Podcast: What Is Moral About Economic Freedom
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Libertarian Christians could learn something from our Jewish friends if we would pay attention. I had never heard of Rabbi Daniel Lapin before the Austrian Scholars Conference of 2009, but apparently he is extremely well-known to modern Jews. Rabbi Lapin is the author of dozens of books and audio lecture collections, a few of which I am now the proud owner. He is an engaging speaker and expertly articulates the Old Testament weaved with modern examples.
His talk at the Austrian Scholars Conference was definitely one of the highlights of the weekend (as I said in my blog post that day), and today I am happy to present the recording of his talk as the next LibertarianChristians.com Podcast. The talk is entitled What is Moral About Economic Freedom. Here’s what I live-blogged about it:
“Of principle importance to [Lapin] is the idea that Jews (and I would extend this to Christians) believe implicitly that making money is a good thing. You are de facto doing something good. You don’t have to give it away to validate yourself or your work! Why is this? Because in the relationship that is developed you have provided value to someone else. Lapin’s deep conviction is that by engaging in commerce you are doing something helpful and good for people. You are making them better off. This is firmly rooted in the Judeo-Christian system of ethics!”
Thank you, Rabbi Lapin, for your excellent work. May God bless your efforts.
Right click here to download the entire audio file. [mp3]
(If the widget above doesn’t show up, you may not have Adobe Flash Player installed on your system. Vista sometimes doesn’t play nice with the Flash player, so in that case you will need to download the audio directly. Enjoy!)
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Tags: ASC 2009, economics, Judaism
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Norman is the creator and primary writer for LCC. Learn a little bit about him in the
You should have a look at Blessed Economist.
http://getrad2.blogspot.com
And Kingdom Watcher.
http://www.kingwatch.co.nz/Christian_Political_Economy.htm
http://www.kingwatch.co.nz/Law_government.htm
Good libertarian stuff.
Brilliant.
Ron: I actually have BE in my RSS reader already.
BTW, if you have more than 2 links in a comment it gets flagged as spam. You’re lucky that I caught it before deletion!
Saw this quote and thought of your article:
“Do you not see, first, that — as a mental abstract — physical force is directly opposed to morality; and, secondly, that it practically drives out of existence the moral forces? How can an act done under compulsion have any moral element in it, seeing that what is moral is the free act of an intelligent being? If you tie a man’s hands there is nothing moral about his not committing murder. Such an abstaining from murder is a mechanical act; and just the same in kind, though less in degree, are the acts which men are compelled to do under penalties imposed upon them by their fellow men. Those who would drive their fellow men into the performance of any good actions do not see that the very elements of morality — the free act following on the free choice — are as much absent in those upon whom they practice their legislation as in a flock of sheep penned in by hurdles.”
— Auberon Herbert
Very interesting quote!
[...] After reading the section and reviewing some of the key points, I noticed that my favorite Rabbi, Daniel Lapin, was part of the group that wrote the paper. I guess he gets [...]