John Strachey wrote about Keynesian economics in a book entitled Contemporary Capitalism¹ which was published in 1956. Strachey was a British Labour party politician, Fabian Society member, and author of The Theory and Practice of Socialism.²

In the 20th century, John Maynard Keynes became one of the world’s most influential economists and “one of the fathers” of modern macroeconomic theory. ³ In 1936, in the midst of the Great Depression, Keynes published The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. Keynesian economic theory is rooted in the belief that government should intervene in the affairs of the market in an apparent attempt to mitigate the effects of economic recessions, depressions, and booms.

Although some form of Keynesian economics has flourished in governments worldwide - especially during the 20th century in the U.K. and the United States - many are not aware that Keynes’ theories have been used as pretense to gain control over the means of production of a society. John Strachey wrote in Contemporary Capitalism:

Was not a horrid possibility visible behind and beyond [Keynes'] proposals, each of which looked so innocuous when taken separately? If once it were admitted that capitalism could be regulated and controlled in this way, might not the wage-earning majority of the population come sooner or later to the conclusion that the thing to do was neither to put up with things as they were nor to go through the fiery furnace of social revolution, in order to establish a wholly new system, but to harness - to bit and to bridle - capitalism in its own interest? Was it not apparent that Keynesism had only to be pushed a little further and a state of things might emerge in which the nominal owners of the means of production, although left in full possession of the legal title to their property, would in reality be working not for themselves, but for whatever hands had grasped the central levers of social control?

For Keynes had rashly shown that those levers had only to be pulled and pushed this way and that, in order to manipulate the system at will. And, in a democracy, would not those hands in the end almost certainly be those of the representatives of the wage-earning majority of the population? Might not the end of the story be that the once proud possessors of the means of the production would find themselves in effect but agents and managers on behalf of the community? If this was saving capitalism, its true defenders felt, it was saving it in a most Pickwickian sense.⁴

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Last week, Mark Thornton wrote that the U.S. is headed towards losing its monetary and economic freedom for the first time since the founding of the nation unless serious reforms are implemented:

As we enter the era of decline for the dollar all sorts of reforms will be used to address this decline and the economic instability it causes. However, reforms designed on Wall Street or in Washington will not work and will amount to nothing more than rear guard action by the moneyed interests that control the government.

The only true path to reform is monetary freedom. We have gone from a situation where money was entirely free from government intervention to one that is completely dominated by government. Instead of privately minted coins made from precious metals we now have a system of government-printed paper fiat currency. We have gone from a system of private banking that provided bank notes and checks for demand deposits to one where banks are completely regulated by the central bank and a host of other regulatory bodies. The idea that our current financial mess resulted from a lack of regulation is truly laughable. Of course this process has taken centuries to complete. By giving up our monetary freedom—particularly over the last one hundred years—we have given government the ability to grow in size and scope and to achieve unthinkable levels of power. Every step forward towards government control of money has resulted in social chaos and economic destruction. The real economy only grows in the interludes when monetary mischief is at a minimum.

We are now at a point in time when the US government is bankrupt. It cannot pay its bills, it cannot pay off its debt, and it has future unfunded liabilities with a current value in excess of $60 trillion dollars—and that was before all the current bailout packages!¹

His comments about increasing government control over U.S. monetary policy reminded me of this statement by Ezra Taft Benson about economic freedom:

All of us are anxious to see our country progress, but we want to know by what means. The whole American concept of progress, which has outstripped every other nation on earth, is based on certain fundamental principles which [some] men now ask us to abandon. Certainly we are entitled to challenge such proposals when they are asking us to give up what has worked so well and substitute something which they merely hope will work.

What are these fundamental principles which have allowed the United States to progress so rapidly and yet remain free?

First, a written Constitution clearly defining the limits of government so that government will not become more powerful than the people.

Second, an economic system which is characterized by:
      Free enterprise the right to venture, the right to choose.
      Private property—the right to own, develop and enjoy.
      A market economy—the right to exchange and to profit.

Third, building an open society where each individual enjoys the greatest opportunity to improve himself, to travel, to become educated, to invent, to compete, to build, to speak, to worship, and to pursue happiness in whatever way the individual finds most satisfying and worthwhile.

Fourth, assigning government the role of referee rather than competitor—giving it enough power to provide peace, order and security but not enough power to rob the people of their liberty or take their property “without due process of law.”²

Many U.S. citizens may not be aware that creating a “new reserve currency” to replace the dollar and an “international central bank” to further control the international economy will most likely cause greater deterioration of U.S. monetary and economic freedom (see Ron Paul on the G-20 Summit).

What’s your take on these troubling events?

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Ron Paul discusses the G-20 Summit and the global push for a “new reserve currency” to replace the dollar standard that has been in place since 1971 and an international central bank.

It is truly amazing that the dollar standard has lasted as long as it has since gold and silver coin as tender payment was officially banned when the Nixon administration abolished the Bretton Woods system. And the idea of creating an international central bank will likely cause the same problems that the U.S. experienced when the Federal Reserve was created. On this last point, see for example Fiat Empire videos or The Corrupt Origins of Central Banking at Mises.org.

George Q. Cannon taught that prophecy is fulfilled by natural means. A person who is enlightened by the spirit of God will see the hand of God in the fulfillment of events, while a person not enlightened will see nothing godlike in the same occurrences. In 1879, Elder Cannon said:

Now I would not, for the world, say one word to lessen in the minds of my brethren and sisters the importance of these events; I would not say one word to weaken your proper expectations; but my experience has taught me that the Lord works in the midst of this people by natural means, and that the greatest events that have been spoken of by the holy prophets will come along so naturally as the consequence of certain causes, that unless our eyes are enlightened by the Spirit of God, and the spirit of revelation rests us, we will fail to see that these are the events predicted by the holy prophets. 

You take two persons, one who has the Spirit of God, whose mind is enlightened by that Spirit - the spirit of revelations, the same spirit that rested upon the prophets who wrote the revelations and prophecies we have - you take a man of that kind, and then take another who has none of that spirit, and put the two together, and the one man’s eyes will be open to see the hand of God in all these events; he will notice his movements and his providence in everything connected with his work and they will be testimonies to him to strengthen his faith and to furnish his mind with continual reasons for giving thanks to and worshipping God; while the man, who has not the Spirit of God, will see nothing Godlike in the occurrences: nothing which he will view as supernatural (as many suppose everything which exhibits God’s power to be), or nothing which he will accept as a fulfillment of prophecies; his eyes will be closed, his heart will be hardened, and to all the evidences of the divinity of these things he will be impenetrable.¹

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David Larsen’s presentation “Two High Priesthoods? Evidence for Changes in the Priesthood from First to Second Temple Judaism” was given at the 2008 SANE Conference. This is a fascinating discussion about priesthood in ancient Israel that may change your view of this topic if you have not yet delved into these things.

For additional information see Videos of SANE Symposium Lectures on “Temples and Ritual in Antiquity” at Temple Study.

Recreating Solomon’s temple is a commercial teaser video produced for NOVA called “The Bible’s Buried Secrets” that airs Tuesday, November 18th. Besides the fact that it describes Solomon’s temple as incorporating “pagan imagery”, it appears worth viewing.

After preparing this post, I just noticed that Bryce also posted the same video on Temple Study a couple days ago - see Video Tour of Solomon’s Temple, Reconstructed for Nova for additional information. I think it would be an interesting post for discussion from an LDS point of view if someone were to review the producer’s statement that Solomon’s temple incorporated “pagan imagery”, especially in light of dispenstationalism.

While in prison, Henri de Saint-Simon - a French utopian socialist¹ - was visited in a dream by Charlemagne.² I thought it of interest that the man who many believe to be one of the modern founders of socialist thought and “social science”³ claimed to have been visited by one of his ancestors in a dream. Saint-Simon wrote:

During the cruelest period of the Revolution, and during a night of my imprisonment at Luxembourg, Charlemagne appeared to me and said: “Since the world began no family has enjoyed the honor to produce both a hero and philosopher of first rank. This honor was reserved for my house. My son, your successes as a philosopher will equal mine as a soldier and a statesman.”⁴

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A friend pointed me to a Prop 8 poll over at SFGate - see Same-sex Marriage Backers Hit Capitol, Churches.¹ The poll asks the question, “Do anti-Prop. 8 protests unfairly target the Mormon Church?” As of a few minutes ago, almost 14,000 votes had been cast with 82% answering yes.

The accompanying article discusses the disappointment of opponents of Prop 8 and their plan to challenge the outcome in court.

An intriguing issue to follow will be to see how the courts rule and how they respond to the will of the people of California.

Check out the poll and leave your vote. And if you think Mormons have been unfairly targeted, tell us why. If not, how so?

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Claiming Christ: A Mormon-Evangelical Debate¹ is a book written by Robert L. Millet² and Gerald R. McDermott. ³ The book follows up where Stephen E. Robinson and Craig L. Blomberg left off in How Wide the Divide?: A Mormon and an Evangelical in Conversation.

Although I have not yet read Claiming Christ, Aquinas at Summa Theologica appears to have written a masterful review at An LDS Perspective on Claiming Christ: A Mormon-Evangelical Debate. Here is an excerpt:

Morehead’s Musings: This book presents an academic discussion of theological issues. But while such theological frameworks may appeal to Evangelicals who approach their faith and interactions with those of other faiths with this priority and framework in mind, it runs the risk of missing the mark in communicating meaningfully with Latter-day Saints. This is not to dismiss the importance of worldview and doctrine which are surely related to ethics and praxis, but what might be the (even assumed) frameworks that Latter-day Saints begin with, and how might Evangelicals begin from these starting points and then bridge the way to their concerns over theological discussion?

Aquinas: This is a great question. We really need spend more time learning each others metaphors. I think McDermott “breaks” Latter-day Saint metaphors by projecting and imposing criteria and meaning from Evangelical metaphors. I’d like to offer three examples of this. First, McDermott makes the argument that the LDS Jesus doesn’t transcend the cosmos (Claming Christ, 75). The Latter-day Saint metaphor is that God creates by bringing order out of Chaos. Cosmos is order. Chaos is disorder, unformed the unorganized. God speaks to Chaos and it obeys. So, what McDermott really means is the LDS God doesn’t transcend Chaos because Chaos exists when God creates. However, this breaks the metaphor because the metaphor only works when Cosmos and Chaos are opposites. The metaphor doesn’t care or it doesn’t make an issue of Chaos pre-existing as a challenge to the absoluteness of God. The point is not who exists before: God or Chaos. The point is that it is God who is creating by speaking to the waters. The point in this metaphor is that God is God because of his creative powers. The Holy Ghost broods over the waters and brings forth heaven and earth from the primordial waters in Genesis. That is one example.

Read the rest of this entry »

1. Millet, Robert L. and McDermott, Gerald R. Claiming Christ: A Mormon-Evangelical Debate. Ada, Michigan: Brazos Press, 2007. ↩
2. Robert L. Millet is Professor of Ancient Scripture and the Richard L. Evans Professor of Religious Understanding at Brigham Young University. ↩
3. Gerald R. McDermott is Professor of Religion at Roanoke College. ↩

Today, envelopes containing white powder have been found at LDS temples in Utah and California. Here is the news story from the Associated Press:

Letters containing a suspicious white powder were sent Thursday to Mormon temples in Los Angeles and Salt Lake City that were the sites of protests against the church’s support of California’s gay marriage ban.

The temple in the Westwood area of Los Angeles was evacuated before a hazardous materials crew determined the envelope’s contents were not toxic, said FBI spokesman Jason Pack.

The temple in downtown Salt Lake City, where the church is based, received a similar envelope containing a white powder that spilled onto a clerk’s hand.

The room was decontaminated and the envelope taken by the FBI for testing. The clerk showed no signs of illness, but the scare shut down a building at Temple Square for more than an hour, said Scott Freitag, a spokesman for the Salt Lake City Fire Department.

None of the writing on the envelope was threatening, and the church received no calls or messages related to the package, Freitag said.

Protests in recent days have targeted the Mormon church, which encouraged its members to fight the recently passed amendment banning gay marriage in California.

Authorities are looking into several theories on who sent the letters and why, Pack said.

Anthrax mailed as a white powder to Washington lawmakers and media outlets killed five people and sickened 17 just weeks after the attacks of September 11, 2001. Periodic hoaxes modeled on the anthrax mailings have popped up since then but usually prove harmless.¹

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