Have you ever wondered – What??? Huh???? Why??? When listening to the radical – religious right?
Have you ever wondered – What??? Huh???? Why??? When listening to the radical –right talk about the economy?
Recently I read an article from 2010 NYT that was an eye opener - some interesting “revelations” in it. The topic of the article was the battle of religious fundamentalist zealots and their battle in Texas to rewrite textbooks and history.
Here are some snips – some that I thought might pique your interest.
“But Christianity has had a deep impact on our system. The men who wrote the Constitution were Christians who knew the Bible. Our idea of individual rights comes from the Bible. The Western development of the free-market system owes a lot to biblical principles.”
“As we try to promote a better understanding of the Constitution, federalism, the separation of the branches of government, the basic rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, I think it will become evident to students that the founders had a religious motivation.”
Barton has written and lectured on the First Amendment and against separation of church and state. He is a controversial figure who has argued that the U.S. income tax and the capital-gains tax should be abolished because they violate Scripture (for the Bible says, in Barton’s reading, “the more profit you make the more you are rewarded”) and who pushes a Christianity-first rhetoric.
This comment took me on a new journey:
The Western development of the free-market system owes a lot to biblical principles
It made me wonder -– What??? Huh???? Why???
Being that I am not a big fan of the free-market philosophy being pushed by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and I feel that ALEC has intentionally influenced the market through their manipulation of legislation by corporate lobbyists and just plain nastiness - I was interested in this topic. Being that Paul Weyrich, the founder of ALEC and the Moral Majority, spent his life pulling right wing Christian extremists into the political arena - I was interested in this topic.
And damned if I didn’t find support for this crazy thinking from the right wing.
The first article that I read was written by a right wing extremist who reinterprets the Bible in only a way that a free-market evangelical fundamentalist would even think of.
Jesus was a free marketer, not an Occupier
Tony Perkins is president of the Family Research Council in Washington
In his article he uses a Bible parable to justify the following statement:
"To everyone who has, more shall be given," the Bible reads, "but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away."
Honestly, I could not believe my eyes when I read that – I needed to re-read it several times to make sure that I had read it correctly.
I had to ask myself does this guy really believe this?
But basically – you have to admit – this appears to be the core belief of the GOP.
Could he really believe that from the Bible – Jesus could be interpreted in a parable to promote a free-market philosophy that results in a statement such as this … "but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away"?
Well yes – ‘cause once I got into digging into this strange interpretation of the Bible as an instrument of free-market philosophy, I found some things that make perfect sense in regards to today’s radical right-wing thinking.
First you have to be able to accept the fact that the free-market can be fundamentalist movement. And you have to be willing to consider what an evangelical fundamentalist belief of the free market would look like.
Fortunately I found some articles that connect-the-dots between fundamentalist religion and fundamentalist free-market philosophy.
One author concludes that
Religious fundamentalism and free-market fundamentalism do not merely parallel each other. These two narrow, far-right ideologies often overlap.
This makes all the sense when you look at the positions currently being taken by the extreme right.
Extremist positions are necessary for both fundamentalist religion and fundamentalist free-market thinking to occur.
" Like religious fundamentalism, free-market fundamentalism emphasizes the need for ideological purity, thereby leading people to embrace extreme positions and uncompromisingly oppose government economic intervention.”
Because fundamentalists are ideologically driven, they tend to reject basic facts that do not comport with their ideology.
“reject the basic facts”
Rejecting basic facts – is the foundation of the “junk science” philosophy held by ALEC and other right wing organizations.
Rejecting basic facts – is evident in the climate denial and the other extremist position taken by the radical right and explains why they are so entrenched in their dogma – whether religious or market based.
Since the fundamentalists' extreme views usually do not square with the facts, they commonly proceed to make up their own facts, resorting to disinformation and conspiracy theories.
And we all have seen this in the reports released by the American Legislative Exchange Council, The Heritage or Reason Foundations.
Religious fundamentalism and market fundamentalism are both rigidly rooted in dogmatic faith - in the literal truth of scripture and in strict laissez-faire economics. These mindsets stand in sharp contrast to an evidence-based, pragmatic approach to religion and public policy.
The literal truth of scripture?
How do you find the literal truth in a “myth of creation” that is a story interpreted by many each in a different way in the different books of the Bible. Based on this line of thinking, we should then be looking for “literal truth” in the Greek myths.
Literal truth – wow!
Free-market fundamentalism is a utopian ideology aiming to create an ideal society with virtually no government economic oversight. Because fundamentalists are inherently hostile to compromise,
And as we can all attest – elimination of government programs and government services is at the top of the GOP agenda.
And as we can all attest – compromise has not been a virtue that we have seen much of in politics the last twelve years –when it comes to the extremist right wing.
But this statement made by author though revealing, is at the same time understated.
Religious fundamentalism and free-market fundamentalism do not merely parallel each other. These two narrow, far-right ideologies often overlap.
Not only due they overlap – but there is historical evidence of the disastrous effects that the combined philosophies can have.
In a historical review of evangelical fundamentalist free markets and religion from 2005, Gordon Bigelow in a Harpers article looks at “The evangelical roots of economics”. Bigelow begins with a short trip down economics history with some interesting information regarding Adam Smith and David Ricardo, and the evangelical response to their economic beliefs.
Neoclassical economics tends to downplay the importance of human institutions, seeing instead a system of flows and exchanges that are governed by an inherent equilibrium. Predicated on the belief that markets operate in a scientifically knowable fashion, it sees them as self-regulating mathematical miracles, as delicate ecosystems best left alone.
If there is a whiff of creationism around this idea, it is no accident. By the time the term “economics” first emerged, in the 1870s, it was evangelical Christianity that had done the most to spur the field on toward its present scientific self-certainty.
So not only do right wing extremist policies – threaten to drag us back 50 or hundred years or more – but the current policies are rooted in a extremist belief that is 200 years old and based in another way of life – an economic environment that no one could possibly comprehend in today’s age.
As the wealthy bought gold pickle forks and paid servants to herd their pet peacocks, the servants and the goldsmiths would benefit. It was on this dubious foundation that Smith built his case for freedom of trade.
By the 1820s and ’30s, this foundation had become increasingly troubling to free-trade advocates, who sought, in their study of political economy, not just an explanation of rapid change but a moral justification for their own wealth and for the outlandish sufferings endured by the new industrial poor.
How could anyone even think they could create an explanation of greed and gluttony - similar to what we are experiencing in today’s society – in relation to the “outlandish sufferings” of the poor. But, as is the case today – they found a way to explain their moral dilemma away.
Ricardo’s credibility with the capitalists was unquestionable: he was not a philosopher like Adam Smith but a successful stockbroker who had retired young on his earnings. But his view of capitalism made it seem that a harmonious society was a thing of the past: class conflict was part of the modern world, and the gentle old England
A stockbroker educating others that class conflict is a part of life.
How 21st century!
The group that bridled most against these pessimistic elements of Smith and Ricardo was the evangelicals. These were middle-class reformers who wanted to reshape Protestant doctrine. For them it was unthinkable that capitalism led to class conflict, for that would mean that God had created a world at war with itself. The evangelicals believed in a providential God, one who built a logical and orderly universe, and they saw the new industrial economy as a fulfillment of God’s plan. The free market, they believed, was a perfectly designed instrument to reward good Christian behavior and to punish and humiliate the unrepentant.
And here – the explanation that they needed – taken from their interpretation of the Bible to soothe their market based conscious – their greed and gluttony. If they were to interpret this as the doings of their so-called “god” – then the “outlandish sufferings” of the poor could be justified.
And this begins to explain the belief stated earlier that:
The Western development of the free-market system owes a lot to biblical principles.”
And there is more … unfortunately more evangelical philosophy that will sound very familiar to those of us living in the 21st century.
Evangelicals interpreted the mental anguish of poverty and debt, and the physical agony of hunger or cold, as natural spurs to prick the conscience of sinners. They believed that the suffering of the poor would provoke remorse, reflection, and ultimately the conversion that would change their fate. In other words, poor people were poor for a reason, and helping them out of poverty would endanger their mortal souls.
Pick themselves up by their bootstraps – if they can afford a pair of boots.
If they can’t afford a pair of boots, then they were poor for a reason, they are full of sin.
But what happened if they could not pull themselves up by their bootstraps?
Workhouses became orphanages, insane asylums, nursing homes, public hospitals, and factories for the able-bodied. Protests over the conditions in these prison-like facilities, particularly the conditions for children, mounted throughout the 1830s. But it did not surprise the evangelicals to learn that life in the workhouses was miserable. These early faith-based initiatives regarded poverty as a divinely sanctioned payment plan for a sinful life. This first anti-poverty program in the first industrial economy was not designed to alleviate suffering, nor to reduce the number of poor children in future generations. Poverty was not understood as a problem to be fixed. It was a spiritual condition.
Poverty a “payment plan for a sinful life”.
Poverty “a spiritual condition”
If you were poor – you were meant to be miserable. It was predestined by the bastardization of the scriptures that had been done to justify gluttony and greed.
The very troubling encapsulation of evangelical religion and fundamentalist free-market thinking of the 19th century eventually comes to a horrible historical ending. In the next section of the article Bigelow goes on to explain how Victorian evangelical religious and economic beliefs exaggerated the death toll in Ireland
To truly understand the horrific nature of this interpretation by Bigelow – you have to remember this quote from above:
" Like religious fundamentalism, free-market fundamentalism emphasizes the need for ideological purity, thereby leading people to embrace extreme positions and uncompromisingly oppose government economic intervention.”
During the potato famine – the
Charles Trevelyan, assistant secretary of the treasury, called the program a “monstrous centralization” and argued that it would simply perpetuate the problems of the Irish poor. Trevelyan viewed the potato-dependent economy as the result of Irish backwardness and self-indulgence. This crisis seemed to offer the opportunity for the Irish to atone.
“argued that it would simply perpetuate the problems of the Irish poor “ - sound familiar?
The food program was stopped.
The belief of the “fervent evangelical” “free market” politicians that dismantling the cornmeal program would force the poor out of agricultural areas and would stimulate manufacturing because the poor would have to move into the cities – which by that time were industrialized and in need of cheap, dispensable labor.
Well – for the poor – it didn’t work out so well.
They had no cornmeal.
They had no potatoes.
The manufacturing jobs didn’t materialize.
Roughly a million people died; another million emigrated. The population of Ireland
It remains one of the most striking illustrations of the incapacity of markets to run themselves.
When government corn supplements stopped, and food prices rose, private charities and workhouses were overwhelmed, and families starved by the sides of roads.
When British leadership put its faith in the natural balance of an open market to create the best outcome, the result was disaster.
Evangelicals like Trevelyan didn’t look smart and pious after the famine; they looked blind to human reality and desperately cruel.
Their brand of political economy, grounded in evangelical doctrine, went into retreat and lost influence.
One hundred and fifty years ago – millions of poor people were basically murdered, directly or indirectly, through starvation because of extremist fundamentalist views of the free-market and of evangelical prosperity - based religion.
These philosophies went into retreat for awhile – but we are seeing a resurgence of evangelical fundamentalist religion and free-market thinking now – in the 20th/21st century, in the United States
The food programs are being defunded/stopped - other social services are being decimated.
The claim that markets are products of higher-order law, products of nature or of divine will, simply lends legitimacy to one particularly extreme view of politics and society.
Free markets don’t promote public virtue; they promote private interest. In this way they are neither “free” (that is, independent of human influence) nor uniformly helpful in promoting freedom.
So, basically, when you combine extreme evangelical fundamentalist positions of religion and free-market you end up with a situation that
... emphasizes the need for ideological purity, thereby leading people to embrace extreme positions and uncompromisingly oppose government economic intervention.”
Free-market fundamentalism is a utopian ideology aiming to create an ideal society with virtually no government economic oversight. Because fundamentalists are inherently hostile to compromise,
Free-market fundamentalism is a utopian ideology aiming to create an ideal society with virtually no government economic oversight. Because fundamentalists are inherently hostile to compromise,
The extremist evangelical fundamentalist positions of religion and free-market,
that has been proven, historically, to be disastrous to humanity
that has been proven, historically, to be disastrous to humanity
and could be again - because this is the current GOP philosophy and agenda.
The question is - will we allow it to happen?
The question is - will we allow it to happen?
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