Here are some highlights from conversations that followed from this post and addressed free college, dependence, entitlement, taxes, conspiracies, and QAnon:
I think the place to focus is on rights and entitlement. I would agree with you, or maybe go even further, in saying that the world owes us nothing. In a cosmic sense I have no rights. I’m thrust into this world, I make my choices, and in some senses there’s no room for whining or blaming or demanding.
But that’s not the only standpoint from which we look at political questions. There are also questions of how we want to react to those brutal realities, and who we want to be as a society.
So to advocate for universal healthcare or free higher education can be not some cosmic claim that it’s a God-given right, and not some moral claim that it’s deserved by the recipients, but instead something more nuanced and complex along the lines that it would contribute to a more humane society, the United States can afford it, it’s become increasingly necessary to modern life, we have models of other wealthy countries doing it and having good outcomes, etc.
You look upon the US Government the same way a child looks up their parents. You see that they have a credit card a nice house and just assume that there is money there. Unfortunately that is not the case. If you tax those who have worked hard so that those who won’t can be their equal, then those who do work hard will stop. The money has to come from somewhere. Sorry I will disagree that a higher education is a God given right. Greece tried and failed. Venezuela tried and failed.
How exactly would stealing from this who have worked their tails off their whole life and simply giving it to those who don’t create a humane society? I see it causing even more separation and hostility.
I explained how I don’t see education, or anything else, as a God-given right.
Have things gone wrong in Greece and Venezuela and elsewhere? Of course. But if you’re actually trying to form accurate views about the big picture then you’ll also need to consider things that have gone right, regarding education and healthcare and otherwise, in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Britain, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Finland…
You’re absolutely right to point out that the money always has to come from somewhere. But then you’re making two assumptions that take you off course. First is the assumption that America’s current tax levels are best, or are already too high, and any increases would have big negative effects on incentives and productivity. I don’t think that’s backed up by the data on our own tax rates over the decades, or on other countries with higher tax rates.
Your second assumption concerns how we think of taxes. One view is that ok, my profits or wages are absolutely my own, and nobody else has any right to them, and the government should take little if any of what’s mine.
But from another angle we can instead say that wealth gets created by a society as a whole, by workers and bosses and owners, dependent on tons of tax-funded public goods like public education, clean air and water, and the peace and stability maintained by police and soldiers. Then the question is how the wealth that’s created in these complex and cooperative ways gets distributed. And taxation is part of the answer.
The first of those two views of taxation pretty clearly leaves some things out. Your profits or paycheck were not handed to you by God, and were not something you created alone in an untamed wilderness. The stuff in the second view was essential.
I want to focus on clarifying what I’m saying about the big picture. I’m not claiming that the biblical points I addressed are the only points. There are plenty of other relevant points both inside and outside the Bible. And these can include points around federalism, free markets, fiscal responsibility, etc.
But not every belief that a Christian has is a Christian belief. Not every priority a Christian has is a Christian priority.
I think we have to look at the big picture. Any given policy point is open to debate, and I’m not claiming that the scriptures I cite dictate particular leftist or liberal positions. I’m simply claiming that on the whole there should be a recognizable resemblance between the Bible and a Christian’s politics. The Bible’s central political concerns should find clear expression, and should probably loom larger than whatever other political or ideological beliefs the Christian has arrived at outside the Bible. And they should certainly loom larger than mere selfishness and tribalism, which are so often condemned by the Bible.
You asked me to name one Trump policy that I find totally misaligned with Christianity, but that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do. Core Christian beliefs about morality and society are precisely those about caring for vulnerable people. It’s a central and emphatic part of the Bible, and it has direct relevance to present political questions.
Let’s make a couple distinctions here. First, some parts of Christianity don’t have direct political application. For example most aspects of personal virtue and personal worship are not things that anybody wants to legislate. And second, when we are talking about political questions, we have to be clear on which of a Christian’s political opinions do or do not come from their Christianity.
For you, this means examining your loyalty to capitalism. Now I actually agree with most of what I bet you’d say in support of capitalism. The past few centuries have seen astounding improvements in human productivity and average human well-being and that has been largely due to capitalism. And capitalism does, at least under some conditions and at least as compared to some alternatives, reward innovation and risk-taking and hard work.
But what’s any of that got to do with the Bible?
You could draw some connections, sure. But my point is that I don’t see how you could ever arrive at something that would outweigh all the direct and forceful stuff about generosity, mercy, justice, orphans, widows, immigrants, and the poor.
Consider a given chunk of social spending. And let’s say one side favors the spending because it would help the poor. And let’s say the other side opposes it because it would increase taxes and expand government. Both sides may be right. But only one side is Christian. Because the Bible says a whole lot about helping the poor, and nothing comparable about lowering taxes or shrinking government.
Where I think you can make a Christian case for capitalism is by arguing that it brings about better outcomes for widows and orphans and immigrants, as well as everybody else. But the measure needs to be human well-being and not some ideological pursuit of productivity or efficiency for their own sake. And I think that once we’re clear on that point—that capitalism is good only inasmuch as it promotes human well-being—then some common Republican arguments fall apart.
Say that some new policy really will decrease overall economic productivity or efficiency. So what? What does this mean for the concrete well-being of individual human beings? Does it ultimately just mean a bit less wealth going to those who are already very wealthy? Many policies have benefits that seem to be well worth that cost.
And context is important here. The United States is an incredibly wealthy and productive country, and already collects lots of taxes, carries big debts, and spends massive sums on a massive military. So to favor low taxes or balanced budgets or small government in the abstract is one thing. But it’s something much different to favor those priorities so strongly that even in this context you want to do things like kicking people off food stamps.
I want to work through the different points you raised, but I think the place to start is with QAnon. My understanding of the basics is that someone high up in the Trump administration is believed to be revealing Trump’s secret war against a global pedophile ring, involving Satanism and cannibalism, and close coordination among powerful people in the Deep State, the Democratic Party, media, and entertainment, right? So it’s a complicated and ambitious story. And I think it forces us to consider a few issues around belief and evidence and psychology.
We all know the human mind has limitations. We can be impulsive, we can be mistaken, we can be misled, we can be stubborn. And scientists have given us clearer pictures of some of our limitations. We’re really good at noticing things that support beliefs we already hold, and forgetting things that don’t. We’re good at being charitable with ourselves and with groups we identify with, while being more critical of other people and other groups. We’re good at finding patterns, but we’re so good that we sometimes find patterns in randomness, signals in noise.
In the same way we can be too quick to see conspiracies. One reason is that a conspiracy is human-shaped, familiar, satisfying. We understand what it means for an individual, or a group of individuals, to plan and pursue something. But a whole lot of what goes on in the world is not primarily the result of any single human plan, and has more to do with complex interactions among impersonal social and historical and economic forces.
But let me start with some points of at least partial agreement. Horrific things like rape and pedophilia and human trafficking absolutely occur. And sometimes they take the form of organized crime, and people in authority getting paid to look other other way. And more generally, plenty of people with money and power have gotten it in immoral ways, and use it in immoral ways. And that includes, as you said, people in government, business, media, and religion.
The question is whether these things are all unified the way QAnon suggests, in a global cabal that is targeting and being targeted by President Trump. It’s possible, but is it actually true? What reasons do we have to think it’s true? What makes the case for QAnon views stronger than any cases for their alternatives?
We would need some sort of solid evidence to be justified in starting to believe something this big. Often we’re sloppy about justification, and led more by our desires, our assumptions, our intuitions. Views that we find plausible and satisfying can slowly start to seem true and then even obvious. And of course once we start to believe something then we become invested, we become defensive, we become good at making supporting arguments and spotting confirming evidence. But digging beneath all those things, what evidence actually exists for this whole QAnon story?
Note that we need a positive case for QAnon, and not just critiques or suspicions of e.g. Democrats or the mainstream media. Because it’s not as if our only two options are QAnon, on the one hand, and blind trust in mainstream media, on the other. My approach, for example, is to engage critically with journalism from multiple sources, and be on guard for sensationalism, shallowness, bias, etc., both within what’s being said, and also in background choices about what is and is not said and how often and within what frames. But those issues notwithstanding, I think that the structures of journalistic ethics, alongside market forces around trust and reputation, have thus far preserved America’s free press as a powerful force for finding facts.
A big part of this is the competition between individual reporters, both within and between organizations. Everyone wants to break the next big story. And those who manage to do it first reap big professional rewards.
Not to say this always works perfectly. Corruption is possible here too. But the thing is that it’s much harder to pull off. If a blockbuster story is being hidden, its evidence can’t be too readily available, or else soon it won’t be possible to bribe or threaten or kill all the reporters who discover it.
That’s one reason it’s hard to see how a big global conspiracy of cannibalism and pedophilia could be kept secret. Trying to game out just how many people across media and law enforcement would have to be knowingly complicit, and how much evidence would have to be staying perfectly concealed, and how many people would have to be keeping how many secrets—I just don’t see how all that can be plausibly accounted for.
And there’s something perverse about believing that Trump is fighting evil in secret, and then for that reason forgiving all the evil that he does openly. But clearly that’s part of how QAnon functions. It conjures this extremely vivid picture of the rape and murder of children, so that you feel in your gut that this is truly the epitome of evil. And if Donald Trump is at war with these incredibly evil people, then he himself must be good. There’s much less need to scrutinize his character or his policies.