I loved the opening two sentences for this article on the abortion debate:

"As an atheist and a secular kinda guy, I practice moral relativism regularly. Still, I always have struggled mightily with the ethics and politics of abortion."

Honesty. It's a virtue.

The Fair Tax

Or National Sales Tax.

This Washington Post article got me thinking about it again. Still not decided on it, but anything that could potentially get rid of the IRS gets my interest.

One of the critiques is that since prices would rise across the board, the poor would be the hardest hit. Maybe everyone having an equal share-paying the same-in the taxation process would enliven political participation. In order for politicians to pay for whatever programs they dream up, they would need to sell it to ALL the voters since ALL the voters would be paying for it.

Hmm.

The Bells

This latest word from Thomas Merton in his book Thoughts in Solitude and to you who hear bells regularly or rarely. It's made the bell sounds at TaylorU a lot more significant to me:


Bells are meant to remind us that God alone is good, that we belong to Him, that we are not living for this world.

They break in upon our cares in order to remind us that all things pass away and that our preoccupations are not important.

They speak to us of our freedom, which responsibilities and transient cares make us forget.

They are the voice of our alliance with the God of heaven.

They tell us that we are His true temple. They call us to peace with Him within ourselves.

The Gospel of Mary and Martha is read at the end of the Blessing of a Church Bell in order to remind us of all these things.

The bells say: business does not matter. Rest in God and rejoice, for this world is only the figure and the promise of a world to come, and only those who are detached from transient things can possess the substance of an eternal promise.

The bells say: we have spoken for centuries from the towers of great Churches. We spoke to the saints your fathers, in their land. We called them, as well call you, to sanctity. What is the word with which we called them?

We did not merely say, "Be good, come to Church." We did not merely say "Keep the commandments" but above all, "Christ is risen, Christ is risen!" And we said: "Come with us, God is good, salvation is not hard, His love has made it easy!" And this, our message, has always been for everyone, for those who came and for those who did not come, for our song is perfect as the Father in heaven is perfect and we pour our charity out upon all.

No Way...

I saw a headline on Yahoo! that a returning contestant to Dancing With the Stars had a wardrobe malfunction.

Now. It seems as if this is inevitable and/or preferable and should be no surprise to anyone. Those ladies perform acrobatic feats in an amount of fabric that combined would make an adequate dish towel. "What!?! The dish towel fell off while you were flipping?!? That wasn't supposed to happen...*cough*"

The laws of physics are defied everyday in many ways on that show.

Keynes

One cannot get much more Keynesian than Noble Prize winnng economist Paul Krugman in his latest article:

Falling Wage Syndrome

Some excerpts:

"Whatever the specifics, however, falling wages are a symptom of a sick economy. And they’re a symptom that can make the economy even sicker."

"But if everyone takes a pay cut, nobody gains a competitive advantage. So there’s no benefit to the economy from lower wages. Meanwhile, the fall in wages can worsen the economy’s problems on other fronts."

"To break that vicious circle, we basically need more: more stimulus, more decisive action on the banks, more job creation."

Movies

I've watched some good movies lately.

Elephant, an independent film about a school shooting.

Being There, with Peter Sellers who plays a mentally handicapped gardener who through random circumstances makes it into the upper echelons of American government just be making general statements about gardening.

Philadelphia, where Denzel Washington played a different character than usual. Thoughtful, emotional. Best Picture 1993.

Annie Hall, Woody Allen and wit and post-modernism. Very good. Best Picture 1977. I'd buy it.

At Last

At last, a new title. For those of you still wondering, I have not been in DC since December 08, thus, there isn't much "DC Time" to speak of first hand anymore.

The new title came to me in class. If I remember correctly, there are as many people living today as have ever inhabited the earth. Roughly speaking I am sure. Each one of us little humans has opinions we think vastly important. For instance, most think that if we were the close advisor to whatever leader of countryX, countryX would no longer be in the dumps. Every time I fly over a city or suburban area or watch hundreds of cars go by on the freeway, it baffles me to think that each person who is represented by the buildings and cars possesses their own set of qualities, flaws, and opinions. By inference, I think this makes our opinions worthless. In the vastness of the cosmos, who cares what I think? Especially if I am an accident of some pre-historic (before time) physical law. But wait! Christ came to earth, demonstrating His love for all humanity, including myself. He gives value to what each of us has to say because we are dignified creations in God's image. We are not an accident but carefully crafted, able to reason and interact. So here's one being's voice (me) out of 13 billion (or so), insignificant, yet valuable for some mysterious reason in all its shortcomings.

Bribing the Public

Let's not be bribed. This article on Tocqueville and his insights:

"Is America on the road to comfortable servility? “The American Republic,” Tocqueville wrote, “will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” Since Roosevelt’s New Deal, America has slowly drifted towards a political economy of soft despotism. Despite the Reagan Revolution, the trend-lines of government-spending and intervention have been in the anti-liberty direction. Entire constituencies of people now exist who regularly support politicians who promise that, in return for their votes, their entitlements (corporate-welfare, bails-outs for the “too big-to-fail,” the old-fashioned welfare state etc) will be maintained and increased."

Despotism-The Soft Way.

Also, this is an interesting article on the collapse of the Icelandic economy. In elections coming up it looks like the conservative party is about to be outed and replaced by a the more left leaning party. The collapse is of the economy is blamed on the conservative party's ruling. I found this sentence to be most interesting: "After racking up massive debts during years of laissez-faire economic regulation and rapid expansion, the country's three main banks collapsed within the space of a week in October." I don't know details, but if I were a socialist, I'd eat this up.

Surprise!

Unexpected results. Usually everything the government gets involved in runs so smoothly.

Bank bailout may hurt taxpayers, be open to fraud.

GM spent $2.8 million on lobbying while on borrowed gov money. Duh.

Wealth

Allow me to clarify on this word and its meaning, since it was thoughtfully brought up by my friend from DC.
Wealth brings with it a connotation of rich businessmen living beyond their means. Or anyone living beyond their means for that matter. This is distasteful to most, for obvious reasons, especially in Christian theology where Christ has exhorted His followers to be mindful and help the poor.
The free market type of wealth refers more broadly to a type of value creation. Wealth means any measure of resources that are expendable in exchange for goods or services.
Why is it a factor? Calvin Coolidge said it well in a speech he gave to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on January 17, 1925. This excerpt took place towards the end of the speech about the relationship between the free, capitalistic press in America to a popular government. He used the poem as a preface to the following paragraph:

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay. (Goldsmith)

Excellent poetry, but not a good working philosophy. Goldsmith would have been right, if, in fact, the accumulation of wealth meant the decay of men. It is rare indeed that the men who are accumulating wealth decay. It is only when they cease production, when accumulation stops, that an irreparable decay begins. Wealth is the product of industry, ambition, character and untiring effort. In all experience, the accumulation of wealth means the multiplication of schools, the increase of knowledge, the dissemination of intelligence, the encouragement of science, the broadening of outlook, the expansion of liberties, the widening of culture. Of course, the accumulation of wealth can not be justified as the chief end of existence. But we are compelled to recognize it as a means to well nigh every desirable achievement. So long as wealth is made the means and not the end, we need not greatly fear it. And there never was a time when wealth was so generally regarded as a means, or so little regarded as an end, as today. Just a little time ago we read in your newspapers that two leaders of American business, whose efforts at accumulation had been most astonishingly successful, had given fifty or sixty million dollars as endowments to educational works. That was real news. It was characteristic of our American experience with men of large resources. They use their power to serve, not themselves and their own families, but the public. I feel sure that the coming generations, which will benefit by those endowments, will not be easily convinced that they have suffered greatly because of these particular accumulations of wealth.

Hopefully that provides some clarification on an important aspect of economic development. Thanks, DM!