Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For September 4, 2019

Sept 2

To R. Scott Clark and Dr Ryan Glumsrud who on Clark’s podcast about recovering the beliefs from the Reformed past. In particular, they discuss the works of Johann Heinrich Heidegger (1633-1698). This appeared in Heidelblog.

Podcast at
https://wscal.edu/resource-center/johann-heinrich-heidegger-part-2

The question is, what does it mean to recover our Reformed past. Does that recovery revolve around education so that we selectively embrace what some Reformed theologians have said in the past using the Scriptures as the ultimate standard? Or will we go the way of traditionalists who almost automatically accept ideas because they belong to a certain group of people from the past?
We should note that traditionalists are the mirror image of narcissists. Why? It is because both group elevate a certain time period(s) over all other time periods. Traditionalists elevate a given groups from specific time periods over all other groups and time periods so that it seems that, using the phraseology of Martin Luther King Jr., those groups have everything to teach those of us in the present and nothing to learn from us. Narcissists elevate the current time over all other time periods so they believe they have everything to teach those from past and nothing to learn from them.

Both traditionalism and narcissism employ an authoritarianism that prohibits them from learning either from many from the past or from those who live in the present.
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Sept 3

To James Agresti and his study that claims that those in the lower 20% of America’s economic class compare favorably with the average person who live in highly developed nations. This appeared in the Acton website.

The study seems to overlook its biases. One of the most obvious biases is that of emphasizing individual responsibility. For example, in discussing why America's poor don't necessarily live better than the poor from other developed nations, partial blame is place on personal decisions like the diet of those who are poor. For the American poor, much of that diet consists of junk food rather than fruits and vegetables. But what Agresti neglects to mention is a key factor as to why poor Americans eat a lot of junk food. That reason consists of food deserts that plague many of the urban areas of our nation. I had a former colleague when teaching college who lived in a major American city who lived in such a desert.

Another bias is indicated by the factors that Agresti looks at that helps determine the consumption rate of America and European nations. For example, the move to green energy hurts living standards and that "aggressive government regulations" hurts business. But why is there the move toward green energy in the nations being compared with the U.S.? And what are the purposes of those "aggressive government regulations"? Doesn't Agresti understand how our way of life is harming the environment both now and in the long-run? That the move to using green energy is to help address the WORLD'S problem with an already started climate change? Does Agresti care that easing up on environmental regulations allows for more toxins to enter the environment? Did Agresti know about asthma rates in urban areas? Does he think that America's water supply is safe?

In addition, it seems that Agresti is all to willing to bite the hand that feeds his convictions. For when he talks about the what enables the lowest 20% of Americans in terms of income to consume so much, he gives credit government programs such as Medicaid, Children's Health Insurance Program, food stamps, school lunches, Women's, Infants' & Children's Program, housing assistance programs, and utilities assistance programs for the consumption rate of lower income class Americans. Then a little later he complains that social programs can hurt the market as well as rob people of the incentive to work. Besides that contradiction, Agresti neglects to mention how American businesses benefit from having their payrolls subsidized in billions of dollars by these government assistance programs.

Finally, in discussing housing and health care, Agresti neglects to compare the quality of housing that the poorest Americans can access versus what the poorest of Europeans can access. Nor does Agresti compare economic mobility based on access to higher education and its aftermath: school loans.

Agresti's claims are based on measuring a single factor: consumption. Some of that consumption does not occur in the houses of those poorest Americans but in group settings such as when the kids are in school. Thus it seems that Agresti has prematurely made claims about those in the  lower 20% of America's economic class as they compare with those in Europe and around the world.