Rule by the Democratic Party is nasty, and where can voters look for relief but to the Republicans?

Because the desperation was strong, too much hope was placed in the Republicans.

Now the disappointment begins. They are starting – so soon! – to copy the Democrats.

And already – of course – the Democrats are gloating.

Catherine Rampell writes in the Washington Post:

Republicans have taken the Senate and expanded their fiefdom in the House, but the Democrats seem to have won the intellectual narrative nonetheless. The GOP, inexplicably, is having its Thomas Piketty moment.

Seriously, guys: Republicans have suddenly started caring about inequality. …

When Republicans have taken note of our country’s income and wealth gaps, the sentiment has usually been dismissive and disdainful, full of accusations of class warfare waged by resentful, lazy people unwilling to hoist themselves up by their bootstraps.

Then, in just the past week, many of the likely 2016 Republican presidential contenders began airing concerns about the poor and condemning the outsize fortunes of the wealthy.

On Fox News after the State of the Union speech, Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) denigrated the administration’s economic track record by doing his best Bernie Sanders impression.

“We’re facing right now a divided America when it comes to the economy. It is true that the top 1 percent are doing great under Barack Obama. Today, the top 1 percent earn a higher share of our national income than any year since 1928,” he said, quoting an oft-cited (by liberals) statistic from the work of economists Piketty and Emmanuel Saez.

Likewise, here’s Mitt Romney, in a speech last week: “Under President Obama, the rich have gotten richer, income inequality has gotten worse and there are more people in poverty than ever before.” Sound-bite highlights from his past presidential campaign, you may recall, included a reference to the “47 percent” who don’t pay federal income taxes and a conclusion that “my job is not to worry about those people”.

Apparently his job description has changed.

Jeb Bush, too, has newfound interest in the lower income groups and deep inequity flourishing in our nation. His State of the Union reaction: “While the last eight years have been pretty good ones for top earners, they’ve been a lost decade for the rest of America.” Sen. Rand Paul, as well: “Income inequality has worsened under this administration. And tonight, President Obama offers more of the same policies — policies that have allowed the poor to get poorer and the rich to get richer.”

Someone up the GOP food chain seems to have decided that inequality and poor people now belong in everyone’s talking points, class warfare be damned. But why?

The rest of the article is not worth quoting. Rampell’s answers to her “why?” are unconvincing (you can judge them for yourself here).

What matters is that the Republican Party may not after all be the lesser of two evils. It may simply be the same evil under a different name.

In an open society, the rich are not rich because the poor are poor.

The poor are not poor because the rich are rich.

When Republican politicians encourage that misapprehension, they are encouraging the politics of envy.

As Thomas Sowell says (see our post Listen to Sowell, January 21, 2015), most people are poor when they are young and rich when they are older.

The main cause, in America, of poor people staying poor is that government keeps them so, by keeping them dependent on government.

The best cure for poverty is freedom from government “help”.

The more government “helps” the poor, the more poor people there will be, and the longer they will be trapped in poverty.

We had assumed that Republicans like conservative Ted Cruz and libertarian Rand Paul knew this. Seems we were wrong.

What do bleeding-hearted politicians think the rich do with their money? Keep it in boxes?

No. They invest it, generally in ways that do far more good for the economy than if they give heaps of it to government in taxes. Government uses tax money to pay a vast army of administrators to distribute some it to those they keep on hand-outs. Government wastes money. And higher taxes never did, never can, and never will cure poverty.

It cannot matter how unequal people are in wealth as long as everyone has enough to satisfy their wants. If they don’t have enough, they can do better for themselves in a market economy. Only if they are left free to work for themselves in an uncontrolled economy. Unless they are socialist tyrants, enriching themselves at the people’s expense. 

Poverty is a problem. Wealth is not.

John Stossel, in his plain-speaking, clear-headed way, deplores Obama’s failed economic policies:

President Obama sure is consistent. His State of the Union address sounded like his other speeches: What I’ve done is great! America is in a much better position. We’ve created a manufacturing sector that’s adding jobs. More oil is produced at home. I cut deficits in half!

Give me a break. The deficit is lower now not because of any prudence on Obama’s part but merely because the $800 billion stimulus spending blowout didn’t continue. All the president does is increase spending: free community college, free Obamaphones, free birth control, etc. Yes, our annual deficit is lower, but it’s still $488 billion! Our $18 trillion national debt increases by $3 million every minute!

Yes, more oil is produced at home, but that’s in spite of the administration. Oil production is down on public land.

Yes, the manufacturing sector added jobs, but that’s mostly because of cheaper natural gas created by fracking, which Obama’s cronies opposed. Also, America is finally recovering from recession. Obama’s policies probably slowed that recovery.

Does the President delude himself when he takes credit for oil production, lower deficits, etc.? Or does he mislead on purpose? I don’t know.

More recently he bragged, “I created the lowest unemployment rate in years.” He created it? He must know it’s “low” only compared to the 10 percent reached during the recession — and because millions have simply given up looking for work. This recovery is the slowest in 70 years.

Then he goes on to propose a very different speech from the one Obama gave last night:

If Obama gave the State of the Union address I’d like to hear, he’d say this:

I heard you, voters, in November when you took control of the Senate away from my party. I get it. I overreached. I was arrogant. I imposed Obamacare on a nation that was deeply divided about it. I ruled through executive orders instead of legislation. I threw money at “green” nonsense. …

We’ve cut a bit out there, because at that point he pulled out the biggest bone of contention we have with libertarians like John Stossel: defense. He wants less spent on it – as Obama does – and  we want more spent on it. 

But on: 

I’ve been in government for years now. I know how badly it works. The last thing I should try to do is make it bigger. In fact, with Republicans now in control of Congress, it’s time I worked with them to shrink government. If we shrink it, we might even dig our way out of the debt hole we’re in. Heck, if we just slow the growth of government to 2 percent a year, we’d be in better shape.

But I didn’t even try to accomplish that. I pretended taxing the rich would solve our financial problems. But there aren’t enough rich people to tax.

That’s not what’s wrong with the idea. What’s wrong is the idea of redistribution itself. The right argument is against any form of redistribution by a central agency.

But on again:

I got drunk on the idea of promising voters “free” stuff such as low down-payment mortgages and guaranteed paid family leave. I told them that all good things come from government. That’s nonsense.

We should put an end to all bailouts. Businesses that screw up should accept the consequences, just like ordinary people who spend recklessly. Main Street should never again be forced to rescue Wall Street.

Instead of expanding government control of health care, we should phase it out. That includes Medicare. I know Medicare is popular, but it is unsustainable. Let current retirees receive their benefits as promised, but younger people should pay for their own health care.

People criticize the economic distortion created by welfare, but Medicare and Social Security are almost as bad. Both redistribute money away from the young and struggling toward those of us who have had decades to invest and save up.

To make these challenges a little easier to deal with, let’s make America richer by abolishing most regulations. They strangle opportunity.

The more I think about it, the more Congress and I could transform America for the better just by getting out of America’s way. The state of our union will be truly strong if the state – by which I mean government – is strictly limited.

That we would applaud.

Some immigrants are valuable, some are not. “If they are graduates in Sociology from the University of Berkeley – get them out of here!”

Listen to Thomas Sowell for enlightenment, fresh ideas, some surprises, some laughter – and some very dark pessimism.

Leaders of the Western world, including Obama talking from his behind, want us to believe that Islam is a beautiful and peaceful religion.

Here are scenes, pictured or described, showing how beautiful and peaceful Islam really is. –

Musicians punished for making music. Wonderfully made musical instruments smashed to pieces.

Boys killed for watching football.

Men killed for breeding pigeons.

Homosexuals hurled from the top of tall buildings.

The words and pictures come from the Daily Mail:

Islamic State religious police have been filmed beating musicians and destroying their instruments as punishment for playing an “un-Islamic” keyboard.

The men were pictured being hit across the back and legs with a wooden stick in a public square after ISIS’s fanatical Islamic enforcers ruled the electric keyboard was “offensive to Muslims”.

Another picture shows two keyboards and what appears to be a lute smashed to pieces after raids thought to have taken place in Bujaq, a few miles to the east of Aleppo in Syria.

Musicians in Syria were given 90 lashes each after they were caught by the Islamic State’s religious police playing an electric keyboard …

Pictures show the men being beaten on their backs and legs by tribal elders in a public square believed to be in Bujaq, a town to the north east of Aleppo. …

The men were apparently caught playing electronic keyboards, and what appears to be a lute, instruments that were deemed to be “un-Islamic” by ISIS’s fanatical religious police …

Earlier today, it was reported that at least 15 pigeon breeders in eastern Iraq were rounded up after ISIS ruled the sport distracted them from praising Allah.

Three of those held by the group in the eastern province of Diyala have reportedly been killed, according to a security official.

Abu Abdullah, a farmer, said a total of six gunmen barged into his home earlier this week and dragged away his 21-year-old son. Mr Abdullah’s son is just one of the 15 young men – all aged between 16 and 22 – who have reportedly been captured in the province for breeding birds.

Yesterday it was reported that 13 youngsters were killed by firing squad in Iraq’s second city of Mosul for watching an Asian Cup football match between Iraq and Jordan.

Activist group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, which operates out of Syria, reported that the teenagers were shot in public and their bodies left there as their parents are too afraid to go and get them.

The boys’ ‘crime’ – breaking religious laws by watching football – was read out on a loudspeaker before their executions.

It came just days after ISIS released a video showing two men being thrown off the top of a tower block in Raqqa, Syria, for being gay.

A masked Islamic State fighter announced the charges against the accused using a small handheld radio, before declaring them guilty of engaging in homosexual activities.

He said they should be punished by death, in accordance with Islamic State’s radical interpretation of Sharia law.

The men were then bound and blindfolded before being pushed off the 100ft tower block to their death.

This last picture comes from The Religion of Peace.

A gay man is thrown from a roof in Mosul

after having been found guilty by a Sharia court. The photo
shows that his accused companion preceded him.

**

 The ongoing war between the West and Islam – though Western governments will not call it that –  is often described as a “clash of civilizations”. We see it as a clash of civilization with barbarism.

**

This article in praise of Capitalism was first posted in 2011. We reproduce it now because our recent post Communism is secular Christianity (January 14, 2015) reminded us of it. 

  *

It is human nature to be selfish. If we weren’t selfish we wouldn’t survive. If we didn’t eat when we were hungry, warm ourselves when we were cold, seek cures for our illnesses, defend ourselves (and our children and our life-sustaining property), we’d die out pretty damn quick. Or rather, we would never have come into existence as a species at all.

We are most of us capable of sympathy with others, and we often willingly give away a thing we own to another person. Some are altruistic. A few will even give up their lives to save the lives of others. Nevertheless, we are all naturally and necessarily selfish.

Christianity and Communism require human nature to change. As it can’t, Christianity’s commandments to love our enemies and forgive those who do us harm turn many a person of good will and high aspiration into a hypocrite if not a corpse. Communist theorists have never settled the question of whether human nature must change so that the Revolution can take place, or whether the Revolution must take place in order for human nature to change. Of course it will never change, but there’s no stopping the collectivist dolts arguing about it.

Capitalism works well because it is in tune with our nature. Adam Smith called it “the natural order of liberty”. Everyone selfishly desires to provide for his needs. To pay for what he wants from others – services and goods – he has to provide something that others will pay him for. Millions do it, and the result is prosperity. Capitalism is an abstract machine most beautiful to behold in the wonder of its workings. When individuals have the incentive to achieve, acquire, and enjoy something for themselves, they’ll go to great lengths to afford it. They’ll compete with each other to provide what others want, toil to make it the better product, and set the price of it lower. The best is made available at the least cost. Everyone is both a taker and a giver, and everyone benefits. True, not everyone’s effort always succeeds, but nothing stops anyone from trying again.

Of course capitalism isn’t a remedy for every ill and discontent. But a capitalist society offers the best chance to an individual to make the best of his condition – being alive – which presents him with a tough challenge – to stay alive for a few score years, and make those years as good as his energy, cunning, and adaptability to conditions outside of his control (plus his statistically likely share of luck), can help them to be.

In a capitalist society no one has a fixed place, whether below, in the middle, or on top. A person can rise, sink, or stay. A truly capitalist society is necessarily a free society in which no one is prevented, by some ruler or ruling clique, from bettering his lot, striving, succeeding, or failing.

Capitalism is the enemy of that God of whom all the children in the British Empire used to sing at morning prayers in school assemblies before the Second World War:

All things bright and beautiful,

All creatures great and small;

All things wise and wonderful,

The Lord God made them all. …

The rich man in his castle,

The poor man at his gate,

He made them high and lowly,

He ordered their estate.

The children were being taught to be content with everything as it was, trusting that God the ruler up there, all wise, permanent and unchallengeable had ordained how everyone had his fixed place and should stay in it, and because He had ordained it, it must be perfect. The recognition that such a God was an indefensible authoritarian, a whim-driven cosmic dictator, an unjust and arrogant tyrant, came – perhaps unconsciously – to the choosers of Anglican hymns only after a few of the earth’s dictators had been trounced in a prolonged and terrible blood-letting.

But then Socialists took over from God. They decided what was best for humanity. They established the Welfare State. No rich men in castles, no poor men at gates. The State would provide every citizen with depressing accommodation, dull food, health care if he were judged worthy of being kept alive, indoctrination in schools. Though the Socialist State is a slave society, the citizens are not called slaves but Social Security Recipients, National Health Patients, Students, Workers. The belief of their rulers is that they’ll be content because the State provides them with “everything”; they’ll be grateful for the food however poor, the unit in the tower block however depressing, the bed in the hospital however filthy, the indoctrination however boring. The great thing about it, to the collectivist mind, is they won’t have to strive to keep alive. And no one will have cause to pity or envy anyone else, since no one will have less or worse, or more or better – except of course the rulers up there, all wise, permanent and unchallengeable who ordain that everyone else has his fixed place. They reserve plenty, choice, comfort, luxury, information, and power to themselves.

The recognition that such a State is counter to the human instinct for freedom – call it “selfishness “ if you will – should have come to every sane adult the world over when the Soviet Empire crashed. The idea of Socialism should have died then. But if it did, it was only for a short time. Like the Christian God, it rose again, and lives now in the White House, an administration indefensibly authoritarian, whim-driven, unjust, and arrogant.

Selfish human nature with its instinct for liberty, its impelling desire to possess what is good for it materially and mentally, is the force that can and must defeat it.

This video of Pat Condell saying what needs to be said was published last Thursday (January 15, 2015):

Peter Martino writes at Gatestone:

Every Monday evening since last October, thousands of citizens have marched through the city of Dresden as well as other German cities to protest the Islamization of their country. They belong to an organization, established only three months ago, called Pegida, the German abbreviation for “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West.”

Pegida is a democratic grassroots organization, without origins in the far-left, far-right or links to any political parties, domestic or foreign.

The French Front National [FN] of Marine Le Pen even made it clear that it wants nothing to do with “spontaneous initiatives” such as Pegida. According to the FN, “something like Pegida cannot be a substitute for a party”.

In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders of the Freedom Party [PVV] is more positive. He sees Pegida as a sign of the growing discontent of ordinary people with the political elite now governing them. “A revolution is on its way,” he says. Ironically, Wilders’s PVV, currently by far the largest party in the Dutch polls, is itself more of a spontaneous movement, driven by the energy and charisma of one single man with a mission to liberate his country from Islamic extremism, rather than an established and structured political party.

That Pegida is a spontaneous and diffuse organization of citizens expressing their discontent, seems to be worrying the German political establishment.

Good. All European governments, all the big political parties, having connived at the colonization and parasitic destruction of Europe by Islam, have cause to be worried. 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel knows how powerful these movements can become. In 1989, when thousands of people shouting, “Wir sind das Volk” [“We are the people”] took to the streets in cities such as Dresden, the Communist regime in East Germany was toppled.

Apart from slogans such as: “Against Religious Fanaticism’, and “For the Future of our Children”, the anti-Islamization protesters of Pegida are using exactly the same slogan – “Wir sind das Volk” – of the anti-Communist demonstrators a quarter of a century ago, as they march against the open-door policies of the German government.

The use of the 1989 liberation slogan has infuriated Merkel, who reproaches Pegida for using it. In her New Year’s speech, Merkel attacked the Pegida demonstrators. “Their hearts are cold, full of prejudice and hatred,” she said, while defending her government’s policies of welcoming asylum seekers and immigrants. She pointed out that Germany had taken in more than 200,000 asylum seekers in 2014, making it the country that is accepting the largest number of refugees in the world.

What a thing to boast of! And Merkel seems to be the least wrong-headed of Europe’s leaders!

Merkel has been backed by church leaders …

Why are we not surprised? …

… who are slamming Pegida and calling for solidarity with migrants. The Confederation of German Employers has been blaming Pegida for damaging Germany’s international reputation.

Meanwhile, so-called anti-fascist demonstrators, shouting “Wir sind die Mauer. Das Volk muss weg!” [“We are the Wall. Down with the people!”], last week blocked a Pegida march in Berlin. …

Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière, another leading CDU politician, claimed that the terror attacks in France had “nothing to do with Islam” and warned against “political pyromaniacs” such as Pegida who suggest otherwise.

They continue with their deliberate blindness, and the absurd pretense that the Islamic jihad “has nothing to do with Islam”!

Each time they make such a statement, the ranks of the Dresden marchers will grow bigger – or so we hope.

Pegida’s worries about the Islamization of Germany concern the seeming intolerance and religious fanaticism that have grown hand in hand with the arrival of Muslim populations unwilling to adapt to Western values.

But by decrying Pegida’s views as “xenophobic”, “narrow minded” and even “inhuman”, Germany’s ruling establishment shows how deeply out of touch it is with the worries of a large segment of the population.

A recent poll, dating from before the terror attacks in France, found that one in three Germans support the Pegida anti-Islamization marches. Further, a new study by the Bertelsmann Foundation found that German attitudes toward Islam are hardening, with 61% saying in 2014 that Islam is “not suited to the Western world” – up from 52% in 2012. Also, up to 57% of the Germans see Islam as a threat, 40% feel that they are becoming foreigners in their own country because of the Muslim presence, and 24% want to ban Muslim immigration.

Looking at the numbers of demonstrators that join the Pegida demonstrations every Monday in various German cities, Pegida is clearly an overwhelmingly East German phenomenon. Indeed, in the provinces formerly belonging to the Communist German Democratic Republic [GDR], many thousands of people are drawn to the demonstrations, while in the West the numbers are far lower. Political analysts admit to being puzzled by this, given that the number of immigrants, including Muslims, is far lower in the East than in the West. …

Perhaps the people in the East just want to avoid the situation that the Western part of the country is in, as a result of the large Islamic presence. While the West might already be lost as a result of Islamization, the East is still capable of avoiding the West’s fate. Moreover, having gone through decades of Communist dictatorship, perhaps the Easterners are less inclined to trust that their political leaders have the people’s best interests in mind with their policies.

Perhaps they feel that, rather than trust that Frau Merkel knows what is best for the German people – as she welcomes in record numbers these new Islamic immigrants – the German people need to show her clearly that they think she is wrong.

Merkel is from East Germany herself. She has suffered under a regime that ignores the will of the people. She is politically astute. She has said that “multiculturalism has failed”. So why is she so afraid of Pegida?

Could it be that as a German with a conscience and a knowledge of twentieth century German history, she is more afraid of a rise of irrational aggression against a specific religious group than she is of Islam conquering and destroying her country?

Surely not. How can any intelligent person not see that fear of Islam is not irrational? That Islam is doing everything it can to make the West afraid of it? That there is no resemblance whatsoever between anti-Semitism, which really is irrational, and “Islamophobia”, which would be thoroughly rational yet was not manifest until the people who started Pegida grasped what was happening to their country; to their democracy; to the Western values their nation adopted only quite recently after descending into deep criminality.

Now that they have grasped the nature and the force of the threat, they are taking action against it. May it not be too little, too late.

The idea that compassion is the essence of morality, entered history – to become in time a significant ethical philosophy – with the teachings of St Paul.

St. Paul, the author of Christianity, preached to his converts that they must “love all”.[1] How to do this was explained by the writers of the gospels. Forgive them if they harm you. Turn the other cheek. Love the sinner though you hate the sin. It was an ethos that preferred love to justice (in contradiction to Judaism which held justice to be the highest value).

St. Paul went to extreme lengths in explaining how a follower of “Christ Jesus” must conduct himself in relation to other people.

He must humble himself until he was no more in his own eyes than “the filth of the world, the scum, the muck that is scoured from things.”[2] He must live for others, sacrifice himself for others, the only use of his life being for others. Not only every other individual, but the collective of mankind was of more value than the Christian’s own life. The plight of others is what matters, never your own predicament. Your only legitimate happiness must be a product of your giving and yielding to others.

So fanatically against self-consideration was St. Paul that his  ideal Christian society was one in which there was no private property. Share all you have, he told his followers. And the reason he gave for this is particularly pertinent: So that you’ll all be equal in worldly possessions.[3]  

Disdain for private property, and the idealizing of equality also entered history with Christianity.  

St. Paul went even further. You must be prepared to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice.”[4] You must not be privileged above others. As a Christian you must renounce your  individual wants, talents, aspirations to serve the collective. That way, you are buying the approval of “Christ Jesus”, by whose grace – and only by whose grace – you may be “saved” to live eternally with him. Yet all your efforts to be good according to Pauline precepts might not after all, however painstakingly pursued, buy you that ticket to heaven. And since God is all-knowing, your fate is pre-determined.

To the Christian, this life was only a time of preparation for eternity. What mattered for the Christian was what happened to his “soul” after his bodily death. Naturally, it became a cult of martyrdom. Christians took up their crosses to follow their Lord; joyfully sought crucifixion for themselves, or death in the lion’s mouth in the Roman arena. Some wore hairshirts. Some sat on the top of tall pillars for years. Some died for “Christ Jesus” in battle with followers of other faiths, or with rival claimants to the certain knowledge of Christian “truth”.

And while human life continues, the Church will be the only power on earth. Both the Catholic and Protestant churches became totalitarian tyrannies whose spies tirelessly sniffed out heretics to be tried, imprisoned, tortured and killed.

When would the eternal life of bliss – or agonizing punishment – begin? Immediately upon your own death, or at the end of time when “Christ Jesus”  will judge the quick and the dead? The answer remains unsettled. But there will be an Apocalypse, a cataclysmic event which will change everything, marking the end of days, and then – if not before – the chosen will live happily ever after in the perfect state of  heaven, ruled over by the all-powerful government of the Triune God; while the rejected burn in hell.

Thus Christianity.

What other ideology claims the moral high ground by justifying its every deed by claiming it to be in the service of the weak, the exploited, the injured, the underdog? Or to put it another way, Justification by Compassion?

What other dogma has it that the plight of the collective matters above all? What other teaches that it is it the duty of the individual to sacrifice himself, his personal wants, talents, aspirations to the greater good of the collective?[6]

In what other ideal society is private property abolished – “so that all will be equal in worldly possessions”? Who decries “privilege”? Who holds equality as the highest ideal? 

In the name of what political orthodoxy were totalitarian tyrannies established whose spies ceaselessly sniffed out heretics to be tried, imprisoned, tortured and killed?

Where do we find revered texts predicting a cataclysmic event that will change everything, after which the chosen will live happily ever after in a perfect state, under the rule of an all-powerful government, while the rejected will be excluded, condemned, punished, and destroyed?

The answer is Communism, learnt from the unquestionable authority of Karl Marx.

Marxist Communism insists that the only power must be the Communist Party.

It predicts an inevitable Revolution as its all-transforming Apocalypse. After the Revolution the faithful – those whom the Communist Party spares – will live happily ever after in a perfect Communist state.

While Communism posits no divinities, it declares that something superior to man’s will determines what must inevitably happen – an hypostasis named History.

It rejects the notions of a supernatural authority and a non-material existence. But the rest of Marxist Communism’s essential doctrine is derived from only one source – Christianity. Though neither Marx nor any of his apostles seem to have been aware of it.

The current head of the Pauline Christian Catholic Church, Pope Francis, has tackled this subject.

AP reports (January 11, 2015):

Pope Francis is insisting that his concern for the poor and critique of the global economic system isn’t some novel, communist-inspired ideology but rather the original and core “touchstone” of the Christian faith.

He is right about that. Communism is inspired by Christianity, not Christianity by Communism.

Some U.S. conservatives have branded the first Latin American pope a Marxist for his frequent critiques of consumerism and focus on a church “that is poor and for the poor”.  But in an interview contained in a new book, Francis explains that his message is rooted in the Gospel and has been echoed by church fathers since Christianity’s first centuries.

Again, he is right.

“The Gospel does not condemn the wealthy, but the idolatry of wealth, the idolatry that makes people indifferent to the call of the poor,” Francis says in This Economy Kills, a study of the pope’s economic and social teachings. …

Wrong. Early Christianity did condemn the wealthy. The Gospel of Luke, for instance, tells a story to make that very point.[7]

Specifically, Francis summarized a verse from the Gospel of Matthew which is the essential mission statement of his papacy: “I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was in prison, I was sick, I was naked and you helped me, clothed me, visited me, took care of me.”

And overlooked the question why “I” was in prison.

“Caring for our neighbor, for those who are poor, who suffer in body and soul, for those who are in need: this is the touchstone. Is it pauperism? No. It is the Gospel.”

Right.

He cites church fathers dating to St. Ambrose and St. John Chrysostom as expressing the same concerns, and noted somewhat wryly that if he had said the same “some would accuse me of giving a Marxist homily”.

Well recognized! Though I cannot resist mentioning in passing that the two saints, Ambrose and John Chrysostom, whom he cites as being especially zealous about caring for the suffering, did not extend their compassion to everyone, they being among the most vicious preachers against the Jews in all history.[8]

How interesting it is that the Pope felt moved to say, not that Marxism and Christianity are different, but merely that of the two similar ideologies, Christianity came first.

To be compassionate is not of course morally wrong. But as a cause so high that in its name human lives may be sacrificed, moral superiority hypocritically claimed, a monopoly of power be instituted, and the unique possession of Truth asserted, it is hideous.

And hideous is the history of both Christianity and its daughter Communism.

 *

Afterword on Charity:

The “first” letter of St. Paul “to the Corinthians”, chapter 13, is a rather good poem declaring love, or charity, to be the highest virtue. “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. … And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” Whether the poet meant “love” or “charity” has been a bone of contention in Christendom. William Tyndale was sentenced to be burnt at the stake by the Church of Infinite Compassion for translating it with the one word rather than the other.

As an aside, I don’t believe that St Paul was the author of the chapter. It is far too well written to be from the pen of such a clumsy writer as he was. For an example of his poor writing, see his authenticated letter to the Romans.[9]

But what of charity – regarded by Christians as love in practice? Though I am not against it, I do not see it as a great virtue. It is no solution for poverty – just prolongs it.

I do think charity is preferable to Communism/Socialism as a means of redistributing money from those who have earned it to those who have not, private enterprise always being preferable to government control.

But still it is unjust.

To give it is very satisfying to the ego. And contrary to Christian dogma, there’s nothing wrong with self-indulgence.

But as self-advertisement it is repulsive.

Ideally, charity would be practiced only by consenting adults in private.

Jillian Becker    January 14, 2015

NOTES

1. Love one another, love all. 1 Thess.4:9 , Rom.13:8, 1 Cor 13. All quotation is from the King James Version of the New Testament.

2. 1 Cor.4:13

3. 2 Cor 8:14

4. Rom.12:12

5. Become the lowest of the low. Phili.2:3; Let us abase ourselves; be fools; 1 Cor.4:10; Be humble, and associate with the lowly. Rom.12:16; Do only the most menial work for a living. 1 Thess.4:11,1 Cor.4:12; Bear affliction –  persecution, injustice – with patience. Rom.12:12-14,  even with joy. 1 Thess.5:16,18

6. It is well documented that numerous loyal members of the the Communist Party, in the USSR and its satellite states, were persuaded by the Party to let it kill them for the sake of the Party. An interesting account in English of how the Communist Party thus devoured its own is Under a Cruel Star by Heda Margolius Kovály, whose husband Rudolf Margolius was a martyr to the greater, humaner, compassionate cause in Communist Czechoslovakia.

7. Luke 16:19-31

8. 379 A.D.  Vicious writing by St. John Chrysostom and St. Ambrose in Milan who said: “The Jews are the most worthless of all men. They are lecherous, greedy, rapacious. They are perfidious murderers of Christ. They worship the Devil. Their religion is a sickness. The Jews are the odious assassins of Christ and for killing God there is no expiation possible, no indulgence or pardon. Christians may never cease vengeance, and the Jew must live in servitude forever. God always hated the Jews. It is essential that all Christians hate them.” He was called the Bishop with the Golden Tongue. St. Ambrose, Bishop of the Church offered to burn the synagogue himself. St. John Chrysostom’s Homilies against the Jews may be found here.

9. eg. of St. Paul’s confused thinking and poor writing, Rom. 5:12-18: “¹² Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: ¹³ (For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law. ¹⁴ Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come. ¹⁵ But not as the offense, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. ¹⁶ And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offenses unto justification. ¹⁷ For if by one man’s offense death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.) ¹⁸ Therefore as by the offense of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.”

Today we posted this on our Facebook page:

A message to Republicans:

We know there are thousands, and we plausibly guess there are tens of thousands, and we conjecture not unreasonably that there may be millions of atheists and secularists who would vote Republican if Christian conservatism did not exert the degree of influence on Republican policy that it does now. Many atheists have voted Democratic not because they like Obama and Pelosi and Reid and Holder and their horrible Leftist, redistributionist, and unpatriotic policies, but because they are repelled by the voices of the religious sounding so loud and often on the Right. By paying less attention to those voices, and keeping religion out of policy-making, you would not lose the votes of many Christians. They’re not likely to go over en masse to the Left. But you would gain a considerable number of new voters. Please take this message, which we advance very seriously, into consideration.

Please help us get our message to Republicans.

It just may make some difference.

Or not?

Would the Republicans ever risk losing the votes of the religious Right? Do they think of it as their base? Would they ever consider ignoring it, let alone abandoning it?

What do our readers think?

Europe in general and France in particular have chosen to exchange loyal law-abiding highly productive Jewish populations – scientists, inventors, doctors, entrepreneurs, industrialists, writers and musicians – for welfare-dependent, violently law-breaking, Europe-hating Muslims. A crazy deal!

Jews are pouring out of Europe. Thousands have emigrated from France in the last few years, and the rate of emigration will now accelerate, while Muslims continue to arrive. They have taken over control of parts of the country, where they enforce their intolerant and cruel sharia law. They treat their women as slaves. Some obey orders from Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Last week in Paris, four al-Qaeda terrorists murdered journalists, cartoonists, and police officers, and shoppers in a Jewish supermarket; all in the name of their bloodthirsty god Allah.

Dr. Lawrence A. Franklin, who served as a US Military Attaché to Israel, writes at Gatestone:

A seemingly required inclusion in most [American] reports on the recent mass murder in Paris was the rhetorical question posed by reporters: “Will these events invite a wave of anti-Muslim incidents?” …

Under-reported, however, was how rapidly the assault against Charlie Hebdo migrated into an anti-Jewish mini-pogrom in the heart of Paris. What did shoppers in a kosher market, four of whom were slaughtered, have to do with the cartoon images of Mohammad? Nothing. But the assault on the HyperCacher Jewish kosher supermarket has a lot to do with the true nature of Islamic militancy.

It seems the drawings in Charlie Hebdo offended some true believers of Islam, but the mere existence of Jews also offends them. So, apparently, does the existence of Christians, Yazidis, Hindus, Ahmadiyyas; anyone considered a “disbeliever”, “infidel” or “not Muslim enough”; other Muslims, such as those blown up on the streets of Asia each week or the unfortunate Muslim policeman, Ahmed Merabet, wounded, then slaughtered at point blank range, on the sidewalk for not being “part of the plan”.

The Grand Mosque in Paris, like mosques all over the capital, was open for business on Friday, the Muslim day of prayer. Moreover, there was little discernible increased security around the Grand Mosque. It seems French security authorities were less worried about attacks directed at Muslim institutions than were America’s media commentators.

Perhaps [the American reporters] should have spent just a little time reporting on the anti-Jewish rioting that took place in the heavily Muslim neighborhood of Trappes, a suburb of Paris?

In reaction to the murders in Paris, the French capital’s Grand Synagogue was closed for the first time since World War II. In fact, synagogues all over Paris were closed. There were no Shabbat services this Saturday, the Jewish day of rest. The stores in the Marais, the Jewish section of Paris, were also shuttered. In light of all this, the expressed concern about possible anti-Muslim incidents, claims on television, such as on CNN, that “Muslims are the most persecuted people,” seemed jarring and wrong.

We of course do not think it a bad thing in itself when places of worship are closed. But as a symptom of the atmosphere of pogrom in Paris, the closing of the synagogues is ominous.

One cannot see how France can profit in the long run from its pro-Islam anti-Semitic policies. But do the indigenous French care what is happening to their nation? All Europe seems to be in a long-drawn-out suicidal death throe.

This is from Front Page, by Ari Lieberman:

It’s time that we finally admit it. The battle for Old Europe is over. The Gates of Vienna have finally been breached. Old Europe has been experiencing a tidal wave of violence and terror in recent years correlating to and in direct proportion with the growing influence of Muslims in the western part of the continent. [The] massacre in Paris by Muslims screaming “Allahuakbar” (what else?) represents a culmination of growing Muslim power and even dominance in France. Britain, Sweden, Belgium and the rest of the sorry lot are not too far behind. Today’s European Muslims have successfully accomplished what the Nazis could not accomplish in World War II. They have sown an irreversible dread into Europe and implanted a fascist-like Islamist seed that has taken firm root.

It is ironic that France has been the recent target of most of the violence. France of all the countries of Old Europe is one of Islam’s greatest appeasers. …

Since the mid-1960s, the French, motivated partly out of greed, partly out of a need to needle the United States and partly out of genuine dislike for the Mideast’s only democracy, have done everything in their power to appease tyranny rather than fight it, to prop it up rather than obliterate it.

In May 1967 France was the first Western power to unilaterally impose an arms embargo on Israel at a precarious time when Israel was facing existential threats from its Arab neighbors. … The world watched with feigned concern as hundreds of thousands of Arabs soldiers backed by modern Soviet T-55 tanks and Mig fighter jets converged on Israel’s borders. The French, who barely had time to shed the stench of their collaborationist Vichy past, chose to abandon and betray the Jewish State in a transparent effort to curry favor with the Muslim world. The French sold their morality for oil and a few Francs.

France’s duplicitous foreign policies when it came to appeasing two-bit Arab dictators only went from bad to worse.  They helped Saddam Hussein construct an atom bomb plant and supplied the tyrant with massive quantities of Mirage fighter jets, missiles, tanks and artillery. …

The French really know how to pick ‘em. Successive French governments have developed a penchant for coddling up to the most vile Islamic dictators and terror sponsoring states. Close relationships were forged with Hafez Assad of Syria and arch terror chieftain Yasser Arafat, a despicable murderer who was always warmly greeted by adoring and fawning French officials.

Rather than fighting and combatting Islamic terrorists, the French have a nasty habit of paying them off. They released frozen Iranian assets in exchange for cessation of Iranian-backed terror attacks against France and paid Palestinian groups protection money in an effort to spare their commercial airliners from the scourge of Palestinian skyjackings.

France’s abominable foreign policy reared its ugly head yet again when on December 30, it backed a Palestinian resolution at the UN Security Council that [would impose] dictates on Israel, compelling the Jewish State to withdraw to pre-1967 borders – borders which Israel’s former UN ambassador, Abba Ebban, perceptively termed “Auschwitz lines” – without addressing Israel’s security needs and territorial claims. …

To the leaders of France, composed of Neville Chamberlin lookalikes, adopting the Palestinian narrative and coddling up to the Mideast’s Muslim dictators, is good for business and insulates France against Islamic-inspired terror attacks. [The recent] barbaric Muslim massacre of French political satirists, journalists and policemen in Paris proves otherwise and should compel French leaders to reevaluate their foreign and liberal domestic policies. It should also serve as a wakeup call for the rest of Old Europe to do the same but something tells me that this will not occur and there will be no course correction. …

In a few weeks or perhaps months, all will return to “normal”. French Muslim Imams will continue to spew hate directed against the “infidels” from the mosques. Violent anti-Israel, Jew-hating protests will resume in the streets of Paris and Marseilles and French officials will once again move to condemn Israel for committing some imaginary offense because it’s good for business.

France’s policy of favoring Muslims and opposing the aspiration of the Jews to preserve their peoplehood, is very long established and deeply grounded.

In his 2006 book Betrayal: France, the Arabs, and the Jews, David Pryce-Jones outlines the history of French relations with the Islamic world, demonstrating how helpful France has consistently been to Arab and Islamic tyrants, in total disregard of moral values. “Morality, justice, fact – they were no obstacle.”

On France’s concept of itself as “une puissance musulmane” (a Muslim power), he writes:

[It is] a concept which could only encourage Arabs and Muslims to feel entitled to make special demands on the country so eagerly co-opting and enrolling them into its national purposes. The definition of Jews as people who must abjure any distinguishing national identity, or else suffer the consequences for preserving their specificity, is one of those special demands, and it happens to coincide exactly with the statute put in place in 1789 by the Comte de Clermont-Tonnerre, and cherished by the state ever since.

Ideas and attitudes work downwards from the political elite that conceives them to the people who have to live with the consequences. The foreign ministry, generally referred to as the Quai d’Orsay, is the institution above all others responsible over an extended period of time for realising the state’s grand design for Arabs and Jews and overseeing the political outcome that derives from it. … [A] small number of highly motivated and carefully selected men of like mind have fostered the preconceptions of Arabs and Jews that have now come to threaten the integrity of the French nation.

So any claim by any French leader that anti-Semitism is alien to France, or that the state has not encouraged conflict between Arabs and Jews, or that the attack by Muslims on the supermarket in a Jewish quarter of Paris is hard to explain, is sheer hypocrisy. France is beginning to pay the price for its short-sighted, immoral, and ultimately unprofitable policies.