The web is tangled.
My former professor at NC State, Craig Newmark, linked to a book report by Philip Greenspun at Harvard Law on Macur Olsen’s The Rise and Decline of Nations.
I shared this with my friends over at Common Root.
Mark has some good thoughts, and I reply:
The question of how to subvert becomes strategic.
Do we focus on the corporate form, or on the state?
Both, of course. But we must do so in a way that working to reduce the negative impact of the one does not increase the power of the other. Progressive solutions only see the corporate side of the problem. Conservative solutions only see the statist side.
Whether the one is prior to or underlies the other is an important question and may be relevant to strategy, but it must be recognized that the two support each other.
As Christians interested in subverting all powers and principalities, we work at the margins of both:
1. We eschew consumerism.
2. We embrace hard work, and the product of that labor. (So that we may have something to share with him who is in need – not for our own security or pleasure.)
3. We reject privilege.
4. We work to eliminate privilege, without expanding existing franchises.
5. We look to the church as the vehicle for positive change, and ourselves as the necessary motivators.
6. We embrace God’s sovereignty over the suffering of His innocents, and wait patiently on the Spirit before acting, not motivated out of guilt, or reward, but by the joy we experience while performing our suitable acts of worship.