So, I’m reading A Patriot’s History of the United States and, apparently, the natives of North and South America were murdering the crap out of one another long before the evil Europeans ever arrived.
Weird.
I’m only on page 35 so don’t ruin the ending for me.
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Only because they learned that behavior from exposure to the evil white man/were driven to it from the deprivations of diseases introduced by the white man/were observed doing so by culturally biased white men who’s eyewitness accounts cannot be trusted.
See, it’s easy to explain! ;)
There is a definite racism associated with the portrayal of Native Americans/American Indians as “noble savages” who lived in perfect harmony with nature and each other until the White Man came and ruined everything. It’s racist toward the Europeans, sure, but it’s racist toward those who were here before that.
Like all people everywhere, the various tribes of people here before the Europeans arrived often warred on each other and did all sorts of things we would consider brutal and destructive. Not because something was wrong with them, but because that’s normal human behavior.
oh, so genocide is okay if the people you murder were also murderers
good to know
“Genocide” is a tricky term in this context, although “democide” may be fair. A deliberate campaign to wipe them all out? No. Various campaigns over several generations by different people in different places to pretty much obliterate various tribes? Oh yes, and shameful stuff that.
Human history is one long story of tribalism vs. tribalism. Modern history has been a steady growth in the scope of what a “tribe” is, with the logical inevitable conclusion being that eventually humanity will be a single global tribe.
Tribalism is itself associated with the dehumanization of those who are not members of the tribe. Once you dehumanize someone you can do all sorts of horrible things.
I’ve done a fair amount of looking into the history of the indigineous peoples of the North and South American continents. There is no doubt that human beings were visiting viciousness upon one another on these continents since they hiked across the frozen Bering Strait.
I’m not going to describe some of the favorite techniques used by individual tribes against each other, I’ll just say that when early settlers described certain behavior as “savage” they were, if anything, being polite.
I also have no doubt that similar activities have been performed throughout human history on all continents. Human nature is human nature after all.
Don’t forget about the ecological damage even primitive man was able to cause. Read about how the Native Americans burned whole forests, used a hunting technique where the caused animals to stampede over cliffs to their death, etc.
One thing that pisses me the frack off when I read or hear about the “sins of the white man” is that they weren’t “sins of the white man” they were pretty universal sins; it’s just that the “white man” (or Christian- and European-inspired culture which included many non-”white men”) for once realized how horrible it was and sought to end it.
The other thing that pisses me the frack off is if I ever let that rant out I get called a “Neo-nazi white supremacist” for arguing that “white people” are no more evil than any other.
…with the logical inevitable conclusion being that eventually humanity will be a single global tribe.
But is that really inevitable? I suspect we may need an “other tribe” subconsciously, so it may be that we wind up with a minimum of two.
Then again, in a completely different direction, our tribalism does seem to express itself these days still, but in (mostly) nonviolent ways. The fierce way so many people identify with their favorite sports teams certainly seems to be a strong manifestation of it; it’s arguable that team sports and team sport fandom are a healthy way to channel otherwise extremely destructive impulses. Belligerents take it out on each other at games and with off-the-field taunting rather than with weapons.
We see that kind of tribalism in other areas as well. So it may be less that tribes are reducing than that we are increasingly taking on voluntary, non-violent tribal associations. And as I say, we may need these things.
Dean:
A simple quote relevent to the “maybe we need two tribes.”
“We’ve always been at war with EastAsia.”
If we need two tribes, then that’s probably the logical equivalent of saying we need enemies, which is probably the logical equivalent of saying we need war.
Plausible, but I hope not inevitable.
Sports team identification has been described as tribalism-by-proxy in many antrhopology papers.
However, my use of the term “tribalism” is in what I think is the purest anthropological sense, in that I’m describing who human beings include in being “human.” In that sense I think the single tribe with several tribes-by-proxy is the likely result, where the fundamental need to express uniqueness and competition can be channeled in (relatively) safe directions. But universal acknkowledgement of humanity seems inevitable to me.
Except, of course, that the Singularity will make all this moot….
well, I think white people aren’t inherently more evil than non-white people. I guess that makes me a white supremacist too.
And I definitely agree we are hardwired for hating the Other.
Most of my liberal politics stems from the fact that I believe that the progress civilization has made (in a social sense) over the past 50 years is the most important time period in our entire history. Its liberal frameworks like the UDHR (human rights are niversal, not cultural) and the Geneva Conventions (civilizing war) and Social Security (ie, old people neednt die in poverty) and Medicare (sick people should be treated) that shape our modern world, and still remain imperfectly implemented even by the most “civilized”. To me liberalism is basically an attempt to finish the job.
(1) It’s always been bizzare to me that we can apply our current standards to a different time, place, and culture and be the judge and jury for a specific person, group or race. More than revisionist, it’s arrogant. No one had clean hands in the settling of America from today’s perspective, but they just didn’t have today’s perspective.
(2) As long as groups of people have different needs than other groups there are going to be tribes of some form.
UDHR: The U.S. Constitution recognized rights are universal as all rights are God-given.
Geneva Conventions: The conventions are only adhered to by civilized nations – nations that don’t want to go to war anyway.
Social Security: You’re too stupid to look after your own finances, let the government do it for you. Oops… we’re bankrupt.
Medicare: Let’s care for the old! Oops… we’re bankrupt.
Bangup job so far, Aziz. Where liberalism didn’t claim for it’s own policy already in place, it bankrupts everything it touches.
Liberalism: Telling you how to live your life so you don’t have to.
Funny, I thought the American Dream was the hope of being allowed to live your life as you saw fit.
The interesting part here is that I agree with Aziz that most of those ideas are pretty nice.
I just don’t think any of the implementations are very good.
(The UDHR includes too many “rights” that are really “entitlements”. (Right to housing? No, thanks.)
But then that’s really the problem with everything in that list, other than the Geneva Convention (which has the problem of “being enforced against only one side” in practice, despite the entire point of the Conventions being that they require mutual consent and obedience).
Social Security might have a nice cuddly warm and fuzzy idea, but it’s a complete Ponzi scheme as implemented, and the moment there’s a demographic blip there’s a big ol’ problem… as there always is when group A is paying for group B’s entitlements.
I prefer progress and real liberalism that aren’t coercive systems of continually increasing government control. Even if that means that maybe somewhere a puppy is unhappy.)
Sigivald, leaving our obvious ideological divide out of this – would you agree or disagree with the contention that all human society and civilziation is based on a Prisoner’s Dilemma model? (or rather, the Tragedy of the Commons) ?
we might actually be able to start from broad principles here and narrow our difference more specifically. if we diverge at the point above, then we really are at an impasse.
Kevin, the US Constitution explicitly defined “men” in a non-universal sense.
The Geneva conventions are indeed for civilized nations at war. Your statement makes no sense. of course no one wants to go to war, but they do, hence the need for Geneva.
And as for SS and Medicare, these are founded in concepts of social justice, which is a very Christian idea. I understand its fashionable for some Christian sects to disdain “works”, howeverm so your antpathy to these at such a visceral level (unlike Sig, who disagrees with implementation) is understandable.
Aziz: The difference between liberalism (as you define it) and conservatism (as I define it) appears not to be the goals we have, but the recognition of the limitations that exist.
The problem with these ideas that “every person deserves a decent retirement” or “every person deserves health care” or “every person deserves sufficient food and water” is that it only describes a goal, not a means to reach that goal. And reality is such that resources are limited, while desires are infinite.
Why not go on to “every person deserves a home?” Or “every person deserves a spouse?” Or “every person deserves a Mercedes?”
When you get to “every person deserves a Lear Jet” it becomes clear that, well, hey, that’s not possible.
There are other philosophical objections to the entire goal of “every person deserves health care.” One might be “Why? What did they do to earn it?”
There may come a time in the future (post-Singularity perhaps) where homes, food, health care, internet access, power, water and retirement are effectively an infinite resource. The problem we have is that they are not yet infinite so we have to figure out how best to manage what we have. Attempting to provide the wants and needs of every human being without expecting those human beings to do something in return is simply an unsustainable economic model, and the end result of that is not that every person will have food, water, a home, health care and retirement, but that the vast majority of people will be destitute and starving when the gravy train runs out.
Oh, by the way Aziz, the US Constitution does not define “men” at all. The document was explicitly reserved to apply to “We the people of the United States of America.” Period. End of audience.
The Declaration of Independence had somewhat loftier language, but the Declaration of Independence is not a legal document.
Oh, and one more thing. “Of course no one wants to go to war.”
I think you just demonstrated why liberal thinking is irrational.
Plenty of people want to go to war. That’s why we have wars. As Mao (I believe) once said, you may not be interested in war, Aziz, but war is definitely interested in you.
Aziz,
Social justice is not a Christian idea. In fact, it’s the antithesis of the Christian philosophy.
Nowhere in the Bible will you find a call for the state to care for the sick and poor. Each and every time we are called on as individuals to care for these people.
That would would even suggest such a thing is possible tells me you’ve spent more time listening to people you agree with and less reading the book you’re talking about.
As for the Constitution, again, you are wrong. Jefferson, when speaking of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” implied all mankind. And the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights applied to men and women equally.
The Geneva Conventions are a fanciful idea without teeth because nations likely to obey them aren’t likely to go to war. And nations most likely to go to war are the least likely to obey them.
Score one for liberalism.
Hey Aziz, here’s a question for you when discussing “Social Justice.” You and most liberals love to talk about what people are entitled to. Do you have any concept whatsoever of what people’s obligations are?
Just from a purely philosophical perspective I think it is completely rational, reasonable and moral to say that if people want to benefit from society’s largesse, they need to contribute to that society in a meaningful way.
This is perhaps a more refined way of saying “If you don’t work, you don’t eat” but it boils down to the same basic philosophy.
Are you opposed to the notion that social entitlements should be tied to meeting one’s social obligations?
Mike Lyons – Slavery, too. Everyone talks about how Europeans enslaved so many people, ignoring the fact that slavery was a universal human institution – practiced by almost every culture, race, nation in history – until Europeans ended it!
JohnW,
If only to be a slave!
A four-day sacrifice in 1487 by the Aztec butchered 80,400 prisoners.
I would argue it may be better to be a slave to the Europeans than a sacrifice of the “noble savages” of the New World.
What a ridiculous fancy of complete fiction. So all the wars in human history have been between two sides that didn’t really want to fight, but had to ?
Give me a break. History is nothing but a long string of aggression of one against another, of one group trying to enslave or colonize another and free men taking up arms to stop them. In most cases BOTH sides “want” to go to war when it comes time for it.
The idea that “nobody” wants war is the most simplistic, naive nonsense possible.
Er, state action to help the poor and sick and needy is the antithesis of Christian thinking? The exact categorical opposite? That’s a rather strong statement. I can see where you could make the case that Christians shouldn’t favor state action on things like helping the sick, but I don’t think you can find such a clear dichotomy in the scriptures. And of course, on social justice issues, various Christian groups have a long history of having favored things like the New Deal and the Great Society; now maybe they were wrong to do so, but I don’t see how anyone can just whip out a Bible and say “yep, clearly, that was the categorical opposite of Christian thinking.”
Did the Bible condemn that king for mandating that people store up grain for a predicted 7 years of famine?
Dean, come on, you can do better than that. Saving up grain for a predicted 7 year drought can hardly be compared to “helping the poor and needy.” Geez. Find an example in the Bible of a King providing a retirement fund for citizens, or a King providing a free hospital, or a King providing free food and water for his poorest citizens ONLY. That’s an actual comparison that would be meaningful.
I’m not saying you can or can’t, I’ve forgotten most of what I’ve read in the Bible, but I can’t recall any examples off the top of my head.
sheesh deadrody. obviously “no one wants war” doesnt mean “no one ever goes to war”
sometimes , you have to go to war, so you go.
Only people with no connection to war – who see it as a video game on CNN – ever anticipate war eagerly, as in “oh goody, we get to kick some ass!” Thankfully no one in the military or government feels this way, for any Administration we’ve had since our founding.
Cosmic: The point is that if you’re going to assert that it is the “antithesis” (the radical opposite) of Christian thought for the state to help people, you’ve set a very high bar. Just because the Bible (and Holy Tradition, for those Christians who accept it) does not directly say “use government to do these things if you can,” that doesn’t mean it says you don’t. And in a famine, the elites never starve, only the common people are in danger. Ordering that grain be stored up so no one starves is a direct example of state action to help everybody, not just a few, and it’s certainly not an example of “lassez faire.”
Aziz: Well, you can make a good case that the Spanish-American war was almost entirely a matter of going to kick Spaniard ass just because it felt good. Fortunately cooler heads prevailed pretty quickly.
Aziz, again, your demonstration of your complete divorcement from reality is quite revealing. This is why I’m not a liberal. My reality includes the quite obvious and historically proven fact that lots and lots of people in government and military relish the prospect of going to war.
In fact the best way to get into a war is to pretend that people don’t want to go to war. This is just another example of how liberals live in a fantasy world of “what we wish the world was like” instead of what the world actually is.
And that, in a nutshell, is why liberal policies almost universally fail.
Dean, “Helping everybody” is by definition “helping myself.” So I’m simply not going to accept the storing of grain due to a predicted 7 year drought being any sort of altruism. It’s simple self-preservation. After all, what’s the point of being a king if you let ALL of your subjects starve? And to think that the common people would get equal access to the “seven year” store of grain is actually quite cute and naive…
I just think you need to find a better example if you’re going to try to find a biblical precedent for something like universal health care, universal retirement or universal food and water. And frankly I don’t think you’ll find one.
However, that doesn’t mean that I think state sponsored programs to help the poor and needy are anti-Christian. I find that argument as weak as you do. I just don’t think you’ve rebutted it well.
CC, if you insist on mischaracterizing my view to prove your point, its your point that is flawed, not my view.
Aziz, tell me how I am mischaracterizing it. You have twice now asserted that nobody wants to go to war. I have twice now told you you are full of it.
How am I mischaracterizing your argument? This seems pretty simple to me.
Did Mao want to go to war? Did Lenin? Did Pol Pot? Did Hitler? Did Mussolini? Did Hirohito? Did George Washington? Did George Patton? Did Genghis Khan? Did Mohammed?
How is it mischaracterizing your argument to point out that all of those people wanted to go to war?
Dean,
Allow me to refine my position then:
There is no call within Scripture for one to abrogate their responsibilities to the poor to the state. Furthermore, there is no call in Scripture for the state to be the primary caregiver of the poor.
While there are things only a state may have the power to do, the overwhelming message of the Bible is for man to care for his fellow man directly, not through an intermediary.
The Bible, in my humble opinion, makes it quite clear what we can expect of government in 1 Samuel 8:10-18. This is not the institution through which God wanted the poor cared for. I think, for example, Matthew 25:35-40 is a shining example of the personal interaction we’re supposed to have with the poor, the hungry, the needy. Would you send a government agency to clothe or feed Yeshua? Then why would you send one for the “least?”
I don’t think it gets any more cut and dry than that, good sir.
In Jesus’ time, and for most of human history, the idea that government existed for the purpose of caring for the weak and dispossessed was so foreign to the human race that it quite probably could not have been comprehended by most people of that day. That’s simply not what governments did. People were expected to fend for themselves.
It is also worth noting that if caring for the poor is something that is left to government who then forcibly extracts taxes from the citizens to do so, there is really no individual charity involved. And it is quite likely that forcing people to give up their own wealth to have it redistributed by the government, those people will rationally conclude that there is no reason (or in some cases, no ability) to provide charity from their remaining personal wealth.
I can tell you for a fact that this is the effect it has on me. If I’m being forced to fork over 1/3 of my wealth to the government, and 75% of what the government spends is supposedly allocated to taking care of the “needy” through entitlement programs, I’m damn sure not going to reach into my pocket to give more of my money to the “poor.” I’m not nearly altruistic enough to join the ranks of the poor after working my butt off every day to try to build a positive life of my own.
So when government then redistributes that wealth purely on political lines, and the wealth gets sucked up by waste, fraud and outright corruption, who gets hurt?
The poor, who are supposedly the beneficiaries of government largesse.
Nothing there I disagree with.
Then, you should also note, that with government “caring” for the poor you have a dedicated voting block more likely to go for the candidate that promises them more “assistance” while that same candidate has a vested interested in making sure the poor stay poor.
good grief CC you’re quoting madmen and psychotics now?
yes, they wanted war. And they were in fact part of the rationale for creating things like the Geneva Conventions in the first place.
Yes I apparently have erred however in not framing my assertion in more rigorous terms. Next time I will have to remember to add exception clauses for madmen and tyrants and whatnot. And people wonder why legislation gets to thousands of pages…
Aziz:
“Only people with no connection to war – who see it as a video game on CNN – ever anticipate war eagerly, as in “oh goody, we get to kick some ass!” Thankfully no one in the military or government feels this way, for any Administration we’ve had since our founding.”
You are a mystery to me. You seem so capable of reasoned, well-mannered discourse; then you make a statement like that above. Read it, and if you don’t notice, let me tell you that it makes you look very narrow-minded. Oh, and George Washington and Mohammed were psychotic? Really?
Aziz,
> Only people with no connection to war – who see it as a video game on CNN – ever anticipate war eagerly, as in “oh goody, we get to kick some ass!”
Actually, when a group of people are gripped by hatred for the Other, they almost always anticipate war eagerly, as in “oh goody, we get to kick some ass!” Right down to the soldiers, Aziz. Were it not so, there would be no suicide bombers, for example.
It seemed strange to me that this would be true, but it just means I failed to look at real people, instead preferring the old liberal tropes my Mom (and others) stuck in my head. Now I think of how American military men (including infantry) reacted after 9/11. They were in fact anticipating war eagerly, as in “oh goody, we get to kick some ass!” They said so. Repeatedly. On their blogs. In blog comments. On TV. On the radio. All. The. Time.
Now here is a real kick in the pants, Aziz.
World War I was popular. Really popular. The people of Europe (not the U.S.) were eager to go to war.
See The July Crisis.
I was surprised to learn when I visited the National WWI Museum here in Kansas City that people came out and demonstrated in favor of the war when they saw it was likely. It was a gala occasion, Aziz.
> Thankfully no one in the military or government feels this way, for any Administration we’ve had since our founding.
Ever heard of Teddy Roosevelt or Curtis Lemay?
No, I’m afraid there have always been lots of people who want war. Political factions called ‘The War Party’ are common.
Yours,
Tom
Aziz:
You are so, so wrong. I don’t think there’s any point in trying again to illustrate how totally, massively, profoundly, wrong you are.
Aziz,
> Yes I apparently have erred however in not framing my assertion in more rigorous terms. Next time I will have to remember to add exception clauses for madmen and tyrants and whatnot. And people wonder why legislation gets to thousands of pages…
Where whatnot includes the mass of the populace.
Some groups of common people eager to go to war (and they said so, repeatedly):
The South before the Civil War.
The North before the Civil War.
The Sioux – almost anytime.
Americans before the Spanish-American War.
The Japanese before the Russo-Japanese War, WWI and WWII.
Europeans before WWI.
The Afghans – almost anytime.
The Somalis – almost anytime.
The Kossacks – almost anytime.
Actually there are lots of people who want to go to war almost anytime.
WWI marked a great change in the attitudes of Europeans towards war, but time will likely heal that wound.
You are taking a particularly uniformed position here, Aziz. Please let your normal critical thinking capabilites kick in, rather than reflexively opposing CC.
Yours,
Tom
maybe we are talking past each other. I mean, a person can still want to defend his country, be patriotic, want to defend his family, eager to stop evil, etc. And still, wish that war wasn’t necessary.
I think its relatively obvious that even when we are compelled to war, for just causes, we wish that the circumstances which take us away from our family/force us to embark on that course were not the same.
There is an inherent tragic sentiment in war, especially just war. And thats why we have things like the USO.
anyway, CC is on his freight train and Im not eager to butt heads anymore. Tom, if you look at what I am trying to say you’ll probably agree. I am not making the uniform statement youu think I am. But since my capacity to explain this is clearly lacking at 2pm in eth afternoon without coffee (pr lunch), I am withdrawing. CC can declare victory if he likes.
I don’t even understand the argument. Aziz makes the unremarkable observation that the people running our government, going back to the earliest days of the country, generally do not take a “hey, war is fun, goody let’s go kick some ass” mentality. And you guys are… upset at that observation? It looks remarkably on the money to me. We DON’T, as a rule, go into wars just because they’re fun. Other than with the possible quibble of the Spanish-American War (which was barely a war it was so short), what war HAVE we ever gotten into because bloodthirsty people wanted us to go fight and kick ass because it would be awesome fun? The Revolution? 1812? The Civil War? World War I, II, Korea, Vietnam–seriously, do you guys think that’s ever been a primary factor? Sure there are sometimes people salivating at the prospect but do you *really* think that’s been anything like the majority of people running the government throughout the last two centuries?
Dean,
I think part of the contention is over Aziz’s argument that the Geneva Conventions somehow make war more civil when, in reality, the people likely to obey them don’t typically even want to go to war.
Since that is the case, those nations more than happy to engage in war are the least likely to obey those conventions.
So, the Geneva Conventions are a paper tiger but Aziz seems to think, no, bloodthirsty regimes will abide by them as well.
In Jesus’ time, and for most of human history, the idea that government existed for the purpose of caring for the weak and dispossessed was so foreign to the human race that it quite probably could not have been comprehended by most people of that day. That’s simply not what governments did. People were expected to fend for themselves.
Uhm, I can’t say I agree. They expected protection from crime, protection from invaders, and alleviation of suffering in times of natural disaster such as plague, earthquake, and so on. I once again point straight at the Bible: do you think it was some sort of shocking thing for the King to order 7 years worth of grain stored up? Wasn’t that “interference in the market?” And do you think he was doing it “just so those who can afford it can eat?”
No, clearly it was to avert mass starvation. Because that’s what a good King would do. And the story notes how great and wises he was considered to do those things, saving his country from mass starvation.
It is true that today we expect MORE from government. On a whole lot of levels. But the idea that your lord or king or whatever was there SOLELY to provide military protection? I think not. And I further think that if you look carefully at what the average citizen of Rome was expecting around the time of Jesus, it was more than just military protection. You can rail about how awful the “bread and circuses” mentality was, but you can’t say it was foreign to anyone’s thinking to be expecting the state to assure them of a minimum sustenance, because the state was already in the business of doing that exact thing.
It even used to be that when we went off to war, one of the main ways we paid soldiers was to let them loot and pillage and rape all they wanted, bringing home the goodies to share with the folks.
So no, I don’t think I can buy that there’s ever been this universal “the government is only there for certain very specific and narrow things” mentality. People have always looked to governing authorities for succor on all sorts of things.
Kevin: Ah, well that’s different then, I guess I missed that subtext.
> Tom, if you look at what I am trying to say you’ll probably agree.
I’m not sure I will. If you are trying to make the point that most people regard war as a tragic necessity,I can go with that. That’s why democracies don’t go to war with each other. But you stated it far more strongly than that. There are large minorities, which sometimes become large majorities, who want to go to war. People think that war is glorious, that it proves their worthiness as a people, as humans, as men and women.
The truth is that war is glorious, because war is tragic and cruel and cannot be refined. Consider the song To Dream the Impossible Dream. It has two lines which are germaine:
… To fight the unbeatable foe….
… To be willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause….
Don Quixote was getting on his war horse and fighting giants, right? Now you can (and should) claim he was mad, but why does everyone identify so strongly with him?
You listen to that song and understand it, and you will see why normal people can be eager to go to war. It’s in our genetic code.
This is important to know. Liberals listen to Imagine and chant “Give peace a chance” and sing “War, what is it good for” and think it’s so clearly true it must be obvious. Problem is, it’s so clearly false it should be obvious. The denial of this basic human truth is a tragic example of wishful thinking. I want liberals to stop thinking like this because it makes them prone to tragic mistakes which increase the likelihood of war.
Now, lets consider some comments in other threads.
Consider your comments about hating the Other. Consider the other comments about sporting events as a substitute for war. Consider soccer hooligans. Consider all the violence surrounding soccer. Now consider the Nika riots. In Constantinople in 532 there were riots over chariot racing. Tens of thousands of people were killed.
People like war. People like violence. People like fighting. Sorry. They do.
Yours,
Tom
Well, even as a libertarian I’d have to say that Dean is right. Lots of governments have made it their business to do many, many things for the people, like:
- Temples / churches. We frown on this, but the vast majority of governments through the ages did not seperate church and state.
- Schools. I think schools are functionally equivalent to churches in many cases, so I’m against governments building schools, but the vast majority of governments through the ages built and ran them – if only for the elite.
- Parks.
- Museums.
- Libraires.
- Roads.
- Baths. In Roman times, these were for everone.
- Theatres.
- Stadiums.
- Wells, aqueducts, canals and other water projects.
- Many governments did provide bread and other sustenance for the poor. They usually also forced them to work, though.
Socialism and collectivism are old, old, old ideas.
As regards the bible, read what Bread for the World says.
The social gospel is a long standing Christian idea.
Yours,
Tom
There is a world of difference between the individual helping the poor, and the state helping the poor.
The Bible stressed the former.
And I looked at that site and it seems to affirm my position that the state shouldn’t be involved in the caring of the poor.
Kevin, we have centuries of Christian tradition supporting the social gospel. If we take a fundamentalist approach, I think you may be right. OTOH, most Christians are not fundamentalists. On the gripping hand, there are many passages advising princes to give to the poor. It’s pretty hard to seperate Jewish royalty from the Jewish government.
In addition, there is this command:
At the end of three years thou shalt bring forth all the tithe of thine increase the same year, and shalt lay it up within thy gates. And the Levite (because he hath no part nor inheritance with thee,) and the stranger and fatherless, and the widow which are within thy gates, shall come and shall eat and be satisfied; that the Lord thy God may bless you in all the work of thine hand which thou doest. (Deut 14:28,29)
Deuteronomy is a book of enforceable Law, not a book of suggestions. So generally, I think you are wrong, especially considering your personal very Jewish form of fundamentalism. However, the New Testament is all about people helping people, presumably since early Christians were powerless.
Yours,
Tom
Tom,
Given that God Himself was the “leader” of the government at the time that passage in Deuteronomy was written, I suppose I can agree that the government being involved in charity at that time was a good idea.
That all changed when Israel asked for a king.
But you are right, I practice a very “Jewish” form of Christian fundamentalism and I don’t expect many, if any, to agree with me.
But, then, the movements of God were always rejected by most people. So, I don’t go seeking mass approval. Neither should you.
Aziz makes the unremarkable observation that the people running our government, going back to the earliest days of the country, generally do not take a “hey, war is fun, goody let’s go kick some ass” mentality.
No, he made the comment that *no one*, not *no one in our current gov’t* wanted to go to war.
The latter is correct, the former, not so much.
The Roman empire didn’t get to be the size it did because they only reluctantly went to war. Same thing with Alexander the Great. They didn’t go to war because they had no choice, they went to war because they wanted to take what other people had. They willingly fought for a rather simple reason: Conquest.
And generally, the kind of people who will kill you to take your stuff aren’t too concerned about using only the right kind of bullets to do it with.
LOL, I love how people try to redefine what they said when their words are plainly clear and readable on the thread. Aziz I certainly hope you’ve just got caught up in a McKiernan moment where it was temporarily more important for you to take on the evil CC than it was to actually observe objective reality, but I’m not so sure… You sure seemed convinced of the truth of your fantasy world.
Dean, that is not what I asked you for, I asked you to show how governments in Jesus’ time provided retirement for the elderly, free food and drink for the poor and free health care for all. I don’t think you can. To say one king stocked away food to allow his kingdom to survive a drought is not remotely the same thing as having a policy to feed the poor.
Actually, Cosmic, I think you’re the one doing some redefining, because what I was responding to was THIS:
In Jesus’ time, and for most of human history, the idea that government existed for the purpose of caring for the weak and dispossessed was so foreign to the human race that it quite probably could not have been comprehended by most people of that day. That’s simply not what governments did. People were expected to fend for themselves.
In fact, go look, I quoted that exact paragraph. And responded, I think, accurately: government did, in fact, do lots of things for people and didn’t always expect them to fend for themselves. Feeding people in time of famine is not expecting people to fend for themselves. And that is only one example; Tom DeGisi gave better ones, but I’ll give you some references:
Romans had a specific policy of providing food to the poor. Controversial, but hardly anything no one could comprehend; obviously, many not only comprehended it, they expected it and demanded it.
And while the Romans did not so far as I can see directly provide doctors (it’s not clear if they never did this or just didn’t do it often), but they absolutely and unequivocally invested massively in projects to improve the health of the poor, for the sole reason that they wanted all Romans healthy; the aqueducts weren’t just pretty and weren’t just for rich people, they were for everyone. And the public baths were intentionally and by policy kept cheap so that all Romans, even the poorest, would have access to them. For health reasons.
So let us be clear that while pension systems for the poor probably weren’t there, people were not “expected to fend for themselves.” The state invested massively in food and in health for the poor. For the specific purposes of keeping the poor fed and in good health. So while I doubt they would have expected the state to provide doctors, they surely would not have found such an idea incomprehensible; a lot of them probably would have thought it was a neat idea.
And while it isn’t as ancient as the time of Jesus, you might also want to read up on the English poor laws, which go back about 500 years and were there specifically for the purpose of giving aid to the poor (and also heavily incentivizing them to work, sometimes in draconian fashion).
You’re poor? You ain’t got food or a place to live? Guess what. State’s been addressing that as a specific problem for a long, long, long time now, and not seeing it as a strictly private matter. By 1597 aid to the poor in Britain was a compulsory tax, not voluntary.
So while it is true that you will not see in history something exactly like Medicare or Social Security, what you will see is a wide array of services to the poor which are all about getting them food and keeping them in decent health. Which has been an interest of the state forever.
So yes, we do expect MORE from the state now, but it is not true to state that anyone would have found things like state-provided food and health care incomprehensible. Thomas Paine was describing and advocating a system that looked almost identical to our Social Security system back in the 1700s for goodness sakes. These ideas are not new, they do not originate with Karl Marx. They have their roots in things governments have been doing for, well, it looks like at least a couple of thousand years now.
If you make me dig harder I wouldn’t be surprised if I could find aid to the poor being described as far back as the Code of Hammurabi. Did you want to wager on that or do you want to call the case made? People were encouraged to fend for themselves but the idea that the state could and would help them was hardly incomprehensible.
This all reminds me of my all-time favorite Monty Python skit, an obscure one I suppose but I quote from it often:
What have the Romans ever done for us?
Dean is clearly correct, but there is another parallel he missed. The Roman policy did not help all the poor in the Roman empire. It helped poor Romans at the expense of the non-Roman poor. In other words people who vote were advantaged over people who could not. Our policy is similar. We advantage old people (who vote in large numbers). We disadvantage immigrants (who can’t vote), young people (who vote less/can’t vote) and, most importantly, future people (who can’t vote yet). Our current government is busily robbing the future me to pay the present me right now.
I’ve read Dean on the subject of government debt before, and he is generally right. The amount of non-entitlement debt wasn’t bad. However, that has changed. It’s rising rapidly. In addition, future public pension, Medicare and Social Security obligations are crushing. Social Security just went cash flow negative. The Social Security bonds in the ‘lock box’ are now being cashed in – for regular bonds.
We can’t afford Obamacare because we have failed to manage our obligations.
Yours,
Tom
Dean, did you read the links? The Romans bought votes by givng food to the poor, and they were concerned about health in thier own homes, then with the health of thier army.
Englsh poor laws were not intended to benefit the poor, not in any way, actually invented to either defend from or take advantage of the poor.
The state has not been providing food & housing for the poor as an entitlement, at least not in the sense that you seem to be promoting.
Tom: As I think I already said, if you want argue that the Roman policies of providing food and health services to poor Romans was a bad thing, you can make that case. What you can’t do is suggest that no one would have heard of such a thing or found it incomprehensible, because in fact we already know that not only was it comprehensible, it was already Roman policy.
Mike: Yes I read them, did you? The Roman policies were clearly and unequivocally about providing food and health services to the poor (and in the case of health services, to all Romans regardless of income).
The English Poor Laws were more complicated, but you’re also engaging in philosophical arguments about whether the laws were good or bad or structured right or whatever. Regardless of anything else, the taxes paid for those laws were used, in addition to other things, to FEED PEOPLE, and to help those who could not work (the “deserving poor”).
Once again, the assertion was made that people were expected to fend for themselves and would have found it incomprehensible for the state to provide anything. Historically, that’s just wrong. If you want to argue that the state shouldn’t have done these things, or did them poorly, or whatever, that’s fine, but they idea that the state didn’t do it at all, and that people didn’t expect the state to do so? Just wrong, sorry.
Make of it what you will, the state did actually DO these things.
Dean,
> What you can’t do is suggest that no one would have heard of such a thing or found it incomprehensible, because in fact we already know that not only was it comprehensible, it was already Roman policy.
I know. I’ve been agreeing with you the whole thread, unlike CC. Clayton Cramer put me onto this by pointing out that Revolutionary War America was no libertarian paradise. (Although the frontier might qualify.)
Now I’m making a new point, though. The poor have the best chance when they have some political power. The poor with little political power still tend to lose out.
Yours,
Tom
Sorry Tom, I didn’t read carefully. I thought you were saying it was Roman poor against non-Roman poor, a recapitulation of other objections we’ve heard. Which is obviously just wrong, I was reading too fast. Yes the Romans definitely didn’t give much of a damn about non-Roman poor (although they did liberalize what it took to become one).
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