Comments on: Trey’s political treatise, part 2

By: Trey’s political treatise, part 3 | Mere Reflections

Trey’s political treatise, part 3 | Mere Reflections — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 05:08:53 +0000

[...] you haven't read part 1 and part 2, you might want to do [...]

By: Riley

Riley — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 03:45:40 +0000

Amen to that. I just want to know what you think.

By: III

III — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 03:06:02 +0000

Don’t worry, I’ll take some sides in part three. You gotta save the hammer for last. But as to the irenic accusation, all I gotta say is Mat 5:9

By: Riley

Riley — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 03:01:54 +0000

@Trey @Trey @Trey @Trey: Irenic alert!

You better make some objective belief statements soon and take some sides!

With dichotomic apprehensions,

Riley

By: Trey

Trey — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 02:37:22 +0000

Oh, I agree completely about this being only about Americans. I don’t know anything at all about the political climate around the world.

As to your first comment, I think this is part of the confusion/hypocrisy of both ends of the political spectrum: both sides use a hybrid political theory, where they (unconsciously, albeit) consider government either an arm or a head depending on which better suits their agenda. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the hybrid is bad–in fact, what I argued above is that it’s impossible to NOT have a hybrid. But the problem is that people don’t think about what view of government they are thinking from on certain issues, and therefore are terribly inconsistent, and have a very hard time understanding the other side. But whatever, I guess that’s life.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 01:42:21 +0000

I believe the vast majority of people want government to be more like a head than an arm. Part of this is just that people don’t care for the intricacies of transportation policy or tax codes, and would rather just elect people to do it for them. A bigger part, I think, is that people don’t like responsibility as much as they say they do. People want to be led. Whenever there’s a tragedy, people immediately look to their leaders, even if the leader can’t do anything about it other than speak.

Social contract theory isn’t necessarily limited to the arm. But, under a social contract, the people have a right to rebel and supplant the government if they don’t believe it is acting in their interests.

This is why I think most Christians are usually conservatives and embrace the theory of government as its own autonomous institution that functions as a head over society to rule as God (via the Bible) instructs.

The more I read, the more I think the “Christian right” is a peculiarly American phenomenon.I think the Christian base varies from country to country, denomination to denomination.