This is an archived copy of a post written by Conflict Of Justice (conflictofjustice.com). Used with permission: Conflict Of Justice may not agree with any alterations made.
“Corporations are people.” (Mitt Romney)
It used to be that both Democrats and Republicans were religious. Now, Christians are decidedly in the Republicans camp, and especially Latter-day Saints. There are plenty of theories for why this is. Ask almost any conservative Christian and they will tell you the left-wing is increasingly atheistic and anti-Christian in rhetoric and behavior. Probably so, yet when I look at right-wing rhetoric in Fox News and other conservative media, I see plenty of rhetoric that goes against the gospel as well. The most prolific and damaging example is the right-wing obsession with business. Financial newspapers and TV channels lean right-wing. Fox News talks about it more than anything else: the economy. Everything is about the economy and getting prices to rise in the stock market. This is for some reason what poor Republican voters in Mississippi are more concerned with than anything else.
It started when political pundits separated social conservatives from economic conservatives. Which side is going to become more popular in this split? Economic conservatives, every time, because the most important thing to people is having the means to live a comfortable life. Social concerns are a luxury we can only have once our material needs are met. “Social conservatism” became a joke in the realm of politics, and conservatives became obsessed with decreasing taxes, decreasing government regulation, and handing economic power to big corporations. This gave the entire right-wing an image of coldness and inhuman energy. But did the same kind of split happen on the left-wing? Not really. Marxism started out as a chiefly economic philosophy, but Marxists and Socialists cleverly were able to integrate the two sides. Economics is downstream of social culture, they realized. The right-wing and Fox News has not learned this lesson–or more likely, it is not profitable for them to treat it this way. That’s because Fox News and the media is run by corporations, and corporations obviously will want a corporate-friendly environment. What has ended up happening is the right-wing is corporate-friendly economically, and the right-wing is corporate-friendly socially, and we now live in a one-party corporatocracy. So, I find it useful not to speak in terms of right-wing or left-wing as people commonly do, but to speak in terms of economic versus social oligarchy. Oligarchal economics and social policy are opposing forces in many ways but both serve to fuel a society run by large international businesses. Most people don’t think they are fueling big corporate dominion, but they are. Everything else is bread and circuses.
Once I accepted this political portrait of the American landscape, I began to realize we are a society run by corporations, and the focus needs to be on corporations versus people if we are to revolve on to something else. As I read old sermons by Brigham Young, much of what he said about economy counters right-wing belief today. He believed in preserving natural resources, not opening everything up for mining and drilling, for example. It’s pretty obvious why we oppose the social ideals of the left-wing–things like abortion–but why don’t people talk about the religious ethics of right-wing economic ideals? I was shocked when I lived in Germany to hear people railing from the pulpit against conservative economic ideas, and at first I thought it was just left-wing politics inappropriately invading religious space, as they tend to do. But finally I had to admit to myself that there was something to it–their disdain for Bush’s “war for oil” and so forth. The problem is that it is easy to complain about something, but what is your solution to fix it? Everything boils down to pretty much two solutions economically and socially: the gospel or Socialism. Those are your two ways. And you are just as likely to get people pushing Socialism as the solution in church as anywhere else. In fact, Socialism was invented by mainstream Christianity.
Law Of Sacrifice Versus Idolatry
They best way I have found to discern which path somebody is preaching is to look at which law of sacrifice they espouse. That’s because Socialism’s version of the Law of Sacrifice is basically the idolatry of ancient times which we read about in the scriptures. First, we need to understand what sacrifice really is. The Sunday School answer is that it is giving up one thing for something better. Well, yeah, that’s a principle that we learn as children. That’s what currency is based on. We sell a truck full of hay in exchange for some green pieces of paper, and then we exchange the green pieces of paper for a cellular phone that was made by a factory. But what sets the gospel’s version of sacrifice apart from the world’s? The purpose of the gospel’s Law of Sacrifice is to prove that we are willing to do anything to keep our covenants with God and be worthy of the celestial kingdom. “It is through the medium of the sacrifice of all earthly things that men do actually know that they are doing the things that are well pleasing in the sight of God. When a man has offered in sacrifice all that he has for the truth’s sake, not even withholding his life, and believing before God that he has been called to make this sacrifice because he seeks to do his will, he does know, most assuredly, that God does and will accept his sacrifice and offering, and that he has not, nor will not seek his face in vain. Under these circumstances, then, he can obtain the faith necessary for him to lay hold on eternal life.” (Joseph Smith, Lectures on Faith)
It’s not just about giving ten percent of our paycheck or being willing to give everything we own if called upon. It’s actually doing it. It’s about actually consecrating everything we have to the cause of spreading the gospel and assuring our personal salvation. Once we perform this action, and only once we perform it, can we know that we have faith sufficient for exaltation. Now, pernicious Antimormons will tempt us by saying we are evil for not giving all our money to charitable groups. Antimormons say this all the time. They tempt us by pointing out that the church itself owns a big corporation. “The corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” If the church practices what it preaches, why doesn’t it give away all of this material wealth to the poor? Of course, the Antimormons who tempt us don’t actually give much to the poor themselves, if any. They don’t truly care about the poor; it’s just about attacking us. But the answer is that it is good and helpful to have material wealth. There’s nothing wrong with that. The church’s mall in Salt Lake City facilitates small businesses and gives people paychecks to take care of their families. The church teaches people how to fish instead of handing out free fish, so to speak. Corporations themselves aren’t what’s evil. It is possible for a corporation to be wholly dedicated to enriching people spiritually, and that’s what the church’s financial assets are for. Individually, it’s okay for each of us to have financial wealth as well, just as long as it is 100% dedicated to spiritual enrichment of ourselves and others.
Idolatrous Sacrifice – In ancient times people sacrificed material goods and even people to superstitious gods, and this was a huge problem that constantly was corrupting the people of God. Why doesn’t that happen today? Does that happen today? I think so. People are not slaughtering animals on altars like in ancient times, but people certainly commit the same kind of idolatrous sacrifice just as often today. Probably more often. It is the Socialistic version of the law of sacrifice, and its foundations rest on the idea of the “social contract.” The early caveman learned that if he stored some of the meat from the elephant he killed he would have some later to eat when he was hungry again. Sacrifice some now for a better experience later. Look ahead. Then, the early caveman discovered that if he shared some of the meat with a nearby tribe, they would in turn share some of their meat when he didn’t have any. We understand that the good of the group is what is better for us individually, and we are willing to sacrifice so we all get along and are all enriched. For the greater good. When someone achieves greatness through strength and hard work, at what point do they start being damaging to the community and need to be stopped? When they start chopping down all the trees in the forests to fuel the furnaces in their factories. When they start controlling what we are allowed to say and do. This is the classic struggle between the controlling rich and the poor. Social justice limits the reward and power of upper-class achievers to ameliorate the rights of the poor. Merit is sacrificed for the sake of equal rights. We all recognize the need for this kind of sacrifice. This is the social contract we all agree to, and it is the basis of idolatrous sacrifice.
The big difference between the gospel’s true law of sacrifice and social justice is that the gospel’s purpose was not to abase the billionaire or some privileged achiever, and was not grounded on the idea that successful people achieved success at the cost of the underprivileged like Marxists think of it. We do not treat success as a zero sum game and we do not divide people by classes. The wealthy sits next to the poor and partakes of the sacrament from the same tray. We do not sacrifice merit for equality. Equality and merit can co-exist–though it is near impossible to achieve because it can only be based on individual virtue–it is voluntary and ‘on your honor’–and we simply aren’t there yet. Socialism seeks to perform exact reparation for injury through distribution, and big corporations willingly perform sacrifices in order to be enriched to a greater degree by the “greater good.”
Gaining Power, Not Money – This is why I shake my head when social conservatives talk about boycotting a business over some woke commercial. When has that ever worked? Next time a big corporation signals their virtue to Socialists with some degenerate commercial, keep track of their stock prices in the following weeks and months. It goes up. Every time. Why? Shouldn’t their stock go down because so many people were outraged by their behavior? Doesn’t they mean they have less customers. Maybe, but gaining power in business is not all about having the most customers. It’s not even about having the most revenue. For all the right-wing obsession over revenue and making money, corporations aren’t really all about making money. Money is just a tool for power, and their end goal is centralizing power. Corporations are the farmer who shows up at a wild field and puts up fencing to claim it as his. Even if the amount of wealth in a business sector decreases overall, it is worth it to a business if they are able to centralize everything under their control. Corporations do not exist to make money. Corporations exist to conquer and control.
This is Socialism’s law of sacrifice, and it explains why corporations are willing to do things that lose them customers and lose money. They understand that sacrifice will yield good results. Yesterday, I watched an interesting documentary about the “discreet lives of the super-rich” by German public television. Billionaires try to be discreet because nobody wants to be a rich snob, like the prince at the beginning of Aladdin who yells at the orphan children: “Only your fleas will mourn you!” Every billionaire will say that he has a kind heart and has the interests of the poor in mind, and maybe it’s true. Lots of billionaires have charitable organizations and genuinely want the world to be a better place. The problem is the smartest billionaire has no clue how to achieve that. Even Elon Musk has not invented a way to achieve world peace, and all the money in the world cannot alter human nature. Their solutions tend to be more social justice, more sacrificing for the greater good, and the inevitable result is more idolatry, and more distance from the true law of sacrifice.
Facebook experiences historic stock market losses after reportedly placing new levels of censorship. Twitter likewise. Starbucks closes stores after caving in to politically-correct demands. George Soros and his recent debacle with Vice News is another great example. In May, “philanthropist” billionaire George Soros provided $250 million of debt funding for floundering media corporation Vice News. And around the same time Vice News attacked the church with a fake news hit piece, which was also hypocritical considering Vice News’s own serious sex scandals. Why did they engage in this fake news hit piece? Maybe they thought it was the right thing to do? Maybe they thought it would make the world a better place? I don’t know, but in this case it did not enrich themselves in the end. HBO recently canceled Vice News’s TV show. As the saying goes: go woke, get broke.
When a big billionaire talks about social responsibility and giving back to the community, that is the time to go running. Their solution will be social justice, and it will either end up selfishly enriching themselves or bankrupting the company. The only way for a billionaire to avoid becoming the great and spacious building in Lehi’s dream is to give away all his wealth to the poor. That’s it. All attempts at humanitarianism just makes them another oligarch. Beyond the top 1%, we can frequently see how followers of social justice fulfill their sacrifice for the greater good under the social contract. You win some, you lose some. Some rise up to become the controlling oligarchs, and most become casualties along the way. But they each understand that they need to sacrifice for the greater good to establish the social justice system in the world, and that this social justice system is good for their business. The great and spacious building, we know, is destined to collapse into the awful chasm because it has no true foundation to speak of, just a strict ideology for how you may build on it.
The Book of Mormon’s allegory of the orchard gives a very good picture of society under Socialism versus the gospel. If one branch becomes too lofty it encumers other trees and branches. Big corporations want more consumers so they can grow and become more dominant. They want cheaper production. They shift society away from divine justice toward the social justice diagram of economics, where justice and mercy are a matter of economic participation and distribution. We individually make this shift as well. The result is a chaotic tree full of wild branches, where a small handful of huge branches dominate everything. The gospel’s version of the orchard is a carefully pruned tree, where sacrifice is constantly being made and it results in a highly organized tree with a much larger overall group of fruitful branches. This can only happen when the branches humbly allow themselves to be pruned by the master of the vineyard, which means full consecration, without compulsion.
The law of sacrifice was fulfilled by the atonement of Jesus Christ, and everything centers around the ultimate sacrifice he gave in the Garden of Gethsemane. Nothing we give under the social contract could be enough to change human nature, and even the giving of our entire material wealth would not be enough to atone for sin. The redemption of mankind from sin and death provides something Socialism and every other ideology could never provide, and it is why everyone is a worker slave under these systems while we climb up toward exaltation under the gospel law. Sacrifice proves that we are willing to accept exaltation and receive faith, and God by His grace provides these things. This is the end of our law of sacrifice, and this is why Saints will always end up on top as long as we practice it.