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Recently, Pope Francisreleased a statement to members of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. The statement, broadly, was about work in society, and how social bonds are incredibly important. At the end of it, however, the Pope levied a harsh attack at what he referred to as libertarian individualism. This, in turn, has been met with harsh criticism by both Reason and Breitbart. This is the latest in a string of statements that has led to one disheartening conclusion,the Pope has two ideologies. Catholicism and Socialism.

Below is the relevant portion of the statement:

Finally, I cannot but speak of the serious risks associated with the invasion, at high levels of culture and education in both universities and in schools, of positions of libertarian individualism. A common feature of this fallacious paradigm is that it minimizes the common good, that is, living well, a good life in the community framework, and exalts the selfish ideal that deceptively proposes a beautiful life. If individualism affirms that it is only the individual who gives value to things and interpersonal relationships, and so it is only the individual who decides what is good and what is bad, then libertarianism, today in fashion, preaches that to establish freedom and individual responsibility, it is necessary to resort to the idea of self-causation. Thus, libertarian individualism denies the validity of the common good because on the one hand it supposes that the very idea of common implies the constriction of at least some individuals, and the other that the notion of good deprives freedom of its essence.

The radicalization of individualism in libertarian and therefore anti-social terms leads to the conclusion that everyone has the right to expand as far as his power allows, even at the expense of the exclusion and marginalization of the most vulnerable majority. Bonds would have to be cut inasmuch as they would limit freedom. By mistakenly matching the concept of bond to that of constraint, one ends up confusing what may condition freedom the constraints with the essence of created freedom, that is, bonds or relations, family and interpersonal, with the excluded and marginalized, with the common good, and finally with God.

The Popes explanation of libertarianism is incredibly flawed. Libertarianism is none of these things, it is simply the belief that government coercion on personal actions should be as limited as possible. It is not a rejection of social bonds, or a denial of the common good. It is, to most, the opposite. Most libertarians believe wholeheartedly that by lifting the threat of force and letting people interact freely, we will have a more prosperous and more pro-social society.

Notice, however, that I said most.

This is where Pope Francis finds an element of truth. There is a very sizable minority of libertarians who are not pro-social. This minority does not care about the freedom and well-beingof all people. They are simply libertarians because they believe that they should be able to do what the Pope has described. They actually want to expand their power at the expense of the majority. These are Brutalists. This is, however, where thetruth of the Popes statement ends.

The Pope does not seem to understand libertarian philosophy, and this statement shows his ignorance. He has associated the simple desire for less coercion to good deeds, to be a rejection of doing good deeds. The Papacy has shown this ignorance before. This backward view that only coerced wealth redistribution can aid the poor has shown to be folly, time and time again. This mistake isnt simply ignorance however, it is, unfortunately, the Popes ideology.

Looking to the Popes past statements and actions, it is likely that he is allowing his politics to bias his moral teachings, and not just about libertarianism. Pope Francis has consistently handled socialist dictatorships like China andVenezuelawith kid gloves. He has instead saved his ire for free market capitalism. When the head of the Catholic Church is more kind towards dictators than those that espouse liberty, we have a serious problem.

To be frank, I am a Protestant. Despite this, I had high hopes for Pope Francis. I was encouraged by his apparent rejection of Papal decadence and a shift in focus to charity and aiding the poor. I was also heartened by his more socially tolerant statements.

This is why my disappointment is all the greater. The Pope has rejected freedom and proven methods of bettering society. He has instead chosen a failed ideology that has been used to oppress our Christian brothers and sisters all over the world.

That stings.

capitalismcatholiclibertarianismLibertyPopePope FrancisSocialism

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The Problem of the Pope and Socialism - The Libertarian Republic

Its May 1 - May Day - and the workers of the world are uniting. Wait, no, the workers of the world are mostly working, because its Monday and stuff needs to get done.

But socialists of the world will march today, in honor of what theyve designated International Workers Day. Theyll be on the streets in Cuba, in Venezuela, and in San Francisco, where theyll attempt a Day Without Immigrants march.

According to Mother Jones magazine, Donald Trump has made socialism cool again.

The magazine added, Socialisms hipster makeover has been accelerated by a flowering of leftist media and culture.

Thats certainly true, but whats the truth about socialism? We need only look to Venezuela to see.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said he will expand the number of civilians involved in armed militias, providing guns to as many as 400,000 loyalists, Fox News reported on April 18. The announcement came as Maduro's opponents are gearing up for what they pledge will be the largest rally yet to press for elections and a host of other demands Wednesday. The Bolivarian militias, currently at approximately 100,000, were created by the late Hugo Chavez to assist the armed forces in the defense of his revolution from external and domestic attacks.

The country is now a failed state, with widespread hunger, looting and lawlessness. Its the textbook example of socialism. The government took control of the economy of the wealthiest and most oil-rich country in South America - and wrecked it through mismanagement and corruption.

You wont hear anything about starvation in Venezuela at any of the more fashionable May Day rallies.

This is just the tip of an iceberg of insensitivity, ignorance, and denial about socialisms ongoing and historical track record, notes The Federalists Robert Tracinski. The bodies keep piling up, but the ideology that produced those bodies always gets a free pass.

What we always hear is that socialism hasnt failed because socialism - true socialism - has never been tried.

As Tracinski points out, this is known as the No True Scotsman fallacy in logic. If I tell you no Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge, and you point out that your Uncle Hamish puts sugar on his porridge, I need only respond, Yes, but no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.

The problem with this fallacy, as it applies to socialism, is that socialism always does - and always must - lead to the dictatorships and government thuggery that it always has.

These crimes follow inevitably from the basic idea behind socialism: the idea that the good of society as a collective is more important the rights or even the life of the individual, Tracinski writes. Thats the social in socialism, and by throwing out the rights and liberty of the individual, it serves as a rationalization for an endless amount of carnage. Who cares if this particular person - or a few million people - suffer, so long as you can claim that mankind collectively benefits?

Those marching for May Day wont acknowledge this, of course. But history will.

See the article here:
Editorial: On this May Day, remember what socialism always leads to - Tyler Morning Telegraph

Recently, I heard popular host Glenn Beck state that he had eliminated the word evil from his vocabulary, the rationale being that he believed it would thwart efforts for conservatives to come together with their political opponents to solve the problems facing our nation.

I acknowledge the fact that Beck has done a lot over the years toward educating his audience concerning the machinations of global socialists, first on Fox News television and later through his online network, The Blaze. However, as Ive indicated previously, sometimes the host goes too far in his self-styled Mormon flower-child modality with regard to the reality of dealing with said political opponents, their ruthlessness, lack of ethics and intractability.

Even though it has not always been a pervasive belief among Western Christians, as a Christian, I can certainly concur with Becks belief that love is the highest ideal a person can have. That said, notions of brotherly love and coming together are nave at best when it comes to political opponents who are wholly dedicated to eradicating an opponents system of belief, governance or population, whether by attrition or by the sword.

Typically, this sort of political opponent is referred to as an enemy.

The half-billion people murdered, maimed and enslaved by socialists of varied stripes during the last century ought to be sufficient proof of their ruthlessness, lack of ethics and intractability. Likewise, Islams 1,400 years of blind zealotry, as well as the murder and mayhem perpetrated by Islamists during that time (to say nothing of the same perpetrated by Islamists over the last couple of decades alone) ought to be sufficient proof of their inability to come to accords with their opponents.

Over the last couple of years, we have seen key indicators that citizens of Western nations whove had socialism and its attendant social engineering devices rammed down their throats over the last 50 years have had enough.

With regard to immigration, for example: Europe is obviously further along than America with respect to the machinations of international socialist politicos. Now, we are seeing a strong response to the doctrine of European leaders having welcomed millions of individuals from culturally bankrupt nations over the last 50 years. Those who have refused to assimilate and treat the largesse of Europeans as their birthright have become a poisonous, indigestible mass in the European body politic.

This isnt an instance of Westerners being bigoted, creepy Christian dogmatists, particularly in the case of Europeans. Europe accounted for 66.3 percent of the worlds Christian population in 1910. Today, it represents 25.9 percent. The proportion of European Christians has dropped from 94.5 percent of the population to 76.2 percent in 100 years.

Over time, Westerners, whether Europeans, Canadians or Americans, have begun to find the insidious aspects of socialism that were dramatically misrepresented to them by politicians, akin to having ingested spoiled food. One doesnt get sick right away, but when it sets in, its something one never forgets.

These people are not ideological conservatives either, nor have they identified socialism as the name of their pain yet. They just know that their paychecks dont go nearly as far as they used to, theyre far less safe, their entertainment media has become shameless left-wing propaganda, and their children are being indoctrinated in school rather than educated.

Other than the election of Donald Trump to the presidency (the most notable byproduct of this phenomenon), there are myriad examples of plain folk expressing their disgust with socialist encroachment. Brexit, the United Kingdoms effort to extricate itself from the European Union is certainly one of these. Citizens expulsion of their government in Iceland a few years ago is another.

In the corporate world, the shrinking coffers of the NFL and ESPN followed those companies tolerance of anti-American expression among certain pro football players and sportscasters, respectively. Big-box giant Target is currently hemorrhaging top executives and cash, the result of that organization becoming a corporate activist for the homosexual agenda.

It was one thing for Westerners to view from afar the desolation of Soviet Russia, Cuba and other nations that went socialist during the last century, or to muse over oil-rich Venezuela being flat broke due to hard-line socialist policies but the foregoing declines have struck too close to home for comfort.

With regard to the opening paragraphs and concepts of evil and enmity: Most people can recognize evil when they see it; obviously, this holds true even among societies in which leftist moral relativism abounds. There is a danger to the excising and modification of language in that it smacks of the Orwellian the politically correct moral relativism, social engineering and borderline mind control so often employed by socialists. Theyve even gone so far as to modify or negate such terms as good and evil to advance amorality and secure political gains.

Increasing numbers of those who have known liberty under Western constitutions and democratic republics are coming to realize that a chief consequence of this strategy has been an erosion of their liberties and a decline in their quality of life which I suppose breathes new life into the axiom referencing not being able to fool all of the people all of the time.

Media wishing to interview Erik Rush, please contact media@wnd.com.

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THE OTHER RUSH - WND.com

April 25 Public Pulse writer Virgil Patlan Sr. (Mello should be ashamed about Bernie) made the incorrect claim that Many U. S. veterans died fighting socialism all over the world. I would like to know, what wars we have fought against socialism?

People are often all too quick to lump socialism and communism together and have this knee-jerk negative reaction toward anything that remotely reminds them of some movie they saw where some American hero was kicking butt against some Commie menace.

Some of our greatest achievements are examples of socialism. The list is exhaustive but consider Social Security, public education and the Interstate Highway System, to name a few.

The idea of working together as a society to fund programs and solve problems is not what our brave soldiers were fighting against. This oversimplification of history is a dangerous misread of truth.

Read the original here:
The Public Pulse: Don't confuse socialism with communism - Omaha World-Herald

NEW YORK The Jewish Sunday school teacher, a black accordion strapped to her shoulders, stands before a photo of a 1927 Jewish protest in Warsaw and introduces her students to an important holiday observed by their ancestors.

It isnt Passover, which has just ended, but another that is approaching in a couple weeks: May Day, the unofficial May 1 holiday celebrating workers rights.

Socialism is the idea that everyone should have what they need, says the teacher, Hannah Temple, as a projector flashes images of a protest sign and Jewish immigrants marching in a labor demonstration. On the walls, multicolored signs declare Jewish communities fight for $15 a minimum wage campaign We are all workers and Remember the Triangle Fire, a reference to the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire that killed 146 garment workers at a factory and galvanized the labor movement.

Temple teaches the children words to a Yiddish May Day anthem and offers a short primer on early 20th century labor activism.

We need to sleep some, we need to work some, but we need some time thats for us, she says, describing the campaign for an eight-hour workday. She invites the few dozen students and parents in the room to a May Day protest in downtown Manhattan. A few hands go up.

Maybe? she asks. Maybe is great.

The Yiddish sing-along-cum-socialist teach-in is the morning meeting of the Midtown Workmens Circle School, a secular Jewish Sunday school that combines Yiddish language and culture education with progressive social justice organizing. Its one of eight such schools, called shules, in four states serving a total of 300 students aged 5 to 13 teaching them everything from an Eastern European melody for the Four Questions to how to protest on behalf of underpaid fast-food workers. The curriculum ends with a joint bar/bat mitzvah ceremony for the seventh-graders.

Students at the Midtown Workmens Circle School in Manhattan read through a play in Yiddish, April 23, 2017. (Ben Sales via JTA)

Though its more than a century old, the Workmens Circle, a left-wing Eastern European Jewish culture and social justice group, has seen its fundraising and school enrollment grow in recent years. Part of the boost, leaders say, was due to the diametrically opposed presidential campaigns of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Donald Trump.

Sanders, says executive director Ann Toback, awakened American Jews to secular, progressive Jewish culture conveyed with a heavy Brooklyn accent. Trump, she adds, sparked Jews on the left to organize in protest.

Workmens Circle made a lapel pin bearing the faces of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump accompanied by the words mensch and putz, respectively. (Josefin Dolsten via JTA)

Workmens Circle isnt shy about its political leanings. Following the presidential election, it made a lapel pin bearing the faces of Sanders and Trump accompanied by the words mensch and putz, respectively.

Before there was Bernie, there was the Workmens Circle, Toback says. Is there a way we can connect to so many of his followers? The values that he based his campaign on are really the inherent values of the Workmens Circle and our movement.

In the five-month period after the election, the group saw its donations double over the same stretch the previous year. It has opened five of its eight Sunday schools in the past three years. The biggest, in Boston, has more than 100 students. In May, the Manhattan school will be hosting a spring open house for the first time.

More people are coming to us looking for I want to engage in social justice activism, says Beth Zasloff, director of the Midtown school. I know that for me, after the election, having a community, having a place to go where I know we can address these issues with our children, felt extremely important.

The Midtown school, like its counterparts, eschews traditional Jewish Sunday school mainstays like learning Hebrew or studying ritual and prayer. Israel isnt a focus. Workmens Circle has partnered in the past both with Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, a left-winggroup that focuses on domestic issues, and Habonim Dror, theleft-wing Labor Zionist movement.

Instead, kids take three types of classes: arts and crafts, Yiddish language and history, and culture and social justice. Last Sunday, the three students in the Yiddish class were reading a play, in transliteration, about a robot. The teacher would read a line in Yiddish and translate, which a student repeated.

The arts and crafts class was making banners for an immigrant rights protest. In the history and culture class, four students prepared for their bar and bat mitzvahs next year. For the ceremony, theyll do a research project on their family history and interview an elderly relative. Later that Sunday, this years bar mitzvah class made presentations on children who werekilled in the Holocaust.

Beth Zasloff, director of the Midtown Workmens Circle School (Courtesy of Zasloff via JTA)

One student said knowing Yiddish made her feel like her friends at school who hail each other in the hallways in Bengali. Another said her favorite Workmens Circle experience was participating in the Jan. 21 Womens March in New York City. And for some, the appeal lies in attending a Sunday school that avoids the standard memorization of Hebrew prayers.

This is secular, and Im not super religious in terms of my beliefs about God, says Moxie Strom. So its nice to have something that doesnt focus so much on God said this and God said that.

The Workmens Circle/Arbeter Ring was founded in 1900in large part to help Jewish immigrants from Europe succeed in America. Along with advocating for better working conditions, it offered members services like health care and loans. It supported socialism at a time when Jews on the Lower East Side of Manhattan helped elected a Socialist Party candidate, MeyerLondon, to Congress.

Nolonger socialist but still left wing, the Workmens Circle fights for those issues largely on behalf of non-Jewish workers, leading campaigns for immigrant rights or better pay.

And instead of helping Yiddish speakers integrate into America, the organizations cultural mission has flipped, preserving and promoting an old world culture for American Jews. It runs Yiddish language classes for adultsand a summer camp for kids, and hosts culinary and holiday events.

Theres so much culture theyre missing, says Kolya Borodulin, the groups associate director for Yiddish programming, who grew up in Birobidzhan, the Soviet Unions Jewish Autonomous Region. Jewish holidays, traditions described by famous Yiddish authors any contemporary issues you name are reflected in the Yiddish language. So you can see this parallel universe in Yiddish.

Even if they go to eight years of Sunday school, Borodulin says, the students are unlikely to come out speaking proficient Yiddish, or even reading a page in the languages Hebrew script. The schools aim, rather, is to reinforce a cultural and ideological Jewish identity in its students. The aspiration is that years after they leave, they will be able to connect to their Judaism on holidays, in song and on the picket line.

What resonates most with them is the social justice and having a sense of what we believe in, says Debbie Feiner, whose two sons, ages 9 and 12, attend the Midtown school. The older one, she says, understands that when you see some injustice, you need to take action. He cant be a passive bystander, and hell connect that with his Judaism.

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This New York City Sunday school teaches Jewish kids Yiddish and socialism - Jewish Journal