Arians

Lately, I have been amusing myself by watching videos about the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Those who are not familiar with the Jehovah’s Witnesses know them as the people who go door to door to spread their religion. Those who are somewhat familiar with the Jehovah’s Witnesses know them as a rather authoritarian cult whose members do not celebrate their birthdays, Christmas, Halloween, or anything else that might be enjoyable. I find this sect intriguing because it seems to be a revival of Arianism. The Jehovah’s Witnesses seem to be Arians.

Mandatory Credit: Photo by REX/Shutterstock (504335q)
Jehovah’s Witnesses Kingdom Hall
VARIOUS

Arians? Am I suggesting the Jehovah’s Witnesses are Nazis? Of course not. I said Arians, not Aryans. An Arian is a follower of the third and fourth-century priest and theologian Arius. Arius taught doctrines which became known as Arianism.

One of the most perplexing problems of early Christian theology was the question of just who and what Jesus Christ actually was. Jesus was called the Son of God in the Bible. What did that actually mean? If Christianity was a polytheistic religion, the issue might have been resolved easily. Jesus, the Son of God, might have been a lesser deity like Apollo, the son of Zeus. Jesus could have been a demigod like Hercules. However, Christianity is a monotheistic religion. There is only room for one God.

So what was Jesus? Was he the same divine being as the God of the Old Testament? Was Jesus a highly favored and blessed man? Was he an angel or a being halfway between God and man? The solution most Christians eventually settled on was that Jesus is God. In mainstream Christianity, there is one God, composed of three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Each person is eternal and uncreated. Jesus is God the Son who became fully human while remaining fully divine.

This is a subtle doctrine, and it should not be surprising some dissenters preferred a less complex doctrine. One of these dissenters was a priest and presbyter from Cyrenaica named Arius. It is not entirely clear precisely what Arius preached and to what extent he founded the movement known as Arianism. Few of Arius’s writings survive. His opponents destroyed his works. What little survives exists in quotations used by polemicists seeking to refute Arianism. Arius, or at least the Arians, taught that Jesus was created by God the Father and, therefore, was kind of a sub-God, divine, but subordinate to the Father. The Arians rejected the doctrine of the Trinity.

The Trinitarians, led by Alexander, the Patriarch of Alexandria bitterly opposed the Arians. The clashes between partisans of the two factions became so fierce; that they seemed to threaten the peace of the Roman Empire. This did not please the Emperor Constantine. Part of the reason Constantine supported Christianity was that he hoped the religion would bring unity to the Empire.

When Constantine was not happy, nobody was happy

Now, infighting among Christians was threatening to tear it apart. To resolve the Arian controversy, Constantine summoned the leaders of the Christian Church to the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea in 325. This Ecumenical Council condemned Arius and the Arians as heretics and formally established the doctrine of the Trinity. The Trinitarian doctrine became a part of what came to be Catholic or Orthodox Christianity. Catholic and Orthodox are terms used to refer to the Western and Eastern branches of what might be called Nicene Christianity, so Nicene is the word I will use.

Sadly the story that St. Nicholas aka Santa Claus punched Arius at the Council does not seem to be true

 

The Council of Nicaea settled the Arian controversy within the Roman Empire. Although several Emperors supported Arianism, the doctrine died out among the Romans. Nicene Christianity was the official form of Christianity in the Empire. This was not true outside the Empire. At about the same time as the Council of Nicaea, missionaries led by the Goth Ulfias were already spreading Christianity to the Germans who lived beyond the frontiers. Ulfias happened to be an Arian, so the Germans he converted to Christianity were Arian Christians, with one important exception.

In time, religion became associated with ethnic identity. To be a Roman was to be a Nicene Christian. A German was an Arian. This complicated relations between the Germans and the Romans, Especially when German tribes like the Goths and the Vandals invaded the Western Roman Empire and set up their own kingdoms. The Romans found themselves ruled not only by barbarians, which was humiliating enough but by barbarians who were heretics. This religious difference meant that when the Eastern Romans, under Emperor Justinian, sought to reconquer the western provinces, they could count on a sympathetic population of Nicene Christians. The German kings could not entirely trust their formerly Roman subjects.

Early Medieval Arians

The one German tribe that was an exception to German Arianism was the Franks. The Franks were still pagan when they overran Gaul. In 508, the Frankish King Clovis I decided he ought to convert to Christianity. This was expected. Paganism had become unfashionable among both Romans and Germans. What was unexpected was that Clovis resolved to convert to Nicene Christianity. This decision was to change the course of European history.

Clovis

Being Nicene Christians, the Franks had the same advantage the Eastern Romans had when warring with the Arian Germans. A Frankish king who fought against the Visigoths or Lombards was not simply fighting a simple war over territory and loot. He was fighting a holy war against heretics, often with the support of the Papacy. This advantage helped the Franks to defeat the other German kingdoms and to become the predominant state in post-Roman Europe.

Over time, the Arian German rulers began to convert to the Catholic faith the majority of their subjects. The King of the Visigoths converted in 589. The kings of the Lombards held out until 671. For the next 800 years, Christianity in Europe was Nicene, trinitarian Christianity.

This began to change with the Protestant Reformation. The Reformers, such as Luther and Calvin, had many differences with the Roman Catholic Church but were all orthodox in their essential doctrines. They were all Nicene Trinitarians. Nevertheless, once prevailing orthodoxies begin to be questioned, there is no stopping, and it wasn’t long before some decidedly unorthodox doctrines began to be preached. This was a hazardous practice since the one thing both Catholics and Protestants agreed on was that heretics should be persecuted. Many heterodox, nontrinitarian sects were founded after the Protestant Reformation, including the Unitarians, the Quakers, and the Deists.

In North America. Such sects flourished in the more tolerant atmosphere of the North American colonies, especially during the Great Awakening. Another wave of unorthodox religious movements began during the Second Great Awakening of the 1820s to 1840s. This second wave included the Shakers and the Latterday Saints or Mormons.

Charles Taze Russel

Charles Taze Russell founded the organization that would become the Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1870, sometime after the Second Great Awakening. He was clearly influenced by restorationist and Aventist strands of that earlier movement. Like many preachers during the Awakening, Russell strove to restore Christianity to its primitive beginnings. Russell also taught that the Second Coming of Christ was imminent. As part of his quest to restore the original doctrines of Christianity, Russell rejected the concept of the Trinity. Instead, he believed that Jesus was a being created by Jehovah. He thought that Jesus was the Archangel Michael. The Jehovah’s Witnesses have held on to such unorthodox doctrines to the present day.

It may not be strictly accurate to call the Jehovah’s Witnesses “Arians.” There are differences between their views and the teachings of the Arians of ancient times. Still, it is interesting, to me at least, how old ideas get revived in new forms. Perhaps there really is nothing truly new under the sun.

They Are Afraid

Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit links to this essay, The Frightened Left, by Victor Davis Hanson. Like everything Victor Davis Hanson writes; it is worth reading, but that is not my concern. My concern, rather, is with the comments left on the Instapundit post. It seemed to me that many of the comments that Instapundit readers posted were some variation of “Of course, the left is not frightened. They have become all-powerful. They control every institution in the United States and have nothing to fear from the people. That represents an attitude that has become all too typical among the right. a sense of doom and gloom pessimism. The left has won, they say, and all we can do is reminisce about our lost country.

I think they are wrong. I think the left is afraid of us. Why am I so sure? Because the leaders of the left have become tyrants, and tyrants always fear the people they oppress. J. K. Rowling said it well, speaking through Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Voldemort himself created his worst enemy, just as tyrants everywhere do! Have you any idea how much tyrants fear the people they oppress? All of them realize that one day, amongst their many victims, there is sure to be one who rises against them and strikes back! Voldemort is no different! Always he was on the lookout for the one who would challenge him.

While I attended Indiana University, I had a professor named Mubarak who met Saddam Hussein. Talk about your six degrees of separation. Many years before the Gulf War, while working on the faculty of the Kuwait University, Mubarak attended an academic conference in Iraq. Saddam Hussein opened the conference with a speech and then went around to shake hands with each of the attendees. The one thing Professor Mubarak noticed when he was in the presence of Saddam Hussein was how nervous and frightened Saddam was. Saddam Hussein was always looking around the room, always on guard. He told the class that he realized that for Saddam Hussein, every waking moment must be one of fear. Saddam Hussein always had to wonder which of his subordinates was plotting to overthrow him or when the oppressed people of Iraq would rise against him. Saddam Hussein may have seemed all-powerful in Iraq.

Dictators do not conduct purges, create secret police, fill concentration camps, and institute censorship for the sadistic joy of oppressing people. They do all that because they are afraid of the people they oppress. The more a dictator oppresses, the more he has cause to fear his victims who rightly hate him, and the more he must oppress. He dares not ease up on the oppression.

The Leftists who control almost every institution in our country are no dictators like Saddam Hussein, but they wield power. They have totalitarian aspirations, and therefore, they fear the people they would tyrannize over. Contrary to what many conservatives assert, the leftists are not confident and secure. Confident and secure people do not fortify elections. Confident and secure rulers would not feel the need to build a wall around the capital building or to deploy the National Guard to protect them. They would not inflate the actions of an unruly mob on January 6 into a full-fledged insurrection. A President secure in his office would not make a speech demonizing half the population as “ultra MAGA” domestic terrorists against a backdrop reminiscent of a Nazi Party rally.

They are afraid of us

 

The Leftist elite is afraid of us. The elite has good reason to be. They have turned the greatest nation on Earth into a third-rate banana republic. They have proven themselves corrupt, incompetent, and authoritarian, and they know we have begun to see through them. The TEA Party was the first shot across the bow of the left and their conservative enablers. We told them we didn’t like the way they were ruining the country into the ground. We told them to leave us alone and stop imposing their values on us. We tried to be nice, but they only called us racists. The election of Donald Trump in 2016 was the second shot. We weren’t so nice, then. They called us Nazis and plotted to rig the election of 2020. They won’t like the next shot. I’m afraid we won’t be nice at all.

The Mug Shot

The Democrats have finally taken the scalp they have wanted for six years. They have finally seen their arch-enemy, President Donald Trump, the enemy of Our Democracy compelled to turn himself in at the Fulton County courthouse in Georgia to answer the criminal charges against him. Unlike his previous indictments, this time, the process included a mug shot that was quickly released by the Fulton County jail in an apparent attempt to humiliate the former president.

I am not a lawyer, so I cannot comment on the legal aspects of Trump’s situation. It does seem evident to me, and to nearly every other thinking person, that the motivation behind the state and federal indictments is political. The Democrats want to destroy Trump and have no compunctions about corrupting the American justice system to achieve their aim. I think they are making a terrible mistake on two levels.

If the intent was to humiliate Donald Trump and get his supporters to forsake him, releasing the mug shot seems to have backfired. The Trump campaign has been getting millions of dollars in donations, and Trump is making money selling mug-shot merchandise. Moreover, the mug shot makes Trump look like a victim of political persecution. Trump’s supporters have been quick to compare him somewhat fancifully to Gandhi and Martin Luther King, two other men arrested for political reasons. The mug shot might also be gaining Trump supporters in the Black community, who are familiar with being harassed by those in power. If Trump manages to be elected president again, the mug shot will play no small role in his victory.

More serious is the precedent set by this series of indictments. The Democrats have been. justifying their unprecedented legal vendetta against Trump by stating that no one should be above the law. They do not actually believe this platitude themselves. If they did, they would not blindly defend every Democrat accused of wrongdoing. While we would like for everyone to be treated equally under the law, the fact is that when high-level politics is involved, political considerations often override legal ones.

Why was Hilary Clinton never locked up after the 2016 election? She is certainly guilty of storing classified information on an insecure server and obstruction of justice for destroying a hard drive that may have contained criminal evidence against her. FBI Director James Comey admitted that Hilary Clinton possibly had committed felonies but declined to ask for any indictments. That was probably the correct decision. The United States of America was not a country in which the winners of elections arrest and imprison the losers. We were not, at the time, a banana republic. Prosecuting Hilary Clinton before the election would look like election interference. Prosecuting her after the election would look like we had the sort of government that persecutes its opponents.

I am not saying we should allow politicians to get away with crimes. What I am saying is that if anyone is going to investigate or indict a person running against an office holder, they had better make sure that there is not a hint of suspicion that they are motivated by politics rather than simply enforcing the law. So far, the many indictments against Donald Trump do not meet this standard. They all look like attempts to prevent Trump from running against Joe Biden. It looks as if the Democrats are trying to rig the election of 2024 even more openly than they rigged the election of 2020.

The United States of America has become the sort of country where the political winners prosecute the losers. We have become a banana republic.

 

Independence Day

The Fourth of July is the day on which the American people celebrate their independence from Great Britain. It is not actually clear why Independence Day is the Fourth. Congress actually passed the Declaration of Independence on July 2, 1776. It has often been thought that the Declaration was signed on the fourth, but that doesn’t seem to be true. There wasn’t any one time when the members of Congress signed the Declaration and there were a few who didn’t get around to signing it until August. Nevertheless, the fourth is the date that stuck. As John Adams wrote to Abigail.

The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.

And so it has been for the last 247 years. May God bless America and grant us many more years of freedom.

Happy Independence Day.

Pride

Dennis Prager has always been one of my favorite conservative commentators. Back when I had time, I used to love to listen to his radio show. He always seemed to know what he was talking about, and I was particularly impressed with the calm and rational way he handled hostile callers.

I am no longer able to listen to his show, but I still read Prager’s columns, and I found this recent one about pride to be especially illuminating.

I’ve never understood ethnic, race, gender or sex pride. Even as a kid.

For my bar mitzvah, someone gave me a book titled “Great Jews in Sports” or something like it.

.Aside from the usual jokes — it was not a long book; the print and the photos were very large — what I remember best was that I had little interest in the book. I loved sports. And I strongly identified as a Jew — I was raised in an Orthodox Jewish home and attended yeshivas until the age of 19. So, my disinterest in the book didn’t emanate from either disinterest in sports or disinterest in Jews. I was keenly interested in both.

But even at the age of 13, the idea of ethnic pride meant little to me.

As far as I could tell, my friends — and, of course, the relative who gave me the book — considered the book quite meaningful. They were proud of Detroit Tigers Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg, of the great Cleveland Indians third baseman Al Rosen, of the lightweight boxing champ Benny Leonard, and the other Jews who were featured.

I apparently marched to the beat of a quirky drummer. It turned out, however, that my attitude at 13 wasn’t a quirk. Though I didn’t realize it then, it was actually the dawning of a conviction — that maybe group pride wasn’t a great idea.

I agree with Mr. Prager. I don’t think group pride is a great idea either. I used to know a man who was heavily into White Pride. He often also posted on social media how proud he was to be White. Now, White people have accomplished quite a bit. In fact, it would be fair to say that White people largely created the modern world, including almost all of its science and technology. This is not to put down people of other races or even to elevate the White race. It is a simple historical fact. I have no doubt that the people who lived in the temperate climate of Europe with the same sort of cultural background would have invented the modern world, no matter what the color of their skin. Race had nothing to do with it.

Should I be proud that I am White? Well, the fact is that all those discoveries and inventions were made by other White people. I didn’t have anything to do with it. The only trait I share with those scientists and inventors is the color of my skin, a trait I did not choose for myself. Should I be proud of my German ancestors because Germans made many scientific discoveries? Why should I? Should I be proud to be an American? I love my country and think it is the greatest country in the world, but I have had little part in making America great.

But Dennis Prager is not writing about racial pride but Pride Month, the month of June when all things LGBTXYZ are celebrated.

The most recent incarnation of group pride is LGBTQ pride. Every company, every professional sports team, every Democratic politician, even the armed forces and American embassies around the world are expected to celebrate Pride Month, Pride Night and year-round LGBTQ Pride.

This is problematic for at least two reasons.

First, what exactly is one proud of? What accomplishment is involved in being gay, lesbian or bisexual? Even trans is allegedly built into one’s nature. Isn’t the entire premise of the LGBTQ movement that one does not choose one’s sexual orientation or sexual identity? Wasn’t anyone who argued that homosexuality is a choice declared a hater and a science denier? So, then, if no choice is involved, no effort on the part of the individual — let alone no moral accomplishment — what is there to be proud of? Maybe I couldn’t identify with Jewish pride over great Jewish athletes, but at least they all actually accomplished something.

The other problematic element has to do with why the LGBTQ movement does everything possible to bludgeon every institution into celebrating Pride Nights, Days, Weeks and Months. The reason is the totalitarian nature of all left-wing movements. Unlike liberal and conservative movements, every left-wing movement is totalitarian. Therefore, it is not enough for people to tolerate or even show respect to LGBTQ individuals. We must all celebrate lesbianism, male homosexuality, the transgendered and queers. No left-wing movement is a movement for tolerance. They are movements that demand celebration.

Pride month wouldn’t concern me at all if it weren’t for the coercive aspect of it all. I wouldn’t care if the LBGTABC crowd celebrated Pride Day or Pride Year so long as I was left out of it. I feel, however, that I am obliged to be part of it, with the corporate-sponsored rainbows showing up everywhere. I feel as if I am being made to celebrate something I don’t really approve of.

Not a good thing

But what’s wrong with pride? As I have said I share Dennis Prager’s wariness about group pride, but I would add one or two things. First, it is not clear to me that being a sexual deviant is anything to be proud of. Mr. Prager steers clear of the subject of homosexuality, but the scripture and traditions of both Judaism and Christianity (and really every other major religion) condemn homosexuality as sinful. The inclination is not, of course, a sin. Temptation is never sinful in itself. The action is a sin. If this is true, then being proud of committing acts that our creator disapproves of seems impudent at best.

Second, I am not sure where Judaism stands, but to Christians the greatest sin is pride. This is a sin worse than any sexual sin. As C. S. Lewis put it:

According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger,
greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the
devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.

Now what you want to get clear it that Pride is essentially
competitive – is competitive by its very nature – while the other vices are competitive only, so to
speak, by accident. Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of
it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but
they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If
someone else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be
proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest.
Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone. That is why I say that Pride is
essentially competitive in a way the other vices are not. The sexual impulse may drive two men
into competition if they both want the same girl. But that is only by accident; they might just as
likely have wanted two different girls. But a proud man will take your girl from you, not because
he wants her, but just to prove to himself that he is a better man than you. Greed may drive men
into competition if there is not enough to go round; but the proud man, even when he has got
more than he can possibly want, will try to get still more just to assert his power. Nearly all
those evils in the world which people put down to greed or selfishness are really far more the result of Pride.

The problem with group pride of any sort is that if you are proud of belonging to your group then it follows that you must look down on the people who don’t belong to your group. This is why the Pride movement is totalitarian in nature. The proud person must feel superior to and have contempt for anyone who is not an enthusiastic supporter of the cause. You can’t be tolerant towards others if you are proud because you are competing with them.

Maybe instead of Pride Month, we should have Humility Month, a month in which we all reflect on how we have not lived up to our promise. We should consider ways in which we can become better people. Maybe we should try to be more tolerant and compassionate towards people we don’t like or agree with. Humility Month would certainly be healthier than Pride Month.

Independence Day

The Fourth of July is the day on which the American people celebrate their independence from Great Britain. It is not actually clear why Independence Day is the Fourth. Congress actually passed the Declaration of Independence on July 2, 1776. It has often been thought that the Declaration was signed on the fourth, but that doesn’t seem to be true. There wasn’t any one time when the members of Congress signed the Declaration and there were a few who didn’t get around to signing it until August. Nevertheless, the fourth is the date that stuck. As John Adams wrote to Abigail.

The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.

And so it has been, for the last 246 years. May God bless America and grant us many more years of freedom.

Happy Independence Day.

Independence Day

The Fourth of July is the day on which the American people celebrate their independence from Great Britain. It is not actually clear why Independence Day is the Fourth. Congress actually passed the Declaration of Independence on July 2, 1776. It has often been thought that the Declaration was signed on the fourth, but that doesn’t seem to be true. There wasn’t any one time when the members of Congress signed the Declaration and there were a few who didn’t get around to signing it until August. Nevertheless, the fourth is the date that stuck. As John Adams wrote to Abigail.

The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.

And so it has been, for the last 245 years. May God bless America and grant us many more years of freedom.

Happy Independence Day.

Independence Day

The Fourth of July is the day on which the American people celebrate their independence from Great Britain. It is not actually clear why Independence Day is the Fourth. Congress actually passed the Declaration of Independence on July 2, 1776. It has often been thought that the Declaration was signed on the fourth, but that doesn’t seem to be true. There wasn’t any one time when the members of Congress signed the Declaration and there were a few who didn’t get around to signing it until August. Nevertheless, the fourth is the date that stuck. As John Adams wrote to Abigail.

The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.

And so it has been, for the last 244 years. May God bless America and grant us many more years of freedom.

Happy Independence Day.

Only Women Can Give Birth

George Orwell once allegedly said, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act”. Orwell does not appear to have said that, but the quote is apt in our own time of LBGTIDK inspired deceit and madness. I am afraid that I am going to tell certain biological truths in this post as a response to this bit of insanity from the United Kingdom. whether I am going to commit a revolutionary act is not clear, but I am sure that some would regard the statement of basic biological facts as being transphobic, anti-LGBT, or bigoted.

First, the relevant article, concerning a birth coach who was fired for the high crime of stating only women can have babies, from Venus Valley, a feminist web magazine, which I don’t think is satire.

It all started in the UK, where a birthing coach was forced to resign after she said that only women could give birth, but how on earth did it get to this?

Her name is Lynsey McCarthy-Calvert, and she is a mother of four as well as a former Doula UK birth coach. She said that a small number of activists opposed her statement and then pressured her company to punish her too!

She is a non-medical companion that supports people who have given birth and she says that her company “ostracised” her over the pressure of being politically correct.

She said:

“I am angry and sad …I was effectively ostracised for saying I am a woman and so are my clients.”

“I have been very disappointed by Doula UK’s response. The leadership is paralyzed by not wanting to upset transgender rights activists. They have fallen over themselves to acquiesce to their demands.”

The margarine brand, called Flora, refused to advertise on Mumsnet after the website was said to be transphobic for having a wide range of views on transgender issues.

The makers of Always sanitary towels got rod of the female “Venus” symbol from the packaging after they got complaints from transgender men.

The fall out with Doula UK started after Cancer Research UK dropped the word ‘women’ from its smear test campaign, instead of saying screening was:

“…relevant for everyone aged 25-64 with a cervix”

So in response to this Mrs. McCarthy-Calvert then posted a picture on Facebook of a negligee-clad woman somersaulting, underwater, with these words:

‘I am not a “cervix owner” I am not a “menstruator” I am not a “feeling”. I am not defined by wearing a dress and lipstick. I am a woman: an adult human female.’

Then she added below it:

“Women birth all the people, make up half the population, but less than a third of the seats in the House of Commons are occupied by us.”

These statements, which would not be at all controversial, or even remarkable just ten years ago, are now completely beyond the pale. Mrs. McCarthy-Calvert has committed a revolutionary act of truth-telling.

Then it seems that her words provoked a group of about 20 individuals, also known as “trans-activists”, they wrote to the company saying that she had “clearly” breeched the company’s inclusive guidelines.

In the letter they wrote, they claimed McCarthy-Calvert was guilty of making several “trans-exclusionary comments” which included, of course, her description of being an “adult human female.”

Doula UK proceeded to straight away withdraw Mrs. McCarthy-Calvert as a spokesperson and, after a four-month dragged out an investigation, its board of directors decided:

“[The post] does breach Doula UK’s guidelines”

They said:

“We are proud to say that we seek to listen to the lived experience of marginalized groups and make changes – including changes to the language we use – if we believe it is necessary to make the Doula UK community more welcoming and supportive”

Here are the facts. Human beings, like nearly all complex organisms on the Planet Earth, are divided into two, and only two, genders. There are indeed a small number of people who have some medical condition, or genetic defect, which renders a certain gender ambiguity, but such conditions are pathologies and not the norm. It is also true that some individuals believe that they are, or ought to be, the gender opposite of their biological gender. These people, who are generally called transgendered, may be sincere in their feelings that they are “really” the opposite of their biological sex, but their feelings, however strong and sincere, do not change physical reality, even if they have pharmacological and surgical techniques applied to themselves to change their physical appearance to resemble the opposite sex.

The two genders into which human beings are divided are male and female. Each gender plays a separate and distinct role in reproduction. The female produces the ova or egg, and in mammals carries the fertilized egg in the uterus until it is born. The male produces the sperm which fertilizes the egg. Only women can become pregnant and give birth to children. Only men can beget children. This is a simple biological fact. It may be a laudable goal to be more welcoming and supportive of marginalized people, but not at the expense of denying the truth. Truth is a higher value than compassion and ought not to be compromised simply because some people might feel uncomfortable.

However, I am not convinced that the goal is in fact laudable. This is not so much an LGBT issue as a matter of how we define reality. Those people who insist that gender is a matter of personal feelings are stating that reality is defined not by any sort of objective facts but by subjective feelings, backed by the threat of punishment for those who dissent.  If a pregnant woman who feels that she is really a man can be considered a pregnant man, then there may be no distortions of facts and logic that we cannot be coerced into conceding. The implications here are truly Orwellian.

In George Orwell’s 1984, one of the central tenets of INGSOC, the ideology of the Party that rules Oceania is that there is no such thing as objective reality. Reality is what the Party says it is. If the Party says that Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia when it was at war with Eurasia last week, or that the chocolate ration has been raised when it has really been lowered, they are not lying. Oceania really has always been at war with Eastasia and the chocolate ration really has been raised, because the Party said so. If you happen to remember otherwise, you are in the wrong, and you had better get your thinking straightened out, or else the Thought Police will straighten it for you. In the end, the protagonist Winston Smith reflected, the Party was going to declare that 2+2=5, with torture and execution in store for anyone who insisted that 2+2=4.

If we can be intimidated into saying that men can become pregnant, how long before we are forced to believe that 2+2=5?

The KKK Mural

The Great American Cultural Revolution continues apace, this time at my old alma mater, Indiana University at Bloomington. According to WHAS News, the university will cease holding classes in a room with a controversial mural depicting a Ku Klux Klan rally.

 Indiana University says beginning next spring, it’ll no longer hold classes in a room where a mural panel depicts a Ku Klux Klan rally.

The scene that’s part of a 22-panel Thomas Hart Benton mural created in the 1930s hangs in Room 100 at Woodburn Hall on the Bloomington campus. The mural panels depicting Indiana history are spread over three buildings.

IU Executive Vice President and Provost Lauren Robel said in a statement Friday the room will have other uses beginning next spring semester.

Jacquline Barrie, a former IU student who started a petition calling for the mural’s removal that collected more than more than 1,000 signatures, told The Indianapolis Star she considers the university’s decision a “small victory.” She has said the scene is a symbol of hate.

I do not believe that the artist, Thomas Hart Benton was intentionally creating a symbol of hate or trying to glorify the Ku Klux Klan. He was commissioned to paint the series of murals to illustrate events in Indiana’s history and the lives of ordinary Hoosiers. At the time Benton was painting the murals, the Ku Klux Klan was powerful in Indiana, and his work depicted that unpleasant fact.

It might seem odd that Indiana was a stronghold of the Ku Klux Klan, since Indiana is not usually regarded as a Southern state. Indiana was never a slave state and it did not secede from the union. The fact is, however, that Indiana; at least the southern half of the state, tends to be culturally aligned with the South. The earliest settlers came from Virginia, either directly by travelling down the Ohio River or up from Tennessee and Kentucky. There were men who lived in Indiana who owned land and slaves across the river in Kentucky. During the Civil War, there was a great deal of pro-Confederate sympathy along the northern banks of the Ohio, both in Indiana and Ohio. So it was only natural that the Ku Klux Klan might find it easy to gain influence in the area.

It should also be noted that the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920’s was influential all over the country and not just in the South. This Ku Klux Klan was what historians call the second Ku Klux Klan which was active from around 1915 until 1944, in contrast to the First Ku Klux Klan which existed from 1865 to 1871 and the Third Klan from 1946 to the present. This Second Klan was unlike the First and Third Klans in that it was more widespread across the nation, having branches throughout the midwest as well as the south. There was even a Klan organization in California. The Second Klan did not only support White Supremacy but were anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, and anti-Catholic. They also saw themselves as moral guardians, protecting their communities against vice and political corruption, and were in favor of Prohibition. Essentially, they were part of the national desire to return to Normalcy after World War I and the Progressive Era. During the 1920’s the Ku Klux Klan was almost a respectable organization with a membership of around six million at its height in 1924.

Indiana was right at the center of the Second Klan. Under the leadership of its bright and ambitious Grand Dragon D. C. Stephenson, the Indiana Klan dominated the state’s politics. By 1925, over half the members of the legislators as well as the governor,and many other state officials were members of the Klan. It was not possible to have a political career in Indiana without the support of the Ku Klux Klan. Stephenson himself hoped to use his influence to gain control of the Ku Klux Klan at the national level and began organizing his own Klan organization in the states he influenced. At the height of his power, Stephenson claimed, “I am the law in Indiana”.

It turned out not to be the case. It is said that pride goeth before a fall and that was certainly the case with D. C. Stephenson. In 1925, Stephenson committed an unforgivable crime. He abducted and raped a white woman, a state official named Madge Oberholtzer. His treatment of her was so brutal that she committed suicide and Stephenson was tried and convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

Once in prison, Stephenson tried to obtain a parole from Indiana Governor Edward L. Jackson and when Jackson declined to grant him leniency, Stephenson began to talk to the newspapers. He released the names of all the Indiana state officials who were members of the Klan and discussed at length the many unsavory and unlawful activities in which the Ku Klux Klan leadership had been involved, More investigations and indictments followed, and the power of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana was broken. Stephenson’s fall was only the beginning of the end of the Second Ku Klux Klan as more financial and sex scandals erupted nationwide, revealing that far from being the public guardians of public morality, as many members had believed, the Klan leadership was corrupt to the core. Membership in the Klan declined precipitously and by 1930 the Klan had only around 30,000 members.

Such is the history of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana. It is not a part of Hoosier history to be proud of, but neither should it be forgotten or whitewashed. If anyone is troubled by a realistic depiction of this unpleasant history, than good, they should be troubled. The fact that Indiana was a stronghold of the Klan in the 1920’s is something that should be troubling, not covered up out of a misguided crusade against “hate”.

But the odd thing is that these contemporary iconoclasts who have been busy trying to rid the country of “racist” statues are not trying to bury or forget the past. Instead they seem determined to bring to life every conceivable grievance or injustice that every group that could possibly claim to be victimized or oppressed. Why do this if they are so concerned about people being triggered or upset?

I believe the activists see history not as the shared story of a people or nation that unites us and teaches us lessons. Instead they seem to see history as a never ending source of grievances to be used to turn us against each other. They do not see historical figures as complex personalities to be understood in their historical context, but as figures of good and evil in a morality play. If this is the case, than the toppling of statues of Confederate generals and similar instances of iconoclasm are being performed not as acts against hate or attempts to ensure social justice, but a campaign to reopen old wounds and turn us against one another for their own purposes. We ought not to let them get away it.

 

Related articles

• Petition Calls for Removal of Indiana University Mural Depicting KKK Scene  (Aol News)
• Thomas Hart Benton Murals
• Indiana University Has no Plans to Pull Mural of KKK Members (Fox News)