That’s ‘merican Stupid!

A British friend asked me why Americans are so stupid.

I couldn’t disagree with him, of course.  If you’re inclined to disagree, check out this CNNNN gag.  (CNNNN in an Australian pseudo-news organization, similar to “The Onion”.)

This video inspires a little national pride, even among the most ardent of apathetic Americans.  They rise off the couch, grab up their American flags, and yell to the sky:  “We are *not* stupid!  You are!”

At least, that was my reaction.  (Ok, not really.  I  don’t own an American flag and while I am prone to yelling at the ceiling it’s usually for less-noble reasons.)

Readers of this blog (all 2 of you) know that I’m an ardent Southern Nationalist (in my own, modified way) and the last thing I want to do is defend contemporary American institutions.  So, I was confused myself about the feelings of patriotism bubbling up in me while watching that video (and again, later on, when my Brit friend asked me his question.)

I realized that it was the American people that are being ridiculed here, not our institutions and way of life.  And, the American people are my people.  (At least, I identify most with the Scots-Irish in the south, especially in the Appalachian region and ultimately, as my understanding of history goes, that makes me of the Anglo-Saxon people, with my particular ethnic stock originating in the low-lands of Scotland, migrating to Ulster Co. Ireland, and then ultimately to the far-blue mountains of America, and beyond!**)

I love the people, the customs and traditions…it’s the cancer of industrialism and the resulting ideological movements that I despise.

So, here’s how I answered my friend:

I claimed that Americans aren’t “stupid” per se.

The average American knows fact A, fact B and fact C, but is helpless in stringing them together into a coherent worldview.

The English-speaking world is, after all, notorious for its reliance on strict empiricism.  Consider the following joke for example:

A businessman asked three philosophers (a Continental philosopher, an English philosopher and an American philosopher) to help him get his elephant off the barge and safely onto land.

The continental philosopher says, “Hmmm…does the elephant really even exist?”

The English philosopher says, “Hmm…how much does the elephant weigh?”

The American philosopher says, “How much will you pay me?”

Ok, well, it’s not really that funny of a joke, but if you’re into philosophy, you’ll immediately note the accurate caricatures.  Continental philosophers were concerned with grand metaphysical schemes (think Spinoza and Leibniz) where as the Brits were into empiricism and scientific investigation.  Americans, to the extent that we can speak of an “American school of philosophy” have always been pragmatic.

This mindset (or zeitgeist if you will) has transferred itself through the ages and today, is well-established orthodoxy, which is very convenient for the financial oligarchs and other satanists (who designed government education to produce factory workers.)

Yes, the American knows how to get things done and is motivated by that knowledge.  If CNNNN had asked any of those folks how to get to the nearest Starbucks, or how to get extra-money for college, I’m sure they would have regaled him with information.  Travel down-south and ask any white man (worth his salt) how to change the oil in a car, fix a flat, or bait a fishing-hook, and you’ll not only get the answer, but you’re liable to get the full-spectrum of diverse opinions on the the matter.

“You see, Jim Bob up the street says you use grub worms and crickets, but if’n you do, you’ll never keep them suckers on the hook when the brim are bitin’ … but Jim Bob swears by ‘em!”

America, unlike Britain or Continental Europe, has never had substantial literary or philosophic movements (that have amounted to anything.)  Now, I know that’s an almost grotesque generalization.  What of the American romantics?  What of Poe?  What of New England Transcendentalism?  What of the Southern Renaissance?

Well, unfortunately, it seems none of these movements have had any effect on slowing down “progress” and by “progress” I mean the devastating march of industry through the flower-beds of community, organic-bonds and cultural tradition.

Americans simply have a very narrow set of concerns in life and they’re prone to compartmentalize everything else.  Philosophy is a separate subject from astronomy and physics.  Psychology is a different subject from mathematics and biology!  Economics are separate from politics and theology!  Music has nothing at all to do with sociology!

In this way, American thought is compartmentalized, distinct and piece-meal.

It’s my hope that as the theology of Cornelius Van Til takes hold while simultaneously, the ravages of industrialism become more and more apparent, that Americans will begin thinking in terms of “worldviews” and all-encompassing conceptual schemes.  They’ll be able to see how national politics and international politics are related.  The common-man will begin taking an interest in what’s happening in Spain, Greece and Ireland.

There might spring up new regional-renaissance movements!  And Americans in general will stop being slaves to the captains of industry (or, as I like to call them:  the powers of the air) and begin taking in the world around them as the wonderfully-rich environment God created.

Until then, I’m afraid the above video clip will remain an accurate caricature of Americans.

________________________________

** I realize the history of people groups is shrouded in ambiguity and I’m open to being corrected on the general scheme I’ve laid out here.  It’s my contention that the Scots-Irish are “Anglo-Saxon” in general, because of their geographical origins.   “Scots” are people from Scotland, who are generally considered a mix of Picts and Gaels and Britons (IE: Welsh) as well as Anglo-Saxon, and given the fact that the lowland Scots lived on the borderland and participated (politically) with Anglo-Saxons often, it seems like a blurring of ethnicities is warranted, especially when, again in the South, the two were thrust together and allied in culture and environment.  With the help of my grandmother, I’ve managed to trace my family-line all the way back to the 1600s when our first ancestor moved to Virginia from Ireland, though I’ve not been able to go further.  Nor have I been able to trace the ancestry of all the wives, so I’m sure some mixing of stock has occurred.  For lack of a better term, I’ll speak of the “Southern Ethnicity” and identify myself and my people in those terms.  See Vanishing American’s post for further discussion.  And also, see comments from the Southern Nationalist Network here.

Romanticism and Socialism

A friend of mine recently made the following comment:

“The acceleration of the cause of Socialism was propelled by the advent of Romanticism as a Worldview. Not all Socialists were Romanticists but Romanticism tilled the cultural soil that allowed Socialism to take root and flourish. Romanticism did this by two components integral to its worldview.

First, Romanticism shifted the Western mindset away from the Changlessness of the Metaphysical with its emphasis on process and becoming found in the realm of the historical. Such a shift served the purposes of Socialism because socialism can not exist apart from the theory that progress is automatically to be preferred over constancy or the enduring aspect of reality. It is critical for socialism that things change and that they do not have an enduring nature

Second, Romanticism shifted the Western mindset from man as creature to man as creator via the use of his sovereign imagination. Such a shift allowed Western man to not only imagine Utopia but to also believe that it could be attained.”

I don’t think my friend has framed the discussion in a helpful way.  It seems like his purpose is to “attack” Romanticism specifically (anything that leads to socialism can’t be good) as if a Romantic poet ran over his dog that morning.  Why reach into the Wests’ bag of unappealing ideologies and pull out Romanticism alone?  (In my friend’s defense, the venue where he made this comment isn’t conducive to treatises on the complex roots of contemporary movements, so the overly-general observation is understandable.)

In responding, I think two very-important things should be kept in mind:

1.  Ideas have consequences.

and

2.  Our paradigm of history.

In light of ideas and their consequences, (and if ideas are presented through language),  we have to admit that a few of the words my friend used are ambiguous.  “Socialism” for instance, is notoriously ill-defined.

Consider Chesterton:

“It is really quite pedantic to say that the use of capital must be Capitalist.  We might as fairly say that anything social must be Socialist;  that Socialism can be identified with a social evening or a social glass.  Which, I grieve to say, is not the case.

Nevertheless, there is enough verbal vagueness about Socialism to call for a word of definition.  Socialism is a system which makes the corporate unity of society responsible for all its economic processes, or all those effecting life and central living.  If anything important is sold, the Government has sold it; if anything important is given, the Government has given it; if anything important is even tolerated, the Government is responsible for tolerating it.  This is the very reverse of anarchy; it is an extreme enthusiasm for authority.” ~ Outline of Sanity pg. 28

I could cite others to make my point but I don’t think it’s controversial.  I can imagine the hypothetical individual who would say otherwise.  He (or, maybe it will be a contentious woman?) might argue that there’s some authoritative body of people, or a god-like individual, who has managed the term so that it stands rigorously defined forever.  I can’t imagine what sort of person (or group) would have enough power to enforce a uniform understanding of “socialism” in the “brains” (I’m being polite to suppose they have any) of the “Occupy Wallstreet” gang.  Different ideals of Socialism abound in that camp.  Also, I bet that if you did a survey of a tea-party group, you’d likely get different notions of it as well.

So, I’m not sure exactly what my friend thinks “Romanticism” helped bring about.  (I get the impression that my friend has more contemporary manifestations in mind rather than the de-contextualized definition of Chesterton, which existed long before the Romantics, or even the West.)

Of course, there’s another term that is somewhat ambiguous:  Romanticism.

From my study of the topic, the so-called “Romantic Worldview” that my friend speaks of, is anything but homogenous.  There are various flavors and aspects of the movement; wide-ranging subtleties abound among Romantic thinkers.  But no matter how nuanced the position or how it’s defined, my friend has chosen two aspects of “The Romantic Worldview” (so-called) that helped grow Western socialism:

- Romanticism shifted the Western mindset away from the changelessness of the metaphysical and towards a worldview of process and change.

and

- Romanticism shifted man’s thinking away from that of a creature, to that of a creator, who creates by virtue of imagination (which lead to ideals of “Utopia”, somehow.)

It’s not my intention in this blog to contest these two statements, (although the Romantic would have a thing or two to say to my friend about accuracy and fair caricatures) but rather, to make the general observations that “ideas have consequences” and point out the importance of one’s historical paradigm in the discussion.

First, our historical paradigm:

Personally, I’m a “nationalist.”  That’s more than simply a political view.  I view all of history in terms of racial-nations and their interactions with each other as well as (and most importantly for a Christian Nationalist) God’s interaction with mankind (as an aggregate of racial communities.)

So unlike, say, a “rationalist” who views history and people in terms of ideological groups, I see the history of the West in terms of a particular racial group — a group that has, many times, moved and danced through the ideological spectrum.

It’s hard for the rationalist to see beyond ideological camps.  “Romantics” vs. “Enlightenment Rationalism” vs. “British Empiricism” vs. “American Empiricism” vs. “New England Transcendentalism” vs. “Protestant Pietism” vs. “Catholic Monasticism” etc. etc. etc.

But all of these movements come and go as the attitudes and whims of the people change.  When this is realized, ideologies become nothing more than rhetorical swords people use to battle their way to self-appeasement!

We may as well commit the fallacy of reification (along with my friend) and claim that “Christianity tilled the cultural soil that has allowed radical egalitarianism and democracy to flourish in the west!”

It’s not an ideology that has tilled soil, but people.  People with attitudes and mindsets!

With that understanding of history, I would argue that the Romantics (despite how their rhetoric and poetry may have been used) had concerns other than “Socialism” and political systems.  They (the poets, at any-rate) were concerned with bridging the great divide between the noumenal and phenomenal world through a metaphysical understanding that the two were related and could be known (the one to the other) through the emotions, (or intuitive-thought IE: imagination, as Steiner and Goethe would put it.)

These may have been pagan men, but not all Romantics were pagans or had anti-Christian sensibilities.  (It irks me when Rushdoony makes hasty generalizations like the one on page 266 of “The One and the Many” when he claims:

The Renaissance, the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and every other movement of the modern mind have one common characteristic:  anti-Christianity.”

It’s just not true.  Certainly it wasn’t true of Steiner, Owen Barfield or William Blake.)

The butting-heads between “raitonalism” and “romanticism” (as literary or even ideological movements) was a contest between pagan peoples who had strong Christian roots.  The same sort of struggle happens even among the “church” which we see constant battling between the same two poles:  IE:  scholasticism vs. pietism.

But it’s the underlying attitudes and impulses of a people that determine which ideology or “worldview” they latch onto and use to bring about their whims.

So, if my friend wants to imply that “Romanticism” has done this or that…then I disagree.  I think it was fallen men who used a few rhetorical devices from Romantics to hoe up Europe and plant the seeds of Revolution.  To claim “romanticism” as an ideology is at fault, is unhelpful.

Secondly, I observe that “Ideas have consequences.”

I put it in quotes because it’s the title of a famous book written by a stalwart Conservative ideologue, Richard Weaver.

Even though I’ve rejected the notion of viewing history as a “rationalist” (who I’ve defined as someone thinking in terms of ideological groups instead of racial or otherwise organic categories) I’ve admitted that ideologies are used like swords (or plows, to keep with my friend’s literary device) and so it is important to keep up with how these ideologies are used (and in what combinations).

Weaver diagnoses the underlying attitudes of Western man which has lead to the use of various ideological traditions to bring about the current world-order (which I’m sure includes my friend’s notion of “Socialism.”)   Weaver attributes it all to hideous “egotism.”  A pride in the fallen intellect of man and a belief in his ability to rationally describe all of reality.

“As one views modern man in his innumerable exhibitions of irresponsibility and defiance, one may discern, if he has the courage to see what he sees … a prodigious egotism.  This egotism, which is another form of fragmentation, is a consequence of that fatal decision to make a separate self the measure of value.” ~ pg. 70

Weaver goes on to outline two different traditions in the West:

“The split in the theory of knowledge which took place at the time of the Renaissance is enough to account for that form of ignorance which is egotism.  Under the worldview possessed by medieval scholars, the path of learning was a path to self-depreciation, and the philosophiae doctor was one who had at length seen a rational ground for humilitas… Thus knowledge for the medieval idealist prepared the way for self-effacement.

An opposing conception comes in with Bacon’s “knowledge is power.”  If the aim of knowledge is domination, it is hardly to be supposed that the possessors of knowledge will be indifferent to their importance.  On the contrary, they begin to swell; they seek triumphs in the material world (knowledge being meanwhile necessarily degraded to skills) which inflate their egotism and self-consideration.  Such is a brief history of how knowledge passes from a means of spiritual redemption to a basis for intellectual pride.”

So here I would argue that those who follow Bacon’s attitude of “knowledge is power” and who have sought their fortunes in Van Til’s “void” are the ones who take up any ideology at will and use it to dig themselves further and further into the darkness.

It’s not just “Romanticism” they’ve used.

Hegel is the “rationalist” extraordinaire!  It was his disciple Karl Marx who gave voice to the prevailing whims of the day and enabled progress and dialectical change to inform his economic views.

I did it facetiously above, but one might even argue that “Christianity” has been used (repeatedly) to advocate for socialist utopias.

Certainly materialism and naive-empiricism have played their role (perhaps more-so than Romanticism.)

So, there.  I’ve listed at least four other “ideas” that have helped “till the Western ground” and make it ripe for a Socialistic harvest.

That’s my point of contention with my friend and if I were to boil it down to a succinct statement, it would be:

“Romanticism is not the only ideological tool involved in the tilling.”

To conclude:

“Romanticism” and “Rationalism” and all the other “isms” were eddys in the stream of the West; arrows in the arsenal of Europeans; swords in their scabbards.

And, as any good conservative knows, it’s not swords that do the killing, but the men wielding them.

Why I Left that Cesspool Known as “Facebook”

Well, here it is, at long last.

The blog I’ve been promising.

Why in the world did I delete my Facebook account?

Am I a brash and fickle kid who is seeking attention and hopes to drum up a little drama among his friends?  Maybe get my way by throwing a temper tantrum or two?  Perhaps, maybe, if I delete my profile, people will take me seriously?

No, no, no!

The ironic fact of the matter is, I’m one of those pitiful souls who takes all this “Kinism” rhetoric seriously.

My dad is kicking himself right now.  He hates the fact that he fed me a diet of Lewis and Tolkien (with side-dishes of Frank and Joe Hardy).  Who would have thought that I’d take all that seriously?  No one else does.

Contemporary society teaches people about right and wrong and then later, how to not-apply that particular knowledge.

Who takes Tolkien seriously, after all?

Well, damn it all, I do!

You know who else I take seriously?  The Southern Agrarians.  The British Distributists.  Richard Weaver!  John Ruskin, Edward Burke, and Chateaubriand!

Do the self-proclaimed “Kinists” take their own rhetoric seriously?

I don’t know, but if I had to guess, I’d say, “probably not” or else their violent acts would make national news.

“Democracy,” afterall, has become a cuss-word among our ilk (we kinists.)

And yet, when disagreements arise among us, what do we do?  We vote on it!

Really????

Yes, really.

We’re democrats to the core, all of us…we’re all rationalists.  We damn ourselves.

Well, I can’t do it anymore.  I can’t preach one thing and practice another.

If I’m to be a consistent “agrarian” “kinist” and all the other “isms” and “ists” that I’m to be… then so help me, I’ll be them.

I’ll be a knight and by God my armor will be shiny… (even though I have my doubts that there are any women out there looking for knights in shining armor.   Do you know what it’s like for a knight to be ridiculed by the lady he’s come to rescue?  It’s a nightmare.)

I’m not angry at my Kinist brethren, not at all.

I love you guys.  Any of you reading this, please know, I love you…I do.  And, I miss you.

But, our association and friendship through “Facebook” is a charade!  A facade!  It’s not real.

How can you know someone over a distance?  You cannot!  There are subtleties to a person that are missed in internet relationships!  Small twists of the corners of one’s mouth, arched eyebrows, and slight changes in tones of voice.  A person’s physique is, unfortunately for many, a part of who the person is and a striking physical appearance plays a role in how we respond to and interact with another person.

God made us that way!  He made us with bodies…and we shouldn’t so callously abandon them, taking up an abstracted form of communication in their place!

Sorcerers and Satanists of old (among whom I count the alchemists) believed that they could reduce everything to some base-form of information.  For the sorcerers, they believed everything could be reduced to complex combinations of vibrations.  Utter the right vibration (IE: magic word) and you could manipulate reality.

In its modern form, this mindset is known as “industrialism.”

Everything is being reduced to mathematical information.  Ones and Zeroes!  Everything, even our food, is being “industrialized!.”

It’s being reduced to its most basic “information” so that it can be easily assembled and manipulated.

That damnable jew Zuckerberg (who invented Facebook) isn’t creative in and of himself.  He merely had the foresight to apply his worldview of industrialization to society.

In Facebook now, you can form different “groups” where you sift and sort your friends into categories so that you can better keep up with different groups of them.

How disgusting!

We’re “industrializing” our friendships!

Of course, this is happening more and more with our sexual relationships as well.  I remember growing up, if you engaged in an internet relationship with some girl, you did your best to hide the fact.  You were considered a huge dork if your internet relationship was found out.

Not these days.  In fact, more and more (women especially) are turning to websites like E-harmony, to find their dates.

Imagine that, you program in a few particulars and preferences and big-business finds you a husband!

We’re abstracting ourselves out of our own humanity!

We are the society of moon-men that Lewis wrote about in “That Hideous Strength.”

Nature is becoming obsolete.

I’ll not sift and sort my friends, sorry.   I either know you in real life, or I do not.  I’ll not participate in some abstract network.

Why?

In my particular “kinist” network on Facebook, there were some truly incredible individuals.

However, there was one very contentious female.  (She knows who she is.)

Every chance she got, she defied me, usually in very un-lady-like manners.   If we had known each other in real life, she wouldn’t ever dare to be as contentious or cruel as she was on Facebook.  I’ve met women like her (and silenced them) multiple times, but due to the artificial environment in which we were associating, she was able to ramble on and continue in her contentiousness.

Not in real life.  It wouldn’t have happened.

So, one by one, I went down my list, deleting those who I have come to love.

I hovered my mouse over CM, a guy in Canada whom I’ve come to appreciate and respect.  But do I really know CM?  Really?  What does he sound like in real life?  What sort of person is he really?  What would it be like to go drinking at a pub on Saturday night with him?

I have no clue.

How about E or Ms. MN?  Do I know them either?  It was very, very hard to click on their names and hit the “remove friend” button.  How can I remove dear M?  Such a stalwart friend and confidant?  I wouldn’t have learned about the novel “The Mouse that Roared” if not for her.  Such a benefit to my life she’s been.

Nevertheless, do I really know her?  Am I cheapening my relationship with M and E and Ms. L by not knowing them in real life, as God has created them?

To answer that rhetorical question, yes…I would be cheapening it.

It was G.K. Chesterton who brought all this to my attention.  Even in his day, men were tempted to industrialize their friendships, and he rightly saw through the attempt.

“We can see this change, for instance, in the modern transformation of the thing called a club.  When London was smaller, and the parts of London more self-contained and parochial, the club was what it still is in villages, the opposite of what it is now in great cities.  Then the club was valued as a place where a man could be sociable.  Now the club is valued as a place where a man can be unsociable.  The more the enlargement and elaboration of our civilization goes on the more the club ceases to be a place where a man can have a noisy argument, and becomes more and more a place where a man can have what is somewhat fantastically called a quiet chop.  Its aim is to make a man comfortable, and to make a man comfortable is to make him the opposite of sociable.  Sociability, like all good things, is full of discomforts, dangers and renunciations.  The club tends to produce the most degraded of all combinations — the luxurious anchorite, the man who combines the self-indulgence of the Lucullus with the insane loneliness of St. Simeon Stylites.”

I encourage everyone to read Chapter 14 of Chesterton’s “Heretics.”

He argues that we should associate with our families and neighbors as opposed to seeking out ideological compatriots in a “social club” (which is a wonderful analogy to today’s “Facebook.”)

We’ll become artificial, brittle ideologues.

The “Scott” known on Facebook wasn’t the real “Scott.”  Now that the real Scott has divested himself of Facebook (and all its artificial relationships) he’s becoming so much more productive in his actual life.

“Kinism” is seeping into his daily associations, where before, it was confined to his Facebook.

In short, I’m describing a pragmatic benefit to axing my account:  I’m focusing more on my life and as a result, I’m much more productive.

I’ll reiterate that I love all my kinist friends and cherish our online conversations.  I miss you all terribly, even now.

But I have to face reality and live my life in the context God has placed me in.

I have a very small Facebook account as of now.  It consists only of those people I’ve met in real life and have formed friendships with.

I think John Ruskin and Chesterton would approve of Facebook in that capacity.

I hope to meet you, dear friends, one day…

All Hail the Dogmatist!

I have a new word in my arsenal of labels:  “dogmatist.”

The dogmatist cares more for his rationalized conceptual scheme than he does for actual people or things.

I’ve run afoul of two different groups of dogmatists lately and was cast from among their fellowship!  (There ain’t no baby in my bathwater!)

The first was a club of Reformed Christians.  They accept into their fellowship anyone who claims historic protestantism, though it’s preferable and easier to get along if one is a follower of Calvin in some capacity.

When asked about my denominational leanings, I usually reply:  “I’m a Presbyterian but I doubt they’d claim me…” and as funny as that sounds, it’s more and more true as life unfolds — (leading me to conclude that I might not be a Presbyterian at all!)  Whatever the truth, it was enough to get me into the club.

I associated with these folks for a few weeks, during which I made a few “friends”.

Though, it wasn’t long before a witch (not only does this woman practice the Craft, you wouldn’t be off imagining her with a wart-encrusted nose and pointy hat–her attitude matching the metaphorical outfit) arrived and informed everyone that, between the two of us, my company was the less-preferable due to my “jaw-dropping” outlook on matters of race.

(We had met previously, the witch and I, an occasion that I recall happily.  Any chance I get to put a feminist pagan in her place, I take enthusiastically.  And like any woman-scorned, she remembered my offense and broadcasted a witchy caricature all around the club.)

Of course, the charge that I was a “racist” simply couldn’t be true, could it Shotgun?

I was given all of two minutes to respond to the accusation, after which my “friends” of the past two weeks proceeded to call me “moron,” “fool,” “dork,” and other, less-flattering, terms, before damning me to Hell and removing me (permanently, it seems) from their fellowship.

The witch?  She attends the club to this day and endures civil attempts at evangelism.  (I’m sure if they adequately present pagan-Christ to her, she’ll have no reservations about signing up!)  Isn’t it ironic?  Our ancestors dunked witches to get a confession, these days when a witch is dunked, it’s a baptism!

These “Reformitards” suffer all sorts of evil:  atheists, witches and democrats, but the one person they can not and will not suffer, is a “racist.”

Makes you wonder about their real passion in life.

The other group of whom I ran afoul are similar, though persuaded of a different rationalistic scheme.  They were, by and large, of the Charismatic variety.  Many believed their flamboyant pastor (who functions almost like a cult leader) can magically heal cancerous tumors with a simple flick of his limp, effeminate wrist.

Apparently though, he’s powerless to heal the fact that I’m a white, Christian male, cast in the image of old Europe.  Off that sort of man, his powers rebound with pious screeches compelling him to damn the poor creature or at least, break fellowship with it.

And, break fellowship we did.  (Though afterwards, others who had been similarly cast out, contacted me, offering friendship and condolences.  There are, at least, a small number of folks out there who aren’t heart-and-soul dogmatists, but care about actual people.)

That’s the rub!  The dogmatist is capable of evil, wickedness and cruelty, all masquerading in the guise of pious duty to his rational scheme.

I blame Mr. Cambria for all my troubles.  Mostly, because if it weren’t for him, I would still be a dogmatist myself (and Presbyterians the world over would welcome me into their fellowship, especially if I was accompanied by a negress!  Presbos need negros, you know!)

He taught me that I was a human but not just a human, an antique-European man.  And that being a human is a good thing.  It’s not something we’re to transcend.  It’s a gift and a very profound one.  God made us men, not spirit-less abstractions!

Mr. Cambria says he used to teach English (or something like that).  He’s found a student in me, if no one else (though I’m sure there’s plenty better-suited to grasp his themes than a farm-boy from North Carolina.)  He cites Walter Scott’s novel “Old Mortality” where the character John Balfour takes on the role of the dogmatist, and violates Christian chivalry:

“In every century of the Christian era of Europe there were blasphemers who championed the forms of the faith against the substance of the faith. Walter Scott depicts such a “Christian” in his novel Old Mortality. John Balfour, a fanatical Scottish Covenanter, violates the law of chivalry, which was written in the hearts of all Christian Europeans, by killing, in the name of his mind-forged Christless faith, a Christian soldier of the royalist party who came to Balfour bearing a flag of truce.

“A free pardon to all,” continued the young officer, still addressing the body of the insurgents—“to all but—“

“Then the Lord grant grace to thy soul. Amen!” said Burley.

With these words he fired, and Cornet Richard Grahame dropped from his horse. The shot was mortal. The unfortunate young gentleman had only strength to turn himself on the ground and mutter forth, “My poor mother!” when life forsook him in the effort. His startled horse fled back to the regiment at the gallop, as did his scarce less affrighted attendant.

“What have you done?” said one of Balfour’s brother officers.

“My duty,” said Balfour firmly. “Is it not written, ‘Thou shalt be zealous even to slaying’? Let those who dare NOW venture to speak of truce or pardon!”

Ironically, I used to attend a Scottish Covenanter church (when I lived in Washington D.C.)  Looking back, I could see myself turning into a Balfour.

But no matter how many Balfours shoot me (and there are many, lining up for the opportunity) I’ll soldier on.  What else can we do?  Give in to cynicism and despair?

It’s tempting.

But, no.  If Mr. Cambria’s taught us nothing else, it’s that the antique-European doesn’t give in to those things.

So, I’ll keep trying.  How else will the Balfours get their target practice?