Pastor Douglas Wilson has a message for Christians who substitute leftist nostrums for Christian charity, prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude:
The government does not make, and in order to have, must therefore take. Here are the basic ways in which such a taking can happen. The government can wage war on other countries, and take from them. The government can raise taxes, and take that way. The government can debase the currency, and take that way. The government can run up a big debt which it finds itself unable to pay, and take that way. And of course, given the realities of the ongoing political circus, the government can stagger between these options, like a drunk trying to make it to the next lamp post...
... I would like to address a few words to those evangelicals who have been seduced by leftist economics, or who are in some way flirting with leftist economics. You may have cannonballed into the deep end, like Jim Wallis, or you may just be sidling sheepishly in that direction, with some cover provided by distributist literature. You think that the language of compassion is more biblical, and the idea of communitarian sharing makes you feel warm all over. You think that businessmen who know how to add and subtract are those who are in the grip of mammon-lust. You don’t like the hard lines of clear thinking, and the blinking sums on their calculators do nothing but harsh your mellow.
Do me a favor, and look at Detroit. Look at the failure of all the compassionate nostrums. Look at the collapse of real integrity. Look at the grasping and demented idiocy of the unions. Look at the abandonment of government’s true functions. Look at the wreckage of human lives. Look at the ruin of a once great city. Look at what aching greedlust does. Behold the handiwork of your compassion.
The Gospel is not a government program. Real Christian charity is directed at what people need, not what people want. In America, people don't need big government and very few people need government checks in the mail. People need God (Who is increasingly banned from our public square), intact families, real jobs, safe communities, and they need to keep much more of their hard-earned wages so they can care for their own families and can help others through private charity.
People don't need leftist public policy-- big government redistributionism-- which has been profoundly destructive of life in America. It has bred family destruction, greed, envy, corruption, and crime.
Detroit is leftism, which is a Christian heresy, incarnated as a city.
Egnor: "Detroit is leftism, which is a Christian heresy."
ReplyDeleteIn other words, hell.
A series of 30 photos: "Modern Ruins of Abandoned Detroit."
ReplyDeleteNothing says "Progressivism" quite like a stripped, overturned, and rotting grand piano in a collapsing ballroom.
DeleteI blame George W Bush.
Detroit is the best illustration of the boom-and-bust capitalism. This simple though seems to never has crossed your minds, guys.
ReplyDeleteHoo
"The reasons for its decline are numerous, but can be summed up in two words: jobs, and demographics. In 1950, when Detroit had 1.8 million people, about 200,000 were employed in manufacturing, according to Kevin Boyle, the author and professor of history at Ohio State University, who is a native Detroiter. That was about one of out every 10 people in the city.
DeleteNow, fewer than 20,000 of Detroit's remaining 714,000 people work in manufacturing, or about one in 50 residents."
Detroit: A Boom Town Goes Bust
It's rather simple math. If you rely on one industry to support life in a city, the city inevitably declines when the industry leaves.
Hoo
Denver is the US capital of "boom-and-bust" capitalism. The auto industry is hardly a "boom-and-bust" industry.
Delete"This simple though seems to never has crossed your minds, guys."
Simple is right.
You can't even do simple, admiral. Sadly, brain capacity diminishes the farther you go into retirement.
DeleteHoo
As usual, an intellectually powerful rejoinder.
DeleteSpeaking of brain capacity, and having read the article at that link, I'm still not sure how a boom town that went bust became "boom-and-bust capitalism" in your bizarre world. Must be a brain capacity thing, since both phrases have nothing in common besides two words. Not exactly "high-level" thinking on your part.
The auto industry gradually moved out of Detroit due to riots, crime, high taxes, bad schools, oppressive unions, and, to be fair, to be closer to distant customers. The foreign companies chose not to move there for the same reasons. The Progressives in Detroit (your intellectual peers) believed they could milk the auto industry forever but it just moved away. "Last year, Detroit had $33 of long-term debt for every $1 of net assets." (Detroit Free Press)
Change [i.e., "boom and bust"] in the auto industry is reflected in the restless successions of plant openings and closings in the Midwest, the industry’s traditional home. Foreign and domestic manufacturers have settled in rural Southeastern locations, bringing with them new approaches to labor and production.
--- Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta
The nonunion auto factories in the Southeast are doing just fine, "booming", in fact, and employ thousands of people in high-paying jobs. The Detroit "boom" is now booming in the southeast and Detroit is now Officially Busted.
As usual, you don't understand your own sources.
"Detroit is the best illustration of the boom-and-bust capitalism."
DeleteLeftists are such liars.
"This simple though seems to never has crossed your minds, guys."
We prefer truth.
Who's laughing, Mr Boom 'n Bust?
DeleteCoping with a hearing loss, admiral? I am so sorry.
DeleteHoo
You read Wilson, too? How awesome is that?
ReplyDeleteI was born and raised in South Bend, Indiana.
ReplyDeleteIf that doesn't ring any bells, I was born and raised in the city from which the world's supply of Studebaker automobiles came.
It wasn't "capitalism" which killed Studebaker (in 1963), and almost killed South Bend; it was the auto unions and elements in the federal government finally achieving the old New Deal policy to "rationalize" the auto industry by consolidating it into three of four companies, with the manufacturing to be in Detroit.
Studebaker was no match to the Big Three. It had been in decline since 1950. While the company could afford paying its workers well in the boom years prior to 1950, it became a loser and went out of business. Too bad for South Bend.
DeleteHoo
What a lying fool this Hooey is.
DeleteWhy did Studebaker "become a loser and go out of business"?
Because its expenses exceeded its income for a significant length of time.
Why did Studebaker's expenses exceeded its income, such that in the end there was no option but to close its doors and leave all its employees with no jobs at all?
Because it was paying its workers more than they were worth, given their productivity.
Why was Studebaker’s management paying its workers more than they were worth, given their productivity?
Because the national-level labor union executives, working in conjunction with elements in the federal government who were still obsessed with seeing to fruition the New Deal “rationalization” of auto manufacturing, would never have allowed the local union organizations, which supposedly represented the interests of the actual Studebaker workers, to accept pay cuts.
For, as every rational being knows, no job al all on a wage of, say, $100K per year, is far better than an actual job on a measly wage of $90K.
In dealing with labor unions, Studebaker was no different from the Big Three. Yet it went out of business in 1963 while the Big Three prospered. Why was that, Ilion? Maybe because the company was making an inferior product? Perhaps that had something to do with the people at the top focusing on getting profits in the short term and not focusing on long-term viability? Discuss.
DeleteHoo
In Mathoo's defense, I don't think he's lying. He's just ignorant.
DeleteMathoo: "focusing on getting profits in the short term and not focusing on long-term viability"
DeleteLosing money now to be viable later?
Obviously, you've never signed the front of a paycheck.
It's a sweet and touching Progressive dogma, though. It's how Amtrak operates.
"In Mathoo's defense, I don't think he's lying. He's just ignorant."
Delete*Willful* ignorance is still lying.
Mathoo: "It's not a Progressive dogma. It's a dogma of venture capitalism."
DeleteOh, so you're a venture capitalist now? Excuse me while I laugh my ass off. You've never made a buck that wasn't printed on the front of a government check. You're a "venture capitalist" like those idiots who "invested" in Solyndra and Ener1. You don't know jack shit about how venture capital works.
You're probably the guy they had in mind when they named the Chevy Dolt.
Sorry, I forgot: you don't know jack shit about "new products" either.
DeleteI didn't say I was a venture capitalist, Mr. Stupid. I am a professor at an elite university, so most of my salary comes from private money. So there.
DeleteAnd unlike you, I do understand that companies go through a period of time when they lose money. Not just for the heck of it, of course, but in order to be profitable in the long term. If that's a foreign concept to you, what can I say?
Hoo
Apple, Inc., is a great example of a company that made short-term financial sacrifices to invest in more competitive products. In the mid-1990s it was in bad shape. Instead of focusing on the near-term bottom line, Apple spent a lot of effort to develop a new operating system (OS X), completely redesigned its line of laptops, and came up with an awesome smart phone. That sort of innovation was not cheap, but it paid off handsomely in the long term.
DeleteWhat kind of innovations were there at the Big Three in the 1970s and 80s? Oh, they figured out how to make a cheap box on a truck chassis and market it as an off-road vehicle. That's a great feat of engineering, right there.
Hoo
Hooey: "LOL. You can't address the argument, so you attack the person. Silly old fuck."
Delete1) hypocrite;
2) hypocrite engaging in "projection";
3) Hooey never does make, you know, arguments. The nearest he comes to arguing is quarrelling.
"Losing money now to be viable later?
ReplyDeleteIt's a sweet and touching Progressive dogma, though."
And, as proven by Studebaker ... then American Motors ... then Chrysler ... then General Motors ... then Detroit as a whole, it's a proven recipe for success.
Except they didn't follow that recipe. After the 1960s, the American car manufacturers started focusing on their bottom line more than on technological innovation. The companies were run by MBAs rather than engineers. The cars became bland, clunky, and lost competition to the Europeans and the Japanese. I had a Pontiac as my first car and I never bought another American automobile since then. How many of you did, I wonder.
DeleteHoo
You moron, American car companies were buried under union debt obligations, union work rules, and Congressional mandates. The engineers and scientists were doing just fine. General Motors Research Laboratories in Warren MI was a great place to work.
DeleteI didn't buy a car made by an American car company for a very long time and for a somewhat quixotic reason: Their involvement in destroying our electric trolley car transportation system. They had succeeded in forcing me to buy a car to get about, but I was determined that it wouldn't be one of theirs. As for the technical 'progress', when I finally did buy a Dodge Minivan in '96 I later discovered that the cabin temperature control chip cost over $600 for a replacement. Violation of the KISS principle in engineering. All that is required is an on/off switch. I can provide the brain.
DeleteI have some comments the reader may consider I deel rich when I ...
ReplyDelete