EOnation: The Yankee Religion

[WesBurt@aol.com]

To: A few friends and members of the DDotSQ

Happy New Year folks,

In reply to my note of December 31, 2000, I received 
a thoughtful and sincere e-mail which opened with an 
inquiry about my religion.  While I was wondering how 
to answer that question my cat stepped on the keyboard 
and the received e-mail vanished.  The delete and enter 
keys should not be located side by side!  I hope the 
author of that e-mail will resend it, so I can read the 
entire message.

It seems important to answer the question truthfully, and 
hopefully, constructively because of the great effort on 
the Internet and in the media to reconcile religion and 
science.  Mine is a mixed religion.  The maternal side 
reaches to The Church Of England and the paternal 
side practiced the Yankee religion, which consists of 
the Lords Prayer, The Ten Commandments, and a 
decent respect for both God and Satan.  The older I get, 
the more I am convinced that pure evil is the only 
explanation for some of the things that happen.

But I find much of interest in the Bible that has 
not been taught by any of the established 
religions, and some of that interesting material 
is presented in the old note below:

Again, I thank the author of the above e-mail for 
his/her inquiry and look forward to reading the 
whole message.

Kind regards,

Wes Burt
>>>>>>> Begin old note <<<<<<<

Two Missing Articles of Economic Rights & Responsibilities
Graphical micro model, Figure 7-9, at URL
http://www.freespeech.org/darves/bert.html
and at URL
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/3142/IR/items//19990119
WesBurtSustainableFuture.html

Here are two rarely acknowledged, and often misrepresented, 
articles of economic rights and responsibilities which have been 
handed down to us by succeeding generations of patriarchs, 
prophets, and poets.  These articles were ancient when Moses 
broke the first two tables of the Law and hid the second two tables 
in the Ark of the Covenant to keep the Whole Law from becoming 
the public property of the Israelites.  

The first article is a statement of the Economic Right of a person 
or capital asset while in development, and still dependent on external 
support.  The second is a statement of the Economic Responsibility 
of a person or capital asset while in production, and capable of 
being independent of all external support.  Together, the two articles 
are the moral authority which enables and defines the optimum 
financial structure of a community, a corporation, or a 
commonwealth.  

Where the people have sufficient vision to teach and conform to the 
two articles, the people prosper.  Where the two articles are violated 
to a sufficient degree, the wealthy, healthy, intelligent, and powerful 
part of the population (the Whips) may still prosper for a while, but 
the people slowly perish.

We are most familiar with a poetic version of these two articles which 
Karl Marx borrowed from Louis Blanc, who in turn, probably got the 
sense of them from Thomas Paine's AGRARIAN JUSTICE or THE 
RIGHT'S OF MAN, part II.  Marx then presented them in the inverse 
order and out of sequence with their consequent effects, when he 
wrote in his 1875 CRITIQUE OF THE GOTHA PROGRAM:

"After labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; 
after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round 
development of the individual, and the springs of cooperative wealth 
flow more abundantly -- only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois 
right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: 
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!""

In this sequence Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and their successors gave the 
world a seventy-two year experiment with communism which failed in 
the USSR and is losing ground everywhere else.  Surely Marx, Lenin, 
Stalin, and their successors did not intend the consequent results; 
that the Soviet Union should fail, that the future as visualized by 19th 
and 20th century intellectuals should revert to a Democratic 
Capitalism in which the human assets are as well capitalized as the 
physical assets.

I am pleased to propose the two articles, which express the economic 
keynote of an optimum community, corporation, or commonwealth, 
in the sequence in which they naturally occur in the lifecycle of each 
individual reproducible productive capital or human asset.  They are 
numbered as they might have been listed among the twelve Moral 
Commandments promulgated at Mt. Sinai, of which we are taught only 
ten; or as they might have been listed among the first twelve "articles in 
addition to, and Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of 
America," of which the States ratified only ten in 1789 to constitute the 
American Bill of Rights.  

Fortunately for us, the omission of these two articles did not become 
critical in America until the onset of industrialization in the 1890s. 

#5, TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS NEED, 
while in development and dependent on external support.

Only when this article has been satisfied throughout the development 
period of the capital or human asset, will "the springs of cooperative 
wealth flow more abundantly" when the asset begins to produce, as 
every successful businessman has learned the hard way.

#6, FROM EACH ACCORDING TO HIS ABILITY,
 while in production and independent of external support.

This article prescribes, not an equalization of condition at the margin 
of subsistence by taxation of all income in excess of subsistence 
exemptions, as some people claim, but a "Flat Tax" (% of income) on 
all income "from whatever source derived," as set forth in the 16th 
amendment to the Constitution of the United States.   #6 also defines 
the structure of the real 
property tax of local governments, as it operated prior to the 1890s to 
provide education, infrastructure, and justice, while the US was still a 
nation of property owning farmers and small businessmen.  Today's 
total tax rates range from 23% in Turkey to 55% in Sweden, with the 
US, Switzerland, and Japan clustered around the Biblical tax rate of 
three tithes, or 30% of Gross Domestic Product. 

To the contrary, the late great USSR collected 92% of its public 
revenue from indirect taxes, which increase the market price 
of subsistence, and only 8% from taxes on personal incomes, 
according to the taxpayer's ability to pay.  There is no surer 
way to arrest the economic and moral progress of a 
corporation or commonwealth than to impair its reproductive 
process by raising the price of necessities for those 
"parenting" families and firms which are producing the 
productive assets for the future.

Once again, friends, nothing I might say at this point can more 
clearly convey the spirit with which I submit these two articles 
of Economic Rights and Responsibilities, which are indeed the 
keystone of an economic philosophy, than the words of Rene 
Descartes in his 1641 letter to The Faculty Of Theology at Paris. 
He wrote, in part, concerning his "Meditations DE Prima 
Philosophia:"

"It is different in philosophy, where it is believed that there is nothing 
about which it is not possible to argue on either side.  Thus few people 
engage in the search for truth, and many, who wish to acquire a 
reputation as clever thinkers, bend all their efforts to arrogant opposition 
to the most obvious truths. ----- That is why, Gentlemen, since my 
arguments belong to philosophy, however strong they may be, I do not 
suppose that they will have any effect unless you take them under your 
protection."

>>>>>> End, 1641 world view of Rene Descartes <<<<<<<

Best Regards,
WesBurt@aol.com

>>>>>>>> End old note <<<<<<<