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This Month's Scripture Verse:

But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.
2 Timothy 3:1-5

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Wednesday, January 10, 2018

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For January 10, 2018

Jan 5

To Sean Fitzpatrick and his blogpost containing his analysis of the Luke Skywalker character in the movie The Last Jedi. In that analysis, Fitzpatrick expressed frustration with how the movie did not portray Luke as the kind of hero Fitzpatrick wanted him to be. Fitzpatrick blamed post modernism for that faulty portrayal of Luke. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

What Sean Fitzpatrick seems to have missed in the latest portrayal of Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi is that Lukei's reluctance to continue being a hero indicated an idealism just as much, if not more, as a turn to post modernism and losing belief in his own superiority. For in failing in how he reacted to Kylo Ren, Luke saw himself, as well as the rest of the Jedi, as complete failures. Guilt for being imperfect haunted Luke. Evidence of this interpretation can be found in what motivated Luke to re-enter the fight: it was Yoda's words. Yoda told Luke that along with teaching others how to use The Force, sharing one's own failures was part of training Jedi Knights. Thus, contrary to what his guilt told him, Luke was qualified to teach those with The Force how to become Jedi Knights.

Authoritarianism loves idealism, even if it admits that the ideal isn't real. It still embraces it. It still sees it as a necessary part of one's beliefs especially those beliefs in one's own or a hero's superiority. And thus authoritarianism results in a denial of either a hero's failures or the significance of given failures. Otherwise, heroes cannot be considered to be superior to others. Idealism embraces that kind of black-white, all-or-nothing thinking. Thus, one failure can mean complete darkness for those who embrace such thinking. This was Luke's dilemma. He was an idealist who could not deny how he failed Kylo Ren. Fitzpatrick wanted Luke to be able to deny the significance of his failure with Ren so he could see himself as being superior to others. And that is the real difference between what Fitzpatrick wanted Luke Skywalker to be and how the movie portrayed him.

Fitzpatrick doesn't see the harmful black-white, all-or-nothing thinking that is a part of idealism and authoritarianism. Nor does he see the harmful effects of believing that one's heroes are superior to others. That might be because he is too involved with authoritarianism himself. His embrace of authoritarianism might be why Fitzpatrick wants to blame post modernism for Luke's loss of confidence as portrayed in the movie. But to do that, one must cut the movie short. One must stop the movie before Yoda convinces Luke to re-enter fray.

In addition, if what I wrote about idealism, and thus authoritarianism by extension, is true when I said 'idealism embraces black-white or all-or-nothing thinking,' then Fitzpatrick's frustration with how the movie portrayed Luke Skywalker provides a window in what he believes about his real life heroes. That is that Fitzpatrick will deny either failures committed by his heroes or the significance of those failures. For to admit to those failures or their significance would disqualify his heroes from being heroes, from being superior to others. And such is a real fear for authoritarians. So perhaps such a fear has led Fitzpatrick to embrace the Dark Side when it comes to promoting some of his heroes.
Another indicator that Fitzpatrick is a bit of an authoritarian is that in talking about Achilles, with whom Fitzpatrick compares the old and new Luke Skywalkers, he never questions the morality of a nation going to war because its queen was kidnapped.


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To Rev Ben Johnson and his blogpost about how Iran and Venezuela were trying to destabilize the West by spreading Socialism. This appeared in the Acton blog.

Socialism will 'degrade the pillars of Western Civilization'? Which form of socialism is being referred to here?  For though there is a greater social consciousness in Islam than in much of Christianity, it is difficult to believe that Iran knows what Socialism from the Marxist tradition is. And I refer to the Marxist tradition because Lenin was mentioned in the article.

One of the key components of Socialism from the Marxist tradition is the idea of the proletariat dictatorship. For without that, according to Marx, there is no socialist transition into the utopia he thought he saw. So when we look at Iran and its government, what would it know about Socialism from the Marxist tradition? Though there have elections, we know that Iran is run by a religious elite. So what would Iran know about Socialism except to fund some organizations that claim to be socialistic.?
As for Maduro and Venezuela, the same question can be asked and has been asked by some leftists. I believe it was at the 2015 Left Forum, there were concerns expressed that Chavez had not really followed through with Socialism because he had not put workers into positions of power and decision making. Yes, people there were happy that resources from profits made by its oil industry were being directed toward the people. But that alone does not make Socialism. That is the very criticism that Rosa Luxemburg leveled at Lenin's regime.  She labeled it a bourgeoisie dictatorship and with good reason. Power was seized by the Central Committee and the local soviets were dismantled. The power structure Lenin employed was a top-down structure used by the bourgeoisie to run their businesses. Furthermore, even some of Lenin's supporters complained about his purges and Lenin himself verbally attacked the Leftists, a.k.a., the real Marxists,  them 'infantile.' We might also note that other important Socialists besides Luxemburg opposed Lenin. And we also have the Mensheviks who walked out of the 2nd Russian Soviet Congress in protest of the Bolsheviks. And yet, despite all of the infighting and divisions and the non-Socialist power structure employed by Lenin, Johnson talks as if Socialism is a monolith after the pattern set by Lenin and was responsible for 100 million deaths even though that number is usually attributed not just to the Soviet Union, but to Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge and Red China. And that number includes those killed in wars and famines.

Johnson might be interested in learning that libertarian Socialism does not even believe in the state. But despite that and what was mentioned above, again, Socialism/Communism are responsible for 100 million deaths and Iran and Venezuela are doing what they can to spread Socialism to the West to destabilize it. What Johnson doesn't mention is that Iran has been threatened with military action and even war by either the US or Israel for the last 20+ years. The US has military bases surrounding Iran on both its western and eastern borders. This is not to exonerate Iran. It is a religious dictatorship. But if Iran was trying to destabilize the West, wouldn't that just be an example of turnaround being fair play? Something similar could be said about Venezuela since it was alleged that the 2002 coup that attempted to overthrow Chavez was supported by the US. The coup failed when the people gathered in too big of a mass for the military to respond in order to oppose the coup. It is also suspected that the US has played a role in destabilizing Venezuela. So again, if Venezuela wanted to spread Socialism to the West to destabilize it, would it not be just another example of turnaround is fair play?

Besides, not all Socialists and forms of Socialism eliminate religion in public life. However, US trained military or paramilitary troops had attacked Liberation Theology advocates and priests in Central America during the 1980s. What does that say about the US and its relationship to religion. And of course, even in Lenin's day, there were Socialists who called to the Church to join their struggle against the exploitation of workers in Russia.The article by Johnson lacks precision in order for it to be informative of any real threat to the West. It cannot adequately identify Socialism as well as it ignores the context that conflicts between the US and the governments of Iran and Venezuela provide. The above is nothing more than persuasion piece that relies on the lack of details and an emotional appeal.


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Jan 6

To Joe Carter and his blogpost that supplies information that he thinks people should know about raising the minimum wage. This appeared in the Acton blog.

It's so easy for some conservatives to criticize the idea of raising the minimum wage, if not the idea of having the minimum wage itself, while regarding their own economic ideologies as being above reproach. And that is the problem here. Our current economic system is regarded by some as a kind of Biblical canon while we weigh the tradeoffs of raising the minimum wage. And if keeping the minimum wage low benefits those with wealth to the detriment of those who live on the minimum wage, then we can say that these same conservatives are merely supporting those with wealth rather than giving a fair assessment of the minimum wage.

Chris Rock had an excellent insight on the minimum wage while reflecting back on when he was paid minimum wage. He said something to the effect that when an employer paid him minimum wage, it was like the employer is saying  that he/she would pay him even less per hour if he/she was allowed--so much for the intrinsic value of the worker. And when we consider the ever widening gap between the pay of the CEO and the not even lowest paid workers of many major companies, we see how the worker is being devalued more and more by our economic system. On average, the CEO at 350 of the top companies makes 271 times the amount made by the average worker in the same company (see  http://fortune.com/2017/07/20/ceo-pay-ratio-2016/ ) and that amount sometimes reaches more than 1,000 times what the median worker makes (see https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ceo-worker-pay-gap_us_55ddc3c7e4b0a40aa3acd1c9 ).

But CEOs are not the only competition  workers face in getting a slice of the pie from the companies they work for. Many top companies also must show that they are maximizing the ROI for their investors. In fact, investors, many of whom never put a dime into the companies they invest in, are seen as having a higher claim on a company's wealth than its workers have.
And thus we come to the argument expressed by Carter and supported by others that too high an increase in the minimum wage could cost workers their jobs. And when we consider that many companies use government assistance programs to subsidize their payrolls while doing all they can to reduce or avoid paying taxes some of which support those assistance programs, we see that to not be able to step back and critically look at one's own economic ideology and the current economic system is akin to being the proverbial bull in the china shop. In addition, when Carter states that 'Almost all economist agree that significant increases to the minimum wage or attempts to bring it in line with a “living wage” (e.g., $12-15 an hour) would lead to significant increases in unemployment,' he is disingenuously saying that the economic system that gives many workers a choice between employment with poverty wages or unemployed is above reproach.

One could also add to Carter's quote that it is wrong. Over 100 economists, with some from Ivy League schools while some are from other prestigious schools like MIT, the University of California Berkley, Penn State, Michigan State, NYU, and USC, all of which are top 100 economic schools, dispute Carter's claim as they call for raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2024 (see http://www.epi.org/economists-in-support-of-15-by-2024/ ).
Now I am not writing as one who supports raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour. Why? Because such legislation overlooks another serious problem that workers in low wage jobs and employers face. That problem is that there is too little communication between the two about each other's needs and too little power given to workers in determining  work issues like pay. To have the government set the minimum wage at $15 per hour eliminates the need for employers and employees to talk to each other face to face about each others' needs. And robbing employers and employees the opportunity of communicating face to face with each other prevents employers and employees from have a chance to be more vested in each other. Requiring that companies raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour does not give workers a greater voice in how the workplace should be conducted. Setting the minimum wage too high doesn't empower workers, it empowers the government.

Instead of the government raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour, it should set its sights on a more modest increase while requiring companies and workers to negotiate wages higher than the modest increase. The divides between employer and employee is not just in pay, it are in communication and in power. Automatically raising the minimum wage too high does nothing to close those divides.In addition, many companies must realize that the divide between the pay of its top employees and the average employee increases wealth disparity and that, according to the IMF, hurts economic growth.
 





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