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Steve Burton comes out of closet that he says he’s never been in
Gintas writes:
Steve Burton calls himself a “Fellow Traveller” at What’s Wrong with the World, because
for the record, and just so there’s no misunderstanding: I’m still gay, and I’m still agnostic—and I’m still way into “human bio-diversity.”
Did I know this? I didn’t think I did, and I search my Google mail archives, and I find this mail I sent to you over a year ago. I was wondering how Burton even got a spot posting at WWWtW, especially in view of Paul Cella’s calling him “illustrious,” seeing as he had no track record as a philosopher or online writing.
On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 10:01 AM, Gintas wrote to LA:
Googling “Steve Burton philosophy” comes up pretty empty. Alasdair MacIntyre is illustrious. G. E. M. Anscombe is illustrious. Alvin Plantinga is illustrious. Even Ed Feser, who wrote a book, is illustrious compared to Steve Burton. Why, Lydia McGrew even has done some serious work in the field. Steve Burton writes on a blog—that’s the first result on Google. The seventh is a link to an astrologer named Steve Burton (I will assume a different man).
Maybe Cella is being tongue-in-cheek; maybe the two were having an offline back-and-forth about Lincoln. Maybe Cella is sucking up. But Steve Burton is, if anything, anti-illustrious. I wonder how he even got a spot on this blog.
LA replies (September 3, 2010):
I never heard that Burton is homosexual. He says this is well known. What is a pro-HBD, agnostic homosexual doing at a traditionalist Christian web site? (Whoops, there I go again, with my authoritarian notion that words, such as “traditionalist” and “Christian,” have definitional boundaries.)
At least now we know where Burton has been coming from with, e.g., his great admiration for Mark Steyn and his over-the-top personal attacks on me for my extensive criticisms of Steyn’s writings on Islam.
Also, I don’t know what Burton means by “fellow traveler” in this context. A fellow traveler is someone who shares the ideology of a group, without being formally a part of it. But I think what Burton means by fellow traveler is the opposite: that he is formally a part of a traditionalist Christian website, but doesn’t share its worldview.
Here are entries responding to Burton’s campaign against me in June 2009, in which he basically called me a depraved liar who has criticized Mark Steyn’s views of Islam, not because I think his views are false or harmful, but because I think his views are true and like my own. From which the logic would follow that if Steyn’s views on Islam were identical to mine, I would be attacking Steyn even more, because, according to Burton, my real motive in writing about Islam is not to speak the truth about Islam as I see it and to say what I think needs to be done about Islam, but to be the sole person who is right about Islam. This is the type of high level argumentation that Burton brought to What’s Wrong with the World.
A reply to Steve Burton
Jun 17, 2009 … A reply to Steve Burton (In this entry, MG says that my Separationist plan is much better than anything discussed by Mark Steyn and other …
Have I lied about Steyn?
Jun 15, 2009 … Have I lied about Steyn? From the big anti-Auster thread that Steve Burton has unleashed at What’s Wrong with the World, and that I have not …
Writer supports P. Hitchens’s attack on the BNP, and smears me
Jun 12, 2009 … Steve Burton has basically called all my critical articles about Mark Steyn out and out lies.
Did I misinterpret Burton’s comment about me?
Jun 19, 2009
WWWW attack continues
A supposedly fellow traditional conservative website initiates an attack on me (namely Steve Burton’s smear concerning my critical articles on Mark Steyn, …
A magnificent response to the attack on me at 4W
Jun 14, 2009
- end of initial entry -
Gerry Neal writes:
I am writing in response to your post “Steve Burton comes out of closet that he says he’s never been in.” I know very little about Burton. I noticed a reference to him in an article by Jerry Salyer in the August 10th issue of Chronicles on the “Antichrist right,” i.e., the segment of the racial right which blames Christian universalism for liberalism and calls for a revival of paganism. In that article, Burton is quoted as being a representative of that part of the right.
You wrote: “Also, I don’t know what Burton means by “fellow traveler” in this context. A fellow traveler is someone who shares the ideology of a group, without being formally a part of it. But I think what Burton means by fellow traveler is the opposite: that he is formally a part of a traditionalist Christian website, but doesn’t share its worldview.”
I think the key to what he means by “fellow traveller” is found in the next paragraph after he says “I’m still gay, and I’m still agnostic—and I’m still way into “human bio-diversity.”” He writes “Moreover: just because I love, from my very depths, the Euro-Christian tradition that led to, e.g., Chartres and the Isenheim Altarpiece and Parsifal and The Lord of the Rings doesn’t mean that I can’t be horrified, from the very same depths, by what seems to me to be the trajectory of Christianity today.” What I take this to mean is that while he isn’t a believing/practicing Christian, he admires the Christian tradition (as it was prior to its contemporary state) from the outside.
This would mean that he rejects Mr. Salyer’s characterization of his position.
September 4
LA writes:
Steve Burton has noticed the present post and writes about it:
In a post which, though brief, displays many of the traits that have made him famous, Lawrence Auster revisits my “over-the-top personal attacks” on him from a year ago last June.
Still on my personal traits. Why are criticisms of me always about my personality? I haven’t noticed this to be the case with any other conservative blogger.
And what are these traits? I guess that I don’t like it when people—especially at what is supposedly an intelligent, traditionalist conservative website, which is, moreover, edited by someone who used to be a regular commenter at VFR, Paul Cella—launch entire discussions devoted to disgusting and moronic smears of me, such as, in this case, that the “real” reason I’ve criticized Mark Steyn’s writings on Islam is that his position on Islam is the same as my own. Which means that my numerous articles criticizing Steyn’s treatment of Islam are the work of a pathological liar.
Nice job by Paul Cella, bringing Burton aboard at WWWW. I would have expected better of that website, and of Paul Cella. In any case, the new information about Burton, at least new to me, that he is a homosexual agnostic HBD’er writing at a traditional Christian website, helps explain why I found myself the target of a sub-intellectual smear attack at that site last year.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 03, 2010 05:52 PM | Send
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