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howwelldoyouknowyourmoon · 3 years ago

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Disciplining the Mind – North Korean style

Sun Myung Moon was in North Korea from 1946-1950.

Ron Paquette spoke to one of Moon’s sons about indoctrination: “And I said in many ways it reminds me sometimes of the communist camps, and at that point he said: ‘Yeah I know,’ he said, ‘and Father learned that when he was in prison camp,’ and I kept trying to make the point that no, no, the way we bring in people, and the way we control people is kind of like the way this goes on in North Korean prison camps, and he kept saying ‘I know.’” from “Reverend Sun Myung Moon: Emperor of the Universe” TV special (Ron Paquette speaks at 23 minutes)

Review: “When the history of North Korea is discussed, the focus is usually on the division of the peninsula, the installation of a pro-Soviet regime, and the application of communism. But Charles K. Armstrong went far beyond this approach in this work.

Armstrong went through several aspects of North Korean society, touching upon even art, to show how the government’s authority and ideology touched upon every aspect of daily life and every imaginable segment of society. To his credit, he highlights the communists’ significant overturning of traditional Korean classes, as the communists placed the peasantry on top.

A sound work free of political bias which examines what the North Koreans did between August 14, 1945 and June 25, 1950, in their attempt to revolutionize their half of the peninsula.”

The North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950 By Charles K. Armstrong

Series: Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University Paperback: 288 pages Publisher: Cornell University Press; 1 edition (February 19, 2004) ISBN-13: 978-0801489143

North Korea, despite a shattered economy and a populace suffering from widespread hunger, has outlived repeated forecasts of its imminent demise. Charles K. Armstrong contends that a major source of North Korea’s strength and resiliency, as well as of its flaws and shortcomings, lies in the poorly understood origins of its system of government. He examines the genesis of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) both as an important yet rarely studied example of a communist state and as part of modern Korean history.

North Korea is one of the last redoubts of “unreformed” Marxism-Leninism in the world. Yet it is not a Soviet satellite in the East European manner, nor is its government the result of a local revolution, as in Cuba and Vietnam. Instead, the DPRK represents a unique “indigenization” of Soviet Stalinism, Armstrong finds. The system that formed under the umbrella of the Soviet occupation quickly developed into a nationalist regime as programs initiated from above merged with distinctive local conditions. Armstrong’s account is based on long-classified documents captured by U.S. forces during the Korean War. This enormous archive of over 1.6 million pages provides unprecedented insight into the making of the Pyongyang regime and fuels the author’s argument that the North Korean state is likely to remain viable for some years to come.

pages 210-214

Disciplining the Mind In the North Korean surveillance regime, social discipline was ideally not something to be imposed by outside regulation and coercion. Discipline was to be internalized through self-examination and reform at the individual level, and “thought struggle“ leading to “thought uniﬁcation“ at the collective level, North Korean communism shared with its counterparts in China and Vietnam, as well as (with a different ideological content) prewar militarist Japan, a strong emphasis on drawing the wayward individual into political conformity through reeducation and reform rather than physical coercion and punishment. The most dramatic example of this was the public ritual of “‘self-criticism” (cha-a pi’p’an or chagi pip’an).

Originally a Soviet technique, self-criticism was used to a much greater degree by the North Koreans and Chinese, and became well-known in the West during the Korean War as part of communist “brainwashing.” It may be that in cultures deeply influenced by neo-Confucian notions of the innate goodness and spiritual malleability of human beings, all deviants are in theory capable of being reformed through self-reflection and reeducation. Self-criticism was the public expression of this reform, through which the genuinely repentant individual could be reintegrated into the community. Its quasi-religious nature has often been noted, although the public nature of self-criticism is much more like evangelical Protestant “testimony” than Catholic confession.

What the Korean communists called “thought unity“ (sasang t’ongi’l), or what the American observers in their characteristic fashion called “totally conditioned public opinion,” was a theme the state and every social organization in North Korea constantly stressed. This stress on ideological conformity derived not only from Soviet influences, but also was clearly resonant with the relentless “thought policing” of the late colonial period, albeit with a very different political content. The North Korean regime put enormous resources into propaganda, as we have seen in the previous chapter, both to encourage support for the regime as well as to uproot subversive ideas that might aid the Americans and the South Korea agents who were suspected behind every corner. Thought had to be free of all reactionary taint and politically pure. The undisciplined mind was a thing to be feared.

Disciplining the Body One final object of discipline stressed in the North Korean literature was the human body. Immediately Following the creation of the DPRK, there was a considerable emphasis on hygiene, sports, and physical purity. The individual had a duty to perfect his physical condition in order to strengthen the society and better serve the state. In particular, there was an emphasis on large, coordinated group sporting events, the precursors of the “mass games” that would in later years be a hallmark of North Korean entertainment for visiting foreign delegations. In North Korea of the 1940s, images abounded of parades of young athletes carrying flags, group calisthenics, and public drills celebrating holidays and events of all kinds. This too had a resonance not only with the Soviet Union and other communist societies, but also prewar Japan and, further aﬁeld, the mass-mobilizing states of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.

The extent to which society was portrayed as an organic unit to which the individual contributed his entire physical and spiritual being, in which “all hearts beat as one” (to use a later North Korean phrase) was probably closest to Imperial Japan. But, as John Dower has pointed out, the Japanese government chose to portray such a rigid image of national unity precisely because many feared that the masses did not share in the virtues the state espoused. The state seemed to be attempting to create a sense of unity and political cohesion in part through the active involvement of the individual in public, physical displays of bodily conformity. These would not be the “docile bodies” that Foucault refers to, but “active bodies” moving in choreographed unity, sports reflecting the indivisible purpose of the nation in all areas of politics, economics, and culture.

The well-trained individual body was a synecdoche of, and a prerequisite for, a well-functioning body politic. Both had to be disciplined, strong, and determined. The inaugural issue of Inmin ch’eyuk (People’s Physical Education) in February 1949 proclaimed that physical training “will help realize complete national uniﬁcation and democratic development.” Physical education was the “firm foundation” of the people’s economic development and the defense of the Fatherland. Although there were already more than 60,000 members of 11,208 athletic groups in the North, there was still a need to “permeate physical education more broadly among the people,” to replace the antiquated Japanese physical education system, and to educate all people in the workplace, farm, and school to become good comrades. Everywhere the nation was supposed to walk in step, both literally and figuratively.

Internalizing Security After the creation of the Democratic People’s Republic in 1948, the North Korean documents show an increasing concern with external dangers to the nation and social discipline appears increasingly militarized. Although references to “reactionary elements” and “national traitors” within North Korea diminishes, criticism of reaction and national betrayal is increasingly focused on South Korea and talk of “defending the Fatherland” ( chogukk powi ) escalates. At the same time, there is a move away from the negative elimination of “bad elements” to the positive creation of “thought unity” within the party and local People’s Committees and the spiritual and physical training of individuals, all linked in turn to the defense of and integration into the state that represents the “national subject,” the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. There is, in short, an unbroken continuum from the internal discipline of the individual to the external defense of the nation.

Local counties and villages were linked to the national security/military complex through the Self-Defense Units ( chawidae ), supervised by the Procurator’s Office, which was in turn part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Self-policing institutions were a common feature of traditional Korean villages, but it was the Japanese colonial authorities who first linked these organizations effectively to the centralized police forces and the state.86 The North Korean state also drew on this system of local self-defense, but the social hierarchy was reversed: rather than being headed by the village elders, held in respect due to their age and perhaps a modicum of Confucian education, the local Self-Defense Units were run by local peasants who were generally both poor and young. In the village of Tongmyon in South P’yong’an, for example, most of the twenty Self-Defense Unit members employed in the local police substation were in their early thirties, all were poor peasants, and two were women.87

The responsibilities of the Self-Defense Units were broad, including the dissemination of state policy (including foreign policy), protection against “infiltration of reactionary elements,” and security from fire and theft.88 At the first meeting of the Tongmyon Self-Defense Unit in October 1949, the members promised to “work for the benefit and productivity of the local people,” to “expose and smash reactionaries and puppets and their helpers,” and above all to “overcome all difficulties and discipline ( hullyonhada )” themselves “for obedience to the demands of the state.”89

86. Likewise, the Japanese in Taiwan made effective use of the traditional Chinese baojia neighbohood family system of local security. See Chen, “Police and Community Control Systems,” 226.

87. RG 242, SA 2005, 4/36. “Personal History of Each Village Guard,” Tongmyon Police Sub-Station, 1949 (“top secret”)

88. RG 242, SA 2009, 8/58. Poster on responsibility and mission of Self-Defense Units, belonging to Cell Section, Kangwon Provincial Public Procurator’s Office, 4 November 1947.

89. RG 242, SA 2005, 4/36. “Record of the First Meeting of the Self-Defense Unit,” Tongmyon Police Sub-Station, 12 October 1949.

90. RG 242 contains a “handbook” on self-criticism, a translation of a 1927 Soviet document, which states that “self-criticism [ chagi pip’an ] is a method of promoting revolutionary consciousness of party members, cadres, and ordinary working-class.” RG 242, SA 2009. 7/32. Propaganda Section Chinnamp’o Korean Communist Party Committee, May 1946. Party members also circulated translations of Chinese articles on “Thought Guidance” by Mao, Liu Shaoqi, Zhu De, and others, indicating the mix of both Soviet and Chinese influences in postliberation North Korea. See RG 242, SA 2009, 6/73.

91. Prewar Japanese tenko (conversion) of “thought criminals” used techniques quite similar to later North Korean and Chinese “reeducation” See Mitchell, Thought Control, 127-47. As mentioned earlier, many Korean communists had themselves been objects of tenko campaigns during the colonial period.

92. For a brief description of self-criticisim in North Korea see Schramm and Riley, “Communication in the Sovietized State.” 764.

93. State Department, North Korea, 91.

94. John W. Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon, 1986), 31. For an interpretation of North Korea as a ��corporatist” organic state, see Bruce Cummings, “Corporatism in North Korea,” Journal of Korean Studies 3 (1983): 269-94.

95. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1979), 135-169.

96. RG 242, SA 2008, 10/122 Inmin Ch’eyuk 1, no. 1 (February 1949): 1.

Moon: “… you must know the knack of holding and possessing the listeners’ hearts. If there appears a crack in the man’s personality, you wedge in a chisel, and split the person apart.”

United States Congressional investigation of Moon’s organization

Politics and religion interwoven

The Resurrection of Rev Moon

#Sun Myung Moon #North Korea

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ponderanew · 7 years ago

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Can Protestant atomization be overcome?

And should it be?

(This is a lightly edited version of an essay I wrote for a law school seminar on capitalism and democracy.)

Introduction

Protestantism, it has to be remembered, is only masked, momentarily, as a religion. What it is underneath, and enduringly, is a way of breaking things.

- Nick Land, The Atomization Trap, Jacobite Magazine

European political philosophy, from Hobbes to Mill, consists essentially of efforts to construct and justify new foundations for society in the destabilized wake of the Protestant Reformation. The Reformation did much more than dictate new church authorities and tweak a few doctrines pertaining to salvation: it swept away many (macro-scale) political entanglements with the institutional Catholic Church and introduced an entirely new (micro-scale) self-conception in relation to truth, first of the religious variety and later all others. The fundamental unit of Protestant society was no longer the fief, the parish, or the guild, but the atomized individual. It is this individual that almost all these European political thinkers begin with when trying to derive the characteristics of the good society from first principles.

An atomized individual is one who conceives of him- or herself as final authority on matters of conscience, ideology, association, or other relevant characteristics by which an individual can be distinguished from the surrounding society. To the extent an atomized individual submits to an outside authority with which he disagrees, he does so only externally and begrudgingly, as the result of an internal calculus that such submission is more tolerable than the consequences from not submitting. His thoughts are not initially taken captive to the obedience of any authority he does not choose, and the authorities from which he derives his own thoughts and ideological commitments are made by his continuing choice of and assent to those authorities, not by their intrinsic authoritativeness. Naturally, his associations are voluntary, with exit of some form or another always remaining an understandable (if not positively sanctioned) option. His rallying cry is Luther’s (probably apocryphal) “Here I stand: I can do no other.”

Armed with his own Bible, telescope, rational mind, or empirical senses in turn, the Reformation man gave way to the Enlightenment man, and on into Modernity, becoming more thoroughly atomized along the way. The Reformation method of changing society, what Tocqueville saw as the common method of Luther, Descartes, and Voltaire, flows from the basic presupposition of the primacy of private judgment. Luther did his part to unlatch society from Mother Church, Descartes from any sort of inherited dogmatism in religion, Voltaire from religion at all; it fell to the social thinkers of post-Reformation Europe to replace Christendom and its corresponding hierarchies with an entirely new foundation.

These thinkers were thus involved in answering a distinctly Protestant-flavored question: how do atomized individuals socially cohere? Their answers were concerned primarily with how societies produce and maintain liberty and equality for their citizens. The preeminent importance of liberty and equality appears obvious given the above definition of atomization: if man is atomized, then liberty (the independence of man from man) and equality (the non-domination of man by man) are fundamental to his nature. Social arrangements that render man in fact unfree or unequal are thus predicted to decohere; human beings will tend to settle into arrangements that more closely mirror the innate qualities that their natures predict.

We see these themes even in Thomas Hobbes, who seemed to value security more than continuing liberty or equality: the act of man in the state of nature to come together and create a sovereign has legitimacy precisely because man is free and equal. In other words, liberty and equality for Hobbes are the preconditions of meaningful political participation, although their ongoing role once a sovereign is established is less pressing for Hobbes. The central roles of liberty and equality become all the more explicit and thoroughgoing in John Locke and the American and French revolutionary political documents, which place the two values front and center in their blueprints for democratic governance. Democracy, as it approaches universal suffrage, increasingly guarantees formal liberty (subject to the general will, the tyranny of the majority, or what have you) and substantive equality. Adam Smith’s notion of the market society is founded on “natural liberty” and its consequent equal treatment of all in economic matters; capitalism is thus a system of substantive liberty and formal equality (with vastly unequal outcomes resulting from everyone’s equal entitlement to transact voluntarily). The promise of capitalist democracy is that it maintains the two societal virtues in a tense balance: when capitalism threatens equality too much, democracy reins it in; when the tyranny of the majority impedes liberty too much, the iron law of the market finds a way around the roadblock. In sum, both democracy and capitalism are aspects of the great answer to the question of how atomized individuals form a society; they presuppose, rather than prove, that man is of necessity atomized.

At this root Karl Marx struck. Ludwig Feuerbach, whose Essence of Christianity was itself a grand exposition of the distinctly Protestant character of atomized man, probably did not believe himself to be saying anything controversial when speaking of a human essence or human nature as a set of characteristics possessed by each individual. For his boringness, he became a punching bag for the animating idea of the most vigorous political movement of the 20th century. Marx’s counter-proposal was the first truly alternative anthropology to find purchase in the European consciousness after the Reformation. But Marx’s effect seems, in retrospect, to have been something more like a surface treatment than a true reorientation of man. The seductiveness of private judgment was not displaced by inculcation in revolutionary practice, and 20th-century left-leaning groups splintered off of each other in a pattern reminiscent of Christian denominations in the American South. Many of today’s states that still call themselves Communist have essentially market-based economic systems. This isn’t to say that history has settled the battle between individualist atomization and Communist collectivism, but to the extent Marx was correct about the reality and power of thought being its real claim to truth, atomization still seems to be winning.

Knowing all this, is de-atomization achievable at all, and if so how could it be done? Marx took a shot at the king, and the perception since 1989 has been that he narrowly missed. Nietzsche, as the intellectual godfather of the other influential 20th century collectivist movement, seems to have missed by a wider mark. It remains to be seen which shots not yet taken might land, but reviewing the history of internecine Protestant disputes—discussions of which troublemaking social facts needed addressing, which aspects of a society contributed to its resilience—can give us an idea of where the weak points might be. If Protestant atomization is the end of the history of anthropology, it is so because to decide, for yourself, knowing what it is, for or against it is to be complicit in it. Anti-atomization, as an ideology propounded by an individual, seeking the voluntary assent of his fellows, performatively presupposes atomization. The least atomized communities today are those that have successfully shut out accurate information about the rest of the world; the most effective way, and perhaps the only way, to escape atomization may be never to atomize in the first place (think North Korea).

Lasting de-atomization may be impossible, and avoiding the phenomenon in the first place has come with substantial costs. So the natural follow-on question is whether and why it might be desirable even to try to overcome atomization. Once again, the answer will draw on the history of internal debates about how to kludge together a social system on a foundation of atomized individuals, as well as Marx’s and Nietzsche’s external critiques of the most favored kludges. Slapping a moral valence on atomization as a general trend is easier said than done; you might as well ask whether “growth” or “dynamism” is good or bad. In all such cases, the answer is clearly that the goodness or badness of the abstract principle depends on the context. All we can do to provide a useful answer, not abstracted to the point of meaninglessness, is describe what we lose, and what we gain, when we unglue society and reconstitute it on an atomistic foundation. Burke provides a fond glimpse at the society we lost, Locke and Smith give us the dual cores of atomized society—democracy and capitalism, and Marx provides an internal critique of the system and a jumping-off point for the next would-be rebuilder of a collective social foundation. I will thus focus on these thinkers in exploring the relationship between atomization and social order.

Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek proposes a method of reading the major works of a canon subversively by situating their claims in light of a “minor text” from a disfavored or counter-hegemonic tradition. I propose to thus “short-circuit” the project of Protestant political philosophy by reading its claims in light of Nick Land’s brief essay “The Atomization Trap.” This reading identifies a rejected and disavowed premise that nevertheless explains the trajectory of the post-Reformation political philosophy canon: the sort of “human nature” that makes democracy and capitalism especially desirable is not the universal essence of humanity, but a distinctly Protestant phenomenon that is still progressively instantiating itself and has not finished eating its way through our organizational principles. This atomization premise implies that liberal capitalist democracy is not, in its current form, the end of history. If human nature were stable, there might be a means of making permanent a system of political legitimization, built upon features like those of democracy and capitalism. But progressive atomization destroys the bare possibility of stable rules for political legitimization. Even if atomization has an endpoint, we aren’t there yet; capitalism and democracy will have to evolve or else be cast off as mere inherited dogmas by the ever-more-atomized man of the future.

I. Burke: Actually, Inherited Dogmas are Good

Edmund Burke stands in a contrast to his contemporaries that becomes much more starkly apparent in light of the atomization premise. Burke’s history-first pragmatism always stuck out from the theory-driven approaches of his contemporaries, but his support for the American Revolution and opposition to the French allows a cursory reader to lump him in with the faction, internal to the Protestant project, that favored Locke’s take on natural rights over Rousseau’s theory of the general will. But a closer reading of Burke reveals him not as a conservative Protestant, but as a crypto-Catholic, in anthropology if not religion.

Burke’s basically Catholic outlook is apparent in his objections to the French Revolution and his theory of political inheritance. Burke’s appeal to sentiment in his description of the end of chivalry in favor of the age of “sophisters, economists, and calculators” is characteristic of his general approach. Chivalry is an exemplary institution of the sort that an organically integrated (i.e. non-atomized) society generates: it establishes particular modes of ritualistic behavior between persons of different rank, especially across gender lines, and by doing so simultaneously entrenches the underlying class and gender stratification of power in the society and (according to Burke) makes the lower-ranked members of that society happier with their lot, since the classification binds the nobles and knights along with them and tempers the force of the exercise of raw power by its normative strictures. Such an institution could sate the inherent human desire for recognition by means of a “pleasing illusion” rather than by tampering with the class ranks on which the social order was built.

The state of flux of the rest of French society, beyond the basic political liberty that the French Revolution achieved, was Burke’s ground for refusing to congratulate the French on their achievement. Burke’s analogy of social order to an entailed inheritance implies that conditions are attached to its transfer to each successive generation, and that these conditions require perpetuating certain norms of the prior generation’s social order. The English fee tail entrenched male primogeniture norms (and particular aristocratic families) by binding real property to their continuance; Burke sees the perpetuation of social order in much the same way, as contingent on the continuation of hierarchical social norms and strictures. His litany of institutions and societal qualities enjoyed by the Kingdom of France and lost or degraded by the Revolution—“laws overturned; tribunals subverted; industry without vigour; commerce expiring; the revenue unpaid, yet the people impoverished; a church pillaged, and a state not relieved,” etc.—serves to illustrate the problem inherent in trying to convey social order without complying with the entailment.

Hobbes’ fear of instability is the nearest analogue within the Protestant canon to Burke’s anti-French Revolution sentiment, but Burke is clear that his objection lies elsewhere: not merely against the political act of rebellion against a monarch, but against the entire worldview animating the revolutionary project in France. Hobbes’ argument against a right of revolution depends on the atomistic individual owing it to himself to obey the sovereign that he or his countrymen chose, since consent to the principle of popular sovereignty and majority rule in the initial act of choosing a sovereign is consent to the sovereign that the process produces. Atomized man could (and for Hobbes, must) thus consent to the given sovereign despite his private objections to certain sovereign prerogatives or policy choices. But Burke could care less about what sort of political order human nature is said to predict.

Burke’s objection to the Revolution is more basic: reconstituting society by theorizing about human nature in the abstract and upsetting every institution not derivable from first principles is an inhuman, disembodied endeavor. Human societies, Burke claims, have historically developed organically by trial and error, not according to an ideological plan. They function as a complex ecosystem, with intermediating institutions such as the nobility and clergy, between the sovereign and the individual. These institutions temper and obscure the workings of power on the populace, making the subjection, inequality, and social immobility endemic in old-model societies more tolerable, as part of a unified whole with its own richness and grandness. (You might be a tenant farmer, slaving away in your lord’s fields to produce your quit-rent wheat, but your fealty is unimpeachable, and besides, the last will be first in the kingdom of heaven.) The revolutionaries’ project—to strip these intermediating institutions of their power, deposit whatever power remains in the assembly, and hope the society continues to hum along as it did before but with some fundamental inequities rectified—is therefore a pipe dream. There are simply too many variables to control for when trying to replace an entire social order with one derived from first principles.

Burke’s different perspective on the American Revolution is therefore more a function of the circumstantial prudence of the Americans than their ideological differences with the French. The American Revolution lacked many of the society-disrupting characteristics Burke would later lament in reflecting on the French Revolution. Burke notes that the Americans, as a distinctly Protestant (and dissenting-Protestant at that) people, had an intrinsic attachment to English-style liberty and self-governance; moreover, before the Revolution they had lived out this internal impulse by forming popular governments, subservient to the crown, within many of the colonies. A change in allegiance from the crown to their own government, set up according to many of the principles already existing in the colonial governments, was therefore much less drastic a shift than the French abolition of the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the entire feudal system of obligations and privileges, as well as the disestablishment of the Church. Moreover, according to Burke, the colonists’ idea of liberty was more consistent with the English tradition, theoretically passed down as part of the “entailed inheritance” of English political order, than were the efforts of England to bring her colonies to heel. Such a revolution is fairly describable as a restoration of old principles, freshly adapted for a liberty-craving populace. Not so the French Revolution: there is no indication that the positive radical liberalism, rather than mere grievances with feudalism, of the assemblies was shared by the common man.

The different growing pains that the French and American republics experienced are traceable to the different suitedness of the government systems for governing the people of each republic, as they existed at the time of the revolutions. As a predominantly dissenting-Protestant group, and as a colonial society, the Americans were much more zealous for and experienced in self-government by the time of the Revolution. The French citizenry was largely Catholic and subject to feudal social arrangements; the elite lawyers who represented them in the Assembly, and whose ideas of human nature reshaped the state, were often not. Recriminations, executions, and a few more iterations of the republic were to follow in France. But America’s chief issue was less inexperience than internal division between the two sorts of freedom-loving Protestants Burke mentions: the southern slaveholders and the northern post-Puritans.

Burke’s perspective on atomization is complicated; he is no raging ideologue for or against it. He proposes that mashing a not-yet-atomized social order together with a new political order that presupposes atomization is a dangerous game. But when the people are already atomized, being the sorts of Protestants that are “most adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion,” self-government that presupposes atomized man might work out just fine. So Burke cannot really be read to endorse either the individual or collective conception of human nature; he simply endorses individualist government for individualist man, collectivist government for collectivist man, and gradual transitions of government as the population individualizes. But his rosy depictions of feudal France give a helpful account of the sorts of virtues that a pre-atomization society is uniquely suited to incubate.

The problem with trying to retain a social structure that can incubate the virtues of chivalry and mutual respect between feudal classes is the system’s vulnerability to headstrong atomizers, which the history of the French Revolution illustrates. Burke seems to see the writing on the wall for the remaining pre-atomization societies in Europe as he chides the French for ruining the noble and mutually trusting exercise of sovereign power for all other insufficiently liberal states. Notably lacking in Burke is any indication that France should try to regain the virtues she has lost. Such a project would presumably be impossible, since once the pleasing illusions of feudal power have been stripped away, all there is is the bare exercise of political power motivated by atomistic ideology; reinstalling the illusions cannot fool anyone. The Revolution made the king and nobles into mere men, who died like any other; with them died the mystique of royalty and the comforting feudal structure according only to which power could legitimately be exercised. If government is to be rational, and rationality is to be judged by private judgment, then anything that can be judged to be in the public interest is doable, and nothing is beyond the reach of the State. And this sea change in the relationship of sovereignty to the individual, once accomplished, is irrevocable. A power that has shown itself willing to cast off all its limits once cannot be trusted to stay within them in the future.

II. Locke and Smith: How to Save Liberty and Equality From Each Other

Liberal, rational government has as its basis only the self-sovereign, contracting individual, so the only real limits on power at any time are those that nearly everyone is convinced are important. This makes social cohesion risky, since the rules governing decision-making for the society are subject to change based on popular whim. The project of liberal political theorists is thus to show that each self-sovereign individual properly ought to agree to certain limits on power, based on some first principles that everyone in the society already agrees are valid. For Locke, these principles are religious: the notion of a natural law that governs man in the state of nature, with God as judge when no human judge is available, is crucial for Locke to establish that there are limits to the power of a state over an individual. Mill appeals to utilitarian ethics to fill much the same role in a later, more secular age. Both were doubtless aware that the true cause of governments’ confining their exercises of power to the proper sphere, defined by Locke’s natural-rights theory or Mill’s harm principle, was not the principle itself but the deterrent effect of the popularity of the principle.

Adam Smith’s project is similar in that he is aimed at convincing atomized society to adopt a set of norms that promotes social cohesion, but his norms are economic and deal with statecraft only secondarily. The laws of supply and demand may be essentially laws of nature, but the sort of person who is likely to think in terms of, and carry on economic activity in knowing accord with, the laws is atomized man, not the feudal peasant. (The peasant pays his tithe-wheat, not because he is at least indifferent about having the benefits of satisfying a religious duty rather than a tenth of his wheat, but because that’s what peasants do.) Capitalism produces social cohesion for several reasons. First, it requires minimal restrictions on buying and selling along with a strong property regime, decreasing the chance that the populace will grow weary under oppressive state restrictions on their ability to earn a living while increasing the initial value of the investments that the people feel secure making. Second, its convincing theoretical foundation makes whoever wields sovereign power in a society at any given time less likely to implement restrictions that hamstring its productive power. Third, it flatters the ego of atomized man, telling him he does good for society by seeking his own good, and thus encourages its own continuation among the common people.

Despite their advantages, both liberal, natural-rights-based governance and capitalism are vulnerable in certain ways. Liberalism, more than capitalism, is endangered when the populace stops believing in it, be that because of security exigencies, a new sweeping ideological fad, or simple demographic shift or a reaction thereto. (The recent rise in popularity of illiberal-right nationalist parties in Europe can perhaps be attributed to this sort of dissatisfaction with liberalism.) Modern secular man may consider Locke’s discussion of the source of natural rights mere superstition and either support the political recognition of his own favored set of human rights (data privacy, broadband Internet, etc.) or reject the idea that there are real limits on what a democratic sovereign may do to respond to emerging needs. He may do so at no cost to himself, as long as his opinions are not too esoteric, but may face social sanction if his expressed ideas are repugnant to his fellows. This process is often slow but can be sped by large-scale social crises.

The fact that one can, as we Americans do, write the rights down in a Constitution and laws slows the disintegration process of the liberal consensus but does not arrest it. Laws have to be interpreted by people at the time they are applied, and if the underlying concepts need to be adapted (in the view of the appliers) to new circumstances, they will be. Thus did liberty, a consensus rallying-cry of our Revolution, morph into “the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life,” one of the most divisive declarations of right in today’s climate.

So liberal democracy relies on social sanction to preserve its list of limitations on sovereign power, by which liberty is protected from the tyranny of the majority. Which particular liberties are protected may change, but the facts of democracy and limited government tend to persist. Capitalism’s productive power improves the material conditions of many members of society; those persons have a vested interest in its continuance and often derive extra political power from their economic power if they so choose. But when the sort of economic activity that robust market capitalism tends to promote leads to economic downturns, as happens with some regularity, democracy tends to react by restricting economic activity of various sorts. (Price controls as part of the New Deal, Dodd-Frank after the financial crisis, etc.) Rarely do such restrictions destroy or permanently hamper the power of capital in a society, but they do tend to sate the impulse of democracy to punish capital for its excesses. And capital inevitably increases its power despite the restrictions, by moving over to less regulated sectors of the economy, refusing to comply and paying the occasional fine, or some other workaround.

For its part, capitalism tends to secure liberal democracy against becoming illiberal. The interests of capitalists are aligned with those of the property-owning class throughout history, in favor of social stability rather than popular uprisings. Social stability comes in part from atomized man being content rather than being subjected to oppressive restrictions on liberty. Capital is thus unlikely to deploy its political power in support of internal changes that illiberalize society. (In recent years, capital has actively withdrawn economic benefits from U.S. states that have passed arguably illiberal laws, such as HB 2 in North Carolina.) This is not to say that capitalism tends to liberalize states that are already illiberal (Singapore comes to mind) but that the effect of capitalism is relative stability in whatever sort of political order a state already has.

So both democracy and capitalism are theoretically vulnerable to being abolished within a state by acts of popular sovereignty, but the two tend to reinforce one another. When a democratic society has higher economic liberty, the more-capable tend to outcompete the less-capable to a greater degree than when economic liberty is low (which is not to say that society approaches a pure meritocracy, just that the proportion of wealth attributable to merit increases). Inequality thus increases without any gentle, overarching social myth that justifies it; if you’re poor, the capitalist myth goes, it’s because you didn’t work hard enough, or you made bad choices. Democracy reacts to inequality by instituting redistributive systems: single-payer health care, Social Security, etc., which either restrict economic activity or appropriate the proceeds of it through taxes and fines. When democracy gets too far over its skis in an attempt to restrict or appropriate, capitalism finds a way to exploit the market inefficiencies created: whole cottage industries spring up to reduce the transaction costs created by new regulations, companies restructure compensation packages to exploit loopholes in the tax code, etc. And the relatively free movement of global capital means that no one democratic sovereign can hamstring it too much.

With this relationship between democracy and capitalism in mind, let us examine how successful Locke and Smith respectively are in their projects of building a lasting society on the foundation of atomized man. At first glance, Locke seems like a lost cause; he presupposes far too much in the way of detailed points of theology to be convincing to a modern, secular reader. But many of his conclusions are equally reachable by means of the implicit premises that seem to underlie much of contemporary liberal ideology. Smith’s empirical foundation still has its devotees, but his reliance on theology actually fares worse than Locke’s. Overall, the fact that both democracy and capitalism have survived as long as they have despite the falling out of fashion of many of their proponents’ premises implies that something in the nature of how atomization has proceeded up to this point, rather than external facts like particular theological doctrines, produces democracy and capitalism.

Locke finds the equality of man in his common creation by God, and his rights as set down in the natural law which is written on man’s conscience. We know that God made us free and equal by simply reasoning about our natural state, once antiquated concepts like the divine right of kings are shown by reasoning from the Scriptures to be false. God reinforces this rational judgment that all men by nature are free and equal by writing the natural law on our consciences, such that we feel that oppression is wrong. The natural law allows us to distinguish government from organized crime and valid claims to property from false ones. For Locke, all this is apparent simply from pondering the nature of things, in light of the Scriptures.

The finer points of Locke’s theology are no longer agreed by social consensus among historically majority-Protestant countries, but the basic thrust of his conclusion is still widely accepted. The notion of rights that inhere in each person equally by virtue of our humanity is still common, even if we no longer agree on what basis those rights exist. But this doesn’t get us all the way to a stable political order; we need some criteria for evaluating claims of right and deciding whether an asserted right the government is infringing is a real right such that the government foreswears its legitimacy by infringing it.

This lack of consensus on a method of evaluating claims of right threatens the Lockean project, but not terminally; as long as atomization remains, so do some self-evident rights. Some rights and liberties are inherent in the atomized self-conception; e.g., the right to one’s own opinions (and therefore freedom of religious belief if not necessarily practice) is necessary to exercise private judgment. Human equality is also inherent in the atomized self-conception; all of us have access to reason, so no one can dictate authoritatively what truth is, including ethical truth, for another; therefore no one has any authority over another’s actions not constructively consented to by the other. To the extent that society continues to be full of atomized individuals (and there is reason to suspect that it will), these rights will remain self-evident.

Other rights and liberties follow from the implicit premise of providential history, the sort of post-theistic Protestant worldview that uses phrases like “the wrong side of history” to condemn political stances with which it disagrees. This worldview is not inherent in the atomization process but is a strong corollary to it; the legitimacy of private judgment implies that many modes of being and living in the world, formerly repressed as improper on the basis of certain past superstitions or other theories now believed false, are just as honorable as the historically hegemonic modes. This worldview employs the atomization method to its conclusion—at least to whichever conclusions are fairly cognizable by the society at the time (it took four score and seven years for Americans to realize that “all men are created equal” meant regardless of race, and another 55 to realize “men” should be read there as the neuter noun for all of humanity). Since atomization tends to produce this worldview, it could become fixed in society to enough of a degree to form a sufficient social consensus of the limits of power.

Reading Locke subversively through the lens of atomization thus teaches us that it doesn’t really matter what the ground of rights is, as long as there continues to be sufficient social agreement on what it is. Since the atomized conception of the individual and the truths that it implies are the only continually self-evident truths in an atomized society, those are the liberties that everyone can agree the government exists to protect.

The most important liberty for the project of achieving social cohesion through liberal democratic capitalism is the right to appropriate and own property, and while Locke’s foundation for the property right is solidly provable all the way down to the nature of the atomized individual, he does not succeed in legitimizing any particular arrangement of property titles. Locke’s basic property argument is that every man owns his own labor, and therefore mixing one’s labor with material from the commons converts that commons-material into property, as long as the taken material is not wasted and as much and as good remains in the commons for others. This theory can explain how some property was created, but it provides no support for the current arrangement of property ownership, as there is no way to tell which parcels of land or chattels were taken from the commons in an original legitimate act and which were not. Locke argues that the use of money is a constructive consent for others to take more than they need from the commons, since the waste problem is solved, but the historical legitimacy problem remains: which titles descend from legitimate takings, where as much and as good was left for others, and which do not? Some takings were illegitimate when they occurred if the entire world is now parceled up. Other takings were accomplished by clear violations of the law of nature, as articulated by Locke. Should those be reversed as well?

One solution to the problem of property legitimacy is to deny the problem and hope that the democratic sovereign doesn’t get riled up over any morally questionable genre of property claims (e.g., the claims to much of the land formerly held by Native American tribes, or a resistance to paying reparations for slavery) enough to threaten the stability of a wide swath of property rights. In practice, this has worked out well, but there is no reason intrinsic to Lockean political theory why it must. It follows that, although the entitlement to property in general is provable from the atomization principle, and stable in a society where everyone can trace their property claims back to a legitimate taking from the commons, the particular arrangement of property titles that we have in any of today’s liberal democracies is not.

So the property-holder may have surety in the institution of property in general, but not in any title of his in particular, aside from that which he mixed his labor with in appropriating it from the commons. (Even property validly appropriated by another and transferred may be suspect, since the right to alienate property can be subject to limitations.) But perhaps it is too much to ask that the rightful owner of Blackacre be provable from historical facts and the nature of man, with no other premises involved. Maybe a little title risk is acceptable on the terms of liberal democracy—the risk can likely be mitigated through other means.

Capitalism and its market-society norms provide the residual risk-mitigation. Adam Smith’s vision of market society replaced the settled feudal order with atomized individuals entering into voluntary arrangements. Such arrangements allow people to acquire things they value more by trading away things they value less, so every rational trade increases the wealth of the nation. But every trade for goods presupposes clear title to the traded goods. So a society that wants to unlock the wealth-generative power of capitalism will generally develop clear rules to disperse clouds on title and statutes of limitation beyond which possession can be conclusively presumed to carry title. And since the political power of capital in capitalist states is high, these rules are insulated from change.

So if capitalism is stable, it can fill the property hole in the liberal-democracy puzzle. Unfortunately, capitalism is as vulnerable to a populace that ceases to believe in it as liberalism is. Smith’s account of the stability of capitalism relies on a sort of providential history quite different from that which now predominates in modern liberalism. For all of the economic benefits that the empirical analysis of capitalism suggests are present, Smith’s case for capitalism was as much psychological as based on a rational analysis of the material circumstances. For Smith, the ambition to accumulate, to gain the trappings of the slightly better to-do man in the street, encourages the sort of economic activity that makes everyone better off. His metaphor of the invisible hand, applied to figures such as the rich landlord who produces far more wheat than he can consume, refers to subconscious psychology, or perhaps divine providence, rather than a calculated decision to take advantage of economies of scale—otherwise the hand would not be invisible.

Smith concedes that it is hard to trust that markets will satisfy the needs of the populace as well as planned arrangements do. It does take a leap of faith, as a newly post-feudal ruler, to liberalize the wheat market and then cross your fingers that the farmers collectively produce neither too much wheat, such that they cannot recoup their costs and are ruined, nor too little, such that the poor cannot afford bread. Smith justifies this leap of faith by an appeal to divine providence, which was probably more convincing to his audience in 1776 than it is to many liberals today—few of whom believe that the same divine providence, which ensures the “right side of history” comports with the Good, also ensures that farmers don’t misjudge demand and glut the wheat market.

But all is not lost: we now have centuries of empirics on how well markets function to provide goods at marginally above the cost of production, and what we formerly used to trust in providence to produce, we now trust in our own scientific skills to predict. And the great thing about science is that it too is an implication of atomization: the ability of private judgment to interpret the world requires there to be an interpretable world out there. So capitalist market norms, armed with empirical data on poverty reduction and economic growth, can provide a practical stopgap where liberal theory doesn’t require that we continue to recognize all the property claims we currently do.

In sum, both Smith and Locke argue for their preferred systems of social order on religious grounds that have largely fallen out of fashion. The rousing success of their preferred systems despite the secularization of society suggests that the real ground of their systems is not some religious metaphysic that society no longer swears by, but the presupposition of human nature as atomized. Since the important elements of both liberal democracy and capitalism are reasonable conclusions from the presupposition that human nature is atomized, they are likely to continue until atomization either goes too far for them to continue to generate social cohesion or gives way to a new collectivism. I propose that only the former is reasonably possible—atomization is a one-way ratchet.

III. Marx: Against the Bourgeois Atomizers

If the story Burke tells is a cautionary tale about what happens when you atomize your sociopolitical relations, Marx’s story is a cautionary tale about atomizing your economic relations. But unlike Burke, who contented himself to be an outside critic of a quickly atomizing society not his own, Marx found himself in the unenviable position of trying to re-collectivize his already atomized society. His method of trying (and failing) to do so is instructive for our question of how atomization could perhaps be overcome.

Marx substitutes a Hegelian historical inevitability for Smith’s doctrine of providence and unsurprisingly comes out with the opposite answer as to the structure of the good society. This could be as much a result of the sort of capitalism each thinker was exposed to as anything else. Smith’s vision of capitalism in 1776 was a relatively rosy one, populated by newly post-feudal towns full of artisans and rural farmers newly working for themselves. Marx writes during and after Britain’s industrialization, where the much more efficient use of unskilled labor was in grimy city factories, which were often undercutting the small-time artisans of the towns and drawing them into the cities as well. The trajectory of the health and well-being of workers under capitalism between Smith and Marx was not promising. It is no wonder that Smith came out extolling the invisible hand while Marx emerged predicting that capitalism would collapse under the weight of its own contradictions.

Marx recognized that the atomized view of human nature was a perspectival ideology, emerging from a particular social and material context, not a universal truth. Marx viewed human nature, not as an “abstraction inherent in each single individual,” but as “the ensemble of the social relations.” Therefore, the whole edifice of liberal-democratic capitalism, designed as it was to feed atomized man’s inherent wants and needs, could be supplanted by an alternative system without running into any fundamental, human-nature-level disconnects between the populace and the set of relations that constitute communist society. Marx describes atomized man as “alienated,” in that he conceives of some things that are properly part of himself, most notably his labor power, as separate from himself, and able to be exchanged for commodities. Alienation for Marx is a spiritual loss with attendant social and psychological effects, and when accompanied by the material deprivation which capitalism necessarily inflicts on the worker, it makes the relation at the heart of capitalism—the exchange of labor for wages—fundamentally unsustainable.

Marx’s materialism and otherwise quirky metaphysics (derived from Hegel, who as far as Protestants go was a rather quirky one already) make his vocabulary difficult to translate into familiar concepts from the Protestant political philosophy canon. In addition, the fact that Marx operated under a fundamentally different conception of human nature than the liberals means his concepts do not translate very well. But Marx’s critique of capitalism, that the entitlement of capitalists to the surplus-value of the labor-power they buy ends up destroying social cohesion and makes a revolution inevitable, is essentially an argument that unbridled liberty destroys equality. But does it? Liberty and equality certainly threaten one another, but the balance of power seems to wax and wane rather than trend toward one value destroying the other in liberal, capitalist societies. If Protestant political theory had been getting human nature that wrong for 300 years, one would have expected a little more difference between how liberal capitalism worked in theory and in practice.

A possible answer is that neither Marx nor the liberals got human nature exactly right. Perhaps human nature is malleable with a change in social relations, per Marx, but atomization is a one-way ratchet, and once you’re atomized, your nature is well suited for liberal-democratic capitalism and not much else. The efforts of 20th-century regimes bearing the Communist appellation to create a post-atomized human nature, to create the “New Soviet Man” or other such fantasies, bear this out. What the failures of Soviet policy mean for the theory of communism is an open question, but the evidence on the possibility of de-atomization suggests that it’s hard to do, if not impossible.

* * *

Conclusion

The progress of Protestant political philosophy, from Hobbes to Mill, is best explicable by means of a progressive atomization premise. Man continually runs more and more inherited truth-claims under the lens of private judgment and splinters off into factions that in various measures accept or reject the old way. The only inviolable truth-claims are the ones underlying the process of private judgment itself, and those are inviolable only as long as the atomized man is not willing to abide logical contradictions in his thought.

I use “atomized man” as a stock phrase, but there is no reason atomization has to stop at isolating individual human beings from each other and from their social groupings. Perhaps the fundamental unit of the society of the future will be minds rather than mind-body complexes, and the norms of the inviolability of the body or respect for dead bodies will be dispensed with as so much old-fashioned sentiment, like prohibitions on blasphemy. The separation of a person’s gender identity from what have traditionally been called biological facts about sex may end up prefiguring this development in our atomization process. Perhaps the division will go further, and the fundamental unit will be the will rather than the intellect. That could get us to a place where people stop agreeing with the logical implications of private judgment while continuing to exercise it. The empirically useful categories, like logic, are less likely to become socially controversial than the merely traditional ones, but who knows. Perhaps this is the future that Nietzsche saw, and went mad.

Since both liberty and equality are validly derivable from the process of private judgment, as long as logic holds sway some types of equality-guaranteeing and liberty-guaranteeing social systems should remain valuable for social stability. This will likely involve some form of popular sovereignty and private ownership of the means of production, as these are tried-and-true pillars of relative social stability when combined. This phase may last a long time, or it might be rendered obsolete by developments in technology: superintelligent AI-based governance or hyper-efficient fully automated corporations. One can hope that technology renders our economy functionally post-scarcity before social cohesion stops being possible.

Outside of some exotically futuristic technological solution, or the grace of God, I do not know how atomization can be overcome. Surely through no merely human effort. Elective communities, even explicitly anti-atomization communities, simply reinforce the primacy of private judgment; their initial and continued existence is the result of a private judgment made by their members. The Communists tried revolution and the destruction of the atomizing class, but their revolutionaries had been atomized first. Our best hope may be to say some prayers, but not everyone can do that in good conscience.

I suggest we keep talking to one another. It won’t put off the end indefinitely, but it might help.

#protestant #catholic #political #political philosophy #locke #adam smith #marx #burke

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xtruss · 4 years ago

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Debunking 15 Myths About China

The USA harbours a love-hate relation with China dragon. The relation reflects distrust, fractiousness and tension coupled with watchful competitiveness.

— News Desk | July 21, 2020 | Globalvilliagespace.Com

China’s polity and society is shrouded in a cobweb of myths. Several countries with whom China has trade surplus suffer from an understanding deficit. China is, at once, feared and envied by many countries, the United States of America in the forefront. Its sheer size and population are awesome.

China’s economic progress has engendered apprehensions that it may overtake the USA and emerge as the new hegemon. The USA harbours a love-hate relation with China dragon. The relation reflects distrust, fractiousness and tension coupled with watchful competitiveness.

The USA looks upon China as a copycat out to obtain economic advantage for its state-owned enterprises through cyber-espionage. Cognitive dissonance in US-China relation is obvious. The USA likes China’s economic progress, as long as it suits American interests. But, it abhors China’s efforts to occupy more strategic space in the region around it, particularly the South China Sea.

China, too, wants to keep an eye on the USA. Its universities and think tanks teem with specialists on the USA, European Union and the rest of the world. There are 150 think tanks focusing on Australia alone.

Though India shares border with China, Chinese students have little interest in exploring Indian culture and history. The Chinese display an indifferent attitude, bordering ignorance about India. Let us mention a few of the myths about modern China heretofore.

Myth 1: China Has No Religion

During the 1920s, a Chinese intellectual Hu Shih proclaimed that China is a country without religion, and Chinese are a people who are not bound by religious superstition. Religion in China could never be eliminated.

It has however seen periods of tolerance and persecution. Qing dynasty built schools in place of temples, churches, shrines and spirit writing altars. The present government believes that secularism would rise pari passu with economic progress. Modern China since its establishment in 1949 has granted right to religious belief.

As such, China, now, has Buddhist association (since 1953), Protestant Church (1954) Islamic Association (1954), Daoist Association (1957), Catholic Patriotic Association (1957). Chinese are traditionally obsessed with survival, not eternity, or higher spiritual values. Chinese philosophy of Daoism, Confucianism, and legalism are mechanistic.

They are concerned with values as a means to an end. Pragmatism is the key attitude. Buddhism stands secularized to align gods with wealth and kitchen not spiritual alignment.

The Chinese society is in transition. Materialism now means faith in a bright future. Even spread of Christianity in both rural and urban areas is not tantamount to rejection of traditional values. During the Tang dynasty, Buddhism emerged as complement to, not repudiation material secularism.

Myth 2: Uyghur’s Persecution and Social Issues

The Uyghurs, alternately Uygurs, Uighurs or Uigurs, are a minority Turkic ethnic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the general region of Central and East Asia. The Uyghurs are recognized as native to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China.

The Uighurs are the people whom Old Russian travellers called Sart (a name which they used for sedentary, Turkish-speaking Central Asians in general), while Western travelers called them Turki, in recognition of their language.

The Uighurs are the people who old Russian travellers called Sart (a name which they used for sedentary, Turkish-speaking Central Asians in general), while Western travellers called them Turki, in recognition of their language.

They are mentioned in Chinese records from the 3rd century. They first rose to prominence in the 8th century, when they established a kingdom along the Orhon River in what is now north-central Mongolia.

Insider dated December 24, 2019 reported that China has initiated a “Pair Up and Become Family” program to dilute Uyghur minority. Han Chinese men are sent to live with Uighur women in China’s western region of Xinjiang.

“Neither the girls nor their families can reject such a marriage because they will be viewed [by Chinese authorities] as Islamic extremists for not wanting to marry atheist Han Chinese. They have no choice but to marry them. It is alleged that the Han Chinese have been raping Uighur women in the name of marriage for years. China denies the allegation.

Be it observed that the Uighurs are not like Orthodox Muslims. Both the Pakistani and the Uighurs criticise each other. Andre Small (p.80, ibid.) states `Pakistan’s criticism of the Uighurs’ irreligiousness or fondness casts aspersions on their standing as Muslims’. It is said that `Turkistan separatists are supported by the United States or India in order to drive a wedge between China and Pakistan.

Chinese concept of Social evils differs from Pakistan’s. Divested of morality, an ordinary Chinese consider it just normal to give or take `body pleasure’ for money.

In Khanewal some Chinese engineers scuffled with police when it tried to prevent them from going to a `red-light area’. Recently some Chinese gangs have been busted at Faislalabad, Lahore and Rawalpindi for fake marriages with Pakistani girls including some underage and later exploiting them as sex slaves (Dawn, Tribune, etc. dated May 9, 2019). The police recovered illicit aphrodisiac `drugs’, `gold ornaments’, `dowry’, Chinese passports and weapons. It is generally believed that the arrests are just a tip of the iceberg.

In some Karachi areas, Chinese have rented congested adjacent housing units in various Karachi areas and turned them into `out of bound’ to Pakistanis. What they do there is anybody’s guess. Traditionally, Chinese prefer to develop and live in China towns wherever they go on the globe. In Pakistan, they have avoided doing so as what they eat (cats, dogs, monkey brains, insects) may sound revulsive and non-kosher.

Myth 3: Corruption Wlmost Eliminated

Xi Jinping began anti-corruption campaign immediately after becoming general secretary of Central Communist Party in November 2012.The government arrested 184 ‘tigers’ besides tens of thousands of `flies’ (lower-rank officials).

XI constantly admonished Chinese not to divide history into the history of the People’s Republic of China into a Maoist period and a reform period. The latter period is distinguished austere Maoism by slogan `to get rich is glorious’.

This slogan led to widespread corruption in bureaucracy. People had muffled resentment against corrupt bureaucracy. They hold CCP responsible for it.

XI instructed officials to remove their children from foreign universities. But, her own daughter, then an undergraduate student at Harvard did not come back. During 2005-2006, there were 62,500 Chinese students in foreign universities. By 2015-2016, their number rose to 3, 28,000.

Myth 4: Sino-US Relations are Stable

China is, at once, feared and envied by many countries, the United States of America in the forefront. Its sheer size and population is awesome. China’s economic progress has engendered apprehensions that it may overtake the USA and emerge as the new hegemon. The USA harbours a love-hate relation with China dragon. The relation reflects distrust, fractiousness and tension coupled with watchful competitiveness.

Myth 5: Chinese Loans are Predatory

The US has expressed its apprehensions about Chinese investment in Pakistan, Sri Lanka as elsewhere. For the US, the investments are a predatory debt trap that could lead to ‘asset seizures’ like Hambantota port of Sri Lanka.

The factual position is that Chinese infrastructure loans have not led to the forfeiture of a single valuable asset abroad. The US view is based on Rhodium Group study, which mentions only Hambantota port as the lone instance of seizure. The claim of forced lease or seizure is questionable. The Hambantota port lease, held jointly by the Hong Kong-based China Merchants Port and the Sri Lanka Ports Authority, was negotiated over 2016-2017.

Payments of the principal and interest for the port loans included only about 1.5 per cent of Sri Lanka’s external debt repayment obligations. The Sri Lanka Ports Authority promptly paid dues using revenues from Colombo port, which includes a container terminal run by China Merchants Port.

China holds an estimated nine to 15pc of Sri Lanka’s low-interest external debt. It owes high-interest loans to Western commercial banks. International sovereign bonds account for about half of the external debt, with Americans holding two-thirds of their value and Asians only about eight per cent.

Sri Lanka is liable to pay interest averaging 6.3 per cent on international sovereign bonds and the principal must be fully repaid in about seven years. In contrast, more than two-thirds of the value of Chinese state funds lent to Sri Lanka from 2001-2017 (including two-thirds of the Hambantota port loans) were at two per cent interest, and mostly repayable over 20 years.

Media reports about Sri Lanka’s government being forced to sign the port away on a 99-year lease after failing to repay Chinese loans at 6.3pc are untenable.

The Sri Lankan government still owns the Hambantota port and funds received for the lease were used to pay off expensive Western loans. There is no Chinese military base at Hambantota

Myth 6: China Wants to Colonise Pakistan

China never harboured any such ambition. History tells that China did its best to ensure protection of Pakistan’s sovereignty.

A strong Pakistan is a bulwark for China’s security as well. Andrew Small, in The China-Pakistan Axis (page 34) tells `In 1982, a C-130 Hercules transport aircraft belonging to the Pakistan military left Urumqi, capital of the North-Western Chinese province of Xinxiang, headed for Islamabad, carrying five lead-lined, stainless steel boxes, inside each were 10 single-kilogram ingots of highly enriched uranium, enough for two atomic’ bombs.

He adds, `China began supplying both M-11s and M-9s in unassembled form, which required development of a dedicated missile assembly facility near Rawalpindi’ (p. 40, ibid.).

There are marked differences between China and Pakistan that rule out Pakistan as a colony for China. China’s pragmatism as `religion’, now dollar-orientation, obedient labour force, enlightened leadership with a world vision, and hard work ethos is different from Pakistan’s.

Take water aspect alone.

Our lethargy marks a contrast with China’s history. There are more than 22,104 dams in China over the height of 15 m (49 ft.). Of the world’s total large dams, China accounts for 20 per cent of them, 45 percent for irrigation. The oldest dam in China Dujiangyan Irrigation System dates back to 256 BC.

In 2005, there were over 80,000 reservoirs in the country and over 4,800 dams completed or under construction that stands at or exceed 30 metre (98 ft) in height. As of 2007, China is also the world’s leader in the construction of large dams. The tallest dam in China is the Jinping-I Dam at 305 metre (1,001 ft), an arch dam, which is also the tallest dam in the world.

The largest reservoir is created by the Three Gorges Dam, which stores 39.3 billion m3 (31,900,000 acre feet) of water and has a surface area of 1,045 km2 (403 sq mi). Three Gorges is also the world’s largest power station.

In July 2020 Pakistan belatedly re-inaugurated Diamer-Bhasha Dam. No-one knows what became of funds collected for Kalabagh Dam.

China’s Marxist-social metamorphosis defies our religious moorings. China was able to bridge the stark differences that existed between rural and urban lifestyles. The hukou system was designed to prevent rural to urban migration.

Our banking sector has consumer orientation. The Chinese system with about 37 tiers has investment orientation. China `entertained’ foreign investors in every possible way. `In 2001, a count of the out-of wedlock children produced by Shenzhen’s working women and mistresses over two decades numbered 5,20,000…the sex industry is one of the few robust conduits of money backs to China’s impoverished areas (Ted C. Fishman, China Inc. 2003, p. 98). There are karaoke clubs to entertain burly foreign investors.

Aside from Tiananmen Square political protest, China has no tradition of industrial protests. `A fundamental problem with the Chinese working class is that it was disorganized and its protests were often leaderless (Alvin Y.So and Yin Wah Chu, The Global Rise of China, p.144).

The so-called unions just collected funds to organise birthday parties and recreational events. In November 1999, the government announced new rules for public gatherings regarding assemblies larger than 200 to obtain approval from local public-security authorities. Chinese leaders have a world vision Weltanschanschauung. Pakistani sand-dune `leaders’ have none.

Myth 7: Chinese to be Pakistan’s Second Language

The popularity of a language rises or falls pari passu with a country’s place in the comity of nations. Historically, English, French, Russian, Arabic and mandarin were the languages of imperialistic or conquering states.

Shifts in power triggered shifts in the status of languages. English continues to hold sway as it has dominated the commercial, scientific, commercial, scientific and technological fields.

Sir Syed understood the link between power and language. Britain and France insisted upon enforcing English and French in their colonies. During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi.

After the demolition of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the Germans began to take pride in speaking German at international forums. People follow language of the dominant power. In the subcontinent, the English language supplanted Persian, the language of the Moghuls. So much so, that that Persian is now archaic in South Asia.

Hong Kong’s effervescence for mandarin is due to the rise of China. When, around 2050, China displaces the USA as the world’s premier economy, English is likely to give way to mandarin as the world’s new lingua franca.

In Pakistan, Sindh set the trend. The NED Engineering University and many private school systems started teaching mandarin. The Technical Education and Vocational Training Authority, Punjab, offers free language courses for students of all ages. To attract, Chinese investment in our country, we should say Ni hao to Chinese language.

Myth 8: The 21st Century Will Be China’s, Not America’s

The fear is that China will surpass the USA within next 10 to 20 years. Cash-rich Beijing with over US$ 30 trillion in foreign capital-reserves will be increasingly uncompromising diplomatically. To entertain a rising Chinese middle class, the world would become more and more `Sinicised’.

The truth is that the Western view of China is a bit too alarmist. The world will have to compromise with China’s economic and cultural heft. The two world views can coexist. One is based on protection of individual self-interest, and the other is top-down Confucian patriarchy.

Yet, the diarchy may co-exist peacefully without a Manichian struggle of the ilk of good and evil, darkness and light. Be it observed, aside from hype China has so far been non-hegemonic at heart.

It has no desire to spin existing geo-politico-economic order out its axis. China will move on its peaceful trajectory for another thirty years. China is unlikely to replay misadventures of the Great Leap Forward’ and the `Cultural Revolution’ to re-shape the nation in Mao Zedong’s image.

The people are becoming more and more resentful against bureaucratic control, lethargy and even perceived corruption. On average over 150000 `public disorder events’ occur each year. Massive abuse of `eminent domain’ is conspicuous from compensating owners of seized lands at fire-scale prices.

Restructuring led to dislocation of workers. Internet is an outlet to fan concerns about government’s impartiality and favouritism. People are sick of fat-cat-like bureaucratic lifestyle.

Chinese ministry of state security has about 100,000 employees who employ sophisticated algorithms to monitor and censor sensitive online chats, and micro-blogs. Mao Zedong is still revered as `70 per cent positive and 30 per cent negative’.

Myth 9: Ascendancy of American-style Individualism

Chinese are becoming better off with a rising middle class and concomitant changes in cultural outlook. Yet, they are far off from American ethos of `life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness’.

The cultural wave is manifest from China’s role rock scene, loaded with a rebellious spirit, and bands like Hutong Fist, Tomahawks, Catcher in the Rye, Twisted machine, Queen Sea, Big Shark and Wild Children. Surely people have abandoned colorless conformity in favour of individualism.

Yet, the brutal truth is family life discourages individualism. `Pursuit of happiness’ is at best an adolescent fantasy. It is soon forsaken under stress of marriage mortgage, mother-in-law and motor-car ownership.

Parents teachers bosses never encourage defining oneself independent of society. The clan, not society is the primary productive unit of society. Ego gratification is not synonymous with individualism,. Success with societal acknowledgment is the norm, not solo flights.

Myth 10: Revolutionary Influence of Internet

China is a country in East Asia and is the world’s most populous country, with a population of around 1.428 billion in 2017. As of July 2016, 730,723,960 people (53.2% of the country’s total population) were internet users.

They are free to play violent computer games, indulge in free music-downloads access to boot-legged movies, and e-commerce. Too, gap between rulers and the ruled have been narrowing. Anonymous sentinels (Weibo, China’s Twitter clone) relay reports of corruption in real time.

Yet, internet is unlikely to upend people-to-government relationship. Internet chats do not crystallise into massive organised dissent. Pre-occupied with welfare of their families few would dare risking trouble with authorities. Very few people knew of dissident Liu Xiabo’s arrest, or his Noble Peace Prize.

Chinese cyberspace is like a walled crystal-globe. People can gaze through it over the world around but they can’t take part in violent agitation. The government cleverly uses cyberspace in advancing social harmony. It facilitates e-commerce platforms. They expand supply and improve quality of consumer goods available in lower-tier markets, down to the rural fringe.

Digital technology has improved Party’s responsiveness. There are over 50,000 net-police monitor-bulletin-boards which alert leadership about discussion on sensitive topics and unharmonious rumblings before they flare up into untoward incidents.

Myth 11: Chinese People are Akin to Europeans

Not so. Average Chinese values stability in family above individualism. There are no political or religious divides as in Europe: lackadaisical Italians versus industrious Germans, anti-institutional Protestants versus statist Catholic.

China displays differences in the north, dominated by bureaucratic state-owned enterprises and the south close to the sea, encumbered by governmental hierarchy. Generally, the Chinese have an identical world view.

As of November 2019, China’s population stands at 1.435 billion, the largest of any country in the world. According to the 2010 census, 91.51% of the population was Han Chinese, and 8.49% were minorities. China’s population growth rate is only 0.59%, ranking 159th in the world.

The major minority ethnic groups in China are Zhuang (16.9 million), Hui (10.5 million), Manchu (10.3 million), Uyghur (10 million), Miao (9.4 million), Yi (8.7 million), Tujia (8.3 million), Tibetan (6.2 million), Mongol (5.9 million), Dong (2.8 million), Buyei (2.8 million), and Yao (2.7 million), Bai (1.9 million). The identified 56 minorities remain outside Han cultural fold.

Myth 12: Inscrutable Chinese Consumer

Usually reticent, Chinese evince warmth once trust has been established. They are not complicated and display warmth and directness in everyday attitude. They are attracted to Western brands just as any other consumer.

Myth 13: China Growth Bubble is About to Burst

Beside COVID19 impact on economy, critics outline a host of challenges to Chinese growth model. They include rising inflation and commodity prices, wage increases inimical to low-cost manufacturing, bureaucratic hurdles to bold structural reforms, urban-rural income militating against social harmony, and an education system that squelches harmony. The fact is that resilient Chinese economy is not over-heating.

The economist noted that China’s accumulated investment in fixed assets is still low and real wages have been rising strongly, which should help boos consumption in the medium term.

Talk of popping bubbles is confined to high-end neighbourhoods in coastal capitals. Despite impact of the pandemic, Chinese economy is growing. The strategic agreement with Iran for supply of crude oil for 25 years secures China’s economic future.

China is emulating American experience in becoming an industrial powerhouse in the twentieth century. Formation of supplier-and-producer clusters is facilitates through cost-slashing in different regions now specializing in different sectors. The middle class has completed a successful production-consumption circle akin to the USA.

Myth 14: Burgeoning Poverty Due to Unbalanced Growth

China was able to bridge the stark differences that existed between rural and urban lifestyles. The hukou system was designed to prevent rural to urban migration. In China today, poverty refers mainly to the rural poor, as decades of economic growth have largely eradicated urban poverty. The dramatic progress in reducing poverty over the past three decades in China is well known.

According to the World Bank, more than 850 million Chinese people have been lifted out of extreme poverty. China’s poverty rate fell from 88 percent in 1981 to 0.7 percent in 2015, as measured by the percentage of people living on the equivalent of US$1.90 or less per day in 2011 purchasing price parity terms.

In 2017, China lifted 12.89 million rural people from poverty which put the poverty rate at 3.1 percent compared to its 4.5 percent the previous year. Around 500 million people, or 40 percent of the population within China, survive on $5.50 per day or less. Productivity has overpowered lack of innovation, creaky distribution networks, patchy tax collection, and even corruption.

Myth 15: China is Militarily Aggressive

China is accused of harbouring outlandish territorial claims in South China Sea, confronting Japan on the high seas and the Philippines. Over 1000 ballistic weapons aim at Taiwan.

Its annual defence spending has been increasing by 13 per cent since 1989. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) estimates the overall 2018 figure at $250 billion and the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) puts the number at $209 billion in 2017.

The US Department of Defense concludes that China’s 2018 defense budget likely exceeded $200 billion. In 2017, the magazine Popular Mechanics estimated that China’s annual military spending is greater than $200 billion, around 2% of the GDP.

But, be it noted that the U.S. spent $649 billion on its military to 2018, according to a report published in 2019 by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. That’s significantly more than China, second on the list of top military spenders.

Of course China is now making aircraft carriers and missiles with range over 900 kilometers. Still, China is nowhere near the USA in military capability. Nor does it have any ambition to invade other countries or challenge USA’s military supremacy in any way.

Temperamentally, Chinese shield themselves from danger (The Great Wall). But, they have no itch to wage a war. India unilaterally `annexed’ Chinese territory in her maps. China did nothing more than protesting verbally or sending emissaries to India for talks.

Distilling the Lesson

Though China wants to overcome present and future challenges, it has no manifesto detailing goals for the next two decades. The alarmist or envious view of a rising China engendered many myths. Once could however peek through XI Jinping’s pronouncements, or his predecessors, to sift his `benchmark vision’.

There are three benchmarks. In the first ten years, the goal was to provide adequate food and clothing to Chinese population (already achieved). In the second phase, the plan is to build a moderately-prosperous country by 20120 with a per capita gross Domestic Product of around US$ 13,000. The final phase, 2020 to 2050, envisions complete modernization of both rural and urban parts of China.

Since early 2013, XI has been talking about `fuqiang guojia’ (`rich, strong, powerful country’). To realise his dreams, he need to stay in power. Yet, his dream is threatened by emerging challenges to China’s stability and development.

The most potent challenge emanates from US machinations to destabilize China (tariff and trade war, religious concerns, BRI/CPEC concerns). True, there are social issues involving China’s unity, need for political reform in view of the Party’s long continuation in power and economic or political deterioration in the international environment.

— Mr. Amjed Jaaved is editor of the monthly magazine, The Consul. His contributions stand published in the leading dailies and magazines at home and abroad (Nepal. Bangladesh, et. al.). He is author of eight e-books including Terrorism, Jihad, Nukes and other Issues in Focus. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Global Village Space.

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septembersung · 7 years ago

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More Reasons to Reject the Reformation

I previously shared the link to Joe Heschmeyer’s great breakdown of St. Edmund Campion’s Ten Reasons, written in 1580 shortly before he was tried and executed by the Protestant English government for the “crime” of being a Catholic priest. This is my own list. It is only an outline, hopefully one that will put many of the quotes I’ve been sharing into context. Each of these topics could easily be (and in many cases actually is) its own library of books; this is a very brief rundown of these consequences, or fallout, from the principles, values, and premises embraced by the Reformation and subsequently entrenched in Western civilization. For more in-depth discussion of all these issues, and many others, see #500 reasons and counting.

1. Individualism

Individualism as a term has many uses, both general and technical within certain disciplines. Here I use it from a religious and philosophical standpoint, as in the summary given by the indispensable Catholic Encyclopedia: “The tendency to magnify individual liberty, as against external authority, and individual activity, as against associated activity.”

When the individual is seen as the primary unit of society; when the individual stands in judgment over all authority, whether religious, political, philosophical, ethical; when the individual’s preferences, feelings, ideas, judgment, and desires are seen as the primary and most inviolable guide, arbiter, and decision maker in all areas of life; then there is no, can be no, cohesion in religion or culture. This gives rise to fractured, amoral, hyperpluralistic societies with no way to resolve their differences, or indeed, to live in anything but uneasy tension. Individualism is at the heart of Protestant culture.

How did the Protestant revolt give rise to individualism? One of the clearest evolutions can be found in the issue of authority: It is Scripture alone that is the basis of Christianity, and the individual Christian is the sole authorized interpreter of Scripture. Luther, et al, replaced the universal interpretative and spiritual authority of the Catholic Church with the idea that every individual Christian is personally guided by the Holy Spirit to correctly interpret Scripture, because Scripture is “perfectly perspicacious.”

Individualism is the prerequisite for moral relativism, the great scourge of our civilization today.

“St. Francis de Sales taught and fought against an individualism that exalted the preferences of each person, as opposed to their obligations to their families, communities, and, most importantly, to almighty God. He emphasized the primary duty of obedience to God, shared by all of us as His sons and daughters, which not only gives cohesion and mission to individual lives but also provides an objective direction for all of society, so sorely needed in the subjectivism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and, to an even greater degree, that of the twenty-first century.“ [x]

2. Schism

Within the Catholic Church, Christianity is a cohesive whole, in large part for two reasons: it is universal across humanity, not subjugated to national, racial, or linguistic barriers (though this universality has been particularly challenged in modern times, we’re looking at the entirety of history); and, there is a competent final, highest authority - the Magisterium, the pope, himself and united with the college of bishops - which safeguards the faith: what it is, challenges to it, and how it should be understood and lived. In the Protestant schema, churches become nationalized, autonomous groups that may or may not agree with each other, and often don’t (this marked even the initial formation of Lutheranism, by Luther’s own admission and dramatically changed the European course of Protestantism).

As each individual, and group of individuals, interprets and defines Christianity for themselves, once the principle of splitting - of schism - is enshrined as acceptable, it becomes the norm: when one disagrees, one leaves. Thus Christianity becomes a collection of factions that can’t all agree on who is Christian, let alone what the central beliefs of the faith are, their importance, or how to practice them.

Schism has been celebrated by some Protestants - even in the early days of the “great divorce,” but especially in our own times - but this is hard to reconcile with Scripture, in which Christ and St. Paul pray and exhort the community to “be one,” united in doctrine and life, as united as the Son and the Father are united. Not to mention the principle of non-contradiction: everyone can’t be right. E.g.: either baptism is a symbol, or it actually regenerates a soul. If Christ is really the way, the truth, and the life, then those who are not in conformity with His truth are following Christ only imperfectly. This should be of grave concern to everyone genuinely eager for salvation, of self and others.

Scripture itself condemns schism as a method of “resolving” conflict, and it is flatly incompatible with Christ’s prayer that the church be one just as the Son and the Father are one.

3. Iconoclasm

The heritage of the Reformation, as a matter of historical record, is the destruction of priceless artifacts: churches, statues, paintings, and every kind of art was vandalized and destroyed wherever Protestants came to power. By rejecting out of hand the physical expressions of the faith, Christians were severed from the artistic, musical, and creative heritage of Christendom. From a “practical” standpoint, this was necessary: how else to make the new doctrines - rejecting sacramentality, the communion of saints - and so on, really understood? How else to truly destroy the old order, which permeated every aspect of life? If you want to destroy a culture, destroy where it lives.

But the horror of iconoclasm goes deeper in that it is the fruit of a worldview in which material things, created things - God-made and man-made - are dangerous, even evil. Rather than a first and sure prompting to point the awed and inquiring human mind to God, a symphony of symbolism, creation becomes an enemy and a snare, something to dominate, subjugate, and in some cases, eradicate. This is an impoverishment of the reality of creation, a death-blow to human beings’ innate religious sense and search for God, and at the bottom line, incompatible with an incarnate faith - with the faith of the Incarnation.

4. Disenchantment of the World

Other appropriate terms could be “demythologization” and “desacramentalization”. The latter is a literal term, as Protestants rejected in practice, if not at first wholly in words, the sacramental nature of the faith and the world. Sacramentality is the basis of Catholic life. Desacramentalization goes hand in hand with iconoclasm, which in religious art, destroys one of the bridges of prayer and reflection uniting our world with the spiritual world, us still struggling with the saints in heaven.

The rise of Protestantism, with its doctrines of total depravity (there is nothing good in man) and the radical sovereignty of God (denial of human free will, God’s will is absolute even over what is good and evil, e.g., if God said murder is good then it would be good), leant a massive helping hand to the notion of the “mechanistic universe” that began to dominate the generations after Luther. The unbridgeable gulf between God and man, which remains, for the Reformers and those who inherited their theology, even after a man is “saved” because is still corrupt and incapable of becoming holy, turned people from seeking sanctification - holiness - to what they could control: this world. Unfortunately, as people began to understand more about the laws that govern the universe, it was all too easy for the great thinkers of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment to begin to see the world as a mechanism, made by a distant God who stands outside it. No longer was creation a sacramental, imbued with the grace of God, a tangible canticle to Him. Now it was just a machine, and we, rather than good stewards of what is God’s, are the ruthless masters of the machine. (For more on this in an easily digestible format, try the quotes here.)

One way to discuss or sum up this issue is found in Erik von Kuenhelt-Leddihn’s book The Menace of the Herd, as in this excerpt. A taste, but I strongly encourage you to click over and read the whole set of paragraphs:

“The average man from the nonindustrial world (South Italian, American Indian, Arabian, Persian, Ruthene, Slovakian, etc.), is often unable to read or to write, yet he is self-sufficient and can be independent of the artificial forms of megalopolitan amusement because he can sing or produce poems, carve wood, paint or compose; he is able to invent new fairy tales, to weave, to stitch, or to play an instrument; he is often a good conversationalist and his humor has roots without being derived from half a dozen funny papers; as a peasant he has a deep organic connection with nature and as a craftsman he can be a true artist, using all his personality to create objects of art. The craftsmen of Ur, Shinar, Lagash or Babylon had undoubtedly greater satisfaction with their finished products than the workers in Henry Ford’s River Rouge plant — in spite of the fact that the Ford worker can read and write (in order to send telegrams and read ads). Yet the workers of Detroit contribute less to literature than the Old Karelians who in spite of their illiteracy produced the “Kalevala.” It is even highly probable that all the great European epics were composed by illiterates and only later on recorded.“

5. Politics & Secularism

The history of Protestantism is the history of the rise of the state, the nation, as we know it today. With the authority of the Catholic Church removed, there was a power vacuum. Luther, very early on, found that he needed an authority to enforce orthodoxy, since once doctrinal authority was removed everyone ran with whatever idea seemed best to them, and he, of course, wanted to enforce his ideas - and he turned to the princes, the local political powers. He could not control them, however, and while sometimes lamenting it, eventually gave over even in theory the “right” of the state to, essentially, be the pope: to decide with authority and execute judgment upon religion matters and the church. The modern oppression of the Church by the state we owe to Luther and his half-willing, half-bewildered, surrender of the authority of Christendom to the princes - who of course used their power for their own, worldly, ends. The history of the world since the Reformation has shown us that every time the Church is not a power in her own right, as her own institutional entity, the state has sought - and often succeed - to control and subjugate her.

6. Divorce of Faith and Reason

For Luther, reason was the “devil’s whore.” Faith had nothing to do with rationality and everything to do with saying the words “I believe.” Why is Christianity - why is belief in God at all - perceived as backwards, stupid, illogical, and irrational? Why is “faith” generally understood to be an emotional experience that probably had nothing to do with facts or real life? The “great divorce” of faith and reason began with Luther’s doctrines of total depravity and sola fide: asserting that man’s postlapsarian nature has nothing good left in it and can accomplish nothing but evil, and that faith is true faith only as it is experienced in the subjective realm of the heart. As Chesterton pointed out, Luther rejected not just medieval philosophy, put in service of understanding the faith, but the Aristotelian philosophical principles which it had “baptized” and built upon. The distrust of the empirical sciences, the disavowal in large part of metaphysics, went hand in hand with the individualistic “emancipation” of science: i.e., scientists felt themselves free to posit their own spiritual and philosophic ideas built out of their observations.

7. Hyperpluralism

Luther himself quickly realized that what was “plain and clear” to him in Scripture was not so to many, many others. He famously wrote that anyone who couldn’t read Scripture and come to the Lutheran conclusions was blind or ignorant. And yet once the authority of the Church as the guardian of the truth faith, the final arbiter in disputes, was overthrown, belief splintered immediately and has kept going every since, resulting in the thousands upon thousands of contradicting Protestant denominations today. “Religious freedom” and “tolerance” were first thought out and applied to the warring Protestant sects (with, depending on the geography in question, the Catholics in the melee too) - and that came only slowly, and with much prejudice. The concept of a society that could be unified by something other than a common philosophic, ethical, and worshipful understanding took off of necessity in this divided and antagonistic atmosphere. What could fill that void? The modern state, with a new center of life: the economic life, rather than the spiritual life. Read more.

To sum up: Modernism

These issues are not disparate or unrelated, even if they seem so at first. All combine and interrelate into one hefty problem. We can legitimately describe them as the tentacles of a single monstrous heresy: modernism. Pope Pius X gave the first thorough Catholic outline and condemnation of modernism in his watershed encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis. It’s a complex phenomenon that has evolved since 1907 when Pascendi was written, but its foundations are still subjectivism - and therefore moral relativism - and individualism (radical autonomy neglecting and/or denying natural law.) The Catholic encyclopedia offers this summary:

“(a) A spirit of complete emancipation, tending to weaken ecclesiastical authority; the emancipation of science, which must traverse every field of investigation without fear of conflict with the Church; the emancipation of the State, which should never be hampered by religious authority; the emancipation of the private conscience, whose inspirations must not be overridden by papal definitions or anathemas; the emancipation of the universal conscience, with which the Church should be ever in agreement; (b) A spirit of movement and change, with an inclination to a sweeping form of evolution such as abhors anything fixed and stationary; (c) A spirit of reconciliation among all men through the feelings of the heart. Many and varied also are the modernist dreams of an understanding between the different Christian religions, nay, even between religion and a species of atheism, and all on a basis of agreement that must be superior to mere doctrinal differences. [...] Manifold are the degrees and shades of modernist doctrine on the question of our relations with God. But no real modernist keeps the Catholic notions of dogma intact. [...] In this way then we may define modernism as ‘the critique of our supernatural knowledge according to the false postulates of contemporary philosophy.’“

The obvious question is: Can we really lay all these problems at the feet of the Reformation?

it is an oversimplification to say merely, “the Protestant Reformation caused all these things” - though that doesn’t mean there’s not truth to it. But it’s not wrong to identify the “genealogy” of ideas. Inasmuch as the Reformation, as a watershed of rapid, large-scale, radical cultural change, separates the medieval and modern world, we can trace much of our society back to its impetus and influence; this, so far, is not too controversial of a historical claim. The difference here lies in that I am discussing the negative fallout, and calling bad much of what modern society - including Protestantism - calls good. In fact, there is - to modern ears - a surprising amount of scholarship on just this thesis. But of course it has largely been written by Catholics, and therefore, ignored. Particularly, the worldview which makes Protestantism possible is a large part of the foundation from which all the above problems, in the form we know them, has sprung, beginning with the elevating of the individual judgment, will, and feelings over and against the community. I discussed this some previously here.

Take a look at how historian Brad S. Gregory describes the legacy of the Reformation in the introduction to his book The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society:

“In getting from the early sixteenth to the early twenty-first century, this study develops the claim from my first book that “incompatible, deeply held, concretely expressed religious convictions paved the way to a secular society.” As we shall see, the Reformation’s influence on the eventual secularization of society was complex, largely indirect, far from immediate, and profoundly unintended. [...] the basic idea is that we will misgauge the character of the Western world today - in both its extraordinary pluralism and its hegemonic institutions - unless we see that and how its differentiated branches are the progeny of the Reformation era, including those branches that might seem unrelated, such as metaphysical assumptions, ethical theories, and economic behaviors. Different progeny have different lineages and occupy different places in the family tree, with complex and diverse relationships to the middle Ages with which they share a common ancestry.”

The switch from a communal, spiritual, unified civilization where the Church was a visible, hierarchical institution to an individualized, secular, hyperpluralistic society with no separate religious power to seriously combat the power of the state, began with the Reformation and has continued until today.

Conclusion: The fractured, relativistic state of Western civilization today began with the rejection of Christendom, and the replacing of its worldview with subjectivism and radical autonomy. The anti-sacramental - not just un-sacramental, but anti-sacramental - worldview of Protestantism, which replaced the objective reality of the sacraments, the physical channels of God’s grace, with interior emotion and elevated the individual conscience to final judge and juror of all truth, both instigated destructive tendencies in Western civilization and let loose many brewing heresies and destructive tendencies that Christendom had held in check.

The point of #500reasons this month has been to learn more in depth about the social consequences of the Reformation, to share what I’ve learned, and hopefully to challenge the complacent, widely accepted notion - common among Catholics as well as Protestants - that the Reformation was generally speaking a good or benevolent thing that has improved society. There should be much, much more healthy and vigorous argument than there actually is about the philosophical, social, political, and economic consequences of the ideas unleashed in the 1500s, with serious attention given to the Catholic case. Unfortunately, there is also a widespread tendency among Protestants to celebrate as good and noble the exact consequences which Catholics, and some other Protestants, mutually recognize as the great tragedy of the Protestant revolt: the splitting of Christendom into mutually exclusive, fundamentally contradictory, squabbling sects.

Ultimately, all arguments about doctrine between Catholics and Protestants will be futile until the issue of first premises - especially the fundamental authority issue, expressed today in individualism and relativism - is addressed. We live in one world, which has one real nature, which we believe to be radically different things. If what I call good, you call evil, and what I call evil, you call good, there can be no understanding, let alone dialogue, not to mention unity or stability - not until we have first settled what is good, and what is not.

#500 reasons and counting #this post is not what i hoped it would be but there's only so much i can do #especially since i'm rotten at synthesis #that's why there's a million quotes in the tag

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mermaidsirennikita · 8 years ago

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thanks sm! about anne boleyn, i wanted to ask why historians always say that she was a calculating person, scheming her way to the top to become queen bc that's what she rly wanted to be, and how she knew how to handle the king and get him to do what she wanted. ppl also think that she made the reformation happen. that she is to be blamed for wolsey's fall. and i don't understand when ppl say that henry was passionately in love with her but i doubt it. i'm confused with her image.

Anne’s image has seesawed throughout history--for more of how she’s been perceived on a cultural level, I highly recommend Susan Bordo’s book--I think it’s The Creation of Anne Boleyn.

Anne was initially perceived in a general sense by Catholics as this whore who basically turned Henry away from Catherine of Aragon and by extension the Church. She was Black Nan, and that’s where a lot of the “scheming Anne” image stems from. It’s a holdover from that era. Protestants had a more favorable view of Anne, but she wouldn’t get her “mother of the English Reformation” rep until Elizabeth I took over and made some steps to rehabilitate her mother’s image.

I tend to feel like the postmodern, post-feminist Anne B that we see today on Tumblr is a combination of those two images. People project onto Anne--and God, a good bit of it, as much as I really appreciate Natalie Dormer’s Anne Boleyn, is thanks to that. People focus a ton on Anne’s “bad bitch” moments in The Tudors, but I think Natalie actually projected a much more complex woman who was insecure, anxious, and perhaps driven to some level of instability by her abusive husband. You can act as if the scene where Anne tells Cromwell that she’ll have him cropped at the neck is badass--but Natalie Dormer, I imagine, knew that was yet another desperate moment from a woman whose days were numbered, and who had much less power than Cromwell at that point.

The real Anne Boleyn may have wanted to be queen--I tend to feel like she didn’t set out to seduce Henry, but when his interest became obsessive she saw an opportunity. She was clever. But she wasn’t a Protestant heroine. She may very well have believed in the Reformation a real level where Henry did not. But like. Anne was not some hardcore Lutheran reformer princess. She was a woman caught up in a game controlled by a man, and she ultimately out of her depth. My perception of this Anne became solidified after I read Sarah Gristwood’s “Game of Queens”. She’s deeply sympathetic to Anne, but points out all the ways that Anne was a smart woman--but far from a trained politician.

Henry forced the English Reformation, and not because Anne pushed him to--but because that was the way out of his marriage to Catherine, and he had other advisers (male advisers) pushing for it. If he’d met another woman or really wanted out of his marriage for other reasons, if Cromwell had whispered in his ear then--yeah, it probably would have happened sooner or later. Was he in love with her? Well, I’m sure he thought he was at some point, but I err on the side of not believing that a person who ever truly loved someone could murder that someone in cold blood while also essentially disavowing their toddler. I think he loved what Anne represented, and there honestly is a classic midlife crisis to it all that people tend to overlook--men have always been, and still are, drawn to women who represent everything that their solid, middle-aged wives aren’t. And Anne also dangled the carrot of full sexual gratification, probably, for a long time. His desire for her was more about the son he thought she could give and lust than love. You don’t abuse someone you love because they stop being sexy. And as soon as Anne began to show her insecurities and slip up, Henry began to lose interest. Their marriage lasted like, three years. No way do I think he loved her.

Some misogynistic historians may present a romanticized, sexualized version of Anne--like Starkey, like Weir. But if you look at Eric Ives, Antonia Fraser, and more recently Gristwood and Bordo, I think you get a more level look at a woman who was incredibly human, and who has borne the weight of all of these feminist projections onto her combined with the misogyny of many male historians. It’s a weird combo that has given us Black Widow/Power Bitch Anne. I really hate it. She was a flawed, victimized woman who exhibited the capacity to love--and the capacity for cruelty. Like many other women.

#Anonymous

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godssea7-blog · 6 years ago

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“From the birth of popery … it is estimated by careful and credible historians that more than 50 millions of the human family have been slaughtered for the crime of heresy by popish persecutors ….”—John Dowling

After Otto the Great died in 973, his German Empire—which he patterned after Charlemagne’s and built with the moral and spiritual support of the Catholic Church—continued as Europe’s most formidable empire. After several generations, however, it decayed into a severely weakened and fragmented state.

During the 13th century, Europe entered the valley between the third and fourth resurrections of the Holy Roman Empire.

The demise of Otto’s Germanic kingdom created a power vacuum in Europe. Before long, some of Europe’s other royal houses began positioning themselves to replace the Ottonians as the power brokers of the Continent. Following the path that Charlemagne and Otto had taken before them, the first step they took in seeking to dominate Europe was to secure the support of Europe’s ultimate spiritual authority.

The seeds of the fourth resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire were sown in the 13th century, when the Habsburg family stepped up its cooperation with the Roman Catholic Church.

The Habsburgs

The Habsburg dynasty is ancient—so old that its origins are somewhat of a mystery. Early on, the Habsburgs seemed more concerned about the legacy of their own dynasty in Germany and Austria than about world dominion. But after the decline of the German Reich founded by Otto the Great, they began cooperating more with the Vatican, with the intention of resurrecting, yet again, the Holy Roman Empire.

In 1273, the Austrian king, Rudolf of Habsburg, was crowned king of the Romans by Pope Gregory x in Aachen, the seat of Charlemagne’s authority. In order to receive this recognition from the church, Rudolf had to renounce his imperial rights and his claims to territory in Italy, and to issue a promise to wage a crusade. Quid pro quo, the pope persuaded Alfonso xof Castile, a rival for the imperial throne, to recognize Rudolf. Thus, the relationship between the Habsburgs and the pope began.

Although Rudolf had been declared king of the Romans, the official title of emperor of the Holy Roman Empire was not bestowed on the Habsburg rulers for another couple of generations. In 1452, Frederick iv, king of Austria, was crowned Frederick iii, the “holy Roman emperor.” That title remained in the family until the dynasty officially ended in 1806.

The greatness of the Habsburg dynasty lies more in its duration than in its dynamic leaders. Yet it did produce at least two outstanding kings who reigned successively in the 16th century: Maximilian i (1493-1519) and Charles v (1519-1556). Both these kings drastically expanded the power and influence of the Habsburgs and, of course, the Roman Catholic Church.

Maximilian I

Maximilian laid the groundwork for an international empire encompassing most of Europe and Latin America. He did this by arranging two marriages with the Spanish houses of Castile and Aragon. In one marriage, Maximilian’s son Philip married Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. This union united Spain and its colonial possessions in the Americas with the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation.

Like many before him, Maximilian frequently allied with and fought for the pope. When Charles viii of France invaded Italy, Maximilian joined an alliance to drive him out. At one point he demonstrated his allegiance by turning down an offer to be made pope himself.

Encyclopedia Britannica concludes, “Great as Maximilian’s achievements were, they did not match his ambitions; he had hoped to unite all of Western Europe by reviving the empire of Charlemagne.” Though he personally failed at that task, it would continue to be pursued by his descendants.

Charles V

In 1520, Charles, the son of Philip and Joanna, was crowned as Roman Emperor Charles v. Philip died before Maximilian, so Charles ended up succeeding his grandfather. Like Charlemagne and Otto, Charles was crowned in Aachen.

Before his coronation, Charles was asked the traditional questions by the archbishop of Cologne: “Wilt thou hold and guard by all proper means the sacred faith as handed down to Catholic men? Wilt thou be the faithful shield and protector of the holy church and her servants? Wilt thou uphold and recover those rights of the realm and possessions of the empire which have been unlawfully usurped? … Wilt thou pay due submission to the Roman pontiff and the Holy Roman Church?” (emphasis added throughout).

To these questions, Charles responded, “I will.”

After his coronation, he conducted himself in accordance with the conviction that the emperor reigned supreme. He went on to become one of the greatest emperors in history.

At age 19, Charles became ruler over Spanish and German dominions, including Germany, Burgundy, Italy and Spain, along with sizable overseas possessions. His kingdom became known as “the empire on which the sun never sets.”

Ten years later, in 1530, Charles was officially crowned emperor in Rome by Pope Clement vii, after Charles’s armies defeated the pope’s in 1527. In his youth, Charles was taught by Adrian of Utrecht, who went on to become Pope Adrian vi.

During Charles’s reign, vast territories in Latin America were converted to Catholicism. This began before Charles ascended to the Spanish throne. Spanish and Portuguese explorers, encouraged by the Vatican, claimed new territory for their home nations. In 1493, Pope Alexander vi gave much of the new land to Spain and, in exchange, asked Spain to convert the natives to Catholicism. Encyclopedia Britannica records that Spanish and Portuguese rulers “recognized the obligation to convert the indigenous population as part of their royal duty.” Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians and Jesuits traveled with the European ships. Much of the conversion of the natives took place under the reign of Charles v and his son Philip ii.

The Catholic Church quickly became the most powerful institution in Latin America. Priests were held in such great respect that they could be relied on to control the masses if the army failed. The Jesuits even had their own private armies. When the Spanish government tried to reform the Catholic Church hundreds of years later, the priests turned the population against Spain. They led Latin America to independence. The fact that this vast territory became Catholic still affects geopolitics today.

During the reign of Charles v, the fourth resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire reached its apex. Not since the days of Charlemagne had a holy Roman emperor ruled over such an immense territory.

The Vatican’s Instrument

Charles v reached the height of power while the Spanish and Roman inquisitions were raging in Europe. Although the Spanish Inquisition was started by his grandparents, Ferdinand and Isabella, Charles took it to new levels. He became a deadly weapon of the Catholic Church.

At first, the Inquisition forced the conversion of Jews and Muslims. All Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492. Then the majority of Moriscos—converted Muslims living in Spain who had retained some Islamic practices—were killed.

Charles v became king of Spain in 1516 (known as Charles i). The following year, Martin Luther produced his 95 Theses, and the Protestant Reformation began. The Spanish Inquisition was aggressively expanded into Europe and brought to full fury during the Protestant Reformation. The Inquisition proved to be an effective Counter-Reformation weapon.

Many thousands across Europe were made to convert to Catholicism or were tortured and executed by the church at this time. In his 1871 book, The History of Romanism, author John Dowling wrote, “From the birth of popery … it is estimated by careful and credible historians that more than 50 millions of the human family have been slaughtered for the crime of heresy by popish persecutors ….” Halley’s Bible Handbook corroborates this figure: “Historians estimate that, in the Middle Ages and Early Reformation era, more than 50 million martyrs perished.”

That is more than twice the population of Australia—tortured and killed for not converting to Catholicism.

Charles fought forcefully against Protestantism. In 1545, he presided over the Council of Trent, which initiated the Catholic Counter-Reformation. This reformation was the Vatican’s response to the Protestant Reformation. This response was brutal, using torture and imprisonment to bring wayward Catholics back into the fold. Germany’s Protestant princes formed the Schmalkaldic League, which Charles defeated in 1547.

However, Charles was too distracted by other wars to prevent Protestantism from getting a powerful hold over Germany, though he fought hard to stop its spread. By 1547, Lutherism had grown so strong within Germany that he was forced to recognize it.

Charles v abdicated in 1556. After his reign, the Habsburg dynasty severed along Spanish and Austrian lines. The Austrian Habsburg line still assumed the title “Roman emperors of the German nation” like their predecessors five centuries before, except they no longer pilgrimaged to Rome to be crowned by the pope. The imperial office became hereditary within the Habsburg line.

By the early 17th century, the power and might of the Habsburg empire—the fourth resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire—had begun to wane. The Protestant Reformation had considerably weakened the once-dominant church in Rome. On the secular side, the tide of power was beginning to shift toward France.

The fourth revival of the “Holy” Roman Empire was on its last leg, but the inevitable fifth revival of the Holy Roman Empire was on its way!

Selling Spiritual Favors

The origins of the Roman Catholic Church can be traced back to when the Apostle Peter spurned Simon Magus for attempting to buy the Holy Spirit (Acts 8:18-21). Perhaps unsurprisingly, the religion that Simon Magus founded eventually became extremely rich by selling spiritual favors.

The most famous of these was the selling of indulgences, a practice especially popular during the Middle Ages.

The church taught that men could reduce the time they would have to spend suffering in purgatory by giving money to the church. The sale of indulgences operated like a franchise, like Subway or McDonald’s: A local bishop would buy the right to sell indulgences from the papacy. This gave him permission to use the Catholic “brand,” and he then worked to profit from this purchase by selling indulgences to those in his district.

The Middle Ages version of the practice began with the Crusades. In 1095, Pope Urban iidecreed that all those who went on a crusade would have their sins forgiven, and their time in purgatory would be wiped out. At the start of the 13th century, this practice was expanded so that those who helped with money and advice were also eligible to have their sins forgiven. From then on, the church seized on indulgences as a means of gathering wealth and power. By the end of the century, it had become a political tool, given to princes to win their favor.

Indulgences were a potent method for raising money. The church profited greatly from people’s sins. Those on their deathbed could buy indulgences and go straight to heaven. Indulgences could be purchased by contributing money toward a cathedral. “Thus a period of pillage and lawlessness might also be characterized by a luxuriant crop of new monasteries, like the England of Stephen’s reign,” Paul Johnson writes in A History of Christianity. Encyclopedia Britannica notes, “From the 12th century onward the process of salvation was therefore increasingly bound up with money.”

Eventually the practice became so widespread that it became financially painful, a major grievance among the people, and one of the catalysts of the Protestant Reformation. Thus the church lost its spiritual monopoly, and with it the power to demand that its followers hand over money or suffer for untold years in purgatory. Responding to the Reformation, Pope Pius v canceled all indulgences that involved financial transactions in 1567.

However, indulgences were not the church’s only revenue raisers. One of the most hated was the death duty. When someone died, tradition dictated that an item of value be handed over to the local priest. The price varied. In some places, it was the person’s bed; for others it was his best garment; in still others it was his second-best possession (the local lord sometimes took the best). For some districts, the church’s price was as high as one third of all the man’s possessions.

This death duty was often collected no matter how poor the parishioner. And the church had a powerful tool to enforce their collection: In many cases, the church would not bury a man unless the duty was paid.

Imagine the position this would put a grieving mother or widow in. The main provider of the household may have just died, and the family would be told that unless they made significant gifts to the church, their husband and father would not be buried. He would be deprived the prayers and blessing of the church and would therefore have to suffer longer in purgatory or perhaps even burn forever in hell. The new widow would be forced to choose between risking the survival of her family or the soul of her husband.

If the family refused to pay, the church would often help itself to what it felt it was due.

For a time, the Catholic Church was the most successful protection racket in history. “During the Avignon regime, the central machinery of the church turned itself primarily into a money-raising organization,” Johnson writes. “In England, the clergy, with 1 percent of the population, disposed of about 25 percent of the gross national product. This was about average. In some parts of France and Germany the church was wealthier and owned one third to half of all real estate.”

The Catholic Church is one of the wealthiest institutions on Earth. Millions of people marvel at its magnificent possessions and awesome material splendor. But how many realize how it came by its wealth?

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johnchiarello · 6 years ago

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Mark 4

MARK 4 Mark 4:14 The sower soweth the word. https://youtu.be/CjaHcrS4nak Mark 4 https://ccoutreach87.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/3-10-17-mark-4.zip ON VIDEO- .Back at St. Patrick’s .Media .What is true? .Self-help program? .Jesus is the sower .Wasted seed is part of the process .Crop failure too .Cabbie wants to give me a ride! .Trump- Obama- ‘Wires tapped’? [Read below] .Fisa warrants .Rome and the Tiber .Vatican 2

NEW [past teaching- verses below] In the parable of the seed planter- Jesus teaches us about how people respond to the truth. When some hear about the Kingdom- right away they lose the truth they heard. Others hear the message- and get excited about it- but after trials and difficulty- they too ‘fall away’. Some believe the truth- but because of the many struggles in life- they never produce the desired result [fruit]. And some hear- persevere- and bear fruit. The message of the kingdom brings with it difficulty- and those who are willing to bear their Cross- will make it to the final stage. Jesus also teaches us that the kingdom is like a seed- it starts small- but eventually becomes a huge tree and provides shelter for ‘the birds’. In the 1st century Jesus appeared- he proclaimed the truth to men- he prophesied of his own death- and resurrection. This indeed did happen- not just because the ‘bible says so’ but because it is an attested to historical fact. In as much as any other historical fact has been attested to. The Christian faith is founded upon historical truth- not simply faith in something that we have no idea ever happened. In our day- truth- or facts- are not simply actual things that happened. Many believe things simply because they have been persuaded to believe them. I hesitated to talk about our current political situation- because it divides people. But I simply gave one example how we- the populace- are easily persuaded by the way things are reported- or told to us. While I was in New Jersey the news broke -Trump tweeted that ‘Obama had my wires tapped’. Here’s the actual tweet- Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my “wires tapped” in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism! 5:35 AM – 4 Mar 2017

Ok- before I heard any reporting on it- as a news watcher- I figured that Trump found out that a warrant was issued by the Fisa court- to investigate his campaigns ‘possible’ collusion with Russia. If this were indeed true- then what Trump said would be fairly accurate. But as the days passed- the media came out and said what Trump tweeted was absolutely false- and groundless. Ok- the same media that reported that there was no evidence that the Trump campaign was ‘tapped’- or meaning there was never a Fisa warrant put out. Also reported that a Fisa warrant was actually sought- under the Obama administration- and was initially turned down. The same media also reported that they went back to the court- and finally did indeed obtain a Fisa warrant to investigate any connections of the Trump campaign to the Russians [links below]. So- the media denied something- that they previously admitted- themselves. I brought up this one example- not to defend Trump- or accuse Obama. But to show what we mean when we say ‘fake news’. How easily people will believe a lie- if they are told it long enough [by either side]. Jesus gave us the truth- regardless of the political side of the aisle you are on- his truth can be trusted. When we embrace the truth about him- then there will indeed be struggles as you follow the path. It’s important for believers to know that this is part of the cost of discipleship. The foundation of the Christian faith is the reality that Jesus died for us- was buried- and rose again. We do indeed read about this event in our bibles- as well as the historians who wrote at the time of Christ. Many witnesses of this event have passed the message along to following generations. This movement has grown over the centuries- and has become a ‘kingdom’ that covers all the earth. The testimony of man has its ups and downs. But the testimony of God stands sure- and this is the testimony that God himself gave to us- about his Son. 1 John 5:9 If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater: for this is the witness of God which he hath testified of his Son.

News links- http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-04/obama-advisor-rhodes-wrong-president-can-order-wiretap-and-why-trump-may-have-last-l http://fortune.com/2017/03/04/trump-wiretapping-fbi-warrent/ http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38589427 These links- by reputable news outlets [BBC] report that Fisa warrants were sought- and that the warrants were no doubt ‘about Trump’. If these reports are true- then it’s very possible that what Trump tweeted was no so far fetched. The reason I talked about it on today’s video- was to simply show you how we are persuaded by constant media coverage- of any issue- and we rarely form our views based on actual evidence. In the end- it’s still possible that no ‘wiretapping’ occurred- but the warrants were sought- twice- to do this very thing ‘wiretapping’. The media simply made it sound like there was never even the possibility that a Fisa warrant was ever even sought- yet the same media has reported that one was sought- twice. And that the 2nd time they were granted the warrant. If true- then this is indeed ‘wiretapping’. Not so hard to see. The source for the BBC article said Trump was not named in the order- but 3 Trump associates were targeted for the inquiry- meaning it was indeed about Trump. For those who don’t like to read entire news articles- here is an excerpt from the BBC report- Last April, the CIA director was shown intelligence that worried him. It was – allegedly – a tape recording of a conversation about money from the Kremlin going into the US presidential campaign. It was passed to the US by an intelligence agency of one of the Baltic States. The CIA cannot act domestically against American citizens so a joint counter-intelligence taskforce was created. The taskforce included six agencies or departments of government. Dealing with the domestic, US, side of the inquiry, were the FBI, the Department of the Treasury, and the Department of Justice. For the foreign and intelligence aspects of the investigation, there were another three agencies: the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Agency, responsible for electronic spying. Lawyers from the National Security Division in the Department of Justice then drew up an application. They took it to the secret US court that deals with intelligence, the Fisa court, named after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They wanted permission to intercept the electronic records from two Russian banks. Their first application, in June, was rejected outright by the judge. They returned with a more narrowly drawn order in July and were rejected again. Finally, before a new judge, the order was granted, on 15 October, three weeks before election day.

Neither Mr Trump nor his associates are named in the Fisa order, which would only cover foreign citizens or foreign entities – in this case the Russian banks. But ultimately, the investigation is looking for transfers of money from Russia to the United States, each one, if proved, a felony offence. A lawyer- outside the Department of Justice but familiar with the case – told me that three of Mr Trump’s associates were the subject of the inquiry. “But it’s clear this is about Trump,” he said.- BBC PAST TEACHING [verses below] MARK- https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/02/28/jersey-city-ride-mark-1/ https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/03/02/mark-2-north-bergen/ https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/03/04/mark-3-isaiah-61/ . I quoted from these bible books on Today’s video [Mark 4] here are my past studies- https://ccoutreach87.com/1st-2nd-corinthians/ https://ccoutreach87.com/john-complete-links-added/

I wrote this little book years ago- it fits- https://ccoutreach87.com/house-of-prayer-or-den-of-thieves/ I mentioned Vatican 2 on today’s video- Mark 4- below are some of my past teachings where I also taught on Vatican 2- . [1770] TREASURY OF MERIT

Let’s pick up where we left off 2 posts back. We were talking about Martin Luther and the events that led up to the Protestant Reformation.

In order to understand the key act that caused the protest- we will have to teach some Catholic history/doctrine.

In the 16th century Pope Julius began the effort to build St. Peters basilica in Rome. He got as far as laying the foundation and died. Pope Leo the 10th would pick up after him.

The church needed to raise money for the project- and the German prince- Albert- would play a major role.

It should be noted that both Catholic and Protestant scholars agree that the Popes of the day were pretty corrupt. They came from what we call the Medici line of Popes.

If you remember last month I wrote a post on the Renaissance- I talked about the Medici family and how they played a major role in supporting the Renaissance that took place in the 13th century in Florence Italy that would spread to the region.

Well this very influential family also played a big role in who would get top positions in the church.

At the time of Luther and prince Albert- if you had the right connections and the money- you could literally buy a position in the church.

Albert already held 2 Bishop seats- and there was an opening for an Archbishops seat in Mainz [Germany] and he wanted that one too. [overblog- see the rest here- https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/01/24/galatians-5/ ]

It should be noted that official Canon law [church law] said you could only hold one seat at a time- Albert was bidding on his 3rd one! And he was too young for all of them.

So even the Pope and the officials held little respect for what the church actually taught at the time.

So Albert opens up negotiations with Leo- and the bidding starts AT 12,000 Duckets [money] Albert counters with 7,000- and they agree on 10,000. How did they justify the numbers? 12- The number of Apostles. 7- The 7 deadly sins. 10- The 10 commandments.

Yes- the church was pretty corrupt at the time.

So Albert works out a plan with Leo- he will borrow the money from the German banks- and pay the banks off by the Pope giving Albert the right to sell Indulgences.

What’s an Indulgence?

Okay- this is where it gets tricky.

The ancient church taught a system called The Treasury of Merit. This was a sort of spiritual bank account that ‘stored up’ the good deeds of others over the years.

You had the good deeds of Jesus at the top- but you also had Mary and Joseph- the 12 Apostles- and other various saints thru out time.

The way the ‘bank’ worked was you could tap into the account by getting a Papal indulgence- a sort of I.O.U. that had the Popes guarantee that it would get so much time out of Purgatory for a loved one.

The actual sacrament that accesses the account is called Penance [confession].

When a penitent does penance- he confesses his sin to the priest- and he is absolved by the authority of the church that the priest has. The priest usually tells the person ‘say so many Hail Mary’s- Our Father’s’ and that’s a form of penance.

One of the other things the church practiced was called Alms Deeds. This term is found in the bible and it means giving your money to the poor- it is a noble act that Jesus himself taught.

In theory- part of the sacrament of penance was tied into Alms Deeds- you can access the account thru the practice of giving to the poor- which also meant giving to the church that helps the poor- and in the hands of the Medici line of Popes- meant outright giving money to the Pope.

So now you see how the abuse worked its way into the pockets of the faithful.

Albert now had the permission from Leo to sell these indulgences in Germany- and he would pick a certain corrupt priest to sell them in a place called Saxony- the region where Luther operated out of.

It should be noted that the Catholic Church never taught the crass act of ‘buying your way out of Purgatory’. The practice of including giving money as a part of the sacrament of penance was tied into the biblical principle of giving to the poor- a good thing.

But Tetzel and others abused the official meaning of the indulgence- and did make it sound like you could by your way out of Purgatory [in theory- a loved one might be in Purgatory for so many years- and through the indulgence you are actually getting time off for them- because the good deeds of others are now applied to the account].

The money Albert would raise- half would go to Rome for the building of St. peters- and half would go to pay off the banks in Germany- it was a sad system- and a sad time for the church as a whole.

It would be wrong to judge the entire church at the time as being corrupt- you did have many sincere Priests and Catholic men and women who saw the abuses and did not take part in them.

But there was corruption at the top- and this would eventually lead to the breakup of the church- and the launching of what we now call the Protestant Movement.

As a side note- it should be said that many Catholics and Protestants are not aware of the whole treasury of merit system- and the church never officially changed her position on the doctrine.

There were 3 Church councils since the time [Trent- 1500’s, Vatican 1- 1800’s and Vatican 2- 1962-65]. The Treasury of Merit never came up for change.

Obviously Protestants don’t believe in Purgatory- and it’s not my purpose in these posts to change Catholics into Protestants or vice versa- but to give all sides a clear view of the issues that divided us- and to try and be honest- and respectful during the process.

Does the bible teach anything like a Treasury of Merit? Well actually it does. The bible teaches that the righteousness of Christ is the treasury that people can access- by faith- and become righteous in the sight if God.

The idea- applied to Christ- is good.

But in the hands of the Medici Popes- and the ambitious prince of Germany- it would lead to disaster. [parts] (739) ACTS 3- Peter and John go up to the temple and heal the lame man. This stirs up a commotion and gives opportunity for Peter to preach Christ. I want you to see something here. The miracles of healing thru out this book testify of something specific. They do not simply prove the existence of God. These first century people were not ‘post moderns’ they had no pre enlightenment era that affected their minds. For the most part they were highly religious! Paul will tell them this later in Acts ‘you are too superstitious’ [religious]. The miracles are testifying to the fact that Jesus is alive, he really rose from the grave! Peter’s sermons are centered around the reality of Christ being the fulfillment of all that the prophets have spoken about! The church must not be ashamed of the gospel. Recently the ‘church world’ was up in arms over the Popes recent reinstating of the Tridentine Mass [the Latin Mass]. After Vatican 2 the Mass was done solely in the language of the hearers. Many old time Catholics were wanting the Latin too. So Pope Benedict said fine, you have the option to practice it either way. Now, this ancient Mass had a prayer that simply prayed for the Jewish people to come to know Jesus. Well, this upset the Jewish groups and they demanded a change in the prayer. At first the Pope re wrote it but it still asked for prayer for the Jews to come to Jesus. This still offended them. So finally the church produced some prayer less offensive. We should not be ashamed of the gospel of Christ and his resurrection! Peter was preaching the reality of the resurrection and was in their face about it! Jesus has proven himself to be alive, we are not just witnesses of the existence of God, we are witnesses that Jesus is the way to him. The only way! Now Peter ends this chapter in a unique way. He invokes the ‘blessing of Abraham’ and says it means ‘the blessing of Jesus in turning you away from sin’. We just finished a study in Genesis. I emphasized how the New testament apostles viewed the Abrahamic blessing thru the lens of redemption. They did not teach it in a materialistic way. Peter also quotes Moses [as well as David] and says ‘Moses said the Lord would raise up a prophet like myself, whoever doesn’t hear him will be destroyed’. Peter sees the fulfillment of ‘the Moses type prophet’ in Christ. Peter has a great gift of taking the old testament prophets and proving Christ from them. There is a young hearer in this early church. He will eventually become one of the first Deacons. His name is Stephen, boy he must be drinking everything in. He is seeing and hearing the testimony of Jesus straight from those who walked with him. He hears Peter’s teachings on Christ. He becomes familiar with the way Peter associates the ‘Moses prophet’ with Jesus. This young man will testify in Acts 7 of the reality of Jesus being the fulfillment of the Moses prophecy. He will give the longest recorded sermon in scripture. He will brilliantly trace the roots of Israel and show how Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophets. He will be accused of going against the law and the temple. He has the first grasp of ‘Pauline theology’ [actually Paul got it from him!] and does such a convincing job of proving Jesus to be Messiah that they stone him to death. He becomes the first martyr in the book of Acts. At his death he says ‘forgive them; don’t hold this sin against them’. A witness named Saul is sitting by. God answers Stephens’s prayer and Saul will become one of the greatest fire starters known to man. [parts] I talked about Rom and the Tiber river- here is some of my previous teaching- Actually reading thru the bible- in context- is one of the best habits you can develop. Rome was the city of influence at the time of Paul- located just east of the bend of the Tiber river- about 18 miles from the Mediterranean Sea. The letter to the Romans- would be read orally to both Christians and Jews in the city- in the days of the writing of these letters [which now make up our bible] they were living in an ‘oral’ culture- and the letters were intended to be read aloud to those in the early Christian communities [remember- you didn’t have books back then- like we have today- and the mass production of writing/publishing did not yet exist]. So- Paul was a strategic thinker- and he penned this letter hoping it would be a ‘shot in the dark’- that is the darkness of sinful man- The letter to the Romans is the closest thing to a systematic theology found in the New Testament. Its impact in church history is great- John Chrysostom- the great 5ht century preacher- had it read aloud to him- once a week.

Saint Augustine attributes it to his radical conversion- the story goes he heard some kids singing ‘take up and read’.

He picked up a copy of the letter to the Romans- and history was changed.

Luther- the great 16th century reformer- was teaching this letter- as a Catholic priest/scholar- out of Germany- when he read ‘The just shall live by faith- therein is the righteousness of God revealed’- It lead to what we call today ‘The Protestant Reformation’.

A few hundred years later- the Great Methodist founder- John Wesley- would say his heart was ‘strangely warmed’ while hearing a message at Aldersgate- and it lead to his conversion- sure enough- the message was from the letter to the church at Rome.

So- when the great Apostle sat down and penned this ‘arrow’- hoping it to go forth and have great impact for the Kingdom of God- his hopes were indeed realized. Enjoy- [parts] Some of my past stuff on the Roman Empire- Because our bibles were written in Greek [which shows you how strong the Greek influence effected the early church- our first New Testaments were written in Greek- though the Roman Empire was the world Empire of the day.

But Alexander the Great- the famed Greek conqueror who came a few centuries before Christ- he instituted what we refer to as Helenization.

A form of conquering where you let the people you conquer keep their culture- but you also use parts of your culture [in this case the Greek language] to permeate the vanquished.

So- the Roman Empire of Jesus day [who at one time were under the rule of the Greek Empire] continued to write in Greek.

It wasn’t until around a few centuries after the time of Christ that the first Latin bible was written [by Saint Jerome].

But even his bible [the Latin Vulgate] used the Greek Old Testament [called the Septuagint] instead of the Hebrew- for his Latin translation.

Ok- the point being- the Greek world did indeed have a strong influence on the early church.

And the church had to refute the belief that all matter was evil.

The Christian doctrine of creation [developed under saint Augustine- the 4th-5th century bishop of Hippo- North Africa].

Was the teaching that matter was good- that God created the material realm- so it is not inherently evil.

But- after the fall of man [Genesis 1-3] a curse did indeed come upon the earth [some times when the bible says ‘the world’ it is speaking of the earth- but other times it is speaking of the fallen order- the sinful realm of man. That’s why there is some confusion- till this day- among Christians. They might read verses like this- and think the bible is saying the earth itself- the planet- is wicked. Actually in those verses it is speaking about the fallen order of sinful men. See? ‘For all that is in THE WORLD- the lust of the flesh- the lust of the eyes and the pride of life- is not of the father- but is of the WORLD- and the WORLD is passing away’- this is one example from the epistle of John- here the World is not saying the planet- but the world of sinful man- a fallen ‘world’ order.]

So- in conclusion [if I ever get there!] we- as believers- reject the belief that all matter is evil.

No- man was created in the image of God- and God is the creator of all things- both visible [earth- man- etc] and invisible [mentioned in the above chapter].

The evil we see in the ‘world’ today is simply a result of mans sin- mans choice to live in rebellion against God.

We can’t escape ‘this world of sin’ by simply denying ourselves [though that is one aspect of the Christian life].

But God sent his Son into the world to redeem man- Christ died for all men- and this is the Divine act of Salvation.

When we as humans partake of this Salvation- we are then free- free to enjoy this life- that God gave us- and we don’t have to have the mindset of a Socrates- who saw this natural life as evil.

The apostle Paul says in his letter to the Romans;

‘Present your bodies as a living sacrifice- HOLY and acceptable to God’.

See?

Our bodies- the actual flesh we live in- can be Holy- sanctified- when submitted to the will of God.

This is from my Romans teaching I did a few years ago- ROMANS 11-13 https://ccoutreach87.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/3-12-15-romans-11-13.zip [note- there’s much more on the video than the post] .ROMANS 11 .ROMANS 12 .ROMANS 13 [parts] St. Thomas and Augustine.

I mean these are 2 of my favorite Catholic scholars.

Augustine- the 4/5th century Bishop of North Africa- and Thomas- the great 13th century Doctor Angelicas [Angelic Doctor].

Yes- these are some big players in Theology and Philosophy. [overblog- see the rest here- https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/02/09/acts-4/ ]

So why have the media reported that the pres used them in his war strategy?

They are also famous for the development of the Just war Theory.

Yeah- people for centuries have appealed to these great thinkers in their justification for war.

But Obama- how does he find the time to read these guys?

I mean- unless their names are on the golf balls [he just played his 100th round!]

I don’t see him having time to read them. [parts] VERSES- Mark 4:1 And he began again to teach by the sea side: and there was gathered unto him a great multitude, so that he entered into a ship, and sat in the sea; and the whole multitude was by the sea on the land. Mark 4:2 And he taught them many things by parables, and said unto them in his doctrine, Mark 4:3 Hearken; Behold, there went out a sower to sow: Mark 4:4 And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the way side, and the fowls of the air came and devoured it up. Mark 4:5 And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth: Mark 4:6 But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away. Mark 4:7 And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit. Mark 4:8 And other fell on good ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up and increased; and brought forth, some thirty, and some sixty, and some an hundred. Mark 4:9 And he said unto them, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. Mark 4:10 And when he was alone, they that were about him with the twelve asked of him the parable. Mark 4:11 And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables: Mark 4:12 That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them. Mark 4:13 And he said unto them, Know ye not this parable? and how then will ye know all parables? Mark 4:14 The sower soweth the word. Mark 4:15 And these are they by the way side, where the word is sown; but when they have heard, Satan cometh immediately, and taketh away the word that was sown in their hearts. Mark 4:16 And these are they likewise which are sown on stony ground; who, when they have heard the word, immediately receive it with gladness; Mark 4:17 And have no root in themselves, and so endure but for a time: afterward, when affliction or persecution ariseth for the word’s sake, immediately they are offended. Mark 4:18 And these are they which are sown among thorns; such as hear the word, Mark 4:19 And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful. Mark 4:20 And these are they which are sown on good ground; such as hear the word, and receive it, and bring forth fruit, some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some an hundred. Mark 4:21 And he said unto them, Is a candle brought to be put under a bushel, or under a bed? and not to be set on a candlestick? Mark 4:22 For there is nothing hid, which shall not be manifested; neither was any thing kept secret, but that it should come abroad. Mark 4:23 If any man have ears to hear, let him hear. Mark 4:24 And he said unto them, Take heed what ye hear: with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you: and unto you that hear shall more be given. Mark 4:25 For he that hath, to him shall be given: and he that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath. Mark 4:26 And he said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground; Mark 4:27 And should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. Mark 4:28 For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. Mark 4:29 But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come. Mark 4:30 And he said, Whereunto shall we liken the kingdom of God? or with what comparison shall we compare it? Mark 4:31 It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown in the earth, is less than all the seeds that be in the earth: Mark 4:32 But when it is sown, it groweth up, and becometh greater than all herbs, and shooteth out great branches; so that the fowls of the air may lodge under the shadow of it. Mark 4:33 And with many such parables spake he the word unto them, as they were able to hear it. Mark 4:34 But without a parable spake he not unto them: and when they were alone, he expounded all things to his disciples. Mark 4:35 And the same day, when the even was come, he saith unto them, Let us pass over unto the other side. Mark 4:36 And when they had sent away the multitude, they took him even as he was in the ship. And there were also with him other little ships. Mark 4:37 And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full. Mark 4:38 And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow: and they awake him, and say unto him, Master, carest thou not that we perish? Mark 4:39 And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. Mark 4:40 And he said unto them, Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith? Mark 4:41 And they feared exceedingly, and said one to another, What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him? 2 Corinthians 3:14 But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which vail is done away in Christ. In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations 2 Corinthians 4:4 In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations 2 Samuel 23:5 Although my house be not so with God; yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure: for this is all my salvation, and all my desire, although he make it not to grow. In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations 1 Corinthians 3:6 I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations 10 For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: 11 So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. Isaiah John 14:1 Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. John 14:2 In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. John 14:3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. John 14:27 Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations John 16:33 These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations John 20:19 Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations John 20:21 Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations John 20:26 And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you. In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations John 16:33 These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations John 18:38 Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all. In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations

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