Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For September 6, 2023

 August 30

To R. Scott Clark and his article on how the current direction of the Church is affected by some of the same problems and troublemakers that so bothered the Church in the past. This appeared in Heidelblog.

I welcome the collapse of Christendom with open arms. Why? It is because now the Gospel cannot be blamed for atrocities committed by the state or tolerated by society. That doesn't mean that we should be satisfied with the injustices that we see today. Rather, the justice concerns held under Christendom tolerated gross corporate sins while using shame and punishment to reign in people's individual sexual sins.

Though Clark reminds us of how some things from the past will continue to haunt us, there is an important omission in his list of troubles. What Clark forgot to mention is that for at least the past few centuries, the dominant branch of the Church in various nations have thrown their support behind wealth and power. That most noticeably occurred in the pre revolutionary times of France, Russia, and Spain. And the results of that misplaced support were that the reputation of the Gospel suffered great harm while the Church suffered unnecessary persecution after those revolutions succeeded. 

That same siding with wealth and power has been occurring here for quite a while. It is demonstrated by the margin by which the Church has been supporting the Republican Party--even when Donald Trump was the Republican Presidential candidate. It's not that the Democratic Party offers that many incentives for the Church to support it. And I am not downplaying the significance of the abortion issue. But the Republican Party's candidates provide the most morally questionable positions on how businesses should be allowed to operate. 

Cuts in regulations that protect workers and the environment as well as cuts in taxes promote social injustices as well as both threaten government programs for the vulnerable and continually shift the tax burden from the wealthy to the lower economic classes. Here we should note that the form of Capitalism employed now is not the same form employed from WW II to around the 1970s and 1980s. And none of that mentions the religiously conservative Christian support for militarism and hegemony.

Many of my fellow religiously conservative Christians are rightly critical of Critical Theory and Post Modernism. But what they neglect to notice is that both are, in part, responses to Christendom. And so both Critical Theory and Post Modernism, despite their flaws, still speak prophetically against the Church for as long as the Church continues with some of the same sins it practiced during Christendom.

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August 31

To Heidelblog for the title it gave to the portion of Harrison Perkins's  article on Signs, Seals, and Means of Grace. Since Perkins's article cites the Augustinian traction of the sacraments, the title that Heidelblog gave this post was Augustine Contra The Postmodernists.

Harrison Perkins's full article can be found at:

https://issuu.com/modernreformation/docs/sola-359-2023_05_mr_final_2_singles/s/23257929

Before we condemn Post Modernism's response to the past, we need to see what it is reacting to. Seeing that won't justify Post Modernism's response. But understanding what Post Modernism is reacting to just very might make us look at a non-magic mirror to see some of what we need to repent of.

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Sept 5

To Adrian Walker and the reposting of his article on how liberal economics have failed and how that could be remedied through changes in ideology and the size of businesses. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog. 

 

Though Walker's criticisms of Liberal economics were mostly on target, his proposed solutions could be beneficially altered by Socialistic approaches. 

How could that be if Socialism is what Walker said it was? It is because Walker's views on Socialism are based on faulty models. Let's take the former Soviet Union for example.

From its beginning Lenin did not take a socialistic approach to governing the Soviet Union. That is because, unknown to conservatives, it takes more than just centralized planning to make socialism. 

Socialism, as pointed out by Rosa Luxemburg's criticisms of Lenin, is where workers are in charge and structure of the government is more horizontal than what Lenin employed. Luxemburg called Lenin's regime a dictatorship based on a 'bourgeois model.' She said that because of the structure of Lenin's government.

Now Marx's main error in analyzing and proposing a solution to the bourgeois economy and political situation of his day was his binary thinking. According to him, there were two classes and that the proletariat should be the rulers of the nation rather than bourgeoisie.

What binary thinking prohibits in Marx's case here was a collaborative structure such as what they have in Germany with their codetermination laws. Working in collaboration could also put an end to the oppression of the bourgeoisie. In other words, what we need is a redistribution of power so that power, whether in a small or large government or business, isn't centralized in one economic class. Rather, we need business and governmental structures that redistribute power to the other economic classes with the hope that the heterogenous class structures would force those from all classes to work not only for their own interests, but for the interests of others.

Walker's solution is to both reduce the size of businesses so that they become more localized and promote a Christian economic ideology among those in charge. But outside of a centralized mandated effort, which he opposes, Walker's solution is not feasible here in America especially because of the diversity in our nation.

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 April 12, 2023

March 29

To Joseph Pearce and his article that called George Orwell a prophet because of what Orwell wrote in his book 1984 while condemning secular rule along with socialism, Soviet Union Communism, and Nazism. He does make some good points about the dangers posed by technology. This article was posted on the Imaginative Conservative's website.

The problem with the above article is that Pearce shows a lack of awareness about Orwell's political ideological leanings. While Pearce merges socialism with Soviet Union communism, which is something that Gorbachev did not do when talking about the Soviet Union's tyrannical leaders, Orwell not only did not conflate the two, he promoted Democratic Socialism.

What is sad is that Pearce's attacks on socialism and secular rule are opportunistic and rely on false premises regarding Orwell and socialism itself. Just as there is more than one kind of capitalism, there is more than one kind of socialism. And Orwell favored Democratic Socialism (see  https://www.biographyonline.net/socialism-george-orwell/  ).

One other point should be made. What the Nazis called socialism, in reality, was not even close to socialism. At least it wasn't the kind of worker-led socialism promoted by Marx or the kind believed in by Orwell. And Nazism wasn't the 'wicked alter-ego' of Soviet Union Communism. Rather, some of Hitler campaign talking points sounded similar to what we hear from the Trumpublicans. After all, Hitler campaigned on bringing back traditional value and putting Germany first. Hitler believed that the Aryan race was the superior race while Trumpublicans believe in the moral superiority of like-minded political conservatives. And Hitler emphasized the importance of having a strong military. 

Also, Hitler's regime not only allowed for the private ownership of property and relied on the advice of Business elites to run his government. He also opposed democracy and diversity. In addition, Hitler co-opted religion rather than opposing it. Hitler saw Soviet Union communism as Nazism's true ideological enemy.

While Pearce legitimately criticizes totalitarian regimes, he errs in claiming that they practiced socialism. The root of his errors is based on not knowing what socialism is and conflating it with Soviet Union communism.

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March 30

To Heidelblog and Simonetta Carr for the portion of Carr's article quoted in a Heidelblog post about the Protestant tradition. 

Simonetta Carr's full article can be found at:

    https://corechristianity.com/resource-library/articles/3-reasons-people-ignore-church-history-but-shouldnt/

We should want to learn Church has taught in the past without becoming traditionalists. Why is that? It is because traditionalists are simply the flip side of the coin from narcissists. For while narcissists believe that we have everything to teach those from the past and nothing to learn from them, traditionalists believe that those from their favorite part(s) of the past have everything to teach us today and nothing to learn from us--that is to borrow a phraseology from Martin Luther King Jr. And that makes today's narcissists into tomorrow's traditionalists.

Of course, Jesus us warns us against substituting our traditional beliefs for God's Word when he challenged the religious teachers of His day in Mark 7. And so Carr is more than correct in saying that we cannot afford to put our traditional beliefs on the same level as the Scriptures. But how many of us do that on an informal level anyway? How many of us do not allow for interpretations of the Scriptures that have not been made by those theological heroes from the past? How many of us believe in full subscription to confessional standards that cover more than just the basics of the faith? When we put our traditional believes on too high a pedestal, we make those traditional belief a canon for the canon of the Scriptures.

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April 1

To R. Scott Clark and his blog article that questions whether the overture from the Evangel Presbytery in the PCA is appropriate because it petitions the government to take a legal stand that would prohibit the medical or surgical procedures done on minors seeking a gender reassignment. This was posted on Heidelblog.

The first point to be made here is about what is considered to be extraordinary cases. Like the word 'extreme,' the word 'extraordinary' is a relative measurement. But use of the Westminster Devines to consider what is extraordinary, as Clark attempts to do, shows both the pedestal on which Clark has put those Devines as well as his commitment to traditionalism, which itself has a disregard for historical progress.

The transgender issue has been with humanity much longer than religiously and politically conservative people would like to admit. Yes, God created man male and female. But that statement was made before the Fall. Both man and nature fell because of the Fall and nature bears witness to that as we have 1 in so many thousands of births where the biological sex of a person is indeterminant. And thus, we have 3 biological sexes.

But gender identity is another issue from biological sex because whereas one's biological sex deals with what is biological, gender identity deals what is psychological. And what we should note here is that the conservative approach to the gender identity mirrors the LGBT approach to gender identity. Both conflate biological sex with gender identity. While it is obvious how the LGBT approach conflates them, it is not as obvious to conservatives how they conflate them. They do so by using the visible biological sex indicators as the only factor that a person should use to determine their gender identity. Both nature and history gives us a different story. Nature does so since there are biological factors that can come into play in gender identity (see  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7415463/   ). History does so because taking a different gender identity other than what would be determined by one's biological sex is an old problem that is not unique to the West. For example, here we should note that some Native American tribes recognized up to 5 different genders and they honored those who identified as a different gender than what would be indicated by their biological sex.

Thus, we need to distinguish how the Church should approach gender identity from how the state should approach it. If truth be told, neither the LGBT community nor those who are conservative in this matter know all of the factors involved and because of that, the overture in question seems premature if it would ever be appropriate. Even scientists studying gender identity understand all of the factors involved.

We should also note that not all medical assistance given to minors who seek a gender reassignment produce permanent effects and surgical assistance to do the same is rare and is cautiously determined.

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April 3

To R. Scott Clark and his first blog article in a helpful series on the dangers of Kinism. Kinism is a form of Christian Deconstructionism that teaches that we need to segregate ourselves by our physical ethnicities. Used criticism of the Covid lockdowns to introduce the subject. This appeared in Heidelblog.

Regarding the lockdown, the lack or slow implementation of lockdowns did a lot more damage than the lockdowns themselves. This was seen in Europe and in some major cities in the U.S. where the number of deaths and those requiring hospitalization overwhelmed the available resources. Deaths and long Covid produce permanent losses for individuals and their families. Questioning the lockdowns without acknowledging the other side of things was an unnecessary political jab in the above article.

The above article is helpful in exposing Kinism-- something I've never heard of. But we also need to acknowledge two things: that the unbelieving world has had some success in battling the segregation that is a part of Kinism and that there seems to be a spiritual Kinism that permeates the those in the Reformed tradition. Yes, the latter practice is not real Kinism. However, there is an unnecessary segregation that we in the Reformed movement often embrace. That spiritual Kinism can be seen every Sunday morning and even on the internet.

The kind of segregation in Kinism which was described in the above article exhibits a control problem. But it doesn't take the extreme of Kinism to see this control problem in religiously conservative Christianity. So while it is easy for many of us religiously conservative Christians to point our fingers at such extremists as those who promote Kinism. But do we have control problems that are exhibited in other areas of our theology? Do we Reformed Christians use our allegiance to our confessions to  unnecessarily segregate ourselves from other Fundamentalists and Evangelicals?

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April 4

To R. Scott Clark and his 2nd blog article in his helpful series on Kinism. Here he focuses on the CRC response to Kinism. This article appeared in Heidelblog.

There is a lot of good material against Kinism in the above article, but there are two things that require a second look and a step back from.

The first is in the quote below:

'Ground: Kinist theology and practice is neither biblical nor Reformed.'

If a theology is not biblical, why do we also need to say that it is not Reformed? If that is an admission that not all theology is Reformed, then that is acceptable. If that is a statement that is looking for an appropriate level of conformity in the denomination, that is understandable. But if that statement implies that we must be both biblical and Reformed, then we might want to reexamine the pedestal on which we place Reformed Theology.

The second item comes from a a line that Clark makes:

'That is the first time I have ever seen Friedrich Schleiermacher quoted in Synodical minutes. It should probably be the last, but I digress.'

Regardless of why Clark made that statement, his digression is a detriment. Should Reformed denominations only use statements from Reformed Theologians while theologically assessing a given position? If so, then some are in danger of making Reformed Theology a canon for the canon of the Scriptures. And thus they are in danger of replacing the Scriptures with Reformed Theology just as the religious leaders of Jesus's day replaced the Scriptures with their own traditions. 

Does Reformed Theology have everything to teach the other Christian theologies but nothing to learn from them? If so, what we are witnessing is a theological Kinism. But worse than that, we we are witnessing is an unnecessary division in the Church based on arrogance.

Was everything that Schleiermacher taught theologically wrong or, even worse, a heresy? One would have to first prove that everything Schleiermacher taught was merely wrong or a heresy. Has Clark actually attempted to prove everyone of Schleiermacher's teachings wrong? Or has he assumed that everything Schleiermacher has taught was wrong? 

Or maybe he didn't make his statement because of Schleiermacher per se. Maybe Clark is afraid that recognizing Schleiermacher in the way that the CRC did in their report would increase Schleiermacher's influence on that denomination. Such is a fear that stems from a tribal authoritarianism.

One should note that an easy answer to Kinism's use of the Old Testament to support racial segregation is to simply note the change of context that exists between the Old Testament and the New Testament. It is an answer that we could also give when our implementation of New Testament principles differ from how they were implemented in New Testament times.

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April 6

K.V. Turley and his article describing the wartime and post war effects on the correspondent Michael Herr. Herr wrote Dispatches, which described the wartime experiences of Americans who fought in the Vietnam War. This was posted in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

As war leaves no participant innocent, it has a haunting effect on the correspondents who cover the war in person. Chris Hedges mentions this in his talks based on his book: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning. Hedges also describes his own deep hardships after he quit being a war correspondent.

Perhaps the chilling effects that war has on its participants and correspondents is in itself a substantial argument that war should be abolished. The Russell-Einstein Manifesto gives another reason to do the same. With the advent of nuclear weapons, the Manifesto tells us that we have to choose between survival and the continued reliance on war. The Manifesto is realistic in its expectations of how acceptable that choice would be to people. That making the right choice demands that we ease our emphasis on national sovereignty. 

Even the with the good "moral" wars, like WW II, war inflicts horrendous, irreparable mental scars on its participants. War correspondents give us an opportunity  to vicariously learn about the horrors of war. But they too pay an exorbitant price to provide this opportunity for us.

 

What To Do When The World Loses A Trusted Leader

The world just lost a trusted leader, a person whom I wish I could have met to thank them for their contributions to mankind. Of course, I am speaking of none other than Mikhail Gorbachev.

Gorbachev became head of the Communist Party in Russia in 1985 and the President of Russia in 1988. He ushered in two revolutionary policies in Russia: Glasnost and Perestroika. The former called for openness in Russia in terms of discussing political and social ideas, It allowed for criticisms of the government to be openly expressed.

Perestroika sought to change Russia's, or really the Soviet Union's, economic and political structure so that there was less centralized control. Meanwhile, Gorbachev wanted the USSR to be more economically competitive with the West.

Now those two ideas may not seem revolutionary to us, but they were to almost all with Gorbachev's childhood and educational background. And they illustrate one of Gorbachev's positive traits: the willingness to learn from outside sources. Here in America, so many people are so ideological that they would rather deny the facts on the ground than admit that their ideology is not omniscient. Gorbachev learned to recognize the limits of Marxist Socialism.   

The willingness to learn from others and change is rare among many politicians, especially among those who are ideologues or those with other tribal loyalties. Gorbachev's willingness to learn and change is similar to that same quality that we saw in both JFK and RFK. Though both knew way too little of the struggle and realities that blacks faced back when JFK became President, they learned from the Civil Rights Movement and the sacrifices that its members made. It was sometimes a resistant and reluctant learning, but they changed either while in or running for office. And Kennedy's commencement address at American University several months after the Cuban Missile Crisis also gave evidence of his willingness and ability to change.

RFK also sought to change after he was presented with enough facts. Yes, initially he was reluctant to change, but change he did. And he met in person with both economically marginalized people to see their harsh way of life and with Caesar Chavez when the latter was represent farm workers.

And so the willingness and ability to change with the times without sacrificing moral values is something that we could see in Gorbachev.

We also see a lot of wisdom in Gorbachev's understanding of the times and the kind of approach he wanted to take to address what was happening. Below are some quotes from Gorbachev regarding what he was observing in Russia after his tenure as leader of the Soviet Union. All quotes are taken from Gorbachev's book, The New Russia, from Polity Press which was reprinted in 2016.

During the time when Gorbachev was thinking about the value of social democracy, he said the following to the Nineteenth Congress of the International:

The downfall of totalitarianism in the former Soviet Union was the collapse of a particular system called 'socialism' and seen by many as such, whether from a hostile viewpoint or with approval and a sense of solidarity. In reality, it was not socialism. The values that usually inform the concept of socialism, however, are as relevant today as ever. They have inspired many generations of champions of liberty, equality and fraternity and  have brought vast mass movements into being...

I cannot see a fully satisfactory and successful future for Russia that does not involve the values of social democracy. At the same time, I am against dogmatically setting one variety of democracy against another. Pragmatic policy should be based on a synthesis of experience, ideas and values that have been tried and tested in practice in the past. 

Note how Gorbachev is willing to learn from new approaches without leaving his convictions. He was looking to merge socialism and social democracy together. This is a similar approach Martin Luther King Jr. took to both Capitalism and Communism in his book, Stride Toward Freedom (click here for one source and read pages 92-95 ).

Or notice Gorbachev's ability to make distinctions, something that is almost extinct now in today's authoritarian world that employs a black-white worldviews. He wrote the following when discussing the Social Democratic Party in Russia:

Like all other social democrats, we were in favor of a market economy but not a market society. We proceeded from the view that, in addition to the market, there are always areas in society outside its reach: science, education, culture. We declared: 'There should be as much of the market as possible, and as much of the state as necessary.'

The words in single quotes, btw, is from one of his books.

Gorbachev was no fan of Stalin, at least he ended up that way. What Stalin had instituted was not socialism but totalitarianism according to Gorbachev. But his view of Lenin was different and his view is one with which I disagree because I consider Lenin to be closer to Stalin than to Marx. Nevertheless, Gorbachev was willing to learn from Lenin's admitted mistakes. He used Lenin's recognition of his own mistakes to help break away from his first reaction to Stalin which was favorable. And something I could relate to was that his breaking away from his first view of Stalin was difficult and painful. I had a similar experience when I broke away from being a political conservative. 

Gorbachev's recognition of mistakes and ability to change his mind from some strong beliefs shows his flexibility in thinking in terms. He also learned from Lenin the dangers of trying to force change on people too quickly--a problem we have been experiencing here:

My transition from the boy who wrote essays at school on the topic 'Stalin Is Our Military Glory, Stalin Is the Soaring of Our Youth' to rejecting Stalinism and waging war on the totalitarian system was hard and far from painless. A major part in it was played by my turning to the last works of Lenin, his admission that 'we made a mistake in deciding to move directly to communist production and distribution'. There is no denying that the Bolsheviks made a complete has of thins with War Communism.

I think Lenin was appalled by the results: the collapse of the economy, famine in the cities, the Kronstadt mutiny, peasant uprisings, and he concluded: 'You cannot jump ahead of the people.' Lenin's comments on the need for 'a fundamental change of our entire point of view about socialism', as well as his words about a transition from the earlier revolutionary approach to 'a completely different, reformist way forward' had a profound impact on me.

If Gorbachev's recounting of what Lenin thought was correct, then through experience Lenin, all too late, became a Menshevik. The Mensheviks were stagists who believed that it was best to bring socialism to Russia in stages. They opposed the revolutionary approach of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. 

We should also note that bringing significant change in stages rather than force a kind of shock therapy change, which is how Gorbachev had described the economic changes Russia had to go through when Yeltsin came to power, also shows a flexibility in thinking--something that is lacking in American politics today. And this bringing significant changes to the Soviet Union in stages is how he wanted Perestroika to be affect Russia's economy. Gorbachev was looking for evolutionary changes.

The last quote I will use is about Gorbachev's view not just of globalization, but any economic system that ushers in great wealth and income disparity:

If globalization leads us further to a world of super-profits and hyperconsumption, and world politics fails to find a path towards a more just and secure world order, mankind will face a period of global chaos and social upheaval. These cautions are not alarmist, not panic-mongering, but the apprehensions of someone who has seen and experienced much in the course of his life.

Gorbachev belongs to a dying breed of politicians and with their death might come the death of the "civilized" world. He was a person and politician who could both hold to basic convictions while learning new approaches. He is a person and politician who would observe and listen to the people rather than push ahead with a personal agenda. And he is the kind of politician that we need in our government today.

Perhaps if more and more people read his works and about him, they would see the kind of character that we need to demand in our leaders and ourselves as citizens.

We don't have to agree with all or even most of his political views to learn from Gorbachev. But we would all do better to learn Gorbachev's approach to politics and to developing one's political views along with his moral convictions that revolve around the welfare of people.

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 February 6, 2019

Feb 4

To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost and its rejection of this age's reliance on feelings to define oneself. This appeared in Heidelblog

see also https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2019/02/49239/

That the world has overemphasized the role of feelings in how we define ourselves cannot be argued against. But many overreactions are legitimate responses to abusive situations and that is the issue that the Church must also deal with. It isn't enough to point out the log in someone else's eye; one must also acknowledge and deal with one's own logs. Otherwise, we will, however tragically ironic, be acting as the Pharisee from the parable of the two men praying.

For centuries, the authoritarianism promoted and practiced by the Church, especially the conservative Church, is partly responsible for the overemphasis that today's culture placed on therapy and on one's own feelings. And by authoritarianism, I am not talking about society's responses to God, I am talking about how resistance to overreach by human authority figures in the Church is responded to with hostility and aggression by those in the Church. Unfortunately, the result of the Church's authoritarian response to Psychology resembles more of a turf war for the hearts and minds of those who need healing rather than attempts to correct points of error.

BTW, regarding Trueman's article, it reinforces the above interpretation the Church's authoritarian approach and its unfortunate reaction to today's Psychology. For his model of thought is similar to the model of thought used in the pre modernism/modernism/post modernism division of history but with a few exceptions. One key exception neglects to mention that post modernism rejection of the metanarratives from both pre modernism and modernism comes from the authoritarian use of those metanarratives by many to enslave or even slaughter others. To condemn post modernism, which is analogous to the combination of Trueman's Second and Third World descriptions, is to act as that Pharisee from the parable of the two men praying (Luke 18:9-14, see  https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke+18%3A9-14&version=NIV  ). How ironic a position to taken by those whose faith is solely in God's mercy and grace rather than in their own merit.
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Feb 5

To Rev Ben Johnson and his blogpost that condemns Socialism as being based on envy, ignorance, and faith. This appeared in the Acton blog.

The first problem with the above article is its factual accuracy. When asked what should replace what Amazon's project, the response was not a "guillotine.' It was one of several responses, not the response. Another response was 'public housing.' In addition, how literally we should take the guillotine response is unknown. Further inquiries and examination of the context of the statement are needed to know what was meant.


The next problem is how much we should generalize the answer of a few to a diverse group like young socialists is problematic. Why? Socialists, even if they are in the same age range, do not make up a monolith. Yes, there are nasty socialists who, as Johnson claims, dehumanize their opponents. There are others who don't. But how does the dehumanization of opponents make socialists, young or old, unique in today highly tribal political culture? Noting that one doesn't have to call for another person's execution to dehumanize them, conservative pop media centers have been dehumanizing their opponents for decades by describing them as having nothing but sabotage to bring to our society and political landscape. Here we should note that marginalization is significantly  dehumanizing just as other actions can be.


And the resistance to Bezos isn't solely because he is offering people jobs. The resistance to Bezos involves how many of his employees are treated as well as the negative impacts that Amazon has brought to the American marketplace. Of course, one needs to expand the participants of that marketplace beyond the conservative model of buyer-seller to see the harm Amazon does. But that doesn't include all of the reasons to resist Amazon's proposed location in NYC. One was the tax breaks being offered to Amazon to locate there. While consuming all sorts of taxpayer funded infrastructure, one must examine whether Amazon  shareholders were getting a free lunch out of what they were called on to pay in taxes vs what the company would consume. When companies get significant tax breaks to locate in any area, the tax burden to support that infrastructure is shifted more and more to workers who don't have as much wealth to support the local tax base as wealthy executives and shareholders have.


What is the alternative to the young socialists or the free market recommend by Johnson? First, we should realize that if the Scandinavian model is what the young socialists are calling for, we know Bernie is calling for it, it isn't socialism, at least not from the Marxist tradition (see https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2018/07/08/sorry-bernie-bros-but-nordic-countries-are-not-socialist/#628d9eaf74ad ). Marx's first concern was not the redistribution of wealth, it was about the redistribution of power in what Marx called the 'proletariat dictatorship.' Thus we should note that a command economy does not socialism make. If power is not redistributed to the proletariat, then there is no socialism regardless of any command economy. The nation whose economic system approximates what Marx wanted the most is Germany. That is because though it has no proletariat dictatorship, its codetermination laws redistribute power in businesses with 500+ employees to the workers by seating democratically elected workers to executive boards.


Finally, Johnson understates the problems with the Free Market. Besides not making any distinction between the different forms of Capitalism, he fails to mention the ever growing wealth disparity that today's form of Capitalism, which is Neoliberalism, is producing both within nations and between nations. Apparently, self-enforce virtue is not rule of the day. And why should we expect it to be when the basic ethic of Capitalism itself is to maximize personal profits? We should note that since political power follows wealth in Capitalist economic systems, as wealth disparity grows, so grows the disparity in political power between the highest economic class and the rest. This has already been observed in America (see https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746 ).


What is sad about the Acton blog articles is this: in the name conservative Christianity, there is an well-intended and focused venture to tightly binding conservative Christianity solely with an economic system that far benefits the wealthy at the expense of all other economic classes. The contradictions involved with conservative Christians engaged in this kind of undertaking are exposed in the Scriptures such as in James 5:1-6, see https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=James+5%3A1-6&version=NIV ) and in (Jeremiah 22:13-17, see https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=jeremiah+22%3A13-17&version=NIV ). At the same time, only Socialism is said to be based on envy, ignorance, and faith. The first part of that statement seems to condemn the desire for more weath by those who live in poverty while remaining silent on those who already have more than enough who then look to accumulate even more even thought it is at the expense of those who have much less. Doesn't such a view rely on ignorance and faith?




 

Why Not Capitalism?

In trying to make a case for Socialism, Albert Einstein makes a better case for why we shouldn't have Capitalism in a pamphlet called, Why Socialism? In that pamphlet, Einstein brings up some serious objections to Capitalism and shows some of the evil associated with it (click here for info on the pamphlet).

One of the first things Einstein makes clear is how economics is different from the physical sciences. For while the laws found in the different disciplines of physical science are not affected by outside influences, economics is. laws in economics are. Thus, in trying to find general patterns that explain how economics works, the task is much more difficult than what we see in the physical sciences contrary to the claims of some economists.

One of the outside factors that affects economies in the world is the historical fact that man has never gained control over his predatory nature. It is the conflicts from that nature that have played a primary role in determining many a nation's border as well as the narrative and its aftermath that results from conquering others. The endless competition that exists that exists in Capitalism can only magnify the predatory nature that is in each of us.

In addition, the values held by people in a given society in which an economic system works lies outside of science and thus outside the field of economics. Einstein is quite clear in stating that while science gives us means, it does not provide us with values.

But more important than the above, Einstein demonstrates how Capitalism puts a person at odds with one of his two major relationships. For man has a relationship with himself including those closest to him, and man has a relationship with the rest of society. And Capitalism makes that latter relationship complicated and conflicting.  For while man sees that much of his success comes because of what society has provided both now and through history, Capitalism tells man that society is also a threat especially to what the individual has accumulated. And if Capitalism reinforces the idea that society is a threat to the individual, how will Capitalism limit the predatory nature in us?

It's not that Einstein regarded Socialism as being perfect. It is that  magnifying the predatory nature as well as Capitalism's making people more defensive and insular leads to the well-off, successful owners who decide for themselves how much of their wealth they will share with both other stakeholders of their enterprises, who unknowingly become vulnerable  and the rest whose vulnerability becomes more than apparent. In the meantime, wealthy owners get to play keeping up with their peers.

Though the individualist streak in Capitalism was not as apparent when Einstein wrote this pamphlet as it is now, Einstein is speaking to the present as much as he spoke to the past about moral issues. We should note that many who stress individualism at the expense of relating to all of society not only are afraid of sharing too much with society, they believe that it is their moral obligation to act out on their selfish interests. And thus Capitalism, especially today's neoliberalism, further alienates people from society.

At this point, I want to jump in to advocate what I think the solution is. Whether we use socialism or modify our capitalist economic system or find a different economic system, the real issue we must contend with is not the redistribution of wealth, it is the redistribution of power. At this point, we should note that those who are willing to share power and wealth with others are taking the first steps toward peace. Those who refuse to share power and wealth with others are taking the first steps toward making war. 

Einstein does acknowledge that central planning of the economy does not necessarily make a socialist economic system. At this point, Marx would heartily agree because with him, the main concern regarded the question of who had more/less power.

Currently, we have two major political parties none of which are willing to share wealth and power. By resisting such sharing, those parties show our human predatory nature that seeks to identify, pounce on, and devour a weaker entity until no other group is left standing. And all that is because our nation's economy with its Free Market System has more influence on our other areas of life, such as Democracy, than vice-versa. And until that trend is reversed so that owners and workers are sharing power and engaging in collaboration for each other's benefit as well as their own,  Whether we call that sharing and kind of collaboration Capitalism or Socialism or whatever else, matters not. That we look to share power and wealth with others and work for not just our own benefit, but for advancing the interests of others is the issue that could hold in check our predatory nature.

Though while some will mockingly say that hoping for the sharing of power and wealth and collaborating for the sake of others besides ourselves is not something that History teaches us to expect, there is another reality that rises on our horizon. To not hold our predatory nature in check while we become more powerful both economically and militarily is a sure path to self-destruction where not even the wealthy will be spared. Here, the French, Russian, and Spanish Revolutions should provide ample examples of what happens when the wealthy are overly represented while the rest are under represented or are ignored all together.











References

1. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12007777-why-socialism

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

August 12

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

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

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

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

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

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August 13

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Feb 24

To John Horvat and his blogpost that blames liberals and liberalism for events like the mass shooting in Florida. Liberals and liberalism are to blame according to Horvat because mass shootings are the result of breakdowns in society caused by liberal influence. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

The tragic part of the above article is that in scapegoating liberals for the recent mass shootings, conservatives are playing the role waned against by the God whom they claim to believe in and liberals reject. Conservatives are also sharing a practice, which is scapegoating, employed by those who participate in mass shootings like the one recently seen in Florida.

Jesus warned us against judging others and putting ourselves on pedestals in His parable of the two men praying (Luke 18:9-25). In that parable, Jesus compared the standing before God between a pharisee, who bragged about his own righteousness, and a publican, who could only see himself as a sinner to the extent that he didn't even mention the pharisee. And why did Jesus tell the parable. Verse 9 explains:

And He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt:

At the end of the day, Jesus's parable tells us that it was pharisee, not the tax collector, who went home condemned.

The scapegoating of liberals and liberalism for today's gun violence runs counter to the narrative of the Florida shooting. For Nikolas Cruz was linked to white supremacists--a right-wing group. We should note that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has tracked 150 terrorist attacks, including those from anti-abortion extremists, to right-wing groups. Those attacks have occurred from 1993 to 2017. The 2 groups involved in most of the attacks are white supremacists and 'anti-government extremists,' who as a group are sometime referred to as the Patriot movement (see  https://www.adl.org/education/resources/reports/dark-constant-rage-25-years-of-right-wing-terrorism-in-united-states  ). We should note that the Imaginative Conservative website has spoken against government when it sees government as stepping outside the bounds that the website has assigned to it.

The scapegoating of liberals and liberalism for today's gun violence runs counter Church history when religious wars and atrocities were performed in the name of Christianity--sometimes with both sides of a war claiming that the Christian God was on their side.That scapegoating also runs counter to the Church's attempts to silence scientific discoveries and thought. The scapegoating of liberals and liberalism for today's gun violence also runs counter the history of our nation where in the name of Christ, European Christian settlers of our nation engaged in both ethnically cleansing Native Americans from the land and owning slaves. Their descendants used their religious faith to defend the continued owning of slaves and, subsequently, a society based on white supremacy such as what occurred during Jim Crow.

It would be just as wrong to scapegoat conservatives and conservatism as it is to scapegoat liberals and liberalism for the violence we see in society today. But we should note that the scapegoating of others is what is still being practiced by many who have been conducting terrorist acts and other mass killings. The scapegoating of others has often been used to justify wars. And yet, that scapegoating is what is being used in the above article to persuade people to have such a hostile view of liberals and liberalism that they see liberals as not only having everything to learn and nothing to teach, but as posing a real physical threat to society.

It isn't that liberals have no faults or that the  have never made questionable impacts on society. It is that negatively influencing society is a human fault that is a part of all groups that wish to influence society. Both liberal and conservative groups have contributed to the some of the breakdowns in society. As Jesus said:

9 And He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ 13 But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

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To Joe Carter and his blogpost on research designed to measure the employment of Protestant religious values with individual prosperity. This appeared in the Acton blog.

Whenever we run into claims of Christian values promoting human flourishing, we also need to account for how Christians have practiced those values to the detriment of others. But that is often not done because, as in the study cited above, the scope of negative and positive effects is limited to the participants. Such possibly shows attempts to correlate work ethic and personal values that would make one more marketable and productive, or reduce wasteful spending or the taking of personal risks that would hurt one's prosperity. So the scope is very small and asks people to only look at how they themselves are affected. The trouble here is that the study was conducted within a certain context that included an economic system but excluded data on the other stakeholders who affected by the same economic system.  It is in that small scope that revolves around the self that shows the fault of measuring the effects of sets of values like the Protestant work ethic and life values.And thus one should wonder if the religiosity involved causes people to be more self-absorbed.

In addition, the tie between increased grit and income is rather ambiguous. For increased grit could show a positive, or at least realistic, relationship with a relative healthy economic system or could be a sign of an acceptance of being exploited in an abusive economic system. And with the small scope that comes from revolving a study on one's focus on oneself, there is little chance, without outside influence of any given participant discovering the kind of economic system in which one is participating.

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Feb 26

To Rev Ben Johnson and his blogpost about how Billy Graham claimed that Britain’s Labour Party created many problems. He also stated that Communism and Christianity are diametrically opposed to each other. This appeared in the Acton Blog.

Should it come as a surprise that Graham would criticize economic ideologies that were not employed in his own nation? Should it come as a surprise that Graham and others viewed socialism as his government did: as a monolith.

Martin Luther King initially viewed Communism as a monolith, but unlike Graham, he could see the strengths and weaknesses in both Communism and Capitalism. King correctly saw materialism in both Communism and Capitalism. After all, both were measured by how they distributed goods. The two, however, employed different kinds of materialism and he viewed the materialism of both as posing a threat. But King saw something else. He saw that the strength of one served as the weakness of the other. King saw that Communism recognized that life was social but forgot that life was individual. Capitalism reversed that.

We could also add to that that both Communism and Capitalism promote utopias. Communism, following Marx, sought an absolute utopia while Capitalism claims to have reached a relative utopia. The relative utopia of Capitalism can be seen in its claim that no other system can make a better economy and way of life.

While Graham saw Communism and Christianity as being diametrically opposed, Marx didn't see it that way. When he wrote about the abolition of religion, he was simply expressing similar views to Jefferson's separation of Church and state. When comparing his view of the abolition of religion in the state with those of Bruno Bauer, Marx noted that Bauer wanted religion to be replaced with science while he simply wanted the state to be liberated from the control of religion. Marx stated that his view of the abolition of religion presupposes its existence--a view that was employed by neither Lenin nor Stalin.
When John McDonnell bragged about there being much to learn from Das Kapital, he was possibly referring to how Marx saw how Capitalism made the worker into something that is disposable. And, by extension, we could include that all that depend on the worker as being disposable as well. That criticism alone shows how Capitalism denies the intrinsic value of each person--definitely an anti-Christian position-- and only recognizes as their extrinsic value their contributions to the market. The jab at cradle to grave welfare state indicates the same mentality.

How the British Labour Party could be thought of as being socialist in same way as the Soviet Union was shows ignorance. It shows an ignorance of the variations of socialism as well as its history. This especially applies to the perceived view of Marx's abolition of private property (see  https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/   ).

The political elevation of man above religion shares all the defects and all the advantages of political elevation in general. The state as a state annuls, for instance, private property, man declares by political means that private property is abolished as soon as the property qualification for the right to elect or be elected is abolished, as has occurred in many states of North America. Hamilton quite  correctly interprets this fact from a political point of view as meaning:

“the masses have won a victory over the property owners and financial wealth.” [Thomas Hamilton, Men and Manners in America, 2 vols, Edinburgh,
1833, p. 146]

Is not private property abolished in idea if the non-property owner has become the legislator for the property owner?  The property qualification for the suffrage is the last  political form of giving recognition to private property.

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. Nevertheless,  the state allows private property, education, occupation, to act in their way – i.e., as private property, as education, as occupation, and to exert the influence of their special nature. Far from abolishing these real distinctions, the state only exists on the presupposition of their existence; it feels itself to be a political state and asserts its universality only in opposition to these elements of its being.

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For January 10, 2018

Jan 5

To Sean Fitzpatrick and his blogpost containing his analysis of the Luke Skywalker character in the movie The Last Jedi. In that analysis, Fitzpatrick expressed frustration with how the movie did not portray Luke as the kind of hero Fitzpatrick wanted him to be. Fitzpatrick blamed post modernism for that faulty portrayal of Luke. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

What Sean Fitzpatrick seems to have missed in the latest portrayal of Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi is that Lukei's reluctance to continue being a hero indicated an idealism just as much, if not more, as a turn to post modernism and losing belief in his own superiority. For in failing in how he reacted to Kylo Ren, Luke saw himself, as well as the rest of the Jedi, as complete failures. Guilt for being imperfect haunted Luke. Evidence of this interpretation can be found in what motivated Luke to re-enter the fight: it was Yoda's words. Yoda told Luke that along with teaching others how to use The Force, sharing one's own failures was part of training Jedi Knights. Thus, contrary to what his guilt told him, Luke was qualified to teach those with The Force how to become Jedi Knights.

Authoritarianism loves idealism, even if it admits that the ideal isn't real. It still embraces it. It still sees it as a necessary part of one's beliefs especially those beliefs in one's own or a hero's superiority. And thus authoritarianism results in a denial of either a hero's failures or the significance of given failures. Otherwise, heroes cannot be considered to be superior to others. Idealism embraces that kind of black-white, all-or-nothing thinking. Thus, one failure can mean complete darkness for those who embrace such thinking. This was Luke's dilemma. He was an idealist who could not deny how he failed Kylo Ren. Fitzpatrick wanted Luke to be able to deny the significance of his failure with Ren so he could see himself as being superior to others. And that is the real difference between what Fitzpatrick wanted Luke Skywalker to be and how the movie portrayed him.

Fitzpatrick doesn't see the harmful black-white, all-or-nothing thinking that is a part of idealism and authoritarianism. Nor does he see the harmful effects of believing that one's heroes are superior to others. That might be because he is too involved with authoritarianism himself. His embrace of authoritarianism might be why Fitzpatrick wants to blame post modernism for Luke's loss of confidence as portrayed in the movie. But to do that, one must cut the movie short. One must stop the movie before Yoda convinces Luke to re-enter fray.

In addition, if what I wrote about idealism, and thus authoritarianism by extension, is true when I said 'idealism embraces black-white or all-or-nothing thinking,' then Fitzpatrick's frustration with how the movie portrayed Luke Skywalker provides a window in what he believes about his real life heroes. That is that Fitzpatrick will deny either failures committed by his heroes or the significance of those failures. For to admit to those failures or their significance would disqualify his heroes from being heroes, from being superior to others. And such is a real fear for authoritarians. So perhaps such a fear has led Fitzpatrick to embrace the Dark Side when it comes to promoting some of his heroes.
Another indicator that Fitzpatrick is a bit of an authoritarian is that in talking about Achilles, with whom Fitzpatrick compares the old and new Luke Skywalkers, he never questions the morality of a nation going to war because its queen was kidnapped.

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To Rev Ben Johnson and his blogpost about how Iran and Venezuela were trying to destabilize the West by spreading Socialism. This appeared in the Acton blog.

Socialism will 'degrade the pillars of Western Civilization'? Which form of socialism is being referred to here?  For though there is a greater social consciousness in Islam than in much of Christianity, it is difficult to believe that Iran knows what Socialism from the Marxist tradition is. And I refer to the Marxist tradition because Lenin was mentioned in the article.

One of the key components of Socialism from the Marxist tradition is the idea of the proletariat dictatorship. For without that, according to Marx, there is no socialist transition into the utopia he thought he saw. So when we look at Iran and its government, what would it know about Socialism from the Marxist tradition? Though there have elections, we know that Iran is run by a religious elite. So what would Iran know about Socialism except to fund some organizations that claim to be socialistic.?
As for Maduro and Venezuela, the same question can be asked and has been asked by some leftists. I believe it was at the 2015 Left Forum, there were concerns expressed that Chavez had not really followed through with Socialism because he had not put workers into positions of power and decision making. Yes, people there were happy that resources from profits made by its oil industry were being directed toward the people. But that alone does not make Socialism. That is the very criticism that Rosa Luxemburg leveled at Lenin's regime.  She labeled it a bourgeoisie dictatorship and with good reason. Power was seized by the Central Committee and the local soviets were dismantled. The power structure Lenin employed was a top-down structure used by the bourgeoisie to run their businesses. Furthermore, even some of Lenin's supporters complained about his purges and Lenin himself verbally attacked the Leftists, a.k.a., the real Marxists,  them 'infantile.' We might also note that other important Socialists besides Luxemburg opposed Lenin. And we also have the Mensheviks who walked out of the 2nd Russian Soviet Congress in protest of the Bolsheviks. And yet, despite all of the infighting and divisions and the non-Socialist power structure employed by Lenin, Johnson talks as if Socialism is a monolith after the pattern set by Lenin and was responsible for 100 million deaths even though that number is usually attributed not just to the Soviet Union, but to Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge and Red China. And that number includes those killed in wars and famines.

Johnson might be interested in learning that libertarian Socialism does not even believe in the state. But despite that and what was mentioned above, again, Socialism/Communism are responsible for 100 million deaths and Iran and Venezuela are doing what they can to spread Socialism to the West to destabilize it. What Johnson doesn't mention is that Iran has been threatened with military action and even war by either the US or Israel for the last 20+ years. The US has military bases surrounding Iran on both its western and eastern borders. This is not to exonerate Iran. It is a religious dictatorship. But if Iran was trying to destabilize the West, wouldn't that just be an example of turnaround being fair play? Something similar could be said about Venezuela since it was alleged that the 2002 coup that attempted to overthrow Chavez was supported by the US. The coup failed when the people gathered in too big of a mass for the military to respond in order to oppose the coup. It is also suspected that the US has played a role in destabilizing Venezuela. So again, if Venezuela wanted to spread Socialism to the West to destabilize it, would it not be just another example of turnaround is fair play?

Besides, not all Socialists and forms of Socialism eliminate religion in public life. However, US trained military or paramilitary troops had attacked Liberation Theology advocates and priests in Central America during the 1980s. What does that say about the US and its relationship to religion. And of course, even in Lenin's day, there were Socialists who called to the Church to join their struggle against the exploitation of workers in Russia.The article by Johnson lacks precision in order for it to be informative of any real threat to the West. It cannot adequately identify Socialism as well as it ignores the context that conflicts between the US and the governments of Iran and Venezuela provide. The above is nothing more than persuasion piece that relies on the lack of details and an emotional appeal.

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Jan 6

To Joe Carter and his blogpost that supplies information that he thinks people should know about raising the minimum wage. This appeared in the Acton blog.

It's so easy for some conservatives to criticize the idea of raising the minimum wage, if not the idea of having the minimum wage itself, while regarding their own economic ideologies as being above reproach. And that is the problem here. Our current economic system is regarded by some as a kind of Biblical canon while we weigh the tradeoffs of raising the minimum wage. And if keeping the minimum wage low benefits those with wealth to the detriment of those who live on the minimum wage, then we can say that these same conservatives are merely supporting those with wealth rather than giving a fair assessment of the minimum wage.

Chris Rock had an excellent insight on the minimum wage while reflecting back on when he was paid minimum wage. He said something to the effect that when an employer paid him minimum wage, it was like the employer is saying  that he/she would pay him even less per hour if he/she was allowed--so much for the intrinsic value of the worker. And when we consider the ever widening gap between the pay of the CEO and the not even lowest paid workers of many major companies, we see how the worker is being devalued more and more by our economic system. On average, the CEO at 350 of the top companies makes 271 times the amount made by the average worker in the same company (see  http://fortune.com/2017/07/20/ceo-pay-ratio-2016/ ) and that amount sometimes reaches more than 1,000 times what the median worker makes (see https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ceo-worker-pay-gap_us_55ddc3c7e4b0a40aa3acd1c9 ).

But CEOs are not the only competition  workers face in getting a slice of the pie from the companies they work for. Many top companies also must show that they are maximizing the ROI for their investors. In fact, investors, many of whom never put a dime into the companies they invest in, are seen as having a higher claim on a company's wealth than its workers have.
And thus we come to the argument expressed by Carter and supported by others that too high an increase in the minimum wage could cost workers their jobs. And when we consider that many companies use government assistance programs to subsidize their payrolls while doing all they can to reduce or avoid paying taxes some of which support those assistance programs, we see that to not be able to step back and critically look at one's own economic ideology and the current economic system is akin to being the proverbial bull in the china shop. In addition, when Carter states that 'Almost all economist agree that significant increases to the minimum wage or attempts to bring it in line with a “living wage” (e.g., $12-15 an hour) would lead to significant increases in unemployment,' he is disingenuously saying that the economic system that gives many workers a choice between employment with poverty wages or unemployed is above reproach.

One could also add to Carter's quote that it is wrong. Over 100 economists, with some from Ivy League schools while some are from other prestigious schools like MIT, the University of California Berkley, Penn State, Michigan State, NYU, and USC, all of which are top 100 economic schools, dispute Carter's claim as they call for raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2024 (see http://www.epi.org/economists-in-support-of-15-by-2024/ ).
Now I am not writing as one who supports raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour. Why? Because such legislation overlooks another serious problem that workers in low wage jobs and employers face. That problem is that there is too little communication between the two about each other's needs and too little power given to workers in determining  work issues like pay. To have the government set the minimum wage at $15 per hour eliminates the need for employers and employees to talk to each other face to face about each others' needs. And robbing employers and employees the opportunity of communicating face to face with each other prevents employers and employees from have a chance to be more vested in each other. Requiring that companies raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour does not give workers a greater voice in how the workplace should be conducted. Setting the minimum wage too high doesn't empower workers, it empowers the government.

Instead of the government raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour, it should set its sights on a more modest increase while requiring companies and workers to negotiate wages higher than the modest increase. The divides between employer and employee is not just in pay, it are in communication and in power. Automatically raising the minimum wage too high does nothing to close those divides.In addition, many companies must realize that the divide between the pay of its top employees and the average employee increases wealth disparity and that, according to the IMF, hurts economic growth.