jeepers

Douglas Wilson wrote this letter to the editor in response to The News & Observer’s story. I cannot find it on the web, but I am confident you will recognize both the words and the tune, if not the condescending arrogance.

December 11, 2004
The slavery booklet
Having being named in the article, I read your Dec. 9 “School defends slavery booklet” piece with some interest.

The headline promised something the article did not deliver. It said that Cary Christian School defended the slavery booklet, and went on to show in the body of the article that the school did not defend the slavery booklet, but rather defended having students read it.

This is not a subtle distinction. The prevailing custom in the government schools has students only read pre-packaged, government-approved information units — pabulum for the mind. Classical Christian schools are a different breed, however, and the students are consistently challenged to engage with worldviews that they and the school do not share. Quite an educational novelty these days, and leave it to conservative Christians to come up with it.

As one of the authors of the booklet, however, I am in a different position than the school is. I would be prepared to defend the central thesis of the booklet (provided that thesis is accurately stated), and have cheerfully been doing so for a year or two now. And this brings me to a second point, which is that Mark Potok [at the Southern Poverty Law Center] said that Steve Wilkins and I have constructed the “ruling theology” of the neo-Confederate movement.

To which I reply, jeepers.

Allow me to compress into one sentence the problems with this howler. I am not a neo-Confederate, the neo-Confederates do not have ruling theologians, and if they did I wouldn’t agree to be one.

Douglas Wilson
Moscow, Idaho

Thank you.