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William Hunter Duncan's avatar

I feel much the same about Christianity, as I was first raised Lutheran and then after my mother became "born-again", a series of evangelical churches, one verging on a cult. I walked away at 14, alienated from the sheep-like adults and their petty tyrant children (who weren't also sheep.)

I agree too, much of what ails America is a spiritual sickness. Dropped in a meaningless void is not a recipe for mental health. Nothing about modernity is designed for health, physical or mental. Maybe your notion about Caesar has merit. I have wondered at times, will something wholly new be birthed in the America's. Not wholly new, necessarily, but something distinctly America? On that I wonder about the European magical traditions, folk magic here, and something birthed out of the land.

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Fabius Minarchus's avatar

For me, the Gospel of Mark reads like somebody's college lecture notes. Matthew and Luke have more coherent narratives.

The portion of the Bible I find to be most verifiably miraculous is the Law of Moses itself. The Law contains a recipe for something very akin to anarcho-capitalism. No jails. No standing armies. The only stated duties of the paid bureaucrats (the Levites) were ceremonial and enforcing some public health regulations.

The Law includes a welfare system which isn't dysgenic. Indeed, there is more Darwinism in the Old Testament than there is in our modern universities. The Biblical welfare system gives recipients plenty of incentive to get their acts back together. Ditto for property criminals.

The Law has some very interesting rules against rent-seeking, including some subtle points which Henry George and his followers miss bigly. The Jubilee law ensures a large supply of rednecks with a stake in protecting the nation. I vaguely recall a passage in Jeremiah indicating that the rich were holding onto their estates vs. ceding back rented land back to the people. You cannot stave off empires with professional soldiers. Judah fell. (And we are falling in part for a similar reason. Nixon changed farm policy in ways that did in most small family farms. We lack a sufficient number of rednecks to be a militia backed republic.)

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There are few historical examples of societies which successfully mixed civilization and something resembling anarcho-capitalism. David Friedman cites Viking Iceland. Murray Rothbard cited medieval Ireland prior to conquest by the English. Both of these examples were islands. Israel during the time of the Book of Judges was surrounded by other nations.

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