June 2015 – Page 10 – Warren Throckmorton

Daily Jefferson: Jefferson on Blackstone and British Common Law

According to David Barton, Thomas Jefferson thought Sir William Blackstone was foundational to legal practice. However, Jefferson felt a reliance on Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England by American law students had led to what he called the “degeneracy of legal science.” In fact, Jefferson told Judge John Tyler in this June 17, 1812 letter that he preferred to rely on no British authorities for legal interpretations after the time of the Declaration of Independence. Following his recommendations would “uncanonize” Blackstone. Jefferson said:

But the state of the English law at the date of our emigration, constituted the system adopted here. We may doubt, therefore, the propriety of quoting in our courts English authorities subsequent to that adoption; still more, the admission of authorities posterior to the Declaration of Independence, or rather to the accession of that King, whose reign, ab initio, was the very tissue of wrongs which rendered the Declaration at length necessary. The reason or it had inception at least as far back as the commencement of his reign. This relation to the beginning of his reign, would add the advantage of getting us rid of all Mansfield’s innovations, or civilizations of the common law. For however I admit the superiority of the civil over the common law code, as a system of perfect justice, yet an incorporation of the two would be like Nebuchadnezzar’s image of metals and clay, a thing without cohesion of parts. The only natural improvement of the common law, is through its homogeneous ally, the chancery, in which new principles are to be examined, concocted and digested. But when, by repeated decisions and modifications, they are rendered pure and certain, they should be transferred by statute to the courts of common law, and placed within the pale of juries. The exclusion from the courts of the malign influence of all authorities after the Georgium sidus became ascendant, would uncanonize Blackstone, whose book, although the most elegant and best digested of our law catalogue, has been perverted more than all others, to the degeneracy of legal science. A student finds there a smattering of everything, and his indolence easily persuades him that if he understands that book, he is master of the whole body of the law. The distinction between these, and those who have drawn their stores from the deep and rich mines of Coke and Littleton, seems well understood even by the unlettered common people, who apply the appellation of Blackstone lawyers to these ephemeral insects of the law.

Although his Commentaries were popular, Blackstone opposed American independence. Jefferson, instead of seeing Blackstone as an influence, saw him as a barrier to a distinctly American law profession.
For more on Getting Jefferson Right, click the link.

Why Don't Christian History Professors Matter When it Comes to David Barton?

Of late, I have gone from trying to change the problem to trying to understand it.
Numerous Christian academic historians have weighed in on the historical misadventures of David Barton, often with unclear results in the church world. A recent example is the decision of the Missouri Baptist Convention to sponsor a talk by David Barton in MO near the end of the month. Despite clear evidence from academic Christian historians that Mr. Barton’s talks are laced with significant historical problems, the executive director of the MBC told me:

We are grateful for the opportunity to help a leading Missouri Baptist church serve as host of the conference. Whatever your views on David Barton, we support the event and encourage Missouri Baptists to hear him out and decide for themselves. In my many years in Baptist life, I have found my fellow Baptists to be fair-minded and discerning people who love the truth. Certainly, we agree with the stated mission of WallBuilders: to educate the nation concerning the Godly foundation of our country; to provide information to federal, state, and local officials as they develop public policies that reflect Biblical values; and to encourage Christians to be involved in the civic arena.

Gregg Frazer, historian at The Master’s College said in response:

Baptists may well be “fair-minded and discerning people who love the truth” and it is good that the president wants Missouri Baptists to “decide for themselves.” The problem is that in order to properly discern and to properly decide on truth, people must have access to proper information and actual truth. Missouri Baptists, for example, would never come to the truth of the Gospel if all that was presented to them was Buddhism or Islam. In order to come to a proper conclusion, one must have access to the truth. How can they learn truth if Missouri Baptists hear only manufactured “history” – history as some wish it had been; history as constructed from partial quotes, quotes out of context, misleading half-truths, and complete falsehoods? The vast majority of Missourians/Americans do not have the time or resources to study primary historical documents – so they put their faith in people who claim to have done that study. When that trust is misplaced, Missouri Baptists will inevitably draw false conclusions – through no fault of their own.

If Missouri Baptists are going to hear the eccentric views of self-proclaimed historians and still have a chance to know the truth and to discern it, they must also hear from someone who can point out misleading tactics and errors and show them the actual texts that are distorted and manipulated. I’m from Missouri; I trust that Missourians could discern properly between two alternatives. But IF THEY ONLY HEAR ONE SIDE, HOW CAN THEY MAKE A PROPER DETERMINATION?

Of course, Frazer is correct.
Here is what I don’t understand. In the face of evidence that you are may be responsible for disseminating error, shouldn’t you check into it? This almost never happens. There is clear evidence that a problem exists and the person in charge does nothing but defend the decision.
Shouldn’t Dr. Yeats have a conversation with Hankins and Frazer?
I can supply him and his board with names of over 50 Christian academics who can provide relevant evidence regarding the matter at hand.
I wrote and asked the MBC why Christian academic historians don’t matter. No answer.
Southern Baptists send their children to Christian colleges to get an education from academics who have dedicated their lives to getting things right. Of course, we don’t always get it right but the values of the academy push us to correct where we are wrong and own up to it. However, when it comes to church work, respect for Christian colleges often goes out the window, at least in the area of historical scholarship. Wallbuilders has the right slogan so it doesn’t matter what the organization’s founder teaches or how many key facts he gets wrong.
Barton’s claims don’t just relate to America’s founding era. He has falsely claimed that violent crime has risen almost 700% since the early 1960s (crime did rise until the mid-1990s but has been falling since then). He has misled audiences about HIV vaccines, PTSD, and numerous other more current issues. He even claimed to play college basketball for Oral Roberts University. He didn’t. This was debunked by ORU. He claimed to be a translator for the Russian national gymnastics team (they brought their own). His book on Thomas Jefferson was pulled from publication by a Christian publisher after they fact checked it. Much more could be said.
Shouldn’t the people responsible for these meetings check into these things?
I realize that the MBC may be at odds with the parent convention over religion and politics. Recently, the SBC pulled an invitation for Ben Carson to speak at an event due to concerns about those entanglements. Perhaps the MBC leadership disagrees with that approach and wants a more political approach to religion. However, if so, that is no reason to mislead the people you are responsible for.
Think about that for a minute. The SBC pulled Ben Carson’s invitation but the MBC is rock solid on sponsoring David Barton.
Something is wrong with this picture.

Are Rachel Dolezal and Caitlyn Jenner Alike? Conflict over Ethnic Identity and Gender Identity Examined (VIDEO UPDATES)

UPDATED: Dolezal as a white woman sued Howard University for racial discrimination. See video on that point at the end of this post. Video of her interview with Matt Lauer is also at the end of the post.
Rachel Dolezal has become an object of media and public attention because she has identified as a black woman for years even though both of her biological parents are white. She recently was outed by her parents but told Matt Lauer on the Today Show today: “I identify as black.”
In May 2008, I asked Ken Zucker, a psychologist best known for his work in gender dysphoria, for permission to reprint a post from the SEXNET listserv, an internet group of people who research and write about sexuality research. The post addressed the question: are ethnic identity conflict and gender identity conflict similar in any meaningful ways? Although Zucker’s illustrations primarily examine the case of darker skinned people wanting to pass as white, his post addresses some of the current issues raised by Rachel Dolezal’s public statements about her ethnic identity.
Dr. Zucker:

In the interview I had with the NPR journalist, Alix Spiegel, I posed the question: How would a clinician respond to a young child (in this instance a Black youngster) who presented with the wish to be White? I had already sent Ms. Spiegel an essay that I published in 2006 in which I had presented this analogy and she told me that she was intrigued by the argument.
In this post, I list some references that I have accumulated over the years that discusses issues of ethnic identity conflict in children and adults. In the 2006 paper, I was particularly influenced, rightly or wrongly, by an essay Brody (1963) wrote many years ago. I think it is worth reading. Thus, I did not invent the analogy out of thin air. I had been influenced by three things: first, I was aware of this literature on ethnic identity conflict and I thought it had some lessons in it; second, I had observed, over the years, that some kids that I have seen in my clinic who had a biracial ethnic background also sometimes struggled with that (e.g., wanting to be White, like their mother, and not wanting to be Black or non-white Hispanic, like their father) or wanting to be an American (and not a Canadian) or wanting to be a dog (and not a human). I have thought about these desires as, perhaps, an indication of a more general identity confusion. Third, I was influenced by a remark Richard Pleak made in a 1999 essay, in which he wrote that the notion that “attempting to change children’s gender identity for [the purpose of reducing social ostracism] seems as ethically repellant as bleaching black children’s skin in order to improve their social life among white children” (p. 14). I thought about his argument and decided that it could be flipped. Thus, in the 2006 essay, I wrote:
This is an interesting argument, but I believe that there are a number of problems with the analysis. I am not aware of any contemporary clinician who would advocate “bleaching” for a Black child (or adult) who requests it. Indeed, there is a clinical and sociological literature that considers the cultural context of the “bleaching syndrome” vis-a-vis racism and prejudice (see, e.g., Hall, 1992, 1995). Interestingly, there is an older clinical literature on young Black children who want to be White (Brody, 1963)–what might be termed “ethnic identity disorder” and there are, in my view, clear parallels to GID. Brody’s analysis led him to conclude that the proximal etiology was in the mother’s “deliberate but unwitting indoctrination” of racial identity conflict in her son because of her own negative experiences as a Black person. Presumably, the treatment goal would not be to endorse the Black child’s wish to be White, but rather to treat the underlying factors that have led the child to believe that his life would be better as a White person. As an aside, there is also a clinical literature on the relation between distorted ethnic identity (e.g., a Black person’s claim that he was actually born White, but then transformed) and psychosis (see Bhugra, 2001; Levy, Jones, & Olin, 1992). Of course, in this situation, the treatment is aimed at targeting the underlying psychosis and not the symptom.
The ethnic identity literature leads to a fundamental question about the psychosocial causes of GID, which Langer and Martin do not really address. In fact, they appear to endorse implicitly what I would characterize as “liberal essentialism,” i.e., that children with GID are “born that way” and should simply be left alone. Just like Brody was interested in understanding the psychological, social, and cultural factors that led his Black child patients to desire to be White, one can, along the same lines, seek to understand the psychological, social, and cultural factors that lead boys to want to be girls and girls to want to be boys. Many contemporary clinicians have argued that GID in children is the result, at least in part, of psychodynamic and psychosocial mechanisms, which lead to an analogous fantasy solution: that becoming a member of the other sex would somehow resolve internalized distress (e.g., Coates, Friedman, & Wolfe, 1991; Coates & Person, 1985; Coates & Wolfe, 1995). Of course, Langer and Martin may disagree with these formulations, but they should address them, critique them, and explain why they think they are incorrect. I would argue that it is as legitimate to want to make youngsters comfortable with their gender identity (to make it correspond to the physical reality of their biological sex) as it is to make youngsters comfortable with their ethnic identity (to make it correspond to the physical reality of the color of their skin).
On this point, however, I take a decidedly developmental perspective. If the primary goal of treatment is to alleviate the suffering of the individual, there are now a variety of data sets that suggest that persistent gender dysphoria, at least when it continues into adolescence, is unlikely to be alleviated in the majority of cases by psychological means, and thus is likely best treated by hormonal and physical contra-sex interventions, particularly after a period of living in the cross-gender role indicates that this will result in the best adaptation for the adolescent male or female (e.g., Cohen-Kettenis & van Goozen, 1997; Smith, van Goozen, & Cohen-Kettenis, 2001; Zucker, 2006). In childhood, however, the evidence suggests that there is a much greater plasticity in outcome (see Zucker, 2005a). As a result, many clinicians, and I am one of them, take the position that a trial of psychological treatment, including individual therapy and parent counseling, is warranted (for a review of various intervention approaches, see Zucker, 2001). To return briefly to the ethnic identity disorder comparison, I would speculate that one might find similar results, i.e., that it would be relatively easier to resolve ethnic identity dissatisfaction in children than it would be in adolescents (or adults). Although I am not aware of any available data to test this conjecture, I think of Michael Jackson’s progressively “white” appearance as an example of the narrowing of plasticity in adulthood.
Two caveats: first, the literature on psychosis and ethnic identity conflict that is cited in no way was meant to imply that transgendered people are psychotic; the comparison is to a very small number of people who have “delusions” of gender change in which the primary diagnosis is Schizophrenia. This was first noted in the DSM-III and remains in the DSM-IV text description; second, I can criticize my own argument along these lines: “Well, this may all be true, but surely there is no evidence for a biological factor that would cause a Black person to want to be White, but maybe there is a biological factor or set of biological factors that either predispose or cause a person with the phenotype of one sex to feel like they are of the other sex (gender).” And to that I would say fair enough.
Bhugra, D. (2001). Ideas of distorted ethnic identity in 43 cases of psychosis. International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 47, 1-7.
Brody, E. B. (1963). Color and identity conflict in young boys: Observations of Negro mothers and sons in urban Baltimore. Psychiatry, 26, 188-201.
Brunsma, D. L., & Rockquemore, K. A. (2001). The new color complex: Appearances and biracial identity. Identity: An International Journal of Theory and Research, 1, 225-246.
Fuller, T. (2006, May 14). A vision of pale beauty carries risks for Asia’s women. New York Times.
Goodman, M. E. (1952). Race awareness in young children. Cambridge: Addison-Wesley.
Hall, R. (1992). Bias among African-Americans regarding skin color: Implications for social work practice. Research on Social Work Practice, 2, 479-486.
Hall, R. (1995). The bleaching syndrome: African Americans’ response to cultural domination vis-B-vis skin color. Journal of Black Studies, 26, 172-184.
Lauerma, H. (1996). Distortion of racial identity in schizophrenia. Nordic Journal of Psychiatry, 50, 71-72.
Levy, A. S., Jones, R. M., & Olin, C. H. (1992). Distortion of racial identity and psychosis [Letter]. American Journal of Psychiatry, 149, 845.
Mann, M. A. (2006). The formation and development of individual and ethnic identity: Insights from psychiatry and psychoanalytic theory. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 66, 211-224.
Russell, K., Wilson, M., & Hall, R. (1992). The color complex: The politics of skin color among African Americans. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Sanders Thompson, V. L. (2001). The complexity of African American racial identification. Journal of Black Studies, 32, 155-165.
Schneck, J. M. (1977). Trichotillomania and racial identity [Letter to the Editor]. Diseases of the Nervous System, 38, 219.
Stephan, C. W., & Stephan, W. G. (2000). The measurement of racial and ethnic identity. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 24, 541-552.
Tate, C., & Audette, D. (2001). Theory and research on ‘race’ as a natural kind variable in psychology. Theory & Psychology, 11, 495-520.
Ken Zucker

Zucker’s provocative post is timely now. Rachel Dolezal’s and Caitlyn Jenner’s stories have caused people to question and examine categories which seem to most people to be discreet categories. One is either a part of one group or another. However, gender is increasingly being questioned by scientists and activists alike. Race and ethnicity has been seen as more fluid but for different reasons than are posed by Dolezal. Can a person simply declare an ethnicity based on psychological affinity for that ethnicity? Is Zucker correct to wonder about an analogy between ethnic identity disorder and gender identity disorder?
Regarding Dolezal, it will be interesting to see how this plays out. Will the decreasing plasticity Zucker describes demonstrate itself here. She certainly has taken a very public step by declaring herself to be black. Social psychological research tells us that it may be harder for her to walk back from that now that she has made a public declaration. If she does revert to a “white identity” then I will be interested in the social and psychological factors which could bring that about.
ABC News has the story of Dolezal’s discrimination suit.

ABC US News | World News
Interview with Matt Lauer (embed not working, click here for video)

Daily Jefferson: Letter to James Maury, June 16, 1815 on Health Benefits of Cold Baths

In a letter to James Maury on June 16, 1815, Jefferson discussed his views of relations with England and other nations. Then he reflected on Maury’s bathing habits and the relationship to his own and his generally good health:

Your practice of the cold bath thrice a week during the winter, and at the age of 70.2 is a bold one, which I should not, a priori, have pronounced salutary. but all theory must yield to experience, and every constitution has it’s own laws. I have for 50. years bathed my feet in cold water every morning (as you mention) and having been remarkably exempted from colds (not having had one in every 7. years of my life on an average) I have supposed it might be ascribed to that practice. when we see two facts accompanying one another for a long time, we are apt to suppose them related as cause and effect.

Even Jefferson was subject to illusory correlations. Maury was a former teacher of the young Jefferson and an Anglican minister.

My Blog Turns Ten This Month

On June 30, this blog will turn 10. We should have a party.
There may be a few readers who are still with me and I hope to hear from them. Unfortunately in the move to Patheos, many of the old comments did not make the migration.
Initially, the main topic of interest was a defense of reorientation therapy, but it wasn’t long before I shifted to a vocal critic. Over the years, I have covered a variety of topics from voter fraud in Ohio to debunking bad history to more recently Mars Hill Church.
Starting this week, I will revisit some of the more popular posts from the first ten years. Through the summer I hope to bring out representative blasts from the past.
In the comments, I invite readers to name your favorite posts.
Hope you enjoy the party!