You are right about one thing, though: this discussion has gone terribly off course, and it is time to move on.

You read my comments because in your heart you are a seeker of the truth of things and you know I’m….well, you know. I understand, and welcome aboard. But hang on because when you get to a certain age you weary of all the lying, propaganda, and bullshit and it becomes a matter of just demanding the truth. If that troubles you, please bypass my comments, but I don’t think you’re going to be able to do that.

In my comment yesterday, I nearly included a preemptive warning against the inevitable “I’m not responding rationally because your arguments are so stupid they don’t deserve a rational response” response. God bless him–every party has to have at least one Mr. Cheeks.

(As you can see, my morbid curiosity got the better of me, and I failed to follow my own advice about skipping over Mr. Cheeks’ comments.)

In case you haven’t noticed, we’re on page two now! Perhaps, we should move on to future arguments.
BTW, you might want to read my response to Lew, above,…slowly.
And, I do apologize for referring to you, Lew, and Arben as “commies, Marxists, socialists, and liberals.” I’m not sure why this offends but in the future I’ll try the word “statist.” And, you may refer to me as an “anti-statist.” That should serve well and no one’s tender sensibilities will be offended.

“All I do know is that anyone who disagrees in anyway with a position you haven’t stated is to be labeled a Marxist. Oddly enough, that tactic is less persuasive than you seem to think.”
Actually, I’m not trying to be persuasive, rather I’m mocking a self righteousness and pomposity that I would not bother with at all if it weren’t for the fact that the result of the pernicious ideology advocated is social disorder and the loss of liberty.

“Yet I wonder, once again, whether you are not making the perfect the enemy of the good, albeit a limited good.”
John, I loved this. Good stuff, like philosophy and all (actually, I’m not quite sure what you mean). You might want to pursue this and I’ll respond with my observations on the psycho-pneumopathological breakdowns, disorders, and derailments related to statism.

In all seriousness, I think “socialism, Marxism, ect” is a spiritual disorder. I’ll pray for you.

Yet I wonder, once again, whether you are not making the perfect the enemy of the good, albeit a limited good. I do know that families need some help today, and shouting “commie” at anyone who tries to help may not be the help they need.

Yes, I think it would be better for you to bypass any comments of mine. It is not my desire to upset you.

Thank you for a fine post and for your willingness to follow up in the comments section. Perhaps Franklin, when he wrote that bit, had recently been reading some scholastic theologians on public and economic ethics. Unlikely, I suppose, though the similarities are remarkable.

Mr. Cheeks,

Speaking as one who has a good deal of sympathy for your positions, I can say that your consistent and, alas, frequent refusal, in this and other postings, to engage your interlocutors’ arguments according to the dictates of rational dialogue and common courtesy is poisoning the well. Again–for emphasis–I speak as one sympathetic to many of your…impulses (I will not say arguments), and I do wish you would take the trouble to explain yourself rationally. Your habit of replacing clear and ordered discourse with “prophetic speech”–i.e. unqualified and un-defended labeling, name-calling, condescension and presumption–has taught me that I am now better off skipping over your comments in the hopes that someone else will explicate a position similar to yours with a greater measure of logic and courtesy.

You have, of course, contributed worthwhile insights on occasion, but your circuits seem to fry when you run up against certain opinions you consider anathema. When this happens, please do everyone a favor by withholding comments that do nothing to advance the dialogue.

In response to the following:“Does our upper class of large shareholders and executives really need to live in exorbitant, often grotesque material luxury, while only affluent mothers can afford the apparent “luxury” of staying home to care for a newborn baby?”

“If not, what do you propose to do about it?”
Very simply, how much a person earns, whether he/she is blue collar or corporate ceo, is none of my business, nor is it the business of the state, at least a state that advocaters republican virtues.
Lew, do you really think the state should be sticking its nose into the question of wages…er, The Grand Thugee is doing that with Government Motors, but then he’s a epigonic Marxist.

“Let me end my comments by quoting one of our few middle class Founders, Benjamin Franklin, on the question of property and public obligation (what Bob calls “statism.”)”
Lew, I know you have a weak argument and you’re trying to frame the debate in your favor, but I really do resent it when ‘you people (you Arben,and John)’ try to speak for me. I think all of you are more intelligent than that, and it’s something of a disappointment.

The definition for statism: “Concentration of economic controls and planning in the hands of a highly centralized government often extending to government ownership of industry (can you say, Government Motors?).” This definition is why I referred to you and John as epigonic Marxists.

Re: the quote from Ben, that’s good! Old Ben can blow that out his ear, as far as I’m concerned; he was also a reprobate. However, my guess is you really don’t want to start quoting the founders in terms of supporting your Marxist principles on property ownership.

For example, brother Madison, from the Virginia Convention:
“It is sufficiently obvious, that persons and property are the two great subjects on which Governments are to act; and that the rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted. These rights cannot well be separated. The personal right to acquire property, which is a natural right, gives to property, when acquired, a right to protection, as a social right.”

“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.”
-John Adams.

“The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend on God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die.”
-George Washington

“Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; secondly, to liberty; thirdly to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.”
-Samuel Adams

“Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.”
-James Madison

“… whenever the Legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther Obedience … [Power then] devolves to the People, who have a Right to resume their original Liberty, and, by the Establishment of a new Legislative (such as they shall think fit) provide for their own Safety and Security, which is the end for which they are in Society.”
-John Locke

“All men are created equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; among which are the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing the obtaining of happiness and safety.”
-George Mason
and so on.

Lew, I have not doubt that, or at least I want to think, that you, Arben, and John are ‘liberals’ because you each share a concern for the downtroddened. What you fellows fail to understand is history! Statism is a grotesque, observable, failure!
If you want to help people the very best way is through voluntary and religious orgainizations that operate in the community. This act of voluntarism, of freely acting on our Christian obligation, will actually strengthen the FPR.

I trust I’ve answered your query and please, feel free to join me in defending the virtues of the American republic.

If not, what do you propose to do about it?

Let me end my comments by quoting one of our few middle class Founders, Benjamin Franklin, on the question of property and public obligation (what Bob calls “statism.”)

“All Property, indeed, except the Savage’s temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it.”

If we can’t continue adding new benefits why can we continue to add labor regulations? The only guarantee we get from changing labor law is that expenses will be cut (Including jobs in an economy that is hemorrhaging them already) or prices will be raised (Which will effect the unemployed and elderly on fixed incomes the worst).

“We have huge inequalities in our private pay structures that could be flattened painlessly to finance such an employee benefit.”

If this is how you want it financed why not just raise the top income tax rate to finance it? Why risk harming workers and the poor with labor regulations when we have a perfectly good graduated income tax with which to redistribute wealth?

A tip of the hat to the FPR editorial board. By publishing the above expression of radical statist doctrine, they’ve indicated their belief in the concept of free speech. That’s a good thing!
My question centers on the variety of political ‘visions’ that the contributors have for the FPR. What is to be the form of gov’t: the republic? A Social-Democracy?
Who’s advocating what? We need essay/blogs on this theme, what will be the form of gov’t?

Benjamin asked about Prime Minister Rudd and social conservatism. Actually, Rudd got in a lot of hot water with the left in Australia for at least one stance he took–against nude photography of adolescents (which became an issue several times in 2008). I don’t know all the details, but Australia being a very secular country, the left is probably quite a bit more secular than our Democrats. Nevertheless, Rudd, Labor’s leader, said he was “revolted” by such photography and he was attacked for censorship by Cate Blanchett and other artists.

I’ll also add this: of the many Republicans I know who voted for Obama, the turning point for virtually all of them was his speech on fatherhood, the one he gave in a Chicago church. In a sense it was a turning point for me as well, giving me hope about this work of developing a new cultural politics of family support. And for all the power Democrats have built up in Washington since 2006, I don’t see a powerful secular tide sweeping across the government and certainly not the courts. Many on the cultural left are somewhat vexed by Obama, to say the least.

Russell, I completely agree that the struggle for family and community does not begin with one kind of change more than another–political vs. cultural, etc. I am neither a materialist nor an idealist when it comes to social change. Culture, politics, and the economic system shape our lives multi-dimensionally, and not always in the same direction. France has an abundance of family-friendly policies but a highly secular, even anti-religious culture. The U.S. public has a strong cultural protectiveness toward young children, yet our children generally fare worse on basic welfare indicators than children in other advanced countries.

Dan raises the problem of new entitlements, even for family support. As I stated in an earlier comment, I do not necessarily want a new entitlement for family leave, and, in general, I agree that we cannot continue on the course of adding new public benefits to compensate for every market failure and degradation. Instead, family leave should be part of labor law, like wage and hour rules. We have huge inequalities in our private pay structures that could be flattened painlessly to finance such an employee benefit. Does our upper class of large shareholders and executives really need to live in exorbitant, often grotesque material luxury, while only affluent mothers can afford the apparent “luxury” of staying home to care for a newborn baby? There is no economic evidence suggesting that such inequality of income is necessary, and much evidence suggesting that, in fact, it is extremely harmful (for the ratchet effects it exerts on others’ consumption). More importantly, on Christian principles, such inequality does not even register on the spectrum of normal sin and possible virtue. It is gravely, even demonically, wrong.

I think Russell is right that there must be space for reform politically even though reform cannot be successful solely on a political level. The problem is the manner of reform. What many here advocate is really no more than social democracy in overalls (Not necessarily a bad thing, I have a respect for both), and not the “third way” many others had hopped for. There is no “third way”, in the real world we are always living and advocating messy mixed economic systems to meet human needs.

It seems, given the Front Porch crowds proclivities, that the mix out to be sustainable and mindful of existing obligations and yet there has not been any discussion of the possible ways that this proposal would be problematic given those criteria. Instead we have abstract philosophical debate on the nature of the state. This liberal is bemused.