Blogging Around #2

Jacob's post discussed the dialectic between capitalism and socialism in the U.S.
I said:

I would agree with you that the U.S. (and most of the world) rests somewhere between capitalism and socialism. However, I think the "capitalism" you describe is closer to anarchy. In my understanding, capitalism recognizes a place for government--it enforces contracts between people and businesses, upholds rights, etc. What isn't capitalist is when governments start doing the job of businesses--providing goods and services such as health care. You could argue that pure capitalism is not realistic or desirable, but it is a little less extreme and more viable than the anarchy you described.

Merrick's post talked about the relationship between religion and hatred. I said:

I agree that hatred and religion are often connected to each other, but I don't think it's fair to say that religion itself causes hatred. I would argue that hatred comes from people manipulating and exploiting religion for their own ends. Many of the examples you give are less an example of people doing bad things because of religion and more of people using religious differences to justify whatever they are doing. Obviously this is a real problem, but it's not one that's unique to religion. From history we can see that any compelling idea--from the promise of life after death, to the belief in the greatness of one's country--can be exploited and used to justify hatred and violence. Obviously, exploiting these powerful ideas can have dire consequences, like the hatred you describe in your post. But this hatred does not have to be a part of religion, and most of the time it is not.