Someone in the LRB, forget which issue, wrote that when one takes Economics at the uni he’s really only studying Capitalism, since that is the only system that is ever seriously discussed.

Posted by: ruralito | Sep 23 2013 17:41 utc | 3

Xtians believe that God had a Son; something, as I hear, Islam is dead-set against. At some point, this irreconcilable has to cause a ruction.

Posted by: ruralito | Sep 23 2013 17:54 utc | 5

Whether Xians believe that God has sons, daughters, aunts and uncles, or for that matter a whole harem of wives, is relatively unimportant. Much more to the point is that Xians believe in the sanctity of private property, just like Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews and members of any other faiths that aspire to respectability. That means, in practice, that no matter how sentimentally populist they may get, they will kill commies with the best of them.

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Sep 23 2013 18:42 utc | 7

it doesn’t matter, it’s not like he’s ruling the financial show… But as long as this message is received & digested by billions of people worldwide, it provides a shift in the right direction, as small as it is compared to our usual daily media crap. and we should appreciate it , whether we’re atheists jews christians martians muslims pastafarians, homo/hetero/bi, who gives a shit…

Posted by: zingaro | Sep 23 2013 19:48 utc | 9

Mr Pragma
In our society, to go against the World is a sure proof of insanity. If a member of any branch of the US government said the things that Francis did, say, on a Monday, then on Tuesday his best friends wouldn’t talk to him, and on Wednesday he would be an unperson, his name forgotten, or a dirty word.
Of course the rest of us nobodies can grumble all we want – no one is listening anyway. Like the dogs of a certain country: they don’t feed you much, but you can bark all you like.
And when you call Francis a “liberal”, specifically who are you comparing him to?

Posted by: rackstraw | Sep 23 2013 22:04 utc | 11

I meant to use this link – John Paul I.

Posted by: juannie | Sep 23 2013 22:24 utc | 13

claudio,
I’m presently reading Howard Zinn’s “The Twentieth Century” and am so disillusioned by the cynical pragmatism of the leaders such as Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower and even Kennedy around the issue of human rights and civil liberties, in regards to all of the working class but especially black Americans. Their civil liberties advances were but ploys to quiet the minds of the dispossessed and were given little power of enforcement; so the revolutionary attitudes were quelled and the captains of capitalism could continue to amass fortunes at the expense of the working class as well as the natural world. My skepticism about the ruling elites is almost total. I have almost zero trust in anything coming out of the mainstream global world. As in the previous thread, of course Kerry can’t be trusted. Nor can Obama or any of the rest of our government or corporate honchos. The only time they tell the truth is when it just happens to coincide with their agenda.

Posted by: juannie | Sep 23 2013 23:11 utc | 15

juannie, I haven’t read that book, but the 20th century, in its central part, has seen a real general trend towards more equality: social advances were real, thanks to mass movements and organized labor; civil right issues are another matter, also regarding their enforcement; I’ll read the book when I can, we all feel the need for a general appraisal

My skepticism about the ruling elites is almost total. I have almost zero trust in anything coming out of the mainstream global world

I agree; I think after the end of the sixties movements, and then the collapse of the USSR, we were rolled back to the world of the late XIXth century: plutocracy, militarism, colonialism, darwinism; but without a socialist movement and leftist parties

Posted by: claudio | Sep 24 2013 1:05 utc | 17

Love the Popes’ rhetoric, can the church actions match it? But, at least we have a religious leader actually saying something relevant. He better watch his back.

Posted by: ben | Sep 24 2013 2:25 utc | 19

@ 19
Thanks for posting that Ben…
Mr. P’s statement “… it’s about annihilation of structure and order. And that’s quite exactly what liberalism is.” has me flummoxed!
@ 17 Mr. P… are you referring to ‘Neoliberalism’? rather than liberalism?

Posted by: Crone | Sep 24 2013 3:00 utc | 21

The Pope is a Jesuit? Ay mi madre santisima, there is goin to be a lot of trouble. The priest need to marry, the Vatican ambassador to Dominican Republic fled the country and is now being sought by the prosecutor for molesting children and a deacon say’s he was that sad creature’s lover. No no no this will not help the holy father one bit. Priests should be allowed to marry and have families. The current system is crumbling, I don’t accept women priests, just like I don’t accept female imams.

Posted by: Fernando | Sep 24 2013 5:13 utc | 23

Ben @ 18 says, “But, at least we have a religious leader actually saying something relevant. He better watch his back.”
Ayatollah Khamenei has been on the leading edge of relevance for a generation and more. The English section of his website might be decent and worth a visit if you are interested in relevance, real and actual relevance, from a religious leader.

Posted by: Unknown Unknowns | Sep 24 2013 8:05 utc | 25

Mr P, you have a theory lurking in there which could easily be extrapolated in a very right-wing way. Let’s untangle this a bit. Historically, ‘liberalism’ arose along with the nascent capitalist bourgeoisie at a time when feudal monsters still roamed the land. Therefore, first and foremost, it was opposed to ‘the Divine Right of Kings’ and similar claptrap espoused by The Church. Out of this come, on the one hand, a defense of the free market (which of course never was that, since it was dominated by corporations, such as the various East India and West India Companies, from the word go); on the other hand, a determination to push religion, and ‘religious values’, out of public life. That is still the heritage of ‘liberalism’, and one shouldn’t allow the manipulated ‘colour’ (or ‘color’) revolutions pioneered by the CIA, to obscure it. Don’t forget, the CIA used a dialectical strategy on Russia (some even call it, rather unfairly, a ‘Hegelian strategy’): they backed and funded ‘progressive’ and ‘reactionary’ fringe groups at one and the same time, the purpose being to destabilise the actually existing state, which operationally can be defined as ‘centrist’. They funded right-wing religious fanatics (pravoslavic Tsarists) at the same time as they funded ultra-progressive cultural dissident groups such as militant gays & feminists. You get the idea?

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Sep 24 2013 12:14 utc | 27

Thank you Mr P. I often think about this problem, so I hope I have indeed become good at explaining it. But the obvious danger when the ‘progressive’ ultra-liberals are as you say sapping the fibre of the nation, is to resort of a sort of Evolian reaction, and in fact Evola is well worth reading so that you know what you’re dealing with. The people who performed the ‘strategy of tension’ bombings in Italy in the 1970s were Evolians. Wikipedia rather surprisingly says on its ‘strategy of tension‘ page:

Carlo Digilio, an Italian neofascist codenamed “Uncle Otto” coordinated CIA activities in the Italian Regions of Veneto and Friuli from the 1960s to the 1970s, recruiting former fascists to serve the NATO and US interests in Italy. He himself had been recruited in Verona by US Navy captain David Carrett. In 1998, David Carrett was indicted by a Milanese magistrate, Guido Salvini, on charge of political and military espionage and his participation in the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing, among other events. Judge Guido Salvini also opened a case against Sergio Minetto, Italian official for the US-NATO intelligence network, and pentito Carlo Digilio. La Repubblica underlined that Carlo Rocchi, the CIA’s man in Milan, was surprised in 1995 searching for information concerning Operation Gladio, thus demonstrating that all was not over.

But the person I was thinking of was Franco Freda, who was a declared Evolian. Evola himself, until 1945, had been vehemently anti-Jewish (I don’t like the expression ‘anti-Semitic’, since to me it implies a race theory which is seldom actually relevant any more). But after 1945, Evola’s anti-communism and general anti-leftism became so dominant that he began to see USrael (and he knew perfectly well what it was, a Jewish-dominated imperial system), as preferable to any further ‘cultural degeneration’ produced by the Left. So his hatred of liberalism became, in the end, a sort of sub-fascism in the service of NATO. This will never, of course, happen to you, my dear Mr P, but hatred of liberalism can do that.

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Sep 24 2013 13:09 utc | 29

The new Pope has given French Catholics a new breath and impulse.
sidebar:
The demos for-against gay marriage in F rested almost purely on pro-Sark and pro-Hollande, and had nothing to do with their electorate’s religious affiliation or their traditional family values.
First off, Catholics (or Zombie Catholics as E. Todd calls them -1) won the election for Socialist Mitterand, and even more strongly this last time round for Hollande. To make it clear, the more religious, observant and traditional came out for gay marriage (pro Hollande), and the most libertarian, traditionally Protestant, least family oriented, pro-Sark, came out against, a bizarre switcheroo.
The FN did not campaign on gay marriage and polls show its members were pro- and anti- gay marriage in French average proportions, far more for than against. The FN in F is a centrist party (footnotes skipped.)
The Catholics are trying to create a platform between various factions who oppose current financial etc. Gvmt. functioning, and have reached out to — dissident and radical economists! Which has sort of surprised both of them.
All of this partly due to the French MSM being the absolutepits – far far worse than the US MSM. Which has had as a result that ‘alternative’ media, groups and associations, etc. are moving forward as best as can, fast clip, or slow confusion.
1- not an insult, meaning Catholic tradition, etc. without full observance, more of a sociological definition, related to F regions, etc.

Posted by: Noirette | Sep 24 2013 13:52 utc | 31

@29 Very interesting, thank you.

Posted by: guest77 | Sep 25 2013 0:24 utc | 33

@32
Sorry Cynthia, though there are certainly huge numbers of people getting very rich in China and a great number of poor, the US and Europe are out pacing them in the stratification of their societies exponentially.

Posted by: guest77 | Sep 25 2013 1:10 utc | 35

“Just look at zusa and you’ll see what degenerated bio-waste liberalism has made out of what once were human beings, lowly human beings, yes, but human beings. And those bio-waste creatures are terrorizing the world, beautiful countries with high culture like Iran; they terrorize Russia with biowaste sluts like pussy riot so as to tear it apart and to “liberalize” it and make it part of their “liberal” empire.”
This is demented, Mr Pragma.
Regarding people as “bio-waste” whether they are Iranians or Americans reveals a very nasty attitude which is unjustified by any arguments to be found in your batshit, be-speckled rants.
You call Liberalism, Capitalism and Socialism equivalents “triplets”. They are actually am occasion to ask which is the odd man out?
Capitalism and Socialism can be defined as alternative socio-economic systems. Liberalism cannot. On the other hand Socialism and Liberalism are rival political perspectives. Capitalism is not.
What is wrong with liberalism is not that it promotes individual rights or that it promotes individualism in the forming of characters and opinions or that it promotes rule by the people but that it does none of these things and degrades them all into submission to the rule of capital. In the end it becomes fascism, which strikes me as being the direction in which you are headed too.

Posted by: bevin | Sep 25 2013 4:07 utc | 37

I’m with RB @ 7 and Mr P et al on religion.
My favourite ‘dead give-away’ is the dubious habit of inducting children into the religion of their parents before they’re old enough to have an informed opinion and without advising them of their Consumer Right to terminate a contract made under ‘duress’ – which pressure from ‘family’ on an unworldly minor – most certainly is.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Sep 25 2013 7:18 utc | 39

bevin (37)
Your “arguments” can be summarized as
– Mom Uber-Ich reprimanding “One doesn’t do that!”
– rationalizing and redefining terms so as to fit within usual system bounds (and indirectly calling me uneducated)
– Indicating that one might put a “fascist” tag on me.
I’m not impressed.
And, of course, I stand with my statement. zamericans are bio-waste and they demonstrate that sufficiently.
The only counter-position that would have made some sense would be to be picky in assuming that “the zamericans” meant to include each and every one of them – which is obviously not the case. “the zamericans” means the mass, the greatest part but clearly spares the very few with intelligence, education, culture, and human qualities (PissedOffAmerican comes to mind as such an exemption).
Btw, one of the reasons I don’t care for academia games (likes those above) any more is that academia is a) part of establishment, payed by it and playing to its tune and b) so bloodily wrong, perverted, ill conceived and arbitrary, particularly in the humanities, social and political sciences.
Kindly note that this post does not constitute an invitation or acceptance to discuss this sideline any further but rather a friendly act of courtesy.

Posted by: Mr. Pragma | Sep 25 2013 10:58 utc | 41