Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For March 29, 2017

March 21

To Collin Hansen and his blogpost review of Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option in the light of Trump’s Presidency. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition website.


I haven't read his book but I have read some of Dreher's articles on the Benedict Option. The weakness I find with his approach which should have some bearing on how we agree with his approach or react to what he sees is that he believes that Christians should maintain a privileged place in society resulting in some degree of Christian supremacy over culture and society. This supremacy, historically speaking, has led to the marginalization of many people and that marginalization has not just been based on race. It is good that Hansen brought up past racism. But other bases for marginalization include economic class, religion, and sexual orientation and identity.

If we religiously conservative Christians could only be content with sharing society with others as equals rather than as being treated as a privileged group, we could see that today's culture wars are both unnecessary and harmful for all involved.

So the real question here goes to Dreher's analysis of culture and the presuppositions he carries in analyzing culture. For if we Christians want to have some degree of supremacy in controlling culture, then Dreher's analysis and solution have some legitimacy even though it causes Christians to appear like children who take their games home from friends because they lost in those games. But if we focused on sharing society with others as equals, especially with those from the LGBT community, then the only need we would have to address is to apologize for the how we have wronged the LGBT community in the past and ask about what measures must we take to address those wrongs prior to the pendulum hitting us in the face from its reversing direction. And we don't have to compromise on what the Scriptures say about sexuality and marriage to apologize.

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To Kevin deYoung and his blogpost that claims that those in need as portrayed in Jesus’s parable of the sheep and the goats refers to fellow Christians only. This appeared in then Gospel Coalition website

But the charge to love one’s neighbor, according to the Good Samaritan parable, means that we must show charity to all who are vulnerable who come our way. And in an age of technology-enabled connectedness and governments that are more accountable to its people, then our neighbors include more and more people and thus opposing our government from caring for the vulnerable is to make Cain’s rhetorical question to God the basis for our political ideology.

IN addition, we should note the original definition of stakeholder before we oppose government as it tries to help those in need.


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March 22

To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost quote of Andrew Sullivan on how intersectionality has become a religion. This appeared in the Heidelblog.

With how the Bible describes our sinfulness, I don't see any problem with considering the validity of concepts Sullivan associates with intersectionality. We know that identity-based oppression is a fact of history and life. And the only ones who should feel threatened by such ideas are those who cherish their association with privileged groups. They are often described by the OT prophets as those who either neglect or oppress the vulnerable. So certainly those who are privileged should be challenged on either their active participation in or silent complicity with oppressing other groups.

Where intersectionality has become a religion according to Sullivan is not necessarily in the concepts they espouse, but in their response to those who promote opposing ideas. At the speaking event Sullivan described in his article, some of those who adhere to intersectoinality not only prevented a controversial speaker, Charles Murray, from speaking, the manner in which they shut down the event reminded Sullivan of a religion. And that should not surprise us in today's world of  highly insular, ideological groups. It's the insularity that, more than anything else, contributes to a self-righteous intolerance by and even the religiosity of many of today's ideological groups.

What failed to be mentioned in the quote above is how Sullivan describes Trump as being just as much an enemy of truth as those who both adhere to intersectionality and disrupted the speaking event that Sullivan described. We should note that Sullivan commented on how Trump too disregards any facts that challenge his ideology. And it is here that Sullivan ties together those who disrupted the speaking event with Trump. For he states that neither side allows for any facts to exist which challenge their own orthodoxies. Thus, from different ideological perspectives, those who believe in intersectionality and Trump himself mimic each other in how they respond to challenges. They mimic each other not necessarily by tactics used but by only allowing for any reality that challenges their ideologies.

So the question becomes why does this blogpost only quote Sullivan when he describes intersectionality and not Trump?

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March 24

To Bruce Ashford and his blogpost review of a book by David Koyzis on making idols out of our politics. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition website.


Two points to make here. Being a socialist, I felt that socialism was misrepresented that was because it was treated as a monolith based on one of its oldest models. We should note that many who have thought about and promoted socialism since Marx, realize that Socialism existed before Marx only he added some particular flavors to it, have some different views than his. Some have followed the Trotsky/Stalin division though I am not sure whether that is the best way to describe that division. Others have taken away the utopian and there are those who have minimized Socialism's materialism while add to that its relational aspects such as seen in the promotion of various degrees of worker control at the workplace and in government. While some want to define socialism around a particular ideology, others focus on socialism as a practice. BTW, when the following revolves around materialism, we could easily say that socialism and capitalism are two sides of the same materialist coin. Both seek a relative or absolute utopia based on the distribution of goods.

And though I can't speak for liberals, conservatives, and nationalists because of how I saw socialism oversimplified, my suspicion is that liberals, conservatives, and nationalists might feel the same misrepresentation of their pet ideologies due to oversimplification that I experienced when read what was said in the above article about socialism.

There is one point I agree with article about though I will put that agreement in my own words. The more ideological we are, the more prone we are to make our political approach into an idol. And how idolatrous we are in our political ideologies can be measured not just in how it changes our relationship with and view of God, but in how we treat others as well. The more we demonize others and think of our own group as having everything to teach and nothing to learn from others, the more our political ideologies have become our idols.

BTW, the line above that says everything to teach and nothing to learn is adapted from a Martin Luther King Jr. line. And I mention that because as Ashford cites the author he is reviewing, David Koyzis, he replicates a King practice that is suggested, if not implied, by resisting the urge to make any political ideology into an idol. That is, as King noted, from comparing America's Capitalism with Russia's Communism, both had unique contributions to make and unique flaws to correct. Thus, we should work with all political ideologies to develop hybrids that emphasize the strengths of each ideology.

But something else has to be said to us religiously conservative Christians. We have to recognize that society is not the Church. And thus, we have evaluate how we should share society with others prior to working with those who adhere to other ideologies in shaping society. For the more we religiously conservative Christians presume a privileged place where we demand some degree of supremacy over others in determining society's laws and mores, the more we will appear to others as those who have made their pet political ideologies into idols appear to us. That is the more we will come across to unbelievers as those who have everything to teach and nothing to learn. In contrast to that, the more we strive to share society with unbelievers as equals, the more we will naturally exhibit the humility Ashford writes about at the end of his article.

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March 25

To Joseph Pearce and his blogpost about how he grew up as a racist but was converted and now sees some of the reactions against the traditions and beliefs of Western Civilization as being racist and, in some people, ethno-massochistic. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

On the one hand, I respect the personal sharing Pearce did in this article. On the other hand, one doesn't have to be a White Supremacist to be a racist. Racism exists on a continuum. Though growing up in an all white neighborhood for most of my youth, I never became a "White Supremacist." But after reflecting on my college days, I realize that I was what I call a passive racist back then. It's not that I was an aggressive racist, but I had racist views stemming from ignorance and that governed how I interpreted and reacted to Black Americans at college. Hopefully I've fully corrected that but I have too much of a conflict of interest to objectively evaluate myself here.

And though we shouldn't believe that all White men were White Supremacists when looking at the history of Western Civilization, but that isn't the issue. We should realize that racism permeated the Western Civilization from its empires and colonialism to its practice of slavery and slave trading, to its ethnic cleansing of indigenous peoples from different lands, to its ethnocracy from the assumption of racial privilege which returns us to White Supremacy though such can be a softer version of White Supremacy than how we usually think of it..

However, we need to understand that what could be called an overreaction to the racism, which Pearce has noted, that is so much a part of almost every aspect of Western Civilization is not racist. Btw, I am calling the banning or burning of books or the total rejection of Western Civilization an overreaction. Rather, it is rooted in an all-or-nothing thinking approach to an outcome-based truth system that simply says if a belief system has produced any abusive behavior, then the belief system is totally false. This kind of reaction is what we see in phobias that are the result of suffering traumas rather than any ethno-masochism. For this kind of reaction is more directed at culture than race. So what we are seeing there is simply the foundation of Post Modernism with its rejection of historical metanarratives because of much of the fruit of those metanarratives. Thus, the supremacy sought in Post Modernism is found in its total rejection of and, by some, its attempts to cleanse ourselves of the metanarratives of Modernism and Pre Modernism rather than in any reactive racism.

And trying to tie racism to Marxism is done pejoratively here. Such is a set up for establishing the supremacy of one's non-Marxist traditions of thought while no specifics are provided to establish the alleged association. But where we do see supremacy showing its ugly face is when a group, whether that group is based on cultural identity, ideology, economic class, race, national identity, sexual orientation, religion, and so forth believes that it cannot afford to share society as equals with those who are different in a diverse society.

And this returns us to the beginning. Whereas Pearce has gone through quite a personal transformation that merits much respect, he seems to overstate his case about being cleansed from supremacist ways of thinking. But for that matter, who has been totally cleansed of all kinds of supremacist ways of thinking? We can find out by how willing we are to share society with others as equals. And we can only share society with others as equals when, using the phraseology of Martin Luther King Jr., we reject the notion that our own group has everything to teach others and have nothing to learn from them.

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To Devin Ryan and his blogpost claiming that it is time for Russia and the others to bury Lenin rather than allowing his body to still be displayed in the Kremlin. This burying of Lenin would cut all favorable associations with him. This appeared in the Acton Blog.

We need to realize that some conflicts consist of evil vs evil. Such was the case when Lenin and the Bolsheviks hijacked the Russian Revolution. The first Revolution saw a provisional government overthrow the Tsar at that time. The provisional government then failed because it followed the will of the capitalists who wanted Russia to continue to fight in WW I. It also saw the Capitalists as having control of the nation. Thus, the conditions that led to the February Revolution of 1917 continued and that led to the October Revolution. We should note that during Russia's pre-revolutionary times, the Church supported the Tsars and the status quo. Though I am unaware of who the Church supported during the reign of the Provisional Government, it opposed the Socialists. Now while Lenin denounced religion, other socialists, like Rosa Luxemburg, called on the Russian Church to support the Socialists for everyone's good.

At the same time, we should note that Socialists like Rosa Luxemburg denounced Lenin's regime calling it a bourgeoisie dictatorship. Others have said that he simply practiced his own version of how the Tsars ruled. Other Socialists were cleansed from the scene by a power hungry Lenin who felt threatened by diversity and dissent. His reach for power included disbanding the soviets and Russia's Constituent Assembly. Other Socialists supported his hijacking because of the Counter Revolution and the crises that followed the Revolution. In essence, those who hijacked the Revolution were Bolsheviks. And thus what we have here is a complex picture of Socialism rather than a simple one that serves as a basis for the pejorative use of the word 'socialism.'

What we saw in Stalin was Lenin-gone-wild while what we saw in Lenin was Stalin-lite.  In either case, there was no proletariat dictatorship that was essential to what Marx taught. So it would be difficult to claim that under Lenin or Stalin, Marxist Socialism failed since it wasn't practiced. It wasn't until you get to Gorbachev who, btw rejected Stalin but embraced what Lenin taught, that you begin to see the Socialist concern for democracy being put on display in Russia. Should note that while not practicing Socialism, Lenin still tended to espouse Socialist beliefs and some just rationalize his totalitarian rule because of the crises that Russia was experiencing back then.

But returning to Lenin, both the Church and Lenin were on the wrong side of history. The Church was on the wrong side because of its support of those with wealth and power, including support for the Tsar, prior to the Revolution. Lenin was on the wrong side of history as he replaced one dictatorship with another. Thus, if we are going to cut all sentimental ties to Lenin, which is why he would be buried, the same goes for the Tsars. The result of both burials would be that bolsheviks and many from the Russian Orthodox Church would be ideologically orphaned.


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March 27

To Joe Carter and his blogpost on the role of Christian journalism and how that is carried out at The Gospel Coalition. This appeared on the Gospel Coalition website.

The crux of many conflicts among Christians and between Christians and nonChristians is what is meant by a 'restoration of creation'? Does it mean that we start to impose Christian values and Church laws on society? And we should also look at the why of this restoration. Does that why revolve around us and the enjoyment of our new life?

Those are pertinent questions because we are sharing that creation with nonChristians. And what  happens when we overreach in that restoration of creation is that we start to use society as a supplemental disciplinary arm of the Church. We know from the Scriptures that unbelievers are not subject to Church discipline. But if we try too hard to assist God in restoring creation, won't unbelievers become obstacles and then we will try to use civil laws to remove those obstacles? And thus, we will be using society as a supplemental disciplinary arm of the Church on those who are not subject to Church discipline.

The most pertinent question that involves the third point of Keller's three-point outline is: How should we Christians share society with others? Does God want his people to claim a privileged place in society so we can enjoy places of supremacy in order for Him to use us to restore creation? Or should we share society with others as equals and work side by side with them in creating a society with equality and justice? In addition, based on that third point, must the world revolve around us Christians because we are God's people? Those are all pertinent questions for any Christian journalist or ministry because the answers to those questions will determine what is advocated and what is described by those doing Christian journalism.

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For October 19, 2016

Oct 5

To Jordan Ballor and his blogpost claim that Christianity is the friend of liberalism. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition website.

Two observations must be used to assess the analysis in the article above. The first observation seems to challenge Siedentop's view that the modernity emerged from the battles between the popes and  kings. And so when Siedentop writes:

The conception of society as founded on ‘natural inequality’ was giving way to a conception of society as founded on ‘moral equality,’ as an association of individuals rather than an association of families.

we should note that the emergence Rome over and apart from European kingdoms did not bring in a moral equality, it ushered in a new basis for inequality. So what replaced the 'natural inequality' was a spiritual inequality or a spiritual association rather than an association of families. Much of Western history shows an assumption of supremacy and thus rule is based on the faith of a predominant group. Persecution of those from the different branches of the Church, let alone persecution and conquest over those from other faiths, give ample evidence against the idea that the emergence of any subset of the Church from kingdoms introduced a moral equality. In addition, other associations were also in play such as association of race and economic class. We really never have achieved a true moral equality either here or in other Western nations.

As for the relationship between Christianity and liberalism, the Church's intramural wars between Protestants and Catholics or between different branches of Protestantism were not cured, for the most part, by leaving the Church to its own devices. Rather, secular liberalism and, in some places, the necessity of the times caused the introduction of moral equality in the Church. Without liberalism and, to a lesser extent, necessity, we might still resemble what we see in warring factions of Islam today.

All too often, we take for granted what people say they want for all without judging it by how they treat those who are different. And it seems that this article is merely another attempt to establish Christianity's supremacy in the West perhaps in an effort to preserve as much of the old status quo as possible. We should note that one cannot believe in such a supremacy and moral equality at the same time.
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Oct 14

To Bruce Ashford and his blogpost on how Christians should respond to our loss of privilege and power in society. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition website.

It seems that Ashford prefers that force our ways onto people through a tyranny of the majority rather than through a strong-arm tyrant. And that is our problem. We are looking to rule over others rather than to share power with them. And thus, we make it more and more difficult to see why more and more people are rejecting Christianity. Are they rejecting it because of the Gospel message or is it because we are attempting to lord it over others?
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To Joe Carter and the Dennis Prager video that was part of his blogpost on the size of government being used to define the Left and the Right. This appeared in the Acton blog.

It seems that in explaining the differences between the left and the right, there seems to be no limit on over simplification for some. And that is what we have in the above video. There are only two ideological positions, according to the video, and all results can be deductively arrived at by using single criteria definitions to define the two positions. In one corner, the Right believes in the most limited government possible while the Left believes in an ever increasing growth in government size and power. And never the twain shall meet.

But history begs to differ and that is always the problem for those who want to define reality exclusively by deductive reasoning. For example, Socialism is always categorized by those on the Right as being the same as big government. But Libertarian Socialism does not believe in the state. So where is Libertarian Socialism in the model of thought presented in the video? Where is anarchism, which is also on the side of the Left, in the model of thought presented by the video?

In addition, the difference between liberalism and the much of the Socialism from the Left is not over the size of government, but who has power both in the government and in the workplace. Liberalism promotes elite-centered rule where elites dictate what is good for the rest. In much of Socialism from the Left, especially from the Marxist viewpoint, it is the workers who should have the bulk of power both in the government and the workplace. And thus, big government alone does not constitute the Left. We can have both small or big government under the Left. But control over that government must be more in the hands of the workers than under the control of elites.

IN addition, an error that is suggested, if not implied, by what was said in the video above is that power and government authority are one and the same. Anyone who has studied power in the business or government setting knows that having power is not the same has having authority. Martin Luther King Jr. had a tremendous amount of political power while he was focusing on racial inequality while holding no governmental position. In addition, we could consult the labor history in the US to note how private businesses and their owners had tremendous power and could harm a great number of people without government assistance. In fact, it was the combination of workers protesting and government finally listening that curtailed many of the abuses that occurred in and out of the workplace.

Yes, the government has the power of force through either local and federal law enforcement or the military; but such was established by God according to the Scriptures (Romans 13). So why would Christians, like myself or many who are associated with the Acton Institute, want to side with him on this point?

In addition, since the military is part of the government, the bigger our military, the bigger our government--or so the above logic would state. But there is a disconnect for Prager here. Big government must be opposed only when the non military side of the government grows. Why? Because the size of our military depends on the number of our enemies. But why doesn't that logic apply to the other parts of our government? After all, isn't it true that some businesses can act as enemies of the people as part of their pursuit of profits? Applying the same logic that is used to determine the size of our military, shouldn't the government be big enough to handle any businesses that would act as a threat to the people?

In addition, what if those from the private sector, like churches, private charities, communities, and families do not want to take adequate care of those in need? Shouldn't the size of the government depend on how many people are in need? In addition, shouldn't the government represent those who are in need as much as it represents business people and others? Therefore, shouldn't the amount of help offered by the government reflect that representation?

Government is like love, size doesn't matter, fidelity does. A small, impotent government provides as much protection for its people as a large, corrupt government. That is because the power that is absent in a small government does not disappear, it finds its resting place in the private sector. And thus, the question becomes this: do we want private sector elites to possess the power that is absent in a small government or do we want to distribute power democratically by having workers and others share power with elite-wannabes? History shows that the consolidation of power is dangerous. That is a truism whether that consolidation occurs in the private or public sectors. The video above states that the consolidation of power is dangerous only when the government has it.

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Oct 15

To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost video featuring D.G. Hart’s interview on C-Span’s Book TV. This appeared in Heidelblog.

Link to Hart’s interview
    https://www.c-span.org/video/?414716-3/billy-graham-sarah-palin&start=470

There is some very interesting and useful historical information given by Hart here, but he also demonstrated how one's answers to questions can sometimes be greatly determined by what one wants to emphasize.

The definition of what is an evangelical and whether Hart considers himself to be on provides an example of emphasis determining definition and categorization. He defines Evangelicals as though who believe in having a personal relationship with Jesus and having undergone some kind of born again experience. These criteria are rather ambiguous in nature. For if we define these references by saying that an Evangelical is one who believes in Jesus for the forgiveness of one's sins and that one must have personally come to faith in Jesus, then Hart must consider himself to be an Evangelical. My feeling is that Hart doesn't consider himself to be an evangelical because of how his family background stands in contrast with  his current reliance on a confessional faith. But here we should note that the definition of what is an Evangelical is broader than he would like to admit.

I found his distinction between conservatives and Evangelicals to be partially problematic. My conversations with Evangelicals is that they believe that they emphasize The Constitution and the intentions of our nation's founding fathers  as much as they emphasize morality. Part of the problem here lies in the fact that Evangelicals have a religiously inspired mythical view of both The Constitution and the  founding fathers which revolves around an over emphasis on the role of the Christian faith in both the writing of The Constitution and in the lives of the founding fathers.  We should note that non-evangelical political conservatives also seem to hold to a mythical view of The Constitution and its emphasis on individual liberty. For what is missing in the interpretation of many conservatives of the The Constitution is its historical context. That The Constitution was written in response to widespread dissent and Shays Rebellion and its purpose was to create a stronger Federal government that could better respond to insurrections and populism in an effort to protect a status quo that benefited the new American elites, many of whom were involved in writing The Constitution.

Finally, in discussing Evangelicals and politics, I was surprised  by how little significance Hart attributed to the abortion issue. My understanding is that today's Republican Party has, for the most part, taken Evangelicals for granted over the abortion issue.
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Oct 17

To Joe Carter and his blogpost on why evangelicals are so split on whether to vote for Trump. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition.

Certainly, Carter's model of thought has merit. But it isn't the only model of thought we should employ. For without Trump, we still have this nagging binary approach to voting. And though the nomination of Trump has caused great strain on that approach, one of the main reasons for voting for the Republican nominee is the one of the main reasons why many Americans vote for the  Democratic candidates they vote for : they are selecting the not-them candidate. In other words, the reason why many conservatives vote for Republican candidates is because they are not Democratic candidates and vice-versa for nonconservatives. Thus, both evangelicals and many other Americans are voting for the same reason.

Why do we stay fixed on the this binary approach to voting? One reason is that, for multiple reasons, we don't want to or cannot change.  Change requires more energy than normal. In fact, nothing requires energy like change does. And for many, they don't have the energy to put into changing because of multiple reasons.

Another reason for maintaining our voting pattern is because we tend to prefer authoritarianism. And with authoritarianism, sticking to tradition is a primary reason for resisting change. In fact, with authoritarianism, there is a great deal of sensitivity to even hearing about challenges to tradition. That sensitivity causes people to respond with anger and/or in attempts to bully those who are considering breaking with tradition.

Now that authoritarianism can come in two different packages. One package is tailored for individual figures. The other package is made for the group. And the one that is made for the group is a part of tribalism. Tribalism occurs when group loyalty becomes high. Tribalism occurs when group loyalty trumps commitment to principles and morals. And the result of tribalism is the embracing of a moral relativity that says what is right and wrong depends on who does what to whom. That is why many Democrats can criticize Trump for his indiscretions while refusing to hold Bill Clinton to the same standards and vice-versa for many Republicans. With tribalism comes the authoritarianism of the group. The group must not be questioned or there will be wrath and/or bullying to keep people in line.


Those evangelicals who are breaking with Trump to vote for Clinton are still engaging in the same voter approach as many evangelicals, as well as others, who are voting to Trump: they are voting for the lesser of two evils. In fact, evangelicals are no different than many other Americans. They either will not or cannot change from voting for the lesser of two evils, for the not-them candidate. That is the voting tradition that we seem either unwilling or unable to break. And for as long as we continue voting that way, we will be presented with the kind of choices that we have this election year.

Our major political parties know all of this. And so they do not select candidates who are looking to improve things as much as they nominate candidates who qualify as not-them candidates. They give us candidates who are merely different from the candidates from the other party. And such an approach continually sets the bar for the quality of our candidates at a lower and lower level.

In short, we evangelicals are not that different from other Americans in how we vote And it is our inability or refusal to adapt to the new conditions of having a continual choice of horrible candidates provided by our two-party/binary system that is causing our demise. And it is our embracing of authoritarianism, either individual authoritarianism or that which comes with tribalism, that not only prevents us from changing, it makes us see our self-destructive binary approach to voting as a duty to continue. Who would have thought that the land of the free and the home of the brave are actually serving inner tyrants?

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For Oct 5, 2016

Sept 30

To Joe Carter and his blogpost on the tradeoffs of the TPP. This appeared in the Acton blog.

It is unfortunate when Christians allow ideology to interfere with the objective reporting of information. IMO, this might explain Carter did in the article above. Whereas Carter lists the main objections to the TPP to be that of the loss of American jobs and currency manipulation, other objections include the right of multinational corporations to sue governments for loss profits over regulations such as those that raise the minimum wage or protect the environment (see http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/joseph-stiglitz-tpp-1.3515452 ). And when such a corporation sues a government, the case is heard in a tribunal established by the TPP (see https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kill-the-dispute-settlement-language-in-the-trans-pacific-partnership/2015/02/25/ec7705a2-bd1e-11e4-b274-e5209a3bc9a9_story.html?utm_term=.3686f85040de ). That means that the validity of some of our laws will be determined by an outside tribunal rather than by a court whose purpose is to uphold The Constitution. This gives multinational corporations an increased measure of control over any member nation while weakening the national sovereignty of those nations. In addition, another concern Stiglitz voices is that the 6,000 page deal was written in secret.

As for this trade deal spreading employment to those nations where people need jobs. We should note that a lot of the previous offshoring of American jobs performed the same task but was done not with the welfare of the employees of those other nations in mind. It has often been done to increase profits by exploiting workers as they are sometimes underpaid, overworked, and forced to work in unsafe conditions. And when these facts are found, governments are not allowed to sue the same multinational corporations that the TPP empowers to sue the participating governments.

So the question becomes this: Why didn't Carter report these other objections to the TPP seeing that they are made by prominent people? My guess is that 'economic freedom' for Carter has become code for private sector elite privilege over those from their own  and other nations. At least that is a possible explanation for Carter failing to mention those other major objections.

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Oct 1

To Joe Carter and his blogpost that claims that the Protestant faith allows for the most economic freedom. This appeared in the Acton blog.

Don't we have the cart before the horse here? Why are we using economic freedom to validate the Christian faith? Such implies that economic freedom stands over the Christian faith as a judge. In addition, how is it that the Protestant ethic requires the same economic freedom of which Carter is speaking? That kind of economic freedom is most likely the product of 19th and 20th century thinking. I am assuming that the main teachers of the kind of economic freedom Carter supports are Hayek and Friedman, neither of whom were protestant. Hayek, for example was raised a Roman Catholic but claimed that he was an agnostic. Friedman pretty much rejected religion. The Protestant ethic precedes both of them by at least a few centuries--that is unless one asserts that the Protestant ethic is scripturally sound.

But what could be said about Carter using the Christian faith to validate a favorite ideology is a serious flaw for all of us. That is because we all have our own pet ideologies and we would like to believe that our pet ideologies are superior to all other ideologies. And, at least, most of us have, from time to time, done what Carter is doing here: that is placing a favorite ideology above the Scriptures. So if we were to rebuke him, we need to acknowledge that our rebuke also applies to ourselves.

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To Abel Upshur and his blogpost about how because the federal government is “the creature of the States,” the federal government’s power should be limited by the states that created it, not The Constitution. This appears in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

I don't know how we can seriously read about The Constitution and the change in the government which it produced without first mentioning the context in which The Constitution was written. To say that our federal government is a creature of the states forgets that it wasn't any official meeting of the states through their representatives that produced the document even though a vast majority of the signers of The Constitution were or had served in the Continental Congress (see http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_founding_fathers_overview.html  ). Thus, some of the signers of The Constitution were private citizens at the time of the signing. The actual role of the states in the creation of the government specified by The Constitution was to accept or reject the document and thus the kind of government it created.

However, what created the federal government consisted of a combination of those who participated in the debates, discussions, and the writing of The Constitution and the historical events that moved these men to write the document. And the events that so moved these men consisted of dissent and Shays Rebellion.

As for the states, we might want to note the following line from Federalist 10 that says:

Hence, it clearly appears, that the same advantage which a republic has over a democracy, in controlling the effects of faction, is enjoyed by a large over a small republic, is enjoyed by the Union over the States composing it.

Thus, if one prefers a republic to the kind of democracy which was the scorn of many of the signers of The Constitution, then one must give significant precedence to the union over the states and thus to the federal government over the state governments.

BTW, we might want to note some of the proposals that the writers of The Constitution tried to block:

A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property

In essence, the government created by The Constitution was meant to prevent sought after changes in the status quo by giving the power required by the federal government to prevent those changes . And that should not surprise us because most of those who participated in the creation of The Constitution were elites from the public and private sectors.


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To Bruce Ashford and his blogpost on what principles we should have to be a Christian witness in a changing America. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition website

How many of these the-sky-is-falling," politically apocalyptic post Obergefell articles must we Christians endure? As in all fear-mongering communiques, the intent is to increase our tribal instincts in order to protect ourselves from others. But what people don't understand about tribalism is that its basic ethic is to define what is right and wrong by who does what to whom. Such makes us blind to our own faults.

Let's start with the beginning of the article. Ashford writes the following:

The past decade has made one thing clear to many evangelicals: the social, cultural, and political ground is shifting beneath them. We’re not “winning the day” with our vision of the good life. Although we’ve seen incremental progress on the pro-life issue, we’re experiencing consistent regression on other important issues, such as religious liberty, human dignity, gender and sexuality, and free speech. And many of us have given little attention to opposing racial injustice.

As we’re marginalized in this uncertain day, the Old Testament offers important lessons for us.

If we work backwards, we see that now we are being marginalized and then there is the concern for our past apathy to racial injustice. Do we see the unflattering association there? When we weren't marginalized, we were apathetic to racial injustice just as some are today. But beyond that, there is also another unfortunate pairing: religious liberty is associated with gender and sexuality and free speech. Well, who was marginalized before gender, meaning gender identity, sexuality, meaning sexual orientation, and free speech? See, the truth is hidden by obscurity. Religious liberty has recently come to mean the right of religiously conservative Christians to discriminate against the LGBT community in response to the Obergefell decision. Might we ask who was being marginalized when we were winning the day on that issue? Was it not homosexuals with some of them seeing the need to live their orientations underground? And so we fought against their rights and equality tooth-and-nail with the belief that our society is not big enough to recognize their rights along with ours. And so we targeted them for marginalization.

Now of course the article talks about much more than the-sky-is-falling apocalyptic scene.  And basically, it calls us to isolate ourselves from our neighbors. For when it calls almost every political ideology available to the American public an idol, it calls on us to withdraw from them. In reality, these ideologies either never have been idols or do not have to be treated as idols. That is because it is the individual who makes these ideologies into idols, not the ideologies themselves. It is only when we embrace ideological tribalism that we make these ideologies into false gods. Thus, we don't have to avoid them, we just have to keep them in perspective.

One of the most important questions we Christians must ask ourselves when it comes to our political involvement in the world is this: How are we to share society with others? Are we to share society in ways that give us a superior place so we can impose our religious values on others? Or, are we to share society with others as equals so that we work together to ensure that all of us have an equal place in society? It seems that the former option is more inviting to religiously conservative Christians even though Jesus warns us against "lording it over" others.

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For August 24, 2016

Aug 17

To Bruce Ashford and his blogpost review of Os Guinness’s new book on how Modernity provides the biggest threat to Christianity and Western Civilization. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition website.

I have respect for Guinness but also feel free to disagree with him. I find that the greatest threat to Christianity is not modernity, in which he includes both modernism and post modernism, itself, it is how we interact with it. For in interacting with modernity, we need to distinguish that from which we can learn from that which we must reject. To deny that we have stuff to learn from Modernity puts us Christians at risk for having the arrogance Martin Luther King Jr. saw in the West during the Vietnam War (see  http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2564.htm  ):

The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

We should remember or learn how Christians treated each other before Modernity. We must know about how Christians persecuted each other, even to the point of death, and how they treated Jews. In addition, Christians weren't all that Christian toward the indigenous people they discovered when enlarging their Western empires. Even with the beginning of our own nation, many Christians persecuted each other and some defended slavery and/or owned slaves as well as participated in the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans. Western Christianity was basically racist and gives evidence of still being that way today. And Modernity has tempered that and has thus has induced some amnesia as evidenced by how we look at the sectarian violence between Muslims today.

Yes, we need to be alert to how Modernity can cause us to compromise our faith. At the same time, we must understand how Modernity has contributed to the Church in tempering the traits that we so easily condemn in others.

Now if I was Guinness, I wouldn't label Modernity as being the biggest threat to Christianity. That is because of the largest threats Christianity faced before Modernity which still exist today. Those threats are the love of wealth and tribalism. Both of these threats cause us Christians to compromise the faith regardless of the time period in which we live. Both the love of wealth and tribalism provide the biggest threat to Christianity because both so strongly challenge our priorities. And by challenging our priorities, they can cause us either to self-destruct or give into external pressure such as the pressures brought to us by Modernity. His apparent concern for both Christianity and Western Civilization indicates that what Guinness seems to be most leery of are changes in the status quo which are not always as much a threat to Christianity as they are to Western Civilization.
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Aug 18

To Denny Burk and his blogpost citing another article on how our children could be taken away from us over their personal transgender issues. This appeared in Denny Burk’s blog.

I think that the quoted paragraph is an overreaction. There is nothing that indicates the taking away of children over transgender issues. Yes, the medical community supports it, you find examples of that support on the Mayo Clinic website. But such provides and indicator for the public's reaction to those who feel not at home in their gender.

Let's face it, the pendulum has swung so hard in favor of those who hold to biblical values and views of gender that all we are seeing now is a reversal in the swing of that pendulum. And if we are anticipating drastic outcomes from that change in direction, perhaps that is an indicator that we pushed the pendulum too hard and far in our preferred direction.

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Aug 20

To Pat Buchanan and his blogpost on how America is committing suicide. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

There are a number of points that are wrong with Buchanan's article. To start off with, he gives incomplete tax information. Though the statistics he cites are correct, he neglects to provide data on the income for the groups he is comparing. According to the same table of information he uses to quote the tax burden being paid by the top 1% vs the bottom 50%, the income gap is more telling of the story here. An example can be found here in comparing the adjusted gross income per return for the two groups while noting that the number of returns used do not include dependent filers. The average adjusted gross income for those in the bottom 50% for 2013  was $15,013 while the average adjusted gross income for those in the top 1% is $1,243,406. We should also note that while there were approximately 1.4 million returns from those from the 1% bracket, there were approximately 69.2 million returns for the bottom 50%. Here we should note that 19% of the adjusted gross income went to that approximate 1.4 million people while only around 11% of the adjusted gross income went to the bottom 50%, or approximately 6.92 million, of returns (see http://taxfoundation.org/article/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2015-update for source).

But what isn't mentioned at all by Mr Buchanan was the amount of federal assistance or money spent on polices  that benefited the corporations owned by the top 1%. Yes, Mr. Buchanan has a legitimate concern over the growing Federal debt; we should all share his concern. But what are the main causes for this debt? The statistics cited by Mr. Buchanan does not paint an adequate picture of the problem.

Having discussed that, Mr. Buchanan's expressed concern for the survival of the purity of Western Civilization while seeming to speak negatively of diversity and equality does not paint a flattering picture of his view. His view is one that seems to relish a past that lacked self-awareness. Yes, there is a conflict between a group of Trump supporters who share Mr. Buchanan's concern for the survival of the purity of Western Civilization and the rest of the world. Trump's supporters seem to share at least some of Buchanan's picture that past Civilization, a picture which seems to have been taken from the past and has become a focal point of their identity. But having that as the center of their identity puts them at conflict with changes that come from people trying to escape horrendous situations in their home countries. In other words, Trump's supporters are experiencing a problem that has occurred before. Here, we should speculate on how Buchanan would portray America's past if he was a Native American.

We should also note that like Buchanan's treasured past, his present lacks self-awareness as well. All one needs to do to verify this is to  look at the statistics on nations from which the most illegal immigrants come. With each nation, significant ties to the US can be found. from coups to trade agreements.

Mr. Buchanan's final words are about the eventual death of democracy in every nation. According to what he quotes from john Adams, this death is self-inflicted. Perhaps we could console Mr. Buchanan by telling him that democracy is not alone in terms of dying; all Empires eventually collapse as well.
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Aug 23

To Tim Keller, Russell Moore, and Kevin DeYoung and their blogpost discussion on how to speak to our culture about sex. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition website.

Though Keller's statements on attacking narratives has significant merit and seems to be the best approach, all of it bears a similarity to Mitt Romney's speeches against Donald Trump in trying to reach those rebelling against an established order by supporting Trump. Though what Romney said about Trump was true, he we ineffectual because he didn't acknowledge the failures of his own group as he is a member of the establishment.

Likewise, though much of what was said, in particular what Keller said has merit, there is no acknowledgement  of the attempts by many Christians to do more than just speak about sex; we've tried to control how others have acted sexually and lived with partners. Of course some controls are necessary. But when saying that, many of us have, with animosity, tried to associate those in the LGBT community with those provide real threats to the community.

In speaking to people about sex, I think we Christians must acknowledge our failures in terms of how we have tried to control others and then we can apply what was said in the video. 



 

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For May 4, 2016

Just to point out a trend that has been growing on the Conservative blogs I've been visiting. There is a tendency among religiously conservative Christian blogs to block more comments than they have before. There are also several religiously conservative blogs that apply no blocks at all. 

 April 27

To Bruce Ashford and his blogpost about a Jewish Intellectual who predicted the Social Collapse of America. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition.

Whenever I read articles like the one above, I try to figure out what kind of society have we collapsed from. We tend to glorify the past because of the degree of influence Christianity had on it, but much of what we see today is the result of people waking up and rejecting the injustices of yesteryear.

No doubt, many of my fellow religiously conservative Christians believe that our society has collapsed because of its changing sexual mores. But what kind of society can claim to be superior to others because of its sexual mores while conducting ethnic cleansing against one race and subjugating yet another? And all of that was on our own continent. We then ventured of to dominating other peoples and races from other continents and we did that to benefit ourselves.

The differences that exist between the societal high life of yesteryear and today's "social collapse" depends on the contexts in which one speaks. Suppose the context is economics. Then, when more of America could be seen as being more like the Capitol, the Capitol from the movie The Hunger Games that is, our society was viewed as having risen or in the process of rising. But when more of America is living like those in the districts in that movie did, then we say we were collapsing. Or when sexual mores are the context for measuring the quality of a society, then when those whose orientation was different from most people were marginalized, then society was described as being better than it is today. 

When we consider America's past, when did America really center itself on God? After all, loving God is not just measured by our own claims of devotion to God themselves, but by our deeds too. And according to the history of our deeds and how we have treated those who were different, it seems that we never really made faith and the Christian religion the center of American life and thus our society had little height, if any at all, to collapse from.

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April 28

To George Stanciu and his blogpost on New England and how democracy has fallen there and elsewhere. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.


There are several parts of this article which I like. Such as when Stannic writes:

New England democracy, as observed by Tocqueville in the early 1830s, could not remained unchanged, for Modernity rests upon three connected legs—democracy, capitalism, and science and technology; the latter two legs changed the former.

it reminded me of something Martin Luther King said when speaking against the Vietnam War:

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

To combine what is said, we need a combination of values and proper structure to be self-governing. And that no structure is immune to all sets of values a society could adopt--though the popular notion of freedom denies this. But after that, I have problems with some of what is written.

The first of Stanciu's main concerns is the degree of  reliance on centralized power, and we should expect as much from an anarchist. The problem, especially as he looks at our democracy through the eyes of de Tocqueville, is that society is tremendously complex and interdependent. And the more interdependence that exists because of the population of individual communities, the number of communities that exist in towns and cities, the number of towns and cities that exist in states, the number of states that exist in the union, and the kind of economy that fosters increasing degrees of coupling, 'coupling is a computer science term that measures how dependent different parts of computer code are on each other, the more power federal government needs to be to protect Democracy. Here I should add is that what wasn't apparent to me is whether Stanciu sees Democracy as a state of being for society where all groups share a common society as equals. That kind of Democracy requires that both government and the people themselves be more involved in what goes on in the nation including in communities. That is because in an inderpendent society, what one part of the nation does affects another. 

Another of Stanciu's objections is that the more intrusive government is on our personal lives, the less mature we become. And the less mature we become the more dependent we become. And the more dependent we become, the less we act to maintain our democracy. The problem here is what was stated in the previous paragraph of this comment. The more interdependent life becomes in our society, the more our decisions affect others. And the more our decisions affect others, the greater call exists for government, whetever the level, to intervene. And that includes seatbelt laws.

Rather than looking at the centralization of government power or the intrusiveness of government decisions as being the reason why we have lost a large part of our democracy here, I would add a different factor to what was stated above about  Capitalism and technology, or what King called a thing-oriented society, as being the reason why we have lost a large part of our democracy. That other factor is tribalism. 

Tribalism isn't the mere belonging to a group. Rather, it deals with the degree of loyalty one has for any group one belongs to. The greater degree of loyalty one has for one's group, the less commitment one shows to principles and morals. Thus, what is right and wrong is determined by who does what to whom.

So why would group loyalty be a problem for Democracy? Because above all, Democracy is a state of being for a society where all groups share society as equals. Thus, Democracy is a commitment to the principle of equality for others as well as oneself.

But how would what has been said here apply to the lack of participation Stanciu notes in New England. Certainly, in a thing-oriented society, people are to occupied with affluence or the quest for it to care about being self-governed. So they vote for those leaders who will make decisions that will maintain or give them more opportunity to acquire more things. As for tribalism, we can look at that as form of group authoritarianism. And as with all authoritarianism, those who live under it either volunteer or are forced to depend on strong leaders. And here we should note how divided American society is and what can of Presidential candidates are being produced by those divisions.

Living in a thing-oriented society many of whose groups ascribe to tribalism seems to be a better explanation for what Stanciu has noticed about the decline in democratic participation in New England and elsewhere than the observations of de Tocqueville who made those observations at a different economic, political, technological time than what exists today.

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April 29

To Eric’s April 26 comments to me about his view of Marxism and the Communist Manifesto This was part of the discussion on the article on the future of reading. Previous response to Eric were not recorded by me and were blocked by the Imaginative Conservative website.

Eric,
This is my second attempt to answer your last note. Your comment that what was seen in Lenin is what happened in all Communist regimes first is not true and second assumes that Communism is the only expression of Marxism.

First, let's look at what is called Communism. It was originally call Bolshevism because it was Bolsheviks who were led by Lenin and who seized control of Russia. There was ample dissent and criticism of Lenin as failing to act as a Marxist. And if that is the case, then one can not lay at the feet of Marx the guilt of Lenin. The same could be said of any revolution that took the Communist label but failed to follow Marx. Thus, one could not blame the Communist Manifesto for the atrocities committed in the name of Marxism. In addition, one would have to read the Communist Manifesto as well as other works of Marx to realize be able to judge whether Lenin and others were actually Marxist in their actions.

Additional support to what was just written comes form the work of Orlando Figes who stated that Lenin's view of what it means to be a strong leader did not come from Marx, but from Russian literature and that that literature was not based on Marx. In addition, we might want to note the cultural influence of that the Tsarist regimes had on Russian and on Lenin. In many cases, revolutions resulted in slightly altered forms of the regimes that were overthrown.

To answer your previous note, my question about whether you read the Communist Manifesto was  not in any way an attempt to dictate terms. It was a simple question. For how can one adequately analyze a document they have not read?

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April 30

To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost consisting of a video clip of a person defining democratic socialism as a dictatorship of 50.1% of the people. This appeared in Heidelblog.

Being a socialist myself, I find it frustrating to hear fellow American believers trying to explain Socialism because they never go to the original sources and this true of Matt Kibbe who is the person speaking in the video. For though he went back to the original sources to find the term 'proletariat dictatorship,' he didn't go back to the original sources to find its meaning.

Proletariat dictatorship means control by the workers. But the workers making the decisions were elected by their peers to discuss and make decisions using democratic processes. So outside of the word 'dictatorship,' how different such a concept of a 'proletariat dictatorship'  from a representative democracy? After all, don't we elect officials  by majority vote, except for the President who must win a majority of electoral votes as long as that majority exceeds a certain number? And don't those officials make binding decisions for the rest of us based on some kind of majority vote?

Well, there is a difference and that difference has to do with the demographics of the elected governing officials. For though we are we well represented by location with Representatives and Senators, we are not represented by vocation in our gov't. Rather, 3 groups of people make up the vast majority of our Representatives and Senators. They are professional public servants, lawyers, and business people. That means that the vast majority of vocations are not represented in the government. 

Now if Kibbe bothered to read more than just about the term 'proletariat dictatorship' and read more sources than just one or two documents from Marx and Engels, he could have better described what a proletariat dictatorship was. It was, and to its fault, a partial democracy, just like the kinds of democratic systems Socialists were protesting were also partial democracies called bourgeoisie democracies. Should note that the latter kind of democracies were defended by people like James Madison because he believed that power should rest in the hands of those with wealth. For just as Marx favored proletariat rule over a nation using democratic processes, so others support a bourgeoisie rule over a nation using  democratic processes. Others, like Lenin, favored using a bourgeoisie dictatorship. BTW, this was Rosa Luxemburg's assessment of Lenin's ruling style because Lenin was used a bourgeois model of government. This is evident by the fact that  decisions were made by a small group of elite leaders who were picked by Lenin. Btw, should note that Lenin abolished both the soviets and the Russian Constituent Assembly. 

So again, I find that my fellow believers in Christ, either through gross negligence or willful intention, have failed to even attempt to provide a fair definition of Socialism and have instead been opportunistically selective in how they have it defined. I hope you understand the dissonance you cause when you pass on such inept definitions while claiming to be faithful teacher of the Reformed Faith. If only you and Kibbe would have been honest in acknowledging your lack of knowledge about Socialism when trying to define it, then, though your material would be wrong, it would be honest and thus not merit any significant criticism. An example of such honesty can be found in a John Piper blogpost on Socialism (see http://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/how-should-christians-think-about-socialism ).

Finally, we should note that Bernie Sanders is not a socialist. Rather, he is an FDR new dealer. Though we agree with some of his individual proposed ideas and programs, he offers little in terms of actual structural changes to our political structure. But at least he is talking about the corrosive effects that money has on our political and economic systems.

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To Joseph Sunde and his blogpost on how theologians need to learn about economics. This appeared in the Acton blog.

I agree that theologians should learn economics. But the question becomes from whom should they learn because not all higher degrees will provide an adequate education in economics. 

As I was talking to someone who was protesting our May Day celebration, we talked about workplace democracy, something we both agreed on but was something he was not aware that such was tied to Socialism. His comment was that though workplace democracy is good, workers need to learn from those having MBAs because they have a lot to teach. I responded by asking about what they know. Their education might have helped learn how to tweak the system, but did it teach them to be able to criticize the system from the outside?

This is the problem with certain degrees. People learn to become technicians, but they remain uninformed about how the system they have expertise in interacts with the rest of the world. The result is that people start to believe that the world must be formed around the system they understand rather than that one must be able to see how the system they understand might possibly have to change because of other concerns that exist in the world.

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To Joe Carter and his blogpost listing 5 reasons why Millennials should prefer Capitalism. This appeared in the Acton Blog.

A valid point that Carter makes here is to say that there are different forms of Capitalism. But he fails to mention that there are also several kinds of Socialism and not all Socialists would agree with each kind,

Mais, c'est la vie, it is time to examine his reasons. We will not respond to reasons #2 and #3 because they are insignificant. Reason #1, Capitalism makes the world cleaner and less violent. That might be true if we don't include the increasing number of dead zones in the ocean, the increasing amount of greenhouse gas emissions, the destruction of Appalachia from the use of Mountain Top Removal, or China's environmental problems and that is just to name a few problems. 

Does Capitalism make the world less violent with fewer wars? His claim that there are fewer wars is actually based on the number of deaths from battles (see http://blog.acton.org/archives/78866-is-capitalism-killing-war.html ) . And though there are fewers deaths from battles, when we look at the details as to why, rather than to assume that Capitalism is the reason, we find the statement to be very misleading. Here we should note that the development of WMDs and the lessons learned from the two World Wars and how tens of millions of people were killed in each war was not even considered as factors in reducing the number of deaths from battle. Before our weapons became as powerful as they are now, there was less reluctance to start wars. In addition, comparing deaths today when Mutually Assured Destruction kept the two main antagonists from declaring war on each other with WW II where the use of no weapons were barred makes the two time periods is faulty. 

In addition, let's count how the number of nations where we have attacked with any kind of forces including drones since the year 2000. We have invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. We have sponsored the coup in Libya and possibly in Honduras. We conduct or have conducted drone warfare in Pakistan and Yemen. And we have been bombing Syria. And all of that is what is happening in the Middle East and parts of Central Asia.

The magazine The Nation reported in 2015 that we carried out 647 military operations in Africa during the previous year (see http://www.thenation.com/article/us-carried-out-674-military-operations-africa-last-year-did-you-hear-about-any-them/ ). And in 2014, the same magazine reported that we are conduct military operations in 134 countries. And perhaps the reason why this isn't real to us and that the number of casualties from battles is not comparable to the past is because of the great disparity between our forces and the forces of the countries we are attacking. It isn't that we have fewer wars or conflicts, it is that the number of deaths for each conflict is much lower than what was seen during WW II and that lower number of deaths has nothing to do with Capitalism.

Skipping reasons #2 and #3 because they are insignificant, we come to Reason #4. There, Carter claims that Capitalism is the most moral system. But what kind of Capitalism is he talking about and what systems did he compare Capitalism to? He never says in that part of his article. However, we should note that despite claims that Capitalism is reducing extreme poverty, the greatest alleviation of poverty is occurring in China which is participating in the Global Economy but could hardly be called a Capitalist country. Certainly it has been affected by Capitalism because of the Global Economy, but, again, it is hardly a Capitalist country.

But we should also note that Capitalism is overseeing an ever increasing wealth disparity throughout much of the world, especially in the US. We should note that along with the alleviation of extreme poverty has come the prevalence of sweatshop, trafficked, and even slave labor along with present environmental problems and an ominous environmental future. We should also note that trade agreements cause democratic nations to lose national sovereignty to foreign investors.

But finally, we should note that the freedom emphasized by Capitalism starts to become at odds with the self-rule freedom that comes with democracies. For the less power a government has to monitor and control businesses, the less control a democratic government has in doing the same. In addition, the new Global Economy that is based on free trade and markets is putting nations, especially less developed ones into an economic class system as Free Trade prevents nations from using protectionism to develop the industries and economic sectors of their choice.

Finally, for reason #5 on how Millennials would prefer Capitalism anyway, ask college graduates about their feelings toward the loans they can't repay because there are not enough well paying jobs available after graduation. In fact, ask Millennials about how they feel about pollution that seeps into our food, air, and water or fraudulently foreclosed on homes or used the global economy to lower the pay, benefits and labor rights of workers in the US or the other complaints listed in The Declaration Of The Occupation Of New York City as prepared by Occupy Wall Street (see http://www.nationofchange.org/declaration-occupation-new-york-city-1317784408 ). All of those grievances were the product of American Capitalism. Is that what Millennials want?

Of course, the easy out for Carter is that he could blame all of the ill-effects we see today on forms of Capitalism he doesn't prefer. But he provides no guidelines for determining which forms of Capitalism are responsible for the benefits he's cited. 

In the end, his article here is an attempt at manipulating people into supporting what he supports.