Comments Which Conservatives Block from Their Blogs For May 8, 2019

May 4

To Joe Carter and his blogpost criticizing Millennials for preferring to live in a Socialist or Communist nation despite the history of certain nations. This appeared in the Acton blog.

2 points should be made here. Just as Millennials might prefer to live in a Socialist or even Communist nation because they don't know what one is from experience, neither do conservative critics of Marxism, Socialism, and Communism. That fact that the majority of Millennials prefer a kind a nation in which they have never lived to a Capitalist nation in which they live is very telling. That preference is, in and of itself, a huge indictment on Capitalism and a significant indicator that Capitalism has failed them. And the details of their disillusionment with Capitalism should be looked into.

But Conservative apologists would rather divert everyone's attention to their view of Marxism, Socialism, and Communism--which many, not all, Conservatives tend to blend together in the forms of the Soviet Union, Red China, Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela. They opportunistically scapegoat Marx for the totalitarianism of those states. But what they don't mention are the conditions and type of leaders who were replaced by the "Communists." And they neglect the backgrounds and contexts of those Marxist states with good reason. In the cases of the Soviet Union and Cuba, the "Communist" overthrew the totalitarian and corrupt governments. The Batista government in Cuba was supported by the US. In the case of China and North Korea, both were emerging from Japanese totalitarian rule. China broke away from Japan both in the 1920s and the end of WW II while North Korea broke away at the end of WW II.
The history of Venezuela was different in that the Socialist leader was elected to power. However, 2 factors should be considered here. First, Chavez never followed Marx in terms of redistributing power to the proletariat. Instead, like Lenin did when he hijacked the Russian Revolution, Chavez consolidated power. Here Rosa Luxemburg's criticism of Lenin's Bourgeoisie dictatorship is more condemnatory of Chavez because Chavez didn't have a subsequent Civil War to fight. Though Chavez called himself a 'socialist,' by not empowering the proletariat, he broke away from the fundamental tenet of Marxism. In addition, though some of Venezuela's economic problems could possibly be due to US intervention, much of its economic problems stem from following the failed history of the past: basing the economy on oil. While prices rise, that seems like a good idea, but when prices drop, the economy collapses. That occurred during the late 1980s and into the 1990s before socialism, and that also occurred under Chavez.

What conservatives conveniently forget are those nations that through democracy started to lean left only to end up in dictatorships. Examples of those nations include Iran ('53), Guatemala ('54), Greece ('67), and Chilé ('73). Why these examples are conveniently forgotten is because in each of those cases, the US had a significant hand in overthrowing the governments of those nations and replacing them with dictatorships. Other examples could have also been mentioned.

We should note that history shows that no one political-economic system guarantees eternal success and prosperity. But what we can look at is the location of power in a given political system. And one criteria by which we should fairly apply to all governments and political systems is to measure the degree to which a government is under elite-centered control or democratic control. Here, we cannot judge any nation simply by the label given to its political system. For elite-centered control governments can exist in nations that actually have "fair" elections in that people are freely voting for the candidates of their choice. Why? Because even here in the US, our system has now been fairly recategorized by some as an oligarchy (see https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746 and https://theintercept.com/2015/07/30/jimmy-carter-u-s-oligarchy-unlimited-political-bribery/ ). And the reason why its status has changed is because power is not defined by the political office one holds, but by the degree of influence one has. And it has become measurably clear that those with the most wealth have the greatest political power in our nation. And that is despite, or perhaps because of, our Capitalist economic system.
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May 5

To Bradley Birzer and his blogpost on democracy. In that article he talked about the need to reduce, but not eliminate democracy in a given nation. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

Why is it that the negative comments about democracy were not vetted here. Certainly the founding fathers opposed democracy. But why? Was it not because many of them replaced British leaders as the new elites of America? Was it not because the people were protesting and even tried a rebellion that threatened the place of these new elites and thus prompted the writing of The Constitution? And did not the founding fathers associate those populist ideas that challenged their position in society with democracy but did so in a derogatory fashion. And don't we see a significant arrogance by those who claimed that the general population did not want virtue and thus implying that the new elites had a monopoly on virtue?

Those above spoke against democracy not necessarily because they knew what it would become. They spoke against democracy our of self-interest and in opposition to popular ideas that could have alleviated some of the suffering of the people, ideas that would have cost the new elites some wealth and position.

Authoritarians don't like democracy. Neither do tribalists. Why? Perhaps it is because democracy is the rule of the people, it is the rule of all the people, not just the majority. Democracy, when looked at as being more than just the sum of certain political processes, can actually be a state of being. It is a state of being, as Jefferson envisioned it, where the nation belongs equally to all its citizens. Democracy is a state of being where society is shared equally by all. When, if ever, we reach democracy as a state of being, we will have greatly reduced, if not eliminated rule by either a few elites or by an ethnic group that assumes its own superiority.

We should note that like any other form of government, democracy does not produce some form of utopia. No political or economic system can do that. But what democracy as a state of being does do is that it prevents the centralization of power whether the centralization of that power be located either in the public or private sectors. And those who are concerned about the rise of tyranny should favor democracy over any other form of government.

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For May 9, 2018

May 7

To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost that talks about where the Church is heading today. This was posted in Heidelblog.

Clark has a legitimate point in noting how past errors reincarnate themselves for the Church today. But he also demonstrates the fatal flaw of many conservatives: that they look solely to the past to understand and respond to today's world. And just as narcissism's fatal flaw is elevating the present over the past so that those in the present have everything to teach and nothing to learn from those from the past, many conservatives elevate a set of past times over the present so that those from the past would have everything to teach and nothing to learn from those modern times.

Where is the Church heading? To answer that question in America, one would expect to have to address the issue of activism and equality for the LGBT community in society. One would expect to have to address social justice and environmental issues. One would expect to have noted how the dominant branch of the American Church, which is a blend of conservative Catholicism and Protestantism, either supports all or a subset of those with wealth and power as the dominant branch of the Church did in the pre-revolutionary times of France, Russia, and Spain. One would expect to have to address those subjects along with what Clark addressed.

Young adults face the biggest challenge in the Church today and yet that isn't mentioned here. What is their challenge? It comes from their elders who have taught them that these young people must choose between believing in salvation by grace alone through faith alone and working for the kind of social justice that the Old Testament prophets spoke of. What many of these young adult Christians do with the apparent 'Sophie's Choice' given to them by many of their elders will determine where the Church is heading. And whether they will find a faithful way of keeping the Gospel while learning from the Old Testament prophets depends on whether they recognize the choice being given to them by their elders is a false dichotomy.
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May 8

To Joe Carter and his blogpost denouncing Marx and Marxism because of the approximately 100 million deaths allegedly attributed to Marx by some Conservatives. That post appeared in the Acton blog.

Articles like the one above and the one cited only show a conservative, opportunistic approach to Marx. For American conservatives are all too eager to trash Marx so as to present their own nation as the paragon of virtue. Besides the fact that Gregg, whose article Carter cites, is grossly mistaken in attributing Hitler's rampage to Marx and somewhat understandably mistaken in attributing the deaths from reigns of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot to Marx, he ignores the fixed number of deaths that would have occurred anyway because Marx, and those who claimed to have followed him, was reacting, rather than encouraging a first strike, to tyranny and killing.

Would Russia have left WW I as early as it did if there was no October, 1917 Revolution. Remember that the February, 1917 Revolution produced the Provisional Authority government that was controlled by the Capitalists in Russia. And, out of self-interest, they favored continuing Russia's participation in WW I despite the hardships such participation caused on the Russian people. Or we could take Guevera and Castro on Cuba for another example. It wasn't until the Cuban Revolution that the US government considered pulling their support from the corrupt and brutal government of Batista. Or we could go to Nicaragua and note how the US supported the Somoza government before the Sandinistas overthrew that government. There are other places we could go as well.

Or we could ask Carter and Gregg this question: How is it that Marxist revolutions are considered murderous while the American Revolution was not? After all, one of the reasons for wanting independence from Great Britain was so that the colonists could expand westward. And that mean dislocation and death for Native Americans.

We could also ask how many deaths could be blamed on Jesus Christ and Adam Smith if we follow the same logic that Carter and Gregg have? After all, how many indigenous people in the new world lost homes and even their lives to those claiming to be Christians? This would include not just the British-based colonizalization of North America, but the Spanish conquests of Central and South America as well. And how many indigenous people from Africa and Asia lost their lives due to the Christian European empires? How many people lost their lives in the American interventions to help business reported on by former Marine Corp Major General Smedley Butler? Or how many people lost their lives from the various kinds of US interventions following WW II? How many people lost their lives as a result of regime changes that the US instigated in Iran, Guatemala, Brazil, Greece, Chilé, Nicaragua, and so on. And how many millions of Vietnamese lost their lives to American bombings? And how many people have lost their lives because of the almost 40-year-old war started in Afghanistan right at the end of the Carter Administration?  Should we blame Jesus Christ and Adam Smith for those deaths or is such attribution to them ludicrous?

There are certainly things Marx wrote that are wrong and have caused harmful effects. But crediting him with 100 million deaths shows a lack of knowledge and understanding as to what Marxism is and isn't. For if Christianity can have false believers and Republicans can have RINOs, why are we so compelled to assume that each murderous leader who calls himself a Marxist is really a Marxist?
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To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost on the use of a Social Psychology experiment to claim that there is no settled science. Here, he is echoing the sentiments of Palanyi This appeared in Heidelblog.

From one social Psychology experiment, Clark's conclusion is that there is no "settled science'? That is what the pairing of the telling of the above Social Psychology experiment and the title Clark gave to this blogpost implies But if there is no settled science, then would it not be true that there is nothing we can know that is true from science? That means that we could wake up some day and discover that the earth is flat rather than round, that the sun revolves around the earth and not the other way around? And then the next day, we could learn just the opposite is the case.
If there is no settled science then we e could learn that none of the vaccines we've taken work or that some of the medicines we take don't work without diseases changing. And we could learn that gravity does not exist. And not only that, we could learn that water does not freeze at 32 degrees and that ice doesn't form at the top of any containment of water.

I could go on but there is settled science for those saying there is none. That science comes from the study of economics and supply and demand and how neoliberal Capitalism is the best economic system ever. And we know that that approach to economics is the only settled science people who say there is no settled science  believe in. That is because there is a particular context for saying there is no settled science. That context is the subject of climate change.

For if there is no doubt that people are contributing to changing the climate of the earth in ways that threaten our descendants, then our American way of life and thus how many of our businesses operate must change. We might be compelled to live and work in a far less individualistic and more collective ways. We might be compelled to be far less materialistic in how we live. We might have to change our economic system despite the settled science its supporters insist on. But perhaps the fear of change, because one is happy with the current status quo, is the biggest factor in saying that there is never any settled science.

Finally, Clark should know better than to attach the above title to the story of this Social Psychological experiment. In terms of logic, he is trying to prove an absolute rule with a single example with an uncountable sample space. Such an attempt is severely logically flawed. For when trying to prove absolute rules, like there is no settled science, only one counterexample is needed to disprove them. And what is distressing here is that Clark seems to be engaging in a ruse in saying something about climate change without disclosing his intent in citing the experiment described above. What he wants to say about climate change is that we don't know for sure that it is happening and thus we don't have to change. And that indicates whether he is satisfied enough with the status quo so as to not want it to change despite the unspecified future suffering many will experience.

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To Dylan Pahman and his blogpost on his celebrating the possible closing of Barnes & Noble, and other big chains, due to its inability to compete with Amazon. This appeared in the Acton blog.

http://blog.acton.org/archives/101493-dont-save-barnes-noble.html

Pahman misses the big picture here. For the big picture isn't about one monopoly replacing ma-and-pa stores or one monopoly replacing another or the roles of regulations and competition in the business world. Nor is it about how conservatives tend to reduce economics to commerce with its redefinition of the concept of stakeholder to consist of only providers and consumers. Rather, the big story is in how extreme individualism that contains no concern for externals destroys not only other people lives, but eventually our own nest too. For this growing trend to buy more and more from Amazon is about the shoppers' convenience and ability to avoid dealing with other people. And what is ironic is that Pahman celebrates the success of Amazon's business venture which includes the cornering of markets served by Amazon. For with that cornering comes the centralization of control of those markets. And centralization of power is suppose to be an enemy to conservatism--at least that is the case when it comes to government.

The problem with extreme individualism, besides the fact that it is suppose to be against the Scriptures, is that such individualism spreads to other areas of life. If I am not suppose to be concerned with who suffers from the purchasing decisions I make, then should I be concerned with the cuts in my taxes even though those cuts lead to the reduction of social safety nets and/or an unmanageable national debt that will force austerity on those who are most vulnerable? If I can benefit from my nation's business regulations that protect neither other people nor the environment, then should I care about who will suffer from the lack of protection those regulations would have provided? If my nation's foreign policies help benefit me in terms of living the life I want, should I be concerned about the victims of those policies?

As we focus more and more on how we individually benefit from our decisions, we feel morally justified in the decisions we make regardless of who suffers because of our decisions. We become immune to the pain others suffer because of the benefits we enjoy. And that is fine for us until those with more power and control act the same way as we are. And that is called karma.

It Has Never Been Just Me, Myself, And I

This is the first time that we are repeating a review on the same talk or article. This talk, which comes text for as well, is by Tim Keller (click here for a bio) and it addresses the subject of corporate responsibility/guilt and systemic sin. We should note that Keller has attracted a lot of negative attention simply because he has drawn a lot of positive attention. Though much of that positive attention is well-deserved, but some of it is a result of the authoritarian mindset that many of us religiously conservative Christians (a.k.a., flaming fundamentalists) have either been born or born again with. And that latter positive attention has irked more than several people.

In his talk (click here for the talk that comes with a transcription), Keller wants to challenge us western white people on part of our emphasis on individualism. And Keller makes a special point of saying that our obsession with individualism is unique to us. That individualism says that we are only responsible for what we have done. Keller challenges that notion in a few steps. First, he uses Joshua 7 (click here for Joshua 7) to show that the Scriptures teach corporate responsibility/guilt at a family level. For Achan and his family were put to death for something Achan alone did wrong. Why were they all put to death? It was partly because Achan was a product of his family. But we should also note that all of Israel was punished because of what Achan did as well. And if we don't understand that, it is because we have seen the world through the lenses of individualism.

Keller proceeds to show corporate responsibility/guilt of time and space. For he shows how Daniel not only prays for God's mercy because of the current sins of his fellow Israelites, but also for mercy because of the past transgressions of his ancestors (click here for Daniel's prayer). Why is that necessary? Keller explains by saying that Daniel recognized he and his people are simply a product of the same culture of those ancestors who had sinned. That the sins of his ancestors were a reflection of that culture.

Finally, Keller takes us to Romans 5 where Paul tells us that we are judged because of the sin of Adam and saved because of the righteousness of Christ (click here for that part of Romans 5). And if we stay with our inherited individualist script, we won't be able to understand either state especially how we are saved by what Christ did for us. 

Next, Keller explains corporate responsibility/guilt and systemic sin in our communities, both small in terms of our local communities and large in terms of our cities, states, and nation, and our responsibility for what happens in our communities. He notes that all of our communities rely on systems to get things done. Systems that are unfair or that neglect and/or oppress others have systemic sins. And we, even by our mere existence, participate in those communities. At this point, Keller notes 4 levels of responsibility we have for what happens in our community. They are:

1. You know what's going on in the community and fully support it.
2. You know part of what's going on in the community and are either apathetic or at least partially support it.
3. You know what is going on in the community but do nothing about it.
4. You don't know what is going on in the community because you don't want to know
   
   

Keller applies these levels to the varying levels of responsibility the German people had during the Holocaust. We should note that as the Allied forces discovered the German camps for Jews and other undesirables, our military made the residents of the nearby towns walk through those camps so they could see what they had done.

Now as Keller applies this to racism and as vitally important as that is, there are other corporate responsibilities and systemic sins we also need to tend to. Some of them are rather obvious, like our responsibility for climate change and for wars, while others may not be as obvious but they are discoverable such as how poverty can be, at least in part, a product of our economic system. If anything, and I don't know if Keller would agree with this conclusion, by addressing corporate guilt/responsibility and systemic sin, Keller has opened the door for the development of a religiously conservative Christian "Social Gospel." Calling it a 'Social Gospel' is a bit of a misnomer because instead of resisting of systemic sin in order to be saved, such resistance plays a role in our sanctification--that is it plays a role in how we should strive to live for Christ. For we are not only learning to resist personal sins, we should love our neighbor enough to learn about and resist systemic sins of the community.

In the end, the Christian life is not just about dealing with the personal sins of me, myself, and I; it is also about learning about our corporate responsibilities and the systemic sins we participate in as members of our communities so that we can properly respond to those sins as well. Responding appropriately to those sins is another way of another way of learning to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Those Whom Government Cannot Represent

During one of the sessions of Left Forum, we dealt with the following Margret Thatcher quote stating that there is no such thing as society (click here for the source, it comes from an interview):

 What is wrong with the deterioration? [mistranscription?] I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand “I have a problem, it is the Government's job to cope with it!” or “I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!” “I am homeless, the Government must house me!” and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business and people have got the entitlements too much in mind without the obligations, because there is no such thing as an entitlement unless someone has first met an obligation and it is, I think, one of the tragedies in which many of the benefits we give, which were meant to reassure people that if they were sick or ill there was a safety net and there was help, that many of the benefits which were meant to help people who were unfortunate—“It is all right. We joined together and we have these insurance schemes to look after it”. That was the objective, but somehow there are some people who have been manipulating the system

Please note that previously, and quite consistently, Thatcher had said the following when talking about England's Enterprise Allowance (click here for review of the program):

 The enterprise allowance is for young people who want to start up on their own, have been on the unemployment register, and we recognise—I must tell you this as the background—that having got the income from unemployment benefit and social security, you cannot expect them to take the leap into self-employment with all its uncertainties unless you help them across that gap, and so three or four years ago, we devised a method: “If you want to start up on your own, we will guarantee you for a year an income of £40 a week, so that you know that you have got that coming in, but in order to get the enterprise allowance, to show that you have something to start off with, because you usually need a little bit of capital, you do have to raise somehow £1000!” A lot of people do it. It is astonishing how many find that their families, from their savings, will give them £1000.

If we compare the two quotes along with reading the whole interview, we see that the initial quote declaring that there is no society, just individuals seems less cold. We should note that there were social programs that were condoned by the Thatcher administration and this eliminates the blunt coldness of her original statement.

But we should note a couple of the criticisms cited in the article on the Enterprise Allowance previously referenced. Those criticisms stated that many who relied on the Enterprise Initiative would have become self-employed anyway (remember that one was to rely on contacts like family to raise the money) along with the fact that many of the businesses became 'one-man shows.'

Thatcher's support of self-employment was an attempt to deal with the unemployment problem that had already existed in Britain. In addition, to Enterprise Allowance, Thatcher denationalized many businesses, like the National Freight Company, utilities, and the mining industry. Thatcher was for free markets and self-determination and she opposed trade unions.

We could begin to say here that government is for some people, particularly those who either have connections or can survive, or even thrive, in the free market. Her policies strongly favored business elites, but, as stated, those weren't the only people whom she helped. 

Therefore, though the rest of the article and the times tell us that her comment about there being no society, but there are only individuals is not as cold as it might sound at first. For in other words, there are those who are worthy to varying degrees of their government's support and there are those who don't deserve any consideration from their government.  And it seems that the minimum requirement that existed for receiving consideration from the Thatcher government is that one had family resources on which one could rely. This caused many who had no family that could provide support to be grouped with whom Thatcher described as those who refused to work because they could milk the system. And there seems to be a conservative eagerness to group too many people into this category because not to do so would challenge their faith in Capitalism.

This problems with deciding who is worthy of their government's support and representation and how worthy they are is a battle still being fought today. And, again, Conservatives are too eager to say that the less well off don't deserve their government's consideration because it is their fault while the more successful people deserve a greater amount of their government's benevolence because of what they bring to the table. Such a mentality provides a roadblock to democracy. That is because such a mentality promotes the consolidation of power to those who "deserve" it elites of the private sector while others don't deserve it. 

But the more consideration one receives from their government, the more government benefits one receives whether those benefits come in the form of beneficial regulations, favorable deregulation, domestic and/or foreign policies that increase one's bottom line, or actual business from the government. And if we used the owners of a major league sports team, especially those who are required to meet a salary cap, to illustrate the real problem with this approach to receiving government help. the better we can see how those who are most favored by the government, that is the elites from the private sector, will hurt those who are in the greatest need. For in major league sports teams we know that the more money A gets from the owners, the less is available to B and the rest. And the more B gets from what's leftover from what A got, then there is less available for C. And the progression is not too difficult to see especially how it plays out in real life. A too similar of a progression occurs with getting government consideration and resources.

We should note one other thing here. As Thatcher and her administration emphasized stock ownership, they were falling back on the worst parts of the Thatcher quote we've been examining. This is because stock ownership teaches one to be more concerned with one's own self-interest and welfare and less concerned, if at all, with the welfare of others. That is the culture promoted by stock ownership is an individualist one. The higher the ROI a company provides to its shareholders, the more rewards go to the shareholder and thus the greater the desirable of being a shareholder for that company becomes. And what is lost in the shuffle are the costs to a company's stakeholders, including its own employees, that is its wealth creators, and to the environment. That is because the more a company invests in its employees or spends on protecting the environment, the lower the ROI. 

All of this produces a greater emphasis on the individual and growing cutthroat mentality toward those a company is beholding to. The more emphasis that is placed on increasing one's own wealth from the ROI, the greater others will be seen as threats because of the competition for resources. And the more we regard others as threats, the more society disappears until all that is left are individuals who are living out a survival of the fittest contest. And that leaves us with the realization that the coldness of the original quote from Thatcher is greater than we might have guessed from reading the interview and the context of her statements.



 

Is Socialism More Conducive To Being Person-Oriented Than Capitalism?

In last Tuesday's blogpost (click here), we discussed how materialism minimizes the differences between Socialism and Capitalism. We used Martin Luther King Jr.'s terminology of 'thing-oriented' for materialism. That terminology can be seen in his quote below which comes from his speech 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.

Here, being thing-oriented meant that we place a higher priority on gadgets, profits, and property rights than we do on the welfare of people.  Thus noting that regardless of the political-economic structure one employs, the ethics of the general public plays a major role in determining the state of society. We also note how being more thing-oriented pushes society into demonstrating more of the following characteristics and behaviors:

• Status and success are most measured in the accumulation of goods
• People view others as objects to be used to get more things or obstacles to be eliminated or avoided in order to steer clear of losing things. In the end, things become more important than people
• People are more aggressive in public
• People become more litigious
• Society becomes more punitive
• People will tend to have a deep compassion on others but only on those who "deserve" it.

Of course, what comes next assumes that a person-oriented society is preferred to a thing-oriented one. Does Socialism or Capitalism lead us to be person-oriented than thing-oriented?

Answering this question is problematic. After all, neither Socialism nor Capitalism are monoliths.  So in order to answer the question, we would have to identify which forms of Socialism and Capitalism we are comparing.

To find an answer to the question, what will be done here is to ask which primary characteristic of the two system would cause us to be more person-oriented. Here, the primary characteristics to be compared are collectivism and individualism. Socialism emphasizes collectivism while Capitalism emphasizes individualism.

How Socialism stresses collectivism can vary from one socialist system to another. In socialist systems that rely on elite-centered rule, collectivism applies solely to the sharing of materialistic things. In socialist systems that expand the use of democratic structures, then collectivism also includes the sharing of power. Now the trouble in the history of socialist systems is this, where collectivism did not include the sharing of power, classism took over and then at least those who were in the upper classes became thing-oriented. This was true of the U.S.S.R. after their Civil War where those who had prominent places in the Party were able to enjoy luxuries and privileges which those below would never see.

In Capitalism, the individual with his/her accomplishments, status, and possession becomes the most noteworthy characteristic of society. In Capitalism, it is what we do for ourselves that defines us. But the trouble here is what we fail to do for ourselves also defines us. And since what we can do for ourselves depends on how much we share with each other, what we do or fail to do for ourselves is not always the best measurement of who we really are as people. See, even with its stress on individualism, there is a certain amount of collectivism in Capitalism. An important example of this collectivism can be seen in the building and maintenance of infrastructures.

We should also note that when some emphasize individualism, such as in individual liberty, they do so by limiting whom they see as individual liberty's main predatory: big government. And this is done assuming that power is only found in government and that one individual cannot limit the freedom of other individuals. 

However, it is with this view of government being the primary threat to the individual and his/her liberties that provides an indicator as to whether Socialism or Capitalism will be more likely to provide a society that is more person-oriented. That the more the individual and his/her liberties are stressed, the more defensive the individual is of what they have. And the more defensive the individual is, the less collectivism will exist--that is collectivism in terms of sharing possessions or power. And the more defensive the individual is, the more value that the individual will place on what he/she has over outsiders. And that applies to both the individual's power and possessions.

This is not to say that we should do away with all individualism. After all, Martin Luther King Jr. noted that the failure of Communism was seen in its failure to recognize how life is individual. But what seems to be the case, at least speculatively, is that too much individualism causes society to become more thing-oriented. And thus, Capitalism should tend to push societies to be more thing-oriented than person oriented. On the other hand, a Socialism that allows for the expansion of democracy rather than relying on elite-centered rule might have a better chance at encouraging society to be more person-oriented.

Of course, some Capitalists would want to disagree with this thinking and they would have good reason too. We've been very speculative here. At least, however, when we look at the above characteristics that thing-oriented societies produce, we should at least agree that a person-oriented society is preferable to a thing-oriented society.

Will The Real Status Quo Please Stand Up

While listening to Christian conservatives John Piper, Tim Keller, and Anthony Bradley talk about racism, I saw a faint glimmer that one of my two pet peeves against the American Conservative Christian Church might finally be addressed. This pet peeve is that the American Conservative Christian Church does not challenge the status quo and the systemic evil that exists in society. Here, we will focus on the talk given by Keller in the event pictured with this paragraph. To access his talk directly, move the time bar to 25:52 in the video to jump to where he talks about how racism is a systemic problem and thus carries a corporate responsibility. There are some helpful comments made by Anthony Bradley in both his following lecture and in the video containing the Q&A session that he moderates.

Keller's first task was to define corporate responsibility. In talking about corporate responsibility, Keller wants to dispel of the notion that sin is solely due to individual choices. The family and or community bear some responsibility as well. But rather than just say that corporate responsibility flows in a oneway direction, he shows how it flows in a two-way direction, both from the community to the individual and from the individual to the community. Both have a hand in and need to respond to the sins of the other.

In citing Joshua 7, Keller tells how Achan and his family were stoned to death for the sin of Achan. This, according to Keller, seems foreign to the mind of many White Americans, to Whites from the West, because of our emphasis on individualism. But he adds that this is understandable to the rest of the world because they know that a person's sins are not just the result of individual choices, but of how the family interacted with him in what they taught and what they prohibited. So Achan, along with all of his family, were held responsible for his sin and were punished.

In citing Daniel 9, Keller tells how corporate responsibility flows the others way when Daniel laments over the sins of his ancestors. Here, Keller says Daniel does this because he is part of the culture that, in the past, moved his ancestors to sin against God. Keller goes on to show how Romans 5 shows that faith in Christ is a corporate deal rather than an individual one. By this he means that just as our punishment comes because of Adam, so our reward comes because of Christ.

Keller goes on to give two illustrations on why certain sins, like racism, must be handled on the corporate and individual levels. In mentioning the Holocaust, he shows how all of German society was responsible for the mass murder of the Jews and others and how each part of society cooperated with the mass murders and thus carried a different level of responsibility. This goes for the Nazi commander who carried out orders to slaughter innocent people to the German citizen who saw his or her duty to be that of just working for a living and paying their taxes. This German citizen had probably heard something about what was going on but shirked their responsibility for finding out and responding. 

Keller also relayed a story from Robert Linthicum who described a young convert of his who later turned to prostitution. When he asked why she became a prostitute, she told how the police came and threatened to beat up her father and her brother if she did not work as a prostitute. It was at this point that Linthicum realized that individual salvation was not enough to help this woman, the system had to be addressed.

What was so good in Keller's presentation? It was Keller's emphasis on our responsibility to challenge unjust systems. Maybe I am not as exposed to Reformed and other conservative sources as I should be but I found Keller's call for us to challenge the system to be refreshing; it was both new and correct. And though Keller's grounds for why we should challenge the system were based mostly on Biblical argument, he did mention the need for Whites to identify with minorities at the end, Anthony Bradley, in his presentation, added that our working for right systems should be based on love for the victims. 

We need both arguments, those grounded in Biblically based logic and those grounded in love. Arguments based on logic alone takes the personal involvement out of the picture. Arguments based on logic alone can make addressing the system something we do for ourselves and an accomplishment to be proud of. Arguments based on logic alone do not move us to listen to those whom we are trying to help and thus our intentions will more easily go astray. 

So we need to add love to arguments based on Biblical logic. Love helps us to be more outwardly directed. Love helps us to work with those we want to help rather than being paternalistic. 

What Keller's presentation, along with Bradley's followup, lacked was that we should challenge the system not just for the sake of the victim, but for the sake of the victimizer too. After all, it is the victimizer who will be judged by God. In other words, we are to challenge the system for the sake of those who are suffering unjustly and for the sake of those who are oppressing the vulnerable. Both need love though that love might be demonstrated in different ways. That we should show love to win over the victimizers was a passion for Martin Luther King and it should be our passion as well.

In addition to what was lacking, Keller makes significant error at the end. As he is exhorting the audience to challenge the system, he warns them about the self-righteousness and arrogance of many who are currently challenging racism. He could have said that self-rightousness and arrogance are temptations that can become stronger when one challenges any part of the system. But by saying what he said, he almost gives his Christian audience a reason for singing to those who are already in the fight, "Anything you can do we can do better." And once we sing that, we become prideful and self-righteous. Keller's warning about those who are self-rightoues doesn't invite us to come along those who have been laboring for the rights of others; it warns us to reinvent the wheel and work apart from them simply because they don't have the humility that comes from being saved by grace. So obviously, humility does not always come once one is saved by grace.

In addition to this talk, I would strongly suggest to those who struggle to understand what White Privilege is, to go to the 16:56 mark of the followup Q&A session to hear Anthony Bradley give a concrete example. I have heard the term but have never really understood it until he described one of his experiences as a teacher. This video accompanies this paragraph.

Finally, we need to mention what needs to be discussed in the future by Piper, Keller, Bradley, and others. Keller alluded to this briefly when he talked about other systems that need to be challenged. We need Christian leaders to talk about the multiple isms that shape the systems that make up the status quo. For our status quo does not exist by racism alone. We can divide these isms into two groups. The one group are the isms used by those who shape and run our society while the other group are the isms that are followed by those who must comply with the status quo to survive. 

There are at least 4 isms used by those who mold our society. They are racism, economic classism, elitism, and militarism. Why these isms belong to those who control the status quo is because these are the isms that those in charge follow to marginalize and displace others. These isms keep the weak dependent on those who wish to hold the whip to tame the rest. What we should note here is that while racism, economic classism, and elitism diminish the voices and power of those inside our country, militarism does the same to those outside of our borders. And we should also note how economic classism received a partial challenge by Occupy Wall Street's Declaration Of The Occupation Of New York City.

If racism is to be challenged because of how it unjustly and harshly suppresses people because of their ethnicity, then we should regard and approach economic classism, elitism, and militarism with the same energy because these isms are harsh and conquer many people too. These isms create the systems that make the status quo so good for a relative few and so miserable for a growing number of people. I don't know where Keller stands on these other issues but I do think that Bradley unintentionally supports economic classism with some of his writings and lectures. For in these writings and lectures, I have yet, and this might be my fault, to read or hear him challenge those running the system to repent of their greed and oppression and to change the economic system. I hope that I am wrong here.

The isms of those who receive the whip in the status quo include: consumerism, tribalism, and authoritarianism. These isms lead the rest in society to do their job at being complicit with injustice.  Consumerism numbs us from feeling the pain of others. Tribalism diverts our attention from morals and justice to parochial concerns and moves us to embrace a moral relativity. And authoritarianism has us following orders without asking questions and causes us to accept what is said based more on the credentials of the source rather than the logic of the content.

Certainly, the above list of isms is not exhaustive. But they are pervasively followed by all in society, by the haves and the have nots. And these isms contribute to why our oppressive systems are not adequately challenged and thus why the status quo remains.