Across the country in the state of Michigan, there are no guns allowed in the public schools, but one school district is allowing Sikh students to wear a ceremonial religious dagger to school. This time it is parents and teachers who are polarized.

These two incidents come as no surprise to anyone familiar with public education. Disputes between students and schools and between parents and school boards over such issues as appropriate clothing, zero-tolerance policies, freedom of expression, and free exercise of religion are the norm.

But those two incidents also remind us that the problem with public education is that it is public education.

Most controversies about what weapons, drugs, and electronic devices can be brought to school; whether baggy pants, short skirts, or shirts with messages on them can be worn to school; and whether prayer should be allowed in classrooms and at assemblies and football games disappear when education is left up to the free market instead of the government.

The same is true for the teaching of evolution, climate change, patriotism, religion, sex education, and any other controversial subject. In fact, every conceivable issue related to education large and small — from whether military recruiters will be allowed on campus to graduation requirements to what is served for lunch — can be solved when education is left up to the free market instead of the government.

There are generally three layers of government when it comes to K-12 education (federal, state, and local) and two layers of government when it comes to college education (federal and state). The biggest problem with education at all levels, but one that can easily and quickly be solved, is the elimination of federal regulation, control, and funding of public education.

Because the Constitution is silent not only on those subjects, but on the subject of education itself, it is a no-brainer that all Americans — regardless of their political affiliation — should be united on the fact that federal involvement in education in any way is plainly unconstitutional. Some people may want the federal government to have total and complete control over education, others may want the federal government to have nothing to do with education, and still others may want something in between. But clearly, there is nothing in the Constitution that authorizes the federal government to be involved in any way, shape, or form with the education of anyone.

That means that on the federal level there should be no Pell Grants, student loans, research grants, teacher-education requirements, teacher-certification standards, Title IX mandates, school-lunch programs, Head Start funding, bilingual-education mandates, forced busing to achieve racial desegregation, diversity mandates, presidential visits to schools, standardized-testing requirements, special-education mandates, math and science initiatives, directives such as the No Child Left Behind Act, or Race to the Top funds; and, of course, no Department of Education.

Although Republicans in Congress may complain about some of those things, they are solidly behind federal funding and control of education. It has been 30 years since the Republicans have seriously talked about abolishing the Department of Education. And the last time they had total control of the government — for more than four years during the George W. Bush presidency — they greatly expanded the size and scope of the department.

Libertarians who advocate educational vouchers so that parents can send their children to the school of their choice — including private schools — are being very inconsistent. If it is not the business of government to fund public schools, then it is certainly not the business of government to fund private schools.

Eliminating public education

One reason that the elimination of federal involvement in education would not be so very difficult, especially when it comes to K-12 education, is that local public schools generally receive less than 10 percent of their funding from the federal government.

On the state and local level, the arguments against public education must be limited to the philosophical and the practical, because all state constitutions have provisions for the establishment and maintenance of a public-education system at the primary, secondary, and college levels. It all comes down to the foundational purpose of government and the extent of its role in society. Thus, the real issue is not how government should establish, reform, improve, regulate, or fund public education, but whether the government should do those things in the first place.

That means that at the state and local level there should be no mandatory-attendance laws; property taxes to pay for public schools; regulation, monitoring, or control of private or home schools; and no public-school teachers — all for the simple reason that there should be no public schools.

Public schools should at the very least be optional. That is, if the states are to have public schools, then they should be like the post office or any government activity that competes with the private sector: Those who use the product or service should have to pay for it; those who don’t, should not have to.

Why should people with no children have to pay for the education of other people’s children? Why should people who pay to send their children to private schools have to also pay to educate the children of others? But more important, why shouldn’t parents — who are responsible for their children’s medical care, clothing, food and drink, housing, religious training, transportation, recreation, et cetera — not also have the responsibility for educating their children?

That does not mean that everyone should home-school his children. Even now, with public funding of education, those parents who choose not to send their children to a public school have a wide variety of options. The educational opportunities that would exist under a real free market for education are limitless. Not only would there be for-profit and non-profit schools, religious and secular schools, vocational and college-prep schools, there would also be schools that cater to a particular religion, political viewpoint, ethnic group, sex, socio-economic status, nationality, ethic, level of intelligence, or worldview.

Charities, business partnerships, and private voucher plans would certainly exist to help educate poor and special-needs children — just as they exist now under the present system.

With a free market for education, some schools would allow prayer; others would forbid it. Some schools would permit guns; others would outlaw even the representation of a gun. Some schools would teach creation; others would teach evolution. Some schools would have a liberal dress code; others would require uniforms. Some schools would offer sex education; others would have an abstinence program.

Why, then, do so many Americans reject educational freedom? Two reasons are the powerful teachers’ unions and generations of Americans that have come to expect free public education, at least at the K-12 level. The distrust that many Americans have of government has, unfortunately, not generally included public education. But it should never be forgotten that public education is nothing more than government education.

The problem with public education is a simple one; it is the fact that it is public education.

Originally published at The Future of Freedom Foundation on February 9, 2012.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

The Problem with Public Education

Though I’m not entirely sure what the term means, it is often used in reference to creating more material equality among people.   It implies that material relations between people are unjust, and to bring justice to them requires rewarding some at the expense of others.  It aims to make the poor richer by making the rich poorer.

In other words, it is not really justice at all, as justice is about humans being in right relation to an objective standard of right and wrong that is the same applied to all persons.  Social justice is quite the opposite of justice, as it is about a desired relation between individuals against the subjective standard of other individuals.  It is not about “where am I in relation to right”, but about “where am I in relation to you”.  (Most people don’t put themselves in the equation when talking about social justice.  Instead they think, “Where is one group of persons in relation to another group of persons”).

Not only is social justice the opposite of justice as properly understood, it is also a purely material concept.  Justice is a moral or spiritual concept, which can have material consequences: you have violated a moral law by stealing, so to right yourself with that law you must pay restitution.  Social justice is a material concept, which can have moral or spiritual consequences: this person has fewer possessions than that person; therefore we should feel outrage and redistribute goods.  In this regard, social justice is a type of human and material idolatry.  It makes other humans the standard against which to measure, and material possessions the unit of measurement.

Still, we wish to help those who need help.  If material inequality causes unhappiness for the poor (though I sometimes believe it causes unhappiness for the rich as well through guilt and shame), there are two ways we can attempt to alleviate the unhappiness.  The first is to try to reduce the amount of material inequality in the world.  I address why such attempts fail in another post.  The second way is to help people stop measuring their happiness against others.

Instead of putting it in terms of others, let’s start with you.

You are not free as long as your happiness is contingent upon the relative happiness of those around you.  Rather than submit to this covetous instinct and try to raise yourself to their level or bring them down to yours, make the covetousness submit to you.  Subdue it, overcome it, conquer it and be free.  It is deeply destructive to you and society to allow covetousness to go unchecked – indeed to feed it and condone it with attempts at making everyone more materially equal.

Do not be mistaken, behind the desire for material equality is the desire to be as good as or better than your neighbor.  Those who feel the world is not right so long as some people have more things than others are not far from wishing ill upon the “haves” because they incorrectly assume this will bring good to the “have nots”.  For your own happiness to be contingent upon the unhappiness of others – the rich, the talented, the beautiful, the undeserving – is a spiritual sickness.  Covetousness may be tolerated and even praised if it is cloaked in the language of “social justice”, but it is covetousness still.

Advocates for material equality sometimes claim that fighting against the sin of greed is the motivation for their meddling with and redistributing the possessions of the rich.  It is doubtful taking from someone will help them conquer their greed.  Nonetheless, even if the rich are greedy of their possessions, it is better to remove the plank of covetousness from your own eye before removing the sliver of greed from your rich neighbor.

The desire for social justice is really not about society at all.  Nor is it about the rich, nor is it about the poor.  It is about you.  You must win your internal battle.  You must overcome the tendency to make your own fulfillment contingent upon the wealth and poverty of others.

We all have the impulse to wish ill upon our neighbors as a way of making us feel better about ourselves.  It is destructive, but difficult to overcome.  I am ashamed to say I often cheer when a great sports team loses.  It makes me feel better about the teams I love to see the teams I don’t lose.  This is the same impulse behind activism for social justice, but at least in the arena of sports my desire is harming only my own spirit.  I am not acting on that desire and seeking to pass legislation to take the trophies and salaries of the winners and give them to my teams.

How much more destructive when this covetousness leads us to condone and even take joy in the breaking up of a large business or the forcible extraction of money from our rich neighbor.  These actions are meant to bring one down ostensibly to bring another up.  We enjoy these actions when our heart does not find fulfillment in an objective standard of right, but in comparison to those around us.

I do not mean to imply that any desire for improvement – material or otherwise – is bad or that ambition is bad.  Indeed the desire for progress is natural and God-given and if we ever lose the desire to move and grow it will cause an unhealthy stagnation.  The key is to know yourself and discover what it is that you need to seek to be fulfilled.  Discover the standard, the direction in which you need to move and channel your ambition and desire for progress toward that.  The moment we become seduced by those around us or the standards they have set for themselves we lose sight of our true self and what makes us free and fulfilled.

Do not be a slave to the position of others.  Take joy in the success of others and sympathize with their failures.  Seek to be free from covetousness, and when you are, others will be drawn to that freedom in you and begin to realize it in themselves.

Political agitation for social justice treats the problem as the remedy.  It focuses on making us more materially equal and encourages us to look not within ourselves or a fixed standard of right to find fulfillment, but to our position relative to those around us.  It draws more attention to our material positions relative to each other, and distracts from our spiritual position relative to God.

It is good to help those who are suffering, but not by making them more like others, but more like themselves. There is no virtue in trying to make people more materially equal; there is great virtue and freedom in finding fulfillment despite material inequality.

Cross-posted at the Common Sense Concept blog.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

What’s Wrong with Social Justice?

I’m still waiting for him, or anyone else, to explain exactly how one measures the common good.  Should we measure it in median income, chicken dinners per household, or perhaps dinners per chicken coop?

Come to think of it, one cannot “measure the economy” at all; neither by the common good nor by maximum profit.  Maximum profit is only a useful measure for a private enterprise.  It is the key measure to know whether the company is producing more value than it is costing.  Every company should aim for this goal.  The economy as a whole is an impossible and meaningless aggregate like GDP and is used for political aims, not economic gains.

He continues, “The economy cannot function only with mercantile self-regulation but needs an ethical reason in order to work for man,”  But this fails to realize that these interests are one and the same.  It is ethical and necessary for man to work because God commands us not to take from others.  In our pursuit of profits the market is regulated by supply and demand.  This is not a “self” regulation but a product of the free market system.  Nowhere, this side of heaven, will people “self-regulate” their actions.

Tom Woods, a vocal Catholic and Austrian economist, has written a great book on the church and the free market. I wish the Pope would read it.

Editor’s Note: Although we think the Pope is completely wrong on this issue, we do not wish to be disparaging in total. (The alliteration was clever, though, don’t you think?) We will freely criticize leaders of any denomination who promote bad economics and seek power, and herald those who speak truth to power.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

Don’t be duped by this dope, errr, Pope.

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!!!

Impressively positive ideas such as “social responsibility,” “fairness,” “the public good,” and “equality” that nobody would ever oppose are used to attract people to give up their rights for the Progressive agendas. Slippery definitions of “common good” or “human rights” (their favorite phrase) justify usurping power from individuals to help “the most vulnerable among us”—the elderly, poor, unhealthy, or immigrant. Since Jesus sacrificed his life for the good of the world, we are to do the same. A society built on this principle of love for one’s neighbor is the only way to create a just society. And, so the argument goes, sacrifice is the best, or only, way to abide by this principle.

This is a savvy way to win the hearts and minds of Christians (and non-Christians) who desire justice. The invitation to “think beyond ourselves” is attractive to those who preach self-sacrifice as the ultimate way to love for one’s neighbor. In a politicized society where democracy is among the highest ideals, people feel warm and fuzzy about collective solutions to the world’s problems. Acting together is better than acting alone, and statements like the following are common:

“We need to fight terrorism.”

“We need comprehensive immigration reform.”

“We need to have a social safety net.”

“We need to stop people from doing drugs.”

“We need to provide health care for everyone.”

Phrases like these abound each day, if not coming from our friends or coworkers, then on the news. Everyone wants to live in a better world. Everyone has an opinion (or three). Everyone wants solutions. Yet Progressives relish a grandiose politically-defined collective called “we,” where power and authority reside at the top. Attaching the sentiments of democracy doesn’t negate the inherent pyramid structure of their arrangement. Even the most purely moral society cannot be arranged this way because those at the top will lack the sufficient knowledge necessary to successfully meet society’s needs. It can only produce an imitation because people become arbitrarily grouped and defined by the supposed “experts” influencing those in power. Individual rights are subsumed under the banner of social justice.

“We” is a loaded word with multiple meanings that can be used to satisfy both cooperative and coercive efforts. It can be delineated in various ways. “We” could be the people of a county, a state, a nation, or a continent. “We” could be the people of a racial segment of society. “We” could be the people of the Gulf States, or the East Coast, or the West Coast. Less geographically, “we” can be a little league, a country club, or a church. Americans are accustomed to thinking about “we” in terms of national identity, in part because since early childhood government schools have conditioned us to think in terms of national boundaries. But the scope of 300 million people make the term “we” a precious entity when the hands of power are concentrated at the top.

But is there a better way to achieve a just society than to define the word “we” by geopolitical identities? Is there a more ethical way for individuals to associate that not only respects their unique differences, but also allows for unity within the diversity of voices? Is there a peaceful way to come together for a common effort toward social justice? And if we find better ways to define “we,” can these groups be based on love and cooperation rather than on power and coercion in order to improve society effectively?

To answer this question, the Christian must think about how he regards his neighbor. Does he believe her to be a free and unique individual created to reflect one of the many diverse qualities of God’s image here on earth? If so, he must then respect her diverse and unique gifts and talents as complements to the rest of society, and permit her to associate with whomever she pleases. He cannot regard her as merely a single unit made to fit into the larger entity called “society” so that “society” can succeed? For him to scheme grandiose social arrangements by starting with “society” violates her by robbing her of respect and individuality.

The early church movement described in Acts 2 has been falsely labeled “Christian socialism.” What is ignored is the obvious point that the success of this new movement was due to the voluntary nature of the collective the early believers were placing themselves within. The Spirit of God guided them, to be sure, but there was nothing coercive about the movement. Everyone’s needs were met not because those involved had to but because everyone involved wanted to. In this way, doing justice is about more than good outcomes, it is about the ways in which those outcomes are brought about.

It is not a Christian duty to ensure that our subjective preferences are imposed upon those around us who may and do have very different preferences. It is our Christian duty to love our neighbor and fight injustice. To seek a just society means we must advocate for a free society where individuals are embraced as unique and worthy of being handed the power to their own lives. We must oppose a planned social order and seeking a free one because we know that groups that emerge spontaneously through free association are likelier to provide a social benefit because people are free to participate. Their benefit to the individual and to society depends largely on the extent to which these groups are joined voluntarily. Forcing people to belong to and identify with the collective effort of seeking social justice will create a society that is neither social nor just.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

Thoughts on the word “We”

I’m excited because my own spiritual and ideological journey has taken me down a path that has led to a very interesting dichotomy. Eight years ago I was being drawn toward and have affirmed some progressive theology. But when it came to the social policies advocated by many social justice Christians, there seemed to be a disconnect. I soon realized that in order to assess ways to achieve socially just outcomes, the key is to develop an economic way of thinking.

I discovered that the Austrian school was not only engaging in its style and presentation, they carried with them the necessary skills to assess the social concerns I had. Austrian economists (and libertarian economists in general) have the verbal acuity to explain the makeup of our social DNA.

Art Carden is one of the most penetrating writers in the Austrian school. Art makes easy that which is often difficult to wrap one’s brain around, with fewer words and elegant prose. This week he wrote a piece called “Libertarian Compassionomics?” in his Forbes.com column which was picked up and responded to my Matt Zwolinski at BHL. I heartily recommend reading Art’s piece, then Matt’s, then Art’s response, and join the conversation.

Conversations are journeys. They lead us to truth, not because truth is the destination, but because it is found in the ongoing process that takes place among those who are passionately committed to the truth and to the conversation.

Sometimes the point of the journey isn’t merely the destination.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

The Bleeding Heart Conversation

I rarely follow the news and almost never get it direct from news sources. What news I’m up on tends to find it’s way to me through filters – blogs I read, emails from friends, Facebook posts and hearsay.

This is not because of laziness or a lack of concern with being informed.  Indeed, I love information, trivia, knowledge and truth.  However, I found that keeping up on the news, especially reading papers and watching news shows, significantly diminished my quality of life.  It made me angry and depressed more often than not.

This is not because the cold, hard realities of terrestrial life are simply all bad news.  In fact every day billions of people are voluntarily, peacefully co-operating and being made better off through trade, commerce, community, and friendship.  Millions of things are invented, quality of life improves, the creative destruction of the market (in both goods and ideas) brings about untold beauty and opportunity.  Indeed, with a little bit of reflection it is not hard to see how vast, mysterious and awesome life is, even in the smallest tasks of a typical day.

But, probably for rational reasons, the news chooses to focus on those relatively few happenings between relatively few people that are violent, coercive and troubling.  A disproportionate amount of space is devoted to that tiny sliver of our individual and societal existence, politics, and nearly all the rest to all the other dangers and troubles in the universe.

It’s not an accurate picture of the world, nor is it particularly useful.  I think it was for this reason (and perhaps the generally bad quality of the writing) that C.S. Lewis warned against frequent newspaper reading.  Mark Twain (I think) said “Those who don’t read the news are uninformed.  Those who do are misinformed”.

Does this mean we turn a blind eye to reality so that we can be happy?  Isn’t that a form of escapism?  Frankly, I think that’s the wrong question.

There is a phenomenal scene in The Silver Chair, part of C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia series, where a group of children and a kindly swamp creature are trapped in an underground world by an evil queen.  The queen has them under a sort of spell and she is trying to convince them that there is no outside world, but only the cavernous underworld.  When they object and say that the outside world is real she asks them what it is like.  They tell her it has a sun, which is much like the lights in the cave only bigger and brighter; it has lions which are much like the cats of the underworld only grander and more fierce, and so on.

The queen remarks that there is no outside world at all, but that the children have simply taken things from the real world and pretended they were bigger and better.  It was a mere game, and the reality was in the caves all along.

The group is on the verge of being persuaded of this sad state when the humble swamp creature proclaims that even if this were true, what would it say about the real world?  What kind of world would it be if children could easily create a make-believe world that was so much better?  Even if the outside world is make-believe, he declares, it’s so much preferable to the “real world” underground that he’d rather go on pretending.  At that the spell was broken, hope restored and the deceptive queen’s power rendered inert.

It is more than a mere cliche to say that perception is reality.  Expectation is also reality.  Believing a better world is real and possible makes this world better, if for no other reason than that positive, optimistic people are more pleasant to be around.

The evidence also supports optimism.  Who could ever have predicted the kinds of technologies and opportunities we have available today even just 50 or 100 years ago?  The iPhone alone is jam packed with capabilities that were the stuff of sci-fi even a decade ago.

Why then do we listen to the news when it constantly reports on the fearful side of the present and future?  That is only one view of reality.  It’s a tiny slice of all that is, and a very unrepresentative slice at that.  If a human can only take in so much of reality at once, why would I focus on the negative in a sea of positive?

I’d rather create my own reality – a powerful, free, beautiful one – than get angry about the false reality portrayed by the news.  If that’s escapism, so be it.  Escaping something bad into something better is nothing to be ashamed of.  It’s a choice to perceive and embrace reality in a more useful, constructive manner.

It doesn’t mean injustice doesn’t exist, or that there are not things I am hoping and fighting to change – not least of which are in myself.  It just means there are better ways of doing it and thinking about it.

Instead of letting it be selected for me, I choose each day what bits of news I take in about the vast and wondrous universe.  It beats the hell out of the paper.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

Don’t Watch The News

Every Person pursues his individual goals in the context of some society. The norms, customs, habits and fashions of that society seem at times to hinder him, but at the same time they are a sustaining presence. Likewise the laws of his nation. Man is said to be a political animal, in the sense that society is his native habitat. But he’s also a political animal in one further respect; people create governments in their own image. This is obvious in a democratic system.

It is self-evident that the politicians elected to public office are men who embody the consensus. The successful candidates are those who most persuasively promise what voters believe government should deliver; politicians operate on that slippery spectrum bounded, on the one hand, by what voters expect and demand of government, and by what they will put up with from government, on the other. A nation tends to get the government it deserves, in the sense that pressure groups will eventually organize to make wrongful demands upon government, unless the nation’s “aristocracy of virtue and talent” — men with the ability to teach what expectations and demands are legitimate — are heeded.

When educators, philosophers, and men of letters fail to properly nourish the intellect, the conscience and the imagination of significant segments of a society, they betray a sacred trust as teachers of mankind, and in the wake of their defection a secular religiousness becomes the popular faith. Leviathan — the omnipotent State — is the god of this faith. Men serve Leviathan in the confident expectation that he will provide his votaries with ease, comfort, security, and prosperity. The modern world does indeed provide more of these things for more people than earlier periods, but it also exacts a toll in the form of perpetual warfare, social unrest, hardening of the arteries, softening of the brain, and a troubled spirit.

We Are the Enemy

When we attempt to assess the modern malaise we are tempted to say: “An enemy hath done this thing.” But the truth of the matter is that we have done it to ourselves — the actively guilty, the passively guilty, the ignorant, the stupid, and all the innocent bystanders — we are all in this thing together.

Every society has its characteristic pecking order, and ours is no exception. Certain men, certain ideas, certain life styles are at the top of the pecking order; the masses admire and seek to emulate these men, ideas and life styles. If these ideas and styles are not life enhancing, there is frustration and thwarting at the deep levels of human nature and a whole society is sidetracked. The Remnant who keep the faith are superfluous; society has no use for their services. Such a society will necessarily get Leviathan — a government which matches its warped and ill-favored nature. Edmund Burke puts the matter plainly in a letter to constituents in Bristol:

“Believe me, it is a great truth, that there never was, for any long time, a corrupt representative of a virtuous people; or a mean, sluggish, careless people that ever had a good government of any form.”

Civilizations rise and fall, nations come and go. Why this occurs is the subject of learned speculation and debate. There is little unanimity among scholars, who disagree among themselves even as to the yardsticks by which decline and progress might be measured. But even though the overall movement of a civilization is difficult to detect, there are two trends in the modern world in all progressive countries, where the facts are clear; the first has to do with politics, the second with economics.

The thrust of eighteenth century Whiggery and of Classical Liberalism was to pry various sectors of life out from under the yoke of the State, to free them from political controls. The aim was to shrink government to a limited, constabulary function. The twentieth century has reversed this trend, with a vengeance. The theory of the free society has come under increasing attack, and totalitarian governments have emerged in nation after nation.

As Classical Liberalism expanded the voluntary sector of society the economic controls of the Mercantilist era were removed from business, industry, and agriculture. Adam Smith demonstrated that — within the framework of the Rule of Law, which Liberalism supplied — the economic order was subtly regulated by the buying habits of consumers; and the free economy began to emerge within western nations. Freedom in economic transactions was never fully achieved in any nation, but we made greater progress in that direction in the United States than elsewhere, and we paid lip service to the ideal of the market economy. But ideals change.

National Planning

The new freedom did not bring about utopia, or a paradise on earth, and in the aftermath of this disappointment, a new scheme captured the imagination of the intellectuals—nation-wide planning for the achievement of national purposes and goals. The New Deal marked a major change in the popular attitude toward the free economy; efforts to frame the rules necessary for attaining competition in the marketplace gave way to the urge to put the marketplace under bureaucratic regulation. The free economy was to be phased out, step by step.

I am a believer in the free society and in the free economy. The free society is to my taste because I like its variety, I like the diversity it encourages, I like the spontaneity it permits. I also like the free economy. I like it because it is more productive than any alternative; people eat better, have more things, are more secure in their possessions. Freedom works, and therefore I resist the collectivizing trends of the twentieth century which would transform people into creatures of the State. But my belief in freedom is grounded, ultimately, on my reading of the nature of the human person.

Man, I believe, is a created being; there is a sacred essence in him. Man is on this planet in consequence of a mighty plan-of whose outlines we may gain faint intimations — and his life is used to further a vast purpose-of which we are given an occasional clue. If man is indeed a created being, and the members of a society act upon their belief that such is their nature, they will begin to frame political theories consonant with their convictions. They will erect political structures designed to safeguard the sacred essence in each person; the law will attempt to maximize each person’s opportunity to realize his earthly goals.

Believing that God wills men to be free, such a society will regard any trespass on the true liberty of even the lowliest individual to be a thwarting of some intent of the Creator. The deep conviction that each human being is a person and not a thing will generate ideas of equal, inherent rights; and this central dogma will exert pressure on personal attitude and conduct, on government and law, on every level of the free society, to bring all into harmony with the key belief that man is a created being.

But suppose man is not a created being. Suppose the human being is not a person, but a thing. If the universe is simply brute fact, mindless and meaningless; reducible in the final analysis to mass and motion — then man is a thing just like any other item in the catalogue of the planet’s inhabitants.

The Materialistic Concept of Human Beings

Suppose we assume — as do many of our contemporaries – that man is the chance product of the random movement of material particles. Man’s haphazard appearance on a fifth rate planet is, then, a fluke; he just happened to occur, as the accidental by-product of physical and chemical forces. He’s merely a part of nature, like every other species on the planet. Except that the human species is more foolish than the rest, loves to be bamboozled, and, has such a gift for make- believe that its continued existence is problematic!

When we confront a strange object we try to size it up, so we’ll know better how to deal with it. If it’s a person we get onto a person-to-per-son basis; but if it’s a thing we treat it like a thing. We make a crucial decision here, and the way we decide depends upon our basic philosophy, our understanding of the fundamental nature of the universe.

If we have embraced some variety of Materialism as our philosophy then we must eventually come to the logical conclusion that human beings are things, and once we conclude this we’ll begin to treat people as things. People then come to be regarded as units of the State, as objects to be manipulated, as pawns in a political game to be used up in some national plan, as guinea pigs for experiments in genetic engineering, as robots programmed for utopia. Shades of 1984!

I am prepared to argue that we get the free society only after the consensus has firm convictions about the sacredness of persons, and that we get the free economy only after we have the free society. Now, when we reflect on the nature of persons we involve ourselves in some pretty deep philosophical and theological questions, and some of our contemporaries are impatient with such speculation. They believe that the intellectual opponents of the free market can be devastated by straightforward economic arguments, and once we have the free market everybody will be doing his own thing and we’ll get the free society as a matter of course. Things are not this simple; if they were, freedom in human affairs would be the rule; voluntary transactions and ‘unhampered exchange would then mark the economic life of all nations. The reverse is true: freedom has always been in jeopardy, and the liberties which expanded during the Classical Liberal Era are now contracting everywhere.

The Conditions of Freedom

There is a deep-rooted urge in each person to be unhampered in the pursuit of his own life goals, but this individual instinct for freedom has only rarely in history been institutionalized as the free society. Likewise, each person has a deeply rooted desire to conserve his energy and improve his material well-being; trade and barter are as old as mankind. But despite the economizing urge the free economy seldom appears on this planet.

The free society and the free economy did emerge in the eighteenth century and freedom expanded during the nineteenth. An excellent literature came into being to expound and defend political and economic freedom, despite which freedom retreated during the twentieth century because there was a leak at the philosophical level, where we deal with the nature of personhood and the meaning of life.

The economizing spirit is concerned to save energy and resources; it strives ceaselessly to diminish inputs and maximize outputs. Which is to say that economics is the drive to get more for less. Now, unless this more-for-less impulse is counterbalanced by non-economic forces it develops into a something-for-nothing mentality. And when the some-thing-for-nothing mentality takes over the free economy dies of autointoxication.

The advice to “do your own thing” has been repeated so often as to be an incantation, and if freedom could be had by casting a spell then the free society would be a shoo-in. But the free society cannot be sustained by magic, and lacking a philosophy of personhood, the advice to “do your own thing” is an invitation to disaster. The weak doing their thing are at the mercy of the strong doing theirs, and the unscrupulous have the upper hand over the rest.

I belong to a bicycle club and have two friends with whom I ride. Joe is a weightlifter, a powerful man, and a “square.” Fred is a middle-aged retiree with strong affinities for the youthful life styles of today. We three were in a resort town for a bike rally, and in addition to cyclists there were many young people whose sartorial and tonsorial disarray proclaimed their devotion to individual liberty. The three of us stopped for refreshments at a soft drink stand and watched the passers-by. A pair of especially unkempt and unwashed young men strolled by, and Joe—the muscular “square”—muttered, half under his breath, “I’d like to wring their necks!” Fred, a gentle and sympathetic soul, said, “But, Joe, they’re only doing their thing.” To which my obvious retort was, “Yes, Fred, but Joe’s thing is wringing hippies’ necks!”

The Rule of Law

Classical Liberalism was built around the idea of the Rule of Law, equal justice for all, and thus it erected certain guidelines and standards, whose observation maximized each man’s liberty in society. And it framed these rules because each person is a sacrosanct individual, free in virtue of his very nature. When convictions about the sacredness and mystery of person-hood are energized, then men will seek to erect institutional safeguards around each individual, and we move toward the free society. But if the prevailing philosophy has a faulty doctrine of personhood, then people lose that sense of their true humanness which would lead them to strive for an ordered liberty, and we lapse into the closed society.

Modern thought, the ideology which has prevailed during the past two centuries, has many facets and some undeniable strengths. But it has one glaring defect, it has no adequate doctrine of personhood. This ideology is reductionist in tendency, whenever it contemplates the Self. It reduces men to animals and animals to machines. It defines thought as subvocal activity, dismisses reason as rationalization, explains mind as a mere reflex of activity among the brain cells, and invokes the conditioned reflex to account for every variety of behavior.

I am painting with a broad brush in order to highlight a drift or tendency in modern thought, “a mean, sluggish, careless” streak in the realm of ideas. When a thinker uses a finely tuned instrument his mind—to reach the conclusion that thought cannot be trusted, we have evidence of corruption in philosophy. Let me illustrate.

Philosopher Kings

There are philosophers of considerable and deserved reputation who have dreamed up world views in which human beings figure as creatures of a lesser stature than persons. Be it noted, however, that the philosopher guilty of devaluating personhood generously exempts himself from the strictures he applies to others! Given his blind spot, he concludes that it is only other people, the mass of mankind, who fall within the scheme of manipulable objects; the philosopher who regards us as un-persons finds another category for himself. He’s the philosopher king!

Bertrand Russell, in a celebrated essay entitled “A Free Man’s Worship,” declares that “Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves, and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms.” In short, we are — along with our beliefs — merely the end result of a chance arrangement of material particles.

It follows, on Lord Russell’s own showing, that his opinion that such is the case is itself only a reflex of an “accidental collocation of atoms.” What point is there in publishing this opinion unless its author regards it as being closer to the truth than alternative views? But can the designation true or false be applied to an “accidental collocation of atoms” or any product thereof? By the internal showing of Russell’s statement, his own beliefs are below the idea level; they are sub-reason. Furthermore, the publishing of these words bespeaks a wish on the author’s part to persuade other people of the validity of his position. But why bother to offer enlightenment to creatures whose beliefs are nothing but the chance result of blind forces?

Bertrand Russell was immensely gifted as a philosopher and mathematician, but his philosophy is deficient in its attempts to account for self-hood; it has no adequate place for persons. And if Russell is deficient here, how much more deficient are the lesser men who instruct us in the meaning of life!

Philosophical Entrapment

The widespread irrationalism of the present day represents the dead end of a philosophy which developed a world view wherein was no proper niche for the creator of that world view—the philosopher himself! It takes a brilliant and ingenious mind to arrive at such a paradoxical conclusion which so blatantly denied the obvious. Any fool knows that white is white and black, black; so does the wise man. But in between the fool and the wise man are those who are able to argue with perverse brilliance that white is a kind of black.

C. A. Campbell, emeritus professor of philosophy at Glasgow University, makes a sound observation: “As history amply testifies, it is from powerful, original and ingenious thinkers that the queerest aberrations of philosophic theory often emanate. Indeed it may be said to require a thinker exceptionally endowed in these respects if the more paradoxical type of theory is to be expounded in a way which will make it seem tenable even to its author—let alone to the general philosophic public.”

To be a man is to search for meaning. Philosophy begins in wonder, and we can’t help wondering what life is all about, and how human life fits into the total scheme of things. We try to decipher the mysteries of the universe, hoping to obtain a few clues to help us play our roles in life with zest and joy. We wonder if human values and ideals find reinforcement in the nature of things, and if the values that concern us most deeply—love and honor, truth, beauty and goodness—are realities. Or are they merely illusions we cling to for comfort in an otherwise cheerless existence?

We consult the philosophers, and all too many of them are mired in the cults of unreason, meaninglessness, and absurdity. Man is a cosmic accident, they assure us; the universe is a moral and aesthetic blank, completely alien to us. We cannot trust our own thought processes, they say, as they simultaneously downgrade mind and insist that we accept their theories! Well, they can’t have it both ways! Of course, if matter is the ultimate reality, mind is discredited. But if this discredited instrument is all we have to rely on, how can we put any confidence in its findings? If untrustworthy reason tells us that we cannot trust reason, then we have no logical ground for accepting the conclusion that reason is untrustworthy!

Well, I don’t trust the reasoning of people who champion the irrational, and I do know that our reasoning powers may be—like anything else—misused. But when human thought is guided by the rules of logic, undertaken in good faith, and tested by experience and tradition, it is an instrument capable of expanding the domain of truth. Reason is not infallible, but it is infinitely more to be trusted than nonreason!

A Religious World View

Deep down within us we know with solid assurance that we really do belong on this planet; that we are the key component of the total richness. We know this, but we need reminding—as in these words from the gifted and unorthodox thinker, Anthony M. Ludovici:

The profound and cultivated man of wanton spirits, whose sense of self is the outcome of healthy impulses springing from the abundant energy and serenity of his being, not only affirms his own self and the universe with every breath he takes, but, by the intimate knowledge he acquires of life through the intensity of his own vitality, he feels deeply at one with everything else that lives. The intensity of his feeling of life helps him to perceive, behind the external differences of living phenomena, that quality and power which unites him to them. The luxuriant profligacy of nature finds a reflection in his soul, but it also finds an answering note in his feelings. Profound enough not to be deceived by surfaces, he feels the dark mystery behind himself and the rest of life, and what is more important, guesses at the truth that he himself cannot, any more than the daisy or the antelope, stand alone, or dispense with the power which is enveloped in that dark mystery. (Man: An Indictment, p. 204)

These are the authentic accents of a religious world view, and a citizenry in whom this vision lives will invest each person with a sacredness, a protected private domain, a body of rights and immunities. The law, then, is established to secure these prerogatives of the person, and government is limited to those functions which maximize liberty and justice for all. This is Jefferson’s “Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion.” This is the free society, and it is not an autonomous social order, suspended in midair, it is based necessarily on a religious foundation.

Freedom in the Market when Options Are Open

Even less autonomous is the free market. Freedom of action in the economic sphere does not beget itself, but a society which maximizes liberty for all persons equally has freedom in economic transactions as well. The free economy, in other words, is simply the label attached to human behavior in the marketplace when our options are open, as they should be.

“The heavens themselves, the planets and this centre observe degree, priority and place.” Shakespeare was right; there is an over-arching Order and Pattern built into the nature of things. Everything has its rightful place in that Order, and each thing after its own kind manifests its peculiar nature — except man.

Man does not simply and naturally manifest his own nature; he is open-ended! Unlike the other orders of creation, man is not infallibly guided by instinct—he is free. Not being locked into a behavior pattern, he has to establish contact with his deeper self, and then properly interpret and carry out its mandates. Only then may he learn to express his true being by conforming himself and all his works to the universal Pattern.

Plato, in the Laws, refers to an ancient saying that God, who holds in his hands beginning, end and middle of all that is, moves through the cycle of nature, straight to His end. And Plato adds:

Justice always follows Him and punishes those who fall short of the divine law. To that Law, he who would be happy holds fast and follows it in all humility and order; but he who is lifted up with pride or money or honour or beauty, who has a soul hot with folly and youth and insolence, and thinks that he has no need of a guide or ruler, but is able of himself to be the guide of others, he, I say, is deserted of God; and being thus deserted he takes to himself others who are like him, and jumps about, throwing all things into confusion, and many think he is a great man. But in a short time he pays the penalty of justice and is utterly destroyed and his family and state with him. (Laws, IV, 716)

We are the architects of our own Leviathan. Whenever a people goes slack, whenever the mean, sluggish, and careless are moved up to the top of the pecking order, then we get an unlovely society to match our own ill nature. But this need not be. The way we express our nature is not fixed in one mode only; we are free to change the pattern of our lives. There is a right way, a way that is good for man, a way that meets the needs and demands of human nature and the human condition, a way that fulfills the law of our being. Walking in that way, men and women find their proper happiness in a free and prosperous commonwealth.

Read more from the Edmund Opitz Archive.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

The Person and His Society

I was blessed to grow up in a Christian home with parents who raised me and my siblings to work hard, care about those in need, and never feel entitled to that which isn’t yours. My parents provided a stable and secure home life where we were taught family values and sound theology, but it was always in my nature to question everything. Perhaps I never grew past the “Why?” phase of my toddler years, but I always had an incredulous attitude toward those in authority. Because of this I have always appeared to be a natural contrarian. If there is a status quo, I will question it. (As you can already see, I was well-suited to be a libertarian!)Throughout my life I’ve constantly sought ways to teach others through speaking or writing. I attended Bible college and graduated with a degree in Communications Ministries. In 2008 I received my Master of Divinity degree from Biblical Seminary, and I currently work at a well-known technology company. I’ve always looked forward to having a family so we could demonstrate Christ’s love to the world. Shiree, my best friend and wife, is a wonderfully gracious and loving companion. We spend lots of time talking about life, the universe, and everything. Our young children have a zest for life and their laughter often fills our house with joy.

After college I began reading more about how the gospel affects societies. I began to ponder how the “good news” to the world was to be carried out by Jesus’ followers. I discovered that the gospel was bigger than my personal salvation experience, and that if Christians were to be a blessing to the world, we must revolutionize it with the love of Jesus. So to learn more I read books and listened to sermons by people like N.T. Wright (my favorite theologian), Tim Keller (my favorite preacher), Brian McLaren (my favorite contrarian), and others who were committed to a gospel that produced the fruit of social change.

But while I was on board with the social justice movement and its theology, I was very unsettled by the practical solutions being proposed by its advocates. Something seemed amiss. It seemed as though their solutions were neither viable nor ethical; sometimes they seemed unchristian. So with questions about social justice swirling in my head, a still small voice said, “If you’re going to understand how to change the world, you have to learn how the world works. And to do that, you need to learn some basic economics.”

My first book about economics was Bob Murphy’s book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism. Then I read Thomas Sowell and Ron Paul, who—like thousands of young libertarians—marched me straight into the Mises Institute (virtually, of course) and other organizations like it. If it were not for the free podcasts and reading materials available from places like mises.org and fee.org, I’d probably have given up the “dismal science.” Though I had been naturally predisposed toward liberty, the Austrian school captured my passion for liberty in all areas of life. I also discovered that economics was the missing component to proposing truly just social solutions.

I am not passionate about liberty  because I believe every politician is an evil bandit or because I simply want to be left alone. It’s not me I’m worried about. I’m not poor, I have no debt, and I have talents in many areas capable of providing income for my family. And even after the State takes 20% of my income, I can still make ends meet. Just about every reason why I’m passionate about liberty has to do with everyone else. In order to advocate for social justice in the world, being a libertarian is the only way for me to not violate the rights of one group while fighting for the rights of another.

If there were a specific passion I have right now, it is to help convince those interested in social justice to embrace liberty and to see the benefits to society that come by embracing and promoting freedom to all. Libertarians, I believe, have the truly progressive ideas.

I also have been blogging my thoughts for over six years at LiveLoud.net.

Read more of Doug Stuart’s posts at LibertarianChristians.com.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

Meet Doug Stuart

The First Amendment to the Constitution forbids Congress to set up an official church; there was to be no “Church of the United States” as a branch of this country’s government. Such an alliance between Church and State is what “establishment” means. An established church is a politico-ecclesiastical structure that receives support from tax monies, advances its program by political means, and penalizes dissent. Our Constitution renounces such arrangements in toro; the Founders wrote the First Amendment into the Constitution to prevent them.

The famed American jurist Joseph Story, who served on the Supreme Court from 1811 till 1845, and is noted for his great Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, had this to say about the First Amendment: “The real object of the Amendment was, not to countenance, much less advance Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment, which should give to an hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government.”

The various theologies, doctrines, and creeds found in this country can thus be advanced by religious means only—by reason, persuasion, and example. Separation of Church and State means that government maintains a neutral stance toward our three biblically based religions—Catholicism, Judaism, and Protestantism, as well as toward the various denominations and splinter groups. These several religious bodies, then, have no alternative but to compete for converts in the marketplace of ideas. This is a good arrangement, good for both Church and State; it avoids the twin evils of a politicized religion and a divinized politics.

A Christian Nation

It has often been observed that America is a Christian nation — around which observation several misunderstandings cluster. We are a Christian nation in the sense that our understanding of human nature and destiny, the purpose of individual life, our convictions about right and wrong, our norms, emerged out of the religion of Christendom — not out of Buddhism, Confucianism, or primitive animism. And it is a fact of history that our forebears whose religious convictions brought them to these shores in the 17th and 18th centuries sought to create in this new world a biblically based Christian commonwealth. But it was not to be a theocracy — of which the world had seen too many! It was to be a religious society, but one which incorporated a secular political order!

The reasoning ran something like this. The human person is forever; each man and woman lives in the here and now, and also in the hereafter. Here, we are pilgrims for three score years and ten, more or less. Life here is vitally important for it’s a test run for life hereafter. Earth is the training ground for life eternal. Such training is the essence of religion, and it’s much too important to be entrusted to any secular agency. But there is a role for government; government should maintain the peace of society and protect equal rights to life, liberty, and property. This maximizes liberty, and in a free social order men and women have maximum opportunity to order their souls aright.

Separating the sacred and the secular in this fashion is a new idea in world history. Secularize government and you deprive it of the perennial temptation of governments to offer salvation by political contrivances. By the same token, things sacred are privatized as free churches, where the spiritual concerns of men and women are advanced by spiritual means only.

So, when it is said that America is a Christian nation, the implication intended is poles apart from what is meant when it is observed, for example, that Iran is a Shiite nation. The Shiite sect of Islam is a branch of the government of Iran. Other religions are not tolerated. Deviations from doctrinal orthodoxy are forbidden. The government punishes infidels because Shiism is Iran’s official, authorized church. From time to time government uses the sword to gain converts. The government of Iran is not neutral with respect to religion.

In the United States, it is mandated that the government maintain a level playing field, so to speak, “a free field and no favor,” where freely choosing individuals find their different pathways to God while government merely keeps the peace. This is what is really meant by the phrase, “Separation of Church and State.” This oft-quoted phrase is frequently misunderstood as suggesting that religion and politics are incompatible, and that we should keep religion out of politics.

If we think of “politics” as several candidates wheeling, dealing, and slugging it out in an election campaign, it’s clear that religion doesn’t have a significant role in such a situation. And if we think of “religion” in terms of a contemplative meditating and praying in his cell, it’s obvious that politics is absent. But there is no coherent political philosophy apart from a foundation of religious axioms and premises.

Religion and the Social Order

Religion, at its fundamental level, offers a set of postulates about the universe and man’s place therein, including a theory of human nature, its origin, its potentials, and its destination. Religion deals with the meaning and purpose of life, with man’s chief good, and the meaning of right and wrong. Thus, religious axioms and premises provide the basic materials political philosophy works with. The political theorist must assume that men and women are thus and so, before he can figure out what sort of social and legal arrangements provide the fittest habitat for such creatures as we humans are. So, some religion lies at the base of every social order.

It is the religion of dialectical materialism that is the take-off point for the Marxian theory and practice of the total state. Hinduism is basic to the structures of Indian society. Western society, Christendom, was shaped and molded by Christianity. Incorporated into Western civilization were elements from the Bible, as well as ingredients from Greece and Rome. This composite was lived, worked over, and thought out for nearly 1800 years by the peoples of Europe. And then something new emerged and began to take root in the New World; it was the recovery of that part of the Christian story needed to ransom society from despotism and erect the structures of a free society wherein men and women might enjoy their birthright of economic and political liberty.

A vision emerged of a society where men and women would be free to pursue their personal goals, unimpeded by the fetters of rank, privilege, caste, or estate that had hitherto consigned people to roles determined by custom and command, not by their own choice.

The people who settled these shores during the 17th and 18th centuries were children of the Reformation driven by their need to worship God as it pleased them, according to their own wisdom and conscience. Believing that God had entered into a covenant with His people, they freely covenanted together to form churches. This was later called “the gathered church idea,” seemingly endorsed by Jesus himself in Matthew 18:20: “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

The local New England church in the Puritan period had full ecclesiastical authority to ordain its minister and appoint deacons and elders. Its minister could celebrate communion, perform christenings, baptisms, and marriages, and conduct funerals — all on the authority of the local church. Each church was in voluntary fellowship with other churches, but in authority over none. The covenant pattern of the early New England churches was the paradigm for the federalist political structure erected two centuries ago. The West was moving from status to contract, as Sir Henry Maine would observe in 1861.

This concern for individual liberty in society was not limited to theologians. Tom Paine generally took a critical stance when dealing with religion and the church, but in 1775 in an essay entitled “Thoughts on Defensive War” he wrote as follows: “In the barbarous ages of the world, men in general had no liberty. The strong governed the weak at will; ‘till the coming of Christ there was no such thing as political freedom in any part of the world… The Romans held the world in slavery and were themselves slaves of their emperors… Wherefore political as well as spiritual freedom is the gift of God through Christ.” And Edward Gibbon, so critical of the Church in his history of Rome, nevertheless pays tribute to “… those benevolent principles of Christianity, which inculcate the natural freedom of mankind.”

Our forebears of a couple of centuries ago regarded human freedom as a religious imperative. They loved to quote such biblical texts as: “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty,” (2 Cor. 3:17) and “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all the inhabitants thereof.” (Lev. 25:10) They struggled for freedom of worship; they fought for the right to speak their minds, and for a free press to put their convictions into written form. They also had firm convictions about private property. The popular slogan of the time was “Life, Liberty, and Property!” Property meant the right of private ownership. Adam Smith and his Wealth of Nations came along at just the right time—with what Smith called his “liberal plan of liberty, equality and justice”—to become the economic counterpart of the political ideas of the Declaration of Independence.

The Importance of the Individual

The central doctrine of the American political system is our belief in the inviolability of the individual man or woman. This is one of the self-evident truths enunciated in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” The “equality” which is the key idea of the Declaration means “equal justice,” the Rule of Law, the same rules for everybody because we are one in our essential humanity.

The reflections of H.L. Mencken on this point are intriguing as coming from a man usually critical of religion. In 1926 Mencken wrote an essay entitled “Equality Before the Law.” “Of all the ideas associated with the general concept of democratic government,” he wrote, “the oldest and perhaps the soundest is that of equality before the law. Its relation to the scheme of Christian ethics is too obvious to need statement. It goes back, through the political and theological theorizing of the middle ages, to the early Christian notion of equality before God… The debt of democracy to Christianity has always been underestimated… Long before Rousseau was ever heard of, or Locke or Hobbes, the fundamental principles of democracy were plainly stated in the New Testament, and elaborately expounder by the early fathers, including St. Augustine.

“Today, in all Christian countries, equality before the law is almost as axiomatic as equality before God. A statute providing one punishment for A and another for B, both being guilty of the same act, would be held unconstitutional everywhere, and not only unconstitutional, but also in plain contempt of common decency and the inalienable rights of man. The chief aim of most of our elaborate legal machinery is to give effect to that idea. It seeks to diminish and conceal the inequities that divide men in the general struggle for existence, and to bring them before the bar of justice as exact equals.”

The freedom quest of Western man, as it has exhibited itself periodically over the past 20 centuries, is not a characteristic of man as such. It is a cultural trait, philosophically and religiously inspired. The basic religious vision of the West regards the planet earth as the creation of a good God who gives a man a soul and makes him responsible for its proper ordering; puts him on earth as a sort of junior partner with dominion over the earth; admonishes him to be fruitful and multiply; commands him to work; makes him a steward of the earth’s scarce resources; holds him accountable for their economic use; and makes theft wrong because property is right. When this outlook comes to prevail, the groundwork is laid for a free and prosperous commonwealth such as we aspired to on this continent.

A Created Being in a Created World

We gaze out upon the world around us and are struck by the preponderance of order, harmony, beauty, balance, intelligence, and economy in the way it works. The thought strikes us that the explanation of the world is not contained within the world itself, but is to be sought in a Source outside the world. The Bible simply declares that God created the world, and when He had finished He looked out upon the world He had created and called it good. The biblical world is not Maya — as Hinduism calls its world; it is not a mirage or an illusion. Nor is the world of nature holy; only God is holy. The created world, including the realm of nature, is “the school of hard knocks.” The earth challenges us to understand its workings so that we might learn to use it responsibly to serve our purposes. Economics and the free enterprise system teach us how to use the planet’s scarce resources providently, efficiently, and non-wastefully—in order to produce more of the things we need.

Man comes onto the world scene as a created being. As a created being, man is a work of divine art and not a mere happening; he possesses free will and the ability to order his own actions. As such, he is a responsible being. He’s no mere chance excrescence tossed up haphazardly by physical and chemical forces, shaped by accidental variations in his environment. To the contrary, man is endowed with a portion of the divine creativity, giving him the power to dynamically transform himself, and his environment as well, according to his needs and his vision of what ought to be.

The other orders of creation — animals, birds, bees, fish, and so on — live by the dictates of their instincts. But our species has no such infallible inner guidelines as our fellow creatures possess; our guidelines are formulated in the moral code, as summed up in the Ten Commandments.

Ethical relativism is a popular attitude today; it is a wrong answer to questions such as: Is there a moral code? Are there moral laws? Let me summarize briefly the argument that our universe has a built-in moral order by showing that there is a striking parallel between the laws of physical nature and moral laws.

The laws of science transcribe into words the observed causal regularities in the world of physical nature, i.e. the realm of things which can be measured, weighed, and counted. This is one sector of reality. Reality also exhibits a moral dimension, where things are valued or disdained on a scale of ethics ranging from good to evil. Biological survival depends on conforming our actions to the laws of nature; ignorance is no excuse. Social survival, the enhancement of individual life in society, depends on willing obedience to the moral code that condemns murder, theft, false witness, and the rest. Transgressors lead us toward social decay and cultural disorder.

Your individual physical survival depends on several factors. If you want to go on living you need so many cubic feet of air per hour, or you suffocate. You need a minimum number of calories per day, or you starve. If you lack certain vitamins and minerals specific diseases will appear. There is a temperature range within which human life is possible: too low and you freeze, too high and you roast. These are some of the requirements you must meet for individual bodily survival. They are not statutory requirements, nor are they mere custom. They are laws of this physical universe, which one can deny only at his peril.

Establishing a Moral Order

It is just as obvious that our survival as a community of men, women, and children depends on meeting certain moral requirements: a set of rules built into the nature of things which must be obeyed if we are to survive as a society — especially as a social order characterized by personal freedom, private property, and social cooperation under the division of labor.

Moses did not invent the Ten Commandments. Moses intuited certain features of this created world that tell us what we must do to survive as a human community, and he wrote out the code: Don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t assault, don’t bear false witness, don’t covet. Similar codes may be found in every high culture.

It would be impossible to have any kind of a society where most people are constantly on the prowl for opportunities to murder, assault, lie, and steal. A good society is possible only if most people most of the time do not engage in criminal actions. A good society is one where most people most of the time tell the truth, keep their word, fulfill their contracts, don’t covet their neighbor’s goods, and occasionally lend a helping hand. No society will ever eliminate crime, but any society where more than a tiny fraction of the people exercises criminal tendencies is on the skids. To affirm a moral order is to say, in effect, that this universe has a deep prejudice against murder, a strong bias in favor of private property, and hates a lie.

The history of humankind in Western civilization was shaped and tempered by biblical ideas and values, and the attitudes inspired by these teachings. There was much backsliding, of course; but in the fullness of time scriptural ideas about freedom, private property, and the work ethic found expression in Western custom, law, government, and the economy — especially in our own nation. We prospered to the degree that we practiced the freedom we professed; we became ever more productive of goods and services. The general level of economic well-being rose to the point where many became rich enough so that biblical statements about the wealthy began to haunt the collective conscience.

The Bible does warn against the false gods of wealth and power, but it legitimizes the normal human desire for a modicum of economic well-being — which is not at all the same as idolizing wealth and/or power. As a matter of fact, the Bible gives anyone who seeks it out a general recipe for a free and prosperous commonwealth. It tells us that we are created with the capacity to choose; we are put on an earth which is the Lord’s and given stewardship responsibilities over its resources. We are ordered to work, charged with rendering equal justice to all, and to love mercy. A people which puts these ideas into practice is bound to become better off than a people which ignores them. These commands laid the foundation for the economic well-being of Western society.

Western civilization, which used to be called “Christendom,” did not prosper at the expense of the relatively poor Third World. This unhappy sector of the globe is poor because it is unproductive; and it is unproductive because its nations lack the institutions of freedom that enabled us to achieve prosperity.

During recent years a small library of books and study guides has poured off the presses of American church organizations (and from secular publishers as well) with titles something like “Rich Christians (or Americans) in a Hungry World.” The allegation is that our prosperity is the cause of their poverty; in other words, the Third World has been made poor by the very same economic procedures — “capitalism” — that have made Western nations prosperous! Therefore — the argument runs — our earnings should be taxed away from us and our goods should be handed over to Third World countries—as a matter of social justice! The false premise is that the wealth we have labored to produce has been gained at their expense. Sending them our goods, then, is but to restore to the Third World what rightfully belongs to it! What perverse ignorance of the way the world works!

Nations of the West were founded on biblical principles of justice, freedom, and a work ethic, which led naturally to a rise in the general level of prosperity. Our wealth could not have come from the impoverished Third World where there was a scarcity of goods. We prospered because of our productivity; we became productive because we were freer than any other nation, Freedom in a society enables people to produce more, consume more, enjoy more; and also to give away more—as we have done—to the needy in this land and in lands all over the world. The world has never before witnessed international philanthropy on such a scale.

No one has denied Third World nations access to the philosophical and religious credo which has inspired the American practices that make for economic and Social wen-being. Few nations have done more to make the literature of liberty available to all who wish it than American missionaries, educators, philanthropists, and technicians. But there is something in the creeds of Third World countries that hinders acceptance. However, when non-Christian parts of the world decide to emulate Western ideas of economic freedom they prosper. Look what happened to the economies of Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore when they turned the market economy loose!

Regarding the Poor

Ecclesiastical pronouncements on the economy are fond of the phrase “a preferential option for the poor.” It is invoked as the rationale for governmental redistribution of wealth, that is, for a program of taxing earnings away from those who produce in order to subsidize selected groups and individuals. But it is a fact that reshuffling wealth by programs of tax and subsidy merely enriches some at the expense of others; the nation as a whole becomes poorer. Private enterprise capitalism is, in fact, the answer for anyone who really does have a preferential option for the poor. The free market economy, wherever it has been allowed to function, has elevated more poor people further out of poverty faster than any other system.

Another phrase, repeated like a mantra, is “the poor and oppressed.” There is, of course, a connection between these two words; a person who is oppressed is poorer than he would be otherwise. Oppression is always political; oppression is the result of unjust laws. Correct the injustice by repealing unjust laws; establish political liberty and economic freedom. But even in the resulting free society, where people are not oppressed, there will still be some people who are relatively poor because of the limited demand for their services. Teachers and preachers are poor compared to rock musicians because the masses spend millions to have their ears assaulted by amplified sound, in preference to the good advice often available for free!

Ecclesiastical documents announce their concern for “the poor and oppressed,” but the authors of these documents are completely blind to the forms oppression may take in our day. If there are unjust political interventions that deny people employment, this would seem to be a flagrant case of oppression. There are many such interventions. Minimum wage laws, for instance, deny certain people access to employment, and these people are poorer than they would be otherwise; the entire nation is less well off because some people are not permitted to take a job. The same might be said of the laws that grant monopoly status to certain groups of people gathered as “unions” – U.A.W., Teamsters, and the like. The above-market wage rate they gain for union members results in unemployment for others both union and nonunion. It is not difficult to figure out why this is so. The general principle is that when things begin to cost more we tend to use less of them. So, when labor begins to cost more, fewer workers will be hired.

It would take several pages to list all of the alphabet agencies that regulate, control, and hinder productivity, making the entire nation less prosperous than it need be. Our country suffers under these oppressions, economically and otherwise, but not so severely as the oppressed people of other nations, especially Communist and Third World nations. Churchmen recommend, as a cure for Third World poverty, that we deprive the already over-taxed and hampered productive segment of our people of an even larger portion of their earnings, so as to turn more of our money over to Third World governments. This will further empower the very Third World politicians who are even now oppressing their people, enabling those autocrats to oppress them more efficiently!

The New Testament and the Rich

It is not difficult to rebut the manifestoes issued by various religious organizations. But then we turn to certain New Testament writings and are confronted by what seem to be condemnations of the rich. How, for example, shall we understand Jesus’ remark, found in Luke 18:25 and Matthew 19:24: “It is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God”?

Jesus’ listeners were astonished when they heard these words. Worldly prosperity, many of them assumed, was a mark of God’s favor. It seemed to follow that the man whom God favored with riches in this life was thereby guaranteed a spot in heaven in the next.

There is a grain of truth in this distorted popular mentality. Biblical religion holds that man is a created being, with the signature of his Creator written on each person’s soul. This inner sacredness implies the ideal of liberty and justice in the relations between person and person. These free people are given dominion over the earth in order to subdue it, working “for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man’s estate,” as Francis Bacon put it. This is but another way of saying that those who follow the natural order of things—God’s order—in ethics and economics will do better for themselves than those who violate this order. The faithful, we read in Job 36:11, “… if they obey and serve Him… shall spend their days in prosperity and their years in pleasures.”

Perhaps Jesus had something else in mind as well. Palestine had been conquered by Rome. Roman overlords, wielding power and enriching themselves at the expense of the local population, would certainly supply many examples of “a rich man.” Furthermore, there were those among the subject people who hired themselves out as publicans to serve the Romans by extorting taxes from their fellow Jews. “Publicans and sinners” is virtually one word in the Gospels!

In nearly every nation known to history, rulers have used their political power to seize the wealth produced by others for the gratification of themselves and their friends. Kings and courtiers in the days of slavery and serfdom consumed much of the wealth produced by farmers, artisans, and craftsmen. Today, politicians in Communist, socialist, and welfarist nations, democratically elected by “the people,” share their power with a congeries of special interests, factions, and pressure groups who systematically prey on the economy, depriving people who do the world’s work of over 40 percent of everything they earn.

Many a “rich man” lives on legal plunder, today as well as in times past. Frederic Bastiat’s little book, The Law, familiarizes us with the procedure. The law is an instrument of justice, intended to secure each individual in his right to his life, his liberty, and his rightful property. Ownership is rightfully claimed as the fruit of honest toil and/or as the result of voluntary exchanges of goods and services. But the law, as Bastiat points out, is perverted from an instrument of justice into a device of plunder when it takes goods from lawful owners by legislative fiat and transfers them to groups of the politically powerful. “Robbery is the first labor saving device,” wrote Lewis Mumford, and political plunder is a species of theft. The fact that it is legally sanctioned does not make it morally right; it is a violation of the commandment against theft.

The Israelites had fond memories of King Solomon. “All through his reign,” we read in 1 Kings 4:25, “Judah and Israel continued at peace, every man under his own vine and fig tree, from Dan to Beersheba.” A nice tribute to individual ownership and economic well-being! The Bible has high praise for honestly earned wealth, and it is exceedingly unlikely that Jesus, in the passage we have been considering, intended anything like a general condemnation of wealth, as such.

At this point someone might raise a legitimate question: “Did not Jesus say, in the Sermon on the Mount, ‘Blessed are the poor’?” Well, yes and no. The Sermon on the Mount appears in two of the four Gospels, in Matthew and in Luke. In Luke 6:20 the Beatitude reads: “Blessed are the poor”; but in Matthew 5:3 it is: “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” There’s a discrepancy here; how shall we interpret it?

The Beatitudes were spoken somewhere between 25 and 30 A.D. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke appeared some 50 or 60 years later. Both authors had access to the Gospel of Mark, to fragments of other writings now lost, and to an oral tradition extending over the generations. We do not have the original manuscripts of the Gospels; what we have are copies of copies, and eventually translations of copies into various languages.

Scholars tell us that the Aramaic original of those two words, “the poor,” is am ha-aretz — “people of the land.” The am ha-aretz — at this stage in Israel’s history — were outside the tribal system of Jewish society; they did not have the time or inclination to observe the niceties of priestly law, let alone its scribal elaborations. The work of the am ha-aretz brought them into contact with Gentiles and Gentile ways of life, which in the eyes of the orthodox was defiling. Their status is like that of the people on the bottom rung of the Hindu caste system — the Sudras. Jesus is reminding His hearers that these outcasts are equal in God’s sight to anyone else in Israel, and because of their lowly station in the eyes of society, they may be more open to man’s need of God than the proud people in the ranks above them. The New English Bible provides an interesting slant on this text; it translates “poor in spirit” as “those who know their need of God.”

In short, Jesus is saying that all are equally precious in God’s sight, including the lowly am ha-aretz; He is not praising indigence, as such.

Biblical Interpretation

The Bible is full of metaphor and symbolism and allegory. Literal interpretation usually falls short; proper interpretation demands a bit of finesse… as in the case of St. Paul’s remark about money.

St. Paul declared that “The love of money is the root of all [kinds of] evil.” (1 Tim. 6:10) The word “money” in this context—scholars tell us—does not mean coins, or bonds, or a bank account. Paul uses the word “money” to symbolize the secular world’s pursuit of wealth and power. We tend to become infatuated with “the world.” It’s the infatuation which is evil, for God’s kingdom is not wholly of this world. We are the kind of creatures whose ultimate destiny is achieved only in another order of reality: “Here we have no continuing city.” (Heb. 13:14) Accept this world with all its joys and delights; live it to the full; but remember—we are pilgrims, not settlers. In today’s vernacular, Paul might be telling us: “Have a love affair with this world, but don’t marry it!”

We know that there are numerous unlawful ways to get rich, and these deserve condemnation. But prosperity also comes to a man or woman as the fairly earned reward of honest effort and service. The Bible has nothing but praise for wealth thus gained. “Seest thou a man diligent in his business?” said the author of Proverbs (Pr. 22:29). “He shall stand before kings.” Economic well-being is everyone’s birthright, provided it is the result of honest effort. But we are warned against a false philosophy of material possessions.

This, I think, is the point of Jesus’ parable of the rich man whose crops were so good that he had to build bigger barns. (Luke 12:17) 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 twofold point to this parable. The first is that nothing in life justifies us in resigning from life; 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—like falling heir to a million dollars—may tempt a man into the error of quitting the struggle for the real goals in life. Jesus condemned the man who put his trust in riches, who “layeth up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.” He did not condemn material possessions as such; He taught stewardship, which is the responsible ownership and use of rightfully acquired material goods.

Life here is probative; our three score years and ten are a sort of test run. As St. Augustine put it, “We are here schooled for life eternal.” And one of the important examination questions concerns our 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. Jesus put it very strongly: “If, therefore, you have not been faithful in the use of worldly wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?” (Luke 16:12)

What does it mean to be “faithful in the use of worldly wealth?” What else can it mean except the intelligent and responsible use of the planet’s scarce resources to transform them by human effort and ingenuity into the consumable goods we humans require not only for survival, but also as a means for the finer things in life? In practice, this means free market capitalism — the free enterprise system — in the production, exchange, and utilization of our material wealth in the service of our chosen goals.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

Biblical Roots of American Liberty