In the previous posting on this subject, we noted that while the Chinese version of social credit differs in most respects from that of Major Douglas, both either assume or impose a condition of total dependency on the State on most people. The Chinese version of social credit assumes that all people are effectively owned by the State outright, while Major Douglas’s version imposes total dependency by making everyone dependent on the government for their income, one way or another.
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| Major Clifford Hugh Douglas |
Yes, adherents of Major Douglas’s version of social credit can honestly claim that creating a race of dependents is the furthest thing from their minds. Whether they do or not is another matter, and there may be some dissenters.
There may, in fact, actually be some social credit adherents who really do think that turning everyone into a dependent — or a slave — of the State is the best, or even only way to achieve a stable society and institute the Kingdom of God on Earth . . . which is what we assume is meant by “Christianity in action.”
Even if social credit adherents don’t intend any such thing, however, the fact remains that they won’t be able to avoid it. If they don’t care for Lord Acton’s quotes regarding how power tends to corrupt, and how absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely, perhaps they will heed G.K. Chesterton. As he said in his last debate with the Fabian socialist George Bernard Shaw,
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| G.K. Chesterton |
I have used the metaphor of the Collectivists of having all your eggs in one basket. Now there are men whom we are pleased to call bad eggs. They are not all of them in politics. On the other hand there are men who deserve the encomium of “good egg.” There are, in other words, a number of good men and a number of bad men scattered among the commonwealth.
To put the matter shortly, I might say that all this theory of absolutely equal mechanical distribution depends upon a sort of use of the passive mood. It is easy enough to say Property should be distributed, but who is, as it were, the subject of the verb? Who or what is to distribute? Now it is based on the idea that the central power which condescends to distribute will be permanently just, wise, sane, and representative of the conscience of the community which has created it.
That is what we doubt. We say there ought to be in the world a great mass of scattered powers, privileges, limits, points of resistance, so that the mass of the Commons may resist tyranny. And we say that there is a permanent possibility of that central direction, however much it may have been appointed to distribute money equally, becoming a tyranny. I do not think it would be difficult to suggest a way in which it could happen. As soon as any particular mob of people are behaving in some way which the governing group chooses to regard as anti-civic, supplies could be cut off easily with the approval of this governing group. You have only to call someone by some name like Bolshevist or Papist. You have only to tie some label on a set of people and the community will contentedly see these people starved into surrender. (“Do We Agree?” 1927)
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| Fulton J. Sheen |
That, as you might say, is the crux of the matter, the res, as it were. There is always someone whom others think doesn’t fit into a society or group, for whatever reason. Maybe they talk funny or don’t dress the right way or believe the right things. Maybe it’s just their attitude, you know? As the legal code of the Third Reich had it, maybe they just offend against “sound popular feeling.”
The fact remains that whenever you have one group able to control how or even if others live, the group in control will always — always, no ifs, ands, or buts — begin eliminating those others or forcing them to conform to what those in control consider proper or appropriate behavior or beliefs. This writer has too often been categorized as a “bad egg” for no discernible reason to have any doubts whatsoever about this.
Thus, social credit — or the so-called “Great Reset” or anything else — may start out with the laudable goal of trying to insure that everyone gets a fair share of the world’s goods and establishing and maintaining the Kingdom of God on Earth. It will, however, necessarily and inevitably end up with the Chinese system in order to guarantee that the Perfect Society remains Absolutely Perfect . . . even if it means turning what was supposed to be Heaven on Earth into a living hell. As Fulton Sheen noted, “This idea of a 'Heaven here below' is the surest way to make a hell upon earth.” (Fulton J. Sheen, Philosophies at War. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1943, 94.)
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