Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For March 15, 2023

Feb 22

To Heidelblog and Ari Schaffer for the part of Schaffer's article that reported on the Buckley Program' Eighth Annual College Student Survey. 

The survey has some problems in the options provided. One major problem is that many of the categories for the choice of answers are not well-defined. For example, when asking students if they feel uncomfortable with giving a dissenting opinion to classmates or professors, the selection of answers are 'Frequently,' 'Sometimes,' 'Rarely,' and 'Never.' Three of those answers are not well-defined. In addition, 'Frequently' and 'Sometimes' are grouped as categorized as 'Often' whereas 'Rarely' and 'Never' are counted as 'Not Often.'  To further complicate the issue, the mathematical definition of the word 'some' is at least 1. That could mean that when students answered 'Sometimes,' they could have meant 'Rarely' and vice-versa.

In addition, the existence of free speech is expressed in binary terms. If hate speech, and that goes undefined, is allowed, then this is counted as being an infringement on free speech and the First Amendment. But yelling 'fire' in a public space is against the law. Is that an infringement on Free Speech? Would some forms of labeling or describing people from a particular race, religion, sexual orientation, or gender identity a threat to society be similar yelling 'fire' in a public place when some of those statements led to violence against those of a given race, religion, sexual orientation, or gender identity?

Are we aware that denying the Holocaust is illegal in some European countries? If that was the case here, would that be an infringement on the First Amendment? Is denying the existence of systemic racism in America today on par with denying the Holocaust in some European countries? 

And why isn't this blog post including the efforts of Governors DeSantis and Abbott in their report on Free Speech on campuses? Why are teachers and professors afraid of talking about America's past in certain states like Florida or Texas?

Finally, without providing definitions for both socialism and capitalism, the data is insignificant. Which form of capitalism was referred to in the survey? Was it the Bretton-Woods System or Neoliberal Capitalism? This is an important question because the conservative definitions of capitalism and socialism since the Bretton-Woods system of capitalism allows for far more government intervention than Neoliberal Capitalism. 

Which form of socialism was referred to in the survey? Was it Stalinism, which many Marxists do not think of as Socialism, or was it the form that emphasizes the redistribution of power to the workers? Here we should note that Germany's codetermination. laws makes Germany's economic system a hybrid of both Marxism and capitalism.  Or, again, did students use the conservative definition of socialism--big government--while answering the question? Were the students who answered the question about capitalism and socialism aware of all of those distinctions?

The above findings are flawed because the survey was flawed by utilizing not well-defined terms in its answers. But that won't stop some conservatives from using the change in statistics over the years to sound the alarm and incite fear where fear is not warranted.

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Feb 25

To Thaddeus Kozinski and his article that reviews what has occurred since the end of Christendom and calls for Christendom's return. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

When we look at what has blossomed since the end of Christendom, as listed in the above article, we must realize one point: what Christendom has suppressed. And when we look at what Christendom has suppressed and what has flourished in its absence, we need to ask why would we ever want a return to Christendom.

We should note in this Post Modern age, that Pre Modernism and Modernism has not totally left the world. Pre Modernism is alive and well within most of the major players who're engaged in committing atrocities today. That means that we can't scapegoat secularism for today's threats. And where we can blame secularism, we should note a common thread that is shared by those remnants of Pre Modernism that is producing atrocities: authoritarianism. And when one looks at the definition of Christendom, we need to ask if it is possible to have a Christendom that is lacking in authoritarianism.

Until we can find a form of Christendom that is void of authoritarianism, selling  Christendom today should be near impossible to the outside world. In fact, if we look at how we should share society with those who believe differently, perhaps we should leave Christendom on the ash heap of history and then go on to study how we Christians can contribute to a truly pluralistic and peaceful society and world. Of course one way in which we can contribute to such a world is to tolerate all others who seek such a society and world. But such toleration means forsaking our authoritarian proclivities.

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To Joseph Mussomeli and his article on the Russian war against Ukraine. In his article, Musomelli has criticized the American involvement in the war as a search for the perfect war. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

Though lessons from WW II abound on both sides of Russia's war against Ukraine, to make Hitler the focal point in trying to understand Putin is a grave error.

The lessons that abound from WW II involve Russia's history with invasions from the West and Europe's history with Imperial dreams starting with one invasion and then advancing an invasion or concession at a time. Both sensitivities are valid. And what goes unmentioned is that NATO's move eastward violated the understanding of the agreement made between Bush I and Gorbachev. Gorbachev stated that in his book, <I>The New Russia</I>.

But to understand what we can from Putin, we should keep our eyes focused on Russian history rather than turning our gaze toward Hitler. Before the October, 1917 Revolution stood the Russian Empire governed by the Tsars. For most of those Tsars, authoritarianism was to Russia what Christendom was to America. The Tsars so identified themselves with the nation of Russia that they believed that any opposition to them was a challenge to the nation itself. Lenin continued that same mentality only with using different labels such as 'proletariat' or 'revolution' for 'Russia' and 'Soviet Union' for 'Russian Empire.'  Stalin was Lenin on steroids. Khrushchev brought a brief reprieve that was only repeated by his successors. And it wasn't until Gorbachev that we saw a significantly real break in Russia's authoritarianism. That authoritarianism started to resurrect itself when Yeltsin had power.

Who knows what Putin wants and what is going on in his mind? Nobody knows enough for sure, but we are seeing repeats of Russian and Soviet Union history in Putin's words and actions. And we only need to look at Putin's authoritarian rule over his own people, his history in Chechnya and Georgia,  and his stated reasons, which seemed to have resembled Bush II when defending his own invasion of Iraq, for the invasion against Ukraine.

Putin is attempting to silence Russians's opposition to the war with arrests and imprisonment at home and threats and attempts at intimidation outside of Russia. Putin claims that Ukrainians are Russians. Putin, via the Archbishop of the Russian Orthodox Church, has stated that the 'special operation' is necessary to protect Russia from Western decadence. And, btw, it is Putin who is pointing to the Nazis by claiming that he trying to de-nazify Ukraine. Putin has made references to the NATO threat to Russia from Ukraine. And Putin has reportedly written about renewing the Russian Empire. If that is true, and there is evidence that supports that in Belarus, then though Germany is safe, quite a few other nations are not. There is also the Rodney Dangerfield complaint that Putin believes that Russia gets no respect. That complaint was one of the reported reasons why Khrushchev put missiles in Cuba.

It appears that no current world leader has either read the Russell-Einstein Manifesto or, if they had remembers it. That Manifesto clearly states that in the nuclear age we have a choice between relying on war and existence. And yet, imperialism cannot be tolerated--a lesson learned from WW II. That puts us between a rock and a hard place, none of which was recognized in the above article despite the some of the good but irrelevant points it made.

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March 7

To Scott McDermand and the first of 2 planned articles which partially layout a case for and defend the Regulative Principle of worship as promoted by the Reformers. This article was posted by Heidelblog.

There are multiple problems with the regulative principle for worship. They include:

1.   The interpretation of the 2nd Commandment used to claim and defend the regulative principle goes well beyond any plain reading of the that commandment. For in that commandment, God only tells us about a certain set of objects that we cannot make as well as a worship practice that we must not employ.  That is simply the plain reading of the 2nd Commandment. To say anything beyond that is to read into the Scriptures.

2.    Yes, other parts of the Old Testament specify exactly how God must be worshiped, but those ways are based on both man's standing with God before Christ died and rose again and how those ways of worship were shadows of and thus what would be fulfilled and thus made useless by Christ's 1st coming. To insist on the regulative principle is to employ an Old Testament mentality on the New Testament community. Here, we should remember about what Jesus said to the woman at the well in John 4: that there will come a time when instead of having to go to Jerusalem, we must worship God in spirit and in truth.

Having said that, there is something to learn from the regulative principle. That care must be taken in how we approach the worship of God. When we are not reverent enough in how we approach the worship of God, it is because we are being presumptuous about our standing before God. For we can only stand before and worship God because of God's grace and mercy which has been shown to and showered on those who believe in Christ. Again, we are to worship God in spirit and in truth. Thus, we must worship God in reverence acknowledging our unworthiness, outside of what Christ has done for us, to worship God in His house.

3.    The regulative principle was not practiced by Jesus nor by the Jews both before and when Jesus came to earth. In fact, there is no regulative principle described in the New Testament. Paul does describe how believers were coming together to worship; but that was simply a description, not an exclusive set of rules.

We should note something else here. When the regulative principle is generalized to other practices and approaches outside of worship, we, paradoxically, limit how we can use the New Testament to guide how we live when we meet circumstances and situations that were not experienced in the New Testament. 

At the same time, we must remember Romans 14 when fellowshipping with fellow believers who adhere to the regulative principle as they must do the same with fellowshipping with fellow believers who abide by the normative principle. The latter says that we must refrain from worshiping and living before God in ways forbidden by God's Word.

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March 9

To R. Scott Clark and his blog post against Christian Transformationalism because the New Testament calls us to be pilgrims and aliens, not transformers. This appeared in Heidelblog.

A weakness in Transformationalism which Clark did not point out is that, in the end, it is antithetical to democracy. In the end, it seeks a privileged position for Christianity in and over society. 

It is true that we are aliens in the world, though our lifestyles might not reflect that when we are financially privileged. But what does being an alien in this world prohibit Christians from doing when interacting with the world?

There are 2 weaknesses with 2KT, which is Clark's position. The first is its failure to acknowledge that to extent that it pushes natural law on society, it too is a form of transformationalism. This is especially apparent in how it views sexual issues, especially homosexuality. That same sex behavior is demonstrated in around 1,500 species of animals shows that the natural law being pushed by 2KT is a Christian view of natural law.

The 2nd weakness of 2KT is that it prohibits the Church from speaking out as an institution against corporate sins. Corporate sins such as systemic racism, economic exploitation and classism, sexism and patriarchy, immoral wars, a renewed arms race and militarism, and destroying the earth's ability to adequately sustain human life either because of pollution and/or climate change must be visibly opposed by the Church as an institution. When the Church does not publicly speak out against these sins, it becomes complicit with them. 

And though I  disagree with Clark's overall position here, I do agree  with him when he says that the Church is not charged to bring a golden age onto the earth. But opposing corporate sins and working for social justice does not imply that one is working for an ecclesiastical golden age. Neither does opposing corporate sins and working for social justice imply that one is working to establish a  privileged place for the Church in society. 

If we want to look at a good example of the Church as an institution speaking out against corporate sins, then we need to look no farther than what Martin Luther King Jr. and the SCLC did and said during the era of the Civil Rights Movement. Though King had golden age visions, what he and the SCLC opposed and what they promoted neither brought a golden age to America nor did it establish a privileged position for the Church in and over society. King and the SCLC simply opposed the sins of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism while promoting the rights and welfare of people without respect to religion. And where the Church was silent on racism, economic exploitation, and militarism back then, it was complicit with those sins just as the Church would be complicit if it didn't warn people against sexual immorality.

Of course, there is an immediate earthly advantage for the Church to be silent about corporate sins. That advantage is that that silence allows the Church to support those with wealth and power when those with wealth and power benefit from the committing of those corporate sins. But that kind of support should offend the Church since those in the Church are called to be aliens in this world.

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To Heidelblog and Carl Trueman for the portion of Trueman's article that was quoted from in this particular Heidelblog post. Trueman's article challenged evangelical leaders to be as courageous as J.K. Rowling was when she claimed that trans women are not women.

Trueman's article can be found at:

https://wng.org/opinions/are-evangelical-leaders-as-courageous-as-j-k-rowling-1677156614

 Carl's article contains nothing more than an authoritarian discourse aimed at refusing to distinguish those who have been helped by gender affirming care from those who are not. 

It is authoritarian because it involves a kind of all-or-nothing thinking about those who have been helped from receiving some level of gender-affirming care and those who provide it. His lack of precision and making distinctions in the different kinds of treatments that children with gender dysphoria are given is another example of a kind of all-or-nothing thinking he employs. And that kind of thinking is seen in his calling people evil in an emotional rant wrapped in  labels. In addition, Trueman's view of gender-affirming care do not seem to reflect J.K. Rowling on transgenderism. Rather, it seems that Trueman's mentality and approach to the subject has more in common with the critics of Rowling than Rowling herself.

If Trueman were to actually employ a rational argument, he would make meaningful distinctions like some of the ones mentioned above. If here were to employ a rational argument, he could borrow an argument from Robert Jensen, who is a leftist,  who looks at the Transgender issue from a feminist perspective. In arguing against allowing males who have transgendered into females to participate in women's sports, Jensen points out that one cannot  conflate gender identity with biological sex because while the former is psychological, the latter is biological--btw, that seems to be J.K. Rowling's view from what I read. Thus the two, biological sex and gender identity, could never be merged. And that those who started as biological males had a physical  advantage over cisgendered females in sports.

But then again, to refuse to conflate gender identity with biological sex on a consistent basis, Trueman and others would have to admit that biological sex is not the only factor involved in one's gender identity. But such an admission would go against a conservative authoritarian mindset.

Because many people have received help from gender affirming care and because we don't know all of the factors involved with  what causes people to experience gender dysphoria and seek a change in genders, we need to both talk with the awareness that  when talking we are walking on thin ice while remaining firm with our Scriptural convictions that transgenderism is wrong. That means that the issue of transgenderism is complicated. But those who prefer to make authoritarian appeals view complexity in the same way that Superman regards kryptonite.

Keeping up with the times in terms of knowledge does not imply that we must change our moral beliefs or shed religiously conservative convictions. Keeping up with the times means that we need to seek wisdom and understanding in order to grapple with today's issues while remaining faithful to the Scriptures. The kind of thinking involved in authoritarianism sees little to no need to seek wisdom and understanding here.

 

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For September 14, 2022

 Sept 9

To Joseph Pearce and the reposting of his 2016 article that supports the existence of Great Britain's monarchy. This was reposted in the Imaginary Conservative blog.

It is clear that Pearce likes structure and authority figures, especially those with whom he can agree.  Orbán, whom Pearce likes, liked to wield his authority to favor specific ethnic groups. And in admiring Orbán, Pearce shows that he doesn't have a full understanding of democracy, especially democracy in terms of what Jefferson said in his 1801 Inaugural  Address.

Did Queen Elizabeth make a statement of support for subsidiarity? Subsidiarity, btw, is a view that limits the work of democracy for any government that is a working democracy. I can understand  why fans of that ideology would believe that is the case. We all would like our beliefs to be praised by authority figures. But her words are unconvincing as well as the context of her statements are not included. Also, there is no contradiction between wanting an active government involved in the lives of its people and appreciating the acts of kindness carried out by individuals. Why must we think that we have to choose one or the other?

As for the monarchy, the real determinant of its continued value is whether there is a net social/political profit that emerges from the tradeoffs that come from maintaining the monarchy. And whether there is such a net profit will always be contingent on the character of the current monarch.

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Sept 13

To Joseph Mussomeli and the reposting of his 2018 article about 9/11 in which he complained that we have yet to reach closure. His complaints also included criticisms of those who are self-righteous on the left and the right and how we never learned what we needed to learn from the attacks. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

There are two points to make about Mussomeli's article on needing closure for 9/11 and its victims. The first point is that despite Mussomeli's refreshing approach about how America contributed to those attacks and that they were not inevitable, Mussomeli shakes his own self-righteous finger at many on the left and the right by insisting that he alone does things right in understanding 9/11. For the most part, the Left isn't out to excuse crime, but to point out that we are not above committing those crimes--our support for and contributions to the first 9-11 event is evidence to that claim.

As for the approach taken by many on the right. The curtailing of liberty that followed 9-11 was an understandable response to how the our increase technology makes all of us both more powerful and vulnerable at the same time. It's not that I agreed with the increased of unwarranted surveillance. It is that it was an understandable response..

Mussomeli lamented over the fact that we have yet reached closure on 9/11 unlike we have on Vietnam. But the way we reached closure on Vietnam, with new crises and enemies, both contributed to the events leading up to 9/11 and, as  part of his legitimate criticism of the right pointed out,  visited  violence on people who were not our enemies.  This is especially true of Reagan's policies in Latin America where, in El Salvador, those policies contributed to the creation of the MS-13 gang.

it's not that Mussomeli's article doesn't make any good points. As he has pointed out, we have bungled our response to 9/11. Instead of learning from and thus understanding why we were attacked, we responded in a way where we repeated some of the same mistakes that contributed to the attacks in the first place. And in seeking to understand the attacks, we can't afford to justify them. We are not safer now than before because we have not learned what we needed to learn from those attacks. 

But Mussomeli draws too hard of a line between his understanding of 9/11 and the responses from the left and right about which he claimed were self-righteous.

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For September 15, 2021

 Aug 27

To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost that defends the right of people to refuse to comply with vaccine mandates. This appeared in Heidelblog.

Are there justifiable moral reasons for refusing the vaccine in the face of the current pandemic? The argument for that refusal must be regarded as weaker now in the face of the Delta variant and the future variants that the Delta variant points to.

The beginning of the above blogpost is problematic because it points to competing claims. That is problematic because it doesn't mention the sources of those competing claims. It doesn't say anything about people vetting their news sources. To spread misinformation, especially deadly misinformation because one was negligent to vet one's news sources is to become vulnerable to violating the prohibitions against bearing false witness and killing. So this discussion about having the moral right to refuse the vaccination must start with knowing how to obtain news sources that are as reliable as possible.

Next, Clark's argument is structured around the individual and their conscience. The selective appeal to the sovereignty of the conscience is determined by the writer's own views and political-moral issues at hand. For example, Clark does not argue for the sovereignty of the conscience when it comes to homosexuality and same-sex marriage. Why? Because the conscience is fallible and thus must answer to higher authority. So why are we not discussing the fallibility of the conscience when structuring the discussion of mandated vaccinations around the conscience?

We should note that to so structure the discussion around the conscience can become counterproductive to promoting Biblical morals. Why? That is because to structure the discussion that way causes people, especially Christians, to be self-directed to the point of being self-focused. The concern for such people is to maintain their own moral purity. But Biblical morals are also about loving one's neighbor as themselves. Biblical morals adds to the mix a concern and even preoccupation with the welfare of others. Note that Biblical morals adds love for neighbor to the mix; it does not replace the valid concerns for maintaining one's own purity.

Next comes a confusing concern about the legality of the abortion from which fetal cells were used in the development of the vaccines. Before noting the confusion, we should note that fetal cells, that is cells from an actual fetus, were not used at all in the development or production of any vaccine. Rather, cells from a fetal cell line were used. That means that reliance on these cells is not causing more abortions. 

As for the moral objections to using such cells, one might ask if it is immoral to use organs in transplant operations from a person who was murdered. Again, the question of whether such use becomes an incentive for future murders is important here. Does the cause of death suggest anything about the use of those organs? If not, doesn’t the comparison suggest a similar, if not the same, answer, for use of fetal cells from an abortion? And since cells from a fetal cell line is being used, doesn’t the suggestion become stronger in the face of the current pandemic?

Clark’s objection to this line of thinking is one of choice only in a broader context. A volunteer organ donor is making the choice to donate one’s organs. But how does that apply when the fetal cell donor has no ability to make such a choice? Is Clark comparing apples to oranges in making  this particular point? Again, isn’t the overriding moral issue here whether the use of these fetal cells leads to future abortions?

As for the confusing concern for the legality of the abortion when it occurred, if one believes that elective abortions is murder, what does the legal status of the abortion add to the discussion of using cells from fetal cell lines?

Clark’s argument encourages Christians to be very focused on their own moral purity. In so doing, he is encouraging a greater self preoccupation at the expense of love for neighbor. The moral objections he considers are not well thought out. And at the end, he lacks precision in talking about the flaws of the vaccines. He fails to mention that the drop in the efficacy of the current vaccines are due to the Delta variant rather than a drop against the earlier forms of the Covid-19 virus. In addition, the growth of the Delta variant has been greatly contributed to by the number of unvaccinated people. And for as long as that number is not reduced, new variants, which pose even greater threats than the current forms of Covid-19, are more likely to emerge. 

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Around Aug 27

To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost that quotes an article by Chris Gordon that that we must focus on and keep the 10 Commandments in order to worship God as he wants us to. This appeared in Heidelblog.

The link for the article quoted by Clark is below:

https://agradio.org/resource/legalism-what-it-is-and-what-it-is-not

But isn't true that in the Old Testament, ways of living and worship had to be more prescribed in detail because Christ and His coming was veiled in the Old Testament? For the Old Testament doesn't just contain the 10 Commandments, it also adds to that ways of applying those Commandments. Isn't it true that in the Old Testament, God's people were centralized in a geographical area and under a certain lineage for the most part and thus God's direction for them was to be different from the neighbors to show that they were set apart while worshiping a revealed Christ?

And isn't it true that under the New Testament, many of those strict prescriptions for life and worship no longer became binding? Isn't it true that the New Testament describes the Sabbath as shadow of what was to come? 

And isn't it true that we now live as a dispersed people throughout the world? And thus our unity is no longer around a particular ethnic group or geographical center, but around Christ. And so local culture may play legitimate roles in a group of believer's worship of God.

And so isn't it true that if how we live and worship accurately reflects or points to Christ, that we are not worshiping God according to our own devices, but instead we are following and proclaiming Christ?  And if how we worship God is adequately proclaiming Christ, then our worship is not only valid, it is safeguarded from following our own devices. In fact, revolving our ways of worship around who Christ is according to the Scriptures is a better perspective for determining how we will worship.

So shouldn't the focus of our worship be on Christ rather on the 10 Commandments. For if our ways of worship accurately portray Christ as the Scriptures define him to be, we will automatically include what is necessary from the 10 Commandments since those Commandments play a significant role in defining who Christ is because they show why He came to earth in the first place.

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Sept 1

To R. Scott Clark and Katie Herzog for his blogpost citing of an article by Herzog on how some in Medical Schools are approaching gender identity issues. This appeared in Heidelblog.

Herzog's article can be found at:

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/med-schools-are-now-denying-biological

The article cited contains quite a generalization from  a few examples. But it also contains a common error made by both conservatives and many in the LGBT community. That error is to conflate gender or gender identity with biological sex. 

While conservatives believe that our gender identity should be defined solely by our biological sex,  those on the other side of the argument believe that our biological sex should be defined only by our gender identity. The problem there is that while our biological sex is a physical construct, our gender identity is a social construct which implies that there are other factors, non physical factors at that, that contributed to our gender identity. 

What the AMA and doctors that follow its direction when recognizing and attempting to   respond to gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria is a real condition that is not yet adequately understood. We should note that though in somewhat different ways, this gender identity issue was handled differently by some Native American tribes some of which only recognized up to 5 genders, they honored those whose gender identity was different than their biological sex. But, again, the gender identity issue in those tribes did not always match up with our gender identity issues here.

The point here is that we religiously conservative Christians, not all of whom are politically conservative, need to stop conflating biological sex with gender identity before judging others for approaching gender identity in ways we disapprove of. 

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Sept 3

To R. Scott Clark and Matt Taibbi for Clark's blogpost quote of a Taibbi article on an NPR episode that talked about the 'dangers of free speech.' This appeared in Heidelblog.

Reality says that authoritarianism is the other pandemic. Authoritarianism, from what I have personally experienced, has become the rage in liberal circles, conservative ones, and even leftist circles. BTW, I count NPR as being liberal, not leftist. And it is authoritarianism that helps govern how tolerant of diversity we are especially in our own ranks.

Common sense would tell us that conservatives have a stronger penchant for authoritarianism than others have because of their emphasis on preserving tradition. In fact, the conservative vigilance in guarding tradition produces conservatism's most glaring fault: the over reliance on selective parts of the past to understand and respond to the present. But the more ideological a group is, the more likely it is to become authoritarian regardless of its conservative credentials. Only instead of the past, a strongly ideological group will rely too much on its own ideology to understand and respond to the present.

And how ideological a group becomes will depend on how much it sees its own ideology as being be all and end all it is either regarding all of life or a given sphere of life. The more a given group believes that its own ideology is omniscient, the more it sees the ideas from other groups as a corrupting influence and thus the less tolerant it will be of those other groups and the more authoritarian it will act toward others. 

So it isn't just NPR that is antagonistic to free speech, every authoritarian group is. They just show it in different ways.

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Sept. 9

To R. Scott Clark and Carl Trueman and Clark's blogpost quote of an article by Trueman on how the faults of past Christian leaders should not move us to dismiss everything they said. This appeared in the Heidelblog

Carl Trueman's article can be found at:

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2021/09/judging-the-sins-of-our-fathers

If judging the sinfulness of our fathers should include taking into account our own sinfulness, that's a good point that should be taken. But should that also apply when we judge the sinfulness of our ideological, religious, and all other opponents too?

But we should add another point when it comes to judging Christian leaders like Jonathan Edwards. That point is that we are often reminded of Edwards's good credentials as reasons to accept what he said without much examination. At the same time, here we are told to remember our own sins when being reminded of his sins. Perhaps, we should remember both Edwards's sins and his good points when we listen or read to his theology so that we neither automatically accept nor reject it. Instead, we should thoroughly examine Edwards's words to see what we agree with and what we disagree with it. To do otherwise would be to passionately embrace authoritarianism.

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Sept 10

To R. Scott Clark and Ilya Shapiro for Clark's blogpost citation of Shapiro's article that opposes vaccine mandates. This appeared in heidelblog.

Ilya Shapiro's article appears in 

https://www.cato.org/blog/federal-vaccine-mandates-pose-constitutional-triple-threat

What is missing from the above citation is the context for vaccine mandates. We do know that even before the pandemic, we've had vaccine mandates. Many colleges require its residential students to receive a particular meningitis vaccine. A vaccine mandate regarding the vaccine for smallpox was supported by SCOTUS in 1905 (see Jacobson v. Massachusetts) and there was a 1922 case ruled on by Judge Brandeis regarding school mandates for children (see https://www.npr.org/2021/08/29/1032169566/the-u-s-has-a-long-precedent-for-vaccine-mandates  ).

To debate vaccine mandates in general would be to go against history and the present.  To go against particular vaccine mandates requires an adequate discussion about the disease, the vaccines, and both the public and private risks and benefits of a given set of vaccines. But neither the above citation nor the article it comes from includes past or present mandates nor the specifics about the proposed vaccine mandate. Rather it speculates on the effects vaccine mandates can have on the application of The Constitution. 

So why does the above citation and the article it is taken from avoid  so much of the context of vaccine mandates in general and the recently proposed one in particular?

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Sept 11

To Joseph Mussomeli and his article on the importance of remembering the dead from the 9/11 attacks. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative.

Mussomeli come closer to understanding 9/11 than most conservatives I've either listened to or read. But where he comes closest to understanding is also where he loses it. 

In analyzing the reactions of both the left and the right to 9/11, he correctly describes the perpetrators of 9/11 as acting out of a desire for justice, though it was a perverted sense of justice.  And he is correct in describing the left as sort of attributing 9/11 to American belligerence and imperialism. But what he fails to understand was that the left was not excusing crimes, they were trying to get us to understand why it happened. Also, the perpetrators of 9/11 were acting not out of a merely perceived sense of just, but out of remembering their own dead--remembering our dead from 9/11 is the central theme of the article.

In what was said innterviews with Bin Laden can be easily confirmed by history. It was Bin Laden who pointed to the number of dead in Iraq from both our sanctions (hundreds of thousands of children died from the combination of first Persian Gulf War and the sanctions that followed) and from our support from Israel's Occupation against the Palestinians (more Palestinian civilians have been killed than those from any other group in the conflict). Another reason for the 9/11 attacks was the use of US troops in the first Persian Gulf War and their continued presence in Saudi Arabia. 

Not being cognizant of the number of dead we've caused as being a necessary lesson to understanding 9/11 is a key missing link in better  understanding 9/11 in order to prevent another such attack. This is where Mussomeli fails. But his failure is partial. 

Furthermore, we might note that what happened on September 11th, 2001 was actually the second 9/11. The first one occurred in 1973 and saw a US supported violent military coup in Chile. Yes, that was the first 9/11. And many more civilians died in the aftermath of that 9/11 than were lost in our 9/11. In addition, what makes us oblivious to those facts is our own America-cefuller picture of 9/11. Though it must be said that Mussomeli's America-centrism is not as strong as that of many other people. And Mussomeli should be commended for coming as far as he did in reflecting on 9/11.

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For June 26, 2019

June 21

To Joseph Mussomeli and his blogpost about the pardon of an American soldier who, in revenge for the death of his friend, disobey orders by taking an enemy combatant prisoner to an isolated area where he stripped the prisoner and then interrogated him. When the prisoner fought back, the soldier killed the prisoner. The article was written because this soldier, who was sentenced to 25 years in military prison, received a Presidential pardon. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

We need to distinguish between what is understandable and justifiable. We could easily understand the 9/11 atrocities if we note that they were in response to our almost carte blanche support for Israel's atrocities against the Palestinians and to our sanctions against Iraq that took the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. That is we could understand those atrocities unless tribalism has prevented us from doing so. Unfortunately, tribalism, a.k.a., strong group loyalty, often prevents us from seeing the sins of our own group. Instead, the ethic that comes with tribalism is that right and wrong depends on who does what to whom. Thus the atrocities that our group does can be described as understandable but not the atrocities of others. BTW though the 9/11 atrocities are understandable, they are in no way justifiable and neither could the actions of Behenna. BTW, for critics, I am well aware that the 9/11 attacks were on a scale far greater than Behanna's killing of the prisoner. That is not the point of comparison being used here. The point is to distinguish how an atrocity can be understandable but not justifiable.

Regarding the events that led to the prisoner's killing, against orders, Behenna took the prisoner to an isolated area where he stripped the prisoner to interrogate him. But when the prisoner attacked Behenna, why wasn't the prisoner's attack described as self-defense? If the roles were reversed and a lone enemy combatant had taken Behenna out to an isolated location, stripped him and started to interrogate him, would we describe Behenna as acting in self-defense if he attacked his captor?  Instead, Behenna's reactions to the attack are the only actions described as self-defense.

War certainly corrupts everyone involved. It is inevitable. War enables tribalism to flourish. In fact war is steroids for tribalism. And in tribalism moral relativism wins the day. And that should be the Christian's problem with the above article even though Mussomeli complains about America's strong tendency to admit no wrong doing. Behenna's actions were in no way justifiable and thus they become a stain on the conscience of both our nation as well as Behenna. Even though what he did was understandable, it can in no way be justified. And though we don't know how Behenna will respond to this stain on his conscience, many of our troops who fought in the War on Terror have reacted to their own stains by taking their lives at rates not seen since the Vietnam War. Recognizing that Behenna's actions were understandable does not wash out the stain. Recognizing that his actions were unjustifiable begins the process of washing out that stain. Unfortunately, according to the above article, Behenna has not completed that stage. And his pardon, though bringing him temporary comfort, might even cause the stain to be set in deeper.
Fighting a war and, to a lesser degree, fighting crime show some with the most power weapons we allow people to have. To allow them to give into tribalism means that we are taking away an important motivation for those with these powerful weapons to exercise self-restraint. So are we fully informed if we give into tribalism for those who have the most powerful weapons people can have? Or are we just kidding ourselves when thinking that our side will always prevail when atrocities win the day?
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June 22
To Joseph Sunde and his blogpost claiming that Socialism and Christianity do not mix. His blogpost contains a video presentation of Socialism by Russell Moore from the Gospel Coalition. This appeared in the Acton blog.

The problems that almost always occur when religiously conservative Christians, especially American ones, talk about socialism is that that they talk about it mostly in static, monolithic terms. By static I mean that they never have read  or listened enough to hear the evolution that occurs in socialist thinking. And by monolithic, I mean that socialism is always described as being the same without acknowledging key differences between Socialists. And we might add that religiously conservative Christians, especially those from America, are opportunistic in terms of what they point out as its examples.


Russell Moore is guilty of having all 3 problems when talking about Socialism. And one has to wonder how limited has been his view of of the subject.

In terms of talking about socialism statically, while the popular Christian assessment of socialism is that it occurs when we have state owned means of production in order to arrive at some utopian end, that is not the view of all socialists today. Some now believe in relying on socialism not to reach utopia, but to improve on a failing Capitalist system. Some now are emphasizing non-elite centered rule and worker-owned and controlled means of production--one can see this in Ezequiel Adamovsky's book, Anticaptialism. And, starting with Trotsky and continuing with Khrushchev and Gorbachev, many socialists have condemned Stalin's totalitarianism. Noam Chomsky also included in that condemnation of Stalin was a claim that Lenin was not a socialist in terms of how he ruled Russia. Like other systems, Socialism has evolved and gone through some changes.

Next, Moore describes socialism, even for democratic socialism, as a monolith where the state owns and controls the means of production. But such does not qualify as socialism from the Marxist tradition. Why? Because the most basic tenet of Marxist Socialism is that the workers replace the bourgeoisie as the ruling class. Thus, even if the state does own the means of production, which is not necessary for Socialism to occur,  it is not Socialist if the workers are not in control of the state. And the workers gain those positions of authority by being democratically elected by their peers. That is an extremely important part of the definition of Socialism from the Marxist tradition. In fact, based on that criteria, Rosa Luxemburg, a contemporary of Lenin, declared that Lenin was not ruling as a Socialist because he relied on a small elite committee to help rule rather than on the workers. We should note here that Lenin came from the Petite Bourgeosie class, he was never a member of the proletariat--the workers. Therefore, according to Luxemburg, Lenin's rule over Russia resembled a Bourgeoisie dictatorship rather than a Socialist rule. And Moore  would know that if he was adequately exposed to socialist thinkers. But he wasn't and thus was ignorant of that fact. But Luxemburg gave Lenin a Hall Pass because of Russia's internal conflicts at the time. And Luxemburg was not the only Socialist who was challenging Lenin's Socialist crednetials..

BTW, Moore's Democratic Socialism isn't the only variation of  Socialism. Libertarian Socialism doesn't even believe in the existence of the state and yet it is a form of socialism. And yet Moore does not account for that.
Finally, religiously conservative Christians are opportunistic in their labeling of Socialist regimes. While they are more than happy to include the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, North Korea and alike as examples of Socialism, they overlook the fact that non-dictatorial, democratically elected and left-leaning  regimes were replaced by the US with tyrannical dictators who served the interests of American businesses. Had they been given a chance, who knows what positive examples of Socialism would have emerged. Rather, Moore and others only point to those "communist" regimes that emerged from revolutions that sought to overthrow dictators who, far too many times, were supported by the West.

IN addition, Moore overlooks one nation that is both economically successful and the closest example of Marxism today. That nation is Germany. Why is Germany the closest example to Marxism in the world today? It is because just as Marx believed in redistributing power to the workers, so has Germany partially implemented that redistribution of power. However Germany uses a hybrid system with its codetermination laws that combine worker-controlled means of production with bowner-controlled means of production. For example, if a company has at least 500 to around 2,000 employees, then around 1/3 of the executive board of the company must be made up of workers who were elected by their peers. And if memory serves, if a company has over 2,000 employees, then the percentage of worker representation on the executive board approaches 50%.
If we want to want to read one of the best Christian assessments of Socialism/Communism, we need to read what Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his book: Strive Toward Freedom. It isn't that King doesn't commit some of the same errors that Moore has. Rather, King's objections to Socialism/Communism are far more biblically based than Moores as King strikes at more of the most bssic elements of Socialism that Moore overlooks.




 

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For January 23, 2019

Jan 22

To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost that significantly criticizes Gillette’s commercial calling on men to treat women with respect and to stop bullying others. This appeared in Heidelblog

It seems that the above reaction to the Gillette commercial is rather defensive and seems to indicate a turf battle over who gets to challenge people to be better. I see no branding in this commercial nor the idea that buying Gillette products is a way of civilizing men as Clark claims. And certainly Gillette is neither a church nor an organization like the B.S.A., but so what?

And as for what the commercial depicts, it explicitly says that it is addressing issues like sexual harassment and assault along with bullying the latter of which explains why the "rough housing" between two boys was broken up. Should we allow bullying between boys because it challenges them to be tougher?

We should ask why the effort to discredit the film? For example, consider the line below:

It is quite likely, however, that this slick, expensive commercial was certainly tested in “focus groups”

How is it logically consistent to say that the testing of this commercial was both 'quite likely' and 'certainly.' Certainly Clark knows the Scriptural warnings against bearing false witness. And to avoid doing so, don't we need evidence rather than speculation to make a claim against another.

Finally, we do need to apply redemptive history to the subject of what men should be. Yes we need people, not just men, who can stand up to evil. But redemptive history seems to have a changing view of the evil in people which must be confronted. When God's people consisted of a collection of tribes or a nation, evil was more likely to be attributed to those outside the tribes or nation. Yes, evil was attributed to evil kings, false prophets, and other disobedient people. But those who opposed God's people were all described as being evil. Deliverance from evil then consisted of deliverance from others.

But New Testament redemptive history attributes evil to all by calling us sinners. So today when people take up arms to confront perceived evil, they must also look in a mirror lest they too be counted with the enemy. WW II, for example, was aptly called a war between empires. Certainly the Axis powers had to be stopped. But opposing the Axis power did not imply one's own nation was good. And not only was the Soviet Union a vintage example of that idea, the US also practiced evil both during and after WW II. Our firebombing of German and Japanese cities, the use of nuclear weapons, and our land acquisitions in the Pacific gave a more complete picture of our true colors. And something similar can be said of our allies such as Great Britain and France.

So why the defensive reaction to the Gillette commercial? Perhaps the above post is more of a self-description than a protest against Gillette along with Proctor and Gamble.

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To Joseph Mussomeli and his blogpost that describes the shutdown as a failure of both the Republican President and the Democratic House members of being unwilling to compromise even despite the fact that federal workers pay the price for that unwillingness. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

What seems to be missing from the above discussion is Trump's history at stiffing workers (see  https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/06/09/donald-trump-unpaid-bills-republican-president-laswuits/85297274/ ). What we see with the shutdown is just another example of the same. And it isn't just the internet that can tell us this history, some who worked in NYC before Trump became President can as well. For example, I met a person who worked as a paralegal during some of the time when Trump was there who told me that many people know of Trump's history at stiffing workers.

The shutdown isn't about two sides who won't compromise. The shutdown is about a President who is using the plight of federal workers as pawns in his version of a nuclear option. The House of Representatives is a collective voice of democracy. So by utilizing the partial shutdown, what Trump has said is that if any collective voice of democracy does not give in to his demands, a partial shutdown of the government, remains an option for him to use. The issue of the wall is not pertinent here. The issue here is a President who rejects a historical and legal voice of democracy and doesn't care who is hurt by the action.

In addition we should note how Trump told Schumer and Pelosi that he would not only shutdown the government, but that he would take credit for that shutdown. But now he blames Democrats for his actions. When will conservatives fully connect with the fact that their Republican President is a man who  has no regard for the truth?

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For August 15, 2018

August 12

To R. Scott Clark and his citation of W. Robert Godfrey description of the differences Machen saw between religiously conservative Christians and liberal Christianity. This appeared in Heidelblog

What we need to consider, if we want to avoid the sin of the Pharisee from the parable of the 2 men praying, is if there are wolves among both conservatives and liberals. What we need to consider is if we need to continually build hybrid theologies from the best of what both liberals and conservatives have to teach.

Certainly liberals need to pay attention to the conservatives' emphasis on the supernatural character of Jesus, His substitutionary death for His people, His literal and physical resurrection from the dead, God's judgment of the quick and the dead, and the inerrancy of the original autographs of the Scriptures.

But conservatives need to acknowledge that many of the social concerns liberals have are implied by the Scriptures. That while Machen identified some legitimate divides between liberals and conservatives, that he overreacted to other differences and that, out of anger for how he was personally treated, he portrayed liberals and liberalism in all-or-nothing terms and thus implied that we religiously conservative Christians have everything to teach liberals and nothing to learn from them.

How Machen treated liberals has become a model for how conservatives and non-conservatives have come to regard each other in other spheres besides religion. And the result becomes a self-righteousness that causes people to unnecessarily attack those who are different.

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August 13

To Rev Ben Johnson and his article claiming that Socialism dehumanizes the poor. This appeared in the Acton blog.

First, we have socialism and we have socialism from the Marxist perspective. While the former might revolve around the controlled redistribution of wealth by the state, the latter does not. In fact, socialism from the Marxist perspective revolves around the redistribution of power from the bourgeoisie to the workers--a feat that has not occurred in the "socialist" governments of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Hugo Chavez, and others.

Second, socialism's track record has been interfered with primarily by the US. As Iran was moving to the left with the nationalization of oil reserves, the US and Great Britain orchestrated a coup to replace a democratically elected leader with a brutal dictator. As Guatemala's new democratically elected leader President Arbenz was promising land reform, the US overthrew him and turned the nation over to a dictator in 1954. As it looked like Greece was about to select a leftist government in 1967. the US stopped the process and installed a military dictatorship. And the last example that will be mentioned but not the last that occurred is what happened in the first 9-11 in Chilé in 1973 when the democratically elected leftist leader President Allende was replaced with the brutal dicator Pinochet who was later indicted for crimes against humanity for how he treated many of his own people.

Yes there are other examples, but none of them were ever mentioned in the writings of those who wish to denounce socialism and one must wonder, but not too hard, why.
The dehumanization of the poor comment misrepresents what Marx was saying. But what he said about Capitalism cannot be argued against by the results. That Capitalism makes workers into disposable objects of profit. Workers, in Capitalism, become commodities like any raw resource commodity would. This is amplified in today's neoliberal capitalism where we have economies designed to profit shareholders before anyone else and sometimes at almost everyone else's expense. Workers are put at risk for exploitation as is the environment, he latter of which Marx didn't foresee.
For sure, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Hugo Chavez and some other revolutionary "socialist" leaders or their political descendants did dehumanize those not in the politically privileged class. But that didn't come about by empowering workers, it came about by destroying workers' democracy. it came about by elite-centered governments, something of which socialism has no monopoly. It was Marx who relied on the workers to bring about his utopia and he was wrong. But his emphasis on empowering the workers and redistributing power from the bourgeoisie to the workers is what we can gain from him. And it seems that by not mentioning that power battle between the bourgeoisie and the workers, that apologists for today's Capitalism want people to overlook that imbalance in power in order to continue to support the dominance that the bourgeoisie continue to have over the workers. And today's attacks on the environment  by Capitalism and the way of life it promotes adds another reason for opposing Capitalism, especially today's neoliberal capitalism.
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August 14

To Joseph Mussomeli and his attempt to use King’s message on equality to attack programs like Affirmative Action. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

The basic theme that Mussomeli eventually  gets to his theme that despite our past abuses of people from different races, women, and economic classes, we should not employ affirmative action to readdress those wrongs. And somehow he reduces Martin Luther King, Jr.'s message to his dream speech in order to refer to King as an opponent to affirmative action.

But what really bothers me about the above rambling article is how it reduces King's message. Below is a quote from his speech against the Vietnam War. In that quote, King offers an explanation of why we still have such a racial divide and what is inseparably linked to that racism. He also offers a partial solution to our problem with racism: a change in the social morals of soceity (see http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2564.htm ):

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.

For as long as society values things more than people, we will be competing in groups for those things. And the groups we will be competing in will be primarily defined by both our race and our economic class. And sometimes we will be competing as members of one gender against another gender. So if people are more important to us than things, we will be more willing to share power and opportunities with those from other races and classes and we will recognize what they have to contribute that we don't. And that is the message that Mussomeli needs to bring balance to his attacks on practices like Affirmative Action.

However, that message of sharing is not strong enough in Mussomeli's article to either address the problems with programs like Affirmative Action or reflect what King thought about how we undo past and current abuses of others.

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For May 16, 2018

May 14

TO Joseph Mussomeli and his blogpost on the 5 myths about the Iran deal controversy. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

Mussomeli makes some good points in the above article even though they can be improved on.

Point #1.
Mussomeli is correct in his assessment regarding Iran's status in sponsoring terrorism. Certainly, Saudi Arabia should be a leading candidate but only if we ignore state actions that meet the definition of terrorism. For the definition says that terrorism consists of the threat or use of violence on civilians to achieve a political end. And whether one considers that we used terrorists in our invasion of Afghanistan and our overthrow of Libya's government, we practiced terrorism in the events leading up to and including our invasion of Iraq, we practiced terrorism in our overthrow of Libya's government, and we use drones to assassinate civilians in other nations, it would seem that the US is the greatest purveyor of terrorism in the world--similar to Martin Luther King's statement that his government is the 'greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.'
The problem with Mussomeli's point here is that it seems to assume that violence can only be counted as terrorism when it is practiced by those who oppose our nation or its allies.
Point #2
Even if Iran developed nuclear weapons, it could never qualify as the greatest nuclear threat in the world. And Mussomeli is correct in stating that Pakistan is a greater threat than Iran would be. But here, Mussomeli leaves out of the rankings of other nuclear armed nations like Israel, Great Britain, India, Russia, and the US--of course there are other nations that could have been included. In terms of the quantity of weapons, the US and Russia pose the greatest nuclear threat in the world. But when one considers the willingness to use nuclear weapons, both India and Pakistan rank ahead of Iran.

There are a couple of reasons why some western thinkers would rank nuclear armed Iran as the greatest nuclear threat in the world. One is that possession of nuclear weapons would give Iran a deterrent to Western aggression in the region. Another reason is to cover Israel's apparent adoption of the Bush Doctrine. The Bush Doctrine said that the US would not tolerate any nation to begin to rival its power in the world. Of course, that doctrine was and still is delusional for the US to enforce on the world. But Israel seems to be enforcing that doctrine in its region. And that might be the real reason for Israel's concern. Israel will not allow for almost any other nation, with the exception of Saudi Arabia, in its region to close the technological gap between itself and Israel. And America allows for Israel to practice such a doctrine because it becomes a watchdog for the US in that region.

Point #3
The only thing I would change in what Mussomeli wrote is the word 'belligerent.'  When a nuclear-armed nation surrounds your nation with military bases and another  nuclear-armed nation in the region continually employs rhetoric, belligerence is not the only way to describe defiance to the situation.
Point #4
Is it in America's best interest to operate by the rule of force? We should ask because, after all, that is how our allies Israel and Saudi Arabia operate in the region and us in the world. But it is that rule of force that fosters enough resentment to cause groups to defiantly oppose our control over others. We should also note that agreements like the Iran nuclear deal subtract from that rule of force because it adds an element of self-restraint. In addition, some American leaders are pushing for sanctions on those European businesses that do business with Iran to even magnify the effect of our leaving the agreement.

Point #5
To continue to operate by the rule of force is suicidal in a world where, because of ever advancing technology, the proliferation of WMDs is inevitable and the current ways of doing things increases  the number of our enemies. Thus, it would seem that leaving the Iran deal is not in our best interests as Mussomeli pointed out in his own way.
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May 15

To Hunter Baker and his blogpost that declared that, from the examples set by nations like Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea, Socialism is dead. This appeared in the Acton blog.

Baker misses the most key component of Socialism from the Marxist tradition in his definition of the term. Socialism is first about the redistribution of power from the bourgeoisie to the proletariat.  And thus, if the state controls the means of production but the bourgeoisie are in charge of the state, you have no socialism. But what about the examples provided by Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea.

First, as discussed a number of times during the 2015 Left Forum, there was great concern as to whether Hugo Chavez putting workers in positions of power and thus giving workers more decision-making ability.  For while Chavez was making economic decisions that helped the poor, which went unmentioned in the above article, he made those decisions from a top-down organizational model. Lenin used a similar organizational model and the regime he led was called a bourgeoisie dictatorship by Rosa Luxemburg. See, how Luxemburg defined Socialism was the rule of a proletariat run democracy. Is that what Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea implemented?

Second, what escapes Baker's mentioning is that both Venezuela and Cuba were subject to significant harassment from the US. The embargo, which consists of economic sanctions, on Cuba was covered by 6 laws and was meant to hurt Cuba's economy until it allowed for democratization and it ecognized human rights. We should note here that the US interest in human rights for Cuba came into existence when the Cuban Revolution occurred. It was then that the US recognized that their support for the corrupt dictator Batista was not in its own best interests.

For Venezuela, there are allegations that the U.S. was not only involved in the 2002 coup attempt, but that it was working behind the scenes to sabotage the Venezuelan economy. The coup and attempts at sabotage could provide a partial, but not complete, explanation for Chavez's reaching for more power.

In terms of the redistribution of power to the proletariat, the question Baker and other conservative, opportunistic prognosticators of Socialism have to answer to is this, do they provide examples of real Marxist Socialism? Did either the Soviet Union or China provide such an example? Here we find that using proper definitions is a key in answering those questions and making pronouncements over the status of Socialism.


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To Joe Carter and his blogpost that argues for Former Justice Scalia’s Originalism approach to interpreting The Constitution over the Living Constitution approach. This appeared in the Acton Blog.

One problem with the living Constitution approach is that it risks separating us too much from our roots in an attempt to be relevant in using The Constitution to address situations never envisioned by our founding fathers. The attempt to be so relevant  elevates the present over the past to the effect that we think nothing could be learned from studying the past. The problem with Originalism is that it risks destroying The Constitution by making it either irrelevant or a tool to implement a tyranny of tradition which elevates the past over the present in terms of wisdom and fairness. Originalism doesn't recognize that the people back then may never have seen the greater implications of what was written in our founding documents. For example, did Thomas Jefferson consider that all men, in his line that 'all men are created equal,' now refers to not just men of every race, but women as well?

Scaila was a conservative and so his approach to interpreting The Constitution is consistent with conservatism and its flaws. And one of the flaws of conservatism is that it tends to look SOLELY to the past in order to understand and react to the present. That is why the Scalia's Originalism approach to The Constitution not only facilitates the tyranny of tradition, it works to deny many logical implications of the text and thus usefulness of The Constitution. Scalia's approach makes The Constitution itself too inflexible, despite his claims otherwise, to speak to many of today's issues.

Finally, the following claim by Carter should be examined:

The Living Constitution replaces our representative democracy with an out-of-touch oligarchy

We should note that The Constitution was written in an effort to maintain the status quo for America's financial elites at that time. For not only was The Constitution written in response to widespread dissent and Shays Rebellion, it gave the Federal government power to put down such insurrections and it tried to prevent the populace from gaining power that would allow it to rule over the financial elites at that time (a.k.a., the landed interests) . Madison himself expressed fear over the opening of elections to all classes of people in England lest agrarian reform should follow. Thus, it seems that, at the least, Originalism invites the same risk of oligarchy that Carter claims that the Living Constitution approach brings.

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For February 14, 2018

Feb 9

To Joe Carter and his blogpost on the Dow Jones exchange and other economic tidbits. This appeared in the Acton blog.

There is something missing in what people, not just Christians, should know about the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The Dow, and other exchanges, shows that our economy revolves around the shareholder. And when that is the case, all other stakeholders of the economy are relegated to being mere objects of profit for the good pleasure of the shareholders. And when referring to shareholders here, we should note that since in publicly owned companies, each share gets a vote, those with the most shares, those who have the most  money to invest, get the most votes and thus are able to control the direction and decisions made by any publicly owned company. Those with the least power in such companies are the other stakeholders. The executive board of a given publicly owned company are there to serve the interest of the shareholders with the most say.

We should note something else about publicly owned companies. Only those who have bought stocks that were originally issued by the company have invested their money into the company. Those who bought shares from previous owners gain the political power of those owners but have invested no money into a given publicly owned company. So they are there to garner the profits of the company more so than those who bought shares from the company itself. This can make shareholders the economic equivalent of absentee slumlords.

The de facto purpose of many publicly owned companies is to maximize the ROI for the shareholders--which is part of maximizing profits for a given publicly owned company. Maximizing the ROI for investors and maximizing profits for the company presents themselves as a conflict of interest with paying all employees fair pay and in protecting the environment from any environmental footprint that the operation of the company and use of its products causes. In addition, part of the maximizing ROIs and profits causes companies to employ lobbyists whose job is to get the government to favor their own companies over the rest of the population. And part of getting the government to favor their own companies includes the use of both legal and illegal bribes in the form of providing favors for elected officials and giving campaign contributions to ensure elected officials job security.

Now the ability to make above observations doesn't require one to take any classes in economics. One only needs to read and ask economists a few questions. And the ability to draw implications from the above observations only requires one to employ logic. And so it doesn't take an economist to realize that we have an economy that exists to serve the interests of the wealthy while all others are made into disposable objects for profit. And why we tolerate a system where investors, who never have put a dime into a company, have all the say and workers, some of whom have labored for a company for decades, are mere disposable objects for profit who have no say in the company is a mystery for a nation that once was a "Christian nation" whose scriptures that teach that the love of money is strongly associated with evil. 

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To Caroline Roberts and her blogpost on how Millennials prefer Socialism. This appeared in the Acton blog.

I would agree that Millennials don't know what socialism is. But what is also true is that they could never learn about socialism from its conservative antagonists. For those conservative antagonists of socialism are content both to be  historical opportunists and content to describe socialism as a monolith.

First, what many conservatives called socialism was Bolshevism. And the leader of the revolution that made Bolshevism into Communism was not only criticized by some of his socialist contemporaries for introducing a bourgeoisie dictatorship, Lenin mocked those to the left of him as being 'infantile'--a description that seems some what synonymous with some conservative criticisms of socialism. This, as well as Mao's and Castro's revolutions are what conservative antagonists of Socialism want people to think about when they think about Socialism. Of course, conservative antagonists of Socialism forget that, in Nicaragua, a leftist revolution turned to a democracy rather than continued a dictatorship. In addition,  conservative antagonists forget that many of the leftist revolutions were executed in order to overthrow Capitalist supported dictatorships. Also, conservative antagonists forget that some Socialist leaders were democratically elected by their people. Thus a very selective use of history is opportunistically employed by many conservative antagonists of Socialism.

Second, if many socialists dissented from what Lenin and those who followed him did, how is it that socialism could rightfully viewed as a monolith? And yet, conservative are more than happy to do that. In addition, what helped Bolshevism obtain the power it wanted was due to a walkout of a Socialist Russian Congress by the Mensheviks. In addition, not only did Lenin purge his own Socialist party, he called those on the left who opposed him 'infantile.' Socialist detractors denounced Lenin for the structure of his government and how he ruled. So how is that conservative antagonists of Socialism can honestly portray Socialism as a monolith?

Let's be clear, the number 1 priority of Socialism from the Marxist tradition is the redistribution of power, not wealth, into the hands of workers. Why? It is because the structure of Capitalism relegates workers to that of being disposable objects. So Marx saw the empowering of workers, what he called the 'proletariat dictatorship,' as the way to change society from being controlled by the bourgeoisie to that of his utopian classless society.

Now, one doesn't have to agree with Marx on his belief in a utopian dreams or in the proletariat dictatorship to believe in the empowering of workers. For the closest thing we have to Marxism in the world today can be found in Germany, which has a very successful economy, that has laws called codetermination laws. In those laws, publicly owned companies of varying sizes are required to have certain percentages of workers on a company's executive board. This partial transfer of power from owners/employers to workers partially follows Marx's Socialism. And thus Germany's use of codetermination starts to approach the Marxist socialism that is so demeaned conservative antagonists.

As mentioned before, the monolithic view of socialism is based on some of the socialist revolutions that overthrew dictators who were supported by Capitalists. Those Capitalists that supported the dictators came from both within nations that went through a revolution as well as capitalists from nations like the the US. Emerging socialist leaders who were democratically elected to office often found themselves targeted by the US for regime changes that saw the replacement of democratic processes with dictators who showed favor to American business interests. Such examples can be found in Iran ('53), Guatemala ('54), Brazil (around '64), Greece ('67), and Chile ('73). An example where a leftist revolution that resulted in a democracy but was viciously attacked by terrorists sponsored by the US can be seen in Nicaragua during the 1980s. There are other examples capitalist engineered coups. But none of Capitalism's attacks on democracies and support for dictators ever finds their way into the comments made by conservative antagonists of socialism. I wonder why.

With growing wealth disparity both within nations and between nations along with an economic caste system maintained by the use of  comparative advantage, we see that today's form of Capitalism, which is called neoliberalism, gives more and more power to those with wealth even over their own nations' governments as well as over the governments of other nations. This form of Capitalism is not the same form of Capitalism that followed WW II. And yet, just as conservative antagonists of Socialism refer to Socialism as a monolith, they do the same to Capitalism. Thus, the successes of a previous form of Capitalism, a Keynesian form called the Bretton-Woods system in which egalitarian economic growth was seen in all of America's economic classes even though it was under a state-capitalism model, are attributed to today's neoliberalism. And such dishonesty can fly under the radar for most people because they are preoccupied with other matters and rely on the stereotypes of economic systems provided by conservative defenders of not just Capitalism, but of neoliberalism.

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Feb 10

To Joseph Mussomeli and his article protesting victimology and what he sees as other inappropriate reactions to past oppressions. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

What is apparent in the above article is that once oppression stops, the writer of the article expects the victim to think and act as if the oppression never existed. And it isn't just Mussomeli who expects that; it is those groups who oppressed others who believe that as well. Such an expectation is the wishful thinking of all oppressors and their allies everywhere. For such an expectation basically says that though the oppression suffered was wrong, it was really not so bad that there should be long-term aftereffects. Such an expectation is at least a denial of the full guilt that should be felt by the oppressors.

After all, we are talking about centuries of severe marginalization for Blacks and the LGBT community in this nation--of course, let's not forget Native Americans and other minorities. And that marginalization, though significantly reduced, is still in effect today. We still have significant racism in our nation. And though same-sex marriage is now legal, the LGBT community is far from experiencing an equal status in society in many places in our nation.

If we were to look at the marginalization and oppression of different groups as we look at severe traumas, we wouldn't be surprised at what some would call overreactions and/or overcompensation for past wrongs. So why should we be upset by what conservatives call 'victimology'? This is an important question because the term itself is just meant to demean the degree of past suffering certain groups experienced for very long periods of time. We shouldn't be upset at 'victimology' and other reactions to past and current oppression by those who have been oppressed and marginalized because they are exhibiting normal human reactions to past, and unfortunately still current, horrific conditions.

The above article shows more concern for the sensitive feelings of groups guilty of being oppressors than it is concerned for the reactions of victims that have gone too far. And considering that those groups of oppressors consist mainly of white, male Christians, what we see is that an appropriate repentance has never been experienced  by my fellow white, male Christians. Rather, what we is a tribal response that only guarantees future conflicts and thus crushes all hopes for any kind of real resolution. And worst of all, what we see is a case being made by these white, male Christians that says: "Even though we made mistakes, we still deserve our place of supremacy over all others.."