Jack, It’s difficult to respond to this since you miss so many of my points. Perhaps in my old age I don’t communicate as well as when I was younger. Behind your comments I see people I’ve argued with about all of this hundreds of times. . . or maybe it was just Mike hundreds of times. A Sunday School class is not a Catechism. In Sunday School the teacher encourages discussion. Sunday School lessons by definition “search the Scriptures.” Catechism is fixed doctrine. Sunday School assumes a Reformed premise. Catechism assumes an authoritative handing down of doctrine. Study and searching the Scriptures is something Calvin, Luther, Zwingli, etc encouraged and the RC did not. You like History; and I could recommend 20 or 30 books on this subject. This is at the heart of the Reformation. If “authority” was at issue, Calvin and Luther would have stayed in the RC. Lawrence From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jack Spratt Sent: Monday, September 05, 2011 5:15 PM To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: (no subject) 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.