Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For December 12, 2018

December 11

To Thomas Ascik and his article that asked if America can return to being a Christian society. In his article he reviews the work of a few other Christians and is dismayed in discovering that they offer no legitimate actions that would make American society a Christian one. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

Perhaps the most prominent fault that religiously conservative American Christians share is that of the lack self-awareness. For example, religiously conservative Christians are not demonized for holding to traditional definitions  of marriage and roles for sex, they are demonized for trying to force unbelievers into accepting and practicing Christian traditions.

Likewise, if government cannot define marriage for society, then who can? Is the Church in position to define marriage for unbelievers?

Also, in calling for a limited, small government, what does Thomas Ascik, the write of the above article, think will happen to resulting the power void? Does he imagine that it will automatically dissipate? Those who call for limited government, despite having legitimate concerns, are also calling for a limited democracy wherever a working democracy is employed. Shouldn't the size of government be democratically determined as long as those limits stipulated in the Amendments to The Constitution are respected?

I have never figured out why any of my fellow religiously conservative Christians call for a return to a Christian Society from the past that never was. For we could never have legitimately claimed to possess a Christian society for as long as we embraced a racism that believed in a white supremacy that ethnically cleansed Native Americans from the land and subjugated Blacks through slavery, Jim Crow, and wealth disparity regardless of the percentage of Christians in the land or the influence of Christianity on society. For our claims to be Christian can be easily negated by how we treat those from groups other than our own. And our obliviousness to that negation only shows how much we lack self-awareness.

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Matthew Summers and his blogpost that defends Capitalism. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative Blog.

One of the most prominent faults we religiously conservative Christians have is that of having a lack of self-awareness. That lack of self-awareness applies both to us personally and how we try to rule over others in society rather than share society with unbelievers as equals. And our lack of awareness is demonstrated in obliviousness to how our sacred cows affect others. And a lack of self-awareness is shown in the above article that defends capitalism.

We should start with the faulty definition of capitalism:

The term capitalism refers to an economic organization in which the means of production are privately owned, and production is guided by profit.

Here capitalism is determined by private ownership rather than public ownership. However, a key distinguishing trait of capitalism has been left out. That trait is that ownership and guidance of production is also determined by solely by wealth which leaves out labor. Here we should note the central role of labor in producing wealth for the business. But those who only provide such labor are objectified by the capitalist system. Of course, there are individual business owners who show more respect for the their workers than other business owners. But in a system where the largest businesses are owned by shareholders, those who own the most shares indirectly guide production. And the most prominent ethic employed by those shareholders is the maximize  personal profits ethic. That ethic is a cannibalizing ethic that devours all competition. Logically speaking, if a higher profit can be gained by breaking the law, then the maximize personal profits ethic demands that one breaks the law. Thus this ethic makes the most powerful shareholders into absentee landlords of the workplace.

Yes, there are owners who treat many of their employees with respect and loyalty. But just as there were some slave owners who were kinder to their slaves than others, the real issue is how much dignity does the system recognize in those at the bottom of the pile. How much dignity did slavery recognize in those who were slaves? And so how much dignity does the capitalism system itself recognize in its workers when labor power can be commodified, and thus objectified, to the same degree that raw materials are?

Above all, because ownership and control is determined by wealth, Capitalism distributes power by wealth. And that distribution of power applies both to the workplace and government. The sharing of power with others then is looked upon as an impediment to the maximization of profits. And yet, the sharing of power is the beginning of peace while the refusal to share power is the beginning of war. Perhaps that is why we tend to have class wars under Capitalism. And we should that just because an exploited class has not resisted does not mean that we have no class war.
There are elements that we should borrow from capitalism to form a hybrid system. But capitalism per se is not worth defending.

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

Oct 8

To Joe Carter and his blogpost on the Columbian Exchange. That exchange includes the benefits enjoyed by Europe and the suffering and loss of life brought to the natives of the New World by Europeans like Columbus. This appeared in the Acton blog.

It's sad that when listing the parts of the Columbian Exchange, the atrocities committed by Columbus and other Europeans are not mentioned. Atrocities such as mass killings, slavery, and exploiting workers were not mentioned alongside the loss of life from European diseases. How could such an omission exist in a Christian blog written by a Christian?

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To Allyson Wieringa and her blogpost questioning the call for the government to put Church charities out os business and to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour. This appeared in the Acton blog.

What is wrong with the government making Church charities not needed? Whose loss is that anyway? And if the Church no longer needs to worry about providing charity because those in need are receiving help elsewhere, then doesn't that mean that the Church can focus more on preaching the Gospel?

Though I can't speak for England, right now, we are in an Ayn Rand coup of the American government. In that coup, those with the most wealth use their wealth to seize power over the government. Then they use that power to continually reduce  fulfilling their social responsibilities. As a result, tax burdens are shifted more toward those who have less and that results in sharp increase in deficit spending. The Ayn Rand opportunist try to use their arguments and power to reduce or even eliminate social safety nets even if those safety nets are self-funding and thus do not contribute to the deficit.
We should note here the kind of government in which Ayn Rand's family financially succeeded: the government of the Tsars. And the Tsars were dictators who enforced the belief that to oppose the Tsar is to oppose the nation. That is similar to the declarations made by Lenin and the Bolsheviks with respect to the workers.
One other point must be made here. Though raising the minimum wage is good, it leaves a major issue unaddressed. Seeing that socialism, from a Marxist perspective, relies on the dictatorship of a proletariat democracy, letting the gov't alone to set all increased wages does not empower the workers. Rather, it establishes a particular group of people in government as the vanguard for the workers. And like most vanguards such as Lenin's Bolshevik Party right after the Russian Revolution, they will declare that anyone who opposes them opposes the workers whom they say they represent. And then we are right back where we started from with the Tsars and Lenin. Not that we don't need the government to raise the minimum wage. What we do need is a minimum wage that is high enough to help and low enough to require workers and owners to continue to meet together to see what each side needs and then to start making decisions that benefits both sides.

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Oct 9

To Thomas Ascik and his blogpost about some Supreme Court decisions on same-sex marriage and laws that addressed inheritance. In that blogpost, DOMA, the Defense Of Marriage Act, is referred to. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

I want to comment on one part of the article above: the references to DOMA. DOMA stands for the Defense Of Marriage Act. But the name itself is ambiguous. Which or whose marriage is being defended? The answer is simple: no one's marriage is being defended. Instead the desire of same-sex couples to be legally married is being attacked by those who claim to have a monopoly on the definition of marriage. Thus, perhaps we should call DOMA, OBTMAA-- the Offensive By Traditional Marriage Activists Act.

The legalization of same-sex marriage does not threaten any traditional heterosexual marriage. Claims otherwise are based on fears that those moving in to the marital neighborhood will bring down the property values. On the other hand, despite the results of inhibiting monogamous relationships and thus reducing promiscuity in the LGBT community, those opposed to same-sex marriages by other people are threatening the marital prospects for those in the LGBT community. Why do they do that? It is simply because they want to impose their own religious/cultural beliefs on others. That imposition would appear to violate the 1st Amendment regardless of how democratically the legal definition of marriage was determined. Why the imposition? There are a number of reasons one can find when talking to DOMA apologists.