After reading all the choices I voted without hesitation whatsoever for the first, “Intolerable [etc.],” as coming closest to my view of AA. What we were originally told was the spirit of Affirmative Action — the aggressive seeking-out of qualified members of under-represented or underperforming races — is what I favor. Putting the less-than-qualified 1) where they are in over their heads, or otherwise unsuited, and 2) in the place of other candidates who cherish equally valid hopes and dreams, and who’ve devoted equally arduous years to preparation, is wrong.

I wonder if the one vote for “good” is by Pat Buchanan, who put that principle into effect when he chose a running-mate a few years ago in his campaign for President.

I voted intolerable, when affirmative action is used by government agencies.

Which means all private entities and individuals can associate with whomever they please and however they please, including picking for a running mate for what ever reason might please Pat Buchannan. If Sears, for instance, wants to only hire and promote bisexual midgets, let them.

But why all the intolerable votes? I thought a number of posters approved of dividing people up by race, national origin, and so forth and granting special privilege accordingly.

Wasn’t there just a thread recently bemoaning the Brits. being thrown into the mix with all the other emigrants and not being granted special privilege? Or how about all the posts wanting to ban certain people from emigration because of religion, race etc?

Anyone care to explain the discrepancy between all the intolerable votes and the posts.

Mr. Salzer, I consider it legitimate for nation-states, nationalities, races, religions, and ethnic groups which want to preserve themselves as such — want to preserve their traditional ethno-cultural identities — to take concrete steps to do so. I see nothing wrong therein provided the rights of minorities in their midst are guaranteed.

The fact that minorities may not like being minorities is a completely separate question, and one which puts majorities under no moral obligation to commit ethno-cultural suicide. (We don’t need to go into exactly what those minority rights are, or where the minority’s rights begin to infringe on the majority’s rights, etc., which are other topics.)

Part of respecting the rights of minorities in our midst is guaranteeing them a level playing field as far as possible, up to the point where that might begin to infringe on the right of the majority to preserve its ethnic, or racial, or religious, or cultural, or linguistic, etc., identity.

For example, I very heartily approve of the French-language-only laws in the province of Québec that seek to preserve that language there (and, through that language, that whole culture). If an anglophone shopkeeper there dislikes that, let him move to Ontario. His right to use English for his shop sign is subordinate to the Quebeckers’ right to maintain the ethno-cultural-linguistic identity of their own country. I warmly approve of similar measures which were enacted in Belgium starting in the 60s, aimed at protecting Flemish identity from French linguistic/cultural incursions. (In the same vein, I approve of all efforts aimed at stopping — and humanely REVERSING — excessive incompatible immigration into the United States.)

In approving of these things, I don’t condone mean behavior by any group toward any individual or group.

I’m not sure if that answers your question, Mr. Salzer.

I voted intolerable. National unity should always take precedence over race, culture and religion. In a quick response to Mr Salzer’s question, I support banning the immigration of certain people’s (Hispanics) and religions (Islam) on the basis of their ability to integrate. While there are always exceptions, large numbers of Hispanics and Muslims have shown a marked unwillingness to integrate themselves into America’s dominant culture and values and to express loyalty to our nation. This does not seem to be true of other ethnic groups, such as East Asians, which is why a sustainable level of immigration (after a five to ten year respite of nil immigration) that included non-Muslim East Asians would not bother me. I suspect the reason for their inability to integrate is that both Hispanics and Muslims have histories of enmity and long held grudges against the U.S. The issue here is national unity. That is why I can disagree with both affirmative action and current immigration policies. Both are sowing the seeds of division.

Frieda wrote: “I wonder if the one vote for ‘good’ is by Pat Buchanan, who put that principle into effect when he chose a running-mate a few years ago in his campaign for President.”

Personally, I thought Ezola Foster was terrific. She’s an especially effective spokesman and debater for immigration reform.

“While there are always exceptions, large numbers of Hispanics and Muslims have shown a marked unwillingness to integrate themselves into America’s dominant culture and values and to express loyalty to our nation. This does not seem to be true of other ethnic groups, such as East Asians”

Not to the same degree as the groups you mentioned, but they are incompatible with Western society nontheless. Just look what the Chinese have done to Vancouver, British Columbia — they have turned half of it into a replica of Hong Kong. The Chinese and Koreans display the same degree of racial consciousness as Central American Indians and blacks; and I am positive they would turn large sections of the US into little Chinas and Koreas if their numbers equaled that of Hispanics or blacks.

Unadorned,

I think I see the problem, the question doesn’t differentiate between opposing affirmative action in principle, versus application.

I oppose it in principle because I don’t think the government should enact by law special privilege to any arbitrarily divided group of people, but should only distinguish people as individuals and families, which are the foundational units of society.

You seem to be opposed to affirmative action not in principle, but only in its application.

Am I correct in my understanding of your position?

Shawn,

If the US people, including yourself, didn’t care to have Hispanics in its midst, it should not have assumed my ancestral lands, which land grants are still in the family, and us with it into its country. We certainly didn’t ask to join, but were taken in at the point of a rifle.

“I oppose it in principle because I don’t think the government should enact by law special privilege to any arbitrarily divided group of people, but should only distinguish people as individuals and families, which are the foundational units of society.”

I don’t know of anyone who has suggested that groups should be divided arbitrarily (by picking random numbers, perhaps? — what a strange notion).

No Matt,

Arbitrarily as in lumping dispirit people into groups when they have little in common except, for instance, country of origin, or ethnic origin or in my case Surname. My family, for instance, comes from Asturia Spain, and my blood is the same as the Celts, yet I get lumped together with naturalized Mexican Indian peasants, and am an official minority in the eyes of the State.

I have almost no cultural, ethnic, national origin, or anyother connection to most of the naturalized immigrants from Mexico, but in the eyes of the State we are as one. In this regard the lumping together is quite arbitrary.

Or take Mexicans alone, the difference between the Mexican aristocracy and the peasants is cultural night and day, yet they get lumped together as “Hispanic” and according to Shawn should all be banned from emigrating from Mexico to the US.

Or subdivide the Mexican aristocracy, because there are significant divisions. And so forth.

What it comes down to is, the State should not lump people together by force of law into legal classifications, ( classifications which as a practical matter are finally arbitrary ), but judge them individually, because we are all finally individuals. Whether they are citizens of the US, like myself, or immigrants, who are not citizens.

“If the US people, including yourself, didn’t care to have Hispanics in its midst, it should not have assumed my ancestral lands, which land grants are still in the family, and us with it into its country. We certainly didn’t ask to join, but were taken in at the point of a rifle.”

Your ancestral lands? I think some American Indians might dispute that. Either way, I believe in the manifest destiny of the United States, that Divine Providence chose her to assume sovereignty over those lands. If Hispanics are loyal to the U.S, and good citizens, then I have no issue. But if they promote disunity and treason, then regardless of how long their ancestors have been here, they should leave. Moreover, the massive influx of Mexicans, who do not have any ancestral claims, is not only unjustified, it has brought with it a virtual war against American citizens, waged by violent drug dealing Hispanic gangs, who have spread to almost every corner of the country. Anglo-Americans built a wealthy and successful nation here. What have Hispanics done in their own countries? It makes no sense to import a culture of violence, poverty, corruption and failure.

Shawn writes:
“I believe in the manifest destiny of the United States, that Divine Providence chose her to assume sovereignty over those lands.”

I think you mean overt conquering by the US and since when does God approve of aggressive wars and theft of land? Or maybe your just a bit weak on American history and should add it to your to do list.
You can’t possibly include Polk in your list of American Heros

Mr. Auster wrote: ‘Frieda wrote: “I wonder if the one vote for ‘good’ is by Pat Buchanan, who put that principle into effect when he chose a running-mate a few years ago in his campaign for President.”

Personally, I thought Ezola Foster was terrific. She’s an especially effective spokesman and debater for immigration reform.’

I was alluding to Lenora Fulani, a black Marxist who could not possibly have brought votes from Buchanan’s old supporters.

F. Salzer:
“What it comes down to is, the State should not lump people together by force of law into legal classifications, ( classifications which as a practical matter are finally arbitrary ), but judge them individually, because we are all finally individuals. Whether they are citizens of the US, like myself, or immigrants, who are not citizens.”

This construction attempts to set a false equivalence between “arbitrary classification” and “permitting unassimilable immigration”. Obviously if the immigrants are unassimilable then the classification is not arbitrary. (As an aside, I don’t know of anyone here who would advocate the deportation of already fully assimilated immigrants, and in any case would certainly oppose such a proposal vehemently myself).

Furthermore, “judge them individually” still entails the creation of some sort of rules at the institutional level. But rules don’t judge individuals; they set up classifications. That is exactly what a rule is *for* — to set up a general classification and authoritatively enforce it.

So Mr. Salzer’s libertarian premeses are flawed in the same fundamental way that libertarian premses are always flawed.

Frieda writes:
“I was alluding to Lenora Fulani, a black Marxist who could not possibly have brought votes from Buchanan’s old supporters.”

I agree it was a strange association, but it wasn’t affirmative action. Affirmative action entails hiring someone less qualified because of their race. Whatever else may be said about Fulani she did bring something unique to the Buchanan campaign that few others could have brought (whether objectively for better or worse is questionable, but it was a campaign strategy).

In other words, Buchanan “hired” Fulani because of the unique things a black Marxist could bring to the table; he didn’t hire her *despite* lesser qualifications and because of her race.

I voted for other. I agree with the what of the first answer, but not the why. AA is a natural outcome of the liberal pursuit of freedom and equal rights as the highest political good, and clearly freedom and equality are core American values. So it didn’t seem right to say that my opposition to AA stems from its destruction of core American values. America needs to repent from its pursuit of freedom and equal rights as the highest political good or face its own destruction, to be sure; but it is a matter of repentance, not a matter of getting back to core flawless values that have been corrupted.

To Matt,

It is one thing to say that the belief in freedom and equality will tend to devolve (as it actually has devolved) from a system of procedural individual equality to a system of substantive group equality. It is quite another thing to say that there is no difference between the two systems, and therefore that it’s not worth it to resist the second and try to return to the first.

If there was a proposal to eliminate all group-rights and racial preference policies and return to the system we had prior to 1964, would Matt oppose that, on the basis that the system we were returning to was founded on “freedom and equality”? In other words, would Matt regard the pre-racial preferences American political system of the 1950s (which was nevertheless based on “freedom and equality”) as equally intolerable as the group-rights American political system of today?

“In other words, would Matt regard the pre-racial preferences American political system of the 1950s (which was nevertheless based on “freedom and equality”) as equally intolerable as the group-rights American political system of today?”

Yes. A return to that system would just restart the cycle and get us back not to exactly where we are today, but to something equally despotic and corrupt. I’ve commented before that I don’t think the distinction between prodecural and substantive equality holds up. It isn’t enough to return to 1950’s America (even if that were a realistic goal); America must repent, at a fundamental level, if she is to survive at all.

I didn’t answer Mr. Auster’s other question (though he posed it prior to “in other words” as if the two questions were the same):

“If there was a proposal to eliminate all group-rights and racial preference policies and return to the system we had prior to 1964, would Matt oppose that, on the basis that the system we were returning to was founded on “freedom and equality”?”

I would not *oppose* it, but it would be objectively inadequate. It would be a symptomatic treatment rather than a cure, so I wouldn’t oppose it any more than I oppose taking cold medecine.

“I think you mean overt conquering by the US”.

Yes we conquered the land in question. So what?

“since when does God approve of aggressive wars and theft of land?”

It was not theft, we won it fair and square through a declared war. As to the rest of your question, read the Bible, especially those parts dealing with the Hebrew invasion and conquering of Canaan, acts that were commanded by God.

“Or maybe your just a bit weak on American history and should add it to your to do list.”

In fact American history has always been a major interest of mine. I don’t order my “to do list” based on what anti-Americans say or think.

“You can’t possibly include Polk in your list of American Hero’s”

Yes I do. President Polk was both a hero and a patriot.

” America must repent, at a fundamental level, if she is to survive at all.”

Except that she would not survive what you are promoting. As I see it what you are saying is that in order to repent America must cease to be what she is, and what she was at her founding. This would entail America ceasing to be at all in any meaningful way, except as a vassal of the Vatican, which is right now busy making nice with the Iraqi government.

“AA is a natural outcome of the liberal pursuit of freedom and equal rights as the highest political good,”

I disagree that individual freedom and equality under the law, are liberal ideas. This is only true from the point of view of totalitarian Roman Catholicism. They have both been around in one form or another far longer than the advent of liberalism.

Individual rights and group rights are not at all the same thing, and I believe it is wrong to say that a nation founded on individual rights will automatically descend into the current system of group rights. This has only taken place in America as a result of three mistakes. The importing of millions of Africans as slaves, the move to virtually unrestricted mass immigration in 1965, and the advent of the New Left Marxist adversary culture, also in the 1960’s. These mistakes could, and should have been avoided, and if they had we would not now be in the current situation.

Shawn writes:
“Except that she would not survive what you are promoting.”

Shawn really hasn’t shown that he has any objective notion of what I advocate. Although reasonable in some other respects Shawn is a Catholic hater, so anything tainted with Catholicism causes him to lose his objectivity:

http://www.counterrevolution.net/vfr/archives/001169.html#3978

If Shawn wants to actually put up, and give a definition of equal rights, it might make the discussion interesting.

“Shawn is a Catholic hater, so anything tainted with Catholicism causes him to lose his objectivity:”

Incorrect. I have a great deal of respect for much of Catholic spirituality and sacramentalism. What I am is opposed to the idea that America should become a Catholic theocracy in any way, or that the Constitution, the President and the Congress should defer to the authority of the Vatican on issues of policy, faith and morality. None of that makes me a “Catholic hater”, unless your definition of such is anyone who disagress with aspects of Roman religion or Vatican policies.

What you are saying is that the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, our love of individual freedom and free enterprise, our belief that anyone can rise above the accidents of their birth to achieve great things, even to lead the nation, that individuals should not be bound nor judged on false notions of “class” or inherited “nobility”, and the entire structure of American constitutional republicanism, is the central problem, a “liberal” problem that we as Americans must repent of.

I do objectively understand what you are saying, I just happen to disagree with it.

“If Shawn wants to actually put up, and give a definition of equal rights, it might make the discussion interesting.”

I have not used the term “equal rights” and niether does the Constitution. I specifically used the terms individual freedom and equality under the law ( which simply means that no person is above the law). Post 60’s New Left notions of equal rights are a Marxist abberation. However if you want a definition, read the Decleration of Independence and the Constitution.

Shawn is a Catholic hater. He has stated that the Nazis were just an expression of Catholicism in the post I linked to, and has refused to retract it.

Shawn’s characterization of what he thinks I believe illustrates that he doesn’t have the faintest idea of what I actually do think. This is demonstrated by the fact that he can’t link to or quote anything I’ve ever said that remotely resembles his characterization.

His decision not to engage in a discussion of equal rights speaks for itself.

Matt,

I agree there have to be “some sort of rules at the institutional level. And a rule is a measure or standard by which we compare and measure an entity.

What I am against is the statistical sampling of a number of some group, coming to an average and then applying that standard or rule of law to that average, as if the average was each individual, and not applying the standard to each individual. Each individual should be compared to the standard and judged, not pre-judged according to some classification the individual may fall under.

Affirmative action pre-judges, just as it prejudice to lump all Hispanics under one umbrella, as if all Hispanics are the same at some fundamental level, differentiated from others who are not Hispanic, in a manner affecting the common good.

Mr. Salzer:
I agree that generalizing can be harmful and unjust; in fact it is this basic fact that gives liberal ideas of prejudice-as-injustice their strength. On the other hand it is not possible within politics to “judge everyone as an individual” strictly speaking, since judging is an act of categorization — the liberal idea of politically treating everyone as an individual is not merely impractical but inconceivable. While it is true that the more we know about someone the better equipped we are to treat him justly, at the same time getting that information doesn’t come without cost and it doesn’t fundamentally avoid the need for general categories and rules. So in the end any immanent justice is going to be messy and flawed. It won’t entail setting rules ahead of time that satisfy every contingency, and it won’t on the other hand entail complete avoidance of a priori categories and rules. But messiness and flaws cannot in themselves prevent us from doing anything at all unless we are pure anarchists (the closest thing to a rationally consistent liberal is the pure anarchist).

Jim Kalb’s classic essay on vindicating stereotypes is helpful here:

http://www.cycad.com/cgi-bin/pinc/dec98/articles/kalb-stereotypes.html

In the context of the immigration debate, which I take to be your comparison-for-consistency to AA, it is true that any immigration policy (other than completely open borders) will involve general categories that won’t always be perfectly fair to individuals, and especially individuals who are non-citizens. If one were to insist that it should be then he has taken a utopian stance with all that implies, in addition to shifting the political concern from protection of the interests of the country to abstract utopian fairness, though. If I were king then my first duty would be to my country, and the preservation and growth of what is good in it. Part of that good is Christian charity of course, but suicide in order that one’s corpse can be used to feed the hungry isn’t a proper form of charity the way I understand it.

Matt,

Without reading Jim Kalbs article, I think we basically agree. A person or country can and should err to its own benefit first, just as in self preservation we err to own protection. St. Thomas says it better.

And you’re correct, only in utopia, will we find perfection, but on earth we have only gross matter at our disposal. But in charity to others we should try to diminish error as much as prudentially possible.

Shawn writes:
“It was not theft, we won it fair and square through a declared war.”

Yes it was a declared war, but fair and square? Lets see, Polk sends soldiers 100 miles into Mexican territory and declares war when Mexico refuses to be blackmailed into either handing over New Mexico and California or paying large sums on spurious claims by US citizens. In other words the war was based on phoney trumped up claims as an excuse for seizing land belonging to another country.

I think it’s more of a claim of might makes right, or in your case, might makes fair and square.

If Polk’s phoney war is your understanding of Divine Providence, you’re welcome to it. I’ll take a God who directs all things to him through Justice and Virtue. God may bring good out of evil, but he is not the cause of evil.

Shawn writes:
“As to the rest of your question, read the Bible, especially those parts dealing with the Hebrew invasion and conquering of Canaan, acts that were commanded by God.”

The key word is ‘commanded’. We are God’s creatures and He may dispose of us as He pleases, but we are not God, and may not dispose of each other as we please. Or do you by chance think God spoke to and commanded James Polk to conquer part of Mexico?

Shawn writes:
“It was not theft, we won it fair and square through a declared war.”

Yes it was a declared war, but fair and square? Lets see, Polk sends soldiers 100 miles into Mexican territory and declares war when Mexico refuses to be blackmailed into either handing over New Mexico and California or paying large sums on spurious claims by US citizens. In other words the war was based on phoney trumped up claims as an excuse for seizing land belonging to another country.

I think it’s more of a claim of might makes right, or in your case, might makes fair and square.

If Polk’s phoney war is your understanding of Divine Providence, you’re welcome to it. I’ll take a God who directs all things to him through Justice and Virtue. God may bring good out of evil, but he is not the cause of evil.

Shawn writes:
“As to the rest of your question, read the Bible, especially those parts dealing with the Hebrew invasion and conquering of Canaan, acts that were commanded by God.”

The key word is ‘commanded’. We are God’s creatures and He may dispose of us as He pleases, but we are not God, and may not dispose of each other as we please. Or do you by chance think God spoke to and commanded James Polk to conquer part of Mexico?

“Shawn is a Catholic hater. He has stated that the Nazis were just an expression of Catholicism in the post I linked to, and has refused to retract it.”

I did not say that the Nazi’s were an expression of Catholicism, I said that there was a direct link between Medieval Catholic anti-Semitism and the anti-Semitism expressed by and exploited by the Nazis’s. This is a simple historical fact that cannot be denied. Anti-Semitism did not just appear out of thin air when the Nazi’s came on the scene. Putting words, or ideas, in my mouth that I have not said is a poor way to make an argument.

“Shawn’s characterization of what he thinks I believe illustrates that he doesn’t have the faintest idea of what I actually do think.”

In fact you have made your beliefs very plain on a number of occasions. You have stated that you believe that the principles upon which America was founded, constitutional republican democracy, seperation of church and state, individual freedom, freedom of religion, equality under the law, are essentially liberal in nature, and that in order to overcome liberalism America needs to repent of and do away with these principles. If I am wrong about this please enlighten me.

“His decision not to engage in a discussion of equal rights speaks for itself”

I made it clear that I did not agree with Marxist notions of equal “rights” that the New Left introduced into America. Therefore I have need to defend them. Equality under the law for all citizens, which I do agree with, is not the same thing as equal “rights”.

“Or do you by chance think God spoke to and commanded James Polk to conquer part of Mexico?”

I certainly think that God required the U.S conquer all of the land we now call the continental United States.

“In fact you have made your beliefs very plain on a number of occasions.”

That may be, but I note again that Shawn doesn’t quote or link to any of them. Then he goes on to express yet another of his own constructions, different from the ones he already posted, and attribute it to me.

Shawn seems to disavow equal rights himself, so it is possible that in substance we are not far from agreement. But since he is a Catholic hater he is not objective about it.

If Shawn wants to stipulate that German anti-Semitism is a Lutheran phenomenon more than a Catholic phenomenon (as I demonstrated by linking to Luther’s _On the Jews and Their Lies_), and that Naziism is neither Lutheran (though that is more plausible than it being Catholic) nor Catholic, and furthermore if he will publicly retract the following two statements:

Shawn writes:
“Nor does it take it account the Holocaust wrought upon the Jews by the Nazis, led by Roman Catholics who used their own religious history to justify their modern excesses.”

And again:
“The Nazi genocide then is most certainly a continuiation, and an attempted fullfillment, of Catholicisms long held anti-semitism.”

then it might be possible to reconsider whether or not he is a Catholic hater.

In any case it is necessary to take into consideration his lack of objectivity when discussing these topics.

Shawn writes:
“Equality under the law for all citizens, which I do agree with, …”

… is what exactly?

“That may be, but I note again that Shawn doesn’t quote or link to any of them. Then he goes on to express yet another of his own constructions, different from the ones he already posted, and attribute it to me.”

If you want to debate this issue then do so. So far all you are doing is avoiding it. I have stated what I take, from your own statements, to be what you believe about America’s founding. If it is wrong, say so. If it is right defend it. How hard is that? I have no time to troll through the hundreds of posts on this forum to pick out quotes as I have a family and I work for a living. Have the guts to front up to what you have said about America and defend it.

Here are some of your own statemensts.

The first could justify me, using your own standards of debate, in calling you a Protestant hater. It would seem that criticism of the Protestant Reformation is fine, but any criticism of Catholicism makes one a “Catholic hater”. This is a conveniant double standard.

“But that doesn’t justify the Protestants in lifting heresies from Islam to bring the Church down.” http://www.counterrevolution.net/vfr/archives/001129.html

Here are some more of your own statements on the American form of government, and your belief in submission to the Vatican.

” A democracy that is not badly contaminated by liberalism may be possible in theory (for example one in which only the landed aristocracy has a vote), but democracy as practiced for the last few hundred years and specifically in the U.S. has always been liberal to a significant degree.”

“AA is a natural outcome of the liberal pursuit of freedom and equal rights as the highest political good, and clearly freedom and equality are core American values. So it didn’t seem right to say that my opposition to AA stems from its destruction of core American values. America needs to repent from its pursuit of freedom and equal rights as the highest political good or face its own destruction, to be sure; but it is a matter of repentance, not a matter of getting back to core flawless values that have been corrupted.”

“I think that ideally the Church should have its own secular power over the Papal states (securing it military and economic autonomy), and that secular rulers elsewhere should recognize it as authoritative on faith and morals”

Now I stand by my reading of what these statements mean, that, as I said, “you believe that the principles upon which America was founded, constitutional republican democracy, seperation of church and state, individual freedom, freedom of religion, equality under the law, are essentially liberal in nature, and that in order to overcome liberalism America needs to repent of and do away with these principles.”

Now either tell me that Im totally wrong in how I am reading them, or defend them.

I myself will stand by my own words.

You say “If Shawn wants to stipulate that German anti-Semitism is a Lutheran phenomenon more than a Catholic phenomenon (as I demonstrated by linking to Luther’s _On the Jews and Their Lies_),”

Except from where did Luther get his anti-Semitism? From the medieval Catholic culture he grew up in.

I said “
“Nor does it take it account the Holocaust wrought upon the Jews by the Nazis, led by Roman Catholics who used their own religious history to justify their modern excesses.”

And again:
“The Nazi genocide then is most certainly a continuiation, and an attempted fullfillment, of Catholicisms long held anti-semitism.”

and I assert that these statements are true. Nazi anti-Semitism did not arise in a vacuum. Anti-Semitism in Europe grew out of Catholic notions about the blood libel of the Jews. Are you saying that the Catholic Church or her leaders have never been anti-Semitic, or have never made anti-Semitic remarks?

Shawn writes:
“Equality under the law for all citizens, which I do agree with, …”

… is what exactly? — Matt.

It means that no citizen should be above the law. It means also that a citizen, merely because of his race, religion, class, or any other accident of birth, should not be treated any differently by the law because of these things. And it means that no citizen should have special “rights”, including access to jobs or education, based on these things. Which means that AA is a violation of the principle of equality under the law. Affirmative action says that some people have special rights based on their race or ethnicity, in other words, that they are NOT equal to other Americans.

Shawn, a clarifying question. Do you think that people should be treated differently because of race, religion, class, sex or other accidents of birth?

“If you want to debate this issue then do so. So far all you are doing is avoiding it. I have stated what I take, from your own statements, to be what you believe about America’s founding. If it is wrong, say so. If it is right defend it. How hard is that? I have no time to troll through the hundreds of posts on this forum to pick out quotes as I have a family and I work for a living. Have the guts to front up to what you have said about America and defend it.”

And I don’t have the time or inclination to defend Shawn’s words that he attributes to me. If he wants to critique me, it doesn’t seem outrageous to request that he critique the actual me rather than the me that exists in his head and that he keeps asserting.

“The first could justify me, using your own standards of debate, in calling you a Protestant hater. It would seem that criticism of the Protestant Reformation is fine, but any criticism of Catholicism makes one a “Catholic hater”. This is a conveniant double standard”

Wrong. There is no double standard. I have not said (and do not say, and would count it ludicrous to say) that Naziism is “most certainly a continuiation, and an attempted fullfillment, of Lutheranism’s long held anti-semitism.”

Shawn can of course publicly retract his statement at any time, but I note that he yet again doesn’t do that. His attempt at equivalence between what he thinks I’ve said and what he actually has said is objectively wrong (ludicrously objectively wrong). His notion that there is some double standard is just as objectively wrong.

I’ll happily have a discussion about America, her greatness, and her flaws with Shawn just as soon as he publicly retracts his Catholic-hating statements and demonstrates that he is capable of having an objective, reasoned discussion. In the meantime I am forced to conclude that he is an unrepentant Catholic-hater.

“Now I stand by my reading of what these statements mean, that, as I said, “you believe that the principles upon which America was founded, constitutional republican democracy, seperation of church and state, individual freedom, freedom of religion, equality under the law, are essentially liberal in nature, and that in order to overcome liberalism America needs to repent of and do away with these principles.””

Of course this is Shawn’s latest construction, which he has been forced to backpedal to; it doesn’t represent the full body of things he has attempted to attribute to me, and even it isn’t the way I would (or have) expressed my own view. I’ll happily discuss this with people other than Shawn; but Shawn, as a Catholic-hater, is clearly incapable of having a reasoned discussion about these matters.

Unless he is now ready to issue that public retraction of his earlier statements?

“It means also that a citizen, merely because of his race, religion, class, or any other accident of birth, should not be treated any differently by the law because of these things.”

So someone who has inherited title to a piece of property by accident of birth should not be treated differently by the law, when it comes to the disposition of that property, from other people who have not inherited it? All should have equal legal claims to that property?

To Shawn,

I have not followed closely your recent debate with Matt, but I just want to say this. You wrote:

“It would seem that criticism of the Protestant Reformation is fine, but any criticism of Catholicism makes one a ‘Catholic hater.’ This is a conveniant double standard.”

This is just not a legitimate or true argument, Shawn. You were not merely “criticizing” Catholicism, but making it responsible for the Nazi genocide of the Jews, an utterly outrageous charge which you could not support and which—despite the fact that it offended many of us who generally appreciate very much your excellent contributions at VFR—you have kept repeating. I don’t think Matt is off-base in describing as a Catholic-hater a person who makes such a charge. I urge you, in a spirit of friendship, to avoid extreme and baseless statements which only create unnecessary arguments among us. (This does not mean that I am denying the important theological differences that separate serious Catholics from serious Protestants.)

Matt,

You write:
I’ll happily discuss this, ( your understanding of proper government) with people.

If you don’t mind, I’m having some difficulty getting a hold of your position, and I know from your comments, you have had the same difficulty with mine.

In a very general way, what is your position?

Also, my understanding of justice and rights is summed up fairly well in this article, what problems do you have with it.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08571c.htm

“In a very general way, what is your position?”

Well, even to answer that generally would require quite a bit more than is allowed in a small space. But the following things are basic to my understanding of politics:

1) Government with the primary function (it doesn’t have to be the only function; merely as a primary function will do) of supporting and advancing individual freedom and equal rights is self-contradictory. It is virtually a definition of government that it is that entity which discriminates and uses coercion to restrict freedom based on that discrimination. This applies to all conceivable government actions, ever. (This is the reason why liberals in the pursuit of consistency will often become actual-anarchists or denial-anarchists who see their own position as noncoercive even when it objectively in fact coerces).

2) The concept “equal rights” is itself an oxymoron, as I have explained elsewhere.

3) It is a feature of self-contradictory ideologies that they can logically produce any outcome whatsoever. People are generally logical and do generally try to be consistent. The human drive to be consistent on top of an inconsistent ideology leads directly to arbitrariness, narcissism, and special-interest self-involvedness (because any outcome is possible, actual outcomes are simply whatever people will them to be arbitrarily constrained only by a common sense and tradition that is not allowed to have any actual authority).

4) “Equality” can be understood from a different angle, also. A requirement for equality is a requirement that we ignore certain actual true facts when making certain substantive decisions. This is only just: as an extreme example it may be a fact that a defendant is black, but justice demands that that we ignore that fact when determining his sentence for a crime. The problem isn’t that justice requires certain true facts to be ignored in certain circumstances; the problem is that there is no bound placed on the list of facts we are to ignore and the circumstances in which we are to ignore them. The same fact may be relevant, and justice may not demand that it be ignored, when we are walking down the street in Harlem and are concerned for personal safety with little information other than the appearance of those around us.

Liberals do make lists of facts to be ignored (skin color, sexual orientation, etc) and situations in which to ignore them (job applicant, apartment applicant, murder trial, etc); but there is no acknowledgement — even from Thomas Jefferson, for example — of the boundedness of the lists. Furthermore, once the boundedness is acknowledged and the lists properly constructed then the language of equality becomes superfluous — it remains only as a deception, which indeed is what it ultimately is. The debate over whether or not to actually specify the bill of rights, and the explicit unboundedness in it, is instructive to this perspective. Equality is a lie that feeds off of our desire for justice and charity, but it is far better to bypass the lie and go directly to justice and charity.

5) The concept of a “right” does not strictly speaking have to be intellectually incoherent, but it almost invariably leads to intellectual incoherence in practice. Underneath virtually every attempt at the use of “rights” lies an attempt to express the good or the bad of a given circumstance or alternative and to shift determination of objective good/bad to the human will; it is less deceiving to simply use the traditional language of good and bad as from the Decalogue. I’ve commented on this elsewhere as well.

6) America is a great nation, a nation founded on top of the late stages of Christendom. In some ways it is far better than the nations it was formed from, having found at least a band-aid for the sectarian violence within the wars of religion that plagued the Continent. Unfortunately that band-aid is wearing out, and it was inevitable that it would do so. In the end the things that matter really do matter, and no amount of formal niceness can protect incompatible authoritative traditions from each other. So the result is that the formal has to uproot and destroy the traditions that it was initially created to protect. America’s current situation is one in which, in order to preserve herself as an actual nation and people, she has to repent from some of her fundamental founding propositions (specifically her liberal ones). This doesn’t mean theocracy or revolution or anything so dramatic; but in the long run an effect of genuine repentance should be expected to be a move away from democracy, rights-speak, equality, etc since things like democracy are direct consequences of propositional liberalism. A concrete example of this moving-away might be the denial of a right to vote for Muslims, or a change of some congressional seats to be hereditary and permanent; or more accurately a shift in public consciousness such that those things are no longer unthinkable.

Mr. Salzer:
“Also, my understanding of justice and rights is summed up fairly well in this article, what problems do you have with it.”

My first objection is that the article uses rights-speak and equality-speak at all. I object to such talk on prudential grounds; not because the words have no possible proper construction but because in our modern context they have no consistent construction. You can use them and get everyone to agree to some proposition containing them, but underneath everyone has only agreed to the formalism and remains substantively at odds. So that sort of talk leads inevitably to a lie-of-agreement, in which peace is made but only through misunderstanding that leads to later, greater conflict. This is a prudential judgement, though, so reasonable people can differ as to the utility of such talk.

I could spend a lot of time talking about specific statements in the article, but I am running quite long as it is. One sample is as follows:

The article says:
“The rights which belong to every human being inasmuch as he is a person are absolute and inalienable.”

This sort of statement simply cannot be taken seriously. It implies that there is nothing that can happen to make a person justly lose a particular right. This is simply false, for all rights ever. The protestation is that the times when someone loses a right it is by virtue of what they do to lose it; but then it is no longer inviolable but in fact becomes violable by the person’s own will. Furthermore, the implicit distinction between what the person WILLS and what he IS breaks down immediately upon scrutiny: is a Catholic what one IS, or is it what one WILLS? Is an owner what one IS, or what one WILLS? Is a homosexual what one IS, or what one WILLS? Is a murderer what one IS, or what one WILLS? Is an American what one IS, or what one WILLS? The requirement for absolute inalienability combined with rampant (and necessary) exceptionalism is another self contradiction within rights-speak.

In the end, liberalism in particular and absolutely inalienable rights-speak in general leave us with two options. One option is to take their express requirements seriously, in which case they are meaningless. Another option is to not take their express requirements seriously, in which case they are meaningless.

Better to stick to the traditional language of morality as found in the Decalogue.

I could write a whole book on The World as Seen From Matt’s Brain, of course; and I’ve already written enough that I will no doubt face all manner of outraged nitpicking about this point or that (part of the problem is that as we build towers to Heaven in order to be like God we find that we can no longer talk to each other).

But the key point is that in order to take ourselves seriously as a particular people and a particular nation, to save ourselves from self-destruction, we have to repent from our propositionalism, that part of us present since the Founding (and before!), that is leading to our undoing. That means leaving liberalism — including the anti-Christian liberalism of a Jefferson as opposed to the self-effacing greatness of a Washington — in the dust-bin of history.

“Shawn, a clarifying question. Do you think that people should be treated differently because of race, religion, class, sex or other accidents of birth?”

I do not think that CITIZENS of America should be treated differently on the basis of race, denomination, class or gender, as far as the law goes. However let me make clear two things. First, a private Business owner should have the right to hire on any basis he chooses, and private organizations should have the right to determine membership on any basis they choose. Also, this applies only to citizens. I am in favour of restricting citizenship far more so than is currently the case. Also the government may and should determine it’s immigration policy on any basis that protects America’s security, and her God given identity as a Protestant Christian nation.

“Unless he is now ready to issue that public retraction of his earlier statements?”

Once again, and for the final time, I stand by those statement without hesitation. You keep claiming that I am supposed to retract them. This is wrong, because I would only retract a statement I did not actually agree with.

“You were not merely “criticizing” Catholicism, but making it responsible for the Nazi genocide of the Jews.

Firstly, would Hitler and the Nazis have used the Jews as a scapegoat, if anti-Semitism did not already exist? No.

Did anti-Semitsm exist in Germany prior to the Nazis? Yes.

Did anti-Semitism and the blood libel against the Jews exist in Euorpe PRIOR to Catholicism? No.

Did Cathloicism encourage anti-Semitism at any time in it’s history? Yes.

Now which of these historical facts are wrong?

“an utterly outrageous charge which you could not support”

I HAVE supported it above, as I did before. What no one on this forum has done is actually REFUTE what seemingly everyone else in the world apart from people at this forum know and accept.

“and which—despite the fact that it offended many of us who generally appreciate very much your excellent contributions at VFR—you have kept repeating.”

I did not repeat it, Matt did. I was quite happy to leave the issue alone on the basis that while it seems blindingly obvious to me, it did offend other people. Matt chose to bring the issue up again solely on the rather petulant basis that I made a comment about the Vatican’s current relationship with Iraq. On that one comment alone he chose to resurrect the debate.

“I urge you, in a spirit of friendship, to avoid extreme and baseless statements which only create unnecessary arguments among us.”

As I said, I was happy to leave the subject alone. However, if every time I make any kind of comment regarding Catholicism, and Matt chooses to bring it up, then what am I to do? Let me make my position clear. I firmly believe that America is supposed to be a Protestant Christian nation. I believe that God ordained America to be a New Israel, a homeland for the Protestant faith, and to be a light to the world, a light informed by the Reformation. I support the Constitutions seperation of Church and state on the basis that the state should not have any single Protestant denomination as a state church. But I do believe that allowing the mass immigration of non-Protestants Christians, as well as Muslims, Buhddists, and all other creeeds, has been a huge mistake. This is my position. It does not make me a “Catholic hater”, or if it does, than anyone who feels that immigration should be restricted only to white Western Europeans (Which I assume would be most people on a traditionalist right forum)is a also a “hater” of all non European peoples. Manifestly this is not the case, any more than I am a “Catholic hater” for my own stand. Am I to have my freedom of speech restricted because sometimes my stance may offend Catholics (or Muslims, Buhddists, whatever)? Again I assert that their seems to be a double standard here.

Shawn writes:
“the government may and should determine it’’s immigration policy on any basis that protects America’’s security, and her God given identity as a Protestant Christian nation.”

The US is not protestant by law, and neither are the American people.

The majority of Americans prefer to act as pagans, and only a minority have an interest in being protestant.

Second, the US government is neither protestant, nor is it a nation. It is not a nation, it is a federation of States, with a federal government. And that federal government is by constitution expressly prohibited from the establishment of religion, thus it cannot be protestant.

So its “God given identity” is neither found in law nor in the will of the American people.

Shawn,
“But I do believe that allowing the mass immigration of non-Protestants Christians, … ‘( read Catholics )’and all other creeeds, has been a huge mistake.”

Just wondering for the humor of it, are Jews included in ‘other creeds’?

BTW, the Church doesn’t hate the Jews, or Protestants, for that matter. It falls under the category of hating the sin, but loving the sinner.

When you write about the Catholic Faith, you need to separate out individual Catholics from the Faith itself. Men have fallen nature, and will sin, but the Faith cannot err. No Catholic will put up for a second an attributing of error to the Faith, because it cannot commit an error.

I apologize to Shawn if I misunderstood or misrepresented the evolution of his discussion with Matt. I had not read it through carefully, but just thought, oh no, here we go again. So perhaps I should have stayed out of it.

However, now that I’ve blundered into it, I must say that Shawn’s questions and answers at the beginning of his comment certainly do NOT establish that Catholicism was responsible for the Nazi genocide. Nazism anti-Semitism was a demonic evil that radically, fundamentally, indescribably transcended any prior anti-Semitism of the Catholic church. With all due respect to Shawn, and I do respect him, I feel he is vastly overstating his case on this point.

Second, Shawn’s belief that “God ordained America to be a New Israel, a homeland for the Protestant faith” is certainly an interesting if highly contentious point of view that he has every right to argue here. But that is quite separate from the question of making the Catholic church responsible for the Nazi horrors.

Finally, I hope that all of us can be honest with ourselves that when we are denying the legitimacy of a given religion or other group, that we are not merely “criticizing” that group. For example, I have said many times that Muslims are incompabible with the West and do not belong among us in appreciable numbers. So I am not merely “criticizing” Muslims; I’m saying they don’t belong here, which means I am an adversary of Islam in the West. While I would have no ambition to uproot Islam from the countries where it is the settled faith, I clearly am more than a mere “critic” of Islam, and, if some Muslim attacked me as anti-Muslim, it would be dishonest of me to complain, “As soon as anybody CRITICIZES Islam, he’s called anti-Muslim.” In the same way, I hope that Shawn will concede that his statements about the Church go beyond mere criticism to a denial of the very legitimacy of the Church. He is therefore an adversary of the Church, not just a critic of it. By the same token, Matt certainly has the right to take offense at that, especially as there has been at least since the mid 20th century a concordat among European Americans that America is a land of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, who all participate in a common public square and tolerate each other’s existence in this country. So Shawn ought to recognize that his negative view of the Church, while he has every right to argue for it, is also going to elicit very strong negative responses from Catholics.

I don’t know if I’ve covered all the points or even if I’ve said anything useful here, but (as the dull Emperor Joseph II keeps saying in “Amadeus”) there it is.

All I did was expose Shawn’s Catholic-hating bias to explain why, for instance, when I say “I don’t advocate a theocracy for America” Shawn hears “I advocate a theocracy for America”.

Mr. Auster writes:
“So Shawn ought to recognize that his negative view of the Church, while he has every right to argue for it, is also going to elicit very strong negative responses from Catholics.”

It isn’t a question of Shawn having a negative view that elicits a negative response. It is a question of Shawn objectively perpetrating a whopper of a lie and refusing to retract it, because he is a Catholic hater.

One of the reasons for this poll was to find out why there have been so few readers’ comments—averaging between zero and one—on the articles written at VFR about affirmative action. My own guess was that many respondents would answer: “Bad, but no one in politics is serious about opposing it, so there’s no point in paying much attention to the issue,” or perhaps even “We’ve learned to adjust to it.” But in fact, the overwhelming majority of votes have been for the first answer, “Intolerable.” So the apparent lack of interest in the many articles that have been written at VFR on affirmative action remains a puzzle. Perhaps readers could enlighten us.

“The US is not protestant by law, and neither are the American people.

The majority of Americans prefer to act as pagans, and only a minority have an interest in being protestant.” — F.Salzer

The American people were Protestant, overwhelmingly so, at the time of the War of Independence. That many are not now is the fault of the liberal-left assault on America from the 1960’s onwards. However, close to half the nation remains conservative Protestant. What we need, and I believe are seeing, is the first strirrings of a revival throughout the land.

“Second, the US government is neither protestant, nor is it a nation. It is not a nation, it is a federation of States, with a federal government. And that federal government is by constitution expressly prohibited from the establishment of religion, thus it cannot be protestant.”

The U.S may have been a federation of States at it’s birth, but it now operates as a single nation, it has a strong patriotic national identity, and most Americans today refer to themselves as Americans first, not Texans, or Virginians. We can debate whether all this is a good thing or bad, but it is a fact.

“And that federal government is by constitution expressly prohibited from the establishment of religion, thus it cannot be protestant.”

The Revolution was founded upon a number of Protestant, especially English Protestant, principles. These included freedom or worship, republicanism, and the priesthood of all believers.

The Constitution only forbids the establishment of a state church. If ninety nine percent of the population was practicing Protestant, America would be in spirit, as it was at the founding, a Protestant nation. Being such a nation is not forbidden by the Constitution, and would not require the establishment of a state church.

“So its “God given identity” is neither found in law nor in the will of the American people.”

As I have pointed out above, the law is not the issue.

As to the will of the people, the will of the vast majority of Americans from Independence to the early twentieth century was indeed that America was, and should remain, a Protestant nation. This will has only beem weakened by the twin assualts of mass immigration and cultural Marxism.

“BTW, the Church doesn’t hate the Jews, or Protestants, for that matter. It falls under the category of hating the sin, but loving the sinner.”

So it’s a sin to be a Jew? Thanks for that wonderful example of exactly what I am talking about.

“Nazism anti-Semitism was a demonic evil that radically, fundamentally, indescribably transcended any prior anti-Semitism of the Catholic church. With all due respect to Shawn, and I do respect him, I feel he is vastly overstating his case on this point.” — Lawrence

“It is a question of Shawn objectively perpetrating a whopper of a lie and refusing to retract it, because he is a Catholic hater.” — Matt.

I take strong exception to the claim that I am lying. I have stated historical facts that not one person on this forum has refuted at any point. I will not retract what I have said because it is TRUE. No one here has offered ANY information to refute it. The perpetration of a lie is what Matt has done to excuse the Roman Churches historically verified attitude towards the Jewish people.

Between 1274 A.D and 1290 Jews in England were persecuted, owing to the fact that they were owed a great deal of money that had been borrowed to finance war. Jews were required to wear yellow material shaped like the tablets of the Ten Commandments on their clothes to identify them. In 1290 all Jews were expelled from England, a final solution to the problem. This expulsion was greeted with joy by the people and especially by the Catholich Church, which after the Lateran Councils, was in the full swing of a campaign against usury, which focused primarily on the Jews.

After the command of Henry 111 to leave, the Jews of London started their long journey to the coast “under the custody of the Lord King,” bearing the Scrolls of the Law, “una cum libris suis” (at one with their book). On board ship, at Queenborough, at the mouth of the Thames, ship’s anchor was cast at ebb-tide and the ship grounded on a sandbank. The ship’s Master then invited his passengers to stretch their legs. When the tide reversed direction so did the Master, climbing back on board while telling the helpless Jews that they “ought to cry unto Moses, by whose conduct their fathers passed through the Red Sea.” The Jews all drowned.

Such incidents happened periodically and regularly in Catholic Europe from at least 700 A.D onwards. The wearing of yellow badges of identification, the internment of Jews in Ghettoes, and the mass murder of them were all features of Catholic Europe at various times, and had the blessings of Rome.

To attempt to view what happened under the Nazis in isolation from this is intellectually fraudulent and morally gutless.

Now I have made my position clear. I have made my case. I have backed it up with examples from history. Others on this forum have the right to disagree with me and argue their case. What the do NOT have the right to do is claim that I am simply lying, or that I have made unsubstantiated allegations with no evidence. They do NOT have the right to impune my character or morals, especially when they themselves have not bothered to offer any evidence for their own claims.

From here on I am happy to let this issue die. It distracts from more important issues that should be discussed here. But if others dredge it up again and attempt to impugn my character with accusations of lying and failing to make my case with any evidence, then I will defend myself.

Shawn:
“I take strong exception to the claim that I am lying.”

This statement, by Shawn, is a whopper of a lie:

“Nor does it take it account the Holocaust wrought upon the Jews by the Nazis, led by Roman Catholics who used their own religious history to justify their modern excesses.”

As is this one:

“The Nazi genocide then is most certainly a continuiation, and an attempted fullfillment, of Catholicisms long held anti-semitism.”

“The Revolution was founded upon a number of Protestant, especially English Protestant, principles.”

I quote from Thomas Jefferson:

“But the greatest of all reformers of the depraved religion of his own country, was Jesus of Nazareth. Abstracting what is really his from the rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its lustre from the dross of his biographers, and as separable from that as the diamond from the dunghill, we have the outlines of a system of the most sublime morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man. The establishment of the innocent and genuine character of this benevolent morality, and the rescuing it from the imputation of imposture, which has resulted fro artificial systems, invented by ultra-Christian sects (The immaculate conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension, his corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity; original sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of the Hierarchy, etc.) is a most desirable object.” - Thomas Jefferson to W. Short, Oct. 31, 1819

“Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others, again, of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being. I separate, therefore, the gold from the dross; restore him to the former, and leave the latter to the stupidity of some, the roguery of others of his disciples. Of this band of dupes and imposters, Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and the first corruptor of the doctrines of Jesus.” - Thomas Jefferson to W. Short, 1820

“The truth is, that the greatest enemies of the doctrine of Jesus are those, calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them to the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. And the day will come, when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.” - Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, Apr. 11, 1823

“The metaphysical insanities of Athanasius, of Loyola, and of Calvin, are, to my understanding, mere lapses into polytheism, differing from paganism only by being more unintelligible.” - Thomas Jefferson to Jared Sparks, 1820

“Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law.”
— Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814

Shawn’s lies are so outrageous they are almost funny. When I quoted Martin Luther’s program for the Jews, Shawn claimed that it was a vestige of Luther’s Catholicism! So whatever was good about Luther is Protestant, and whatever was bad about Luther was Catholic! Hysterical! As I said, Shawn is simply incapable of objectivity. Rather than the real actual world in which there is plenty of blame to go around for plenty of things, Shawn lives in a cartoon world in which Protestantism is goodness and light while the Pope — any Pope, really — is not merely the Whore of Babylon but der feurher.

As a reminder, here is the Lutheran program for the Jews, straight from the German First Among Protestants himself. This isn’t just incitement to hatred, mind you — Luther had quite specific recommendations:

“First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians.”

“Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed.”

“Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them.”

“Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb.”

“Fifth, I advise that safe­conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews.”

“Sixth, I advise that usury be prohibited to them, and that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them and put aside for safekeeping.”

“Seventh, I commend putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews and Jewesses and letting them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow, as was imposed on the children of Adam.”

All quotes from _On the Jews and their Lies_ by Martin Luther, 1543.

The Jews of course have been persecuted throughout their existence as a people; sometimes by Catholics, sometimes by Protestants, and in general by just about everyone. Other than the fact that they took place in Medieval Europe, though, there is nothing especially Catholic about Shawn’s specific examples above (or if there is, he hasn’t mentioned what).

What cartoon short will play next, I wonder?

Here is Shawn’s method of argument: He cites certain facts, and then points out that we haven’t refuted those facts (true, we haven’t refuted them), and then he concludes that his thesis about the Church being the source of Nazism and Nazism being the fulfillment of the Church is proven.

The problem is that the facts he cites do not lead to his conclusion. Events such as the captain drowning a group of English Jews occurred sporadically under Christendom. At the same time, Bishops generally condemned such outrages, though probably in many cases with insufficient vigor. There were also long periods of relative peace. It’s true that the history of Christendom vis a vis the Jews is replete with sins. But Shawn, in an failure of logic, of any sense of proportion, and of any willingness to preserve crucial distinctions, leaps from those familiar and often awful facts of European history to the demonic Nazi program for the ruthless dehumanization and killing of European Jewry on a racial basis. Thus Shawn has not come anywhere close to proving the assertion he thinks he has proven.

Why is it not sufficient for Shawn to agree that Cathlics committed many awful sins against Jews over the course of centuries. There are so many bad things that were done. No one is claiming Catholic innocence or using moral equivalencies to avoid moral judgment. But Shawn insists on pushing the argument to the reductio ad Hitlerum, and that’s where he loses me, and Matt as well.

However, I’m afraid we have to accept that Shawn has fixed views on this subject, and move on.

We all know how in quantum mechanics there is the wave-particle duality. Well, somehow in religion you have to both believe yours is really the true one AND fully respect the belief of others that theirs is the really true one. That’s what I do. Just as in quantum mechanics there is acceptance of the wave-particle duality, so in religion one can feel comfortable accepting that one’s religion is better, yet that all others are just as good. Yes, one can accept both these positions at the same time. It’s like many-valued logics — how can something be neither true nor false? But one accepts that things can be in that state. It’s part of faith, I find.

Unadornded,
A man can not hold two logically contrary positions simultaneous. This duality you are asking for is only possible if at least one of them is a material error. With material error meaning one holds one position in ignorance of it contradicting the other position.

It’s logically impossible to “fully respect the belief of others” as true, while also maintaining that your own contrary belief is equally true, except in material ignorance. You may do it, but only materially, not formally.

The same can be said for ‘goodness’. Positions cannot be equally good, and at the same time one being better.

Holding both substantial change and the mechanist theory simultaneously is a better example of holding two contrary positions. And is a common material error.

Mr. Salzer writes, “A man cannot hold two logically contrary positions simultaneously. This duality you are asking for is only possible if at least one of them is a material error.”

Yes, of course I understand that. I was only trying to offer one of the ways I myself have striven personally to approach this conundrum in my thoughts — the conundrum of wanting to be able to believe in my religion and in so doing, allow to other religions the dignity of not being considered false. My little amateurish way of doing that is by looking where science and mathematics do similar things. It’s a subtle distinction I am trying to draw: sort of, “I believe my religion is true, but I do not deny yours or want to convert you.” Doesn’t this notion also dovetail with one of VFR’s fundamental principles, recognition of the transcendent? The sense of the transcendent, being fundamentally in opposition to the solipsism whereupon liberalism and leftism are based, involves, in part, being able to perceive, respect, and perhaps incorporate into one’s life the fact that things of spiritual value really and truly exist which dwell beyond — over and above — the narcissistic self. I don’t mean to imply that deep, total belief in one’s own religion is in any way whatsoever narcissistic, but doesn’t the “transcendent sense” lead one to the principle that “others also exist,” with all that that entails?

These questions of course must already have been dealt with by history’s greatest minds — all the great philosophers (including the classical pagan ones), priests, rabbis, and saints must have dealt with them ever since remote antiquity up until the present day. So, I feel a little weird, being uneducated in both philosophy and religion, trying to add my uneducated two cents here (while I do not feel weird adding my two cents to discussions about the immigration/nation-state question, whereof all discussion, particularly wherever the liberal-left controls the media, is STRENG VERBOTEN!).

This said, one must of course recognize that the efforts of priests of all religions must in part be directed at ensuring the fullest understanding of the truth as perceived from their religion’s point of view, and the truth in question must include the conviction and, where available, the “proof,” that their religion is true. Such proofs aren’t easy to come by and involve centuries and millennia of accumulated profound thinking to reconcile seeming inconsistencies and correct apparent errors, even inconsistencies and errors which only the deepest intellects and subtlest minds were ever able to perceive in the first place.

Religion, not a game or a trifle, is the most serious thing in existence, for it deals with life, birth, death, sin, redemption, meaning, right, wrong, love, marriage, divorce, abortion, bloodshed, killing, sparing, condemning, forgiving, salvation, the void, and eternity. Its tenets and laws — its morality and its love — can come only from God and cannot be deduced from logical positivism. There cannot be a “logically formal morality deduced from first principles without God,” despite what college students of probably every generation since Aristotle’s Academy have thought. (They all slowly learn, over the succeeding decade or two of life lived.) Something has to have made innocent, saintly seventeen-year-old Lady Jane Gray make that astounding piety-inspired mea culpa on the execution block before her beheading, and that mortally-wounded soldier in that photo from South America some decade or two ago crawl on his belly to where he saw a Catholic priest, lift up his arms as the priest reached down to take him up, and die in the arms of Christ. No one needs to be told that we are looking here at a stength beyond the stength of logical positivism and of course beyond the strength of everything else.

When strong men come to their religion, they have to find it there. Certain people — certain thinkers — have the gift to see to it, through their insights and their long mental and spiritual toil, that their religion is shown to be true, and strong men and women who come to it seeking to slake their spiritual thirst are not disappointed or deceived but find the meaning they thirst for. I respect the people who do this — sort of the Matts of the world.

All her life my mother totally rejected organized religion, and she raised me and my siblings essentially as atheists (after some childhood instruction in Catholicism which my father’s German Catholic family attempted to insist on). My extremely strong-willed mother’s atheism and horror of organized Christianity were absolutely unalterable.

Then one evening I saw her softly say what amounted to a prayer out loud, sort of a plea to God suddenly spoken quietly, very briefly, at normal speed, not slow or anything, or separate from the rest of the sentence but inserted in the middle of a sentence — it was a prayer requesting that a little baby not die. It was something like this she said, inserted in the middle of a longer sentence she was saying — “Please don’t let him die … I know she has lots of lessons to learn in life but please don’t make her learn this way — let her learn some other way …” There was no doubt whom she was talking to though she didn’t say it, but went on and finished her sentence. (The infant was my elder sister’s son, her third child and first boy, who had been stricken with bacterial meningitis, and the scene in the house could have been the death-chamber scene taken from some victorian novel — grave, haggard looks on the faces of the mute men and boys in the somberly-lit room, the only sound the soft sobbing of my two sisters — a scene I’ll never forget as long as I live.)

Even my mother knew where to turn for help. (But she turned there only that once — never, ever theretofore, or ever again afterward — not that I myself ever heard, at any rate.)

Part of the issue is that while there is such a thing as objective truth, it is not the sort of thing that comes as instant and fully revealed. Sure, there are epiphanies; but even an epiphany is just a quickening, a sudden leap — it doesn’t represent the Beatific Vision. So any practical politics, and, importantly, any practical religion, has to recognize that everyone is coming from their own place and stage in the journey. Any politics or religion that demands instant, complete, utter, comprehensive submission is inhuman. Grace is the food that feeds over a lifetime, not a one-time engorgement of everything.

The flip side of all that is the heresy of indifferentism, though. In the end the truth is the truth, and attempts to deny that always result in self destruction.

Thank you Matt, your post is a nice clarification.

___________________________________________________

Unadorned,

You write:
”the conundrum of wanting to be able to believe in my religion and in so doing, allow to other religions the dignity of not being considered false.”

Somewhat like yourself, I grew up in a Atheist, and in my case new-age home. And came to the Faith while pursuing a girl and the intellectual life at a small Catholic college. Needless to say, my entire family went ballistic when I came home a Catholic, and they have never recovered. I love them all very much and hope for their souls, but I don’t deny what I know to be true in my loving them.

And I try to help them quietly, because the mere mention of the Faith will send them into less than pleasing descriptions of myself and the Faith.

“Nor does it take it account the Holocaust wrought upon the Jews by the Nazis, led by Roman Catholics who used their own religious history to justify their modern excesses.”

As is this one:

“The Nazi genocide then is most certainly a continuiation, and an attempted fullfillment, of Catholicisms long held anti-semitism.”

A lie would be to state something I know to be false. I stand by both of these statements as true. To claim I am lying is when I happen to believe what I am saying is a poor way to make an argument. Attacking someone’s character rather than the substance of the argument suggests you have no argument in the first place and have to resort to this low tactic to hide the fact.

“I quote from Thomas Jefferson:”

Reducing the American Revolution to Jefferson, as though Jefferson alone was the only influence, is conveniant but little more than a lie. To ignore the influence of Protestantism on America and her founding is so absurd that it suggests you know little about American history. Your attempts to paint the American revolution is a liberal affair with no religious basis suits your ideology but has nothing to do with historical fact.

“When I quoted Martin Luther’s program for the Jews, Shawn claimed that it was a vestige of Luther’s Catholicism! So whatever was good about Luther is Protestant, and whatever was bad about Luther was Catholic! Hysterical!”

And rubbish. I am beginning to come to the conclusion that you are incapable of actually arguing the substance of what I say and merely resort to silly name calling, character assination, and misrepresentation.

What I said is that Luther cannot be seen in isolation from the culture and cultural assumptions he gew up with and that were taken for granted. To believe that any historical personage can be seen in isolation from their culture is laughable. Some of what was bad about Luther was simply his own failings as a person. Again, your attempting to claim that anti-Semitism had nothing whatsoever to do with Catholic culture. This is false. To view Luther’s anti-Semitism in isolation from the Catholic culture which informed him growing up is reductionism at its worst.

“The problem is that the facts he cites do not lead to his conclusion. Events such as the captain drowning a group of English Jews occurred sporadically under Christendom. At the same time, Bishops generally condemned such outrages, though probably in many cases with insufficient vigor. There were also long periods of relative peace. It’s true that the history of Christendom vis a vis the Jews is replete with sins. But Shawn, in an failure of logic, of any sense of proportion, and of any willingness to preserve crucial distinctions, leaps from those familiar and often awful facts of European history to the demonic Nazi program for the ruthless dehumanization and killing of European Jewry on a racial basis. Thus Shawn has not come anywhere close to proving the assertion he thinks he has proven.” — Lawrence.

With respect, my assertion all along has been that Nazi’sm cannot be seen in isolation from medieval Catholic attitudes towards the Jews, and that that many Nazi supporters were motivated by their Catholic anti-Semitism. Many were also motivated by neo-pagan notions and yes, Lutheran attitudes to the Jews. I have never claimed that ALL Catholics throughout history were anti-Semitic, nor that elements of the clergy did not speak out. I have also said that I do not think most Catholics today are anti-Semitic, and I also stated that I think the modern Roman Church has done well in reversing and facing up to it’s past. The current Pope has more honesty on the issue than Matt does. It is Matt that has reduced my arguments on the issue into a black and white “Catholic bad, Protestant good” level. I have not. And in fact reductionism is Matts entire debating tactic, as in his repeated reduction of the American Revolution to Jefferson, as though the views and influence of Protestants were of no relevance. I still say that no one has refuted my claim that the Nazis cannot be seen in isolation from historical Catholic ant-Semitism, and in fact you support this in your own words.

To couinter Matts absurd reduction of the Revolution to Jefferson alone, here are some links to articles on the Protestant foundations of the American Republic and the influence of Protestant political thinking during the War of Independence.

Federalism and Covenant: The Historical Contribution of Covenantal Thinking to American Federalism:

http://www.natreformassn.org/statesman/97/fedcov.html

Biblical Freedom and the American War for Independence:

http://www.natreformassn.org/statesman/01/bibfreedm.html

Religion and the American Revolution:

http://www.nhc.rtp.nc.us:8080/tserve/eighteen/ekeyinfo/erelrev.htm

PRESBYTERIANS AND THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE:

http://www.gbt.org/wilkins/presbyterians_and_the_war_of_ind.htm

Religion and the founding of the American Republic.

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel03.html

AMERICA’S CHRISTIAN HERITAGE –
THE REVOLUTION AND BEYOND:

http://www.alliance4lifemin.org/amchristii.html

Shawn writes:
“A lie would be to state something I know to be false. I stand by both of these statements as true.”

Shawn wants to assert that:

1) He thinks that Catholics perpetrated the Nazi genocide (indeed that “Nazi” is just a form of Catholic); and

2) It is possible to engage in reasonable conversation with him, particularly in areas that have to do with relations between religions, the religious makeup of America, etc.

He is wrong on both counts.

His frustration at not being engaged in discussion has everything to do with the fact that such an engagement is not possible because of Shawn himself, and nothing to do with lack of potential capable interlocutors at VFR.

“To couinter Matts absurd reduction of the Revolution to Jefferson alone,…”

I asserted no such thing, but Shawn’s lack of objectivity makes him think I did. I don’t claim that the revolution was strictly and only a Deist enterprise with no elements of Protestantism; I only claim that important foundational elements in it, including (but not limited to) the contributions of Thomas Jefferson (not an unimportant founder) are anti-Christian and specifically Deist. It is Shawn who wants to see the founding as an EXCLUSIVELY protestant enterprise, when in reality it was a mix of many things, including anti-Christian Deism.

I won’t be discussing this with Shawn any more though, since not only is he incapable of objectivity but he also projects his own faults onto others.

Ecclesia: The Colonial Pulpit and Christendom
David Cassidy
For the pulpit is ever this earth’s foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world…yes the world’s a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete…and the pulpit is its prow.
- The Preacher, in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick

The years 1740 to 1790 marked an age of “mighty men,” a season of remarkable preachers and theologians who by their faithful ministries laid the foundation for the American War of Independence and the founding of the American Republic. In 1860 J. Wingate Thornton wrote The Pulpit of the American Revolution and claimed, ‘To the Puritan pulpit we owe the force that won our independence.’ That is a remarkable claim, and it is also astonishing in the light of our present popular but feeble pulpits in the United States. Could historians a hundred years from now attest to the societal influence of the American pulpit as it is presently constituted? In all likelihood they would note that we have reduced preachers to amateur therapists touting cheap, second hand versions of late night talk show humor and self-help infomercials. Not the stuff of revolutions. Not the stuff of Puritan and Calvinistic muscle and power that declared the whole counsel of God for the whole of life. No wonder the Church in America is finally starting to shrink, and will, if the trends continue, finally be reduced to the measure of its present cultural influence, which is next to nothing. Blame Hollywood and the media elite if you want; attack Planned Parenthood, NARAL, the radical homosexual lobby, and all the usual suspects. But here’s the sad truth: the pulpits of America are deficient and they are to blame. The preachers have not preached anything more than either liberal gibberish or feel-good gospels. The result is a Church cut from its moorings and a society that is increasingly wicked, adrift because the ‘prow’ (to quote Melville) is missing or broken.

This stands in marked contrast to the Colonial Pulpit. In it were men like Samuel Davies, Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, John Witherspoon, Patrick Allison, George Duffield, John Blair Smith, Robert Davidson, James Armstrong, Dr. John Rogers, Pastor Peter Muhlenburg, and Jonas Clark (to name just a few). These were giants indeed, men who faithfully led their congregations or students, and who worked —and at times fought—tirelessly for the cause of Christian civilization.

Some secular historians want to expunge the memory of the religious impulse of the War of Independence, giving our nation a kind of collective amnesia about our origins. They seek to reduce the causes of the war to mere economic matters, or the ideology of Locke and even Rousseau! But this is a deficient view. Harvard historian Perry Miller, not to my knowledge a believing Christian, has written a series that tells the story of the huge influence that Puritanism had on American culture, specifically in the Revolutionary period that led to the rise of our tradition of law and liberty (see Perry Miller, The New England Mind: the Seventeenth Century, Harvard University Press, 1954). In the nineteenth century George Bancroft wrote, “The Revolution of 1776, so far as it was affected by religion, was a Presbyterian measure. It was the natural outgrowth of the principles which the Presbyterianism of the Old World planted in her sons in the New World, the English Puritans, the Scottish Covenanters, the French Huguenots, the Dutch Calvinists, and the Presbyterians of Ulster….the American Revolution was but the application of the principles of the Reformation to the civil government.”

Fire In The Pulpit

What fired the Colonial pulpit was the theology and experience of the dissenting church in Europe, the Reformed Church, in the seventeenth century. That influence, specifically the two-power view of the Kingdom of Christ, espoused by Knox and Calvin, that gave rise to the Colonial form of government. The War of Independence was fought because the Colonists believed the King had broken covenant with them. He had assumed a one-power theory by which authority flowed from God to the people through Parliament. But Parliament was not to have jurisdiction over the Colonies. Massachusetts in particular had been chartered to be governed independently of Westminster, acknowledging that authority flowed from God to the people with the church and state as separated powers, both ordained by God, the one not ‘authorizing’ the other.

In This Independent Republic, RJ Rushdoony notes that William Henry Drayton of South Carolina drew a parallel between the illegal maneuvers of James II in 1688 and George III in 1776. As Douglas Kelly writes, “If the Convention parliament (of 1688) had the right to declare the throne vacant because of James’ violations of office, so did the Continental Congress. Both kings had violated the covenant.”

The ideological context of the war is why it was referred to by some as “The Presbyterian Parsons Rebellion.” Indeed, Witherspoon, who came to America only after being imprisoned in Scotland for his covenantal views, was instrumental in forming the thinking of many founders. He was the one clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence. In addition he taught philosophy and theology at Princeton. His students included James Madison, the primary author of the Constitution. Where did Patrick Henry get his passionate devotion to liberty? His mother regularly took him to hear the preaching of Samuel Davies. During the war the British troops targeted Presbyterian Churches and homes. W.P. Breed wrote that, “Presbyterianism was prima faciae evidence of guilt. Any house that had within it a large Bible and David’s Psalms in meter was supposed as a matter of course to be tenanted by rebels.”

The war was fought to preserve colonial Independence in the name of the original covenants. Those ideas were forged in minds by documents like Samuel Rutherford’s Lex Rex and by the French Huguenot tract Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos. In the view of many of the great preachers of the colonial period, George III was a covenant breaking tyrant, and had lost the legitimacy to remain their governor. It was he, not they, that were in rebellion. Thus it was not a revolution—like the French war that would follow in the next century. Rather it was a struggle to protect God-given liberty from the usurping power of a civil authority that had, in their view, abandoned its covenantal obligations and taken on a messianic authoritarian character.

A Great Awakening?

Much has been made of the influence of the Great Awakening just prior to the War. Indeed the colonies were aflame with religious zeal. But while there were “upsides” to the awakening, the down side must also be duly noted (see also Charles Hodge’s critique The Great Revival of Religion in Constitutional History of the Presbyterian Church in the United States). There were divisions between Old Line and New Line that developed, and the emphasis on personal salvation and the purification of the Church during that period may well have contributed to the erosion of the old idea of a Holy Commonwealth, the Puritan vision of the City set on a Hill in the New World. Men became more detached from the social interaction necessary to maintain distinctively Christian civil structures. Revivalists traveled the length of the colonies, their message serving to meld together these disparate peoples with a great work of the Spirit, preparing the way for a new national consciousness. But it must nevertheless be noted that in the Awakening also lay the seed of a deadly and disintegrating pietism.

Nevertheless, at the time of the Revolution enough of the great world view that was enunciated by the Reformation as a new catholic Christendom, in which the transcendent lordship of Christ expressed through the Scriptures was the pervasive truth, was still in place that the relatively small band of ‘revolutionaries’ could see that their cause might in fact succeed. Without doubt they believed that, succeed or not, they were in the right. Like Luther they were bound by conscience. The covenant must be defended. Add to this the fact that, according to E.P. Thompson, one sixth of the population was Scotch-Irish due to the massive immigrations of Protestants in the years 1725-1773, then it is easily seen how the Reformed pulpits, filled with men of courage, profound theology, and fired by revival zeal, were able to lead the nation to independence. Some Presbyterian pastors even led their congregation’s men into battle. Here in the New World the defeats in Scotland would be reversed, and the crown rights of Christ the King would be defended. It is interesting to note that when Cornwallis surrendered to Washington at Yorktown, all of Washington’s colonels save one were Presbyterians!

From: http://www.newchristendom.com/Issue%202/colonialpulpit.htm

“1) He thinks that Catholics perpetrated the Nazi genocide (indeed that “Nazi” is just a form of Catholic);”

Actually I have at no point said either. What I have said is that the Nazis cannot be seen in isolation from the previous centuries of Catholic anti-Semitsm, and this was one of the primary influences on the supporters of the Nazis. It is sad that you have to resort to putting words into my mouth.

“I don’t claim that the revolution was strictly and only a Deist enterprise with no elements of Protestantism; I only claim that important foundational elements in it, including (but not limited to) the contributions of Thomas Jefferson (not an unimportant founder) are anti-Christian and specifically Deist.”

In response to my claims that Protestantism was a defining influence on the founding, and that America was in spirit a Protestant nation, you chose to quote only from Jefferson, as though Jefferson was the only influence. When called on this, you change tack and then claim that you really meant something else. If you had said in response to me, “Yes but liberal Deism was ALSO an influnce and I see this as a problem”, then we might have a platform from which to carry out an adult discussion about the issue. But you chose ONLY to quote from Jefferson. If you want people to understand what you mean, be clear. If your going to make what look like highly one sided posts and then claim foul when someone critiques what you have said, and only what you have said, you have no one but yourself to blame.

“It is Shawn who wants to see the founding as an EXCLUSIVELY protestant enterprise”

And once again, I have said no such thing. And you claim that I cannot be objective when you lie about things I have not even said?

Me:
“1) He [Shawn] thinks that Catholics perpetrated the Nazi genocide (indeed that “Nazi” is just a form of Catholic);”

Shawn:
“Actually I have at no point said either.”

Actually, Shawn said exactly that:
“…the Holocaust [was] wrought upon the Jews by the Nazis, led by Roman Catholics who used their own religious history to justify their modern excesses.”

So according to Shawn, the Nazis were led in the Holocaust by Roman Catholics (presumably the leaders of the Nazis are also a species of Nazi, no?), unless he has finally decided to retract that outrageous and false lie.

His other complaints at misprepresentation are just as specious.

My own posting record speaks for itself.

“Here is Shawn’s method of argument: He cites certain facts, and then points out that we haven’t refuted those facts (true, we haven’t refuted them), and then he concludes that his thesis about the Church being the source of Nazism and Nazism being the fulfillment of the Church is proven.”

With respect Lawrence, I never said that I had proven my case, only that I had provided evidence in support of it. Debates of this nature cannot be proven or disproven, but debate requires making clear points and then giving evidence in support. This is in stark contrast to Matts tactic on this specific issue of throwing a tantrum and name calling.

“the Holocaust [was] wrought upon the Jews by the Nazis, led by Roman Catholics who used their own religious history to justify their modern excesses.”

Leading members of the Nazis, including Hitler, were Catholics. It could be argued, and rightly so, that not all were practicing, believing Catholics, but like Hitler, they were cultural Catholics, informed by the surrounding mileiu they grew up in (Austria in Hitler’s case, Bavaria in others). Hitler saw the Nazis as modern day Tuetonic Knights, and we are all familiar with the famous painting of him dressed as such, and Nazi ritual paegentry drew on medieval Catholic paegentry.

“Leading members of the Nazis, including Hitler, were Catholics.”

Shawn continues with his lies. Hitler was the third son of the third marriage of a shifty line of Austrian vagabonds. Shirer’s classic _The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich_ gives an honest portrayal that anyone can read. But Shawn isn’t interested in that, nor in the fact that Hitler wasn’t a practicing Catholic and in fact was more antagonistic to the Catholic Church than he was to America. Shawn wants to justify his lie by coining a notion of “cultural Catholic” (a thing utterly antagonistic to the Church, yet somehow still of it) that he can apply to Naziism. But he’s just playing words games now. He isn’t objective, and he isn’t serious; he is just a lying Catholic hater.

Like the rabidly anti-Semetic Martin Luther it is true that Hitler borrowed from, and horribly perverted, the rich traditions that preceded him. But by Shawn’s infinitely plastic criteria Shawn himself is “culturally Catholic” and therefore Nazi.

There is a reason for the existence of Godwin’s Rule, a long standing rule of Internet debate. Godwin’s Rule states that the moment someone mentions Hitler he automatically loses the argument. Godwin’s Rule overstates the case: I think we’ve had some interesting and objective discussions of Naziism on VFR. But Shawn illustrates the reason Godwin’s Rule came to be so widely accepted on Usenet. “My enemies are Hitler” is the last resort of Ferrous Cranus:

http://www.winternet.com/~mikelr/flame63.html

Shawn, I think you’ve gone completely over the top in repeating Daniel Goldhagen’s blood libel against Catholicism specifically (and against Christianity in general, by the way). A large number of devout Catholics sacrificed their own lives and the safety of their own families in resisting the Nazis and hiding their Jewish neighbors - especially in Poland. The state-sponsored “church” in Nazi Germany was, in fact, Protestant - at least officially. Of course, there were lots of real Protestants who resisted as well (Dietrich Bonhoffer, Corrie Ten Boom). Hitler and the Nazi rulers were pagans, and leftist pagans at that. Since you seem to have taken up Goldhagen’s argument, you might wish to consider asking why is it that Goldhagen and his anti-Christian fellow travelers rarely, if ever, mention the fact that some 15 million non-Jews (latest estimate) were slaughtered by the Nazi regime in along with the 6 million Jews. I guess all of those victims don’t quite qualify as human in the eyes of folks like Mr. Goldhagen. Oh, and FYI I’m a Protestant myself who doesn’t always see eye-to-eye with Rome.

It occurred to me that I ought to provide the official medieval Catholic teaching to contrast with what Martin Luther wrote (quoted above) about Christian duty toward the Jews. Pope Gregory X’s encyclical from 1272 is a good example:

http://www.dailycatholic.org/issue/2003Mar/gregxjew.htm

Blessed Pope Eugene IV, Pope Alexander IV, Pope Clement IV, and Pope Callixtus II are among the Popes who condemned mistreatment of Jews and taught authoritatively that Jews must be treated with Christian charity, must never be compelled to convert, etc. No official Catholic teaching ever, over two millennia, calls for the mistreatment of Jews.

There is no question about the fact that Jews have in fact been mistreated terribly by Catholics at times throughout history (as I stipulated, Jews have been mistreated terribly by many categories of persecutors). Those Catholics were acting in violation of their faith, though.

Not that it will likely do any good, but on this question of the Nazis being Catholics or somehow sympathetic to Catholicism, let me quote from Justice Jackson’s opening statement at the Nuremberg trials:

“A most intense drive was directed against the Roman Catholic Church. After a strategic concordat with the Holy See, signed in 7/1933 in Rome, which never was observed by the Nazi Party, a long and persistent persecution of the Catholic Church, its priesthood, and its members, was carried out. Church schools and educational institutions were suppressed or subjected to requirements of Nazi teaching inconsistent with the Christian faith. The property of the Church was confiscated and inspired vandalism directed against Church property was left unpunished. Religious instruction was impeded and the exercise of religion made difficult. Priests and bishops were laid upon, riots were stimulated to harass them, and many were sent to concentration camps.

After occupation of foreign soil, these persecutions went on with greater vigor than ever. We will present to you from the files of the Vatican the earnest protests made by the Vatican to Ribbentrop summarizing the persecutions to which the priesthood and the Church had been subjected in this twentieth century under the Nazi regime. Ribbentrop never answered them. He could not deny. He dared not justify.”

The transcript can be found here:

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/nuremberg/Jackson.html#The Battle against the Churches

Also, here’s something else I just happened to run across, which documents testimony at the trial concerning Nazi persecution of Christians, both Protestant and Catholic:

http://www.nazis.testimony.co.uk/judas.htm