Thursday, November 27, 2008

"Without justice, what are kingdoms but great robber bands? What are robber bands but small kingdoms?"

Yes, St. Augustine included the qualifier "without justice," but what State on earth is bound by justice? The State owes its very existence to funds (i.e., taxes) extracted under threats of fine and imprisonment. It operates like the Mob, raising its revenue under threats of great bodily injury up to and including death. If you don't believe me, try not paying your taxes for a while and see what happens. The State will kill you, in the final analysis, if you resist its fines and imprisonment.

Taxation is extortion. Extortion violates the Seventh Commandment. Until we have a State that raises its revenue voluntarily--i.e., until we have a State that operates like a church or legitimate business, relying on charity or commercial exchange--I'd say we Christians are under no moral obligation to obey its generally arbitrary and capricious edicts.

Of course, the State can ruin your life in this world, so be careful. But the care you exercise is entirely a prudential matter. It has nothing to do with upholding or rejecting Christian morality.

Labels:

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

When grega says he believes what people do in private is none of his business, I'm pretty sure he means what *consenting adults* do in private is none of his business. That probably leaves cannibals out of the picture. Moreover, even if what consenting adults do in private *is* somehow grega's business, he probably doesn't want to sic the cops on them.

That's what it all comes down to, doesn't it, when we're talking public policy? Whom do we sic the State's agents on? Most people aren't inclined to couch the debate in those terms, because they regard the State as a legitimate institution, rather than as a "band of thieves writ large," as the agnostic Murray Rothbard (and not so agnostic St. Augustine) so aptly put it.

The fact remains that Christ taught with authority on matters of faith and morality without giving us much guidance on what submission to His authority means in the context of rendering unto Caesar. Hence the perennial question: To what extent should Christian morality be legislated? Are traditionalist Catholics compelled to support legal bans on homosexuality, contraception, artificial insemination, divorce, heresy, failure to attend Mass on Sunday? If so, what do we tell the cops to do with the miscreants after we sic the cops on the miscreants? What would Jesus tell the cops to do?

Labels:

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Pat's analysis is very good. he missed a major point and that is the EU and ISO. Free trade is a myth that libertarians believe in and never has it been practiced on this earth, therefore it is in the realms of myth and fairy tales. The animis he speaks of I was subject to for thirty five years or more. These restrictions and regulations from the Govt. may be un-intended consequences, but if you had been there like me you would not think so. Free trade like free sex is part of the NWO, and libertarians are usefull idiots. If we were really in favor free trade we woluld make laws to help small business and regulating all large, multi-nationals, wall street. and the banksters. Consumerism and Capitalism and Greed is what this about and it is a sin.

On the contrary, Pat's analysis is shoddy. The notion the State regulates the marketplace to protect small businesses and consumers is what falls in realm of "myths and fairy tales." The recently enacted Billionaire Bankster Bailout should have made that abundantly clear.

It is anti-free traders like Buchanan who are useful idiots. Corporatists (once known as fascists or, earlier, mercantilists) hate laissez-faire capitalism, as they fear competition and innovation from small businesses and entrepreneurs. Corporatists enlist the coercive State (but I repeat myself) to protect their interests in the regulated marketplace, thereby ensuring they alone can commit the sins of "consumerism" and "greed." (Forgive the scare quotes, but these buzzwords are meaningless in economic analysis.)

America became rich because her culture once exalted property rights and entrepreneurial activity. Free--i.e., not managed--trade among the states made America richer by enhancing the division of labor across a large geographic area. Opposition to free trade (again, not managed trade, as prescribed by NAFTA, GATT, ISO and EU) between nations makes as much economic sense as opposition to trade between states or provinces within a nation, between towns within a state or province, or even between neighbors living in the same town.

Taking Buchanan's precepts to their logical extreme, we would all live as subsistence farmers, tilling the soil surrounding our lean-tos in the woods, refraining from any exchange of goods or services outside our own families. At least then, presumably, we'd enjoy full employment. At least then consumerism and greed would no longer imperil our immortal souls.

Labels:

Saturday, November 22, 2008

How about calling the hundreds of thousands of victims of the Benevolent Hegemon's interminable shock-and-awe campaigns (q.v., the March to the Sea, the Trail of Tears, the Phillipines, Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, Panama, Bosnia, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and so on and so forth, ad nauseam) "collateral damage"? That's a construct, too, no?

What's that? Oh, that's right, sorry. Those aforementioned culture-of-death episodes don't count. God anointed America globocop (it's right there in the Book of Romans, in the unlucky 13th Chapter), after all, and we all know when you want to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs. As the great Joseph Sobran put it, in his own inimitable way, "Americans who want their country to behave like other countries are called 'isolationists'; other countries that behave like America are called 'rogue nations.' "

Wait a minute! Isn't there something about universality being the hallmark of Christian morality? Would any nation besides the U.S. be granted a free pass to wreak all this death and destruction in the name of uplift? Well, any other nation would be if it were blessed with such forward-thinking, well-intentioned and humanitarian leaders as "Honest" Abe Lincoln, Woodward "War to End All Wars" Wilson, "Uncle Joe" Stalin-lover FDR, "Hiroshima Harry" Truman, LBJ, Nixon, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II. This is where my straining moral equivalence falls to the ground.

Labels:

Sunday, November 02, 2008

"The natural progress of things," Thomas Jefferson once famously observed, "is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." Well, famously observed if you're a libertarian. In the larger political culture, of course, our fourth president's incisive words are studiously ignored--and not surprisingly, since they fly in the face of the Myth of Democratic Consent propagated by state-dominated mainstream media organs like the Detroit Free Press.

No, you won't hear the Catholic Church's theological or philosophical position in MiCAUSE's anti-Proposal 2 ads. This fact hardly renders them "disingenuous, manipulative and deceitful." Indeed, for the Church to advance its religious views on public airwaves would surely raise the hackles of enlightened CINO (Catholic in Name Only) secularists like Brian Dickerson.

The Church would have breached that hallowed Wall of Separation. We'd hear no end of it.

That wily old WASP deist Thomas Jefferson was right. It's a virtual certainty that Proposal 2 will lead to higher taxes, cloning and medical experimentation. The State operates from the camel's-nose-in-the-tent principle. It promises to limit its activies to a very few enumerated and essential functions like, e.g., protecting the nation from foreign attack and ensuring domestic tranquility. The next thing you know, it's fighting two wars halfway around the world and running a trillion-dollar a year empire with 575,000 troops and 730 military bases in 130 different countries (all of whom hate us for our freedom), all while banning smoking in bars and using extorted taxpayer dollars to fund "reproductive choice."

Conservative critics of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 warned that its passage would lead to hiring quotas. Hubert Humphrey not-so-famously promised to eat the bill if those critics' manipulative and deceitful charges ever came to fruition. Forty years have passed and employers are still inundated with anti-discrimination edicts, affirmative action timetables and diversity mandates. Senator Humphrey, as far as I know, died without eating his cherished fair-employment project.

Labels: ,