Redefining Country

March 22nd, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

Ask not what your country can do for you, nor what you can do for your country.

In early 1961, President Kennedy gave what would become one of the most memorable inaugural speeches ever. In his speech, he spoke the oft quoted words,

“Ask not what your country can do for you… but what you can do for your country.”

For the time of it’s original publishing (1962), Milton Friedman opens his book with some very controversial statements. In the introduction to Capitalism and Freedom he writes,

“It is a striking sign of the temper of our times that the controversy about this passage centered on its origin and not on its content. Neither half of the statement expresses a relation between the citizen and his government that is worthy of the ideals of free men in a free society. The paternalistic “what your country can do for you” implies that government is the patron, the citizen the ward, a view that is at odds with the free man’s belief in his own responsibility for his own destiny.”

Friedman had no intention of this being an easy or agreeable read. He is very openly opposing what had already become an extremely popular quote and president… and all of that within the first few hundred words of his book.

It is easy to get caught up in the words of Kennedy and feel an overwhelming sense of national pride. He was a very brilliant wordsmith and speaker. Yet I think in this introduction of Friedman’s he points to another idea that we have overlooked and over-simplified for far too long. That is the idea of country.

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A Christian AND a Capitalist? – Part 1

February 28th, 2011 § 1 comment § permalink

In 1962, the United States found itself looking over the ruins of World War II and looking ahead into the uncertain future. The Vietnam conflict was in its early phases; JFK was the promising young president; and the country, along with the whole world, was in a process of rebirth – socially, culturally, economically. Many philosophers and economists were being swayed especially by Keynesian economics that envisioned a more dramatic role of the government in the process of establishing freedom and equality for humanity.

Into that situation, Milton Friedman wrote Capitalism and Freedom. He wrote not simply another economic manifesto; rather, he saw the crucial junction at which the United States stood, and he believed the dominant mindset to be severely misleading. He wrote passionately in an attempt to secure true freedom for the people of his country by countering tendencies toward socialism or communism. He did this because, at he states in the introduction of that book, “Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power” (2). In other words, he firmly believed that an increase in governmental influence in the economy would do quite the opposite of what the Keynesian philosophy promised: it would threaten and, eventually, destroy freedom.

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With God on Our Side

February 7th, 2011 § 1 comment § permalink

In his song “With God on Our Side,” the young Bob Dylan begins,

Oh my name it is nothin’
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I’s taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And the land that I live in
Has God on its side.

He ends the song by boldly belting,

So now as I’m leavin’
I’m weary as Hell
The confusion I’m feelin’
Ain’t no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And fall to the floor
If God’s on our side
He’ll stop the next war.

This song highlights and criticizes a basic assumption about American existence: that the country is indelibly connected to God.

This blog that my brother Zach and I have started in some way demands that we face this very issue head-on. Throughout the last several centuries, many American Christians have unapologetically accepted that America is God’s country. What’s best for the country is best for the church, and vice versa. In the realm of economics, this has resulted in the baptism of American capitalism and the political structure that supports it.

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