Richards is Director and Senior Fellow of the Center on Wealth, Poverty, and Morality at the Discovery Institute, a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics, and co-author, with James Robison, of the New York Times bestselling book Indivisible: Restoring Faith, Family, and Freedom Before It’s Too Late (FaithWords, 2012). Richards and I have many common interests: Christianity, theology, economics, politics. He sounds like my kind of guy – except that he’s not.

Richards is your typical "criticize the welfare state while you support the warfare state conservative." I wasn’t sure at first, but after looking at his new book Indivisible, and especially his remarks in chapter five ("Bearing the Sword") on pacifism, just war, the war on terror, the military, and defense spending, my suspicions were confirmed.

Richards maintains in his Public Discourse article that libertarians "tend to disagree with conservatives on social issues." He views the issues of abortion and marriage as "the two greatest sources of conflict between libertarians and conservatives." He believes that "there is a tacit if inarticulate conservative wisdom that recognizes that the libertarian commitment to free markets and limited government is best preserved within a broader conservative context." He posits that this "conservative wisdom" should appeal to the "‘everyman libertarian’ who values limited governments, individual rights, and free markets, but is not otherwise committed to a deeply libertarian philosophy." Richards concludes: "We conservatives need to strengthen our base without alienating our near allies. One way to do that is to show how the central convictions of ‘everyman libertarians’ can find a peaceful repose in a conservative home."

Baloney.

One does not have to be a conservative to oppose abortion and defend traditional marriage. And one should certainly not be a conservative when it comes to other important issues.

I have argued that because the non-aggression axiom is central to libertarianism, and because force is justified only in self-defense, and because it is wrong to threaten or initiate violence against a person or his property, and because killing is the ultimate form of aggression that, to be consistent, libertarians should be opposed to abortion.

If conservatives are so committed to pro-life principles, then why did they continue to fund Planned Parenthood during the Bush presidency? Why did John McCain and others vote to confirm pro-abortion judges like Stephen Breyer, Ruth Ginsburg, and David Souter to the Supreme Court? Why did George H. W. Bush even nominate Souter?

I agree with Richards that "just as government may not redefine our rights as individuals, it has no authority to redefine marriage." Marriage has always been and will forever be the union of a man and a woman. God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. Anything else is just cohabitation, fornication, civil union, voluntary contract, or domestic partnership, whether it is called a marriage or not. Same-sex marriage, which is not even supported by some homosexuals, is like a square circle, solid jello, or liquid steel.

But more importantly, and as I have also argued, the state should get out of the marriage business. Why do governments at every level require a license for people to engage in consensual, peaceful activity? And not only that, in some states there is not only a hefty fee to get a marriage license, but a required waiting period or recommended premarital counseling course. Why do two individuals need the state’s permission to get married? Who knows better if two individuals are fit to be married than the two individuals? If they want advice regarding their union, they can consult their pastor, parents, co-workers, and/or friends. It is none of the state’s business.

Marriage predated the state. It needs no protection, regulation, or monitoring by the state to continue its existence.

The real threat to the institution of marriage is not homosexuals wanting heterosexuals to recognize their same-sex marriages, it is Christians standing in a church and saying "for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part" and then getting divorced a few years later. The real assault on marriage is by serial adulterers who preach family values like the thrice-married Newt Gingrich. As Doug Bandow has recently said: "When it comes to sex the Republican Party is divided. A few members actually don’t believe it is the government’s business. However, the GOP is full of leaders with multiple marriages engaging in multiple affairs who lecture everyone else about the importance of sexual morality."

So, should libertarians be conservatives? Did not Ronald Reagan famously say: "The very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism"? The issues of abortion and same-sex marriage are used by conservatives to sucker pro-life, pro-family libertarians into believing that they should abandon libertarianism for conservatism. This would be a terrible mistake, for there is much more to conservatism than its emphasis on social issues.

There are four areas I would like to briefly mention that show the incontrovertible divide that exists between libertarians and conservatives.

First, the state. As concisely summed up by Mises Institute chairman Lew Rockwell:

The problem with American conservatism is that it hates the left more than the state, loves the past more than liberty, feels a greater attachment to nationalism than to the idea of self-determination, believes brute force is the answer to all social problems, and thinks it is better to impose truth rather than risk losing one soul to heresy. It has never understood the idea of freedom as a self-ordering principle of society. It has never seen the state as the enemy of what conservatives purport to favor. It has always looked to presidential power as the saving grace of what is right and true about America.

Second, the welfare state. As recently explained by Future of Freedom Foundation president Jacob Hornberger:

Conservatives are having a heyday calling President Obama a socialist. What they block out of their minds is that by their own measure, they are socialists too. . . . But while conservatives want to protect the assets of the rich from IRS confiscation and welfare-state redistribution, conservatives cannot deny that they themselves also favor the welfare-state concept of taxing people so that the state can redistribute the money to others. The only thing different between conservatives and liberals is the identity of the people they wish to tax and the identity of people they wish to receive the loot.

Third, war. I have said on more than one occasion that the very heart and soul of conservatism is war. Patriotism, Americanism, and being a real conservative are now equated with support for war, torture, and militarism. I firmly stand by this assertion that I first made in 2009, although it was true long before then.

And fourth, the drug war. Out of one side of their mouth conservatives talk about individual liberty, free markets, limited government, less intrusive government, cutting regulations, personal responsibility, and the Constitution, but at the same time they say out of the other side of their mouth that if you buy, sell, or possess a substance the government doesn’t approve of then we will lock you up in a cage. And if you buy, sell, or possess too much, then we will throw away the key.

Should libertarians be conservatives? To be consistent, must pro-life, pro-family libertarians be conservatives? Absolutely not.

Originally published on LewRockwell.com on May 14, 2012.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

Should Libertarians be Conservative?

The average American is in favor of freedom and he’ll tell you so in no uncertain terms. He wants Church and State separate, he would object if government were to censor the press, he doesn’t want some bureau­crat dictating to professors what they should teach. But at the same time he wants government to con­trol and regulate business; he thinks industry and trade need to be policed in order to protect the con­sumer from the wolves. Warming up to his subject he proceeds to catalogue the wickedness of people engaged in commercial activity, and especially the sins of "big business."

Strange to say, these turn out to be the same old sins one finds in every walk of life. Some men in the business world are wicked, no doubt; but so are some ministers, some pro­fessors, some publishers, some en­tertainers, and even some television commentators. There’s no reason for singling out businessmen—except to provide a specious rationale for saddling economic life with ever more bureaucratic regulations and controls. This has adverse economic effects, of course, adding to the costs of doing business and making all of us poorer, but that’s not the worst of it. When economic enterprise is not free every other freedom is in jeopardy.

Human liberty is a precious and a fragile thing. Human liberty can not be won, or even sustained, on the economic level alone; but it can be lost on that level, and it is being lost there. Control the economic life of a people and you control every other aspect of their lives as well. "Power over a man’s subsistence amounts to a power over his will." The truth of this ancient maxim has been pounded home in our time by the conditions of life behind the Iron Curtain.

Now, it is true that business is not the only sector of our society under fire. Our whole civilization—western civilization—has been under siege for several generations; and because our culture so largely embodies bourgeois values, the at­tack against business is reinforced by the revolutionary Communist thrust to unseat the bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie are the middle class—townspeople engaged in indus­try and trade—and their emergence in the modern period was opposed by the aristocracy, whose values were quite different. Few of us live next door to counts, dukes or lords: the nobility is distant in time and space, glowingly enshrined in romance and myth. "The nobleman has cour­age, spends without counting, de­spises petty detail. There is a great air of freedom and unselfishness about the nobleman. He will throw his life away for a cause, not calcu­late the returns. That is the noble idea. In reality, he lives by the serf­dom of others, and he broadens his acres by killing, and taking other people’s land-’the good old rule, the simple plan. That they should take who have the power, and they should keep who can." These are Jacques Barzun’s words.

Dr. Barzun continues, "The bourgeoisie opposed such noble free-handedness and supported a king who would replace ‘the good old rule’ by one less damaging to trade and manufacture—and to the peas­ants’ crops. But the regrettable truth is that there is no glamour about trade. Trade requires regular­ity, security, efficiency, an exact quid pro quo, and an exasperating attention to detail. . . . There is nothing spontaneous, generous or large-minded about it. Man’s native love of drama rebels against a scheme of life so plodding and re­sents the rewards of qualities so niggling."

"What a convenient word is bourgeois!" Barzun observes. "How expressive and well-shaped for the mouth to utter scorn. And how flexi­ble in its application—it is another wonderful French invention!"

The Working Class

The free enterprise system—or what is popularly called "cap­italism"—has a special affinity for the type of man we’d call bourgeois or middle class. Industry and trade have never been the preoccupation of any aristocracy, which dislikes to sully its hands with ordinary work. Most of the world’s work today is done by those who have risen from the ranks, largely by their own efforts, in societies which have no rigid caste barriers to prevent upward mobility.

The emergence of the busi­nessman during recent centuries was not a solitary adventure; the freeing of the business sector of western society went hand in hand with the expansion of other liberties we cherish. The story is a familiar one, and it begins with the religious revolution of the 16th century which led eventually to the separation of church and state, and freedom of worship. Free speech and freedom of the press were parts of this liberat­ing movement, and eventually—as Mercantilism gave way before the current of ideas released by Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and others—economic enterprise was freed from political regulations and controls, and came under consumer guidance.

Consumers—by our millions of daily decisions in the market place to buy this or not buy that—project a pattern; and these buying habits of ours give entrepreneurs the clues they need to direct production into this channel or that, in an effort to please customers. In the free econ­omy the consumer is sovereign. You may regard your product as the best gismo available anywhere at any price, but if the consumers don’t like it they buy elsewhere and you go out of business. You, as an entrepre­neur, have no power over customers except your ability to persuade and the quality of your product. This is the free market economy, and it is an integral part of the free society.

Everyone’s Business

Freedom, we hear it said, is everyone’s business, so each of us really does have a stake in freedom in-general. To the extent that any­one’s freedom is lost, everyone’s freedom is in jeopardy. But there are particular freedoms, and when a particular freedom is attacked you’d expect those directly involved to rush to its defense. And this is what you do find in most instances. When religious liberty is threatened, churchmen unite to oppose the threat. When freedom of the press is imperiled newsmen band together. Any impairment of academic free­dom is challenged by teachers, and intellectuals do battle on behalf of free speech. And when freedom of economic enterprise is being throt­tled by governmental controls busi­nessmen and business organizations mobilize to resist the attack. Right? Wrong!

Businessmen, all too often, are unwilling to speak out vigorously, even in self-defense—as the cele­brated economist, Joseph Schumpe­ter, has scathingly pointed out: "Perhaps the most striking feature of the picture is the extent to which the bourgeoisie, besides educating its own enemies, allows itself in turn to be educated by them. It absorbs the slogans of current radicalism and seems quite willing to undergo a process of conversion to a creed hos­tile to its very existence. . . . This is verified by the very characteristic manner in which particular capital­ist interests and the bourgeoisie as a whole behave when facing direct at­tack. They talk and plead—or hire people to do it for them; they snatch at every chance of compromise; they are ever ready to give in; they never put up a fight under the flag of their own ideals and interests—in this country there was no real resistance anywhere against the imposition of crushing financial burdens during the last decade or against labor legislation incompatible with the ef­fective management of industry."

I can imagine an ideal society where each sector was alert to rebuff threats to any other sector; where clergymen would go to bat whenever freedom of the press was threatened, and publishers jealously guarded academic freedom, and professors fought for freedom of medical prac­tice, and doctors resisted every bu­reaucratic invasion of the market place, and businessmen cherished freedom of religion. In real life, however, things do not happen this way.

It is partly the fault of business itself that the freedom most gravely threatened right now is the freedom of the economy, on which not only our prosperity depends, but much else besides. Those immersed in the grubby details of the market place often lose sight of the big picture; the head of a business worries about falling sales and how to meet the next payroll, but here, in this serene academic environment, we can sit back and theorize.

Better Understanding, The Best Defense

The best defense of the free econ­omy is a better understanding of the free economy, shared by more people. So let’s put capitalism to the test. Put aside, for the moment, any opinions you may entertain about the free enterprise system we now have, and let’s draw up some plans for an ideal economic order. If we were starting from scratch what requirements would we lay down for an economic order that would meet with our approval? I’m going to sug­gest that there are four major de­mands we should make of any economic system, and after we have spelled these out a bit each of us can decide for himself whether our pres­ent system falls short and how it might be strengthened and de­fended.

A good economic system has four characteristics:

1. A good economy produces goods and services efficiently.

2. A good economy allocates re­wards equitably, to all partici­pants.

3. A good economy broadens the scope for individual free choice.

4. A good economy functions in harmony with religious and moral values.

There’s no argument on the first point; our present economic system does deliver the goods, as even its enemies admit. The American econ­omy has never been wholly free; it has operated under various political restraints from the very beginning. But compared to the politically planned economies of other nations our relatively free economy has been a paragon.

Producing and exchanging in a largely free country has bestowed a prosperity upon America that the world envies. Americans started poor. There was little per capita wealth two hundred years ago; but our forebears had an abundant faith in the nation’s future under God, a strong belief in themselves, and they practiced the Puritan work ethic. This was the land of opportu­nity, and millions of the poor and oppressed of other nations migrated here to make their own way in this "land of the free." By and large they succeeded; never have so many ad­vanced so far out of poverty in so short a time.

There have been evils in Ameri­can life, and some are there still; along with errors, shortcomings and blind spots. But what other nation is entitled to cast the first stone, or the second, or the third? Lf the American Dream has faded, if there is tarnish on our idealism, where lies the fault? The Church and the School are the institutions charged with the responsibility for things of the mind and spirit, and if we have lost that vision without which the people perish, if our value system is in disarray, we surely can’t blame business and industry—which merely reflect the consensus.

The Goals of Life

The goals of human life, the ends appropriate for creatures such as we, are the primary concerns of reli­gion and education. The increase of material well-being may be the means for achieving the good life; it is certainly not the end for which life should be lived. The economic order has the modest role of supplying our creaturely needs efficiently so that we may have the leisure to pursue our personal goals. In America the economy has performed its role commendably. It is not to be blamed for the failures of other institutions. The relatively free economy we have enjoyed in America has brought unparalleled prosperity, but an affluent society is not neces­sarily a just society. And so we come to the second test we wish to put to the free enterprise system: Does it allocate the rewards fairly and equitably?

In a free society every one of us is rewarded by his peers according to the value willing buyers attach to the goods and services he offers in exchange. This is the market in ac­tion. This market place assessment is made by consumers, and we all know that consumers are ignorant, venal, biased, stupid; in short they are people very much like us! This does seem to be a clumsy way of deciding how much or how little of this world’s goods shall be put at this or that man’s disposal.

Isn’t there an alternative? Yes, there’s an alternative, and it occur­red to people more than two millen­nia ago. We’ll invite the wise and the good to come down from Olym­pus to sit as a council among men, and we’ll appear before them one by one, to be judged on personal merit and rewarded accordingly. Then we’ll be assured that those who make a million really deserve it, and those who are paupers belong at that level; and we’ll all be contented and happy. What lunacy! The genuinely wise and good would not accept such a role, and I quote the words of the highest authority de­clining it: "Who made me a judge over you?"

The market place decision that this man shall earn twenty-five thousand, this one ten, and so on, is not, of course, marked by supernal wisdom; no one claims this. But it is a million miles ahead of the alterna­tive, which is to recast consumers into voters, who will elect a body of politicians, who will appoint bureaucrats, who will divvy up the wealth—by governmental legerde­main. This mad scheme backs away from the imperfect and lurches into the impossible! There are no perfect arrangements in human affairs, but the fairest distribution of material rewards attainable by imperfect men is to let a man’s customers decide how much he should earn; this method will distribute economic goods unequally, but equitably.

We do live in an affluent society, and the fact is that the prosperity generated by our relatively free in­stitutions has been widely shared by the American people. There are the rich, there are the less well to do, and there are still some poor; but this allocation of rewards represents the choices of people themselves—as reflecting their buying habits. But the question still remains; do we have a lopsided society in which a handful of people have accumulated the bulk of the wealth produced in our economy? Dubious statistics are offered to demonstrate that 10 per cent of the people own two-thirds of the wealth, or three-quarters, or 90 per cent, or whatever. Is there any truth in such figures, or do they tell a lie?

There’s a fairly simple way to check this out for yourself. Take home ownership. Is it a fact that a handful of people own the homes most of us live in? To the contrary; 45 million homes are owned by the families that occupy them. Assum­ing the family unit to consist in father, mother and one child this accounts for 135 million persons. Millions of other Americans can ^afford to own their homes, but choose instead to rent an apartment or a house. Take automobile ownership: 82 million people own their own cars and 33 million own two or more cars. There are 130 million licensed driv­ers in the country.

Eighty-three million housing units have electric refrigerators; there are 125 million television sets, 55 million of them color; 70 million homes have washing machines; and there is a radio for every man, woman and child in the country. And as for food, we are the only nation in history whose number one medical problem is overeating! I do not know who concocted the first share-the-wealth scheme. It was ages ago, and it was a pipe dream from the beginning. It is a pipe dream still for most of the world’s people. But in America that dream has come true—in large measure. Capitalism—the free economy—has produced material abundance, and the benefits of our prosperity are enjoyed by almost every man, woman, and child in the country—as well as by millions of people around the globe.

Let me pursue this point through one more stage. Most people, when they reflect on the matter, agree that there is no concentration of ownership in everyday things like houses, automobiles and food. But when they get into the arcane world of the corporation, they are easily misled by those who have twisted "big business" into a four-letter word; they have been led to believe that the industry of this country is owned by a handful of stockholders.

Widespread Ownership

Pick any one of the giant corpora­tions and examine its annual report. I picked Exxon, a fairly large outfit. The 1976 Annual Report reveals that Exxon is owned by approxi­mately 700,000 shareholders; that’s roughly 5½ times as many owners as employees, and it’s about as many people as live in the whole state of Delaware. That’s a lot of people, but there’s more to come.

Note the large number of stock­holders who are not individuals but institutions. Every major church body owns shares of stock in indus­try, but in some statistics a denomi­nation counts as but one stock­holder. Several thousand colleges own stock, but each is counted as one stockholder. Your local Bank and Trust Company is a stockholder on behalf of its thousands of depositors; every insurance company owns stock on behalf of its millions of policy holders; every pension fund is invested in stocks. Pension funds, including labor union funds, now own about one-third of the total value of all the stocks listed on the New York exchange. The unions have come to own so large a share of American industry that Peter Drucker refers to this phenomenon as "pension fund socialism." In short, nearly every American owns a chunk of the corporate wealth of America!

Now, it is true, of course, that there are some enormously rich peo­ple in this country. What do they do with their money? Some of them spend their money foolishly, just as you and I would do if we were in their shoes. But any millionaire, who wants to preserve his fortune and pass it along to his children and their children, has no choice but to invest it in industries which produce the incredible variety of goods which flood the market places of America soliciting the patronage of the masses of consumers. No other soci­ety has ever allocated its rewards as generously, or so equitably.

Our present economic system, the system of free enterprise, has met our first two requirements; it has made us an affluent society produc­ing over and above our own needs, an abundance that we have gener­ously shared with the world; and every person who has participated in the production of goods and ser­vices shares equitably in the fruits of his production.

The third test has to do with an aspiration deeply rooted in human nature; we want to be free; we want the freedom to choose. We want to be free to worship in the church of our choice, to choose our own schools, to read freely and speak our minds. We want to be free to be ourselves, even if this is to practice what others regard as our harmless eccen­tricities. We want to be free to choose our profession or place of employment. We want solitude when we choose to be alone, and we want the freedom to choose our associates—which includes the right to dissociate. These are some of the demands of human nature itself, this is how God made us. As Jeffer­son put it, "The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time." Therefore, the third demand we make of an economic order is that it manifest, in its operations, a crea­ture who is a freely choosing being.

By Acts of Choice

Man’s will is uniquely free. All other creatures—birds, beasts, fish, and so on—obey the laws of their nature willy-nilly. Only man has the capacity to disobey the deep mandates of his being. Ortega, the great Spanish philosopher, re­marked that the tiger cannot be de-tigered but the human being is al­ways in danger of being de­humanized. It is by acts of will, by acts of choice, that man is hu­manized; and this decision pro­cess, in the nature of the case, must be engineered by the individual concerned—by an act of inner re­solve. Each person is self-con­trolling, he is in charge of his own life; and if a person refuses to as­sume responsibility for himself no one can exercise this role by proxy, from the outside.

The free society is our natural habitat; freedom accords with human nature, and the tactic of freedom as it applies in the economic sector is capitalism, the market economy. The economy is free when the productive activities of men re­spond sensitively to the needs of consumers, as these needs manifest themselves in people’s buying habits. It is true, of course, that when people are free to spend their money as they please they will often spend it foolishly—other people, that is! They’ll make mistakes. But isn’t that one of the important ways we learn in life, by being free to make mistakes, picking ourselves up every time we fail and standing a bit taller every time we succeed?

The biggest mistake of all is to persuade ourselves that we can avoid the little mistakes people make in a free society by adopting a planned economy. A centrally planned nation is necessarily a command society. Individual per­sons are no longer free to make their own decisions, their private plans must be cancelled whenever they conflict with the overall political plan. This is a giant step along the road to serfdom.

No Guarantees

To have economic freedom does not, of course, mean that you will be assured the income you think you deserve, or the job to which you think you are entitled. Economic freedom does not dispense with the necessity for work. Its only promise is that you may have your pick from among many employment oppor­tunities, or go into business for yourself. And as a bonus the free economy puts a multiplier onto your efforts, to enrich you far beyond what the same effort returns you under any alternative system.

The American economic sys­tem—free enterprise, capitalism, the market economy, call it what you will—has never been as free as the believer in the free society would wish. But it aspires toward freedom, as do most citizens of our country; and our economy has indeed been freer than the economies of other nations. But despite the restrictions and controls, our relatively free economy has (1) delivered goods and services efficiently; it has (2) allo­cated rewards equitably; and (3) it does expand opportunities for per­sonal choice in society.

There is one final point. Ameri­cans are basically a religious people who try to bring moral values to bear on the issues of public life. Does a person have to put aside his reli­gious and moral values while en­gaged in the sordid business of mak­ing a living—as some misguided voices declare? Or is there, as I be­lieve, a vital relationship between market place and altar? No man’s judgment can rise above his under­standing of the facts; and as I have pointed out, there is gross misun­derstanding of the nature of busi­ness and the economy—especially, it seems, among those given to pro­nouncing moral judgments!

Biblical religion has at least three important and relevant criteria for judging social policy:

(a) the idea of justice voiced by the Old Testament prophets;

(b) the New Testament ideal of the sacredness of persons (i.e., Rights endowed by the Creator); and

(c) the Protestant emphasis on the importance of personal deci­sion—you are closed to God’s grace until you decide to open yourself up.

Put these ingredients together in the proper proportions—justice, the sacredness of persons, and the necessity of choice—and you have the free society. The political struc­tures of a free society are designed to assure the inviolability of every per­son. They maximize his opportunity to pursue his personal goals, and they cultivate an economic order that is guided by consumer demand. This was the social goal envisioned by the eighteenth-century Whigs, the men we refer to as the Founding Fathers. What they founded was prepared for by eighteen centuries of tutelage in biblical religion.

Questions Concerning the Morality of Capitalism

This may sound good, the critic tells us, but doesn’t the psychology of capitalism take the wraps off greed, and doesn’t capitalism ele­vate money-making to the chief end of man? And didn’t Jesus condemn wealth?

The answer to all three questions is No. As my first witness I call upon the eminent sociologist, Max Weber, and quote from his celebrated book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. "The impulse to acquisition, pursuit of gain, of money, of the greatest possible amount of money, has in itself noth­ing to do with capitalism. This im­pulse exists and has existed among waiters, physicians, coachmen, art­ists, prostitutes, dishonest officials, soldiers, nobles, crusaders, gam­blers, and beggars. It should be taught in the kindergarten of cultural history that this greed for gain is not in the least identical with capitalism, and is still less its spirit." Greed is a human frailty, to be condemned where found and overcome if possible. It is not the exclusive vice of any class or occupa­tion. In any event, it has nothing to do with the efficient production of goods and services in the capitalist order and their equitable distribu­tion.

My second witness is the eminent theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr. Late in life, after being converted away from Socialism, Niebuhr made a sage comment on the profit motive. Even the minister is economically motivated, he wrote, "when he moves to a new charge because the old one did not give him a big enough parsonage or a salary adequate for his growing family."

We can better understand Jesus’ attitude toward material posses­sions if we contemplate a seeming paradox: Jesus had harsh things to say about the three R’s; the three R’s in this case being Religion, Righ­teousness, and Riches! We learn from the Gospels that something which resembles religion, but which is ritualistic and external, may im­munize us against the real thing, which is inward and spiritual.

Which of us does not feel, at times, the exasperation which caused a member of Parliament to blow his top and say: "Thank God for the Church of England; it’s all that stands between us and Chris­tianity!" And by the same token, perfunctory righteousness—Phar­isaism—may harden the heart and beget an uncharitable spirit. Riches, too, may pose a peril; but this is a matter of degree only, for it is just as common to be infected with a false philosophy of material pos­sessions by a thousand dollars as by a million. Avarice is a common trait in all cultures and at every economic level. There are misers everywhere, and a miser is one who puts his trust in riches, and in so doing he treats means as an end.

This is the point of Jesus’ parable of the rich man whose crops were so good that he had to build bigger barns. This good fortune was the man’s excuse for saying, "Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years! Take thine ease, eat, drink, be merry." There is a two-fold point in the parable; the first is that nothing in life justifies a man in assuming this attitude; we must never stop growing. It has been well said that we don’t grow old, we become old by not growing. The second point is that a material windfall may tempt a man into the error of quitting the struggle for the real goal of life. Jesus condemned the man who put his trust in riches, who "layeth up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God." Which is not the same as condemning material possessions per se, or wealth held under proper stewardship.

Life is probative; our three score years and ten are a test run. As St. Augustine put it, "We are here schooled for life eternal." And one of the important examination ques­tions concerns the economic use of the planet’s scarce resources and the proper management of our material possessions. These are the twin facets of Christian stewardship, and poor performance here will result in dire consequences. As Jesus put it, "If, therefore, you have not been faithful in the use of worldly wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?"

Economics, the science of means, needs religion, the science of ends. To inflate a means into an end is idolatry. In sober truth, no economic system can be anything more than a means. The ends for which life should be lived take us into another dimension, into the domain of our moral and religious life. As created beings we are designed to achieve a transcendent end: "Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in Thee." But if we are to live as we should live during this life, we must be free; and one of the imperatives of the free life is freedom of economic enterprise.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

Humane Values and the Free Economy

Man is not simply a spiritual being; he is a spiritual being who feels hunger, needs protection from the cold, and seeks shelter from the elements. In order to feed, house and clothe himself, a person must work. Augmenting his labor with tools and machinery, he converts the raw materials of his natural environment into consumable goods. He learns to cooperate with nature and use her forces to serve his ends. He also learns to cooperate with his fellows, his natural sociability reinforced by the discovery that the division of labor benefits all. "Trade is the great civilizer." There’s an unbroken thread that runs from these primitive beginnings to the complex economic order of our own time: it is the human need to cope with scarcity, to satisfy creaturely needs, to provide for material well-being.

The visible signs of this endeavor are all about us; factories, stores, offices, farms, mines, power plants. These are the locations where work is performed, services rendered, goods exchanged, wages paid, money spent, and so on. This is the economy, and in the free society the economy is not under government control and regulation.

In the free society the law protects life, liberty and property of all men alike, ensuring peaceful conditions within the community. This lays down a framework and a set of rules, enabling people to compete and cooperate as they go about the job of providing for their material well being. When government performs as an impartial umpire who interprets and enforces the agreed upon rules, then the uncoerced economic activities of people display regularity and harmony—as if guided by Adam Smith’s invisible hand!

The Capitalistic Economy

In a society where people are free, the economy is referred to as capitalistic. Some prefer the term free enterprise; others like the private enterprise system, or the private property system, or the market economy. Now, of course, no society has ever been one hundred per cent free, which means that we’ve never had a completely free market economy. Some people have always seized and misused political power to rig the market in their favor. Obviously, it is not the market’s fault if some people choose to break the rules.

The appalling thing is that many intellectuals mistake these deviations from free enterprise for free enterprise itself! And so they condemn "capitalism." But the "capitalism" they condemn is actually the failure of certain people to live up to the rules of capitalism–the system of voluntary exchange among uncoerced people. We’re aware of human frailties and shortcomings; we know that it’s easier to preach than to practice, easier to announce a set of ideals than to live up to them. Economic theory provides us with a description of the way an economy would work among a people who exercise individual liberty and practice voluntary association. It is this theory we seek to understand and explain, and it is the deviations from this ideal that we seek to correct.

Every person of good will wants to see other people better off; better fed, better housed, better clothed, and well provided with the amenities. So everyone wants the economic order to function efficiently. But how important is it that the economic order be free from bureaucratic direction and political controls? Does it do any harm if we allow the economic order to be quarterbacked by government? Let’s examine a concrete example to indicate the serious secondary consequences of government control.

In the economic sector of our society there is a multi-billion dollar industry engaged in the production of newspapers, magazines, and journals of opinion. There is also the book trade. Those who publish and distribute the printed word constitute The Press, and one of the important freedoms cherished in our intellectual heritage is Freedom of the Press. The concept is now extended to cover the media—radio and television—where the same principle applies.

Freedom of the Press means simply that the government does not tell editors what to print and what not to print–nor does it dictate to purveyors of television commentary. Some editors print stuff they think will sell. Some editors are men of strong conviction trying to promote a cause they believe in; others are party hacks thumping the tub for some ideological idiocy like communism, or anarchism, or the New Left, or whatever. But not a single editor in the country is out crusading for government censorship of the press; except indirectly!

Editorial Inconsistency

A large number of editors, writers and commentators who demand freedom for themselves in one breath, demand government regulation of business and industry with the next! If, at the urging of The Press, government continues to extend its controls over one business after another, how can anyone believe that government will respect the editorial room as a privileged sanctuary, and keep its hands off that section of business known as The Press? Socialize the economy and The Press becomes a branch of the government bureaucracy, free no longer.

The fact that The Press actively cooperates in its own entrapment makes the end result even more bitter. It is one thing to go down fighting; it is something else to cooperate in your own demise. Political control and regulation of the written and spoken word means excessive influence over the minds and thoughts of people. It means eventually a ministry of Propaganda and Information, and an Office of Censorship.

If you get the impression that I don’t think highly of some of the people involved with The Press, you’d be correct; they are—with notable exceptions—a sorry lot. They, along with their counterparts in the University and in the Church—with notable exceptions—are guilty of that "treason of the intellectuals" denounced by the French writer, Julien Benda, in his 1927 book of that title. The intellectuals’ treason in the modern world, wrote Benda, is to abandon the pursuit of truth and to seek political preferment instead.

Lest you think I am being unduly harsh on some of those who refer to themselves as Intellectuals, I shall quote a few words of C. S. Lewis:

It is an outrage that they should be commonly spoken of as Intellectuals. This gives them the chance to say that he who attacks them attacks Intelligence. It is not so. They are not distinguished from other men by an unusual skill in finding truth nor any virginal ardour to pursue her… It is not excess of thought but defect of fertile and generous emotion that marks them out. Their heads are no bigger than the ordinary; it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so.(1)

A Vital Connection

I use The Press to point up the vital relationship between intellectual freedom and economic freedom. Freedom of thought, bound only by the rules of thought itself; freedom of belief, in terms of the mind’s own energy; freedom of utterance, guided by logic and within reason–these spiritual freedoms are of the very essence of our being. When they are threatened directly all of us rush to their defense. My point is that they are threatened indirectly whenever—and to whatever degree—their material and economic support is straitjacketed by government regulations and controls.

The same analysis would apply to the Academy and to the Church. If the government owns the campus and pays the professor’s salary, the teacher becomes a political flunky, no longer free to research, write, and teach according to his best insights and conscience. And when private property is no longer regarded as the sine qua non of a free people, when private property suffers increasing encroachments by government, then church properties, too, become politicized. And, as taxes increase and disposable individual income diminishes, private voluntary funding of churches correspondingly declines and religious programs suffer. Accept economic controls, and what then becomes of Academic Freedom and Freedom of Worship?

In short, freedom is all of a piece; philosophy is not the same as digging a ditch, but socialize the ditch-digger and the philosopher begins to lose some of his freedom. Freedom of the marketplace and liberties of the mind hang together as one depends on the other.

The great philosopher, George Santayana, reflected sadly that, in this life of ours, the things that matter most are at the mercy of the things which matter least. A bullet, a tiny fragment of common lead, can snuff out the life of a great man; a few grains of thyroxin one way or the other can upset the endocrine balance and alter the personality, and so on. But the more we think about this situation and the more instances of this sort we cite, the more obvious it becomes that the things Santayana declared matter least, actually matter a great deal. They are so tied in with the things which matter most that the things which matter most depend on them!

Economic Liberty Paramount

In precisely the same way, economic liberty matters a great deal because every liberty of the mind is joined to freedom of the market, economic freedom. There’s an old proverb to the effect that whoever controls a man’s subsistence has acquired a leverage over the man himself, which impairs his freedom of thought, speech, and worship. The man who cannot claim ownership over the things he produces has no control over the things on which his life depends; he is a slave, by definition. A man who is not allowed to own becomes the property of whoever controls his means of survival, for "a power over a man’s support is a power over his will," wrote Hamilton in The Federalist. Economic planning implies the power to regulate the noneconomic sectors of life.

F. A. Hayek puts it this way in his influential book, The Road to Serfdom: "Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life which can be separated from the rest; it is the control of the means for all our ends."(2)

In a totalitarian country like Russia or China the government acts as a planning board to assign people to jobs and direct the production and distribution of goods. The whole country is, in effect, a gigantic factory. In practice, there is bound to be a lot of leakage—as witness the inevitable black market. But to whatever extent the State does control the economic life of the Russian and Chinese people it directs every other aspect of their lives as well.

The Masses Content to Drift

The masses of people everywhere and at all times are content to drift along with the trend; they pose no problem for the planner. But what happens to the rebels in a planned economy? Suppose you wanted to publish an opposition newspaper in a place like Russia or China. You could not go out and simply buy presses, paper, and a building; you’d have to acquire these from the State. For what purpose? Why, to attack the State! You would have to find workmen willing to risk their necks to work for you; ditto, people to distribute; ditto people willing to be caught buying or reading your paper. A Daily Worker may be published in a capitalist country, but a Daily Capitalist in a communist country is inconceivable!

Or take the orator who wants to protest. Where could he find a platform in a country in which the State owns every stump, street corner, and soap box—not to mention every building?

Suppose you didn’t like your job, where could you go and what could you do? Your job is pretty bad, but it is one notch better than Siberia or starvation, and these are the alternatives. Strike? This is treason against the State, and you’ll be shot. Listen to George Bernard Shaw, defending Socialism, writing in Labor Monthly, October 1921: "Compulsory labor, with death as the final penalty, is the keystone of Socialism." Shaw was a vegetarian because he loved animals; perhaps he was a Socialist because he hated people!

Point One: Economic freedom is important in itself, and it is doubly important because every other freedom is related to it.

To have economic freedom does not, of course, mean that you will be assured the income you think you deserve, nor the job to which you think you may be entitled. Economic freedom does not dispense with the necessity for work. Its only promise is that you may have your pick from among many employment opportunities, or go into business for yourself, and as a bonus the free economy puts a multiplier onto your efforts to enrich you far beyond what the same effort returns you under any alternative system.

Under primitive conditions a family grows its own potatoes, builds its own shelter, shoots its own game, and so on. But we live in a division of labor society where individuals specialize in production and then exchange their surpluses for the surpluses of other people until each person gets what he wants. Most of us work for wages; we produce our specialty, and in return we acquire a pocketful of dollar bills. The dollars are neutral, and thus we can use them to achieve a variety of purposes. We use some of them to satisfy our needs for food, clothing and shelter; we give some to charity; we take a trip; we pay taxes; we go to the theater, and so on. The money we earn is a means we use to satisfy our various ends.

These interlocking events—production, exchange, and consumption—are market phenomena, and the science of economics emerged, as Mises put it, with "the discovery of regularity and sequence in the concatenation of market events."

Economics Concerns the Means to Achieve Human Goals

Economics has often been called a science of means. The economist, speaking as an economist, does not try to instruct people as to the nature and destiny of man, nor does he try to guide them toward the proper human goals. The ends or goals people strive for are, for the economist, part of his given data, and his business is merely to set forth the means by which people may attain their preferences most efficiently and economically. Economics, as Mises says, "is a science of the means to be applied for the attainment of ends chosen." And a "science never tells a man how he should act; it merely shows how a man must act if he wants to attain definite ends."(3)

When people are free to spend their money as they please, they will often spend it foolishly—I mean other people, of course! As consumers they will demand—and producers will obediently supply—goods that glitter but are shoddy; styles that are tasteless; entertainment that bores; and music that drives us nuts. Nobody ever went broke, H. L. Mencken used to say, by underestimating the taste of the American public. But this, of course, is only half the story. The quality product is available in every line for those who seek it out, and many do. The choices men make in the economic sector will be based upon their scales of values; the market is simply a faithful mirror of ourselves and our choices.

Now, man does not live by bread alone, and no matter how much we might increase the quantity of available material goods, nearly everyone will acknowledge that there is more to life than this. Individual human life has a meaning and purpose which transcends the social order; man is a creature of destiny.

As soon as we begin talking in these terms, of human nature and destiny, we move into the field of religion—the realm of ends. A science of means, like economics, needs to be hitched up with a science of ends, for a means all by itself is meaningless; a means cannot be defined except in terms of the ends or goals to which it is related. The more abundant life is not to be had in terms of more automobiles, more bathtubs, more telephones, and the like. The truly human life operates in a dimension other than the realm of things and means; this other dimension is the domain of religion—using the term in its generic sense. Or, call it your philosophy of life, if you prefer.

If we as a people are squared away in this sector of life—if our value system is in good shape so that we can properly order our priorities—then we’ll be able to take economic and political problems in our stride. On the other hand, if there is widespread confusion about what it means to be a human being, so that people are confused as to the proper end and goal of human life—some seeking power, others wealth, fame, publicity, pleasure or chemically induced euphoria—then our economic and political problems overwhelm us.

If economics is a science of means, that is, a tool, we need some discipline to help us decide how to use that tool. The ancient promise of "seek ye first the Kingdom" means that if we put first things first, then second and third things will drop naturally into their proper places. Our actions will then conform to the laws of our being and we’ll get the other things we want as a sort of bonus.

Point Two: Once we understand that economics is a science of means, we realize that economics cannot stand alone—it needs to be hooked up with a discipline which is concerned with ends, which means religion or philosophy.

There is no easy answer to questions about the ends for which life should be lived, or the goals proper for creatures of our species, but neither is the human race altogether lacking in accumulated wisdom in the matter. Let me offer you a suggestion from Albert Jay Nock. Nock used to speak of "man’s five fundamental social instincts," and he listed them as an instinct of expansion and accumulation, of intellect and knowledge, of religion and morals, of beauty and poetry, of social life and manners. He then makes the charge that our civilization, especially during the past two centuries, has given free reign only to the instinct of expansion and accumulation, that is, the urge to make money and exert influence; while the other four instincts have been disallowed and perverted. Our culture is lopsided as a result, and some basic drives of human nature are being thwarted.

Let’s move to the next stage of our inquiry and ask: What is the distinguishing feature of a science, and in what sense is economics a science? Adam Smith entitled his great work The Wealth of Nations (1776); one of Mises’ books is entitled The Free and Prosperous Commonwealth (1927). It is clearly evident that these works deal with national prosperity, with the overall well-being of a society, with upgrading the general welfare. These are works of economic science, insofar as they lay down the general rules which a society must follow if it would be prosperous.

General Principles

The distinguishing feature of a science, any science, is that it deals with the general laws governing the behavior of particular things. Science is not concerned with particular things, except insofar as some particular thing exemplifies a general principle. When we concentrate on a particular flower, like Tennyson’s "flower in the crannied wall," we move into the realm of art and poetry. Should we want the laws of growth for this species of flower, we consult the science of botany. These books by Smith and Mises lay down the rules a society must conform to if it wants to prosper, they do not tell you as an individual how to make a million in real estate, or a killing in the stock market. This is another subject.

The question before the house in economic inquiry is: "How shall we organize the productive activities of man so that society shall attain maximum prosperity?" And the answer given by economic science is: "Remove every impediment that hampers the market and all the obstructions which prevent it from functioning freely. Turn the market loose and the nation’s wealth will be maximized." The economist, in short, establishes the rules which must be followed if we want a society to be prosperous; but no conceivable elaboration of these rules tells John Doe that he ought to follow them.

Economic science can prescribe for the general prosperity, but it cannot tell John Doe that he ought to obey that prescription. That job can be performed, if at all, by the moralist. The problem here is to bridge the gap between the economist’s prescription for national prosperity and John Doe’s adoption of that prescription as a guide for his personal conduct.

A Science of Means

Economics is a science of means. It abstains from judgments of value and does not tell John Doe what goals he should choose. If you want to persuade John Doe to follow the rules of economics for maximizing the general prosperity you must argue that he has a moral obligation to conform his actions to certain norms already established in his society by the traditional ethical code.

This code extols justice, forbids murder, theft, and covetousness, and culminates in love for God and neighbor. This is old stuff, you say; true, but it’s good stuff! It’s the very stuff we need when constructing a proper framework for economic activity.

The market economy is not something which comes out of nothing. But the market economy emerges naturally whenever certain noneconomic conditions are right. There is a realm of life outside the realm of economic calculation, on which the market economy depends. Let me cite Ludwig Mises again, quoting this time from his great work, Socialism. Mises speaks of beauty, health, and honor, calling them moral goods. Then he writes: "For all such moral goods are goods of the first order. We can value them directly; and therefore have no difficulty in taking them into account, even though they lie outside the sphere of monetary computation." In other words, the market economy is generated and sustained within a larger framework consisting of, among other things, the proper ethical ingredients.

Point Three: The free market will not function in a society where the sense of moral obligation is weak or absent.

Nearly everything on this planet is scarce. There are built-in shortages of almost everything people want. For this reason we need a science of scarcity, and this is economics—a science of scarcity. Goods which are needed but not scarce, such as air, are not economic goods. Air is a free good. Economics deals with things which are in short supply, relative to human demand for them, and this includes most everything we need and use. Our basic situation on this planet is an unbalanced equation with man and his expanding wants on one side, and the world of scanty resources on the other.

Human Wants Insatiable

The human being is a creature of insatiable wants, needs, and desires; but he is placed in an environment where there are but limited means for satisfying those wants, needs, and desires. Unlimited wants on one side of this unbalanced equation; limited means for satisfying them on the other. Now, of course, it is true that no man, nor the human race itself, has an unlimited capacity for food, clothing, shelter, or any other item singly or in combination. But human nature is such that if one want is satisfied the ground is prepared for two others to come forward with their demands. A condition of wantlessness is virtually inconceivable, short of death itself.

What does all this mean? The upshot of all this is that the economic equation will never come out right. It’s insoluble. There’s no way of taking a creature with unlimited wants and satisfying him by any organization or reorganization of limited resources. Something’s got to give, and economic calculation is the human effort to achieve the maximum fulfillment of our needs while avoiding waste.

Let me, at this point, offer you a little parable. This story has to do with a bright boy of five whose mother took him to a toy store and asked the proprietor for a challenging toy for the young man. The owner of the shop brought out an elaborate gadget, loaded with levers, buttons, coils of wire, and many movable parts. The mother examined the complicated piece of apparatus and shook her head. "Jack is a bright boy," she said, "but I fear that he is not old enough for a toy like this."

"Madam," said the proprietor, "this toy has been designed by a panel of psychologists to help the growing child of today adjust to the frustrations of the contemporary world. No matter how he puts it together, it won’t come out right."

Relative Scarcity

Economics is indeed the science of scarcity, but it’s important to realize that the scarcity we are talking about in this context is relative. In the economic sense, there is scarcity at every level of prosperity. Whenever we drive in city traffic, or look vainly for a place to park, we are hardly in a mood to accept the economic truism that automobiles are scarce. But of course they are, relative to our wishes. Who would not want to replace his present car with a Rolls Royce if it were available merely for the asking?

These simple facts make hash of the oft repeated remark that "we have solved the problem of production, and now we must organize politically to redistribute our abundance." Economic production involves engineering and technology, in that men, money, and machines are linked to turn out airplanes, or automobiles, or tractors, or typewriters, or what not. But resources are limited, and the men, money, and machines we employ to turn out airplanes are not available for the production of automobiles, or tractors, or anything else. The dollar you spend for a package of cigars is no longer available to you for a hamburger.

The economic equation can never be solved; to the end of time there will be scarce goods and unfulfilled wants. There will never be a moment when everyone will have all he wants. "Economics," in the words of Wilhelm Roepke, "should be an anti-ideological, anti-utopian, disillusioning science,"⁽⁵⁾ and indeed it is. The candid economist is a man who comes before his fellows with the bad news that the human race will never have enough. Organize and reorganize society from now till doomsday and we’ll still be trying to cope with scarcity. This truth does not set well with those who have the perfect solution in hand—and the woods are full of such. No wonder economists are unpopular!

Point Four: Things are scarce, and therefore we need a science of scarcity in order to make the best of an awkward situation.

The modern mind takes the dogma of inevitable progress for granted. Most of our contemporaries assume that day by day, in every way, we are getting better and better, until some day the human race will achieve perfection. The modern mind is passionately utopian, confident that some piece of social machinery, some ideological gadgetry, is about to solve the human equation. Minds fixed in such a cast of thought, minds with this outlook on life, are immune to the truths of economics. The conclusions of economics, in their full significance, are incompatible with the facile notions of automatic human progress which are part of the mental baggage of modern man—including many economists!

I’m not denying that there is genuine progress in certain limited areas of our experience. This year’s color television set certainly gives a better picture than the first set you bought in, say, 1950. The jet planes of today deliver you more rapidly and in better shape than did the old prop jobs—although there’s some truth in the remark of some comedian: "Breakfast in Paris, luncheon in New York, dinner in San Francisco—baggage in Rio de Janeiro!" Automobiles are more luxurious, we have more conveniences around the house, we are better equipped against illness. There is real progress in certain branches of science, technology, and mechanics.

But are the television programs improving year by year? Are the novels of this year so much better than the novels of last year, or last century? Are the playwrights whose offerings we have seen on Broadway this season that much better than Shakespeare? Has the contemporary outpouring of poetry rendered Homer, Dante, Keats and Browning obsolete? Is the latest book on the "new morality" superior to Aristotle’s Ethics?

Are the prevailing economic doctrines of 1979, reflecting the Samuelson text, sounder than those of a generation ago, nourished on Fairchild, Furness and Buck? Are today’s prevailing political doctrines more enlightened than those which elected a Grover Cleveland? Henry Adams in his Education observed that the succession of presidents from Washington, Adams and Jefferson down to Ulysses Grant was enough to disprove the theory of progressive evolution! What would he say if he were able to observe the recent past?

The dogma of inevitable progress does not hold water. Perfect anthills may be within the realm of possibility; but a perfect human society, never! Utopia is a delusion. Man is the kind of a creature for whom complete fulfillment is not possible within history; unlike other organisms, he has a destiny in eternity which takes him beyond biological and social life. This is the world outlook of all serious religion and philosophy. The conclusion of economics—that life holds no perfect solutions—is just what a person who embraces this world view would expect. Economic truths are as acceptable to the religious world view as they are unacceptable to the world view premised on automatic progress into an earthly paradise.

Another Dimension Transcends the Natural Order

If there is another dimension of being which transcends the natural order—the natural order being comprised of the things we can see and touch, weigh and measure—and if man is really a creature of both orders and at home in both, then he has an excellent chance of establishing his earthly priorities in the right sequence. He will not put impossible demands on the economic order, nor will he strive for perfection in the political order. Earth is enough, so he’ll leave heaven where it belongs, beyond the grave! The effort to build a newfangled heaven on earth in countries like Russia and China has resulted in conditions that resemble an old-fashioned hell. Let us strive for a more moderate goal, let us work for a tolerable society —not a perfect one—and we may make it!

Point Five: Economics tells us that the Kingdom of God is beyond history.

Economics is a discipline in its own right, but it has some larger meanings and implications. Its very nature demands a framework in which there are religious and ethical ingredients. Establish these necessary conditions—together with their legal and political corollaries —and within this framework the economic activities of men are self-starting, self-operating, and self-regulating. Given the proper framework, the economy does not have to be made to work; it works by itself, and it pays rich dividends in the form of a free and prosperous commonwealth.

⁽¹⁾ The Abolition of Man, pp. 34-35.

⁽²⁾ The Road to Serfdom, p. 92.

⁽³⁾ Human Action, p. 10.

⁽⁴⁾ Socialism, p. 116.

⁽⁵⁾ A Humane Economy, p. 150.

Read more from the Edmund Opitz Archive.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

Thinking About Economics: It’s more than just money.

The defense "cuts," of course, are not really cuts at all, just reductions in the rate of spending increases of the bloated defense budget.

So, who is this Christian warmonger that is so upset about defense budget "cuts" that he thinks they are a deeply disturbing, draconian, recklessly dangerous, self-destructive absurdity.

He is not a member, with Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Hal Lindsey, Cal Thomas, and Pat Boone, of the Christian axis of evil, although he should be. He is not a Christian killer par excellence, like Doug Giles. He is not a Christian warmonger on steroids, like Bryan Fischer. And neither is he the greatest Christian warmonger of all time. That designation goes to Ellis Washington.

He is Michael Milton, the newly elected chancellor/CEO of Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina. Milton holds a B.A. from Mid-America Nazarene University, an M.Div. from Knox Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. from the University of Wales, Lampeter. He is the former pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Chattanooga, Tennessee, in addition to founding two other churches and a Christian school. Milton is the host and speaker on Faith for Living, which can be seen on television and heard on radio. He has also released three music CDs and is the author of several books.

But perhaps I should also note that Dr. Milton has a diploma from the Defense Language Institute, holds a commission in the U.S. Army Reserves as a chaplain, and was elected in 2010 by the Chief of Chaplains to the College of Military Preachers and appointed an instructor at the Armed Forces Chaplain School. He is also the founding director of the Chaplain Ministries Institute in Charlotte. I also note that on October 14, 2001, it was announced that Reformed Theological Seminary had "been approved by the NC SAA Program to receive the GI Bill under the provisions of Title 38 and 10, United States Code!"

Milton is a theological schizophrenic. Schizophrenia has been described as a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness that most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking.

I know of no other way to describe Milton after reading his latest post on the Faith for Living blog hosted by his seminary:

The failure of the bipartisan super committee to take decisive action to reverse the 15 trillion-dollar debt crisis this country needs from becoming another Greece has, predictably, failed. Now the Washington blame game begins. However, the greatest losers are the American people and, specifically, those Americans who courageously and proudly wear the uniform of the armed services.

As threats of cuts are made to their very mission, our brave troops are on the ground, in the air, and on the seas fighting, defending, and protecting this nation from the continuing threats to our very existence as a people. The absurd decision to tie massive cuts to the US military as an "incentive" to force action by the super committee was one of the biggest mistakes ever made by Washington DC, and they have made a few recently. Of all the things that the government does, providing a military to "defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic" just happens to be one of the clearest.

Scripture teaches that God has ordained government for the good of man. Civil authority, according to St. Paul, has been granted the power of the sword to punish evil, thereby protecting the innocent: "For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil" (The Epistle to the Romans 13:4 KJV). The present talk of defense cuts flies in the face of our nation’s duty and our proud heritage.

We have had draw downs before – after WWII, after Vietnam, and after the Gulf War, but we have never had to think about draconian reductions while we were in the middle of a war! It is this very point that is deeply disturbing, and recklessly dangerous. The consequences of even the talk of such tinkering with our defenders, even if reasonable heads prevail to stop this absurdity, will have their consequences.

Have we not learned our lesson? Reagan’s military build-up in the 1980s reversed the ill-advised draw downs after Vietnam (just one front in a larger, trans-generational Cold War) and, according to scholars like Paul Kengor of Grove City College and the American Center for Vision and Values, "All of these ventures [the strengthening of defense] had the effect of demonstrating a stronger, resurgent America, not only economically but also militarily. Suddenly, the country that had left Vietnam no longer appeared to lack resolve" (The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism by Dr. Paul Kengor, HarperCollins, 2007, 82).

Kengor went on to demonstrate that President Reagan understood that America was still at war. According to this preeminent Reagan scholar, his action in strengthening the military greatly contributed to bringing down the Soviet Union. Why now, when our sacred military members are risking their lives to fight "over there" so we don’t fight "over here," would the president and other congressional leaders think that it is any different? To reduce military strength or even to talk about it as an option is to demoralize our troops while they are literally in the midst of a battle for our way of life.

Some may call it treason. I would call it self-destructive. As a minister of the gospel I would also call it irresponsible and immoral, given that God has called our civil authorities to protect our people against evil. May God have mercy and bless the troops who bravely carry on their mission to defend this nation, even while others who have taken the same oath are allegedly using the military as pawns in a Washington election year. There are times when the Church should speak up. Because our life and liberty is at stake, I think that time is now.

Milton holds to every armchair warrior, red-state fascist, reich-wing nationalist, imperial Christian fallacy known to man.

As I mentioned above, cutting the bloated defense budget is to Milton a deeply disturbing, draconian, recklessly dangerous, self-destructive absurdity. The "cuts" fly "in the face of our nation’s duty and our proud heritage." Never mind that the real defense budget is $1 trillion, that the United States spends more than the rest of the world combined, and that most defense spending is really spending on offense.

Milton idolizes members of the military. They are our "brave troops." They "courageously and proudly wear the uniform of the armed services." God should "bless the troops." U.S. soldiers are never Christian killers, murders, accomplices to murder, criminals, dupes, mercenaries, or part of the president’s personal attack force willing to obey his latest command to bomb, invade, occupy, and otherwise bring death and destruction to any country he deems necessary. They are "our sacred military members."

Milton is likewise deceived about the real mission of the military. He thinks they are "our defenders" who "defend this nation" and protect "this nation from the continuing threats to our very existence as a people." The government provides a military to "defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." U.S. troops "fight ‘over there’ so we don’t fight ‘over here.’" They are "in the midst of a battle for our way of life." But is this what the U.S. military actually does? Unfortunately, most of what the military does is more offense than defense, more foreign than domestic, and more civilian than martial. I think Milton needs a course in DOD 101.

Milton says that we are "in the middle of a war." The United States is actually in the middle of several wars. But rather than saying we should not cut defense because we are fighting wars, why not examine the wars we are fighting to see if they are just, right, and necessary? Since the undeclared, unconstitutional wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Yemen, Pakistan, and everywhere else, are clearly – except to Christian warmongers and imperial Christians – unjust, immoral, and unnecessary, the only sensible solution is to end the wars, not increase the defense budget.

Like other Christian apologists for the state, its military, and its wars that I have written about who appeal to Romans 13 to justify their blind nationalism, their cheerleading for the Republican Party, their childish devotion to the military, their acceptance of national-security state, and their support for perpetual war, Milton seeks to justify a large defense budget by doing the same thing. This, of course, is ludicrous, since the passage has nothing to do with the government providing national defense. But let’s assume for a moment that it does. Fine. How does that justify bloated military budgets, foreign wars, militarism, imperialism, and policing the world? When it comes to the military budget, conservatives adopt the same fallacy as liberals do when it comes to education. To liberals more spending on education means better education; to conservatives more spending on defense means better defense.

And finally, why do conservatives always invoke the name of the criminal, warmongering, budget-busting, deficit-increasing, liberty-destroying, government-expanding, economic and foreign interventionist St. Reagan? Anyone remotely familiar with the Reagan record would not be impressed with Milton’s name-dropping. For the complete and utter evisceration of Reagan, see Murray Rothbard’s "The Reagan Phenomenon," "Ronald Reagan, Warmonger," and "Ronald Reagan: An Autopsy."

What is so bad about theological schizophrenics like Michael Milton is that they have a position of influence over many young people. We can only hope and pray that this is one college administrator that students never get to know.

Originally posted on LewRockwell.com on December 9, 2011.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

Theological Schizophrenia

As I have maintained whenever I speak about Christianity and war, if there is any group of people that should be opposed to war, empire, militarism, the warfare state, an imperial presidency, blind nationalism, government war propaganda, and an aggressive foreign policy it is Christians, and especially conservative, evangelical, and fundamentalist Christians who claim to strictly follow the dictates of Scripture and worship the Prince of Peace.

I have also maintained throughout these wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that, even though it is Christianity above all religions that should be opposed to the evils of war and militarism, in the Church will be found some of the greatest supporters of the military and the current wars.

The "criminality of war," as Howard Malcom, president of Georgetown College, wrote in 1845, is not "that tyrants should lead men into wars of pride and conquest," but that "the people, in governments comparatively free, should so readily lend themselves to a business in which they bear all the sufferings, can gain nothing, and may lose all." That people would act this way, Malcom says, is an "astonishment indeed." "But," he continues, "the chief wonder is that Christians, followers of the Prince of Peace, should have concurred in this mad idolatry of strife, and thus been inconsistent not only with themselves, but with the very genius of their system."

I have heard and read many Christians criticize Obama – and rightly so – for his horrendous policies, but I have heard and read little or nothing from Christians of how Obama has continued the war in Iraq, escalated the war in Afghanistan, and expanded the bogus war on terror to other countries.

The above sign from a church in Maryland can unfortunately be seen almost anywhere in the United States. Although some Christians have begun to criticize Obama and the Democrats for the things that only a short time ago they were silent about when perpetrated by Bush and the Republicans, support for the military among Christians – no matter where it goes, why it goes, what it does, how much it costs, how long it stays, and how many foreigners it kills – is so entrenched, so sacrosanct, that I am at the same time bewildered and embarrassed, angered and ashamed.

The result of this mindset is a perversion of the very Scriptures that Christians claim to believe and follow. So, just as Christian warmongers would, if they were honest, recite The Warmonger’s Psalm (Psalm 23), assent to The Warmonger’s Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12), and pray The President’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13), so they would acknowledge that they manifest The Warmonger’s Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23).

In contrast to the works of the flesh (adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, and revellings), the Apostle Paul in the Book of Galatians mentions the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance.

But in place of these virtues, warmongers have substituted pride, indifference, vengeance, ignorance, malice, arrogance, lust, foolishness, and blasphemy.

Christian warmongers have pride in the U.S. military – the greatest cause of terrorism and instability in the world. They are indifferent to the tremendous suffering of foreigners who get in the way of the U.S. military. They want vengeance for 9/11 now matter how many innocent Muslims have to die. They have a tremendous and willful ignorance of the true nature of U.S. foreign policy. They have malice toward foreigners who never harmed Americans until the U.S. military starting bombing them. They have an arrogant "USA, USA" patriotism that supports an interventionist and militaristic foreign policy. They lust for the blood of foreigners by supporting bombing, drone attacks, torture, and indiscriminate killing. They make foolish statements like the military is defending our freedoms by fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. They blaspheme God by asking him to bless and protect U.S. soldiers.

I realize that I am making some serious accusations, but the truth is simply that most Christian warmongers don’t care whether there are Predator drone attacks against Afghan and Pakistani peasants as long as a Republican-controlled government gets to conduct the attacks.

Originally published on LewRockwell.com on June 23, 2011.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

The Warmonger’s Fruit of the Spirit

In 2003, the Barna Research Group released a well publicized study indicating that only about 10 percent of Christian students possessed a biblical worldview.¹ I was reminded of this after talking with a friend recently after church.

My friend is not a political person, which probably speaks well of her. However, she seemed perplexed when I calmly implied that it was an outrage that Uncle Sam confiscates half our income before we can buy groceries. She responded that ‘we get a lot of things’ for those taxes we pay.

I heard millions of people speaking. She did not recognize that taxation is theft. She had no clue that things like oppressive taxation, gun control, government education and government welfare have no scriptural basis. I told her that this just may be the first time anyone had ever told her that the Bible has something to say about a limitless array of social and political issues.

If she had never heard this in church before, it would not surprise me one bit.

America’s churches are as ‘dumbed down’ as its schools. In all fairness, several generations of pastors have been lied to about the political themes in the Bible. Our call to be ‘salt and light’ goes beyond loving our neighbors, telling the truth and being faithful to our spouses. It extends to all aspects of life including politics, economics, law, education, medicine and any societal issue you can think of.

The word ‘king’, as well as variations such as ‘kings’ and ‘kingdom,’ appears almost 2,000 times in the Bible. But, for some odd reason, we are not supposed to discuss politics in church.

I am no Bible scholar. That some folks think I am reflects their ignorance, rather than my intellectual superiority. I have just read more than some folks. This does not make me a better Christian or even a better person. I am just a bigger nerd. I am just a hack advertising salesman who has developed an interest reading the Bible with an eye to political themes. It would blow most people’s minds if they knew what the Bible really said about these things and how much they are being lied to by pastors and purported Christian politicians.

Most churches nowadays do a rotten job of Bible education. This has resulted in a generation of gullible Christians who stand for nothing and fall for anything.

There are several forces at work here. The Church Growth Movement shares much of the blame. In order to get the maximum number of warm bodies through the doors each Sunday, many churches have sacrificed godliness in the name of relevance. Preach something too controversial and some folks might not come back. Relevance and a packed house are preferable to godliness and a few empty seats.

501(c)(3) is another huge contributor, if you will. This provision of the Internal Revenue Code requires that organizations refrain from endorsing political candidates and keep political comments to a minimum if they wish to remain tax exempt. Most pastors, I fear, are more committed to keeping this exemption than to the struggle against the rulers, authorities and powers of this world. (Ephesians 6:12)

The sad irony of 501(c)(3) is that, while churches compromise Scripture in order to avoid taxes, they remain silent about a tax code that inflicts far more harm on Christians than Ozzy Osbourne, Larry Flynt or Howard Stern ever possibly could.

This situation will only grow worse as federal funding for “faith-based” institutions grows from a trickle to a deluge. What a great way to get more money from someone: speak oh so glowingly of them! You cannot serve God and money. (Matthew 6:24)

Contemporary churches typically discuss only three Scriptures pertaining to the Christian attitude toward government. And even then, they get things all wrong.

I Timothy 2:1-2 instructs us to pray for those in authority. This does not mean that we should be brainlessly uncritical of what they do just because we like their rhetoric or their party affiliation.

Matthew 22:21, Mark 12:17 and Luke 20:25 tell us to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. There is a who-o-o-o-ole lot of difference between rendering unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and rendering unto Caesar whatever he willy-nilly demands. Jesus never assigns any specific duties to Caesar. Here in America, our Constitution assigns only 18 duties to Uncle Sam and forbids him from engaging in any other activity.

All the fiery rhetoric of the American Founding ‘ it was based on Christianity, you know² — was directed at a “tyrant” who taxed his subjects at a rate of about three percent. Let me give you a thought experiment: How much easier would it be for you to give ten percent of your income to your church and other Christian causes if half your income did not disappear in the form of taxes? Here’s another thought experiment: How much more able would you be to provide for your family (I Timothy 5:8) if you were not being taxed into the pavement?

If I put a gun to your head and demanded that you hand over your purse or your wallet, you would call it robbery and have me arrested. It is no different when some government flunky demands that you fork over the fruit of your labor under penalty of fines, jail or death. It matters not that ‘ in some ‘democracy’ ‘ the majority voted that half of your income should be confiscated. In God’s eyes, government agents are no better than thee or me. They are subject to the same judgment.³

Romans 13:1-7 is the favorite Scripture of control freaks everywhere. (3) It is too often taken to mean that Christians should obey secular laws without questioning. While we should obey godly laws ‘ i.e. those against murder, rape, theft, etc. ‘ the idea that we should heed every command of secular governments is madness. Indeed, it is downright unbiblical. Civil disobedience is a theme throughout the Bible. (For further reading, see Daniel 3, Daniel 6, Luke 23:2, Acts 4:19 and 5:29.)

Too many people think it is their pastor’s job to spoon feed them Scripture. God gave you a brain. Use it! Take some initiative! Just because your pastor does not discuss certain subjects does not mean that they are not of biblical importance. Jesus told the apostles to be as ‘shrewd as serpents.’ (Matthew 10:15) Discern the world around you in light of God’s Word rather than in light of party agendas.

Again, it would blow your mind if you only knew how much you are being lied to.

We hear a lot of talk about certain movies desensitizing children to the effects of sex, violence and so forth. I see a parallel in politics. Most people today have no memory of life before 1913. We are used to a socialist police state at home and perpetual war for empire abroad. We have no memory of life in a free society. Therefore, we are indifferent about the loss of our freedom. We view the world through the lens of socialism and consider it normal.

Add to this a church that has been derelict in its duty to educate people about a very important theme of Scripture, and you have greased the skids for a slide into slavery and persecution.

In the Old Testament, God rebukes the Israelites for setting up kings without His consent and princes without His approval. (Hosea 8:4) American Christians 2,700 years later are no different. We have rejected God as our king, and we clamor for political saviors. (I Samuel 8:4-20) We are just like secular people in our love affair with the modern superstate, which has no basis in Scripture.

Most Christians simply have no clue that every ‘benefit’ government provides carries a price. The more you ask government to do for you, the more government will do to you. Most Christians are unaware that the worst persecutors of Christians have been governments. Most Christians are unaware that, if you give governments too much power, they will at some point proclaim that ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before us.’

The more we place our faith in the state, the more we reject God. Keep in mind that Jesus was put to death by people who proclaimed, “We have no king but Caesar.” (John 19:15) They had become completely allied with Rome and no longer acknowledged their real king.

Government is not nice to begin with. It is at its cruelest when it rejects God. In the Twentieth Century, government was at its most godless. Indeed, in the Twentieth Century, more Christians perished at the hands of their governments for being Christians than in all prior centuries combined.

R.J. Rummel, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Hawaii, has pointed out that in the Twentieth Century, ’170 million men, women, and children have been shot, beaten, tortured, knifed, burned, starved, frozen, crushed, or worked to death; buried alive, drowned, hung, bombed, or killed in any other of the myriad ways governments have inflicted death on unarmed, helpless citizens and foreigners.’

But, for some odd reason, we shouldn’t talk about this in church. The devil, undoubtedly, is in the details.

¹ http://www.worldviewweekend.com/articles/christianstudents.shtml

² No, not all of the Founders were Christians. However, many were. And even those who weren’t were far more Christian in their politics than so many of those who purport to be Christians in today’s political scene.

³ Consider Romans 13:1 in the New International Version: “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.” Now consider it the King James Version: “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.” As stated in this essay, “In God’s eyes, government agents are no better than thee or me. They are subject to the same judgment.”

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

Dumbing Down the Church

The Economic Argument
Arguments against immigration on economic grounds basically boil down to “They took our jobs!”. Some feel that allowing people to freely cross borders will result in a flood of low-wage labor that will “steal” jobs from natural born citizens. Labor is a factor of production, just like raw materials or financial capital. Restricting the flow of capital and labor will always decrease economic prosperity. Access to more resources – human or otherwise – always increases wealth and opportunity. If this does not make sense to you, I recommend Frederic Bastiat’s “What is Seen and What is Unseen”, chapter 7, as well as his brilliantly satirical “Candle Maker’s Petition.”

The Culture Argument
Others argue that immigration must be restricted in order to protect the nation’s unique cultural heritage. I submit to you that any culture which must be maintained by force is not an authentic culture and is probably a bad one. Cultures freely arise because they provide benefits to those who participate in them. Cultures are always changing. Getting government in the business of protecting culture is dangerous and counter-productive. First, who gets to define what constitutes culture? Bureaucrats don’t have the best track record in such matters. Second, do we really want to live in a culture that is forced upon us by government prohibitions, restrictions and mandates?

The Welfare Argument
Advocates of limited government sometimes argue against immigration on the grounds that immigrants make use of the welfare state and increase the cost of government. State-sponsored welfare programs are a problem. Stopping immigration because immigrants might use welfare programs treats one tiny symptom, not the disease itself. If you routinely dumped garbage on your front lawn and found critters frequenting your property, would you try to ban critters or would you clean the up the garbage? Though I think the vast majority of immigrants immigrate for jobs, freedom and opportunity, I’m sure some come and make use of government handouts (though far less than U.S. Citizens, and on average less than they pay in taxes). The handouts are an attractive nuisance and should be addressed on their own merits, not by attempting to ban the free movement of people.

The Safety Argument
Some argue that allowing easy immigration will bring bands of criminals into their country and make them less safe. First, if something is a crime it is already, by definition, illegal. Threats to life and property are already protected against via the existing police/military operations. Putting up a wall and stopping anyone from crossing it on the grounds that some of them may be criminals is ludicrous. By this logic, governments should perpetually engage in random home searches because they might discover criminal activity. Closed borders probably don’t stop criminals, but let’s pretend that they could; if we could keep foreign criminals out by keeping out anyone foreign, what would we gain? We’d have spent tons of resources keeping out foreigners, most of whom aren’t criminals, and we’d have that much less to use fighting domestic crime. Banning people from movement because some of them may be criminals is even dumber than banning gun ownership because some people may use them for crime. I trust LCC readers to see the many problems with preemptive Minority Report style crime fighting.

The Right Argument
Freedom to immigrate can be defended from several angles, but I believe the most important argument is based on rights. Imagine you and I have pieces of property that share a border. You wish to traverse my property and I wish to let you, but lawmakers prohibit it. What business do they have dictating whether we can make decisions about our own property? Sure, they were democratically elected, but what business do others have of voting to determine how you and I peacefully use our property?

What if government issued a decree that business owners were prohibited from hiring anyone born on a Tuesday? It’s no different when they prohibit hiring anyone born in another country. Shouldn’t the business owner be free to hire whom he wishes? If an individual wishes to travel, work, buy, or sell peacefully and all other parties involved agree, why should government prohibit it?

When you think up other arguments against immigration, ask yourself why they should not also be applied in state to state immigration? City to city? Home to home?

At bottom I think much anti-immigration sentiment comes from a fear of people unlike us. I support anyone’s right to be prejudiced, or to associate only with those of like culture. But putting that attitude into public policy not only hampers wealth and progress, it violates my right to associate peacefully with whom I choose.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

Bad Arguments Against Immigration

I love this post by my dear friend Anthony Gregory at the Independent Institute: “Saved from the Precipice of Doom!”

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Thank goodness for the Republicans and Democrats, who in the eleventh hour, put aside their differences and compromised to avert the catastrophe of a government shutdown. You see, the Republicans wanted to cut something like $78.5 billion from what Obama wanted to spend—itself more than $78.5 billion over the year before. The Democrats were initially willing to talk about “cutting” much less. And now, thanks to the greatest political compromise since the one in 1850—and surely one that will be as permanent in preventing a national crisis—we can all sleep at night knowing that Yosemite and the National Archives will continue to be open for business. The Washington Post reports:

The final pact on 2011 spending called for $38 billion in cuts to federal agency budgets compared with last year’s levels, about $78.5 billion below the president’s initial funding request for 2011. The White House, which initially resisted any funding reductions, started touting all the cuts it signed off on in a statement that praised reductions of $13 billion in funding for education, health and labor programs.

Oh my, oh my! $38 billion cut from Obama’s budget proposal? I guess everyone gets what they want. Obama gets to pat himself on the back for avoiding a shutdown. The Republicans get to pat themselves on the back for avoiding a shutdown, and the American people are satisfied as well.

Oh, wait. Those who love government spending are not so satisfied. You see, the cuts appear to target hot-button social programs. And those who want (at a bare minimum) for government to live within its means might also be dissatisfied. They might protest that even if we go by Obama’s projected deficits, these cuts will only shave a few percent of the amount deeper the U.S. goes into the debt hole in a year.

Yet we should forget about all this and just be glad the government didn’t shut down. For if it did, we would surely awake to a dystopian nightmare, coastal cities collapsing into the ocean, civil unrest at every corner, whole swaths of previously populated centers abandoned, disease and lawlessness rampant in every direction. Thank goodness Congress and the President got together and stopped this.

After all, we all remember when happened when the government shut down in 1995. Traffic lights didn’t work. All the prisoners were running wild in the streets. The US military was completely put out of commission, allowing the Soviet Union to spring back to life and take over half of the world. In the Great Government Shutdown of 1995, an estimated 150 million Americans died of starvation, pertussis, rubella and acute cynicism. Cats were chasing dogs, telephones and plumbing ceased to function completely, and only 75 channels were available on cable television.

Some will respond that these claims are preposterous—that in fact, not only do modern “government shutdowns” only close down a handful of functions (including such programs as tax refunds and national museums, just to annoy the American people)—but that, in the United States, such shutdowns are so superficial an example of the government truly shutting down that they actually cost more money than allowing the government to run as normal.

Sure, refuse to take such a catastrophe seriously. But as our Dear Leader says, “Americans of different beliefs came together. . . [i]n the final hours before our government would have been forced to shut down. . . [to pass] a budget that invests in our future while making the largest annual spending cut in our history.” Thanks to these courageous and selfless efforts, “when 50 eighth graders from Colorado arrive in our nation’s capital,” they might “get a chance to look up at the Washington Monument and feel the sense of pride and possibility that defines America.”

Doesn’t that make your burn with patriotic fever? Red-white-and-blue fumes are just making their way up my esophagus right now. The two parties put aside their vast disagreement—over whether to borrow another trillion or so of to be paid back by these eighth graders or whether to cut that amount down by a few percent—and they agreed to meet in the middle. Just like their parents and grandparents, these kids will have the pride to know that they live in a country where every generation has the chance to grow up with much more money owed by the government on their behalf that the generation before it.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

News of the Week: Saved from Doom!!!

Clearly, there is a great divide in the Bible between animals and humans. Although the Bible does say: “A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast (Pro. 12:10), that doesn’t preclude him from putting said beast to work, sacrificing him, and then eating it (sorry, “him”). The opening chapters of the Bible show some uses that God allowed for animals. God himself made Adam and Eve “coats of skins” (Gen. 3:21). And when Cain and Abel each made an offering, God only accepted the one that included an animal to be sacrificed (Gen. 4:3-5).

Referring to an animal like it was a human being elevates animals to a place that the Bible never does.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

PETA and the Bible

Most human differences are set­tled peacefully. Collisions of in­terest occur sporadically, but when intelligence and good-will com­bine we work out a modus vi­vendi. Conflicting opinions are resolved by an appeal to reason; patience and persuasion ease the frictions arising out of personal encounters. Thus it is in most areas; we carve out survival pat­terns and get along with each other. But there are periods of history more violent than others when arbitration works poorly and conflict intensifies; we are living through one such.

Warfare of unusual ferocity has plagued the West for more than half a century—despite lip service to peace in the form of nominal pacifism and humanitarianism. But international strife is not the only plague; domestic ten­sions break out of bounds with increasing frequency; riots, dem­onstrations, assault, kidnappings, bombings, strikes, and acts of sabotage barely make the front pages, so commonplace have they become. Out of the woodwork come spellbinders to lecture uni­versity audiences on gun barrel politics, revolution for its own sake, and the beauties of violence. Professors of philosophy are in­voked to provide a specious ration­ale for destructionism. A cult of violence and systematic terror comes into being. There’s no longer time to take thought, we are told; men must act. Incessant and strident calls to action are directed toward the base emotions of hatred and fear, drowning out quiet appeals to the mind. The demand that we do something results in thoughtless action, and mindless violence breeds more of the same.

Violence Displaces Reason

What has brought about this state of affairs? How shall we ac­count for the increased violence that mars our land? It is obvious that violence and the cult of vio­lence expands as faith in reason declines—only when people are convinced that differences cannot be worked out intelligently do they resort to force. The restoration of reason to its proper role in human affairs is essential if we would live in peace, but first we must try to understand what has caused men of the modern era to distrust reason.

History is not simply what Gib­bon called it, a catalogue of "the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind"; but the human record is spotty and there has been vio­lence in every era. People differ, and occasional conflict is thus a built-in feature of human action. The species could not have sur­vived, of course, were there not a preponderance of cooperation and mutual aid in human affairs, but traces of friction remain even un­der the best of conditions. Abra­sive contacts between men may be eased by good will plus a disposi­tion to argue it out rather than fight it out, but when all strata­gems fail and flight is impossible human beings do resort to force. Violence, in other words, is an­cient in human experience—but as a last resort. It is today’s cult of violence that needs diagnosing.

A collision of interests devel­ops between two evenly matched men. Before any blows are struck one man says to his adversary, "Come let us reason together," or words to that effect. If this offer is accepted it is because both men hold certain assumptions in com­mon. Each man takes it for granted that he is a finite and fallible human being; he entertains a set of convictions on grounds he deems reasonable, but he has no im­mediate access to Universal Rea­son which might assure certitude. It is assumed that men are gifted with a divine spark, reason—a valid instrument for getting at the truth when used properly, that is, with due regard for logic and in good faith. Finally, it is assumed that the universe is ra­tionally structured, in the main, so that there is a correspondence between correct reasoning and the nature of things, enabling men who start from different places to think their way through to common ground.

The human reason, employed within these rules, may thus re­duce tensions and resolve conflict. It may firm up one’s own convictions, enhance appreciation of the opponent’s views, and persuade a man to ponder the rich diversity of mankind. Admittedly, even un­der the best of conditions men may not find a reasonable modus vivendi; words may lead to blows. But violence, if it occurs, is at any rate postponed to the last stage. It is not condoned.

Imagine another encounter. The antagonists this time do not share a common faith in the ef­ficacy of reason. Skeptical of rea­son as a useful means for thrash­ing out differences of opinion they are prepared to accept the alternative that differences can be settled only by the forced imposi­tion of one man’s or one party’s will over the other. Everything that denies or diminishes Mind, everything that downgrades rea­son, transforms a point of view—which is reasonable or amenable to reason—into a nonnegotiable demand for submission to supe­rior force. Men have a condition rather than an opinion; two states of mind confront each other.

Slogans to Live By

The True Believer does not en­tertain conclusions arrived at by marshalling the relevant evidence and drawing from it the correct inferences; to the contrary, he has been programmed with a set of armed doctrines picked up ready to use from the nearest intellec­tual arsenal—newspaper, TV, lib­eral journal, college, or whatever. Instead of ideas which might en­lighten, there are slogans, catch­words, and labels—a new set every few years—that nerve both sides for combat. When the pre­vailing ideology deters men from ventilating their differences rea­sonably they fight about their differences, hence the depressing increase of violence in our time. And the proceedings are rational­ized; hence the cult of violence.

Faith in reason is at a low ebb in modern man; Mind is bogged down in the snarled ideological skein of the twentieth century. The low estate of things mental is the consequence of a trend which has brought several sets of ideas together.

• Philosophical materialism and mechanism assumes that the ul­timate reality is non-mental; only bits of matter or electrical charges or whatever are, in the final analysis, real. If so, then thought is but a reflex of neural events. "Our mental conditions," wrote T. H. Huxley, "are simply the symbols in consciousness of the changes which take place auto­matically in the organism." Fare­well to free will, if "the brain secretes thought as the liver se­cretes bile," as one materialist put it.

• Evolutionism, popularly under­stood, conveys the idea that living things began as a stirring in the primeval ooze and became what they are now by random inter­action with the physicochemical environment, moved by no pur­pose, aiming at no goal. "Darwin banished Mind from the uni­verse," cried Samuel Butler. Man, wrote Bertrand Russell, is "but the outcome of accidental colloca­tions of atoms."

• From popular psychology comes the notion that reason is but ra­tionalization, that conscious men­tal processes are but a gloss for primitive and irrational impulses erupting from the unconscious mind. Psychoanalysis discredits mind by subordinating intellect to the Id.

• From Marxism comes the no­tion that class interest dictates a man’s thinking. There is one logic for the proletariat and another for the bourgeoisie, and the mode of production governs the philosoph­ical systems men erect, and their life goals as well. The unfortu­nately placed middle class forever gropes in darkness, unable to share the light revealed to Marx and his votaries.

These are some of the battle lines where men must fight to vindicate themselves as reasoning beings, possessed of free will, ca­pable of guiding their lives with intelligence and idealism. The Mind must be restored to its rightful place in the total scheme of things, and that place is central for, if the Mind be deemed un­trustworthy, who can then trust any conclusion? The centrality of Mind must be the keystone of any philosophy worth the allegiance of rational creatures, and this is the battle line behind all the others.

Overarching all other causes for the flight from reason is the decline of theism—an interpreta­tion of the cosmos which finds a mental or spiritual principle be­yond nature. If there is no God the cosmos is only, in the final analysis, brute fact, and a man’s thoughts are reduced to a bodily function. The thinking part of a man is validated ultimately by its kinship with the Divine Mind. Theism contends, as a mini­mum, that a Conscious Intelli­gence sustains all things, working out its purposes through man, na­ture, and society. This is to say that the universe is rationally structured, and this is why cor­rect reasoning pans a few pre­cious nuggets of truth. Restora­tion of faith in the efficacy of rea­son and a revival of theism go hand in hand. But this is not all. Acceptance of the Creator re­minds men of their own finitude; no man can believe in his own omnipotence who has any sense of God’s power. And finite men, aware of their limited vision, have a strong inducement to enrich their own outlook by cross fertili­zation from other points of view.

A revival of theism, in the third place, will curb utopianism. Men vainly dream that some combina­tion of political and scientific ex­pertise will usher in a heaven on earth, and they use this future possibility as an excuse for pres­ent tyranny. Under theism, they modestly seek to improve them­selves and their grasp of truth, thus making the human situation more tolerable, confident that the final issue is in God’s hands.

Originally published in the April 1971 edition of The Freeman. Read more from the Edmund Opitz Archive.

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