Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For January 9, 2019

Jan 7

To Bradley Birzer and his article on Christian Humanism. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative Blog.

It seems that many of us religiously conservative Christians are forever searching for religious justifications for controlling society. This search is made evident here in the following quote:

Fourth, Christians (Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant)—in alliance with believing Jews and even virtuous pagans—must sanctify the world through the Grace of God. For men of good will to fight amongst themselves squanders precious time and resources, and it leaves the field to the Enemy.

We should remember that Western Civilization revolved around Caucasians. Thus any insistence on continuing the Western Civilization from the past in a multicultural and diverse world cannot escape racism. That doesn't mean that we can't maintain some parts of Western Civilization. It does mean that trying to continue the Western Civilization from the past either in its entirety or even most of it includes a call to promote racism.

We are not called to sanctify the world, we are called to preach the Gospel. We are also called to seek justice but unlike preaching the Gospel, our seeking for justice is most likely to be  done in partnership with unbelievers in society and that is where we need new Christian scholarship.
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Jan 8

To Patrick Oetting and his blogpost that praises the free market and condemns tariffs such as Trump’s tariffs. This appeared in the Acton blog.

The above uses Trump's tariffs to support its claims against tariffs. But there is a problem with that approach. The problem being  that tariffs can apply varying rates and thus making widespread conclusions based on one set of tariffs does not do the subject justice. In addition, the above evaluation of tariffs is based on immediate rather than long-range consequences. Thus a snapshot approach to examining tariffs is the approach used above to examine tariffs.

Finally, the claims made for free trade do not coincide with what we are seeing in today's world. Neoliberal capitalism has ushered in a stronger free trade than the previous form of capitalism. And yet, wealth disparity is growing within many nations so that even the IMF has listed detriments to neoliberalism. We might also note that the notion of comparative advantage can be used to keep a nation's economy in a global system.

Historically speaking, our nation employed tariffs from its beginning up to and through FDR's presidency. The long-term results of that use of tariffs was that America's industries were given ample opportunities to catch up and even surpass their global competitors.

Now the historical success of past approaches to tariffs implies neither that tariffs are always necessary nor that regardless of their rates, that tariffs always work. However, the historical success of past tariffs clearly shows that they can benefit the whole economy of a nation and thus articles that claim that tariffs always hurt the economy, like the above article, are easily proven to be wrong.

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For March 28, 2018

March 23

To John Horvat and his blogpost on a Christian approach to the tariff issue. In his article, Horvat sees the tariff issue as being argued over by two groups: those who promote free trade with the fewest possible restraints vs those who want to control trade according to how it impacts culture. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

Though Horvat makes a useful distinction between the economics of those who favor as much free trade as possible vs those who want to check economics at the door of culture, he misses a basic point about economics. That being that those who favor more and more unrestricted free trade are not approaching the subject as economists; instead, their only interest here is in commerce. For commerce is defined as (see  http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/commerce.html  ):

Exchange of goods or services for money or in kind, usually on a scale large enough to require transportation from place to place or across city, state, or national boundaries.

On the other hand, economics is defined as (see  https://www.britannica.com/topic/economics   ):

[the] social science that seeks to analyze and describe the production, distribution, and consumption of wealth.

What is missing from the free trade perspective is the paying of attention to production. For production involves workers and then the society and the culture that depends on those workers. Production also involves the environmental impact of production as well. What the advocates of free trade focus on are the immediate returns from the exchange of goods. This feeds the embracing of the ethic that calls for maximizing profits. And the maximizing profits ethic focuses first on the welfare of the owners. A secondary focus is paid to the consumers but only to the extent that it serves the owners. For the maximizing profits ethic is a cannibalizing ethic that devours all other ethical standards and values. For all other standards and values must be sacrificed when one makes one's goal the creation of as much profit as possible.

The emphasis on maximizing profits makes Horvat's suggestion of Natural Protectionism DOA. For Natural Protectionism is nothing more than Adam Smith's teaching on the Invisible Hand, if memory serves. So once owners, and then consumers after them, embrace the maximizing profits ethics, concern for local preferences is easily sacrificed just as all other standards and values are to serve the maximizing of profits.

Aside from  what has just been noted above, Horvat's description of those who want to at least somewhat control economics because of its impact on culture is a portrayal of those who want democracy to control economics, which includes commerce.

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To Dan Hugger and his blogpost on self-deceit, utopian ideologies, and Communism. This appeared in the Acton blog.

Not knowing how the the term Communism is being used above, I will offer the following points.

First, Communism/Socialism is not a monolith. And note that not all Socialists have utopian expectations. How can that be? It is possible because not all who follow Marx fully agree with him or interpret him the same way.

Second, those who claim that their pet political-economic system is the best of all time and cannot improved on or be beat by another system have already implied that they hold to a utopia of their own. Unlike Marx's utopia, their utopia is a relative one as its results are compared with the results of other systems. Thus, those who believe that free markets are the all time best way of doing commerce, note I wrote 'commerce,' not 'economics,' and that they cannot be improved on have already implied that we have entered a utopia of sorts. And then what was said above about utopian ideologies applies to systems that are promoted as producing relative utopias.

Third, conservatives who portray the Communism/Socialism practiced in the Soviet Union, Red China, Cuba, etc. as the only form of Communism/Socialism that exists are either being disingenuous or have deliberately limited their reading about Communism/Socialism to sources that are wholly antagonistic to Marx and Marxism. That means that they are being either deliberately deceitful or they are speaking out of ignorance. Those who have never read Marx and the writings of his various followers are free to say what they want to about Marxism, they are just unqualified to do so.

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March 24

To Joe Carter with his blogpost that cites Samuel Gregg’s attempt to make a patriotic case for free trade. This appeared in the Acton blog.

Whether a patriotic case can be made for free trade depends on what we identify as being American and thus what we call patriotic. According to the cited article by Samuel Gregg (see http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/03/21211/  ), embracing free trade is good for commerce, allows America to be more innovating, and forces America to be more flexible and adaptable. All of that goes into what Gregg, and Carter, think of as making America great and it is that search for America's greatness that Gregg calls patriotic.

But there are problems with what free trade apologists advocate. For one thing, and Gregg's article provides an example for this,  free trade apologists fail to give America's past protectionist policies their due. Yes, there were trade-offs with those policies, but those policies allowed America to develop its own industries survive foreign competition. For free trade allows foreign nations with more developed industries to compete in a developing nation with domestic industries and those domestic industries often have less chance to survive (see  https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/ha-joon-chang-protectionism-the-truth-is-on-a-10-bill-5334137.html  ), Thus free trade can partially enforce an economic caste system as more developed nations are found 'kicking away the ladder' of protectionism from developing nations (see  http://www.paecon.net/PAEtexts/Chang1.htm ).

In addition, as Gregg sees free trade calling on workers to be more 'adaptable and plan for the future more carefully, workers are more likely to see the work place as being more volatile as the continual switching from job to job becomes the norm. This puts many American workers in a bind for not only must they make enough to pay for immediate expenses, they are also expected to prepare for sizable fuure expenses such as college education for their children and their own retirement. In the meantime, those who benefit most from the free trade that is meant to provide lower costs for the consumer are benefiting the most from the deal. This might serve as a partial explanation for why America has seen a steady increase in wealth disparity over the past few decades. All of that shows that free trade apologists are more concerned with a tunnel view of commerce as opposed to the wide-angle picture that is provided by the discipline of economics. For economics is not only concerned with  commerce, but it is concerned with production as well.

Also, those who define America by its performance in commerce might have grounds for wrapping the flag around free trade. But those who place a high value on democracy cannot. For free trade continually severs business's  accountability to the government. And when that government is a working democracy, then we find that free trade makes businesses less responsive to democracy.

Finally, those who condemn "Communism" for the unintended consequences of its quest for utopia while promoting free trade for all nations in all circumstances are themselves promoting their own utopia. In reality, both free trade and protectionism are human models of thought with neither one being neither a monolith nor perfect. Free trade and protectionism stand on opposing poles on the same continuum. And varying degrees of each one works at different times for different nations. Those who believe otherwise are the ones who show themselves to be least flexible and adaptable.

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March 27

To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost that uses the myth of a frog that refuses to leave a pot of slowly boiling water with the scientific consensus on climate change. This appeared in the Heidelblog.

What I learned from this article is that frogs who reside in slowly boiling water can still demonstrate more intelligence than some humans. I also learned that theologians struggle with logic. Take the comparison of the past accepted truth that earth was the center of the universe and that science is settled on climate change used in order to give an example of how a once accepted truth was exposed as being false. Besides the fact that the latter is stated too ambiguously to make a legitimate comparison, the data on which each accepted truth is based is significantly different in terms of sources and amount of data. Such differences makes the comparison invalid for the point being made.

However, the association of religiously conservative Christianity with a rejection of the warnings about climate change does harm the reputation of the Gospel to both political non-conservatives and even some political conservatives. And considering that businesses stand to lose profits when acting on the available scientific consensus on climate change, we should remember the times in Church history when the dominant branch of the Church sided with wealth and power during pre-revolutionary times of nations like France, Russia, and Spain. That is because when their respective revolutions came, not only was the reputation of the Gospel harmed, Christians suffered unnecessary persecution for the alliance.

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For August 2, 2017

July 31

To Joe Carter and his blogpost lamenting the fact that our society’s system is turning out more and more of what he calls Bolsheviks. The appeared on the Acton blog.

There are a few errors here. As much as Carter did well to mention the Bolsheviks, it still seems that, to him, all Socialists are Bolsheviks.  Here, Carter would do well to take out a student loan to study history. For the Bolsheviks were not the only Socialists in Russia. There were the Mensheviks as well. One of the major differences between the two groups is that the Bolsheviks insisted on immediate revolution while the Mensheviks were stagists. They wanted Socialism to become the system over a period of time because they felt that the people were not ready at the time. And mentioning the Mensheviks does not include the criticisms Lenin faced from fellow Socialists outside of Russia.,

Second, trying prove that a system works for a group by citing a single example is no proof at all. We could just as well cite an example of  another individual and, by the same logic Carter uses, prove that the Carter's free market for education is a house of horrors for all who enter.

Third, there is Carter's belief in the free market because it empowers individuals. Yes, the free market does empower individuals. But we should note that not all individuals are empowered the same. And many of those who are empowered discover that money is the source of even more power. Anyone who has studied business knows that power and money are not the same. When Martin Luther King Jr. was alive, he was a very powerful, influential, man; but he had no government authority. As for today, there are sources that tell us that we live in an oligarchy, not a Democracy. Now it isn't that all oligarchs have governmental positions, But because their wealth buys influence, these Oligarchs are powerful because  they can use their wealth to control the decisions made by our elected officials

Fourth, if we have a right to life, as stipulated in the Declaration Of Independence, then the free market does owe us some things that are necessary to survival if we are choosing to employ it as our economic system. What is the value in saying we have a right to life if our economic system denies us the means to make a living? And why are we denied opportunities to make a living? It is because the free market saw that offshoring jobs was more financially rewarding to a given company than paying workers here livable wages. And the same principle applies when we see the results of technological unemployment on the opportunities people had to make a living. For while technology has increased output, it has hurt the workers who are being replaced with machines. Soon a glut of people seeking certain kinds of jobs forms and there are not enough available jobs that pay liveable wages. And that leaves us with being guaranteed the right to life while not having sufficient opportunities at making a living.

Finally, Carter's free markets might appear preferable to control of the markets by those running the Soviet Union. But being told that those are our only two choices is a false dichotomy.What free markets also impose are laws and regulations that emanate from any working, democratic representative government. Such governments actually succeed at representing the people. With such governments and Carter's free markets is a contest between the Free Markets vs  the Rest Of The People. And Free Markets make the voice of the people mute.

Again, Carter does need to further his education before writing what he does about free markets and socialism.


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To Joesph Pearce and his blogpost that tries to explain why progressives “hate” the West. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative Blog

If we are going to include the conquests of Spain, then the West represents a multitude of global empires. Of course, by empires what should be included is the conquests of different lands and the subjugation of people of different races who were not deemed worthy to rule themselves. With at least one of those empires was the ethnic cleansing of the land of its indigenous population. And with many of those empires came the enslaving of people based on racial or even ethnic lines.

While Pearce wants to focus on cultural values, political and economic structures and wants to represent those structures as the hope and aspirations of humankind, we should note that the Western empires worked against those political and economic structures existing in foreign lands and forced its cultural values on people as if they had nothing to teach.

Even today, the West forces its economic structures on other nations, and instead of conquering other nations by invasion, it uses proxy leaders who  deny people their rights. One only needs to consider the US interventions after WW II. Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Brazil in the 1960s, Vietnam and prohibiting the implementation of the Geneva Accords from the 1950s to the 1970s, Chilé in 1973, Latin America in the 1980s and the resulting creation of MS-13, Haiti in the 1990s, and I could go on. And that doesn't include support for Israel's Occupation against the Palestinians. And, of course, that doesn't include the enslavement of Blacks and the following Jim Crow era in America itself. And again, we could go on. The current refugee crisis that is faced by Western nations started with the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

If one wants an adequate picture of the West and of Capitalism, then one needs to focus on the Capitol from the Hunger Games movie series. Sure, the Capitol looked great from the inside, but its image becomes tarnished once one visits the districts. And that is the case the West and its capitalism.

We shouldn't be surprised at Pearce's perception of the West. it often mimics people's perception of their own nation. For the people of many nations have perceived themselves with their culture and so forth as being superior to all others. And with that perception of superiority comes the entitlement to rule over others for their sake. To Pearce and his love for his West, one should only say that believing that one is special is normal. And that the ability to step outside of one's own group to view one's own group is very difficult to obtain.
And of course, none of the above includes the fact that progressives have been very busy in participating in the crimes of the West. One only needs to look at the wars and interventions pursued by "progressive Presidents" of the United States.

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Aug 1

To Joe Carter and the claim in his blogpost that it was government regulations, not the lack thereof, that caused the economic collapse of 2008. This appeared in the Acton blog.

In his enthusiasm to defend free markets, Carter misses some important points about the economic collapse of 2008. For example, if there were no bailouts from the government, then economic recovery would next to impossible. But suppose those who acted so recklessly did so knowing that there would be bailouts. What do we get?

First, the financial institutions that suffered the largest losses were those that were over-leveraged the most, not those institutions that actually lent the money out. And why were those institutions over-leveraged? It was because either the lack of enforcement of then current regulations or the financial sectors fight to prevent certain financial products from being regulated. One such product allowed for multiple parties to buy loan insurance on loans they did not take. This would be like the neighborhood buying fire insurance on the same house in the neighborhood. What could go wrong there?
But even before that, the idea of bundling loans and then selling them as financial products that get the institution that makes the original loan not have to worry about being paid back. Thus, it wasn't just the needy who could apply for a risky loan, but unsuspecting entrepreneurs as well. Again, what could go wrong there?

And then there was no effective government oversight of the ratings agencies so that they could profit by giving artificially high ratings to financial products that carried risky loans. Here we have to ask: What did go wrong here?
And last for this list but not least, you had the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act. That act created two kinds of banking: commercial and investment. Glass-Steagall was enacted in 1933 and was repealed in 1999. And between those dates, we didn't have a financial collapse.

In his zeal to defend Free Markets, Carter not only is selective in the details about the government interventions he lists, some of his statements gloss over important details about how government intervenes in the economy. And he does so not to try to factually prove his point, but in order to be persuasive. In addition, Carter expresses no criticisms of the some of the faulty financial products being sold that contributed greatly to the economic collapse. At this point, it is difficult to say whether Carter's view of free markets has more influence on how he reads the Bible than vice-versa. For instead of saying that government should have pursued a more wise and intelligent approach to regulating the markets, he opts for saying that there should be little to no government oversight or intervention.  If he is not careful to reign in and modify his approach, Carter will be a representative of a part of the Christian Church that is to the support of those with wealth and power here, what the dominant branches of the Church were in supporting wealth and power prior to the French, Russian, and Spanish Revolutions.

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To Rev Ben Johnson and his blogpost that free trade is good stewardship of the earth. This appeared in the Acton blog.

This article doesn't make sense. When talking about the environment, he tries to dispel the notion that neoliberalism hurts the environment  by an article written by a professor of finance about some EU farming and fishing rules that hurt the environment and how Brexit eliminated those problems. He makes the claim that neoliberal economics has produced the greatest wealth the world has known. But he neglects to mention the growing wealth disparity both within nations and between nations which has come with neoliberalism. In addition, he doesn't try to compare neoliberal economic performance with that of the Bretton-Woods system. In fact, he might not even be aware of the existence of the latter let alone the comparison. In addition, we should note that the startup of neoliberal economic systems have often occurred during trying times or dictatorships. Chilé and Argentina in the 70s, Poland after their solidarity movement succeeded, and Russia during Yeltsin's presidency part of which occurred when he ordered the military to fire on the Parliament serve as examples. We should note that introducing neoliberalism to Russia required Gorbachev to step down otherwise loans needed by Russia could not be made. Gorbachev had wanted to model the Russian economic system after what was being practiced in Scandinavia.

Rev. Johnson does not mention the compromise of national sovereignty that takes place with free trade. The WTO, which is a free trade organization, threatened the US with billions of dollars approved retaliatory tariffs  if the US did not repeal its newly passed law that required the origin of the meat sold here be printed on the package for consumers to know. That decision was made by the WTO and no regard for any Constitutional issues were shown. Please  understand that one of the measurements for our laws to meet are constitutionally defined and a foreign organization ruled against the US without regard for The Constitution. Likewise, if the TPP had passed, then corporations could sue the US for laws passed that were perceived as having hurt the profits of these corporations. And those lawsuits would be held in a TPP tribunal, not an American court of law.

Nor does Rev. Johnson mention that much of the wealth built up in America is due to the past when free trade was not practiced. America has relied on protectionist policies for much of its history. That protectionism allowed America to build up certain industries that free trade has been destroying. Yes, we have the strongest economy in the world, but today more and more of America's economic strength is located in the financial sector while manufacturing has been shipped elsewhere to maximize profits for shareholders. Insisting that less developed nations must rely on free trade and prohibiting them from using protectionism to build their own economies is called 'kicking away the ladder.' In addition, neoliberalism has produced quite a few instances of workers having to work for poverty wages and corporations relying on government subsidizing their payrolls as low-paid employees must rely on government assistance programs.

Of course, Rev. Johnson did set out to show that free trade helps the environment. However, neoliberalism, of which free trade is a part, is occurring when the environment is being pushed to the breaking point in terms of it being able to sustain the kind of life we know now in the future. That pushing of the environment is not just seen in the transportation of goods, but in the manufacturing and and consumption of goods as well. And the more neoliberalism, the less environmental regulations that mus be met.

Yes, neoliberalism has produced a lot of wealth. But it has also produced one of the greatest consolidations of wealth in history and that consolidation of wealth leads to a consolidation of political power in the private sector. In fact, that consolidation of political power in the private sector has contributed to America transitioning from a democracy to an oligarchy (see http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746 ). But at least our loss of democracy has been more gradual and soft than what has occurred elsewhere for the sake of neoliberalism.

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For June 14, 2017

June 10

To Joe Carter and his blogpost accusing Senators Sanders and Van Hollen of being ignorantly intolerant of orthodox Christian beliefs when they accused Russell Vought of being intolerant for expressing the belief that Jesus is the only way to God. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition website.

Yes, Sanders and Van Hollen exhibit an ignorance of basic Christian doctrine in their statements against Vought. So does the ACLU. But didn't Vought display intolerance and the same regarding Larycia Hawkins when he suggested that Hawkins, a Christian, did not have a 'prayerful and faithful relationship' with God? After all, Hawkins was explicitly clear in saying that whether one can say if Muslims worship the same God depends on the context of the statement. And yet, most Christians ignored the distinctions and contexts of which Hawkins spoke. After all, in one context, Hawking said something very orthodox regarding the faith and her other statements, because of the context of her statements, did not contradict the statements she made that was orthodox.

We might also look at acts of intolerance religiously conservative Christians have associated with Christianity by the stands they have taken. In particular, many of us religiously conservative Christians have shown intolerance for refugees, despite the fact that it is America's foreign policies that have caused the refugee crisis, and  the LGBT community. The intolerance for the latter was shown by opposing same-sex marriage in society. So now, why shouldn't Sanders and Van Hollen see intolerance in Vought's statements? Yes, we know that Vought was theologically correct in saying that Jesus is the only way to God--though his statement failed to observe that Hawkins agreed with him on that point because he failed to see the distinctions she was making. But having associated other Christian beliefs with intolerance means that belief in Jesus as the only way to God will be viewed with suspicion and greater vigilance than normal.

Yes, we religiously conservative Christians have been exhibiting intolerance toward others in some of the practices and beliefs we have been practicing and promoting. So should we be surprised by the views  Sanders and Van Hollen exhibited in their judgments on Vought?

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June 13

To Joe Carter and his blogpost supporting Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Accords and how it is human creativity, rather than government agencies, that can help us produce a cleaner environment. This appeared in the Acton blog.

By itself, Trump's withdraw from the Paris Accords is ambiguous. But along with his dismantling of regulations, including environmental regulations, and his tax cuts, the purpose of his withdrawing from the Accords becomes more and more obvious. Add to that his mistake in using a MIT study on the environmental impact of the Paris Accords in his speech(see [sent invalid link]), his intentions are clearer and clearer. Businesses are not to be hampered or constrained by regulations meant to protect the environment in their search for increased profits.

But something should also be said about the title of the article above. For it presents a false dichotomy between employing human creativity and technocrats. Aren't the technocrats those from agencies like the EPA whose study of the environment produce regulations? And without the regulations, who says that the human creativity involved will be directed toward reducing a business's environmental impact especially where ever increasing profits for shareholders trump most, if not all, other concerns?

It's not that government agencies like the EPA  don't commit errors when producing regulations. But it is that the government can provide a buffer between the people and the business world where government can represent the concerns of the people to the business world. Ideally that is how it is suppose to work. But in today's society where everybody, both big business and the little individual, is on the take, we find that those with the most wealth get the most representation by the government and the rest of us have to live with that.

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To Donald Devine and his blogpost discussing the ideological splits in Conservatism partially caused by Trump’e election and Presidency. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

Three points here. First, it seems that in an effort to categorize all of the ideologies that could be associated with conservatism, Devine overlooks a group of neverTrumpers. That group consists of those who, for personal and moral reasons, found themselves opposing Trump. For them, character mattered more than any pretense to a conservative ideology.

Likewise, some who voted Trump because they were voting against the person of Hillary are also overlooked. It isn't just the promise to help that swayed their votes, it was, again, the character of a candidate whom they could not trust.

The short of it is that some who found either candidate too personally objectionable were leery of associating their ideology with character flaws. And so they vote for the other candidate.

Second, the conservative attack on entitlement programs are not very honest. They don't talk about the lack of economic opportunities that some on entitlements face. For example, they don't talk about how gov't assistance programs subsidize corporate payrolls because of the poverty wages being paid by those corporations for certain jobs. In addition, while conflating all entitlement programs together in order to say that we can't afford these, we forget that two entitlement programs are financially self-funded. And both are threatened by corporate interests. Social Security for example is totally self-funded and the only risk it faces is due to the fact that it is the largest holder of federal debt--it even holds more of our federal debt than the Chinese. Since some of this debt was used to pay for unfunded wars where the use of private contractors spiked as well as the use of goods and services from the Military Industrial complex, what we are seeing is the transfer of public funds into private coffers.

Medicare is also self-funded however it is, by law, prohibited from negotiating for lower pharmaceutical prices. Thus, the pharmaceutical industry also gains unnecessary profits at the expense of public funds.

In addition, by longing for the days that preceded the New Deal, one is pining for the conditions that led to the Stock Market collapse of 1929 and the subsequent depression. We should note that the economic collapse of 2008 saw either a prohibiting of regulations that would oversee new financial products or a lack of enforcement of existing regulations. In the end, the bailout given to the financial sector also saw a transfer of public funds to private coffers.

Finally, the assumption made by Conservatives who want to limit government is that government will be run by elites. And thus, to restrict the power of elites, government must be restricted because one cannot guarantee that the right elites will be in power after any given election. And there are liberals who also make the same assumption except that they don't believe in limited government. The condition that allows a democratic nation to be run by elites is that the populace must embrace a passive authoritarianism. This authoritarianism not only promotes loyalty and obedience to elites, it sustains divisions by groups who adhere to different elites.

Now if we, the people, could see our way clear of this passive authoritarianism, both conservatives and nonconservatives would benefit by gaining a measure of independence for the two corporate major political parties: the Republican and Democratic Parties. In addition, if we could free ourselves from this authoritarianism, instead of placing too much reliance on elites, we could see a more participatory political system. And such would ease the need to restrict the power of government lest the wrong group of elites take power.

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To Joseph Sunde and his blogpost claiming that free trade is fair trade. This appeared in the Acton blog.

Free Trade is fair trade for those who benefit the most. But what about those who don't?

Proponents of free trade forget that the United States, with all of its emphasis on freedom by the founding fathers, did not practice free trade at first. Rather, protectionism was employed to allow for American industries to start and become competitive. Without that protectionism, our nation would not have developed its industries either as fast or as far as it did.

Those who would force free trade on undeveloped nations are not promoting fair trade. They are not allowing nations to develop past their current capabilities. Rather, they are 'kicking away the ladder' that allowed their own nation to develop its industries. And by doing so, they are, at least in part,  promoting an economic caste system on undeveloped nations. Undeveloped nations need to use protectionist measures that would allow desired industries to get off the ground, succeed, and then become competitive with their counterparts from the more developed nations.

And it isn't just the undeveloped nations that could benefit from protectionism. Nations that want to revive dead industries because such industries gives balance to their economic portfolio should also be free to employ protectionism.

In the end, it is not the case that either free trade or protectionism are always right or wrong. It is the case that depending on the economic needs and goals of a given nation, both free trade and protectionism have their roles to play in helping a nation develop and sustain a healthy economy. To force free trade on a nation, especially an undeveloped nation, makes that free trade neither free nor fair. After all, is kicking away the ladder fair?

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For May 24, 2017

May 17

To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost on inclusiveness and exclusiveness for the Church. He talks about people being included in and excluded from the Church. But he also mentions the Church being put on the margins by culture. This appeared in Heidelblog.

Certainly there is a necessary exclusion when it comes to the Church. John tells us in his first epistle that only those who believe in Jesus as who He is and has been defined by God's Word and who love those who believe are Christians. And Jesus told us that the summation of the 2nd table of the law is to love one's neighbor as oneself. He also provided the parable of the Good Samaritan as example of how one is to be a neighbor to someone. If we are followers of Jesus, regardless of being imperfect, we will pursue His commandments.

But there is a missing dimension here as well. That dimension regards how inclusive/exclusive we are when sharing society with others. And this is perhaps where we receive the bulk of our criticisms and thus the primary reason why we begin to find ourselves being marginalized in society. We have been too exclusive in terms of how we share society with others. In the past, our exclusion of others has revolved around religious faith, denominational beliefs and identity, and race. Today, the key factors that determines whether many of us religiously conservative Christians wish to exclude others from being equal members of society are sexual orientation and identification. In short, it is disingenuous to cry martyr because we are shunned for trying to marginalize the LGBT community in society.  Some of us have also been trying to exclude people based on religious faith and/or national identity when it comes to responding to immigrants and refugees.

So why are some crying martyr over such actions? Perhaps it is because some Christian leaders, in order to cement their position in and control over the flock, have created a religious persecution industry here in America. For it isn't real persecution when we are marginalized for trying to marginalize others in society. It is real persecution when we are marginalized when trying to promote equality while preaching God's Word. And while God's Word requires that we preach against the sexual orientation and identity embraced by the LGBT community, there is nothing there that tells us to persecute that community by trying to marginalize them in society. And certainly God's Word opposes the idea of excluding the vulnerable such as immigrants and refugees from society.

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May 21

To  R. Scott Clark and his blogpost quote of Ben Sasse who described John Dewey's design for education of displacing parents because of their "petty" concern for the welfare of their students. This appeared in Heidelblog.

The comment shows an ignorance to the reality that schools face with their children as well as the purpose of schools. According to the quote, the purpose of schools is to make sure nothing changes from generation to generation--kids have to be literate and traditions have to be passed down. But what should schools do for those whose handed down traditions need challenging? After all, some kids are neglected or raised in unstable homes or raised by ignorant or bigoted parents? How should schools then prepare children for the future? And isn't the purpose of education there to challenge what has been accepted to further critical thinking skills?

The above is not there for schools to usurp a child's parents' authority. Nor are schools there to overthrow all tradition.  But schools should not be totally submissive to the parents. There are too many other significant stakeholders in the education process for that to be acceptable. Teachers, for example, have specialized training that parents do not have. And so  shouldn't teachers have a say in what is taught? And doesn't society have a say in what is taught since society is the recipient of the children it educates?

Schools are not there to aid in the production of Stepford Children. In addition, the producing of such children sabotages the Sasse's goal of the article from which his quote is taken: That goal is to produce adults, Their goal isn't to produce adult children who cannot be intellectually independent.
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May 23

To Joe Carter and his blogpost video that provides a simplistic model in trying to argue against tariffs and protectionism. This appeared in the Acton blog.

The value of any model is how well it simulates the reality it tries to portray. Now one doesn't have to understand everything about the model to realize its problems. First of all, what is called wasted resources is based on a limited set of considerations. For example, if the long range benefits of a tariff outweigh the present costs involved, then should we call the difference between domestic costs and world costs wasted? But let's forget the long range benefits assuming we are too impatient to wait for them. Are there benefits not mentioned in the video to the state of Florida to house domestic producers of sugar? For example, what about the workers who work at those domestic plants? Do they, and the communities and the state of Florida, benefit from the domestic production of sugar in Florida? IN addition, not all factors are being discussed here. For example, what if the supply of goods from other nations has reduced costs because of gov't subsidies for the production of those goods? Then doesn't free trade prohibit the nation consuming a particular set of goods from having its domestic producers being able to compete with the world producers? Such limits, if not destroys, the ability of domestic producers from growing and learning how to reduce its production costs. And that limits a particular nation's ability to diversify its economy.

But we might also argue from history. America used tariffs, against the standing economic advice of the day, to build up different sectors of its domestic economy. This allowed domestic producers to expand and even lower their production costs. This made our economy stronger.

The model presented in the video is meant to prohibit change within the economies of weaker nations. It prevents them from using the protectionist tools to grow and diversify their economies which nations like the U.S. used when it was a developing nation. Thus, this argument for free trade and against protectionism is an argument that is designed to keep the status quo regardless of the harm the status quo might be doing to the economies and people of a given developing nation. And that argument also defends the place of those nations that already benefited the most from protectionism and currently maintains today's status quo for those same nations. Basically, and this is not my terminology, enforcing free trade and prohibiting protectionism from being practiced by developing nations has been called 'kicking away the ladder.'

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To Rev. Ben Johnson’s blogpost that claims that liberty and collectivism, or Christianity and Marxism, are opposing political systems and theologies. This appeared in the Acton blog.

The trouble with the article above is that it does not give the complete, or even accurate, picture of the competing systems. Collectivism as represented by Marxism, which is not a monolith in the first place, isn't competing with Christianity unless Christianity fully supports bourgeoisie control of society. In addition, liberty itself is not a monolith. For we have at least two kinds of liberty to talk about: individual liberty and corporate liberty. We call the latter kind of liberty 'democracy' for it is in a fully functioning democracy that corporate liberty is fully expressed. And so what is at odds with the notion of liberty described above is not just the Marxism, which is inadequately described above, but democracy. In addition, Christianity does not support individual liberty if that liberty is used to neglect or exploit the vulnerable. And if Christianity doesn't support that kind of liberty, then collectivism is not opposed to Christianity. Instead,  collectivism is oppose to what is today called 'conservative libertarianism. While those who do support that misuse of liberty are the privileged who support bourgeoisie control of society.

We should also note that in his book Anti-Capitalism, Ezquiel Adamovsky rejects the notion that Marx presented his ideas has being scientific. Rather, it was Engels who made that claim about Marx's ideas.

Finally, there is a religious perspective that both Marxism and its real chief rival, Capitalism, share. That religious perspective is that both are promising a materialistic utopia. Now Marx, and I say this as a person who leans toward Marxism, wrongfully believed that an absolute utopia could be established not through what was described above, but through a proletariat dictatorship. That is because such a dictatorship, which was actually a partial democracy, would so distribute goods and services that people would find true freedom. Capitalism also promises a utopia based on the distribution of goods. Only its utopia is relative when it claims to provide the very best distribution of goods possible. The problem here is that both systems are based in materialism. And materialism is, according to Christianity, nothing more than idolatry. We should note that neither system is a monolith and thus both systems have multiple variations that try to address these problems. But in the end, Marxism and Capitalism are two sides of the same coin.

Why I lean toward Marxism is not because of its materialism, I reject that. It is because I see in Marxism a greater potential for bringing people together to cooperate and collaborate in deciding how they will live. And its strength won't be found in the efficiency and effectiveness of the decisions made; its strength is found in the process of cooperating and collaborating.

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For March 8, 2017

March 1

To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost message to the Millennial Christians and their concerns with Social Justice and how that compared to the concerned baby boomers had during the 60s. This appeared in Heidelblog.

Half thoughts are really presented here in order to push Clark's opinion. We should note that not all on the left believed in utopia. Some believed in just trying to improve what was there. But one of those who did believe in working toward a utopia was Martin Luther King Jr. So how much of his  thinking should we discard because of his utopian beliefs?

Another half though is that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not a social gospel. What should be implied from that statement? Should the Church make no statements or efforts to bring about social justice because the Gospel is not a social gospel? The statement and the question show what has been overlooked about what the Gospel says about social justice. For certainly the Gospel cannot be reduced to bringing social justice. But it is just as much of a mistake to think that the Gospel has nothing to do with social justice either.

For what is the Gospel? It tells us that we can be forgiven of our sins and receive a new life by believing in Jesus. To do that, the Gospel must preach against sins. Certainly, no conservative worth their weight in theology would neglect to tell those who are engaged in sexual sin to repent of such sin. And yet, when it comes to our active participation or silent complicity in societal and state sins, how many conservatives worth their weight in theology would preach that we must repent of supporting such sins?

One difference in the two kinds of sins here is that while personal sins like sexual sins affect just a small group of people, societal and state sins hurt far more people. And those who are involved in such sins need to hear a message saying to stop and change and ask for forgiveness as much as we need to hear the same message regarding our personal sins.

We should also note that when we fail to preach against societal and state sins, we align the Church behind those with wealth. The Church has done that before during the pre revolutionary times in France, Russia, and Spain and has brought dishonor to the Gospel when having done so. Here we should ask whether those with positions of influence in the Church today who suppress people's efforts to preach against wealth and power are acting from the same motivation as Baby Boomers do when they demand a quiet life in the suburbs.

BTW, we should note something about Reagan's stimulation of the economy. That he did it partially through attacking unions. And one only needs to look at wealth disparity in the US to see if it increased or decreased during and after his presidency. We should also look at his foreign policies in particular his support of people like Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and right-wing armies, paramilitaries, and terrorists who committed gross crimes in Central America. For it seems that what Clark accuses Millennials of doing when they mix social concerns with the Gospel is what some Christian leaders do when they back conservative politics so strongly.

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March 2

To Joe Carter and his blogpost stating that the transgender issue is a public battle for reality where losing brings dire consequences. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition website.

Certainly reality is an issue in the transgender debate, but it isn't the only issue. Another issue that comes into play is how will we religiously conservative Christians share society with those who have different views of reality than we have? And that question has come into play way before elementary school teachers would have thought about contradicting the idea that sex can occur outside of a monogamous heterosexual relationship. BTW, Carter's claim about what elementary school teachers would not being willing to contradict 50 years ago is just noise. Why? First, because such teachers would not be discussing sex in class 50 years ago. And second, if we are speaking about what teachers believe and would say outside the classroom and school, there is no way to prove this claim.

We could go back to the debate on evolution to see that there are people who view reality differently than we do. Segregation was another such issue that divided people according to how they saw reality. And so the other question comes into play: How will we share society with people who view reality differently than we do? Coexisting as equals is one such option. Certainly we could share society with those who believe in evolution as equals. We could give a voice to both sides in society and school.

But the live and let live approach does not always work and the belief/nonbelief in segregation shows why. To allow those who believe in segregation to have their way, one must impose on the rights of those who don't believe. That is because to allow segregation to hold sway, we must violate the rights of those who don't.

Certainly some Christians feel that their rights and, perhaps, safety are infringed on when they must share a bathroom with those who identify with the other gender than the one they are born with. At the same time, transgender students feel like their rights are violated when they can't use the facilities of the gender they identify with. Yes, we Christians can point to a physical reality. But should we let that physical reality drown out the voices and feelings of those who identify with the other gender? Since we don't really know what is going on in their minds of transgender students, perhaps a much more nuanced approach than the one recommended above or the one insisted on by transgender students should be searched for. After all, taking a more nuanced approach respects the positions of both sides without having to agree with a side. And then we can see whether we have opened the Pandora's box envisioned by the writer of the article.

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March 7

To Alexander Salter and his blogpost using ethics to support his preference for free trade over protectionism. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

When the writer introduced the idea of introducing ethical concerns in economics when discussing free trade vs protectionism, I held hope for the article. But the following statement dashed all such hope:

I am a free trader. My reasons have nothing to do with economic efficiency. Instead, I rely on a simple maxim—a heuristic, if you will—for what I believe is sound public policy: It is wrong and harmful to prevent benefits accruing to the general public due to fears about the costs borne by a relatively small subset of the public.

For the ethics put on display for the writer's argument for free trade is nothing more than a bottom-line, ends justify the means argument. But it is more than just that, the actual loss of jobs that actually increases the supply of workers for lower pay jobs is more than just a fear; it is a reality. Let alone, the loss of manufacturing, textile, and now information technology jobs  affects more than just a small subset of the people. All of this actually affects a larger percentage of people than the writer either is aware of or willing to admit.

But it is the basic ethic that is unacceptable. What if the general public is benefiting from paying a subset of the population poverty wages, is that ethical? Or what if the general public is benefiting from even slave labor, is that ethical? What we do know is that our general public is benefiting from foreign slave and sweatshop labor? Is such ethical since those people are invisible to us?

In addition, certain assumptions are made about protectionism. For example, Salter declares an absolute truth by begging the question of the statement on which it is made:

There are a host of other reasons to oppose protectionism. Peace between nations is one. A quote attributed to Bastiat goes, “When goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will.”

When the US and UK used protectionism to develop certain industries, did war result from it? What we do know is that conflict can come from forcing free trade on nations where the leaders of those other nations benefit but the people don't.

One thing is for sure, this article shows a shortsightedness in economics as much as it does in ethics. For not only is a bottom-line ethic espoused that  makes the free trade economies of the richest nations resemble the backdrop of what existed in the Hunger Games movie series, the only stakeholders of free trade recognized by this writer are some of the stakeholders of one's own nation. In this sense, it seems that Salter is a nation-first, free trader. And here, the issue isn't whether he should favor protectionism over free-trade. The issue is the ethical argument he uses to support his case.

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To Joe Carter and his blogpost that opposes increasing the minimum wage. This appeared in the Acton blog.

Carter offers a within the system look at the cost of raising the minimum wage. And it is a limited within the system look at that for it only considers the choices faced by those who employ, not by those who are employed in low wage jobs.  And because Carter views the minimum wage issue from within the system, he lacks any ability to view the system from the outside, to view the system from any ethical perspective. That is because to view the system from the inside alone ends up with us equating reality with the system and thus any bucking of the system is a denial of reality. And part of that reality is that the wages that Carter insists should not be raised are poverty wages that make employees dependent on gov't assistance to survive. And that means us taxpayers are subsidizing the payrolls of companies that pay poverty wages.

The real concern that any Christian should have over this issue is what is right for all of the participants. Is it right for the employers and business owners to treat and pay employees from a self-interest perspective alone? Doesn't such a perspective cause an employer or business owner to relegate one's employees to that of being disposable objects? And doesn't relegating people to be disposable objects deny the intrinsic value of those employees? And is it Christian for us to only view the plight of employers and business owners  without challenging the notion that the decisions of employers and business owners are to be guided by self-interest alone? Is acting from self interest alone the basic ethical principle we learn from the Scriptures? And we can only face questions like these if we are willing to look at the system from the outside the system, rather than from the inside.

Here, Carter aligns himself with employers and business owners. In other words, Carter aligns himself with wealth and he is not alone. Much of conservative Protestantism aligns itself with wealth. And in doing so, these Christians are simply repeating the mistakes made by the Church. For in the pre revolutionary times of France, Russia, and Spain, the predominant branch of the Church in those countries also aligned themselves with wealth and with power. So that when the revolutions came, revolutionaries could only see the Church as being an enemy and this brought great dishonor the Gospel.

As Christians align themselves with either the domestic side of neoliberalism as seen with President Trump's efforts to cut taxes and regulations or the foreign face of neoliberalism as seen in free trade, they align themselves with wealth as the Church has mistakenly done in the past. And while these Christians rant and rail against the personal sins of people, they discredit the Gospel by turning blind eye to the sins of the economic system they have come to embrace and a deaf ear to the cries of the stakeholders of that system who are exploited. They also live in denial of the fact that when those with wealth are allowed to make decisions based on on self interest alone, society becomes more corrupt and its economic system becomes corrosive.

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blocs For November 2, 2016

Oct 28

To Joe Carter and his blogpost that proposes that conservatives could control the Supreme Court through a Democratic administration by having Congress change the size of the Supreme Court. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition.

Considering that the criteria conservatives use to determine whether a judge is an activist judge depends on whether they agree with any judgment made by that judge, this argument of controlling SCOTUS by lowering the number justices is rather petty.

We simply don't understand what is involved in changing the nation from being pro-choice to being pro-life. We don't understand because not enough people are consistently pro-life. Thus, the actual pro-life base is not big enough to establish and win arguments where those arguments are most important: in the street.

When abortion was illegal, its status changed because of the number of ordinary people who still sought abortions. And since our prisons are already overcrowded and the number of doctors to provide healthcare is marginal, changing the law to criminalize abortion at this point in time can bring damaging unwanted consequences as well as could be unproductive to the pro-life cause. And considering the damage that is already caused by pro-life advocates excusing our exploitive economic system, our deadly foreign polices, and our way of life that continues to damage the environment, we need to find ways that bolster pro-life credentials before we depend on changes in the law.

In addition, this proposal of changing the size of the Supreme Court is such a temporary fix that it risks making the size of the Supreme Court a kind of ping pong issue which could constantly be changed with each changing of the guard in Congress.

Any real pro-life victory in our nation must be a comprehensive one, not a piecemeal one. And the biggest obstacle we have to the pro-life cause is not in the courts but in the streets. Thus, this proposal of changing the size of the Supreme Court is really inadequate and lacks vision.

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Oct 29

To Joe Carter and his blogpost on how free trade reduces poverty. This appeared in the Acton blog.

It is tiring to keep pointing out that those who support free trade do so by filtering the evidence and the points they make. This is what our "free trade" has brought. The offshoring of jobs where trade is conducted without concern for labor conditions elsewhere and thus it supports the exploitation of workers  and others in other nations (see http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/05/business/worldbusiness/05sweatshop.html) for the sake of business profits. BtW, we should note that rescuing people from abject poverty does not imply that one is rescued from poverty.

We should note that what free trade does is to remove government controls on trade. When a government is a working democracy, then what free trade accomplishes is to remove democratic controls on trade. Finally we should note that many nations have built their own industries using protectionists measures. We might ask here whether free trade prevents nations from building their own industries and thus ensures a caste system for nations that embrace free trade.

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Oct 30

To Joe Carter and his blogpost about why some do not trust authority. This appeared in the Acton blog.

It seems to me that the fear of authority is not highly tied to the personal feeling of being judged, but it is caused by the abuse of power those with authority sometimes execute. This is especially true when it comes to the police. From the news stories I've seen, some groups of people are reluctant to call the police in an emergency because doing so before has led to the deaths of innocent people. For others, the police have meant the arrest of innocent friends and family members while for others it has led to racial profiling.

What is surprising is that race plays a role in many areas regarding how authority is perceived, but there is no mention of race as being a possible contributing factor for how authority is received.

In the meantime, perhaps the purpose of this article can best be described by the following quote from the report The Crisis Of Democracy:

In the past, those institutions which have played the major role in the indoctrination of the young in their rights and obligations as members of society have been the family, the church, the school, and the army.





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This comment is currently awaiting moderation. This blogpost will be updated once the results of that moderation are known to this blog.

Update--though being listed as being posted Oct 31, the comment below was not posted until sometime later after November 2.

Oct 31

To Trevin Wax and his blogpost about 3 truths we need to remember when voting. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition website.

If only the 3 truths mentioned above were more evident in practice than just in theory. What we have seen, at least through my lifetime and I was born when Eisenhower was President, is that the Church, at least the conservative American Church, is yes political, but is not one that speaks truth to power nor is it on the front lines helping the vulnerable. Rather, the following description from the report The Crisis Of Democracy best describes the conservative American Church that both I have grown up in and still live.

In most of the Trilateral countries in the past decade there has been a decline in the confidence and trust which the people have in government, in their leaders, and, less clearly but most importantly, in each other. Authority has been challenged not only in government, but in trade unions, business enterprises, schools and universities, professional associations, churches, and civic groups. In the past, those institutions which have played the major role in the indoctrination of the young in their rights and obligations as members of society have been the family, the church, the school, and the army. The effectiveness of all these institutions as a means of socialization has declined severely.


Please note that these comments were made after what the report called the 'excess of democracy' from the 1960s. And we should note the some of the civilizing effects of that excess of democracy included the beginning of racial justice, equality, and reconciliation as well as examination of US foreign policies and wars.

Where was the conservative Church during Martin Luther King's protests against racism, economic exploitation, and the Vietnam War? In fact, where was it during the 1970s? We know where it was during the 1980s; it was supporting Ronald Reagan whose administration supported contra terrorists in Nicaragua and the military and paramilitaries of El Salvador where a war against priest advocating liberation theology was being conducted.  In addition, the fruit of Reagan's anti-union/pro-business stand can be seen in the still ever increasing wealth disparity we see in America today.

And where has the conservative Church been regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the sanction years on Iraq hundreds of thousands of children died or Bush's invasion of Iraq? Where is the conservative Church standing regarding police accountability and Black Lives Matter? Where is the conservative American Church standing regarding environmental issues and is it defending the Standing Rock Sioux in their protest against the DAPL? Has the conservative American Church said anything about neoliberal capitalism or is it blindly supporting free markets and free trade without considering how those approaches affect all of Capitalism's stakeholders?

And where has the conservative American Church stood in protecting the equality of those from the LGBT community?

The three truths mentioned above, from what I've seen, are more present in theory than in practice.

BTW, there should be at least one point of correction. At Occupy Wall Street, we practiced a form of anarchism to a certain degree. But that does not even suggest that we had no order. The idea behind anarchism is not that there is no order, the idea is that because all are counted as leaders, there is no single leader or group of leaders. In other words, with anarchism, leadership and power are distributed as widely as possible rather than consolidating it as is practiced in other systems. This is not to say that anarchism is always the best form of self-governing. It is to say that we should represent it accurately. What I saw in Occupy's implementation of anarchism were rules and order that everyone could consent to.

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To Rosaria Butterfield and her blogpost response to Jen Hatmaker about how homosexual relationships are unbiblical and thus sin in contras to Hatmaker's view. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition website.

If I understand the article correctly, in terms of sexual ethics, we must promote and even push for laws that enforce Biblical sexual ethics for nonChristians in society. However, we don't do that for unbliblical heterosexual marriages. And we don't legally prohibit nonChristians from worshiping idols and false gods? So why should we support and even push for laws that prohibit same-sex marriages?

Could it be that our intolerance for same-sex marriage (SSM) in society is just one way by which we are failing to love those in the LGBT community? After all, supporting SSM doesn't prohibit one from seeing it as sin, nor does it prohibit one from sharing what the Bible says about SSM. But legally prohibiting SSM does not recognize the equality of those from the LGBT community with us in society. What is it that Paul says in I Corinthians 5:12-13?

We need to see the differences that exist between being a person in good standing in society from being a person in good standing in the Church. When we confuse those two standards, we make society a supplemental disciplinary arm of the Church just as Martin Luther tried to do when he wanted German society and princes to punish the Jews for their unbelief. How is it that we can love our LGBT neighbor while wanting society to punish and marginalize them for their sexual orientation and identity? Yes, sex outside of a monogamous heterosexual relationship is sin. But does that imply that society must punish that behavior? If so, what other unbiblical behaviors must society punish? Should we eliminate freedom of religion from The Constitution?
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To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost quote of Rosaria Butterfield who called Jen Hatmaker’s words justifying homosexuality a ‘well-meant millstone’. This appeared in Heidelblog.

Is there more than one well-meant millstone here? For example, were laws that prohibited SSM and the current lack of legal protection for those in the LGBT community at work which exists in the majority of our states millstones to people like Jen so that the only choice they see is to either justify what is clearly sin or to continue marginalizing those in the LGBT community?

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For August 10, 2016

As I read some of the blocked comments below, I am reminded of how I need to better edit my comments that I try to post. But they are what they are.


Aug 8

To R. Scott Clark and the first of a multil-part blogpost podcast on the Muslim Brotherhood and the danger it poses to our democracy. This appeared in Heidelblog.

I guess we are entering an updated version of McCarthyism. We should note how our past war against Communism served us. Yes, the Soviet Union collapsed. But some not so funny things happened on the way there. Coups in nations like Iran ('53), Guatemala ('54), and Chile ('73), all in the name of anti-communism were used to usher in dictators who reacted brutally to dissent. The US supported Osama Bin Laden, despite his terrorism, because he was fighting against a Soviet approved, secular government. The US military actually conducted terrorist attacks on civilian targets after its Revolution. And the US was condemned by the World Court for its actions and supported actions, which involved terrorist tactics,  in Nicaragua during the 1980s. 

And on a side note, the US supported Saddam Hussein even to the extent of providing his nation with materials for WMDs up until Iraq invaded Kuwait. Then after destroying Iraq's infrastructure in the first Persian Gulf War. the sanctions that it forced through the UN and imposed were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children.

Returning from the side note, we should never forget how we contributed to the deaths of perhaps millions of people in Vietnam in the name of anti-Communism.

So now we have a new boogyman to fear. And yes, there are some groups from Islam that do pose a threat. And mentioning such groups can be helpful. But more importantly, looking how our nation's policies contribute to the recruiting for such groups rely on is much more important. We will see if that occurs here. For if we want to say that such groups pose a threat to our democracy here, how is it that, because our government has been supporting business-friendly dictators over there, we should not be seen as a threat by the people and nations over there?

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To Christopher Nelson and his blogpost that states that there is no student debt crisis. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

Whether there is a crisis or not sometimes depends on whether it is your neighbor who has the problem, or you. The problem with the student debt crisis is that it is real. It was one of the contributing factors to the starting of Occupy Wall Street. Plenty of students had no job prospects that paid enough to match the debt they took on--and they took on that debt with the understanding higher paying jobs would be the result of going to school. Also, one could cite example afte example graduates who had to postpone the starting of families and buying of homes to repay student debt.

However, a lot of that is anecdotal. What is real are the statistics of those who default the most or the aggregate amount owed along with the aggregate amount owed on student debt vs the number of lendees (see http://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2015/04/just-released-press-briefing-on-student-loan-borrowing-and-repayment-trends-2015.html#.VkkRTyvMLs4nts/mediaadvisory/2015/Student-Loan-Press-Briefing-Presentation.pdf ). Also, those in the lower class suffer the most but one should also look at the age ranges of those who are still paying their debts. That age is rising and that means that such people limited in terms of spending on current needs as well as preparing for the future.

Again, whether the student debt crisis is a crisis is being answered by some  by whether their neighbor is struggling or whether they are. Considering that millions are involved, that is plenty of neighbors who are either being hit with the crisis or face it in the future.

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Aug 9

To Kyle Hanby and his blogpost on globalization and free trade. This appeared in the Acton blog.

Kyle Hanby made a similar mistake on free trade in a previous article. He looks at it as it affects people now and claims that its opposite privileges a few. If Hanby would study how tariffs have been used in the past, he would discover that nations have used tariffs to build up their own economic sectors. The current use of free trade then has become a way of 'kicking away the ladder,' as some explain it. That means that the mechanisms used by the industrial nations to develope their own industries in the past is being denied use for developing nations by these same industrial nations.

Hanby should also learn about what happens when nations join free trade agreements and organizations. What happens is that a part of national sovereignty, and this applies to a people's democracy when a nation relies on democratic processes, is lost to corporations. The TPP for example allows for foreign and multinational corporations to sue governments over laws that these corporations says causes them to lose profits; but corporations cannot return the favor. In addition, when a corporation sues a government, such as Canadian mining company has sued Costa Rica over its decision to prohibit the mining for gold in its nation because of environmental reasons, the case is adjudicated by a trade agreement's tribunal, not the courts of that land. Here we should note how the WTO threatened the US with $1 billion dollars in trade sanctions over a US law demanding that the origin of meat packaged to be bought at stores be labeled.

Unfortunately, those who are pusing free trade agreements now are neglecting to look at the issue either historically or in terms of national sovereignty.

 

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To Joe Carter and his blogpost on freedom, especially economic freedom. This appeared in the Acton blog

The problem with the article above and the article which it cites is that freedom is applied solely to the individual, not to a group, not to society. Thus society, in principle according to these two articles, is not free to make laws that govern how the markets interact with and treat those in society. We call this group freedom exercised by a given society democracy.

Of course, governments are never portrayed by markets as being representatives of the people. Rather, those who favor limited government and free markets portray all governments as alien entities that have their own interests aside from the interests of the people. And In practice, this often turns out to be the case. This occurs where citizens are not seriously involved in monitoring and speaking out to their governments. Thus, there is a burden that comes with any working democracy: that burden is putting in the time and energy into being seriously involved.

However, we should note the flip side of not letting democracies set rules for the market. The flip side is that all of this individual economic freedom, when summed up, equals consolidated wealth, and thus power, for private sector elites. And thus political power in the nation no longer rests with its elected leaders, it rests with those who have made the most money. And such does not equate to either freedom for all or even humility by a few.

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To Joseph Pearce and his blogpost on abortion in the Black Lives Matter issue. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

Despite the faulty description of Planned Parenthood today, one of the most pertinent issues involved in the abortion of Black babies is economics. The average Black person has far less wealth than the average White person and the disparity is growing. So in addition to Black Lives Matter, in a different way, we can can say regard abortion that economic class matters. And so if we want to address the abortion issue that exists in the Black community, we need to address the wealth disparity that exists between the two races.

Likewise, regarding crime, one needs to look at the correlations and possible cause and effect relationships between wealth, or the lack thereof, and violent crime.