Tom [Timework Web <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>] wrote:
>Here's something that can't be attributed to either Quayle or Dubya. It is
>by the "economic" thinker, E. Calvin Beisner, behind Dubya's
>"compassionate conservatism" guru, Marvin Olasky. Read 'em & weep,
>sinners.
Well this is truly frightening - a spectacular excercise in
rationalization. The neo-calvinist work ethic: the merger of god and
mammon...
[...]
> Here also is the fundamental reason why contemporary fears of resource
> depletion and environmental disaster are unjustified. The Malthusian
> theory that underlies them is precisely opposite this Christian view
> of man. Malthusianism sees man as primarily a consumer, not a
> producer; it thus, like socialism, views people as brute beasts,
> unable to produce more than they consume without direction from above
> (which is why environmentalism and socialism readily go hand in hand
> and environmentalism may turn out to be the last best hope of
> socialists to gain control over the world's economies).
Yes, those evil socialists, and their stubborn attachment to that
annoying math of the exponential nature of population growth. I'm
surprised he didn't just say " resource depletion doesn't matter
because we'll arrive at the Armaggeddon/rapture/second coming before
it makes an impact on the good practising (and therefore rich and
insulated) christians".
[...]
> (Christ "loved me and gave Himself for me,"
> Galatians 2:20). It is not enough that I do something brilliant or
> difficult or time consuming; I should not be rewarded unless what I do
> benefits others. And the chief practical indicator of that is their
> willingness to pay for it in the marketplace.
Oww. My brain hurts. Does this mean the advertising industry is really
a branch of the christian church?...
[...]
Coupled with love is justice, which, if we look carefully at what we
find in Scripture, means rendering impartially and proportionately to
everyone his due in accord with the right standard of God's moral law.
Commutative justice requires the honest exchange of value for value;
distributive justice institutionalizes commutative justice on the wide
scale, ensuring that those too weak to defend their rights are not
victimized by the stronger (and thus it is not the distribution of
wealth or any other good but justice itself). And so justice
necessitates different rewards for different actions. Economic
policies designed to equalize economic condition are therefore
inherently unjust.
I guess comprehension of the sequence of logical argument that leads to
that last sentence requires a moment of transcendant illumination which
is vouchsafed only to the righteous and chosen few... Lucky such
selfless (by their own definition) individuals are out there to
decode the economic tablets and minister to us out here in the
darkness of apostate ignorance...
-Pete Vincent
