More Reflections from a Freedom-Hating, Science-Idolizing, Church-Destroying (and let’s throw in anti-American, for good measure) Communist

The following is a point-by-point response to The Friar’s comments (which are italicized) on the views I expressed on the Illumined Heart podcast. I regret to say that, after having read his essay, I have come to the conclusion that he is either utterly ignorant of my real views, or is deliberately misrepresenting them.

…his progressive sympathies are even more serious in terms of its fostering tyrannical regimes (because, for one, it inherently relies on the vision of the One executive)…

Ah, the tyranny argument so beloved by conservatives. Honestly, who can say with a straight face that social democratic countries are tyrannical? I sincerely believe that you can be a conservative and still not subscribe to this nonsense. This sort of argumentation reminds me of tactics that atheists often use in discrediting Christianity. For example, many unbelievers love to draw our attention to self-professing Christians who publicly declare God’s supposed hatred for homosexuals in order to prove that the Christian faith is full of hate and bigotry. Similarly, in their efforts to legitimate laissez-faire capitalism, many conservatives have sought to obfuscate the differences between Soviet-style communism and other forms of socialism. I must admit that they have been remarkably successful.

…his empirical research falls flat. He clouds over the real economic harm to property and to freedom that Unions have historically provided--the auto industry is just one of these oversights, as Powerline and other numerous websites have cataloged.

My job is to uncover general patterns in the empirical world. The key term, here, is general, which implies the existence of exceptions (e.g., survey evidence shows that most British citizens are quite satisfied with their publicly-funded national health care system, though you are certain to find a few who aren’t). Let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, that unions were, indeed, responsible for the collapse of the auto industry. Should we then dismiss other evidence that suggest that unions are, generally, a boon to our economy? With all due respect to Powerline’s contributors, I believe the answer is no.

Dr. Azarvan repeats the canard that unions are being restricted and that people should have freedom to to pursue happiness and form unions without restriction. But, there are two problems with this, one Fr John Whiteford points out:

1. Unions force all workers into service, except for right to work states which celebrate freedom. Dr. Azarvan has no response to this.

2. The government enforces unions and backs them. This is not freedom but imposed regulation for the favored few union workers and executives at the expense of the many.

Let’s begin with #1. I do have a response to the silly claim that unions force workers to join; I simply wasn’t given a chance to offer it. In saying this, I mean no disrespect to Kevin Allen – that simply wasn’t the format of the discussion. The reality is that federal law already protects a worker’s right not to join a trade union. If it is poorly-enforced at times, that is certainly a shame. The solution, however, is not to throw the baby out with the bath water. As an aside, the “freedom” celebrated in right-to-work states is, among other things, the freedom to pay workers less and to subject them to lower safety and health standards.

As for # 2, let’s apply this logic to the subject of private property rights: the government enforces private property rights and backs them. This is not freedom but imposed regulation for the rich few at the expense of the many (Sounds socialistic to me!).

Dr. Azarvan blames materialism for all things--pollution, divorce, etc.

A note to all readers: whenever a critic employs terms like all or completely in reference to another’s views, a straw man argument is likely being used.

…he never takes on the issue of how the market can be used for a Good end--or as another Fr says, a Christian end.

I was asked to address the downsides of a market economy. Moreover, the fact that I sympathize with social democracy implies that I do not see the market as thoroughly evil. Again, this point will be lost on those who see all socialisms as indistinguishable from one another.

His argument is full of non-sequiturs. One example: it does not follow that the market is completely about self-interest, and that this self-interest is Randian.

Another unfortunate misrepresentation. To say that the market encourages self-interested behavior is not to say that it is completely about self-interest. Further, I have never depicted all conservatives as “Randian” in their outlook.

Furthermore, if he really believes that Rand's Nietzschean Will Capitalism equals Smith's understanding of the market, he errs greatly.

Very true. It must be pointed out, however, that I never expressed such a belief.

His view is a practical one not a philosophical one. His understanding is one where science trumps political thought.

Let’s place our discussion in its proper context. I was invited to speak on the Illumined Heart in part because I brought to Kevin Allen’s attention certain inaccuracies in Chris Banescu’s treatment of “democratic-socialist” countries. To briefly summarize, Banescu claims that more capitalistic countries enjoy higher living standards. Now, the question that any honest person should ask himself (regardless of his ideological predispositions) is this: how do I test this empirical claim? Should one rely on the observations of a few people (even if they support his pre-conceived ideas)? Or, should one give greater weight to the findings of scientific studies? Without placing a Dawkins-esque faith in science, I personally opt for the latter. Particularly when these studies are controlled and involve larger samples, I see no better, earthly means to evaluate claims about the empirical world. From this epistemological position, therefore, I can but flatly disagree with Banescu, given the evidence that I cited.

Furthermore, one can go too far in divorcing the philosophical from the practical. Most, if not all philosophies involve assumptions about the empirical world. If we discover that some of these assumptions are invalid, is there any virtue in adhering to this philosophy (at least without modifying it)? If your “philosophy” rests on empirically false claims, then you are following an inferior philosophy.

The more serious problems with his thought is that it violates the golden rule for he wants the government to take from those who have talent and give to those who do not, even if they have no desire to develop their talents.

I have already addressed such elitist arguments in my blog, as well as on the Illumined Heart. All I wish to add, here, is that this statement truly reflects the seemingly willful ignorance many conservatives have of those to whom wealth is redistributed. That they are regarded so contemptuously as talentless, or unwilling to develop their talents, is nothing short of tragic.

An aside: There is no command in the Bible for the State to care for the poor. That charge goes to the Church and individuals.

I agree. Yet once again, I have expressed nothing to the contrary. Moreover, as far as the state is concerned, we should remember that the Bible was written well before the modern era, and is thus no more a manual on economic justice than it is a scientific textbook. I defend my views on economic justice not on specific passages related to charity (including the parable of Lazarus and the rich man), but on teachings that have much broader applications. For instance, in regards to Christ’s injunction to do unto others what we would have them do unto us, I encourage everyone to imagine being amongst the working poor in this country. And I wager that many, after having performed this mental exercise, would desire an economic system that is fairer than what we currently have.

Reflections on my Discussion with Kevin Allen and Fr. John

I, along with Fr. John Whiteford, was recently a guest on Ancient Faith Radio’s Illumined Heart podcast. The episode revisited the subject of capitalism’s compatibility with Eastern Orthodoxy (click here for the essay which prompted the invitation to appear on the show). In this short essay, I share some reflections on what was a very lively discussion. As one who is sympathetic to social democracy, I knew that I would regularly be at odds with Fr. John, a conservative. I must confess that I almost wish Fr. John was less pleasant than he is, since it would be much easier to continue disagreeing with him, as I do below.

Poverty

Obesity

Fr. John argued that the problem of poverty in the U.S. is not as severe as the Left suggests, and he points to America’s obesity rate as evidence. Rising obesity, it is assumed, necessarily means that people have more money to increase their food consumption. However, obesity does not merely indicate the quantity of food that is consumed, but also its quality. While conservatives often over-emphasize individual choices in explaining poor diets (and, to be fair, many on the Left are vulnerable to the charge of overstating structural factors), the reality is that the quality of one’s diet is significantly determined by income (along with genetics and other factors). As one writer put it, “…when a head of broccoli costs three times as much as a McDonald’s double cheeseburger, the whole notion of consumer ‘choice’ becomes suspect.” It is, therefore, no coincidence that the urban poor are disproportionately represented among the obese in our country.

Quantifying the Working Poor

After citing a statistic on the number of Americans from working class families who were living in poverty, I was asked whether that figure included the number of illegal immigrants. Even at present, I’m still not quite sure (I’ve yet to receive a response from the Working Poor Families Project, which furnished the data). Yet I’m also unsure as to whether that even matters. Working poor is working poor - “alien” or otherwise. If illegal immigration were as economically burdensome as many claim, then the government should do more than pay lip service to the need to protect our borders, as well as to punish those businesses whose willingness to recruit undocumented workers incentivizes those living across our borders to enter our country illegally.

Even if we exclude illegal immigrants from this estimate (as if sub-living wages for them are somehow more acceptable), the number would still be intolerably high. Yet as far as I’m concerned, even if one persuasively argues to the contrary, he would actually be undermining the conservative perspective. After all, the smaller this figure becomes, the more difficult it is to convincingly argue that mitigating this problem is impractical. It would do more to support my case if one were to discover that the true number of impoverished Americans from working class families is 22 thousand, rather than 22 million.

Alternative Explanations

I sampled recent scholarly research on the positive effects of social democracy on several measures of subjective and objective well-being. However, at least three factors were offered to downplay social democracy’s role in enhancing living standards. I address each of these below.

Oil and Inequality

Using the Gini coefficient as a gauge, I presented solid evidence that social democratic welfare countries (SDWCs) produce lower levels of inequality than do the more capitalistic ones. In response, it was countered that Norway’s large oil revenues (and not its welfare system) explain its lower GINI score. The obvious rebuttal, however, is that oil fails to explain the much lower Gini scores in Denmark (24.7), Sweden (25), France (32.7), to name but three countries whose welfare spending is often targeted for criticism.

Population

According to the familiar population argument, the U.S. can’t be compared with SDWCs because the latter are much smaller in population, and thus have fewer people on whom to spend welfare (let’s ignore, for the sake of argument, that conservatives are often eager to embrace findings from comparative research that support their conclusions). One basic flaw in this argument is that it focuses on the total number of welfare recipients, rather than their share of the total population. Let’s say, hypothetically, that the number of welfare recipients in the U.S. is 30 million. Moreover, let’s assume for simplicity’s sake that they, themselves, don’t contribute - even in the smallest of ways - to America’s welfare apparatus. In one sense, 30 million is a large number (it’s roughly the size of Afghanistan). In a country like France, where an impoverished population of 30 million would constitute almost half of its total population, it doesn’t appear remotely possible that an effective welfare state could be sustained. However, as a share of America’s population, that would amount to approximately 10%, which means that there would be a much larger 277 million people among whom the financial burden of sustaining the welfare system would be divided (I entertain no delusion that all would end up sharing the burden equally, of course).

Hence, we are left without a proper explanation as to why population should matter. We may discover that Norwegians consume more cheese than Americans (I have no data on cheese consumption, mind you), though we wouldn’t entertain the possibility that cheese consumption is responsible for their different levels of inequality. This is because there is no theory accounting for why cheese consumption should matter. It seems to me that, as an explanatory factor, population is more credible than cheese consumption mostly for superficial reasons – it is merely because population is an important correlate of many things that interest social scientists that some people take it seriously, even if they can’t explain why its related to welfare spending.

Finally, what exactly is the threshold beyond which a country’s population is “too large”? While having less than half of America’s population, Japan is still quite large compared to most other countries (with over 127 million people, it’s the world’s 10th largest country). Nevertheless, its Gini score (24.9) is among the world’s lowest. So, is 127 million the cut-off point?

Ethnic Heterogeneity

SDWCs are more egalitarian than the U.S., it was suggested, because they are more ethnically homogenous. This is the only argument I’ve heard that appears to have any empirical support. There is, indeed, evidence for the claim that heterogeneity and welfare spending are inversely related (although this argument is certainly not without its critics). But what does this really say? Does this mean that heterogeneity affects the capability of sustaining the welfare spending? Or, does it simply reflect ethnocentrism, whereby the majority ethnic group is unwilling to include minority groups among welfare recipients, as many claim (perhaps it is due to my ignorance that I consider this an open question)?

Trade Unions

By and large, workers have demonstrably benefited from trade union membership; here, again, empirical research is on my side. Moreover, survey evidence reveals that a majority of Americans have over the years supported trade unions. Yet in spite of unions’ proven benefits and democratic appeal, many conservatives insist that they are a force for evil, and often point to cases in which workers are coerced into joining them. But are we to generalize from what appear to be isolated (and perhaps exaggerated) cases of abuse, and simply ignore the evidence in favor of unions? We must understand that the argument is not whether trade unions are perfect (as I pointed out, so long as we remain fallible, our institutions will always be fallible). The argument is whether a system in which unions flourish is less imperfect than one in which they do not.

The Religious Criterion in Evaluating Welfare States

In response to the parallel I pointed out between the social democratic welfare and Byzantine states, it was remarked that (a) the Byzantine Empire was Christian, whereas SDWCs are not; and (b) that this distinction somehow matters. Here, I point out two basic problems with this argument.

First, far from devaluing social democracy, it implicitly provides justification for a specifically American version of it. The inference drawn from this distinction is that the welfare state is not viewed, in and of itself, as morally problematic. It becomes an evil when the society in which it is embedded no longer practices the Christian faith. But once we reconcile this idea with the belief that Christianity is alive and well in the U.S., a conclusion that ought to trouble conservatives seems to follow: the U.S. is an especially fitting place in which to establish a social democracy, given its continued attachment to the Christian faith.

Second, one’s freedom to pursue happiness is restricted once it is conditioned upon the religious beliefs and practices of his fellow citizens. To be sure, I could not consider myself a true Christian unless I genuinely wished that everyone embraced the Christian faith. However, as far as economic justice is concerned, I could care less about the religious climate of my society. Is the worker really to be told that he may not be paid a decent wage because his compatriots are no longer Christian?

More Americans are Pro-LIFE

It's about time!

Orthodoxy and Capitalism: Towards a More Balanced View

The following is a brief response to Dr. Banescu's discussion on capitalism and its compatibility with Orthodoxy in The Illumined Heart, a wonderful podcast on Ancient Faith Radio.

Impact of the Welfare State on Living Standards

Dr. Banescu claims that social democratic countries are associated with lower living standards. However, there is an abundance of empirical research that reveals the contrary. Below is a sampling of recent findings:

1.) Leftist political institutions reduce relative poverty (David Brady, 2003, “The Politics of Poverty,” Social Forces, Vol. 82).

2.) Social-Democratic welfare states prevent income poverty (Muffels & Fouarge 2004, “The Role of European Welfare States in Explaining Resources Deprivation,” Social Indicators Research, Vol. 68).

3.) Public entitlement programs reduce both relative and absolute poverty (Scruggs and Allan, 2006, “The Material Consequences of Welfare States,” Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 39).

4.) The welfare state enhances life satisfaction (Pacek & Radliff, 2008, “Assessing the Welfare State,” Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 6)

Capitalism and its Relationship to Theism

The U.S. is unique among advanced industrialized democracies both for its high degree of religiosity and its highly capitalistic economy. Dr. Banescu assumes that these unique qualities must be causally related. In other words, there is something inherent in capitalism that enhances or sustains the level of religiosity in a country. This may or may not be true, but it strikes me as a theoretically-undeveloped thesis (as a social scientist, I could never get away with arguing that two or more variables are causally related unless I could explain that relationship theoretically).

I saw no mention of alternative explanations, such as the following two (I quote these verbatim from U.S.A. Today, which reported on a recent AP-Ipsos poll):

1) “Many countries other than the United States have been through bloody religious conflict that contributes to their suspicion of giving clergy any say in policy.”

2.) “A long history of religious freedom in the United States created a greater supply of worship options than in other countries, and that proliferation inspired wider observance.”

The posited relationship between capitalism and theism reminds me of the inverse relationship between the latter and I.Q. (of which many atheists are so fond), and I find both to be spurious. On the contrary, I believe a case can be made for a relationship between capitalism, on the one hand, and secularization and immorality, on the other (please take this with a grain of salt, though, since I don’t have time to elaborate on this argument here).

Orthodoxy and Capitalism

If I remember correctly, Dr. Banescu argues that although the Byzantine Empire behaved in ways analogous to the modern welfare state, we mustn’t forget that it was also capitalistic. Yet this is less of an argument than it is a matter of grammatical preference. After all, one wishing to enhance social democracy’s appeal could simply argue in the reverse; that is, although the Byzantine appear was capitalistic, it also behaved in ways analogous to the modern welfare state. Indeed, Nikolas Gvosdev (Emperors and Elections: Reconciling the Orthodox Tradition with Modern Politics, Troitsa Books) notes “parallels between the principles espoused by the Byzantines with the operations of the modern welfare state” (p. 130). Gvosdev goes so far as to argue that there is “a tendency within Orthodox economic thought that lends support to socialism, based on conciliarism” (p. 128).

“Creating Value”: Dispelling the Nature Myth

Imagine yourself instantly transported to a plot of land dotted with apple trees. The fruit of this land is available to all who are willing to work for it. Suppose you expend the effort to pluck two apples from one of the trees. The enjoyment of those apples is the natural consequence of, or reward for, your labor. And if someone were to come along and take an apple or both against your will, he would rightly be accused of stealing. The proponent of laissez-faire capitalism likens this to the state of affairs in a “free” market economy. One’s wealth is imagined to be the direct, natural, result of his personal efforts alone. To the very last penny, one’s wealth is believed to measure the extent of his labor with the same precision that a thermometer gauges the temperature outside. Hence, to take any portion of that wealth (i.e., in the form of taxation) would be tantamount to stealing. This explains why, of the three possible ways “of creating and obtaining value”, Dr. Banescu places taxation in the same class as stealing.

However, wealth accumulation in a capitalist economy is quite different from picking apples. In reality, “wealth is not simply the result of an individual’s efforts, but exists within the context of a larger community which has supported and protected these efforts” (Gvosdev, p. 125). Further, the government (far from being the enemy of laissez-faire mythology) is the instrument through which these efforts are supported and protected. If government policy benefits the wealthy, and if wealth production is a collective effort, why should it not also benefit the working class? The individualism that pervades our culture encourages the myth that the rich C.E.O. arrived at his position on the basis of his personal efforts alone, as if workers are no more deserving of credit than a conveyor belt.

Why Even Nonbelievers should be Critical of “Religulous”: Part I (??)

I thought it necessary to share some brief comments on Bill Maher’s film “Religulous” a documentary intended to display the idiocy of religion. For me, this film is dangerous in the same sense that Fox News is dangerous. Both present a potent mix of entertainment, in order to capture and keep one’s attention, and misinformation. Unfortunately, I only have to time to address some of the more important issues Maher raises (I hope to write a follow-up in the near future).

Maher’s Conspicuous Bias
Maher concludes his film by calling for the de-religification (if Maher can create words, so can I!) of society. As I see it, once you go beyond ridiculing something that most Americans value and propose to make it extinct, you have a moral obligation to treat your opponents fairly (and the fact that this is “just” a comedic documentary doesn’t excuse Maher from this responsibility).

This leads me to Maher’s visit to the trucker’s chapel. Needless to say, this is not a likely place to find many Christians who are well instructed in their faith. The point is not to insult truckers, but to show that what Maher is doing is somewhat analogous to interviewing car mechanics about the laws of physics. True, they regularly apply physics concepts to their job. But are they expected to be capable of explaining them as physicists do? Why not interview the theologians, church historians and monastics who are in a better position to tell us how and why congregants of trucker’s chapels (and elsewhere) believe as they do.

Science and Religion
Neuroscience and Religion
During the interview with neuroscientist, Andrew Newberg, there were at least two occasions on which Maher represents Newberg’s study as constituting a threat to religion, although we’re not given a chance to hear Newberg’s response. We might have otherwise learned that Newberg does not regard the fact that we can detect brain movements that are linked to certain religious experiences as implying anything about the reality of those experiences. The following is a quote from Newberg’s website:

“Our research indicates that our only way of comprehending God, asking questions about God, and experiencing God is through the brain. But whether or not God exists ‘out there’ is something that neuroscience cannot answer. For example, if we take a brain image of a person when she is looking at a picture, we will see various parts of the brain being activated, such as the visual cortex. But the brain image cannot tell us whether or not there actually is a picture ‘out there’ or whether the person is creating the picture in her own mind. To a certain degree, we all create our own sense of reality. Getting at what is really real is the tricky part.”

Evolution
Not all Christians are creationists or biblical literalists. For example, the Roman Catholic Church has explicitly endorsed the theory of evolution. Maher seems to treat the Catholic astronomer’s assertion that the Bible shouldn’t be regarded as a scientific textbook as an embarrassing “admission”. Yet neither he nor Dawkins understands the different interpretive methods that non-Fundamentalists have traditionally employed. Most churches (including the Eastern Orthodox Church, to which I belong) do not insist that the Genesis account of creation be interpreted literally. The fundamentalism that Maher (and Dawkins) criticizes and equates with all of Christianity is, in reality, relatively new to the Christian scene.

Religion and Violence
To put it succinctly and bluntly, Maher’s (and Dawkin’s) reasoning is as follows: given all of the violence and intolerance committed in the name of Islam, Christianity is a bad religion. It’s like bombing Norway in retaliation for the Pearl Harbor attacks (or, to use a real-life example, bombing Iraq in response to the 9/11 attacks).

Faith
According to Maher, “faith makes a virtue out of not thinking.” No Christian instructed in his religion endorses this understanding of faith. Suppose some celebrity had recently confessed that he is gay, and the first place you find this reported is the National Enquirer. Assuming you know anything about this tabloid magazine, you’d likely take this story with a grain of salt. If, on the other hand, you see it reported on CNN (or whichever news source(s) you usually rely on), you’re more likely to take it at its word. Why is that, if not because you have some measure of faith (gasp!) in that news source? If we didn’t have such faith, we’d doubt most of everything there is to know, not just religion. After all, most of what we learn is not derived first-hand (and that’s more pathological than virtuous). As C.S. Lewis put it, "ninety-nine percent of the things you believe are believed on authority...A man who jibbed at authority in other things as some people do in religion would have to be content to know nothing all his life" (in Chapter 5 of Mere Christianity).

What many Christians take to be evidence for their faith isn’t given a fair hearing by many of the more militant nonbelievers, and this is because of their a priori rejection of anything supernatural. If, rather, you approach it with an open mind, you might come (as I have) to embrace the Christian faith. For the sake of argument, suppose that you do. In this case, there is no need to defend the truth of each and every teaching (e.g., the Virgin Birth) since you can logically infer its truth from the ultimate source (i.e., the teaching of the Church). In this regard, the Church’s teachings are a useful heuristic.

In short, the Christian is not thinking any less than he who accepts, on faith, the truth of what his favorite news source has reported. Sure, he might doubt the veracity of this and that story from time to time (hence, his faith is much weaker than the religious believer’s). However, this is only because he correctly understands that journalists are fallible human beings, whereas Christians believe that God is infallible (and doubting a God who you believe is inerrant is nothing less than irrational).

On President Obama's Inaugural Speech

Greta Christina, and I presume many other atheists, have taken umbrage at President Obama’s references to God in his inaugural speech. The following excerpt summarizes her position well:

"Do I need to point out how grotesquely inappropriate it is -- in a massive and public government ceremony, addressed both to and on behalf of a secular nation populated by people of many faiths and many people of no faith -- to assert that everything that happens comes from God and belongs to him? To assert that there's something wrong/ needing of forgiveness about "forgetting" God and claiming our achievements for ourselves? To not only invoke a prayer on behalf of the whole country, but to do so in a specific prayer that comes from his particular religious tradition, in the name of his particular god?"

To begin, I completely disagree that this is a secular nation. To be sure, we have (or are supposed to, at any rate) a secular government. Yet the majority of our nation remains religious and, in particular, Christian. And, given the custom to speak of populations in general terms, it is no more inappropriate to call America a Christian nation than it is to call, say, California a blue state. Both generalizations are true, even though there are plenty of non-Christians in our nation, just as there are plenty of Republicans in California.

Furthermore, although such non-believers regularly appeal to the separation of church and state, they either fail to understand what this principle really means, or consciously promote a distorted interpretation of it in order to advance their secularist agenda. According to the First Amendment, our government must make “no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Of course, there have been instances in which this principle has arguably been violated (erecting a monument listing the Ten Commandments on state property comes to mind). Yet Obama’s inaugural speech is not one of them, for this same amendment explicitly protects one’s right to freely exercise his or her religious beliefs, and nowhere in the Constitution does it deny this right to public servants. If, on their inauguration, new presidents were required to swear on the Bible or otherwise express fidelity to the Christian faith (or any religion, for that matter), then we would clearly have a case in which the separation of church and state has been violated. This is not the reality, however.

I understand that President Obama’s religious remarks might make non-Christians and unbelievers a bit uneasy. However, the solution is not to deprive him of his constitutional right to publicly express his religious beliefs (for a Christianity that cannot be lived out is no Christianity at all), but to put their T.V.s on mute until the religious talk has ceased.