I like to describe one of the banes of my life this way:
I think out loud about a subject that strikes me as important. The person I am talking to then says, “So what you’re saying is that my mother is ugly.”
He then goes into an enraged explanation about what the subject was and how my reply could be interpreted that way. I have spent a major part of my life trying to tell people I was NOT talking about their other, and even apologizing for having put my comment in a way that, from another point of view, might be interpreted that way.
This seminar is an enormous relief.
When I was doing WhitakerOnline for different audiences, it was always a lot like trying to give a lecture to a group of menopausal old maids, most of them male.
WhitakerOnline began as a part of the League of the South website. It became by far the most-read part of that website. But as Southerner descended from Jamestown Southerners, the place where the South originated, I had some remarks to make about the Calvinists, including the Pilgrim Fathers, who were supposed to have “founded” America.
Actually, the pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock were trying to reach Virginia, which had already elected its House of Burgesses and was a going concern.
I caught hell for that. You see, the League of the South was founded and run by people who are total Calvinistic theocrats. To them, Calvinist theology as represented by the pilgrims and LATER by the Puritans was what their idea of an independent South was all about.
Below you will find a piece called “Agents” in which I wrote about decades of nasty little people who have planted rumors about our comrades by saying they are “agents.” I put it in a Stormfront thread. Suddenly the lady who started the thread said I was being “vitriolic” towards her.
This is a woman I have helped out and who has thanked me for it. But she decided to take what I said as a personal insult to HER. It had nothing to do with her. So I had to spend a good deal of time writing a placating reply to whatever the hell it was she though I had said about her or her mother being ugly or whatever the hell it was I was guilty of.
Now, after eight years, I have a group that does not act like a group of paranoid menopausal nutcases. You could hardly take it as a compliment that I do not regard you as a group of nasty nutcases.
But you can appreciate what a relief you are to me.
#1 by Dave on 10/15/2006 - 6:04 pm
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I’ve never been able to really grasp “Calvinist Theology”. My basic understanding is that Calvinism is the idea that “salvation” is impossible before a distant God who has no concern for most men, but faith is required despite no payoffs for “believing”.
I always thought of it has supporting a military ideology where the highest value is placed in obeying orders without question: “It is not for the soldier to ask why, rather to do or die.”
I cannot understand how such an ideology could have anything to do with Southern independence. What am I missing?
#2 by Shari on 10/15/2006 - 8:10 pm
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Well, not being two out of three is good.
#3 by Alan B. on 10/15/2006 - 8:15 pm
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Never be ashamed of what you truly believe in, we are all aware that non comformist in america today are labled with mean and deceitful titles like rightwing or extremist etc. Bob mentioned having to explain to that lady what he meant. If people like her would stop feeling guilty for believing in something thats real to them, they wouldn’t feel so affended about nothing.
#4 by Papillon on 10/16/2006 - 3:41 am
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If one has experienced a lifetime of being attacked by people, it is very easy to fall into the habit of automatically thinking that you are being unfairly criticised when something is said which one’s brain can twist horribly out of shape. When the comments are being made are over the Internet, this is all the more easier. Now that I have people in my life whom I can trust explicitly, I am training myself not to go on automatic pilot and feel attacked when they say things which my mind can subvert into unfair criticism. Instead, I sit back and think about what really has been said and the context in which it has arrived. Thus, it is both trust and self-moderation that are missing from the equation when these sorts of mishaps occur. You were NOT wrong to say what you said over at Stormfront; it was the lady who was wrong in thinking that she was being insulted.
#5 by Pain on 10/16/2006 - 5:45 pm
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“League of the South was founded… by people who are total Calvinistic theocrats.”
Not the founders. Clyde Wilson and Donald Livingston are hardly Calvanist and Thomas Fleming is something like an atheist (though he backs away whenever anyone tries to pin him down).
#6 by Elizabeth on 10/16/2006 - 8:55 pm
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Back in ’99 or ’00, I was _so_ disappointed when I was finally able to attend an LoS meeting — and got insulted. Because I wasn’t a Calvinist, _I_ was an “outsider”!!!!
I had been favorably disposed towards the organization, but, after that……..NO WAY!!!
It isn’t easy being a Catholic, but you are allowed to have fun. And you are allowed
to be happy. And you can question God.
I was horrified when I found out what Calvinism actually was, largely because I grew up
under the thumbs of two people who yet demand absolute obedience and cringe-ing
worship. (They demand it, but they haven’t gotten it from me in years!) I’m no
masochist.
#7 by Shari on 10/16/2006 - 10:29 pm
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Elizabeth, I like you. Don’t know you ,of course, and my life is quite different from yours, but I think that you have a lot very interesting to say.
#8 by Bob on 10/17/2006 - 11:58 am
Oh my God! The women are getting together!
Us guys have HAD it!