Christian Nationalism Is A Marxist Christianity

Being a Christian Fundamentalist who politically leans toward Marx, I am interested in what other Christians write about Marx and Marxism. The most balanced view of Marx and Marxism came from Martin Luther King Jr in his book: Stride Toward Freedom.

In that book, written in the 1950s, King called Marxism evil and yet he agreed with the former Archbishop William Temple who called Marxism a 'Christian heresy.' By that, both Temple and King saw in Marx and Marxism concerns that every Christian should have but those concerns were joined with beliefs and practices that no Christian should ever accept. 

Contrast that with religiously conservative Christianity's current reviews of Marx and Marxism and some of its derivatives today. For most of today's conservative Christian reviews of Marxism and some of its derivatives paint all negative portraits of Marx and Marxism in that they present it as something to totally reject. It's like those reviewing Marx and Marxism today always take a Jenga approach to interpreting both. That is they look to disprove the one presupposition or tenet that would cause the tower of Marx, Marxism, and its derivatives to totally collapse. The attitude that those religiously conservative Christian reviewers of Marx and Marxism have reminded me of a quote by Martin Luther King Jr when he spoke against the Vietnam War:

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

And so if we replaced the word 'Western' with a fill-in-the-blank,  some religiously conservative Christians could have their names inserted into that sentence when they talk about Marx and Marxism.

However, a subset of these religiously conservative Christians are now seeking to respond to their current circumstances as Marx told the proletariat to respond to the bourgeoisie. And we can call that group of Christians 'Marxist Christians.' The group I am referring to here are Christian Nationalists.

Though Marx and Marxism cannot be reduced to a single tenet, its most foundational part, as stated in The Communist Manifesto, is the overthrow of the oppressor class, which was the bourgeoisie, by the oppressed, the proletariat. It is because Marx and Marxism taught that the only way to eradicate the oppression he witnessed was for the proletariat to overthrow the bourgeoisie and to take the bourgeoisie's place as rulers over society.

And so now we enter today's Post Christendom's, Post Modern world where secular liberalism holds sway over American society and past Christian "freedoms," like the right to discriminate against some who are different, are not only threatened, but might become a reason for American society to marginalize religiously conservative Christians. Here we should note that secular liberalism isn't concerned with how Christians live their private lives; it is concerned with when Christians show intolerance to others in society. 

It is now time, according to the words of too many Christian leaders, influencers, and pew sitters, when we can expect to be oppressed by secular liberalism's influence on American society. For the talk by many of my fellow religiously conservative Christians is that if we are not being oppressed now, it won't be long when we will be. After all, that is what the New Testament says will happen to believers. And so what is an oppressed, religiously conservative Christian to do? According to Christian Nationalists, our "biblically mandated" duty is to overthrow secular liberalism with its democracy, equality, and pluralism and  Make America Christian Again (or MACA). 

The above provides the reason for why we can call Christian Nationalism a Marxist Christianity. By that I mean that Marxism, with its talk of the oppressed vs the oppressor and the proletariat dictatorship, is modifying how Christianity view itself and acts. BTW, Marxist Christianity stands in contrast to Christian Marxism because with Christian Marxism,  Christianity would modify how Marxism would function. And the reason why we can call Christian Nationalism a Marxist Christianity because it relies on the same model of thought that Marx and Marxism used: overthrowing the oppression of one's enemy by gaining political control over them. Our oppressor, according to Christian Nationalism, is the reign and influence of secular liberalism.  Therefore,  the only way that the oppression of secular liberalism can be resolved is if we religiously conservative Christians replace secular liberalism as the ruler over our nation. And the only way we can fix the problems that have been caused by secular liberalism is if we, not me personally, religiously conservative Christian seize political control over the nation either by democratic processes or other means--the January 6th Insurrection was an example of the attempt to grab political control through other means. By seeking to seize near total, if not absolute, control, Christian Nationalists are proclaiming to the nation that only we 'can fix it,' whatever it is.

Today's Christian Nationalism is ironic in more than one way. First, by claiming to be law and order people and claiming to be the rightful interpreters of The Constitution, Christian Nationalists have rallied behind a convicted felon and a man who inspired an unconstitutional overthrow of a duly elected government. 

The second irony is that by embracing the oppressed status, either because of present experience or anticipation of the future, and using that status as a main reason for seeking control, Christian Nationalism is practicing what it accuses ideologies such as CRT of employing: emulating Marx's oppressor vs oppressed worldview. It matters not if religiously conservative Christians are barely persecuted here in America. It is that anticipation of the future which is deeply shared by Christian Nationalists and even by others. 

And yet another irony is that while proclaiming itself to be a present or future oppressed class, Christian Nationalists are seeking enough power so that they can return to oppressing select groups of people. Because I lived during part of the Jim Crow era, I grew up during a time when many, but not all, religiously conservative Christianity persecuted blacks. And they used the Bible to defend their actions. Now Christian Nationalism seems to be promising to send the LGBT community back to the margins of society should they gain control and they are using the Scriptures to defend their attempts. 

Christian Nationalism is concerned about God's kingship over the earth. But it mistakenly believes that God's kingship can be politically thwarted by people. Such a belief either minimizes or denies God's plan and power. Because God is all powerful, He works out His plan regardless of our sins. In fact, He uses our sins to work out His will. That was the lesson taught by the deliverance of the Hebrews from Egypt. And it is the lesson that is taught in the crucifixion of Christ for the sins of those who believe in Him. In both cases, Pharaoh's initial refusals to let Moses's people go and Christ's crucifixion, it seemed like God was defeated. But He never was in danger of losing control. And that was shown when Pharaoh finally let the Hebrews go and when he and his army were killed in the Red Sea as well as when Christ rose from the dead. Those examples show that God doesn't need our political help to be king of the world. For He is already king over all that He created.

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For April 10, 2024

March 7

To Heidelblog and Derrick Bride for the part of Bride's article that was quoted in an article about whether Calvin was a Biblicist and whether the Reformed traditions had parts that were more deduced and thus were human conclusions rather than being biblical. 

There is more than one danger here that Christians face. Of course, Biblicism is one of those dangers. An example of that can be found in what I overheard a person say that the Bible does not condemn rock music. Perhaps that lack of condemnation is because rock music, as bad as it is, is not as bad as country music.

The other danger is the overuse of deduction when using the Bible and/or our traditions to answer a question. The overuse of deduction can cause us to come to questionable conclusions and even theologies. Christian Nationalism is an example of the overuse of deduction and sometimes it includes an over dependence on our traditions. When, as some have claimed with certainty, that good and evil mentioned in Romans 13 definitely calls on governments to enforce either both tables or just the 2nd table of the 10 Commandments.

The overuse of deduction in our applying the Scriptures to issues and questions could easily be in some parts of the Reformed traditions. And saying that is neither being Biblicist nor being against the Reformed traditions. Saying that is simply acknowledging that because the Reformed traditions are not God's Word, they are subject to being corrupted by human frailties. 

We need to be cautious about how we apply the Scriptures to subjects where the Scriptures have either not spoken clearly about or when the contexts of what the Scriptures said clearly differ from today's contexts. One way of being cautious is to check and see if what we have deduced to be true runs counter to Scriptures that we were not considering the time.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To John Horvat and his article that reviews a book that is critical of Catholic Integralism. This article was posted on the Imaginative Conservative website.

If Liberalism is crumbling, it is because democracy with equality is being threatened internally and externally.

It is being threatened internally because either too many people or the wrong kind of people are now obtaining a fuller equality. Their equality is intolerable to those who believe in authoritarianism with hierarchy--that is provided that one's own group is on top of the hierarchy. And the problem with Integralism is the problem that all other authoritarian ethnocratic movements have. That is without equality, the common good become camouflage for oppression and atrocities. For with every authoritarian ethnocratic movement, there is always at least one group the bottom of the totem pole who will pay the price for the common good that the ethnic group in charge has defined. And we should note that Integralism is just another authoritarian ethnocratic movement. That means that, in a given nation, one ethnic group rules over the nation including all other ethnic groups. And a religious group is an ethnic group.

History shows this to be true; even the history of Christendom shows it so be true. And so all of the self-praise that its adherents in the Roman Church lavish on themselves becomes nothing more than the prayer of the Pharisee from the parable of the two men praying (Luke 18:9-14). After all, what was the fruit of Christendom? Didn't it include religious wars, inquisitions, imperialism, colonialism, and ethnic cleansings? And doesn't such a history go beyond the claim that Christendom only lacked perfection? And yet, the Integralist thanks God that they are not like the liberal with the liberal's relativistic values.

Another problem with Integralism that is shared by all authoritarian ethnocratic movements is that the ethnic group in charge assumes that they alone get to define what is the common good. And in taking that position, they have implied that they are either absolutely or relatively omniscient in solving mankind's problems. And that arrogant attitude seems to create dissonance when one hears how loving and caring the integralist claims to be. That arrogant attitude also undercuts the Catholic social teaching that can contribute to society.

The basic structure of even the most devout authoritarian ethnocratic group sabotages the most saintly and sincere intentions. For with the universal value of equality having been swept away, rights become privileges and the voices of those groups at the bottom of the hierarchy have too far to travel to reach the ears of the ethnic group at the top of the hierarchy. Again, the history of Christendom supports that claim. 

If what we have of democracy with equality is lost to any authoritarian ethnocratic movement,  even the Integralist one, we'll see the history of authoritarian groups  repeating itself. The direction in which we need to go is to bring democracy with equality to its full completion.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

March 11

To R. Scott Clark and Augustine's Just War Theory as it applies to the Russian invasion in Ukraine and any conflicts in the world. This was posted by Heidelblog.

Things have changed since Augustine's time that just might require a change in our view of war.

What's changed? The Russell-Einstein Manifesto identified that change and stated the new status quo dictated by advancements in technology. Because of the existence of nuclear weapons, the new status quo tells us that we have a choice between war and survival. That if a nuclear war broke out between the then super powers, mankind would cease to exist except perhaps in some primitive state.

Because that manifesto was written in the 1950s, the only conflict that could cause global catastrophic destruction was a direct war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union wars within or between nations that are linked to the two then superpowers.

But now, more nations have possession of nuclear weapons. And not only that, other weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), such as some biological weapons, could easily become reality in the near future. And because technology is user friendly, the proliferation of WMDs is inevitable. And so in the near future, we could see global catastrophic destruction in conflicts between nations or even non-state actors that are not superpowers at the present time.

What to do? Right now we have no choice in Ukraine. Even if it will be known to be a losing cause, we must support Ukraine against the Russia invasion. If the war is lost, then the cost to Russia's military must be made as high as possible without using WMDs and while avoiding a direct clash between Russia and NATO so as to discourage future invasions.

But our only avenue out of an eventual conflict in which WMDs are employed is to employ the current resources that would enforce the rule of law. All nations must submit to International Law in order for mankind to survive. 

Unfortunately, the U.S. will not submit to international law because too many of its leaders believe that doing so compromises its sovereignty. And that is true, if the U.S. submitted to international law it would compromise its sovereignty. But that is true for every nation in the world. And so why should the U.S. be any different?

When the world's greatest superpower does not submit to international law because it feels that it has no need to, other nations, especially those that desire to be known as being powerful, follow suit. That is part of what is going on in Russia's invasion of Ukraine. In addition, when the U.S. protects its allies from international scrutiny, again, other nations follow suit.

And so we return to the Russell-Einstein Manifesto. We have a choice between war and survival. We, and I mean especially Christians, can no longer solely rely on Augustine to form our beliefs about and use of wars. The world has changed significantly since Augustine's time. We currently have some tools that could help bring about the rule of law. We have the U.N., but it must be revised because it is currently constructed to have a limited voice by the world's superpowers. And we have the ICC. But if we want all nations to follow international law, the U.S. must lead by example and insist that its allies to the same.

The question is will mankind learn just in time, or will mankind learn after it's too late? For the Church to have something to contribute to the discussion, it cannot rely solely on its past for analyzing and responding to the world both now and in the future.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

March 15

To R Scott Clark and his article that discusses attending what would be questionable events, such as a Mass at a Roman Church or a same-sex wedding, for the Christian. This appeared in Heidelblog.

One of the most important issues that was inadequately dealt with in the above article is that of communication. What are we communicating to all of the communities involved by our presence at a questionable event? 

For example, I would occasionally teach a World Religions course where I taught at college. That means that I would have to teach students about other religions than my own. I did my best to have people from those religions check my lecture notes to ensure accuracy. But one thing I should have done to prepare was to visit the worship services of other religions. Would that be wrong?

And so if I was studying same-sex marriage from a Christian perspective, would it be wrong to attend such wedding services to get a better understanding of what same-sex marriage  is about to the participants? Would it be wrong if I made it clear to those who organized the event that I was there just as an observer?

Now, is it possible for a Christian to attend a same-sex wedding for other reasons than to celebrate the union of those two people involved? It may not be to study same-sex marriage to better understand what means to those in such unions; it could be for other reasons that we can't think of right now.

I feel  that there is just too much corporate and individual inner-direction that goes into the answers. There is too much emphasis on one's own purity and not enough emphasis on what a Christian could communicate to the communities involved, including one's own church community, to give a more complete answer to the question.

There is no doubt that we cannot celebrate such unions even though I think that it is imperative that we celebrate people's right to join in same-sex marriages in society. That means that we believe that people should have the right to make a choice that we don't want them to make. The same applies to people practicing other faiths. We can't celebrate them believing in false gods, but we should celebrate the freedom of worship in society.

A lot of it comes down to not judging fellow believers, those for whom Christ died, by appearances.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

March 28

To T. David Gordon and his review of a book by N.T. Wright about Christianity in an age of Totalitarianism and Dysfunctional Democracies. This appeared in Heidelblog.

Below is my reaction to what is shared in the above article.

It appears that authoritarianism is conflated with autocracies in the above article. But there are other implementations of authoritarianism such as ethnocracies and classocracies. Unlike autocracies where authoritarianism is practiced by a few or even one leader, authoritarianism is exercised by groups in ethonocracies and classocracies. And because religion is an ethnicity, Christendom was and will always be a kind of ethnocracy.

We should also note that those autocracies that are driven by ideology often rationalized their dominance by claiming that they had an exclusive knowledge of what is best for human flourishing and the common good. And regardless of the will of the people, a given ideology was then forced on people by those autocracies and was rationalized by that autocracies claims about their ideology.

We should also note that because Christendom was an implementation of an ethnocracy, Christendom ran counter to rather than promoting the ideas of democracy. For if an ethnocracy is a form of group authoritarianism, then what is an integral part of authoritarianism is hierarchy. Opposite of that is the idea that equality is an inextricable part of democracy. And history shows how Christendom has resisted equality and, by being a form of authoritarianism, is diametrically opposed to democracy with equality.

Also, because of how conservative Christianity has rightfully emphasized  the importance of the authority structures in a Christian's life, we religiously conservative Christians have a penchant for authoritarianism. And this is what we see today as many of us religiously conservative Christians. We see government as having a parental relationship with its people. And because we have a penchant for authoritarianism, we have great difficulty in recognizing where egalitarian relationships fit into society. And conservative Christianity's resistance to recognizing full equality to the LGBT community in society is an example of that great difficulty.

Unfortunately, conservative Christianity sees itself as a promoter of democracy. That is because of how so many of us religiously conservative Christians have reduced democracy to majority rule. In so doing, we have failed to heed the warning that Thomas Jefferson gave in his 1801 Inaugural Address:

'All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. '

Though Jefferson states that majority rule must be upheld, that the violation of the minority's equal rights is the majority's practice of oppressing the minority. And so the practice of that oppression means that any nation that does so is embracing  authoritarianism with hierarchy.

 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

April 3

To Joseph Pearce and his article on History and how it helps our understanding of people and who we are. In his article he compared how Marx understood people in comparison to some Roman Catholics whose books he referred to. This was posted on the Imaginative Conservative website.

Actually, the best Christian assessment of Marx comes from Martin Luther King Jr in his book, Stride Toward Freedom. Why Kings assessment of Marx is better than the one above is because King could see both the beauty and ugliness of of Marx and implies that with Catholic teaching, such as the books he was he referenced, we don't need to read Marx.

But history tells us that the Roman Church is not infallible in its teachings and practices, in fact far from it. And we would do well to listen to both Marx, those from the Roman Church, and others to learn about where we are today.

We should note what King said about Capitalism in comparison to Marx. That the materialism in Capitalism is as 'pernicious' as that of Marxism. But despite all of his faults and problems, Marx saw and said things that are worthwhile to consider. And one can see that if one does not reduce Marx to materialism. Marx was very concerned about justice, social relationships, and how the Capitalism of his day commodified Labor power and objectified the worker into an object for profit--profit for the owner that is. 

Marx rightfully saw one solution which was to redistribute power to the workers. Marx's fatal flaw here was that he took an all-or-nothing approach to how he saw the groups of people in his day and in how he saw the need for the redistribution of power. That is why he so sharply distinguished the proletariat from the bourgeoisie as well as how he wanted to redistribute all power to the proletariat. BTW, if memory serves, the one who most promoted Marx's ideas as being scientific was Engels.

Socialism Isn't Always In The Wheelhouse Of American Conservative Preachers

 If you want to learn what socialism is about, perhaps your last resource should be American conservative preachers. That is not to discourage anyone from listening or reading what they say about socialism. It is simply to say that their views of socialism are perhaps too tainted by their background and lack of exposure to give a full picture of what socialism is. An example of a preacher's inadequate background to define socialism can be found in the video that will be reviewed here (click here for the video and start at the 30 minute mark).

The presentation is on statism and socialism by Dr. W. Robert Godfrey (click here for a bio). I remember Godfrey from my days at Westminster Theological Seminary even though I never was in one of his classes. I admired his perspective on the Reformation and theology as well as the kind of person he presented himself to be. I still hold that same admiration and reasons for that should be evident by viewing the whole video.

But here is the problem that I have with what he said about socialism for the last 8 minutes of the video. His views of socialism seem largely colored by his life as a conservative American. He has a view of socialism from the outside, but even with my limited exposure to socialism, my view from the inside of socialism can see blind spots in his presentation.

The positive part of his comments on socialism is that he understands that socialism is not monolithic. That is because the word 'socialism' can have many different meanings. But he then at least partially counters what he just said by reducing socialism to this characteristic: socialism is where 'the state should own and operate the means of production for everyone.' Now at first, that doesn't seem to be misrepresenting socialism at all--at first that is. But from that, he synonymously says that government owns everything. And the problem here is that those two ideas are not only not synonymous, one can have those conditions without being socialistic. That is because there are other factors that qualify a system as being socialist than  what that one statement describes. That is especially true for Maxist Socialism.

So what is meant by the state must own the means of production to be a Socialist state. In the early 1950s, Iran's oil fields were owned and run by a British oil company. That meant that those who were profiting the most from Iran's oil fields was a private British company. By the some time in the 1940s, national sentiment favored the nationalization, which would be state ownership and management, of those oil fields. The pressure built when it was revealed that the U.S. had brokered a deal with Saudi Arabia that would give Saudi Arabia a bigger cut of the profits than what Iran was getting from the British. The British offered Iran a deal  but the deal did not include an increase in Iranian input managing the oil fields. Iran eventually elected a president who promised to nationalize the oil fields. Then the British sought to destabilize the nation in hopes of weakening the Iranian President's status. When that failed, England convinced the U.S. to join them in overthrowing the Iranian government. They succeeded and installed the Shah who ruled as dictator in 1953. His rule eventually resulted in the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and that has given us the Iran that we see today.

So what is the alternative to nationalizing a resource and industry? For Iran, the alternative was let another nation own one of its national resources so that the greatest profits went to the private sector of another nation.

However we should challenge Godfrey's parallelism here. Does the state owning and operating the means of production result in the state owning everything? And if the state does own and operate the means of production, is that automatically Socialism?

Here we should note that just because the state does own and operate the means of production for some resources and industries, that doesn't mean that the state owns everything. For example, for Iran during the 1950s, the nationalizing of oil fields only meant that the state would own and operate those oil fields and the government could disperse the profits of those oil fields to a greater portion of the population. So in such a case, the state would not own everything.

We should note that in the following year, when the elected Guatemalan President campaigned on introducing agrarian reform so that some of the land owned by a U.S. fruit company would be given out some of the people of Guatemala, the U.S. orchestrated a coup and replaced that President with brutal dictator in order to protect the interests of that fruit company. Did that mean that the state would own everything in Guatemala had the elected President been able to carry out his plan?

This is where we need to check out a quote from Eugene Debs who was a famous American socialist and actually ran for President in the early 1900s (click here for the source):

Private appropriation of the Earth’s surface, the natural resources, and the means of life is nothing less a crime than a crime against humanity, but the comparative few who are beneficiaries of this iniquitous social arrangement, far from being viewed as criminals meriting punishment, are the exalted rulers of society, and the people they exploit gladly render them homage and obeisance.

Is it socialist for a nation's government to nationalize its nation's natural resources? It can be. Does it make sense for a nation's government to want to nationalize a natural resource? It very much seems like a rational decision. But Venezuela has shown that such a decision doesn't always work out. And we should also note that such a decision does not result in the state owning everything.

From one Marxist perspective, whether state ownership of the means of production is socialist depends on two factors here. First, what are the demographics of those in the state who are managing a given industry? Second, is the structure of state ownership is vertical or horizontal?

The reason why the first question is important is because Marx believed in a proletariat dictatorship that would overthrow the oppression of the bourgeoisie (the wealthy owners). Thus, if the state isn't being run by the workers, then such an ownership would not make it a Marxist socialist venture. Marx was clear on that. For a venture to be Marxist, the workers would have to be in charge (click here to see how Noam Chomsky shows that Lenin did not install a Marxist Socialist state). 

Next we need to look at the structure of state control. Why? It is because a top-down structure is not a structure employed by Marxist socialism. Chomsky already pointed that out in his presentation previously mentioned. He noted that when Lenin destroyed the local soviets (a soviet was a workers' council where its members were democratically elected by their peers), he destroyed socialism in the Marxist tradition in Russia. Chomsky also explains why Lenin did that.

But then there is another factor to be included. This factor reinforces what Chomsky said, though it was written during the time of Lenin, and again shows the distinction between Marx's proletariat rule and as opposed to the rule of the Bourgeoisie (click here for the source):

Lenin and Trotsky, on the other hand, decide in favor of dictatorship in contradistinction to democracy, and thereby, in favor of the dictatorship of a handful of persons, that is, in favor of dictatorship on the bourgeois model...

Yes, dictatorship! But this dictatorship consists in the manner of applying democracy, not in its elimination, but in energetic, resolute attacks upon the well-entrenched rights and economic relationships of bourgeois society, without which a socialist transformation cannot be accomplished.

It should be clear now that, from the Marxist tradition, state ownership of a part or all of production does not automatically result in Marxist Socialism. Not only must workers be in charge. Those workers must not model their structure of governance on the bourgeoisie model of a top-down organization. Conservative American Christian theologians have not often felt the need to look at some of the fine print of Marxist socialism to understand that. They seem content enough in using some of those nations that have called themselves Communist or Marxist as the standard for what Marxism is. And we shouldn't be hard on them for that. Martin Luther King Jr. made the same mistake when discussing Communism/Marxism in his book Stride Toward Freedom. 

There is something else about Marxist Socialism and government ownership of property. When Marx attacked private property, he wasn't attacking all private ownership of property or  private property per se. Rather, he was attacking the political power that some ownership of private property brings (click here):

Nevertheless, the political annulment of private property not only fails to abolish private property but even presupposes it. The state abolishes, in its own way, distinctions of birth, social rank, education, occupation, when it declares that birth, social rank, education, occupation, are non-political distinctions, when it proclaims, without regard to these distinction, that every member of the nation is an equal participant in national sovereignty, when it treats all elements of the real life of the nation from the standpoint of the state.

Here we should see that there are sufficient grounds for saying that Marxist Socialism isn't looking for the state to own everything. In fact, there are some European nations where the state has owned certain industries without owning everything. And we have seen the Socialism of such states, granted that they were not socialist states from the Marxist tradition, benefit the people of those nations. There is also sufficient grounds for saying that when a state does own and manage the means of production of all its industries, other criteria must be applied to determine whether that ownership and management qualifies a state as being called Marxist Socialist. 

We should also note that forms of Marxist Socialism have changed over the years. The form of which I am most familiar recognizes the need for hybrid attempts that combine Marxism with Capitalism--something Rosa Luxemberg would not approve of. I remember a video in which Marxist economist Richard Wolff talked about Germany's codetermination laws. Those laws require that a certain percentage of a company's executive board consist of workers who were elected by their peer. The percentage required depends on the number of employees in the company. Those laws just might make Germany the most Marxist state in the world.

Hybrid attempts at government that include ideas from Marx and Capitalism and other isms and ideologies have an advantage over other forms of government. That advantage is that such attempts presuppose that no political-economic ideology is omniscient. And thus we need the insights of a variety of ideologies to come up with solutions that help most of the people of a given nation without exploiting others. But those who listen to religiously conservative American preachers when they talk about Marx and Socialism would be leery of including Marx and Socialism in any mix of ideologies to better meet the political-economic needs of America.

Religiously conservative American Christian preachers, especially those who have always lived in America and were predominantly exposed to political conservatism, most likely have not studied Marx and Marxist Socialism enough to see the distinctions in big government or government ownership of property and Marxist Socialism. Because of their lack of exposure to Marx, they also would not be able to understand the differences between what Marx wrote and the governments that were Marxist in name only--such as the Soviet Union or China. 

And so rather than sound the alarm on Marxist Socialism, they perhaps would do better to call our attention to Church History over the past few centuries. For what that Church History reveals is that the dominant branch of the Church for many nations has all too often sided with wealth and power at the expense of the welfare of the people of those nations and consequently the reputation of the Gospel. And that fact should be included not just in the teaching of Church History, but in any discussion on Marxism and Socialism.

References

1. https://www.ligonier.org/learn/conferences/upholding-christian-ethics-2022-national-conference/statism-and-socialism
2. https://www.wscal.edu/academics/faculty/w.-robert-godfrey
3. https://www.azquotes.com/author/3810-Eugene_V_Debs    Look up Private appropriation quote
4. https://www.dsausa.org/about-us/constitution/
5. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/dec/03.htm
6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsC0q3CO6lM
7. 
   

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For February 23, 2022

 Feb 17

To W. Robert Godfrey and his adult church class on the fall of Christendom. This particular session focused on Karl Marx. This appeared in the Abounding Grace Radio website. 

One could approach Godfrey's from two different perspectives here. One perspective would be to ask Godfrey the same question about Christendom that he asks about Marxism. That question is, did Christendom provide what it promised or expected to produce? It's certainly a fair question to ask of Marxism, but why not ask the same question of Christendom since the basic theme of Godfrey's series here is the fall of Christendom.

The second perspective to take when looking at Godfrey's content in this lesson is a more critical one. That is because it seems that Godfrey knows enough generalities about or commonly perceived conservative views of Marxism and CRT, the latter of which he tossed  in there, to oversimplify both systems of beliefs. And it is in that oversimplification that Godfrey makes some significant errors when talking about both.

Regarding Marxism, is Godfrey aware of one of the major splits between Marxists? That split would somewhat part company with Lenin and fully part company with Stalin over whether they ruled as Marxists. Among those who lean more toward Trotsky is the belief that Lenin, though a Marxist, never ruled Russia as a Marxist. This was pointed out by a fellow socialist contemporary of Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg. Other Marxists also parted ways with Lenin and in how he ruled Russia. Lenin points this out when he openly insults leftist Marxists in Russia. Luxemburg's point was that Lenin ruled Russia not as a Marxist, but as a member of the bourgeoisie in how they would run their business. Luxemburg point that Lenin was not promoting or installing the proletariat dictatorship, which was partial democracy based producing the class rule of the proletariat. We should also note that Lenin was never a member of the proletariat just as Trotsky never was. And Stalin's work history did not really qualify him to represent the proletariat. But we should note that Stalin was once a seminary student

Around the time of the October, 1917 Russian Revolution, there were a number of Marxist political parties. But that revolution brought about a tyrannical rule by the Bolsheviks who prohibited the other Marxist groups from having any pull. After securing power came the purges of socialists as well as the revolt by the Kronstadt sailors. That alone tells us that neither Lenin nor Stalin had a monopoly on representing Marxism. And yet, they are two of the major faces of Marxism in the West while the others are ignored.

Currently, the nation that comes closest to practicing Marxism is Germany. And that is the case because of Germany's codetermination laws. For the foundational point of Marxism is the redistribution of power from the bourgeoisie to the working class so the proletariat could free itself from the rule of the bourgeoisie. And though Germany's codetermination laws deliberately fall very short of any kind of proletariat dictatorship, those laws do enable a significant redistribution of power to workers.

Godfrey's treatment of CRT is much worse than his treatment of Marxism. For Godfrey effectively reduces CRT to Marxism with the oppressed and oppressors. Such a reductionism ignores the similarities and differences between CRT and Critical Legal Studies, the latter of which is the approach to racism from which CRT emerges. Even more than that, much of CRT consists of a continuation of the  works and teachings of the Civil Rights Movement. Here we should note that CRT strongly opposes the conservative approach to Civil Rights which, based on Reagan's approach to racism when he was the President, relies on a colorblind approach to racism. However, the implication of Godfrey's calling CRT Marxist is that it is safe for us religiously conservative Christians to throw all of CRT's similarities to Critical Legal Studies and the Civil Rights Movement out the window.

In the end, the combination of Godfrey's overly simplistic statements on Marxism and CRT are disappointing because of Godfrey's scholarly reputation. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On or After Feb 17

To Patrick M. Garry and his article that defends traditional conservatives from the claims made against it by national conservatives. While the former group stresses individual liberty more than the latter group does, the latter group emphasizes the need to pay more attention to the Common Good by the government. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

What is unfortunate in the above article is the laudative and pejorative use of labels. Such uses give evidence of an authoritarian approach that employs a begging the question logic. For example, the term 'conservative' is an example of a laudative use of a label while 'wokism' is an example of a pejorative use.

What is unclear is why there exists a conservative intent on limiting democracy, especially among the traditional conservatives. That intent is expressed both explicitly and implicitly in the above article. Perhaps the reason for limiting democracy is one that was shared by James Madison when he spoke the following during the Constitutional debate as recorded in Yates's notes (see  https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/yates.asp   ):

In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of the landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be jsut, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability. Various have been the propositions; but my opinion is, the longer they continue in office, the better will these views be answered.

So how altruistic was Madison's concern about limiting the power of democracy?

We should note that the national conservatives have a point about The Constitution and the common good. The was an expressed concern about creating a government that would last for a long time during the Constitutional Convention and in the beginning of The Constitution, comes the following phrase:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Insuring 'domestic Tranquility' and promoting the 'general Welfare' are explicit terms expressing some of the concerns of the participants in the writing of <i>The Constitution</i>.

Another weakness of the above article is an inadequate description of the context of the events mentioned. Those events include the the writing of The Constitution, the 1960s, and today's 'wokism.' What is especially missing from the contexts of those events are the sufferings of certain groups of people. 

For example, what triggered the writing of The Constitution were Shays Rebellion and the widespread  dissent due to the troubled, and what seemed to many to be the unfair, economic troubles of that time. In the 1960s, we saw a far greater systemic racism demonstrated than seen today in the Jim Crow South and in the discrimination heavy real estate and banking practices in the North along with a military draft that gave economic-based privileges, a higher degree of poverty than seen today an immoral Vietnam War for which both major political parties were responsible, second class citizenry for women, and discrimination against and criminalization of homosexuals. The context of today's corporate 'wokeism' has to do with establishing a more consistent equality for those in the LGBT community. Why were the sufferings of these different groups left out of the article when mentioning the times in which The Constitution was written, or when progressives looked to reform society in the 1960s, or with today's corporate wokeism.

The writer of the article is correct in saying that traditional conservatism is not libertarianism. But so what? Traditional conservatism is closer to and has more in common with libertarianism that the national conservatism described above or progressivism. And hasn't at least some of the abuses people have suffered from corporations been at least partially due to the privileges which the traditional conservative approach have granted to the corporate world?

Finally, we should note that because our ideologies are created by us, by people, that no ideology created by people is omniscient. And thus we should feel free to borrow from multiple ideologies  including those outside of conservatism, let alone from different conservative ideologies. The refusal to do so suggests the belief that one's own ideology is omniscient.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Feb 21

To R. Scott Clark and Carl Trueman for Clark's blogpost that quotes part of Trueman's article that heavily criticizes Biden for an appointment of a gay man to a government position. Clark's quotation in posted in Heidelblog while Trueman's article appeared in World Magazine.

The link to Trueman's article is below:

    https://wng.org/opinions/decadence-on-display-1645449344

What is Trueman's beef here, that someone from the LGBT community was appointed to a government job? That such appointments might promote equality for the LGBT community? Does Trueman want society to demand that our government prohibit government appointed jobs to the LBGT community?

And while picking on #NeverTrumpers, does Trueman give the alternative outcome that would result from reelecting Trump? Didn't Jan 6 tell us what we could have expected from the reelection of Trump? After all, look at the, talking about, extremes that Trump and is group went to try to steal the election that they falsely claimed was stolen from them.

Being a leftist, I knew what to expect from a liberal Biden. He, like Trump, is an authoritarian. Only Biden's authoritarianism is in the form of having a hero complex. Whatever rudeness one might see in Biden has been far surpassed by Trump. 

Finally, doesn't Romans 1 describe homosexuality in the unbeliever in a way that says we should not be shocked by such behaviors? And yet Trueman is because of his hypersensitivity over sexual issues. Does Trueman want society to marginalize those in LGBT community? If so, he is overlooking the narcissistic authoritarianism of Trump and the violence promoted by Trump's camp.  Does that mean that Trueman is more tolerant of violence than of homosexuality?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Feb 22

To Stephen Spinnenweber and his blog article on how those who oppose Greg Johnson's position that those who are SSA but do not act on it should be able to hold offices in the Church. Johnson also includes the idea that those opposing his position do not care about Christians who struggle with being SSA. This appeared in Heidelblog.

There are a number of issues that need to be addressed here. First, I get the idea that the concept behind the word 'attracted' is not the same for the two parties involved here. While one talks about a general attractiveness of a person, the other includes feelings of wanting or lust. With the former, unless one struggles withhomophobia, we freely notice people from either sex whom we regard as being attractive. 

Second, we seem to overlook 2 things about Romans 1 and its statements about homosexuality. First, that homosexuality should not surprise us in the unbeliever because the unbeliever has traded his worship of the Creator for his worship of the creature. Second, Romans 1 is followed by Romans 2:1ff. And there, after discussing homosexuality and listing other sins with it, including gossiping and being disobedient to parents, Romans 2 starts off with a stern warning for those who believe in God: do not judge those mentioned in Romans 1 because you too are guilty. If we are not guilty of having identical sins as the unbeliever, we are guilty of sins that at least live in the same neighborhood as the sins of the unbeliever. Here, it might be helpful to compare and contrast the prayers of the Pharisee and the tax collector from the parable of the two men praying (Luke 18:9-14). Note that it is the very religious person who thanks God that he is not just like other people, including the tax collector. In addition, it might be useful here to compare and contrast how Paul describes homosexuality in Romans 1 with the sexual sin Paul has to deal with in I Corinthians 5. For where as homosexuality is described as something not to be surprising in the unbeliever even though it is against nature as God designed it, having relations with one's father's wife goes beyond the pale of what is known among the Gentiles.

What Spinnenweber wants us to notice and focus on here is the distinction between those sins that are according to nature and those that are not. And thus a necessary hierarchy is introduced here, but it is one that can be misapplied. After all, Paul states in I Corinthians 6 that the sexually immoral from both the SSA and those who are attracted to the opposite sex are said no be disqualified from inheriting the Kingdom of God. And, again, we should note the prayers prayed from the parable of the two men praying.

Another thing we should note that seems to escape the notice of both those who believe that it is ok to be SSA as long as one doesn't act on it and those who oppose what Johnson is advocating for: nature is fallen. It fell with Adam's sin. And so while Paul's says what he says about homosexuality being against nature, it is against nature as God designed it, it may not be against what fallen nature is telling someone on the inside. BTW, if we don't think nature has fallen from its original design, then how do we explain homosexuality in around 1,500 species of animals in which there are benefits produced by the homosexuality practiced in some of those species?

Also, does our identity in Christ preclude other identities? According to Spinnenweber it does if those other identities are sinful. But how many such benign identities, such as national or ethnic identities, that are the cause of personal pride and thus division in the Church, fly in under the radar that Spinnenweber is using? In addition, does our new identity in Christ preclude our identity of being a sinner like the tax collector from the parable of the two men praying.

If people like Spinnenweber do care about Christians who struggle with being SSA, then they have an odd, or perhaps inconsistent, way of showing it. For Spinnenweber et. al. look down on such fellow believers for whom Christ died. They neglect to notice that perhaps fellow believers who struggle with being SSA have an even greater battle against the fallen nature of the flesh than themselves whose attraction is according to the design of nature. And they seem oblivious to the at times horrendously harsh struggle that homosexuals have had in society.

Lies, Lies Everywhere With Plenty For One To Use

Justin Giboney (click here for a brief bio) has written an article posted on the Gospel Coalition website about the lies we tell ourselves about racism. In that article, he has two groups he wants to target: those who deny or minimize racism in America's past and/or present and those overstate the case of racism in America as exemplified by theories such as Critical Race Theory (CRT). In particular, the ties that critical theories like Critical Theory and CRT have to Post Modernism and Marxism are highlighted, but perhaps not always as one might expect (Click here to read the article).

What Giboney has in mind is to draw attention to the lies that the above mentioned groups tell themselves and others about racism in America to serve their agenda. For the group that minimizes racism in America's past and/or present, lies include the following:

• Racism is plays a very minimal part in the story of America
• Racism was eradicated with events like the end of slavery or Jim Crow laws or with reconstruction, and I could add the Civil Rights Movement
• That those who bring up racism are Marxists
• That 'Marxist barbarians' are waiting in the wings to bring destruction

The lies that some progressives who are battling racism in America include:

• Whiteness is the cause of all sins and pathologies
• One's class or race can tell us about a given person's character

Though Giboney pays more attention to the lies of those who minimize racism in America, we should note the issue about CRT. It's issue is whether or not it overstates its case against racism in America. And here we should note that CRT's working definition of racism is different than that of most people. For while most people, especially conservatives, think of racism as to be confided to the attitudes and actions of a given individual, CRT says something different. CRT acknowledges that the racial prejudice of an individual is involved in racism; but it adds to that structural and social components to the definition of racism. As a result, racism in America can only be by White against people of color because whites much have more say in determining the structure and cultural aspects of society than any other group does. Thus, though CRT acknowledges that blacks can have personal prejudice against whites, because the structural and social components of society are, for the most part, controlled by and favor whites, there are no structural and social components in society that oppress whites and thus the personal prejudice that any black person might have against whites does not qualify as racism. And thus, in America, CRT states that racism can only be exercised by whites against people of color despite the fact that people of color can have racial prejudice against whites (click here and there).

That point might show the claim that all sin is due to whiteness, a view attributed to some progressives by Giboney, might not be a valid claim. Regardless of the validity of the claim, Giboney failure to draw attention to the different working definition of racism by CRT is a serious flaw in his article.

What we might want to do here is to apply the same test to Giboney as he applies to those who minimize racism in America and those who hold to the critical theories. That is does Giboney hold to lies that bolster his views of the world. And here, we might want to check his view on Marxism because he makes several negative references to it.

Why would lying to himself about Marxism serve his interests? If we look at his associations with the And Campaign (see his bio and click here) and the Gospel Coalition, there seems to be a consistent denouncing of Marxism in the critical theories and an implied warning that one doesn't need to read Marxist materials to learn from them. That is because some from the Gospel Coalition, and possibly the And Campaign, have claimed that any good that Marxism has said social justice has already been said better by certain Christians and so there is no need to read it. 

I would invite people to read what Martin Luther King Jr. said about Marxism to see if it has anything valid for us to learn. Now here we should first note that King merged Marxism with the Communism practiced in the Soviet Union, something that many Marxists or those leaning toward Marx disagree with. Examples of those who disagree with that conflation would include Mikhail Gorbachev would object to regarding Stalin and his successors as socialists and Noam Chomsky would object to regarding Lenin as having ruled as a Marxist. 

Anyway, King regarded Marxism/Communism as evil. And yet, he acknowledged that it attempted to speak for justice. In fact, King believed that truth could not be found in neither Capitalism nor Communism, but that we need the best elements of both ideologies in order to better arrive at truth (click here, King's comments on Marxism begin on pg 92). We don't see Giboney treat Marxism as King did though his treatment of Marxism is certainly not as bad as others have treated it. So perhaps when Giboney describes Marxism as a 'real threat to truth and moral order,' Giboney is holding to at least a partial lie so that he can direct people to read from Christian sources only. Also, Giboney claims that Marxism tells lies to strengthen its position. But what lies is he referring to? 

The final point I would like to make here is that Giboney is too easily prone to call flaws in reasoning 'lies.' Such does not ask us to look for rational explanations for why an ideology or movement takes the approach it does. 

Here we should note that it is not uncommon for people who are reacting to longterm social injustices to respond to those injustices with a phobic reaction. By that I mean that in order not just to undo longterm social injustices, but to also try to prevent those injustices from occurring again respond phonically  And thus there is a fear in being able to distinguish between factors and variables that are coincidentally associated with a given injustice from those factors and variables that contribute to the injustice being addressed. The phobic reaction here is like the irrational fear a person who has been bitten by a dog might have to all dogs. Rather than learning to distinguish a dangerous dog from a dog that is not, those who have a phobic reaction to dogs fear all dogs and thus avoid taking chances on distinguishing threatening dogs from friendly dogs. 

Such an explanation for why ideologies and movements believe what Giboney might call lies gives those ideologies and movements some benefit of the doubt without having to agree with questionable beliefs.

Giboney has several valid points to make here and is worth reading. But it doesn't really provide an accurate description of CRT before examining whatever lies it might hold to. And that is a significant flaw in Giboney's article.

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For October 14, 2020

 Sept 18

To Andrew Latham and his blogpost that accuses Marx and Engels as being racists and of early founders of Marx as embracing slavery. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

I cannot speak much to racism in Marx except to say that what is written above does not make him stand out from either most leaders in America or from people like Tocqueville. Whereas Marx saw in Germany the hope for the future, Tocqueville saw in Great Britain the superior society. In addition, Tocqueville wrote about Blacks and Native Americans in similar ways as is being attributed to Marx and Engels above. And yet that seems to not have been important enough for Latham to mention. And unlike Tocqueville, Marx did not get to witness what was going on in the United States.

But as for slavery, Latham fails to mention Marx's relationship with Abraham Lincoln. It has been summarized as one where they communicated and Lincoln learned from Marx without becoming a Marxist (see  https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/07/27/you-know-who-was-into-karl-marx-no-not-aoc-abraham-lincoln/  ). Marx spoke against American slavery in class terms. He corrected the perception that London's media presented of our Civil War which was that of a battle between protectionism vs free trade. Marx said that it was about slavery (see  'The North American Civil War (October, 1961) in   https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/internationalist/pamphlets/MARX-on-Slavery-OptV5.pdf  ). In Marx's congratulatory letter to Lincoln for winning a second term, he criticized the South by calling it an 'oligarchy of 300,000 slave holders and described the Southern cause as 'property against labor' (see   https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1864/lincoln-letter.htm ). In 1861, Marx called slavery a horror (see  https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/10/11.htm ).

Yes, Marx made more than just mistakes with some of his views, though it is very debatable whether those who committed great atrocities while claiming to represent him were actually following what he  wrote. Rosa Luxemburg, a socialist contemporary of Vladimir Lenin criticized Lenin's regime as imitating a bourgeoisie dictatorship in its structure and operation. Why she said that is the real issue. For Lenin did everything to ensure that proletariat rule would not be his way of governing Russia (see  https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/russian-revolution/ch08.htm ). In fact, none of the big 3 leaders of the Russian Revolution were Proletariats. Rather, they led a vanguard movement equating themselves with Marx's revolution. We should note that it was their vanguardism, not Marx's teaching, that led to their tyrannical rule in Russia and we could say the same of Mao in China. We should note that because our 2 major political parties portray themselves as vanguards as well.

So why was the above article written. My guess is that it was written to inspire people to view Marx in all-or-nothing terms and thus to reject anything associated with Marx. And if I am correct, by doing so, Latham is speaking as an authoritarian which is something for which we should all condemn Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, and Castro for ruling like one.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sept 24

To Sir Roger Scruton and his article that heavily criticizes the replacement of classical music with avant-garde. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

The only problem that occurs when discussing the classical tradition and avant-garde is when we try to force a false dichotomy between the two onto the listener. Just because avant-garde might, in many cases, better express the world in which we have been living doesn't mean that we can dispose of all of the music from the past. Likewise, just because of the magnificent contributions and works of the classical period doesn't mean that we should disregard boundaries crossed by avant-garde music.

While Scruton uses the views of the music critic Robert Reilly to make his case. And while Scruton tries to establish Reilly's musical authority to speak on such matters by presenting him as a kind of Renaissance man, I would like to think that Leonard Bernstein also possesses significant enough credentials to speak about music. He talks favorably about Schoenberg's explorations and achievements while telling us that we cannot escape the past (see  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olwVvbWd-tg  ).

We see 12-tone scales and other more exploratory approaches to music in some Jazz artists. Why? it is because they believe that the rules and new boundaries set are tools rather than goals. After all, music is first about communication rather than about techniques and tools. Music, like all of the arts, are to reflect life rather than try to meet some idealistic standard.

And in reflecting life, music is a barometer for where we are as a people. Rather than criticize avant-garde, I would hope that Scruton would spend his time on what the overly simplistic approach to music that we see in pop music tells us about people in general. How the rejection of complexity in music indicates that we have a population that believes that life must simple. And in so believing, we see more and more people becoming unable to see reality for what it is because they cannot tolerate complexity. And that is where avant-garde comes in.  It has simply introduced more complexity and is overly criticized by some because they cannot accept that complexity.

Thus, there is no reason to either reject classical music or avant-garde or any other approach to music that tries to adequately reflect the the complexity that is so much a part of life in every age.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sept 24

To G. Shane Morris and his blogpost that claims that it is progressives, not evangelicals who are obsessed with sex. This appeared in the Troubler of Israel blog on Patheos.

IMO, the above article indicates that Morris is too defensive to understand the complaints made about us religiously conservative Christians. Here is the complaint, that in terms of legislation and politics, many religiously religiously conservative Christians are obsessed with controlling the sexual practices of fellow citizens, especially those who are unbelievers, while we say nothing about America's immoral wars and support the cutting of social safety nets by the government.

If we can disagree with other religions while fully supporting their right to meet and practice, how is it that we are unable to to disagree with the sexual practices of unbelievers while allowing them the freedom to follow their own sexual mores? The concern from many unbelievers isn't about us agreeing with their sexual practices and relationships. Rather it is about us imposing our sexual mores on them. For the most part, religiously conservative Christians have fought tooth and nail against full equality for the LGBT community. And we have done so partly because such equality would cause us to have more contact with them than we care to.

At the same time, many of us religiously conservative Christians express no qualms when our nation separates kids from parents and locks everyone up. Many of us show no concern about the cutting or reducing of social safety nets nor do we want to admit that there is systemic racism in our nation. We even cheer the sending of our troops into harm's way while sharply condemning as being unpatriotic those who oppose, or even question, our wars.

Certainly some of us believe that the Church should be in charge of helping the needy. But America's conservative Church has no such interest in helping everyone. Don't we understand why many conservative churches move out of urban areas into the suburbs? And yet some of us want the conservative Church to take care of all who are in need.

In addition, the note by Iain Lovejoy noted the problem with the field hospital.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Oct 6

To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost that accuses CRT of suppressing dissent. This appeared in Heidelblog.

Odd that Clark would take one school's attempt to accommodate CRT and attribute that to CRT as a whole. I suspect that Clark's real objection is the basic tenet of CRT: that this nation was founded on and still revolves around white supremacy. I think that Clark denies that the nation is still based on white supremacy, as well as some other supremacies. The inclusion of other supremacies comes with the addition of Intersectionality.

In addition, CRT says that because of the current systemic racism that exists in this nation, we do have to review and even redefine some of our basic institutions.

Part of CRT is based on the works of Martin Luther King Jr. And here we should note that  King battled against a large white supremacist culture that, with the help of laws, enforced that white supremacy on this nation. Thus, racism wasn't only an individual sin, it was a corporate, societal sin. The response of color blindness forgets the disadvantages that systemic racism brought to many people of color. Thus color-blindness and meritocracy only furthered those disadvantages and inspired those who hold to hyperindividualism to continue to believe in white supremacy because they overlooked the disadvantages from which many people of color were performing with. Many liken all of that to a race where the starting line for those with privilege is significantly closer to the finish line than the starting line for those who have been marginalized. To then judge people based on when they cross the finish line might seem fair, but it is far from fair.

Thus, one has to question whether a person who opposes racism as an individual but does not oppose systemic or institutional racism is still adequately opposed to racism.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Oct 13

To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost that celebrates the removing of the Pulitzer Prize from and criticism of the 1619 Project. This appeared in Heidelblog.

The key problem with  the 1619 Project was not with facts but the interpretation of the facts. It employed all-or-nothing thinking by reducing the founding of America to the issue of slavery.

The conservative reaction to the 1619 Project by some religiously conservative Christians often employs the same type of thinking. And the reason for that is partial conflation of Christianity with American Patriotism. This is seen in their use of the parallel of America's founding fathers to America with the Apostles to the Church. And in doing so, they put America's founding fathers, and America itself, on too high a pedestal.

As for why the American Revolution was fought, there was no one single issue. That the British were interfering with the colonialists westward expansion that would take land from the Native Americans is certainly  one reason. Defense of slavery was another reason why some of our founding fathers sought independence from England. How the Sommerset case was reported, especially with how the judges words about how slavery was not consistent with English law was taken out of context. Thus,, many wrongly thought that his decision spelled the end of slavery in England and the colonies. So it is quite reasonable to see that continued belonging to the UK posed a threat to slavery and thus provided another, but not the only, reason why some of the founding fathers, many of whom were slave owners, wanted to break away from England.

Of course those two reasons alone break the idealistic parallel that many religiously conservative American Christians want to maintain between the role that our nation's founding fathers played with the creation of American and the Apostles' role in establishing the Church.

Is Bernie A Socialist?

With Sanders' lead in both the polls and in delegates, the question becomes whether America is ready for Socialism. At least that is how Republicans want to frame Sanders' campaign. And of course, with the Republican view of Socialism and Marxism, the answer should be 'no.' The trouble is that the Republicans often have no clue as to what Socialism from the Marxist tradition are. And the reason for that is that they are content to read about Marxism from their own their own people. And that is like expecting to learn all about Christianity by listening to Bill Mahrer.

To learn about Socialism, especially the Marxist brand of Socialism, one should read Karl Marx. And one could include Frederich Engels as well. But one should first read Marx.

Perhaps the primary document one could use is the Communist Manifesto (click here for the document). Their primary concern, as expressed in that document, revolves around how the bourgeoisie, the owners of capital, rule over the state and society. Their solution is not described as big government that tries to control every aspect of life. Rather their solution is to change the ruling class from the bourgeoisie to the proletariat. Marx called that the proletariat dictatorship. The name is a bit of a misnomer because Marx and Engels believed in democracy. They just believed in a kind of democracy that would be the proletariat in charge.

It is from the rule of the proletariat that Marx expected his utopia to emerge. Why is that? It is because he expected the proletariat, with the help of his analysis of Capitalism, to arrange for the distribution of wealth in ways that, with their control, would eliminate the injustices that arose from the distribution of wealth from the Capitalism of his day. And here we should note that this is where Republicans misunderstand Socialism from the Marxist tradition is at this point. While Republicans strictly limit Socialism to how it redistributes wealth and big government; Socialism from Marx's view teaches that Socialism is first about the redistribution of power, both at work and in the government, from the bourgeoisie to the proletariat. And it isn't just Republicans who make that mistake, even those who have called themselves Socialists do so many times as innocent mistakes and at other times opportunistically.

So read through Bernie Sanders' website (click here for his website). Is he promoting the redistribution of power, even in part, to the proletariat both at the work place and in government? Does Sanders' proposals on strengthening unions really do justice to what Marx and Engels said about getting the proletariat to become the ruling class? Does Sanders's views help the proletariat gain control over the government?

My own views on Sanders is that though he is a breath of fresh air when it comes to major political party candidates, he is more of an FDR New Deal candidate who is promising to act as a vanguard for the vulnerable and workers. And though we should always appreciate candidates and elected officials who share Sanders' concerns, in the end Sanders provides an inadequate approach to what Marx and Engels promoted as well as to any meaningful hybrid approach that combines Capitalism with Socialism. Under Sanders, we won't see workers gaining enough power in the work place, and definitely not in government, to change the status quo.

Here we should note that the prevailing belief passed on to society from the free market is that the pursuit of self-interest is one's only moral obligation. Thus, what we need are for different groups, like the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, to share power and collaborate. A structure that forces those two groups to sufficiently share power in the work place can be found in Germany's codetermination laws. Those laws state that, based on the number of employees, a business's executive board must contain a  certain percentage of workers so that workers are also represented in those boards. Such does not occur with the promotion of union despite how unions can help workers. And there is nothing in Sanders' visions to increase the number of proletariat representation in government.

It is sad that there is much deliberate ignorance regarding Socialism from a Marxist tradition. The ignorance is deliberate because it allows people to use the label 'Socialism' either as a pejorative or as a moral appeal. In either case, the ignorance prevents people from learning what Marxist Socialism has to offer and what it has that can be detrimental.

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For May 9, 2018

May 7

To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost that talks about where the Church is heading today. This was posted in Heidelblog.

Clark has a legitimate point in noting how past errors reincarnate themselves for the Church today. But he also demonstrates the fatal flaw of many conservatives: that they look solely to the past to understand and respond to today's world. And just as narcissism's fatal flaw is elevating the present over the past so that those in the present have everything to teach and nothing to learn from those from the past, many conservatives elevate a set of past times over the present so that those from the past would have everything to teach and nothing to learn from those modern times.

Where is the Church heading? To answer that question in America, one would expect to have to address the issue of activism and equality for the LGBT community in society. One would expect to have to address social justice and environmental issues. One would expect to have noted how the dominant branch of the American Church, which is a blend of conservative Catholicism and Protestantism, either supports all or a subset of those with wealth and power as the dominant branch of the Church did in the pre-revolutionary times of France, Russia, and Spain. One would expect to have to address those subjects along with what Clark addressed.

Young adults face the biggest challenge in the Church today and yet that isn't mentioned here. What is their challenge? It comes from their elders who have taught them that these young people must choose between believing in salvation by grace alone through faith alone and working for the kind of social justice that the Old Testament prophets spoke of. What many of these young adult Christians do with the apparent 'Sophie's Choice' given to them by many of their elders will determine where the Church is heading. And whether they will find a faithful way of keeping the Gospel while learning from the Old Testament prophets depends on whether they recognize the choice being given to them by their elders is a false dichotomy.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

May 8

To Joe Carter and his blogpost denouncing Marx and Marxism because of the approximately 100 million deaths allegedly attributed to Marx by some Conservatives. That post appeared in the Acton blog.

Articles like the one above and the one cited only show a conservative, opportunistic approach to Marx. For American conservatives are all too eager to trash Marx so as to present their own nation as the paragon of virtue. Besides the fact that Gregg, whose article Carter cites, is grossly mistaken in attributing Hitler's rampage to Marx and somewhat understandably mistaken in attributing the deaths from reigns of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot to Marx, he ignores the fixed number of deaths that would have occurred anyway because Marx, and those who claimed to have followed him, was reacting, rather than encouraging a first strike, to tyranny and killing.

Would Russia have left WW I as early as it did if there was no October, 1917 Revolution. Remember that the February, 1917 Revolution produced the Provisional Authority government that was controlled by the Capitalists in Russia. And, out of self-interest, they favored continuing Russia's participation in WW I despite the hardships such participation caused on the Russian people. Or we could take Guevera and Castro on Cuba for another example. It wasn't until the Cuban Revolution that the US government considered pulling their support from the corrupt and brutal government of Batista. Or we could go to Nicaragua and note how the US supported the Somoza government before the Sandinistas overthrew that government. There are other places we could go as well.

Or we could ask Carter and Gregg this question: How is it that Marxist revolutions are considered murderous while the American Revolution was not? After all, one of the reasons for wanting independence from Great Britain was so that the colonists could expand westward. And that mean dislocation and death for Native Americans.

We could also ask how many deaths could be blamed on Jesus Christ and Adam Smith if we follow the same logic that Carter and Gregg have? After all, how many indigenous people in the new world lost homes and even their lives to those claiming to be Christians? This would include not just the British-based colonizalization of North America, but the Spanish conquests of Central and South America as well. And how many indigenous people from Africa and Asia lost their lives due to the Christian European empires? How many people lost their lives in the American interventions to help business reported on by former Marine Corp Major General Smedley Butler? Or how many people lost their lives from the various kinds of US interventions following WW II? How many people lost their lives as a result of regime changes that the US instigated in Iran, Guatemala, Brazil, Greece, Chilé, Nicaragua, and so on. And how many millions of Vietnamese lost their lives to American bombings? And how many people have lost their lives because of the almost 40-year-old war started in Afghanistan right at the end of the Carter Administration?  Should we blame Jesus Christ and Adam Smith for those deaths or is such attribution to them ludicrous?

There are certainly things Marx wrote that are wrong and have caused harmful effects. But crediting him with 100 million deaths shows a lack of knowledge and understanding as to what Marxism is and isn't. For if Christianity can have false believers and Republicans can have RINOs, why are we so compelled to assume that each murderous leader who calls himself a Marxist is really a Marxist?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost on the use of a Social Psychology experiment to claim that there is no settled science. Here, he is echoing the sentiments of Palanyi This appeared in Heidelblog.

From one social Psychology experiment, Clark's conclusion is that there is no "settled science'? That is what the pairing of the telling of the above Social Psychology experiment and the title Clark gave to this blogpost implies But if there is no settled science, then would it not be true that there is nothing we can know that is true from science? That means that we could wake up some day and discover that the earth is flat rather than round, that the sun revolves around the earth and not the other way around? And then the next day, we could learn just the opposite is the case.
If there is no settled science then we e could learn that none of the vaccines we've taken work or that some of the medicines we take don't work without diseases changing. And we could learn that gravity does not exist. And not only that, we could learn that water does not freeze at 32 degrees and that ice doesn't form at the top of any containment of water.

I could go on but there is settled science for those saying there is none. That science comes from the study of economics and supply and demand and how neoliberal Capitalism is the best economic system ever. And we know that that approach to economics is the only settled science people who say there is no settled science  believe in. That is because there is a particular context for saying there is no settled science. That context is the subject of climate change.

For if there is no doubt that people are contributing to changing the climate of the earth in ways that threaten our descendants, then our American way of life and thus how many of our businesses operate must change. We might be compelled to live and work in a far less individualistic and more collective ways. We might be compelled to be far less materialistic in how we live. We might have to change our economic system despite the settled science its supporters insist on. But perhaps the fear of change, because one is happy with the current status quo, is the biggest factor in saying that there is never any settled science.

Finally, Clark should know better than to attach the above title to the story of this Social Psychological experiment. In terms of logic, he is trying to prove an absolute rule with a single example with an uncountable sample space. Such an attempt is severely logically flawed. For when trying to prove absolute rules, like there is no settled science, only one counterexample is needed to disprove them. And what is distressing here is that Clark seems to be engaging in a ruse in saying something about climate change without disclosing his intent in citing the experiment described above. What he wants to say about climate change is that we don't know for sure that it is happening and thus we don't have to change. And that indicates whether he is satisfied enough with the status quo so as to not want it to change despite the unspecified future suffering many will experience.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To Dylan Pahman and his blogpost on his celebrating the possible closing of Barnes & Noble, and other big chains, due to its inability to compete with Amazon. This appeared in the Acton blog.

http://blog.acton.org/archives/101493-dont-save-barnes-noble.html

Pahman misses the big picture here. For the big picture isn't about one monopoly replacing ma-and-pa stores or one monopoly replacing another or the roles of regulations and competition in the business world. Nor is it about how conservatives tend to reduce economics to commerce with its redefinition of the concept of stakeholder to consist of only providers and consumers. Rather, the big story is in how extreme individualism that contains no concern for externals destroys not only other people lives, but eventually our own nest too. For this growing trend to buy more and more from Amazon is about the shoppers' convenience and ability to avoid dealing with other people. And what is ironic is that Pahman celebrates the success of Amazon's business venture which includes the cornering of markets served by Amazon. For with that cornering comes the centralization of control of those markets. And centralization of power is suppose to be an enemy to conservatism--at least that is the case when it comes to government.

The problem with extreme individualism, besides the fact that it is suppose to be against the Scriptures, is that such individualism spreads to other areas of life. If I am not suppose to be concerned with who suffers from the purchasing decisions I make, then should I be concerned with the cuts in my taxes even though those cuts lead to the reduction of social safety nets and/or an unmanageable national debt that will force austerity on those who are most vulnerable? If I can benefit from my nation's business regulations that protect neither other people nor the environment, then should I care about who will suffer from the lack of protection those regulations would have provided? If my nation's foreign policies help benefit me in terms of living the life I want, should I be concerned about the victims of those policies?

As we focus more and more on how we individually benefit from our decisions, we feel morally justified in the decisions we make regardless of who suffers because of our decisions. We become immune to the pain others suffer because of the benefits we enjoy. And that is fine for us until those with more power and control act the same way as we are. And that is called karma.