Aug 8
To R. Scott Clark and the first of a multil-part blogpost podcast on the Muslim Brotherhood and the danger it poses to our democracy. This appeared in Heidelblog.
I guess we are entering an updated version of McCarthyism. We should note how our past war against Communism served us. Yes, the Soviet Union collapsed. But some not so funny things happened on the way there. Coups in nations like Iran ('53), Guatemala ('54), and Chile ('73), all in the name of anti-communism were used to usher in dictators who reacted brutally to dissent. The US supported Osama Bin Laden, despite his terrorism, because he was fighting against a Soviet approved, secular government. The US military actually conducted terrorist attacks on civilian targets after its Revolution. And the US was condemned by the World Court for its actions and supported actions, which involved terrorist tactics, in Nicaragua during the 1980s.
And on a side note, the US supported Saddam Hussein even to the extent of providing his nation with materials for WMDs up until Iraq invaded Kuwait. Then after destroying Iraq's infrastructure in the first Persian Gulf War. the sanctions that it forced through the UN and imposed were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children.
Returning from the side note, we should never forget how we contributed to the deaths of perhaps millions of people in Vietnam in the name of anti-Communism.
So now we have a new boogyman to fear. And yes, there are some groups from Islam that do pose a threat. And mentioning such groups can be helpful. But more importantly, looking how our nation's policies contribute to the recruiting for such groups rely on is much more important. We will see if that occurs here. For if we want to say that such groups pose a threat to our democracy here, how is it that, because our government has been supporting business-friendly dictators over there, we should not be seen as a threat by the people and nations over there?
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To Christopher Nelson and his blogpost that states that there is no student debt crisis. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.
Whether there is a crisis or not sometimes depends on whether it is your neighbor who has the problem, or you. The problem with the student debt crisis is that it is real. It was one of the contributing factors to the starting of Occupy Wall Street. Plenty of students had no job prospects that paid enough to match the debt they took on--and they took on that debt with the understanding higher paying jobs would be the result of going to school. Also, one could cite example afte example graduates who had to postpone the starting of families and buying of homes to repay student debt.
However, a lot of that is anecdotal. What is real are the statistics of those who default the most or the aggregate amount owed along with the aggregate amount owed on student debt vs the number of lendees (see http://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2015/04/just-released-press-briefing-on-student-loan-borrowing-and-repayment-trends-2015.html#.VkkRTyvMLs4nts/mediaadvisory/2015/Student-Loan-Press-Briefing-Presentation.pdf ). Also, those in the lower class suffer the most but one should also look at the age ranges of those who are still paying their debts. That age is rising and that means that such people limited in terms of spending on current needs as well as preparing for the future.
Again, whether the student debt crisis is a crisis is being answered by some by whether their neighbor is struggling or whether they are. Considering that millions are involved, that is plenty of neighbors who are either being hit with the crisis or face it in the future.
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Aug 9
To Kyle Hanby and his blogpost on globalization and free trade. This appeared in the Acton blog.
Kyle Hanby made a similar mistake on free trade in a previous article. He looks at it as it affects people now and claims that its opposite privileges a few. If Hanby would study how tariffs have been used in the past, he would discover that nations have used tariffs to build up their own economic sectors. The current use of free trade then has become a way of 'kicking away the ladder,' as some explain it. That means that the mechanisms used by the industrial nations to develope their own industries in the past is being denied use for developing nations by these same industrial nations.
Hanby should also learn about what happens when nations join free trade agreements and organizations. What happens is that a part of national sovereignty, and this applies to a people's democracy when a nation relies on democratic processes, is lost to corporations. The TPP for example allows for foreign and multinational corporations to sue governments over laws that these corporations says causes them to lose profits; but corporations cannot return the favor. In addition, when a corporation sues a government, such as Canadian mining company has sued Costa Rica over its decision to prohibit the mining for gold in its nation because of environmental reasons, the case is adjudicated by a trade agreement's tribunal, not the courts of that land. Here we should note how the WTO threatened the US with $1 billion dollars in trade sanctions over a US law demanding that the origin of meat packaged to be bought at stores be labeled.
Unfortunately, those who are pusing free trade agreements now are neglecting to look at the issue either historically or in terms of national sovereignty.
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To Joe Carter and his blogpost on freedom, especially economic freedom. This appeared in the Acton blog
The problem with the article above and the article which it cites is that freedom is applied solely to the individual, not to a group, not to society. Thus society, in principle according to these two articles, is not free to make laws that govern how the markets interact with and treat those in society. We call this group freedom exercised by a given society democracy.
Of course, governments are never portrayed by markets as being representatives of the people. Rather, those who favor limited government and free markets portray all governments as alien entities that have their own interests aside from the interests of the people. And In practice, this often turns out to be the case. This occurs where citizens are not seriously involved in monitoring and speaking out to their governments. Thus, there is a burden that comes with any working democracy: that burden is putting in the time and energy into being seriously involved.
However, we should note the flip side of not letting democracies set rules for the market. The flip side is that all of this individual economic freedom, when summed up, equals consolidated wealth, and thus power, for private sector elites. And thus political power in the nation no longer rests with its elected leaders, it rests with those who have made the most money. And such does not equate to either freedom for all or even humility by a few.
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To Joseph Pearce and his blogpost on abortion in the Black Lives Matter issue. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.
Despite the faulty description of Planned Parenthood today, one of the most pertinent issues involved in the abortion of Black babies is economics. The average Black person has far less wealth than the average White person and the disparity is growing. So in addition to Black Lives Matter, in a different way, we can can say regard abortion that economic class matters. And so if we want to address the abortion issue that exists in the Black community, we need to address the wealth disparity that exists between the two races.
Likewise, regarding crime, one needs to look at the correlations and possible cause and effect relationships between wealth, or the lack thereof, and violent crime.
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