The Global Economy

The Global Economy
The global economy results from Western capitalists and social progressives’ increasing the integration and interdependency of sovereign nation-state economies, worldwide. By definition the Western capitalists and social progressives’ championing of the global economy ignores the vital role that the Protestant Church has made to enable the immergence of thriving economies between Western democracies. As capitalists and social progressives seek to transfer Western economic prosperity to non-Christian regions, the democratic liberties and social enfranchisement of Western citizens slowly degrade.
Today’s burgeoning global economy’s closest parallel is the ancient Roman Empire’s Mediterranean economy; however, unlike today’s Western world, Roma did not fully enfranchise the conquered peoples that it ruled over. The Roman Mediterranean world fell after Germanic tribes sacked Rome: the Germanic tribes sought the riches and civilization of the Roman economy. The barbarous period of the Dark Ages ensued, under which trading cities, currency, and commerce collapsed.
Though it eventually became corrupt due to the political hegemony of the Roman Church, the doctrines of the Apostolic Church (that is, the original laypeople empowered Church that the Apostles established) civilized and enfranchised the Germanic tribes, under the legal fiction of one Christian people. As Christianity reclaimed peace from Europe’s Dark Ages, trading cities reemerged along Northern Europe’s water thoroughfares, replacing the former bustling commerce centers of the Mediterranean. Currency and sophisticated banking instruments emerged to finance economic ventures. The universality of Europe’s kingdoms under Christendom then inspired secular humanists to envision the universality of law. Documents like the Magna Carta soon appeared, granting rights to nobles: rights that did not extend to the commoners. Enlightened philosophers also appeared, championing humankind’s access to reason and science. However, enlightened and humanist understandings did not extend to or enfranchise the commoner. Only the Protestant Reformation effected change on a wide ranging cultural scale:
The market economy’s replacing of the agrarian economy required the public’s trust that representative government and commercial forces can respectively enforce legal and financial instruments without partiality to personal, kindred, religious, or class gains. The Protestant Reformation’s approximate return to the apostolic doctrines of election by faith, regardless of religious works, kindred relation, class, and male or female sex infused intra-class and intra-kindred relationships into Protestant America and other burgeoning Protestant lands, to the effect that the public at large (whether believers or non-believers) experienced upward social mobility: essentially, Protestants secured an individualism centered cultural environment that gave rise to modernity’s social-contract based governments and market economies.
Because of its fresh start and isolation from Europe, America experienced the most pronounced effect of the Protestant Reformation. The Church played a major role in chartering many of the American states, and the Church pioneered public education. The Church pioneered the abolitionist movement to free African-American slaves, and the Church led the civil rights movement of the mid-20th Century. Also, the Church pioneered many inner city social programs to help new immigrants: these programs evolved into today’s social welfare programs that contemporary social liberals champion.
While non-politicized Protestant Churches cultivated a non-classed based culture and free market that eventually unified the American states, European nations still wrestled with social and cultural animosities. Instead of a free market and non-class-based culture, European nations competed with each other as their mercantile economies inspired them to establish, subjugate, and exploit colonies across the globe. After military skirmishes between European nations became industrialized, World War I and World War II resulted, becoming civilization’s most destructive wars—wars that had no religious instigation. Because of the American military’s leading of NATO (an intergovernmental military alliance), Europe’s industrial nations stemmed the revival of their nationalist, military complexes; moreover, under NATO’s umbrella, Europe’s industrial nations integrated their economies to make the European Union: a union that guarantees the liberties that the American Constitution and French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen founded.
The continued peace and prosperity of the post war western world stands upon the continued growth of Western economies through a free market in which trading nations agree to open up trade barriers by lowering tariffs and import quotas; by preventing government subsidizing of national industries; by specializing in services in which a nation’s industries possess a comparative advantage; by importing goods and services in which a nation’s industries do not enjoy a comparative advantage; and by holding stable currencies. The shortsightedness of liberal capitalists and social progressives, who champion globalization, is their expectation that non-Christian nations will democratize and build middle class trading partners that do not diminish the living standards of Western middle-classes. What liberal capitalists and social progressives fail to understand is that the greatest subsidizing of industries that non-Christian regimes commit is not merely the slave labor forces of a vast array of peoples that slowly transition from agrarian economies to industrial economies.
The greatest subsidizing of industries is the non-Christian cultures that entail prejudices and belief systems that keep the masses disenfranchised, to the end that the Western middle class cannot compete with the infinite array of slave-like labor forces that the belief systems propagate. As Western countries become increasingly dependent upon foreign non-democratic markets, Western working and middle class labor forces become disenfranchised. All told, the greatest trade imbalance is the striking contrast between, first, the Western liberties and upward social mobility that Christianity fostered and, second, the oppressions and subjugation that non-Christian belief systems maintain. The Landscape of Truth's 6th and 7th chapters traces the manner in which varied economies grow relative to the regimes and belief systems that govern the respective economies. The Landscape's 6th and 7th chapters chiefly address how Christianity is responsible for the economic and social prosperity of the West.
Western Liberty Versus Oriental Stability: Which Culture Will Dominate the Global Community and Economy?
Published June 5, 2017 – thelandscapeoftruth.com
For some time now, we at thelandscapeoftruth.com have been astonished that so many public thinkers (from college professors and seasoned journalists unto veteran politicians and reputable economists) stand in awe at China’s growing economic clout.
Dumbfounded we have been because we know that China’s increasing material gains cannot remotely match the wealth of Western nations, whose material gains derive from fair and equitable dealings with even the basest of their respective citizen-bodies. We wonder how so many reputable thinkers could marvel at an autocratic regime that accrues wealth from the denial of civil liberties; the infringement upon Western entrepreneurs’ copyrights and patents; the employment of exploitable work forces under poor working conditions; and the manipulation of currency.
Thus, we at thelandscapeoftruth.com could not help but celebrate when then presidential candidate, Donald J. Trump, decried China’s unfair trade dealings. We knew that neither Trump nor his political opponents have entirely grasped the dizzying scope of extending Western liberty and economy to the non-Western world without compromising the livelihood, civil rights, and healthfulness of Western peoples. Even so, we applauded the fact that presidential candidate Donald Trump voiced concern, while all sides of the political spectrum stood resigned to China’s inevitable rise.
A pitiful thing to see is President Trump’s political opponents gloat over the fact that President Trump is finding out that confronting China’s unfair practices is more of a mammoth task than he expected. The President should not feel too much shame, however. Who can forget how President George W. Bush generously warned the democratic presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, not to promise that they would immediately withdraw troops from Iraq and Afghanistan once either of them assumed office?
President Bush cautioned the two candidates that once his successor saw what was on his desk, the successor would have a hard time owning up to his or her promise of removing the troops. We can only speculate about what the newly elected President Donald Trump found upon the retiring President Barack Obama’s desk. Perhaps President Trump found that North Korea proves to be a more lethal threat that requires China’s cooperation with the Trump administration. Time will tell.
Whatever the cause for President Trump’s taking a softer approach to confronting China’s unfair trade dealings, sooner or later Western leaders must confront China and the other Asian, Indian, and African powers, who engage the global economy with an inexorable amount of politically oppressed, cheap laborers. We fully acknowledge that we risk resorting to hyperbole to express our frustrations. Indeed, we admit that we are becoming so disillusioned that we risk the surrender of all well-reasoned judgment to far-fetched ideas. Nevertheless, we must say that China and the undeveloped world’s flooding the global market with cheap, slave-like labor forces gradually undermines Western government’s mere two centuries old experiment with politically and economically enfranchising the working and middle classes of civilization. The United States’ Declaration of Independence and the French Republic’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (the two cardinal documents that define the modern state’s individual liberties) together declare that government derives its power from the consent of the governed who have unalienable rights to liberty, the pursuit of happiness, property, and the resistance against oppression. Far from securing Western citizens’ rights, China and the undeveloped world’s unequitable trade dealings undervalue Western working-class laborers’ contribution to the economy and thereby undermine the working-class’s capacity to create wealth and secure private property. Concurrently, China and the undeveloped world’s unjust trade dealings undermine Western citizens’ political enfranchisement as national politicians and multinational corporations increasingly become irresponsive to Western citizens and more responsive to the aggregate gains of the global economy.
The framers of the United States of America and the modern European states had uncanny foresight as they designed their respective constitutions. The framers envisioned the unparalleled achievements that a partnership between democracy and the free commercial markets could achieve. They understood, well, the levels of scientific advancement and technological innovation that the free commercial society could realize; therefore, the framers had a reasonable understanding that the preservation of a democratic state required the upkeep and reinvigoration of the economy through technological innovation and market integration. They knew that the individual liberties, which their constitutions enshrined, required the upkeep of an economy that regularly produces such entrepreneurial opportunity that affords socio-economic mobility for all classes to either gain or retain the living wages of surplus sustenance and property.
Justice compels us to revere how the framers of modern Western government demonstrated great foresight as they enshrined individual liberties into their constitutions, overseeing the relationship between government and the free commercial market. At the same time, the want for justice compels us to recognize that the framers grossly overestimated the ability of the free market to offer economic opportunity to all classes perennially. The framers ignorantly saw an immense world of seemingly infinite renewable resources. And so, they could not imagine how the commercial market would drive science and industry to categorize and demarcate all natural resources for capital gain so swiftly, to the extent that economic growth decreasingly effect the well-being of all classes. As the framers secured the right for private property, they failed to understand the extent to which rapacious market consumption would produce gross shortfalls that limit the newly freed citizens’ capacity to benefit from market gains equitably, in accordance to the citizens’ respective entrepreneurial merits.
The regularity of the agrarian societies enabled human civilization to endure throughout its history. In the agrarian societies, people gained sustenance through manual agricultural labor and husbandry under the centralized authority of landowning governors. The recent advent of modern democratic government of the individual free citizen stands upon the guarantee of individual ownership of property above sustenance; in a commercial market where the individual enjoys socio-economic mobility. The new world of the free citizen, therefore, assumes that the free commercial market would offer wages through not only manual labor for the base socio-economic class, but also more specialized employment that afford greater income opportunity for the upward socio-economic mobility for all classes.
Seeing innovations and individual liberty blossom instantly, the framers of modern Western government had justifiable reasons to believe that the new governments stood unchallengeable. Because the virgin lands of the Americas and other colonial lands offered what seemed to them an unfathomable amount of economic opportunity, the framers could not foresee a reason to craft constitutional safeguards that address two challenges that rival non-democratic powers presently present in the global market. First, the framers could not recognize how most non-Western nations would not readily adopt Western governments’ progressive liberties for the individual: the framers did not understand that the Protestant Reformation made Europe’s Judeo-Christian culture particularly compatible with the West’s progressive liberties; therefore, they did not expect that the non-Western world’s group-based cultures would naturally resist individual liberties as civilization has done sense its inception. Second, because economic opportunity seemed prolific as they developed their colonies, the framers could not imagine how commercial market cycles would offer less opportunity for the working class as industrialization advanced. The framers did not understand the full extent to which the economy would become more specialized, offering more opportunity to a limited number of skilled professions and less opportunity to the greater number of “unskilled” laborers.
Tragically, the framers of modern Western government could not foresee the increasing economic and political disenfranchisement of the Western working-class, as industry necessarily shifts to develop the non-Western world: most societies of the non-Western world have only recently begun the transition from agrarian based societies to commercial and industry based societies. As a result, the non-Western societies do not have cultural traditions that celebrate the entrepreneurial merit and liberty of the individual: traditions that are necessary for commercial based societies. Instead, the many peoples of the non-Western world retain strong group-based cultural ties under centralized socialist authorities, who only subjugate the cultural and factional prejudices inherent in their societies. China, for instance, has a long standing tradition of only seeking political stability. China celebrates the millennia old Confucian tradition that demands the people to know their class and station in life, in order for the state as a whole to survive in political harmony.
China openly spurns democracy and punishes those who demand a two party system. Like other non-Western nations, China has viewed the challenges that Western nations have experienced in ensuring constant economic growth to support the West’s working and middle classes. China is, therefore, unlikely to extend Western civil liberties to its people because the Chinese government cannot guarantee the requisite economic growth to support a free people’s accompanying progressive free market. The Chinese, like most non-Western countries, see the free market as unpredictable. And so, the Chinese fear to risk their political stability to an unregulated economy that agitates the factionalism amongst the people. In the interests of national stability, the Chinese government only concerns itself with ensuring the bare minimum required for the people’s subsistence. Because the Chinese have no aversion to allowing economic and social disparity amongst their people, the Chinese have an unfair trading advantage because of their surplus of cheap laborers whom Western multinational corporations exploit. In the end, the Chinese believe their cultural tradition of ensuring stability, rather than individual unfettered freedoms, will empower them to lead the global economy and thereby the world. For instance, seeking to ensure Westerners’ dependency upon China’s cheap labor economy, the Chinese President Xi Jinping recently introduced New Silk Road initiative, which seeks to link sixty percent of the world’s nations to China through a series of ports, railways, roads, and industrial parks. To promote the initiative, President Xi Jinping gave a series of speeches decrying the resurgence of nationalism and protectionism by many Western leaders, like the American President Donald J. Trump, who are beginning to acknowledge the harm done to Western working class peoples.
Indeed, Western working-class citizens increasingly find it hard to compete in the global market as well as secure adequate political representation from politicians who seek financing from the multinational corporations that benefit from non-Western laborers. At the last, the cheap labor from non-Western countries undermines Western democracy by undermining Western working class citizens’ economic standing.
China’s success at employing its autocratic control over its economy to influence the global market does not mean that the Chinese repressive culture and government are ultimately superior to Western democratic culture. China’s recent success is the sole outcome of Western leaders’ lapses of political judgment that they have experienced since Western nations allowed their former colonies to obtain independence after the two World Wars that Western nations fought over their colonial possessions. After the second World War in the mid-20th Century, Western liberal policy began to conceive the non-Western cultures as equals; therefore, instead of exploiting the non-Western world, Western leaders naively believed that they could successfully extend fair commercial trade with what became today’s autocratic non-Western governments.
At the dawn of modern Western government, the framers of the Western constitutions failed to appreciate how Christianity ultimately helped Europeans to overcome human civilization’s group based religious, tribal, and kindred prejudices to establish individual freedom. First, the Catholic Church reconciled hostile Germanic tribes, with the legal fiction of one brotherhood, joined together in custom and moral belief. Then the commercial world, which enables an individual’s upward mobility, occurred after the Protestant Reformation broke the political hegemony of those who used the Church to oppress European peoples for political gain: the Reformation upheld the New Testament principle that only an individual’s mere belief in God’s righteousness is of consequence. With this New Testament principle, the Reformers demonstrated that true Christian orthodoxy holds social prejudices and religious works to be of no merit. Like so, the Reformation inculcated into the general public the acceptance of individual choice and religious freedom under a secular government, even as the general populace remained morally empowered to self-govern under Judeo-Christians notions of right and wrong. And so, because the framers only experienced a Christian worldview, they could not fully appreciate how other cultures have not overcome human civilization’s natural inclination to uphold the significance of group-based human organizations, instead of individual merit. The framers ignorantly believed that the political balance of power that they struck in their constitutions would universally free all peoples.
Not until the 1960s did we witness the fallout from Western leaders’ insufficient appreciation of the role that Christianity played in helping the general populace accept individual choice and conviction. The so-called Counterculture revolution of the 1960s compelled many to walk away from Judeo-Christian traditions and become open to non-Christian cultural beliefs. The Counterculture began to abandon the Protestant work ethic of hard work, thrift, and efficiency: principles that moderated the excesses of capitalism. Now the general public has grown excessively materialistic, failing to secure savings, living paycheck to paycheck, while a few gain excessive amounts of income in the global market.
One of the first leaders to respond to the emerging market overseas, United States President Richard Milhous Nixon normalized relations with China, opening the doorway for trade. Then taking the ultimate step to normalized relations, President William Jefferson Clinton secured a trade agreement with China that lowered trade barriers and gained China’s acceptance into the World Trade Organization.
Both democratic and republican politicians argued against normalized trade relations with China: they argued that the vast majority of Chinese citizens were too impoverished to afford American products. Plus, the politicians expressed grave concerns over the Chinese government’s abuse of human rights and the Chinese inclination to use poor laborers, which would negatively affect the competitiveness of American workers. Yet, the Presidents dismissed the arguments, believing that normalized trade relations with China would influence China to democratize and adopt Western values. China of course did not westernize. Instead, the Chinese communist party gainfully exploits Western leaders’ naivety.
Confronting the economic threat that the non-Western world poses is the ultimate challenge to the endurance to Western democracies. The only first step to confronting the challenge is to recognize the reality that all races and kindred groups are equal in the eyes of God; however, all belief systems, religious practices, and cultural traditions are not equal. As a matter of fact, most non-Western cultures retain strong group-based prejudices that are not compatible with Western democracy. Though many post-1960s political and public leaders, as well as popular culture personalities, preach that Western peoples must embrace all cultural traditions, the people find that many of the non-Western practices undermine non-Western immigrants full democratic participation in modern society. As Western government increase trade with non-Western nations that do not or cannot guarantee their citizens’ rights, Western nations only empower tyrannical regimes and slowly weaken the long-term viability of Western democracies.
We, thelandscapeoftruth.com, do not recommend that Western nations formally adopt Christianity to the denial of other beliefs. True Christianity and democracy stand upon individual choice. At the same time, we do recommend that the people and the governments understand that we risk the long-term survival of democracy, itself, by our not censoring our commercial interactions with tyrannical regimes.
In regards to our ensuring economic growth for the working class, we agree that the future of economic growth is in renewable sources of energy, as well as the development of biodegradable goods and reforgeable building materials. Unfortunately, Western political leaders have a shortsighted notion on how to advance the future economy. They do not consider the immediate harm done to workers who remain employed securing traditional sources of energy and building materials. Also, Western political leaders fail to guard workers against non-Western nations’ ventures into the new economy. For this cause, we applaud President Donald J. Trump’s recent cancelling of the United States involvement in the Paris Climate Agreement. President Trump noted how the agreement gave China and India the right to develop their coal industry, while denying that right to the American coal industry. Following Trump’s example, we must continue to highlight and censor the unjust dealings of non-Western nations if we are to truly advance democracy at home and abroad.
The People’s Republic of China is the second largest nation in the world. Though China has a vast and varied landscape, consisting of deserts, forests, and mountain ranges; China’s inclusive geography greatly contributed to its uniform history of dynastic succession, beginning with the Xia dynasty 2070 BC unto the end of the Qing dynasty in 1912.
In contrast, European nations endured a more fractured history, as a consequence of Europe’s geography. Modern European nations are remnants of the Greco-Roman Empires that arose upon the trade and warfare between the nations around Mediterranean Sea. Rather than experiencing the uniform lands that facilitated the political hegemony of China’s heavily centralized, authoritarian dynasties; European democracies arose upon the every changing political fortunes that seafaring trade amongst Europe’s rivers and fractured seas gave rise to. The American Democracy is a direct result of Europe’s seafaring democratic culture.
Democracy and trade, therefore, rise and fall upon their shared fortunes. The question is can China, which does not have a democratic history that results from international trade, truly lead Western nations, peacefully?
Since the Middle East and other former colonial possessions gained their independence from European powers, many have noted that strong dictators are needed to quell the factional strife between the people. For instance, many Westerners celebrated the 2010 Arab Spring, the revolutionary wave of demonstrations that occurred across the Middle East, until Westerners realized that the toppling of dictators led to societal chaos. Indeed, refugees fleeing the chaos continue to arrive and settle in Europe. We see another example in how the United States’ toppling of Saddam Hussein, the dictator of Iraq, resulted in non-stop violence between religious factions that Saddam Hussein suppressed, during his tenure.
What we may take from the success of dictator rule over the former European colonies is that the respective cultures have not advanced beyond the group-based divisions and prejudices that have persisted throughout human civilization. Unfortunately, Western leaders and thinkers fail to recognize this reality as they push Western policies upon cultures that are irreconcilable with the policies.
Our doctrinal treatise, the Landscape of Truth, details how the biblical Testaments secure the individual liberty before God in the Kingdom of Heaven. The treatise demonstrates the effectualness of the biblical Testament in addressing the injustices of human civilization. Chapter 3 of the work details physical evidence for not only the existence of God, but also the human spirit and soul. The chapter accomplishes this by reconciling the mind-matter explanatory gap and the manner in which the mind integrates quantum impressions to grasp the uniform world that we perceive in human relationships, art, and government. The succeeding chapters detail human civilization’s development in government, economy, philosophy, art, and science. Then the work demonstrates how the biblical Testament address the human epic.
We do not expect for Western leaders to address the unfair outcome of global trade between free Western democracies and autocratic non-Western nations. Only the sustained outcry of the people will force change. The election of President Donald J. Trump as well as Great Britain’s exit from the EU is the outcome of the dissatisfactions of the people. Even so, ignorance silences the general outcry of the people, who do not want to give way to racism. Only the Church can take the lead by underscoring how it became reconcilable with modern democracy while upholding its belief, as it loved others that do not share its convictions. Like so, the Church can underscore that all must embrace all races and kindred groups, as we advance economic prosperity together; however, Western citizens must recognize that not all oppressive practices reconcilable when they practices do not accept individual choice.
The Future Industrial Apocalypse (Part 2): How Both Capitalists and Socialists cannot guarantee a Continued Economic Growth that supports all Social Strata
Published December 28, 2015 – thelandscapeoftruth.com
In today’s world, one is only a finger click away from finding amusement to divert one’s attention from life’s daily drudgery. In modern society, even the working class has access to a plethora of hand held electronic devices, such as tablets and I-phones. Every home has access to video games, cable television, satellite television, and satellite radio, giving people the opportunity to personalize their viewing and listening pleasures, from millions of productions. Because they have around-the-clock access to all forms of professionally produced entertainment, modern people find it hard to imagine that the common individual at the turn of the 20th Century was actually more imaginative, inventive, and mentally sophisticated in his or her securing of entertainment.
In the early 1900s before the invention of radio and television, street performers and magicians reigned supreme in working class urban areas. Companies of men thought it good fun not merely to watch magic shows, but rather to figure out where the trickster hid the keys that allowed him to perform death defying acts. As the audience watch with critical scrutiny, always looking for the reality behind the gimmick, the audience applauded any performer that could escape their critical gaze.
Erik Weisz, better known as Harry Houdini (1874-1926), proved to be the greatest early 20th Century street performer. Houdini became world renowned as an escape artist. His acts gained such public attention that local merchants sponsored Houdini’s performances. Houdini, like so, help to pioneer the indelible link between the entertainment world with commercial marketing.
The marketing of today’s commercial products requires the slight illusion of the products’ being more than they are in reality. For the most part, like the patrons’ buying a ticket to see Houdini’s magic tricks, our purchasing overrated commercial products usually do not negatively affect our standard of living. The threat that we face from the ever growing illusion of commercial prosperity in today’s global economy is that the commercial marketers have advanced from simply putting excessive luster on their products unto enticing the community unto believing that individuals can either buy into the success of fly-by-night industries by purchasing company stock, or establish their individual professions upon what the building and selling of the products entail. While capitalism stands upon the continued growth and investment in a free market, today’s commercial marketers and economists champion the idea that growth in highly specialized industries can positively affect all industries across the board.
The recently deceased Steve Jobs (1955-2011), the co-founder of Apple Inc., was a master showman who marketed Apple electronic products, making Apple a global leader in electronic home products; however, Apple’s success in the 2000s (as well as the success of social media giants like Facebook) did not translate unto prosperity across the economic spectrum to avert the Great Recession of 2007 and 2008.
As economists continually buy in to the belief that advances in tech industry can grasp continued prosperity for all, we see the hallmarks of what we are deeming the industrial apocalypse as governments continually wrestle with the transfer of income from people in short term profitable professions to people in economically stagnant professions. We see the hallmarks as corporations exploit cheap labor from nations that do not regard workers’ rights and insurance. We see the industrial apocalypse afar off, as we witness economists and politicians fail to observe that industry growth requires not merely innovations in technology, but also renewed commitment to the Judeo-Christian ethics and the resulting liberal freedoms upon which Western commerce stand. Like the quick witted audiences of the early street magician shows, we shall spy the keys behind the illusion of today’s industry, as we take a closer look.
Economists put forth the illusion that commercial markets have a life of their own; however, the reality is that healthy commercial markets have key human values that ensure that the markets function justly. The key to understanding healthy commercial markets is to understand that healthy markets are only the result of a principled society that bolsters itself against the severities of market failures. The West’s Judeo-Christian (and particularly Protestant) values have provided the ethical climate that enables modern Western culture to apprehend a science of commerce that operates justly.
The illusion of the commercial market’s self-sufficiency is strong only in Western culture where secular capitalists and secular socialists wrongfully attribute the West’s commercial market success to their respective economic philosophies: secular conservatives, such as libertarians, believe in laissez-faire, i.e., “let it go” capitalism, which is the belief that the free-market corrects itself, without the need for government tariffs and other forms of business regulation. In contrast, Secular progressive, socialists believe in strong government intervention, regulation, and wealth distribution to correct social imbalances. Disregarding the respective negative and positive attributes of the world religions and their resulting native cultures, the secular socialists believe in reconciling all cultures and peoples with government sponsored social programs that the socialists have developed through their social sciences. When market failures such as the misappropriation of wealth in the hands of unscrupulous and exploitive business owners occur, secular progressives use government intervention to regulate and redistribute wealth to the economically disadvantaged. Accordingly, when government expenditures run the nation into debt and misappropriate resources to unproductive programs and dishonest recipients, secular conservatives champion policies that rein in government corruption.
The Church has played a vital role in mediating the ongoing struggle between secular capitalists and secular socialists. The Protestant Church has vested Western society with principles that have enabled Western peoples to self-govern. To mitigate the excesses of capitalists, the Church has invested the people with the ideals of charity, forgiveness, and the understanding that spiritual wealth endures beyond temporal gains; moreover, to mitigate the abuses of government handouts, the Church has invested the people with the ideals of thrift, industriousness, and honesty. For example, a Christian businessman, John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937), the purported wealthiest man in modern history (as measured in today’s money), pioneered business philanthropy. Besides his giving to Baptists missions, Rockefeller pioneered conditional grants to encourage investment in efficiently ran colleges and public institutes. Also, Rockefeller became one of the first private funders of America’s medical science foundations.
Until the end of the Cold War between Western nations and the Soviet Union, the complementing roles of secular capitalists, secular socialists, and the Church struck the careful balance that rendered the illusion that the free-market is self-sufficient. At the dawn of the modern nation-state in the West, Western peoples could secure living incomes as the last vestiges of the West’s agricultural economies remained. Then as the West’s Industrial Revolution occurred in the mid-19th Century, working and middle class Western people could secure living incomes as laborers and wage earners, mostly in the burgeoning commercial and manufacturing industries. Yet, at the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union and a new era of a global economy resulted, the delicate geo-political balance, which fostered a free-market under a Judeo-Christian public ethos, faced the challenge of expanding the free-market in non-Western areas.
The key challenges that the capitalist and socialist champions of the global economy face are, first, the challenge of compelling non-Western totalitarian states to not regulate their markets unfairly and, second, the challenge of compelling non-Western states to extend Western privileges to their impoverished laborers, who essentially exist as slave-laborers, outnumbering Western laborers many times over. The challenges are perilous because Western working and middle class peoples have no redress in the foreign governments, and the foreign governments more often or not suppress or outlaw the Church, denying it of its natural public efficacy.
Fortunately, more and more Western citizens are becoming aware of the trade imbalances and the other economic shortcomings of extending the free-market unto unfair non-Western trading partners. More and more, the people are beginning to resist the secular capitalists and secular socialists’ ill-advised attempt to transfer Western wealth and culture abroad.
The use of grandiose illusions to sell commercial enterprises of course did not begin with the capacity for television and radio to make mass broadcasts. 16th through 18th Century investors and shareholders chartered companies to explore, colonize, and establish trading posts in the new found lands of North America. These companies served at the pleasure of European monarchs who sought to expand their imperial realms and increase their wealth. The companies advertised to the European public the hope of acquiring vast amounts of cheap and fertile lands. Often ancient tales arose of European-like people in the Americas, living virtuous lives without war, disease, and famine. As the harsh reality of life in the American wilderness became apparent, the American Colonies only survived because of the European Christian pilgrims’ hope of practicing their faith free from the persecution of the politicized Churches in Europe.
As the global economy extends the free-market in the non-Western world, liberal progressive parties and their voters decry the dramatically increasing income gap between rich capitalists and the working and middle class peoples of the West. What the liberal voters fail to recognize is that social progressive policies, which do not differentiate between Western Judeo-Christian cultural sensibilities and the illiberal sensibilities of the non-Western nations, are equally to blame for the income gap. The capitalists are gainfully exploiting the non-Western peoples whose governments and respective cultures accept their downcast states. Establishing free-trade deals with nations that are not free only hurts the working and middle class people in the West.
The doctrinal treatise, the Landscape of Truth, is a systematic theology of the biblical Testaments that empowers the reader to apply biblical understandings to today’s world. Among many things, the Landscape peers past the illusion of commercial wealth by upholding the truth that “Man does not live by bread only, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord . . . (Deuteronomy 8:3).”
In the Landscape of Truth’s chapter 6, the Landscape details the evolution of government and economy, demonstrating how the equitable relationship between the government and the government only stands as the rulers and their respective peoples uphold a benefactor and beneficiary relationship like the kindred relationships of the people. The Landscape details how the New Testament describes how Lord Jesus’ eternal government in Heaven ultimately fulfills the benefactor-beneficiary relationship in a Holy Marriage between Christ and his Church.
Though secular capitalists and secular socialists promise economic prosperity in the global economy, the reality that the commercial market is not an entity unto itself that can incorporate the illiberalities of non-Western cultures will become increasingly apparent. Western leaders will either have to scale back the global market by benchmarking how non-Western nations observe Western freedoms and standards of living; or have to face public upheaval and the resurgence of nationalist parties that will seize power from liberal lawmakers. Of course, thelandscapeoftruth.com will be there to observe.
Despite Conventional Wisdom, Europe’s Christian Monarchies Must Not Modernize: They Still Play a Crucial Role in Preserving Western Culture (Part 2 – The Monarchy and Economy)
Published August 17, 2015 – thelandscapeoftruth.com
Heathrow airport, Great Britain’s only international airport hub, seeks the much needed expansion of a third runway, in order to compete with other European airport hubs: all seeking to secure trade with the world’s new growth markets in Brazil, Russia, India, and China. A leader of international trade for over three centuries, Great Britain has showcased some of the world’s largest ports, in its harbors and air fields. Now Britain struggles to compete.
As a credit to its international utility, a foreigner can navigate Heathrow not speaking English, meeting courtesy and professionalism. Heathrow’s international capacity should come as no surprise: London, the home of Heathrow, itself, reflects the international effects of British commerce. According to a 2011 census, only 45 percent of London is actually white British: mix ethnic groups comprise 5 percent; Asian ethnic groups comprise 18 percent; and African and Caribbean ethnic groups comprise 13 percent of London’s population. Amongst many of London’s ethnic communities, London’s Brixton community has a West Indian population; south-west London’s New Malden community has a concentration of Koreans; an Italian community dwells in Clerkenwell; the Tower Hamlets houses a Bangladeshi community; the Stockwell district is home to a Portuguese community; and French immigrants favor the South Kensington area.
One white British family, however, is determined to stay in London for the long haul, ensuring that their image accompanies and helps to define the ever-changing English cultural landscape. The British people (and the world over) know this family as the British Royal Family, who’s 89 year old Monarch Queen Elizabeth II resides in Buckingham Palace. The family has recently welcomed a new addition, one Prince George of Cambridge. If all goes well, he will succeed his Father Prince William the Duke of Cambridge; who will succeed his Father (George’s grandfather) Charles the Prince of Wales, first in line to the throne.
Once, in a haphazard attempt to merit the Royal Family’s rule over the ever-changing cultural landscape, Prince Charles reasoned that he would become the defender of faiths instead of being the defender of the faith (that is, the Christian faith), which the Church of England represents. Prince Charles later backed away from the proposal, meaning no harm: he only sought to secure some multicultural relevance for his pending assumption of the throne. The palace in general struggles to ensure that the British Monarchy is far more than a tourist attraction, in the increasingly international city of London.
With some justification, Great Britain claims that it is chiefly responsible for the modern world’s commercial economy. Indeed, non-Western nations cannot divorce Britain and other Western nations’ Judeo-Christian sensibilities and govern the modern economy justly: Great Britain’s Christian culture gave its society a common Judeo-Christian ethical foundation upon which jurisprudence flourished in civil and economic law. The British Crown’s break from the continental Roman Catholic Church sealed Great Britain’s commercial identity: Great Britain’s isolation from the European continent encouraged Britain to rely more upon a maritime economy. To expand its seafaring economy, the United Kingdom (that is, Great Britain’s union of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales) planted colonies managed by commercial entities. The mechanized processing and distribution of imported goods from abroad changed the face of the British economy to the extent that Great Britain became the first industrial economy, the first to shift from an agricultural economy: Great Britain privatized 17 million acres of land; nationalized its economy by uniting regional economies unto one complementing system; and began a financial revolution by creating a national bank that gave loans to the government, allowing the government to incur debt.
The success of Great Britain and her former colonies (namely the United States of America, Canada, and Australia) often cloaks the reality that the West’s commercial wealth lies in the liberal rights that the Protestant sensibilities have fostered amongst commoners. The social revolution of the public (first, in the British upper class’ Glorious Revolution and, second, in the colonial commoner’s American Revolution) inculcated amongst Western citizens a sensibility of constitutional rights, such as the right to private property, the freedom of religion, the freedom of expression, and the freedom of assembly. Nevertheless, as the markets expand to non-Western lands or nations that have not ensured citizens’ rights, many mistake the burgeoning emerging commercial markets of nations like China, Russia, and India to be economic successes. Many fail to see that emerging markets do not guarantee the true wealth of the constitutional rights and upward mobility of the people.
Those who champion the West’s growing economic ties to the emerging markets have no malicious intents. On the contrary, those who champion the global economy have noble aspirations: the liberal ideal of the equality of all races inspires globalism advocates to tear down the national boundaries and traditions that prejudice defines.
Unfortunately, globalism advocates fail to recognize a significant problem. Because Christianity took root in European countries, many deem the Church and its subsequent values to be a European phenomenon; therefore, as they seek to uphold the equality of races, globalists morph foreign belief systems with the equality of race ideal, effectively rendering the equality of beliefs. As a consequence, the market’s expansion into other nations realizes different effects in terms of the other nation’s cultural willingness to forgo civil and worker’s rights for economic profit. In the end, Western citizens see the most harm, as necessity increasingly compels them to compromise their demand for just working conditions, in order to remain competitive.
The worldview of Barack Hussein Obama II, the 44th President of the United States of America, captures how social progressive thinkers conflate belief systems with the ideal of the equality of the races. President Obama is biracial, having a European mother of English ancestry and an African Father of Kenya. President Obama is highly intelligent, articulate, and inventive. As a child, President Obama attended school in Indonesia, until returning to Hawaii to live with his grandparents as he attended high school: President Obama, in fact, stated that the multicultural communities of Hawaii, which mutual respect held together, framed his worldview. Upon his assumption of the U.S. Presidency, Barack Obama immediately attempted to transform the United States’ traditional relationships with Western European countries like the United Kingdom, as President Obama sought to make to ties with non-Western countries. To demonstrate the Obama administration’s realignment, President Obama deemphasized the U.S.’s relationship with Great Britain: President Obama discontinued the favoritism that U.S. Presidents traditionally showed as they hosted British Prime Ministers. Obama went so far as to replace the White House bust of Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill with a bust of the slain civil rights leader Doctor Martin Luther King.
Greatly alarmed by the Obama administration’s undermining of the long time partnership between Great Britain and her most successful former colony, the United States; British leaders honored President Obama by inviting him to make an unprecedented address to the British Parliament in Westminster Hall. Humbled by the honor, President Obama reassured the British people of the undying relationship between Great Britain and the United States. President Obama said that they should not be afraid of the competition coming from the emerging markets of Russia, China, Brazil, and India. Though his address was affable and of good cheer, President Obama in his goodwill toward non-Western nations overlooked the inequalities excessively indoctrinated in the non-Western belief systems.
Though the perseveration of ancient Western institutes like the British Monarch may not be politically correct in our current global environment, we must support the preservation of the icons of Western values. We cannot countenance the harm done to our long fought for liberties by our overlooking how new trading partners deny their vast competitive populations Western liberties.
We can only hope that the advisors of the future kings Charles III, William V, and George VII will compel the kings to build their thrones on the defense of the Church and the constitutional liberties of the people. No other pursuit justifies a monarch’s rule.
In temporal terms, the strength of the British Monarchy rest upon the Peace of Westphalia, signed in 1648: a treaty ending the Thirty Years War between the Holy Roman Empire, Sweden, the Dutch Republic, France, and Spain. From the Peace of Westphalia arose the concept of Westphalian sovereignty, in which international law recognized the sovereignty of individual nation states over their respective territories and domestic affairs, without interference from foreign powers. The Westphalian notion of sovereignty currently erodes as multinational organizations, such as the World Trade Organization and the World Bank, transcend sovereign borders. As in other European states, increasingly the British Parliament is less receptive to the sovereignty of the Monarch and the Monarch’s British subjects and more receptive to international bodies such as the European Union, under which British voters do not have direct representation.
Though Great Britain bears the most responsibility for creating global commerce, Britain’s dominance of the global economy ceased due to the ill effects of World Wars I and II. Until the present time, the United States of America (Great Britain’s former colony) assumed Britain’s dominating role.
Under the auspices of the United Nations, the United States hosted worldwide delegates in Bretton Woods New Hampshire to establish commercial and financial rules to manage global currency exchanges. The forgoing Bretton Woods system obligated all trading nations to fix their currencies to the value of gold, and seeing how the United States held above two thirds of the world’s gold reserve; the United States’ delegates demanded that all nations affix their currency rates to the U.S. dollar. After the President Nixon administration terminated world currency’s relation to gold reserves, the U.S. dollar became an international reserve currency. The continued trust in the U.S. dollar as an international reserve currency presently stands not upon a tangible value but upon the moral character of the United States Government and thereby the character of U.S. politicians and citizens.
The doctrinal treatise the Landscape of Truth empowers individuals by expanding the emotional and physical security that an individual experiences in kindred relationships to encompass work, public, and greater societal relationships. For the reader, chapters 5, 6, and 7 of the Landscape details how patriarchs arise to govern kindred groups; how monarchs arise to govern higher level civilizations; and how aristocracies and democracies arise to govern the ascendency of the lower-classes. The Landscape empowers the reader by detailing how the biblical Testaments exemplify how Lord Jesus the Christ arises to preserve justice throughout kindred relationships and the political relationships in higher level civilization, as the Christ marries all in a Holy Marriage of reconciled consciences in his Body. Using biblical models, the Landscape introduces the reader to Western philosophy, economics, science, and political science, in order to give the reader a sound understanding of today’s global order and the challenge of preserving our freedoms.
Unless Western leaders measure the integration of the global community by bench-marking the increased integration upon the new nations’ willingness to advance the liberties and living conditions of their respective peoples, conflict between new immigrants and nation states will increase with terrifying effects. Thelandscapeoftruth.com will address the ongoing conflict in future articles.