RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://canadafreepress.com/article/moral-equivalence-in-charlottesvile

Violence is one of the “messy implications of fighting for liberation.” So say the Reverend Traci Blackmon and three other authors in a remarkable op-ed piece in the New York Times that ran in the wake of the recent events in Charlottesville. (NY Times, Sept 1, 2017)

The attitude of Reverend Blackmon and her fellow authors, all Christian ministers, can be summed up as follows: Violence comes with the territory. We don’t condone it, but we understand that it is unavoidable. If our efforts inspire some to commit violence, this will not prevent us from continuing our efforts, and it should not prevent others from joining us. At least our violence is committed in the service of a just cause, which is more than can be said for the right’s violence. (Reverend Blackmon is one of the founders of Black Lives Matter, whose efforts contributed, among other things, to the murder of five police officers in Dallas in July of 2016.)

”unconscious white supremacy”

In the Times piece, the authors complain that the media, and President Trump, have promoted “a false equivalency between groups that advocate white supremacy and those that seek to eliminate it,” as though we ought not condemn violence committed by both sides, since Antifa’s violence against white supremacists is somehow justified.

But what of “those who seek to eliminate” white supremacy? Are they really on the side of the angels, as Rev. Blackmon, et al, would have us believe? It all depends on what they mean by “white supremacy,” a term, it turns out, with two very different meanings.

Reverend Blackmon is one of over 200 signers, mostly Christian ministers, of the “Theological Declaration on Christian Faith and White Supremacy,” also issued in response to the events in Charlottesville. The Declaration refers to “the recent hesitation by the president of the United States in unequivocally condemning the clear exhibition of fascism and white nationalist sympathies in Charlottesville, as well as other long held manifestations of white supremacy such as white privilege and white normalcy. It seems that “white supremacy” does not refer just to the ideology of groups like neo-Nazis and the KKK. Its manifestations include “white privilege,” which must mean that most white Americans are white supremacists.

The Declaration goes on to refer several times to “unconscious white supremacy,” which hardly describes the thinking of genuine white supremacists. When the authors of this document use the term “white supremacy,” they are really referring to the dominant, “white” culture of the United States, especially America’s economic and political practices and institutions. And they are against this culture. “God’s abundance never exists in the context of hyper-individualized meritocracy,” they write. “Rather, it rises from the commons cultivated by cultures and systems of generosity, reciprocity, and profound integrity. The individualistic pursuit of prosperity distorts the good news of the Gospel itself.” (thedeclaration.net) In other words, capitalism bad, socialism good.

It is clear that the authors of the “Theological Declaration on Christian Faith and White Supremacy” aspire to a great deal more than the removal of Confederate monuments, which was the proximate cause of the trouble at Charlottesville. In their view, the American enterprise has been tainted at least since the Pequot Massacre at Mystic Connecticut in 1637. As Reverend Blackmon has said elsewhere, “The Fourth of July is a lie.”

These authors and their allies pose as opponents of racism, but what they really oppose is Americanism. And what they aspire to is the destruction of the “white,” individualist, capitalist culture that lies at the heart of Americanism. “We reject as false doctrine any teaching that the human vocation is to exploit land, people groups, or other nations for the amassing of wealth.” (thedeclaration.net) They agree with Karl Marx that capitalism, the one economic system based on voluntary cooperation among all parties, is immorally “exploitive” because it allows some to become rich while others do not.

Capitalism gives rise to inequality, which for the Left, is the greatest of all evils. If individual freedom, which is the necessary political foundation of capitalism, gives rise to inequality, then individual freedom must go—hence all the special laws in the name of “equality” for blacks, women, homosexuals, and transgenders, laws which diminish Americans’ freedom of association and other rights. If you want to know what a non-capitalist America would look like, imagine Obamacare-style regulation extended to the entire economy.

In response to the events in Charlottesville, President Trump said “We condemn in the strongest most possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides. On many sides.” (Foxnews.com, Aug. 12, 2017) For condemning both the hyper-violent Antifa and the white supremacists—for speaking the plain truth, in other words, an egregious violation of the rules of political correctness—Mr. Trump was excoriated by the mainstream media. But, as I have shown above, a proper respect for the Republic would have required that he condemn both sides even if neither had resorted to violence.

Patriotic Americans are seeing their republic disassembled before their eyes

Instead, we have the United States Congress, led by the Republican establishment, issuing a resolution “rejecting White nationalists, White supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and other hate groups, and urging the President and the President’s Cabinet to use all available resources to address the threats posed by those groups,” with no mention of Antifa, much less of the “non-violent” anti-American groups at Charlottesville that were led by the Reverend Traci Blackmon and her colleagues.

Patriotic Americans are seeing their republic disassembled before their eyes, while the officials they elect to defend it end up siding with the enemy in the name of political correctness. Americans have seen a Republican-appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court take a dive in the fight against Obamacare—twice—in a manner that would have made Sonny Liston blush. They have elected first a Republican House, then a Republican Senate, and now a Republican President, yet Obamacare remains the law of the land. They are loyal and patriotic and eminently respectful of the law, and they are a majority, yet they are seeing themselves rendered politically impotent by a corrupt political establishment in thrall to the evil ideology of cultural Marxism, otherwise known as political correctness. A more effective strategy for promoting the growth of right-wing extremism I could not imagine.