Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For January 12, 2022

 Dec 22

To R. Scott Clark and the Reverend Dr Peter Sanlon for the part of Sanlon's article quoted in Clark's article that warns the PCA not to accept any appeal or argument made by Side-B Christians regarding their standing in that denomination. This appeared in the Heidelblog.

Sanlon's article can be found at either

https://theaquilareport.com/a-letter-to-pca-friends-from-england-speaking-to-your-future/

or

https://www.reformation21.org/blog/a-letter-to-pca-friends-from-england

There are several problems with the above article. The first problem is that there seems to be an expressed fear of being able to distinguish the different flavors of Side-B Christians.  There is an expressed fear that if the more acceptable Side-B Christians are welcomed as spiritual peers, then the worst Side-B Christians are sure to follow. Such thinking is a form of all-or-nothing thinking which, in part, is part and parcel of authoritarianism and thus not necessarily Biblical.

There is a problem with the claim that some Side-B Christians are 'downplaying' the work of the Holy Spirit in being able to change their desires. With that is the implication that those correcting Side-B Christians have experienced a fuller work of the Spirit, that they have no equivalent issues to the Side-B Christian struggle with SSA. So perhaps Machen's racism with its implicit white supremacy expressed in some of his letters to his mother is not as serious as struggling with SSA. Of course, it is unknown if Machen recognized let alone struggled with his own racism. And before him, we have Whitfield and Edwards and their accepting of white supremacy as expressed in their owning or viewing slavery. Here we should be reminded of how they benefited from those beliefs. And what should we say about today's exemplary Christians from the Reformed Theology Tradition who are accepting of systemic racism or the economic exploitation that is a foundational part of our current economic system because they, like Machen, are members of privileged groups? What should we say about those same Christians who are apathetic to the suffering caused by our nation's misuse of its military and other services or by our foreign policies because they live in a privileged country? I could go on.

Finally, isn't it one thing to question experienced or emotional based beliefs when they run counter to the Scriptures and another thing to question those same kind of beliefs when they run counter to or go beyond the scope of issues covered by the Reformed Confessions? If we can't make that distinction, then are we implying that like the Scriptures, the Confessions are inerrant and sufficient to guide Christians living in today's world? Do we really think that none of today's issues are new to what the writers of our confessions thought of or had to deal with? Are we implying that because of our Reformed Confessions and Catechisms that we do not need to list to others as they share about their experiences and feelings? 

Certainly there are faults, some very serious, that come with the different varieties of Side-B Christianity. But their problems in no way imply that those who automatically reject them as  being spiritual peers are either correct in their rejection of them or have no faults as serious as any Side-B Christians have.

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Dec 28

To W. Robert Godfrey and his church school lesson on the changes in our world due to the overthrow of Christendom. Thie appeared on the Abounding Grace Radio Blog.

Besides oversimplifying Hegel, Marx, and the struggle to improve, Godfrey employs a double standard. For at the end he says that Christians are easy to attack because they are sinners and not perfect. And so if one only focuses on their sins and ignores what they do is good, it is easy to attack Christianity. And yet he seems not to consistently employ the same graciousness when dealing with the faults of those who sought to overthrow Christendom.

In addition, we might want to ask if there is something wrong with unbelievers only seeking to improve life on earth for others. And if Christians do not to join them in that venture, doesn't that makes them guilty of what Lenin observed and thus charged the Christians of his day with? 

So does what Godfrey said about Christians and their faults apply to whatever group, movement, or ideology that we wish to criticize? For it seems that Godfrey is complaining that Christianity is being rejected simply because of the sins of Christians while ignoring Christianity's contribution and yet he seems not to mind rejecting other ideologies as a result of employing the same logic. Here we should note that Martin Luther King Jr., if memory serves, borrowed from Hegel in some of his analysis. 

Also, if we want to focus so on the secular prophecy that predicted Hitler's emergence, why not also examine WW I to note how each side claimed that the Christian God was on their side. And what about the colonialism, imperialism, slavery, ethnic cleansing, anti-semitism, and such which were all the fruit of Christendom?

The problem with traditionalists is that they rely too heavily on the past to analyze and respond to the present. The problem with narcissists is that they don't rely enough on the past to understand and respond to the present. And if we placed a  line between those two positions, we find that most of us lean, at various points on that line, one way or the other. Unfortunately, our world changes and that requires us to change. And the failure to change wisely dooms one to suffer the harsh consequences that comes from either overreacting or under reacting to our ever changing world.

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Jan 3

To Gene Veith and his article on how Trump is not receiving the credit he deserves for the development of the vaccines and how he is being vilified for his Covid policies. In the end, Veith asks about how one reacts to Trump and whether Trump should run for President. Veith's opinion is that Trump's influence and political career will disappear. This appeared in the Cranach blog on Patheos.

There is no doubt that Trump deserves credit for making the situation more feasible for developing the vaccines--though we need to remember that Trump did not develop the vaccines himself, Al Gore did.

But where Trump deserves unwanted negative credit was in his flaunting of the disease and, thus, his flaunting of medical science in how seriously he took the disease after the end of April of 2020. His flaunting of the disease included his promotion of hydroxychloroquine and deliberate disregard for the wearing of masks and his pushing people to prematurely return to life as normal. His flaunting of medical science was parallel to his ridicule of the courts and the election system after the election. His behavior, in both cases, encouraged people to prefer offbeat sources like QAnon to medical science and the courts even where his own appointed judges presided.

Yes, Trump does deserve credit for fostering an environment that helped speed the development of the vaccines. But he also deserves credit for flaunting medical science and thus encouraging others to do the same with regard how they were to react to the Covid-19 pandemic. And Veith doesn't help here when he presents the story of Trump and Covid in such a bipolar manner. It is as if Veith was trying to make the case that if Trump is not the epitome of evil, then he must be innocent of the Covid-related accusations against him.

As for whether one should support Trump for President again, let us remember how he has tried to make people so dependent on his alternative facts and himself as the sole source for reliable information and news. And let's remember Jan 6, 2020, a day that could have lived in infamy if some of his supporters had their way in that insurrection.

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Jan 4

To Paul Krause and his article that tries to establish Western Exceptionalism by trying to tie it to the exceptionalism found in the Hebrew Bible. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

I guess by praising the Hebrew Bible, one is praising oneself or one's own group when one tries to establish strong ties between the Hebrew Bible and oneself or one's own group. But we should note two problems with that approach. First, the New Testament is the completion of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament makes it clear that without that completing of the Hebrew Bible, one is left to be condemned by its principles so praised in the above article because of one's own violations of those principles.

Second, history is quite clear in pointing out the vast disconnect that exists between the principles of the Hebrew Bible and what has driven Western Civilization. However, there is a point of continuity between the Hebrew Bible and Western Civilization: religious intolerance. Religious diversity was labeled as idolatry punishable by God's judgment and sometimes physical death as sanctioned in the Hebrew Bible. A major theme in Western history is the practice of religious intolerance unless an ulterior motive could be satisfied by tolerating other religions.

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Jan 6

To Patrick M. Garry and his article that attacks the Left for its promotion of an anti-Constitutional democracy. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

There are a few things to comment on in the above article. First, there is a conflation of Democratic liberals with the Left. The Left is anti-Capitalist to varying degrees, Democratic liberals are not.

Next, we cannot adequately describe the intentions of The Constitution without noting its context and citing from Yates's notes on the Constitutional debates. What spurred the writing of The Constitution was neither the Revolutionary War nor the newfound independence from Great Britain;  what spurred the writing of that document was Shays Rebellion and the widespread dissent caused by the economic distress of the time. As a result, America's own elites felt threatened and wanted a stronger federal government that would be able to put down resistance. We should note that Madison was not just opposed to direct democracy, but also to allowing all classes of people having the right to vote so that the wealthy could be protected from the demands of the rest. Here we should remember the occupational demographics of those who participated in the Constitutional debates as well as the writer of The Constitution itself. Many were slaveholders or bondholders. 

The Federal Papers make it clear that the charge of factionalism was nothing more than political speech aimed at those with whom America's financial elites disagreed on economic solutions for that time. We should also note that The Contitution initially did not allow for voters, and only around 5% of the population could vote at the time of the writing of that document, to vote for their Senate representatives. Senators were appointed by their state governments, along with the length of a Senator's term, in order to protect Senators from popular opinion.

If democracy is the rule of the people, then America has never been a democracy in the first place. America's varying levels of embracing white supremacy has made sure of that. At best, we are an ethnocracy. But even outside that ethnocracy, whatever democratic elements that exist in our government are strongly limited by the rule of  financial elites (see  https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B  ). 

The lack of democracy and the rule of specific groups  such as whites or financial elites it is what is being defended here. Such a rule produces an authoritarianism that has profoundly infected all political ideological sides from libertarianism to conservatism to  liberalism to the left. In other words, what we are experiencing is a continual King-Of-The-Hill battle for control over the nation. And though more democratic in form that the then different styles of governments were at its time, The Constitution started us down this road a stealth authoritarian rule by privileged groups of this nation. And defense of such an authoritarianism by a religiously conservative Christian source should note surprise anyone since conservative Christianity has a strong penchant for authoritarianism.

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Jan 9

To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost that advises the Alliance of Reformed Churches (ARC) on how to proceed after spliting from the Reformed Church of America (RCA). This appeared in the Heidelblog.

The mocking of the Mainline denominations simply because they have attempted to address issues that we daily face because we live in today's world is not consistent with how we are to live as Christians. And that is one of the problems with the above article. Correcting others as if one is above them is a temptation that we face as Christians and thus how we confront others should be tempered by our own failures and sins. And we should be able to do that because we who hold to the Reformed traditions pride ourselves in believing that we are saved by grace alone.

It is also nice to know that those in the Reformed sideline churches tolerate us believers who don't hold to conservative social and political views. We should thank those social and political conservatives for being so gracious for allowing us to be members of their churches.

If I were to advise the ARC about its future, I would say that instead of looking at being either faithful to the Confessions or being culturally relevant as a choice, it should look at both as being siren songs with each containing its own hazards and dangers. 

There is a certain degree to which we need to be faithful the the Confessions, but lest those Confessions begin to compete with the Scriptures for our attention and dependency, we need to lower the pedestal on which they are often placed. We need to see that the writers of those Confessions as well as other writings from the past were significantly influenced by their own cultures and life experiences. And thus, to depend too much on those Confessions and writings not only can cause us to depend too much on them, it can make us less able to translate what is in the Scriptures to today's life. Here we should remember that a key fault of traditionalists is to depend too heavily on the past to understand and respond to the present.

On the other hand, we need to distinguish between being culturally relevant from being culturally influential. That is because being influential sometimes depends on affirming current actions, attitudes, and beliefs that go against the Scriptures. Being culturally relevant simply means being able to make understandable what the Scriptures have said in order to clearly address today's issues. Our ability to translate the Scriptures that way can be limited when we depend too much on Confessions and the writing s of others from the past who were heavily influenced by their own cultures and who did not face the world we face today.

The Scriptures must be our guide above all guides. As for the Confessions, we must realize that, like ourselves, not only have the writers of those Confessions and other writings  face issues unique for their time and location, but that how we look at the Scriptures has already been influenced by our own culture and life experiences. And thus to better understand the Scriptures, we must be honest in how we look at both ourselves and the writers of our Confessions and other writings has affected how we interpret the Scriptures. 

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For March 4, 2020

Feb 28

To Gene Veith and his article reviewing the views of some other religiously conservative Christians who believe that the West has lost its competitive advantage by not asserting its god of family, community, religion, and so forth. And that this is due to Post Modernism that, according to Veith, was because of a general reaction to the Nazis. Veith also asserted that because the Nazis believed something too much, that Nazism was the result of the forebearers of Post Modernism. This appeared in the Cranach blog on the Patheos website.

I agree with Veith in that the Post Modern response to the West consists of an overreaction But Veith is wrong in claiming that Post Modernism was a response solely to Nazism. Such an idea suggests that all other past expressions of Western wars, imperialism, colonialism, and ways of exploiting of and marginalizing others were acceptable if not appropriate. That makes Nazism a minimum of standard of evil when compared with what the rest of the West was doing.

Veith's claim that it was the forebearers of Post Modernism that led to Nazism because they rejected all 'moral and intellectual absolutes.' But then what drove Western wars imperialism, colonialism, racism, sexism, and so forth before that? How much of the Western Hemisphere was claimed in the name of God and how many European Christians viewed themselves as superior to this hemisphere's indigenous people as well as the Blacks who were brought over from Africa? Didn't such European Christians hold to the same moral and intellectual absolutes which Veith mentioned? And yet even before the West practiced imperialism and colonialism overseas, it had its own wars of conquest.

Post Modernism's response is not just to WW II and Nazism, but to much of the history of Western Civilization. For in Western Civilization, authoritarianism, as shown in its heavy reliance on hierarchies, ruled both at home and abroad. So Nazism simply rolled over those same beliefs in authoritarianism, one's superiority and thus one's entitlement to rule over others, that came from Western Civilization, only to put those beliefs on steroids. And just as Post Modernism's response to Western Civilization's atrocities includes an overreaction, so too has the religiously conservative Christian response to Post Modernism responded in kind.

The reason why there is religiously conservative Christian call to 'strong gods' referenced above is that we Christians have yet to learn that there are times to relate to others without authoritarianism and thus without hierarchies. And for as long as we, because of our authoritarianism, insist on opportunistically keeping unnecessary hierarchies, we put ourselves into the rifle scope of Post Modernism's sniper rifle. And the results is a justified feeling for shooting down our Christian metanarrative in the eyes of many who should be listening to the Gospel.

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March 3

To Paul Krause and his blog post that attempts to define how Conservatives should approach American culture. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

The problem with Krause's article is the same problem that those who over elevate one specific time period over all others.  For traditionalists, that time period is designated time in the past, for narcissists it consists of the present. When the elevation is too great, then what is believed is that those from either from a given time period have everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them. That principle was called unjust by Martin Luther King Jr.

What is the problem with Krause's article? It is its rigidity in thinking. First, he restricts the definition of culture to only what can be derived from the Latin root of the word. That today's working definition of culture cannot exceed what that root says. Thus, whatever is involved with polis, or politics, such as free speech,cannot also be part of the culture even though he explained that the Latin root of the word culture involves what is cared for.  And that caring for involves nurturing.

What belongs to polis then and not culture? Krause says it issues like free speech, individualism, and collectivism and the free market. But if Americans have historically cared about free speech, or individualism, or collectivism, then why can such positions not be included in both culture and polis?

Likewise, when Krause talks about the contents of culture, he states that it concerns itself with our consciousness and memory as it comes to us from 'history, identity, and symbol',  And he gives an example from part of Roman culture in Virgil's Aeneid. From that story came lessons and virtues such as heroism practiced by pas heroes which were valued by the Romans. He later on defends the arts. And thus Krause limits the concerns of culture to what comes from our history and the arts. They alone determine our identity. But again, aren't other concerns that are shared with polis expressed in our history and the arts so that they have become a part of our identity?

Krause then goes on to compare how conservative approach history with how the Left does. He describes conservatives who reduce culture to political issues like free speech and such are not doing culture right by their own standards because, as Krause claims, conservatism about the 'defense of culture,' not ideology. And the defense of culture is about preserving our history, identity, and 'mythical symbolism' that we have learned from a Conservative account of history and the arts. So when conservatives reduce culture to issues of polis, they sabotage their cause of supporting or promoting conservatism.

On the other hand, Krause claims that the Left understands culture because it is trying to change, completely what seems to be according to Krause, our history and identity. The Left wants us to hate our past history, identity, and so forth.  So unlike the conservative version of history, the Left demonizes our past as way of changing the present.

The rigidity is all too obvious. Conservatives want Americans to love their history with its heroes and miracles, the Left wants us to hate it. Conservatives want us to preserve that past identity based on the conservative view of history, the Left want to replace from our past identity by revising our history and collective memories.  But it isn't just American history that Krause mentions, it is the history of Western Civilization and Hebraism that the conservatism revolves around. And to be more specific, Krause is talking about Anglo Conservatism. There is no mention of America being multiple identities from the beginning or of having mixed feelings about our history and past identity.

America consists of many people who either don't share that history or share the wrong side of it. Our nation consists of Blacks, Latinos,  and Asians all of whom have a history that creates a different identity. That shows both another rigid division in addition to an ominous implication about conservatism.

Krause seems to have left out any intersection of shared values and identity between culture and polis. He does the same with hybrids between what Conservataive and those on the Left value. And it seems that Krause's Conservatism has no room for those Americans' whose history and identity lie either outside that of Western Civilization and Hebraism or is on the wrong side of Western Civilization.

And finally, it seems to me that, according to Krause, the Conservative view of who we Americans are today should be strictly limited to who our ancestors were according to the Conservative accounts of them. Again, the rigidity in thought that implies that Conservatives everything to teach others and nothing to learn is made by Krause. Unfortunately, such is also a recipe for becoming a cult. 

Comments Which Conservatives Bllock From Their Blogs For October 3, 2018

Oct 2

To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost blaming the problem Millennials have with perfectionism on the influence of social media. This appeared in Heidelblog.

The article is beyond belief. Why? When mentioning a real problem, the problem Millennials have with perfectionism, the parents of Millennials do not even receive honorable mention. How is that possible?
One reason why may be possible it is because it is us baby-boomers who, for the most part, are the parents of Millennials. Parents still have a significant influence on how their children grow up, especially with how a child reacts to changing social and cultural conditions. Plus, has Clark forgotten about 'Helicopter Parents'?  Clark is correct in starting off by saying that he was not critiquing Millennials. But he should have followed that by saying that saying that this was a partial critique of those who raised Millennials.

As for neoliberalism, Scott seems to have a selective memory regarding what fostered neoliberalism and what it produces. Neoliberalism started after America supported a military coup in Chilé in 1973. That coup overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende after Allende, with support of many of his people, had decided to pursue a more leftist agenda. America's government, because of business interests there, wanted a free market. And so a dictator was installed so that a free market could follow. And, btw, that dictator was eventually indicted for committing crimes against humanity which involved crimes against his own people. Since then, free markets have been following the growth of authoritarianism in governments. Some of that growth in authoritarianism has occurred right here in the U.S. (see https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746  ).

Furthermore, neoliberalism's free markets have caused growing wealth disparities throughout the world. Some of those losses have occurred right here in the U.S. (see https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746  ). Of course that doesn't include the fact that workers support their families in a shareholder economic world where these workers are seen as disposable objects for profit. Even if the produce a significant profit for their owners, if a higher profit can possibly be made elsewhere, workers can lose their jobs. So many jobs offer no job security because workers can be easily replaced by having their jobs offshored  or by technology. Do we really believe that the angst caused by such an environment was never passed down to the kids?


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To Paul Krause and his blogpost about how Christianity must significantly change culture for its own good. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative.

I look at articles like the one above as a defense for Church to assume more control over society and culture. The defense for such actions are deductively made, but that defense becomes unraveled when induction, via examining history, is employed. Church history does not tell many positive stories of the West when the Church was dominant. For when Christianity is seen as revolving around a region, it all too soon becomes a vehicle that promotes self-worship instead of the worship of God.

The self-worship seen in Western Civilization when the Church was a dominant force included colonialism and imperialism along with white supremacy. In America, the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans from the land, race-based slavery, and Jim Crow were strongly promoted and then defended with perceived tenets of the Christian faith along with the Scriptures. But America has always been more Protestant than Catholic. But not all parts of Europe were that way. And  what we find in history is the lust for power, the use of violence, the embracing of intolerance, and the hoarding of wealth. These practices were seen as entitlements if not morally obligatory. Thus with the proclamation of the Gospel was the claim that white men must rule over women and people of color.

The problem with articles like the one above is that they either explicitly or implicitly promote Christian supremacy over society. That means instead of Christians sharing society with all others as equals, Christians must seize the day so as to save any pagan society from itself. But who was there to save Christian Europe, and parts of the rest of the World, from the Church? Thus came the problem that civilization changed from being Christian to being more atheistic because of the failures of the Church when it was in charge.

The NT Scriptures command us to preach the Gospel and to promote justice. And they warn us against meddling too much in society in terms of personal matters. Finally, Jesus warns us against  'lording over others.' So we need to be very careful when we Christians attempt to change society and culture lest we imitate our forefathers in how they tried too hard to influence society and culture.
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To Rev. Ben Johnson and his blogpost citing a German Socialist party’s claim that Jesus would be a Socialist had he been on earth today. This was posted in the Acton blog.

It certainly is wrong of the Socialist Party to speak for Jesus on the issue of voting. But regarding the problems brought to us by Capitalism, Marx, not necessarily all of his followers, was on target especially regarding neoliberalism--today's form of Capitalism. We live in a shareholder economy where the traditional definition of stakeholder has been reduced to shareholders and possibly a few key decision makers. The traditional business definition of stakeholder consists of all who are impacted by the business. That includes those who are included in today's definitoin as well as workers, the community in which a business is located, customers, and others. To give an example, a while ago, the then CEO of Exxon was asked if Exxon should be concerned about the effects of their prices on their customers. He clearly stated that the only people Exxon is accountable to are the shareholders.

With today's new definition of stakeholders, all others are considered to be disposable objects whom a business could choose to care about. But when a business follows the maximize profits ethics, which is a popular ethic followed by those who reject the traditional definition of stakeholder, what follows is that not only do we work with the redacted definition of stakeholders, but that that ethic is cannibalizing ethic that devours all other ethical and moral guidelines. Thus obeying the law depends on belief that either the business can get away with it or that being caught will not impact the ROI.

We should note that with neoliberalism, we see an ever growing wealth disparity and that results in an ever growing political power disparity. Growing political power disparities destroy democracies.

Finally, I am not sure why Marx said that religion is the opiate of the people, but do know why Lenin said it. He spoke from observation on how those following the Christian religion enabled the exploitation of workers and others by those with wealth. He wasn't speaking from an ideological point of view as much as observational one. It is one of the few things he got right. 




 

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For September 26, 2018

Sept 25

To Joseph Sundee and his blogpost that tries to show a strong tie between free markets and free press as he denounces the interest some have in democratic socialism. This appeared in the Acton blog

There might be a strong correlation between economic freedom and press freedom, but correlations do not imply cause and effect. And we might ask whether press freedom only measures infringements exercised by government, not by financial elites. This is true since most of our major news outlets are owned by financial elites.

Sundee's article reduces freedom to individual liberty forgetting that democracy is an exercise in social freedom. Thus to try to limit democracy in order to enhance the liberties of business is to say to the people that they can't make rules that control how business interacts in society. Thus to argue for free markets against government regulations in a government that is a working democracy is to attempt to limit what the rest of society can say to business. It is a limiting of social freedom and subjugates the rest of society to business. And at this point, we should note that society is a pie in which business is merely a slice and not vice-versa.

Since the Acton blog is a religious blog, we should remind it that Church history tells us multiple tragic stories of when the Church supports those with wealth and power. Those stories include what happened to the Church when it supported wealth and power in the pre-revolutionary times of France, Russia, and Spain. And we could include Chilé in as different way since its revolution saw a democratically elected leader overthrown and replaced with a brutal, military dictator who ushered in free markets. We should also note that the economic freedom enjoyed by Ayn Rand's family took place under the dictatorship of the Tsars. And that the Provisional Government that replaced the Tsars in the February, 1917 Russian Revolution was controlled by the Capitalists who insisted on continuing Russia's involvement in WW I despite the disastrous consequences that it brought to the people. So bad were those consequences that it welcomed Lenin's hijacking of the Russian Revolution.

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To Rev Ben Johnson and his blogpost that attempts to portray a the fully  autonomous individual with what is opposite from his “Christian” understanding of America’s Constitutionalism and its reliance on natural law. This appeared in the Acton blog.

My impression from reading about the Homo Economist is that he is a person who promotes the free markets of neoliberal capitalism. We should note that, along with Bolshevism, neoliberal Capitalism relies on the strengthening of a federal government that shows less and less interest in the concerns of those who live outside the circle of financial elites. On the other hand, there is that Johnson's reference to 'ordered liberty' and an unsupported assertion that The Constitution depended on natural law.

Those last two references give the appearance to support a conservative vanguardism. And that vanguardism, if it is defined by the blogposts, that appears in the Acton blog would give almost free reign to businesses despite any objection from society while it mandates that a Christian interpretation of natural law would deny equality in society to the LGBT community. Why the latter? It is said that acceptance of the sexual revolution clashes with religious liberty. Where does that clash occur? It occurs when laws demand that Christians treat those from the LGBT community as equals in the market place and  in society. Here we should note that many religiously conservative Christians, especially in the South, were dragged kicking and screaming into accepting the basic tenets of the Civil Rights Movement.

So perhaps Homo Economists and making the federal government stronger for emerging vanguards are conditionally positively related rather than existing as polar opposites. After all, the history of neoliberal capitalism shows a tendency to rely on oppressive government actions to protect its venture. The first 9/11, the one that occurred in Chilé serves as one of several examples.
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To Paul Krause and his blogpost that claims that real humanism comes from Catholic anthropology. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative.

It seems to me that if any one group wants to claim credit for being the original source or key contributor to real humanism, then that group must not only use logical deduction to prove its point, it must also use induction. That is it must include a history of actions that could be defined as humanistic while showing a minimal or non-existent list of actions that would be defined as opposing humanism.

It is the neglect of using induction to prove that real humanism is heavily dependent on the Church regardless of the branch (Orthodox, Roman, Protestant). The history of the Church is filled with a lust for power and possessions. It shows that the Church has sided with wealth and power and participated in exploiting, sometimes brutally, the vulnerable way too many times. It shows how the Church has condoned colonialism as it used it to spread its influence and domination.

Today's Post Modernism is, in large part, due to the failure of the Church in promoting true humanism in its actions. And the Church should not feel alone, Post Modernism also faults Modernism with its dependence on science and reason for the same failure. This is why Post Modernism has rejected the metanarratives of both Pre Modernism, where faith is the rule, and Modernism, where reason is the rule. And though Post Modernism is wrong in rejecting the metanarrative of faith, its observations about the failures of faith to bring real humanism into the world are on target.

The lesson here is that we can't use deduction to come to conclusions that the use of induction cannot support. The Bible has a parallel to such logic: 'faith without works is dead.'