Anyone Else Sick of Experts?

No doubt others were also dismayed to see the recommendations of experts about a move to ‘Level 2 plus’ for places outside Auckland. According to the New Zealand Herald, the recommendations would include the following particularly egregious requirements:

• Mandatory masking in all indoor settings outside the home, including workplaces, secondary schools and shops.

• Mandatory QR code scanning.

• Indoor gatherings limited to 25 people, 50 for outdoor gatherings.

• Closing potential super spreader locations including bars, night clubs, gyms and churches.

I have a few not very nice words I’d like to say to these control freaks. However, in the interests of politeness, I’ll say just this “Stop pretending to be God and get out of our lives you control freaks. Return to under the rock you came from.”

From the Archives #2

Since we have so many new readers, we are going to bring out old posts from the archives to help you find your feet and get a feel for The Sojournal. Today, we encourage you to check out our imaginary conversation between a first-century Christian Jew and a modern Western Christian on the subject of Christian education: Levi and Mike Discuss Education.

Peer Pressure

In a recent post looking at one of the excuses Christian parents make to avoid giving a Christian education, we focused on the holy grail of school for many, that of socialisation. In passing, I mentioned that socialisation in a secular environment could look like a child conforming to the pattern of this world rather than being transformed into the image of Christ.

Hannah Arendt, an American political commentator who wrote many books commented on the issue of peer pressure in an essay entitled “Crisis in Education”. There she compares the authority of a tyrannical individual over a child with the tyranny of a group. She writes:

the authority of a group, even a child group, is always considerably stronger and more tyrannical than the severest authority of an individual person can ever be. If one looks at it from the standpoint of the individual child, his chances to rebel or to do anything on his own hook are practically nil; he no longer finds himself in a very unequal contest with a person who has, to be sure, absolute superiority over him but in contest with whom he can nevertheless count on the solidarity of other children, that is, of his own kind; rather he is in the position, hopeless by definition, of a minority of one confronted by the absolute majority of all the others. There are very few grown people who can endure such a situation, even when it is not supported by external means of compulsion; children are simply and utterly incapable of it.

While not a Christian as far as I can tell, Arendt is right on the money and her point has implications for Christian parents. Few grown-up people can endure the pressure of being the odd one out. Witness the way your facebook friends pay homage to the alphabet cult during ‘pride’ month by changing their profile pictures. Children cannot handle this pressure at all. They are by intention programmed to imitate those around them. However in God’s design, this ought to be parents and other wise adults, not their peers. In our modern world, we bundle them off into huge schools, where they are isolated from wise adult council and surrounded by hundreds of other children their own age. To make matters worse, for the Christian, most of these children come from families who have no love for Christ and are caught up in rebellion and idolatry. How will your children stand in this pressure when the entire system is predicated on turning out children who have internalize the norms and ideologies of society – a society that is at war with the king?

Why Modern Christians Separate Faith and Politics

In every culture, law is religious in origin and so it must be recognized that in any social order the source of law is the god of that society and that to which the people have bound themselves. To change the law order is then an implicit or explicit change in religion – revealing a change of gods (allegiance) in that political realm. This further implies that no absolute disestablishment of religion is actually possible in any society. A culture can certainly disestablish one faith or church, but it merely replaces that faith with another one, be it Islamic, Buddhist or any other humanistic faith. This is clearly what has taken place in the modern West. We have traded the God of the Bible for the god of the state (man enlarged), where the ‘will of the people,’ personified by an elite bureaucracy, now redefines law in the name of the people, the new god. This has been in no small part due to a faulty theology amongst Christians and the consequent abdication of responsibility by the church in the socio-political sphere. Due to the philosophical dualism that has so greatly influenced the church (discussed in chapter two), modern Christians have tended to separate God’s law and covenant from real history and implicitly assumed that the state is not actually accountable to God’s standards.

Joseph Boot in The Mission of God: A Manifesto of Hope for Society

How to be an Antiracist – A Review

Ibram X. Kendi has been described as one of the foremost historians and leading voices of antiracism. He is a New York Times #1 best selling author and a contributing writer at the Atlantic, just to list a few of his accolades.[1]

In 2019, Kendi published “How to be an Antiracist” which was praised by the New York Times as “the most courageous book to date on the problem of race in the Western mind”[2]

In this book Kendi offers a personal memoir in which he retells significant events from his life and explores philosophical ideas around race and racism. The book maps Kendi’s own journey towards ‘antiracist’ ideology.

What I found particularly helpful about this book is how forthright Kendi is about the radical nature of his beliefs. Many Critical Theorists and grievance hustlers are often too embarrassed to state their true intentions outright. Not Kendi. From out the gate, he is willing to espouse the most radical forms of Critical Theory ideology and put into words what his contemporaries are sheepish to admit.

For example, on page 18 he says this

A racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between racial groups. An antiracist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial equity between racial groups. By policy, I mean written and unwritten laws, rules, procedures, processes, regulations, and guidelines that govern people. There is no such thing as a nonracist or race-neutral policy. Every policy in every institution in every community in every nation is producing or sustaining either racial inequity or equity between racial groups.[3]

Now consider just how radical a claim this is. “Any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity”. By this standard, the policy that makes murder illegal would be considered a racist policy because this policy produces a disparity between the races. What Kendi refuses to recognise is that proportional representation in outcomes is something that has not been achieved or even approximated in any society in recorded history.[4] Moreover, in order to achieve proportionate outcomes, governments and institutions must discriminate against people on the basis of race or ethnicity.

What might this idea look like in practice? Well, in New Zealand, a surgeon might triage his patients and determine who needs surgery most urgently and create a waiting list based on urgency. He may also take into account how long a patient has been waiting. Both these factors would be considered racist by people like Kendi because these sorts of policies produce a disparity between different ethnicities. Instead what surgeons now have to do is give priority to Pacific Island and Maori patients in order to create more ‘equitable’ results.[5] Surgeons need to discriminate against people based on their ethnicity in order to be ‘antiracist’.

Now before I am accused of misrepresenting Kendi’s positions here; Kendi himself is happy to state this explicitly. He says this on page 19;

The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.[6]

Ibram X. Kendi is more than happy to discriminate against people based on the colour of their skin. He is happily content to award certain people with advantages and burden certain people with disadvantages based purely on their participation in one ethnic group or another.

By any meaningful standard, Kendi is a racist.

He is an ethnic discriminator. He is the one who treats people differently based on the colour of their skin. The great irony of Kendi’s book is that it is a masterful work of projection. The guy who openly calls for race-based discrimination has the gall to call racist anyone who might advocate for impartiality and equal treatment before the law.

RACIST: One who is supporting a racist policy through their actions or inaction or expressing a racist idea.[7]

Kendi is not anti-discrimination, rather, in many cases he is pro-discrimination. For Critical Theorists any disparity has to be explained by some form of oppression. Kendi has a predetermined commitment to the worldview of oppression. He does not examine the evidence to determine whether or not racism exists, rather, racism and oppression are the very lenses through which he examines all evidence. So overriding is this principle that Kendi can assert;

A racist idea is any idea that suggests one racial group is inferior or superior to another racial group in any way.[8]

In his attempt to get rid of any other explanation for disparities, Kendi wants to make clear that the cause for disparity cannot be the results of any factors within the group itself. For example, suggesting that educational disparities between Asian students and Black students are a result of cultural difference, namely that Asians generally value education more than Blacks, is considered racist. Yet studies show that Asian students prefer to spend more time doing school work than Blacks.[9] These disparities are not peculiar to Blacks in America. In Australia, Chinese students spent more than twice as much time on homework as their White counterparts.[10]

Kendi is not concerned with these kinds of explanatory tools, however. Like other Critical Theorists, he simply considers empirical evidence, soundness, and reason to be tools of oppression.[11]

Anyone who would suggest paths of cultural improvement is merely an ‘assimilationist’;

ASSIMILATIONIST: One who is expressing the racist idea that a racial group is culturally or behaviorally inferior and is supporting cultural or behavioral enrichment programs to develop that racial group.[12]

Seventy percent of black children are born to single mothers. The black community would be enriched if they raised children in stable two-parent households. Children from fatherless homes are more likely to be poor, become involved in drug and alcohol abuse, drop out of school, and suffer from health and emotional problems. Boys are more likely to become involved in crime, and girls are more likely to become pregnant as teens.[13] Pointing this out is not racist. Refusing to recognise responsibility for this cause of disparity and suffering is what truly damages communities and cultures.

The full destructive force is seen later in the book when Kendi advocates the tearing down of capitalism, and why not? When people are free to own property and make decisions based on their own preferences, disparity will result. Some ideas are better than others. Some products are better than others. Some people are able to generate more wealth and produce more than others. All of this, by Kendi’s definition, is racist;

To love capitalism is to end up loving racism. To love racism is to end up loving capitalism. The conjoined twins are two sides of the same destructive body.[14]

Kendi’s vision of utopian equity is unachievable in a free society. When people are free to make decisions for themselves disparity will always exist. This is not a bad thing. No one complains that Pacific Islanders are ‘over-represented’ in the All Blacks. No one complains that Blacks are over-represented in the NBA.

If we want to manufacture equal outcomes in all institutions, then the only way this is achieved is through the kind of tyrannical oppression that has wrought misery and suffering throughout the globe. Communism and socialism share Kendi’s goals of equitable outcomes, and the fruit of this ideology has been 100 million dead in the last century.

It is frightening that Kendi seems fine with top-down oppression in order to achieve his utopia. It is even more frightening that people who consider themselves compassionate and on the side of the oppressed are praising his book and supporting his deadly ideas. Elsewhere Kendi has advocated an “antiracist amendment” to the constitution;

To fix the original sin of racism, Americans should pass an anti-racist amendment to the U.S. Constitution that enshrines two guiding anti-racist principals: Racial inequity is evidence of racist policy and the different racial groups are equals. The amendment would make unconstitutional racial inequity over a certain threshold, as well as racist ideas by public officials (with “racist ideas” and “public official” clearly defined). It would establish and permanently fund the Department of Anti-racism (DOA) comprised of formally trained experts on racism and no political appointees. The DOA would be responsible for preclearing all local, state and federal public policies to ensure they won’t yield racial inequity, monitor those policies, investigate private racist policies when racial inequity surfaces, and monitor public officials for expressions of racist ideas. The DOA would be empowered with disciplinary tools to wield over and against policymakers and public officials who do not voluntarily change their racist policy and ideas.[15]

Great! Just what we need… An antiracist police force that can wield disciplinary tools over those who aren’t discriminating against people based on race. Will these disciplinary tools include Gulags?

So, in summary, in order to be antiracist, we all need to start discriminating against people on the basis of race, we need to abandon capitalism and we need a tyrannical government agency to punish anyone who doesn’t get with the program.

With that in mind, I guess I’m okay with being the kind of hideous racist who thinks that we should treat all people equally.

[1] For more bio information see this link; https://www.ibramxkendi.com/about

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/20/books/review/how-to-be-an-antiracist-ibram-x-kendi.html

[3] Kendi, Ibram X.. How To Be an Antiracist (p. 18). Random House.

[4] Horowitz, D. L. (1985). Ethnic Groups in Conflict. Berkeley, University of California Press. p. 677

[5] https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/121640802/mori-and-pasifika-given-priority-in-elective-surgery-waitlists

[6] Kendi, Ibram X.. How To Be an Antiracist (p. 19). Random House.

[7] Ibid (p. 13)..

[8] Ibid (p. 20).

[9] Thomas D. Snyder, Cristobal de Brey and Sally A. Dillow, Digest of Education Statistics: 2015, 51st edition (Washington: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2016), pp. 328, 329.

[10] Sowell, Thomas. Discrimination and Disparities (p. 102). Basic Books.

[11] Bailey, A. (2017) Tracking Privilege-Preserving Epistemic Pushback. p. 181 “By interrogating the politics of knowledge-production, this tradition also calls into question the uses of the accepted critical-thinking toolkit to determine epistemic adequacy. To extend Audre Lorde’s classic metaphor, the tools of the critical thinking tradition (for example, validity, soundness, conceptual clarity) cannot dismantle the master’s house:”

[12] Kendi, Ibram X.. How To Be an Antiracist (p. 24). Random House.

[13] https://fathers.com/statistics-and-research/the-consequences-of-fatherlessness/

[14] Kendi, Ibram X.. How To Be an Antiracist (p. 163). Random House.

[15] https://www.politico.com/interactives/2019/how-to-fix-politics-in-america/inequality/pass-an-anti-racist-constitutional-amendment/

Don’t Be This Parent

Here is a quote from Father Hunger by Douglas Wilson. He is commenting on what often happens when parents finally ask for outside help after experiencing persistent long term parenting difficulties.

When parents finally get real help from someone who is willing to be honest about what is going on in their family, and how they got to where they are, it is in the highest degree likely that father or mother, or both, will be offended. Part of the reason why they have gotten this far without hearing what they need to hear is that many of their friends instinctively know this. The temptation for the struggling parent will be to think that the person who finally speaks up “doesn’t understand,” or “has a simplistic approach,” or “doesn’t know the family dynamics,” and so on. And the longer it takes for someone to finally say something, the more it seems like an intervention when it finally does happen.

Douglas Wilson in Father Hunger

Excuses for Avoiding the Responsibility of Christian Education #2

Christians in the West are gripped in a fearful idolatry. We, like the ancient Israelites, cannot decide who we worship. Elijah asked the Israelites, “How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.” Today we could say, “How long will you go limping between two different opinions. If Christ is king, follow him, but if the state, then follow it.” Nowhere is this idolatry more obvious than in our capitulation in education. Christians give their children to the enemies of Christ in the hope that their minds will be trained. A few weeks ago we began a series on the excuses Christian parents make for avoiding the responsibility of Christian education. There we looked at perhaps the most sanctified excuse – that of wanting our children to be salt and light. Today we investigate another common excuse: socialisation.

Excuse 2: Socialisation

Many parents have noticed that children who are homeschooled, and even to a certain extent children who attend Christian schools (and I’m not talking about the Christian veneer type schools, but Christian down to the roots types), are…well different. They tend not to be as aware of or obsessed with current fashions in clothing, music and thought. It shows. And parents, because they love their children, do not want their children to have a tough time. They want them to have friends and fit in. They don’t want ‘nerdy’ children. They often want their children to be ‘cool’.

However, this ought not to be the primary goal of a Christian parent. We should seek holiness for our children. And that ought to mean they are different to the children brought up with the secular values of mainstream society. Socialisation is the process of a child internalizing the norms and ideologies of society. Now if a society is secular and anti-Christ, then we ought not to want that for our children. In fact, if we want that, we cannot call ourselves Christians in any meaningful way. A Christian wants what Christ wants, and Christ wants followers who are not of the world. We want our children to be different. They ought not to fit in. They ought to be an irritation to a society that is in high rebellion to Christ because they will be constantly reminding them of their need to repent, not only by their speech but by their different values expressed in the way they live with Christ as Lord of all.

In Idols for Destruction, Herbert Sclossberg deals briefly with the concept of socialisation and a Christian response.

Society’s most important institutions serve the socializing function, making people better balance and adjusted to the way things are. And that is why they are so dangerous. All education is of necessity value-laden, and the public school is the most powerful of these instruments of conformity. Its goal is to instil society’s norms and to discredit deviant ideas. The best elements of the Christian school movement…is a determined No! by parents to the homogenization of American life, a recognition that the model to which their children are intended to be conformed has become evil.