Posted on 07/31/2010 10:07:39 AM PDT by TradicalRC
In 2002 a group of tourists from the United States visited the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing to hear a talk by a Chinese academic who prefers to remain anonymous. Speaking in the plural for unnamed fellow thinkers, he described their search for what accounted for the pre-eminence, the success of the West all over the world. Their studies ranged widely. Originally they thought the main reason was more powerful guns; then it was Western political systems, before considering the claims of the Western economic system.
Finally, and I quote "in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. . . . The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the transition to democratic politics. We don't have any doubt about this" [1].
My second straw in the gale comes from Zhao Xiao, an official Chinese economist, who wrote also in 2002 a fascinating article titled "Market Economies With Churches and Market Economies Without Churches". It made the obvious points that market economies promote efficiency, discourage laziness, force competition. They work and produce wealth. But, he pointed out, a market cannot discourage people from lying or causing harm and indeed may encourage people to be industrious in their efforts to harm others and pursue wealth by any means [2].
(Excerpt) Read more at catholiceducation.org ...
Hunh. Sounds like a museum exhibit.
Sort of appropos, I guess.
Please, can we stop letting communists define us? No Catholic who studies the matter can support "capitalism," certainly not lassez faire.
An economic system born of liberty and the rule of law (read: free markets) certainly.
The final footnote to this legacy is that their sense of fairness, basic humanity and good will toward others, coupled with their determination to forge these beliefs into laws for all has been used against them, with their own laws, by those that hate them, those that want to destroy them because they were able to make their beliefs prosper and grow. Jealousy and hate are evil things.
How can anyone doubt the thread that used to bind western civilization was Christianity? The basic founders of the G7 went to the crusades together.
And this is the one thread that one man, Barrack Obama wants to break for his brethren.
As a Christian law student, I’ve learned about Aquinas and Blackstone and the concepts of higher law and natural law. The historical, reasonable assumption is that man, as God’s creation, has a God-given desire to pursue his own happiness. Societies, laws, and governments that help man in his pursuit of happiness are considered to be good and most likely valid natural law, a derivative of higher law.
Societies, laws, and governments that are unjust and cruel are unreasonable and unnatural. These interfere with man’s highest pursuits and, therefore, are probably not from God’s higher law. Centuries of thought and development of common law have taught us this, although increasingly higher law has been ignored in since 1900. Augustine said (De Lib. Arb. i. 5). “That which is not just seems to be no law at all,” to which Aquinas adds (Summa, Q. 92, Reply Obj. 4), “A tyrannical law...[is] not according to reason [and] is not a law, absolutely speaking, but rather a perversion of law...”
America has been successful because its traditional values codified in the U.S. Constitution are consistent with man’s God-given instincts, interests and aspirations. Free-market capitalism, for the same reasons, is vastly superior in concept and historical results, to any government-run economy. Tyranny may temporarily gain an upper hand as it has now in America. But given the chance, the Christian values of life and freedom will always win out in the end over tyranny.
Zhao Xiao, “Market Economies With Churches and Market Economies Without Churches”
Lead paint on little toys, melamine in petfood, toothpaste and such, sulfided drywall, hi-arsenic-coal-dried peppers, etc.
“No Catholic who studies the matter can support ‘capitalism,’ certainly not lassez faire.”
That’s true!
Anyone who truly desires individual liberty better listen. Catholicism opposes it.
“Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.
“The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting man’s rights.”
—Ayn Rand
Those who despise capitalism, despise man’s rights.
Hank
if your mind works in this way -- seizing upon fables and insisting they are reality, then reason is clearly futile here.
Suffice to say that Catholicism hammered out the parameters of dignified human liberty in all realms -- including the marketplace -- centuries before Ayn Rand came upon the scene to repackage and dramatize Hayek and seduce her proteges.
“Catholicism hammered out the parameters of dignified human liberty in all realms ...”
Sure. Tell that to the Cathars, Albigenses, Waldenses, Huguenots and Nights Templars the Catholics mercilessly persecuted and stole the property of.
Hank
o.
m.
g.
don't you have to get back to your room now?
“don’t you have to get back to your room now?”
Not ‘til 7:30, Honey!
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