I was searching the interwebs for your name and came across this blog. If you remember who I am give me a holler. I’d like to know how you are doing.

Yan

And I agree that there is more equality under a Euro-style social democracy than in the U.S.

Regarding the Vanguard: I understand that it’s supposed to disappear, but I don’t see that happening. Do you have a good historical example of that or is it that we haven’t given socialism enough time to get there?

I have no problem with a monetary system — a fungible commodity for easier exchange of goods.

And again, I think you’re setting up a bit of a false dilemma between capitalist-fascism and totalitarian-socialism.

Marx (and I) would have the collective be in charge — real democracy (with some safeguards against too much majoritarian dominance over minorities). No “someone else” in charge, but “everyone else” in charge.

2. I don’t agree that inequality is necessarily worse under something like state-run socialism than it is under capitalism. In fact, I think equality tends to be much better in Euro-style social democracies than it is in the U.S.

Again, between us it’s a matter of emphasis.

Hence, I am working to help individuals with the same religious ethos as I have to see property as a gift from God, to be used as Locke states. Have his words been twisted by those who would use them for their benefit? Absolutely, as were Marx’s words. Thus we have to take Locke at his word and promote the concepts that individual Christians must limit their property to those limits stated by him (both Locke and Christ…and Isaiah and many others). Otherwise our options are profound inequality (under capitalism) or profounder inequality (under a Vanguard).

Your last paragraph hits it relatively closely. The potential for grabbing economic power that exists because the way property exists in the Western world is what makes me concerned for the authoritarian constructs winning out. That said, I think that the U.S. is actually closer to corporatistic authoritarianism than totalitarian socialism (although to listen to anything Right of NPR would have us believing otherwise).

However, I see this as a slowly creeping process that needs to be checked soon or we will be too far along the road to reverse any of the power grab from the sovereign people. I just see us giving up more and more of our natural rights of freedom for more and more civil rights for security. Europe is doing it in a more socialistic fashion and the U.S. is doing it in a more corporistic fashion, but it is happening in both places.

I think that you and I see things very similarly but with different emphasis: I want to protect freedom first and foremost, and you seem to want to protect equality and social justice first and foremost. All of those things we want are critical components of Christianity. Is there a way to have the optimum of all without having the increase the power of the governance to a degree that it negates one? That’s what I’m trying to ask.