[Vision2020] Probably why the Merkles' don't really want to be my friend

[Heather Wilson]

Rose,

It's been too long! No time interact with the contents your note at the moment since my phone is dying, but just wanted to say one thing now. I shared her email response online because your initial email to Ben was posted on the public forum, not privately to him. Had it not been, I would have not felt any need to forward hers along to V2020.

Always happy to engage.
Heather 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Aug 3, 2015, at 12:57 PM, Rosemary Huskey <donaldrose at cpcinternet.com> wrote:
> 
> Ordinarily, I would not have posted this response to the Merkle’s on-line.  I’m told that Heather Wilson shared her sister-in-law’s email to me on-line so I offer this rebuttal for Vision 2020’s delight/disgust as well.  Then, for me, this matter is closed.  All anyone need remember, when it comes to the Wilson’s, is the old chestnut “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” - which is as sad a truism as I have ever uttered.
> 
> Rose
> 
> Good morning Dr. and Mrs. Merkle,
> 
> Thank you both for taking the time to respond to my note.  Apparently, you were surprised that I sent it to your husband rather than to you, Mrs. Merkle.  The reasons for that two fold and are quite aside from my head of household remark which carries weight within the dynamics of CREC marriage. 
> 
> Firstly, I believe that private blogs, Femina Girls or Blog and Mablog for example, are places where the blog owner(s) should enjoy the peaceful right of his or her free speech.  In my mind a blog is the equivalent of one’s intellectual home.  While I feel a moral obligation to confront the racist, sexist, and homophobic expressions of your father, I certainly would not knock on the door of his home on North Polk, step inside without an invitation (or, come to that, with an invitation) and decry his hateful rhetoric.  His home should indeed be his castle on-line and in actuality.  Therefore, I always tackle my issues with him in public and sign my name in order to take responsibility for my remarks.
> 
> Secondly, I had no idea how to contact you directly but Dr. Merkle has an email address on the church website.  Of course I am aware of your skillful wordsmithy, Mrs. Merkle; the spirited defense of your daddy after remarks made by Rachel Held Evans comes to mind. However, in this instance, there is a simple and straight forward explanation for my email address choice which has nothing to do with a more exciting or complex personal agenda, I just didn’t know your personal email address.
> 
> The genealogical history of the Merkle and Wilson family is, as you both should know, a straw man argument. It does not explain nor is it a defense for two distinctly inaccurate statements in Mrs. Merkle’s piece Victims and Perpetrators. I need hardly mention that Dr. Merkle’s academic training (which I wish I had) or the fact that Jewish guests were served pork nudge, nudge, wink, wink, those silly old dietary rules, in your Oxford home  does not excuse or justify the egregious offense of blaming the victim.  Your claims, Mrs. Merkle that “it was those Jewish leaders who forced their own people into slave labor” and “The Jews of Poland were betrayed by their own” are ludicrous, insulting and are chilling reminiscent similar to the blood libel made up by devout Christians argument to excuse the unholy segregation, isolation, and abuse of Jews throughout the centuries.
> 
> Are you willing to also blame the kidnapped men, women and children stolen from their African homeland for the centuries of mistreatment they received at the hands of the slave holding owners and more recently the Jim Crow laws of the old Confederate states?  Do you share your daddy’s published claim that:
> 
> “Slavery as it existed in the South was not an adversarial relationship with pervasive racial animosity. Because of its dominantly patriarchal character, it was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence. There has never been a multi-racial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world.”
> 
> It seems to me that you might have learned to blame the victim and shield the perpetrator at your daddy’s knee.
> 
> Do you also believe that the dozens of young victims of Steven Sitler’s repulsive behavior are to blame for being used as his sexual toys?  Your father remains curiously silent on that issue although he and Ed Iverson played very important roles in lobbying for and conducting the corrupt travesty of his marriage. 
> 
> Theological disputes are fraught with danger since they rely on personal understanding of scripture.  Your understanding is no more infallible than mine. Your belief that at the moment of conception fetal tissue becomes a human being with a soul is not shared by everyone.  Reasonable, decent, and moral people can disagree, and do, on that issue.  Neither of us have the title of Her Royal Highness, Ethical Arbitrator of the Universe.  But, I do have the distinct impression that although you are uncrowned in my eyes, your birth privilege and pride of place as a minister’s wife may leave you feeling a special kinship with the Almighty that the rest of us don’t enjoy.  Perhaps it is the sense of being Elect before birth that cloaks you in spiritual ermine and silk.  (Quaker’s don’t get special treatment from God, plain old ordinary cotton (not dyed in indigo thank you very much) suffices for us.)
> 
> Mordecai Chaim Rumkowski, in my opinion, was a thuggish, sociopathic, moron which has absolutely nothing to do with being Jewish. That was the reason I suggested the ironic name Chaim was clearly at odds with his behavior.  Other historians, far better educated than I, have a different perspective on his actions.  Sadly, all ethnicities and religious (or not) affiliations on this earth contain some really rotten, sinful folk.  But, that does not mean that Jews were responsible for the Holocaust, or that all Kirkers think Steven Sitler or Jamin Wright are fine fellows and would make great babysitters or husbands.
> 
> Thanks for your kind offer, Dr. Merkle to discuss your dissertation with me.  I would like to read it, is it on-line? I would be uncomfortable wasting your time with my limited knowledge of your field so I’ll not follow up on the generous offer for a tutorial (sans my half assed jackassery of course).
> 
> As always you remain in my prayers (although unlike your lot I don’t think imprecatory prayers are ever appropriate.)
> 
>  
> 
> As ever and always, Amen.
> 
> Rose Huskey
> 
> 
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