Since Drudge had the link, this shouldn't be new, but it's still intriguing:
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of likely voters finds Obama with 42% support and Paul with 41% of the vote. Eleven percent (11%) prefer some other candidate, and six percent (6%) are undecided.
I don't want to oversell this; the chance that Paul becomes president is still slim. But this is still big news for at least two reasons. First, as Gary North points out:
Ron Paul's notoriety is based on his policy recommendations, not charisma. His ideas are mobilizing an audience, and his main ideas are these: (1) strict Constitutionalism and (2) end the FED. No other candidate has ever gained public attention on this pair of ideas.
On one hand, Paul is the most replaceable of the candidates, because anyone who shares his ideas could run his campaign. On the other hand, the paucity of Paulians in the beltway make him the only political figure who can defend the Constitution and demand and end to the Fed without looking like a cheap panderer. In this sense, his thirty-plus year record of limited government and sound money makes him indispensable.
Second, the Republican establishment isn't going to be able to pretend that Paul is unelectable anymore. When you're polling even with the current president and large numbers of people still don't know who you are, you have to be considered a viable candidate.
Now, I fully expect the Republicans to do anything they can to avoid allowing Paul win the nomination, but their task is not an easy one. The game may be rigged, but it has to appear to be fair. In addition, the GOP can't afford to lose all of the Paul people. Sure, some of them, like me, have never voted Republican in a major election, but many more of them are former GOP loyalists.
There is a growing backlash against government growth led by the tea partiers. I'm very receptive to criticisms that the tea party movement is hypocritical for not paying attention to the deficit until Bush left office. But this doesn't alter the fact that the State has gotten too big, and shows no indications of being able to live within its means. I'm not at all optimistic that anything can be done to stop the Leviathan, but I'm cautiously hopeful that enough of the tea party will be principled enough to push the GOP fiscally rightward.
On a related note, Politico came out with an interesting story about the tea party movement:
Tea party activists are divided roughly into two camps, according to a new POLITICO/TargetPoint poll: one that’s libertarian-minded and largely indifferent to hot-button values issues and another that’s culturally conservative and equally concerned about social and fiscal issues.
The results, however, suggest a distinct fault line that runs through the tea party activist base, characterized by two wings led by the politicians who ranked highest when respondents were asked who “best exemplifies the goals of the tea party movement” — former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), a former GOP presidential candidate.
The tea parties have been a very mixed blessing for Republicans. They've certainly provided an outlet for the growing anti-Obama, anti-Government rhetoric. But this fault line will not necessarily repair easily.
The Democrats have managed to piece together electoral success with a contingent of disparate special interests. The Republic ideology has been, at times, more coherent, but in addition to the divide between fiscal conservatives--who can be appeased by tax cuts--and the social conservatives--who will gladly give obeisance for a nasty word about abortion now and again--the foreign policy issue is threatening to split the party.
This has not been Paul's doing entirely--the disastrous wars were the real impetus--but he's added fuel to the fire. There will always be a Palin wing that supports the military blindly for the "freedoms" it allegedly provides us; but there will also be those who wonder, if the State is truly the enemy, why we are to trust its employees if they wear the right uniforms. If the Post Office is inefficient, and a drain on free citizens, why is an empire deemed compatible with limited government?
There is a moral and an economic side to non-interventionism. As much as I'd like to think that the barbarity of bombing Afghani weddings would cause Americans to cease warring on everyone, the economic crisis may drive the point home more effectively. It makes no sense to lavish billions of dollars attempting to build a pair of countries in the Middle East when our own country is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. If enough of the Palin people figure this out, the tea party just might be a force to be reckoned with.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Sunday, April 04, 2010
Hard choices can always be made later
One of the better observations Jonah Goldberg makes in Liberal Fascism is that centrist policies are often sold, not on the basis of taking a bit of good from each of the opposing policies, but by revealing that there is no actual conflict between them. We need not choose between guns and butter, or between economic growth and saving the environment; we may have both. We make our choice by not needing to choose at all.
In a recent column, Goldberg brings up this point in regards to Obama's health care bill:
We can give 32 million more people coverage, without preconditions, and save money. It’s already clear that this have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too pitch was bogus; big corporations are announcing that Obamacare will either cost them millions (if not billions) or force them to drop coverage.
This is a valid criticism. There is absolutely no way that costs can be reduced by circumventing what little remains of the free market in the health care industry. Whenever costs are borne by others, we provide a disincentive for consumers to minimize their usage of the good or service. This naturally pushes costs sharply upwards. The end result will not be death panels, but some form of rationing is, in the long run, inevitable.
But while Goldberg is right about health care, he ought to apply his criticism to the American democratic system as a whole, or at least to the two parties that run it. For the Republicans, too, used the have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too pitch during the run up to the war in Iraq. The war would not prove costly, as Iraqi oil could defray war expenses.
The Iraq war was immoral and stupid, but it also served to demonstrate the extent to which Republicans, the ostensible party of restraint, hadn't the slightest inclination to provide responsible government. Rather than insist that the American people finance the war, Bush exacerbated the situation by cutting taxes. This was just as reckless and foolhardy as Obama's similar lack of fiscal restraint which conservatives now decry.
The fundamental problem which confronts our country is our massive debt. We continue to spend more money than we save; with the cost of entitlements rising, with no meaningful cuts to any government programs, and with tax revenues plummeting in a wobbly economy, the crisis threatens to become acute in short order.
But politicians of both parties continue to believe that there is no debt crisis. We can borrow as much as we like, and continue to spend on whatever we feel is desirable. This fallacy will be laid to rest when foreigners cease buying our debt, and we are forced, at last, to make a decision. Do we monetize the debt, and risk destruction of the currency through inflation? Or do we take our medicine and deal with a deflationary depression?
No inclinations can be discerned from the present government, which, like those before it, is content to let the problem build up for another administration to handle. So we wait.
In a recent column, Goldberg brings up this point in regards to Obama's health care bill:
We can give 32 million more people coverage, without preconditions, and save money. It’s already clear that this have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too pitch was bogus; big corporations are announcing that Obamacare will either cost them millions (if not billions) or force them to drop coverage.
This is a valid criticism. There is absolutely no way that costs can be reduced by circumventing what little remains of the free market in the health care industry. Whenever costs are borne by others, we provide a disincentive for consumers to minimize their usage of the good or service. This naturally pushes costs sharply upwards. The end result will not be death panels, but some form of rationing is, in the long run, inevitable.
But while Goldberg is right about health care, he ought to apply his criticism to the American democratic system as a whole, or at least to the two parties that run it. For the Republicans, too, used the have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too pitch during the run up to the war in Iraq. The war would not prove costly, as Iraqi oil could defray war expenses.
The Iraq war was immoral and stupid, but it also served to demonstrate the extent to which Republicans, the ostensible party of restraint, hadn't the slightest inclination to provide responsible government. Rather than insist that the American people finance the war, Bush exacerbated the situation by cutting taxes. This was just as reckless and foolhardy as Obama's similar lack of fiscal restraint which conservatives now decry.
The fundamental problem which confronts our country is our massive debt. We continue to spend more money than we save; with the cost of entitlements rising, with no meaningful cuts to any government programs, and with tax revenues plummeting in a wobbly economy, the crisis threatens to become acute in short order.
But politicians of both parties continue to believe that there is no debt crisis. We can borrow as much as we like, and continue to spend on whatever we feel is desirable. This fallacy will be laid to rest when foreigners cease buying our debt, and we are forced, at last, to make a decision. Do we monetize the debt, and risk destruction of the currency through inflation? Or do we take our medicine and deal with a deflationary depression?
No inclinations can be discerned from the present government, which, like those before it, is content to let the problem build up for another administration to handle. So we wait.
Saturday, April 03, 2010
Dostoevski and the west
"To Dostoevski every object and every act is merely a symbol for some elusive spiritual truth. From this point of view comes an outlook which makes his characters almost incomprehensible to the average person in the Western tradition: if such a character obtains a fortune, he cries, "I am ruined!" If he is acquitted on a murder charge, or seems likely to be, he exclaims, "I am condemned," and seeks to incriminate himself in order to ensure the punishment which is so necessary for his own spiritual self-acquittal. If he deliberately misses his opponent in a duel, he has a guilty conscience, and says, "I should not have injured him thus; I should have killed him!" In each case the speaker cares nothing about property, punishment, or life. He cares only about spiritual values: asceticism, guilt, remorse, injury to one's self-respect." - Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, p.104
Although his observations about Dostoevski are correct, I do not find his characters incomprehensible as Quigley does. Certainly, there are scenes--in The Idiot especially--in which the characters' reactions seem sentimental, if not slightly mad. But do we really blame Roskolinikov for the guilt he feels, or for the way in which he seeks redemption for the crime he has committed? Nor do I find Alyosha Karamazov's boasts of his own evil to be impossible to understand. For, granted that he is the most morally righteous character of the novel, Alyosha was aware of the potential for evil which resides in every human heart.
Quigley may be right that "Dostoevski was a precursor of the Bolsheviks." Still, I think one ought to read Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov not merely in an attempt to catch a glimpse into the Russia soul, but as one would read any other great work of fiction.
Although his observations about Dostoevski are correct, I do not find his characters incomprehensible as Quigley does. Certainly, there are scenes--in The Idiot especially--in which the characters' reactions seem sentimental, if not slightly mad. But do we really blame Roskolinikov for the guilt he feels, or for the way in which he seeks redemption for the crime he has committed? Nor do I find Alyosha Karamazov's boasts of his own evil to be impossible to understand. For, granted that he is the most morally righteous character of the novel, Alyosha was aware of the potential for evil which resides in every human heart.
Quigley may be right that "Dostoevski was a precursor of the Bolsheviks." Still, I think one ought to read Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov not merely in an attempt to catch a glimpse into the Russia soul, but as one would read any other great work of fiction.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Feds never pay taxes
This story from Drudge the other day caught my attention:
More than 3 percent of the 2.8 million federal civilian employees owed the Treasury unpaid federal income taxes in 2008, according to the IRS. If you include retirees and military service members, the numbers go from nearly 100,000 up to 276,000 current or former workers who owe $3 billion in taxes.
The problem here is that federal employees pay no income tax. As Murray Rothbard observed:
If a bureaucrat receives a salary of $5,000 a year and pays $1,000 in "taxes" to the government, it is quite obvious that he is simply receiving a salary of $4,000 and pays no taxes at all. The heads of the government have simply chosen a complex and misleading accounting device to make it appear that he pays taxes in the same way as any other men making the same income. The UN’s arrangement, whereby all its employees are exempt from any income taxation, is far more candid. - Man, Economy and State with Power and Market, pp. 1151-2
There are other problems with federal employees, such as that they make more money than productive private sector employees, and that, when not completely worthless, they actually inhibit production by insisting that the private sector participate in an Olympics of bureaucratic games in order to provide goods and services to consumers.
Anything which draws attention to the bloated government sector can't be all bad, but the focus on unpaid taxes rather misses the point.
More than 3 percent of the 2.8 million federal civilian employees owed the Treasury unpaid federal income taxes in 2008, according to the IRS. If you include retirees and military service members, the numbers go from nearly 100,000 up to 276,000 current or former workers who owe $3 billion in taxes.
The problem here is that federal employees pay no income tax. As Murray Rothbard observed:
If a bureaucrat receives a salary of $5,000 a year and pays $1,000 in "taxes" to the government, it is quite obvious that he is simply receiving a salary of $4,000 and pays no taxes at all. The heads of the government have simply chosen a complex and misleading accounting device to make it appear that he pays taxes in the same way as any other men making the same income. The UN’s arrangement, whereby all its employees are exempt from any income taxation, is far more candid. - Man, Economy and State with Power and Market, pp. 1151-2
There are other problems with federal employees, such as that they make more money than productive private sector employees, and that, when not completely worthless, they actually inhibit production by insisting that the private sector participate in an Olympics of bureaucratic games in order to provide goods and services to consumers.
Anything which draws attention to the bloated government sector can't be all bad, but the focus on unpaid taxes rather misses the point.
Monday, March 15, 2010
On the coming death of Keynesian economics
For those who believe the economic crisis is over, Keynes is the hero of the hour. His ideas were implemented by enlightened Governments around the world--especially those of the United States and the United Kingdom. Without the decisive action to bail out bankers with borrowed money, these countries would still be mired in recession.
For the narrative to fit, no mind must be paid to the fact that countries which neglected to implement Keynesian ideas, such as Germany, are doing even better. And we must refrain from pointing out that the boost in GDP has done nothing to reduce unemployment. This is a jobless recovery, whatever that may mean.
I don't for a second believe this crisis is over. I am also far from convinced that the credit given to Keynes will be turned to blame should the recovery fail to materialize. Gary North is more optimistic than I am:
When the USSR went bust economically in 1988, then lost the Afghan war in 1989, and finally committed suicide in 1991, Marxism died. All the footnotes in the Marxist books no longer mattered in academia. All the post-1991 wailing by Marxists that the Soviet Union really had never been truly Marxist has been ignored. Why? Because the Marxists took credit for the USSR for 74 years. They praised the Soviet Union's central planning. So, in 1991, they could not get off the sinking Soviet ship in time to justify the Marxist system.
By 1991, China's economy was booming because of Deng's abandonment of Marxist economics in 1978. That left only Albania, Cuba, and North Korea. The Marxists had nowhere to turn to that offered evidence of economic success. Overnight, they became a laughing stock on campus.
This will be the fate of Keynesians when the governments of the West finally go bust or else abandon the deficits and the fiat money.
North has a point, but I see two problems with his analysis. First, it is extremely unlikely that the "recovery" will last seventy-four years. It is far more likely that it will be revealed to be chimerical by the end of the year than that it should last three quarters of a century. This is important because the more an idea is impressed upon the minds of men, the harder it is to uproot. If the stock market collapses tomorrow, and the unemployment numbers shoot up, the Keynesians will have some explaining to do. But the longer the false recovery lasts, the harder it will be for them to explain away the failure of their theories.
Second, I am not so sure the Keynesians will be discredited by more than the small number of people who pay attention to these sorts of things. Ron Paul has done a tremendous service in educating people--myself included--about the school of Austrian economics. His impact, exemplified by his recent win at the CPAC straw poll, should not be understated. But even with the increased interest in economics that accompanies every end of the boom phase of the business cycle, much work remains.
North is aware of this, but I'm still concerned that so much of the populace remains completely ignorant of economics in general, or at least of any alternative to the Keynesian chatter that dominates everywhere outside of the Internet, that the opportunity will only be capable of so much. Mainstream economists should have been run out of town after their embarrassing inability to notice the economic crisis they now take credit for having averted. But Krugman still has his column, and I think it depressingly likely that this will not change, even should the economy worsen to the extent that no one can mention recovery without being laughed at.
After all, most of the neo-conservatives who proved so abysmally inaccurate about WMDs, the Al-Qaeda connection--in fact, most everything about the Iraq War--are still ubiquitous. Bill Kristol will probably continue to write alongside Krugman even after they should have both been discredited.
This said, North is right about the opportunity for adherents of the Austrian school. As economics is only one of my interests--I have a full-time job as a computer programmer--I don't think I'd be able to contribute to North's project to dismantle the Keynesian system. Nor, to be honest, do I believe my sparse readings in economics qualify me for the role. But I wish him the best of luck.
Still, my brother, who is presently majoring in economics, and I plan on reading Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money sometime this summer on this blog. I can't promise a line by line examination of the book, but we should be able to cover some of the main points, as PJ and I have tried to do for On Liberty and The Republic. Every little bit helps.
For the narrative to fit, no mind must be paid to the fact that countries which neglected to implement Keynesian ideas, such as Germany, are doing even better. And we must refrain from pointing out that the boost in GDP has done nothing to reduce unemployment. This is a jobless recovery, whatever that may mean.
I don't for a second believe this crisis is over. I am also far from convinced that the credit given to Keynes will be turned to blame should the recovery fail to materialize. Gary North is more optimistic than I am:
When the USSR went bust economically in 1988, then lost the Afghan war in 1989, and finally committed suicide in 1991, Marxism died. All the footnotes in the Marxist books no longer mattered in academia. All the post-1991 wailing by Marxists that the Soviet Union really had never been truly Marxist has been ignored. Why? Because the Marxists took credit for the USSR for 74 years. They praised the Soviet Union's central planning. So, in 1991, they could not get off the sinking Soviet ship in time to justify the Marxist system.
By 1991, China's economy was booming because of Deng's abandonment of Marxist economics in 1978. That left only Albania, Cuba, and North Korea. The Marxists had nowhere to turn to that offered evidence of economic success. Overnight, they became a laughing stock on campus.
This will be the fate of Keynesians when the governments of the West finally go bust or else abandon the deficits and the fiat money.
North has a point, but I see two problems with his analysis. First, it is extremely unlikely that the "recovery" will last seventy-four years. It is far more likely that it will be revealed to be chimerical by the end of the year than that it should last three quarters of a century. This is important because the more an idea is impressed upon the minds of men, the harder it is to uproot. If the stock market collapses tomorrow, and the unemployment numbers shoot up, the Keynesians will have some explaining to do. But the longer the false recovery lasts, the harder it will be for them to explain away the failure of their theories.
Second, I am not so sure the Keynesians will be discredited by more than the small number of people who pay attention to these sorts of things. Ron Paul has done a tremendous service in educating people--myself included--about the school of Austrian economics. His impact, exemplified by his recent win at the CPAC straw poll, should not be understated. But even with the increased interest in economics that accompanies every end of the boom phase of the business cycle, much work remains.
North is aware of this, but I'm still concerned that so much of the populace remains completely ignorant of economics in general, or at least of any alternative to the Keynesian chatter that dominates everywhere outside of the Internet, that the opportunity will only be capable of so much. Mainstream economists should have been run out of town after their embarrassing inability to notice the economic crisis they now take credit for having averted. But Krugman still has his column, and I think it depressingly likely that this will not change, even should the economy worsen to the extent that no one can mention recovery without being laughed at.
After all, most of the neo-conservatives who proved so abysmally inaccurate about WMDs, the Al-Qaeda connection--in fact, most everything about the Iraq War--are still ubiquitous. Bill Kristol will probably continue to write alongside Krugman even after they should have both been discredited.
This said, North is right about the opportunity for adherents of the Austrian school. As economics is only one of my interests--I have a full-time job as a computer programmer--I don't think I'd be able to contribute to North's project to dismantle the Keynesian system. Nor, to be honest, do I believe my sparse readings in economics qualify me for the role. But I wish him the best of luck.
Still, my brother, who is presently majoring in economics, and I plan on reading Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money sometime this summer on this blog. I can't promise a line by line examination of the book, but we should be able to cover some of the main points, as PJ and I have tried to do for On Liberty and The Republic. Every little bit helps.
Sunday, March 07, 2010
Stock up now
The tax on pipe tobacco is heading drastically upwards:
Just about every member of the pipe smoking community should already know about H.R. 4439, the Tobacco Tax Parity Act of 2010. It proposes to raise the tax on pipe tobacco 775% from $2.8311 to $24.78 per pound.
Since I happen to smoke pipe tobacco, this issue is nearer to my heart than it may be to yours. But it should be aggravating to anyone who cares at all for liberty. If the Government can place prohibitive taxes on any economic good, it can make them all but illegal. I'm not certain we'll see a black market for tobacco emerge, like the ones we already have for drugs which are actually illegal, but as the taxes continue to increase, that day becomes ever nearer at hand. In the meantime, we must simply pay exorbitant prices for a legal good.
The article I linked to contains an interview with an entrepreneur who sells roll your own tobacco and pipe tobacco. It's instructive for two reasons: first, in that it demonstrates how decisions by bureaucrats destroy working sectors of the economy without the least concern. Both the entrepreneur and his customers benefited by the free exchange of tobacco for money; they will now have to pay more dearly--but at least the State can make steal a bit of money from its citizens.
Second: regulation hurts small companies more than it hurts corporations. To be in favor of excessive regulation and yet to be anti-corporation is to reveal oneself to be ignorant, or a moron, or both.
These oppressive bastards are going to make everybody in pipe tobacco register in their states. Folks in roll-your-own and cigarettes do now. Every year you have to get your brand certified. In terms of incrementalism, that’s one of the next steps, and another thing to destroy manufacturers because the paperwork is so regressive and so time-consuming, it’s more than a small company can sustain.
The people in government can do it because they don’t have to pay for their payroll. They can just steal more money from taxpayers. They can add employees ad nauseam to process all the paperwork because they don’t have to produce anything to pay all the salaries. For a business it’s a little different. It gets to a point that a business just says screw it, I can’t afford the paperwork. It’s time to shutter the store. We’re getting to that point.
It would be hyperbole to suggest that this is evidence that we no longer live in a free society. But it is telling that this sort of thing can happen without anyone really noticing. Sure, Pipes Magazine picked up on it, but if Lew Rockwell hadn't linked to it, I'm not sure how many people would have noticed. The next thing you know, Obama and the Democrats will extend the PATRIOT Act...
Just about every member of the pipe smoking community should already know about H.R. 4439, the Tobacco Tax Parity Act of 2010. It proposes to raise the tax on pipe tobacco 775% from $2.8311 to $24.78 per pound.
Since I happen to smoke pipe tobacco, this issue is nearer to my heart than it may be to yours. But it should be aggravating to anyone who cares at all for liberty. If the Government can place prohibitive taxes on any economic good, it can make them all but illegal. I'm not certain we'll see a black market for tobacco emerge, like the ones we already have for drugs which are actually illegal, but as the taxes continue to increase, that day becomes ever nearer at hand. In the meantime, we must simply pay exorbitant prices for a legal good.
The article I linked to contains an interview with an entrepreneur who sells roll your own tobacco and pipe tobacco. It's instructive for two reasons: first, in that it demonstrates how decisions by bureaucrats destroy working sectors of the economy without the least concern. Both the entrepreneur and his customers benefited by the free exchange of tobacco for money; they will now have to pay more dearly--but at least the State can make steal a bit of money from its citizens.
Second: regulation hurts small companies more than it hurts corporations. To be in favor of excessive regulation and yet to be anti-corporation is to reveal oneself to be ignorant, or a moron, or both.
These oppressive bastards are going to make everybody in pipe tobacco register in their states. Folks in roll-your-own and cigarettes do now. Every year you have to get your brand certified. In terms of incrementalism, that’s one of the next steps, and another thing to destroy manufacturers because the paperwork is so regressive and so time-consuming, it’s more than a small company can sustain.
The people in government can do it because they don’t have to pay for their payroll. They can just steal more money from taxpayers. They can add employees ad nauseam to process all the paperwork because they don’t have to produce anything to pay all the salaries. For a business it’s a little different. It gets to a point that a business just says screw it, I can’t afford the paperwork. It’s time to shutter the store. We’re getting to that point.
It would be hyperbole to suggest that this is evidence that we no longer live in a free society. But it is telling that this sort of thing can happen without anyone really noticing. Sure, Pipes Magazine picked up on it, but if Lew Rockwell hadn't linked to it, I'm not sure how many people would have noticed. The next thing you know, Obama and the Democrats will extend the PATRIOT Act...
Saturday, February 20, 2010
On Liberty
I've gone back into the archives to provide links to the first set of discussions PJ and I had. May this someday prove useful, to someone.
1) Introductory
2) Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion
3) Of Individuality, as One of the Elements of Well-Being
4) Of the Limits of the Authority of Society Over the Individual
5) Applications
1) Introductory
2) Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion
3) Of Individuality, as One of the Elements of Well-Being
4) Of the Limits of the Authority of Society Over the Individual
5) Applications
Instructive Reflections
Church, Ecumenism and Politics: New Endeavors in Ecclesiology, is a collection of lectures and papers by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. This slender volume takes a theme similar to that of his book, The New People of God, first published (in German) in 1969: "the question of the nature of the Church and her structure, the questions of ecumenicism and of the relation between the Church and the world." The threefold division given in the book will be followed in my review.
The first part, On the Nature and Structure of the Church, contains a useful chapter, "The Primacy of the Pope and the Unity of the People of God"; it offers insight into the Cardinal's understanding of the responsibility of the pope, which responsibility is now his. The pope's relation to the Church, as an individual, is not only biblically sound—we find Paul speaking, as Paul, for the members of his community, and addressing other communities through their leaders, such as Peter—it also provides a framework for responsibility. Ratzinger uses Reginald Cardinal Pole's observations to work his way towards a pope who leads and guides his Church even in, perhaps especially through, personal suffering. As Pole observes: "The office of the papacy is a cross, indeed, the greatest of all crosses. For what can be said to pertain more to the cross and anxiety of the soul than care and responsibility for all the Churches throughout the world?" Ratzinger was reflecting on this cross long before it became his as pope.
Part two deals with Ecumenical Problems. Given the recent actions by the author, as Pope Benedict XVI, in respects to the struggling Anglican Church, "Problems and Prospects of the Anglican-Catholic Dialogue" is most enlightening. Although it will be some time before the effects of the olive branch offered to Anglicans by Pope Benedict are known, this section makes clear that when the pope acted, he did so with immense awareness of the issues at stake. In the appendix to this section, Ratzinger draws on the great Catholic convert, the Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman. He notes, "In Newman's day, every kind of interpretation of the Thirty-nine Articles was permitted except for an explicitly Catholic one. Conversion for Newman became imperative once the Anglican hierarchy had explicitly rejected as unacceptable his attempt at a Catholic interpretation." Although personal interpretation was supposed to be given significant freedom, it required limitation, without which a believer would be totally cut off from tradition. This conundrum, which is at least as old as Luther's discovery of alternative Protestant theologies, confronts Anglicans today.
The final part, which comprises almost half of the book, it titled Church and Politics. Ratzinger's meditates on "Europe: A Heritage with Obligations for Christians." He points out problems with three "counterimages" of Europe: a pre-Christian paganism; what is often dubbed post-Christian, but what he calls "post-European"; and Marxism. The first image resonated with practitioners of National Socialism, which was "a renunciation of Christianity as alienation from the "beautiful" German "savagery"." The second elevates tolerance by excluding religion from the secular realm; in the process rational law dissolves into anarchy. This leaves opens the door to tyranny, since anarchy wearies of lawlessness and readily consents to force as a substitute.
The third image, Marxism, comes up with some frequency. Time and again, Ratzinger tactfully and gently corrects its errors. Rather than discuss Marx's economic theories, Ratzinger points out the problems of Marx's eschatology. Since human beings as such are secondary to the goal of communism, their dignity is not sacred. "In practical terms, those who act according to party logic, and only those, act in keeping with freedom. When party logic demands arrests and terror, then it goes without saying that such action, too, is in keeping with freedom, because, after all, it is consistent with the logic that leads to freedom." Such thinking cannot protect the rights and dignity of every human being.
Church, Ecumenism and Politics is engaging and informative. It offers valuable insight into the thinking of Pope Benedict XVI on matters of particular and far-reaching significance, which indicates that the Church is in very able hands.
The first part, On the Nature and Structure of the Church, contains a useful chapter, "The Primacy of the Pope and the Unity of the People of God"; it offers insight into the Cardinal's understanding of the responsibility of the pope, which responsibility is now his. The pope's relation to the Church, as an individual, is not only biblically sound—we find Paul speaking, as Paul, for the members of his community, and addressing other communities through their leaders, such as Peter—it also provides a framework for responsibility. Ratzinger uses Reginald Cardinal Pole's observations to work his way towards a pope who leads and guides his Church even in, perhaps especially through, personal suffering. As Pole observes: "The office of the papacy is a cross, indeed, the greatest of all crosses. For what can be said to pertain more to the cross and anxiety of the soul than care and responsibility for all the Churches throughout the world?" Ratzinger was reflecting on this cross long before it became his as pope.
Part two deals with Ecumenical Problems. Given the recent actions by the author, as Pope Benedict XVI, in respects to the struggling Anglican Church, "Problems and Prospects of the Anglican-Catholic Dialogue" is most enlightening. Although it will be some time before the effects of the olive branch offered to Anglicans by Pope Benedict are known, this section makes clear that when the pope acted, he did so with immense awareness of the issues at stake. In the appendix to this section, Ratzinger draws on the great Catholic convert, the Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman. He notes, "In Newman's day, every kind of interpretation of the Thirty-nine Articles was permitted except for an explicitly Catholic one. Conversion for Newman became imperative once the Anglican hierarchy had explicitly rejected as unacceptable his attempt at a Catholic interpretation." Although personal interpretation was supposed to be given significant freedom, it required limitation, without which a believer would be totally cut off from tradition. This conundrum, which is at least as old as Luther's discovery of alternative Protestant theologies, confronts Anglicans today.
The final part, which comprises almost half of the book, it titled Church and Politics. Ratzinger's meditates on "Europe: A Heritage with Obligations for Christians." He points out problems with three "counterimages" of Europe: a pre-Christian paganism; what is often dubbed post-Christian, but what he calls "post-European"; and Marxism. The first image resonated with practitioners of National Socialism, which was "a renunciation of Christianity as alienation from the "beautiful" German "savagery"." The second elevates tolerance by excluding religion from the secular realm; in the process rational law dissolves into anarchy. This leaves opens the door to tyranny, since anarchy wearies of lawlessness and readily consents to force as a substitute.
The third image, Marxism, comes up with some frequency. Time and again, Ratzinger tactfully and gently corrects its errors. Rather than discuss Marx's economic theories, Ratzinger points out the problems of Marx's eschatology. Since human beings as such are secondary to the goal of communism, their dignity is not sacred. "In practical terms, those who act according to party logic, and only those, act in keeping with freedom. When party logic demands arrests and terror, then it goes without saying that such action, too, is in keeping with freedom, because, after all, it is consistent with the logic that leads to freedom." Such thinking cannot protect the rights and dignity of every human being.
Church, Ecumenism and Politics is engaging and informative. It offers valuable insight into the thinking of Pope Benedict XVI on matters of particular and far-reaching significance, which indicates that the Church is in very able hands.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Milton
From Sonnet 15:
For what can Warrs, but endless Warr still breed,
Till Truth, & Right from Violence be freed,
And Public Faith cleard from the shamefull brand
Of Public Fraud. In vain doth Valour bleed
While Avarice, & Rapine share the land.
Sometimes even the puritans get it right. I've been distracted by fine literature, but it's important to remember that Americans are still killing and being killed in at least two countries. And the bleeding shows no signs of abating anytime soon.
For what can Warrs, but endless Warr still breed,
Till Truth, & Right from Violence be freed,
And Public Faith cleard from the shamefull brand
Of Public Fraud. In vain doth Valour bleed
While Avarice, & Rapine share the land.
Sometimes even the puritans get it right. I've been distracted by fine literature, but it's important to remember that Americans are still killing and being killed in at least two countries. And the bleeding shows no signs of abating anytime soon.
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