Posted on 05/05/2009 12:31:36 PM PDT by Conservative Coulter Fan
GLENN: From Radio City in Midtown Manhattan, hello, you sick twisted freak. Welcome to the program. I'm glad you're here. Ashley is with us from Oklahoma and KTOK. Hello, Ashley.
CALLER: Hi.
GLENN: What is ‑‑ where do you go to school, Ashley?
CALLER: It's a very conservative Christian university in Oklahoma.
GLENN: A very ‑‑ is it the one with the big praying hands?
CALLER: No.
GLENN: You don't want to say? Okay. It's a very conservative Christian school in Oklahoma.
CALLER: Yes. It's a Baptist College.
GLENN: Got it, okay. So what happened with you and your professor?
CALLER: Well, I'm in an ethics course, a biblical ethics course, and he put up a quote on the board about capitalism like having this derogatory meaning with it, and I said, well, what's wrong with capitalism? And he said, capitalism's based on selfishness. It's about getting as much as you can for yourself. And I said, no ‑‑
GLENN: That's his perversion of it. But go ahead.
CALLER: Yeah. And I said, well, capitalism's based on hard work. It's about getting reward for hard work. And well, he told me, no, it's about making money off of other people; it's not about hard work. It's about ‑‑
GLENN: So what is his, what is his replacement for capitalism?
CALLER: Socialism.
GLENN: Socialism?
CALLER: Yeah, he says that the Bible ‑‑
GLENN: This is a Christian ‑‑ hang on. This is a Christian ethics teacher?
CALLER: Yes.
GLENN: Okay. And he said what? The Bible says what?
CALLER: He said the Bible supports socialism.
GLENN: Where?
CALLER: Well, there's this scripture in Acts about ‑‑ that's always used about the early church sharing their possessions.
GLENN: Yes.
CALLER: So I ‑‑
GLENN: The church did.
CALLER: ‑‑ wrote a paper on capitalism as a biblical basis. So I turned that in. I don't know if he will like it or not.
GLENN: Look, here's the thing. Tithing and the 10%, Moses, tithe 10%, right? What did they try to do before tithing? What did Moses actually come out with? Do you know? What was tithing? Before it was 10%, what was it before that? The law of?
CALLER: I'm not sure.
GLENN: The law of?
CALLER: Oh, yeah, okay.
GLENN: The law of consecration, which means you take all of your money and you give it to Moses. You give all of your money to your church, 100% and then you take only that that you need, okay? Moses couldn't make that work and so the law of consecration was too difficult for the people with the guy who parted the Red Sea and so they went down to a 10% tithing rule: Give 10%, okay? When Jesus was talking about ‑‑ when the apostles were talking about the early church where they shared everything, that's the law of consecration, and people have led lives of the law of consecration before and since. People have lived it many times. However, the secret is nowhere in the Bible does the ‑‑ do any of the apostles or Jesus say give all of your money to the government. They gave it to their church, and the church, nowhere did the apostles say we're going to take it from members of the church. They, keyword, shared everything they had.
Now, your professor can talk all he wants about how evil capitalism is, but ask your professor why Adam and Eve came down. Why, what was the whole thing about with the snake and the apple? What was that all about?
CALLER: Because they disobeyed God.
GLENN: Yeah, but what did that do? If Adam and Eve could ‑‑ if Adam and Eve didn't have the apple, they wouldn't have been fruitful and multiplied. Man would not be if it wasn't for that, okay? So what did they do? They ate the apple. Their eyes were opened. They saw the difference between good and evil, and the Lord drove them out of paradise and let them live this life where you've got to make choices and there's bad and there's good. We are here to make choices. You ask your professor, how am I supposed to be a good Christian, how am I supposed to better myself if all of my decisions are made for me by the state. If I can only eat these things, if I can only do these things, if I can only have this much money, if I'm forced to share, how does anyone grow spiritually? How do you become Gandhi if everything is decided for you? If this was the plan of salvation, if this is the plan of heaven, if this is God's plan, why didn't he just go with Lucifer's plan of just, I'll bring every soul back to you, God; you give the glory to me. I'll make sure. I'm not going to give them any choice. I'll bring everyone back. Jesus said, no, no, no, no; go down, let them have free will, let them have choice. But they are going to make so many mistakes, they are going to need a savior to come down and wash them clean. Now, if God didn't care about choice, if God was just like, you know what, just force them to do these things, it seems to me he would have gone with Lucifer's plan and not the other plan. Does that make sense to you?
CALLER: Yeah. And I ‑‑ one of the things I told him is that when Jesus commands us to give, I think that in a socialist society when our money's taken away from us by taxes, that's not really Jesus' definition of giving.
GLENN: No, did he say ‑‑ go quote the scripture to your professor. Ask him, did Jesus say when a man asks for your shirt, you give the government your coat, also, and have the government give that coat to the man? No. The government is a middleman. The government is acting in the role of Lucifer. They are taking stuff from you. They are forcing you ‑‑ yes, I did, I did just say, yes, the government is the devil. They are taking your choices from you. There is ‑‑ you ask your professor this. I hope you're writing this stuff down and I want to hear the answers from this nut job of a professor. You ask this ‑‑ you ask your professor this: At what point ‑‑ now, jeez, I just lost it. What were we talking about before that? The government is the devil, I remember that.
CALLER: The government is Satan.
GLENN: I remember that one clearly. I can't remember the last one. Yeah, you just, you just ask your professor where in the scriptures does it teach about a middleman. It teaches you to go right directly to the source. Where ‑‑ you ask your professor this: On April 15th does he feel charitable.
CALLER: Right.
GLENN: As charitable on April 15th as he does when he goes and visits a soup kitchen and works there, when he goes and visits sick people in the hospital, when he stops off the side of the highway to help somebody whose car is broken down? Does he have that same warm confirming spirit with him on April 15th? The answer is no. Because the spirit wouldn't confirm April 15th. It's taken from you. Giving is about your heart. Taxes don't engage your heart. They engage another part that is down, usually kept in the wallet region. Ashley, you ask him those questions. You call us back, all right?
CALLER: Okay. Thank you.
GLENN: All right. Thank you. Jeez. I mean, from a Christian: Capitalism is evil. Capitalism is freedom. What we do with capitalism is evil sometimes. Capitalism, capitalism is evil. Really? Tell that to Bill Gates, who has taken, what is it, a billion dollars and given it to cure malaria, given it to help people all over the world. You tell Wal‑Mart that capitalism is evil as they are writing out the largest check of any corporation for charity on planet Earth, every year. You tell them that capitalism is evil. You tell they happen that capitalism is evil when you look at the Jon Huntsman cancer center. Written by a capitalist. The check written by a capitalist. The funds taken from capitalism. You do that. You tell him that. Capitalism is evil? You tell me that capitalism is evil when you look at what Washington has built on the backs of capitalists. If capitalism was evil, if capitalism didn't exist, we wouldn't have this country. We wouldn't have what the government has because the government didn't create anything; it took it from us! Show me the dollars that they have made themselves, except for recently because they're printing those off right now show me the things the government has built on its own, except for a war machine. They haven't invented or built one thing. They went to capitalists and entrepreneurs and said we need something that does this, and they built it. Don't tell me that capitalism is evil. Your choices can be evil or your choices can be good. But in this country the individual choice is what mattered. But we have so perverted God's will, God's law, we have so perverted what our founding fathers ‑‑ so let me ask you this, Mr. Professor: Do you believe this country was founded on divine providence? Do you believe that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Madison, Adams, do you believe those men were enlightened men? I do. Well, their crazy idea was to allow men to be free and free in their own business to allow them to be able to engage in capitalism. I didn't think a bad tree could bear good fruit. I didn't know a good tree could bear bad fruit or bad trees bear good fruit. I didn't think that was possible. I've read that some place in some big thick book. You'd know better than I do because you're a professor, and the elite professors always have the right answer.
Self-interest is not the same as selfishness. One is rational, the other is a vice.
Absolute idiocy from an ethics professor.....
There is no system we can come up with that is not based on self interest.
Socialism and Communism are based on self interest. You have something I want, I get the government to take it in the name of fairness and redistribute it to me. Those who have a lot, the government says you have too much, we will forcibly take it from you and give to those we believe have a need for it whether they’ve earned it or not.
And let’s not forget the Inner Party. The elite overseers of the socialist systems. Like people didn’t get key spots for having certain friends or blackmailing or bribing or doing any of the same things that happen in any other system.
Every system is based on self interest. It’s just that under capitalism people have the best shot at being rewarded for their labors and keeping what they earn.
Ask him, did Jesus say when a man asks for your shirt, you give the government your coat, also, and have the government give that coat to the man? No. The government is a middleman. The government is acting in the role of Lucifer.
That is a great point....
Aesop’s fable of the Ants and the Grasshopper is lost on modern socialist audiences.
Orrrr, maybe not.
"Thou shalt not steal".
"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods".
Charity is a virtue. Socialism is theft.
He missed the most salient point.
Socialism spreads the wealth so everyone is equally destitute except those at the top.
Socialism distributed misery eventually.
As Ayn Rand termed it: “Rational self-interest”.
Think love and rape
Socialism is not free will giving (think Love). Anyone can give of there own free will of what they have to who they want.
Socialism is the forced taking from others of what they have (think Rape) and giving it to who you want.(including just giving it to you self)
This ethics professor is “wanting” in his/her understanding of Biblical history and scripture.
First of all, the “socialism” he mentions in the book of Acts (Acts 4:32-37) was all VOLUNTARY!! The church members were not commanded to do this - they just did it out the goodness of their hearts in order to meet the needs of some of their members. Some sold personal property and gave all the proceeds to the church to use wherever it was needed most. But, it was all voluntary - no arm-twisting involved.
In fact, there were two people mentioned in Acts chapter 5, Ananias and his wife Sapphira, who noticed the esteem and attention that was received by those who gave up personal possessions to help others. They decided to sell a piece of their personal property and give part of the proceeds to the church. The problem was that they lied and told the church they had given the “entire amount” of the sale of their property to the church.
The Apostle Peter confronts them about their lie and tells them in Acts 5:3-4, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied to men but to God.”
The point is, Peter said the property “belonged” to them. They had a right to do with it whatever they wanted. Personal property rights are mentioned throughout both Old and New Testaments. The problem for Ananias was he lied about the amount.
So, to say that “socialism” is Christian is absurd. Giving and a spirit of generosity is expected in a mature Believer because of God’s generosity toward us - but it is always voluntary. Personal property was accepted as the right and normal state of things.
I have no time to read a lengthy article...but so what if it is? We don’t have a right to be selfish???
Great post. Succinct and really not subject to argument.
Ah, that reminds me of the old Russian proverb, “they pretend to pay us, we pretend to work.”
The idiot professor (who I assume works for no pay) has mistaken efficiency for selfishness.
Capitalism is not based upon selfishness, but I believe it recognizes that people will generally act in their own self interest, and therfore is the best economic system.
If people were all selfless, and truly loved their neighbors as themselves, and worked heartily, as unto the Lord, and not unto men, just about any economic system would probably work.
Unfortunately, we live in a fallen world, where people will often do as little work as possible to get what they want, and will freeload, if they can. Also, people will generally not work hard at developing skills that benefit society, or take risks that can lead to economic growth, unless there is something in it for them.
One could argue that some in the early church practiced a form of socialism (Acts 2:44-45), but we must remember that it was VOLUNTARY. They were not forcing others to participate in it. Voluntary redistribution of wealth, in the form of charity, voluntarily sharing with neighbors, and paying fair wages, etc., is a Christian virtue. Involuntary redistribution of wealth is a totally different thing and could be considered covetousness and theft, depending upon the specifics of it. Reasonable taxes to cover common expenses are fine, but going much beyond that is not.
Because Socialism goes against man’s nature, by expecting people to do their best, even if there is nothing in it for them, it inevitbaly leads to oppression or economic disaster (or both). If there is no incentive to work hard, or develop valuable skills, the goverment will need to coerce people into doing these things.
Also, while Socialism is, in theory, more “equal”, equal is not always fair and is often downright unfair. If you work hard on your farm and produce a great harvest, and I barely work at all, and produce almost nothing, would sharing our crops “equally” be “fair”? If one man spends 8 years and huge amounts of money to become a doctor and another drops out of high school to do unskilled labor, would paying them the same be “fair”?
Certainly, Capitalism produces some unfair outcomes, but with Socialism unfairness is pretty much the norm.
The flaws in this pastor’s view are explained well in:
The Catholic Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, by Michael Novak.
http://www.aei.org/books/filter.all,bookID.577/book_detail.asp
The government and satan:
www.thearrivals.blogspot.com
www.wakeupproject.com
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