Category Archives: Political Theory

On the Need for Wisdom in Politics

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A useful description of the importance of prudence or wisdom (sophia) rather than theory or formal education in statesmanship:

Following a discussion of virtue as a mean between extremes, Aristotle attributes to concrete action a higher degree of truth than to general principles of ethics.

The mark “of a man with high moral standards is his ability to see the truth in each particular moral question, since he is … the standard and measure for such questions.” (20) Ethics in politics, then, is not merely announcing moral postulates or retreating before the complexities of the world.

What matters, said Voegelin, are

not correct principles about what is right by nature in an immutable generality, nor the acute consciousness of the tension between the immutable truth and its mutable application (possibly even with tragic overtones), but the changeability, the kineton itself, and the methods to lift it to the reality of truth. The truth of existence is attained when it becomes concrete, i.e., in action. (21)

In classical and Christian ethics, the first of the moral virtues is sophia or prudentia because without adequate understanding of the structure of reality, including the conditio humana, moral action with rational coordination of means and ends is impossible. (22)

Voegelin’s characterization of the spoudaios (who sees the “truth in concrete things”) carries an important moral message for the democratic statesman. No amount of single tangible facts imparted through education can substitute for the type of experience that pushes great men to the limits of their human possibilities. The knowledge of the statesman grows out of the eternal laws by which man moves in the social world. The validity of those laws, the Aristotelian truth that man is a political animal, does not derive from “objective” facts in conformity with the mathematizing models of the natural sciences. The key to those laws of man lies in the practical wisdom through which the statesman elevates his experiences into universal laws of human nature. (23)”

— “Eric Voegelin and Reinhold Niebuhr on the Moral Resources of Democracy,” Greg Russell in Modern Age, Sep 22, 2006

Debt And Sin In The Bible

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A British Christian libertarian blog on why canceling the debt is questionable from a Christian perspective:

“Should Christians be concerned about this [the levels of debt contracted by the government]? One angle on this is the fact that in the teaching of Jesus, sin is often compared with debt. Two obvious examples are the parable of the unforgiving servant (Matthew 18:23-35), and the fact that in the Lord’s Prayer as found in Matthew’s gospel, disciples are taught to pray “and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” (Matthew 6:12) In other words, there is a correspondence between sin and debt.

Many may consider sin not to be serious, but the Christian does. I am reminded of the words of Anselm of Canterbury, addressing Boso in Cur Deus Homo (Book 1, chapter 21) “You have not yet considered what a heavy weight sin is.”

If sin is serious and Jesus compares sin to debt, surely it follows that for Christians, debt is serious as well. And if that is so, government borrowing which will saddle our country with huge levels of debt, possibly for decades, is serious.

Yes, it is true that in the Old Testament, there was provision for the cancellation of debt every 50 years in the Jubilee, but to argue that such a provision means that one of the world’s wealthiest nations (that has incurred its debts by living beyond its means) should have its slate wiped clean is simply ridiculous.

Perhaps the message for Christians who are not horrified by the levels of debt that we are incurring is: “You have not yet considered what a heavy weight debt is.”

Why Pork-Chop Health-Care Doesn’t Work

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Donald J. Boudreaux on why collectivized health care solutions don’t work (hat-tip to Cafe Hayek):

“Collective efforts — which, in practice, mean “imposed by government command” — typically allow each of us to free-ride off of each other’s resources. And when I get to spend your money and you get to spend mine, it’s a sure bet that that money will be spent wastefully.

Consider Medicaid and Medicare — huge socialized health-care programs. Funded with tax dollars, these programs allow the millions of Americans covered by them to consume medical services without paying the full cost of those services. The predictable result is that these services are over-consumed.

To see why, ask the following question posed by my George Mason University colleague Russell Roberts. If you go to dinner with a large group of strangers and you know that the bill will be split evenly, aren’t you more likely to order pricier dishes and drinks than you would order if you, and you alone, were responsible for picking up your full tab?

The answer is surely “yes.” Let’s say that you’d be content to order the pork chop priced at $15, but would get even greater enjoyment from ordering the rack of lamb priced at $25. If you alone were responsible for your tab, you’d order the lamb only if it is worth to you at least the extra $10 that it costs. So suppose that you value the lamb by only $8 more than you value the pork chop. In that case, you’d order the pork chop. You wouldn’t spend an extra $10 to get extra satisfaction worth only $8.

But if the bill is evenly shared among, say, 10 diners (yourself and nine others), then if you order the lamb, your share of the higher bill will be only $1. That’s $10 split evenly 10 ways. You’ll order the lamb.

You might think that this sharing arrangement is good. After all, in this example, the cost to you of getting something you valued more (the lamb rather than the pork chop) was reduced. It became sensible for you to order the lamb.

Look more deeply, though. What happened is that society (here, the 10 diners) was led to supply something that wasn’t worth its cost. The lamb was worth to you only an additional $8, but to make it available to you, society spent $10. Ten dollars were used to raise the welfare of society by only $8. (You’re a member of society, so any improvement in your welfare counts as an improvement in the welfare of society.) That’s a waste of $2…”

My Comment

(Check back later tonight)

Tom Woods On Wealth Creation

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Nice finale to Tom Woods’ piece at Taki Magazine, putting an end to some superstitions about labor and wealth:

“Leaving aside the odd view that only manual laborers engage in “work,” all the brawn in the world could never have produced a steam engine or a Pentium processor. Only when informed by the knowledge of inventors and supplied with the capital saved by capitalists can the average laborer produce the tiniest fraction of what he is today accustomed to producing. The central ingredient in a laborer’s physical productivity is the equipment and machinery at his disposal. There is nothing natural or inevitable about the availability of this productivity-enhancing capital equipment.  It comes from the wicked capitalists’ abstention from consumption, and the allocation of the unconsumed resources in capital investment. This process is the only way the general standard of living can possibly rise.  Hartmann thinks it’s just swell to tax it.

The increases in the productivity of labor that additional capital makes possible, by increasing the overall amount of output and thereby increasing the ratio of consumers’ goods to the supply of labor, make prices lower relative to wage rates and thereby raise real wages.  That’s why, in order to earn the money necessary to acquire a wide range of necessities, far fewer labor hours are necessary today than in the past—say, 1950 or 1900. Thanks to capital investment, which is what businesses engage in when their profits aren’t seized from them, our economy is far more physically productive than it used to be, and therefore consumer goods exist in far greater abundance and are correspondingly less dear than before……

Hartmann’s argument runs, in effect: “Citizen, you need to be looted in order to stabilize the system [a nonsensical idea Hartmann came across in the popular Keynesianism that forms the entirety of his economic knowledge].  Let us hear no more anti-social talk about your so-called rights. All hail The System!  Wherever would we be without the stabilizing power of violence!”

As for the nonsense about FDR’s New Deal “stabilizing us”—and the perverse argument that our economy will never be stable unless the people are violently expropriated—check out economist Robert P. Murphy’s new book The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal.  Its playful title notwithstanding, this book mercilessly bludgeons thoughtless clichés like this.

At least the mafia has the decency not to put such transparently phony claims over on you. They’re honest: we’re taking your money because we have power, and you don’t.

What it all boils down to is this: one side of our political spectrum favors the central planning of Iraq, while the other favors the central planning of Americans. We can only hope for the continued growth of a third side, one that rejects as unworthy of a free people all the superstitious nonsense about the magical powers of our overlords, whether that power is exercised at home or abroad.”

Carson Versus Marks On Libertarianism And Scarcity

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An interesting exchange from The Libertarian Alliance’s website on libertarianism and scarcity, with Kevin Carson responding to Paul Marks’ critique of his work:

[Marks]

“Neither land nor capital are [sic] “artificially scarce” – they are just scarce (period).  There are billions of people and only a certain amount of land and machinery?  .[T]he idea that land and capital are only scarce [emphasis mine] compared to the billions of people on Earth because of either wicked governments or wicked employers (or both) is false.”

[Carson]

First, simply to get the second part of Mr Marks’ statement out of the way, I nowhere asserted that all scarcity of land and capital is artificial.  I argued only that they were more scarce, as a result of state-enforced privilege, than they would otherwise be, and that returns on land and capital were therefore higher than their free market values.  In any case, as Franz Oppenheimer observed, most of the scarcity of arable land comes not from natural appropriation, but from political appropriation. And the natural scarcity of capital, a good which is in elastic supply and which can be produced by applying human labor to the land, results entirely from the need for human labor for its creation; there is no fixed limit to the amount available.

But getting to his main point, that land and capital are not artificially scarce, I’m not sure Mr Marks is even aware of his sheer audacity.  In making this assertion, he flies in the face of a remarkable amount of received libertarian wisdom, from eminences as great as Mises and Rothbard.  As a contrarian myself, I take my hat off to him.

Still, I wonder if he ever made the effort to grasp the libertarian arguments, made by Rothbard et al, that he so blithely dismisses.  Is he even aware of the logical difficulties entailed in repudiating them?  Does he deny that state enforcement of titles to land that is both vacant and unimproved reduces the amount available for homesteading? Does he deny that the reduced availability of something relative to demand is the very definition of “scarcity,” or that the reduction of supply relative to demand leads to increased price?  Or is his argument rather with Rothbard’s moral premises themselves, rather than the logical process by which he makes deductions from them?  I.e., does he deny that property in unimproved and vacant land is an invalid grant of privilege by the state, and thereby repudiate Locke’s principle of just acquisition?

It seems unlikely, on the face of things, that Mr Marks would expressly repudiate Mises and Rothbard on these points.  After all, elsewhere in his critique he cites Human Action and Man, Economy and State as authorities.  Perhaps he just blanked out on the portions of their work that weren’t useful for his apologetic purposes.

In any case, if he does not repudiate either Rothbard’s premises or his reasoning, Mr Marks has dug himself into a deep hole.  For by Rothbard’s Lockean premises, not only the state’s own property in land, but “private” titles to vacant and unimproved land, are illegitimate. Likewise, titles derived from state grants are illegitimate when they enable the spurious “owner” to collect rent from the rightful owner – the person who first mixed his labor with the land, his heirs and assigns.  And the artificial scarcity of land resulting from such illegitimate property titles raises the marginal price of land relative to that of labor, and forces labor to pay an artificially high share of its wages for the rent or purchase of land….”

Solzhenitsyn On Conscience

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Alexandr Solzhenitsyn on developing a point of view:

“In First Circle, the young diplomat Innokenty Volodin lived a life of prosperity and comfort. As the privileged child of a hero of the Revolution he had married into a prominent family and advanced in the Soviet diplomatic service. But he became alienated from it all: he “lack(ed) something: he didn’t know what” (p. 341).
Upon examining the old fashioned ideas of his deceased mother in her diaries, his perspective on life changed from one of an Epicurean pleasure-seeking to one of ethical regard. He developed a “point of view”: Up to then the truth for Innokenty had been: you have only one life.

Now he came to sense a new law, in himself and in the world: you also have only one conscience. And just as you cannot recover a lost life, you cannot recover a wrecked conscience [p. 345]

Moral choices are often the consequence of accumulated culture, happenstance or social institutions, and as such judging others’ moral choices must be done with compassion and humility. Solzhenitsyn contemplates rather extensively his rejection of an offer to join the Soviet internal police force, the NKDV, when he was a young communist in Rostov in the late 1930’s:

“The NKVD school dangled before us special rations and double or triple pay …
It was not our minds that resisted but something inside our breasts. People can shout at you from all sides: “you must!”… inside our head can be saying also: “You must!” But inside your breast there is a sense of revulsion, repudiation. I don’t want to. It makes me feel sick. Do what you want without me; I want no part of it …. Without even knowing it ourselves, we were ransomed by small change in copper that was left from the golden coins our great-grandfathers had expended, at a time when morality was not considered relative and when the distinction between good and evil was very simply perceived by the heart.” —

[Gulag Archipelago, p. 160].

This leads to a rather subtle and non-judgmental view of good and evil. Evil is very real and very wrong, but no human being is authorized to become too self-righteous in its condemnation: but for the grace of God go I.

In Gulag Archipelago Solzhenitsyn says quite emphatically:

“So let the reader who expects this book to be a political expose slam its covers shut right now. If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.

Socrates taught us: Know thyself!

“Confronted by the pit into which we are about to toss those who have done us harm, we halt, stricken dumb: it is after all only because of the way things worked out that they were the executioners and we weren’t.” [p. 169]

“To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions. Macbeth’s self-justifications were feeble – and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and the spiritual strength of
Shakespeare’s evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology.

Ideology – that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors.”

How Much Land Does A Man Need?

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“How Much Land Does a Man Need?” — Leo Tolstoi
Sections VII – IX

“Pahom lay on the feather-bed, but could not sleep. He kept thinking about the land.

“What a large tract I will mark off!” thought he. “ I can easily do thirty-five miles in a day. The days are long now, and within a circuit of thirty-five miles what a lot of land there will be! I will sell the poorer land, or let it to peasants, but I’ll pick out the best and farm it. I will buy two oxteams, and hire two more laborers. About a hundred and fifty acres shall be plough-land, and I will pasture cattle on the rest.”

Pahom lay awake all night, and dozed off only just before dawn. Hardly were his eyes closed when he had a dream. He thought he was lying in that same tent and heard somebody chuckling outside. He wondered who it could be, and rose and went out, and he saw the Bashkir Chief sitting in front of the tent holding his sides and rolling about with laughter. Going nearer to the Chief, Pahom asked: “What are you laughing at?” But he saw that it was no longer the Chief, but the dealer who had recently stopped at his house and had told him about the land. Just as Pahom was going to ask, “Have you been here long?” he saw that it was not the dealer, but the peasant who had come up from the Volga, long ago, to Pahom’s old home. Then he saw that it was not the peasant either, but the Devil himself with hoofs and horns, sitting there and chuckling, and before him lay a man barefoot, prostrate on the ground, with only trousers and a shirt on. And Pahom dreamt that he looked more attentively to see what sort of a man it was that was lying there, and he saw that the man was dead, and that it was himself! He awoke horror-struck.

“What things one does dream,” thought he.

Looking around he saw through the open door that the dawn was breaking.

“It’s time to wake them up,” thought he. “We ought to be starting.”

He got up, roused his man (who was sleeping in his cart), bade him harness; and went to call the Bashkirs.

“It’s time to go to the steppe to measure the land,” he said.

The Bashkirs rose and assembled, and the Chief came too. Then they began drinking kumiss again, and offered Pahom some tea, but he would not wait.

“If we are to go, let us go. It is high time,” said he.
VII.

The Bashkirs got ready and they all started: some mounted on horses, and some in carts. Pahom drove in his own small cart with his servant and took a spade with him. When they reached the steppe, the morning red was beginning kindle. They ascended a hillock (called by the Bashkirs a shikhan) and dismounting from their carts and their horses, gathered in one spot. The Chief came up to Pahom and stretching out his arm towards the plain:

“See,” said he, “all this, as far as your eye can reach, is ours. You may have any part of it you like.”

Pahom’s eyes glistened: it was all virgin soil, as flat as the palm of your hand, as black as the seed of a poppy, and in the hollows different kinds of grasses grew breast high.

The Chief took off his fox-fur cap, placed it on the ground and said:

“This will be the mark. Start from here, and return here again. All the land you go round shall be yours.”

Pahom took out his money and put it on the cap. Then he took off his outer coat, remaining in his sleeveless under-coat. He unfastened his girdle and tied it tight below his stomach, put a little bag of bread into the breast of his coat, and tying a flask of water to his girdle, he drew up the tops of his boots, took the spade from his man, and stood ready to start. He considered for some moments which way he had better go – it was tempting everywhere.

“No matter,” he concluded, “I will go towards the rising sun.”

He turned his face to the east, stretched himself, and waited for the sun to appear above the rim.

“I must lose no time,” he thought, “and it is easier walking while it is still cool.”

The sun’s rays had hardly flashed above the horizon, before Pahom, carrying the spade over his shoulder, went down into the steppe.

Pahom started walking neither slowly nor quickly. After having gone a thousand yards he stopped, dug a hole, and placed pieces of turf one on another to make it more visible. Then he went on; and now that he had walked off his stiffness he quickened his pace. After a while he dug another hole.

Pahom looked back. The hillock could be distinctly seen in the sunlight, with the people on it, and the glittering tires of the cart-wheels. At a rough guess Pahom concluded that he had walked three miles. It was growing warmer; he took off his under-coat, flung it across his shoulder, and went on again. It had grown quite warm now; he looked at the sun, it was time to think of breakfast.

“The first shift is done, but there are four in a day, and it is too soon yet to turn. But I will just take off my boots,” said he to himself.

He sat down, took off his boots, stuck them into his girdle, and went on. It was easy walking now.

“I will go on for another three miles,” though he, “and then turn to the left. This spot is so fine, that it would be a pity to lose it. The further ones goes, the better the land seems.”

He went straight on for a while, and when he looked round, the hillock was scarcely visible and the people on it looked like black ants, and he could just see something glistening there in the sun.

“Ah,” though Pahom, “I have gone far enough in this direction, it is time to turn. Besides I am in a regular sweat, and very thirsty.”

He stopped, dug a large hole, and heaped up pieces of turf. Next he untied his flask, had a drink, and then turned sharply to the left. He went on and on; the grass was high, and it was very hot.

Pahom began to grow tired: he looked at the sun and saw that it was noon.

“Well,” he thought, “I must have a rest.”

He sat down, and ate some bread and drank some water; but he did not lie down, thinking that if he did he might fall asleep. After sitting a little while, he went on again. At first he walked easily: the food had strengthened him; but it had become terribly hot and he felt sleepy, still he went on, thinking: “An hour to suffer, a life-time to live.”

He went a long way in this direction also, and was about to turn to the left again, when he perceived a damp hollow: “It would be a pity to leave that out,” he thought. “Flax would do well there.” So he went on past the hollow, and dug a hole on the other side of it before he turned the corner. Pahom looked towards the hillock. The heat made the air hazy: it seemed to be quivering, and through the haze the people on the hillock could scarcely be seen.

“Ah!” Thought Pahom, “I have made the sides too long; I must make this one shorter.” And he went along the third side, stepping faster. He looked at the sun: it was nearly half-way to the horizon, and he had not yet done two miles of the third side of the square. He was still ten miles from the goal.

“No,” he thought, “though it will make my land lop-sided, I must hurry back in a straight line now. I might go too far, and as it is I have a great deal of land.”

So Pahom hurriedly dug a hole, and turned straight towards the hillock.
IX.

Pahom went straight towards the hillock, but he now walked with difficulty. He was done up with the heat, his bare feet were cut and bruised, and his legs began to fail. He longed to rest, but it was impossible if he meant to get back before sunset. The sun waits for no man, and it was sinking lower and lower.

“Oh dear,” he thought, “if only I have not blundered trying for too much! What if I am too late?”

He looked towards the hillock and at the sun. He was still far from his goal, and the sun was already near the rim.

Pahom walked on and on; it was very hard walking but he went quicker and quicker. He pressed on, but was still far from the place. He began running, threw away his coat, his boots, his flask, and his cap, and kept only the spade which he used as a support.

“What shall I do,” he thought again, “I have grasped too much and ruined the whole affair. I can’t get there before the sun sets.”

And this fear made him still more breathless. Pahom went on running, his soaking shirt and trousers stuck to him and his mouth was parched. His breast was working like a blacksmith’s bellows, his heart was beating like a hammer, and his legs were giving way as if they did not belong to him. Pahom was seized with terror lest he should die of the strain.

Though afraid of death, he could not stop. “After having run all that way they will call me a fool if I stop now,” thought he. And he ran on and on, and drew near and hear the Bashkirs yelling and shouting to him, and their cries inflamed his heart still more. He gathered his last strength and ran on.

The sun was close to the rim, and cloaked in mist looked large, and red as blood. Now, yes now, it was about to set! The sun was quite low, but he was also quite near his aim. Pahom could already see the people on the hillock waving their arms to hurry him up. He could see the fox-fur cap on the ground and the money on it, and the Chief sitting on the ground holding his sides. And Pahom remembered his dream.

“There is plenty of land,” though he, “but will God let me live on it? I have lost my life, I have lost my life! I shall never reach that spot!”

Pahom looked at the sun, which had reached the earth: one side of it had already disappeared. With all his remaining strength he rushed on, bending his body forward so that his legs could hardly follow fast enough to keep him from falling. Just as he reached the hillock it suddenly grew dark. He looked up – the sun had already set! He gave a cry: “All my labor has been in vain,” though he, and was about to stop, but he heard the Bashkirs shouting, and remembered that though to him, from below, the sun seemed to have set, they on the hillock could still see it. He took a long breath and ran up the hillock. It was still light there. He reached the top and saw the cap. Before it sat the Chief laughing and holding his sides. Again Pahom remembered his dream, and he uttered a cry: his legs gave way beneath him, he fell forward and reached the cap with his hands.

“Ah, that’s a fine fellow!” exclaimed the Chief. “He has gained much land!”

Pahom’s servant came running up and tried to raise him, but he saw that blood was flowing from his mouth. Pahom was dead!

The Bashkirs clicked their tongues to show their pity.

His servant picked up the spade and dug a grave long enough for Pahom to lie in, and buried him in it. Six feet from his head to his heels was all he needed….”

From The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Short Stories, by Leo Tolstoi

De Crevecoeur: Letters From An American Farmer

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The following is a description of Nantucket from De Crevecoeur’s Letters From An American Farmer, a literary account of the political principles informing the Declaration of Independence and Paine’s Common Sense:

“My simple wish is to trace them throughout their progressive steps from their arrival here to this present hour; to enquire by what means they have raised themselves from the most humble, the most insignificant beginnings, to the ease and the wealth they now possess; and to give you some idea of their customs, religion, manners, policy, and mode of living.

This happy settlement [Nantucket] was not founded on intrusion, forcible entries, or blood, as so many others have been; it drew its origin from necessity on the one side and from good will on the other; and ever since, all has been a scene of uninterrupted harmony. Neither political nor religious broils, neither disputes with the natives, nor any other contentions, have in the least agitated or disturbed its detached society. Yet the first founders knew nothing either of Lycurgus or Solon; for this settlement has not been the work of eminent men or powerful legislators forcing nature by the accumulated labours of art.

This singular establishment has been effected by means of that native industry and perseverance common to all men when they are protected by a government which demands but little for its protection, when they are permitted to enjoy a system of rational laws founded on perfect freedom. The mildness and humanity of such a government necessarily implies that confidence which is the source of the most arduous undertakings and permanent success. Would you believe that a sandy spot of about twenty-three thousand acres, affording neither stones nor timber, meadows nor arable, yet can boast of an handsome town consisting of more than 500 houses, should possess above 200 sail of vessels, constantly employ upwards of 2000 seamen; feed more than 15,000 sheep, 500 cows, 200 horses; and has several citizens worth 20,000L. sterling! Yet all these facts are uncontroverted. Who would have imagined that any people should have abandoned a fruitful and extensive continent filled with the riches which the most ample vegetation affords; replete with good soil, enamelled meadows, rich pastures, every kind of timber, and with all other materials necessary to render life happy and comfortable, to come and inhabit a little sand-bank to which nature had refused those advantages, to dwell on a spot where there scarcely grew a shrub to announce, by the budding of its leaves, the arrival of the spring and to warn by their fall the proximity of winter?

Had this island been contiguous to the shores of some ancient monarchy, it would only have been occupied by a few wretched fishermen, who, oppressed by poverty, would hardly have been able to purchase or build little fishing barks, always dreading the weight of taxes or the servitude of men-of-war. Instead of that boldness of speculation for which the inhabitants of this island are so remarkable, they would fearfully have confined themselves within the narrow limits of the most trifling attempts; timid in their excursions, they never could have extricated themselves from their first difficulties. This island, on the contrary, contains 5,000 hardy people who boldly derive their riches from the element that surrounds them and have been compelled by the sterility of the soil to seek abroad for the means of subsistence. You must not imagine, from the recital of these facts, that they enjoyed any exclusive privileges or royal charters or that they were nursed by particular immunities in the infancy of their settlement. No, their freedom, their skill, their probity, and perseverance have accomplished everything and brought them by degrees to the rank they now hold.…”

“Letters From an American Farmer,” by J. Hector St. John Crevecoeur (1735-1813) reprinted from the original ed., with a prefatory note by W.P. Trent and an introduction by Ludwig Lewisohn. New York, Fox, Duffield, 1904.

Torture Files: Testimony of Richard Wurmbrand About Communist Torture

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“……I have been for years in prison with thieves and murderers. Even before having been put in prison I have been chaplain of a prison. A thief after he has stolen is a gentleman. He gives to the waiters the greatest tips and he invites girls and he invites you and he orders the best wines. He has not worked for his money. And such thieves are the communists. They have stolen half of Europe, they have stolen Russia, too. They have stolen a great part of Asia. And now they have what they have stolen and they are gentlemen and they expect the next occasion to steal again.

In this sense there is a relaxation with us, but it is not an essential one. We continue to have the avowed dictatorship of an atheistic party. We have one party. There can be no religious freedom where there is one party. We have elections. Now a joke is made with us that when God created Adam, He created only one woman, Eve, and He said to Adam, “You are free to choose for wife whomsoever you wish.” But there was only Eve. And so are the elections with us. (my emphasis)

Our Government doesn’t mind old women coming to church, but our childhood, our youth is poisoned with atheism. We are not allowed to counteract, and what bitter fruits will come out of this seed nobody can know.

Now you have asked another question, do we have open churches in Rumania? If somebody comes to Rumania – it is another situation in Russia – if somebody comes to Rumania, he is really impressed.

The Orthodox liturgy is something very beautiful. It is grand. And if you come in Rumania you see thousands of churches open, liturgies, sermons, many people in the church. And I have spoken with Americans who have been there and have told me, “I was very impressed.” And now there is really a certain religious liberty. In Rumania you are allowed to say as much as you like that God is good. You are not allowed to say that the Devil is bad. St. John the Baptist could have saved his life if he had said: “Repent because the kingdom of heaven is near.” Nobody would have touched him. He was touched when he said, “You, Herod, are bad.”

If Christ would have delivered a thousand “Sermons on the Mount” they would not have crucified Him. They crucified Him when He said, “You vipers,” then He was crucified.….”

Comment

One of the heroes of modern evangelical Christianity, Pastor Richard Wurmbrand, on the state’s use of religion as propaganda, in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1966.

Wurmbrand, a Lutheran pastor of Jewish origin who died in 2001, isn’t easily dismissed: he spoke 14 languages, was a professor of the Old Testament and suffered over a dozen years of torture in Romanian prisons, several in solitary confinement underground.

He’s worth reading again today for anyone inclined to romanticize communism in the last century. And for anyone concerned about the direction in which the west is heading today.

More on what Wurmbrand suffered (his wife, Sabina, lost her entire family and herself worked as a slave laborer):

“His captors dumped him at Calea Rahova, a spanking new prison for dissidents, enemies of the people and criminals of various stripes. The warders there gave him a new identity (Vasile Georgescu), and set about erasing his old one. The 39-year-old Wurmbrand was 6 feet, 3 inches tall, with a medium build, and enjoyed relatively hale health before his abduction. But after being subjected to physical and psychological depredations and humiliations during his first year in the gulag, he nearly expired, kept just this side of living by the facility’s doctors. Dead, of course, he would be incapable of divulging information.

In clear, straightforward, occasionally stomach-churning prose, Wurmbrand recounts his horrific tortures: sleep deprivation; starvation diet; made to race around his four-steps-by-two-steps cell for hours until he collapsed; beatings with truncheons and boots; water funneled down his throat until it filled his stomach, which was then violently kicked; the bastinado, a relic of the Spanish Inquisition in which the bare soles of the feet are flogged; guards urinating and spitting into his open mouth; drugged into delirium; terrorized by dogs kept inches from his throat; solitary confinement–speaking to no one except inquisitors–for nearly three years in a three-paces-by-three-paces cell, this one located 30 feet underground; tossed into the “carcer,” a constricting, closet-sized enclosure with metal-spiked walls. In short, he experienced his own personal Passion.

“It was an image of hell,” Wurmbrand reported, “in which the torment is eternal and you cannot die.” He confessed to any false charges concerning himself–adultery, homosexuality–but steadfastly refused to implicate other believers, irrespective of denomination.

Transforming solitary confinement into his crucible, Wurmbrand affirmed his faith and tried to keep sane by mentally composing approximately 350 sermons and 300 devotional poems, which he later claimed to have memorized by employing condensed rhyme schemes and mnemonic devices. (He published 22 of the former in 1969’s Sermons in Solitary Confinement.) Additionally, he “talked” with and “preached” to inmates in adjacent cells by tapping on the walls using Morse code, which the prisoners learned from each other; devised chess matches with himself, substituting bread crumbs for pieces; and held imaginary conversations with his wife Sabina and young son Mihai.

More than three years into his ordeal, Wurmbrand was hauled before a faceless quartet of judges for a 10-minute trial, found guilty of subversive activities and sentenced to 20 years’ hard labor. Wracked by tuberculosis, he spent four years rotting in a prison TB ward in the Carpathian foothills. With no medicine, many died. While there he learned that his wife had been arrested in 1950 and pressed into slave labor digging and carting dirt for the Danube-Black Sea canal, a project eventually abandoned as infeasible. Held for three years, she ate grass when necessary.

A member of the secret police whom Wurmbrand had earlier converted to Christianity helped secure his release in June 1956, and he rejoined Sabina and Mihai in Bucharest, where he resumed preaching. “I knew, of course,” he wrote, “that sooner or later I would be rearrested.” In January 1959 he was re-imprisoned during a renewed crackdown on the clergy, his old sentence–plus five years–reimposed. Plunged back into the black hole of the gulag, he endured extensive brainwashing designed to eradicate religious beliefs. Five and a half years later he walked away, his faith intact…..”

More in an obituary in 2001 in the New York Press.

On the other hand, the Independent in its obituary took a more reserved view of Wurmbrand’s experiences and testimony.

The Guardian also noted some criticisms of him.