On civilization and children

After over five hundred pages chronicling the vicissitudes of The Renaissance in Italy, Will Durant recounts "The Moral Relapse":

The Church and Scriptures bade men increase and multiply, but comfort counseled infertility. Even in the countryside, where children were economic assets, families of six children were rare; in the city, where children were liabilities, families were small--the richer the smaller--and many homes had no children at all. (p.586)

It is important for a society to have children, not only because, without them it quite literally disappears, but because children represent society's hope for a better future. However impoverished, if a civilization is resplendent with children, it stands some chance at succeeding. Contrarily, as Renaissance Italy demonstrates, no matter how prosperous a nation, if it has lost faith in its future, it will begin to recede, until perhaps--but not always--that faith is rekindled.

A point could be made that the tendency of our leaders to pay for the excesses of today with the money of tomorrow is good evidence about how we feel about the future. On the one hand, it could be argued that optimism is the impetus of letting tomorrow's problems be ignored. The salient point, however, is that such intense focus on living well in the here and now at the expense of the future is irresponsible, and no mark of a balanced and healthy civilization.

But there is no need to reach for such a point when the more obvious one presents itself:

The recession is driving American demand for contraception and for abortions. The media have been riven this past week with stories about the rising number of couples and single mothers doing the math and deciding this is no time to bring a child into the world --- not when the economy is depressed, jobs are scarce and family incomes are dropping.

The media have also been rife with stories portraying this trend as something of a tragedy. Let me propose a counter view: it is not.

I don't know what media the author, Bonnie Erbe, has been reading, but if she's right about their stories, I can't help but consider this a good thing. My faith in the rationality of mankind is such that I cannot expect people to always recognize violations of the natural law; at the same time, abortion is so obviously a moral wrong that when it is finally recognized as such, our progeny will look back at our protestations to the contrary as a dark period of human history.

After recounting an individual case, Erbe continues:

Yes, it's sad that this unwed, pregnant mother of three had no money for bus fare. It's terrible that her boyfriend lost his job. It is heart-wrenching that she fell to tears in the doctor's office. But in the long run, can we agree that this unwed couple's decision not to bring a fourth child into the world when they are having trouble feeding themselves and three children is no tragedy? It's actually a fact-based, rational decision that in the end benefits the three children they already have and society as well.

The economic argument for an abortion is not only weak, it's precisely that to which the lazy Italians of yore would have resorted. Now, there are circumstances in which a family can no longer provide for another child; but this doesn't mean that it becomes morally acceptable to abort her. Abstinence is still possible, even in marriage, for extreme circumstances, and adoption is always a valid recourse.

The other problem with this argument is that it's not at all clear when a family can't afford another child. In many if not most cases, an additional child will be cost prohibitive. That it will also be the source of innumerable blessing shouldn't be forgotten. Throughout history, families have lovingly welcomed these blessings into their lives, under situations of such dire poverty which few if any Americans will ever experience, and which most of us can hardly even fathom.
Without declaring myself competent to judge individual circumstances, it seems fair to suggest that children should be valued, and that parents should only avoid having them under especially dire circumstances.

The true test of a society comes under crisis. The tendency is for politicians to manufacture them, but sometimes they appear in actuality. The endless series of hobgoblins could be ignored, but economic collapse must be confronted. We may continue to insist that luxury is the status quo, a right to which all Americans may lay claim. Or, we may put away childish things and clean the mess we see all about us. However long the recession lasts, no matter how far America relapses, civilization marches on. It always does--with children carrying its glorious banner.

On bailouts and bonuses

I must have missed the part where capitalism allows the government to create money out of thin air:

Saying that the recession continues to deepen, the U.S. Federal Reserve announced Wednesday that it would pump an extra $1 trillion into the economy by buying mortgage-backed securities and long-term Treasury issues.

It's hard to avoid snark and sarcasm when one realizes the utter ridiculousness of what is going on. I wonder what it's like to be the son or daughter of a Federal Reserve chairman. "Eat your breakfast, Jimmy. When you grow up you too can debase the currency and bring further ruin to the global economy." The lessons which will be repeated pounded into my poor reader's heads--if only to give a brief respite to the pounding within my own--are: that this system is not capitalistic; and that the inmates who run the asylum haven't the foggiest idea of what they are doing, and so have no possibility for success. Enjoy the ride.

On a related note, there has been a bit of a hullabaloo over the AIG bailout. It seems that a number of employees were planning on using the money for bonuses. The populace is enraged, and thus the Democrats, who continue to lead by following, are up in arms:

Talking tougher by the hour, livid Democrats confronted beleaguered insurance giant AIG with an ultimatum Tuesday: Give back $165 million in post-bailout bonuses or watch Congress tax it away with emergency legislation. Republicans declared the Democrats were hardly blameless, accusing them of standing by while the bonus deal was cemented and suggesting that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner could and should have done more.

In an age of agitated action, it is asking too much to expect our representatives to actually read the bills which rob the people of their hard-earned money to give to whomever Congress feels has more need of it. If AIG is behaving immorally, they are at least legally in the right. There is a lesson here about the importance of sober reflection before action. It's almost like that time the Congress rushed through the PATRIOT Act, and then lamely asserted that they didn't realize what the bill would be used to do.

On the one hand, it's absurd that money is being taken from the people to give to those who have proven to be abject failures. Bonuses are the sorts of things you get when you make money, not when malfeasance or incompetence causes the government to give you money to stay solvent. But if the righteous indignation remains directed at the employees of AIG, ultimately, it misses its mark. As Rich Lowry writes in his column: "The bonuses AIG wants to pay its employees are a pittance compared with the $170 billion it has received in government bailouts, a trifling .097 percent."

I'd like to see the population insist on the bailout money being returned from every single recipient, bonus or no bonus. Such a blatant redistribution of wealth is pure thievary, made worse by the fact that it won't prove beneficial to anyone but the recipients themselves. If there's a sanguine note on which to end this sorry episode, it's that the cowardly democrats are sufficiently scared of a popular revolt placing the republicans back in power that they might just act. Left for an exercise for the reader is the appropriate response to a system which places faith in the people's propensity to cajole their represntatives into doing right.

The expiration of the evangelicals

At the peak of the Bush presidency--the country behind him after 9/11, the war with Iraq not yet begun--and perhaps even before that, a number of observers noted that the evangelical bloc which gave him the White House was now a force to be reckoned with. Then, as per usual with the fare that populates the current affairs section of any bookstore, everyone extrapolated the present trend into the future. Theocracy--whatever that is--was here to stay.

But prophecy is a difficult art. Once believed to be invincible, the evangelicals were unable to swing the election in favor of McCain. Cue the same predictions from the opposite side of the political aisle. The "permanent republican majorities" of yesteryear are today's GOP, doomed to wander for an eternity in the political wilderness. No trend is so permanent that it cannot be bucked eventually.

While power is bound to vacillate between the two parties in our rotten system, the people upon whom they depend for support will change. For the culture, which forms the people, is always changing. The role played by evangelicals, like any other, will vary; and not for the better according to Michael Spencer:

We are on the verge – within 10 years – of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West.

More prophecy it seems. But because he attempts to back it up, we ought to hear him out. His second point especially merits consideration:

We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we've spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.

Spencer is very perceptive here. Although I was raised Catholic, I was also exposed to a good deal of evangelical culture, not directly since my family didn't know many evangelicals, but through the "music, publishing and media". Much of said is morally good, or at least mildly edifying, but a lot of it is disturbingly lowbrow. And a dreadful percentage of it was derivative, without necessity. Was the world really improved by Bibleopoly?

As an aside, the tendency to copy the culture with which we were supposed to be at war sent mixed messages. If Christian products are only clones of their secular counterparts, then young people will confuse a belated sense of hipness for religious principles. There's also the sheer bizarreness of trying to market Christianity; the gimmicks only make this weirder.

For all of the faults of evangelicals, I don't wish to insist that Catholics have this all figured out. For one, Catholics in America tend to be at least partially Protestantized. My family didn't have Bibleopoly, but we had Bible Baseball. On the other hand, Catholicism's basis in tradition means that ties to the past haven't been severed. Not many people seek out the heady spiritual and intellectual material which strengthens the soul and the mind to contest with powers and principalities. But I would argue that the material is more readily accessible to the Catholic. If you read the Catechism, you'll see the Summa cited. If you decide to pick up the Summa, you'll come across references to almost every significant thinker who lived before Thomas. Where would an evangelical begin his search with similar results?

In making an appeal to the past, I'm not insisting that everyone study the Church Fathers, or that without an intimate knowledge of Augustine's thought, you'll never become a saint. On the contrary, a great many holy men and women have had very little book learning, and Dante filled his inferno with bishops who at least knew their way around a church library. Nor is it true that good books could not be written today which might prove as beneficial as the great works of the past.

Instead, I merely note that a philosophy must have a solid foundation. Aside from the religious equivalent of current affairs book, an evangelical is armed only with his Bible and, if he is fortunate, with C.S. Lewis. Certainly this isn't a bad place to start, but one shouldn't confuse humble beginnings with a complete set of tools for life's journey. The Bible should be read and re-read throughout one's life, and although I am fond of Lewis--especially The Abolition of Man--there is too much good thought out there to confine oneself to one thinker. And yes, this even applies to my Chesterton.

My only hesitation in agreeing fully with Spencer is that monumental ignorance isn't confined to a subset of religious individuals. It's ubiquitous. I'd never profess optimism for a culture mired in hedonism and recklessly unaware of its own past, but neither would I discount a return to religion. An irreligious age will bear no resemblance to the promised land of secular utopias. This way have been mildly convincing when postulated by the philosophes of the Enlightenment, but it can hold little sway for mankind after the gulags and gas chambers of the twentieth century.

Man must return to God or perish. But what if those who speak in His name can't even convince their own?

Thomas and Rothbard on property rights

The great Murray Rothbard succinctly captures the thought which undergirds libertarian philosophy in an essay titled War, Peace and the State:

The fundamental axiom of libertarian theory is that no one may threaten or commit violence ("aggress") against another man's person or property. Violence may be employed only against the man who commits such violence; that is, only defensively against the aggressive violence of another. In short, no violence may be employed against a non-aggressor. Here is the fundamental rule from which can be deduced the entire corpus of libertarian theory.

This statement may seem surprising. After all, there is a tendency to see libertarians as a purer—if more hopeless—strain of conservatives. This is a misconception. Conservatives supported the Iraq War, something no sensible libertarian could ever do.

This fundamental antipathy toward aggression can be hard to square with what is known of libertarian thought. Many of us would probably be receptive to a system in which “no violence may be employed against a non-aggressor”; but it is also apparent that the number or us who would readily embrace the libertarian vision is minuscule. There seems to be a disconnect with the principles upon which libertarians say they build their philosophy and the philosophy itself. In short, we need to make apparent the connection between the usual behavior of libertarians, that of denouncing the State, with Rothbard's fundamental axiom:

It is time now to bring the State into our discussion. The State is a group of people who have managed to acquire a virtual monopoly of the use of violence throughout a given territorial area. In particular, it has acquired a monopoly of aggressive violence, for States generally recognize the right of individuals to use violence (though not against States, of course) in self-defense. The State then uses this monopoly to wield power over the inhabitants of the area and to enjoy the material fruits of that power. The State, then, is the only organization in society that regularly and openly obtains its monetary revenues by the use of aggressive violence; all other individuals and organizations (except if delegated that right by the State) can obtain wealth only by peaceful production and by voluntary exchange of their respective products. This use of violence to obtain its revenue (called "taxation") is the keystone of State power.

If we see that taxation requires the use of violence—or, more accurately, the threat of violence—and if we are opposed to violence except against aggressors, it becomes impossible to accept the existence of a large State. This is another example of the chasm between conservatives, who wish only to ameliorate some of the excesses of the State, with libertarians, who wish to come as near as possible with its abolishment.

As an aside, I am not familiar enough with Rothbard's works to know whether he finds the existence of the State itself to be an affront to liberty, or whether, like Robert Nozick for example, he would find a minimal state to be acceptable. I myself find Nozick's case to be convincing, and can think of no reason why Rothbard wouldn't come to a similar conclusion.

Setting this point aside, I do have one issue with which I find myself in disagreement with Rothbard, and for which I turn to St. Thomas Aquinas to better explain myself. As both Rothbard and Thomas recognize, the right to life should be absolute: anyone who aggresses against another's person is in the wrong, and the non-aggressor has every right to defend himself. Rothbard has already made his case; let us hear Thomas answer: Whether it is lawful to kill a man in self-defense?

Therefore this act, since one's intention is to save one's own life, is not unlawful, seeing that it is natural to everything to keep itself in "being," as far as possible. And yet, though proceeding from a good intention, an act may be rendered unlawful, if it be out of proportion to the end.

So far so good. But what of violations of property rights? Something in us recoils when we place the same commitment to reinforcing property rights as we do to those of life itself. We readily empathize with a man who accidentally kills a man in self-defense of his own life, but would find it harder to understand if the man had been killed over a watch. Part of this, perhaps, is the “proportion to the end” of which Thomas speaks. Might there be another reason?

First, we need to see what Thomas believes about property in general. He asks: Whether it is lawful for a man to possess a thing as his own?

Two things are competent to man in respect of exterior things. One is the power to procure and dispense them, and in this regard it is lawful for man to possess property. Moreover this is necessary to human life for three reasons. First because every man is more careful to procure what is for himself alone than that which is common to many or to all: since each one would shirk the labor and leave to another that which concerns the community, as happens where there is a great number of servants. Secondly, because human affairs are conducted in more orderly fashion if each man is charged with taking care of some particular thing himself, whereas there would be confusion if everyone had to look after any one thing indeterminately. Thirdly, because a more peaceful state is ensured to man if each one is contented with his own. Hence it is to be observed that quarrels arise more frequently where there is no division of the things possessed.

A couple of things are of interest here. First, the objections are largely pragmatic. This fits well with Thomas's philosophy of Natural Law. Man, being of a certain nature, behaves a certain way; any system which ignores this will be wholly impractical since it is at odds with the nature of human beings. We see here, in the 13th Century, some very common sense objections to the socialism that would arise in various heretical sects throughout the Middle Ages, and would later be revived in the teachings of Karl Marx, before being passed onto the revolutionaries of the twentieth century to sow destruction throughout the world.

Back to Rothbard. He writes:

It is wrong and criminal to violate the property or person of another, even if one is a Robin Hood, or starving, or is doing it to save one's relatives, or is defending oneself against a third man's attack. We may understand and sympathize with the motives in many of these cases and extreme situations. We may later mitigate the guilt if the criminal comes to trial for punishment, but we cannot evade the judgment that this aggression is still a criminal act, and one which the victim has every right to repel, by violence if necessary.

While he is certainly to be applauded for his clarity, I cannot confess that he is correct. If a starving man were to enter a person's house to procure bread for himself so that he didn't die, we would be hard-pressed to defend the person who expelled the aggressor. But I would also, it must be admitted, find it difficult to accept a situation in which anyone is allowed to any property whatsoever if they have a great enough need for that object. I am reminded of Chesterton's quip in The Man Who Was Thursday: "Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it." If we are not to draw the line where Rothbard does, surely we ought to draw it somewhere. Fortunately, Thomas has already answered our question: Whether it is lawful to steal through stress of need?

In cases of need all things are common property, so that there would seem to be no sin in taking another's property, for need has made it common.

It should be pointed out, that while Thomas answers the question, he still leaves a good deal unsaid. The concept of need is, to put it bluntly, ambiguous—if not for Thomas, certainly for one used to a slew of modern amenities without which we find life to be difficult, but which can by no means be called necessary since man lived for so long without them. Clearly food is a need while cellular phones are not. But this leaves a good deal unsettled.

This essay had already run on for too long, so I will merely suggest two areas for future discussion. First, any attempt to enlarge the acceptable sphere of state action must do so on grounds of meeting an essential need. To take but one possible example, it could be argued that taking from the rich and giving to the hungry is within the rights of the State because the latter have need of food. To pose an objection, any money taken from taxpayers to enrich State employees cannot do more than meet the bare minimum of needs, for anything more is clearly theft. Even if we interpret need in the largest sense possible, all sorts of actions fall well outside acceptable bounds, and require a vigorous defense on their behalf before we should accept them as legitimate.

Second, any attempt to reconcile libertarianism with Catholicism, as it is one of my aims to do, must determine when it is acceptable to violate property rights. Suggesting that property rights are absolute does not strike me as compatible with Catholic teaching. However, since non-aggression is a principle in full accord with Catholicism, I remain optimistic that much common ground remains.

A return to economic sanity

During his State of the Union speech, President Obama, whose budget roughly doubles the percentage of government spending with respect to GDP, insisted that his reasons for the lavish spending increases were pragmatic and not ideological: “I called for action because the failure to do so would have cost more jobs and caused more hardships.” Attempts to justify such profligacy invariably depend on a narrative that suggests that capitalism is inherently unstable. Unless the system is somehow buttressed by government action, its greedy paroxysms will cause it to collapse. It is implicitly assumes that we do in fact possess a system of laissez-faire capitalism. But as is so often the case, the narrative is ultimately at odds with the facts.

In Meltdown, Thomas Woods attempts first, to point out the absurdities of blaming capitalism for the economic crisis, given the immense dissimilarities between the present system and a truly free market. Second, he puts the blame squarely where it belongs: at the feet of the central bankers of the Federal Reserve. Especially considering how quickly the book was written, Woods succeeds admirably. Despite being a short book, Meltdown makes a thorough case against government intervention in the economy, and more than vindicates capitalism for the latest economic crisis.

As Woods reasonably points out, “We cannot expect the situation to improve until we understand how we got there.” This may seem too obvious to deserve mentioning, but most economists have no idea what causes a recession. Paul Krugman, neo-Keynesian and columnist for the New York Times, lamely asserted on C-SPAN that “bubbles happen”. One wonders if he also posits incredulity about the reasons for a recovery.

Although an alarming number of economists share Krugman's ignorance, the small but growing Austrian school of economics, of which Woods is a member, professes to know why the crisis occurred, as well as the way out. Woods spends an entire chapter explaining the business cycle theory, which accounts for the boom and bust cycle of the economy. Although businesses fail all the time, a recession occurs when a whole sector of the economy is revealed to have made bad investments. By artificially lowering the interest rate and injecting money into the economy, the Federal Reserve deceives businesses into thinking that it will be profitable to make long-term investments—something which would never happen to all businesses at one time if the interest rate was allowed to float freely. Sooner or later, the malinvestment becomes apparent to all. To take a present example, the scores of McMansions which were foolishly built on credit are without buyers: all of the capital and labor spent in the building process has been badly allocated. The economy will only recover as production becomes reallocated to sectors of the economy in which demand actually exists. And, since the easy credit policy of the Federal Reserve was the cause of the bubble, attempting to inflate oneself out of a crisis will only serve to encourage malinvestment and postpone the recovery.

This is precisely what happened during the Great Depression. Rather than letting capitalism correct itself, as it did admirably during the depression of 1920-1921, Hoover put into action a drastic program of economic intervention—which FDR then continued. The argument that the Great Depression was somehow too big for the market to solve holds no water as “Conditions were worse [by the middle of 1920] than they would be in 1930, after the first year of the Great Depression.” Throughout the book, Woods presents evidence that government repeatedly prevents economic recovery.

Another valuable chapter focuses on the issue of money, which is crucial if we are to understand the economic crisis. The health of an economy cannot be improved by injecting more money into the economy; for money is only a means to an end. The real ends are the goods and for which we hope to exchange for the money we earn by producing goods which are in turn used by others. The productive powers of an economy are of far more importance than the number of paper or electronic dollars in circulation, and no attempt to increase the latter will improve the economy unless production also increases.

Meltdown concludes with a logical and well-articulated political program. It's completely impractical, of course, but it will become less so as the arguments the book presents take hold in a culture which must sooner or later realize that sound money and economic freedom have more to offer than the perpetual inflation and turmoil provided by central planners.

To serfdom we will go

I recently started reading The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek. It's a prescient book en lieu of the liberal fascism we're seeing from Washington.

On pages 93-4, he points out in a footnote:

The conflict is thus not, as it has often been misconceived in nineteenth-century discussions, one between liberty and law. As John Locke had already made clear, there can be no liberty without law. The conflict is between different kinds of law—law so different that it should hardly be called by the same name: one is the law of the Rule of Law, general principles laid down beforehand, the ‘rules of the game’ which enable individuals to foresee how the coercive apparatus of the state will be used, or what he and his fellow-citizens will be allowed to do, or made to do, in stated circumstances. The other kind of law gives in effect the authority power to do what it thinks fit to do. Thus the Rule of Law could clearly not be preserved in a democracy that undertook to decide every conflict of interests not according to rules previously laid down but "on its merits".

Critics of the free market, like Obama, and indeed, most politicians, insist that the government must produce order out of the essentially anarchic system. To a certain extent, this is true. If there were no government, for instance, to enforce contracts, no such market could exist. Free exchange depends on rules, known to all parties beforehand, by which buyers and sellers are to be bound, and without which neither has any guarantee that such exchanges will produce the intended results. But there are limits by which government itself must be bound; without these, government becomes an arbitrary judge; the market becomes a muddled mess, as buyers and sellers haven't the slightest ideas about which rules will be enforced and which will be overthrown.

The arbitrary nature of the governmental authorities is less a cause of the financial meltdown than it is a certitude which shall perpetuate the misery. There are other reasons bailouts and stimuli are improper responses for government, which I have examined before; I am concerned here with the effects of unpredictable interventions by the government. While the stock market should never be confused with the economy, its wild swings in recent months are indicative of the effects of this unpredictability. No one doubts that the government will act; but no one has the slightest clue how that action will manifest itself. Acting at random is sure to prolong the return to economic normalcy, as buyers and sellers haven't the slightest idea of how purchases should be made in the present clime. Not without reason, both behave conservatively, eschewing investment with any perceived risk for surer things. Thus the wild injections of capital have an unintended, but not unforeseen effect: namely, reducing the willingness of creditors to borrow money in the midst of such volatility.

Now, it is theoretically possible that the internal contradictions of capitalism will eventually emerge to undermine it, and that any attempts to save capitalism are thus futile. But if we are to accept this interpretation, we need one of two things. Either we must see a capitalist system collaspe by itself, and not because government strangled the producers until the system expired after a spell of depotism.

Or, we must change the formulation to run, somewhat cumbersomely, along these lines. Capitalism has not yet been proven capable of affecting its own destruction, and in fact, in the midst of the totalitarian system of the Soviet empire, a system of free economic exchanged emerged, keeping always in the shadows. But it may be that man cannot ignore the siren song forever; he rejects the dull freedom of the market for a system in which government begins, gradually at first, to gain control of the means of production, until whatever is left of the market must retreat again to the shadows.

There have been, of course, no explicit calls for control of the means of production; no politician would ever use those words unless the situation became dire enough that he forgot his vocation. Moreover, the coercion will become more pronounced as the failure of the stimulus becomes apparent. For now, I'll only point out that the administration's attempts to harvest alternative energy by the application of billions in bribe money, demonstrate clearly how much faith they have in entrepreneurs working freely in the marketplace. It is but a small step to insist that other sectors begin producing whatever goods the administration can imagine, irrespective of whether or not such production is economically feasible. And when the whole economy seems to be having trouble producing, given the president's predilection to find his supply of blood in turnip fields, we begin to see clearly the road Hayek implored us not to take.

College degrees for all

One of things I learned during the painful Bush years was that it's not worthwhile to have to sit through any lengthy speeches. There's way too much clapping. And while it is nice to have a president who avoids stumbling all over himself while reading the teleprompter, I'm sticking with my technique of simply reading the remarks on the Internet.

There's a lot in there with which a libertarian could take umbrage. Despite the calls to reduce the deficit, outside of a rollback of the empire--which I support, but don't believe will be forthcoming--it's hard to see whence Obama is going to trim the fat.

A bizarre shout out to Biden and a number of incorrect assertions aside, this statement may be my least favorite:

As soon as I took office, I asked this Congress to send me a recovery plan by President’s Day that would put people back to work and put money in their pockets. Not because I believe in bigger government – I don’t. Not because I’m not mindful of the massive debt we’ve inherited – I am. I called for action because the failure to do so would have cost more jobs and caused more hardships.

As Rich Lowry commented, "He’s trying to redefine extensive government activism as simple pragmatism, and if he succeeds, might well shift the center of American politics for a generation."

First, it's simply not true that failure to act is what costs and prolongs the depression. As Murray Rothbard points out in America's Great Depression, "The severe depression of 1921 was over so rapidly, for example, that Secretary of Commerce Hoover, despite his interventionist inclinations, was not able to convince President Harding to intervene rapidly enough; by the time Harding was persuaded to intervene, the depression was already over, and prosperity had arrived."

The Great Depression, on the contrary, was treated by government action; consequently, as Rothbard details copiously, an ordinary recession blossomed into a full scale depression. Indeed, Obama's remarks are eerily similar to those given by President Hoover near the close of his first term: "we might have done nothing. That would have been utter ruin. Instead we met the situation with proposals to private business and to Congress of the most gigantic program of economic defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of the Republic. We put it into action. . . ."

Aside from the fact that the actions of the government will do precisely the opposite of what is intended, and thus more needless pain will be endured by the American people because of the folly of their leaders, Obama has slickly avoided having to answer for ballooning deficits despite plans to reduce them by half. Since we have to act, act we must, by spending money we don't have. In the unlikely event that the recession ends, he can not only claim credit, but it will be easy to avoid having to reduce spending, since in perceived economic good times, as we saw during the Bush years, no one gives two mites about deficit spending.

What I really wanted to discuss, however, was Obama's education plan. I'll intersperse my comments with his remarks as is my wont.

Right now, three-quarters of the fastest-growing occupations require more than a high school diploma. And yet, just over half of our citizens have that level of education. We have one of the highest high school dropout rates of any industrialized nation. And half of the students who begin college never finish.

Society certainly doesn't benefit from increasing its scores of high school flunkies, but there is nothing to prevent someone without a diploma from succeeding in this country, except for the fact that graduating is so preposterously easy that a lack of a high school education in many cases is merely another name for sloth. On the other hand, the women who reach the age of eighteen with a pair of kids in tow, or the men with extensive time in correction facilities, have more pressing affairs with which to concern themselves.

The problem is not that not enough people are attending college; the problem is that so many students receive utterly worthless degrees. I live with an exceptionally bright individual who works in retail, his bachelor degree aiding him slightly if at all. As this graph demonstrates, Americans are first in the world--and fourth per capita--when it comes to tertiary education. While the country would benefit immensely if more students graduating with degrees in, say, engineering or computer science, we accrue no similar benefit from a proliferation of degrees in the social sciences. To be sure, some good can come of the latter, but what makes this country run is not hordes of feminists with Womyn's Studies degrees.

Already, we have made an historic investment in education through the economic recovery plan. We have dramatically expanded early childhood education and will continue to improve its quality, because we know that the most formative learning comes in those first years of life. We have made college affordable for nearly seven million more students.

Anytime you hear the government insist that it will make something more affordable, that's an immediate sign to run directly in the opposite direction. When you subsidize something, you get more of it. Increasing student aid is a good way get more kids to attend college, but it has nothing to do with reducing the cost of education. More competition for fewer students could drive prices down, but Obama isn't advocating this.

This also shows a lack of originality on Obama's part, which may be one of the themes of the speech. I'm going to sound like a talking head if I insist that the whole Democrat platform can be boiled down to increased spending, but in this case, it's true. For years, we've tried to make education more affordable. If it isn't working, shouldn't we change strategies instead of just pushing down harder on the accelerator?

But we know that our schools don’t just need more resources. They need more reform.

Unless the plan is to eliminate the government monopoly on education, reform isn't possible. I'm willing to bet that a disproportionate number of engineers and programmers come from the home schooled ranks, but I somehow doubt this is in line with the Obama plan.

That is why this budget creates new incentives for teacher performance; pathways for advancement, and rewards for success.

The unions have always fought this, so I'm intrigued to see if this happens. It's a good idea actually; if we insist on good teachers, it behooves us to find a way to reward them.

And so tonight, I ask every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training. This can be community college or a four-year school; vocational training or an apprenticeship. But whatever the training may be, every American will need to get more than a high school diploma. And dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It’s not just quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country – and this country needs and values the talents of every American. That is why we will provide the support necessary for you to complete college and meet a new goal: by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.

There is something to be said, I suppose for hope and optimism, but we always seem to carry it too far. As Alexis de Tocqueville put it in Democracy in America, "Aristocratic nations are naturally too apt to narrow the scope of human perfectibility; democratic nations to expand it beyond compass." There is something to be said, I suppose for hope and optimism, but we always seem to carry it too far. Despite our ostensible equality before the law, it's simply not true that we all possess equal abilities or virtues. It makes no sense to insist that everyone attempt to continue schooling beyond twelve years. The insistence that everyone finish high school is one of the factors that destroyed the diploma of whatever value it once held. If we are not to do the same with the university degree, we need to encourage those who are not qualified from finding alternative educational or employment arrangements. Or we could simply dumb down the curriculum until a college degree becomes the new high school diploma. Then, a president, many years hence, will be able to urge everyone to attend graduate school--which of course we'll make affordable. Is it really necessary to put off meaningful employment for so long? Couldn't we try to do with a little less schooling?

The rhetoric is nice, but it looks like the current president is taking off where the former left off in our slow march back to serfdom.

Making a few changes

After spending a few minutes wrestling with html I gave up and simply upgraded the template. Ignoring the fact that I'm a computer programmer, and thus should have no reason to ever lose a battle to html, we now have an upgraded template. The aesthetic has remained very much the same; the only noticeable change is that I now have a series of links to the right which catalogs the four books I have reviewed thus far.

There have been a number of reasons for the precipitate drop in posts over the last several months. First, I graduated from college; thus ended my job churning out weekly columns for the school paper. Second, I have stepped up my reading substantially. Despite a couple of wavers on my part, the plan all along was to get my degree in a field in which I could find a job. I would then go about giving myself a liberal education. I have some thoughts to offer on the matter, which can be saved for a later post.

The important part is that without the deadlines, I tend to neglect writing for reading. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; although my writing is improving, I still have far too much to learn to pretend that I can neglect my studies to empty out whatever wisdom is lodged in my cranium. There's probably some happy medium, which, in my tendency to go to extremes, I have not yet happened upon. My hope is that the book reviews will become more plentiful, and will serve to boost my pitiful post count. Feedback on them is thus greatly appreciated.

And, although my stack of books to read continues to grow, I'd be open to suggestions for books to review as well.

An Appeal for Open Revolt

As a deeply conservative Roman Catholic, it would be dishonest for me to suggest that I read Good Catholic Girls with a terribly open mind. Billed as a fight for change, the introduction featured calls for “an end to mandatory clerical celibacy” and arguments for “women's moral authority on birth control, homosexuality, divorce, and abortion”. Here was reform of the revolutionary variety.

Nonetheless, I read with curiosity. While Pope John Paul II's “Theology of the Body” is causing a sensation in more orthodox circles, it will be sometime yet before the rest of the world catches on: tellingly, it receives no mention in Good Catholic Girls. Meanwhile, the heresies which author Angela Bonavoglia presents are the sort paraded out every time the Church is believed to be poised for reform. Thus, for instance, when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger—ubiquitous villain of the book—was chosen pope, journalists bemoaned the election of another traditionalist who was content to allow the Church to lag helplessly behind the times. The implicit assumptions seem to be: 1) that the Roman Catholic Church will one day shake loose the bonds of tradition and embrace modernity in all its forms; and 2) that the reluctance to do so is what prevents Her from once again playing a meaningful role in society. Specifically, Good Catholic Girls argues that it is high time the Church stops silencing women and starts embracing their role as “equals”. Of course, this is to be done on progressive terms.

Although I reject both assumptions, the book contains some value because it offers for examination a variety of arguments in their favor. This allows us to ask, charitably, how much can be said in favor of the drastic changes which Bonavoglia and her compatriots insist that the Church undertake. Setting aside the fact that many of these reforms are effectively impossible, the Church having settled the doctrinal dispute already, it remains unclear whether they would be beneficial.

As with so many feminist writers, Bonavoglia sees everything in starkly feminist terms: “The history of women's place in the Catholic Church is one of fits and starts, of rising power followed by backlash, of emerging authority squelched and denounced by a threatened all-male hierarchy.” This explanation is too simplistic, and does nothing to explain why men have also been denounced by an “all-male hierarchy”. For instance, some of the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas—who is called to the carpet for his “misogynistic theology”—were denounced as heretical a scant three years after his death. As Flannery O'Connor once put it while speaking on similar matters, “If they are good, they are dangerous.” The Church would not have lasted these two thousand years if She did not tread very carefully when it came to new and alarming thought.

Given the title, one assumes a predilection with women's issues. But her obsessiveness often exceeds the bounds of prudence. For instance, in covering the sex abuse scandal of the Church—which is done quite well for the most part—she notes that women too have been abused; and, whatever one's feelings for the “patriarchy”, the male clergy of the Church bear immense responsibility for what occurred. But to argue that it is women who are sexually involved with Catholic priests who “are arguably in the greatest danger of exploitation” is absurd: first, because it suggests that adult women are even less capable of removing themselves from abusive situations than are children and adolescents; and second, because it undermines the whole point of her book, which is that strong women cannot and will not be silenced by a Church that they are changing.

One mostly good chapter highlights the hypocrisy inherent in a clergy which takes a vow of celibacy and then lives licentiously, and a Church which seems nonplussed. To which I say: preach it sister. She then pleads for a change which is ultimately at odds with her fundamentally sound criticism: “One might have expected, in the face of the onslaught of outrage engendered by the sex abuse crisis, that the hierarchy would back off its rigid prohibitions concerning premarital sex, artificial birth control, infertility treatments, condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS, sterilization, homosexuality, remarriage after divorce, and pregnancy termination.” Why would one expect that? When confronted with an abuse of an ethic, it doesn't do to overhaul the whole edifice. The Church's teachings on human sexuality can be difficult to understand, and, but for Grace, impossible to follow completely. But their difficulty does not mean we should cease trying to adhere to them.

Despite the focus on sex and power, Bonavoglia is actually a bit confused about what she wants for the Church. After deprecating the institution of the priesthood, she implores that women be allowed to join it. Intent on improving the role of women in the Church, it is understandable that she may sometimes be unclear about the best way to do so. But it hardly makes the cautionary observer wish to join the crusade for an undefined panoply of reforms.

Bonavoglia offers insight into the progressive mind, but she seems incapable of understanding the mind of one who believes and strives earnestly to follow Church teaching on all issues. Her chapter on abortion, for instance, bemoans the fact that the Church pays so much attention to this one issue when there are so many other battles to be fought. The reasoning is simple: if the Church is correct that abortion is murder, then the silent holocaust is far and away the most important issue of our times. Noticeably, she completely fails to make this identification, instead offering her usual claptrap about sex and power.

Regrettably, this flaw pervades the book. Despite her frequent calls for dialogue, Good Catholic Girls is decidedly and disappointedly one-sided. Rather than extensively cover the reasoning behind a particular doctrine, which the Church has painstakingly defined after centuries of thinking on the matter, Bonavoglia finds a few excerpts to fit with her sophistical thesis. Thereupon she charges at the windmills of perceived oppression. The reader is left to scramble for the Catechism to provide a much needed counterpoint. It is a bit difficult to find cause to scramble back.

The postmodern despair

I live with an amusing and very intelligent fellow with whom I had the privilege of attending college. He is a good deal sharper than I am, the proof of which is that he often happens upon a particular theory well in advance of me; when I at last catch up, I mention my discovery to him, as he exasperatedly explains that he already knew this, and had, in fact, mentioned it to me previously. For instance, during our freshman year, he flatly pointed out that there was no difference between the Republicans and the Democrats. I objected, only to recite this very same fact with utter confidence some years later.

Similarly, for years he has been preaching to me what could ironically be dubbed the postmodern faith. And for years he has attempted to rebut my criticisms of that which, in fairness, neither he nor I, nor anyone really, completely understand. The tale of postmodernism involves a little history lesson. As science developed, man became more confident that he could comprehend the world in its entirety. Rejecting religion, modernists sought to use reason alone to understand man and his society. Faith left man content to gaze at the stars and hope for a better existence in some future life; but science promised to harness happiness in the here and now, in the inexorable march of progress.

Just as faith suffered a blow in the wars between Protestants and Catholics in the Reformation, and, to an extent, made way, eventually, for modernism, the bloodbath that was the twentieth century shattered man's faith in his own perfectibility. Billed as "the war to end all wars", the first world war settled precisely nothing; Europe had bathed in the blood of its children, and would do so again in less than thirty years. It would be some timbefore modernism would admit its defeat; meanwhile, the poet T.S. Eliot captured the mood best with his masterpiece, The Waste Land, which was published shortly after the end of the first war. As historian Paul Johnson puts it in his book Creators, "The Waste Land is not a narrative but a poem about moods, predominately despair and desolation, reflecting the ruin and waste of Eliot's private life and the defeat World War I had pointlessly inflicted on civilization."

Postmodernism can best be seen and understood as a reaction against the modernists. But whereas traditionalists such as Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton defended the Catholic Church, and the civilization which it built, and offered Her creed as the antidote to modernism, postmodernism retains the disregard for religious truth, and, indeed, much scientific truth as well; it offers a sort universal skepticism to the confidence of the moderns. Often contradictory, it tends to evade criticism because it makes so few claims.

It is also, my friend informs me, more about a mood and a state in which we find ourselves, than a school of thought led by protagonists. There are postmodern theorists of course, which I have neither the patience nor the inclination to explain; but it is a peculiar theory for which to fight. For a fight must have a cause, and the postmodernists don't seem to have one.

Now, as a Catholic, like the Chesterbelloc, I would answer the postmodernist by pointing to truth. We could start with things grasped easily, like the existence of natural laws, by which man is bound, and without which civilizations crumbles into barbarism. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception we would save for later.

And yet, even as I would meet these fellows with whatever wit I could muster, I have to admit that to an extent the postmodernists seem to have a point. They are wrong, of course, because however dubious we may be--and often should be--about the truth of certain matters, it is an intolerable absurdity to insist that it is not there because we cannot find it. Yet, as Eliot captured, the world does seem out of place, probably even unusually so. High culture has receded to be replaced by pap, offering no substance, but mere digestibility in the form of popular culture.

This dreary decadence has happened before, and it will happen again, so it's unwise to get overly lethargic. After all the excesses of the Renaissance, especially the behavior of the clergy, were one of the major impetuses to the Reformation. In the meantime, some good art was produced--although I've not read it, Erasmus's In Praise of Folly is generally regarded as a brilliant book. Selected geniuses aside, overall, the religious wars seemed to exhaust the energies of Europe; it took respite, resigned tolerance, and the casual passing of the seasons to make her again resplendent with a culture which forms a more honorable part of our heritage.

Normally, I'd insist, arrogantly, that the Church will unexpectedly ride to the rescue, as She often does. Just as the Jesuits confounded the Calvinists and Lutherans by saving half of Europe for Rome, just as the martyrs of the early Church surprised the Romans by dying joyously, and leaving one hundred more in their stead, the possibility of resurgence remains. But as anticipations of such are grounded solely on faith, and in utter disregard for the present position of the Church, it behooves us to look elsewhere.

It would be difficult to describe what we see as good, or even promising. Where are the satirists for this time of decadence? Is culture content to allow itself to be overtaken by a whirlwind of mediocrities?

Postmodernists argue, with some success, that society has lost all perspective. Experience, no longer rooted in anything, has become an end in itself; human life becomes a collection of experience; society, a collection of collections. Pagan society had myth: for the Greeks, this meant Homer. It didn't matter that it was difficuly to believe all the specifics of the stories; they provided the grounding, the shared vocabulary, which allowed Greek society to achieve such greatness. Similarly, Jewish society had the Torah and the priesthood. Christian society had the Church, and, with the coming of the Reformation, the Bible. Postmodern man has television shows which bring together the list of all of the neat things that happened during the last week. He has movies whose jokes are mere references to other movies he has recently seen. His personality becomes a list of things he likes; his friends are those who happen to profess a liking for similar things. To achieve individuality, he adds further and divergent interests to his list; sheer probability seems to separate him from the crowd. But whether he is popular or solitary, fundamentally, he is alone. He has enough distractions to fill his life should he so desire, but he is utterly unequipped to solve the existential crisis which confronts him when he is no longer surrounded by the cacophony of the media circus.

Like my friend, Walker Percy was way ahead of me. Binx Bolling, the antihero of his book The Moviegoer is a sterling representative of postmodern man, and a gentle reminder that while the culture in which he dwells changes frequently, man himself does not. Percy begins his book by quoting Kierkegaard: "the specific character of despair is precisely this: it is unaware of being despair". I can summarize no better, and can but plead for hope; hope that man may once again discover that he is not just a product of his time, but is instead a member of the brave and enduring human race. Greatness awaits.