Gary North

What is politics for? This is the crucial question seldom asked. What is the purpose of our public life, its meaning, its shaping and guiding principles? Where do we want to go, and why? What do we want to achieve? And, most important, what is a good society? -- Jim Wallis, God's Politics (2005), pp. 25--26

These are all good questions. Unfortunately, you have yet to answer them, either in your book editorials. I have read a lot of your editorials -- which, I note, have wound up as chapters of your recent book. (Good show! Never let old articles go to waste.)

First and foremost, who is "we"? This is the central question that you refuse to discuss.

Are "we" Christians? In the United States only? Or around the world and through the ages?

Are "we" voters primarily? If not, then what are "we" mainly?

When "we" decide what "we" want to do, to what degree should "we" rely on the coercion of civil government to achieve it?

Are "we" a long-term political majority? Or a majority in a particular election?

Are "we" planning to take money from those who lose the next election?

Obviously, you are ready to use the State to grab other people's money. You favor the welfare State. You believe in taxing "the rich" to pay for the needs -- undefined -- of "the poor" (also undefined). You write:

We must ensure that all people who are able to work have jobs where they do not labor in vain, but have access to quality health care, decent housing, and a living income to support their families. [God's Politics, p. 240.]

"We" must ensure. And, pray tell, how shall "we" ensure this? By getting government to stick a gun in the belly of voters and say., "Fork over your money to the government in the name of the poor."

But an amazing thing has happened: voters, who have a majority, have long resisted this call, and will continue to resist it. They see themselves as threatened by your "we." They perceive correctly. This is a really big problem for you.

You have another problem: You cannot prove from the Mosaic law that any such view of State power is valid. You do not even try. So, you ignore the Mosaic law and keep citing "the prophets." But the prophets had this crucial task in Old Covenant Israel: to call the nation back to obedience to the Mosaic law.

It was the court prophets who advised kings not to return to the Mosaic law.

If my definition of a court prophet is correct, then you are a court prophet in the field of economic policy. You made this crystal clear back in 2000.

The Bible doesn't propose any blueprint for an economic system, but rather insists that all human economic arrangements be subject to the demands of God's justice, that great gaps be avoided or rectified, and the poor are not left behind. ["Seattle: Changing the Rules," Sojourners Magazine (March-April 2000).]

Politics and Society

You link politics to society. You write: "And, most important, what is a good society?" Yet your books and editorials keep coming back to the State, meaning the use of monopolistic violence. You think the State can help create a good society by taking money from those who did not win a majority in the last election in the name of those who did win a majority.

And then, lo and behold, defense contractors and government bureaucrats and middle-class white people on Social Security take most of the money extracted from the rich -- year after year, decade after decade. Then you complain that the country keeps getting into wars.

The politicians use you to get out the vote for the welfare State, which you do, and then they get into a war and spend the money on war. This keeps coming as a surprise to you. You are like a welfare mother who keeps having children by different men, who always depart when the baby arrives. You just can't seem to figure it out.

You suffer from a great confusion. You confuse "State" with "society." Society is made up of those voluntary institutions and associations that make civilized life possible: families, churches, businesses, schools, and service groups. These are well-described in Alexis de Tocqueville's two-volume book, Democracy in America (1835, 1840).

The State is an organized monopoly of violence.

You want the State to do Good Things. You expect these Good Things to create a better society.

The Bible has a different view of the State. It sees the State as preventing evil. It does not picture the State as an agency for establishing good. It does not regard the State as having the authority to make men good. It opposes this doctrine, the doctrine of salvation by law. (See Galatians for details here.)

Welfare State liberals believe in salvation by legislation -- the creation of the good society through organized wealth- transfers by force. Welfare State liberals believe in the greater good through the redistribution of wealth by means of the threat of violence.

Whenever you write "we," I always substitute this:

Politically well-organized people who will use the violence of the State to alter the results of society -- the interplay of voluntary institutions and voluntary transactions.

Am I incorrect? Do you mean something else by "we"?

What, exactly?