Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Policy of a Philosophy

[johng]

Thanks to Chick Hurst.   I agree that distractions only impede reform -- especially reform that would rid our world and cultures of, (in Chick's words), poverty and economic, social, and political oppression and injustice.   So Chick and I are singing off the same sheet of music and lyrics.  He answers my concerns that social credit is more about making laissez- faire work than about using intelligent law to help make freedom of enterprise more effec- tive in concrete ways. I think we must examine mixed economy examples and ad joc solutions to arrive a a dynamic platform ready to learn from experience. Povery, pollution and injustice are the enemy.   On the Jewish experience over the past 5000 years -- we must remember Egypt, Babylonia, Syria, Rome, the early Christian Jews, the Jews before the middle ages and during that dark age, and Jews around the world since the enlightenment. Jews have been as varied as everyman.   If anyone seriously blames the Jews, per se, for anything, he is my enemy along with every enemy of America and my President.  I hesitate to get too deeply into this -- we all have our hot buttons. -- and this is not the discussion forum to exercise them: Blaming Jews is one of mine.  Disrespecting President Bush is another.   John Gelles         ----- Original Message ----- From: Chick Hurst To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, March 02, 2003 12:15 PM Subject: Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Policy of a Philosophy I like what John is saying and it ties in with what Bill Ryan is saying and I agree, but perhaps a better term might be crutch.   These side issues are distractions but when we, for example say that Social Credit is a good philosophy because it is based on Christian principles or because it suggests a Jewish conspiracy, or whatever, is an unnecessary crutch and that crutch is brandished by some like a sword as if to say that this is a good philosophy and Christianity is here to back it up.   What should be able to be said is that “Social Credit is a good philosophy,” period.  It is totally unnecessary to create heroes and villains.   And the banter about accounting is also a distraction that gets away from the real point, offering a solution to the economic oppression of the present system.   Way too much time and energy is wasted on the “distractions” and not enough on the actual fighting of poverty and economic, social and political oppression and injustice.   I have been on this planet for several years and like probably everyone else, I would like to go back to perhaps twenty five or thirty with the knowledge that I have now but… and in that time span I have met and gotten to know a lot of people, people of every colour, culture, religion and language and some were good and some were not.  From what I have experienced and from what I have studied I know that not all people are alike, not all hold the views that society generalizes that they do and most, if Social Credit was not presented the way that it was, would be very accepting of it with in the context and confines of their own religion or culture and that includes Jews.  In fact in Alberta, regardless of how the original books portrayed Social Credit, there were several Jews that were active members of the party and the movement.   Chick ----- Original Message ----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Social Credit Sent: Sunday, March 02, 2003 12:29 AM Subject: Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Policy of a Philosophy The discussion between Keith Wilde, Chick Hurst, Vince, Victor, and Bill Ryan, thread subject -- Policy of a Philosophy, is not easy for me to fully grasp.   There seems to be a concern that Social Credit, as a critique of modern accounting and both laissez-faire and command economy doctrines, may be missing an emphasis on outcomes (in the game of life, as it were, where winning may be  possible) relative to (a) individual fortune and (b) economic inequality, at least.   In addition, there appears to be a concern that Judaism may not share Christian values that may tend to soften, for an individual's feelings or soul, the aforesaid outcomes.   If this were the case, the further concern appears to be that Social Credit advocates would find in Judaism a defect not easy to overcome -- one that might see two Venn diagram defining cricles that did not overlap -- one encircling Judaism as belief in a hard reality, the other circling Social Credit as belief in something softer now and forever.   I am reading "The Mind and the Market -- Capi- talism in Modern European Thought"   by Jerry Muller.  It is a serious study of laissez-faire capitalism versus a planned economy, even a mildly planned welfare state mixed economy.   Its scope is mainly philosophical -- Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, Hegel (Georg, Wilhelm, Friedrich), Karl Marx, Matthew Arnold, many others, ending up with Joseph Schumpeter, Maynard Keynes, Herbert Marcuse, and Friedrich Hayek.   Not only is its scope philosophical -- and therefore related to the thread under discussion -- but it tells of the Jews as an important people, including Jewish elites and Jewish commoners, in the development of both modern laissez-faire capi- talism and planned and mixed economies.   Muller is an extremely gifted historian, tenured at Catholic University in Washington D.C., and an easy to read stylist. He avoids offering subjective opinion -- even makes an art of avoiding it.  So he will not settle the questions presented above on outcomes or Judaism.  But he does throw a lot of light on them.   In my subjective view, I think that outcomes matter. Accounting is a small matter -- like all math it is trivial. But food on the table matters. Defeating poverty and pollution matters. Equality matters to all of us when we say, "we are all equal before the bar of justice and before God's fair and final judgement."  But inequality matters when we run a foot race or ask to have the best dentist around to stop our pain.   And in my view Judaism may be a series of texts that can be assembled by scholars, but every Jew is unique and not any more connected to those texts than Christians are to Christianity.   Which leads me to conclude, subjectively, that Social Credit advocates will never sell reform of accounting to ordinary people. But they may sell ideas that promise to end poverty and pollution and to explain that the great middle class owes it to itself to spread equality as far possible by voting against useless inequality at every opportunity.   This leaves useful inequality alone -- like some great wealth to check and balance great political gifts and power. Or some great talent in sport, art and science, to exempt individuals from any need to "be like the rest of us".   And as to money-crank reformers like myself, some like me are Jews. Some not. I don't know if any are Social Credit advocates -- or if any SC advocates are money cranks.  I am fairly ignorant of what a SC advocate is.   But if they are mostly Christian -- that's OK with me.   Most of my best friends are Christian. Why? Because there are so many of them and so few Jews in America. ==^==^============================================================= This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html ==^==^=============================================================