Why not distributism?

[Stfassisi]

So, what’s an “unproductive loan”?

If I get a bank loan to buy cattle in order to raise cattle that I couldn’t possibly afford to buy with case, and if my intend (and outcome) is that I make money selling cattle, is that an “unproductive loan”? I don’t think Belloc would say so.

I certainly wouldn’t. If not for having borrowed money, I would not now have 99% of what I now own.

Is borrowing money to buy a car to go to work an “unproductive loan”? Hard to think so if I can’t take a job if I don’t have a car.

Is borrowing money to buy a big screen TV an “unproductive loan”? Well, that probably is, because it’s hard to characterize the big screen TV as anything I really need or can turn to productive purposes.

But if the lender for the TV is guilty of a moral failing, then I’m every bit as guilty. If I don’t have the cash to buy the TV, then I have no business “selling” my future earning potential for it.

Very busy right now, but Hiaire Belloc explains further

From Belloc…

Supposing a man comes to you and says: “There is a field next to mine which is a very good building site; if I put up a good little house on it I shall be able to let that house at a net profit-----all rates, taxes and repairs paid-of
£100 a year. But I have no capital with which to build this house. The field will cost £50 and the house £950. Will you lend me £1,000, so that I can buy the field, put up the house, and enjoy this nice little income?” You would presumably answer, “Where do I come in? You get your £100 a year all right; but you only get it by my aid, and therefore I ought to share in the profits. Let us go fifty-fifty. You take £50 every year as your share for your knowledge of the opportunity and for your trouble, and hand me over the other £50. That will be five percent on my money, and I shall be content.”

This answer, granted that property is a moral right, is a perfectly moral proposition. The borrower accepting that proposition certainly has no grievance. For a long time [theoretically, forever] you could go on drawing five percent on the money you lent, with a conscience at ease.

Now let us suppose that man comes to you and says: “I know the case of a man in middle age who has been suddenly stricken with a terrible ailment. Medical aid costing £1,000 will save his life, but he will never be able to do any more work. He has an annuity of £100 a year to keep him alive after the operation and subsequent treatment. Will you lend the £I,000? It will be paid back to you on his death, for his life has been insured in a lump payment for the amount of £I,000.” You answer: “I will lend £1,000 to save his life, but I shall require of him half his annuity, that is £50 a year, for every year he may live henceforward; and he must scrape along as best he can on the remaining £50 of his annuity.” That answer would make you feel a cad if you have any susceptibilities left, and if you have not-----having already become a cad through the action of what the poet has called “the soul’s long dues of hardening and decay”-----it would be a caddish action all the same, though you might not be disturbed by it.

It seems therefore that there are conditions under which you may legitimately and morally lend £1,000 at five percent in perfect security of conscience, and others in which you cannot.

Now look at the matter from another angle.

When the American city of Boston was founded, three hundred years ago, a man in London proposing to emigrate thither left gold to the value of £1,000 with a London goldsmith, under a bond that the goldsmith might use the money until he or his heirs should demand it, but with the proviso that five percent on the capital should accrue at compound interest until it was withdrawn. The emigrant did not reappear. The goldsmith’s business developed, as so many of them did, into a sort of bank as the seventeenth century wore on. By the beginning of the eighteenth it was a bank in due form, and its successor today is part of one of the great banking concerns of our time. The original deposit has gone on “fructifying,” as the phrase goes, with the liability piling up, but no one claiming it.

At last, in this year 1931, an heir turns up and proves his title. The capital sum into which this modest investment of a thousand pounds at five percent has grown is to be paid over to him under an order of the court. Do you know how much it will come to?-----More than twice the annual revenue of the United States today.

To be continued

 

[Stfassisi]

Continued from Belloc…

Let us take a less fantastic example, and perhaps it will be more convincing. Supposing a man to have lent £10,000 on mortgage at six percent upon an English gentleman’s estate at the beginning of the American War of Independence, in 1776: the said estate to pay £600 a year to the lender. The debt is not pressed. The embarrassed gentleman is allowed to add to the principal the annual payments due, so that the whole sums up at the rate of six percent compound interest.

That is not at all an impossible supposition. Do you know what the mortgage-holder could demand of that estate today? Nearly five million pounds a year!

Neither of these examples could arise in practice because the law forbids such prolonged accumulation, but the very fact that the law has been compelled to do so, is proof that there is something wrong with the current notion everywhere acted upon, that money “earns” a certain rate of interest and has a moral right to it without regard to the way in which the capital is employed.

For what is common to all these illustrations is the patent fact that interest on a loan may, under some circumstances of time or extent, be a demand for an impossible tribute. It may under some circumstances be a tribute which is not morally due, because it does not represent an extra production of wealth due to the original investment. It is under some circumstances a demand for wealth which is not connected with the produce of the original investment, and the payment of which is therefore not a payment of part profit, but a payment to be made, if possible, out of whatever other wealth the debtor can obtain; and a tribute which, beyond a certain point, cannot even be paid at all, because the wherewithal to pay it is not present in society.

What are those circumstances? What are the conditions distinguishing a demand for payment of interest which is legitimate in morals from a demand which is illegitimate?

The distinction lies between a demand for part of the product of a productive loan, which is moral, and the immoral demand for either (1) interest on an unproductive loan, or (2) interest greater than the annual increment in real wealth which a productive loan creates. Such a demand “wears down”-----“eats up”-----“drains dry” the wealth of the borrower, and that is why it is called Usury. A derivation inaccurate in philology, but sound in morals, rightly connects “usura” “usury,” with the idea of destroying, “using up,” rather than with the original idea of “usus,” “a use.”

Usury, then, is a claiming of interest upon an unproductive loan, or of interest greater than the real increment produced by a productive loan. It is the claiming of something to which the lender has no right, as though I should say: “Pay me ten sacks of wheat a year for the rent of these fields” after the fields had been swallowed up by the sea, or after they had fallen to producing annually much less than ten sacks of wheat.

I must here reluctantly introduce a colloquial meaning of the word “Usury” which confuses thought. People talk of “usurious interest” meaning very high interest. It is obvious how the confusion arose. Very high interest is commonly greater than the real wealth produced even by a productive loan, and to demand it is, in effect, to demand more than the produce of the original loan; but there is nothing in the rate of interest per se which renders such interest usurious. You may demand one hundred percent on a loan and be well within your moral rights.

 

[Cirdan_XII]

What if I don’t want to share my profits with the bank? If I didn’t think I could make more on the cattle than what the bank’s getting in interest (more than double it if you wish) I wouldn’t do it at all. Why should I be obliged to share my profits with the bank if the bank’s happy enough with the rather modest interest it’s going to get? Why should I force my children (my heirs) to partner with some bank?

The bank isn’t going to be out there in January feeding hay to the cattle in the drizzle. It’s not going to help me with vaccinations. Why shouldn’t I get the lion’s share of what they bring? If I’m willing to risk the wolves and disease (which i can prevent, by the way, while the bank can’t) myself, why shouldn’t I be allowed to do that?

But surely all that is a question of you negotiating with the bank. Seeing you do all the hard work and the bank just fronts the money, the sharing of profits should reflect that (i.e., the bank does not get to keep all the profit). But if it is in the bank’s best interest that you succeed, then the bank is also incentivized to jump in when you need them. If your barn loses its roof in a January storm, the bank can no longer legitimately say its not their problem. They can choose to help you or lose their investment. The usury system of separating costs from risk mean the bank doesn’t care.

 

[Cirdan_XII]

Finally, most of the interest goes to the savings customers and bank employees anyway.
Banks only make about 1.5% actual profit on the money they loan. So, if some old lady has her savings in a bank, is she going to bear my cattle risk with me? Why should she?
How do I justify asking her to do that?

And if that old lady lives off her savings interest, but can’t get stable income because I demand she share risks, how is that just?

1.5% is a joke. The banks these days are laughing in our faces paying interest like that. If a little old lady is living off those 1.5% she must have a pretty big sum of money in the bank, and might do better to start using that up instead.In fact she is getting less than inflation, so her bank deposit is losing in real value year by year.

Those 1.5% are the fig leaf of the usurers to pretend they are actually giving anything back at all.

Of course I’m not going to ask the old lady to share the risk in my cattle. But that’s what the bank is for. The bank is a middle man that can assess the risks and get the best deals for its depositors. And the bank is not putting all its money in my cattle. Risk averages out over a large number of investments. And the aggregate risk is something that should be fairly predictable and give this old lady the peace of mind she deserves.

 

[Used2beSherryG]

Capitalism only works well in a moral society. When Christianity began to be removed from society, capitalism is becoming unbridled greed in action. Without strong Christian moral principles, capitalism or any other economic system cannot long endure. Society is unraveling at a pretty fast clip.

 

[Ridgerunner]

1.5% is a joke. The banks these days are laughing in our faces paying interest like that. If a little old lady is living off those 1.5% she must have a pretty big sum of money in the bank, and might do better to start using that up instead.In fact she is getting less than inflation, so her bank deposit is losing in real value year by year.

Those 1.5% are the fig leaf of the usurers to pretend they are actually giving anything back at all.

Of course I’m not going to ask the old lady to share the risk in my cattle. But that’s what the bank is for. The bank is a middle man that can assess the risks and get the best deals for its depositors. And the bank is not putting all its money in my cattle. Risk averages out over a large number of investments. And the aggregate risk is something that should be fairly predictable and give this old lady the peace of mind she deserves.

You misunderstood what I said. I was in banking years ago and have very good friends in the banking business. I have modest investments in three of them and I pay very close attention to their profit margins. When all is said and done, banks make anywhere from 1% to 2% profit on the money deposited with them. The rest goes to savers, employees and other expenses. I never said the little old lady was making 1.5%. She probably isn’t because Bernanke is keeping interest rates artificially low in order to make this government not look quite as bad as it is. Well, too, he actually believes in doing it as a “depression preventer”. Probably he’s wrong and should have let asset values reset. We would probably be out of this recession by now if he had.

The interest rate environment is very hard on the elderly, which is why you see so many ads now for “reverse mortgages”; about as bad a deal as can be imagined.

Now, it’s entirely possible that, from time to time, very big banks that are also in the investment banking business make more, or seem to. Of course, they take very heavy losses too. Actually, what you’re thinking banks ought to do is to be totally in the investment banking business.

And yes, one can come up with a zillion examples of how lending and borrowing can turn out badly. But it rarely does, particularly in business lending.

But I would be the first to say that borrowing for consumption is almost always a bad idea from the borrower’s standpoint. It’s hard for young people to avoid in some ways because I consider a home a “consumption item” not an investment like many do.

 

[Abu]

Cirdan XII #114
Capitalism is not the same as Free Enterprise….Therefore whereas free enterprise can live side by side with other mechanisms of assuring the mobility of capital and restrictions and bounds which should not be crossed, Capitalism itself cannot tolerate any other.

Listen and learn from the acknowledged St John Paul II in Centesimus Annus, 1991:
‘If by “capitalism” is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative, even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of a “business economy”, “market economy” or simply "free economy".’

Continually confusing the Marxist misrepresentations of what Marx described as “capitalism”, with the clarity expressed by Bl John Paul II, helps no one.

Used2beSherryG #124
Without strong Christian moral principles, capitalism or any other economic system cannot long endure.

Precisely – words of wisdom which some here seem incapable of understanding, while not even appreciating the value and wise use of loans, interest, and the fact that the Late Scholastics developed free enterprise.

 

[Cirdan_XII]

Continually confusing the Marxist misrepresentations of what Marx described as “capitalism”,

I find it interesting that when you study distributism, something that predates both socialism and capitalism by a margin of several centuries, that people somehow think that it is something defined by Marx, or seek to look to Marx for a definition or defence of it (*). I think this shows to what extent cpaitalism has already poisoned our thinking to the point of believing that all that is not capitalism must be socialism.

*) If you actually go out and read what Marx really said and not what some Ayn Rand groupies thinks he said, you’ll find he goes into a lengthy analysis of Adam Smith and actually agrees with much of what he says. It is quite scary how the two agree and how both systems work towards the corruption of humanity.

 

[Robert_Sock]

The real issue is the lack of humanitarian values, and how to implement them in the very greedy and pitiful society that we live in today.

 

[Abu]

Cirdan XII #127
distributism, something that predates both socialism and capitalism by a margin of several centuries

In fact, as documented, the origin of free enterprise evolved with the monks in the ninth century. “The term ‘capital’ came into use in the fourteenth century to identify funds having the capacity to return income, rather than being simply of consumable value.”

“ ‘Capitalism’…originated as a pejorative term first used by nineteenth-century leftists to condemn wealth and privilege.”
The Victory of Reason, Dr Rodney Stark, Random House, 2005, p55].

 

[Ridgerunner]

In fact, as documented, the origin of free enterprise evolved with the monks in the ninth century. “The term ‘capital’ came into use in the fourteenth century to identify funds having the capacity to return income, rather than being simply of consumable value.”

“ ‘Capitalism’…originated as a pejorative term first used by nineteenth-century leftists to condemn wealth and privilege.”
The Victory of Reason, Dr Rodney Stark, Random House, 2005, p55].

I recall reading, long ago, that some orders of monks “specialized” in going into wild or infertile areas and laboriously turning them into useable farmland. They would then recruit farmers who owned no land to come and work it. They would then give the land to the farmers and move on to the next wild or otherwise unuseable place.

That could pretty well be described as an example of Distributism. They didn’t take anything away from anybody. The didn’t operate a commune other than their own while building up the land. They then turned over “productive inheritable assets” to individuals and families, who were on their own with management and the fruits of their labor (and brand-new capital) thereafter.

 

[manualman]

The question is not why we defend Capitalism. The real question is, “What other economic system would you suggest we convert to?”

Did you read the thread title? Distributism differs substantially from socialism. Distributism is fundamentally still a free enterprise system like capitalism. Unlike capitalism, Distributism views the entrepenuer who runs the business to be the main injector of real value, not the investor that backs him.

Modern capitalism inherently favors the investor over the entrepenuer. As a result, it tends to result in an increasing divide between the rich and the poor. An example of that is the way our current tax code places a MUCH lower burden on high income capital gains than on high income from business revenue. That’s just dumb. Why take more from the guy who busts his butt building a business than from the guy who reads a quarterly statement?

America got to be economically great through accidental distributism. We expanded so fast in population and geography that the economy innately favored the entrepenuer since the investor class was so small in comparison to the opportunities out there. Anybody with skills and a work ethic could open a business and thrive. Today such individuals choke under both government bureaucracy, but even more over corporate structures that make small competition nearly impossible.

How could we make America more distributist? For starters:

1. Capital gains = wages for tax tables.
2. Impose a large estate tax for estates beyond $3-4M. Applies to personal trust funds too.
3. Establish corporate tax structure to favor small business over large corporations, such as steadily increasing corporate tax rates per total employment or total revenue (not just profits).
4. Prohibit special tax exemptions. No more mega-corps getting sweetheart deals for locating their facility at city, state X.
5. Redesign as many government services as possible to be funded like utilities: Mass transit should fund itself, roads should fund via gas tax and annual vehicle fee based on GVWR, water, sewer, etc. Make things cost what they actually cost.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Did you read the thread title? Distributism differs substantially from socialism. Distributism is fundamentally still a free enterprise system like capitalism. Unlike capitalism, Distributism views the entrepenuer who runs the business to be the main injector of real value, not the investor that backs him.

Modern capitalism inherently favors the investor over the entrepenuer. As a result, it tends to result in an increasing divide between the rich and the poor. An example of that is the way our current tax code places a MUCH lower burden on high income capital gains than on high income from business revenue. That’s just dumb. Why take more from the guy who busts his butt building a business than from the guy who reads a quarterly statement?

America got to be economically great through accidental distributism. We expanded so fast in population and geography that the economy innately favored the entrepenuer since the investor class was so small in comparison to the opportunities out there. Anybody with skills and a work ethic could open a business and thrive. Today such individuals choke under both government bureaucracy, but even more over corporate structures that make small competition nearly impossible.

How could we make America more distributist? For starters:

1. Capital gains = wages for tax tables.
2. Impose a large estate tax for estates beyond $3-4M. Applies to personal trust funds too.
3. Establish corporate tax structure to favor small business over large corporations, such as steadily increasing corporate tax rates per total employment or total revenue (not just profits).
4. Prohibit special tax exemptions. No more mega-corps getting sweetheart deals for locating their facility at city, state X.
5. Redesign as many government services as possible to be funded like utilities: Mass transit should fund itself, roads should fund via gas tax and annual vehicle fee based on GVWR, water, sewer, etc. Make things cost what they actually cost.

I agree that at least the classic version of Distributism is much different from socialism. However, there are socialistic views that call themselves “Distributist”.

Capital gains are not taxed so much lower than wages anymore, since Obamacare added to them. If I’m not mistaken, the effective rate is now 18.5%, not 15%. It can be higher than that, but I’m not sufficiently familiar with tax laws to give chapter and verse. For some things, I think your argument might have some merit. But not for all things. With some capital gains, the owner expended a lot in terms of time, trouble, contribution and risk. I’m not too sure how many people would really want to make some kinds of investments if the eventual return was taxed at income rates. It would artificially push up one’s tax bracket for one thing, one a one-time, long-term investment. The “effective rate”, then might be higher than a person’s “normal” tax rate.

Estate taxes are already steeply progressive after the “lifetime exemption” ($5 million). Trusts aren’t protected from that unless they meet pretty stringent requirements so a husband and wife could each get their “lifetime exemption” (therefore $10 million total).
Gifts made to, say, trusts for children during one’s lifetime reduce one’s “lifetime exemption”. So that’s really not a protection against taxes other than the growth in the value of the asset transferred.

 

[Abu]

A famous text of Leo XIII defended Capitalism, and stated that both capital and labor have the right to exist in a Catholic society. In *Rerum Novarum *he preached harmony between capital and labor rather than a suppression of the regime of capital.

Pope Leo XIII referred to the minds and actions of those people described as “the inhumanity of employers and the unbridled greed of competitors” (Rerum Novarum, # 6).
After defending the right of private property against the attacks of the Socialists, Leo XIII emphatically affirmed:
“The great mistake made in regard to the matter under consideration is to take up with the notion that class is naturally hostile to class, and that the wealthy and the working men are intended by nature to live in mutual conflict. So irrational and false is this view that the direct contrary is the truth. Just as the symmetry of the human frame is the result of the suitable arrangement of the different parts of the body, so in a State is it ordained by nature that these two classes should dwell in harmony and agreement, so as to maintain the balance of the body politic. Each needs the other: capital cannot do without labor, nor labor without capital. Mutual agreement results in the beauty of good order, while perpetual conflict necessarily produces confusion and savage barbarity.

“Now, in preventing such strife as this, and in uprooting it, the efficacy of Christian institutions is marvelous and manifold. First of all, there is no intermediary more powerful than religion – whereof the Church is the interpreter and guardian – in drawing the rich and the working class together, by reminding each of its duties to the other” (n. 19).
traditioninaction.org/HotTopics/j008htDistributism_Encyclicals_Odou.htm

The fundamental economic laws which enable great productivity increases and wealth creation, were discovered by the Catholic Late Scholastics and endorsed by the Catholic Church, and economics involves the activities of fallen individuals who need the moral teaching of Christ’s Church. Over the course of several generations, they discovered and explained the laws of supply and demand, the cause of inflation, the operation of foreign exchange rates, and the subjective nature of economic value. For these reasons Joseph Schumpeter applauded them “as the first real economists.” (Thomas E Woods Jr, The Church And The Market, Lexington Books, 2005, p 8). The free enterprise economy consists of voluntary property exchanges.

Those who care to support locally based and smaller-scale agriculture have already been doing so for two decades now by means of community-supported agriculture, which is booming. On a purely voluntary basis, people who wish to support local agriculture pay several hundred dollars at the beginning of the year to provide the farmer with the capital he needs; they then receive locally grown produce for the rest of the year. The organizers of this movement, rather than wasting their time and ours complaining about the need for state intervention, actually did something: they put together a voluntary program that has enjoyed considerable success across the country. Perhaps, if distributists feel as strongly about their position as they claim, this example can provide a model of how their time might be better spent.

What’s Wrong with "Distributism"
Mises Daily: Sunday, October 06, 2002 by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

Mises Daily | Mises Institute

 

[Least]

Capitalism. . . because who’s to say who gets what any other way.

Americans have not just supported Capitalism, but militarily worked to defeat socialism and Communism throughout their history and throughout the globe WHILE supporting the people under such systems with delivery of food, medical supplies, clean water, etc.

In 200 years of our history Americans put a man on the moon (Progress? Time will tell, Evil? - Go #NaCl), in 2000 years + of most Socialistic, Communistic, and other despoted nations’ histories and most are still eating from, drinking from, washing their clothes, bathing in, relieving themselves in, and burying their dead in the same damn river. Progress? NO!

Nobody raises the live birth rate of indigenous societies like the U.S. and that’s during wartime (let me hear one crack about the U.S. involved in any U.N. style “rape crews” and I’ll hunt the last one of you).

 

[Robert_Sock]

Capitalism. . . because who’s to say who gets what any other way.

Americans have not just supported Capitalism, but militarily worked to defeat socialism and Communism throughout their history and throughout the globe WHILE supporting the people under such systems with delivery of food, medical supplies, clean water, etc.

In 200 years of our history Americans put a man on the moon (Progress? Time will tell, Evil? - Go #NaCl), in 2000 years + of most Socialistic, Communistic, and other despoted nations’ histories and most are still eating from, drinking from, washing their clothes, bathing in, relieving themselves in, and burying their dead in the same damn river. Progress? NO!

Nobody raises the live birth rate of indigenous societies like the U.S. and that’s during wartime (let me hear one crack about the U.S. involved in any U.N. style “rape crews” and I’ll hunt the last one of you).

It’s the great nation of the Vatican that we Catholics owe our allegiance to first and foremost. The Vatican, especially Pope Francis, contend that we need to implement humanitarian values in the world. The task for us is how to implement these humanitarian values within our very greedy and apathetic society.

 

[Least]

Americans have not just supported Capitalism, but militarily worked to defeat socialism and Communism throughout their history and throughout the globe WHILE supporting the people under such systems with delivery of food, medical supplies, clean water, etc.

From surplusses CREATED UNDER CAPITALISM.

Nobody rapes the earth, or their fellow man, like a person only interested in today. If a person is not amassing their needs for today, for themselves, they will be compelled to take it from you, and that will not aid either of you in providing for each of your needs later. Unless we are reaching to tomorrow, each of us, we can hash this out violently right now, and JESUS will likely be compelled to come earlier than planned.
[loosely paraphrased, TERMS, J.M. Thomas R., 2012]

 

[Least]

It’s the great nation of the Vatican that we Catholics owe our allegiance to first and foremost. The Vatican, especially Pope Francis, contend that we need to implement humanitarian values in the world. The task for us is how to implement these humanitarian values within our very greedy and apathetic society.

It is to GOD, JESUS, and THE HOLY SPIRIT, that we owe our allegiance FIRST AND FOREMOST.

Then to Pope Francis (if he maintains his Holy Orders) and then successor, the “VATICAN” ain’t even on the list.

Everything we have is of the Divine Providence OF HE WHO IS, and no one has been a greater tool for HIM in distribution of HIS blessings like Capitalists.

And yes, GOD BLESS

 

[Robert_Sock]

It is to GOD, JESUS, and THE HOLY SPIRIT, that we owe our allegiance FIRST AND FOREMOST.

Then to Pope Francis (if he maintains his Holy Orders) and then successor, the “VATICAN” ain’t even on the list.

Everything we have is of the Divine Providence OF HE WHO IS, and no one has been a greater tool for HIM in distribution of HIS blessings like Capitalists.

And yes, GOD BLESS

I was merely alluding to our earthly allegiances, and The Vatican is the one earthly institution that we owe our allegiance to first and foremost.

Humanitarianism shares much more in common with Christ’s teachings and actions than does capitalism. Again, the problem is how to implement humanitarian values within our very greedy and apathetic capitalistic system that is ruining our society.

 

[Least]

I was merely alluding to our earthly allegiances, and The Vatican is the one earthly institution that we owe our allegiance to first and foremost.

Humanitarianism shares much more in common with Christ’s teachings and actions than does capitalism. Again, the problem is how to implement humanitarian values within our very greedy and apathetic capitalistic system that is ruining our society.

The Holy Church is the one earthly institution we owe our allegiance to. If the “Vatican” is destroyed by a Meteor tonight, I will mourn and rebuild the seat of The Holy Church (and arm-wrestle his Holiness for where to put it ).

Humanitarianism is not a Governmental entity, and government is the current “holder” of our “Terms” defining “Society” [loosely paraphrased: TERMS, J.M. Thomas R., 2012]. Society (due to Human Nature and Physics) will always need to be defended by the threat of violence between the “peacefully” contained parties therein [loosely paraphrased: TERMS, J.M. Thomas R., 2012]. Humanitarianism is too wet a paper bag to hold any of the trappings of Society, and can only survive under another form of government (self-rule) until the Second Coming.

Worship God, not guns!

Strawman - Who the heck is “worshipping” guns???

“Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” -John 12:25

Correct, but Better dead then red-communist. If you live in a Blue State, you are part of the Problem, if you have a (D) after your name, the problem is part-of-you.