Originally posted by Dee Dee Warren
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Is The Pope A Commie?
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Don't call it a comeback. It's a riposte.
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Originally posted by Zymologist View PostUg...I don't think I should have posted anything. The opinion that I have on this subject is in the extreme minority, and I don't think anybody will be really willing to entertain it. It would probably just be easier to forget I said anything."I am not angered that the Moral Majority boys campaign against abortion. I am angry when the same men who say, "Save OUR children" bellow "Build more and bigger bombers." That's right! Blast the children in other nations into eternity, or limbless misery as they lay crippled from "OUR" bombers! This does not jell." - Leonard Ravenhill
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Originally posted by KingsGambit View PostI don't think those sort of views are an extreme minority at all... especially among libertarian types, they're fairly common. And I don't want you to feel unsafe expressing your opinions here. You have a history of making well defended points so you would be taken seriously even if not all agree.
ETA: But seriously, thanks. That's a cool thing to hear.Last edited by Zymologist; 05-10-2014, 10:17 PM.I DENOUNCE DONALD J. TRUMP AND ALL HIS IMMORAL ACTS.
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Originally posted by Zymologist View PostAw, shucks. You say the nicest things.
ETA: But seriously, thanks. That's a cool thing to hear.
( KG! You want he should get the big head or something?!)"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot
"Forgiveness is the way of love." Gary Chapman
My Personal Blog
My Novella blog (Current Novella Begins on 7/25/14)
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Originally posted by Zymologist View PostUg...I don't think I should have posted anything. The opinion that I have on this subject is in the extreme minority, and I don't think anybody will be really willing to entertain it. It would probably just be easier to forget I said anything.The State. Ideas so good they have to be mandatory.
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Originally posted by Spartacus View PostGodwin's law. You lose.
More seriously, popular revolutions against authoritarian oppression and social reform movements in many parts of the world were led or informed by Marxism. Catholic social teaching was dealing with Marxism before the bloodshed of the Russian and Spanish revolutions, back before marxism had the political means to start enforcing the side of
Marxist ideology which Benedict criticized in the CDF document.
If nothing else, the fact that anyone who speaks up for the poor is immediately labeled a Marxist means that the term is no longer as pejorative as you would like it to be. When everyone from Dorothy Day to Pope Francis has been accused of Marxism by the reactionary right, the term kind of loses its force.Originally posted by Dorothy DayIn 1960, she praised Fidel Castro's "promise of social justice". She said: "Far better to revolt violently than to do nothing about the poor destitute.when that regime is bending all its efforts to make a good life for the people, a naturally good life (on which grace can build) one cannot help but be in favor of the measures taken."
Just as leftists, socialists, and Communists do with all authority, from the political and heirarchical to the personal:
These people are Communists in spirit, liberals in actual fact, though they may be anything else as long as it serves the Spirit of the Age, as distinct from the Holy Spirit.
They're also utter intellectual lightweights incapable of speaking to real human or divine aspirations in any serious context. You may as well defend the cast of "The View."
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When an avowed pacifist like Day says that violent revolution is better than complacency, we would do well to understand it not as an endorsement of violent revolution, but as a condemnation of complacency with respect to economic injustice.
That you, Epo, should accuse anyone else of being "incapable of speaking to real human or divine aspirations in any serious context," provides me with no little amusement.Don't call it a comeback. It's a riposte.
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Originally posted by Spartacus View PostWhen an avowed pacifist like Day says that violent revolution is better than complacency, we would do well to understand it not as an endorsement of violent revolution, but as a condemnation of complacency with respect to economic injustice.
The idea remains with us as the leftist response to crime by groups they classify as oppressed-blacks and Hispanics obviously, but even women. Since these groups are good and could only engage in violence if seriously provoked, violence on their part serves as a signal that some oppression must be remedied, on the individual level as well as the social level. Thus criminal proceedings against a black criminal will conclude with what can be done to help him, rehabilitation being an important part of the sentencing procedure in progressive justice systems. The criminal justice system in the US is infused with a sense of regret that it is necessary at all.
The concept of cathartic violence is stupid, but more troublesome is its immorality and vacuity. The concept of pacifism is wrong, but at least contains the insight that violence will tend to lead to more violence. Any violent act or system of violent acts must contain in its intent some kind of stable solution that is better than the status quo. And it must recognize that violence has a serious deleterious effect on the person engaging in the violence. Violence can never be cathartic, this is a gross intellectual, moral and spiritual error.
Some kind of reconciliation is crucial for positive human existence;
That you, Epo, should accuse anyone else of being "incapable of speaking to real human or divine aspirations in any serious context," provides me with no little amusement.
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Originally posted by KingsGambit View PostI am fairly surprised at how many Christians argue that governments are inherently illegitimate and that taxation is inherently theft. I do not personally believe either position is very compatible with Christianity given the biblical support for the legitimacy of both, which is of course not to accuse those holding such positions of anything more than cognitive dissonance.
Also I think you are misusing the term "cognitive dissonance." It is not the holding of contradictory views but the discomfort felt upon realizing that one has been holding contradictory views. (Sorry, pet peeve of mine.)
Originally posted by robrecht View PostI don't think Franklin is presenting an argument so much as merely expressing his view. The point is, one could easily make the accusation that he was much more of a socialist than Obama and somewhere up there with Pope Francis.
Did Adam and Eve own the Garden of Eden?
Originally posted by Spartacus View PostIf Francis is a socialist, so is Benedict, and so was Jesus. In other words, if "socialist" is the only word you know for these ideas, you need a bigger moral vocabulary.
Benedict was at least as bad as Francis (as far as I know) regarding economics (as seen in his Caritas in Veritate). But I don't think their wrongheaded ideas can be attributed to Jesus.
I'm coming to this discussion blind, so please forgive me if I'm being too simplistic; but if human governments are, in theory, ordained by God then it must follow that they collect tax. They can't operate without revenue - it's just not possible.
I think it only gets messy when an individual decides they don't want the protection and benefits of a certain or any society - they can't move anywhere because basically everywhere but Antarctica has been claimed by a government and failure to follow they're laws leads to unpleasantness.
Originally posted by Paprika View PostI find your stance extremely bizarre.
It's depends entirely on the premise that we own absolutely what we have. But that is not so; we have responsibilities and duties beyond our individual selves, including society at large, and paying taxes is one of them.
A moral obligation to submit to tax would also not be an endorsement of taxation. Consider that when Jesus said to turn the other cheek to one doing violence, he is in no way condoning the one doing violence.
More fundamentally, from a Christian perspective, we don't have absolute ownership even of ourselves. All was made by God and belongs ultimately to God. We are stewards of what He gives us, and He wants us to pay taxes.
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Originally posted by Epoetker View PostOr, she could just be trying to realize the benefits of violence without paying the cost, like pretty much every other leftist out there who believes in cathartic violence:Don't call it a comeback. It's a riposte.
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Originally posted by Epoetker View PostWho is this man who brings a knife to gunfight?
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Originally posted by Joel View PostThis requires more careful analysis. It makes no sense to suppose a duty to pay tax for its own sake, apart from the any need for taxes. After all, a bunch of wealth could be taken via taxation, and then destroyed. To whom would this be a duty to pay? It would benefit no one, and make everyone worse off. In such a case if you wanted to help your fellow men, you would oppose such taxation. Thus you have to take into account the need for the taxation and what causes the duty to arise. (Not to mention the question of to whom it is due.)
A moral obligation to submit to tax would also not be an endorsement of taxation. Consider that when Jesus said to turn the other cheek to one doing violence, he is in no way condoning the one doing violence.
You are equivocating. Ownership is meant in different senses. Otherwise, it would always be false to say any man owns anything, because God owns everything. In which case the commandment "Thou shall not steal" would be meaningless. But ownership among men is meant in a different sense than when we say God owns everything. Consider a hammer; yes, God owns it in the ultimate, unqualified sense. But when we say a human, let's call her Alice, owns the hammer, we are talking about inter-human interaction. What we mean is that it is immoral (more specifically injustice) for another human to take the hammer from Alice without her consent. We mean that among humans, it is Alice who has the moral license to decide how the hammer is used. (Which of course could be preempted by God's explicit action, because of his ultimate ownership, at any time. But I've never seen that happen.)
If you don't mind, I would also like to comment further on your earlier post; thus far, you have provided no sufficient reason to think that taxation is necessarily evil:If you start with a hypothetical group of people stranded on an island, say, without a government and without the idea of a human government, but understanding morality of justice (don't steal, don't kill, etc.), they would recognize that a powerful guy suddenly going around and forcing everyone to give him money (or goods) is theft/unjust. Likewise a gang (even majority) banding together and forcing everyone else to give them money is theft. The only reason for them to ever come to the conclusion that it's acceptable to appoint a head thief or organize a thieving organization (they'll call it a "government") is if they think the cause is so necessary that it becomes a necessary evil. The most likely original justification for this is something like: that hostile forces are coming to destroy them, and without this mass theft (which they decide to call "tax") they won't be able to amass the means of defense and they will all perish or have everything stolen from them by the hostiles. (Whether they are correct in the assessment of its necessity may be a matter of debate.)
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