American democratic socialists are poised make a big blue wave this fall. Folks like Bernie Sanders promise free college, a single-payer health care system, guaranteed jobs, and more. But, how will they pay for all these promises? The reality is that these measures would require extremely high expenditures that would cause the federal deficit to skyrocket. Once the costs become clear, most mainstream politicians and voters will more than likely tell them to go pack sand. Math always gets in the way of sleepy unicorn dreams.
Let’s add up the cost
The Mercatus Center, a libertarian-leaning center at George Mason University, estimated that Sanders’s Medicare-for-all plan would cost the government $32 trillion over the next decade.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) assumes a baseline budget deficit of $12.4 trillion over the next decade (assuming current laws continue). And even these projections assume that last year’s tax cuts expire on schedule, though they may well be renewed, and that the recent two-year discretionary spending hike is not renewed in 2020. Most of this deficit is driven by the escalating Social Security and Medicare system deficits.
Using CBO’s figures, Sanders has proposed a Social Security expansion, including higher cost-of-living adjustments and higher minimum benefit levels, that the liberal Tax Policy Center estimates will cost $188 billion over the next decade.
The Tax Policy Center adds these numbers:
Sanders “free college” proposal at $807 billion over the next decade.
The center estimates that Sanders’s proposal of up to 12 weeks of paid family leave for new parents and for people with serious health conditions would cost another $270 billion.
The cost of replacing private insurance, including copayments, with a Medicare-for-all plan are more brutal. The liberal Urban Institute estimates that Sanders’s single-payer health plan would add $32 trillion in federal costs over the decade. Note that that’s the exact same figure produced by those George Mason libertarians.
Ocasio-Cortez and Senate Democrats also want to guarantee a job for anyone who wants one, at $15 per hour plus benefits. The liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, commissioned a report by outside scholars Darrick Hamilton, William Darity, and Mark Paul that estimates the cost of a more modest proposal along these lines (with a lower wage, for example). It suggested the cost would be $56,000 apiece for 9.7 million enrollees, for a total of $6.8 trillion over the next decade.
As a note, this enrollment estimate for the jobs program is marginally low. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities assumes nearly all participants would come from the ranks of the jobless who are seeking work. Realistically, the 60 million Americans currently earning less than $15 per hour (plus many retirees and longtime labor force dropouts) would also stampede into this program.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities asserts that employers would retain such workers with large raises, or a higher minimum wage. But clearly, some of these 60 million workers would be laid off and possibly replaced with automation, particularly in industries with tight profit margins. Those job losses would expand this program’s participation, as would an influx of workers who simply want an easier job or more hours than their current jobs.
Still, we will assume for the purposes of a rough calculation that the center’s figure is correct — while keeping in mind that the actual cost could easily triple that amount
Senate Democrats have promised $1 trillion for new infrastructure, and House Democrats are rallying around legislation to pay off all $1.4 trillion in student loan debt — both of which the far left generally supports. I will exclude vague promises such as universal pre-K and expanded special education funding.
Total cost: $42.5 trillion in new proposals over the next decade, on top of the $12.4 trillion baseline deficit.
To put this in perspective, Washington is currently projected to collect $44 trillion in revenues over the next decade. And the Republican tax cut, decried universally by Democrats as irresponsible (and by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi as “Armageddon”) will cost less than $2 trillion over the decade.
The 30-year projected tab for these programs is even more staggering: new proposals costing $218 trillion, on top of an $84 trillion baseline deficit driven by Social Security, Medicare, and the resulting interest costs.
What would be the effects of such an unprecedented spending binge? Federal spending, which typically ranges between 18 and 22 percent of GDP, would immediately soar past 40 percent of GDP on its way to nearly 50 percent within three decades. Including state and local government spending would push the total cost of government to 60 percent of GDP by that point — exceeding the current spending level of every country in Europe.
No, single-payer doesn’t just involve a straightforward shift from private payments to taxes
These numbers are not partisan. They come from the Congressional Budget Office, top liberal think tanks, and the lawmakers themselves. They are the left’s own figures. (And note that we included an absurdly low-cost estimate for the jobs guarantee.)
Nevertheless, many advocates claim that single-payer health care will not worsen America’s fiscal problem, and may even be part of the solution. These plan scores show otherwise.
First, single-payer would not “fix” Washington’s current unsustainable health spending, as its advocates often claim. Medicare’s existing $6 trillion cash shortfall over the next decade (which soars to a $40 trillion shortfall over 30 years) would not be reduced because Medicare is already a price-controlled, single-payer system that would merely become more generous under Medicare-for-all. Perhaps advocates should pay for Medicare’s existing obligations before expanding the system to everyone else.
Second, single-payer proponents claim that the $32 trillion single-payer cost should be considered differently from the other expenditures, since, in theory, money spent privately on health insurance and other health-care costs would now be spent by the government. Essentially, goes the argument, the dollars that went to health premiums and copays would instead go to taxes, with no one worse off.
The Urban Institute score shows otherwise. The $4 trillion saved by state and local governments on programs like Medicaid and CHIP, over 10 years, and the $22 trillion saved by families and businesses on premiums and out-of-pocket expenses cannot easily be converted into a $26 trillion “single-payer tax” without serious economic and redistributive side effects.
Designing a politically acceptable $26 trillion tax hike, even if families and businesses would then have more money, is nearly impossible. CBO data suggest that a new payroll tax, which is one of the “pay-fors” Sanders has emphasized, would need to be set at 29 percent in order to raise $26 trillion over the decade. And that is on top of the existing 15.3 percent payroll tax and all other federal and state taxes.
Hardest hit would be the 77 million Medicaid recipients who currently pay no health insurance premiums (just limited copays), and thus would not receive any “insurance premium windfall” to help pay for their steep new taxes. Overall, converting these $26 trillion in savings into a “single-payer tax” is so difficult that Sanders’s own page of tax increase options comes up with just $16 trillion. And even those tax scores are not independently verified, are often politically unrealistic, and fail to account for any revenues lost to interactions between tax proposals or macroeconomic responses.
What’s more, even if Washington could tax all $26 trillion saved by families, businesses, and state governments, there remains a final $6 trillion federal cost that represents the increase in total national health spending.
Yes, according to the Urban Institute and others, the Sanders plan raises US health spending. This is because American single-payer proposals are far more generous than other nations’ systems; its population is less healthy; and, most overlooked, America decided decades ago to invest more heavily than other nations in expensive technology, roomy hospitals, and pharmaceutical research.
Maintaining this larger infrastructure costs money and limits how deeply provider payments can be cut to pay for the substantial coverage expansions. All of this helps explain why a single-payer system would cost more in America than in other nations.
George Mason’s Mercatus Center study did find that single-payer would reduce projected national health spending by 2 percent. But it did so by charitably assuming Sanders’s immediate (and implausible) 40 percent cut in provider payments would occur. (When, in passing, the center examined more modest and realistic provider payment reductions, it found the plan would cost an additional $5.4 trillion.)
The Urban Institute score also assumes that payment rates could fall significantly, but to a lesser degree than the Mercatus Center. And the liberal economist Kenneth Thorpe of Emory University, who has designed single-payer legislation himself and is considered sympathetic to this approach, found a price tag for the Sanders plan similar to that of the Urban Institute.
Regardless of whether national health expenditures slightly rise or fall, virtually every analysis — liberal or conservative — agrees that Washington must come up with roughly $30 trillion to finance single-payer health care.
And here is a key point: Even setting aside the feasibility of a 40 percent cut to health providers, I have yet to come across even one specific single-payer proposal that raises anywhere close to the roughly $30 trillion needed to pay for the new system (much less “solves” the existing Medicare deficit, as is often claimed).
The Sanders 2016 campaign’s single-payer plan came up $14 trillion short, and his new legislation ignores the tax side altogether. If converting all the health savings from state governments, businesses, and families into a “single-payer tax” is so easy, why has no one come up with a blueprint? Until there is an actual plan that includes the necessary taxes, a fiscally responsible single-payer system will remain a fiction
Paying for socialism
According to the left’s own sources, democratic socialism will cost $42.5 trillion in its first decade. How would the US pay for it?
Under the most generous assumptions possible, liberal proposals would cut $8.5 trillion on the spending side. To begin with, state governments no longer burdened with health care costs would save $4.1 trillion, according to the Urban Institute. The popular leftist goal of slashing defense spending down to Europe’s target of 2 percent of GDP, for which there is no plausible blueprint, would nonetheless save $1.9 trillion if achieved, according to CBO data. Charitably assuming that the jobs guarantee would reduce antipoverty spending by one-quarter would save $2.5 trillion.
Paying for the remaining $34 trillion would require nearly doubling federal tax revenues. Let’s examine three paths using data from CBO’s menu of budget savings:
- What about just taxing corporations and rich families? Raising the final $34 trillion would require seizing roughly 100 percent of all corporate profits as well as 100 percent of all family wage income and pass-through business income above the thresholds of $90,000 (single) or $150,000 (married), and absurdly assuming they all continue working. (This calculation refers to individual income, not investment income.)
- How about a European-style value-added tax (VAT), which is basically a national sales tax? A rate of 87 percent would be needed to collect $34 trillion under the American tax base.
- What about payroll taxes? Lawmakers would need to create a new 37 percent payroll tax, on top of the existing 15.3 percent payroll tax, in order to collect $34 trillion.
And the taxes do not stop there. There is still that aforementioned baseline budget deficit of $12.4 trillion over the decade, and $84 trillion over 30 years (driven almost exclusively by growing Social Security and Medicare shortfalls). It is not sustainable to allow budget deficits to swell to nearly 10 percent of GDP during peace and prosperity. So tack on an additional across-the-board income tax hike of 15 percentage points just to pay for the growing costs of our current federal programs.
Mix and match these tax policies and it still represents an unfathomable and impossible tax burden. American taxes would be higher than most of Europe because its spending levels would also be higher. (Our health care system would still cost more, and Europe does not have an expensive government job guarantee.)
Taxing the rich is not enough. America would need to match, or even surpass, Europe’s enormous tax burden on the middle class. There is no evidence that American voters will accept this level of taxation.
Democratic socialists are disingenuously cagey about the exorbitant tax burden they require. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently offered a list of tax increases — such as a 28 percent corporate tax rate, a “Buffett tax” on millionaires, and carbon tax — that collectively add up to just $2 trillion over the decade, according to the CBO.
More broadly, advocates often downplay the cost of their proposals by introducing them one at a time, hiding the cumulative costs, and recycling the same tax increases across different proposals. But the 2017 tax cuts can be repealed only once. And tax rates on the rich can be raised only so many times.
If democratic socialists and their allies are serious, they must move beyond slogans and figure out how to pay for these proposals, or scale them back to plausible levels similar to last year’s tax cuts (which cost a comparatively small $1.8 trillion).
The democratic socialists may do well in November. Yet upon arriving in Washington, they will discover that even their revolution cannot repeal the laws of math.
Data from Economist Magazine, as well as the research of senior Manhattan Institute fellow Brian Riedl was used in this article.
Paul Plante says
An interesting and timely article that leaves out the name of New York state governor Young Andy Cuomo, who, as matters now stand, will be the flag bearer for the Democratic Socialists in the 2020 presidential election.
Since New York state under Young Andy can be considered a leader when it comes to socialism in America, let’s look at how its budget fares, which we can see from the Observer article “New York State Has Second-Highest Debt in U.S., Comptroller Says” by Madina Toure on 12/14/17, as follows:
New York State has the second-highest debt total in the United States, and it’s expected to grow in the coming years, according to state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.
New York’s state-funded debt is expected to reach $63.7 billion at the end of the current fiscal year and increase over the following four years to $71.8 billion, according to a report released by DiNapoli on Thursday morning.
New York’s current total state debt is second only to California’s, which is at $87 billion.
The average amount of debt for every man, woman and child in the state is $3,116, three times the median for all states, the report found.
And the annual debt service payments — the amount of money needed to reimburse debts over a period of time — are projected to surpass $8.2 billion by the end of state fiscal year 2021-2022.
end quotes
Debt service payments are money that serves no purpose to the residents and taxpayers of this state – it is very much akin to the vigorish, or simply the vig, also known as juice, under-juice, the cut or the take, which is the amount charged by a bookmaker, or bookie, for taking a bet from a gambler, or the interest on a shark’s loan.
Young Andy, bred for politics as the wags say he was, has hitched his political star to socialist Bernie Sanders, as we see from the Politico article “Andrew Cuomo Could Beat Trump … If He Can Win Over the Left First – The governor of New York suddenly looks like the kind of take-no-prisoners pol his party needs. With one catch.” by David Freedlander on July 7, 2017, as follows:
“I would say Cuomo is the one I am most nervous about,” said Michael Caputo, a longtime adviser to Trump who helped put together an aborted Trump gubernatorial run against Cuomo in 2014, and helped lead the campaign for Carl Paladino, Cuomo’s 2010 Republican opponent.
“Hillary Clinton wouldn’t take the gloves off.”
“There isn’t a counterpunch Andrew Cuomo won’t throw.”
There are signs he’s already trying to work that puzzle: The state Democratic Party has run ads out-of-state featuring Cuomo alongside Sanders, trumpeting the Sanders-esque free college proposal that he (Cuomo) pushed through.
But in 2014, something changed: A little-known, poorly funded Constitutional law professor named Zephyr Teachout ran against Cuomo in the Democratic primary and captured a third of the vote, proof that not only was a restive progressivism already brewing in the pre-Trump, pre-Sanders era, but that the party’s liberals didn’t care much for their governor.
Cuomo responded by swinging abruptly to the left.
Since then, even with the state Senate’s hybrid Democratic-Republican coalition still in place, Cuomo has passed a $15 minimum wage, implemented a robust paid family leave program, raised the age of criminal responsibility to 18, rushed through a plan to make tuition free at the state’s public colleges and universities, and banned fracking.
He passed marriage equality, something that stymied his predecessor, and wrested every dollar he could out of the deep-pocked LGBT community around the country along the way.
Just in the past month, he announced that he would ban any insurer that dropped out of the Obamacare market from participating in the state’s Medicaid program, announced that the state would join the Paris climate accord, and held a midtown rally alongside Nancy Pelosi and woke celebrities like John Leguizamo and Steve Buscemi to announce an all-out assault on the half-dozen or so New York congressional Republicans thought to be vulnerable in 2018.
And then—“sounding like Friedrich F**king Engels,” as one lefty operative who opposes Cuomo sniped to me later—he launched into an attack on free-market politics.
“The gods of the private market are not our god.”
“We don’t follow that god.”
“And we believe when the private market fails, that we have a collective responsibility to help one another.”
“… That’s society’s responsibility, and that’s what we do through a collective vehicle, and the collective vehicle is government.”
Is Cuomo really a warrior for social justice?
Maybe, but probably not, but if you get a higher minimum wage and paid family leave and free college and same-sex marriage and gun control and a fracking ban and the first reversal of harsh Rockefeller-era drug laws in four decades, who cares?
end quotes
Indeed, who does care?
When everything is free, who is going to complain?
And when everything is free, who really is going to question where the money has to come from to pay for it, especially after the Federal reserve created TRILLIONS of dollars of funny money out of thin air to bail out the rich after the Great Recession?
If the Federal Reserve can create money from out of thin air to bail out the rich, why they can create more TRILLIONS to pay for Young Andy Cuomo’s socialist policies, and that is the way that story goes, at least for now, anyway.
Laurie Wolpert says
Nobody gets everything they want in Washington, so Bernie Sanders and Cortez would be no different in that respect from any other politician.
Most people want similar things- a chance for a decent job or meaningful work, quality relationships, a sense that they matter in the cosmic order of things. Many conservatives (not all) minimize these needs in favor of what the “free market” can offer. The losers of the free market are frequently not counted in the equation and the winners see no problem with the system. It’s not a mystery why people like Nordic states or “socialist” programs. Most people are not going to be Steve Jobs. They want a shot at a decent life where they can raise a family and get healthcare if they get sick. If that makes them risk-adverse or not heroic, so be it. Rushing around lauding “job creators” is the silly Ayn Randian way of making most of society sound like lazy schmucks, instead of the people who actually do most of the work.
Paul Plante says
Laurie, as an older American who well could be your grandfather, given your millennialism, I always enjoy to read your posts, which always leave me scratching my head wondering where on earth you come up with all these ideas of yours, starting with “(N)obody gets everything they want in Washington, so Bernie Sanders and Cortez would be no different in that respect from any other politician.”
Is that what “Washington” is to your generation, Laurie, a real-life, real-time version of the Wizard of Oz, where if you treat the wizard right and click your heels the requisite number of times in the right manner and sequence, the wizard will grant your wish and award you with a brain, or a heart, or an all-expenses-paid trip back to Kansas?
Where does “for the goo9d of the people” enter into your calculus?
And then we come to this: “Most people want similar things- a chance for a decent job or meaningful work, quality relationships, a sense that they matter in the cosmic order of things.”
Uh, okay.
Sure, Laurie, I’m with you on all of that, mostly, anyway .
What does any of that have to do with the national government in Washington?
Are you saying that it is the duty of the national government in Washington to provide you personally with “quality relationships?”
And is it the duty of Congress or the president to provide you with a sense that you and the other millennials out there matter in the cosmic order of things?
Why, may I ask as someone old enough to be your grandfather, isn’t that YOUR personal responsibility as a human being?
And why would I want either Demo9crats or Republicans or both, or more to the point, the Democratic Socialists of America, determining my place in the cosmic order of things?
Why would I be so stupid as to put the direction my life is going to go in, in any of their hands?
Why would any FREE American want any of them meddling in his or her life?
And then we come to this generality: “Many conservatives (not all) minimize these needs in favor of what the ‘free market’ can offer.”
Do tell, Laurie, and pray tell, from whence came that knowledge?
How about many people labeled as conservative by people who label themselves liberal do not for a moment believe that it is the responsibility of the national government in Washington to provide people in America with a chance for a decent job or meaningful work, quality relationships, and a sense that they matter in the cosmic order of things, and being rational, and knowing history, they do not want the national government in Washington, which is partisan and incompetent, involving itself in any of those PERSONAL matters?
Then you say: “The losers of the free market are frequently not counted in the equation and the winners see no problem with the system.”
What equation, Laurie?
Who is it that is doing the math?
And really, Laurie, and think hard on this, who are the “winners?”
How about Hussein Obama who left the White House millions of dollars ahead?
Do you think he sees anything wrong with the system that enriched him while he was president?
And how about Rodham Clinton, who I realize you don’t like to hear about?
According to an article in the New York Times, which would know if anyone did, by Amy Chozick and Jonathan Martin on 3 September 2016, at a private fund-raiser at a waterfront Hamptons estate, Hillary Clinton danced alongside Jimmy Buffett, Jon Bon Jovi and Paul McCartney, and joined in a singalong finale to “Hey Jude.”
“I stand between you and the apocalypse,” a confident Mrs. Clinton declared to laughs, exhibiting a flash of self-awareness and humor to a crowd that included Calvin Klein and Harvey Weinstein and for whom the prospect of a Donald J. Trump presidency is dire.
In the last two weeks of August, Mrs. Clinton raked in roughly $50 million at 22 fund-raising events, averaging around $150,000 an hour, according to a New York Times tally.
And while Mrs. Clinton has faced criticism for her failure to hold a news conference for months, she has fielded hundreds of questions from the ultrarich in places like the Hamptons, Martha’s Vineyard, Beverly Hills and Silicon Valley.
“It’s the old adage, you go to where the money is,” said Jay S. Jacobs, a prominent New York Democrat.
Mrs. Clinton raised about $143 million in August, the campaign’s best month yet.
Mrs. Clinton’s aides have gone to great lengths to project an image of her as down-to-earth and attuned to the challenges of what she likes to call “the struggling and the striving.”
If she feels most at ease around millionaires, within the gilded bubble, it is in part because they are some of her most intimate friends.
The campaign’s finance team is led by Dennis Cheng, previously the chief fund-raiser for the Clinton Foundation, and it employs a couple dozen staff members.
Mr. Cheng, who attends the events with Mrs. Clinton, offers donors a number of contribution options that provide them and their families varying levels of access to Mrs. Clinton.
A family photo with Mrs. Clinton cost $10,000, according to attendees.
end quotes
Isn’t she one of the winners see no problem with the system, Laurie?
Do you actually think she gives a tinker’s damn about who the losers are?
And then you say, “It’s not a mystery why people like Nordic states or ‘socialist’ programs.”
Isn’t it?
Why, Laurie, do people like the Nordic states, which incidentally, are not “socialist” states, if you bothered to do even some preliminary research before putting forth these points you can’t substantiate?
If you had bothered to do even a cursory search, you surely would have googled the question “Is Denmark a capitalist country?” and the answer you would have gotten back is that, “the Nordic model (also called Nordic capitalism or Nordic social democracy) refers to the economic and social policies common to the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Sweden).”
If you researched further, and truly, Laurie, we’re talking maybe 7th or 8th grade stuff here with regard to Denmark, the Danes have been a people taking care of other Danes since before the “Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum,” which was an agreement between Alfred of Wessex and Guthrum, the Danish ruler of East Anglia somewhere between 878 and 890, so they have a long history of being “socialist,” if you can call it that, as a common people.
Don’t they teach that kind of stuff to millennials today. Laurie?
And then you say, “Most people are not going to be Steve Jobs.”
Okay.
What of it?
And why would people want to be Steve Jobs?
I don’t.
Steve Jobs means absolutely nothing to me, to be truthful.
What makes him any kind of role model for anyone?
The fact that after dropping out of Reed College in 1972, he traveled through India in 1974 seeking enlightenment and studying Zen Buddhism?
Because his declassified FBI report states that he used marijuana and LSD while he was in college, and once told a reporter that taking LSD was “one of the two or three most important things” he had done in his life?
Then you say, “They want a shot at a decent life where they can raise a family and get healthcare if they get sick.”
Who. Laurie, is it that is supposed to give them that “shot?”
And who gets to decide for me what a “decent” life is for me?
Some hack politician in Washington with his or her hand out waiting to see how big my bribe is going to be, before they settle on the question of what kind of “decent” life I am going to entitled to?
You say, “If that makes them risk-adverse or not heroic, so be it,” and you know what; I doubt you would get any kind of argument from anybody with a functioning brain in his or her head on that sentiment.
And then you say: “Rushing around lauding ‘job creators’ is the silly Ayn Randian way of making most of society sound like lazy schmucks, instead of the people who actually do most of the work.”
Obviously, Laurie, you have never bothered to read and absorb what Ayn Rand was portraying in “Atlas Shrugged.”
I have read the book several times, actually, and the first time I read it, I found myself going back to see when it was copyrighted, over and over, because it so accurately depicted the society in America or what calls itself America when I landed here after leaving Viet Nam in early 1970.
“Atlas Shrugged” hardly made most of society sound like lazy schmucks.
The book did not even make mention of “most of society,” as this list of the main characters makes clear:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Atlas_Shrugged_characters
And the hero of the story, if you will is not John Galt, at all.
To the contrary, it is Dagney Taggert, who happens to be a woman, Laurie, a female:
She is Vice-President in Charge of Operations for Taggart Transcontinental, under her brother, James Taggart.
Given James’ incompetence, Dagny is responsible for all the workings of the railroad.
end quotes
That book was written in 1957, Laurie, and my goodness, there is a woman running ma railroad, and you know what, Laurie, if I had a daughter, I would very much want her to be just like Dagney Taggert, and I would be very much ashamed of myself if I reared a son like the incompetent James, who incidentally in the book was very powerful in the slimebucket of Washington, D.C., the world where people like Wesley Mouch, an incompetent and treacherous lobbyist who rises to prominence and authority throughout the novel through trading favours and disloyalty thrives.
That is the world Ayn Rand deicted in “Atlas Shrugged,” and personally, I think she took a very accurate photograph, all the way around, or at least that is how somebody old enough to be your grandfather sees it, anyway.
Ray Otton says
Laurie, you have a very warped idea of Conservative values. Not surprising, based on other comments you’ve made here.
It is clear that you believe Conservatism is heartless at it’s core but nothing could be further from the truth.
Conservatism is not a monolithic philosophy the way Liberalism is. There isn’t one way to be a Conservative. so there exists no model Conservatism.
I think we can at least agree that Conservatism is the opposite of Liberalism in that it negates ideology, meaning that the Conservative movement accommodates a considerable diversity of views on a good many subjects as opposed to Liberalism which is severely constrained by “tests” that ensure adherence to a well defined ideology.
In short, a Conservative is one who finds permanent things and orderly progression of society more pleasing than chaotic change. A Conservatives knows that healthy change is the means of humanity’s preservation. An historic continuity of experience is a far better guide than the abstract ideas of Liberal pundits and university professors.
Plus, on a lighter note, numerous polls indicate that Conservatives are far happier than Liberals.
Laurie Wolpert says
I don’t know if conservatism is heartless, exactly, but I believe in the economic sphere, mainstream conservatism elevates the individual, and by it’s lack of solidarity with ordinary working people, allows great inequalities to flourish, which then have to be rationalized away. Here’s a a textbook example below, in which a conservative writer extols the free market for producing a smartphone. Not only are the disadvantages of having a population completely glued to technology not mentioned, but the idea that people would really sacrifice a stable life for a new gadget is laughable. The Wall Street Journal does the same specious arguments, stating that because the poor have televisions and air conditioning, that they must be fine. Do people really feel fine because they have televisions? It’s hard to believe these arguments can still hold traction.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/socialism-fad-a-fixation-on-exciting-words/
There are some more conservative people who are willing to attack the market and seek to conserve the true, the beautiful, and the good. Rod Dreher, Wendell Berry, G.K Chesterton, and Anthony Esolen come to mind. However, they tend to be religious and their ideas do not always attract mainstream attention or they are derided as impractical dreamers. I have no doubt that many conservatives wish to preserve faith, family, and patriotism. I do not think our current economic system supports those things and I do not think our current politics is capable of adequately articulating solutions to the marketplaces fundamentally deficient view of human nature.
Note: Unfortunately, the only thing that will support the 10 year, multi-trillion dollar price tag for the true, the beautiful, and the good is the marketplace. Money does not grow on trees, it is generated through friction and disruption (by people working jobs, any jobs). Cars, wide screen televisions and air conditioning can’t buy happiness, but it does speak to a standard of living. Although, they might be happier and more content sitting in a hot, sweaty room staring at the walls or reading a dog-eared copy of (didn’t Sartre write a novel about that?).
Laurie Wolpert says
Which speaks to what I just said. Most conservatives want to conserve things that will then be given up when the market demands it. Like those beautiful views out your window? Wait until a hotel wants to build on it. Want a community whose jobs won’t be outsourced to China? Don’t bet on the market. That’s why the Nordic countries built a safety net- they knew the market would not.
I’m not against capitalism per se, but I find the dishonest conversation about its real trade-offs frustrating. The towns that are dying from opioids are the same ones whose jobs have been relocated. It’s not a coincidence. And yet, whenever you say, maybe we need to find a way to bridle all of this creative destruction or perhaps there is a more human economy, you will be derided as a young idealist, nothing more. The economy was made for man, not the other way around. It’s why I simply can never get behind mainstream conservatism. It never fully delivers on its promises, and it never articulates its tradeoffs.
Note: Modern conservatism is not any one thing, but a variant response to collectivist, Keynesian, and secularist ideology. Liberitarianism, on the other hand, doesn’t make any promises, and only holds sacred an individual’s freedom to fail.
Laurie Wolpert says
What does the modern conservative movement wish to conserve and what is it willing to resist to do so? This is very important. Immigration, same sex marriage, gender and racial diversity quotas, disrupted family life, two wage earners, and environmental degradation are the costs of doing business and supported by many, if not all, corporations. Please note I am not arguing for or against any of these things. What are conservatives willing to pay to have modern day capitalism? Is there even a price tag?
Note: Great questions, but they are hard to answer. Many people confuse social conservatism (non-issues like same sex marriage, gender and racial diversity, etc.) with Modern conservatism. The Sharon Statement, drafted by 26-year-old M. Stanton Evans and approved by Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) at its founding meeting in Sharon, Connecticut, covers the core. It is only 400 words, but covers:
Foremost among the transcendent values is the individual’s use of his God-given free will.
Political freedom cannot long exist without economic freedom.
The purposes of government are to protect these freedoms through the preservation of internal order, the provision of national defense and the administration of justice.
The market economy is the single economic system compatible with personal freedom and constitutional government.
The forces of international communism are the greatest single threat to these liberties, and the United States should stress victory over rather than coexistence.
Thanks for the comments, you have given us an idea for our next edition!
Laurie Wolpert says
Well, I’ll look for the next column where perhaps these ideas are more fleshed out. Social conservatives are often part of the broader umbrella of conservatism.
Why the market economy will not fall prey to rent-seeking, crony capitalism, and exploitation of all stripes is not at all clear to me from this manifesto. Freedom seems to be defined as the absence of constraint, rather than the presence of justice. Many people at the bottom of our economy might feel strongly that is a world which favors the powerful.
Paul Plante says
Many people at the bottom of our economy might feel strongly that is a world which favors the powerful. Laurie, precisely because it is a world which favors the powerful.
Last year, it was a world which favored the powerful, and the year before that, it was a world which favored the powerful, and you know what, Laurie?
Since there have been people, the world has favored the powerful.
Do you think Octavian became Augustus Caesar because he was weak?
Did Guthrum the Dane seek peace with King Alfred the Saxon because King Alfred was weak, and Guthrum felt sorry for him?
Nature doesn’t think much of the weak, Laurie.
Never has, never will.
That is reality, whether any of us like it, or not.
And it is not the function of a rational government to elevate the weak in society to positions of power over the rest of us.
Search history, Laurie, and come up with a civilization where the weak had all the power, and when you find one, please let us know where it was and what its fate was.
Start your search with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
See where putting the weak in charge got them.
And then let us know why we should repeat their experiment over here?
And no, I am not a part of the conservative movement in America, nor do I self-identify as a conservative.
Paul Plante says
Laurie asks: What are conservatives willing to pay to have modern day capitalism?
Laurie, do you realize that you have asked a question that nobody can possibly answer, precisely because there is no such thing as a cookie-cutter “conservative”?
In fact, nobody really knows what a conservative even is.
Are you talking about intellectual conservatives?
Are you talking about conservative Republicans?
And the modern-day capitalism we have in America is called “finance capitalism,” which is a far different animal than the industrial capitalism we used to have.
Finance capitalism is best demonstrated by the game of Monopoly.
Google the question “What is a finance capitalism?” and the answer you will get is that it is a stage of capitalism in which economic and political domination is exercised by financial institutions or financiers rather than by industrial capitalists.
Your problem, Laurie, is that you talk about “capitalism” as if it were one thing, like a doily or trivet, and it is not.
You think that somehow there are cures for capitalism, and there aren’t.
You think that socialism can somehow cure the “evils” of capitalism, and it can’t.
Educate yourself, Laurie, on the subject, if you are really serious about discussing it in a rational, rather than emotional manner.
Read, for example, Michael Hudson’s article “Financial Capitalism v. Industrial Capitalism” on September 3, 1998, and don’t just skim it, actually take the time and read it word for word:
http://michael-hudson.com/1998/09/financial-capitalism-v-industrial-capitalism/
Our economy is evolving into something different from what most people imagine it to be.
The emerging system bears little relation to what academic textbooks describe, to say nothing of what politicians are promising.
Whereas classical economic theory was taught largely by religious officials, often as moral philosophy at Christian colleges, the study of economics has now shifted to the business schools whose objective is simply to teach students how to get rich, not how to be happy or how to promote overall public welfare and prosperity.
The old capitalism used public-spirited rhetoric while relying on government for support (including police).
The new finance capitalism uses an individualistic rhetoric while buying control of governments and depending on them to lend defaulting debtors the funds to pay their creditors, and to guarantee security of financial assets for their holders.
As envisioned by Marx, industrial capitalism was characterized by a class war between the workers and their employers.
But industrial capital, as well as labor, is victimized by today’s finance capitalism.
Industrial corporations are targeted by raiders to be carved up, while the labor force is downsized and out-sourced.
And whereas the old capitalism used a nationalist rhetoric to expand throughout the world, the new finance capitalism uses an internationalist one-world rhetoric while in practice creating economic polarization and asymmetries between the financial centers and the rest of the world.
end quotes
There is what you need to cure, Laurie, if you want to make a difference today.
Make a lasso and stop the run-away train with it, if you can.
Paul Plante says
Vey well stated with great patience, Mr. Otton!
Chas Cornweller says
Ain’t it a funny thing when it comes to the deficit…whereas you can break down all the costs for free college and healthcare for all and can acknowledge every nickel and dime that would be imposed on the American public. That followed by the tsk, tsk, tsk of self-aggrandizing tongues and the inevitable statement…”So very sorry to inform you, there is just not enough in the budget to acquire that program. So sorry.”
But! Create a new Space Force! Create a one point five trillion, that’s a TRILLION-dollar tax break for corporations (private/profit making and taking corporations!) and the Uber Rich of this nation. By a president who has now spent more days on the golf course and at his various vacation homes around this nation, than Bush, Clinton and Obama combined! (and hasn’t cleared the half-way point of his only year at the presidency yet!) And the coup-de-Gras for the deficit…a Seven Hundred-Billion-dollar budget for the military (the budget that WAS declared, not counting the secret funds channeled to black opts, CIA, other nations, etc.). Not to mention the two wars we’ve fought since 2003 to the tune of over four trillion. Crickets from you people. Nothing! Not a peep! Seriously. Anybody care to guess where the money has gone?
Good old America, making and taking the money from our pockets for nearly a hundred years now to fund god-knows-what. But, the health and well-being of an educated society? Sorry, just can’t see our way clear. Our poisoned uneducated informed public is a joke! And we deserve exactly, who/what we put in office. So that they can to put into motion, our own decline! We’re a nation of blind sheep. See you all in the funny papers!
Note: The “Space Force”, or actually the Space Development Agency, already exists; it will be made up from the Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center (also possibly part of the Naval Space Command). Estimates so far is that it will not add much to the already underfunded DoD budget (National Defense, all those ships and planes is not cheap). Making this an autonomous branch of the military is 40 years overdue. As a country, we spend $620 billion annually for K-12 education, $80 billion for higher ed (not counting state funding), $670 billion on Medicare and $565 billion on Medicaid. You seem to be taking a lot for granted. At some point, people have to assume some responsibility for their lives, don’t they?
Paul Plante says
Dear friend Chas Cornweller, you say “Not to mention the two wars we’ve fought since 2003 to the tune of over four trillion.”
“Crickets from you people.”
“Nothing!”
“Not a peep!”
Seriously, Chas Cornweller, how long has the Cape Charles Mirror been in existence?
Wasn’t the last edition of the Cape Charles Wave, the predecessor of the Cape Charles Mirror, on June 29, 2015?
So how then, Chas Cornweller, were we to speak out against all of that in the Cape Charles Mirror when there was no Cape Charles Mirror in existence back then to speak out in?
As for me, dear friend and fellow American patriot Chas Cornweller, I HAVE been speaking out against those things on the internet since 2004.
One of the sites I was speaking out on before I found the Cape Charles Mirror was suppressed here in corrupt New York.
The following is a note I sent to that site regarding that suppression:
8 July 2016
Angela Rosetti
Operations Manager
TALK 1300-WGDJ-AM,
C/O TU Center,
51 South Pearl Street,
Albany, NY 12207
RE: Suppression of TALK 1300 Report
Dear Angela:
Several days ago now, I sent an e-mail request to your radio station asking to know why the Talk 1300 Report was suddenly gone.
For the record, that e-mail request was never responded to, nor actually, did I expect it to be, to be entirely candid with you, based on what you had told me when I contacted you by phone to ask the same question.
By way of refreshing your memory, when I asked you why the Talk 1300 Report was suddenly gone, just before a long holiday weekend, along with Jim Franco’s Twitter Tweets, your response was a terse “we decided to take that in a different direction.”
That direction you chose to take, quite obviously, was to suppress the Talk 1300 Report, and with it, the truth that was being posted in there, truth you as Operations Manager obviously cannot handle.
Get it buried was your order, and so it was, the Talk 1300 Report disappearing from cyberspace as if it never had existed, along with all of Jim Franco’s posts, which were embarrassing powerful political people locally and at the county level, and the state level, which violates the rules of neutered and gelded journalism in this state today, which is why so much corruption can exist right out in plain sight – because moral cowards like yourself, to prove your own political reliability, won’t allow it to be questioned.
§8 of Article I of our NYS Constitution, the Bill of Rights, states in language a child is supposed to be able to comprehend and understand, or at least such was the case when I was in kindergarten, that “Every citizen may freely speak, write and publish his or her sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that right; and no law shall be passed to restrain or abridge the liberty of speech or of the press.”
But that obviously does not apply to you, because by suppressing the Talk 1300 Report as you did, you restrained and abridged the liberty of Jim Franco, which ranks as one of the most cowardly acts I have witnessed in the seventy years I have been alive.
Thankfully, I had the foresight some years ago to start my own blog that would be totally independent of cowardly censors like you, so some of Jim Franco’s work at exposing the truth of politics in the Capitol District of New York state lives on, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, as will this correspondence to you.
Yes, Angela, you have the power to suppress the truth in New York state, I will hand you that.
But this is to inform you that with the advent of the internet being available to the common person, your power to totally suppress the truth has become limited, and thankfully so.
You are like something straight out of Orwell’s “1984,” where your version of truth can change in mid-sentence.
In that, you have become an anachronism, and through my own blog, I plan to make that point to a candid world that is now tuned in to what I say on another channel.
Sincerely,
Paul R. Plante
end quotes
To close, Chas Cornweller, if you are going to call us out for acting in what you perceive to be a cowardly manner, do us a favor and make sure the charges are justified.
Just saying.
And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming after this break for station identification and a word from our corporate sponsors, BIGG DAWG dog food, guaran-damn-teed to make your puppy howl with the best of them.
Chas Cornweller says
“You seem to be taking a lot for granted. At some point, people have to assume some responsibility for their lives, don’t they?”ed.
My point is this. People are so turned out by the costs of education vs. the cost of the military. Whereas they can quote statistics for the exorbitant cost of educating our children, but don’t bat an eye for creating situations where we can send them off to battle, someplace half-way across the world. Nothing is cheap (anymore) I get that. What is lacking are priorities.
And asking me – people have to assume some responsibility for their lives. Just ask someone who has forty plus years invested in the labor sector, dying of cancer with inadequate health insurance (or worst still – a pre-existing condition not covered by their insurance) about to lose everything they worked for just to pay off or be indebted to health care system. So, you see, you can do ALL the right things, and still get flushed by the system.
So, you see if we were to go whole in on funding (like we do with our military while cutting costs on wasteful military spending) we’d have a system where people are better educated and our health (due to preventive care) would improve. Couple with better foods (less processed and chemically grown) and cleaner living conditions…the costs would actually take care of themselves. We are 21 trillion in debt as it is. Surely, we are not going down the correct road.
Paul Plante says
Chas Cornweller says: “We’re a nation of blind sheep.”
“Surely, we are not going down the correct road.”
end quotes
That pretty much nails it so far as I can see, Chas …
And I’m still waiting for Nancy Pelosi to hook me up with some with “quality relationships” if only I can come up with the money to get her to notice my existence!
Silly me, huh?
Do you think I would be better off looking for them on my own?
Laurie Wolpert says
Resistance is not futile. Sure, the powerful have always existed, but democracy and Christianity have changed the game. We owe no allegiance to wickedness in high places. Most people’s theology is not as cold as their economics, and refusing to bow towards cultural gods is good for ones soul.
Paul Plante says
Laurie, how long has “Christianity” been around now?
A long time, n’est-ce pas?
And what is the history of Christianity, pray tell?
And in the history of “Christianity,” who were some of the richest people?
Ah, yes, Laurie, the clergy.
Think mega-churches today.
What is simony, Laurie?
That is the practice of the church making money by selling ecclesiastical privileges to those who could afford them, which was a means of enriching the church and clergy.
Didn’t John of Gaunt on or about 19 February 1377 threaten to humble the pride of the English clergy and their partisans by secularizing the possessions of the Church?
Wasn’t John Wycliffe censured in 1377 by Pope Gregory XI because of his ideas on lordship and church, with Wycliffe arguing that the Church had fallen into sin and that it ought therefore to give up all its property and that the clergy should live in complete poverty?
For those who don’t remember him, John Wycliffe (1320s – 31 December 1384) was an English scholastic philosopher, theologian, Biblical translator, reformer, English priest, and a seminary professor at the University of Oxford who was an influential dissident within the Roman Catholic priesthood during the 14th century and is considered an important predecessor to Protestantism by attacking the privileged status of the clergy, which was central to their powerful role in England, and attacking the luxury and pomp of local parishes and their ceremonies.
But, oh, yes, that was yesterday, so let’s jump forward to today with “Jesus: The Greatest Marketing Genius of All Time” published by Darren Shearer:
In your opinion, who is the greatest marketing genius of all time?
As I have asked other people this question, the most frequent responses have included Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Lady Gaga, and other influential people.
Now, imagine yourself sitting in a “Marketing 101” class in college.
Your professor says,
“Class, today, we have a special guest professor who will lead today’s class.”
“This man is the single greatest marketing genius of all time.”
“Based on the astonishing number of people around the world that claim to be his followers, no person in the history of the world has made a more profound impact on the hearts and minds of people and nations than this man.”
end quotes
Which takes us to Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker and the PTL Club.
Do you remember Jim and Tammy Faye, Laurie, good Christians that they were?
If you don’t, there is a book about them you should read entitled “PTL: The Rise and Fall of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s Evangelical Empire” by John Wigger published by Oxford University Press, August 4, 2017.
If the book is too much of a challenge, you can read a review entitled “The Cautionary Tale of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker – Their sins and scandals were extreme, but it’s too easy to dismiss them as an aberration” by Heath W. Carter on September 19, 2017:
https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2017/september-web-only/cautionary-tale-of-jim-and-tammy-faye-bakker.html
Here is an excerpt:
Or perhaps it is best to begin with the greed?
As the Bakkers’ ministry grew, so did their insatiable appetite for nice things.
In 1982 they used PTL funds to purchase a $375,000 vacation condo in Florida, which they went on to furnish lavishly.
As Wigger reports, “The drapes, bedspreads, and headboards cost $40,000 alone.”
After a few days, Tammy Faye grew tired of the place, which struck her as “nothing but a hotel suite.”
They wound up spending only a total of three weeks there.
Both the sex and the greed drove jaw-dropping levels of deceit.
Jim went to extreme lengths to cover up the Jessica Hahn affair, a decision that fit into a much larger pattern of illicit lies.
The Bakkers’ meteoric rise to Christian celebrity status was made possible by the faith and generosity of countless ordinary believers, who tuned into PTL’s television programs and donated to its telethons.
Jim and Tammy Faye violated their trust early and often.
In one August 1978 newsletter, Jim, seeking funds for his ambitious Heritage USA theme park, wrote, “Unless God performs a financial miracle, this could be the last letter you will receive from me.”
“… Tammy and I are giving every penny of our life’s savings to PTL.”
But the truth was, as Wigger observes, “He wrote this at almost exactly the same time he bought [a $30,000] houseboat.”
The kicker:
He paid the required $6,000 down payment with PTL funds.
The Bakkers’ prevarications grew more grandiose and more illegal as they stretched to finance larger and larger projects.
Their supporters were not the only victims.
While during times of financial distress Jim, Tammy Faye, and other high-level PTL employees still took home extravagant bonuses, the vast majority who worked for the organization scrimped and saved—if they managed to keep their jobs.
As Wigger writes, “From November 1985 through February 1986, PTL laid off 283 people, an annual savings of $3,613,780.”
“[Jim] Bakker’s total compensation for 1985 and 1986, as calculated by the IRS, was $3,946,229.”
end quotes
Yes, indeed, the powerful have always existed, but democracy and Christianity sure have changed the game, alright.
Laurie Wolpert says
Sure, I can think of more examples, the terrible Catholic priests, the southern slave holders, the support in Latin America for dictators. Nevertheless, Christianity has always preached the ultimate worth of the human soul and democracy has given ordinary people political power. Although things appear (and sometimes are) bad, I believe a Christian conscience has developed in the West that will not easily be snuffed out. Slavery was ended, Jim Crow was ended, labor laws were passed, Hitler was defeated, and global poverty and disease have been reduced tremendously (which does owe its success in part to capitalism). If we could get some good governance again, we might be able to mitigate the worst parts of capitalism and invest in the ordinary people that make up our country.
Paul Plante says
I don’t disagree with your sentiments, Laurie, and as a grandfather, I certainly applaud your hope for the future.
As to Hitler and the Nazis, however, might I remind you that Germany was a Christian nation, not only at the outbreak of WWII, but going a long way back in history, as well.
Study the Thirty-Years War to see the influence of Christianity and religion in the German states long before Hitler and the Nazis came on the scene.
According to Wikipedia, which is far from the only source on the subject, in 1933, prior to the annexation of Austria into Germany, the population of Germany was approximately 67% Protestant and 33% Catholic.
A census in May 1939, six years into the Nazi era and after the annexation of mostly Catholic Austria and mostly Catholic Czechoslovakia into Germany, indicates that 54% considered themselves Protestant, 40% Catholic, 3.5% self-identified as “gottgläubig” (lit. “believers in God”, often described as predominately creationist and deistic), and 1.5% as “atheist”.
During Hitler’s reign, Hans Kerrl, who served as Hitler’s Minister for Church Affairs pushed for “Positive Christianity”, which was a uniquely Nazi form which rejected its Jewish origins and the Old Testament, and portrayed “true” Christianity as a fight against Jews, with Jesus depicted as an Aryan.
Under the Gleichschaltung process, Hitler attempted to create a unified Protestant Reich Church from Germany’s 28 existing Protestant churches.
Amid harassment of the Church, the Reich concordat treaty with the Vatican was signed in 1933, and promised to respect Church autonomy.
Historians resist a simple equation of Nazi opposition to both Judaism and Christianity.
Nazism was clearly willing to use the support of Christians who accepted its ideology and Nazi opposition to both Judaism and Christianity was not fully analogous in the minds of the Nazis.
end quotes
As to Austria, at p.238 of “World Wars and Revolutions” by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D., Dodge Professor of History at Princeton University, we are told as follows:
The majority of Austrians (circa 1929-30) called themselves socialists; but between the Social Democrats of Vienna, moderate Marxists, and the Christian Socialists of the rural districts there was profound disagreement.
The new constitution was federal in character, and since half the money raised by taxation had to be handed over to the particular province in which it was raised, the Social Democrats of Vienna found that they had more money to spend than had the Christian Socialists of the country districts.
Vienna spent this money freely in building very decent homes for the working classes and raised increased sums for other social purposes by virtually confiscating the property of the wealthy by high taxes.
The Christian Socialists, much more conservative, disapproved of this radical procedure; they were also attached to the Roman Catholic Church and they hated the agnosticism of the city socialists.
They were somewhat akin to the Centre party in Germany, although more powerful, and like that Centre party were really between two extremes, that of the Social Democrats on the left, and that of the Nationalists on the right.
The Austrian Nationalists were divided into two groups; one, under Prince von Starhemberg, was aristocratic, agrarian, Catholic, and after the advent of Hitler to power, opposed to the submergence of Austria in Germany; the other group consisted of Pan-Germans, clamoring loudly for “Anschluss,” or union with Germany, before long virtually becoming an Austrian Nazi party taking orders from Berlin.
Both sections of the Austrian Nationalists added together were in a minority in Austria; but for that matter, neither the Christian Democrats nor the Social Democrats had a majority, and since these two groups would not work in harmony, a democratic government soon became almost an impossibility.
The aristocratic Nationalists founded a private army of their own, the Heimwehr, commanded by von Starhemberg; the Social Democrats countered by another private army, the Schutzbund.
That of the Nationalists was not opposed to a monarchial restoration; it numbered some 60,000 and was better drilled.
In the Schutzbund, on the other hand, there were some 100,000 men devoted to the Republic; they knew less about fighting, but they did have arms and they were opposed to reaction.
For several years a rather confused political fight followed, mainly along the lines of city against country.
During most of that time, the Christian Socialists nominally held the reins of government; but they had little jurisdiction over Vienna; their common ground with von Starhemberg was slight, and with the Austrian Nazis they had no common ground whatever.
Soon, as the Nazi propaganda spread in Austria, the Christian Socialists under Dollfuss were confronted with a grave decision.
Their control of the country was extremely precarious.
Dollfuss, an ardent Roman Catholic, was chancellor, and he kept his post by a temporary and tentative alliance with the Social Democrats.
The Chancellor sought and obtained the warm friendship of Mussolini as insurance against Hitler and the Nazis, but for it he had to pay a heavy price.
The Duce did not like Social Democrats and, to keep the Duce on his side, Dollfuss broke off his alliance with them, and with the help of von Starhemberg established a Christian Socialist dictatorship.
end quotes
That story goes on, of course, but what is the upshot?
To me, it is that Christianity, and any other religion for that matter, and politics should not be mixed, which is why we are supposed to have complete and total separation of church, any church, and state in this country, and that most definitely includes the Christians, especially the holier-than-thou ones.
And you cannot say that Christianity beat Hitler and the Nazis when Christianity was inextricably mixed up in the whole sorry affair.
Laurie Wolpert says
It’s true that Germany was Christian in name, although very doubtfully in practice, which is why what people “believe “is often less important than what they do. Nevertheless, there were some brave souls like Bonhoeffer who advocated for a Church that existed for others and not just its own interests, and who did not fall prey to Hitler’s nationalist schemes. Unfortunately, evil has a long arm and the Church has often been complicit. I don’t pretend to have all of the answers, but we have to find hope somewhere.
Paul Plante says
Nobody, Laurie, including myself, has “all” the answers, and maybe many of us have none at all.
The important thing is the on-going discussion, and more importantly, the spirit of the discussion, which hopefully, is for further enlightenment on what it means to be a human being o the planet today in the light of what all the prior human beings have been and done.
Civilizations rise because of human activity and they die because of human activity.
As the ancient Chinese once said, “He (she) who uses a mirror of brass can see to set their cap; he (she) who uses the mirror of antiquity can predict the rise and fall of nations.”
I personally think it is a great thing that you are a participant in these discussions.
This is very much a world stage in here, Laurie, because the Cape Charles Mirror, while local, is actually a global publication.
None of us know the extent to which our words are going, but it must always be kept in mind that we are not talking to each other, we are talking to the world.
So keep your voice I the “game,” Laurie, and always strive to learn from the feedback and thereby to hone your arguments further and you will be doing a positive thing for the world your generation has inherited.
Paul Plante says
If you have to look for hope, Laurie, my feeling as an older person is that you are never going to find it.
Might as well look for it at a Blue Light Special sale at Ames as anywhere.
At least you would get a good deal, maybe 20 or 30% off the listed price, and if that isn’t something to hope for, what is?
As to hope as a noun, it is defined as “a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.”
So what certain thing do you want to happen, Laurie?
Have you figured that out yet?
As to religion being inextricably linked with politics, that has been the case since at least the days of the Pontifex Maximus in Rome, more than 2,000 years ago.
As Wikipedia tells us, the Pontifex Maximus, a political office Julius Caesar held, was the chief high priest of the College of Pontiffs (Collegium Pontificum) in ancient Rome.
Pontifex Maximus was the most important position in the ancient Roman religion, and originally, and not at all surprisingly, it was open only to patricians, a group of ruling class families in ancient Rome, until 254 BC, when a plebeian first occupied this post.
A distinctly religious office under the early Roman Republic, it gradually became politicized until, beginning with Augustus, it was subsumed into the Imperial office.
As Wikipedia tells us, as well as does an actual study of Roman history, the Pontifex was not simply a priest.
The Pontifex Maximus had both political and religious authority.
In practice, particularly during the late Republic, the office of Pontifex Maximus was generally held by a member of a politically prominent family, with it being a coveted position mainly for the great prestige it conferred on the holder.
As was stated above, Julius Caesar became pontifex in 73 BC and pontifex maximus in 63 BCE.
The main duty of the Pontifices was to maintain the pax deorum or “peace of the gods,” which is about as political as it can get.
With that said, the Pontifices were in charge of the Roman calendar and determined when intercalary months needed to be added to synchronize the calendar to the seasons.
Since the Pontifices were often politicians, and because a Roman magistrate’s term of office corresponded with a calendar year, this power was prone to abuse: a Pontifex could lengthen a year in which he or one of his political allies was in office, or refuse to lengthen one in which his opponents were in power.
And we cannot forget the augurs, who were priests and officials in the classical Roman world.
Their main role was the practice of augury: Interpreting the will of the gods by studying the flight of birds – whether they were flying in groups or alone, what noises they made as they flew, direction of flight, and what kind of birds they were, a practice known as “taking the auspices”.
The augural ceremony and function of the augur was central to any major undertaking in Roman society – public or private – including matters of war, commerce, and religion.
Augurs sought the divine will regarding any proposed course of action which might affect Rome’s pax, fortuna, and salus (peace, good fortune, and well-being).
Political, military and civil actions were sanctioned by augury and by haruspices.
Historically, augury was performed by priests of the college of augurs on behalf of senior magistrates. Other magistrates were empowered to conduct augury as required for the performance of their official duties. Magistracies included senior military and civil ranks, which were therefore religious offices in their own right, and magistrates were directly responsible for the pax, fortuna, and salus of Rome and everything that was Roman.
The Roman historian Livy stressed the importance of the augurs: “Who does not know that this city was founded only after taking the auspices, that everything in war and in peace, at home and abroad, was done only after taking the auspices?”
During the Republic, priesthoods were prized as greatly as the consulship, the censorship, and the triumph, and my goodness why not, because membership gave the lifelong right to participate prominently in processions at ludi and in public banquets.
Roman augurs were part of a college (Latin collegium) of priests who shared the duties and responsibilities of the position.
At the foundation of the Republic in 510 BCE, not at all surprisingly, the patricians held sole claim to this office, although by 300 BCE, the office was open to plebeian occupation as well.
As to politics, according to Cicero, the auctoritas of ius augurum included the right to adjourn and overturn the process of law: Consular election could be – and was – rendered invalid by inaugural error.
For Cicero, this made the augur the most powerful authority in the Republic.
And that is over 2,000 years ago, now, that politics and religion have been inextricably intertwined.
And as one comes forward through history to our times, that relationship between religion and politics has remain3ed just the same.
Consider the role of evangelical Christians in our recent presidential elections and the claim of George W. “Small” Bush that God wanted him to be president, a claim that was repeated by Lt. Gen. William G. “Jerry” Boykin, then-deputy undersecretary of Defense for intelligence, and an outspoken evangelical Christian who appeared in dress uniform and polished jump boots before a religious group in Sandy, Oregon in June of 2003 saying of President Bush: “He’s in the White House because God put him there.”
And so it had to be, wasn’t it?
Elsewise, it would have been Gore, but it wasn’t because God is a conservative Republican and as such, he doesn’t like Democrats, so Gore lost.
You see how it goes, Laurie?
Religion and politics in this country go hand in glove.
Laurie Wolpert says
It would seem Lincoln was someone “chosen”, perhaps to lead the Civil War, but it’s only looking back that we are able to see a clearer pattern. Anybody can say anything. Perhaps some leaders are our punishment (but nobody says that).
Discernment is figuring out what is true.
I think the Christian hope is a new world and the end of evil. Those are pretty big things, but I’ve always loved Lord of the Rings for its theology. In the end, evil, which seemed massive and overwhelming, is defeated by good, which seemed ordinary and inconsequential.
Paul Plante says
Laurie says: “Perhaps some leaders are our punishment (but nobody says that).”
I do, Laurie.
I say that and have said that.
And I actually believe it, as well – out in the country, Laurie, that is a saying, “don’t get above your raising.”
I think it applies as much to nation-states as it does individuals.
But only time will tell.