Is the Alliance between Christianity and Capitalism Falling Apart?

[O-Land News Junkie]

In an incisive column at TownHall.com, George Will points out that the alliance between religious conservatives and economic conservatives seems ready to crumble.

Like Job after losing his camels and acquiring boils, the conservative movement is in distress. Mike Huckabee shreds the compact that has held the movement's two tendencies in sometimes uneasy equipoise. Social conservatives, many of whom share Huckabee's desire to "take back this nation for Christ," have collaborated with limited-government, market-oriented, capitalism-defending conservatives who want to take back the nation for James Madison. Under the doctrine that conservatives call "fusion," each faction has respected the other's agenda. Huckabee aggressively repudiates the Madisonians.

He and John Edwards, flaunting their histrionic humility in order to promote their curdled populism, hawked strikingly similar messages in Iowa, encouraging self-pity and economic hypochondria. Edwards and Huckabee lament a shrinking middle class. Well.

Economist Stephen Rose, defining the middle class as households with annual incomes between $30,000 and $100,000, says a smaller percentage of Americans are in that category than in 1979 — because the percentage of Americans earning more than $100,000 has doubled from 12 to 24, while the percentage earning less than $30,000 is unchanged. "So," Rose says, "the entire 'decline' of the middle class came from people moving up the income ladder." Even as housing values declined in 2007, the net worth of households increased.

Read the whole article.

Provides further evidence for Ayn Rand's claim that altruism provides a lousy philosophical basis for capitalism.

Thanks to novelist (and Rand protege) Erika Holzer for the tip.

http://www.theatlasphere.com/metablog/716.php

[studiodekadent]

Fusionism was always doomed anyway.

The base of Fusionism was "libertarian means to (socially) conservative ends." This means that the libertarian side of the fusionist alliance had to implicitly concede that the only justification for their pro-market economics was service to God.

Just remember, it was the libertarians that got the Nobel prizes and turned socialist economists into intellectual laughingstocks. It was us who did the work, and the Jesus Fascists who got all the cushy seats in Congress.

[Roger Bissell]

Fusionism was always doomed anyway.

The base of Fusionism was "libertarian means to (socially) conservative ends." This means that the libertarian side of the fusionist alliance had to implicitly concede that the only justification for their pro-market economics was service to God.

Just remember, it was the libertarians that got the Nobel prizes and turned socialist economists into intellectual laughingstocks. It was us who did the work, and the Jesus Fascists who got all the cushy seats in Congress.

Damn, I never looked at it that way before! You're right.

Except....wouldn't you consider Ron Paul to be an exception? Or do you regard him as a "Jesus Fascist," too?

REB

[studiodekadent]

Fusionism was always doomed anyway.

The base of Fusionism was "libertarian means to (socially) conservative ends." This means that the libertarian side of the fusionist alliance had to implicitly concede that the only justification for their pro-market economics was service to God.

Just remember, it was the libertarians that got the Nobel prizes and turned socialist economists into intellectual laughingstocks. It was us who did the work, and the Jesus Fascists who got all the cushy seats in Congress.

Damn, I never looked at it that way before! You're right.

Except....wouldn't you consider Ron Paul to be an exception? Or do you regard him as a "Jesus Fascist," too?

REB

I'd consider Ron Paul to be an exception. He is of our political/economic philosophy (to a massive degree) so I would call him a classical liberal but he is personally (in terms of his own values) conservative.

[Chris Grieb]

Isn't this what was supposed to happen

What do we do now?

[BaalChatzaf]

Read the whole article.

George Will is our Secret Weapon and our National Treasure. The comparison of John (Plastic Man) Edwards to Uriah Heap is priceless! One of the reasons I cherish Will, is that he treats his readers with respect. He assumes they read books for example. He does not "dumb down" his editorial pieces.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited January 11, 2008 by BaalChatzaf

[studiodekadent]

Isn't this what was supposed to happen

What do we do now?

Forge a fusionism with our real friends: those of secular, classically liberal, enlightenment values.

We need a nice little collaboration of Ayaan Hsri Ali's, Christopher Hitchens's, Objectivists, Enlightenment-values Libertarians, Enlightenment-values members of either party. We really have to start making these culture wars look like the three-cornered contest they truly are, i.e. a debate between pre-enlightenment religion, post-enlightenment skeptical philosophies, and enlightenment pro-reason philosophies, with their attendant moral conservatism vs. moral skepticism vs. moral eudaimonism.

I say we need to start an "Institute for Enlightenment Values" based on the following: 1. A knowable and objective reality, 2. A trust in human reason, 3. Anthropocentrism, 4. Human flourishing as the basis of morality and 5. Liberty as the basis of a moral political order.

This should provide a nice, broad coalition of Objectivist and Objectivist-friendly intellectuals to take on the culture wars.