I thought I would try and do a little writing kind of like what Exclamatio did awhile back. But, I would like to point out that the subject of my writing is more of a political and idealistic nature. These are my personal viewpoints and opinions on the subject and I would like to know what the people of Ragezone thinks. I do this to get different perspective's from different people around the world and compare them to my own, because it's always better to have many opinions than just one. So I hope you enjoy. Also, my essay is comparative of the values of Socialists and those of American ideals.
Most thoughtful people of to-day know that the political and economic
elements were just as strong as the religious one in the Protestant
Reformation in Germany, but that fact by no means would lessen the value
of the gains for intellectual and religious freedom that were won by
Martin Luther. Again, bad economic conditions had as much, or more, to
do with the outbreak of the French Revolution as did political and
philosophical unrest. Also taxation, trade and currency squabbles had
more to do with causing an American Revolution than did the idealistic
principles later enunciated in the Declaration of Independence. And
there was a broad economic basis for the differences in crops,
transportation and the organization of labor which expressed themselves
in a sectionalism which finally assumed the political aspect that
caused the Civil War. Yet the student who would forget the spiritual
element in our life, who would overlook the fact that man is a human
being and not a mere animal, will wander far astray into unreal bypaths
of crass materialism.
On the other hand, it would be hard to find an economic explanation for
the emigration of the Pilgrim Fathers to Plymouth, for the Quaker
agitation that supported John Woolman in his war upon slavery or for
most of the Christian missionary enterprises of the present day. Also it
would take a mental microscope to find the economic cause for the
extermination of the Moriscos in Spain by Philip III. or the expulsion
by Louis XIV. of the Huguenots from France. These two great crimes of
history had important economic consequences, but the cause behind them
was religious prejudice. Prof. James Franklin Jameson, of the Carnegie
Institution at Washington, rightly has stressed a study of the religious
denominations in the United States, of the Baptist, Methodist and other
"circuit riders" of the old Middle West, as one of the most fruitful
sources for a fuller knowledge and understanding of the history and
development of the American nation. Neither George Whitefield, Peter
Cartwright, nor Phillips Brooks of a later day, can be explained in
terms of economic interpretation.
This false and entirely materialistic conception of the development of
society and civilization is a mistake not only of the learned, but of
the pseudo-learned, of the men and women of more or less education whose
mental development has not progressed beyond an appreciation of Bernard
Shaw, Henrik Ibsen and H.G. Wells. Most of them are estimable people,
but the difficulty is that they are so idealistic that, so to speak,
they never have both feet upon the ground at the same time. This is
especially true of our esteemed contemporaries, the Socialists. These
cheerful servants of an idealistic mammon pride themselves upon
completely ignoring human nature. Many years ago, at a London meeting
of the "parlor Socialists" known as the Fabian Society which, by the
way, was presided over by Bernard Shaw, an old man began to harangue the
audience with the words, "Human nature being as it is--" At once his
voice was drowned out by a chorus of jeers, cat-calls and laughter. He
never made his address, for the audience was unwilling to hear anything
about "human nature." No Socialists in general are willing to do so, for
human nature, with the mental and spiritual sides of life, is just the
element with which their fallacious creed cannot deal, and they know it.
But the human element must enter into business and trade in the problems
of direction, management, even in the form of competition itself, and
cannot possibly be eradicated.
It is amusing to note that these same Socialists are busily occupied
with pointing out what they consider to be the failures of government,
as well as of "business and capitalism." Yet they do not realize that
they are thus condemning their own system, for if the governments of the
world have failed to do the work at present laid upon them, how can they
ever undertake the gigantic additional political and capitalistic
burden that Socialism would impose? Thomas Jefferson, the patron saint
of the party that President Bush now leads, always expressed a fear of
"too much government." It would appear that the present Administration
and the Democratic members of Congress have wandered far from their old
beliefs, and if recent legislation is the result of it, their
Socialistic experiments have not been much of a success.