[lbo-talk] Blue Dogs cashing in

Matthias Wasser matthias.wasser at gmail.com
Wed Aug 5 10:20:29 PDT 2009


On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 1:11 PM, Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:


> Post-Protestant? Most Americans are Protestants.
>
> Anyway, I think turning this into a free will issue (which Miles seems to
> have been doing) is missing the point. Free will on the part of the
> individual is neither unique to capitalist ideology, nor inherent in it. It
> predates capitalism by quite some time, being central to Catholic doctrine
> and the Middle Ages as a whole. Nor does capitalism have any problem
> coexisting with the notion of predestination, i.e., fate.
>

This may or may not be incidental, but the libertarian form of free will and the theological notion of predestination are orthogonals, not opposites. Predestination doesn't say anything about whether one's actions are predetermined - whether by mechanical or subjective forces inside or outside the person - but rather that those actions have no effect on one's salvation.



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