MORE ON THE BRAT

David Brat accepts Max Weber's idea that the Protestant ethic is central to the inner spirit of Capitalism despite the fact that there is no compelling evidence for Weber's claim but this does fit in with the Fundie mindset which Brat seems to have in abundance:

“If we are ever going to be transformers of culture, we need to get our story straight on capitalism and faith,” Brat wrote in the essay, published in the journal Interpretation in 2011.

“The two can go together and they had better go together, or we will not transform anything.”

“We should love our neighbor so much that we actually believe in right and wrong, and do something about it,” he wrote. “If we all did the right thing and had the guts to spread the word, we would not need the government to backstop every action we take.”

He suggested that spreading Christianity would improve the economy.

“Preach the gospel and change hearts and souls,” Brat wrote. “If we make all of the people good, markets will be good. Markets are made up of people.”

“If markets are bad, which they are, that means people are bad, which they are,” he continued. “Want good markets? Change the people. If there are not nervous twitches in the pews when we preach, then we are not doing our jobs.”

“I think the main point is that we need to synthesize Christianity and capitalism,” Brat concluded.

Descending a bit from the stars, we can see that Brat has extreme positions on several issues:

 He appears to endorse slashing Social Security payouts to seniors by two-thirds. He wants to dissolve the IRS. And he has called for drastic cuts to education funding, explaining, "My hero Socrates trained in Plato on a rock. How much did that cost? So the greatest minds in history became the greatest minds in history without spending a lot of money."

An economics professor at Randolph-Macon College in central Virginia, Brat frequently has repeated the conservative canard that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae brought down the housing market by handling the vast majority of subprime mortgages. That is, he absolves Big Finance and the banks of responsibility for the financial crisis that triggered the recession, which hammered middle-class and low-income families across the country. (In fact, as the housing bubble grew, Freddie and Fannie shed their subprime holdings, while banks grabbed more.)

In his campaign speeches, Brat has pointed out that he isn't worried about climate change because "rich countries solve their problems":