You are right.

At the time of the French Revolution, Mirabeau (a moderate) maintained that “Property is a social creation. The laws not only protect and maintain property; they bring it into being; they determine its scope and the extent that it occupies in the rights of the citizens.”

So, too, Robespierre (not a moderate) “In defining liberty, the first of man’s needs, the most sacred of his natural rights, we have said, quite correctly, that its limit is to be found in the rights of others. Why have you not applied this principle to property, which is a social institution, as if natural laws were less inviolable than human conventions?”

The source of these ideas is Roman law, which drew a sharp distinction between possession (a fact) and ownership (a right, established and protected by the law). Rights of property, in other words, are a “social construct,” as we say nowadays. Hence European conservatives, even of the Throne and Altar variety are often remarkably dirigiste when it comes to the economy.

Likewise, Anglo-American thinkers have been more influenced that is commonly recognized by their Common Law tradition of law based on immemorial custom, rather than enactment in claiming property rights to be pre-political.

Is it unhelpful because you automatically reject “sin” without knowing – or caring – what people mean by that word?

Because I find the concept of “sin” to be extremely helpful and useful. (But like so many people I did not come to feel that way until I got old enough to want to at least try to put away justifications and to think about such things.)

Moreover, it’s not always obvious what should be counted as sinful, even if we allow the Bible to guide us. There are diverging theories of entitlements. You can’t, for example, identify who is guilty of envying another’s property until you settle some difficult questions about property ownership. Although a person happens to possess something (or hold it in a paycheck), this does not necessarily means that he/she “owns” it, or that this is her private property. Or, even if we say that a person does own something, it’s not exactly obvious what precise entitlements are supposed to come with that ownership.

It has been my observation that conservative evangelicals are typically quite naive when it comes to these issues. They often don’t realize that they are taking for granted certain peculiar philosophical commitments–often ones that themselves itself quite problematic. I suspect that Ms. Hall herself is coming from a rather shallow point of view. It would be interesting to be able to cross examine her on some of these issues.

Every time any newsworthy event takes place there seem to be a queue of commentators out looking for the ideological “root causes”. In more traditional Christian thought the root cause was sin, not capitalism, or a sense of entitlement or lack of economic opportunity or the welfare state or whatever.

You are right. Ever since the days of Colbert, the state has always treated the economy as political, as have the bourgeoisie (who profit from it) and the proletariat (who confront it).

Gains in productivity, outsourcing, mechanisation, automated and digital production have advance to a point where that they have reduced almost to zero the quantity of human labour necessary in the manufacture of any product. Today work is tied less to the economic necessity of producing goods than to the political necessity of producing producers and consumers.

The state must somehow maintain control of a largely superfluous population of the unemployed, but, to this day, they have found no better method of keeping it docile than wage labour. The Welfare State must be dismantled, so that the most restless ones, those who will only surrender when faced with the alternatives of dying of hunger or stagnating in jail, are lured back to the bosom of wage-labour.
Nothing can make it an attractive prospect to wipe the backsides of pensioners for minimum wage. Those who have found less humiliation and more advantage in a life of crime than in sweeping floors will not turn in their weapons, and prison will not teach them to love society.

Capitalism is good for economic growth.

Economic growth, divorced from political needs, is bad. But when political needs are allowed to destroy the economy, that’s bad too.

Everything has its place and its purpose. The trick is understanding the right relation of things, one to another. If and when we can figure out the right relation of political to economic needs, we won’t have these problems any more.

I remember being very struck by a slogan scrawled up in Paris, around the time of the banlieue riots – « Le futur n’a plus d’avenir » – “The future has no future.”

Perhaps, but I have yet to see a society where people aren’t hurt by capitalism mechanisms.

Progressives argue that we can – but their policies seem to have failed in the real world.

You have said there’s a culture war and that I’m on the regressive side of it. Since I’m not a progressive, I’ll take that as a compliment. Which regressive view of mine is most repugnant to you?

Abortion is legalized homicide

The family is the basic unit of society

Sodomy can never be romantic

The love of money is the root of many evils, amongst which are class warfare rhetoric and redistribution of wealth (legalized pickpocketing)

No one should have to apologize or feel guilty for their race or sex

Not every social ill has a political solution

Christianity is true

Morality is not relative

Males aren’t good at being a mom

When reading this, it might help to think of a disinterested sociologist, rather than, e.g., the embattled, oft-ridiculed foot soldier on the regressive side of the culture war. If something like this can’t be done, it’d be wisest just to move on.