In 1946, a man named John Biggins created the first cashless credit system that allowed customers at his bank to pay local merchants through their account rather than with cash. Since then, America has progressed towards ever more cashless methods of payment. Physical currency was designed to represent wealth and ease bartering. Beginning with precious metals as coinage with actual value, money progressed into a representation of the precious metals through the use of clad coinage, and, eventually, paper money alternatives. Many view cashless systems as the next step in the process of monetary evolution. Cashless systems, however, may mean the loss of freedom and privacy, and open an easy path for totalitarian control of the people.
Read moreBalancing Mercy and Justice
What is the point of law? We have systems put in place to protect people and serve justice, but what happens when those systems fail to serve the people they aim to protect? What happens when those systems are built upon the false pretense that one life is more valuable than another? How should these systems be reformed? How do we respond when a human mistake costs someone their life?
Read moreLoneliness
I think all of us, at some point or another—whether we’re sitting in our rooms, going about our day or even in a big group of friends—have had that nagging feeling of loneliness that just doesn’t seem to go away. One of the most frustrating parts of feeling lonely is that it’s a situation that people rarely seem to address, and the fact that we are often too embarrassed to say we are lonely contributes to us feeling even more lonely than we did in the first place.
Read moreMarx is Still the Ghost of Capitalism Future
Karl Marx’s critiques of capitalism died in the 1980s with the fall of the USSR and the move in China towards a more free-market economy, or so it’s been said. Marx’s predictions about capitalism are alive and well today, however, and not in the way you might expect. It's not in the “radical” left and their socialist plots; it’s not hiding away in the Scandinavian nations; and it’s not even in a supposed "Chinese push for world dominance". Rather, Marx's theories, almost unchanged from their original conception, are alive today in every major capitalist nation.
Read moreLetter to the Editor
In last issue's "A Rebuttal of 'Capitalism was Built for Dictatorship,'" Kyle Kraus uses China as an example of a command economy to support his argument. This is problematic because China is not a command economy.
Read moreA Rebuttal of “Capitalism was Built for Dictatorship"
In the last issue of The Bagpipe, an article written by Elias Vedders addressed the topic of capitalism and how the only way to truly achieve this ideal was to accept dictatorship. Vedders’s article can best be summed up by its final sentence, which stated, “...if we want capitalism to perform at its peak, perhaps it’s time to give dictatorial regimes a second chance.”
Vedders argued that society is held back by the fact that experts aren’t allowed to dictate policy without interference from the public. The masses, Vedders argued, “simply cannot know everything.” Dictatorship, though, can solve these problems, and reach a higher form of capitalism. While his logical reasoning is sound, Vedders based his points on faulty assumptions.
No Perfect Places
Last semester, an eager previewer asked a question that caught me off guard: “What would you change about Covenant?” This earnest question from a high school senior terrified me not only because that is such a difficult question to answer authentically in front of a hundred previewers, parents and admission counselors, but also because that was the very question I pestered students with on college tours four years ago.
Hollywood's Ableism Problem
With the announcement of the Golden Globes winners on the forefront of the mind, opinions about whether or not the nominations were given to the best choices sit on everyone's lips. Whether the opinion is which director was snubbed or which TV show or movie deserved better, one movie in particular did not deserve any of the nominations that it received.
I Am, by All Accounts, an Unpatriotic Man
I am, by all outward, modern accounts, an unpatriotic man. My loathing for our current incarnation of the state knows few bounds. I despair in our electoral system. Our representatives in this fair Congress neither fairly nor accurately lead in our interest. In the interest of some good, neither common nor welcomed, they lie to take our money and spend it on glorified refuse. But I digress.
Signs of the Times
“It’s the birthing pains!” “What’s happening is a sign of the times!” Throughout my life, I’ve often found myself caught in a discussion with one or both of those phrases connected confidently to whatever the latest news story is. I think that at one point or another, we have each found ourselves on either one end or another of that exchange. Those conversations so often end in one person rolling their eyes, or giving a heated monologue about their personal spin on the details, that I think it’s safe to say that a lot of us either try to mentally escape or hastily give our own opinion, with claws bared, every time those phrases come up.
What It Means to be American
One of The Bagpipe’s recent issues featured an article titled, “What Does it Mean to be White?” It argued that “the primary mark of being White is being blind to White culture and the effects of being White,” and that the “effects of being White'' are privilege and a lack of cultural awareness stemming from an almost complete lack of culture.
Read moreWhat's the Goal?: Re-examining Singleness in the Church
I recently read a sociological study that examined the changing views on milestones that define adulthood in America. In the 1950s, one such milestone included marriage. In fact, one’s ability to perform within their designated familial role was the defining feature of an adult.
Today, researchers have found that the most important milestones to adulthood are considered to be completing school and having a full-time job. Surely we can attribute this shift to the rise of feminism and individualism in modern America, and the church is not immune to these cultural shifts.
Read moreIs God Sovereign Over Suffering?
It’s incredible to think how many months have passed since we got that first email saying Covenant College would be online for a semester because of COVID-19, and how many things have happened since then. The world seems to be spinning out of control, and I think every single one of us has had plenty of those moments of feeling exasperated and disappointed by all the craziness, wondering when or if it will ever end.
Capitalism Was Built for Dictatorships
Capitalism has been championed, largely, by democracy. We take it for granted that capitalism exists only in democracies. When we think of dictatorships, we think of socialist experiments like the USSR or Mao's China. If not that, we think of despotic dictators abusing the populace of resource-rich countries to benefit themselves. I am beginning to question these assumptions more and more, and beginning to consider that perhaps capitalism can really only function in a dictatorship.
Read more"Rules, Sex, and Responsibility" Was Bananas: Let's Talk About It
When an article from last issue of The Bagpipe reminded us that students have sex on Covenant’s campus, our response couldn’t possibly be contained to one of three narrow definitions. Our emotions ran the gamut, because this is a highly sensitive issue that affects many people. Everyone on this campus experiences sexual struggles to some degree. And so, while the author’s woeful account of our sexual responsibility wasn’t at all accurate, it wasn’t completely baseless either, and this reality should be taken seriously.
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