Let's say that the General sees his former situation and background as having been caused by generations of Western white male colonialism slavery and imperialism, and but for that, he would have been living in a civilized and enlightened African state where he would have developed very differently indeed!
He thinks he is entitled not only to reparations but also tuition room and board at any elite Western university he should select.
How did General Butt Naked come to see it that way?
He finally found Western Christianity, what he calls the only good side of Western Civilization, and was saved!
Alternatively, he might also turn on his Christian conversion, claim that he really was saved by a virtuous underlying natural law black African heritage that he now at length has found, and that Western Christianity had perverted along with its imperialism, slavery, and oppression.
General Butt Naked can go either way, and still claim raparations, causal Western Civ responsibility, and a place at Yale or Harvard, just like Kashuv!
He can even claim that he is a direct descendant of enslaved Africans shipped to America, and get reparations that way too!
He can claim reparations directly from descendants of African slave drivers in Africa who sold his forefathers to white male slave drivers.
These last two claims undercut his other claims based on white male imperialism and colonialism.
But, for General Butt Naked, as for Rumpole, those are merely fine points of law.
David Brooks: Kashuv remarks: repulsive, blatantly racist and anti Semitic.
Yet, much of Western history, your history, your theology if
Christian, whoever you are, here in the West, has been based in part at least on blatantly racist and anti semitic views.
It has only come to seem repulsive against a background of non Western-looking ideology, a Western secular ideology repudiating Western Civilization itself lock stock and barrel, not merely its incidental racism and anti Semitism.
What of Brooks' Western Civ card? It turns out on examination to be a joker. The Western Civ Whig Enlightenment view of man, to which Brooks ostensibly subscribes is one in which man, and individual men, are basically good, after all, in a natural law, and state of nature kind of way, not inherently and irretrievably sinful, nor Calvinistically predestinarianingly so either.
That has been the message of Whig, Dissenting, and Anglican theology, and much of kaleidoscopic schismatic Protestantism, alike.
Catholicism resisted this trend, although they had the notion of good works, and the forgiveness of sins as one goes along.
For Jews also, man is a fallen race, descended from Adam's seed, needing redemption at the end of time, not now, and a final judgment, and the redeemed Kingdom of Israel.
Man did not, and cannot, turn inherently good on his own, either for Catholics or for Jews. Man cannot sin and repent his way to inherent goodness.
In Brooks' sin drenched world it is only through sin and repentance that moral formation happens.
What does the happening of moral formation mean? Who needs the happening of moral formation as the end objective of life? Wouldn't one think that one should grow up being trained in right and wrong, trying to avoid both sin and repentance as much as possible at every turn? Who wants to be sin drenched?
What about salvation, atonement, forgiveness of sins? What does moral formation have to do with them?
These are not what he is talking about, but are the stock in trade of Whig Enlightenment Christianity. Folks are Christians to be saved.
Brooks believes that it is for fellow men to forgive sins, not for God. What then do you do with sins that some men forgive, others do not, and God may or may not?
Sins are not just between sinner and sinned against. Sin, by its nature, is communal, or it is nothing. The Jewish term transgression is different. Sins are sins against god's law. That is the traditional interpretation.
One classic statement is: "Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do." (Not that they repent, for they do not, in fact the opposite. They know not that they sin against God. On the other hand, were they to have repented, the repentance would not have run to Jesus to forgive, but to the Father. Killing Jesus was a sin against the Father, not against Jesus. Jesus could not have forgiven them, according to the gospel account.)
What wisdom through the grace of God has to do with forgiveness of sins is not made clear. Maybe it is plain Jewish theology.
In a sin drenched world, how could there be even one student, perfect resume, who would not have yet committed a disgrace (sin), if committing sins, and ensuing repentances, are what lead to moral formation in the first place, and thus to such a rare thing as a perfect resume? (Thus Brooks' reasoning here is circular, when you flesh out what certain terms really mean to the argument itself, actually. He goes from sin to disgrace. Call it a fine point of law.)
He can even claim that he is a direct descendant of enslaved Africans shipped to America, and get reparations that way too!
He can claim reparations directly from descendants of African slave drivers in Africa who sold his forefathers to white male slave drivers.
These last two claims undercut his other claims based on white male imperialism and colonialism.
But, for General Butt Naked, as for Rumpole, those are merely fine points of law.
David Brooks: Kashuv remarks: repulsive, blatantly racist and anti Semitic.
Yet, much of Western history, your history, your theology if
Christian, whoever you are, here in the West, has been based in part at least on blatantly racist and anti semitic views.
It has only come to seem repulsive against a background of non Western-looking ideology, a Western secular ideology repudiating Western Civilization itself lock stock and barrel, not merely its incidental racism and anti Semitism.
What of Brooks' Western Civ card? It turns out on examination to be a joker. The Western Civ Whig Enlightenment view of man, to which Brooks ostensibly subscribes is one in which man, and individual men, are basically good, after all, in a natural law, and state of nature kind of way, not inherently and irretrievably sinful, nor Calvinistically predestinarianingly so either.
That has been the message of Whig, Dissenting, and Anglican theology, and much of kaleidoscopic schismatic Protestantism, alike.
Catholicism resisted this trend, although they had the notion of good works, and the forgiveness of sins as one goes along.
For Jews also, man is a fallen race, descended from Adam's seed, needing redemption at the end of time, not now, and a final judgment, and the redeemed Kingdom of Israel.
Man did not, and cannot, turn inherently good on his own, either for Catholics or for Jews. Man cannot sin and repent his way to inherent goodness.
In Brooks' sin drenched world it is only through sin and repentance that moral formation happens.
What does the happening of moral formation mean? Who needs the happening of moral formation as the end objective of life? Wouldn't one think that one should grow up being trained in right and wrong, trying to avoid both sin and repentance as much as possible at every turn? Who wants to be sin drenched?
What about salvation, atonement, forgiveness of sins? What does moral formation have to do with them?
These are not what he is talking about, but are the stock in trade of Whig Enlightenment Christianity. Folks are Christians to be saved.
Brooks believes that it is for fellow men to forgive sins, not for God. What then do you do with sins that some men forgive, others do not, and God may or may not?
Sins are not just between sinner and sinned against. Sin, by its nature, is communal, or it is nothing. The Jewish term transgression is different. Sins are sins against god's law. That is the traditional interpretation.
One classic statement is: "Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do." (Not that they repent, for they do not, in fact the opposite. They know not that they sin against God. On the other hand, were they to have repented, the repentance would not have run to Jesus to forgive, but to the Father. Killing Jesus was a sin against the Father, not against Jesus. Jesus could not have forgiven them, according to the gospel account.)
What wisdom through the grace of God has to do with forgiveness of sins is not made clear. Maybe it is plain Jewish theology.
In a sin drenched world, how could there be even one student, perfect resume, who would not have yet committed a disgrace (sin), if committing sins, and ensuing repentances, are what lead to moral formation in the first place, and thus to such a rare thing as a perfect resume? (Thus Brooks' reasoning here is circular, when you flesh out what certain terms really mean to the argument itself, actually. He goes from sin to disgrace. Call it a fine point of law.)
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