Nov 4
To Joe Carter and his blogpost that cites a Joseph Loconte article on Luther’s 95 theses and what that did to promote religious liberty and a free conscience. This appeared in the Acton blog.
There are problems with Loconte's article on Luther and conscience. Besides the fact that appeals to our conscience do have a limit, we should note what else Luther supported. He sided with wealth and power by supporting a brutal suppression of the Peasant's Revolt as well as he, later on in life, expressed strong anti-Semitism sentiments and suggested harsh treatment of the Jews in Germany with the purpose of seeing them gone through attrition.
From these two facts, we see that even Luther put limits on the conscience: the consciences of some with whom he disagreed. The limits we should note about the conscience here is that we can't excuse our oppression of others on our consciences. This excusing of visiting injustice others occurred during Jim Crow when some Christians used the Scriptures to defend segregation and white supremacy. Here one could say that they included an appeal to consciences as a defense of their abuse of others. At least that is how they saw it and the same could be said of those who owned slaves or supported slavery that preceded Jim Crow.
How some Christians used their religious beliefs to defend the oppression of Blacks is an important point to bring up here because a similar defense is being made for Christians being able to discriminate against the the LGBT community. Though there are significant differences between the past marginalization of Blacks in during slavery and Jim Crow and how many religiously conservative Christians want to discriminate against the LGBT community today, the basic theme of not sharing society with a targeted group as equals is what both kinds of discrimination have in common.
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Nov 5
To Caroline Roberts and her blogpost that references an article by Samuel Gregg that speaks of what is good and bad about our economy. In listing what is bad, Loconte lists several entitlement programs as causing current and future harm to our economy. Roberts’s article appeared in the Acton blog
In actuality, the article cited (see https://stream.org/economy-booming-but-theres-trouble/ ) is rather disingenuous with its claims about the economy and especially about entitlement programs.
Is the economy improving? Yes, but it has been for a while especially during much of Obama's Presidency. In other words, part of the success of the economy has to do with the momentum created by what went on during the Obama Administration.
But is the economy improving for everyone? No. Wealth disparity continues to grow and with that there is a growing disparity in political power so that the wealthiest gain more and more political power. Wages for many jobs have not increased significantly for decades when accounting for inflation. Basically, we have an economy that revolves around the whims of major shareholders rather than one that accounts for the needs for everyone.
The grouping of entitlement programs as being blamed for 70% of the Federal budget is deliberately deceptive. Both Social Security and Medicare are self-funded and thus cannot negatively contribute to the National Deficit or Debt. In fact, the Federal Government has borrowed more money from the Social Security Trust fund to finance its spending than any other lender including China. Realize that that fund is financed by individual payers for their collective future for when they retire and much of that spending goes to corporations. Thus we are seeing a transfer of funds from the middle and lower economic classes to the higher ones. Also, to include Social Security and Medicare with programs that are not self-funding in this 70% of Federal spending is deliberately dishonest. In addition, one of the reasons why we have some current spending problems with Medicare is because of Federal laws that prohibit Medicare from negotiating lower drug costs with Pharmaceutical companies.
To merely call self-funded programs like Social Security and Medicare entitlement programs is false labeling. To call the non-self funded programs entitlement programs without including other labels is highly selective. Along with Social Security and Medicare, these programs are survival programs for many in this nation.
From an overall perspective, the most apparent reason for calling for cuts in these entitlement programs is that those with wealth want to pay less and less in taxes while enjoying the benefits from living in and/or doing business in our nation at the current and previous tax rates. Basically we have an ongoing Ayn Rand Coup of the government. But let's suppose we cut those "entitlement programs," what happens? This has been occurring in Greece and even the IMF has come to the conclusion that national austerity policies lead to economic harm. From other perspectives, these cuts lead to a society and culture that value things over people. Such according to Martin Luther King Jr maintain what he called the 'triplets of evil': racism, materialism, and militarism.
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