Redneck Review
No. 44 2/22/2016
We have all heard at one time, "That is just pure common sense!" Just what might this have to tell us about the issues involved in these articles the past several weeks?
To begin, there is the easily proved contention, that history was drastically altered by the life and death of Jesus Christ. Atheists may try to deny it, but the fact that our calendar is divided into the time before and after Christ, B.C. and A.D., is compelling support!
The overwhelming evidence of His miraculous cures, His restoring life back to the dead, and the historical record of His agonizing death and crucifixion, followed by His own return from the grave that was witnessed by hundreds and by accepted accounts in the Bible, all provide additional and powerful witness to this unique moment in history.
And even a brief study of the teachings of Christianity proclaims the value of an individual with the ability to think and to choose, having a destiny in eternity determined by choices made during a relatively short time on this earth. In brief, the freedom we all have and also treasure, is a God-given reality enjoyed by all, but is necessarily bound by decisions that follow and for which we are responsible. All of this is claimed to be just common sense!
So how does this fit into the claims that have been investigated here, that democracies have a limited life expectancy, before they collapse from fiscal failure? Or the assertion by historians that the average life span of nations is 200 to 250 years? Or our own concerns over a snow-balling debt nearing $19 trillion that threatens our own national existence?
Enter into this discussion the observed tendency of our human nature to self-seeking, to being captivated by greed and power. From Adam and Eve's wish to "become like God" by eating the forbidden fruit, this tendency can be seen down through the ages, with many examples of ambitious men trampling on the rights and lives of others in their determined quest for power, wealth, and fame.
Could this not be the answer lying behind the slow transformation during the Enlightenment period and the Industrial Revolution, when capitalism we are told passed from a free system concerned with Christ's request to "love your neighbor," to the dog-eat-dog, me first, style of "capitalism" so criticized today for its unrelenting pursuit of money, power and wealth?
John Horvat in his book RETURN TO ORDER, argues that the merchant "in looking for his own welfare should also be a voluntary servant of the public good... fitting though it be they receive a just profit from their effort...they should avoid false weights, defective goods... and a host of other deceptive practices that imperil his soul, destroy trust and drag down an economy."
Even Plato touched on this human tendency in his book THE REPUBLIC, where he quoted Socrates in his quest to define the best kind of government. Discussing at length a natural evolution Socrates claimed led from oligarchy (rule by a few) to democracy to tyranny, he had this to say to his companion: "The insatiable desire of wealth and the neglect of other things for the sake of money-getting was the ruin of oligarchy..." and later adds, "...a democracy which has drunk too deeply of the strong wine of freedom, and the neglect of other things introduces the change in democracy which occasions a demand for tyranny." So, does not our common sense suggest that solutions sought depend on the right human behavior?
Jake Wren 

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