Jan 14
To Joe Carter and his blogpost that states that economics is like Christianity. This appeared in the Acton blog.
The above article relies on empty assertions--assertions made without proof or evidence. Economics can be the 'crown-jewel of human compassion? If it is, then economics is not being properly practiced here.
And those who care about employees going without pay are deficient because they care not for the taxpayers who fund them? Those who are being punished by the shutdown are individuals who do various jobs. But those being rewarded the most by our political-economic system are corporations and the wealthy who have conditionally invested so much in those corporations. We have to say conditionally invested because their investment depends on the ROI. Other than that, many wealthy shareholders make no other investment in those corporations. For that reason, many major shareholders are like absentee landlords who squeeze out of their tenants whatever they can while repairing their properties as little as possible.
The term 'economics' comes from the Greek word 'oikos' meaning house. Such a term implies a holistic approach to the subject. But what has often occurred is a reducing of economics to the field of commerce. This reductionism has been facilitated by limiting the definition of a business's stakeholders to consisting merely of the buyer and seller. Workers, and their communities, other venders, society, and environment are cut out of the picture because to include these parties as stakeholders, the free market must become less and less free.
We should also make one other point. To reduce Christianity to being other-directed is to cut the Gospel out of Christianity. For the Gospel revolves around the forgiveness of an infinitely unpayable debt because the one to whom the debt was owed paid the debt with His most precious Son. That is what Christianity revolves around. Now how is that mirrored in any school of economics?
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Jan 15
To Joe Carter and his blogpost that boasts of how Conservatives are leading the way in prison reform. This appeared in the Acton blog.
The above article consists of empty claims: claims made that are not substantiated. How is it that only conservatives have become the champions of prison reform as claimed above? In reality, the fight for prison reform is being led by a coalition of both conservatives and nonconservatives. In addition, who reduces the justice system to a single entity? Haven't many, but not all, conservatives conflated justice with punishment so that the two are indistinguishable? That part of the problem with our current justice system is due to the conservative approach to justice. For aren't our jails currently designed to be a hellish purgatory on earth? Aren't our current jails themselves a source of cruel and unusual punishment because there is nothing but the exploitation of prisoners and a lack of protection for them from violence that comes from either fellow prisoners or staff?
The article above is nothing more than an empty tribal boast of superiority of conservatives over others. And that kind of boasting can only lead to tribalism with its group authoritarianism and its assumption of being superior over all others.
Again, there is a coalition of both conservatives and nonconservatives who are leading the fight for prison reform. And perhaps that coalition, rather than false claim that conservatives alone are leading the way, is our only hope for the future because it shows that groups with different beliefs can respect each other and work together.
www.flamingfundamentalist.blogspot.com
(Only one person pictured is a Christian Fundamentalist. And so which one pictured is not like the others)
Showing posts with label economics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economics. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 16, 2019
Wednesday, February 21, 2018
Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For February 21, 2018
Feb 19
To Joe Carter and his blogpost that asks if Capitalism can be saved from the conservatives who hate it. This appeared in the Acton blog.
Having read the whole article cited, there are two questions that should have been asked rather than the one in the title. First, can democracy and capitalism coexist? Second, can capitalism be saved from itself?
The first question asks whether we can have a true democracy while embracing capitalism. That partially depends on how we define democracy. For if democracy is merely reduced to the people having the right to vote for their leaders, then the answer is 'yes.' But then we would also have to look at more examples of democracies than we might care to. For there are many nations that allow their people to vote for their leaders but restrict who can run for office. Such situations puts voters in voting cattle chutes that either the voting shows that election winners have a false level of support and/or the voters will constantly vote for the lesser of evils. People can vote for their leaders in Iran, but does Iran have a working democracy? The same can be asked of Russia.
Now if democracy includes along with the mechanisms that allow people to vote for their leaders a state of being where people share society with others as equals, then we have more to consider. Jeff Halper, from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition (ICAHD), has noted that ethnocracies, that is nations with some sort of majority in terms of national identity, race, language, religion, and so forth which seizes a privileged place of control over government, even if they use democratic processes to accomplish this, has become an ethnocracy. In such a situation, society isn't shared with others as equals because one group's control over government is used to maintain that privileged position at the expense of the rights and welfare of the other groups.
The question then becomes, are there other categories of groups, besides the ones Halper associated with ethnocracies, that can do the same? For example, another category of groups is economic class. What if one economic class seized a privileged position of control over our government over the other classes? We could call such a situation a classocracy. And considering how some are starting to question whether we have transitioned from a democracy to an oligarchy (see http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746 ), asking if we have a classocracy becomes a legitimate question to ask.
We should also note that the structure of one of the mainstays of our capitalist economic system, the corporation, lends itself to authoritarianism and the centralization of power. How is it that the leadership of our corporations will not seek to exercise a similar kind of control over government that they have over their employees especially when increasing profits are at stake? And since most of the people employed by those corporations are ruled over by authoritarians, what choices are these employees able to make?
Then we come to the second question of whether capitalism can be save from capitalism. Here we should note, from the article cited by Carter, that the free market is based on the maximization of individual freedom. But such a description is misleading. For the free market maximizes the privileges for freedom - equality = privilege. Thus, what we are really talking about is the maximization of privilege for the market's elite performers. Note that we can't say that freedom is being maximized because voting in the free market is based on a one dollar per one vote rather than a one person per one vote scenario. And since, in capitalist nations, political power follows wealth, those with the most wealth have the most political power. And those with the most power then tend to use that power to maintain the status quo rather than to make changes to the status quo which protects and give political voice to all the others. As the non-elite groups suffer from the rule of the elitesit can lead to a dystopias if not revolutions.
While conservatives considered FDR to have enacted "socialist" policies, leftists had a different view. They view FDR's policies as having saved capitalism from itself because it made it at least tolerable to those who otherwise might have revolted or, at least, become unmanageable.
What we see today is simply an Ayn Rand coup of our government which celebrates this maximizing of individual freedom without accounting for the consequences that are experienced by others. That coup is empowering those with the most power to act more and more selfishly. We should note that America is still experiencing a long-term increase in wealth disparity. And we should note that our society is becoming more and more violent. In addition, the way of life which our capitalism has promoted is destroying the environment and thus any kind of satisfying way of life for future generations.
So the real question is, can capitalism be saved from itself.
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Feb 20
To Gary Gregg II and his blogpost praising Ronald Reagan as the greatest modern American Presidents. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.
Link to cited article on whether Capitalism can be saved from Conservatives
As Gregg cited prejudice as a reason for why Schlessinger's survey did not rank Reagan as high as the ISI survey rated him, we might want to note the prejudice with which Gregg writes his article. That prejudice is found in his selective use of facts.
Gregg wants to cite Reagan as the greatest of the modern presidents using the ISI survey. I guess that Eisenhower, who was also ranked on the same level was not considered by Gregg . But what impressed Gregg about Reagan?
Gregg talks about Reagan's ending of the Cold War through a philosophy of 'peace through strength.' He also 'encouraged' prosperity and helped his political party recover from its previous state and break control over the House of Representatives by the Democratic Party. He was instrumental in getting others to end 'big government.' And he taught, by example, the republicanism's tenets of self government along with leading a moral revolution of his own.
When one goes through that list, how could Reagan not be consider to be a great President? Again, the analysis of Reagan provided by Gregg and also the ISI survey team is only as good as the data they worked with. And what is missing from that data is first the consequences of Reagan's self government and reduction of the reach of the Federal government approach. For Reagan, reducing government size applied only to social safety nets and reductions in taxes and regulations. But what were some of the other results of Reagan's shrinking of government? One non-result was the standard living. It did not improve from the time period of 1950 to 1980. Neither did the poverty rate. However, income inequality did increase (see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8500951 ). In addition, the National Debt rose much faster under Reagan than under previous presidents. We should note that the National Debt nearly tripled under Reagan's presidency while the National Debt-GDP ratio increased in all but the first year of his presidency and went from 31% to 49%.
The damage that Reagan did to unions has lived far past the tenure of his administration. But something else should be noted. The reduction in the reach of government at home, which is widely celebrated by some conservatives, resulted in increases the reach of private elites, who are not subject to the accountability that democratic processes affords. Remember that the S&L crisis occurred during Reagan's presidency just as the economic crisis of 2008 occurred during Bush II's presidency. Both presidencies saw an decrease in regulations. In addition, Reagan's 'peace through strength' expanded the reach of the US in the world. Thus we have the conservative celebration at the reduction of government power at home but a celebration of the increase of our government's power abroad.
As for Reagan's moral character, one should consider his administration's mixed record on Pinochet and Chilé--should note that Pinochet was indicted for crimes against humanity in how he treated his own people after a coup established him as Chilé's military dictator.. After the State Department had decided, during Reagan's 2nd term, in favor of ending Pinochet's reign and partially restoring democracy, it was so determined so long as US interests, which most often refers to business interests, would be helped by such a return to democracy. But it was not the kind of democracy Chilé practiced before Pinochet took over. For the multiple political party democracy that existed prior to Pinochet was regarded as an 'adventurism.' Political ideologies and parties that the US opposed were not allowed to participate (see http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/159267 ).
Or another sign of Reagan's moral side came with his full support of terrorists like Osama Bin Laden and others in Afghanistan. He called these men 'freedom fighters' even though they were conducting terrorist attacks in the nation in order to draw the Soviet Union into a Vietnam kind of war and outcome. Under Reagan we had the Iran-Contra affair in which arms sales to, what was considered to be an enemy nation, Iran was used to fund support for the Contras despite the Boland Amendment that outlawed such sales.
And speaking of the Contras, the US was condemned by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for the actions it sponsored which were conducted by the Contras in Nicaragua as the US vigorously tried to over throw the Sandinista government. The specific actions included mining Nicaraguan harbors, which was a terrorist act. Other terrorist acts against soft targets in Nicaragua were also executed by the US-supported Contras.
Still another side of Reagan's morality could be seen in his support for Saddam Hussein even when he was committing atrocities (See http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/08/26/exclusive-cia-files-prove-america-helped-saddam-as-he-gassed-iran/ ).
We could also include America's support and training of military and paramilitary forces from El Salvador. Those troops committed numerous atrocities to the extent of causing the beginnings of the MS-13 gang.
Thus, today we are dealing with at least 2 significant problems that were either the result of Reagan's policies or a reaction to them. The former saw the formation of the Taliban and other terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda as a result of foreign policies pursued by the Reagan Administration. The latter resulted in the formation of the vary dangerous MS-13 gang. Both are unsung parts of the Reagan legacy. Reagan's successful attacks on unions has contributed to the ever increasing wealth disparity in the US.
Certainly there are other events to add to the ones just listed. But it appears that those products of the Reagan Administration were not counted by the ISI in determining Reagan's performance as President.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To Joseph Sunde and his blogpost, which was mistitled, about the purpose of economists. This appeared in the Acton blog.
We should note that the title of the article said it was about economics, but the content focused on economists. So besides the title of the article being misnamed, it seems that the role of economists is not adequately defined here. Why? Because it seems that explaining economic science is done from a single economic ideology. That ideology is neoliberalism. And we should note several things here. First, economics is a behavioral science, not a physical science and that is regardless of the mathematics involved. Mathematics is also heavily used in other social sciences and so citing its dependence on math does not remove economics from the field of the behavioral sciences. Rather, economics includes a study of human behavior within certain spheres of society and human life and the impact that behavior has on society as a whole and groups of people. And as a behavioral science, it is far more difficult to isolate variables in economic studies than it is in many of the physical sciences.
Second, as a behavioral science, understanding the behavior of those in business must always include an adequate description of the context in which an economy functions. Thus, what works in one contextual setting doesn't always work in other settings. We should also note that economists should educate people as to the strengths and weakness of each of the various economic ideologies. There are a number of different economic ideologies besides the one our society and nation employs now.
We should also note that what often passes as economics is merely commerce (for the difference between the two, see http://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-economics-and-vs-commerce/ ). Economics is a broader field of study that includes public policies, government and should include the physical and social impacts of business on people and their different environments.
Since there is no adequate definition of economics given here, it would be hard to ascertain the difference between commerce and economics from reading this article. But more than that, because there is no adequate definition of economics given here, neither is there an adequate description of how economists should relate to the public.
To Joe Carter and his blogpost that asks if Capitalism can be saved from the conservatives who hate it. This appeared in the Acton blog.
Having read the whole article cited, there are two questions that should have been asked rather than the one in the title. First, can democracy and capitalism coexist? Second, can capitalism be saved from itself?
The first question asks whether we can have a true democracy while embracing capitalism. That partially depends on how we define democracy. For if democracy is merely reduced to the people having the right to vote for their leaders, then the answer is 'yes.' But then we would also have to look at more examples of democracies than we might care to. For there are many nations that allow their people to vote for their leaders but restrict who can run for office. Such situations puts voters in voting cattle chutes that either the voting shows that election winners have a false level of support and/or the voters will constantly vote for the lesser of evils. People can vote for their leaders in Iran, but does Iran have a working democracy? The same can be asked of Russia.
Now if democracy includes along with the mechanisms that allow people to vote for their leaders a state of being where people share society with others as equals, then we have more to consider. Jeff Halper, from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition (ICAHD), has noted that ethnocracies, that is nations with some sort of majority in terms of national identity, race, language, religion, and so forth which seizes a privileged place of control over government, even if they use democratic processes to accomplish this, has become an ethnocracy. In such a situation, society isn't shared with others as equals because one group's control over government is used to maintain that privileged position at the expense of the rights and welfare of the other groups.
The question then becomes, are there other categories of groups, besides the ones Halper associated with ethnocracies, that can do the same? For example, another category of groups is economic class. What if one economic class seized a privileged position of control over our government over the other classes? We could call such a situation a classocracy. And considering how some are starting to question whether we have transitioned from a democracy to an oligarchy (see http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746 ), asking if we have a classocracy becomes a legitimate question to ask.
We should also note that the structure of one of the mainstays of our capitalist economic system, the corporation, lends itself to authoritarianism and the centralization of power. How is it that the leadership of our corporations will not seek to exercise a similar kind of control over government that they have over their employees especially when increasing profits are at stake? And since most of the people employed by those corporations are ruled over by authoritarians, what choices are these employees able to make?
Then we come to the second question of whether capitalism can be save from capitalism. Here we should note, from the article cited by Carter, that the free market is based on the maximization of individual freedom. But such a description is misleading. For the free market maximizes the privileges for freedom - equality = privilege. Thus, what we are really talking about is the maximization of privilege for the market's elite performers. Note that we can't say that freedom is being maximized because voting in the free market is based on a one dollar per one vote rather than a one person per one vote scenario. And since, in capitalist nations, political power follows wealth, those with the most wealth have the most political power. And those with the most power then tend to use that power to maintain the status quo rather than to make changes to the status quo which protects and give political voice to all the others. As the non-elite groups suffer from the rule of the elitesit can lead to a dystopias if not revolutions.
While conservatives considered FDR to have enacted "socialist" policies, leftists had a different view. They view FDR's policies as having saved capitalism from itself because it made it at least tolerable to those who otherwise might have revolted or, at least, become unmanageable.
What we see today is simply an Ayn Rand coup of our government which celebrates this maximizing of individual freedom without accounting for the consequences that are experienced by others. That coup is empowering those with the most power to act more and more selfishly. We should note that America is still experiencing a long-term increase in wealth disparity. And we should note that our society is becoming more and more violent. In addition, the way of life which our capitalism has promoted is destroying the environment and thus any kind of satisfying way of life for future generations.
So the real question is, can capitalism be saved from itself.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Feb 20
To Gary Gregg II and his blogpost praising Ronald Reagan as the greatest modern American Presidents. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.
Link to cited article on whether Capitalism can be saved from Conservatives
As Gregg cited prejudice as a reason for why Schlessinger's survey did not rank Reagan as high as the ISI survey rated him, we might want to note the prejudice with which Gregg writes his article. That prejudice is found in his selective use of facts.
Gregg wants to cite Reagan as the greatest of the modern presidents using the ISI survey. I guess that Eisenhower, who was also ranked on the same level was not considered by Gregg . But what impressed Gregg about Reagan?
Gregg talks about Reagan's ending of the Cold War through a philosophy of 'peace through strength.' He also 'encouraged' prosperity and helped his political party recover from its previous state and break control over the House of Representatives by the Democratic Party. He was instrumental in getting others to end 'big government.' And he taught, by example, the republicanism's tenets of self government along with leading a moral revolution of his own.
When one goes through that list, how could Reagan not be consider to be a great President? Again, the analysis of Reagan provided by Gregg and also the ISI survey team is only as good as the data they worked with. And what is missing from that data is first the consequences of Reagan's self government and reduction of the reach of the Federal government approach. For Reagan, reducing government size applied only to social safety nets and reductions in taxes and regulations. But what were some of the other results of Reagan's shrinking of government? One non-result was the standard living. It did not improve from the time period of 1950 to 1980. Neither did the poverty rate. However, income inequality did increase (see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8500951 ). In addition, the National Debt rose much faster under Reagan than under previous presidents. We should note that the National Debt nearly tripled under Reagan's presidency while the National Debt-GDP ratio increased in all but the first year of his presidency and went from 31% to 49%.
The damage that Reagan did to unions has lived far past the tenure of his administration. But something else should be noted. The reduction in the reach of government at home, which is widely celebrated by some conservatives, resulted in increases the reach of private elites, who are not subject to the accountability that democratic processes affords. Remember that the S&L crisis occurred during Reagan's presidency just as the economic crisis of 2008 occurred during Bush II's presidency. Both presidencies saw an decrease in regulations. In addition, Reagan's 'peace through strength' expanded the reach of the US in the world. Thus we have the conservative celebration at the reduction of government power at home but a celebration of the increase of our government's power abroad.
As for Reagan's moral character, one should consider his administration's mixed record on Pinochet and Chilé--should note that Pinochet was indicted for crimes against humanity in how he treated his own people after a coup established him as Chilé's military dictator.. After the State Department had decided, during Reagan's 2nd term, in favor of ending Pinochet's reign and partially restoring democracy, it was so determined so long as US interests, which most often refers to business interests, would be helped by such a return to democracy. But it was not the kind of democracy Chilé practiced before Pinochet took over. For the multiple political party democracy that existed prior to Pinochet was regarded as an 'adventurism.' Political ideologies and parties that the US opposed were not allowed to participate (see http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/159267 ).
Or another sign of Reagan's moral side came with his full support of terrorists like Osama Bin Laden and others in Afghanistan. He called these men 'freedom fighters' even though they were conducting terrorist attacks in the nation in order to draw the Soviet Union into a Vietnam kind of war and outcome. Under Reagan we had the Iran-Contra affair in which arms sales to, what was considered to be an enemy nation, Iran was used to fund support for the Contras despite the Boland Amendment that outlawed such sales.
And speaking of the Contras, the US was condemned by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for the actions it sponsored which were conducted by the Contras in Nicaragua as the US vigorously tried to over throw the Sandinista government. The specific actions included mining Nicaraguan harbors, which was a terrorist act. Other terrorist acts against soft targets in Nicaragua were also executed by the US-supported Contras.
Still another side of Reagan's morality could be seen in his support for Saddam Hussein even when he was committing atrocities (See http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/08/26/exclusive-cia-files-prove-america-helped-saddam-as-he-gassed-iran/ ).
We could also include America's support and training of military and paramilitary forces from El Salvador. Those troops committed numerous atrocities to the extent of causing the beginnings of the MS-13 gang.
Thus, today we are dealing with at least 2 significant problems that were either the result of Reagan's policies or a reaction to them. The former saw the formation of the Taliban and other terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda as a result of foreign policies pursued by the Reagan Administration. The latter resulted in the formation of the vary dangerous MS-13 gang. Both are unsung parts of the Reagan legacy. Reagan's successful attacks on unions has contributed to the ever increasing wealth disparity in the US.
Certainly there are other events to add to the ones just listed. But it appears that those products of the Reagan Administration were not counted by the ISI in determining Reagan's performance as President.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To Joseph Sunde and his blogpost, which was mistitled, about the purpose of economists. This appeared in the Acton blog.
We should note that the title of the article said it was about economics, but the content focused on economists. So besides the title of the article being misnamed, it seems that the role of economists is not adequately defined here. Why? Because it seems that explaining economic science is done from a single economic ideology. That ideology is neoliberalism. And we should note several things here. First, economics is a behavioral science, not a physical science and that is regardless of the mathematics involved. Mathematics is also heavily used in other social sciences and so citing its dependence on math does not remove economics from the field of the behavioral sciences. Rather, economics includes a study of human behavior within certain spheres of society and human life and the impact that behavior has on society as a whole and groups of people. And as a behavioral science, it is far more difficult to isolate variables in economic studies than it is in many of the physical sciences.
Second, as a behavioral science, understanding the behavior of those in business must always include an adequate description of the context in which an economy functions. Thus, what works in one contextual setting doesn't always work in other settings. We should also note that economists should educate people as to the strengths and weakness of each of the various economic ideologies. There are a number of different economic ideologies besides the one our society and nation employs now.
We should also note that what often passes as economics is merely commerce (for the difference between the two, see http://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-economics-and-vs-commerce/ ). Economics is a broader field of study that includes public policies, government and should include the physical and social impacts of business on people and their different environments.
Since there is no adequate definition of economics given here, it would be hard to ascertain the difference between commerce and economics from reading this article. But more than that, because there is no adequate definition of economics given here, neither is there an adequate description of how economists should relate to the public.
Wednesday, June 7, 2017
Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For June 7, 2017
June 5
To Allen Porter Mendenhall whose blogpost discuss whether President Trump endangers the rule of law within our nation. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.
Seems like, to some, progressives and the left have a monopoly on the vices that threaten our nation. We should note that, as the article stated above, the rule of law is not fully enforced here. Take insider trading and Congress for example. Members of the House and Senate can call brokers to make trades on information that is not public (see https://www.forbes.com/sites/kylesmith/2011/06/01/insider-trading-rules-that-dont-apply-to-congress/#8c9e48c6167e ). And this can occur as many times as possible. So while regular citizens and those working in the financial industry are subject to one set of laws, our elected officials are not.
But the biggest breach is in international law where the US relies on the opposite of the rule of law in order to get its way. On the foreign scene, the opposite of the rule of law is the rule of force. And that has been a major part of US foreign policies for a very long time. Smedley Butler wrote about the American use of force to help American financial interests (see https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html ). America would not tolerate that kind of use of force on itself, but it did inflict force on others to get its economic way.
Or we could talk about post WW II when we actually have a number of internationally accepted set of rules (Geneva Conventions, UN Charter, Nuremberg Principles) and even a World Court decision against the US in the case of its intervention in Nicaragua. In terms of foreign policies, the US does what it wants to when it can but holds other nations accountable they try to do the same.
Chalmers Johnson wrote that nations cannot keep a republic while maintaining an empire. He cited two examples showing this rule. Rome sacrificed its republic in order to maintain its empire while Great Britain did the opposite. Now it is America's turn to decide. And what we are seeing is a losing of our republic in order to maintain an empire much for the sake of our "national" (a.k.a., business) interests. It should not be a surprise that we don't operate by the rule of law. The real difference between Trump and previous presidents is that Trump shows no appearance of appreciation for the rule of the law and therefore the is the President who shows the least, if any, subtlety when exercising what is called above 'the rule of man,' which is reality the rule of force.
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June 6
To Rev Ben Johnson and his blogpost on how redistributing the debt in the EU is not only bad economics, but leads to ‘moral problems.’ This appeared in the Acton blog.
Unfortunately, Rev Johnson paints an inadequate picture of Greece's economic problems and debt. It's not that Greece did not make mistakes before the economic collapse of 2008, but that collapse put Greece in a hole that started its current downward spiral. The bailouts for Greece, for the most part, never see Greece or its people. Rather, the bailouts are destined for Greece's lenders and the conditions for the bailouts, ever increasing austerity measures, hurt the economy so that Greece less and less able to recover. The IMF itself has concluded that Greece's austerity measures have hurt its economy (see https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2012/10/12/imf-austerity-is-much-worse-for-the-economy-than-we-thought/?utm_term=.28898f0c4f3a ). One reason why austerity measures can hurt the economy is because fewer people have money to spend for goods and services.
Currently the global economy adheres to a Neoliberal Capitalist economic system. Under that system, not only has wealth disparity continued to grow in many nations, the wealth disparity between nations continues to grow. Of course the "only" option offered in place of the current global economy is a nationalist option. That is one of the reasons why Trump won the election, he offered a nationalist solution. However, his "nationalism" shared a major trait with the Neoliberal global economy: it featured elite-centered rule rather than democratic rule. Thus, Trump's "nationalist" approach is not really nationalist because not everyone in the the nation is included in the decision making and thus his economic approach is not designed to benefit the whole nation.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To Joe Carter and his blogpost quote of an Acton commentary on De Vos and a new model for public education. This appeared in the Acton blog
The problem with the above is that school choice exists without vouchers. To say that one cannot be without the other is a marketing ploy. If applied to college, the school choice logic would demand that students going to more expensive schools than state schools be given enough state aid so that these students can choose the college of their choice. But such is not the case so why would we call vouchers "school choice" when applied to public education?
De Vos is not a reformer of public education. A reformer would change the public education system. By drawing funds from public schools, some of which are already strapped, De Vos shows herself to be an enemy of public education. For the way to destroy a publicly funded institution is to under fund it so that it no longer works. And yes, public schools do suffer significant problems. But a significant number of those problems lie outside of the influence of public schools.
What "school choice" is about is a transfer of public funds meant for public education to religious, especially Christian, institutions so that the government is sponsoring religious education. Such could destroy some public school districts leaving kids without the opportunity for a serious education because charter and religious schools will not be able to pick up the slack if a whole school district goes down. And an additional issue becomes will those charter and religious schools that receive public funds be held accountable to the same regulations that public schools are held to?
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To Russell Moore and his blogpost on how the Church should respond to the Transgender Revolution. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition website.
There are some weaknesses with the article above. One is the inconsistency in declaring that each person is a human who has a purpose. That message is repeatedly transmitted to the LGBT community but not to the business community that looks on its employees, especially those who have lower paying jobs, as disposable objects of profit. Many job situations are highly volatile where people can be displaced by either offshoring or replacement by technology. And as this occurs, the job market for low skill jobs in retail and food service becomes flooded thus keeping the pay for those who work in these sectors low. Some victims of offshoring have even been directed to train their replacements. In the meantime, some recipients of jobs that were offshored work in sweatshops or as slaves with the justification that they are being paid more now than before they received their jobs. Where is Russell's Gospel message to our economic system and those who look at employees as being disposable?
Other than that, we need to distinguish the Church's message to those who are transgendered from the state's message. After all, the Church is a voluntary organization that has rules more stringent than the state's rules because not the Church is not for everyone in society. So as long as we don't make the Church's message to the LGBT community the state's message, then much of what Russell says above has much validity.
But that is much of what he said. What should the Church do with those married couples who voluntarily choose not to have children? Should they be disciplined and possibly excommunicated because they have chosen not to have children and the Church teaches that raising children goes with marriage? Or should the Church deny those who cannot reproduce the right to enter into marriage?
I think that instead of castigating everything about the Sexual Revolution, we should pick our battles. Again, in criticizing the Sexual Revolution, we should note that what the Church can say is not necessarily what the state should say. And we also should note the valid concerns that the Sexual Revolution tried to address. In addition, we should note that during the time of the Sexual Revolution, the Church in America was divided on whether it should have supported the Civil Rights Movement and, for the most part, supported the immoral war against Vietnam. The Church, that is the predominant parts of the Church in America, like its ancestors in the pre-revolutionary times of France, Russia, and Spain supported wealth and the establishment regardless of the exploitation and oppression practiced by those respective establishments during those times.
To Allen Porter Mendenhall whose blogpost discuss whether President Trump endangers the rule of law within our nation. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.
Seems like, to some, progressives and the left have a monopoly on the vices that threaten our nation. We should note that, as the article stated above, the rule of law is not fully enforced here. Take insider trading and Congress for example. Members of the House and Senate can call brokers to make trades on information that is not public (see https://www.forbes.com/sites/kylesmith/2011/06/01/insider-trading-rules-that-dont-apply-to-congress/#8c9e48c6167e ). And this can occur as many times as possible. So while regular citizens and those working in the financial industry are subject to one set of laws, our elected officials are not.
But the biggest breach is in international law where the US relies on the opposite of the rule of law in order to get its way. On the foreign scene, the opposite of the rule of law is the rule of force. And that has been a major part of US foreign policies for a very long time. Smedley Butler wrote about the American use of force to help American financial interests (see https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html ). America would not tolerate that kind of use of force on itself, but it did inflict force on others to get its economic way.
Or we could talk about post WW II when we actually have a number of internationally accepted set of rules (Geneva Conventions, UN Charter, Nuremberg Principles) and even a World Court decision against the US in the case of its intervention in Nicaragua. In terms of foreign policies, the US does what it wants to when it can but holds other nations accountable they try to do the same.
Chalmers Johnson wrote that nations cannot keep a republic while maintaining an empire. He cited two examples showing this rule. Rome sacrificed its republic in order to maintain its empire while Great Britain did the opposite. Now it is America's turn to decide. And what we are seeing is a losing of our republic in order to maintain an empire much for the sake of our "national" (a.k.a., business) interests. It should not be a surprise that we don't operate by the rule of law. The real difference between Trump and previous presidents is that Trump shows no appearance of appreciation for the rule of the law and therefore the is the President who shows the least, if any, subtlety when exercising what is called above 'the rule of man,' which is reality the rule of force.
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June 6
To Rev Ben Johnson and his blogpost on how redistributing the debt in the EU is not only bad economics, but leads to ‘moral problems.’ This appeared in the Acton blog.
Unfortunately, Rev Johnson paints an inadequate picture of Greece's economic problems and debt. It's not that Greece did not make mistakes before the economic collapse of 2008, but that collapse put Greece in a hole that started its current downward spiral. The bailouts for Greece, for the most part, never see Greece or its people. Rather, the bailouts are destined for Greece's lenders and the conditions for the bailouts, ever increasing austerity measures, hurt the economy so that Greece less and less able to recover. The IMF itself has concluded that Greece's austerity measures have hurt its economy (see https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2012/10/12/imf-austerity-is-much-worse-for-the-economy-than-we-thought/?utm_term=.28898f0c4f3a ). One reason why austerity measures can hurt the economy is because fewer people have money to spend for goods and services.
Currently the global economy adheres to a Neoliberal Capitalist economic system. Under that system, not only has wealth disparity continued to grow in many nations, the wealth disparity between nations continues to grow. Of course the "only" option offered in place of the current global economy is a nationalist option. That is one of the reasons why Trump won the election, he offered a nationalist solution. However, his "nationalism" shared a major trait with the Neoliberal global economy: it featured elite-centered rule rather than democratic rule. Thus, Trump's "nationalist" approach is not really nationalist because not everyone in the the nation is included in the decision making and thus his economic approach is not designed to benefit the whole nation.
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To Joe Carter and his blogpost quote of an Acton commentary on De Vos and a new model for public education. This appeared in the Acton blog
The problem with the above is that school choice exists without vouchers. To say that one cannot be without the other is a marketing ploy. If applied to college, the school choice logic would demand that students going to more expensive schools than state schools be given enough state aid so that these students can choose the college of their choice. But such is not the case so why would we call vouchers "school choice" when applied to public education?
De Vos is not a reformer of public education. A reformer would change the public education system. By drawing funds from public schools, some of which are already strapped, De Vos shows herself to be an enemy of public education. For the way to destroy a publicly funded institution is to under fund it so that it no longer works. And yes, public schools do suffer significant problems. But a significant number of those problems lie outside of the influence of public schools.
What "school choice" is about is a transfer of public funds meant for public education to religious, especially Christian, institutions so that the government is sponsoring religious education. Such could destroy some public school districts leaving kids without the opportunity for a serious education because charter and religious schools will not be able to pick up the slack if a whole school district goes down. And an additional issue becomes will those charter and religious schools that receive public funds be held accountable to the same regulations that public schools are held to?
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To Russell Moore and his blogpost on how the Church should respond to the Transgender Revolution. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition website.
There are some weaknesses with the article above. One is the inconsistency in declaring that each person is a human who has a purpose. That message is repeatedly transmitted to the LGBT community but not to the business community that looks on its employees, especially those who have lower paying jobs, as disposable objects of profit. Many job situations are highly volatile where people can be displaced by either offshoring or replacement by technology. And as this occurs, the job market for low skill jobs in retail and food service becomes flooded thus keeping the pay for those who work in these sectors low. Some victims of offshoring have even been directed to train their replacements. In the meantime, some recipients of jobs that were offshored work in sweatshops or as slaves with the justification that they are being paid more now than before they received their jobs. Where is Russell's Gospel message to our economic system and those who look at employees as being disposable?
Other than that, we need to distinguish the Church's message to those who are transgendered from the state's message. After all, the Church is a voluntary organization that has rules more stringent than the state's rules because not the Church is not for everyone in society. So as long as we don't make the Church's message to the LGBT community the state's message, then much of what Russell says above has much validity.
But that is much of what he said. What should the Church do with those married couples who voluntarily choose not to have children? Should they be disciplined and possibly excommunicated because they have chosen not to have children and the Church teaches that raising children goes with marriage? Or should the Church deny those who cannot reproduce the right to enter into marriage?
I think that instead of castigating everything about the Sexual Revolution, we should pick our battles. Again, in criticizing the Sexual Revolution, we should note that what the Church can say is not necessarily what the state should say. And we also should note the valid concerns that the Sexual Revolution tried to address. In addition, we should note that during the time of the Sexual Revolution, the Church in America was divided on whether it should have supported the Civil Rights Movement and, for the most part, supported the immoral war against Vietnam. The Church, that is the predominant parts of the Church in America, like its ancestors in the pre-revolutionary times of France, Russia, and Spain supported wealth and the establishment regardless of the exploitation and oppression practiced by those respective establishments during those times.
Wednesday, May 10, 2017
Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For May 10, 2017
May 3
To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost quote challenging the claims that 97% of climate scientists see the relationship between see CO2 has increased or that climate change will lead to hardships. This appeared on Heidelblog
It is very unfortunate when Christian leaders take the side of business in discussing issues like climate change. The above quote on this blogpost without offering any opposing view is such an example is not just unfortunate, it can be irresponsible depending on how it is presented. We should note that prior to the French, Russian, and Spanish Revolutions, that the predominant branch of the Church in those countries supported those with wealth. And so now we come to climate change.
Below are a few links pointing to more than just polls taken about CO2 levels. The first one is a study surveys the literature on whether the climate is warming due to human activity. The overwhelming consensus is that it is true.
http://www.pnas.org/content/107/27/12107.full
We might also want to note joint statements of scientific organizations like the ones below:
1. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/292/5520/1261
2. http://dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/exec-office-other/climate-change-full.pdf
But we should note that with the above joint statements, concern is expressed over the results and the need to stabilize the rising CO2 levels in both the atmosphere and the oceans. There already are observable results of our current climate change. A few small islands in the Pacific have disappeared, low level areas in parts of the East Coast of the United States are experiencing and increase in non-weather related flooding, and the thawing of the permafrost in the Arctic which results in the release of methane gas, which is another greenhouse gas are some of the effects that are observable now. And below is a link to an unexpected result.
http://www.pnas.org/content/113/42/11649.full
In addition, we have a statement signed by a number of scientists regarding the lack of respect that the scientific study on climate change is receiving.
http://www.pacinst.org/app/uploads/2013/02/climate_statement3.pdf
One thing we should note about the article linked to above is that it provides a partial listing of the negative effects of the warming of the climate. These include:
1. Ocean acidification
2. Sea level rise
But what does all of that mean? According to the last article, it means the following:
While no one can accurately predict what exactly will happen due to the warming of our climate, a number of models point negative consequences for a large number of people. And there is consensus on that point as well.
The article being cited is important to read. But so is the literature provided by scientific organizations let alone other individual scientists. In addition, we should note that one source cited by the article quoted from above about scientific views sometimes come from a non scientific source. Prof Lindzen, in an effort to challenge the claim that ocean acidification is an increasing concern, cites a report from the Frontier Center for Public Policy, and think tank group that favors neoliberal economics. There are other problems with some of the other things Lindzen said.
Though we can't look into the future clearly, there is enough evidence to cause much concern as well as motivation for changing how we live. And yet, it seems, that some in the Church side with those who don't want short-term profits for business to be threatened. So why do some religious authorities step out of their area of expertise to weigh in on these matters on the side of those serving mammon?
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To Joe Carter and his blogpost critquing the prosperity gospel of people like Oral Roberts and others. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition website.
Being a graduate of ORU and having attended the university while Oral was president of the school, I can safely say that the above assessment of the prosperity gospel is a decent one. One thing that was left out was the Scripture passage often used by Oral and others to defend their emphasis on prosperity: 3 John vs 2 (see https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=3+John+2&version=NIV ).
We should also note that Oral looked at the prosperity part of his preaching as part of the stand standard gospel. Oral believe in what we would call the Gospel that says that we are sinners and are saved from our sins through faith in the work of God's only son, Jesus Christ. Perhaps his background of suffering from respiratory illness early in life caused him to seek an interpretation of God's Word that would prevent others from experiencing what he suffered.
But we should consider one other point here. Does the secular world have its own version of the prosperity gospel? That is does the secular world believe in and promote an economic ideology that promises great prosperity while sacrificing social responsibility & solidarity, human rights, and the environment? This is an important question for all of us religiously conservative American Christians to consider if we want to remain consistent in avoiding those beliefs that promise wealth despite the price others must pay.
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May 7
To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost that answer Stephen Fry’s blaming God for the problems in the world. This appeared in Heidelblog.
This is a very good article and its title gives the most appropriate answer to Stephen Fry's rant blaming God for the evil in the world. And yet, religiously conservative Christians balk at applying the title to our nation and the problems it faces because of its foreign, its economic system, and its domestic policies.
Such both brings and shows a disconnect with how the Scriptures describe the world. If the Scriptures define man as being depraved as they do, why are some of us religiously conservative Christians so defensive regarding American foreign policies as being sinful and producing sinful results? This is especially be true when we see the relationship between our foreign policies and the terrorist groups proliferating around the world is pointed out to them.
And when we look at the exploitation that is built into our Capitalist economic system, especially with today's neoliberal Capitalism, how can we not partially attribute many of our social and economic problems to that system? And when you add that domestic policies that favor the wealthy and hurt the vulnerable, again, how can we not partially fault the systems that our nation so deeply relies on?
The disconnect that exists for us religiously conservative Christians and we seeing significant faults in how America does things is that the line "it's our fault" is forbidden from being applied when it implicates our sacred cows. Our founding fathers, The Constitution, our prosperous way life especially in the suburbs, and our nation's domination over other nations would all be implicated in sin. And then when you add climate change to the mix, the admission of sin is too great a burden to bear because we enjoy so much of what we have.
Thus, the line "it's our fault" is partially said disingenuously and that is very obvious to many unbelievers. And because our message about sin is said disingenuously, many unbelievers don't see us as being credible when we talk about their sin.
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May 9
To Joe Carter and his blogpost containing a video praising the merits of comparative advantage in trading. This appeared in the Acton blog.
The overly simplistic view of trade to support comparative advantage is nothing but disingenuous. We should only note history to judge whether comparative advantage always works. We should note that when the U.S. started, it was told to follow a comparative advantage trade approach. The U.S. was told that Adam Smith promoted comparative advantage. And yet, the U.S. did the opposite. The U.S. used tariffs to allow certain industries to develop (see https://chomsky.info/20120811/ ). This gave time for U.S. to expand its talents rather than stay with the status quo. So if 3rd world nations followed the comparative advantage advice that the U.S. rejected during its beginning, those 3rd world nations can follow the road not traveled by the U.S. But in so doing, what are those nations trading?
The video presentation is overly simplistic. How can it not be when individual people are used to serve as metaphors for the economies of whole nations? And here, the issue isn't that a nation must choose between trading in ways that follow a comparative advantage approach or it becoming totally isolated. The issue is whether richer nations can force comparative advantage trade approaches on other nations which would only serve to keep those other nations less self-sufficient and more dependent on the richer nations. 3rd world nations should have the right to use tariffs to protect industries they want to develop. But such doesn't mean that all trade is cut off.
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To Devin Ryan and his blogpost that reports on the claims of Samuel Gregg on how to make America great again. The key point was that making America great again depends on increasing our nation’s economic growth primarily by cutting regulations. This appeared in the Acton Blog
There is either a paradox or contradiction presented here. On the one hand, America's greatness is measured solely by its economic output. On the other hand is the claim that economics is not being presented as an end in and of itself. Rather, It is a means to reducing poverty. This latter claim runs into problems. For only economic growth, spurred by decreasing regulations, is mentioned as our nation's saving grace in becoming "great again" and addressing poverty while nothing is said about other factors. Other factors include how our industries impact the environment or whether wealth disparity continues to grow in our nation. Could some of our problems with poverty be due to an unfair distribution of wealth? Martin Luther King Jr. thought so according to Tavis Smiley's biography of him. And what should we say about those businesses that rely on government assistance programs to subsidize their payrolls because they pay some of their employees poverty wages? Couldn't better regulations address that issue or would those businesses be eager to pay all of their employees higher wages if regulations weren't holding them back?
Many regulations deal with protecting the environment or workers or other stakeholders. Therefore, merely reducing regulations should be seen as an overly simplistic approach to what ails the economy. If the government decides to reduce regulations, will it act as a bean counter in doing so or will it give a detailed account of the regulations being cut and why they are being cut? This is an important question especially because with publicly owned companies, their major shareholders sometimes become like absentee landlords by how they demand higher and higher returns on their investments. Many times these demands cost workers their jobs and/or bypass safeguards for the environment.
It seems to me that the conservative approach to our political-economic system is that government should represent and serve business interests only while people who are not business owners should rely on business to take care of and protect them. This leaves people out of the democracy formula. It also leaves people vulnerable to those business interests that are better served by exploiting them or the environment. A simple economic indicator of whether people are being exploited is whether our wealth and income disparities continue to grow as regulations are being cut.
To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost quote challenging the claims that 97% of climate scientists see the relationship between see CO2 has increased or that climate change will lead to hardships. This appeared on Heidelblog
It is very unfortunate when Christian leaders take the side of business in discussing issues like climate change. The above quote on this blogpost without offering any opposing view is such an example is not just unfortunate, it can be irresponsible depending on how it is presented. We should note that prior to the French, Russian, and Spanish Revolutions, that the predominant branch of the Church in those countries supported those with wealth. And so now we come to climate change.
Below are a few links pointing to more than just polls taken about CO2 levels. The first one is a study surveys the literature on whether the climate is warming due to human activity. The overwhelming consensus is that it is true.
http://www.pnas.org/content/107/27/12107.full
We might also want to note joint statements of scientific organizations like the ones below:
1. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/292/5520/1261
2. http://dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/exec-office-other/climate-change-full.pdf
But we should note that with the above joint statements, concern is expressed over the results and the need to stabilize the rising CO2 levels in both the atmosphere and the oceans. There already are observable results of our current climate change. A few small islands in the Pacific have disappeared, low level areas in parts of the East Coast of the United States are experiencing and increase in non-weather related flooding, and the thawing of the permafrost in the Arctic which results in the release of methane gas, which is another greenhouse gas are some of the effects that are observable now. And below is a link to an unexpected result.
http://www.pnas.org/content/113/42/11649.full
In addition, we have a statement signed by a number of scientists regarding the lack of respect that the scientific study on climate change is receiving.
http://www.pacinst.org/app/uploads/2013/02/climate_statement3.pdf
One thing we should note about the article linked to above is that it provides a partial listing of the negative effects of the warming of the climate. These include:
1. Ocean acidification
2. Sea level rise
But what does all of that mean? According to the last article, it means the following:
The combination of these complex climate changes threatens coastal communities and cities, our food and water supplies, marine and freshwater ecosystems, forests, high mountain environments, and far more.
While no one can accurately predict what exactly will happen due to the warming of our climate, a number of models point negative consequences for a large number of people. And there is consensus on that point as well.
The article being cited is important to read. But so is the literature provided by scientific organizations let alone other individual scientists. In addition, we should note that one source cited by the article quoted from above about scientific views sometimes come from a non scientific source. Prof Lindzen, in an effort to challenge the claim that ocean acidification is an increasing concern, cites a report from the Frontier Center for Public Policy, and think tank group that favors neoliberal economics. There are other problems with some of the other things Lindzen said.
Though we can't look into the future clearly, there is enough evidence to cause much concern as well as motivation for changing how we live. And yet, it seems, that some in the Church side with those who don't want short-term profits for business to be threatened. So why do some religious authorities step out of their area of expertise to weigh in on these matters on the side of those serving mammon?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To Joe Carter and his blogpost critquing the prosperity gospel of people like Oral Roberts and others. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition website.
Being a graduate of ORU and having attended the university while Oral was president of the school, I can safely say that the above assessment of the prosperity gospel is a decent one. One thing that was left out was the Scripture passage often used by Oral and others to defend their emphasis on prosperity: 3 John vs 2 (see https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=3+John+2&version=NIV ).
We should also note that Oral looked at the prosperity part of his preaching as part of the stand standard gospel. Oral believe in what we would call the Gospel that says that we are sinners and are saved from our sins through faith in the work of God's only son, Jesus Christ. Perhaps his background of suffering from respiratory illness early in life caused him to seek an interpretation of God's Word that would prevent others from experiencing what he suffered.
But we should consider one other point here. Does the secular world have its own version of the prosperity gospel? That is does the secular world believe in and promote an economic ideology that promises great prosperity while sacrificing social responsibility & solidarity, human rights, and the environment? This is an important question for all of us religiously conservative American Christians to consider if we want to remain consistent in avoiding those beliefs that promise wealth despite the price others must pay.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
May 7
To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost that answer Stephen Fry’s blaming God for the problems in the world. This appeared in Heidelblog.
This is a very good article and its title gives the most appropriate answer to Stephen Fry's rant blaming God for the evil in the world. And yet, religiously conservative Christians balk at applying the title to our nation and the problems it faces because of its foreign, its economic system, and its domestic policies.
Such both brings and shows a disconnect with how the Scriptures describe the world. If the Scriptures define man as being depraved as they do, why are some of us religiously conservative Christians so defensive regarding American foreign policies as being sinful and producing sinful results? This is especially be true when we see the relationship between our foreign policies and the terrorist groups proliferating around the world is pointed out to them.
And when we look at the exploitation that is built into our Capitalist economic system, especially with today's neoliberal Capitalism, how can we not partially attribute many of our social and economic problems to that system? And when you add that domestic policies that favor the wealthy and hurt the vulnerable, again, how can we not partially fault the systems that our nation so deeply relies on?
The disconnect that exists for us religiously conservative Christians and we seeing significant faults in how America does things is that the line "it's our fault" is forbidden from being applied when it implicates our sacred cows. Our founding fathers, The Constitution, our prosperous way life especially in the suburbs, and our nation's domination over other nations would all be implicated in sin. And then when you add climate change to the mix, the admission of sin is too great a burden to bear because we enjoy so much of what we have.
Thus, the line "it's our fault" is partially said disingenuously and that is very obvious to many unbelievers. And because our message about sin is said disingenuously, many unbelievers don't see us as being credible when we talk about their sin.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
May 9
To Joe Carter and his blogpost containing a video praising the merits of comparative advantage in trading. This appeared in the Acton blog.
The overly simplistic view of trade to support comparative advantage is nothing but disingenuous. We should only note history to judge whether comparative advantage always works. We should note that when the U.S. started, it was told to follow a comparative advantage trade approach. The U.S. was told that Adam Smith promoted comparative advantage. And yet, the U.S. did the opposite. The U.S. used tariffs to allow certain industries to develop (see https://chomsky.info/20120811/ ). This gave time for U.S. to expand its talents rather than stay with the status quo. So if 3rd world nations followed the comparative advantage advice that the U.S. rejected during its beginning, those 3rd world nations can follow the road not traveled by the U.S. But in so doing, what are those nations trading?
The video presentation is overly simplistic. How can it not be when individual people are used to serve as metaphors for the economies of whole nations? And here, the issue isn't that a nation must choose between trading in ways that follow a comparative advantage approach or it becoming totally isolated. The issue is whether richer nations can force comparative advantage trade approaches on other nations which would only serve to keep those other nations less self-sufficient and more dependent on the richer nations. 3rd world nations should have the right to use tariffs to protect industries they want to develop. But such doesn't mean that all trade is cut off.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To Devin Ryan and his blogpost that reports on the claims of Samuel Gregg on how to make America great again. The key point was that making America great again depends on increasing our nation’s economic growth primarily by cutting regulations. This appeared in the Acton Blog
There is either a paradox or contradiction presented here. On the one hand, America's greatness is measured solely by its economic output. On the other hand is the claim that economics is not being presented as an end in and of itself. Rather, It is a means to reducing poverty. This latter claim runs into problems. For only economic growth, spurred by decreasing regulations, is mentioned as our nation's saving grace in becoming "great again" and addressing poverty while nothing is said about other factors. Other factors include how our industries impact the environment or whether wealth disparity continues to grow in our nation. Could some of our problems with poverty be due to an unfair distribution of wealth? Martin Luther King Jr. thought so according to Tavis Smiley's biography of him. And what should we say about those businesses that rely on government assistance programs to subsidize their payrolls because they pay some of their employees poverty wages? Couldn't better regulations address that issue or would those businesses be eager to pay all of their employees higher wages if regulations weren't holding them back?
Many regulations deal with protecting the environment or workers or other stakeholders. Therefore, merely reducing regulations should be seen as an overly simplistic approach to what ails the economy. If the government decides to reduce regulations, will it act as a bean counter in doing so or will it give a detailed account of the regulations being cut and why they are being cut? This is an important question especially because with publicly owned companies, their major shareholders sometimes become like absentee landlords by how they demand higher and higher returns on their investments. Many times these demands cost workers their jobs and/or bypass safeguards for the environment.
It seems to me that the conservative approach to our political-economic system is that government should represent and serve business interests only while people who are not business owners should rely on business to take care of and protect them. This leaves people out of the democracy formula. It also leaves people vulnerable to those business interests that are better served by exploiting them or the environment. A simple economic indicator of whether people are being exploited is whether our wealth and income disparities continue to grow as regulations are being cut.
Wednesday, May 3, 2017
Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For May 3, 2017
April 28
To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost quote from an article on the first things blog about whether there is a war on science and that challenged who was the real anti-science. Among those who were listed were those who call anti-scientific those who challenge what scientists are saying about a variety of subjects like climate change, abortion, and embryo research. This appeared in Heidelblog
The original article being responded to is at https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2017/04/the-real-anti-science
Below is my response to the article containing the above quote as it was posted in the Firstthings website
quite simply, if approximately 97% of scientists said that the bridge ahead was going to collapse while 3% said it would stand, would you drive your family across the bridge? That is approximately what was said in one of the signs on the march for science day.
Why say there is a war on science? Perhaps it's because despite what a vast majority of scientists say about climate change and man's contribution to it, the evidence is being ignored because of economic concerns. Those economic concerns have more to do with the immediate financial welfare of those with wealth.
Why say there is a war on science? Perhaps it's because the President wants slash funds to the EPA, an agency that bases its regulations and enforcement on what we know science is saying about our way of life. And that just doesn't have to do with climate change. We need to look at the effects of manmade products like GMOs and insecticides and see if what science has discovered so far tells us that we need to pass and enforce regulations to protect the public.
Why say there is a war on science? Perhaps it's because funds to help NASA study the climate and the NIH for medical research are facing funding cuts by the President's proposed budget.
Why say there is a war on science? Perhaps it is because of the funding cuts for education which will affect science education.
When over 90% of the scientists say that there is current problem with ramifications that lie on the horizon, it isn't anti-scientific to question what is being said. After all, according to the article above, 'science is truly never settled.' But if that is the real belief of people, then enacting policies based on current scientific understanding would never wait until 100% of the scientists agree. And yet, those who oppose regulations and polices that address climate change are demanding that no regulations and policies that address climate change should be enacted until the science on climate change is a settled matter. Why? Perhaps it is because those who oppose regulations and policies that address climate change are trying permanently block them because of their economic ideologies and financial concerns. And when the Church does that, it shows that it has yet to learn from history. For prior to the French, Russian, and Spanish Revolutions, the Church sided with wealth and power only to see that they had dishonored the Gospel after the revolutions succeeded.
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May 2
To Sarah Stanley and her blogpost that reported on an issue of Religion & Liberty that talked about cleansing the memory of Stalin as well as economic nationalism. This appeared in the Acton blog.
There is plenty to criticize Stalin on. And there are plenty of critics too from past Socialists who criticized Lenin to current ones like Mikhail Gorbachev.
As for global elites getting the boot. Unfortunately, domestic elites are not. And they are the same as global elites it's just that their sphere of control has been reduced. We should note that just because economic nationalism has given global elites the boot, it doesn't follow that the people of a nation can exercise economic self-rule. That is because domestic elites are still so influential at home.
The solution here isn't an all-or-nothing approach where elites rule or are kicked out. We need to get elites to stop practicing their economic apartheid and join the rest of us as equal partners in determining the economy of one's nation. Without this collaboration, a nation will be economically divided and there will forever be a battle of 2 sides wanting to rule over the other.
The real solution can only be found in expanding democracy to the workplace and reestablishing democracy in the public sphere.
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To Joe Carter and his blogpost on Trump’s performance in keeping first day promises he made during the campaign. This appeared in the Acton blog.
The first promise commented on shows the mindset of the President who brags about being a detailed person. The value of regulations depends not on raw numbers but on the specifics of each regulation. Do the regulations as a whole provide sufficient protection for all of the stakeholders? Making 2 for 1 bargains on regulations is a bean counting measure. When regulations are dropped that protect the environment for the sake of increasing short-term profits, where is the merit in keeping this bean counting promise? When financial regulations that prevent financial institutions from putting our economy at risk as it was when the collapse of 2008 occurred are dropped, where is the merit in keeping this bean counting promise? And when regulations that protect workers in terms of their safety, benefits, and pay are dropped, where is the merit in keeping this bean counting promise?
Instead of targeting specific regulations, Trump promised to rely on a bean counting general approach toward cutting regulations. At the same time, President Trump describes himself as a detailed person. At some point, we have to realize that his lack of awareness and/or honesty does significantly and negatively affect his presidency.
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To Christopher Morrissey and his blogpost that talks about The Benedict Option in light of the choice between nominalism and realism. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.
At some point, adopting pluralism is to allow for at least some degree or form of nominalism and realism as described above. What is often missed in these discussions is the following question: How will we Christians share society with others? Will we share society as equals and thus work to protect each group's equal status in society? Or will we attempt to become paternalists or worse and draw lines in the sand in an effort to save society from itself? If we pick the former, do we necessarily lose touch with God's reality? if we pick the latter, have we lost awareness for how our efforts to save society impact others?
Dreher's Benedict Option is based on the premise that since Christians have lost their privileged position in society, we must at least partially withdraw from society in order to regroup to save our own traditions and then hopefully to eventually return to prominence. Unfortunately, Dreher suffers from the lack of awareness that all who feel entitled to rule suffer.
The Church must decide to learn how to decide which battles it will fight and which ones it can let go regarding the direction of society and culture. And how the Church shares society with others always provides the general rules for deciding on these battles. In the past, the Church took the the paternalistic or stronger position in terms of how it would share society with others. The Church is now suffering both externally and internally for the control it has tried to exercise over those who do not belong to the Church. The question here becomes will the Church learn from its mistakes?
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To Bruce Frohnen and his blogpost on how Alexi de Tocqueville described how America could descend from democracy into a soft totalitarianism. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.
We might ask who wasn't the beneficiary of the American Democracy de Tocqueville observed? Could it possible be people of color? After all, didn't we have slavery so Blacks certainly weren't enjoying democracy? And weren't we also ethnically cleansing Native Americans from the land and so they weren't enjoying democracy. And what about women who could not vote and were not treated as equals in society? Were they enjoying democracy?
And if those were some of the people not enjoying democracy, who was enjoying it when de Tocqueville visited? We should note that de Tocqueville regarded British society as being superior to all others. This might help us understand the lack of racial awareness in his view of American democracy. And now that the subjugation of others is being more fully addressed today, shouldn't we be saying that American democracy has expanded from a racially and sexist based democracy to a fuller one? So why would Frohnen focus solely on the faults de Tocqueville noticed while seeming to disregard the alleviation of the faults he failed to notice?
Jeff Halper, an Israeli activist who protects the rights of Palestinians, made an important observation about democracy. He stated in his book An Israeli In Palestine that when a group defined by national identity, language, ethnicity, or religion takes control over a government employing democratic procedures in a diverse society, that such is not a democracy. Rather, it is an ethnocracy. We could call it a group totalitarianism recognizing that that could be a soft or hard totalitarianism. And as such, there is no real democracy especially for those who do not belong to the group in power. So just perhaps, America's descent into soft or hard totalitarianism didn't begin with the satisfying of appetites and materialistic comforts of recent times. Rather, America was already a soft or hard totalitarian nation when de Tocqueville visited. And perhaps he didn't notice because of his views on race.
To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost quote from an article on the first things blog about whether there is a war on science and that challenged who was the real anti-science. Among those who were listed were those who call anti-scientific those who challenge what scientists are saying about a variety of subjects like climate change, abortion, and embryo research. This appeared in Heidelblog
The original article being responded to is at https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2017/04/the-real-anti-science
Below is my response to the article containing the above quote as it was posted in the Firstthings website
quite simply, if approximately 97% of scientists said that the bridge ahead was going to collapse while 3% said it would stand, would you drive your family across the bridge? That is approximately what was said in one of the signs on the march for science day.
Why say there is a war on science? Perhaps it's because despite what a vast majority of scientists say about climate change and man's contribution to it, the evidence is being ignored because of economic concerns. Those economic concerns have more to do with the immediate financial welfare of those with wealth.
Why say there is a war on science? Perhaps it's because the President wants slash funds to the EPA, an agency that bases its regulations and enforcement on what we know science is saying about our way of life. And that just doesn't have to do with climate change. We need to look at the effects of manmade products like GMOs and insecticides and see if what science has discovered so far tells us that we need to pass and enforce regulations to protect the public.
Why say there is a war on science? Perhaps it's because funds to help NASA study the climate and the NIH for medical research are facing funding cuts by the President's proposed budget.
Why say there is a war on science? Perhaps it is because of the funding cuts for education which will affect science education.
When over 90% of the scientists say that there is current problem with ramifications that lie on the horizon, it isn't anti-scientific to question what is being said. After all, according to the article above, 'science is truly never settled.' But if that is the real belief of people, then enacting policies based on current scientific understanding would never wait until 100% of the scientists agree. And yet, those who oppose regulations and polices that address climate change are demanding that no regulations and policies that address climate change should be enacted until the science on climate change is a settled matter. Why? Perhaps it is because those who oppose regulations and policies that address climate change are trying permanently block them because of their economic ideologies and financial concerns. And when the Church does that, it shows that it has yet to learn from history. For prior to the French, Russian, and Spanish Revolutions, the Church sided with wealth and power only to see that they had dishonored the Gospel after the revolutions succeeded.
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May 2
To Sarah Stanley and her blogpost that reported on an issue of Religion & Liberty that talked about cleansing the memory of Stalin as well as economic nationalism. This appeared in the Acton blog.
There is plenty to criticize Stalin on. And there are plenty of critics too from past Socialists who criticized Lenin to current ones like Mikhail Gorbachev.
As for global elites getting the boot. Unfortunately, domestic elites are not. And they are the same as global elites it's just that their sphere of control has been reduced. We should note that just because economic nationalism has given global elites the boot, it doesn't follow that the people of a nation can exercise economic self-rule. That is because domestic elites are still so influential at home.
The solution here isn't an all-or-nothing approach where elites rule or are kicked out. We need to get elites to stop practicing their economic apartheid and join the rest of us as equal partners in determining the economy of one's nation. Without this collaboration, a nation will be economically divided and there will forever be a battle of 2 sides wanting to rule over the other.
The real solution can only be found in expanding democracy to the workplace and reestablishing democracy in the public sphere.
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To Joe Carter and his blogpost on Trump’s performance in keeping first day promises he made during the campaign. This appeared in the Acton blog.
The first promise commented on shows the mindset of the President who brags about being a detailed person. The value of regulations depends not on raw numbers but on the specifics of each regulation. Do the regulations as a whole provide sufficient protection for all of the stakeholders? Making 2 for 1 bargains on regulations is a bean counting measure. When regulations are dropped that protect the environment for the sake of increasing short-term profits, where is the merit in keeping this bean counting promise? When financial regulations that prevent financial institutions from putting our economy at risk as it was when the collapse of 2008 occurred are dropped, where is the merit in keeping this bean counting promise? And when regulations that protect workers in terms of their safety, benefits, and pay are dropped, where is the merit in keeping this bean counting promise?
Instead of targeting specific regulations, Trump promised to rely on a bean counting general approach toward cutting regulations. At the same time, President Trump describes himself as a detailed person. At some point, we have to realize that his lack of awareness and/or honesty does significantly and negatively affect his presidency.
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To Christopher Morrissey and his blogpost that talks about The Benedict Option in light of the choice between nominalism and realism. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.
At some point, adopting pluralism is to allow for at least some degree or form of nominalism and realism as described above. What is often missed in these discussions is the following question: How will we Christians share society with others? Will we share society as equals and thus work to protect each group's equal status in society? Or will we attempt to become paternalists or worse and draw lines in the sand in an effort to save society from itself? If we pick the former, do we necessarily lose touch with God's reality? if we pick the latter, have we lost awareness for how our efforts to save society impact others?
Dreher's Benedict Option is based on the premise that since Christians have lost their privileged position in society, we must at least partially withdraw from society in order to regroup to save our own traditions and then hopefully to eventually return to prominence. Unfortunately, Dreher suffers from the lack of awareness that all who feel entitled to rule suffer.
The Church must decide to learn how to decide which battles it will fight and which ones it can let go regarding the direction of society and culture. And how the Church shares society with others always provides the general rules for deciding on these battles. In the past, the Church took the the paternalistic or stronger position in terms of how it would share society with others. The Church is now suffering both externally and internally for the control it has tried to exercise over those who do not belong to the Church. The question here becomes will the Church learn from its mistakes?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To Bruce Frohnen and his blogpost on how Alexi de Tocqueville described how America could descend from democracy into a soft totalitarianism. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.
We might ask who wasn't the beneficiary of the American Democracy de Tocqueville observed? Could it possible be people of color? After all, didn't we have slavery so Blacks certainly weren't enjoying democracy? And weren't we also ethnically cleansing Native Americans from the land and so they weren't enjoying democracy. And what about women who could not vote and were not treated as equals in society? Were they enjoying democracy?
And if those were some of the people not enjoying democracy, who was enjoying it when de Tocqueville visited? We should note that de Tocqueville regarded British society as being superior to all others. This might help us understand the lack of racial awareness in his view of American democracy. And now that the subjugation of others is being more fully addressed today, shouldn't we be saying that American democracy has expanded from a racially and sexist based democracy to a fuller one? So why would Frohnen focus solely on the faults de Tocqueville noticed while seeming to disregard the alleviation of the faults he failed to notice?
Jeff Halper, an Israeli activist who protects the rights of Palestinians, made an important observation about democracy. He stated in his book An Israeli In Palestine that when a group defined by national identity, language, ethnicity, or religion takes control over a government employing democratic procedures in a diverse society, that such is not a democracy. Rather, it is an ethnocracy. We could call it a group totalitarianism recognizing that that could be a soft or hard totalitarianism. And as such, there is no real democracy especially for those who do not belong to the group in power. So just perhaps, America's descent into soft or hard totalitarianism didn't begin with the satisfying of appetites and materialistic comforts of recent times. Rather, America was already a soft or hard totalitarian nation when de Tocqueville visited. And perhaps he didn't notice because of his views on race.
Wednesday, December 7, 2016
Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For December 7, 2016
Nov 30
To Mike Edmonson and his blogpost on Evangelicalism’s 4 unique perspectives on politics. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition website
Christianity does not revolve around our own uniqueness, it revolves around the uniqueness of Christ and the Gospel. To focus on our own uniqueness merely imitates those from any other group where tribalism is strong. To show this, all we need to consider is the concept of American Exceptionalism and how people from other nations have also seen their own nations as being exceptional.
Another way of showing that our uniqueness is not unique is to look at each of the 4 perspectives on politics and show that they are not unique. Take the first perspective, which is our governmental perspective, for example:
Sorry but Howard Zinn made an activist career of putting elections and their leaders in their place. Anarchism and bottom-up forms of Socialism also regard elections as not being ultimate.
On the other hand, the belief that elections are ultimate in that we depend too much on our elected leaders to manage the government while we tend to our own business is a mark of embracing an authoritarian relationship with the government. And guess which institution is one of the greatest teachers on authoritarianism is. It is the Church where most of our relationships with others and God use authority figures as a center part of each relationship.
Take the second perspective, which is our moral perspective, as another example:
Hate to bust Edmondson's bubble here but Socialists have him beat. For Socialists are not just concerned for the well-being of Christian migrant workers and refugees, they are concerned for all migrant workers and refugees. What Edomondson seems unaware of is that he is replacing self-interest with tribal interest. And what group, where tribalism is present, is not concerned with all of its members?
As for the third perspective which is our perspective on pain:
Here we need to compare how those in a Christian nation, especially Christians who tend to be politically conservative, with those from other nations. Until its Civil War, Syria was one of the leading nations in caring for refugees. Ironically here, most of the refugees whom Syrians took care of became refugees as a result of America's invasion of Iraq. Currently Jordan is one of the world's leaders in taking in and caring for refugees. As for Christian America, we only need to look at its political conservatives, who have more than their fair share of religiously conservative Christians, and their position on taking in refugees. That is because their position is not very good and this is especially evident by the support conservative Christians gave to Donald Trump in the election. There is no need here to mention Trump's views on immigration or the Republican Party's opposition to societal safety nets.
As for the forth perspective, if the beliefs expressed there were so strongly held, why did the majority of religiously conservative Christians vote for a candidate like Donald Trump? Issues like controlling immigration, changing the Supreme Court, and wanting to make America great again were reasons that greatly influence Christian voters.
Again, pointing our uniqueness as a way of proving Christianity to either ourselves or others is problematic. It is flawed because as people, we are not always as unique as we perceive ourselves to be or should be. And once our lack of uniqueness is outed, our credibility as witnesses for Christ is greatly damaged.
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To Jason Baxter and his blogpost about what the humanities can contribute to the modern world in the light of how our politicians are trying to make education more of a tech school experience. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.
Every time I read a conservative reference to the founding fathers which describes them as trying to limit government's power, I wonder if such conservatives have heard of decontextualization. That is because The Constitution was written with the intention of strengthening government power so that the Federal government could, in the future, better respond future insurrections. And the point of being better prepared to handle future insurrections was to maintain the status quo for the sake of the bondholders and the landowners and slaveholders where wealth was consolidated at that time. The then current insurrection that prompted the writing of that document was Shays Rebellion. And all one has to do to realize that The Constitution was written to strengthen the federal government's power is to look up all of the references made to the militia. For the militia was to be armed and trained with funds from Congress and was to be under the command of the President. And one of the state purposes of the militia was to put down insurrections.
Furthermore, with the powers granted to the Senate, we should note how Senators originally received their office. They were appointed by their respective state legislators. That, along with their term in office, made Senators pretty much immune to popular opinion and with good reason. In arguing for the length of a Senator's term, it was Madison who said that the purpose of government was to 'protect the minority of the opulent from the majority.'
Along with the fact that only White, male, property owners could vote when The Constitution was ratified, we see a government that is as not limited as conservatives want to portray it. In fact, since The Constitution was written to preserve the status quo for the sake of America's own elites, Baxter's statement that Rubio and Walker are closer to Clinton than to our nation's founding fathers is a bit more problematic than Baxter realizes. For in that Walker, Rubio, and Clinton are striving to preserve a status quo that serves those with wealth and power, they are all in fact following in the footsteps of the majority of those who wrote The Constitution.
Thus, their, that is Walker, Rubio, and Clinton, wanting education to serve the welfare of the money-interests is in line with the intentions of our founding fathers. And so there is a certain irony when Baxter uses our nation's founding fathers to challenge the current deemphasis on the humanities in education. Baxter is completely correct in challenging the current emphasis on technology. He just does so from the wrong basis.
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Dec 3
To Greg Forster and his blogpost that describes both America’s signs of death and its signs for hope. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition website.
I heartily agree with much, though not all, of the description of the problem. The solution, however, is problematic. But there is also a problem with the description of the problem. The problem with the description of the problem is that it doesn't tie together the similarities between what Hillary was offering and what Trump was offering. Those similarities could be described with two labels: neoliberalism and neoconservatism. Yes, their versions of both were different, but the general direction was the same. With neoliberalism, both wanted to cut big businesses' social responsibilities and give them free reign in society. Hillary wanted to do that on the global scene with open markets and free trade; Trump wanted to do that on the domestic scene by reducing taxes and regulations. This somewhat illustrates why their versions of neoliberalism are different. While the Repubs want an express train to corporate rule, the Dems want a local train that offers amenities. But in the end, they destination is the same. After all, how different is Trump's promise to reduce regulations from trade agreements like the TPP that allow corporations to sue governments for any financial losses incurred by the laws a government passes? And yet, open markets would rely on trade agreements like the TPP. And both Hilary and Trump have expressed the same concern over these agreements: it is American jobs not this corporate control. Plus, we also have to realize that with the presence of foreign investors, we really don't have any true American big businesses anymore
As for their shared neoconservative leanings, the only real difference between Hillary's and Trump's view of America's leadership in the world is that Trump wants America's allies to pay protection money for its military services and presence. Plus we also have to ask ourselves why a free world needs a leader? For if the free world has a leader, is it truly free?
Despite missing their similarities, the identification of battle between technocrats vs tribalists has much merit. But we also have to realize that patriotism is an exercise in tribalism as well. So if we are going to complain about Trump's economic nationalism, which is something not necessarily mentioned here, or his other forms of tribalism we have to complain about our military tribalism as expressed in patriotism as well. And we need to accurately define tribalism in the context of the world we live in. Tribalism is when group loyalty is so high that it trumps, no pun intended, any commitment to morals and absolute values. And tribalism can be based on what's listed above as well as ideology and economic class. Thus, we could say that Hillary's favoring of technocrats was a form of tribalism.
The solution resented is problematic for two reasons. First, the Church has, since the time of Constantine, generally stood with and supported wealth and power. Yes, there have been some intramural battles between wealth and power where the Church was split, but it still has, for the most part, stood with wealth and power. This was true prior to the French, Spanish, and Russian Revolutions as well as many other modern revolutions. It is most certainly true for the conservative Church in modern America. After all, the conservative Church in modern America was slow to even recognize our nation's problem with racism. And it wasn't the conservative Church that took the lead in battling racism. We should note that King was no conservative Christian theologian. The conservative Church in America, under the banner of patriotism, has been even slower in recognizing the immorality of many of America's wars. And where does the conservative Church stand in relation to unions and workers' relationship with employers? The conservative Church predominantly supports small gov't and low taxes and few regulations and all of that favors those with wealth. And the conservative Church is not a big supporter of social safety nets because it believes that the Church should be in charge of providing relief and help, not the government.
Or we could go back to what was written in a report called The Crisis of Democracy where the Church is listed, along with the family, schools, and the military as institutions whose job was to teach people how to fit into society and take orders from those with authority. Here it would be helpful to note that that report was the liberal view of the role of the Church which was in response to the radical exercises of democracy during the 1960s. The The Crisis of Democracy called those radical exercises in democracy an 'excess of democracy.'
But it isn't just our history that makes the proposed solution problematic. What the above solution proposes is that the Church must have a place of supremacy in society that is based on the freedom of religion. And this is done by having society look to the Church for its temporal salvation. In such a scheme, where does the LGBT community fit in? And how about those whose suffering is prolonged by the Church's slowness in recognizing their problems just like the conservative Church was slow in recognizing our nation's problem with racism? And how can we call for a public discipleship while the Church shares society with others as equals? And if it doesn't share society with others as equals, then what other position than a place of supremacy does the Church want in society?
Yes, we need to share the Gospel to all. But we have to both acknowledge our past failures and look at how we can share society with all sorts of unbelievers as equals so that if a large number of people become converted, they will not be a part of marginalizing some group like the Church has for all America's history.
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Dec 4
To Kyle Hanby and his blogpost that cites an article by Samuel Gregg which claims that protectionism is bad for us in the long run. This appears in the Acton blog.
Link for the article cited: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2016/1201/Can-economic-nationalism-keep-more-jobs-in-US
Just as location is everything in real estate, so labels are in persuasive articles.The 'economic nationalism' and 'free trade' labels serve as such examples. We should note that economic nationalism can mean economic self-rule. We should also note that if free trade is not popularly accepted, it becomes forced trade with the free part describing how those who benefit the most experience it.
We should also note that economic globalism has produced more than the alleged effect of lifting more people out abject poverty. It has caused a loss of many manufacturing and even service jobs in America causing a glut of people applying for low skilled labor jobs. That glut means less in wages for many people which is why over a billion dollars goes into subsidizing corporate payrolls via government assistance for the working poor. We should also note that economic globalization has involved the trafficking of people and to sweatshop factories. In addition, in the two nations that have allegedly seen the biggest decrease in poverty, which are China and India, we have seen slight to significant increases in slavery. In the mean time, Jeff Halper notes that the wealth disparity between nations has sharply increased.
Certainly any kind of self-rule that is based in some kind of tribalism is not good for anyone. But the reliance on the rule of economic elites as opposed to self-rule produces even worse results in the long run. For the rule of economic elites which we see in today's economic globalism not only increases wealth disparity in and between nations, in many of the nations which have embraced this kind of globalism, it destroys democracies and all of that occurs for the love of wealth. So why is a Christian blog encouraging a system that revolves around the love of wealth and the weakening of national sovereignty?
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Dec 6
To Joe Carter and his blogpost on profits, wealth, and well-defined property rights. This appeared in the Acton blog.
We should first note that the Scriptures don't label money as being intrinsically evil; but they do call the love money the 'root of all kinds of evil.'
But second, what is said above about property rights is pretty much contradicted by Martin Luther King Jr. when he spoke against the Vietnam War:
So while well-defined property rights are a key to the common good according to the article above, King states that while property rights and other things are more important than people, then the triplets of 'racism, materialism, and militarism' will forever plague us. We should note that well-defined property rights does not imply just property rights. A question that would be involved in determining just property rights would be this: Did all of James Madison's wealth belong to him seeing that much of it was the product of slave labor? We might ask the same when it comes to corporations that pay poverty wages to workers here and/or use workers from sweatshop factories abroad. We might also ask, why, if there is this economy of mutuality, do we have a growing wealth disparity within many nations as well as between nations?
To Mike Edmonson and his blogpost on Evangelicalism’s 4 unique perspectives on politics. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition website
Christianity does not revolve around our own uniqueness, it revolves around the uniqueness of Christ and the Gospel. To focus on our own uniqueness merely imitates those from any other group where tribalism is strong. To show this, all we need to consider is the concept of American Exceptionalism and how people from other nations have also seen their own nations as being exceptional.
Another way of showing that our uniqueness is not unique is to look at each of the 4 perspectives on politics and show that they are not unique. Take the first perspective, which is our governmental perspective, for example:
Although elections are important, as believers we uniquely understand that elections are not ultimate.
Sorry but Howard Zinn made an activist career of putting elections and their leaders in their place. Anarchism and bottom-up forms of Socialism also regard elections as not being ultimate.
On the other hand, the belief that elections are ultimate in that we depend too much on our elected leaders to manage the government while we tend to our own business is a mark of embracing an authoritarian relationship with the government. And guess which institution is one of the greatest teachers on authoritarianism is. It is the Church where most of our relationships with others and God use authority figures as a center part of each relationship.
Take the second perspective, which is our moral perspective, as another example:
Wealthy business-owning American citizens baptized in Christ, for example, must deeply consider the practical wellbeing of the undocumented migrant worker and refugee also baptized in Christ. Christian civil engagement is not fundamentally self-interested.
Hate to bust Edmondson's bubble here but Socialists have him beat. For Socialists are not just concerned for the well-being of Christian migrant workers and refugees, they are concerned for all migrant workers and refugees. What Edomondson seems unaware of is that he is replacing self-interest with tribal interest. And what group, where tribalism is present, is not concerned with all of its members?
As for the third perspective which is our perspective on pain:
One of the most significant distinctions we have as God’s people is our compassion for the distressed. Deuteronomy 10:18 says God “executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing” (see also Exod. 22:22–23; Deut. 27:19; 2 Chron. 19:7; Ps. 68:5; and Ps. 146:9). Throughout Scripture, the Lord makes himself known through his practical care and concern for the most vulnerable and distressed
Here we need to compare how those in a Christian nation, especially Christians who tend to be politically conservative, with those from other nations. Until its Civil War, Syria was one of the leading nations in caring for refugees. Ironically here, most of the refugees whom Syrians took care of became refugees as a result of America's invasion of Iraq. Currently Jordan is one of the world's leaders in taking in and caring for refugees. As for Christian America, we only need to look at its political conservatives, who have more than their fair share of religiously conservative Christians, and their position on taking in refugees. That is because their position is not very good and this is especially evident by the support conservative Christians gave to Donald Trump in the election. There is no need here to mention Trump's views on immigration or the Republican Party's opposition to societal safety nets.
As for the forth perspective, if the beliefs expressed there were so strongly held, why did the majority of religiously conservative Christians vote for a candidate like Donald Trump? Issues like controlling immigration, changing the Supreme Court, and wanting to make America great again were reasons that greatly influence Christian voters.
Again, pointing our uniqueness as a way of proving Christianity to either ourselves or others is problematic. It is flawed because as people, we are not always as unique as we perceive ourselves to be or should be. And once our lack of uniqueness is outed, our credibility as witnesses for Christ is greatly damaged.
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To Jason Baxter and his blogpost about what the humanities can contribute to the modern world in the light of how our politicians are trying to make education more of a tech school experience. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.
Every time I read a conservative reference to the founding fathers which describes them as trying to limit government's power, I wonder if such conservatives have heard of decontextualization. That is because The Constitution was written with the intention of strengthening government power so that the Federal government could, in the future, better respond future insurrections. And the point of being better prepared to handle future insurrections was to maintain the status quo for the sake of the bondholders and the landowners and slaveholders where wealth was consolidated at that time. The then current insurrection that prompted the writing of that document was Shays Rebellion. And all one has to do to realize that The Constitution was written to strengthen the federal government's power is to look up all of the references made to the militia. For the militia was to be armed and trained with funds from Congress and was to be under the command of the President. And one of the state purposes of the militia was to put down insurrections.
Furthermore, with the powers granted to the Senate, we should note how Senators originally received their office. They were appointed by their respective state legislators. That, along with their term in office, made Senators pretty much immune to popular opinion and with good reason. In arguing for the length of a Senator's term, it was Madison who said that the purpose of government was to 'protect the minority of the opulent from the majority.'
Along with the fact that only White, male, property owners could vote when The Constitution was ratified, we see a government that is as not limited as conservatives want to portray it. In fact, since The Constitution was written to preserve the status quo for the sake of America's own elites, Baxter's statement that Rubio and Walker are closer to Clinton than to our nation's founding fathers is a bit more problematic than Baxter realizes. For in that Walker, Rubio, and Clinton are striving to preserve a status quo that serves those with wealth and power, they are all in fact following in the footsteps of the majority of those who wrote The Constitution.
Thus, their, that is Walker, Rubio, and Clinton, wanting education to serve the welfare of the money-interests is in line with the intentions of our founding fathers. And so there is a certain irony when Baxter uses our nation's founding fathers to challenge the current deemphasis on the humanities in education. Baxter is completely correct in challenging the current emphasis on technology. He just does so from the wrong basis.
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Dec 3
To Greg Forster and his blogpost that describes both America’s signs of death and its signs for hope. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition website.
I heartily agree with much, though not all, of the description of the problem. The solution, however, is problematic. But there is also a problem with the description of the problem. The problem with the description of the problem is that it doesn't tie together the similarities between what Hillary was offering and what Trump was offering. Those similarities could be described with two labels: neoliberalism and neoconservatism. Yes, their versions of both were different, but the general direction was the same. With neoliberalism, both wanted to cut big businesses' social responsibilities and give them free reign in society. Hillary wanted to do that on the global scene with open markets and free trade; Trump wanted to do that on the domestic scene by reducing taxes and regulations. This somewhat illustrates why their versions of neoliberalism are different. While the Repubs want an express train to corporate rule, the Dems want a local train that offers amenities. But in the end, they destination is the same. After all, how different is Trump's promise to reduce regulations from trade agreements like the TPP that allow corporations to sue governments for any financial losses incurred by the laws a government passes? And yet, open markets would rely on trade agreements like the TPP. And both Hilary and Trump have expressed the same concern over these agreements: it is American jobs not this corporate control. Plus, we also have to realize that with the presence of foreign investors, we really don't have any true American big businesses anymore
As for their shared neoconservative leanings, the only real difference between Hillary's and Trump's view of America's leadership in the world is that Trump wants America's allies to pay protection money for its military services and presence. Plus we also have to ask ourselves why a free world needs a leader? For if the free world has a leader, is it truly free?
Despite missing their similarities, the identification of battle between technocrats vs tribalists has much merit. But we also have to realize that patriotism is an exercise in tribalism as well. So if we are going to complain about Trump's economic nationalism, which is something not necessarily mentioned here, or his other forms of tribalism we have to complain about our military tribalism as expressed in patriotism as well. And we need to accurately define tribalism in the context of the world we live in. Tribalism is when group loyalty is so high that it trumps, no pun intended, any commitment to morals and absolute values. And tribalism can be based on what's listed above as well as ideology and economic class. Thus, we could say that Hillary's favoring of technocrats was a form of tribalism.
The solution resented is problematic for two reasons. First, the Church has, since the time of Constantine, generally stood with and supported wealth and power. Yes, there have been some intramural battles between wealth and power where the Church was split, but it still has, for the most part, stood with wealth and power. This was true prior to the French, Spanish, and Russian Revolutions as well as many other modern revolutions. It is most certainly true for the conservative Church in modern America. After all, the conservative Church in modern America was slow to even recognize our nation's problem with racism. And it wasn't the conservative Church that took the lead in battling racism. We should note that King was no conservative Christian theologian. The conservative Church in America, under the banner of patriotism, has been even slower in recognizing the immorality of many of America's wars. And where does the conservative Church stand in relation to unions and workers' relationship with employers? The conservative Church predominantly supports small gov't and low taxes and few regulations and all of that favors those with wealth. And the conservative Church is not a big supporter of social safety nets because it believes that the Church should be in charge of providing relief and help, not the government.
Or we could go back to what was written in a report called The Crisis of Democracy where the Church is listed, along with the family, schools, and the military as institutions whose job was to teach people how to fit into society and take orders from those with authority. Here it would be helpful to note that that report was the liberal view of the role of the Church which was in response to the radical exercises of democracy during the 1960s. The The Crisis of Democracy called those radical exercises in democracy an 'excess of democracy.'
But it isn't just our history that makes the proposed solution problematic. What the above solution proposes is that the Church must have a place of supremacy in society that is based on the freedom of religion. And this is done by having society look to the Church for its temporal salvation. In such a scheme, where does the LGBT community fit in? And how about those whose suffering is prolonged by the Church's slowness in recognizing their problems just like the conservative Church was slow in recognizing our nation's problem with racism? And how can we call for a public discipleship while the Church shares society with others as equals? And if it doesn't share society with others as equals, then what other position than a place of supremacy does the Church want in society?
Yes, we need to share the Gospel to all. But we have to both acknowledge our past failures and look at how we can share society with all sorts of unbelievers as equals so that if a large number of people become converted, they will not be a part of marginalizing some group like the Church has for all America's history.
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Dec 4
To Kyle Hanby and his blogpost that cites an article by Samuel Gregg which claims that protectionism is bad for us in the long run. This appears in the Acton blog.
Link for the article cited: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2016/1201/Can-economic-nationalism-keep-more-jobs-in-US
Just as location is everything in real estate, so labels are in persuasive articles.The 'economic nationalism' and 'free trade' labels serve as such examples. We should note that economic nationalism can mean economic self-rule. We should also note that if free trade is not popularly accepted, it becomes forced trade with the free part describing how those who benefit the most experience it.
We should also note that economic globalism has produced more than the alleged effect of lifting more people out abject poverty. It has caused a loss of many manufacturing and even service jobs in America causing a glut of people applying for low skilled labor jobs. That glut means less in wages for many people which is why over a billion dollars goes into subsidizing corporate payrolls via government assistance for the working poor. We should also note that economic globalization has involved the trafficking of people and to sweatshop factories. In addition, in the two nations that have allegedly seen the biggest decrease in poverty, which are China and India, we have seen slight to significant increases in slavery. In the mean time, Jeff Halper notes that the wealth disparity between nations has sharply increased.
Certainly any kind of self-rule that is based in some kind of tribalism is not good for anyone. But the reliance on the rule of economic elites as opposed to self-rule produces even worse results in the long run. For the rule of economic elites which we see in today's economic globalism not only increases wealth disparity in and between nations, in many of the nations which have embraced this kind of globalism, it destroys democracies and all of that occurs for the love of wealth. So why is a Christian blog encouraging a system that revolves around the love of wealth and the weakening of national sovereignty?
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Dec 6
To Joe Carter and his blogpost on profits, wealth, and well-defined property rights. This appeared in the Acton blog.
We should first note that the Scriptures don't label money as being intrinsically evil; but they do call the love money the 'root of all kinds of evil.'
But second, what is said above about property rights is pretty much contradicted by Martin Luther King Jr. when he spoke against the Vietnam War:
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 while well-defined property rights are a key to the common good according to the article above, King states that while property rights and other things are more important than people, then the triplets of 'racism, materialism, and militarism' will forever plague us. We should note that well-defined property rights does not imply just property rights. A question that would be involved in determining just property rights would be this: Did all of James Madison's wealth belong to him seeing that much of it was the product of slave labor? We might ask the same when it comes to corporations that pay poverty wages to workers here and/or use workers from sweatshop factories abroad. We might also ask, why, if there is this economy of mutuality, do we have a growing wealth disparity within many nations as well as between nations?
Wednesday, July 27, 2016
Comments Which Conservative Block From Their Blogs For July 27, 2016
July 20
To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost calling for an end to the alliance between the Presbyterian and Reformed denominations and the Republican Party especially when it comes to praying at the convention. This appeared in Heidelblog.
I agree with much of what is written here, but I have a question. Should we also do away with the alliance between religiously conservative Christianity, including those who are Reformed, and conservative political ideology? That idea certainly doesn't prohibit Reformed Christians from holding to politically conservative ideas. But the idea does say that Reformed Christians can also hold to non conservative ideas and ideologies as well.
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July 23
To Denny Burk and his blogpost on whether Trump is on the side of social conservatives. This appeared in Denny Burk’s blog.
I think what is worse than believing that Trump is Christian is to believe that Social Conservatism is Christian. Yes, it has Christian elements such as opposing abortion. But it is also two-faced in that it portrays itself as being for religious liberty while opposing same-sex marriage and promoting school prayer.
In addition, it takes an unbalanced view on the 2nd Amendment and its interpretation of that amendment decontextualizes the right to bear arms. The emphasis on strong national defense ignores America's imperialism and becomes very presumptive of America's role in the world.
In addition, in the name of free markets, social conservatism has advocated for the cutting of social responsibilities for businesses.
What could be observed here is that for most issues, social conservatism aligns itself with business interests whether it is with the interests of weapons manufacturers and the military industrial complex to the reduction of welfare obligations and the denial of business's fault in the lack of economic opportunities available for certain people.
Yes, I understand why some religiously conservative Christians have bought into social conservatism. But what is both troubling and puzzling is the insistence by some that social conservatism is Christian and that those ideologies and groups to the left are anti-Christian.
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July 25
To Joe Carter and his blogpost that contains a video presentation on economics by South Korean Economist Ha-joon Chang. This appeared in the Acton blog.
The video here is a welcomed change from the usual presentations on economics. That the presenter stated we should look valid points in the nine major economic theories puts Economics into the science category in which it belongs. Economics is, after all, a behavioral science. And the problem some people have when listening to any other theory but their own is that they often speak and act as if economics is a natural science. And even in natural science, we have had changing approaches to studying the physical world. In addition, the presenter talked about topics that some schools of economics includes and others do not such as personal identity, happiness, and democracy. We could add environmental impact as a topic that should be included in the study of economics but is most often not.
Finally, that this person invites people to form their own economic views and be willing to challenge the experts is partially taught by Marx with his proletariat dictatorship. Only because Marx viewed the proletariat as having a monopoly on truth and values while seeing the bourgeoisie having a monopoly on selfishness and sin, he was only partially correct. Neither the proletariat nor the bourgeoisie have a monopoly on either virtue or vice.
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To Kyle Hanby and his blogpost that describes protectionism as being harmful. This appeared on the Acton blog.
What this article seems to ignore is that the push for free trade on nations that are trying to develop their economies or certain sectors of it is from nations that used protectionism to develop their own economies. Ha-Joon Chang, an economist whose video presentation on why anyone could have valid insights into economics which was the focal point of a Joe Carter blogpost on the Acton blog notes the following (see https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/162/27898.html ):
He then goes on to list and describe areas in which both the Great Britain and the US used protectionism to build their economies. He mentions how Britain used protectionism to develop its wool manufacturing, for example, and also for corn. Other industries also benefited from protectionism. According to Chang, Britain exceeded its European neighbors in using protectionism. Likewise, he notes that the US employed one of the highest tariffs perhaps more than any other nation from 1830 to around 1945. In addition, the oceans themselves became natural tools of protectionism due to the cost of shipping. He mentions other parts of protectionism in the US which are quite interesting.
Today, the forcing of free trade on undeveloped nations by developing nations is really forced trade where fledgling industries and business from these nations are forced to compete with well established industries and businesses from developed nations. The result is that too many of the fledgling industries and businesses fail thus making nations with developing economies subservient to the demands of developed nations. But also, forcing free trade on developing nations robs the developing nations of the same mechanisms to develop used by many of today's established nations.
I'm afraid that the view of protectionism described above is that is both economically myopic and historically blind.
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July 26
To Bruce Frohnen and his blogpost about how college is a place full of liberal indoctrination of students. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.
Having taught at state schools, my experiences do not match those of Frohnen. Conservatism was well represented on campus by the number of conservative faculty members. Free speech was respected provided that it was respectful. And though while I started my career as a political conservative and eventually turned out to be an actual political leftist, as opposed to a liberal, but with conservative religious beliefs, I felt the scorn from both sides.
The conservative-non conservative faculty ratio was, in my teaching experience, highly affected by major in which a faculty member taught. Engineers and business teachers tend to be strongly conservative though there were some exceptions. The majors I taught in contained a mixed bag of conservatives and non conservatives.
Considering that Frohnen seems to be offended by the presence of liberals and leftists, whom he seems unable to distinguish, his portrayal of Zinn's claim of bias misses the point of the claim. The point of his claim is that in history, one cannot escape being biased and it does come out in the selection of material one thinks is important. Thus, Zinn's admission is one of occupational honesty rather than deliberateness and prejudice.
But the biggest objection to college by my former colleagues has not been touched on in this article. Our main objection is that college has merely become just another business who mission is to create more cogs for the system. Why college is a business bothered us is because students became customers and consumers rather than people who were in search of an education. And as customers and consumers, they also became merely numbers for the sake of the profitability of the school. And thus lower admission standards were needed to garner enough customers and thus we had too many kids who were unprepared for college in all sorts of ways and who blamed faculty for their own lack of preparation. Such is the biggest problem the schools I taught in were displaying.
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To Joe Carter and his blogpost video where John Norberg claims that when we buy goods from China, we are feeding ourselves because much of that money goes to workers who contributed to those good here. This appeared in the Acton blog.
No, contrary to the claims made in the video, trade with nations like China and Mexico where more money leave the nation than comes in is not feeding us. And no, it is not necessarily the nations with which we have trade deficits which are killing us, it is the corporations and their investors that are killing us. For much of the money that goes into buying products overseas just doesn't go to the workers, some of whom are working in sweatshop conditions in other nations, it goes to investors. And it is investors, especially the more wealthy ones, around whom our nation's economy is revolving. In addition, the primary labor force for many of the products we buy as a result of trade are not workers from the US.
So while the video answers Trump's concerns, it neglects to mention the concerns of those on the Left. But the speaker makes one valid point, the trade does feed us. For Reaganomics tells us that when we enrich the rich, they feed us. However, what is not mentioned is that they feed us table scraps of both food and freedom.
To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost calling for an end to the alliance between the Presbyterian and Reformed denominations and the Republican Party especially when it comes to praying at the convention. This appeared in Heidelblog.
I agree with much of what is written here, but I have a question. Should we also do away with the alliance between religiously conservative Christianity, including those who are Reformed, and conservative political ideology? That idea certainly doesn't prohibit Reformed Christians from holding to politically conservative ideas. But the idea does say that Reformed Christians can also hold to non conservative ideas and ideologies as well.
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July 23
To Denny Burk and his blogpost on whether Trump is on the side of social conservatives. This appeared in Denny Burk’s blog.
I think what is worse than believing that Trump is Christian is to believe that Social Conservatism is Christian. Yes, it has Christian elements such as opposing abortion. But it is also two-faced in that it portrays itself as being for religious liberty while opposing same-sex marriage and promoting school prayer.
In addition, it takes an unbalanced view on the 2nd Amendment and its interpretation of that amendment decontextualizes the right to bear arms. The emphasis on strong national defense ignores America's imperialism and becomes very presumptive of America's role in the world.
In addition, in the name of free markets, social conservatism has advocated for the cutting of social responsibilities for businesses.
What could be observed here is that for most issues, social conservatism aligns itself with business interests whether it is with the interests of weapons manufacturers and the military industrial complex to the reduction of welfare obligations and the denial of business's fault in the lack of economic opportunities available for certain people.
Yes, I understand why some religiously conservative Christians have bought into social conservatism. But what is both troubling and puzzling is the insistence by some that social conservatism is Christian and that those ideologies and groups to the left are anti-Christian.
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July 25
To Joe Carter and his blogpost that contains a video presentation on economics by South Korean Economist Ha-joon Chang. This appeared in the Acton blog.
The video here is a welcomed change from the usual presentations on economics. That the presenter stated we should look valid points in the nine major economic theories puts Economics into the science category in which it belongs. Economics is, after all, a behavioral science. And the problem some people have when listening to any other theory but their own is that they often speak and act as if economics is a natural science. And even in natural science, we have had changing approaches to studying the physical world. In addition, the presenter talked about topics that some schools of economics includes and others do not such as personal identity, happiness, and democracy. We could add environmental impact as a topic that should be included in the study of economics but is most often not.
Finally, that this person invites people to form their own economic views and be willing to challenge the experts is partially taught by Marx with his proletariat dictatorship. Only because Marx viewed the proletariat as having a monopoly on truth and values while seeing the bourgeoisie having a monopoly on selfishness and sin, he was only partially correct. Neither the proletariat nor the bourgeoisie have a monopoly on either virtue or vice.
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To Kyle Hanby and his blogpost that describes protectionism as being harmful. This appeared on the Acton blog.
What this article seems to ignore is that the push for free trade on nations that are trying to develop their economies or certain sectors of it is from nations that used protectionism to develop their own economies. Ha-Joon Chang, an economist whose video presentation on why anyone could have valid insights into economics which was the focal point of a Joe Carter blogpost on the Acton blog notes the following (see https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/162/27898.html ):
They argue that free trade is how all developed countries have become rich, and criticise the developing countries for refusing to adopt this successful formula for economic development.
This is far from the truth. When they were developing countries, those countries now developed followed few of the policies they now recommend to others, and especially free trade. And nowhere is this discrepancy between historical reality and myth greater than in Britain and the United States, the two countries supposed to have reached the summit of the world economy through free markets and free trade.
He then goes on to list and describe areas in which both the Great Britain and the US used protectionism to build their economies. He mentions how Britain used protectionism to develop its wool manufacturing, for example, and also for corn. Other industries also benefited from protectionism. According to Chang, Britain exceeded its European neighbors in using protectionism. Likewise, he notes that the US employed one of the highest tariffs perhaps more than any other nation from 1830 to around 1945. In addition, the oceans themselves became natural tools of protectionism due to the cost of shipping. He mentions other parts of protectionism in the US which are quite interesting.
Today, the forcing of free trade on undeveloped nations by developing nations is really forced trade where fledgling industries and business from these nations are forced to compete with well established industries and businesses from developed nations. The result is that too many of the fledgling industries and businesses fail thus making nations with developing economies subservient to the demands of developed nations. But also, forcing free trade on developing nations robs the developing nations of the same mechanisms to develop used by many of today's established nations.
I'm afraid that the view of protectionism described above is that is both economically myopic and historically blind.
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July 26
To Bruce Frohnen and his blogpost about how college is a place full of liberal indoctrination of students. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.
Having taught at state schools, my experiences do not match those of Frohnen. Conservatism was well represented on campus by the number of conservative faculty members. Free speech was respected provided that it was respectful. And though while I started my career as a political conservative and eventually turned out to be an actual political leftist, as opposed to a liberal, but with conservative religious beliefs, I felt the scorn from both sides.
The conservative-non conservative faculty ratio was, in my teaching experience, highly affected by major in which a faculty member taught. Engineers and business teachers tend to be strongly conservative though there were some exceptions. The majors I taught in contained a mixed bag of conservatives and non conservatives.
Considering that Frohnen seems to be offended by the presence of liberals and leftists, whom he seems unable to distinguish, his portrayal of Zinn's claim of bias misses the point of the claim. The point of his claim is that in history, one cannot escape being biased and it does come out in the selection of material one thinks is important. Thus, Zinn's admission is one of occupational honesty rather than deliberateness and prejudice.
But the biggest objection to college by my former colleagues has not been touched on in this article. Our main objection is that college has merely become just another business who mission is to create more cogs for the system. Why college is a business bothered us is because students became customers and consumers rather than people who were in search of an education. And as customers and consumers, they also became merely numbers for the sake of the profitability of the school. And thus lower admission standards were needed to garner enough customers and thus we had too many kids who were unprepared for college in all sorts of ways and who blamed faculty for their own lack of preparation. Such is the biggest problem the schools I taught in were displaying.
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To Joe Carter and his blogpost video where John Norberg claims that when we buy goods from China, we are feeding ourselves because much of that money goes to workers who contributed to those good here. This appeared in the Acton blog.
No, contrary to the claims made in the video, trade with nations like China and Mexico where more money leave the nation than comes in is not feeding us. And no, it is not necessarily the nations with which we have trade deficits which are killing us, it is the corporations and their investors that are killing us. For much of the money that goes into buying products overseas just doesn't go to the workers, some of whom are working in sweatshop conditions in other nations, it goes to investors. And it is investors, especially the more wealthy ones, around whom our nation's economy is revolving. In addition, the primary labor force for many of the products we buy as a result of trade are not workers from the US.
So while the video answers Trump's concerns, it neglects to mention the concerns of those on the Left. But the speaker makes one valid point, the trade does feed us. For Reaganomics tells us that when we enrich the rich, they feed us. However, what is not mentioned is that they feed us table scraps of both food and freedom.
Wednesday, May 4, 2016
Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For May 4, 2016
Just to point out a trend that has been growing on the Conservative blogs I've been visiting. There is a tendency among religiously conservative Christian blogs to block more comments than they have before. There are also several religiously conservative blogs that apply no blocks at all.
April 27
To Bruce Ashford and his blogpost about a Jewish Intellectual who predicted the Social Collapse of America. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition.
Whenever I read articles like the one above, I try to figure out what kind of society have we collapsed from. We tend to glorify the past because of the degree of influence Christianity had on it, but much of what we see today is the result of people waking up and rejecting the injustices of yesteryear.
No doubt, many of my fellow religiously conservative Christians believe that our society has collapsed because of its changing sexual mores. But what kind of society can claim to be superior to others because of its sexual mores while conducting ethnic cleansing against one race and subjugating yet another? And all of that was on our own continent. We then ventured of to dominating other peoples and races from other continents and we did that to benefit ourselves.
The differences that exist between the societal high life of yesteryear and today's "social collapse" depends on the contexts in which one speaks. Suppose the context is economics. Then, when more of America could be seen as being more like the Capitol, the Capitol from the movie The Hunger Games that is, our society was viewed as having risen or in the process of rising. But when more of America is living like those in the districts in that movie did, then we say we were collapsing. Or when sexual mores are the context for measuring the quality of a society, then when those whose orientation was different from most people were marginalized, then society was described as being better than it is today.
When we consider America's past, when did America really center itself on God? After all, loving God is not just measured by our own claims of devotion to God themselves, but by our deeds too. And according to the history of our deeds and how we have treated those who were different, it seems that we never really made faith and the Christian religion the center of American life and thus our society had little height, if any at all, to collapse from.
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April 28
To George Stanciu and his blogpost on New England and how democracy has fallen there and elsewhere. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.
There are several parts of this article which I like. Such as when Stannic writes:
it reminded me of something Martin Luther King said when speaking against the Vietnam War:
To combine what is said, we need a combination of values and proper structure to be self-governing. And that no structure is immune to all sets of values a society could adopt--though the popular notion of freedom denies this. But after that, I have problems with some of what is written.
The first of Stanciu's main concerns is the degree of reliance on centralized power, and we should expect as much from an anarchist. The problem, especially as he looks at our democracy through the eyes of de Tocqueville, is that society is tremendously complex and interdependent. And the more interdependence that exists because of the population of individual communities, the number of communities that exist in towns and cities, the number of towns and cities that exist in states, the number of states that exist in the union, and the kind of economy that fosters increasing degrees of coupling, 'coupling is a computer science term that measures how dependent different parts of computer code are on each other, the more power federal government needs to be to protect Democracy. Here I should add is that what wasn't apparent to me is whether Stanciu sees Democracy as a state of being for society where all groups share a common society as equals. That kind of Democracy requires that both government and the people themselves be more involved in what goes on in the nation including in communities. That is because in an inderpendent society, what one part of the nation does affects another.
Another of Stanciu's objections is that the more intrusive government is on our personal lives, the less mature we become. And the less mature we become the more dependent we become. And the more dependent we become, the less we act to maintain our democracy. The problem here is what was stated in the previous paragraph of this comment. The more interdependent life becomes in our society, the more our decisions affect others. And the more our decisions affect others, the greater call exists for government, whetever the level, to intervene. And that includes seatbelt laws.
Rather than looking at the centralization of government power or the intrusiveness of government decisions as being the reason why we have lost a large part of our democracy here, I would add a different factor to what was stated above about Capitalism and technology, or what King called a thing-oriented society, as being the reason why we have lost a large part of our democracy. That other factor is tribalism.
Tribalism isn't the mere belonging to a group. Rather, it deals with the degree of loyalty one has for any group one belongs to. The greater degree of loyalty one has for one's group, the less commitment one shows to principles and morals. Thus, what is right and wrong is determined by who does what to whom.
So why would group loyalty be a problem for Democracy? Because above all, Democracy is a state of being for a society where all groups share society as equals. Thus, Democracy is a commitment to the principle of equality for others as well as oneself.
But how would what has been said here apply to the lack of participation Stanciu notes in New England. Certainly, in a thing-oriented society, people are to occupied with affluence or the quest for it to care about being self-governed. So they vote for those leaders who will make decisions that will maintain or give them more opportunity to acquire more things. As for tribalism, we can look at that as form of group authoritarianism. And as with all authoritarianism, those who live under it either volunteer or are forced to depend on strong leaders. And here we should note how divided American society is and what can of Presidential candidates are being produced by those divisions.
Living in a thing-oriented society many of whose groups ascribe to tribalism seems to be a better explanation for what Stanciu has noticed about the decline in democratic participation in New England and elsewhere than the observations of de Tocqueville who made those observations at a different economic, political, technological time than what exists today.
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April 29
To Eric’s April 26 comments to me about his view of Marxism and the Communist Manifesto This was part of the discussion on the article on the future of reading. Previous response to Eric were not recorded by me and were blocked by the Imaginative Conservative website.
Eric,
This is my second attempt to answer your last note. Your comment that what was seen in Lenin is what happened in all Communist regimes first is not true and second assumes that Communism is the only expression of Marxism.
First, let's look at what is called Communism. It was originally call Bolshevism because it was Bolsheviks who were led by Lenin and who seized control of Russia. There was ample dissent and criticism of Lenin as failing to act as a Marxist. And if that is the case, then one can not lay at the feet of Marx the guilt of Lenin. The same could be said of any revolution that took the Communist label but failed to follow Marx. Thus, one could not blame the Communist Manifesto for the atrocities committed in the name of Marxism. In addition, one would have to read the Communist Manifesto as well as other works of Marx to realize be able to judge whether Lenin and others were actually Marxist in their actions.
Additional support to what was just written comes form the work of Orlando Figes who stated that Lenin's view of what it means to be a strong leader did not come from Marx, but from Russian literature and that that literature was not based on Marx. In addition, we might want to note the cultural influence of that the Tsarist regimes had on Russian and on Lenin. In many cases, revolutions resulted in slightly altered forms of the regimes that were overthrown.
To answer your previous note, my question about whether you read the Communist Manifesto was not in any way an attempt to dictate terms. It was a simple question. For how can one adequately analyze a document they have not read?
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April 30
To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost consisting of a video clip of a person defining democratic socialism as a dictatorship of 50.1% of the people. This appeared in Heidelblog.
Being a socialist myself, I find it frustrating to hear fellow American believers trying to explain Socialism because they never go to the original sources and this true of Matt Kibbe who is the person speaking in the video. For though he went back to the original sources to find the term 'proletariat dictatorship,' he didn't go back to the original sources to find its meaning.
Proletariat dictatorship means control by the workers. But the workers making the decisions were elected by their peers to discuss and make decisions using democratic processes. So outside of the word 'dictatorship,' how different such a concept of a 'proletariat dictatorship' from a representative democracy? After all, don't we elect officials by majority vote, except for the President who must win a majority of electoral votes as long as that majority exceeds a certain number? And don't those officials make binding decisions for the rest of us based on some kind of majority vote?
Well, there is a difference and that difference has to do with the demographics of the elected governing officials. For though we are we well represented by location with Representatives and Senators, we are not represented by vocation in our gov't. Rather, 3 groups of people make up the vast majority of our Representatives and Senators. They are professional public servants, lawyers, and business people. That means that the vast majority of vocations are not represented in the government.
Now if Kibbe bothered to read more than just about the term 'proletariat dictatorship' and read more sources than just one or two documents from Marx and Engels, he could have better described what a proletariat dictatorship was. It was, and to its fault, a partial democracy, just like the kinds of democratic systems Socialists were protesting were also partial democracies called bourgeoisie democracies. Should note that the latter kind of democracies were defended by people like James Madison because he believed that power should rest in the hands of those with wealth. For just as Marx favored proletariat rule over a nation using democratic processes, so others support a bourgeoisie rule over a nation using democratic processes. Others, like Lenin, favored using a bourgeoisie dictatorship. BTW, this was Rosa Luxemburg's assessment of Lenin's ruling style because Lenin was used a bourgeois model of government. This is evident by the fact that decisions were made by a small group of elite leaders who were picked by Lenin. Btw, should note that Lenin abolished both the soviets and the Russian Constituent Assembly.
So again, I find that my fellow believers in Christ, either through gross negligence or willful intention, have failed to even attempt to provide a fair definition of Socialism and have instead been opportunistically selective in how they have it defined. I hope you understand the dissonance you cause when you pass on such inept definitions while claiming to be faithful teacher of the Reformed Faith. If only you and Kibbe would have been honest in acknowledging your lack of knowledge about Socialism when trying to define it, then, though your material would be wrong, it would be honest and thus not merit any significant criticism. An example of such honesty can be found in a John Piper blogpost on Socialism (see http://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/how-should-christians-think-about-socialism ).
Finally, we should note that Bernie Sanders is not a socialist. Rather, he is an FDR new dealer. Though we agree with some of his individual proposed ideas and programs, he offers little in terms of actual structural changes to our political structure. But at least he is talking about the corrosive effects that money has on our political and economic systems.
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To Joseph Sunde and his blogpost on how theologians need to learn about economics. This appeared in the Acton blog.
I agree that theologians should learn economics. But the question becomes from whom should they learn because not all higher degrees will provide an adequate education in economics.
As I was talking to someone who was protesting our May Day celebration, we talked about workplace democracy, something we both agreed on but was something he was not aware that such was tied to Socialism. His comment was that though workplace democracy is good, workers need to learn from those having MBAs because they have a lot to teach. I responded by asking about what they know. Their education might have helped learn how to tweak the system, but did it teach them to be able to criticize the system from the outside?
This is the problem with certain degrees. People learn to become technicians, but they remain uninformed about how the system they have expertise in interacts with the rest of the world. The result is that people start to believe that the world must be formed around the system they understand rather than that one must be able to see how the system they understand might possibly have to change because of other concerns that exist in the world.
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To Joe Carter and his blogpost listing 5 reasons why Millennials should prefer Capitalism. This appeared in the Acton Blog.
A valid point that Carter makes here is to say that there are different forms of Capitalism. But he fails to mention that there are also several kinds of Socialism and not all Socialists would agree with each kind,
Mais, c'est la vie, it is time to examine his reasons. We will not respond to reasons #2 and #3 because they are insignificant. Reason #1, Capitalism makes the world cleaner and less violent. That might be true if we don't include the increasing number of dead zones in the ocean, the increasing amount of greenhouse gas emissions, the destruction of Appalachia from the use of Mountain Top Removal, or China's environmental problems and that is just to name a few problems.
Does Capitalism make the world less violent with fewer wars? His claim that there are fewer wars is actually based on the number of deaths from battles (see http://blog.acton.org/archives/78866-is-capitalism-killing-war.html ) . And though there are fewers deaths from battles, when we look at the details as to why, rather than to assume that Capitalism is the reason, we find the statement to be very misleading. Here we should note that the development of WMDs and the lessons learned from the two World Wars and how tens of millions of people were killed in each war was not even considered as factors in reducing the number of deaths from battle. Before our weapons became as powerful as they are now, there was less reluctance to start wars. In addition, comparing deaths today when Mutually Assured Destruction kept the two main antagonists from declaring war on each other with WW II where the use of no weapons were barred makes the two time periods is faulty.
In addition, let's count how the number of nations where we have attacked with any kind of forces including drones since the year 2000. We have invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. We have sponsored the coup in Libya and possibly in Honduras. We conduct or have conducted drone warfare in Pakistan and Yemen. And we have been bombing Syria. And all of that is what is happening in the Middle East and parts of Central Asia.
The magazine The Nation reported in 2015 that we carried out 647 military operations in Africa during the previous year (see http://www.thenation.com/article/us-carried-out-674-military-operations-africa-last-year-did-you-hear-about-any-them/ ). And in 2014, the same magazine reported that we are conduct military operations in 134 countries. And perhaps the reason why this isn't real to us and that the number of casualties from battles is not comparable to the past is because of the great disparity between our forces and the forces of the countries we are attacking. It isn't that we have fewer wars or conflicts, it is that the number of deaths for each conflict is much lower than what was seen during WW II and that lower number of deaths has nothing to do with Capitalism.
Skipping reasons #2 and #3 because they are insignificant, we come to Reason #4. There, Carter claims that Capitalism is the most moral system. But what kind of Capitalism is he talking about and what systems did he compare Capitalism to? He never says in that part of his article. However, we should note that despite claims that Capitalism is reducing extreme poverty, the greatest alleviation of poverty is occurring in China which is participating in the Global Economy but could hardly be called a Capitalist country. Certainly it has been affected by Capitalism because of the Global Economy, but, again, it is hardly a Capitalist country.
But we should also note that Capitalism is overseeing an ever increasing wealth disparity throughout much of the world, especially in the US. We should note that along with the alleviation of extreme poverty has come the prevalence of sweatshop, trafficked, and even slave labor along with present environmental problems and an ominous environmental future. We should also note that trade agreements cause democratic nations to lose national sovereignty to foreign investors.
But finally, we should note that the freedom emphasized by Capitalism starts to become at odds with the self-rule freedom that comes with democracies. For the less power a government has to monitor and control businesses, the less control a democratic government has in doing the same. In addition, the new Global Economy that is based on free trade and markets is putting nations, especially less developed ones into an economic class system as Free Trade prevents nations from using protectionism to develop the industries and economic sectors of their choice.
Finally, for reason #5 on how Millennials would prefer Capitalism anyway, ask college graduates about their feelings toward the loans they can't repay because there are not enough well paying jobs available after graduation. In fact, ask Millennials about how they feel about pollution that seeps into our food, air, and water or fraudulently foreclosed on homes or used the global economy to lower the pay, benefits and labor rights of workers in the US or the other complaints listed in The Declaration Of The Occupation Of New York City as prepared by Occupy Wall Street (see http://www.nationofchange.org/declaration-occupation-new-york-city-1317784408 ). All of those grievances were the product of American Capitalism. Is that what Millennials want?
Of course, the easy out for Carter is that he could blame all of the ill-effects we see today on forms of Capitalism he doesn't prefer. But he provides no guidelines for determining which forms of Capitalism are responsible for the benefits he's cited.
In the end, his article here is an attempt at manipulating people into supporting what he supports.
April 27
To Bruce Ashford and his blogpost about a Jewish Intellectual who predicted the Social Collapse of America. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition.
Whenever I read articles like the one above, I try to figure out what kind of society have we collapsed from. We tend to glorify the past because of the degree of influence Christianity had on it, but much of what we see today is the result of people waking up and rejecting the injustices of yesteryear.
No doubt, many of my fellow religiously conservative Christians believe that our society has collapsed because of its changing sexual mores. But what kind of society can claim to be superior to others because of its sexual mores while conducting ethnic cleansing against one race and subjugating yet another? And all of that was on our own continent. We then ventured of to dominating other peoples and races from other continents and we did that to benefit ourselves.
The differences that exist between the societal high life of yesteryear and today's "social collapse" depends on the contexts in which one speaks. Suppose the context is economics. Then, when more of America could be seen as being more like the Capitol, the Capitol from the movie The Hunger Games that is, our society was viewed as having risen or in the process of rising. But when more of America is living like those in the districts in that movie did, then we say we were collapsing. Or when sexual mores are the context for measuring the quality of a society, then when those whose orientation was different from most people were marginalized, then society was described as being better than it is today.
When we consider America's past, when did America really center itself on God? After all, loving God is not just measured by our own claims of devotion to God themselves, but by our deeds too. And according to the history of our deeds and how we have treated those who were different, it seems that we never really made faith and the Christian religion the center of American life and thus our society had little height, if any at all, to collapse from.
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April 28
To George Stanciu and his blogpost on New England and how democracy has fallen there and elsewhere. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.
There are several parts of this article which I like. Such as when Stannic writes:
New England democracy, as observed by Tocqueville in the early 1830s, could not remained unchanged, for Modernity rests upon three connected legs—democracy, capitalism, and science and technology; the latter two legs changed the former.
it reminded me of something Martin Luther King said when speaking against the Vietnam War:
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.
To combine what is said, we need a combination of values and proper structure to be self-governing. And that no structure is immune to all sets of values a society could adopt--though the popular notion of freedom denies this. But after that, I have problems with some of what is written.
The first of Stanciu's main concerns is the degree of reliance on centralized power, and we should expect as much from an anarchist. The problem, especially as he looks at our democracy through the eyes of de Tocqueville, is that society is tremendously complex and interdependent. And the more interdependence that exists because of the population of individual communities, the number of communities that exist in towns and cities, the number of towns and cities that exist in states, the number of states that exist in the union, and the kind of economy that fosters increasing degrees of coupling, 'coupling is a computer science term that measures how dependent different parts of computer code are on each other, the more power federal government needs to be to protect Democracy. Here I should add is that what wasn't apparent to me is whether Stanciu sees Democracy as a state of being for society where all groups share a common society as equals. That kind of Democracy requires that both government and the people themselves be more involved in what goes on in the nation including in communities. That is because in an inderpendent society, what one part of the nation does affects another.
Another of Stanciu's objections is that the more intrusive government is on our personal lives, the less mature we become. And the less mature we become the more dependent we become. And the more dependent we become, the less we act to maintain our democracy. The problem here is what was stated in the previous paragraph of this comment. The more interdependent life becomes in our society, the more our decisions affect others. And the more our decisions affect others, the greater call exists for government, whetever the level, to intervene. And that includes seatbelt laws.
Rather than looking at the centralization of government power or the intrusiveness of government decisions as being the reason why we have lost a large part of our democracy here, I would add a different factor to what was stated above about Capitalism and technology, or what King called a thing-oriented society, as being the reason why we have lost a large part of our democracy. That other factor is tribalism.
Tribalism isn't the mere belonging to a group. Rather, it deals with the degree of loyalty one has for any group one belongs to. The greater degree of loyalty one has for one's group, the less commitment one shows to principles and morals. Thus, what is right and wrong is determined by who does what to whom.
So why would group loyalty be a problem for Democracy? Because above all, Democracy is a state of being for a society where all groups share society as equals. Thus, Democracy is a commitment to the principle of equality for others as well as oneself.
But how would what has been said here apply to the lack of participation Stanciu notes in New England. Certainly, in a thing-oriented society, people are to occupied with affluence or the quest for it to care about being self-governed. So they vote for those leaders who will make decisions that will maintain or give them more opportunity to acquire more things. As for tribalism, we can look at that as form of group authoritarianism. And as with all authoritarianism, those who live under it either volunteer or are forced to depend on strong leaders. And here we should note how divided American society is and what can of Presidential candidates are being produced by those divisions.
Living in a thing-oriented society many of whose groups ascribe to tribalism seems to be a better explanation for what Stanciu has noticed about the decline in democratic participation in New England and elsewhere than the observations of de Tocqueville who made those observations at a different economic, political, technological time than what exists today.
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April 29
To Eric’s April 26 comments to me about his view of Marxism and the Communist Manifesto This was part of the discussion on the article on the future of reading. Previous response to Eric were not recorded by me and were blocked by the Imaginative Conservative website.
Eric,
This is my second attempt to answer your last note. Your comment that what was seen in Lenin is what happened in all Communist regimes first is not true and second assumes that Communism is the only expression of Marxism.
First, let's look at what is called Communism. It was originally call Bolshevism because it was Bolsheviks who were led by Lenin and who seized control of Russia. There was ample dissent and criticism of Lenin as failing to act as a Marxist. And if that is the case, then one can not lay at the feet of Marx the guilt of Lenin. The same could be said of any revolution that took the Communist label but failed to follow Marx. Thus, one could not blame the Communist Manifesto for the atrocities committed in the name of Marxism. In addition, one would have to read the Communist Manifesto as well as other works of Marx to realize be able to judge whether Lenin and others were actually Marxist in their actions.
Additional support to what was just written comes form the work of Orlando Figes who stated that Lenin's view of what it means to be a strong leader did not come from Marx, but from Russian literature and that that literature was not based on Marx. In addition, we might want to note the cultural influence of that the Tsarist regimes had on Russian and on Lenin. In many cases, revolutions resulted in slightly altered forms of the regimes that were overthrown.
To answer your previous note, my question about whether you read the Communist Manifesto was not in any way an attempt to dictate terms. It was a simple question. For how can one adequately analyze a document they have not read?
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April 30
To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost consisting of a video clip of a person defining democratic socialism as a dictatorship of 50.1% of the people. This appeared in Heidelblog.
Being a socialist myself, I find it frustrating to hear fellow American believers trying to explain Socialism because they never go to the original sources and this true of Matt Kibbe who is the person speaking in the video. For though he went back to the original sources to find the term 'proletariat dictatorship,' he didn't go back to the original sources to find its meaning.
Proletariat dictatorship means control by the workers. But the workers making the decisions were elected by their peers to discuss and make decisions using democratic processes. So outside of the word 'dictatorship,' how different such a concept of a 'proletariat dictatorship' from a representative democracy? After all, don't we elect officials by majority vote, except for the President who must win a majority of electoral votes as long as that majority exceeds a certain number? And don't those officials make binding decisions for the rest of us based on some kind of majority vote?
Well, there is a difference and that difference has to do with the demographics of the elected governing officials. For though we are we well represented by location with Representatives and Senators, we are not represented by vocation in our gov't. Rather, 3 groups of people make up the vast majority of our Representatives and Senators. They are professional public servants, lawyers, and business people. That means that the vast majority of vocations are not represented in the government.
Now if Kibbe bothered to read more than just about the term 'proletariat dictatorship' and read more sources than just one or two documents from Marx and Engels, he could have better described what a proletariat dictatorship was. It was, and to its fault, a partial democracy, just like the kinds of democratic systems Socialists were protesting were also partial democracies called bourgeoisie democracies. Should note that the latter kind of democracies were defended by people like James Madison because he believed that power should rest in the hands of those with wealth. For just as Marx favored proletariat rule over a nation using democratic processes, so others support a bourgeoisie rule over a nation using democratic processes. Others, like Lenin, favored using a bourgeoisie dictatorship. BTW, this was Rosa Luxemburg's assessment of Lenin's ruling style because Lenin was used a bourgeois model of government. This is evident by the fact that decisions were made by a small group of elite leaders who were picked by Lenin. Btw, should note that Lenin abolished both the soviets and the Russian Constituent Assembly.
So again, I find that my fellow believers in Christ, either through gross negligence or willful intention, have failed to even attempt to provide a fair definition of Socialism and have instead been opportunistically selective in how they have it defined. I hope you understand the dissonance you cause when you pass on such inept definitions while claiming to be faithful teacher of the Reformed Faith. If only you and Kibbe would have been honest in acknowledging your lack of knowledge about Socialism when trying to define it, then, though your material would be wrong, it would be honest and thus not merit any significant criticism. An example of such honesty can be found in a John Piper blogpost on Socialism (see http://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/how-should-christians-think-about-socialism ).
Finally, we should note that Bernie Sanders is not a socialist. Rather, he is an FDR new dealer. Though we agree with some of his individual proposed ideas and programs, he offers little in terms of actual structural changes to our political structure. But at least he is talking about the corrosive effects that money has on our political and economic systems.
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To Joseph Sunde and his blogpost on how theologians need to learn about economics. This appeared in the Acton blog.
I agree that theologians should learn economics. But the question becomes from whom should they learn because not all higher degrees will provide an adequate education in economics.
As I was talking to someone who was protesting our May Day celebration, we talked about workplace democracy, something we both agreed on but was something he was not aware that such was tied to Socialism. His comment was that though workplace democracy is good, workers need to learn from those having MBAs because they have a lot to teach. I responded by asking about what they know. Their education might have helped learn how to tweak the system, but did it teach them to be able to criticize the system from the outside?
This is the problem with certain degrees. People learn to become technicians, but they remain uninformed about how the system they have expertise in interacts with the rest of the world. The result is that people start to believe that the world must be formed around the system they understand rather than that one must be able to see how the system they understand might possibly have to change because of other concerns that exist in the world.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To Joe Carter and his blogpost listing 5 reasons why Millennials should prefer Capitalism. This appeared in the Acton Blog.
A valid point that Carter makes here is to say that there are different forms of Capitalism. But he fails to mention that there are also several kinds of Socialism and not all Socialists would agree with each kind,
Mais, c'est la vie, it is time to examine his reasons. We will not respond to reasons #2 and #3 because they are insignificant. Reason #1, Capitalism makes the world cleaner and less violent. That might be true if we don't include the increasing number of dead zones in the ocean, the increasing amount of greenhouse gas emissions, the destruction of Appalachia from the use of Mountain Top Removal, or China's environmental problems and that is just to name a few problems.
Does Capitalism make the world less violent with fewer wars? His claim that there are fewer wars is actually based on the number of deaths from battles (see http://blog.acton.org/archives/78866-is-capitalism-killing-war.html ) . And though there are fewers deaths from battles, when we look at the details as to why, rather than to assume that Capitalism is the reason, we find the statement to be very misleading. Here we should note that the development of WMDs and the lessons learned from the two World Wars and how tens of millions of people were killed in each war was not even considered as factors in reducing the number of deaths from battle. Before our weapons became as powerful as they are now, there was less reluctance to start wars. In addition, comparing deaths today when Mutually Assured Destruction kept the two main antagonists from declaring war on each other with WW II where the use of no weapons were barred makes the two time periods is faulty.
In addition, let's count how the number of nations where we have attacked with any kind of forces including drones since the year 2000. We have invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. We have sponsored the coup in Libya and possibly in Honduras. We conduct or have conducted drone warfare in Pakistan and Yemen. And we have been bombing Syria. And all of that is what is happening in the Middle East and parts of Central Asia.
The magazine The Nation reported in 2015 that we carried out 647 military operations in Africa during the previous year (see http://www.thenation.com/article/us-carried-out-674-military-operations-africa-last-year-did-you-hear-about-any-them/ ). And in 2014, the same magazine reported that we are conduct military operations in 134 countries. And perhaps the reason why this isn't real to us and that the number of casualties from battles is not comparable to the past is because of the great disparity between our forces and the forces of the countries we are attacking. It isn't that we have fewer wars or conflicts, it is that the number of deaths for each conflict is much lower than what was seen during WW II and that lower number of deaths has nothing to do with Capitalism.
Skipping reasons #2 and #3 because they are insignificant, we come to Reason #4. There, Carter claims that Capitalism is the most moral system. But what kind of Capitalism is he talking about and what systems did he compare Capitalism to? He never says in that part of his article. However, we should note that despite claims that Capitalism is reducing extreme poverty, the greatest alleviation of poverty is occurring in China which is participating in the Global Economy but could hardly be called a Capitalist country. Certainly it has been affected by Capitalism because of the Global Economy, but, again, it is hardly a Capitalist country.
But we should also note that Capitalism is overseeing an ever increasing wealth disparity throughout much of the world, especially in the US. We should note that along with the alleviation of extreme poverty has come the prevalence of sweatshop, trafficked, and even slave labor along with present environmental problems and an ominous environmental future. We should also note that trade agreements cause democratic nations to lose national sovereignty to foreign investors.
But finally, we should note that the freedom emphasized by Capitalism starts to become at odds with the self-rule freedom that comes with democracies. For the less power a government has to monitor and control businesses, the less control a democratic government has in doing the same. In addition, the new Global Economy that is based on free trade and markets is putting nations, especially less developed ones into an economic class system as Free Trade prevents nations from using protectionism to develop the industries and economic sectors of their choice.
Finally, for reason #5 on how Millennials would prefer Capitalism anyway, ask college graduates about their feelings toward the loans they can't repay because there are not enough well paying jobs available after graduation. In fact, ask Millennials about how they feel about pollution that seeps into our food, air, and water or fraudulently foreclosed on homes or used the global economy to lower the pay, benefits and labor rights of workers in the US or the other complaints listed in The Declaration Of The Occupation Of New York City as prepared by Occupy Wall Street (see http://www.nationofchange.org/declaration-occupation-new-york-city-1317784408 ). All of those grievances were the product of American Capitalism. Is that what Millennials want?
Of course, the easy out for Carter is that he could blame all of the ill-effects we see today on forms of Capitalism he doesn't prefer. But he provides no guidelines for determining which forms of Capitalism are responsible for the benefits he's cited.
In the end, his article here is an attempt at manipulating people into supporting what he supports.
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