Again, this post will be rather brief due to certain circumstances.
July 15
To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost on businesses providing services for homosexuals, especially for same-sex weddings. This appeared in Heidelblog.
Opting for the American solution is to opt for another potential Jim Crow whether the target be chosen because of race or sexual orientation or some other reason. Please remember that your American solution was the legal basis for Jim Crow especially when many found Biblical reasons for segregation. It matters not whether those Biblical reasons were valid, it matters that people sincerely held to them and thus used their right of religious freedom to deny the rights of others to access needed goods and services.
In addition, your natural law argument will not work because not everybody has the same view of natural law. This is especially true when homosexuality serves a useful purpose in many species.
Because in a Capitalist economy, access to goods and services is through private businesses, then the right of the business owner to deny the providing of goods and services to whomever he/she chooses allows for the partial or complete denial of access to those goods and services to groups. This competes against the basis of your American solution because the potential effects on the stakeholders gives them a legitimate claim to partial ownership of how the business operates.
However, what is most objectionable here is the association made between Conservative Christianity with discrimination and thus with bigotry. And all of this applies even when those being discriminated against are gays regardless of King's view of homosexuality. His view only shows an inconsistency regarding his working for equal rights--and this is not his only inconsistency. This is said not to discredit his tremendous work for equal rights, it is said to show that he was not perfect in what he did.
Finally, ironically, the argument here is really a backdoor attempt to act as a transformationist only using the "economic freedom," rather than cultural influence or legislation, as the main tool for control. Your approach here saddens me.
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To Edward Trancik and his blogpost on whether greater economic freedom brings greater religious liberties. This appeared in the Acton blog
One could discuss the point of this article, along with Samuel Gregg's statements, by looking at history. For example, free trade and economics were brought to history a little after and via Sept 11, 1973. Friedman's form of neoliberal capitalism was installed by the government that took power on that day, the government of Augusto Pinochet. One only needs to look at history to see how the new found economical freedom of the markets spread to other areas of life. A similar occurrence happened in Argentina in the mid 70s. Again, history can teach us how those new economic freedoms translated into other freedoms. In Russia, new economic freedoms, with a new government, eventually led to a military attack on Parilament--I guess Parliament was oppressing the people.
We could go on but Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine pretty documents how Gregg's statement doesn't always coincide with history. BTW, where we saw religious liberty flourish in Russia is where Religious institutions supported those with power. Not sure about what happened with those other examples.
So will China experience religious liberty with more economic freedoms? We should only note that our economy has been experiencing greater economic freedom and with that came the collapse of 2008 along with a growing wealth disparity during the recovery. And we should note the economic freedoms being granted now. Those from major financial institutions are not being held criminally liable for fraud and money laundering. In the meantime, we are under greater government surveillance than ever.
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To Joe Carter and his blogpost on the border crisis. This appeared in the Acton blog.
It is odd that the border problem can be discussed without going through history with its examples of US interventions and trade policies. For example, Mexico entered the NAFTA that caused economic problems in certain spheres. First, agriculture suffered as Mexican family farmers were forced to compete with subsidized American Agribusiness. Then the new manufacturing plants lost jobs to factories in Asia that used sweatshop labor. And there is the selling of American made weapons to drug gangs and voila.
We should also note that violence that has always been a part of the history of Guatemala since American interventions there. With Honduras, it is very well possible that the recent coup there had American support.
Of course, including such history would indict leaders from both parties as well as our nation. Our intervention in Guatemala which resulted in a coup in 1954 occurred during the Eisenhower administration. Our intervention in El Salvador which included our support for paramilitary troops occurred during the Reagan Administration and it has been stated that the MS 13 got it start from the violence back then occurred under the Reagan Administration. Meanwhile NAFTA went thru during the Clinton Administration as Clinton was attempting to form closer ties between the Democratic Party and the business community. The Honduras coup occurred in 2009 during the Obama Administration.
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