[Vision2020] Justifying Slavery: From The Credenda
Douglas Stambler
ccm_moscow@yahoo.com
Thu, 7 Aug 2003 10:40:56 -0700 (PDT)
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>From the issue: "True DefianceA Memorial to Black Confederates "************************************************Quotations on Black Confederates
Various Saints
Numerous Afro-Virginians, free blacks and slaves, were genuine Southern loyalists, not as a consequence of white pressure but due to their preferences. They are the Civil War's forgotten people, yet their existence was more widespread than American history has recorded. Their bones rest in unhonored glory in Southern soil, shrouded by falsehoods, indifference and historians' censorship.
Ervin L. Jordan, Jr.
There are at the present moment, many colored men in the Confederate Army doing duty not only as cooks, servants, and laborers, but as real soldiers, having muskets on their shoulders and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down loyal troops and do all that soldiers may do to destroy the Federal government and build up that of the traitors and rebels.
Fredrick Douglass
To the majority of the Negroes, as to all the South, the invading armies of the Union seemed to be ruthlessly attacking independent States, invading the beloved homeland and trampling upon all that these men held dear.
Charles H. Wesley
There are numerous accounts of black participation in the battle of First Manassas in the summer of 1861. Black combatants shot, killed, and captured Union troops. Loyal slaves were said to have fought with outstanding bravery alongside their masters. These reports also provide testimony to the fidelity of black Rebels in combat. One black soldier was moving about the field when ordered to surender by a Union officer. The Rebel replied, "No sir, you are my prisoner," while drawing a pistol and shooting the officer dead. He then secured the officer's sidearm and after the battle boasted loudly of having quieted at least one of "the stinkin' Yankees who cam here `specting to whip us Southerners." Another black Confederate who stood behind a tree allowed two Union soldiers to pass before shooting one in the shoulders, clubbing him with a pistol, while demanding the other to surrender. Both prisoners were marched into Confederate lines. An Alabama officer's servant marched a Zou!
ave into
camp proclaiming, "Massa, here one of dese devils who been shooting at us, Suh."
Charles W. Harper
I have no doubt that if Congress would authorize their [the black Southerners'] reception into service, and empower the President to call upon individuals of States for such as they are willing to contribute, with the condition of emancipation to all enrolled, a sufficient number would be forthcoming to enable us to try the experiment [of determining whether the slaves would make good soldiers]. If it proved successful, most of the objections to the measure would disappear, and if individuals still remained unwilling to send their negroes to the army, the force of public opinion in the States would soon bring about such legislation as would remove all obstacles. I think the matter should be left, as far as possible, to the people and the States, which alone can legislate as the necessities of this particular service may require.
Gen. Robert E. Lee
One cavalry officer related how he was held under guard by a shotgun-wielding black who kept the weapon trained on the Yankee's head with unwavering concentration. "Here I had come South and was fighting to free this man," the disgusted major wrote in his diary. "If I had made one false move on my horse, he would have shot my head off."
Wayne R. Austman
For more than two years, Negroes had been extensively employed in belligerent operations by the Confederacy. They had been embodied and drilled as rebel soldiers and had paraded with white troops at a time when this would not have been tolerated in the armies of the Union.
Horace Greeley
Some Negroes, however, soon became disillusioned because of the hardships they experienced during the early months of their freedom. Nine hundred freedmen assembled at Mobile on August 13, 1865, and by a vote of seven hundred to two hundred declared that the realities of freedom "were far from being so flattering as their imagination had painted it; that the prejudices of color were not confined to the South, but stronger and more marked on the part of the strangers from the North."
Robert D. Reid
Former mayor John Dodson . . . presented them with a Confederate flag, assuring them that when they returned they would "reap a rich reward of praise, and merit, from a thankful people." Charles Tinsley, a bricklayer and a "corner workman," acted as spokesman for the Negroes. His remarks in acceptance of the flag were brief: "We are willing to aid Virginia's cause to the utmost of our ability. . . . There is not an unwilling heart among us, not a hand but will tell in the work before us; and we promise unhesitating obedience to all orders that may be given us."
Benjamin Quarles
Nor were runaways the only bondsmen who aided the Union war effort. Slaves who lacked opportunity to escape nonetheless found ways of contributing to Confederate defeat. At great peril to themselves, some slaves, concealed, fed, and directed runaways or escaped Federal prisoners of war on the journey to freedom. Others sabotaged farm and labor equipment or assumed an uncooperative attitude with owners and overseers, to slow down work and promote widespread insecurity among whites at home. In time such deeds paid great dividends, as Confederate troops deserted ranks to look after the welfare of loved ones at home.
Joseph T. Glattaar
Tennessee in June 1861 became the first in the South to legislate the use of free black soldiers. The governor was authorized to enroll those between the ages of fifteen and fifty, to be paid $18 a month and the same rations and clothing as white soldiers; the black men appeared in two black regiments in Memphis by September.
Ervin L. Jordan, Jr.
Perhaps the group that had the strongest vested interest in seeing the South victorious were the black slaveowners. In 1830 approximately 1,556 black slaveowners in the deep South owned 7,188 slaves. About 25% of all free blacks owned slaves. A few of these were men who purchased their family members to protect or free them, but most were people who saw slavery as the best way to economic wealth and independence for themselves. The American dream in the antebellum South was just as powerful for free blacks as whites and it included the use of slaves for self-improvement. They bought and sold slaves for profit and exploited their labor just like their white counterparts.
Richard Rollins
After their capture one group of white Virginia slave owners and Afro-Virginians were asked if they would take the oath of allegiance to the United States in exchange for their freedom. One free negro indignantly replied: "I can't take no such oaf as dat. I'm a secesh nigger." A slave from this same group, upon learning that his master had refused, proudly exclaimed, "I can't take no oath dat Massa won't take." A second slave agreed: "I ain't going out here on no dishonorable terms." On another occasion a captured Virginia planter took the oath, but slave remained faithful to the Confederacy and refused. This slave returned to Virginia by a flag of truce boat and expressed disgust at his owner's disloyalty: "Massa had no principles." Confederate prisoners of war paid tribute to the loyalty, ingenuity, and diligence of "kind-hearted" blacks who attended to their needs and considered them fellow Southerners.
Ervin L. Jordan, Jr.
Wednesday, September 10: At 4 o'clock this morning the Rebel army began to move from our town, Jackson's force taking the advance. The movement continued until 8 o'clock P.M., occupying 16 hours. The most liberal calculation could not give them more than 64,000 men. Over 3,000 Negroes must be included in the number. . . . They had arms, rifles, muskets, sabers, bowie-knives, dirks, etc. They were supplied, in many instances, with knapsacks, haversacks, canteens, etc., and they were manifestly an integral portion of the Southern Confederacy army. They were seen riding on horses and mules, driving wagons, riding on caissons, in ambulances, with the staff of generals and promiscuously mixed up with all the Rebel horde.
Capt. Isaac Heysinger
Forrest said of the black men who served with him, and this seems to be a direct quote:
These boys stayed with me, drove my teams and better Confederates did not live. . . . Those [black Southerners] among us during the war behaved in such a manner that I shall always respect them for it. . . . I have always felt kind towards them and always treated them kindly.
Thomas Y. Cartwright
The public support and activities of Afro-Confederates, a minority within a minority, received considerable prominence. A Charlottesville newspaper reported an interview with Hames Ward, a slave who fled "Yankeedom" to warn his fellow slaves of abuse and racism in Union army camps and of blacks being forced to front lines during battles. He preferred being the slave of "the meanest masters in the South" than a free black man in the North: "If this is freedom, give me slavery forever."
Ervin L. Jordan, Jr.
Much is said about the slaves coming into Federal lines, and many complaints are made because they are not promptly given up. Are they not in the Confederate lines, and are they not used to build fortifications and do the work of rebels, and in many instances used to man rebel guns, and fight against the Union?
The Liberator, July 18, 1862
Well-to-do Creole Negroes . . . carried themselves with a military bearing; as they informed a commanding general on a later occasion, they came of a fighting race: "Our fathers were brought here as slaves bacause they were captured in war, and in hand to hand fights, too. Pardon me, General, but the only cowardly blood we have got in our veins is the white blood."
Benjamin Quarles
***********************************************
Debunking Racial Rights
Douglas Jones
After slogging through piles of white nationalist/supremacist literature, it finally struck me that I had stumbled upon one of those unreached tribes which from childbirth has been handcuffed inside an Affirmative Action office. This is the only explanation. Here is a people who are obsessed with racial categories, race classifications, race distinctions, race relations, and did I mention race? Anything that flutters by their minds has to immediately be sucked within some racial cubicle. But race simply isn't that interesting. It's as if these people have never even heard of other possible topics of conversation. Perhaps we could start to undo all their ugliness by quietly smuggling them a thesaurus. In a much touted paper, "The Racial Compact," white nationalist Richard McCulloch outlines a vision for fixing the world's oppressions by rearranging--what else?-- race relations. His key is to build worldwide recognition of racial rights, rights that serve to keep the respectiv!
e races
independent, separate, pure, and, probably, trustworthy, brave, and reverent too. His quite typical monotone on race leads him at one point to call for all worldviews to serve race as their goal: "The belief that a fundamental end or purpose of a socially, culturally, and politically dominant morality, philosophy, ideology or religion, or system of beliefs and values, is to serve and promote the welfare, well-being, health, and best interests of the race." (On second thought, send this guy a redundancy editor not a thesaurus.) Black nationalists say similar things. For all such ethnically-obsessed groups, the chief end of man is to glorify race and enjoy it forever. If this isn't idolatry, I don't know what is.
As a treatment of rights, McCulloch's vision crashes in the corner at several points. For example, in his "Charter of Racial Rights," McCullogh declares that "All races have right to their own living space or territory, to possession of their own racial homeland . . . as a condition required for both their continued life and independence." Yet just prior to this, we were told that "All races have a right to . . . exclusive control of their own life and existence . . . free from domination, control or interference by other races." But if your race owns property in a territory claimed as a homeland by another, then we've got a serious knuckle fight. You would have an obligation to give up land that you have a right to keep.
Similarly, McCulloch disparages individualism as "idiocy" and defends racial groups as whole objects: "individual entities, whether tree or human being, come and go in their generations, but the larger entity of which they are a part, whether forest or race, lives on" (my emphasis). Yet at the same time, he later calls for a "rejection of the concept of `collective guilt,' which holds all members of a racial, religious, national or ethnic group responsible and guilty for the wrongs committed by some members of the group." Well which is it going to be? He demands collective duties but rejects collective responsibility. How convenient. Perhaps his race has some guilt to hide. It reminds me of the quip that Aristotle categorized ad hominem arguments as fallacies because he had a questionable parentage.
McCulloch makes some rather jelly-like things the bearers of civil protection. For example, races have the right to "love and value and be proud of what they are," as well as "a right to the affections and loyalties, love, and care of their members." A right to love and affection would sure put a new spin on courtship. He also turns ethnic jokes into a blood sport by opposing "any action" which has "the effect of taking persons away from their race, in mind or body, physically or in alienation of affections or loyalties" whether "with or without the consent or cooperation of its victims." We can't even poke fun at our own race, even though that is probably the only useful function of race.
In addition, McCulloch finds quick affinity with environmentalist categories. Both ideologies value the whole over the particulars--"Racial conservation has much in common with the conservation of nature. . . . Racial preservation depends upon the development of a conservationist ethic for race, or human nature, similar to the conservationist ethic developed for nonhuman nature." He then cites Vice President Albert Gore on environmentalism to support his point. Hmmm. It would be fun to see a news report about the Vice President's ties to white supremacy. Dreams can be cruel.
More importantly, white supremacists are excessively modern constructs. They try hard to deny it, but like Al Gore they are proud children of the Enlightenment. Marx, Rousseau, and Earth First! all try to get rid of the evil in the world not by the Spirit of God but by impotently moving around the furniture of society. Marxists want to get rid of evil by getting rid of the ruling class. Classical liberals want to get rid of evil by getting rid of the State. Modern liberals want to rid evil by getting rid of the market. Environmentalists want to get rid of evil by getting rid of those nasty humans. And white supremacists want to get rid of evil by getting rid of racial contacts. They are all Rousseauean rebels. They all draw the antithesis between light and darkness in the wrong place. But moving the furniture can't deal with the heart of sin.
We can test this easily. Let all the vast numbers of white nationalists across the U.S. and Germany have a territory of their own, say, a small county in Rhode Island (just not out here in the west). Then watch for utopia to sprout. All the evils they blamed on other races will magically appear in their midst. They won't learn though. They'll find some conspiratorial way to blame everyone else. But those outside can have fun watching the foolishness of modernity.
---------------------------------
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<H3>From the issue: "True Defiance<B class=one>A Memorial to Black Confederates</B> "</H3>
<H3>************************************************</H3>
<H3>Quotations on Black Confederates</H3>
<P><B>Various Saints</B></P>
<P>Numerous Afro-Virginians, free blacks and slaves, were genuine Southern loyalists, not as a consequence of white pressure but due to their preferences. They are the Civil War's forgotten people, yet their existence was more widespread than American history has recorded. Their bones rest in unhonored glory in Southern soil, shrouded by falsehoods, indifference and historians' censorship.
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV class=indent><SPACER width="18" type="block"><I>Ervin L. Jordan, Jr.</I> </DIV>
<P></P>
<P>There are at the present moment, many colored men in the Confederate Army doing duty not only as cooks, servants, and laborers, but as real soldiers, having muskets on their shoulders and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down loyal troops and do all that soldiers may do to destroy the Federal government and build up that of the traitors and rebels.
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV class=indent><SPACER width="18" type="block"><I>Fredrick Douglass</I> </DIV>
<P></P>
<P>To the majority of the Negroes, as to all the South, the invading armies of the Union seemed to be ruthlessly attacking independent States, invading the beloved homeland and trampling upon all that these men held dear.
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV class=indent><SPACER width="18" type="block"><I>Charles H. Wesley</I> </DIV>
<P></P>
<P>There are numerous accounts of black participation in the battle of First Manassas in the summer of 1861. Black combatants shot, killed, and captured Union troops. Loyal slaves were said to have fought with outstanding bravery alongside their masters. These reports also provide testimony to the fidelity of black Rebels in combat. One black soldier was moving about the field when ordered to surender by a Union officer. The Rebel replied, "No sir, you are my prisoner," while drawing a pistol and shooting the officer dead. He then secured the officer's sidearm and after the battle boasted loudly of having quieted at least one of "the stinkin' Yankees who cam here `specting to whip us Southerners." Another black Confederate who stood behind a tree allowed two Union soldiers to pass before shooting one in the shoulders, clubbing him with a pistol, while demanding the other to surrender. Both prisoners were marched into Confederate lines. An Alabama officer's servant marched a !
Zouave
into camp proclaiming, "Massa, here one of dese devils who been shooting at us, Suh."
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV class=indent><SPACER width="18" type="block"><I>Charles W. Harper</I> </DIV>
<P></P>
<P>I have no doubt that if Congress would authorize their [the black Southerners'] reception into service, and empower the President to call upon individuals of States for such as they are willing to contribute, with the condition of emancipation to all enrolled, a sufficient number would be forthcoming to enable us to try the experiment [of determining whether the slaves would make good soldiers]. If it proved successful, most of the objections to the measure would disappear, and if individuals still remained unwilling to send their negroes to the army, the force of public opinion in the States would soon bring about such legislation as would remove all obstacles. I think the matter should be left, as far as possible, to the people and the States, which alone can legislate as the necessities of this particular service may require.
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV class=indent><SPACER width="18" type="block"><I>Gen. Robert E. Lee</I> </DIV>
<P></P>
<P>One cavalry officer related how he was held under guard by a shotgun-wielding black who kept the weapon trained on the Yankee's head with unwavering concentration. "Here I had come South and was fighting to free this man," the disgusted major wrote in his diary. "If I had made one false move on my horse, he would have shot my head off."
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV class=indent><SPACER width="18" type="block"><I>Wayne R. Austman</I> </DIV>
<P></P>
<P>For more than two years, Negroes had been extensively employed in belligerent operations by the Confederacy. They had been embodied and drilled as rebel soldiers and had paraded with white troops at a time when this would not have been tolerated in the armies of the Union.
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV class=indent><SPACER width="18" type="block"><I>Horace Greeley</I> </DIV>
<P></P>
<P>Some Negroes, however, soon became disillusioned because of the hardships they experienced during the early months of their freedom. Nine hundred freedmen assembled at Mobile on August 13, 1865, and by a vote of seven hundred to two hundred declared that the realities of freedom "were far from being so flattering as their imagination had painted it; that the prejudices of color were not confined to the South, but stronger and more marked on the part of the strangers from the North."
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV class=indent><SPACER width="18" type="block"><I>Robert D. Reid</I> </DIV>
<P></P>
<P>Former mayor John Dodson . . . presented them with a Confederate flag, assuring them that when they returned they would "reap a rich reward of praise, and merit, from a thankful people." Charles Tinsley, a bricklayer and a "corner workman," acted as spokesman for the Negroes. His remarks in acceptance of the flag were brief: "We are willing to aid Virginia's cause to the utmost of our ability. . . . There is not an unwilling heart among us, not a hand but will tell in the work before us; and we promise unhesitating obedience to all orders that may be given us."
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV class=indent><SPACER width="18" type="block"><I>Benjamin Quarles</I> </DIV>
<P></P>
<P>Nor were runaways the only bondsmen who aided the Union war effort. Slaves who lacked opportunity to escape nonetheless found ways of contributing to Confederate defeat. At great peril to themselves, some slaves, concealed, fed, and directed runaways or escaped Federal prisoners of war on the journey to freedom. Others sabotaged farm and labor equipment or assumed an uncooperative attitude with owners and overseers, to slow down work and promote widespread insecurity among whites at home. In time such deeds paid great dividends, as Confederate troops deserted ranks to look after the welfare of loved ones at home.
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV class=indent><SPACER width="18" type="block"><I>Joseph T. Glattaar</I> </DIV>
<P></P>
<P>Tennessee in June 1861 became the first in the South to legislate the use of free black soldiers. The governor was authorized to enroll those between the ages of fifteen and fifty, to be paid $18 a month and the same rations and clothing as white soldiers; the black men appeared in two black regiments in Memphis by September.
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV class=indent><SPACER width="18" type="block"><I>Ervin L. Jordan, Jr.</I> </DIV>
<P></P>
<P>Perhaps the group that had the strongest vested interest in seeing the South victorious were the black slaveowners. In 1830 approximately 1,556 black slaveowners in the deep South owned 7,188 slaves. About 25% of all free blacks owned slaves. A few of these were men who purchased their family members to protect or free them, but most were people who saw slavery as the best way to economic wealth and independence for themselves. The American dream in the antebellum South was just as powerful for free blacks as whites and it included the use of slaves for self-improvement. They bought and sold slaves for profit and exploited their labor just like their white counterparts.
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV class=indent><SPACER width="18" type="block"><I>Richard Rollins</I> </DIV>
<P></P>
<P>After their capture one group of white Virginia slave owners and Afro-Virginians were asked if they would take the oath of allegiance to the United States in exchange for their freedom. One free negro indignantly replied: "I can't take no such oaf as dat. I'm a secesh nigger." A slave from this same group, upon learning that his master had refused, proudly exclaimed, "I can't take no oath dat Massa won't take." A second slave agreed: "I ain't going out here on no dishonorable terms." On another occasion a captured Virginia planter took the oath, but slave remained faithful to the Confederacy and refused. This slave returned to Virginia by a flag of truce boat and expressed disgust at his owner's disloyalty: "Massa had no principles." Confederate prisoners of war paid tribute to the loyalty, ingenuity, and diligence of "kind-hearted" blacks who attended to their needs and considered them fellow Southerners.
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV class=indent><SPACER width="18" type="block"><I>Ervin L. Jordan, Jr.</I> </DIV>
<P></P>
<P>Wednesday, September 10: At 4 o'clock this morning the Rebel army began to move from our town, Jackson's force taking the advance. The movement continued until 8 o'clock P.M., occupying 16 hours. The most liberal calculation could not give them more than 64,000 men. Over 3,000 Negroes must be included in the number. . . . They had arms, rifles, muskets, sabers, bowie-knives, dirks, etc. They were supplied, in many instances, with knapsacks, haversacks, canteens, etc., and they were manifestly an integral portion of the Southern Confederacy army. They were seen riding on horses and mules, driving wagons, riding on caissons, in ambulances, with the staff of generals and promiscuously mixed up with all the Rebel horde.
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV class=indent><SPACER width="18" type="block"><I>Capt. Isaac Heysinger</I> </DIV>
<P></P>
<P>Forrest said of the black men who served with him, and this seems to be a direct quote:
<DIV></DIV>
<P></P>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=one>These boys stayed with me, drove my teams and better Confederates did not live. . . . Those [black Southerners] among us during the war behaved in such a manner that I shall always respect them for it. . . . I have always felt kind towards them and always treated them kindly. </BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>
<DIV class=indent><SPACER width="18" type="block"><I>Thomas Y. Cartwright</I> </DIV>
<P></P>
<P>The public support and activities of Afro-Confederates, a minority within a minority, received considerable prominence. A Charlottesville newspaper reported an interview with Hames Ward, a slave who fled "Yankeedom" to warn his fellow slaves of abuse and racism in Union army camps and of blacks being forced to front lines during battles. He preferred being the slave of "the meanest masters in the South" than a free black man in the North: "If this is freedom, give me slavery forever."
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV class=indent><SPACER width="18" type="block"><I>Ervin L. Jordan, Jr.</I> </DIV>
<P></P>
<P>Much is said about the slaves coming into Federal lines, and many complaints are made because they are not promptly given up. Are they not in the Confederate lines, and are they not used to build fortifications and do the work of rebels, and in many instances used to man rebel guns, and fight against the Union?
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV class=indent><SPACER width="18" type="block"><I>The Liberator, July 18, 1862</I> </DIV>
<P></P>
<P>Well-to-do Creole Negroes . . . carried themselves with a military bearing; as they informed a commanding general on a later occasion, they came of a fighting race: "Our fathers were brought here as slaves bacause they were captured in war, and in hand to hand fights, too. Pardon me, General, but the only cowardly blood we have got in our veins is the white blood."
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV class=indent><SPACER width="18" type="block"><I>Benjamin Quarles</I> </DIV>
<DIV>***********************************************</DIV>
<DIV>
<H3>Debunking Racial Rights</H3>
<P><B>Douglas Jones</B></P>
<P>After slogging through piles of white nationalist/supremacist literature, it finally struck me that I had stumbled upon one of those unreached tribes which from childbirth has been handcuffed inside an Affirmative Action office. This is the only explanation. Here is a people who are obsessed with racial categories, race classifications, race distinctions, race relations, and did I mention race? Anything that flutters by their minds has to immediately be sucked within some racial cubicle. But race simply isn't that interesting. It's as if these people have never even heard of other possible topics of conversation. Perhaps we could start to undo all their ugliness by quietly smuggling them a thesaurus.
<DIV class=indent><SPACER width="18" type="block">In a much touted paper, "The Racial Compact," white nationalist Richard McCulloch outlines a vision for fixing the world's oppressions by rearranging--what else?-- race relations. His key is to build worldwide recognition of <I>racial rights,</I> rights that serve to keep the respective races independent, separate, pure, and, probably, trustworthy, brave, and reverent too. His quite typical monotone on race leads him at one point to call for all worldviews to serve race as their goal: "The belief that a fundamental end or purpose of a socially, culturally, and politically dominant morality, philosophy, ideology or religion, or system of beliefs and values, is to serve and promote the welfare, well-being, health, and best interests of the race." (On second thought, send this guy a redundancy editor not a thesaurus.) Black nationalists say similar things. For all such ethnically-obsessed groups, the chief end of man is to glori!
fy race
and enjoy it forever. If this isn't idolatry, I don't know what is. </DIV>
<DIV class=indent><SPACER width="18" type="block">As a treatment of rights, McCulloch's vision crashes in the corner at several points. For example, in his "Charter of Racial Rights," McCullogh declares that "All races have right to their own living space or territory, to possession of their own racial homeland . . . as a condition required for both their continued life and independence." Yet just prior to this, we were told that "All races have a right to . . . exclusive control of their own life and existence . . . free from domination, control or interference by other races." But if your race owns property in a territory claimed as a homeland by another, then we've got a serious knuckle fight. You would have an obligation to give up land that you have a right to keep. </DIV>
<DIV class=indent><SPACER width="18" type="block">Similarly, McCulloch disparages individualism as "idiocy" and defends racial groups as whole objects: "individual entities, whether tree or human being, come and go in their generations, but the <I>larger entity</I> of which they are a part, whether forest or race, <I>lives on</I>" (my emphasis). Yet at the same time, he later calls for a "rejection of the concept of `collective guilt,' which holds all members of a racial, religious, national or ethnic group responsible and guilty for the wrongs committed by some members of the group." Well which is it going to be? He demands collective duties but rejects collective responsibility. How convenient. Perhaps his race has some guilt to hide. It reminds me of the quip that Aristotle categorized <I>ad hominem</I> arguments as fallacies because he had a questionable parentage. </DIV>
<DIV class=indent><SPACER width="18" type="block">McCulloch makes some rather jelly-like things the bearers of civil protection. For example, races have the right to "love and value and be proud of what they are," as well as "a right to the affections and loyalties, love, and care of their members." A right to love and affection would sure put a new spin on courtship. He also turns ethnic jokes into a blood sport by opposing "any action" which has "the effect of taking persons away from their race, in mind or body, physically or in alienation of affections or loyalties" whether "with or without the consent or cooperation of its victims." We can't even poke fun at our own race, even though that is probably the only useful function of race. </DIV>
<DIV class=indent><SPACER width="18" type="block">In addition, McCulloch finds quick affinity with environmentalist categories. Both ideologies value the whole over the particulars--"Racial conservation has much in common with the conservation of nature. . . . Racial preservation depends upon the development of a conservationist ethic for race, or human nature, similar to the conservationist ethic developed for nonhuman nature." He then cites Vice President Albert Gore on environmentalism to support his point. Hmmm. It would be fun to see a news report about the Vice President's ties to white supremacy. Dreams can be cruel. </DIV>
<DIV class=indent><SPACER width="18" type="block">More importantly, white supremacists are excessively <I>modern</I> constructs. They try hard to deny it, but like Al Gore they are proud children of the Enlightenment. Marx, Rousseau, and Earth First! all try to get rid of the evil in the world not by the Spirit of God but by impotently moving around the furniture of society. Marxists want to get rid of evil by getting rid of the ruling class. Classical liberals want to get rid of evil by getting rid of the State. Modern liberals want to rid evil by getting rid of the market. Environmentalists want to get rid of evil by getting rid of those nasty humans. And white supremacists want to get rid of evil by getting rid of racial contacts. They are all Rousseauean rebels. They all draw the antithesis between light and darkness in the wrong place. But moving the furniture can't deal with the heart of sin. </DIV>
<DIV class=indent><SPACER width="18" type="block">We can test this easily. Let all the vast numbers of white nationalists across the U.S. and Germany have a territory of their own, say, a small county in Rhode Island (just not out here in the west). Then watch for utopia to sprout. All the evils they blamed on other races will magically appear in their midst. They won't learn though. They'll find some conspiratorial way to blame everyone else. But those outside can have fun watching the foolishness of modernity. </DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV><p><hr SIZE=1>
Do you Yahoo!?<br>
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