Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For January 12, 2016

Jan 8

To Joe Carter and his blogpost opposing the legalization of prostitution. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition website

This is an article with which I am in full agreement. And yet, how we implement the criminalization of prostitution targets the women more than the men who support it as customers and the men who provide the women. If we legalize any part of prostitution, we should make it legal for the actual prostitutes and criminalize the men who use the prostitutes and those who manage them.

But in addition, we need to increase the job market for jobs that pay liveable wages so that there are fewer women who find themselves in such desparate situations that they see prostitution as a way to support themselves.

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To Joe Carter and his blogpost criticizing Powerball and other state-run gambling games. This appeared on the Acton blog.

As right as this article is on powerball and state-run gambling, it misses a point. That point is the question of why there is state-run gambling. My guess is that it is to keep the people at bay because the state will not tax those who are wealthy in order fund certain programs. And thus, people who are desparate to win the big prizes to make in life are depended on to foot the bill of some necessary government programs. But I guess that is the price of ensuring economic "freedom" for those to whom that "freedom" applies.

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To Bruce Edward Walker and his blogpost criticizing those who work to reduce our reliance on fossile fuels. This appeared in the Acton blog.

First, let's take a look at what the poverty level is. It is $1.25 per day. And the only reason why we know that that removes people from poverty is that we are told so. But suppose it is true, what else is true? We know that most of the improvement in world poverty came from nations like China and India. But China is also experiencing severe enviornmental problems and a significant number of workers there work in sweatshop factories. And while there has been some statistica progress reported in India, hundreds of thousands of farmers from India have committed suicide because of financial debt stemming from the "free market" that exists there. 

In addition, we need to remember that some gains in jobs in both India and China have come through the loss of jobs here. This is because the minimum wage requirements and other regulatory enforcements that exist here do not exist in many of the Asian nations cited above. So employment gains in Asia have come at the expense of jobs here. This increases the labor pool which, according to the law of supply and demand, keeps wages down here.

But besides all of that, this article is telling us that to do something about damage to the environment by reducing our use of fossile fuels, we are told that we mush sacrifice gains made elsewhere. Basically, this article tells us that we must pick our poison. And yet this article never once does such a choice inspire supporters of the global economy to question the system.

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Jan 11

To  Joe Carter and his blogpost claiming that raising minimum wage does not target poverty. This appeared in the Acton blog.

One of the problems with the article above is that the research is cherry-pioked. For example, Arindrajit Dubeú's work on raising the minimum wage and poverty show different results (see https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15038936/Dube_MinimumWagesFamilyIncomes.pdf ). And, in fact, in reviewing other research, Dubeú references Neumark's work, Neumark is the author of the first work cited, and and states that some of his work is unconventional as well as having flaws in its methodology. We should note here that Dubeú disagrees with Neumark's assessment of the data.  It wouldn't hurt Carter to cite evidence from different perspectives than the one he favors.

Second, that raising the minimum wage has no effect on the unemployed is a rather trivial statement. What he misses is that the number of low wage workers who would benefit from a raise in the minimum wage includes more than just minimum wage workers, it includes at least those who are paid one to several steps above minimum wage since this is how employers who want to be fair to their many of their employees who are paid more than minimum wage would react to a raise in the minimum wage. In addition, we should note that the reduction in poverty must include a number of tools, not just one. That is because the poor are not a monolith.

Third, my sources who work with sheltering the homeless tell me that a number of homeless people are actually employed. Thus, raising the wages of all low-income workers could reduce the number of working homeless people.

Fourth, the last statistics I've seen from Seattle's raising the minimum wage in the food industry business is that after an initial drop in employment has come an increase in employment. The increase in employment can come from more people having expendible income, However, suppose there is a decrease in employment with an increase in the minimum wage. How is it that the choice between having low paying jobs or higher employment rates does not cause us to question the current economic system we employ. Yes, some business leaders can tell us how to work the current system. But they can't always step outside our current system to tell us whether the system itself is flawed. 

Being Thankful For Bathsheba At Thanksgiving

I would like to suggest that the story of David and Bathsheba (click here) brings some relevance to how we should celebrate Thanksgiving. Why? It is because there are common themes between how we have procured bounty in this nation with how David was able to get Bathsheba to be his wife.

For those who don't know the story, during wartime, David saw Bathsheba. David sent for Bathsheba. David knocked up Bathsheba. And to hide what he did, David had Bathsheba's husband, Uriah, killed in battle so he could marry her. So for David to have Bathsheba for his wife, he had to steal and kill.

Now let's fastforward to Thanksgiving Day, this year. We will be giving thanks for the great bounty some of us still have opportunity to enjoy. We have homes to live in and places to visit. We have plenty of material blessings. We have plenty of food to eat. And we have nice clothes to wear. But what had to happen for us to have all of that?

That question will most likely not be addressed in Conservative Christian blogposts. It certainly wasn't addressed in the following articles: Marshall Segal on what happens after Thanksgiving (click here), Erik Raymond on a Thanksgiving prayer (click here), or Erik Raymond's blogpost asking if one is a thankful person (click here). The titles pretty much explain what each article is about. And yet, there was no mention of the theft and murder involved with the blessings we have. In fact the first article links receiving blessings with faith. To its credit, that article does mention how, because of our sins, we do not deserve the blessings for which we should be thankful. But that did not deserve line seems to be due to our personal sinfulness and not how our society became so wealthy. 

And all of this talk about how the physical blessings we will be giving thanks for are the result of theft and murder seems to go against the grain of Erik Raymond's article asking if one is a thankful person. For such talk seems to answer the question he asks about whether one is a person who complains with an affirmative. And in his other article cited here, he thanks the Lord for the rich bounty we enjoy. He did not mention the price others have had to pay for our bounty.

Finally, we need to be specific regarding how the bounty we have is due to theft and murder. Here, this blog will provide only a partial list of how theft and murder procured our blessings. Of course we start of with the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans from the land. So we stole their land and killed some of them while taking what was theirs. For almost the first half of our existence as a nation, much of our wealth was the result of slave labor. So here, we might want to think about all of the people we stole from their families in Africa and how they either died either in transit or as a result of the conditions of their slavery or how they suffered to make others wealthy. Then after the Civil War, our wealth increased as the result of prison labor where many Blacks were arrested because of their skin color. In addition, the railroads that traversed our nation were built while exploiting the labor of workers who came directly from China as they were paid significantly less than other men who helped lay the tracks.

The above is just a partial list of how  theft and murder was used in the past to make this country rich. But what about today? We can start with prison labor again as some companies make significant profits from using such labor while the prisoners receive hardly any compensation for the labors. Or we could talk about how a significant amount of our food is provided in some way to us by trafficked and slave labor. Or we could talk about how many of our clothes as well as some of our electronic gadgets, which we use for work or play,  are made in sweatshop factories. We should note that both trafficked and slave labor along with sweatshop factories also exist in the United States. Some of the services we enjoy when at a restaurant or fast food place are provided by those who are being paid poverty wages. And some of the big box items we buy are at stores that pay their employees poverty wages.

We'll stop there. But the above should show us how much of the bounty we receive and should be thankful is the result of the same causes that allowed David to marry Bathsheba. All are the result of exploitation of others. And so the question remains: How should we be thankful for those goods that are ours because of theft and murder?

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For November 25, 2015

A preface for this edition of Comments Which Conservative Block...

1. Please note that the same amount of editing that goes into a regular blogpost is not put into the comments. Thus there will be more errors in the posts of this series than the other posts on this blog. So please be patient when coming across those errors.
2. The size of the posts in this series will gradually get larger because I am blocked from commenting on more blogs now by administrators. I inquired as why the latest website blocked my comments but received no answer. So judge for yourself why I would be blocked.

Nov 17

To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost about a 2-Kingdom approach to the law. This appeared in hiedelblog.

Let's be honest, though what the Westminster divines said about the godhead and soteriology could be adequately described as being  less influenced by  culture and more influenced by the Scriptures, the same cannot necessarily be said about the second table of the law. For example, what is missed in the quoting of the Westminster divines is Chapter 23:3 of the Westminster confession are the statements saying that kings were to punish blasphemies, heresies, and corruptions. The end effect was so that all of the 'ordinances of God' be observed. The above contains a  modern adjustment to WCF 23:3 not what the divines wrote..

We should also note how Calvin implemented the 2 kingdoms. For he had no qualms about finding, prosecuting, and persucting to the point of death those who were witches or heretics. So the question is how much do we want to use Calvin as a guide for what the Church should expect from or demand of the state. We should also note in his writings against the Jews, Luther, a 2ker in his own right, called on German society and princesses to punish the Jews for their continued unbelief.

We should note that regarding the law, Acts 15:10 makes a general statement about the whole law within the historical context of the Church determining whether a ceremonial part of the law requiring circumcision should be practiced. Vs 10 clearly states that the Church should not require its members to follow a law that nobody had kept up until that time including the apostles with the exception of Jesus of course. Thus we saw a letting go of the ceremonial law because of how it foreshadowed Christ's passion and an adjusted version of the civil law that was made far more flexible than what was stated in the Torah, rather than total elimination of it, as well as the requirement of the 10 commandments. Here we should note that some reformers, such as Martin Luther,  believed that keeping the law concerning the Sabbath was not in effect in the literal way that other reformers who were following Calvin believed.

But such brings us to the Christian "theonomists" some who are said to be on the left and others on the right. The problem here is that not all Christians on the left who call for justices are theonomists nor are they looking for some Messianic age. Some are merely looking for how we can improve life on this earth and thus take a more flexible approach to the civil laws, much like the NT Church did only the Left focuses on societal sins rather than personal sins. We should note that some of those civl laws were applications of God's moral laws especially laws that prohibited murder and theft. So what many on the Christian left did was to extract principles inherent in many of the civil laws that revolved around the prohibition against murder and theft and applied them to their respective societies rather than enforce them completely and literally.

Now it is true that Marx and many of his earlier followers, especially those who  lived in the early to mid 20th century and before believed in Marx's utopian dreams. Those Christians who mixed Marx with their faith could be accurately described as hodling to state-Messianism. But it would a gross overgeneralization and oversimplification to say that all Christians on the political left expect a state-Messianism. Why? While early Marxists attributed deprivation to the distribution of goods to the bourgeoisie, others focused on the building of community within the state as well as holding to what Chomsky calls the principle of universality. That principle states that how we judge others is how we should judge ourselves and vice-versa. This applied to what we gave ourselves license to in how we treated others as well as what we prohibited others from doing to us. 

Martin Luther King Jr., a person who opposed Marx but recognized the legitimat issues he was bringing to the table did well in describing the basic fault that could be applied to both socialist and capitalist approaches to society. King stated that if we are going to be on the correct side of the 'moral revolution,' our society must be a 'person-oriented society' rather than a 'thing-oriented society.' We should note her that King's move away from materialism is more consistent on socialism than capitalism. And such should raise red flags for Christians living in Capitalist economies.

Finally, we should note the serious flaw that exists in reformed 2KT. That serious flaw is that while the Church is free to beat up on the consciences of individual believers for their personal sins, the Church has no right to correct society torcorporate sins sins. And with the conservative Church's obsession with sexual sins,  the Reformed Church dishonors the Gospel not by trying to legally prohibit some new sexual sins while remaining mute over issues of slavery and imperialism with some empires being at least partially build on human exploitation and theft of land.

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Nov 18

To Russell Moore and his blogpost asking if whether we should pray that ISIS be converted or defeated. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition website

Can we  pray for both? The article above is correct in answering with a yes.  As a group, we should want ISIS to be defeated. But since ISIS consists of individual people, shouldn't we want these people to believe in Jesus? That we should is an excellent point made in the article above. We should note that Martin Luther King Jr took a two-prong approach to his enemies. He wanted to win them over. But for those who refused  to be won over King wanted their behavior to be controlled to be controlled by the law.

At the same time, we can never afford to forget about the Wests's legacy of practicing its own evil in order to gain oil, profits, and strategic advantages.

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To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost on Christians being called exiles and strangers in this world. This appeared in Heidelblog

I think most of what was written above was good. But the following line needs more refinement:

Our most ultimate citizenship is in heaven but our citizenship in this world is truly important. 

Some have used that important worldly citizenship as a justification for treating people who share their own ethnic or national identity with preference over those who don't.

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Nov 19

To Gaye Clark and her blogpost of when they helped an African-American woman with some problems by having the woman live with them. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition website


One of the most important lines written in this article is below:

Racism is better understood when experienced than when explained.

That is especially true when we have a stake in having racism no longer being an issue. The other parts of the article are important to but in a different way. One of the things we must constantly draw people's attention to is the continued existence of racism.

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Nov 20

To Benjamin Watson and his blogpost about racism. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition website.

We should note that racism is nothing more than another form of tribalism. Other forms of tribalism include nationalism, classism, ideological tribalism, and religious tribalism. Tribalism includes believing that one's own group is superior. Watson mentions this above with regard to race. But we should oppose the other forms of tribalism as much as we oppose racism. And racism must be opposed as strongly as possible.

According to Martin Luther King Jr., there is one more part of racism that was not included above. In speaking against the Vietnam War, King said the following:

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.

So according to King, we will have racism for as long as we count things as being more important than people. That is something for a consumer society to think about.

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To Joe Carter and his blogpost on what we should know about Syrian refugees in the light of the attacks on Paris. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition website.

There is something else we should note about the Syrian refugee problem and it has to do with the attacks on Paris. According to a recent Washington Post article, not one of the known attackers were from Syria. Rather, they were all citizens of Europe.

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To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost quote of William Buckley Jr as he criticized Yale’s economics education for not glorifying the individual. This appeared in the Heidelblog

So is Buckley saying that it is less idolatrous to glorify the individual, disparage government and community for that matter, play in the hunger games, and to encourage self-reliance while denying the interdependencies that are inherent in the system?

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Nov 21

To Caleb Greggsen and his blogpost that comments on terrorism and its effects. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition website.

There is one more response to terrorism that is necessary, but not mentioned. That response is when it is your own country that is practicing terrorism against others. What about our drone missile attacks that either cause collateral damage or, perhaps, target innocent civilians? What should a Christian's response be to those?

And if we are going to include Christians being beaten or robbed as acts of terrorism, why not include when our own government supports brutal dictators who beat and imprison their citizens for political reasons?

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Nov 23

To John Courts and his blogpost associating the Syrian Refugee problem with the Arab Spring movement in that nation and quoting an Orthodox Church official who stated that Arab Spring was the result of misguided American foreign policies. This appeared in the Acton blog.

Misguided American policies caused the Arab Spring? That is difficult to believe since American policies backed those with power with whom they were doing lucrative foreign aid business. That was certainly true in Egypt and in Tunisia. It wasn't true in Syria since Russia cornered the military aid market there. And American policies didn't start the Arab Spring in Tunisia. That started with self-immolation of one of its citizens and that was precipitated by living conditions.

The Arab Spring in Syria was inspired by successes in Tunisia and Egypt, but became violent in response to the government's  violent response including the conducting of a massacre. Other groups joined including some in the military that took the original peaceful movement into a violent reactionary direction.

Btw, we should note that the Ocuupy Movement started in places like Tunisia and Egypt and that includes Occupy Wall Street (OWS). The preparation for OWS on Sept 17, 2011 occurred prior to the event when activisits from places like the Middle East and Spain came over here to teach activists how to make decisions and run meetings. I remember my first participation in the Global Justice Working group of OWS because of what seemed then to be almost a majority of people having come from other nations, particularly Middle East nations.

But here, we should also consider the source. As in Egypt, except when the Muslim Brotherhood was in control, the state Church, that is the Orthodox Church, has supported a strong-arm dictator simply because that dictator provided protection for the Church. Thus, out of self-interest, the Church in Syria, that is another Orthodox Church, has supported a tyranical regime because that regime kept it safe from religious extremism. Perhaps, this is just one of the reasons why some in Syria's civil war want to target Christians. With the help of these Christians, they have associated the Church with a brutal tyrant.

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To Joe Carter and his article about what we should know about the Syrian refugee controversy. This appeared in the Acton Blog.

Perhaps Carter should update his sources. According to a Washington Post article, an article that is more recent than the one Carter cited regarding the refugee-attacker with the Syrian Passport, all known participants in the Paris attack were Europeans. A fake Syrian passport was found and its appearance is now believed to be the result of the attackers's attempt to throw off the investigators regarding their identity. A link to the Washington Post article I am referring to is below:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/11/17/were-syrian-refugees-involved-in-the-paris-attacks-what-we-know-and-dont-know/

Editor's note: Please see more recent news articles than the one linked to above to see if any Syrian refugees have been implicated in the Paris Attacks. The date of the article linked to above is November 17

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To Matt Smethurst and his blogpost on how Christian history can benefit us. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition website.

What is missing in this blogpost is the obvious that Church history can also disillusion us. Yes, this article is about how Church history can benefit us. But a warning label about how it can also disillusion us or, at best, teach us that we are all sinners must be attached to any legitimate church history study. When we consider the political maneuvering, intolerance, and violence practiced by Church leaders and heros throughout the history of the Church, it is sometimes more difficult to be inspired by them than to be repulsed. I experienced this reaction as I occasionally taught a World Religions class when I use to teach. 

And there doesn't seem to be much difference in the Church's behavior today as the Church latches on to political parties leaders that show them favoritism even though the same visits violence and injustice on its own citizens and abroad.

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To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost telling us to silently submit to the civil authorities regardless of how unjust they are. This appeared in Heidelblog.

Besides the gross generalizations made about student protesters and Islamists (a.k.a., Muslims), I've protested with both and found your descriptions to be wanting in even the majority of instances I've been involved in, you given contradictory insturctions regarding our submission to the civile authorities. See, on the one hand you tell us to silently submit to even the most unrighteous authorities and yet you tell us to lell us to love everyone, including those who are suffering even gross injustices at the hands of the same authorities. And you do so forgetting the different historical context in which we find ourselves from the time of the apostles.

I know there is an exception to your rule here. That exception would be if the authorities told us to disobey God. And we have the examples of Daniel, Meshack, Shadrack, Abendigo, as well as the Apostles, to name a few,  to thank for that.

But what about when we see a civil authority practicing injustice. Are we to silently submit to that injustice and let others be harmed and abused? See, how is it that we can silently submit to authorities unrighteously oppress our neighbors while loving our neighbors at the same time? After all, you did tell us to love others. And how is it that we can honor the government and not tell them that they are practicing injustice?

Now you have already stated that Paul and Peter gave us these instructions under some of the worse circumstances and there is no argument there. But if honoring the Lord is an important reason for the Christians to obey the Civil Authorities back then regardless of how horrible they were, does doing the same today honor the Lord or does it cause outsiders to not want  to listen to the Gospel or even want to persecute Christians? If you don't believe the latter situation, please realize that one of the reasons why Christians have been persecuted in places like Syria and Egypt is because they support tryanical leaders in exchange for security. Here, Christians invite those in the Middle East to oppose them for their support for Israel. And in the old South, remember that Christians not only supported slavery at one time, they supported Jim Crow and it was civil disobedience that helped eliminate the latter.

If we were to never disobey the civil authorities as they practiced injustice, how would Moses have survived childhood? How would the OT prophets have challenged their kings and their nation about the injustices they were practicing? 

And what about the change in historical context between then and now? After all, were not the Apostles first concerned about the spreading of what was to the world then an unknown Gospel. So Paul used his impriosnment to go to Rome to preach. And Peter told people to submit so as to not bring dishonor to the Gospel. Well, hasn't the Gospel been spread throughout the world? And aren't we living in democracies now so that we are at least partially responsible for the sins of the state officials we elected? And since when has remaining silent in the face of gross injustices brought honor to the Gospel or has been a way of loving one's neighbor who is being unjustly treated?

It seems to me that the hermeneutic that says we are silently submit to unjust gov'ts today is one that reduces God's description of our relationship to gov't to that which was preached by Peter and  Paul while forgetting the rest of the Scriptures as well as not applying all of the Scriptures to new historical contexts to both the state of the Gospel in the world as well as the new responsibilities Christians have in democratic societies.

On the other hand, we have some nonChristians who, out of love for neighbor, challenge the government when it oppresses others and thus risks the consequences of so doing. This leads to two questions. First, how is it that our neighbor will, under these circumstances, not perceive the nonChristians as being more loving and outer-directed than the Christian? And how is it that Conservative Christianity, for the most part, has fashioned a practical theology that tells its followers to support status quos that benefit those with wealth and power while remaining silent about their sins? In other words, and in the words of some of my liberal and leftist friends, how is it that the Conservative Church has become anything else than an institution of indoctrination to maintain the status quo for the benefit of those with wealth and power? Perhaps if you just loved your neighbor, you would have interpreted Scriptures more accurately than what is done in the article above.

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For February 18, 2015

Feb 5

The status of the comment below has been changed from awaiting moderation to published.

To David Robertson and his blogpost reviewing the movie American Sniper. This appeared in the Wee Flea blog.

Just wanted to know if you read the book too. One of the reviews of this movie I read noticed a real difference between how the movie depicted Chris Kyle’s approach to war and killing and that which was written in the book.

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Feb 12

To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost about the changing laws on marriage. His blogpost points to an article by Stella Morabito that reports on the coming doom for the legalization of same-sex marriages. This appeared in the Heidelblog.

Citing instances of and supporting statements for practices all of which have been in existence for much of man's sinful existence as evidence for an "I told you so" from Conservative Christians concerning the results for allowing same-sex marriage  is more an instance of venting than sound reasoning. It certainly appeals to the choir, but it is seen as not having any credibility by those outside the choir. In short,  such is simply an appeal for restoring positions of power to the Conservative Christian consensus over culture and society. And what is really discrediting to the Gospel to many outsiders is our obsession with these messages of doom regarding same-sex marriage, especially by those who pride themselves on their church not taking social stands while saying nothing about the exploitation of people and the environment by our current economic system and about how our government wants to conduct wars with impunity.

In the end, Christians who are obsessed with the changing laws regarding same-sex marriage, whether they admit it or not, are more concerned with Christian privilege in society where Christians have various levels of control over society and its laws and mores than anything else. What scares them is sharing society with unbelievers as equals. Remember if the sin from I Cor 5 was not even heard of among the Gentiles, how is it that many of the extreme sexual practices listed in Stella's article will ever gain enough popular support to become part of the norm in society?

The all-or-nothing thinking, scared-straight approach that says the definition of marriage in society must follow the Christian definition or all variations of marriage will eventually become part of the status quo can only be seen as manipulative. Also, the percentages in Stella's article about nonmonogamous same-sex marriages is disputed by other data.

Should we oppose the practice of same-sex marriage? Of course. But why not depend on evangelism alone to do that? We should note that those Christians from the past who have sought privileged positions to control society stated a pendulum swing so any restrictions we might encounter in preaching the Gospel is part of the same swinging of the pendulum.

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The following blocked comment is the epitome of why this series appears on this blog. It points to the filtering of information performed by some Conservatives.

Feb 16

To Joe Carter and his blogpost on the ISIS slaughter of 21 Egyptian Christians. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition website.

The story is too sad for words. We should also note that IS represents criminal insanity rather than any religion.

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Feb 17

To R. Scott Clark and his short blogpost quote of a scientist complaining about group think among climate scientists. This appeared in Heidelblog

So without any details, we can say that this person's grievance is legitimate and that science stands on one side while group think warns us about climate change? That kind of reasoning reveals one's predispositions. Where's the objectivity here?

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To Joe Carter and his blogpost on incarceration rates and crime reduction. This appeared in the Acton Blog.


Consider then that America incarcerates more people than any other country. But also consider that the incarceration rate for Blacks is higher than that for Whites. And also consider that that disparity is due to an inequitable enforcement of drug laws. At this point, let's stop. How does Carter's Theft Island fit into our current circumstances where Theft Island was made of some who were genetically predisposed to committing one theft per year while our jails have disproportionate rate of Blacks incarcerated for drug related crimes though Whites use drugs at the same rate?

Let's also look at the fact that life for former prisoners lends itself to recidivism because of the difficulties these people have in obtaining meaningful, livable salary employment in such a tough job market and housing--in other words, the some of the same conditions that might have contributed to the initial crime, conviction, and incarceration. In addition, the same  legal system that has disproportionately incarcerated Blacks and other minorities is still in operation. Then consider people who have committed small crimes who, sometimes either inadvertently or in order to live, continue to commit small crimes and are thus locked away for the rest of their lives.

Finally consider those who have committed fraud or money laundering or some other major financial crime are counted as untouchable by criminal laws because of the economic influence these people have. Where is the insistence that to reduce those crimes, one must convict and incarcerate them?

Just once, I would like a Conservative to write extensively about our justice system by first checking out people's lives rather than just by applying their logical powers of deduction.

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To Joe Carter and his blogpost on unemployment and suicide. This appeared in the Acton Blog.

Too many times when someone says that unemployment is a spiritual problem, they mean it is just the problem of the unemployed person. It is tragic shame that nobody considers whether the number of unemployed here is also a sign of a spiritual problem of either the economic system being used or the people running and benefiting the most from the system.