To Joe Carter and his blogpost on how to unreservedly embrace patriotism. This appeared in the Acton Blog.
I am confused as to why one would want to brag about being patriotic. If the ideal and real America are too different, then the real America is seen as a failure or even a delusional attempt at creating a utopia. But if the ideal and real America are too similar, then whether one celebrates America or not depends on the privileges one's own group enjoys or is deprived of.
When one looks at the evidence, then one finds that history points to the ideal and real America being more similar than different. A rebellion against a founding empire allowed domestic elites to replace foreign elites as leaders of a nation just born. But when dissent and Shays Rebellion occurred a few years later, domestic elites refused to allow those who were resisting to follow the path set by those elites. And thus The Constitution was written. For in that document, the federal government was made more powerful partially so that it could better put down future insurrections. Just look at all of the instances of the word 'militia' is mentioned in The Constitution and the Bill of Rights to see evidence of this view.
From a Christian perspective, it seems to me that patriotism is just another religion that worships one's own group--especially when one's own group enjoys privilege over others, And thus for the Christian, embracing patriotism leads one into practicing polytheism. And here we should note what Paul wrote about his belonging to a group that was, in the past, chosen to be God's very own people (see https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=philippians+3%3A1-11&version=NASB ):
Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things again is no trouble to me, and it is a safeguard for you.
2 Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the false circumcision; 3 for we are the true circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh, 4 although I myself might have confidence even in the flesh. If anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more: 5 circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless.
7 But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, 9 and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, 10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; 11 in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Note all that Paul counts as loss because of the superior significance that belonging to Christ involves. For he not only counts as loss his own achievements, but whatever identities he could claim from being a member of the tribe of Benjamin and being the cream of the crop of the chosen race of the Hebrews. And he does so to show that all his confidence is exclusively in Christ. All other confidence is leads to pride.
So why should we be so eager to embrace patriotism? Isn't the significance we gain from belonging to Christ enough?
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April 24
To Rev. Ben Johnson and his blogpost that reviewed an article that claimed that the religious interest of people negatively correlated with the existence of effective government assistance programs. This appeared in the Acton blog.
Besides the fact that conclusions that are at the end of any scientific article are nothing more than the writers' interpretations of the data, Rev. Johnson sounds defensive. And the zenith of his defensiveness is exhibited in his following statement:
Philanthropy comes near the end of a longer process of conversion – after the person has personally accepted Jesus Christ’s unconditional love and mercy, seen Christ in his neighbor, and reacted accordingly.
Such a statement logically implies that only Christians engage in philanthropy. That claim is easily disproven by a single counterexample, let alone the many counterexamples that could easily be provided.
Likewise, his defensiveness is also shown in the statement below:
When private individuals set their hand to philanthropic works, the results are more effective and longer lasting than government programs. A sense of entitlement and the bureaucratic one-size-fits-all mentality cannot replace personalized care, real relationships, and a sense of belonging created by religious outreaches. The larger government gets, the more corruption and fraud crowd out a program’s noble intentions. One may be justified in asking whether big government is a near occasion of sin.
Such is an unsubstantiated statement. But we might ask Rev. Johnson which philanthropic work can compete with Social Security or Medicare in terms of providing resources and services for so many people? Again, a single counterexample is all that is needed to to dispel one of Rev. Johnson's claims.
Finally, to show how defensive Rev Johnson has become to the article he reviewed, one only needs to note how he describes that it is either government or God that provides for people. He never considered that God can use government and its programs to provide for people. That when we attribute our blessings to government only, or any other human agency, only, then all that has happened is that God was not given his due.
In addition, there is one more interpretation of the data that could be postulated. That some religions prey on the vulnerability of the people in order to draw followers. That vulnerability could be based on fear or deprivation. And that is why religiosity and the prevalence of effective government assistance programs have a negative correlation. Thus, opposing government assistance programs could be a logical strategy adopted by those religions that seek to take advantage of people's suffering. Perhaps that is the nerve that was hit by the article Rev. Johnson commented on
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To Chuck Chalberg and his blogpost on ‘single-issue liberals’ and how different Democratic liberals and Republican conservatives are. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.
While teaching, I asked one of my colleagues who was from another country about how different our political parties were. My friend said, 'very little.' And this is the problem we have when sizing up people from the other side. If we were to be more reflective, we might realize that many whom we thought were on the other side are actually on a different part of our own side.
In addition, any American who thinks that Democrats are on the left know little about both the Democrats and the Left. As a leftist, that is one who does not believe in Capitalism, not even Bernie Sanders is counted as one of us. Noam Chomsky has correctly labeled him as an "FDR New Dealer." That is he likes the social safety net programs FDR initiated while President. And many conservatives call that the left because they mistakenly equate big government and entitlements with socialism.
When one reads Marx, one realizes that the first agenda item to be addressed by any socialist from the Marxist tradition is the redistribution of power, not wealth. And that redistribution isn't designated to an ominous, amorphous alien state, that redistribution channels power to the workers. For the abolition of private property for Marx occurs in its ideal sense when the proletariat can make laws that curb actions of wealthy landowners. Thus, Marx's abolition of private property assumed the existence of such property. And when we look at the left from that perspective, we find that Democrats and Republicans have far more in common than Democrats and the left.
Some of those shared views between establishment Democrats and Republicans include support for our current neoliberal form of Capitalism. Here we should note that during the 2016 election, both Trump and Clinton were supporting two different sides of neoliberal capitalism. For while Clinton was pushing for America to join the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), Trump was pushing for tax relief for and mass deregulation of American businesses. In essence, both want the same kind of economic system only Clinton believed that it should include some fringe benefit bells and whistles in order to keep the masses happy. And now, it has been reported that Trump is reconsidering his position on the TPP.
Did both Trump and Clinton believe in big military budgets and American interventionism with impunity? Yes. Do both allow for a growing deficit? Yes. Did the DOJ from Clinton's Democratic predecessor fail to prosecute any of the financial wizards who were responsible for the economic collapse of 2008? Yes. Is Trump following suit? Yes.
All of the above leaves social issues, like same-sex marriage, as the only issues left for establishment Democrats and Republicans to debate over. Yes, there are fringe members and groups of each party which get their 15 minutes of fame, but they never seem to really change the direction of the Republican and Democratic establishments. So the article above seems both puzzling and uninformed. For the only thing that seems to really divide America is a manufactured tribalism over labels and those pesky social issues. And that obscures the reality of the real divisions that exists. For the real division in America today is the one that exists between the establishment of each party and their respective constituents. And for as long as we have a 2-party system, the establishment is sitting pretty.
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