Bankers are All the Same

No one, to my knowledge, has remarked that the modern rhetoric about "capitalists" and "one-percenters" and "monopolists" and "big money" is remarkably similar to Medieval denunciations of the Jews - and for the same reason: people with the money inspire resentment, justified or unjustified.

Of course, I will not just leave that statement hanging there.  There are qualifications that must be made.  "Capitalists" are not widely regarded as guilty by association in the death of Christ.  (The death of Iraqi civilians, on the other hand...)  "Big money" is not disliked on racial grounds, mainly (though there are the wild ranters out there).

I suppose it is an improvement that we are lining up targets by class rather that race.  No one can change their genes, but class distinctions admit change and improvement with hard work.  On the other hand, many of the tomato-throwers would hastily mutter about "not fair" and "born to wealth", and propound theories about how the wealthy are lucky - so if they are right, there has actual not been any moral improvement in whom we choose to abuse.

It is certainly good that Wall Street bankers are not subject to exile by whim or having their gold teeth pulled, but the tax rates levied for daring to be wealthy are just as high now as then.  (Okay - probably not actually as high (though I do not have the knowledge to confirm this), but proportionally to the rest of the population, I'm sure they are comparable.)

You can draw from this comparison two possible morals.  On the first hand, you can say, "Huh", and possibly feel at least a little sympathy for the Medieval town's crowd of Jew-abusers.  Or if not sympathy, at least understand them better.  On the other hand, you can do your best to make sure the modern debate - and this is the far more important part - stays civil and lawful.  "Occupy Wall Street", however unsuccessful, made about as much sense as "Burn out the infidel bankers!" even if it was after all a bit less destructive (except, you know, in Oakland, where they managed to shut down the port briefly).

Moderation, Tolerance – and Reality

A liberal friend was lamenting on facebook today the state of affairs where Newt Gingrich is a moderate.

Frankly, and as a conservative, I'd have to agree.  There's no question he fits the category reasonably well: his own views seem to be more or less in line with a conservative ideology, but he doesn't seem to be over-committed to any of them, is in many ways a "DC insider", and has proven more than willing over his political career to play ball with the big-government kooks.  Hardball, sometimes, but Verlander doesn't stop being a pitcher because no one can hit him.  When conservativism (at least supposedly) favors small government, that all makes him either a hypocrite or a moderate or perhaps both – but I'm feeling polite.

And this is one of the guys supposedly headlining the supposedly conservative Republican candidate selection?  Sheesh.

There's a simple problem with moderation: some topics simply don't allow for it.

If my family are pacifists, and your family believes in a universal draft, and we agree to "compromise" and just draft one person per family, that's not a compromise – your agenda has won in principle, and the rest, as Churchill said, is just haggling about the price.

If some crazy professor thinks we should force abortions to prevent population growth, and some priest thinks abortion is evil – occasionally a medically necessary evil to save more life, but still not a good thing – and the "compromise" is that people can kill infants if they want to, that's not a compromise: the side that thinks killing the babies is okay has won in principle, and the only question is who gets to decide who has to die.

Are we seeing the problem here?

Sure, there are issues on which compromise is possible, but in order to compromise some level of agreement is necessary.  If, for example, I think a car is worth five thousand dollars, and the dealer thinks it's worth sixty-eight hundred, we can eventually compromise, perhaps at six thousand.  But it's only possible because we both agree the car is worth something.  If I'm a Luddite who thinks cars are a deception of the devil, the car has what can only be described as negative value, and any possible sale – even if I were to frustrate the dealer so much he convinced me to buy the car for $1 – is a net win for the dealer who thinks it's worth something.

If you say you think that all violence is always wrong, and I'm in favor of executing petty thieves, but you get argued into justifying self-defense, you've lost the logical argument – only the degree is in question, not the fact of retribution.

Which is why recent politics show up as a lot of nonsense.  For example: One side – supposedly extreme – wants to stop spending money we don't have.  The other side – supposedly backed up by the ivory towers – wants to spend even more money we don't have than we're already spending.  And the supposed "compromise" positions have, at their most conservative, suggested that we should spend less money that we don't have than we're currently spending, but really there's nothing wrong with spending money we don't have… which is a net win for the people who want to spend money we don't have.

In case you've somehow missed the point to this point, here's the short version: if the choices are "all" and "not any ever", "some" is not a compromise: it's a logical victory for the side of "all" and future choices will move further and further towards "all" unless actively overturned.  Political Exhibit A?  Growth of the United States Federal government since... let's say since World War One at the absolute latest.

A Reformed Sticking Point

Reformed churches are mostly fiercely dedicated to remaining with and in the Word of God.  This is commendable.  This dedication does however often extend to insisting on a necessity of preserving in all cases the exact wording of professedly uninspired documents.  We might call this linguistic legalism.  As an example, I want to comment on this condemnation issued by certain Pastors Bayly.  I do not have anything against their words of warning for those who try to use the Gospel 'for profit' (though St. Paul's other commentary on envious preachers comes to mind as a counter-warning against taking such condemnations too far).

But at the end of their pronouncement, the Baylys leave the realm of reasonable warnings.  They accuse Pastor T.D. Jakes – one of those preaching for gain, in their accounting (at least a plausible accusation, given the tone of his ministry's website) – of heresy.  How so?  On the basis of this statement:

"There is one God, Creator of all things, infinitely perfect, and eternally existing in three manifestations: Father, Son and Holy Spirit."

The offending word is "manifestations", with its overtones of the various kinds of essentially gnostic heresies throughout the church's history.  The Baylys particularly identify Jakes with the Modalists (that link is original to BaylyBlog: the possible irony of their using a Roman Catholic webcyclopedia amuses me).

To be sure, "manifestations" is not the accepted term "persons" used in the Western translations of the Church's creeds.  And as mentioned, to the historically literate Christian it has unfortunate overtones.  But the charge of heresy is concocted entirely on that poor word choice, with no regard for the rest of the statement.  Take for instance

"Further, [Jesus Christ] arose bodily from the dead, ascended into heaven, where, at the right hand of the Majesty on High, He is now our High Priest and Advocate."

and

"The ministry of the Holy Spirit is to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ..." (emphases mine)

Both these statements accept, even emphasize, even require the traditional and orthodox doctrine of the separate persons of the Trinity.  Nowhere does Jakes' church veer into clear heresy (at least on that score) in their statement.  The charge is ludicrous – and making it worse is that searching for departures from orthodoxy within the ministry of The Potter's House is easy: the Baylys might have started, say, in the church's inclusion of female pastors.  Instead, they appear to be clutching carelessly at any straw of accusation they can find.  That's careless rhetoric, if nothing else, but often is the hallmark of personal attacks – which I doubt either Bayly had in mind at all, but again is an appearance to avoid if possible, for rhetorical reasons if nothing else.

I might have just dismissed the post out of hand and ignored it, but I had been reading earlier today in Henry Osborn Taylor's The Medieval Mind, where in a footnote to an account of Patristic discussions he has this to say:

"... The Latin juristic word persona [is] used in the Creed.  The Latins had to render the hypostaseis of the Greeks; and "three somethings," tria quaedam, was too loose.... hypostasis would have been substantia; but that word had been taken to render ousia.  So the legal word persona was employed in spite of its recognized unfitness." (Chapter III, note 1)

Hypostasis might literally be translated an "under-standing-ness", or more colloquially a thing which stands by itself (while supporting another), thus translations such as "foundation", "substance" (derived from the Latin word with the same literal meaning as the Greek), and the philosophical sense of the English "essence".  Yes, even the "somethings" of quaedam are more definite, more material than Jakes' "manifestations", to say nothing of substantia, Taylor's (and by his account the Church Fathers') preferred word if had been possible.  But we have to recognize that persona – meaning legally approximately the same thing to a Roman that "persons" now does to us, I believe – is itself an approximation, and that makes the charge look even sillier.  "Manifestation" is a poor choice, given that it carries a connotation of appearance only – but none of us are perfect, and perhaps a friendly letter, rather than flinging down a gauntlet?

Some Quick Corrections

I've been posting on CONVPOL lately, and I want to address a few points here so as to not add to an already outrageously long response, or detract from the main point. The post in question is here, and Kyle says a number of things which seem unnecessary, or even badly in error:

Marxism

I mentioned briefly that Kyle's ideals are very close to the Marxist "from each... to each..." formulation. Kyle admits this himself; I admit it is essentially the goal of any society. The difficulty starts because people don't, never have, and don't seem inclined to ever comply with the "from each" bit. Conservatism says give 'em what they earn; liberalism, largely, wants to give them the "to each" anyway. I'm side-tracking here, but I just wanted to point out that describing a thing accurately doesn't necessitate a defense in detail like Kyle gave.

Obama The Leftist

This one's a little trickier. President Obama is not a vegan, PETA-endorsing, alternate-power-is-the-only-good-thing leftist. But in the American political calculus, his determination to follow leftist – that is, liberal Democratic – policies put him about as far left as you can get while still being even vaguely in the main stream of American thought.

"Effectiveness" of Leftist Presidents

If you want to demonstrate that conservative ideology is a wrong, you need to do more than point out that you disagree with it. We know that already. You also need more than your "effectiveness" argument. Great – FDR was better at instituting liberal ideals than Reagan was at establishing conservative ones. We get that. Mao was more efficient at getting his way than the Kuomintang, too.

List of Accusations

With conservatives in power, the military industrial complex tends to rapidly grow, legislation making lists of banned behaviors (books, religions, abortions, medicines, organizations, etc.) appear[s], and even more legislation is passed to specifically allow previously unallowed behaviors (death sentences, guns in the workplace, etc.).

This is pretty much nonsense. Yes, the biggest agitation to ban things in recent history has been to ban abortion, which is murder. If you don't like the word, what do you call something which is, at the very least, by scientifically unassailable facts, the destruction of a unique human organism? There can be and should be no apology for any attempt to ban murder. But after that, two can play the accusation game. The next biggest political crusade has been against "hate speech" – and that's a liberal cause that treads dangerously close to transgressing on the right of freedom of speech. It's to the point where few comparisons that even mention race can be made publicly without accusations of racism flying, no matter how incidental or true the point made.

But these specific accusations are silly too:

• Allowing gun ownership and carrying is consistent with low-regulation conservatism, what do you expect? (It's not like it really adds to risk, either - if anything, the opposite.)
• The death sentence was regarded as an effective deterrent and just punishment for virtually the entirety of human history. In terms of human rights logic, it's an established line of argument that involvement in certain crimes forfeits societal rights, including life. Many conservatives accept that, or believe the death penalty acceptable for religious reasons, or both.
• The "military industrial complex" is a thing of dubious definition, and seems above politics. If Bush I had Iraq, Clinton had Kosovo. If Bush II had Afghanistan, Obama has Libya.

As for banning books and religion? I have never heard of a conservative trying to ban anything more than immoral books (whether rightly so considered or not) from a school – which seems eminently sensible, and not a Federal matter at all. Under banning "religion", that's been a liberal crusade lately: no prayers in school, no Ten Commandments in public buildings, etc. If you can back that one up I'll be disturbed, but it seems little more than a wild accusation with, at best, fault on both sides.