American Girl

With the Veteran's flag from my father's funeral

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How to Signal You Are Not a White Supremacist

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Professor Kim READ FIRST:  Why Dorothy Kim Hates Me , The Color of the House of the Lord It’s back to class for those of us who teach in medieval studies, and my medievalist colleague Dorothy Kim , Assistant Professor of English at Vassar College ( pictured in 2014 ), wants to make sure you understand the stakes . The medieval western European Christian past is being weaponized by white supremacist/white nationalist/KKK/nazi extremist groups who also frequently happen to be college students.  That does sound bad. But, wait, it gets worse! Don’t think western European medieval studies is exceptional.... ISIS/ISIL also weaponizes the idea of the pure medieval Islamic past in their recruiting rhetoric for young male Muslims. If the medieval past (globally) is being weaponized for the aims of extreme, violent supremacist groups, what are you doing, medievalists, in your classrooms? Because you are the authorities teaching medieval subjects in the classroom, you are, in fact, ide
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Talking Points: Three Cheers for White Men

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1. When white women (see Marie de France and Eleanor of Aquitaine) invented chivalry and courtly love , white men agreed that it was better for knights to spend their time protecting women rather than raping them, and even agreed to write songs for them rather than expecting them to want to have sex with them without being forced. 2. When white men who were celibate (see the canon lawyers and theologians of the twelfth century and thereafter) argued that marriage was a sacrament valid only if both the man and the woman consented , white men exerted themselves to become good husbands rather than expecting women to live as their slaves. 3. When white women (see Christine de Pizan, Mary Wollstonecraft, and the suffragettes) invented feminism , white men supported them (see John Stuart Mill) and even went so far as to vote (because only men could vote at the time) to let them vote, not to mention hiring them as workers and supporting their education. And before you start telling me a
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Make the Middle Ages Dark Again

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I miss the good old days. You remember. Back when the only thing people knew about the Middle Ages is that they were Dark and filled with evil barons wresting a living off the back of their serfs, not to mention lecherous clergy imprisoning young maidens so as to rape them and then accuse them of witchcraft. You remember, right? What it was like when the Middle Ages were Dark? The Roman Catholic Church made slaves of everyone, stripped them of their sense of dignity and independence and made social status a matter not of achievement, but birth. The Church hated science and industry and did everything in its power to keep people in chains. It guarded its authority with the sword and the stake, stifled all innovation, and fed the common people lies. And why were these Ages so Dark? There were no universities, no towns, only castles with dungeons. Monks huddled in their cells thinking dark thoughts about sin, while Vikings stormed across the countryside, raping and pillaging and ca
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Heresies of the Left: Unholy Trinity

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Evil does not exist except as a corruption of the Good. Every falsehood or lie contains something of Truth. The same is true of heresies. Every heresy is a corruption of some aspect of orthodox doctrine, which is why heresies are so hard for the orthodox to answer . The orthodox trip themselves up trying to negate the heresies directly, which they cannot do without denying the truth and goodness at their core. This is why conservatives have so much trouble answering the Left (other than the fact that, as Milo rightly says, we are too often spineless cunts ). Everything that the Left believes is grounded in a central claim of Western civilization, more often than not a central claim of Christianity or the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Left, of course, denies this hotly, pointing for support for their doctrines to the "scientific teachings" of the prophet Marx or the "Enlightened" ideals of the prophet Robespierre . But the Left defend their beliefs with the vehe
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Lies of the Left: “White Nationalism"

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I don't know if you've noticed, but the professional Left* loves thinking in terms of binaries: black and white, male and female, rich and poor, Left and Right. For the media, it means easy headlines: find the Black Hats, and you've got your story. Likewise for Hollywood: drama depends on conflict, and what better conflict is there than that between the forces of Good and the forces of Evil? Academics tend to take a little more prodding before they will admit to thinking in such reductive terms, but get them talking about power and oppression and the categories will become clear.  "We" (the speakers) are necessarily the Good Guys. "They" (those who think wrongly about sex, race, and gender) are the Bad Guys. All the Good Guys are on the side of the Oppressed (blacks, women, the poor); all the Bad Guys are on the side of the Powerful (whites, males, rich). It does not matter that the categories make no historical sense, whether because they
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