Let Freedom Ring July 14, 2009
Posted by sweetswede in Libertarianism, Politics.Tags: economics, freedom, individual rights, political policy, property rights
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By Jason Batten
I believe we live in an America that is becoming less free with every new administration.
Examples of this have defined the 20th century. 1. We have given bankers the ability to inflate the currency by way of the Federal Reserve. 2. We made sale and consumption of alcohol illegal. 3. Now most drugs aside from alcohol are illegal. 4. The government has the ability to take as much or as little of our income as they like. 5. Property rights are being taken away by the State.
The Federal Reserve is a private bank that has the ability to create wealth from paper. This harms the middle class by way of inflation. If you are on the government dole or very rich it isn’t such a bad thing. It hurts those that make just enough to be self supporting. It hurts those who try to save.
If I save $5,000 in five years and the total number of dollars gets doubled that causes prices to rise. That $5,000 however is still just $5,000. The money that I have saved is now less valuable. President John F. Kennedy said “The great free nations of the world must take control of our monetary problems if these problems are not to take control of us.” I would be inclined to agree with him. Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said “In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation.” Thomas Jefferson thought banking establishments were more dangerous than standing armies!
The middle class is not free.
Prohibition was a major failure. It caused a lot of gang violence because we took a product that the market wanted very badly and punished anyone who sold it in the market. We gave all the power to the criminals. Unfortunately we have been doing the same thing for a long time with drug prohibition. I understand that drugs are harmful. I also understand that alcohol is a drug and therefore CAN be very harmful. I think it is a bit hypocritical to let people get as drunk as they want but arrest or fine people for smoking pot. I think we should be consistent. We either give prohibition another go [yeah right] or we allow people to take control of their own bodies. Why should people who don’t do drugs be taxed to try and stop those who take drugs.
People are not free.
Why should the government get first dibs on a person’s income? Shouldn’t people have a choice on how their money is spent? If you earn money it is your private property. If the government forces you to give it to them isn’t that stealing? A national sales tax would still suck, but at least it would give the people the ability to withhold taxes if we saw fit. You could have it on everything except clothing and food. To keep the sales tax low we could do things like close most [or all] military installations overseas. You could even use that money from the closed bases for these “wonderful” welfare programs. Not to mention how many jobs that would create here at home. You could fund government by trimming our fat. We don’t have economic freedom.
Property rights are a joke in today’s America! The government [state or federal] does not have the right to come in and tell a property owner they can not allow smoking on their property. It is the right of the owner whether or not smoking is allowed.
Government should never be allowed to use eminent domain. We should not be able to force people to give up their property for any reason. Especially for corporations! I understand this is more of a local government problem then a federal one. Who gets to decide what just compensation is? Only the owner can do that.
Property rights are a joke these days.
Corporate Welfare: Killing Our Freedom, Society, and Planet July 14, 2009
Posted by sweetswede in Global Warming, Libertarianism, Politics.Tags: Corporate Welfare, economics, freedom, Global Warming, subsidies
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By Josiah Batten
Stephen Slivinski, Director of Budget Studies at the CATO Institute, defines corporate welfare “as any federal spending program that provides payments or unique benefits and advantages to specific companies or industries” (Slivinski, 2007). Things like subsidies, tax breaks, and bailouts (of which we’ve all become painfully aware) qualify as corporate welfare.
What’s incredibly interesting about corporate welfare is that it’s an issue upon which several unique groups should be able to agree. Libertarians, environmentalists, and social welfare advocates, as much as they disagree on other things, should all be able to say in a unified and authoritative voice “corporate welfare is wrong!”
For Libertarians, the issue at hand is the free market. A free market minimizes government intervention. Corporate welfare assures that 1. We never attain equilibrium of supply and demand and 2. Businesses receiving corporate welfare face strict regulation.
Corn subsidies are a fine example here. As supply goes up, price generally goes down. As price goes down, demand generally goes up. As demand rises, prices generally rise. So in this model, with no government intervention, let’s assume the price of corn is $2.00 a bushel. At that price, the American people will demand 10,000 bushels (this is just an example, figures aren’t accurate). However, at that price, farmers will produce 12,000 bushels resulting in a surplus of 2,000 bushels. So what happens? In a free market the price drops to encourage people to buy the surplus. Not in America. Here good old Uncle Sam conveniently subsidizes, buying up the surplus. Farmers are encouraged to produce more than is needed and the government intervenes to ensure that the market has not say and a large farming conglomerate will get its money. Equilibrium is not achieved; prices remain higher than they should be because demand remains artificially high. From a free market perspective, it’s a disaster.
At this point those who support eliminating global poverty should be outraged. “American and European Union farm subsidies spur growers to produce gluts that depress crop prices throughout the world” (Barrionuevo, 2005). Essentially, as we encourage our super-growers to produce too much, Ravi and Punta over in India absolutely can’t compete. The poor are made poorer and the rich ensured that they will become richer regardless of the cost to or wants of the world.
We might ignore that fact, however, to focus on the reality that the recent government bailouts outspend social welfare by many times. That doesn’t even include our consistent yearly corporate welfare built into the budget. Money that could have gone to schools, the homeless, stopping genocide, etc… served as corporate welfare. Oddly enough, for the first time in human history 1 billion people will go hungry this year. The problem is not a lack of food, the problem is they don’t have the money to compete with corporate welfare.
If this wasn’t enough, the environmental costs of corporate welfare are astounding. Many of the companies benefiting from corporate welfare thrive by destroying our planet. We are paying companies to rape the world and produce products for prices not reflective of market demands.
For these reasons I argue corporate welfare kills our freedom, society, and our planet. The cost of corporate welfare now is astounding, but if it’s not stopped it will continue to have uncounted non-monetary costs in regards to human life, dignity, and stewardship of the planet.
It is my hope that you will consider the costs of corporate welfare; costs that go well beyond several hundred billion dollars. This issue quite literally transcends party affiliations or political ideologies. We as the American people need to take a principled stand to restore the fundamental beliefs and practices upon which our country was founded. Doing so will not only encourage a fair and free market, but benefit society’s poorest members and protect the planet we rely on for survival.
Works Cited:
Barrionuevo, A. (2005, November 9). Mountains of Corn and a Sea of Farm Subsidies. Retrieved June 6, 2009, from The New York Times: http://artsci.wustl.edu/~anthro/articles/09harvest.html
Slivinski, S. (2007, May 14). The Corporate Welfare State: How the Federal Government Subsidizes U.S. Businesses. Retrieved June 6, 2009, from The CATO Institute Web Site: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8230
Jude and The Emergent Church July 14, 2009
Posted by sweetswede in Emergent Church, Religion and Spirituality.add a comment
By Josiah Batten
In the present day no person acquainted with the facts can deny that there are monumental shifts taking place inside of the Church. America is basically following Europe in a move towards post-modernism. At the same time the more traditional Church (by “traditional” I mean “the Church as we’ve known it up to this point”) is facing the house Church movement, emergent theology and ecclesiology, emergent evangelicalism, and the new methodologies inherent with each.
At times like this it’s important to remember the words of Martin Luther King Jr., who points out the New Testament Church was a thermostat setting the cultural temperature rather than a thermometer simply responding to and recording it (see Letter from a Birmingham Jail). In Verse 4 of his single-chapter Epistle, Jude warns against “godless men, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.” (NIV).
I must say some of the “emerging” trends have alarmed me. In an attempt to move away from traditionalism and towards progress we may have forgot what “progress” really is. As C.S. Lewis defined it in Mere Christianity, progress is “getting nearer to the place where you want to be”. Inherent in that assertion is the assumption that we actually know where we want to be. However, as many leaders in the “emergent” Church will admit, they don’t know where they want to be. Quite simply they know where they don’t want to be (e.g.- where we are presently at) and mistakenly hold that any move away from that spot is in some way “progress”. It is necessary to acknowledge that we could move away from where we are presently and still be on the wrong road, therefore achieving no progress whatsoever.
While in the space given here it would be impossible to present a comprehensive caricature of the emergent Church (and indeed, there is not one “emergent” Church but many) , there are a few common statements I’ve noticed among certain Emergents. These I shall address. I’m working on the assumption that inside of the Christian Church “progress” refers to those things that help us grow in relationship with Christ; those things that help us “take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me [us]” (Philippians 3:12, NIV).
I’ve encountered many Emergents who assert that because Christianity is about a relationship with Christ other things don’t matter. For example, many moral requirements are readily dismissed by Emergents because “Christianity is about grace”. Often this is a reaction to fundamentalism. Where fundamentalists enact the standards of a Pharisee (don’t go to theaters), Emergents often react by going to the opposite extreme (we’ll not only go to theaters, but we’ll see the filthiest movie playing and justify it by grace).
This demonstrates not only misguided notions about grace, but also misguided notions about Jesus. To think that grace equals the cancelling of all moral requirements is a severe folly. Grace is undeserved favor. I see God’s grace as this: He trades His forgiveness for my sins, the whole time knowing this deal is completely unfair. If there were not moral requirements that we break then grace would be unnecessary. To say that God’s grace and forgiveness eliminate the necessity of moral restraints would be like saying “because a lifeguard saved me as I drowned I’m going to drown myself again”. Surely the opposite is true, because a lifeguard saved you from drowning you’re going to first be very grateful, and second take extra precautions to ensure you don’t drown again. This idea of a dichotomy between grace and works is ludicrous. They are complementary, not contradictory. God’s grace yields good works in us. Because I’ve received God’s grace I help the poor, I lobby against genocide, I’m honest with people. These things are all natural by-products of grace, they are signs that grace has been received; they are not methods of attaining grace.
This represents misguided notions about Christ because if our goal is to know Christ in an intimate relationship we must know Him as He truly is by His nature. By His nature Christ hates sin. Because Christ loves people He hates murder. Because Christ loves children He hates kidnapping. If we’re not becoming better people because we know Christ, the logical conclusion is that we don’t know Him! God is working in us to will and act according to His good purpose, and what is His good purpose but carrying on the work begun in us which is being conformed day by day to be more and more like Christ (see Philippians 2:12-13, 1:6, 3:10-11)?
A second notion common among many Emergents is religious pluralism. Undoubtedly we’ve all heard someone say “there are many ways to God” or “there’s not just one way to God”. The fact is many people say this because it’s quick, popular, and convenient. It eliminates any need for deep thinking and quickly pays lip service to 1,000 different propositions while committing to none (committing to all views is no different than committing to no view). I should like to ask the pluralist, how does he or she know there are many ways to God? Has he or she tried them? I suspect this is a case of being a thermometer rather than a thermostat. Not to mention, such a statement is an insult to the particularists who compose a majority of the planet’s population.
Closely related to pluralism is relativism. While pluralism says “there are many ways to God” relativism says “your way is just as true as mine” (this is just one form of relativism). I can’t think of a more subtle way to deny supremacy and sufficiency of Christ. If many ways to God are equally valid then there was really no point whatsoever in Christ dying and rising. C.S. Lewis said that Jesus is either Lord, liar, or lunatic. If Christ’s death was not essential for the salvation of man then He is both a liar and a lunatic, but not Lord. Anyone who willingly dies on a cross without a purpose as noble as drawing humanity into a saving relationship with God is, quite frankly, a lunatic. If that purpose is there, and if this person does what they say they will do (rise from the dead), then there’s good reason to believe that that person is Lord.
I can imagine many people will object: “But many people are good people without being Christian”. This claim I must reject. While it is possible to do good things without being a Christian, it is impossible to be a good person. God is good, He is the standard for good, anything short of meeting that standard is “not good”. None of us meet that standard outside of a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, and therefore outside of the grace of God none of us can be “good”.
What most people really mean when they say “I know good people who aren’t Christians” is “I know people who are more or less decent and friendly people”. If either pluralism or relativism are correct then “good” does not exist in any objective sense and it becomes impossible for anybody to be “good”. So really what we then view as a “good person” is just someone that we find agreeable. Generally they’re not serial killers or bank robbers, but they tell occasional lies and may be dishonest if that’s what it takes to get ahead. They may be very friendly, and we may genuinely like them, but using our subjective standard to rate them does not make them “good” anymore then using the same standard makes green better then purple. You may find green more aesthetically pleasing then purple, but that does not make green “good” and purple “bad”. Thus, realistically, a pluralist and relativist can’t say “I know many good people who are not Christian”, they must say “I know many people whom I subjectively find agreeable and to my liking who are not Christian”.
In conclusion I believe it’s necessary to deeply consider some of the philosophical underpinnings driving many people in the Emergent Church. We can’t accept to disregard our critical faculties simply to embrace any new movement away from traditionalism. Without a doubt ecclesiastical reform is necessary, but it must be truly progressive and not simply appeasing a whim of popular opinion at the present time.
Offending the Pro Crowds July 14, 2009
Posted by sweetswede in Politics.Tags: abortion, libertarianism, pro-choice, Pro-life, when does life begin
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How to offend both pro-life and pro-choice individuals
By Jason Batten
When does life begin? That is the question.
Does life begin at conception? I hardly think that proposal is logical. Conception is simply when a sperm meets and falls in love with an egg. I can’t call that a human.
This issue is of utmost importance because at some point there is a human life inside of a womb. I think an 8 pound baby that has a heart and brain and sucks his thumb is a human life and should be protected.
So if you do agree that an egg and a sperm do not constitute a human life we need to ask: What does?
At what point between conception and birth is it a human? When we can answer that I think we can come to a logical conclusion that determines the point at which its life should not be stopped.
I think a good place to start in contemplating this issue is at what point does human life end?
Shouldn’t it logically follow that the opposite of when human life ends is when human life begins?
For instance, if human life ends when the heart stops beating and there is no brain activity shouldn’t human life begin when the heart starts beating and there is brain activity?
If the reading I’ve done is correct, the heart starts beating around 21 days after fertilization. The brain starts showing activity around 6 weeks gestation.
I reject the notion that a woman has a right to choose whether or not to end a human life. I also reject the notion that a sperm and an egg constitute a human. Both arguments are taking a complicated issue and over-simplifying it.
I think Roe v. Wade should be over turned because it allowed for abortion into the third trimester. I think anyone should be able to do a little reading and determine that in the third trimester that “fetus” is a baby. It is a human. It has an inherent right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
I think the complete and total outlaw of abortion is too simple because I don’t believe a cell and an egg is a human.
I believe life starts around 6 weeks gestation. I believe after that no human has the right to take that life away from the baby. If you’re having sex personal responsibility is key. Have protected sex and take birth control pills. Understand that pregnancy may happen. If you’re not ready to face that music can’t sex wait?
I could be wrong about all of that. From the research I have done this is what I believe to be most logical. Abortion up until 6 weeks gestation.
