We realize that
on this particular (Saint) Valentine’s Day we’re supposed to wail and moan the
fact that it falls by coincidence on “Ash Wednesday,” which many Christians
observe as the start of Lent and is therefore a day of “fast and abstinence.” That means no chocolate or other goodies for
your sweetie.
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| In logic this is called "a false dichotomy." |
And that’s the
way some rather pedestrian preachers of religion have put it. Instead of trying to tie together the “real”
meaning of (Saint) Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday — which shouldn’t be too
hard for a day honoring a Christian martyr and a day beginning a season of
sacrifice — the idea seems to be that all the people who make a point of
strengthening and working on their relationships on (Saint) Valentine’s Day
somehow got cheated this year.
Instead of
emphasizing the fact that all relationships take work and sacrifice, but it
should never be a burden, many ministers laid it on pretty thick that, bummer,
you don’t get any candy this year.
Instead, you get double the trouble instead of twice the fun — yes, work
and sacrifice can be fun if done in the right spirit instead of being looked on
as a punishment . . . which is the way it seems to have been “sold” this year.
That being the
case, it’s up to us to take up the slack and give everybody, both “pro-choice”
and “pro-life” a valentine this year, one that will take a lot of work to enjoy,
but will be well worth it: a pro-life economic agenda, that also addresses the stated concerns of the pro-choice
position.
These latter are
well-presented in a recent article, “The Christian
Who Cried Abortion,” from The
Huffington Post of February 11, 2018.
Briefly, the author of the article claims that pro-life Christians
(evidently other pro-lifers either don’t exist or don’t matter . . . which no
doubt comes as a surprise to atheists, agnostics, Jews,
Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and millions of other people) care only about
stopping abortion, not in a “quality” life for people once they’re born.
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| Not our sort? Not welcome. |
Both claims are demonstrably
untrue. We won’t waste any time proving
that the pro-life movement is not a “Christian” thing as that term is generally
meant. Nor a “religious” thing
(ditto). It’s a glib fallacy that a
large number of Christians have unfortunately bought into, making others feel
not merely unwelcome in “their” “Christian” “Crusade” to “end abortion.” It’s been extremely effective in dividing
people who should be strong allies, and in diverting people away from the main
issue — the sacredness of human life (another pro-choice victory: equating “sacred”
exclusively with religion) — and to fighting endlessly over differences having
nothing to do with protecting fundamental, natural rights to life, liberty, and
private property.
No, our focus
today is the pro-life movement, not the anti-abortion movement (getting that label into
the media is another pro-choice triumph . . . as is “pro-choice” itself, which
doesn’t mean what it sounds like). The author
of the article broadly claims that the “typical” pro-life activist cares
nothing about people once they are born, and is in fact anti-life for “typically”
promoting conservative political values and causes instead of liberal ones, and
that this is hypocritical, implying a moral equivalence between being in favor
of executing a duly convicted serial rapist cannibal who tortured his victims
before eating them, and not increasing welfare benefits.
We didn’t say the
article was logical, consistent, or even believable once you get past the glib
phrases and knee-jerk thinking.
Anyway, the
problem is that there is a germ of truth in the author’s contentions. Only a germ, mind you, but it’s enough to give
the piece a certain plausibility in many quarters, especially these days when
so few people have learned to think.
There are people in the
pro-life movement — and they tend to be the loudest and most obnoxious ones
(what, you think that being pro-life qualifies you for instant canonization?) —
who rant that ending abortion is the only
thing that matters. Period.
We won’t go into
that, either. We’ve completed the draft
of a 150,000-word book that addresses in part that sort of mindset, and it’s
currently in editing.
No, what we’re
looking at today is an economic agenda for the pro-life movement, one that
addresses the material needs of every child, woman, and man from conception to
natural death. We believe that “Capital Homesteading,”
an application of the principles of the Just Third Way, fills the bill.
Admittedly, we
can’t do more in a brief blog posting than introduce the idea, but that is all
we really need to refute the claim that a pro-life movement is necessarily
restricted to being anti-abortion. In
fact, if that’s all the pro-life movement is, then it’s a failure, as the
author of the article does more than hint.
So, what is “Capital
Homesteading”?
Capital Homesteading
is intended to be a comprehensive legislative program of Kelsonian tax,
monetary, and fiscal reforms to make every child, woman, and man a direct owner
of a piece of the industrial and commercial frontier. It is designed to connect every person to the
global economy as a fully empowered participant and owner of new technologies,
by dismantling structural barriers in our basic institutions and financing
capital formation through ownership democratization vehicles.
This economic
agenda for the twenty-first Century provides a blueprint for leaders committed
to restructuring the legal and financial system to grow an economy at maximum
rates with no inflation, in ways that build a Just Third Way version of economic
democracy as the essential foundation for effective political democracy.
Capital
Homesteading offers a private property and free market-oriented alternative for
saving the social safety nets and supporting programs securing retirement
income. At the same time, Capital Homesteading offers a new national
policy to foster life-long “capital self-sufficiency” as a means of achieving
true economic independence for every individual in any country that adopts it
or a similar program based on the same principles. If implemented, capital
ownership would be systematically de-concentrated and made directly accessible
to every person, without redistribution or reducing existing property rights of
the wealthy.
Obviously, this
brief posting cannot make a complete case for a pro-life economic agenda, any
more than it can describe in more than broad terms the agenda itself. More detail on Capital Homesteading can found
in Capital
Homesteading for Every Citizen (2004), while the case for having an
agenda in the first place can be found in the pamphlet, Supporting
Life: The Case for a Pro-Life Economic Agenda (2010).
Happy (Saint)
Valentine’s Day, and an Awesome Ash Wednesday.
#30#