Dave Brat is a former congressman who has an administrative position at Liberty University. His field is economics.
He raises an alarm that our elites and our uniparty are producing deficits and a level of debt that is going to lead to immense hardship. He argues that previously our economic system and our politics were geared toward assuring the common good.
But he says that the emphasis on human dignity and human rights– reflected in our economic system– was originally produced within the western world centuries ago by Christianity. As our country continues to move away from Christianity, and toward other belief systems centered on Marxism, then human rights and dignity go away, and the economic structure is allowed to implode.
Brat’s discussion of the impact that historic Christianity had begins at the 8:45 mark:
TC: Thanks for sharing Brat’s interview. He has had an interesting career in politics. I am suspicious of his ties with US Senator Tim Kaine.
But that having been said, Brat asserts that culture matters in economic markets. He believes that the culture that produced Adam Smith was a Protestant culture and that fact and the ethics of that culture are important in understanding market efficiency.Brat has advocated that Christians should more forcefully support free-market capitalism and behave more altruistically, in the manner of Jesus, so that “we would not need the government to backstop every action we take.”
Brat “sees free-market economics as being intricately linked to ethics and faith and he makes the case that Adam Smith’s invisible hand theory, should be seen in the context of Christianity”. Brat argues in his 2004 paper Economic Growth and Institutions: The Rise and Fall of the Protestant Ethic? that “institutions such as religion, democracy and government anti-diversion policies all significantly enhance a country’s long-run economic performance,” and concludes that “the religion variable may be the strongest ex ante, exogenous institutional variable in the literature.”
Finally I see him as a force for good in today’s battle between Christianity and Marxism .
Fred, I was unaware he had ties with Kaine. My recollection is that he was elected during the Tea Party wave.
You are right that was the kind of point he was trying to make tying Christianity, politics and economics.
Free enterprise is on the ropes at this point, and he knows it..