Be Thankful And Hope

IN THE PRESENT season of conservative and Republican exhaustion it is easy to think that the great tide of conserative reform has reached its high tide and has turned into a vicious rip-tide that will swallow its supporters. Even if that is so we should be thankful, especially in this season, for all that the American conservative movement has achieved in its program of resumption, that is, the resumption of eternal truths and practices that sustain the civilized life. We use “civilized life” in the strict sense referring to the life of the city in its characteristic of bringing together those of a commercial habit to serve the consumers.

But there is also hope. In the weeks after the voters of California truckled to their public employee masters and the principled liberal voters of King County, Washington, voted to reelect Ron Sims, the county executive that presides over the third most corrupt election system in the United States, according to one observer, there are buds of renewal. According to Max Borders

Many of us are tired of trying to use political channels to bring about social change. We’re dissatisfied with the way government handles such projects, we’re fed up with the bureaucracy, and we resent having our money taxed from us every paycheck to be managed by those who only claim to know better.

And some of us are doing something about it. Borders cites a whole range of “social entrepreneurs,” many of them successful business entrepreneurs like the Google guys and Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, who

are starting to figure out that civil society works better than government at bringing about civic improvement, opportunity, and positive change. The altruism boom is underway. And if the government doesn’t smother it, social capitalism can amount to a revolution for tremendous good.

Fast Company has compiled a list of these new social entrepreneurs. But will they make a difference?

One thing is for sure. The present huge power structure that runs the government system of social support will not give up without a struggle.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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