Murder of CEO reveals idolatry and covetousness in the US

The recent murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City reveals a dark side to culture in the US. Many people are cheering, according to USA Today:

"The Midtown Manhattan killing tapped a groundswell of public anger over an industry the public often only knows through impersonal delays and denials to needed health care, said Wendell Potter, a former CIGNA executive who became a whistleblower against the health insurance industry.

"'I've been hearing for years now from people who have been so frustrated because of denials or delays of care, and this was an opportunity for people to vent and to take out their anger against someone who just became known to them all of a sudden,' Potter said."

Such threats against health insurance company executives are common in the US according to some reports. Why isn't there similar anger against bureaucrats in socialists countries where waiting periods for treatment and denials are far greater?

If medical care in the US is so awful, why do people from other countries fly here for treatment? Google for "medical tourism." Millions of Canadians and Europeans travel to the US for medical care their nation health insurance plans refuse to pay. No Americans go to Canada or Europe for medical care. 

Canadians are very happy with their socialist system of healthcare. The closest thing Brits have to a religion is its National Health Service. Yes, it has problems. No one suggests changing it and the only proposed solutions that people will approve is more tax infusions to keep it alive. With longer waiting periods and higher denial rates, why aren't Canadians and Brits murdering the bureaucrats who run their systems?

Was the Jerusalem Church in Acts Socialist?

 

Did the first church in Jerusalem practice socialism? Acts 2:44, 45 reads, "Now all who believed were together, and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as anyone had need." After reading that, a good friend said, "That sounds like socialism to me!" Was it? 

That's a difficult question to answer thanks to socialists who continually redefine words so that they win any argument by definition. Today, any concern for the poor is called socialist. By that definition, the first Jerusalem church was socialist. But must we accept the socialist definition? What are socialism and capitalism really? Who has the authority to define them?

The honest thing to do is to go back to the people who launched those systems. I do that here for capitalism. I haven't done that for socialism, so let me give a brief history of it. The first depiction of socialism appeared in Plato's Republic, which was inspired by Sparta. Plato required that the state own all property and the children. The state employed nannies who raised all children so that parents couldn't know who there children were and give them advantages over others. A philosopher would be the absolute monarch. 

How the Pilgrims became capitalists

This month children across the US will dress up as Pilgrims and Native Americans to honor Squanto, an Abenaki chief, who taught the Europeans to plant maize and kept them from starving. But here is the rest of the story. 

The Pilgrims had first sailed to the Dutch Republic to escape persecution in England. They remained there ten years but weren’t happy. They refused to learn the Dutch language because they wanted their children to retain their English culture. Lacking language and work skills (They had been farmers in England) limited them to labor in textile mills for what they considered low wages. But their children learned the Dutch language and absorbed Dutch culture. So, they set sail for the New World.

The Wisdom of God in the Torah Government

Opinions on the Torah law are polarized. Some ignore it completely. Others woodenly apply every law. Many will consider the religious laws to show how they relate to Christ and others emphasize the moral laws, such as the prohibition of coveting, applicable because they reflect God’s character that never changes. 

All sides miss the larger picture by fixating on the details, in other words, they miss the forest for the trees. God’s wisdom is displayed more in the structure of the Torah government than in the detailed cases, as wise as they are. For government, God gave Israel no human executive, legislature (which in Moses’ day was the king), or taxes. He gave Israel only judges, chosen by the people, to adjudicate the civil laws. 

National Socialism (Nazism) was Socialism

Democrats have tried to frighten gullible people by calling Christians in the Republican party “Christian Nationalists” because when people think of nationalism, they remember the National Socialism of Germany and Adolf Hitler. The more brazen Democrats simply call Trump Hitler and Christians his Nazi followers. Also, they refer to social conservatives who want limits on immigration, as the far right, in other words, Nazis.

 

The problem is, the Nazis were socialists, as their name, National Socialism, emphasizes. Clearly, the left doesn’t want to be associated with Hitler and the Nazis. So, they deny he was socialist and claim Nazism represented the end stage of capitalism. Even Britannica regurgitates that lie: “Were the Nazis socialists? No, not in any meaningful way, and certainly not after 1934.”

 

Here is a good documentary, Hitler's Socialism: The Evidence is Overwhelming, that should settle the matter for honest people. National Socialism was pure socialism of the extreme left. Watch it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLHG4IfYE1w 

No, Governor Walz, Socialism is envy not neighborly

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the abortion of communism in Eastern Europe didn’t cause socialists to give up on the ideology. They merely redefined socialism. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said,  “Don’t ever shy away from our progressive values… One person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.” Any act of concern for another is socialism. Others have defined socialism as worker-owned businesses. 

Socialist Christians who call themselves “progressive” to fool the gullible see Jesus as a socialist because he healed people, fed the poor and torched the rich. Telling the rich young ruler to sell everything and give the cash to the poor is Jesus advocating socialism. The church in Acts helped the poor so it was an example of a socialist commune. They imply that capitalists hate the poor and vulnerable and will not lift a finger to help them. 

National Conservatism needs better economics

 

Senator Josh Hawley made many excellent points in his speech at the recent National Conservatism Conference, especially on cultural issues. But his economics is lacking. For example, he said, 

“In the name of capitalism, these Republicans sang the praises of global integration while Wall Street bet against American industry and bought up single family homes—so that after the banks took the working man’s job, he couldn’t afford a house for his family to live in. Then Wall Street crashed that global economy—multiple times—and the housing market, and these same Republicans kept right on rhapsodizing. And subsidizing.”

Senator Hawley should know that the US hasn’t practiced capitalism for over a century. The country followed the principles of capitalism from before our founding until the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913 that gave it the legal authority to counterfeit money. The Fed’s massive money printing in the 1920’s caused the unsustainable bubble of the roaring twenties that gave us the Great Depression when the bubble burst. Roosevelt’s New Deal and Johnson’s Great Society piled on the socialist policies that crushed what was left of capitalism. 

What are the social responsibilities of companies?

Last year, the theological journal themelios, owned by The Gospel Coalition, published a paper asking “Do Companies Have Social Responsibilities?”  The author, Dr. Gary Cundill, concludes, “Companies are not human persons that have social and environmental responsibilities; they are legal entities that have legal responsibilities. There can therefore be no useful theology of corporate social and environmental responsibility.”

I agree with Dr. Cundill’s conclusion, but he fumbled his initial question, “What are companies for?” He recalled the Business Roundtable’s purpose, “to deliver value to its stakeholders: customers, employees, suppliers, communities and shareholders.”  And he discussed the Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman’s statement in Time Magazine that “there is one and only one social responsibility of business – to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits.” 

Biblical Critical Theory Is Not Biblical. It’s Watered-Down Marxism

 

Tags:Book Reviews,Media and Culture,Philosophy,Socialism

02/24/2024•Mises Wire•Roger McKinney

Christianity Today magazine, founded by Billy Graham, chose Christopher Watkin’s book, Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture, as one of its 2024 Book Awards and the book most likely “to shape evangelical life, thought, and culture.” Other Christian organizations promote the book too.

Nonreligious readers won’t care, but they need to keep in mind that most people won’t take a class or read a book on economics. I can clear a crowded room just by mentioning economics. But they do read books like this one or listen to pastors who do. Evangelicals make up about 25 percent of voters. So, any plan to change the direction of the country’s economic policies requires reaching them.

Watkin, a lecturer in French studies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, trudges through the Bible applying his interpretations to his perception of modern Western culture. He calls his method “diagonalization,” in which he identifies extreme cultural views and places biblical principles in the middle.

But his diagonalization forces him to see only extremes, many of which don’t exist. Much of what he writes is reasonable, but his train derails when writing about the market:

There Is Something Wrong with the Economic Views of Theologians

 

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Review of Kathryn Tanner: Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism

An old professor told our class decades ago to believe nothing from the popular press about economics and only half of what the financial press writes. I would add that if a theologian tries to teach you economics, hide your wallet and lock up your daughters! Kathryn Tanner’s Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism is a good example of such the tragic comedy produced by most theologians.

Tanner has taught at Yale Divinity School since 2010 after 16 years at the University of Chicago Divinity School. She is an influential past president of the American Theological Society. Rosemary P. Carbine and Hilda P. Koster say, “Kathryn Tanner is, quite simply, the most accomplished theologian of her generation,” in their book The Gift of Theology: The Contribution of Kathryn Tanner. The errors in her book are so numerous that it would take another book to correct them, so I’ll concentrate on the assumptions underlying her argument.

Tanner’s premise is that capitalism, as evil as it was in the beginning, has morphed into a more horrible monster called financial capitalism. Socialists have over the decades invented stages of capitalism and it’s popular to decry the latest for the dominance of the financial services sector. Yet as usual, they lack evidence. The sector grew from 4% of GDP in 1929 to 8% in 2006 according to a paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. While doubling, it’s still smaller than the healthcare or government sectors. The federal government absorbs over 20% of GDP. So, Tanner would be more accurate calling it state capitalism, but that’s an oxymoron.