Monday, April 19, 2021

Should the Alamo Be Legitimized?

What I can't understand about Republicans and conservatives is, why you insist on making heroes out of a bunch of Democrat Protestant pro-slavery asshats?

That's what the Alamo was about - it was about a bunch of Democrats, a bunch of illegal alien immigrants - fighting to keep slavery alive in Texas. Why? Because that's what Democrats always do, and that's what they were doing at the Alamo, that's what they were doing in the entire fight for Texas independence. They were fighting for the right to be Democrat slaveholders, and everyone at the time knew it.

The prime cause, and the real objects of this war [the Texas Revolution], are not distinctly understood by a large portion of the honest, disinterested, and well-meaning citizens of the United States…. They have been induced to believe that the inhabitants of Texas were engaged in a legitimate contest for the maintenance of the sacred principles of Liberty, and the natural, inalienable Rights of Man: --whereas, the motives of its instigators, and their chief incentives to action, have been, from the commencement, of a directly opposite character and tendency…to wrest the large and valuable territory of Texas from the Mexican Republic, in order to re-establish the SYSTEM OF SLAVERY; to open a vast and profitable SLAVE-MARKET therein; and, ultimately, to annex it to the United States…. The Slaveholding Interest is now paramount in the Executive branch of our national government…. Benjamin Lundy, 1836

 John Quincy Adams testified in the House of Representatives (Dec 1835) that Lundy was absolutely correct:

And this is the nation with which, at the instigation of your Executive Government, you are now rushing into war into a war of conquest; commenced by aggression on your part and for the re-establishment of slavery, where it has been abolished, throughout the Mexican Republic. For your war will be with Mexico---with a Republic of twenty four States, and a population of eight or nine millions of souls.... 
And again I ask, what will be your cause in such a war! Aggression, conquest, and the re-establishment of slavery where it has been abolished. In that war, sir, the banner of freedom will be the banners of Mexico; and your banners, 1 blush to speak the word, will be the banners of slavery. 

Every abolitionist of the age said the same thing:

"It is impossible for any honest man to wish success to Texas. All who sympathize with that pseudo republic hate liberty and would dethrone God."

—abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, editor of The Liberator

In early 1836, the largest Texas force in the field, commanded by Colonel James Walker Fannin, was composed of over ninety percent of United States citizens. Even many of the Northerners in the US saw the danger Catholic freedom posed for the Protestant slave-holders. They saw Santa Ana's insistence on freeing slaves as a direct threat to Southern and Western slave-holding states. The existence of a free Catholic Texas was an incitement to slave revolts throughout the South. The Texans at the Alamo were not freedom fighters, they were slavery fighters, as Democrats always are. When you put a halo around the Alamo, you defend illegal immigration, you defend slavers, you defend the use of violence in the name of, in the support of, illegal immigration and slavery.


When you look at all the details, really study what the American Protestant Democrats at the Alamo and in the larger fight for Texas independence were doing, you soon realize they were the early 19th century version of BLM and Antifa. Why would conservatives defend this nonsense?

Why would anyone from the party of Lincoln want to legitimize Democrat asininity?


Monday, April 05, 2021

Protestants Claim Scripture is Heretical

 There has been a recent kerfluffle over a comment by a pastor, in which Reverend Warnock, a pastor who oversees MLK's church, said:

The meaning of Easter is more transcendent than the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Whether you are Christian or not, through a commitment to helping others we are able to save ourselves.

This comment has been condemned by Protestant commentators as heresy. Well, there's nothing heretical in Warnock's statement unless you're a Protestant, but Protestant theology has always been nonsense.

Take the first sentence, "The meaning of Easter is more transcendent than the resurrection of Jesus Christ." Yes. Exactly right. The resurrection of Jesus is immanent, the meaning of the resurrection is transcendent. That is, the resurrection is a real thing that happened in the flesh, risen flesh that could be touched, it is closer to us than we are to ourselves, it is bound up within who we are, while the meaning of that resurrection is transcendent, it is higher than us, it draws us up beyond ourselves into the heart of the Trinity. Yes. Precisely correct.

Second sentence, "Whether you are a Christian or not," - yes, as Paul says in Romans 2 “They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.)" . That is, we all know what the law says, even when we don’t know the law. And, we all prove it by doing what’s in God’s law without even knowing it. And this knowledge and acting on this knowledge will "even defend them" on the Day of Judgement.

And the last part? "Through a commitment to helping others we are able to save ourselves." As Augustine of Hippo says "He who created us without our help will not save us without our consent." (St Augustine, Sermo 16913 (PL 38,923)). Paul pointed out that "We are God's co-workers" (1 Cor 3:9). God's work is our salvation, so our co-work is also our salvation. Paul talks about "working out my salvation in fear and trembling". (Phil 2:12) and even goes so far as to say "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church..." (Col 1:24). That is Paul asserts not only that Jesus' suffering actually LACKS something, he asserts that he, Paul, can make up what is lacking!

Jesus points out that we must do this through good works, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, etc. The people who do this are the people who are gathered together and saved on the last day.

Grace affects the whole person. The mind responds with faith, the body with works, both happen simultaneously. We are NOT saved through faith alone, as the Letter of James points out. Even the demons have faith in the resurrection, but that does not save them.

The good reverend just echoed Scripture and Saint Augustine.

People who object to what he said know neither Scripture nor the power of God.