Ecc 9-10
Romans 10
Psalm 129; Psalm 130; Psalm 131
“Be feeble-minded and milk-livered when hard times come. Curl up in the fetal position and wet your big Christian diaper.” el Diablo 37: 11
Doug Giles in his book - Dear Christian: Your Fear is Full of Crap (Available on Amazon)
Today in History: 25 July 1775 - Maryland issues currency depicting George III trampling Magna Carta
This brings me to the conflicts we see today…
1776 vs 1789: The Two Bloody Revolutions That Defined How We Think About Wealth in the Modern World
By Julius Ruechel
The American and French Revolutions were based on two fundamentally opposite ways of thinking about wealth. These two viewpoints produce two completely different societies and the conflict about which is right forms a long-running debate that goes back centuries. At its heart, it’s a debate about how wealth is created and how it should be divided between the citizens of a country.
The recent US election was just the latest chapter in this debate and modern discussions about “economic, racial, social and environmental justice” are simply restating age-old questions: Should fairness be measured by opportunity or outcome? When should the government be allowed to interfere in your life for someone else’s benefit? When does the hand of the referee become the strong arm of the tyrant?
What happened in 1776 in America and in 1789 in France laid the groundwork for the dominant political philosophies that have defined the Western world ever since. Both revolutions were motivated by the same desire to bring prosperity to the people and to free them from the tyranny of their unaccountable rulers. And both succeeded in throwing off their monarchies. But that’s where their similarities end.
The American attitude towards wealth led to the founding of a successful and long-lasting republic. The rallying cry of their Revolution - Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness - inspired Americans to follow a path of wealth creation unlike anything the world had ever seen. The freedom America offered became a refuge from the “storied pomp of ancient lands”, a place where the “world's tired, poor, and huddled masses could breathe free” and lift themselves up by their own bootstraps. And the ideas that sparked their revolution matured into the American Dream and the American tradition of the self-made man.
Things didn’t turn out quite so well in France. Despite the fact that their rallying cry - Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality - was partly inspired by the American version, within a decade of overthrowing their monarchy public opinion in France had already turned against their new republic. Disillusioned, they turned to military dictatorship instead and Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned as emperor and was, once again, granted absolute power over his people.
To understand why America ended up with a stable republic while France slid right back into dictatorship, we need to have a closer look at the attitudes that each of these countries had towards the creation and division of wealth. So, imagine for a moment a world full of oak trees and squirrels and nothing else. The oak trees produce acorns, which represent the wealth of the nation.
The default attitude throughout history has been to view wealth as a limited number of acorns, collectively shared, with laws needed to ensure that every squirrel gets a fair share of acorns so none go hungry. This attitude places government at the center of society in the role of referee in charge of dividing access to this wealth. That is why the French squirrel of 1789 cried out for Fraternity and Equality; it was a cry about the unfair division of acorns and a veiled threat to those holding the reins of power that when government fails to divvy out acorns fairly, it loses its legitimacy and heads roll. From this perspective, fairness is judged by equality of outcome.
But from the American perspective, shaped by their history of hacking a living out of the raw forests and grasslands of the American continent, this is a world with a thriving market for acorns. It’s a world where squirrels are free to take the initiative to plant more oak trees in order to produce even more acorns. Or they can become wealthy either by trading acorns for other goods and services or by trading other goods and services for more acorns. Consequently, this American worldview sees wealth as infinite, and individually owned, because it can be created from nothing and is limited only by the time and effort required to create it.
That’s why the American squirrel of 1776 cried out for the Pursuit of Happiness. It’s a cry to be released from the control of others, to do away with the confiscating hand of the referee, so that every squirrel can reap the benefits of its own planting, harvesting, and trading to achieve its own American Dream. This attitude removes government from the center of society. Its responsibility is limited to protecting you from being tread on by others, but it is not responsible for your financial condition. You, and only you, are responsible for your successes and failures. With an infinite amount of wealth that can be created, fairness is simply a measure of everyone's equal opportunity to participate in the game.
France's Fraternity and Equality, on the other hand, is an invitation to look over your neighbor's fence and count his acorns. It’s a demand for government to continuously intervene in the market through regulation, taxation, and redistribution in order to smooth out differences between individuals or groups. It’s an invitation for everyone to lobby the government to shovel more acorns in their direction in the name of social justice. And it leads to a culture of victimhood because every perceived disadvantage motivates the referee to give you greater access to someone else’s acorns while every perceived advantage is punished by the referee by confiscating some of your acorns to give to someone else.
This attitude towards wealth is the perfect fuel for a never-ending cycle of jealousy, envy, and tribal conflict. It’s the sentiment at the heart of every Marxist revolution. It’s the heartstring every socialist politician pulls to deceive voters into believing that putting the "right" people in charge (and giving these referees more power) will ensure that the acorns will be divided more fairly. This attitude simply replaces old hierarchies built on royal pedigrees with new power struggles based on class, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, skin color, religion, political affiliation, or some other way to divide people into tribes, resulting in a new set of elites elevated to the task of refereeing between them.
Fraternity and Equality are abstract ideals that are impossible to achieve. Fairness depends on whether all the squirrels feel that the acorns were divided equally, and that never happens. When each feels threatened by someone else's abilities and when each feels more entitled according to their own needs, even the most honest and well-meaning referee will never achieve a balance to suit everyone, which means that each revolution merely plants the seeds for the next.
Furthermore, the impossible task of refereeing inevitably leads to economic stagnation. Every new innovation, every improvement in efficiency, and every idea that gives someone an advantage in the marketplace automatically disrupts the distribution of acorns, creates new inequalities, and disturbs the notion of camaraderie. And so, in the name of fairness, the long tentacles of government constantly have to stifle progress, confiscate and redistribute wealth, and try to prevent the creative destruction that occurs when old ways of doing things are replaced by new more efficient ways.
By contrast, the American Pursuit of Happiness is an invitation to look at your own two hands to see what you can create through your own hard work. There’s no guarantee of success, no promise of equal outcomes, and no insulation from competitive market forces. But with no limit to the amount of wealth that can be created, your neighbor's wealth doesn’t threaten your ability to accumulate your own pile of acorns. If anything, he’s a customer with deep pockets, a potential buyer for whatever you’re willing to sell. And your neighbor's success is something to be celebrated and emulated as a model for your own individual path to prosperity. The Pursuit of Happiness is the ultimate motto of a free market, of reinvested savings as a pathway to creating long-term wealth, of personal responsibility, of a good work ethic, and of neighbors who can live together peacefully despite having different sized piles of acorns stashed in their backyards.
So, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that France is currently on its sixteenth constitution since 1789 while America is still on its first. Clearly not all attitudes towards wealth are created equal. The only question that remains is whether there are still enough Americans left today who understand the value of the Pursuit of Happiness to prevent America from falling prey to the deceptive siren song of Fraternity and Equality.