(no subject)
- From: Jack Spratt <dosflounder@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 5 Sep 2011 17:14:50 -0700 (PDT)
Lawrence: Protestants have Sunday Schools, Catholics do not. Protestants have
Bible Studies, Catholics do not.
J.S. Of course Catholics have Sunday School, they have catechism class. Mike
can fill us in.
Lawrence: A favorite “Proof Text” for Protestants is the story in Chapter 17
of Acts about the Bereans who searched the Scriptures daily to see if what Paul
and Silas were telling them was the truth. This is not a Proof Text used for
Catholic authority.
I am not intending to assert that all Catholics accept authority without
exception or that all Protestants are freethinkers, merely that the RC
discourages its members from thinking through theology based on the
Scriptures..
J.S.: You have not showed that this proof text questions authority, only that
it confirms authority. Has any bible scholar anywhere ever disproved the
scriptures? Of course not, they can't, it's the authority. All they do is
prove it over and over.
Lawrence: An RC doctrine is that Church will teach and explain Scriptures as
necessary.
J.S. The oral tradition has a long history, Homer, etc. The Protestants
learn what they already know just like the Catholics. They just have less fun
doing it.
Lawrence: Now as to how I got from this Protestant predilection for searching
the scriptures to studying Stoicism and various other things, it came readily
to my mind that if I was in doubt about something, that I should “search the
Scriptures.” I mean that to be an attitude of reading to find answers, not
necessarily reading the Bible exclusively although I did that as well. A
Catholic in my situation would be encouraged to ask his priests for answers.
Again, these two structures, Catholic and Protestant were never followed
“religiously” by all its members, and the percentage following them has
probably dropped over the years, but that was my predilection, and I gather
from Billy’s various notes that his predilection has been different.
J.S. People who want to do something just do it. Those who go to a priest or
minister know what they'll be told or they wouldn't go. Do you really believe
that if you had been raised Catholic that you would not have read the Stoics
after being introduced to them in college? In other words, only Protestants
read the Stoics? Is that a little hard to believe Lawrence?
Lawrence: [snip] Now as to becoming a free thinker, my “searching the
Scriptures” caused me to disagree with what I had been taught during my college
years, so I studied to find a resolution. And while I wallowed about for
several years, I ended up with a resolution and am, today, a Protestant.
J.S. It sounds as though you may have started with the conclusion (religion is
true and I need to find one that suits me).
Lawrence: Billy on the other hand rejected the authority of the Catholic
Church and, unless he has recanted recently, became and remained an atheist.
J.S. Your original premise was that RC's accept authority. Now it seems this
good Catholic rejected the authority and thought for himself. Generalization
never work do they?
Lawrence: As to Marx, I think Marx would see the Western predicament as just
another Capitalist cycle. We violated Keyne’s dicta in order to pursue Liberal
goals.
J.S. Briefly, Marx saw the internal dynamics of capitalism as bringing about
its downfall. Marx predicted that capital would be concentrated in fewer and
fewer hands, which has been happening for decades and is especially pronounced
today, which then creates an instability because money can't move, it can't
circulate, it can't be productive. At that point the monied interests
essentially destroy the money, as happened during the housing boom with bad
mortgages and gambling the money away betting, among a lot of other things,
that the housing market would crash. Then they ran to government to give them
back the money they lost. Marx didn't say capitalism runs in cycles, but
rather it runs from crisis to crisis. Marx looked at how things work in real
time, and it's applicable today.
Lawrence: For example, we found a way (a sort of Ponzi scheme) to sell houses
to people who couldn’t afford them.
J.S. The mortgage market was not a Ponzi scheme. It was simply handing out
money to anybody with a pulse, whether they had a prayer of repaying it or
not. A Ponzi scheme borrows from Peter to pay Paul and borrows from Paul to
pay Harry and borrows from Harry to pay Susie until it runs out of people to
collect money from. Then it collapses, as it always does.
Lawrence: Keynes would have been appalled. As a result of that and some
good-old-fashioned Capitalist greed we are having a Marxist crisis.
J.S. Keynes would have been appalled because he said that government should
stimulate the economy (as FDR did with the works program) when things are bad,
and then, the part that everybody forgets, pay it back when times return to
normal. The U.S. has been borrowing without paying back for decades, at least
since Reagan. Paul Krugman today advocates stimulus spending, get the people
spending and working, but he's been shouted down. Unfortunately, the
government has to borrow the money for any stimulus from China and others.
That's why the republicans want to cut the deficit, as if it can be done, so
they are refusing additional stimulus money. So, pick your poison: an
inflationary depression like in the 30's without stimulus, or hyperinflation
from too much money in the system that the Fed in pushing in. The latest
prediction is that we'll have deflation and inflation together; houses and
unsold goods are deflating; oil and food is
inflating. WWII of course was a huge stimulus package. Today we're fighting
two wars and cutting taxes, meaning how are we funding these wars?
Lawrence: I am not a fan of the Welfare mentality. No Western state should
provide more welfare than it can afford.
J.S. In other words, you don't support the bank bailout in 2008. Or are you in
favor of welfare for corporations and against welfare for people? Should the
banks not stand on their own feet without being propped up, especially after
acting so irresponsibly?
Lawrence: After a few years of crisis you, Jack, declare Capitalism in the
United States a colossal failure.
J.S. This crisis is decades old. It began with Reagan and Thatcher, probably
even earlier with the guns and butter of Johnson. But with Reagan is when
production began to decline and the financial sector began grow
disproportionately large and factories moved overseas. Unless you're living in
the movie It's a Wonderful Life, the financial sector today is like the
advertising sector, somewhere between useless and destructive, especially with
banks, who are a force that needs to be controlled. Adam Smith said that banks
need to be kept small. Letting banks be too big to fail is against the advice
from the father of capitalism. himself. Are you giving the banks a pass
Lawrence? Do you think they were at all complicit in this Marx predicted
crisis turning into a disaster? The banks gambled, they lost, Uncle Sam bailed
them out, and they're out there gambling again and will be demanding another
bailout, "or the economy will crash, quick,
quick give us the money!" Does this sound a bit like extortion or even
terrorism (fly this plane to Cuba or I'll crash the plane; give us the money or
we crash the economy!).
Lawrence: After far more extensive and extended crises than ours, Marx never
declared Capitalism a colossal failure.
J.S. I'm not sure what you mean here. He wasn't around for the big panic of
the end of the 19th century, then 1907 and of course the 30's.
Lawrence: He thought a revolution was necessary to unseat it.
J.S.: There are revolutions aplenty in Egypt, Syria, Libya. They're being
called the bread riots. Ironically, if foodstamps weren't keeping a huge
percentage of the population eating, American hungry people may not be anymore
gracious than any others. Lenin is actually who popularized revolution. The
neocons believe violence is the answer as well, meaning invading Iraq,
Afghanistan, threatening Iran, generally using the military as a first resort.
Lawrence: Every few years for the past 20 or 30 there has been hand-wringing
over some other nation superseding us. While still in Engineering, for example,
I attended scores of classes on the way the Japanese did things because their
way was so superior to ours that they were going to drive us into bankruptcy. I
retired before the next round of “Advisors” could show up to conduct more
classes, probably on how much better the Chinese did things than we do.
J.S.: It's not that their way is superior, it's that they own us. Without
them buying our treasuries, who's going to pay your social security and your
medicare and pay for your bloated military? Corporations are sitting on
trillions of dollars cash and paying no taxes and not hiring. In France the
wealthiest class has offered to pay more taxes. They realize that a bifurcated
society is not a society worth living in.
Lawrence: The term Capitalism in modern times has been replaced by “Liberal
Democracy.”
J.S.: Capitalism is an economic system. Liberal democracy is a political
system. The two are not the same.
Lawrence: There have been so many “Welfare-type” concessions to the working
man that the Capitalism of Marx’s day no longer exists.
J.S. And a good thing that is, even if it won't last forever. Be careful what
you wish for Lawrence.
Lawrence: You say you have been a Lurker, Jack. Have you read any of the
discussions of Francis Fukuyama’s ideas? In his The End of History and the Last
Man, he presented arguments showing that there isn’t anything out there that
can compete with “Liberal Democracy.” I subscribe to The American Interest
which was created by Fukuyama, and which I (figuratively) “read daily” to see
if what is happening in the world conflicts, in Fukuyama’s opinion, with his
theory. It does not. Neither Fukuyama, nor any of the other writers in this
publication think the current crisis is “the big one.” There is no “big one” in
Fukuyama’s thesis. There just simply isn’t another system out there that can
compete with Liberal Democracy. A lot of people may be discomfited and have to
cut back or work at different less rewarding jobs, but Liberal Democracy isn’t
going to collapse, at least not in Fukuyama’s opinion, and I agree with him.
J.S. Fukuyama is all over the place. He signed the Kristol letter to Bush in
September 2001 encouraging an attack on Iraq. Now he says that war should be a
last resort and that the Iraq war was a mistake. He was a neoconservative, now
he identifies neoconservatism with Leninism (in a NYT magazine article in
2006). He endorsed Obama in 2008. He called the Bush presidency a "disastrous
presidency". Fukuyama goes with the flow.
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