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A Calvinist Defense of "Anarcho-Capitalism"
Many forms of government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
Winston Churchill, House of Commons, 11 Nov. 1947
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Why "Biblically?" |
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The Bible is a blueprint for human action in every field of endeavor. The Bible is a "textbook" in political science and economics just as much as it is a textbook in religion. The rejection of this textbook brings tyranny and mass death. |
In an article in Free Inquiry, Fall, 1995, entitled The Founding Fathers Were Not Christians, Steven Morris claims:
The Christian right is trying to rewrite the history of the United States as part of its campaign to force its religion on others. They try to depict the founding fathers as pious Christians who wanted the United States to be a Christian nation, with laws that favored Christians and Christianity.
Morris is like many left-of-center anti-Christian writers who fear that if the "Religious Right" gains political power, there are going to be policemen crawling all over atheists, homosexuals, drug-users, and others who live off the Christian social capital of the past. Everything Morris says about American history is wrong, as we have shown, except the fact that the Founding Fathers did not envision a nation governed by priests. They did, however, believe in a nation "under God" (which is the meaning of the word "theocracy"). They believed in a government of very limited powers, but one which was, nevertheless, committed to Biblical principles.
Believing them to resolve the conflict between atheist liberals and Christian conservatives, Vine & Fig Tree takes these two ideas seriously:
We maximize both "limited" and "God." We urge less and less power for the government and more and more obedience toward God. We do not seek to "impose" Christianity through fines and imprisonment. We seek to move our nation ever closer to "anarchy" and "Theocracy." The best (though still alarming) name for the system of social organization we believe the Bible teaches is "Laissez-Faire Theocracy."
“Capitalism” is widely understood to be the opposite of “socialism.” Capitalism delegates economic functions to the private (rather than the public) sector, relying on the “invisible hand” of the free market to allocate resources in the most efficient way. Pure laissez-faire capitalism is a radically consistent capitalism, seeing all human action as an economic function, and therefore appropriately directed by market forces.
Most generic capitalists reserve several economic functions to the public or governmental sector: National Defense, punishment of criminals, and resolution of contractual disputes. Some capitalists would also include certain utilities (water, electricity) as necessitating a public monopoly. Pure laissez-faire capitalists would remove all of these functions from political monopoly and allow them to be provided by the free market.
This essay equates pure laissez-faire capitalism and a term that is growing in popularity, especially on the Internet: "anarcho-capitalism." Pure laissez-faire capitalism, we contend, advocates the abolition of the State.
Anarcho-Capitalist Bibliography
It is the purpose of this website to offer a Biblical (Calvinist) justification for the complete abolition of all socialism. The post office is socialist. The welfare system is socialist. The military, the police, the FBI and the CIA are all socialist. We would abolish them all. In short, we would abolish "the State" entirely.
Clearly, some of these institutions or organizations provide morally legitimate services. There's nothing immoral about placing "letters" in someone's "mailbox." It is currently against the law for FedEx to put "first class mail" in anyone's mailbox. Delivery of "first-class mail" is a government monopoly. We believe the existence of government monopolies, which fund these legitimate services by force or threats of violence, is immoral. We would replace the post office and all other government agencies which provide legitimate services with home businesses or corporations which provide the same social services on a voluntary basis, without funding their businesses through confiscation of wealth and threats of enslavement or death.
Those government agencies which do not perform morally legitimate services should, of course, be abolished and not replaced by free market substitutes.
As Calvinists we believe in the Sovereignty of God. We believe that every individual, every family, every voluntary association, every business -- even every nation-state, every empire, and every other organized criminal syndicate -- is morally (Biblically) obligated to bring every area of life under the jurisdiction of God and His Word.
"Theocracy" comes from two Greek words,
Theos, God, and kratein, to rule.
A Theocracy is where God rules,
or governs.
Every human action and relationship should be "Theocratic."
You hear that phrase thrown around a lot these days. Everybody wants their idea to be the next "paradigm shift." Paradigm-shifters are now mainstream. We believe Vine & Fig Tree represents a true break with the status quo, a change as momentous as that described by Benjamin Rush, Signer of the Declaration of Independence, upon hearing of Locke's rejection of the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings:
Never before had I heard the authority of kings called in question. I had been taught to consider them nearly as essential to political order as the sun is to the order of our solar system.
Vine & Fig Tree really is a new "paradigm," a "Copernican revolution," a radical way of looking at politics and society. It is one step beyond the radical vision that motivated America's Founding Fathers. It is a vision so old that it appears to be utterly unprecedented.
The vision of Vine & Fig Tree gives energy and hope to those who work for it. It inspires dedicated action.
| Lawrence Cremin writes: |
American Education: The National Experience,
1783-1876, |
For Rush, who was present in the Congress as a representative of Pennsylvania, the events surrounding the creation of the Republic marked nothing less than a turning point in the course of human history. "I was animated constantly," he reflected in later years, "by a belief that I was acting for the benefit of the whole world, and of future ages, by assisting in the formation of new means of political order and general happiness."11
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11. The Autobiography of Benjamin Rush, edited by George W. Corner (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1948), p.161.
I am convinced that Vine & Fig Tree will contribute to the Glory of God and the greater happiness of mankind. It will animate future leaders and captivate the hearts and minds of many. I know it's captivated me, and I get enough enthusiastic e-mail from people who have discovered the Vine & Fig Tree web pages (even though I haven't listed them with any search engines yet) to believe that there is something here that will resonate with a broad section of Americans.
Dr. Rush speaks of "a turning point," which is to speak of a turning from something to something else. From what should we turn? To what should we aspire?
I believe we must move
Many people balked at the "turning point" which the Declaration of Independence represented. Many will balk at Vine & Fig Tree -- it is the overthrowing of ideas which many have believed are as essential to social order or the Christian faith "as the sun is to the order of our solar system." You may have already heard some of the leading lights of the Christian Reconstruction movement denounce these ideas as heresy. But Vine & Fig Tree was the aspiration of many of America's Founding Fathers, and made America "the greatest nation on God's green earth" (Michael Medved). Read their hopes here.
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This proposal is the most controversial "paradigm shift" since the "divine right of kings" was overthrown by "the consent of the governed." But it is a shift that will benefit the world and extend the reign of King Jesus. It will animate great men like Benjamin Rush to attempt great things for God and resist great calumnies from the Sanballats and Tobiahs of our day. |
Detractors have called this vision "patriarchy," "anarchy," and "theocracy." In an age of sound-bites and slogans, when packaging is more important than substance, I admit I am hard-pressed to propose a consumer-tested label for Micah's Vine & Fig Tree vision. Perhaps the next generation will have to adopt the most popular label of our opponents, just as Marx coined "capitalism" and Bloody Mary derided Calvin's "Geneva Jigs."
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American Theocracy: The Genius of the Founding Fathers |
In 1776 America rejected the idea of "the Divine Right of Kings." The rejection of the idea of "the Divine Right of Kings" was Biblically proper. Monarchy was replaced by an experiment in "the consent of the governed." For various reasons, that experiment must now be judged a failure. We must continue along the lines that led to the end of the divine right of kings, reject the thinking that created the Government-run Post Office, and establish the divine right of the King of kings.
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My M.A. thesis at Simon Greenleaf: |
My goal is to set forth the basic outlines, blueprints, or "institutes" of this new social order in a well-researched and persuasively-stated manner that will allow people to break out of old patterns of thought, and raise up a new generation of Christian missionaries; missionaries in the fields of politics, economics, sociology, law, science, etc., who will guide these disciplines to Micah's world of Vine & Fig Tree.
"For the Americans," Tocqueville found, "the ideas of Christianity and
liberty are so completely mingled that it is almost impossible to get them to conceive
of one without the other; it is not a question with them of sterile beliefs bequeathed
by the past and vegetating rather than living in the depths of the soul."
Russell Kirk, The Roots of American Order, p. 448
America's Founding Fathers on the Importance of the Bible
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Desert Hot Springs, CA 92240
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