The Race of Fishmongers

 There are two pious myths about 'race' which I detest for their falseness:

1) "One's race is the most important fact about one's self".
2) "There are no such things as races";

Leftists promulgate both myths, sometimes even simultaneously, depending on what seems advantageous at the moment.  Rightists, and especially Christian rightists, tend toward promulgating the second myth.

There two myths are pernicious not because they are mutually exclusive (for, after all, one might be correct), and only not because both are false, but also because both may have terrible real-world consequences:

1) IF it is true that "One's race is the most important fact about one's self", THEN racism is not only morally justified, but inevitable and inescapable; and perhaps not merely morally justified, but morally requisite.  This is where the leftists, in general, and the Democratic Party, in particular, have settled.  Though, in their defense, the Democrats have *always* been racists.

2) IF it is true that "There are no such things as races", THEN one is compelled to ignore what one's own lying eyes clearly see.  For instance, in medical care it is not infrequently the case that persons of some races are more susceptible to some specific diseases than to others. And thus, when one pretends that the patient's race does not exist, one may well waste time and effort -- and the patient's health, or even life -- by studiously overlooking conditions known to be more prevalent to persons of the patient's particular race. 

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To quote myself from a recent post --

Firstly, the English word 'race' isn't *about* skin-color or ancestry or even about biology; it is about different ways of categorizing things or animals or people. That for about the past 150 years (i.e. since Darwinism took over the minds of the "progressives") we most commonly use the word to denote the broad continental origins of various ethnic groups doesn't change the fact that the word is not so narrow in its designations. [See below for an historical example of 'race' used in this broader, "non-racist", meaning]

Secondly, if you're distinguishing an Englishman from a Welshman, or an Igbo (called 'Ibo' in my youth) man from a Yoruba man, you are distinguishing these men based on their ethnicities -- for which distinctions the word 'race' has historically been used [despite that in presently common usage, an Englishman and a Welshman are of a common 'race', while an Igbo man and a Yoruba man are of a common 'race' different to the former].

But, what does ethnicity mean in a country like America? In the South Bend Indiana of my mother's youth (i.e. nearly a century ago), it mattered immensely whether one was "Polish" or "Hungarian". Or, it mattered not at all, if like her people, one was simply what is now disdained as "WASP". In my own youth in South Bend Indiana, some people just had difficult-to-pronounce family names.

The ethnicity of a black American and the ethnicity of a white America are singularly 'American'. Yet, sometimes, we do need to recognize the broadly continental origins of a person's ancestry.

While 'English' or 'Yoruba' are ethnicities, 'white' is not an ethnicity and 'black' is not an ethnicity. 'European' is not an ethnicity; 'African' is not an ethnicity; 'East Asian' is not an ethnicity; 'American Indian' is not an ethnicity. And so on [Nonetheless, the 'white/European' race is a real thing; and the 'black/(Sub-Saharan) African' race is a real thing; and the 'yellow/East Asian' race is a real thing; and the 'red/American Indian' race is a real thing; and the 'Australian Aborigine' race is a real thing. And so on.].

And yet, there are recognizable differences -- generally unimportant, but sometimes critical -- between a person of primarily European ancestry and a person of primarily (sub-Saharan) African ancestry. To blind ourselves with the one leftist lie that "There is no such thing as race" is as foolish and potentially harmful as to blind ourselves with the other leftist lie that "All there is is race".

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At the following link are English translations -- made in the 19th Century, when English-speakers more generally were not so simple-minded as in the present day -- of two ancient Greek references to "the race of fishmongers" --

"I used to think the race of fishmongers Was only insolent in Attica; But now I see that like wild beasts they are Savage by nature, everywhere the same. ..."

"But as to fishmongers, They're an inventive race, and yield to none In shameless conduct. ..."

https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2013.01.0003%3Abook%3D6%3Achapter%3D6

Have you fixed the Lisbon Problem?

 Douglas Wilson: "Have you fixed the Lisbon Problem?"

These pretend atheists (*) like to pretend that "The Problem Of Evil" refutes the Christian understanding of the nature of God. It does not; and they studiously avoid and ignore any and all Christian responses to said problem. MOREOVER, their atheistic "solution" to "The Problem Of Evil" is to deny that there are such things as Good or Evil in the first place.

Can you not see the absurdity of this? The God-haters want to point to the reality of "senseless" evils (**), whether of a moral or of a "natural" nature, WHEN IT SUITS THEM to use such evils as a cudgel with which to attack Christianity and as an excuse to deny the reality of God. Having done so, they shrug their shoulders at the truth that one must at least implicitly acknowledge the reality of God – and one must acknowledge that the Christian understanding of the nature of God is broadly correct, even if incomplete (as, of course, *any* human understanding of the nature of God must be incomplete) -- before one can even point to the reality of such evils.

Stripped to its core, the atheistic “Argument From Evil” is this – “God is.  Ergo, God is not!”

(*) They are not truly atheists, because they refuse to follow the logic of their premises to the inescapable logical conclusions. Rather, they are God-haters.

(**) Christianity says that God will rectify all the evils of history, that God will make sense of all evils, that not one of the evils in all of history is ultimately meaningless.

Atheism says that the very concept of 'evil' is meaningless.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n16mPd60j1w

On the Democrats' New Boogeyman -- "Christian Nationalism"

 Seen on the internet --

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NYT reported, “Mr. Johnson declined an interview request and did not respond to a request for comment about whether he considers himself a Christian nationalist. But the little-known speaker of the House has made clear that his faith is the most important thing to know about him, and in previous interviews, he has said he believes ‘the founders wanted to protect the church from an encroaching state, not the other way around.’”

I hadn’t thought of it that way but yes, that is true. The Constitution is a document of restraints on the government, not the people.

The IUPUI professor’s definition of Christian nationalism is shockingly Christian: “Christian nationalism strongly favors traditionalist social relationships and hierarchies. This ideal society revolves around patriarchy, heterosexual marriage, and pronatalism.”

By pronatalism he means women birthing babies.

Professor IUPUI just described the 1950s. We have devolved into a nation populated by purple haired people, people with tattooed faces, bearded ladies, and 500-pound men. Face it. America is a circus now where you dare not slut-shame the neighborhood whore.

If we must go through this, at least bring back some calliope music.

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My response --

Contrary to what we all have been taught ... since the secularists/atheists took over the government and the schools ... the US Constitution does not establish a secular state. Rather, it establishes a non-sectarian, but decidedly Protestant flavored, state.

A secular state is hostile to "religion", which is to say, to Christianity. A non-sectarian state is supportive of Christianity, but takes no sides regarding any Christian sect.

Furthermore, there is no such thing as "Separation of Church and State" in the self-serving manner in which the secularists/atheists used that phrase as a bait-and-switch to covertly overthrow the prior American regime of "civic religion" or Christianity Lite. There is *always* a "god of the system", and there are always laws against blasphemy; in Current Year, it is blasphemy to say such things as:
1) homosexuality is *not* a Good Thing ... Hell! They have recently starting asserting that saying the word 'homosexual' is itself a "hate crime";
2) human beings come in only two sexes, and no genders at all;
3) men cannot be/become women;
4) women cannot be/become men;
5) women have no business in the military, nor in the police or fire-fighting forces.

https://donsurber.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-maga-mike