Suppose a nation, rich and poor, high and low, ten millions in number, all assembled together; not more than one or two millions will have lands, houses, or any personal property; if we take into the account the women and children, or even if we leave them out of the question, a great majority of every nation is wholly destitute of property, except a small quantity of clothes, and a few trifles of other movables. Would Mr. Nedham be responsible that, if all were to be decided by a vote of the majority, the eight or nine millions who have no property, would not think of usurping over the rights of the one or two millions who have? Property is surely a right of mankind as really as liberty. Perhaps, at first, prejudice, habit, shame or fear, principle or religion, would restrain the poor from attacking the rich, and the idle from usurping on the industrious; but the time would not be long before courage and enterprise would come, and pretexts be invented by degrees, to countenance the majority in dividing all the property among them, or at least, in sharing it equally with its present possessors. Debts would be abolished first; taxes laid heavy on the rich, and not at all on the others; and at last a downright equal division of every thing be demanded, and voted. What would be the consequence of this? The idle, the vicious, the intemperate, would rush into the utmost extravagance of debauchery, sell and spend all their share, and then demand a new division of those who purchased from them. The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If “Thou shalt not covet,” and “Thou shalt not steal,” were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.
John Adams, Defense of the Constitutions of the United States, 1787
Donald R. McClarey
Paul Zummo
Property is NOT as sacred as the laws of God. This is a blasphemous statement. It also shows a very poor acquaintance with the Bible and the teachings of Jesus (who is it who requires a positive miracle from God to enter Heaven, the poor or the rich?)
Property is not as sacred as the laws of God, Fabio, rather the right of property is one of the laws of God:
“You shall not steal.”
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.”
Saint Thomas Aquinas recognized a right to private property and that it was to be respected except in dire circumstances, such as stealing a loaf of bread to maintain life.
In regard to the New Testament, it is interesting to observe that attempts to have all Christians own property in common ended in flat disaster and that the Christian stage of primitive Communism was a brief one, and judging from the story of Ananias and Saphira a fairly unhappy one. Saint Paul’s admonition that those who will not work should not eat also indicate grave problems with the attempt to have property in common.
Pharisaism has nothing to do with Christianity, and Adams’ piece is pure Pharisaism. Adams’ attitude is that the poor are natural scroungers and that a majority of people live with the intention to steal the work of the few virtuous (and luckily rich) individuals. This is neither Christian nor decent.
I have written a couple of posts on this:
http://fpb.livejournal.com/586855.html
http://fpb.dreamwidth.org/548645.html
Actually Fabio the Pharisees were quite close to the moral teachings of Jesus. Christ Himself commanded the people to follow the teachings of the Pharisees but not their example.
“[1] Then Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to his disciples, [2] Saying: The scribes and the Pharisees have sitten on the chair of Moses. [3] All things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do: but according to their works do ye not; for they say, and do not.”
As for Adams, I believe your criticisms are unjust. I think he made an accurate prediction as to the malign purposes that government can be put to, and I believe that history indicates that his predictions are entirely accurate. All of his predictions came true during the Terror in France, and in the eventual Communist regimes. Many of his predictions are dead on accurate in regard to modern welfare states.
Adams of course was not alone in that insight de Tocqueville predicted the rise of the modern welfare state:
“Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood; it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances; what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?”
“attempts to have all Christians own property in common ended in flat disaster and… the Christian stage of primitive Communism was a brief one”
If you are referring to attempts to impose this lifestyle upon ALL Christians, that is true. However, religious orders living under vows of poverty have successfully lived in this manner for thousands of years. The difference, of course, is that they do so voluntarily, in response to a specific vocation/call from God, and NOT because the government or the Church compels them to do so (you don’t have to be a vowed Religious to be a Catholic in good standing.)
Moreover, they do so knowing that what they are giving up (the right to own property) is a natural right — just like the right to marry (the vow of chastity/celibacy) or the right to choose where one lives and what profession to follow (vow of obedience). Natural rights can be given up in the service of a greater good, but they CANNOT be taken away from anyone without a very serious reason.
Government-imposed socialism or communism has about as much in common with the evangelical counsel of poverty as forced sexual slavery or prostitution has with sacramental marriage.
“However, religious orders living under vows of poverty have successfully lived in this manner for thousands of years.”
Oh, agreed Elaine, and underlines Christ’s counsel to the rich young man, if you would be pefect give all you have to the poor and follow me.
This is utterly disingenuous and off the point. The point is whether we are to imagine that the rich are anything special; that those who have wealth also have virtue and that those who do not have nothing but the jealousy and greed to steal it from them; and that any kind of good government begins and ends with protecting the rich. If that is what you want, you are welcome to it, but don’t call it Christian, because the evidence is that you CANNOT be Christian and respect wealth as such.
“This is utterly disingenuous and off the point.”
Not at all Fabio. My comments directly relate to what John Adams said.
“The point is whether we are to imagine that the rich are anything special; that those who have wealth also have virtue and that those who do not have nothing but the jealousy and greed to steal it from them;”
No, the point is whether governments tend to be used to redistribute wealth and that clearly is the case. John Adams thought that such efforts have a wretched impact on societies and I agree with him. The idea that we should look to Caesar to redistribute goods at the point of the sword is many things, but Christian it is not.
You evidently think that the kind of language that associates virtue with wealth and greed and thieving with its opposite is compatible with Christianity. No. it is compatible with Greek heathendom, where the rich were automatically the Aristoi or best (hence aristocracy); it is compatible with Pharisaism. It is NOT COMPATIBLE with the religion of He Who said that, save for a miracle, the rich cannot be saved, and who praised the Father for having revealed great things to idiots and children and withheld them from the wise, and Whose mother identified the God who was being born in her with He who fills the poor with good things and sends the rich empty away. This is the issue! Is a Christian government under any compulsion to respect wealth as such, to regard it as meritorious, to treat it as a significant consideration in any way? Hell no! I repeat: HELL NO!! and if we were to forget it for a minute, facts would take care of reminding us of how contemptible wealth is and how rarely those who have it have anything else worth having. The richest man in Italy was three times given the opportunity to show his wisdom, virtue and patriotism as head of government: he has been a joke and a curse to his country. And it is not for no reason that the party of the rich, the Tories, are also known as the Stupid Party. The curse that the worship of wealth and status has been for Germany goes beyond my ability to describe, and other European countries tell the same story. Wealth destroys virtue and intelligence. It validates people who don’t deserve validation. And there is more than just a good joke in the old line that says that “What God thinks of wealth can be seen in the people He gives it to”.
Brevity has much to recommend it Fabio. You confuse government flimflams involving redistribution of wealth with the private duty that Christ enjoins of charity. You can look in the Gospels from now until Doomsday and you will never find Christ calling for the State to steal from the wealthy to give to the poor.
“Flimflams”, eh? Insults aren’t arguments, and you know it, m’learned friend. And you know what your argument reminds me of? The old gay trope that Jesus does not condemn homosexuality anywhere in the Gospels. No, and he does not command penal taxation either. There is an awful lot of things on which Our Lord did not give direct commands, on which nonetheless we may easily draw conclusions. In point of fact, Jesus never says anything at all about how good government should be carried out. He does say that wealth is spiritual poison. And at any rate you continue to get my point entirely wrong. I am not arguing for redistribution as a principle, since as such it is simply a ridiculous and self-defeating idea – what do you do when your former poor has become enriched, steal from him? I am arguing against having a high regard for wealth in any circumstance. I am arguing against giving it excessive importance in society – the best thing about democracy is that the squijjillionaire only has one vote, same as the woman who cleans his floor; and that is good and justified because there is no evidence whatever that he has any more brains, virtue or patriotism than she does. I am against, for instance, considering anyone or anything “too big to fail”, and stealing from the poor, as your state in fact does, to give to the rich to prevent their failures. Let the bastards go to the wall; protect, so far as you can, the employees and account holders who were caught in the disaster through no fault of their own. And I have to tell you that, as we are witnessing some of the greatest acts of stealing from the poor to give to the rich since Henry VIII, from “Quantitative Easing” to “Too Big To Fail”, your homilies against redistribution seem entirely out of time. Redistribution is going on, m’llearned friend, right here, right now. The rich are making sure of it.
Flimflams is not an insult but rather an accurate assessment of redistributionist folly throughout the ages. Whenever the government plays Robin Hood it ultimately steals from everyone and the biggest theft is in increasingly worthless currency.
If you are going to bring up Christ and the poor and the rich you must actually look closely at what He said about the poor. He placed the duty to help them on all of us and that duty is not to be fobbed off on the State. If He had wanted such to be the case, He could have said so. Advocates of the welfare state have plenty enough bad arguments to make, but they really should leave Scripture alone because they find no support there.
In regard to wealth and its importance on an individual level I agree with you. None of us can take our property with us into the next world and we should use it to help others with charity and love. However, my study of History indicates that any derogation of the protection of property by government is usually followed by a diminution in personal liberty. Interventions in the economy rarely do what they are purported to do, with the chief beneficiaries being a handful of insiders, which is why I opposed the bailout of 2008. Government is to be carefully watched because of the infinite capacity of mankind to use it for ill.
I don’t think you read what I wrote with any care, or at least you simply did not pay attention to what you did not find easy to answer. My charge of Pharisaism and Hellenizing goes for nothing. The fact that I rejected redistribution on principle – there are very obviously cases in which it is required, as the history of my country and my own ancestors shows – does not seem to have been noticed. Above all, the very fact that I said that there is no commandment whatever in the Gospel about anything to do with government, one way or another, passes you by. How could you, after what I wrote, still write such a thing as, ” Advocates of the welfare state have plenty enough bad arguments to make, but they really should leave Scripture alone because they find no support there”?? Do you even realize that you are endorsing all those sophists who go looking for what Jesus did not explicitly condemn, and on those grounds and on those grounds alone insist that it is licit? How can you possibly say that the duty to help the poor belongs to the individual but not to government? What is government except the people in its corporate character? What are its duties except the duties of the people in their corporate character? and on what grounds do you dare remove the relief of poverty from those duties? I pay taxes so that the poor and sick may be cared for and protected. If I thought thjat I was paying taxes to help the rich alone, I would not pay any; the rich don’t need it. Do you think it is any better for the public in their corporate character to turn to to the poor, the homeless, the starving, and say, “sorry, mate, no business of mine, but you could ask some individual walking down the road”? Do you think that escapes the condemnation?
41: Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
42: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
43: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
44: Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
45: Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me..
What makes this complete nonsense is that there is absolutely no way that the State can be neutral in any such matter. There is no decision that the State makes, no policy that it carries out, which does not reflect on the rich and on the poor. Here is just one instance: http://www.amazon.com/Plague-Your-Houses-National-Haymarket/dp/1859842534 This was as apparently neutral a matter as deciding the allocation of resources for firefighting. Hello? End result, disaster for weaker communities, including massive extra burden on public and private health spending. In the face of something so obvious, to imagine that an elected officer of the State can escape the final condemnation and the fate of the goats because he was expressing group rather than private selfishness is to deny that God is just.
I read carefully everything you have written in regard to this post Fabio. Your criticisms of John Adams I believe are unjust and I find your defense of the welfare state wrong headed. Government attempts to alleviate poverty I think usually harm the poor far more than help them and we are just beginning to see what a bitter harvest all this will produce as the welfare states collapse under their own cost. Attempts to wrap this tripe in the Gospels I find mistaken at best and blasphemous at worst. When we stand before God I think He will be far more concerned with what we did individually to help others rather than how much tax money we wished to pour down various welfare rat holes with the government always taking a high percentage as its cut.
PJ O’Rourke sums my position in regard to Welfare States and helping the poor: “There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as “caring” and “sensitive” because he wants to expand the government’s charitable programs is merely saying that he’s willing to try to do good with other people’s money. Well, who isn’t? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he’ll do good with his own money — if a gun is held to his head.”