Speaker of the House Mike Johnson as an example of what's wrong with evangelicalism

[Bartato]

It's this sentence, Sir:


Trend is opposite. We are winning. Minor setback is no cause for concern.


Winners will be one willing to live in reality. Problems are "pragmatics" prefering social approval over truth. It's this guys moving right toward left over time and accepting left's assumptions.

It applies only to human-human relationships, not Lord-human. It's basic, simple, neccesary, morally right and practiced in 90+% of time rule. Only allowable usage of force is in self-defence.

Only problem is anarchists insistence on absolutism of rule. So no, BS excuse, I'm right to take your property or order you something.

"Minor setback" is a bit of an understatement, and "losing lately" is very different than "dooming".

Christ is on the Throne. His enemies are being, and will be put under His feet. His Kingdom will prevail. The world is on a long term upward trend.

Any individual man, woman, family, church, or people who follow Christ will be blessed.

That said, Christianity in Protestant Western Europe and the English speaking world (USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa) has been in serious decline for the last hundred plus years, due to apostasy.

Our cultures and nations are dying because we are largely denying the rule of Jesus Christ. As an American, and as someone in the stream of the English cultural tradition, I hate to see that. I hope to help reverse that trend.

Sadly, most of our religious leaders in Evangelicalism (including the somewhat more serious Reformed branch of it) are more of a hindrance than a help. Our "conservative" politicians are also pretty pathetic.

I intend this as a call to faithfulness, not a call to despair.

 

[steve]

Christ is on the Throne. His enemies are being, and will be put under His feet. His Kingdom will prevail. The world is on a long term upward trend.

He is on the throne of the lives of those who have put him first.
But if this is what it looks with his enemies under his feet, um, I don’t get it.
That long upward trend, though……things must have been worse than I remember them to have been.

 

[MeganC]

There is still the same danger present in privatisation. It means selling assets because of a philosophical belief that those assets should have been built by somebody else.

Or those assets should never have been nationalized in the first place. Further, government should not be declaring monopolies in sectors where private citizens and private businesses can compete and either do the job better or else provide goods and services that the government monopoly does not provide.

Energy and healthcare are two sectors that immediately come to mind. Transportation is another.

 

[MeganC]

There are two forms of socialism. One when state own directly and second it private owner, stare tells you everything. In both cases state has direct control and you zero. Whole point of private property is you having direct control which enables property usage for your goals.

Amen!!!

 

[Bartato]

He is on the throne of the lives of those who have put him first.
But if this is what it looks with his enemies under his feet, um, I don’t get it.
That long upward trend, though……things must have been worse than I remember them to have been.

Regarding that long term trend...
Our society in the West has been heading downward longer than any of us have been alive. I am expecting a turnaround sometime in the next few decades, but maybe I'm overly optimistic.

 

[Bartato]

Or those assets should never have been nationalized in the first place. Further, government should not be declaring monopolies in sectors where private citizens and private businesses can compete and either do the job better or else provide goods and services that the government monopoly does not provide.

Energy and healthcare are two sectors that immediately come to mind. Transportation is another.

That's true, but FollowingHim is also right to suggest that publicly own assets shouldn't be cheaply auctioned off to well connected oligarchs, who then have a private monopoly.

Unraveling the nasty mess that socialism creates is no easy task, but still needs to be done.

 

[FollowingHim]

I'm not advocating socialism @MemeFan and @MeganC, just pointing out that following decades of socialism, decades where the government was stealing money from the people to spend on assets, making the people poor except for the fact that they collectively owned state assets - those state assets are now the people's wealth. It's a bad form of wealth, it should not be this way, but it now is the reality. If you hand it to a private corporate, you are taking it from the people and impoverishing them further. The only fair outcomes are to find a way to hand the asset or its true value back to the people who paid for it, or to retain it in state ownership until you can figure out how to do that (or in perpetuity if that is impossible). Selling it for bargain prices to an international corporate is effectively theft. And it is the rich taking the only asset the poor have - like the rich man taking the poor man's sheep in Nathan's story to David.

I expect that someone has financed Milei's campaign hoping to acquire large assets at bargain prices.

I may of course be wrong.

 

[MemeFan]

Or those assets should never have been nationalized in the first place. Further, government should not be declaring monopolies in sectors where private citizens and private businesses can compete and either do the job better or else provide goods and services that the government monopoly does not provide.

Energy and healthcare are two sectors that immediately come to mind. Transportation is another.

Have you figured out that any sector works better without government? Why keep government if they turn anything they touch into crap?

 

[MemeFan]

"Minor setback" is a bit of an understatement, and "losing lately" is very different than "dooming".

It's minor setback. Try against next year.

Our cultures and nations are dying because we are largely denying the rule of Jesus Christ. As an American, and as someone in the stream of the English cultural tradition, I hate to see that. I hope to help reverse that trend.

Cause is widespread breaking of theft prohibition. Execution is proper proscription for society where money comes from politicians instead of improving people's lifes.

 

[MemeFan]

That's true, but FollowingHim is also right to suggest that publicly own assets shouldn't be cheaply auctioned off to well connected oligarchs, who then have a private monopoly.

Private monopoly is only problem when state provides regulatory protection.

I'm not advocating socialism @MemeFan and @MeganC, just pointing out that following decades of socialism, decades where the government was stealing money from the people to spend on assets, making the people poor except for the fact that they collectively owned state assets - those state assets are now the people's wealth. It's a bad form of wealth, it should not be this way, but it now is the reality. If you hand it to a private corporate, you are taking it from the people and impoverishing them further. The only fair outcomes are to find a way to hand the asset or its true value back to the people who paid for it, or to retain it in state ownership until you can figure out how to do that (or in perpetuity if that is impossible). Selling it for bargain prices to an international corporate is effectively theft. And it is the rich taking the only asset the poor have - like the rich man taking the poor man's sheep in Nathan's story to David.

I expect that someone has financed Milei's campaign hoping to acquire large assets at bargain prices.

Financing is probably mostly by small donations. It's standard for any libertarian/populist.

Koch brothers did finance libertarian movement. Result is "regime libertarian" Cato institute. Lesson: Don't take big donors at all costs.

Look, it's simple. What is value of state business after removal of subsidies? If negative, it was whole time drain of national wealth. Shutdown is best. If opposite, asset prices will go up and business will become more worth. So no firesale.

And Milei was TV host before. Murray Rothbard has advised that any right-wing libertarian movement must have fiery and populistic messaging. It must wake people from slumber and leaving politics to experts. And with Argentina visibly becoming shithole, no wonder he is becoming popular.

 

[MeganC]

Or those assets should never have been nationalized in the first place.

The only fair outcomes are to find a way to hand the asset or its true value back to the people who paid for it, or to retain it in state ownership until you can figure out how to do that (or in perpetuity if that is impossible). Selling it for bargain prices to an international corporate is effectively theft. And it is the rich taking the only asset the poor have - like the rich man taking the poor man's sheep in Nathan's story to David.

Sadly, in 2008 Argentina's kleptocracy nationalized US$30bn in private pension funds. Then-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (a Peronist) justified the theft saying that it was to "protect retirees from falling stock and bond prices" when in fact this was sheer theft and the $30bn was eventually liquidated in an act of expropriation. The money was then squandered by the socialist government.

In 2012 this same socialist thief seized control of Spanish-owned Repsol oil company and effectively ended foreign investment in Argentina's energy sector.

Here's a comprehensive list of the private sector assets that the Argentine socialists stole:

1946 Central Bank of Argentina
1946 Natural gas services (later privatized in 1992)
1947 Telephone network (later privatized in 1990)
1947 Radio networks (later privatized between 1980 and 1993)
1948 Rail transport (privatized between 1991 and 1999)
1959 Oil reserves (the state oil enterprise, YPF, had been established in 1922; mineral resources were nationalized with Article 40 of the 1949 Constitution; the latter was abrogated in 1956, but oil was renationalized in 1958 and private firms operated afterward via leases)
1949 Port administration (privatized in 1992)
1949 Merchant marine (privatized in 1991)
1951 LR3 TV Canal 7 (the first and only existing television network in the country at the time; despite not being founded by the state itself, it began as a state-owned venture. It was briefly privatized in 1954 and renationalized in 1955)
1952 Buenos Aires Metro (operations privatized in 1994)
1958 Electric utilities (privatized in 1992)
1974 Television networks (privatized between 1982 and 1998)
1980 Austral Líneas Aéreas (privatized in 1987, renationalized in 2008)
2003 Postal service renationalized (state-owned between 1949 and 1997)
2006 AySA, the water utility serving Buenos Aires (its state-owned precursor, OSN, was established in 1912 and privatized in 1993)
2008 Aerolíneas Argentinas renationalized (state-owned between 1949 and 1990)
2008 Pension funds (transferred to ANSES)
2010 FAdeA (state-owned between 1927 and 1995)
2012 YPF renationalized (state-owned between 1922 and 1993)
2013 Metrogas (part of the Gas del Estado state-owned enterprise privatized in 1992)
2015 Rail transport[1] (renationalization of commuter lines began under the auspices of SOFSE in 2013)

All of those assets need to be restored to the people from whom they were stolen.

It would not at all be 'fair' to auction off these stolen assets and then use the proceeds to buy votes. That would just be a further continuance of the problems that caused the people to elect Javier Milei.

 

[Bartato]

It's minor setback. Try against next year.

Cause is widespread breaking of theft prohibition. Execution is proper proscription for society where money comes from politicians instead of improving people's lifes.

So your use of the phrase "minor setback" refers to the proposed Louisiana abortion legislation, not the century plus of cultural decline in the West. That makes more sense.

I have to laugh when you suggest that we should pass laws leading to the execution of big government officials, when you also think it is impossible to pass a law banning abortion. Do you really think the public will ban socialism? It might happen if women couldn't vote.

 

[MemeFan]

So your use of the phrase "minor setback" refers to the proposed Louisiana abortion legislation, not the century plus of cultural decline in the West. That makes more sense.

Correct.

I have to laugh when you suggest that we should pass laws leading to the execution of big government officials, when you also think it is impossible to pass a law banning abortion. Do you really think the public will ban socialism? It might happen if women couldn't vote.

It's all Overton window: what is socially acceptable. If it moves in direction both laws are possible. Just not now.

 

[FollowingHim]

Look, it's simple. What is value of state business after removal of subsidies? If negative, it was whole time drain of national wealth. Shutdown is best. If opposite, asset prices will go up and business will become more worth. So no firesale.

This is too simplistic, and shows one of the major problems with privatisation, which is

Who determines the value of the business?

For a commercial buyer, the value of the business is directly related to its ability to return a profit. Let's take a power station for an example. In a poor country, where all the customers are poor, there is a limit to how much can be charged for electricity. So a power station selling power to poor people will make little profit. The price it will receive on the market is low.

However, for the current owners (the citizens who paid for its construction and use the power from it), its value is more closely related to the replacement value of the asset - what it would cost to build another if that one disappeared. This will usually be higher than its commercial value.

And some of the things that make the business unprofitable are actually not a problem for the citizens, or even a benefit. Say the power station is unprofitable because it employs too many staff. From the people's perspective, especially in a poor country, that is likely to be seen as a good thing because it means more jobs. A private buyer will trim staff numbers to make the business profitable - and that means less of the money paid for electricity goes back into the local community, and more gets siphoned off outside the community.

If you think about it, even if the business makes no profit whatsoever, but provides the service people need (electricity) and provides employment for a lot of people, it is still a very large benefit to the community. Yet it would have a low commercial value, so would sell for peanuts to a private investor.

They could theoretically end up shutting it down due to it being unprofitable, and if it's unprofitable to run an existing power station it's almost certainly even less profitable to build a new one. So what happens then? Most likely, the people will decide "capitalism failed", vote in another socialist government who promises to fix everything, taxes them all and builds another one, despite it being "unprofitable", because it's necessary. Which a few decades later when everyone decides "socialism failed" will be sold off in turn. And the cycle from one extreme to the other continues.

 

[FollowingHim]

And the cycle from one extreme to the other continues.

This cycle is well illustrated by @MeganC above, but she made one major mistake. Nationalisation does not necessarily mean theft - often it means the state purchases the asset from private owners, or that the private owner is so deeply indebted they voluntarily transfer the asset to the state because that means getting rid of the debt. So this is not a list of assets that have been "stolen" (some may well have been, but you can't assume that just because it's on the list).

Also, if you look at the list, you'll see that many of these assets were actually originally state-owned, then privatised, then re-nationalised later.

Take two examples below. The state created a postal service and national airline in 1949. Both were privatised in 1990-1997. Then both were re-nationalised in 2003-2008. Likely under Milei both would be privatised again. Back and forth like a pendulum as the whims of the electorate swing from left to right and back again.

2003 Postal service renationalized (state-owned between 1949 and 1997) ...
2008 Aerolíneas Argentinas renationalized (state-owned between 1949 and 1990)

When Aerolineas Argentinas was renationalised, it was so deep in debt that the government was actually taking on a liability and getting the private owner out of a major problem.

It is common for the people to lose out both at the time of privatisation AND at the time of nationalisation. When an asset is privatised, it is usually sold for less than what it is worth to the people. Then when an asset is nationalised, it is often purchased back for an exhorbitant price, or is taken over for nothing but has massive debts the government must now repay. So the people receive less than they should upon privatisation, and pay more than they should upon nationalisation. And the more it changes hands, the more the people lose.

 

[MemeFan]

Argentina's airline to be gifted to workers:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1727302600079647073

 

[FollowingHim]

Argentina's airline to be gifted to workers:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1727302600079647073

If true, that would be grossly unfair also, because it belongs to taxpayers, not the tiny number of taxpayers who happen to work there.

 

[Maddog]

"Minor setback" is a bit of an understatement, and "losing lately" is very different than "dooming".

Christ is on the Throne. His enemies are being, and will be put under His feet. His Kingdom will prevail. The world is on a long term upward trend.

Any individual man, woman, family, church, or people who follow Christ will be blessed.

That said, Christianity in Protestant Western Europe and the English speaking world (USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa) has been in serious decline for the last hundred plus years, due to apostasy.

Our cultures and nations are dying because we are largely denying the rule of Jesus Christ. As an American, and as someone in the stream of the English cultural tradition, I hate to see that. I hope to help reverse that trend.

Sadly, most of our religious leaders in Evangelicalism (including the somewhat more serious Reformed branch of it) are more of a hindrance than a help. Our "conservative" politicians are also pretty pathetic.

I intend this as a call to faithfulness, not a call to despair.

America is not the Church of God. God's children are the Church. The prolife policies must be proclaimed IN THE CHURCH. In turn, prolife laws are good for the society in which we live. Speaker Johnson understands the pendulum of political pursuasion and the move back toward the sanctity of life. Is your goal to be politically pure (absolutely NO abortions) or to save as many lives of the unborn as possible? Our hope is not in human politics but rather the change in the human heart.

 

[frederick]

Our hope is not in human politics but rather the change in the human heart.

That is something that all too frequently gets forgotten, especially at election times. Jesus Christ gave the responsibility for the preaching of the gospel to His disciples, and through the gospel, the salvation of lost souls. Politics and governments are more like a satanic distraction to the work God has given His people.

 

[MemeFan]

That is something that all too frequently gets forgotten, especially at election times. Jesus Christ gave the responsibility for the preaching of the gospel to His disciples, and through the gospel, the salvation of lost souls. Politics and governments are more like a satanic distraction to the work God has given His people.

Except politics will keep inserting into your life.

And political problems can only be solved, well, politically.