Upon awakening this morning,  I eventually wound my way downstairs to my office where I took to the Internet to check Emails (looking for customer responses) and then went over to Facebook to see who was posting and what was new.  One of my friends posted an article with the title “The Tragedy of Greta Thunberg.”  It is a typical response from a typical Right-winger type.  (Please read before proceeding. It’s short, I promise.)

Here are my thoughts on what I can only describe as a piece of journalistic trash.

What Greta is to the immoral, Communist Left, David Harsanyi is to the war-loving, Capitalist Right. Both of them are mindless automatons who are devoted to their political views with no regard for either the truth or the bigger picture. Since we know what the little Commie. Greta, is, I shall elucidate on Mr. Harsanyi’s failings:

*** Apparently, given the line under the heading – Our Lady of Sorrows – Mr. Harsanyi is a Roman Catholic. He appears to be one of those Roman Catholics, however who would actually be quite uncomfortable under either the biblical injunctions against greed (which is at the heart of Capitalism) or living in a time when his own Church forbade the charging of interest,  which is at the heart of the Capitalist system. He is also probably dismissive of G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Beloc, and Fr. Vincent McNabb, all of whom promoted a more biblical system of economics known as Distributism.

St. Paul said, “Having therewith food and raiment, let us therefore be content.” Capitalism knows of no such ideal. Indeed, the immorality of the Capitalist system is this: make money. Lots of it. TONS of it. In order to do this, you must get people to give you their money in exchange for something you have. And in order to do this, you must convince people that their lives are really unfulfilled, miserable, and unhappy unless they buy stuff. Lots of stuff. TONS of stuff.

How different from the admonition of St. Paul:  1 Timothy 6:8 “And having food and raiment let us be therewith content.”

Therewith be content?  Content? Not these people!

Thus, we have men dying with a net worth of over a billion dollars while people in their city struggle to buy medicine and food, as if Jesus Himself didn’t say that it is almost impossible for the rich to enter heaven. Capitalism, on the other hand, appears to promote an idea that if you are rich, you are certainly God’s favorite, and if you hit billionaire status (regardless of the suffering poor around you) you have guaranteed entry thru the Pearly Gates. It is an obscene economic system,  bullt on the blood and deaths of those who were not fortunate enough to be born into the right family.

It is also a system which Pope Leo XIII took to task in his encyclical, RERUM NAVARUM, for its abuses of power and the grinding down of the poor. And to be honest, if it weren’t for men and women organizing unions and standing against the Robber Barons of the 20th century, children would still be working 12 hour days, we would be paid about a dollar a day, and live in hovels. This is the rich, this is Capitalism, this is the system that Mr. Harsanyi defends as a professing follower of Christ.

He should be ashamed of himself.

But he won’t be. He is of the mindset that the acquisition of riches proves that A.) a system is correct B.) God approves of that system C.) everything else is evil. No, sir, what is evil is that we have a dozen people in the United States who own more wealth than some Third-World countries.

The proper system of economics for anyone who professes Christianity is Distributism. In Distributism, private property is defended, usury (credit on compounded interest) is prohibited, families are defended, and businesses are privately owned rather than owned by sociopaths who only care about the bottom line.

*** Climate Activism is a false god. Dear little Communist Greta ought to spend her time being outraged against a real extinction event which takes place every day – the killing of thousands of unborn and living childen in their mother’s wombs. But being a good little Leftist, real extinction, real suffering, a real crisis of gigantic moral proportions – this is off-limits to her.

We call this “hypocrisy,” and she is a screaming example of this.

So this is what I wrote. For those of you who wish to understand better what Distributism is, I recommend their website, The Distributist Review.

Mr. Harsanyi apparently doesn’t understand that Capitalism is an outgrowth of a heretical religious system known as Calvinism. In his book,  The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber shows how this system developed, primarily in the United States by Puritan Calvinists  who needed to find a way to assure themselves that they were “of the elect” and thus would escape hell. For them, success (i.e. accumulation of wealth) was the sure sign. American Catholics have accepted this idea whole-heartedly, following their Capitalist masters into owning as much crap as possible while igorning the plight of the poor. The Left may be immorally insane and stupid followers of Communism, but if “Christians” in America had taken care of the poor instead of exploiting them (and then going to church on Sunday with a big ole KJV Bible tucked under their arms and pious looks on their faces), Communism would probably have never gotten a hearing in this country. People who know they are loved and who are happy with their state in life don’t tend to listen to rabble-rousers intent on turning over the social order and destroying things.

Mr. Harsanyi doesn’t understand that we live in a society which is pyschologically manipulated into acting according to the desires of our masters. He has allowed himself to be more influenced by the teachings of Edward Bernays and the German Economic School of thought than by the words of Jesus and the Catholic faith. To better understand this, Google “Edward Bernays” and discover how the principles of psychological manipulation have come to dominate our landscape, especially in the field of advertizing.

The Left has a number of valid objections to life in America – not the least of which is the way that Capitalism has run amok and destroyed lives. Big Pharma, the Eternal War Machine, Banksters and Wall Street Thugs – these are some of their concerns that we as  Christians should share. I doubt David Harsanyi does. He is probably too busy counting the dollars in his bank account.

 

*** Well, this is a tad embarrassing. I have just been informed (and verified on the Internet) that Harsanyi is Jewish and an atheist. Which leads me to wonder why The Federalist would publish his piece with the sub-title Our Lady of Sorrows???  Was this deliberate or an oversight? Perhaps the editors of The Federalist are Catholic, in which case they should be ashamed to publish such tripe.  Either way, I am leaving this piece up because there are literally millions of Catholics who do fit the profile of American Capitalist Catholicism which I have presented in this piece.

*** Greta is, sadly, a pawn in a larger game of which she is unaware. I found out about her autism after I wrote this piece.  In regards to Greta, it appears that the Left, who do not give a rat’s ass about children if they are unborn, are once again using a child to get sympathy points and promote their agenda. This is despicable. Greta is apparently a high-functioning and quite intelligent girl who, because of her autism, is easily aroused emotionally. Her Leftist parents see no problem in using her to achieve their ends, no matter what emotional damage may be happening to her. I will leave my comments up, but I regret calling her a “good little Commie.” Her parents are Antifa members, Leftists, and apparently have no moral qualms about using their kid for political purposes.