Saturday, November 08, 2003
(2:04 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Brueggemann and Limbaugh
I am currently reading Walter Brueggemann's The Covenanted Self, a great book on the way an understanding of Israel's covenant with God might inform our modern practices. Brueggemann consistently makes use of the image of Egypt as a monopoly, which forces people to sell themselves into slavery in order to buy food (Genesis 47). It's pretty clear that the Bible views Egypt negatively -- even in the face of the Babylonian conquest, the true prophets are unanimous that Israel should not rely on Egypt for their defense. We often tend to view such issues as arbitrary ("God just likes Israel better than he likes Egypt"), but Brueggemann says that the key to Israel's prosperity and favor is following a just economic system, which is basically outlined in Deuteronomy and includes such "unrealistic" practices as periodic, institutionalized forgiveness of debt -- this just economic order was given to them by God himself, and he expects them to follow it.
Here's where Rush Limbaugh rears his ugly head. In See, I Told You So, he uses the example of pharoah's monopolistic practices in Genesis as an example of why capitalism works, and if I remember right, why a flat tax system works. That is to say, he misses the point of the biblical narrative entirely, and his many enthusiastic Christian readers were likely so excited to see an example from the Bible that they are now perhaps permanently blinded to the real meaning of these narratives.
We don't need a revelation from God to teach us how to institute and preserve an economic system based on inequality, coercion, and greed. I'm pretty sure we can figure out that kind of stuff all by ourselves, through the use of our God-given reason.
UPDATE: While checking for comments, I decided to follow the Rush link and read some of the reviews. Apparently about two thousand enterprising souls decided that they should post reviews of the book that do little other than make fun of him for his drug habit. I also noted that there are 941 used copies available, starting at a penny each.
