Sept 11
To Joe Carter and his blogpost on the similarities in beliefs between today’s American Protestants and American Catholics. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition website.
One problem with the study is that Protestants are only being compared with Catholics. What if their similarities were affected by outside Church influences? What if what is affecting the beliefs of both Protestants and Catholics is society and culture? That means that not only are more Protestants are not Protestant than realize it, the same could apply to Catholics.
Another reason for the similarities between Protestants and Catholics might lie in what Protestant leaders are teaching their followers about what is justification and what is sanctification. This especially applies to what is taught about sanctification and what deficiencies a person has is tolerated in the Church and what deficiencies disqualifies one from Church membership.
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To Rev. Ben Johnson and his blogpost on distinguishing the difference between how economic inequality is perceived and how it is experienced. This appeared in the Acton blog.
If we are going to use Germany's economy as an example, please note that they have mixed some actual socialist means into their economic system. In what is called codetermination, all companies that have 500 to 2,000 employees must allow for workers, who are elected by peers, to make up 1/3 of each company's supervisory council. For companies over 2,000 employees, almost half of the supervisory council must be made up of peer-elected workers.
Our economic system here is quite different. Here, owners, either private or majority shareholders determine who makes up the equivalent of a company's supervisory board. So what we learn from Germany does not necessarily translate the same to other nations.
Regarding whether economic inequality is increasing or decreasing, that depends on one's source and the statistics one is measuring (see http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/global-income-inequality-is-indeed-falling-but-we-should-still-be-wary-a6831056.html and https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2016/apr/08/global-inequality-may-be-much-worse-than-we-think and https://unu.edu/media-relations/releases/global-income-inequality-unu-wider-press-release.html#info ). The last reference makes a point that Global inequality has been measured as both falling and rising depending on which measurement one uses. If one uses a relative measurement, then global economic inequality has falling, but that is very much influenced by the economic changes that are occurring in India and China. When the absolute measurement is used, global economic inequality is growing significantly. And just for North America, the study found that both the relative and absolute measurements indicated a growing economic inequality. We should note that economic inequality has an inverse relationship with economic growth for developing nations (see https://www.unicef.org/socialpolicy/files/Global_Inequality.pdf ). In addition, wealth can greatly influence political decisions (see http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746 ).
In addition, we should note that whatever economic measurement we use to discuss poverty, it is inadequate either by itself or in conjunction with others in defining poverty. We cannot really understand what poverty is except to seriously study the lives of the poor and the deprivations they suffer because they are on the downside of economic inequality. At that point, what is considered to be poverty in Germany might cause Americans, who feel economically and morally superior to the rest of the world, hang their heads in shame at what we tolerate for the poor in our own nation.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost consisting solely of a picture that presumedly is of 9/11 wreckage. This appeared in the Heidelblog.
We should never forget 9/11. The pic above is of United Flight 93's crash site. BTW, I knew someone on that flight. And certainly we should never forget what happened then because of the atrocities visited on our nation. But we should also never forget the atrocities that our nation has visited on others from the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans from the land to the enslavement and harsh persecution and oppression of Blacks here to how our interventions often replaced democratic regimes with dictatorships in other nations.
A selective 'never forget' attitude where we focus solely on the atrocities forced on us is nothing more than an exercise in a self-induced martyr complex and an exhibition of self-righteousness. We must also include the atrocities we have visited on others in our memories as well lest we continue to repeat them causing many others to suffer.
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Sept 12
To Sarah Stanley and her blogpost on how the US should respond to North Korea. In that blogpost, she interviews Suzanne Scholte who is an expert on North Korea. This appeared in the Acton blog.
What is missing from the interview is broader perspective regarding WMDs. The interview focused too narrowly on the region. We need to realize that technology makes the proliferation of WMDs inevitable. Thus, we can look at North Korea as a window into the future. And in such a future, the reliance on the rule of force ends in mass mutually-assured suicide for the people of all nations.
And though working through the UN to resolve the crisis with North Korea is appropriate, we should note that we don't rely on and submit to UN decisions on a consistent enough basis. Otherwise, our policies in the Middle East would have been far different even from what they are today. And perhaps now is the time to bring all of our policies under the guidelines set by the UN and answerable to the ICC. In addition, we need to insist that all of our allies do the same. Perhaps then constructive examples of what it means to be powerful nation could be on display for emerging nations to follow.
While the above might sound too idealistic to become a realistic possibility, what is even more idealistic, and thus more unrealistic, is to think that we can survive while continuing on our current course of relying on the rule of force to get our way while living in a world where the proliferation of WMDs is inevitable.
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