Axis Kast wrote: Quite easily —by never changing a single idea to start with and holding to fixed notions despite the movement of the rest of the world, and then reacting with increasing intolerance toward a world which no longer considers their ideas workable, relevant, or even remotely logical.
You stated that conservatives had
become more or less of something, not that society's relative movement had made them
appear more or less something.
Which defeats the point... how, exactly? Are you going to try to argue that reactionary resistance to a changing world does not induce a further tilt toward extremism?
More than that, conservatives have clearly proven changeable: before 9/11, many proudly identified as isolationists; after Bush teed up their support for the invasion of Iraq, many could only be described as military interventionists.
"Many" is a quantifiable term... how, exactly? And American conservatism has hardly been isolationist.
Judgment is clearly a component of what you do. Running throughout your replies in this thread is a confident, nearly blind presumption that there can be only evil in a man's heart when he says, "A man should mostly take care of himself," and, "I oughtn't have to pay so many taxes."
A strawman is a strawman is a strawman, no matter how many times you keep trying to put it up. I thought we hashed through this particular invalid approach to argument years ago. It seems you have learned nothing since the last time you were regularly getting your ass kicked in on these boards and are determined to make the same mistakes again.
Of course they doubt it —because they don't want to contribute a goddamned thing and see their wealth and achievements entirely as if they came from a vacuum, with zero connection to a wider world which made the conditions which made their wealth and achievements possible in the first place. That's at the root of every "It's MY money" argument.
You've never satisfactorily proven to
anyone that conservatives got their wealth from, or were able to get anywhere on account of, this hazy "other" called "a wider world." You've never provided any kind of mechanism to be able to quantify, or even qualify, this supposed contribution and corresponding debt. Whenever anybody asks you for substation, you merely assert your belief in a "Social Contract," as if it is self-evident truth.
Here's an experiment for you to test this proposition: try pursuing your interests to the degree of success you'd like to attain in a place like Somalia and see how far you actually manage to get.
Another strawman. It is not unreasonable to posit the observation that those who benefit from society should take a hand in its maintenance —if for no other reason than ensuring that the society they benefit from remains viable so they can continue benefiting from it.
You've now staked out an even more ambitious position: without some undefined extent of open-handedness, society will no longer be "viable." What does that mean, spelled out in more than a sentence? How did you arrive at this conclusion, and how can I be assured that this is not riding the philosophical slippery slope too far?
No I haven't, actually. It is you, rather, who seems to be arguing that a society can continue to be viable all by itself simply because... well, you don't even bother to try to explain your alternative vision at all, do you? Just what is so difficult to comprehend about the proposition that a society does indeed depend upon the support of it's population to maintain itself and by tangible means such as taxation to finance necessary functions and services? How do the police get paid for? Or the fire department? Or the schools? Or sewer construction and maintenace? What pays for paving the roads? What funds public health services? Or garbage collection? Or any of several dozen other mechanisms and services which a functional society actually needs to remain functional? How does it all happen, Axi? Magick?
Your philosophy on what is "necessary" or "reasonable" seems to have a lot in common with your personal opinions about what is most important or most desirable in organized society. In other words, "Do this, because I said so." You sound an awful lot like the doctrinare conservatives insisting, "Because God said so! Because it's in the Bible!" That's when I ask them to prove to me that the Bible is assuredly the Word of God.
The difference is that I do not appeal to the Invisible Cloud-Being as a source of authority but an observable mechanism which is quite readily testable and open for examination. Your questions have been repeatedly answered and you just keep repeating yourself as if nothing had been said in the first place.
It is readily observable that charity donation is nowhere near sufficient to see to the needs of the poorer segments of a large and complex society but conservatives continue to insist that somehow, someway, charity will actually meet those needs in sufficient quantity. Problem is, they never actually bother to explain how this is to be workable to the extent they insist it will but is just presented as an a priori assertion. When confronted with facts that charity won't actually fill the gaps in the provision of social services, however, they simply repeat the same arguments: government is inefficient, charity is sufficient.
The conservative willingness to make donation to charity in the first place clashes with your earlier perception that they are inherently selfish and tight-fisted.
Because the tax deductions for doing so, of course, have no influence whatsoever upon that decision, I suppose? Or the demands of church-membership? Take those away and what incentive is there to continue charitable giving even to the extent that now exists?
When confronted with the statement, "Government is inefficient," do you simply reply, "No, it isn't!" and then pull your hair out when disagreement persists? You treat the potential debate as if there must be equivalency. My point is that conservatives will often be unable to sustain their positions; if you want to challenge them, the investment of effort on behalf of evidence will often need to be primarily your own.
The problem is that this debate keeps being had and evidence continues to be put up which destroys the proposition and conservatives will turn right around and continue arguing "government is inefficient" as if nothing had ever been said. This is simply taken as
a priori.
And that's nice as far as it goes. Unfortunately, it doesn't go anywhere near as far as it needs to —a fact conservatives are loathe to admit, much less concede.
You said that it was selective, not that it was merely insufficient.
It is selective and it is insufficient just from examining the numbers as well as the scope of action for private organisations v. government agencies. There is also the question of which system is more accountable to public scrutiny. As demonstrated in
this monograph:
Charity in the United States
In 1993, Americans contributed $126 billion dollars to charity. This averages out to $880 per contributing household, or 2.1 percent of contributing household income. For all households, that works out to $646 per household, or about 1.7 percent of household income. (1) In general, the poor give a greater percentage of their income to charity than the rich. Consider:
Household income and percent given to charity (1993) (2)
Percent of income
Income level given to charity
--------------------------------------
Under $10,000 2.7%
$10,000 - 19,999 2.3
$20,000 - 29,999 2.7
$30,000 - 39,999 2.0
$40,000 - 49,999 1.3
$50,000 - 59,999 1.1
$60,000 - 74,999 2.3
$75,000 - 99,999 2.0
Over $100,000 ?
There are statistical difficulties in determining the percentage of charity donated by those in the richest group, because this group includes billionaires as well as those making "merely" $100,000 a year. However, even if better research clarifies this question, we should remember that different income groups make different types of charitable contributions anyhow. The rich tend to donate to "rich" charities; the poor tend to donate to "poor" charities.
Charity experts have long known that donors give to charities with whom they identify and from whom they might reasonably expect something in return. (Indeed, the Olasky argument above strongly suggests this.) While the very poor tend to donate more to the Salvation Army, the very rich tend to donate more to the arts, humanities and sciences. Because the rich still donate more in absolute dollars, this has caused a serious mismatch between donations and allocations. Only about 10 percent of charitable contributions are specifically directed to the poor. (3)
Furthermore, charities are highly localized. Most are small neighborhood organizations that are tied to their immediate community by their charters, service missions, support bases, and relationships with trustees. They reflect their neighborhood's values, religious preferences, interests, problems and, above all, income. As charity expert Julian Wolpert writes: "Most of the donations that charities raise go to support community churches and synagogues, Y's, museums, public radio and television, universities, and parochial schools -- the services that donors themselves use -- and these funds are largely unavailable for helping the neediest." (4) For these reasons, almost 90 percent of all charity funds are both raised and spent locally. (5) But what this means is that communities with high incomes tend to enjoy well-funded charity programs; those with low incomes tend to suffer poorly-funded ones. This is exactly backwards from the way it should be. It would be more logical to see well-funded organizations transfer their help to the communities that need it most, but their ties to the local community prevent them. Even re-allocating funds within a community is difficult. For example, if an epidemic breaks out in a local community, an educational charity cannot re-allocate its funds or resources to help out a health charity. The situation is akin to a fire department being unable to help out the police department during a crime wave.
The following chart shows how the $126 billion in charitable donations was allocated in 1993:
Allocation of charitable donations (1993) (6)
Type of Percent of
organization total collections
------------------------------------------
Church or religion 45.3%
Education 12.0
Human Service 10.0
Health 8.6
Unclassified 8.5
Arts, culture and
humanities 7.6
Public/societal benefit 4.3
Environmental/wildlife 2.5
International 1.5
Most donations go to churches, but churches are an excellent example of the localized nature of charities. And churches with even national charity campaigns hardly spend a substantial amount of their money on helping the poor. Until recently, the Seventh-day Adventist church had one of the most enviable records of charity collections of any U.S. religious denomination. Yet its department devoted to helping out the poor and needy -- the Dorcas Society -- received only a tiny fraction of the church's donations. Instead, the vast majority went to church administration, religious and educational facilities, and a remarkable world-wide missionary effort to convert other nationalities to their faith. (7)
In a thorough review of charities in the United States, Wolpert summed up the problems of replacing welfare with charity this way:
* There is a serious mismatch between the location of charitable resources and needs.
* There is a mismatch between the kind of programs that attract charitable donations and the kind that benefit needy people.
* Charities are severely limited in their freedom to shift their efforts to the places and programs that are in the most trouble.
* The voluntary hand of charity as a substitute for government entitlements might involve objectionable religious, political, and social intrusion into the lives of many people. (8)
The Liberal Response
In 1992, Hurricane Andrew devastated Southern Florida, leaving 137,000 homes destroyed or damaged and 250,000 people homeless. Imagine, for a moment, that there was no federal emergency response, and that charities and private organizations were responsible for the cleanup and recovery. Of course, most of the charities in Southern Florida were destroyed along with everything else, so local charities would be of little help. By definition, the charity response would have to come from other communities -- but, as we have seen, most charities are small and tied to their local communities, and not designed to export their help. Clearly, a disaster the size of Hurricane Andrew calls for a national response -- but how is a neighborhood charity in Seattle, Washington going to ship its few volunteers and resources all the way to Florida?
If thousands of independent, local charities from all across the nation tried to help out the victims of Hurricane Andrew, the resulting confusion, duplication of effort and the lack of a clear, overall strategy would waste much of their time and effort. In this respect, the federal government has a huge advantage over thousands of isolated, disparate charities; it can draw on deep strategic reserves and allocate them according to an organized plan. Furthermore, the operations required to fight a national disaster are far different from the ones required to fight local neighborhood problems. Small charities are not even suited for these different mission requirements.
Many conservatives -- Olasky among them -- concede that the federal government is more efficient at handling national disasters like the Great Depression. However, they argue that in a normally functioning economy, charities are sufficient to handle the everyday poverty they find.
But this is not true either. Our economy is dynamic, and hard times may hit one region one year, another region the next. Many will recall the film Roger and Me, which detailed the horrific unemployment and economic devastation that visited Flint, Michigan when General Motors closed down its auto plants and moved them to Mexico. This single business decision resulted in years of hardship -- but the city is recovering today. California is another example; it did not recover with the rest of the nation after the 1991 recession, and its poverty rate remained high. Yet, within a few years, the state returned to a booming economy.
Economic twists and turns like this are almost impossible to predict. When they do hit a region, the very charity organizations that would help it -- the local ones -- are the least able to help, since they suffer too. So a national charity organization would have to set up offices in these temporarily stricken regions, only to uproot them when good times returned and move them to the next stricken region. That is expensive, and a waste of resources. Compare that to the current federal system, which already has offices everywhere (doing more than just welfare); this makes it much simpler to divert the required funds to the appropriate regions. And as we have seen, charitable donors tend to donate only to their own communities; we should expect to find little support for national charities that spend most of the donor's money elsewhere. Indeed, the current federal system is unpopular for exactly that reason.
Furthermore, charity is a drop in the bucket compared to all the social spending conducted by the government. The total assets (as opposed to merely the income from endowments) of America's 34,000 foundations add up to only about 10 percent of current government expenditures for social welfare and related domestic programs. (9) As Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan says, "There are... not enough social workers, not enough nuns, not enough Salvation Army workers" to care for the millions of people who would be dropped from the welfare rolls.
To replace welfare with charity, our society would have to boost its charitable giving tenfold. Which raises an interesting point: conservatives bitterly assail the federal government for making them pay taxes to help the poor. Why, then, would they turn around and happily surrender an equal amount to charity? The answer, of course, is that they would not. Once conservatives are freed from their obligation to help the needy, charitable donations will continue to languish as they always have.
Here conservatives might return to Olasky's argument: that they would feel more inclined to give to charities that espoused traditional family values and conservative morals. But, as we have seen, Olasky's idea of charity is to dispense advice, not funds. There is no question that a charity that simply tells the needy, "Get a job," is less expensive to run. But it should be pointed out that Olasky's entire argument is really a disingenuous change of subject. The original argument was that charity could replace welfare. In Olasky's world of privatized philanthropy, this is not the case; welfare would be eliminated but charity donations would not rise to replace it. This is a different argument, one about the benefits of eliminating most financial aid to the poor, not replacing it.
Finally, there is a matter of accountability. Private charities are notorious for spending 90 percent of their revenues on administrative costs. Many will certainly remember the fund-raising efforts of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, who raised millions ostensibly to spread the word of God -- but actually spent it on themselves. In such cases, a donor's only recourse is to stop giving once the scandal breaks. These scandals are often belated, because the media does not actively search out scandals in the private sector; they need to be tipped off to them. The scandal may put this fraudulent charity out of business, but there always seems to be another to take its place.
By contrast, the federal government is held much more strictly accountable for its actions. The media conducts an intense and proactive search for scandals in government, and their discovery becomes front page news. This results in enormous political pressure to correct deficiencies. Just one example is FEMA -- the Federal Emergency Management Agency. This is the agency commissioned with helping Americans recover from natural disasters. Under President Reagan, the nature of these disasters was assumed to be nuclear, and the agency poured millions into the creation of nuclear-proof command and control structures that would survive and "win" a nuclear war. Needless to say, it was completely unprepared to deal with the many natural disasters that were actually occurring. It took FEMA three days just to show up after Hurricane Andrew, and they snarled its victims with an unforgivable amount of red tape. Media reports sparked such public outrage that Senate hearings were held. Senator Fritz Hollings called FEMA "the sorriest bunch of bureaucratic jackasses I've ever known." (10) Under the intense glare of the national media, reforms occurred. James Lee Witt took over the ailing organization and completely turned it around. Today, it is one of the best functioning agencies in government, and is winning praise even from its former critics.*
In sum, the claim that charity can replace federal social spending -- and do it better -- is a hopelessly unfounded one.
*n.b. this was written in 1996, several years before Bush Jr. turned FEMA into a crony-infested adjunct of the Department of Homeland Security
To underscore this point, New Orleans was the subject of outside charitable assistance in the weeks and months following the Katrina disaster and private organisations and initiatives continue to operate to do what they can with the resources they've got at their command. The sad fact is that these efforts are nowhere near able to cope with the task of rebuilding a city after a major flood and New Orleans would be in far worse shape than it is even now were it not for the amount of Federal aid it has already received.
In a word, bullshit. And actually quite comical coming from somebody who keeps presenting his personal anecdotes and incredulity as "evidence" of anything.
See above.
A predictable evasion.
To borrow a phrase from the Bible: "By their works Ye shall Know them" (Luke 13:26).
I guess that musn't apply to me; only Democrats.
I'm sorry, is that you attempting to be clever?
No, you simply chose to dismiss a historical article which backed the observation as "opinion" and continue your patented handwaving. Seems you're falling back to your usual bad habits.
No, I simply question (1) how the article speaks to Bill Kristol's personal beliefs, abstracted from a sentence or two; (2) how somebody could possibly be making an argument from theological Calvinism if not a Calvinist. Are conservatives all "secret Calvinists" or something? Unless they are Dutch Reformed, they probably aren't hearing very much about the "elect" and the "unworthy." How, then, can they be secret Calvinists, as you claim?
How exactly does it follow logically that a Calvinist worldview can
only be espoused or held by a religious Calvinist? You're drifting into No True Scottsman territory.
To reinforce the earlier point, which you try to just dismiss out of hand, Milan Zafirovski, associate professor of sociology at the University of North Texas in Denton, writes in his academic paper
"Radical Puritanism ‘Rediscovered’: Elements and Legacies of Extremism and Anti-Egalitarianism":
Puritanism and Anti-Egalitarianism
This section elaborates on and evidences Puritanism’s political and other anti-egalitarianism considered to be, as even Popper (1973) and many contemporary economists (Acemoglu 2005; Putterman, Roemer and Silvestre 1998; Pryor 2002) suggest, a particular dimension or at least correlate and complement of authoritarianism and so extremism or radicalism in politics and all society. It explores Puritanism’ elements and legacies of political and economic inequality as well as its links of inequalities in the economy with repression in the polity.
Puritanism and Political Inequalities
As intimated, Puritanism intrinsically constitutes or creates and leaves as its legacy a system of political and other inequalities or anti-egalitarianism, sanctified as a “part of providential design” (Bendix 1984) and via Weber’s theodicy cum sociodicy (Bourdieu 1998), in politics and society. Original Puritanism was anti-egalitarian in political and economic terms, and also bequeathed as a sort of “God’s providence” an enduring and strong legacy of anti-egalitarianism in politics as well as economy within historically Puritan societies, particularly America and to a lesser extent Great Britain. Specifically, proto-Puritanism initially was and neo-Puritanism, in the derived and generalized form of modern Protestant sectarianism, remained, with some prudent adaptations, essentially aristocratic, oligarchic or hierarchical and to that extent politically anti-egalitarian and so (as implied in Popper [8] 1973; also Acemoglu 2005; Putterman et al. 1998; Pryor 2002) authoritarian and repressive, thus extreme or radical in this sense.
As an early though transient historical instance, in the wake of its Revolution (the 1640s-60s) victorious Puritanism in England (re)established and ruled as narrow repressive aristocracy and medieval-style political hierarchy overall opposing any democratic innovations in politics (Goldstone 1991; Gorski 2000), specifically exclusive theocratic oligarchy. It did so in the form of what Comte and Weber call the “reign” or aristocratic domination of the “sinful world” by Puritan religious virtuosi with self-assigned Divine Rights to rule, embodied by Cromwell and his “holy wars” (Gorski 2000) and the “Parliament of Saints”, yet couched in the anti-monarchical facade and rhetoric of “republic” in opposition to the Monarchy and the Anglican Church.
In a sense, English-American Puritanism was the “providential design” and institutional system of political (and economic) inequality, exclusion and oppression from its very genesis, derivation or extension from, as Weber and other sociologists (e.g. Eisenstadt 1965) note, already staunchly anti-egalitarian, exclusive and oppressive, medieval-style, European Calvinism to Old and New England in the late 16th and early 17th century. Thus, according to a historical study, what is connoted the “significant career of Puritanism as an ideology of exclusion” (Ashton 1965:587) commenced with its Calvinist (re)birth and expansion in England during the 1590s (e.g. after the English defeat of Spain).
Hence, in terms of exclusion or anti-egalitarianism, European Calvinism, basically rooted in anti-egalitarian medievalism and even seeking to recreate a “purer medieval past” (Eisenstadt 1965), historically over-determined (Sprunger 1982) or, as Calvin himself might say, predestined English and in extension American Puritanism, just as the latter did historically Puritan societies, primarily America, secondarily Great Britain. In short, English and then American Puritanism was “created unequal” (Galbraith 1998) or anti-egalitarian by European Calvinism as its historical Creator, rather than, as usually and naively assumed (Coffey 1998), “equal” in the sense of egalitarian and liberal-democratic. Then, Geneva’s Calvinists and European medieval theocratic aristocrats or oligarchs (and rationalizing scholastics) would be justified in finding, in respect of anti-egalitarianism and authoritarianism, “nothing new under the sun” of English and then American Puritanism, contrary to its venerable claims to novelty and exceptionality from anti-egalitarian medievalism or the old world, if not Calvinism (as “foreign”).
As intimated on various occasions, another, more enduring and probably more pertinent historical exemplar is provided, to recall, by New England’s proto-Puritan mixed aristocracie of Winthrop et al. At this juncture, this curious Puritan political creation originated or operated as a medieval-style aristocracy of hierarchy and exclusion (Bremer 1995; Gould 1996), notably a narrow oligarchy of sectarian persecution and theocratic oppression (Munch 2001; Stivers 1994), exemplified and symbolized by “Salem with witches” (Putnam 2000:355), though, predictably, following its English original and/or displaying what Weber calls American Puritanism’s “pure hypocrisy”, couched in and rationalized by the official formula or, in his words, formal rationality and democracy--in a charitable interpretation given Winthrop et al.'s hostility or suspicion toward “democratical government”--of “Republic.” In turn, this official formula of New England’s “Republic” seemingly misled sympathetic Tocqueville into depicting American Puritanism as being “not merely a religious doctrine”, but also corresponding with the “most absolute democratic and republican theories” or liberalism, including egalitarianism, and republicanism, as still do his US admirers (e.g. Lipset and Marks 2000), and perhaps even more skeptical Weber to suggest its “anti-authoritarian tendency”, though not Comte, Pareto and other critical European sociological observers of Puritan America. These observers basically regarded New England’s “Republic” as a medieval or pre-medieval exclusive and repressive aristocracy, notably theocratic oligarchy or oligarchic theocracy, in changed Puritan clothes, a sort of “old wine in the new bottle” (though not the best of metaphors given US Puritanism’s condemnation and prohibition of and perpetual obsession with alcohol in the style of, if not emulating and inspired by, Islam). And, even were it really a “republic” in the traditional sense, it was far from being a liberal-secular (and any) democracy as a system of political freedom and equality, as historical and sociological studies suggest (Bremer 1995; Munch 2001; Stivers 1994), which thus contradicts the “naïve assumptions of Puritanism and liberty” (Coffey 1998).
Hence, in virtue and to the degree of Winthrop’s mixed aristocracie, contrary to its claim to egalitarian and democratic exceptionalism (Lipset and Marks 2000), original American Puritanism was basically almost as politically anti-egalitarian and so authoritarian as its British parent and in extension European Calvinism as their common basis, as well as medieval (Catholic-based) feudalism and despotism. The above holds true, with some variations, of derived American Puritanism in the form or sense of Protestant sectarianism (Lipset 1996) generalized and even become predominant, via various neo-Puritan revivals since the Great Awakenings, to most of America, notably the “old” (Episcopal) South transformed into a sectarian “Bible Belt”. Thus, some sociologists implicitly identify another instance of Puritanism’s practice or legacy of exclusion and anti-egalitarianism in American politics by detecting and emphasizing narrow, exclusionary political rule (a la “good old boys”) and selection processes (Amenta, Bonastia and Neal 2001) and a myriad of other deformations of democracy (Cochran 2001) in the “new”, Puritan-remade South (Boles 1999; Mencken 1982).
Such persisting Southern political eccentricities or anomalies, even when placed within Puritan America itself (as implied in Cochran 2001), demonstrate and confirm that this region continues to exhibit the salient degree of oligarchic, exclusionary and anti-egalitarian, just as theocratic, so authoritarian continuity with proto-Puritan New England’s mixt aristocracie andtheocracy (“Biblical Commonwealth”). As intimated, these continuities historically originated in and initiated with the Puritan-incited Great Awakenings aiming and eventually succeeding to expand Puritanism and thus its anti-egalitarianism and authoritarianism from its New England point of origin to all America as the final destination. To that extent, at least the still politically exclusionary (plus religiously sectarian), oligarchic and under-democratic South continues to epitomize and reflect Puritanism’s institutions, practices or legacies of political (and other) anti-egalitarianism, exclusion and authoritarianism in contemporary America. In terms of exclusion and anti-egalitarianism, like authoritarianism, notably theocracy, the post-bellum neo-Puritan South has become what colonial proto-Puritan New England was—i.e. a system of exclusionary politics as well as sectarian religion in the model or image of “Salem with witches” (for example, in the updated form of “Monkey Trials” and other actual or metaphorical witch-trials of enemies). Moreover, during the late 20th and early 21st century, in these terms the South basically (and seemingly proudly) remained (a functional equivalent or historical successor of) what New England was from the 17th to 19th century. This indicates that some, anti-egalitarian, as well as authoritarian, notably theocratic, institutions or things almost never change—or, as in the French proverb, “the more they change, the more they stay the same”—in the long and seemingly never-ending historical and geographical march of Puritanism, from Reformation France (and Geneva) and Calvin to England and Cromwell, to New England and Winthrop et al. to the South and Bible-Belt sectarians, to modern American religious-political conservatism as a whole (viz. McCarthyism and Reaganism).
Puritanism and Economic Inequalities
Relatedly, as intimated, Puritanism also constitutes, creates and leaves as its legacy the system of economic inequalities or anti-egalitarianism in economy, just as politics, to form an integral and usually consistent complex and “method in the madness” of pervasive inequality and exclusion in society. Perhaps even more than or decreasingly so (at least in its formal declarations or rhetoric) in politics due to countervailing democratic-egalitarian political forces (e.g. Jefferson’s “created equal”, modern civil-rights movements, global human rights conventions), Puritanism’s original attribute as well as historical creation and contemporary legacy has been anti-egalitarianism in economy or sharp and widening wealth and income inequalities, especially in America and to a comparable, but lesser extent, Great Britain.
Simply, if not so much or openly in political terms, Puritanism has always been and continues to be, via its generalizations in religious conservatism and sectarianism as in contemporary America, economically anti-egalitarian or exclusionary both through its institutions and practices and in its religious-political ideas or preaching (“sword and word”). It typically creates and perpetuates material inequalities and exclusions as well as mounts an overt, uncompromising and unapologetic defense of them sanctified, like political inequality and exclusion, as part of Providential “intelligent” design, plus rationalized, as done by US neo-conservatism, in terms of “merit”, thus through a mix of Weber’s medieval-style theodicy a la Divine Plan and Rights with sociodicy (Bourdieu 1998) or social neo-Darwinism. Alternatively, Puritanism tends to eliminate or reduce economic egalitarianism and inclusion as well as engage in an equally open, categorical and stringent condemnation of material equality as contrary to “God’s Providence” and Divine Rights of Puritan masters (theodicy), just as, as does US neo-conservatism, “undeserved”, “inefficient” and even “destructive” to the economy (sociodicy).
Historically, following Calvinism’s theological rationalization of economic inequality, original Puritanism’s economic anti-egalitarianism was manifest in creating and/or justifying sharp wealth inequalities and so class divisions as Divinely Ordained destiny analogous to and, as Weber suggests, rooted in the Calvinist dogma pre-destination, as well as anti-charity (or anti-welfare) ideas, institutions and practices, in those societies it temporarily or enduringly governed like Old and New England, respectively. This is what Weber suggests observing that Puritanism since its gestation in Calvin’s writings and activities tended to institute and advocate the “unjust, but equally divinely ordained, distribution of wealth” or class divisions, and was to that extent, contrary to its claims to novelty, basically no different from also anti-egalitarian Lutheranism and medieval Catholicism. In essence, Calvinist Puritanism fully embraced the medieval or older theological dogma of official Catholicism that, as Weber puts it, the “unequal distribution of the goods of this world was a special dispensation of Divine Providence”--i.e. a sort of theodicy of material inequality and class divisions (i.e. justification, and perhaps eventually Machiavellian-like exploitation or invocation, of God by economic anti-egalitarianism). Thus, a historical study concludes that Puritanism has always been a “class ideology” (Folsom 1948:424) of sharp wealth divisions, from Calvinism to its English and American variants in Old and New England.
In turn, Puritanism’s legacy of economic anti-egalitarianism or class divisions, including anti-welfare institutions, ideas and practices, has been particularly manifest, pervasive and enduring in America and to a lesser extent Great Britain, probably reflecting its long and total mastery (New England) and subsequent dominance (the South) in the first case, and its brief rule (Cromwell) and eventually “abortive” Revolution in the second. As mentioned, judging by the comparative indexes of economic egalitarianism (Putterman et al. 1998) or universalism (Pampel 1998), this Puritan anti-egalitarian legacy remains strong, pervasive and enduring in contemporary society. Thus, historically Puritan societies, primarily America, secondarily Great Britain, are estimated to have the lowest scores of official economic egalitarianism or universalism (“collectivism”) in the sense of universal welfare or public material benefits, conjoined with its political form expressed in consensus democracy and absence of violent political conflict, in modern Western democracies (Pampel 1998).
And probably in consequence to this government anti-egalitarianism rooted in Puritanism, historically Puritan societies like America and to a lesser or diminishing extent Great Britain have as a rule the greatest degrees of actual economic inequality among Protestant and other Western countries. Thus, these Puritan societies’ lowest (and negative) scores on public egalitarianism or universalism are typically correlated with their highest levels of income and wealth inequalities (e.g. Gini indexes, the wealth share of the richest 1 percent) among these countries. As expected given its Puritan destiny or over-determination, this especially holds true of America that epitomizes more than any other Western Protestant and other society this link. It does so by continuing to be, by the 21st century--as has been mostly in the past (since the robber-barons era or the 1920s)--a kind of Western leader both in public anti-egalitarianism and actual wealth (Wolff 2002; also Keister and Moller 2000) and income inequalities (2000 Luxembourg Income Study), as indicated by virtually all statistical data and measures (e.g. the share of the top 1 percent and Gini indexes).
Particularly and predictably, some economists and sociologists identify and emphasize anti-welfare neo-conservative Puritan-rooted or -style government economic policies in America as well as Great Britain (Hudson and Coukos 2005; Quadagno 1999; Smeeding 2006; also Chaves 1999). In this view, the “harsh moral tenor” of English and American welfare institutions and policies, spanning from the late 19th to the early 21st century, is “rooted” in Calvinist Puritanism, the legacy of which primarily explains “why English and American hostility to public aid is not shared by other Protestant countries”, with the link being particularly “explicit” between Reaganism/Thatcherism and Methodism (Hudson and Coukos 2005:5) as what Mill and Weber consider a late-Puritan revival and (emotional) intensification. A likely specific indicator or proxy of this Puritan-rooted antagonism to the welfare state in America is also non-egalitarian (non-progressive) as well as non-redistributive taxation, as exemplified by the US lowest marginal taxes and the highest income threshold for the highest marginal tax (Smeeding 2006) among other Protestant societies. In short, the above suggests that Puritanism is at the root of what sociologists identify as the “new American exceptionalism” (Quadagno 1999) and even “backwardness” (Amenta et al. 2001) in terms of a welfare state within the Western world.
As indicated, a salient aspect of this Puritan legacy of economic anti-egalitarianism in the economy includes traditionally high, even recently (as during the 1980-2000s) further increasing economic inequalities in America by comparison with other less or non Puritan Protestant as well as Catholic societies. As known, primarily in consequence of neo-conservative anti-egalitarian (including anti-welfare and taxation) Puritan-rooted economic institutions, policies and ideas, America has by far the greatest income inequality by virtually all relevant criteria, including the highest and ever-growing comparative Gini index (Deininger and Squire 1996; Gottschalk and Smeeding 1997). Among such indicators, since the 1980s America features the greatest share of the top 20, 10 and 1 percent of the population in national income and wealth alike (Wolff 2002), highest executive (CEOs) total compensations both in absolute terms and as a ratio to worker pay (Abowd and Kaplan 1999), as well as among the lowest worker wages (e.g. hourly compensation for manufacturing workers), the lowest paid working poor (Smeeding 2006), and the lowest minimum wages within Western societies.
Another correlated dimension of Puritanism’s legacy of economic anti-egalitarianism, specifically its, as Weber, Tawney and others stress, original condemnation and attack of the poor through anti-charity and anti-welfare (Hudson and Coukos 2005) preaching, institutions and practices, in America is widespread, persistent poverty, just as a non-existent or minimal welfare state, by comparison with other Western societies. As well-known, among Western societies, America has traditionally had and continues to have by the 21st century the highest poverty (including child poverty) rates (invariably double-digit figure, around 12-20% depending on the measure used) as well as the lowest social benefit and other welfare expenditures as a key factor in the persistence of the American poor (Korpi and Palme 1998; Smeeding 2006).
Alternatively, all non or less historically Puritan, Protestant as well as Catholic societies, ranging from Great Britain and Canada to Scandinavia and France, have substantially lower (regularly, single-digit) rates of poverty either in general or in its particular dimensions (e.g. children in poor families). For example, data show that, as the Western country with the highest level of child poverty (alongside Italy), the United States contributes the least assistance to children as a percentage of GNP (Smeeding 2006), and overall has the lowest public expenditure or so among industrial countries (Tanzi and Schuknecht 1997), except for the military and other mechanisms of social control and repression (the police). Consider this remarkable American-Mexican convergence: For example, (as a 2000 UNICEF report finds) “Mexico and the United States now top the list of OECD countries where children live in “relative” poverty: More than one in four children in Mexico (26.2%) and more than one in five in the United States (22.4%) are poor” (cf. also Smeeding 2006).
Puritanism, Economic Inequalities and Political Repression
The preceding implies that both in original Calvinist Puritanism and its subsequent derivatives in Great Britain and America economic inequalities are intertwined and mutually reinforcing with political anti-egalitarianism and repression, thus epitomizing and confirming a general link of inequality, exclusion and oppression in economy with those in politics and society overall. As emphasized by some contemporary economists, Puritan-rooted conservative and any other “economic institutions that lead to a very unequal distribution of income and wealth are only consistent with a similarly unequal distribution of political power, i.e., with dictatorships and other repressive regimes” (Acemoglu 2005:1041). In this view, the slave-plantation economy in the ante-bellum, ultimately neo-Puritan US South, just as by implication New England’s proto-Puritan “trade in slaves and rum” (Foerster 1962:4), was impossible “together with democratic political institutions” (Acemoglu 2005:1041), and conversely possible to establish and endure only by a repressive state-church in a way of what Weber identifies as Puritanism’s alliance with or control of political power in early Great Britain and America.
Specifically, some economists implicitly detect and predict a link between conservative-produced or Puritan-rooted economic and political inequality and repression in America by identifying or predicting the movement of the US economy and polity toward an authoritarian, specifically oligarchic, economic and political system in which repression of the population persists and even tends to increase (Pryor 2002). In this view, “ever greater” wealth and income inequalities in America will eventually lead to “greater social unrest and crime” and consequently “harsher” repression of “un-American” economic-political groups--viz. workers and unions reduced to non-entities or nuisances resulting in an economy emptied of industrial democracy and so operating as a functional equivalent of a one-party political system--by a conservative policing state or repressive government through Puritan-inspired Draconian (“get tough”) institutions (Pryor 2002:359-64). In addition, economists and other analysts find that increasing economic inequalities in America under neo-Puritan conservatism result in lower rather than (as often supposed) higher, social mobility (Bjorkland and Janti 1997; Breen and Jonsson [9] 2005; Solon 2002) than other Protestant, especially Scandinavian, societies, thus effectively subverting, rather than promoting, the American Dream of “moving ahead” (Becker and Murphy 2000), just as linked with corruption [10] (You and Khagram 2005) in economy and politics.
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