Let me get a little introspective now, change the tone a little bit. I'm also gonna write this kindof fast and off the top of my head - so no links. I've disclosed that I used to be a Unitarian Universalist and now I'm a Christian. How in the world did that happen? Aren't UUs supposed to be stubbornly skeptical of all things miraculous?
To tell the truth, if Unitarian Universalism had remained the way it was when I first encountered it (a small congregation of very libertarian-minded individualists), I very likely would still be one today. But it changed on me. Sometime in the 90s, due either to a move to a larger congregation in a more liberal state (the previous one was in Texas), or becoming more bold with liberal ideas with a sympathetic political administration, the UUA became much more of an anti-capitalist organization. All talk of economics was like: "the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and that's the cause of all our economic troubles". I started thinking about that, and one day, I remember seeing an anti-communist bumper sticker that said something like "Communists are all equal because they're all poor!", and my reaction was "That's So True!!!". So I started thinking about it, and realized that no socialist country has ever been truly prosperous. Even the Scandinavian countries that everyone claims as a mystical "third way" are just dreary run-of-the-mill countries without anything great to say about them. (About a month or two over at Instapundit, it was reported and discussed that Sweden is about as poor as our poorest states in America, with a higher crime rate to boot) So I started questioning the wisdom of socialism and its capacity for improving the lot of an average person economically speaking. When I started taking that attitude, I found it much more difficult to relate to all those UU discussions on the merits of socialism. I was slowly but surely becoming an outsider.
Out of time, but I'll be saying more on this thread in days to come....
Posted by joelfuhrmann at November 12, 2002 01:07 PM