Hell Opens A Hockey Rink

Doug Wilson and I Agree on Something: The Real Battle is Here and Now

By Joan Opyr, 11-08-06

In a November 7 letter to the editor of The Moscow Pullman Daily News, Christ Church Pastor Doug Wilson objects to a front-page comparison between his book, Black and Tan, and University of Idaho Professor Dale Graden’s book, From Slavery to Freedom in Brazil: Bahia, 1835-1900.

Note: Black and Tan is a reworking of Wilson’s controversial 1996 pamphlet Southern Slavery: As It Was. In this predecessor to Black and Tan, Wilson claimed that slavery in the antebellum South was “the most racially harmonious relationship the world has ever known.” Little wonder that Black and Tan drops that claim, along with several passages that were shown to have been plagiarized from Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman’s Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery.

That said, in his letter to the editor Wilson asks, correctly, “[W]hat on earth is this doing on the front page of The Daily News, tricked out as though it were a genuine debate or engagement of ideas?” Why indeed? Dale Graden is a professional historian. He’s a respected academic. He’s done the research, he’s faced peer review, and he knows what he’s talking about. Wilson, by contrast, is an opportunistic dilettante. He writes willy-nilly about history, theology, politics, marriage, child rearing, the culture wars, and whatever else catches his magpie’s fancy. A little learning is a dangerous thing. What we have in Pastor Wilson is a little learning with its own vanity press.

Wilson writes that in his book, Black and Tan, “The point was not to laud American slavery as a positive good, but rather to show that it was benign when compared with ancient Roman slavery (concerning which St. Paul wrote), the slavery that existed elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere (Haiti and Brazil), and the rhetoric of the abolitionists” (p. 64). In short, my treatment of Brazilian slavery was brief in the extreme, and the statement I was making about it was that it was ‘horrendous.’”

We might waste a good deal of time arguing about the comparative evils of slavery across countries and across time. I find Wilson’s arguments about Southern slavery uncompelling. If the Romans or the Brazilians or, for that matter, the Babylonians or the Egyptians were more brutal to their slaves than your average white Southern Christian, what does it matter? Slavery is a universal wrong. Parsing words about the comparative treatment of one group of human beings owned lock, stock, and offspring by another group of human beings is like arguing that it was better to be in Dachau than Auschwitz because the work was lighter and you were fed more potatoes.

Where Wilson and I agree is in believing that Dale Graden’s book has nothing to do with Wilson’s Black and Tan or with Southern Slavery: As It Was. I would go further and ask not only why The Moscow-Pullman Daily News distorted the real news story here -- the publication of Graden’s academic treatise -- by comparing it to Wilson’s rehashed, half-baked, and ill-informed pamphlet? Further, why is it that the Daily News runs story after story about Wilson family businesses like New St. Andrews College, which doesn’t so much exist to serve as it serves to employ Wilson’s son, Wilson’s sons-in-law, Wilson’s brother, and Wilson himself? Judging from the New St. Andrews College catalog, the only qualifications for employment at this institute of higher learning are a familial relationship with Doug Wilson and the ability to draw a salary. There's quite a story there, but what does the Daily News choose to cover? The double marriages of NSA President Roy Atwood’s nieces. That was front page news. Also above the fold not long ago was complete fluff piece about NSA opening its doors to the public for tea and cakes and tours of the Skattboe Building. Ho. Hum.

Wilson asks the Daily News a good question: what was the point of running a comparison between his work and that of Dale Graden? Wilson writes:

“Was it an editorial determination that our community hasn’t gotten tired enough of all the disputing, and we all needed another fracas about slavery, this time set in Brazil? I have been waiting, thus far in vain, for someone to do some real reporting on the genuine story in all of this. I have been waiting for The Daily News to realize that this is not about conflicts in other centuries and other countries, but rather is a conflict right here. The real reasons for the conflict are so far all still under the surface. Thus far The Daily News has been caught up in the conflict in various ways, but has not really done any reporting on it. If our local conflicts were a badminton game, The Daily News has been the shuttlecock.”

Here is where Wilson and I agree, but with a caveat. I don’t believe that The Daily News has been shuttlecock; I believe that it’s been a chickenshit. The real story is the battle in the here and now, the battle for the heart and soul of Moscow, Idaho. That’s a battle that for all of Wilson’s hue and cry, the forces of diversity and tolerance and progressive values are winning. Over on Christ Church Elder Dale Courtney’s blog, Right-Mind, the Wilson rank and file are crowing over the election of Bill Sali and the passage of HJR2, the anti-gay marriage amendment to Idaho’s constitution.

But before they pop their collective champagne corks, perhaps they should have a look at the Latah County Elections page. HJR2 was defeated soundly here. Bill Sali lost big, and Jerry Brady defeated Butch Otter. We returned Democrat Shirley Ringo to the Idaho Statehouse by an overwhelming margin, and we voted for experienced teacher and school administrator Jana Jones over businessman Tom Luna, the man with the online bachelor’s degree. The Latah County Commissioners now comprise two Democrats and one Republican, and that Republican held on to his seat by a mere 180 votes. Yes, Idaho is red, but Latah County is BLUE. I still feel comfortable and safe here. I still feel happy here. And I woke up this morning singing.

Moscow's moderates and progressives have good reason to look on the bright side. If nothing else, wouldn’t you rather have idiot’s idiot Bill Sali in Washington, DC, sitting on the back bench with the new Republican minority than in the Idaho Statehouse doing real damage?

Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.