said that my position was “remarkably stupid.” He did not refute its substance. He merely insulted–by implication–its holder.
I took no insult from his response, but I was saddened, because of my enormous respect (otherwise) for Mr. Francis. I had sought to civilly engage him on one topic, and failed. When it came to “race,” he had one enormous blind spot. Like so many of us.
I realize my opinion re Mr. Francis is likely to put many Chronicles bloggers’s noses out of joint. I can add only that I mean to insult no one.
15 Comment by Virgil Caine on 16 February 2009:
Dr. Wilson:
Didn’t Edgar Lee Masters, who grew up in the Illinois River valley and whose forbears knew Lincoln and despised him, pretty much dismember the Sandburg hagiography? Though Masters was an unabashed admired of the Little Giant, Senator. Stephen A. Douglas, so I’m sure the Lincoln Brigade would cite that as discrediting bias.
16 Comment by Jonathan Vaughan on 17 February 2009:
I much prefer the simplicity of another president, as quoted by the late, great Shelby Foote: “Tell them that I only loved America.” -Jefferson Davis
17 Comment by Jonathan Vaughan on 17 February 2009:
By the way, a great period case for secession can be found in Robert Louis Dabney’s book, Life and Campaigns of Lt. General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson.
18 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 17 February 2009:
Right about Dabney. And Albert Taylor Bledsoe’s WAS JEFFERSON DAVIS A TRAITOR? is absolutely conclusive and irrefutable.
19 Comment by TJF on 17 February 2009:
Masters’ family was divided on Lincoln. His book, Lincoln the Man, is a brilliant character study that only a poet like Masters could have brought off. I wish people who did not know Sam Francis would leave his memory alone. There is no need to feed ammunition to his enemies. He died as a Christian, and that is all one needs to know. Terms like racist–which would include 99.99% of the human race throughout its history–are meaningless except as terms of abuse. Is a man a racist because he likes the Godfather or loves England or acts as a good friend. Labels almost always trivialize real men and women. Leave them, unless they are openly embraced by the people to whom they are being applied, to butterfly collectors and intellectual historians.
20 Comment by Michael Ezzo on 17 February 2009:
“Say what you want about David Hackett Fischer….”
Rob, I was under the impression that he was well respected by Chronicles, at least in a general way. He won the Ingersoll Prize in 1996 and was praised in the December issue of that year. His acceptance speech was printed in the magazine, as well. Having said this, I distinctly remember him saying he considered himself left of center, so maybe that is what you refer to.
21 Comment by John Willson on 17 February 2009:
David Hackett Fischer is a fine historian, and Forrest McDonald is a better one. Anyone who puts either man in a category of popularizer or speaker to “tenured bureaucrats” has simply not read their books or heard them talk. Fischer is indeed “left of center,” as he has told me on more than one occasion; yet his “Paul Revere’s Ride” is perhaps the best explanation of why there wasn’t a revolution in New England. Forrest writes like an angel, but doesn’t always say what ideologues of any persuasion want to hear. Beschloss is a hack; Obama probably deserves him (although I hope not). This inspires me: I think, Clyde, you and I should make lists of the greatest historians still living, and see where this old unreconstructed Yankee and his Confederate friend come out. What do you say?
22 Comment by Virgil Caine on 17 February 2009:
Thanks very much to Dr. Fleming on the Masters response. I could have sworn I read somewhere along the way that Edgar Lee Masters savaged Sandburg’s Lincoln biography and that it caused a major rift between Masters and his buddy Clarence Darrow? I guess I need to pony up for the Lincoln reader set and will definitely check out “Lincoln the Man”.
Just curious if Drs. Fleming or Wilson have any further thoughts on whether Senator Douglas was a tragic hero history has treated unjustly or merely a precursor to the corrupt Illinois Combine of the 20th century?
23 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 18 February 2009:
#21. John. You’re on. “Still living” will make a fairly short list, I fear.
24 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 18 February 2009:
A historian is properly judged not by right or left but by honesty and a not-easily-definable quality of vision, breadth, intuition. And a capacity for hard work.
My preliminary list: Eugene Genovese, Forrest MCDonald, John Lukacs.
I will accept Fischer and add, if he is still with us, T.R. Ferhenbach. This is limited to Americans. I can probably come up with a few others after some thought.
25 Comment by Red Phillips on 18 February 2009:
There is nothing inherently wrong with popularizers. Everyone has their gifts. On some subjects we could use some popularizers.
26 Comment by Josh Cooney on 18 February 2009:
Dr. Wilson,
Since the university is in a deplorable state and the college-industrial complex may soon collapse under economic pressure, do you see, possibly, a bright future for independent scholars and amateur historians? Might this be a good thing for the profession?
27 Comment by TJF on 18 February 2009:
I believe Masters left Darrow’s law firm when Darrow tried to set him up to take the fall for dirty business of Darrow’s. Douglas was certainly a political fixer and not a real Illinoisann but a Vermonter. For all his pettiness and deal-making, he was the only chance Americans had in 1860. Significantly, Mel Bradford used to say that had he been alive, he would have voted for Douglas in 1860 and not Breckenridge. Illinois went for Lincoln in 1860 but in the election of 1862, the tide turned against the Republicans in Illinois, but not in Kentucky. To be an effective popularizer, a writer must first know what he is talking about. There is the rub. In areas of history where I know something, popularizers like VD Hanson–apart from his concentration on hoplites–knows too little to justify his pontifications, and he–quite apart from moral insanity–knows far more than most vulgarizers of ancient history. Where McDonald and Genovese fall short, although I admire both, is in literary and narrative ability. What we need today is another Hume or Gibbon or even a Macaulay or, may the Lord forgive me for saying this, Winston Churchill.
28 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 18 February 2009:
25. Dr Phillips, you are quite right. Some of the best historians have been “amateurs.” In fact, not until the 20th century did historians become associated with colleges. Everything, as Dr. Fleming says, depends on the quality of the popularizer.
26. Mr. Cooney, I don’t have a lot of optimism about this because American publishing is under the same mindset as those who have ruined the colleges. And the “general reader,” who once flourished in the U.S., in the days when Faulkner could be read in the Saturday Evening Post, is a negligible force in Amerikan mass culture. society.
29 Comment by Brock H. on 18 February 2009:
Dr. Fleming, how was Winston Churchill a “popularizer” of history, if that is what you are saying?
30 Comment by Virgil Caine on 19 February 2009:
Dr. Fleming:
Again thanks so much for your courtesy in taking time on responding to my inquiry. The late Mr. Bradford’s retropsepctive endorsement of Douglas certainly raises The Little Giant’s stock in my estimation. (And I in no way meant to imply anything positive about Clarence Darrow who was a foul piece of work- Leopold and Loeb- even before he cruely mocked the Great Commoner and hastened Bryan’s death.)
I am very much looking forward to the Summer School on the American West and to Mr. Chilton Williamson’s contributions in particular.
31 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 19 February 2009:
… the Times was soon just another firing post of the disguised (but non-spurious) Trotskyite revolution of neoconservatism.
Hear, Hear!
I was peeved when The Washington Times got rid of John Lofton. I was really angered when they dismissed Sam Francis over his biblically correct commentary on the Southern Baptist Convention. They seldom publish a column by either Pat Buchanan or Joe Sobran. The closest thing they have to conservative is R. Emmett Tyrrell each Friday. It seems to me that most of TWT’s columns these days are scribbled by Jews screaming for America to sacrifice its hicks, rednecks, apple-knockers, and hillbillies to die in some foreign hell-hole for “democracy.”
The only bright spots remaining are Culture etc., Wes Pruden’s Tuesday and Friday pieces, and Sage Advice on Wednesday. Oh yeah and the crossword/sudoku/comics page.
32 Comment by Rob on 19 February 2009:
Mr. John Wilson has misunderstood me and I agree with him that Fischer is a gifted narrative writer. As I said, McDonald is a fine historian. Nonetheless, his books do not have a wide audience. I suspect the Chertow biography of Hamilton had more readers than McDonald’s. Now part of this is publishing. McDonald is mostly published by Kansas, a fine academic press. Since our finer historians, and I agree with Dr. Wilson’s list, leave a void (I mean how many people picked up “The Slaveholders’ Dilemma”?), the popular hacks fill it with crap like “Teams of Rivals.”
33 Comment by TJF on 19 February 2009:
Churchill wrote a serious, though one-sided life of his ancestor the Duke of Marloborough, and his History of the English Speaking Peoples is a wonderfully entertaining and popular presentation of the basic Whig view of history. I read it several times, as a boy and as an adolescent, and occasionally pick it up to find something to irritate me. It was in every halfway literate household in the US, once upon a time, and the used book stores and library discard tables are full of it. WC had an eye for detail and a gift for telling stories. Read together with Shakespeare’s Histories, Churchill’s History is a fine introduction to the English myth. Whatever its limitations (and cruelty), it is a better myth than we have.
34 Comment by Derek Leaberry on 19 February 2009:
Although Churchill was a Lincoln devotee, he was also very respectful of Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. In his History of the English Speaking Peoples he wrote of Lee’s army that it “made a struggle unsurpassed in history”, a declaration I must agree with. Given what happened to the United Kingdom and the British Empire during his nearly sixty year political career, it can be said that Churchill was a better writer than he was a politician. Of course, John Lukacs would strongly disagree and woe to me for being on the wrong side of an argument with that distinguished gentleman.
35 Comment by John Willson on 19 February 2009:
No, this Willson (two l’s please) hasn’t misunderstood. Chertow isn’t as good as McDonald no matter how many readers he has, and that isn’t the point. It isn’t fair to taint historians as writers for “tenured bureacrats” or “indentured students,” just because they write for academic presses, nor is it correct that either Genovese or McDonald see acorns rather than trees. One can write big popular books and still be a good historian, or even small obscure books and still be a good historian. Creating false choices isn’t helpful. Many years ago I was taking a graduate course in Faulkner and Ransom, taught by a disciple of the New Critics. As someone who tends to think historically, I fought all semester with the instructor and several of his groupies about whether one could go outside the covers of a book to understand Faulkner (and other related questions). Their trump question was always, “Name a great work of history. When was the last truly great work of history written?” Since they were the inverse of Darwinians insisting that given enough time, a roomful of monkeys and typewriters would produce the works of Shakespeare, there was no answer that fit their conditions. I agree with Clyde’s criteria and would add a certain generosity of spirit; as Bishop Sheen used to say we have to find a story where we come out second best. Genovese, McDonald, Lucas all fit the criteria, and I think McCullough does too, despite the fact that I don’t admire most of his characters as much as he does. I might suggest Walter McDougall as well. You’re right, Clyde, the list is short.
36 Comment by Rob on 19 February 2009:
Well since I don’t see the names Foner and McPherson on your list, I suppose we can make peace. Apologies for botching your name, Mr. Willson.
37 Comment by Derek Leaberry on 20 February 2009:
Since the term “racist” is thrown about so often, and, in this thread, the target is the late Sam Francis, I would like to know what the definition of the word “racist” is. Or is “racist” one of those words that acts as putty in the hands of the person who uses it? Does Morris Dees use the word in a manner different from Peter Brimelow? And who is or was a “racist”- Enoch Powell, Stokeley Carmichael, Marion Barry, Winston Churchill, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Jared Taylor, Woodrow Wilson or Congressman Bobby Rush? All of them?
Although Sam Francis was a racial realist when it came to political analysis, as far as I know he never hated people due to their race, never advocated white supremacy, and never advocated a return to Jim Crow. When he died, Dr. Francis lived in a Maryland suburb that was two-thirds black(I grew up in that very town) and died at a hospital that serves an overwhelmingly black population. If he was racist, Sam Francis was not a very discriminating one.
Who deserves to be called “racist”? In my home state of Maryland, the term might apply to almost any Republican if one uses an expansive definition. On the socially Southern Eastern Shore, most whites have switched from being Southern Democrats to being conservative Republicans as the Democrats are perceived as the party serving black interests statewide and nationwide. The Republicans of the Baltimore suburbs are ancestorally Baltimore ethnic Democrats who have engaged in “white flight” for fifty years. Even most of the Republicans of the Washington area are “white flighters” from the District of Columbia and suburban Prince George’s County. Essentially, the word “racist” has been bastardized for so long by certain political interests that it has been made into a childish insult rather than a useful definition.
38 Comment by Virgil Caine on 20 February 2009:
Didn’t Comrade Trotsky himself coin the term “racist”? My recollection was that older editions of the Oxford English Dictionary used to reflect this eytolomology.
39 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 20 February 2009:
@37 Derek
It used to be “racialist.”
And just for the sake of being up to date you should add Rev Jeremiah Wright, Eric Holder, Morris Dees, and the swinish Abe Foxman.
40 Comment by Frank on 20 February 2009:
Mr. Leaberry,
Francis’s Eurocentrism is somewhat between what’s usually called “racialist” and “white supremacist”.
He certainly didn’t want to harm nonwhites, which is the point I think you’re trying to get across.
41 Comment by Geronimo on 21 February 2009:
Lincoln’s greatness equals Stalin’s in effectiveness and ruthlessness.
42 Comment by Mark Higdon on 22 February 2009:
I defy anyone on this blog or anywhere else to precisely and scientifically define any “race” as a biologically discrete subdivision of mankind. This is why I maintain that, to speak of different human “races” is to indulge in pseudo-science. There is all the more reason for me to say so, if we have on this blog a consensus of agreement with Genesis and the fact that we are all descended from two first parents. Those who disagree with this Truth will learn their error someday, one way or another. (It is my sincere hope that Sam Francis has, and in God’s good grace.)
Those who refer to Barack Obama as “black” have as much logic going for them as I would, were I to refer to him as “just another white guy in the Oval Office.” By the way, I do this–both to puzzle and annoy people. But even more to drive home the point that “race,” as it is commonly used, is a political/sociological construct that forever serves to divide us and cloud our understanding of each other, without having any basis in biology apart from insignificant incidentals.
While I might be willing to withdraw my labeling of Sam Francis as a racist, I stand by my assertion that–as evident in his writings and his direct communication to me–he was willfully blind to the significance of the fact that every human being who has ever lived is a member of only one race: the Human Race. I.e. those made by God in His image and likeness to love and serve Him in the world, and be happy with Him in the next. To insist that there are material qualifiers to our human uniqueness is evidence of clouded judgment.
Call it whatever you like.
43 Comment by Bob Johnson on 22 February 2009:
Mark Higdon,
No offense, but you are clearly insane.
Saying that there’s only one race, the human race, is as stupid as saying there’s only one family, the human family.
Clearly the human species has existed long enough that what may have begun as one family has split in the thousands and thousands of different families.
And in the same way, the human species has existed long enough that what began as one race has divided into many different and clearly distinct human races.
Whether or not you consider this pleasant or not is no concern of mine. But it would be a sign of greater wisdom on your part if you came to understand that a man like Sam Francis who pointed out the reality of race should not to be held responsible for something (the existence of human races) that far predated his birth.
44 Comment by Mark Higdon on 22 February 2009:
No offense taken, Bob, for you offered no real argument to me. You merely attacked the messenger by calling him insane and his opinion stupid without meeting his challenge to define “race.” You claim that there are “many different and clearly distinct human races” without naming them and listing the biological characteristics that make them “clearly distinct” from one another. Yours is not even a weak argument. Rather, it is a lame exercise in name calling.
I leave my challenge on the table.
45 Comment by ural haines on 22 February 2009:
As far as the meaning of race is concerned, unfortunately it is ultimately our government which determines that. And that all-knowing institution has determined that there are lots of races (some that we didn’t even know constituted a “race” – Uncle Sam considers people of Spanish descent to be of a separate race from the Portuguese, yet Portugese are classified as being of the same race as Norwegians…go figure); and that the Caucasian race – especially of the male variety – is somehow a lesser race, if the level at which a “race” is politically pandered to is an indication of their worthiness.
46 Comment by MAR on 22 February 2009:
Mark,
If race were merely social, then shouldn’t two black parents be able to give birth to a white child, or two Asian parents to a black child? (After all, two atheists can give birth to a Christian; or two vegetarians to a meat-eater.)
How then, if race is merely social, can police forensics technicians generally tell, merely from a drop of saliva or a piece of hair, whether someone is white, black, mestizo, Asian, etc?
Obama is black because the products of black-white procreation will generally “look black” (hair texture, skin color, nose shape, lips, eye color, etc.). Whites have recessive traits which are usually lost in interracial breeding.
I am not saying that race should be the determining factor for everything. Obviously, other things matter too – like family, religion, location, etc. But to deny the reality of race is an exercise in postmodernist fraud – these are the same tactics used to deny the existence of gender and the natural family.
I’m not going to write anything else on this because I don’t want Dr. Wilson’s post to turn into a thread on race, and I hesitated even to write this, but, seriously, this legerdemain, denying race, puts you in the dishonest camp of neocons and neoliberals, who peddle this lie because of their own political agenda.
47 Comment by Mark Higdon on 22 February 2009:
And I would not bother to continue this subthread, were I not being called the purveyor of a lie. I have seen black alley cats and I have seen white ones and I have seen striped ones and many other colors and combinations thereof. Does each represent a different “race” of alley cat? Does the mating of a black cat with a white cat produce a black cat? Probably, in some cases. Is this relevant to cat biology? Only insofar as the science deals with genetic incidentals.
Cats are animals, with mortal souls. Same as all most other animals in their almost-infinite varieties. Human beings are the only life-form created in God’s image and likeness, possessed of immortal souls. In the animal kingdom, we are unique. To speciously subdivide us strongly suggests otherwise: that we are merely another “evolved” accident that just “happened.”
MAR (whatever your real name is): you have failed to define “race.” Furthermore, you have shredded any credibility you might have had by claiming that BO is of the black race, right after acknowledging that he was begotten by one “black” parent and one “white” one. You fail to define race even as you categorically claim it to exist. Your only argument in favor of your stance is that anyone who denies discrete human “races” is insane or stupid. I argue from the Truth that is divinely revealed by Sacred Scripture.
You offer no more strength to your claims than did Bob.
Once again, I leave my challenge on the table.
48 Comment by Geronimo on 23 February 2009:
FOR MARK HIGDON. Black is black, and white is white; red is red, and yellow is yellow; mongrel is mongrel. Surely all these are equal before God and should be so before Man.
49 Comment by Tom Ridenour on 23 February 2009:
A recent History Channel program on Lincoln’s Assassination had me similarly gaging.
One of the lines that brought me near hurling was the mention of the ex-slaves standing outside the White house after Lincoln’s assassination weeping, wailing and wondering what would become of them now that “their great benefactor was gone.”
As I recall slaves in DC at that time were not ex-slaves, since Lincoln did not see fit to free those whom he actually could. Those souls had to wait for the 13th amendment, just as Grant’s slaves.
But beyond that, the History channel writers fail to see how insulting such an inclusion must be to the black community, for it implies that blacks have no self-confidence and no sense they, given the freedom, can take care of themselves, take personal responsibility and make their own way. They’ll always need a great white benefactor.
The whole damn piece was a hurlarama.
I’m not sure what racism is, but if it really exists, I think this may be an instance of it.
Gag me!
50 Comment by Frank on 23 February 2009:
Geronimo,
what do you mean by “equal”, and is there a difference between man and woman in the world of man? The definitions of “equal” have material differences.
51 Comment by Geronimo on 23 February 2009:
Equal = equal. Sex is not in dispute here. Besides, who says this is the world of man?
52 Comment by Frank on 23 February 2009:
Equal = equal? Galatians 3:28 says we’re all one in Christ, but people take this to all sorts of extremes. And you’d said “should be so before Man.”
—
Genesis 9:2 is all I meant by “world of man” – meant to be contrasted with the next life.
—
Anyway, I meant my previous comment to be rhetorical, though it doesn’t seem to have had the intended effect.
53 Comment by Mark Higdon on 23 February 2009:
@48
I’m not sure from your post whether or not we agree.
In any case, when it comes to what we erroneously call human “races,” what we typically call “black” in the U.S. comes in almost infinite shades of brown. The closest I have seen to an totally black human being is what’s left of some ancient mummies and some people who live on the African continent. The closest thing to an actually white human being is a person with albinism. What we call “white” comes in almost infinite shades of, well, pick your own crayola # (an olive-skinned Italian is considered “white” when the race game is played). The closest I have seen to a red human being is someone with a severe sunburn. The yellowest person I have ever seen was my infant son with his jaundice. Neither of his parents are from anywhere in Asia (although I will not rule out possible ancestors from that huge continent).
At what point did anyone become a “mongrel?” Who were the first black parents? The first yellow or red ones? How did these people come to be their specific, unadulterated colors, and exactly what colors on the wheel were they? If such people ever existed, how did their births constitute the beginnings of discrete human “races,” and what color(s) were their parents? What color(s) were Adam and Eve?
I’m not putting you specifically on the spot, Geronimo, to answer the unanswerable. But the notion that there are discrete human “races” prompts my questions.
I will not play the multi-race game because it is without foundation in Truth and abets falsehood and injustice. On every census form, I designate myself a member of the human race. It’s the only one.
54 Comment by Bob Johnson on 23 February 2009:
Is the only breed of dog the “dog breed”?
You might as well be consistent and say that as well.
55 Comment by Frank on 23 February 2009:
@53
Black mummies?
56 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 23 February 2009:
Alas, as is all too usual, this discussion has got way off track. The subject of my piece was Lincoln worship and neocon ignorance and deceit.
57 Comment by Geronimo on 23 February 2009:
FOR MARK HIGDON. I actually say that the question of race should be “prejudicially irrelevant”, that is, one may or may not see the colors as long as one admits to the “equality” of all colors. To Lincoln, that equality was unthinkable, never mind the “emancipation”.
58 Comment by Mark Higdon on 23 February 2009:
@57 And since Geronimo has rethreaded the wayward thread (per Prof. Wilson @56), I will agree with his conclusion @57.
One more thing, @54: It is illogical to ask me to to “be consistent” by applying to dogs the principles that I have established (by God’s own Word) are unique to human beings. We know by Divine Revelation that human beings are made in God’s image and likeness and that all are descended from two–and only two–first parents. First parents, the first of whom was directly created from the slime; the second, then, from the first. Not mutated, not “evolved.” Created–to their unique, immortal nature–by their Creator. I am puzzled that I find myself having to repeat these fundamentals.
59 Comment by Bob Johnson on 23 February 2009:
It’s not a question of applying principles, Mark, it’s a question of observing reality.
And the reality everyone can see is that just as there are subtypes of the dog species that are usually called breeds, there are subtypes of the human species that are usually called races.
“We know by Divine Revelation that human beings are made in God’s image and likeness and that all are descended from two–and only two–first parents.”
We aren’t talking about what was the case at the beginning of the human race, when there was but one human family and one human race. Rather we are talking about what is the case now, where there are clearly many human families, and likewise, many human races.
And it isn’t just a question of “color”, those are just convenient shorthand labels. Rather it is ancestry, genetics, and morphological characteristics (including skin color, but also facial features, etc.) that mark a person out as belonging to a particular race or combination thereof.
60 Comment by Frank on 23 February 2009:
Apologies for going off topic.
I wish students were made aware of this in history classes.
The lie has been well sold that the US is an “experiment” and an “ideological nation” and what not… Some of us call a tiny corner of this immense state home.
61 Comment by Mark Higdon on 23 February 2009:
@59 “We aren’t talking about what was the case at the beginning of the human race, when there was but one human family and one human race. Rather we are talking about what is the case now, where there are clearly many human families, and likewise, many human races.”
Since we are all descended from two first parents, there is, in fact, only one–greatly extended–human family.
Would someone who believes in multiple human races PLEASE define the term? I’m still waiting for that.
62 Comment by Frank on 23 February 2009:
I simply must reply to 61…
@61: “A mostly distinct gene pool”.
This could be anything from a small clan to a nation of several clans, etc. Wiki has an interesting entry on historical definitions of race.
We should drop this off topic debate. A google search brings up racial sites that will readily debate this topic.
63 Comment by Allen Wilson on 23 February 2009:
Perhaps Mr Higdon should also define ‘family’.
We can see many varieties of animals out there, and when we look at different kinds of humans, we can see the differences and know that differences do exist. Words are not even necessary when the simple act of seeing informs us of the differences. It would be ridiculous to say that these physical characteristics are not genetic, since they are inseparable from the ethnic groups which have the traits. Why the demands for a definition of one single word? Most people are not Webster and dont have a copy of his dictionary on hand, or care to use google. All words change meaning over time, and have meanings that are not always clearly defined according to common usage. In any even, no matter what we are talking about, the word is never the thing, but that does not mean that words aren’t useful or accurate.
I am not a linguist or a philologist, and neither are most people on this site, so I’ll leave the definition of race to people better qualified to deal with definitions of words.
The fact that all people are descended from two original ancestors does not preclude the existence of races or ethnic groups, no matter what definitions are used. It is true that all are one in God’s eyes, but we also live in a physical world where you can be mugged or raped purely because of your race.
I wonder if there is a definition that will satisfy Mr Higdon. I also get the impression that for him, ‘race’ seems to have a negative meaning, whatever that meaning might be. The fact that races do exist is not a negative thing, and to think that it is could lead to many sorts of follies, perhaps not on Mr Higdon’s part, but certainly on the part of others. For some reason, it reminds me of Cathars who thought that all things physical were evil and so would starve so that their mass would be smaller, and therefore, less ‘evil’.
64 Comment by Mark Higdon on 23 February 2009:
My obvious implication is that the human “race” and human family are one and the same. Obviously, that definition satisfies me. Clearly, I know what I mean by race. Mr. Allen Wilson demurs from defining race, then insists on using the word in sentences. I’ll let that practice speak for itself.
65 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 23 February 2009:
Race is not a term used in the Holy Bible, but Old Testament divisions are by nation, tribe and tongue. The New Testament seems only concerned with believers and unbelievers.
That being said, one can’t help but notice that some tribes work harder than others, some are more interested in acquiring knowledge, and some others produce better literature. And among the believers, some are more childishly emotional while others are more rational and studious.
66 Comment by Mark Higdon on 24 February 2009:
@65 Indeed, my friend. I don’t recall the Holy Bible uses the term “culture”, either.
“One can’t help but notice that some tribes work harder than others…” I would phrase it thus: “One can’t help but notice that most members of some tribes tend to work harder than most members of some other tribes.” But I believe our thinking is close in this matter.
God visited his punishment upon mankind following the Tower of Babel. One could speculate that His punishment went beyond confusion of languages. In any case, it did not erase the discrete beginning of the (one) human race.
67 Comment by Aaron D. Wolf on 24 February 2009:
“And when he had taken the book, the four beasts and four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints.
“And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation;
“And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth.”
—Revelation 5:8-10
68 Comment by Allen Wilson on 24 February 2009:
Now Mr Higdon, after faulting me for using the word ‘race’ without providing a definition, which can be found in any dictionary (and I doubt that any definition provided by anyone here would satisfy him, since he seems intent on not being satisfied by any definition any of us might provide) then uses the word himself @66 above. I’ll let that practice speak for itself.
This is ridiculous.