The Downfall of Doug Phillips and Chalcedon’s Half-Hearted Defense of R. J. Rushdoony’s Legacy

PhillipsHaiti_B

The Kinist community has been watching with great interest the fallout from the public revelation of Doug Phillips’ marital infidelity. While I in no way celebrate the damage done by his sins, I am nevertheless rejoicing in the downfall of a man whose public and private actions have done so much harm to Christendom. Phillips never injured me personally, but let’s just say I find high-functioning pathological narcissists to be intellectually interesting. Plus, a number of my friends were not left unscathed, and Kinists tend to be very protective of their kith & kin from outside attacks.

A social order can no more withstand the presence of a revolutionary underclass than it can withstand men whose naked self-interest seemingly overrides all internal moral restraints in their treatment of others. Disagreeing with a man does not give one moral permission to destroy him, or to threaten to destroy him in order to gain his silence. Most of us accept that we’ll just have to live with our critics, even the very vocal ones, whether or not that cuts into our business of selling overpriced novelties to prairie muffins.

The Phillips clan had a real talent for making money by riding on the coattails of men and movements that were not of their own making. Following in his father’s footsteps, Doug Phillips hitched his wagon to the late theologian R. J. Rushdoony, with one of the unfortunate consequences being that Phillips’ perverse hyper-patriarchy was, in the popular mind, wrongly associated with Rushdoony. To help clear the air on this matter (after much delay), Martin Selbrede, Vice-President of Rushdoony’s Chalcedon Foundation, has recently been interacting on blogs critical of Doug Phillips when his organization’s relationship to Phillips is questioned, or when Chalcedon’s progenitor becomes a topic of conversation.

Of interest to Kinists, a number of those also commenting have been made familiar with Rushdoony’s proto-Kinism, even having sourced some of his more Kinist quotations from my friends over at Faith & Heritage. While his nascent Kinism could be frustratingly inconsistent at times, his words have been foundational to our movement. Rushdoony wrote and spoke on racial matters with a frankness that is very offensive to the modern mind. Those who have been reeducated by the apostles of political correctness, and thoroughly instilled with white guilt, are predictably foaming at the mouth over his candidness.

RJRushdoony

Regrettably, rather than take this opportunity as a teachable moment to unashamedly speak the truth, it seems that Mr. Selbrede is attempting to downplay or reinterpret Rushdoony in an inoffensive manner. This is an unfortunate trend with Chalcedon. In the foreword to This Independent Republic, republished just months after Rushdoony’s death, his own son Mark apologetically explained-away his father’s use of the word “Negro”. This was done by relating a private story wherein his father stated that he would have found the Confederate battle flag offensive had he been black. But Rushdoony was Armenian, and one’s shift of perspective based on a theoretical race change has no bearing on the technical accuracy of the word “Negro”, nor does it diminish the historical fact that the South was the last outpost of Christian civilization. While there is much I admire about Mark Rushdoony, such pandering may only be accurately described as contemptible. Selbrede likewise seems to be a likeable man, but we have too many likeable men these days, and could use a few more unpopular prophets willing to speak uncomfortable truths.

BlackConfederates

For the black folks offended by Rushdoony’s frank references to their race, I can’t exactly say I expect them to be jumping for joy. His observations, however, are accurate, and it is my hope that they would take them to heart. Every race contains some unique expression of divine intention, and despite the black race’s humble history, they should at least take pride in that. Neither of our races, however, is served by claiming that we are functionally equal. While the Bible clearly teaches monogenesis and the resultant ontological equality of the races, it by no means teaches equality of ability, nor advocates for equality of opportunity or equality of wealth. We are different, and, as Geerhardus Vos has written, “Under the providence of God each race or nation has a positive purpose to serve, fulfillment of which depends on relative seclusion from others.” Racial envy of whites by blacks, which has been enflamed both by would-be Christs and by cultural revolutionaries using them as pawns, also necessitates the separation of our races, lest the entirety of Western civilization become like Detroit and the white man but a memory.

A very perceptive friend of mine read one of these Phillips / Selbrede / Rushdoony exchanges on Spiritual Sounding Board, and shared his thoughts about it in a private Kinist forum. I thought what he wrote was quite good, so I asked his permission to post it here for others to read. The comments he’s referencing start here:

http://spiritualsoundingboard.com/2013/11/21/chalcedon-foundation-privately-donated-funds-to-joe-taylor-to-help-his-legal-defense-against-doug-phillips/#comment-54354

Ever since I learned of her years ago, I was fairly impressed by this black woman, Taunya Henderson, because she has a stable, Christian family, and she seems to be very traditional, and Reformed, etc. In short, if you ever wanted to find the black equivalent of the kind of family we would all want to associate with, hers would be a good example. Yet even for this extreme case, you can see why most black Christians, however admirable they might be in other areas, can never be relied upon to be truly biblical in terms of respecting our right to survive as God created us. Nor can they accept criticism directed at their race, no matter how accurate.

She quotes one of Rushdoony’s Kinist statements and has a mild freak-out over it, but nothing to be compared to Julie Ann’s stroke over Rushdoony’s “racism.” Of course, no one attempts to prove that what Rush said was false. Of course it’s natural to segregate. Of course selective breeding is the garden in which Christian faith thrives. Of course the Bible indicates that there can be unequal yokings between believers, and that these are forbidden. Of course hybridization comes at a great price. But does Martin Selbrede tell these people the truth, which is that a Christian who denies what Rushdoony has taught here is simply ignorant of Scripture, and is therefore unwise? No, he makes himself (and Chalcedon) look foolish by saying, Never mind all that. Look over here, as I open my box of tricks. He writes: “Rushdoony performed interracial marriages, and cited Numbers 12 as an example of such a marriage that God Himself defended against Miriam’s objections [horrible theology]… Rushdoony was a very nuanced, systematic thinker whose fully-stated position can appear to differ from selected quotations — and it’s his fully-stated position that needs to be heard and understood.”

Of course, no one buys into the “nuance” excuse.

Then it gets even more ridiculous. He pleads ignorance and says that he can’t find the quote in the Institutes, as though this is the first he has heard of it. (Someone provides a link to Faith and Heritage.) Then he says that Rushdoony was more like Warfield on race than Dabney. (Not true, as we all know.) They keep hammering him, and like Mark Rushdoony, Selbrede keeps falling back on the story that Rushdoony performed interracial “marriages.” (We only know of one by hearsay, and he said at the time how opposed he was to it personally but didn’t believe that he had the right to prevent it. He said that such marriages were “barely legal,” about 1% of the time.) And oh yeah, he couldn’t have been a racist because was a missionary to the Indians!

So parse what is being argued here. Selbrede, who has been the caretaker of Rushdoony’s work for at least three decades, can’t accept or defend what Rushdoony actually taught on this subject. Instead, he knows that he can only win over the throngs of non-white Christians and their liberal white friends by supporting miscegenation, which repulsed Rushdoony. And it’s a lesson to all of us too: There is NO support for the Bible and traditional thought among strangers, even if they call themselves Christians. They won’t allow us to survive, because to acknowledge that the white race should survive would mean that the attempt of our ancestors to survive was legitimate; one of the reasons they gave for it was that miscegenation would degenerate the race. This makes all non-whites feel somehow less than human. They never buy into their own story that faith makes us all equal, because they never fail to identify with their co-racialists at any time in history. A slight against any of them, at any time in history, is a slight against all of them, they believe. It’s just like Oprah defending those men accused of rape ages ago, when she has nothing whatsoever in common with them except for race. Then this billionaire trash concludes that anyone who disagrees with her racial views needs to die!

All of these people love to condemn our godly ancestors on the subject of slavery. But the fact is that only a tiny sliver of all the people who have ever lived have loved liberty and fought for it, our ancestors among them. Almost everyone alive today in the “land of the free and the home of the brave” is begging the government to take their liberties from them in exchange for security (which never comes to pass). This is the typical state of humanity, as Rushdoony himself taught. Most people LOVE slavery, and blacks love it most of all. When Christian leaders succumb to the constant harangues directed at the South especially, they only show themselves to be cowards. They’re not defending the Bible. They’re simply reading the signs of the times and looking for acceptance.

A KILL WHITEY 2

19 thoughts on “The Downfall of Doug Phillips and Chalcedon’s Half-Hearted Defense of R. J. Rushdoony’s Legacy

  1. Ri Ri

    I wonder why your “very perceptive friend” has not commented on my posts over at Julie Ann’s blog which call into question Rushdoony’s hypocrisy at marrying 2 women from outside of his own ethno-cultural background?

    1. Mickey Henry Post author

      The self-righteous point-and-sputter is so thick over there, I can only guess that he thought a fair sounding for his views to be unlikely. It’s difficult to answer critics who spend 90% of their lives being morally outraged and offended.

      As to your question, as an Armenian, R.J. Rushdoony was Japhetic, as were Arda and Dorothy, so on a very broad scale, they were racially compatible. Of course, you mentioned specifically their ethno-cultural background, and you are quite correct that they were not the same (at least to my knowledge). Ethno-cultural identity is a product of religion, race, and place, and is highly dependent upon the shared understanding between an individual and his community; said understanding being founded upon common genetics, history, language, and goals for the future. It’s a very useful though admittedly fluid category. A man born in America to recent immigrants doesn’t quite fully belong to his parent’s historic ethno-cultural category, nor to that of his newly adopted home. It probably would have been best if Rushdoony would have married a fellow Armenian immigrant, but I don’t know his specific circumstances, nor am I in favor of putting impossible burdens on men. I would point out that the end result of his marriage to Arda may indicate that a more compatible woman would have been a better choice, though I am speaking without much knowledge here.

      What a lot of the anti-Kinist crowd fails to comprehend is that our beliefs do not rise and fall on the basis of what R.J. Rushdoony did or did not do, nor what he said or did not say. We are no more a Rushdoony cult than Reformed Christianity is a John Calvin cult. We believe him to have been a gifted theologian, though hardly approaching inerrancy in thought and deed.

      Also, our disapproval of miscegenation isn’t based on some brutal and exacting racial purity theory. We simply find marriages that are religiously, racially, ethnically, and culturally homogeneous to be Biblically normative. While miscegenation results in the soft-genocide of categories the Lord evidently deems important, and should certainly be opposed on those grounds, the telos of all things is to give glory to God. Biblically normative marriage inherently accommodates this telos because it naturally and commonly results in a harmony of interests between husband and wife, parents and children, the family and the in-laws. Mixed marriages are, by nature, beset with difficulties. Not wanting to marry a category of people does not mean that you believe them categorically inferior in the aspect of their humanity.

      The unfortunate support for mixed marriages in our society has it’s basis in:

      1. An intolerance for the diversity in God’s creation, seeking a monotonous oneness through amalgamation. When a culture rejects the transcendent unity we have in our common Creator, this vacuum is filled by the attempt to create an immanent unity. Distinctions and variety are a hindrance to this immanent unity.
      2. Novelty is the highest virtue of a decadent culture. The normal and native are rejected in favor of the peculiar and strange. There is an undeniable kinky, forbidden aspect to rejecting traditional taboos by intermixing with naturally unharmonious people groups.
      3. It is an unfortunate aspect of our character, but white people, our women in particular, are highly receptive to manipulation through the imposition of false guilt. True guilt results from sinning, and sin is any lack of conformity to God’s Law in action or attitude. It only finds its relief in Christ. Now that so many of us have rejected God as our source of definition, the media and degenerate popular culture have become our substitutes. When we accept their sin definitions, we incur false guilt just from the state of being white, let alone expressing a preference for our own kind. Whites seek to relieve this false guilt through intermixing.
      4. A guilty, disharmonious people is an easily ruled people. There are those of other tribes who would sap us of our strengths and creative energies so that we may be easily dominated. This serves the purpose of those seeking to create a New World Order, with a one-world government, a one-world religion, and a one-world man. The “new man” is an inescapable category in all worldviews. Christianity’s new man is the redeemed man. Though not sinless while yet alive, his natural orientation to sin has changed. The NWO’s new man tends to be mocha-colored and submissive.

      Stay calm and keep breathing. If you interact honestly with my position, I will endeavor to do the same with yours.

      1. Ri Ri

        I replied several days ago but do not see my comment here. Does my pc have a virus or did you not publish it? If the latter, why not?

        1. Ri Ri

          “The self-righteous point-and-sputter is so thick over there, I can only guess that he thought a fair sounding for his views to be unlikely. It’s difficult to answer critics who spend 90% of their lives being morally outraged and offended.”

          – I didn’t mean at her blog, I meant why your friend didn’t address my comment on the private kinist forum you referred to.

          “Stay calm and keep breathing. If you interact honestly with my position, I will endeavor to do the same with yours.”

          – Well, I teach dhyana and pranayama so I’m pretty much always calm and conscious of my breath.

          🙂

          1. Mickey Henry Post author

            “I didn’t mean at her blog, I meant why your friend didn’t address my comment on the private kinist forum you referred to.”

            We are well aware of Rushdoony’s marriages. This is a matter of common knowledge to Kinists, and is not something we find particularly troubling to our worldview. As mentioned here, we do not believe RJR to be inerrant, only that he was a gifted theologian, if not always consistent.

            “…I’m pretty much always calm and conscious of my breath.”

            Good to know. We appreciate people who can discuss these sensitive issues with cool heads.

        2. Mickey Henry Post author

          I have not deleted/disapproved any of your comments. There are two admins at this site, but the other gentlemen (the site’s creator) shares a single mind with me on Tribal Theocrat’s liberal comment policy. This leads me to conclude that either your comment didn’t make it to us, or it was accidentally deleted (we get an unfathomable amount of spam). My apologies. I assume that your comment below is what you submitted previously. If it was not, please feel free to submit it again and we’ll make sure it’s approved.

  2. Weston

    Hello Mr. Henry,

    I have a bit of trouble explaining in simple terms for people why the races should not mix. Obviously their arguments are the ones you stated below. They think it’s a racial superiority issue and why not let people in love get together and so on. What would be a short, simple answer for them? I’ve heard it said that it’s rebellion. As you said in your comment, God has made us separate races for a reason. To mix them is to mess with His design. I didn’t know if you had any other information or a link that might help me in arguing the point. It’s distressing the amount of mulattos I saw in a mall the other day. Whole packs of them. Those would have been white children but now those kids mix with a black and there stops entire white lineages.

    1. Mickey Henry Post author

      Hello Weston,

      Thank you for writing. This is a difficult topic to argue in a succinct fashion, especially when we have increasingly little moral context with our fellow man. My approach is usually one or a combination of the following:

      1. Marriages that are racially and ethnically homogeneous are Biblically normative. A number of verses can be utilized in making that case: Genesis 24:3-4, 27:46 – 28:9; Exodus 34:15-16; Leviticus 21:14; Numbers 25:1-9; Deuteronomy 7:3-4; Joshua 23:12-13; Judges 3:5-6, 14:3; I Kings 11:1-6; Ezra 9:1 – 10:44; Nehemiah 10:30, 13:23-27; Ezekiel 44:22
      2. Husband and wife should be as similar as possible to reduce their potential sources of conflict. The natural consequence of similarity is a harmony of interests that promotes agreement and growth. Shared identity is a key aspect of community, both on a smaller scale in marriage and on a larger scale in society. The thoughts, actions, and desires of other races are often mystifying, such that the shared understanding necessary for community remains elusive in heterogeneous associations.
      3. The progeny of mixed marriages often suffer identity problems. Simply put, they don’t look like either parent or either set of grandparents. The child does not fully belong to the race of either parent, and yet the typical result is that he ultimately identifies with the race of one to the exclusion of the other. The desire for belonging and association is strong, and it’s terribly selfish for parents to bring about offspring who, by nature, are likely to suffer alienation on so many levels. Faith in a post-racial future is foolish in light of the millennia of human experience that militate against it, and to wager one’s own children on the basis of its eventual realization is irrational and irresponsible.
      4. We fail to honor our father and mother when we marry someone so unlike them, and provide them with grandchildren who are likewise alien. It only takes one mixed marriage to distort many generations of our forefathers’ faithful endogamy.
      5. The principle of mixed marriage, if consistently applied, would result in the elimination of the distinct races. This is not dissimilar to hunting a species to extinction. As God’s image bearers, we exercise dominion as stewards over His creation. Our subordinate role as creatures exercising dominion, under His ultimate ownership, is one of regulation and maintenance, not as creators or destroyers. To meddle with the Creator’s design is to presumptuously claim His position as our own.
      6. Miscegenation is often a form of self-justification, seeking to relieve the guilt of being white. This guilt is not a real guilt but a false guilt based on non-Christian sin definitions. Race mixing is used as a form of burden-bearing and self-debasement to satisfy the wrath of the gods of egalitarianism. But while we are equal in humanity with the other races, we are not equal with the other races in achievement, natural talents, physical beauty, or in many other measures. Every race has its areas of superiority. Sinful pride is self-idolatry, which is giving glory to oneself that rightly belongs to God. Godly pride, on the other hand, manifests itself as an enjoyment of the good things God saw fit to give us, further realizing that much of what we have now is the continuing overhang of blessings bestowed upon our forefathers for their covenantal faithfulness. Our areas of superiority should only be contemplated in humility, but they are certainly nothing about which we should be ashamed.
      7. Interracial physical relationships are often based on a lascivious desire for the unusual and forbidden. Interracial (IR) is a genre of pornography, even having sub-genres such as “Ebony & Ivory”, in which this unaesthetic, taboo-breaking perversion is highly fetishized. Further, physical union with those viewed as being more barbaric, brutish, savage, or bestial, is a downward integration in which regeneration through chaos is sought in a revival of the spirit of the Bacchanalia. In an age in which public advocacy for formerly unmentionable perversions is now a matter of boring regularity, it is unsurprising that interracial relationships are also made subject to normalization.
      8. We live in a time in which consciences have been seared, and should give close consideration to the beliefs of our forefathers as a safeguard against our own innovations into areas of potential moral madness. When the moral permissibility of a formerly forbidden activity is questioned, it is awfully arrogant to refuse the past a place at the table.

      I hope this helps!

      1. Weston

        Wow, thank you sir. That is all rather insightful. I didn’t get the response by email and am just now seeing this. Apologies.

        I had never considered the failure to honor father and mother through the destruction of their lineage but it is plain as the nose on my face that this would be so.

        Since becoming a race realist and, well, just being anti political correctness, I’ve tried to feel more of a kinship towards fellow whites as other races so often do and as they always do when they are outnumbered. It’s difficult because most other whites are oblivious to their shared heritage. I was raised in the cult of egalitarianism and regularly felt ashamed of being white. Now that I’ve unlearned this false doctrine I want more to unlearn it but I suppose this might take becoming a minority population to learn it en masse. Of course by then it may be too late to do anything about it.

        It’s sad, because if it weren’t for the vast amounts of brainwashing people would just see the races mixing as wrong from common sense and simple observation. “Those are two very dissimilar people so they should not procreate. It would be against nature.”

        Thanks again and God bless!

    2. Ri Ri

      “It’s distressing the amount of mulattos I saw in a mall the other day. Whole packs of them. Those would have been white children but now those kids mix with a black and there stops entire white lineages.”

      They also would have been black children and there stops entire black lineages.

      1. Mickey Henry Post author

        “They also would have been black children and there stops entire black lineages.”

        Indeed, that is also true. Of course, it is very Kinist to advocate for one’s own.

  3. civil rights apostate

    This is very sad. I think we should be more concerned that a Christian sinned greatly than that an alienist was exposed. Like king David, Mr. Phillips has given the Lord’s enemies a great occasion to blaspheme. I am sure this is heartbreaking to Mr. Phillips wife and their beautiful white children.

    1. Mickey Henry Post author

      I can agree with some of what you’ve expressed here, but, from the evidence I have seen, I sincerely doubt that Mr. Phillips is a Christian. He seems to be more of a sociopath who aligned himself with Christian causes for the sake of his own gain. Phillips has a long and storied history of unrepentant sinful behavior that is not at all limited to his infidelity. T.W. Eston seems to be a generally reliable source of information on Phillips’ crimes (though I am often at odds with blogs where he has commented and posted as a guest). As you so correctly stated, “Mr. Phillips has given the Lord’s enemies a great occasion to blaspheme.” My rejoicing is that very soon he will no longer be in a position of power and leadership where he can effect further damage, and the fact that good men like Joe Taylor might finally see some degree of justice. The closing of Vision Forum Ministries and the forthcoming closing of Vision Forum Inc. is a good thing. “When it goes well with the righteous, the city rejoices, and when the wicked perish there are shouts of gladness.” The truth will be known in time. (I love your screen name, by the way!)

  4. civil rights apostate

    I see your point. I hope he has indeed sincerely repented, as it seems from his resignation he has. The problem is I grew up with vision forum and I didn’t catch any rabid alienism there. The resignation letter sounded like he was a believer, and I hope he will be able to walk in the light for the rest of his days. I am glad to know that you don’t want every “alienist” to end up like Mr. Phillips. I grew up alienist, as my name implies, and all my friends are alienist, or appear to be.

    1. Mickey Henry Post author

      Indeed. We should never gloat over the damage done by another’s sins. I do sincerely hope that Mr. Phillips turns from his selfish and destructive path, and seeks to make things right with those he has injured.

      1. civil rights apostate

        I agree with your comment, but in reading this through again I noticed that You put the word “marriages” in quotation marks. Do you believe mixed couples should divorce? I think interracial couples should separate in every circumstance? I think interracial marriage between such groups as white, black, and yellow are unwise, and I think it would be morally wrong for a Swede and a pigmy or a Eskimo and an aborigine to marry, but should we go so far as to mark all interracial marriages as invalid and analogous with homosexuality?

        1. Mickey Henry Post author

          I do not believe that interracial marriage is categorically sinful under every conceivable circumstance, and I do not believe that those who are currently in interracial marriages should necessarily divorce, though I would encourage them not to compound their error by having further children. Some Kinists do not agree with me, though I’ve never met one who thought interracial marriage to be an unforgivable sin. Note that the quotation marks you referenced were in my friend’s remarks, not mine, though I am uncertain of his exact intent in their usage; that is, whether he intended to convey that such marriages are generally founded on questionable motives (I agree), or that they are universally invalid. Please keep in mind that his remarks were originally written in a private Kinist forum, not intended for public consumption. Thank you again for writing!

  5. civil rights apostate

    Good. I’m glad you don’t think they should divorce. Although I am not a kinist per se, my racial views are quite similar to the group called weak kinists. I personally think that if interracial marriage is always sinful, it is the same as interreligious marriage, in that they should stay together. I can see your point, however, in that a interreligious marriage can become an intrareligious marriage and they may have all Christian children, whereas that cannot happen with an interracial marriage.

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