Moral equivalence, tolerance, reciprocity

September 5, 2010 2 Comments

When specifics are at stake, when values are weighed, and when judgments must be passed, it seems American liberals cannot help but default to moral equivalence.

Take for example the post-9/11 semantic struggle for the word “terrorism.”  In an earlier era, terrorism clearly meant something like a plane hijacking or an embassy bombing; it was bad because it forced a government into an odious moral dilemma of either sacrificing innocents or legitimating violence as a means for change.  But with the War on Terror, many opponents were either too angry or wearied by the daily use of the “T” word to maintain the important distinctions of who, how, and why that makes terrorism so bad.  In their new parlance, “terrorist” became an epithet befitting the unrealistic black-and-white view that any exercise of force or the mere holding of power was bad.  Common was the claim that Americans were terrorists because they dropped bombs from planes or their ancestors once sniped British officers from treetops.  This dumbing down of the “T” word culminated in a bumper sticker featuring a quaint photo of four Native Americans with rifles at the ready.  Its caption: “Homeland Security–fighting terrorism since 1492.”  And so in a thumbnail sketch, the whole of our glorious and equitable American civilization was dismissed as no different from a band of murderous Islamo-supremacist thugs.

Not only can moral equivalence single-handedly dismiss a civilization’s rich heritage, its also a cover for those who don’t want to think too hard in comparing religions or considering their respective relation to truth.  In the midst of August’s “Ground Zero mosque” media madness, a telling exchange between Charlie Rose and Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria demonstrated a shameful intellectual weakness that pervades mainstream journalism.  To them, the shared evil between Christendom and Islam was not violence or the threat of coercive force, but the idea of proselytization itself;  that is, the desire to share, spread, or submit for discussion that one idea or belief is possibly better than another.  It is anathema to their profession, which upholds objectivity and neutrality.  But in an existential twist, their reports in turn must be colored by a tolerance that is itself intolerant of exclusive truth claims.  All this is surely an overreaction to a past age when fears of patriarchy, conformity, and stigmatization of minorities were major concerns.  But if we can’t get beyond the hang up of stigmatization and the impulse of tolerance that begets moral equivalence, then we have no hope of solving our problems.

Oddly enough, the inability of journalists to admit their true feelings or core motivations gives them something in common with orthodox Islam.  They both are deficient in reciprocity.  While the vested partisans of Christendom have demonstrated a sustained capacity for self-criticism, reflection, dialog, and reform, no one under the sun of political correctness can bear to admit that orthodox Islam today is in want of those things.  When a religion’s unmistakable prescription for apostasy is death, and when a civilization propagates its ideas but cannot reciprocate openness to allow the honest consideration of others, there is a problem.  Any institution or social phenomena, whether it be a religion, a government, or the culture of professional journalism, cannot long survive without shedding illiberal bulwarks against the unfettered exchange of ideas.  Totalitarian states make no qualms about shutting up debate, but when American liberals run up against the hard facts of life, they all too often dull distinctions by means of moral equivalence.

To be sure, all individuals must be respected and judged on their own merits, not on their cultural background.  And while religions and cultural norms should be given due diligence, it does not hold that in the end they are all the same.

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Hackers, Pirates, Brats

August 7, 2010 1 Comment

The Afghanistan Wikileaks story has gotten progressively more interesting in the weeks since it broke.  Initial critics rightfully blasted Julian Assange’s outfit for endangering the lives of those who have collaborated with NATO forces.  When prompted in a July 28th  interview by Today‘s Merideth Vieira, the Australian-born Assange admitted (to his credit) the possibility that further killing could result from his leak campaign.   So in an effort to save lives from American “murder,” as Wikileaks alleged in their famous Apache helicopter video from earlier this year, the once prodigy hacker and his crew have wrecklessly endangered the lives of others.

The leaks also have the secondary effect of making cooperation with American forces less appealing to any potential partners in future conflicts.  For this, some observers have concluded that Wikileaks is basically an enemy of the United States.  Its no coincidence that Iceland happens to be a base for the site or that Pirate Bay, Sweden’s ridiculous information liberators, have extended a hand of complicity to securely host the leak documents.  It would seem silly to think that Scandinavians have been conspiring in enmity against America, but such a postulation is not far off the mark.  In terms of international relations theory, these countries are known as freeriders.  Iceland is a quintessential case.  During the Cold War, America operated bases there and since that time, Iceland’s military has been virtually nonexistent.  So its not surprising that there has come to be such contempt for the military, or the idea that outside of their sheltered paradise, there exists a brutal world that sometimes necessitates the use of force.

Swedish pirates and Icelandic scofflaws are just the tip of the iceberg of today’s self-indulgent wannabe hacker heroes.  Recall the modern day anarchist, who instead of hurling a bomb like a good nineteenth century revolutionary, thanked today’s finest industrialist by hurling a pie in his face.  This was the case for Bill Gates when he visted Belgium in 1998.  So if you aspire to invent new technologies, increase worker productivity, and bless humanity by single-handedly launching an information revolution, not only will governments seek to double tax your earnings and capital gains, you should also expect occasional vollies of pie as your just dessert.  While Assange aspires to liberate secrets from the vaults of the state, those like Pirate Bay seek to terminate copyrights and all intellectual property protections.  To these starry-eyed warrior geeks, no secret is worth keeping, and all information should be freely accessible.  But if we compelled all computer code to be open-source or all pharmaceuticals researchers to immediately disclose their formulas, the only ones who would produce these goods for us would be the spoiled hacker types who do this stuff on their spare time.  They have no comprehension of economic utility or value, or their necessary relationship to work and sacrifice.

Perhaps these hacker pirates are best seen as little leather-clad Neos who feel they have moral license to run around with their figurative guns blazing, reducing Agent Smith’s marble lobby to flying chips and plaster.  In a top-notch piece by the Christian Science Monitor, former CIA officer Jerrold Post explains that the same psychological motivations of spies holds true for the Afghanistan Wikileakers.  While some people betray secrets for money or sex, others are motivated by ideology or ego.  And whether we consider the American private who initiated the leak or Assange and Pirate Bay who obliged, its the confluence of ideology and ego that satisfies these bored, ungrateful, uncomprehending brats in their quest for significance and belonging.  How sad it is that so much energy and talent of youth are poured into counterproductive and downright dangerous channels.

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Deferential Discourse

July 24, 2010 Leave a comment

Recently I was fortunate enough to see a stage adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. I really appreciate the points that Lewis conveys in his original work, and while the play was well-produced and had its shining actors, I had some problems with the writing of the adaptation itself. In translating the letters to a more concrete narrative, Lewis’ emphasis on attitudes and distinctions is lost. For example, the patient’s early dealings with haughty, progressive friends in the book are supplanted by the devils’ conspicuous trumpeting of social class, which the play ultimately does nothing constructive with. However, it does insult liberals by making the patient’s drunken louse friend a socialist.  In introducing the parish pastor, the play brandishes its disdain for the overreach of cultural relativism with a reference to church karate classes taught by a Japanese Muslim. But since these introductory remarks show no connection to the characters they describe, they come off as cheap hits on unfavored practices. If we recall the patient’s haughty pacifist friends or the morally picky parish pastor of the book, Lewis does better by withholding direct judgment on specific issues and individuals. Whether examining social activism or church sermons, the book’s Screwtape turns our attention toward our attitudes of approach rather than the specific practices or practitioners before us.

This deference given toward individuals and institutions with which there is disagreement is something I see a lot with British writers, more so in the past than today. In The Abolition of Man, Lewis criticizes the ideas put forward in a science textbook, but chooses to leave the work unnamed in order to stem the sensational urges that come from connecting individuals to their ideas. So those whose idea he criticizes are called in his text “Gaius and Ticius.” In old works of fiction, its not uncommon to see authors go out of their way to avoid impugning real people or places by calling them “Mr. X” or  “M. S____.”  Today I see the survival of this sense of deference in people like apologist Ravi Zacharias, well-connected with Oxford and Cambridge, and British-born journalist Peter Hitchens. In his past talks, Zacharias has often left broad elements ambiguous for the sake of his audience’s attention, saying only that such an anecdote occurred in some city on the West Coast, or that a cutting conversation happened with a professor of some unnamed Eastern religion (really, how many can we choose from?). Likewise, in a recent interview promoting his latest book The Rage Against God, Peter Hitchens consistently avoids “personal” criticisms of his famously strident atheist brother Christopher. If you press him too hard on his conjectures of their personal relationship, his deference will block you and return the conversation again to the ideas, not to the people who espouse them. Peter, who claims that he is a pariah to his countrymen because of his beliefs, points to the demise of deferential discourse in his earlier book, The Abolition of Britain.

This old-style deference is remarkably rare in a sensate age where more points are conveyed with blunt images and sound bites rather than well-reasoned arguments. Yet I’m attracted to the power of shorthand that specific people and places convey. If we look at the controversies of today, so much emotion and meaning can be unpacked if you just drop some names: merely mentioning Sarah Palin or Jerry Falwell will set off a certain crowd, while mentioning Chairman Mao or Che Guevara will set off another. The deference writers do have the advantage of taking the high road and keeping their discourse focused, but I do believe there are times and places where it makes sense to be more direct. However, if someone is going to drop names, they ought to be more than just smears by association. Whether constructing a talk or writing a work of fiction, we will benefit just by being a little more careful about the specific mentions we make.

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Rule of Law, Rule of Gut

June 25, 2010 Leave a comment

The BP oil spill has provided a chance to clearly delineate between two worldviews vying for our political discernment: the visions of the liberal Left and the conservative Right.  In responding to Republican House representative Joe Barton’s double-apology gaffe, President Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said as much.  And while Emanuel is correct in observing that two governing philosophies are at stake this November, it would be an error to take his class warfare bait.  The choice is not between wise, compassionate Democrats and corrupt, cozy-with-big-business Republicans.  To the contrary, this November is a chance to dump destructive Democratic impulses to rule from the gut, and empower a new, conservative Republican leadership that values rule based on law.

The rhetoric of emergency is the greatest pitfall of the Democrats’ liberal governing philosophy.  In times of crisis like the BP oil spill, inflammatory rhetorical appeals come naturally to them. At the onset of the oil spill, Democratic strategist James Carville cried out “We’re dying here!” In a recent attempt to capitalize on Barton’s apology blunder, Vice President Joe Biden chided that “people are drowning.”  As a tool of political persuasion, the appeal to emergency is dangerous.  It preys on raw emotions, leading to the loosening of purse strings and  easing the approval of impractical and downright harmful policies.  Recall that appeals to emergency during the Great Depression ushered in the New Deal.  Among the many blunders under the aegis of enlightened activism, the federal government paid farmers to wastefully slaughter their livestock, denying food to the hungry for the sake of stabilizing food prices.

Having lived through Bolshevik brutalism as well as America’s New Deal fiascos, Ayn Rand warned in her brilliant polemic Atlas Shrugged that appeals to emergency inevitably empower either unsavory autocrats or unreasoning incompetents.  The Left’s Rule of Gut is all the more dangerous given their inscrutable devotion to the cult of the political savior.  Whether as youth admiringly looking upon the iconic visage of revolutionary Che Guevara, or as older generations fondly recalling fireside-chatter FDR, Democrats and their Leftist base turn not to reasonable stewards of power, but at the gut level dream of charismatic, decisive deliverers of salvation.  Perhaps it is only slightly more tragic for a banana republic to produce a Castro or Chavez than it is for the United States to beget a starry-eyed bungler like Carter or Obama.

What then stands as an antidote to the twin appeals of emergency and charismatic deliverance?  Many people dismiss today’s conservative movement out-of-hand because they buy the idea that Republicans are beholden to big business and that conservatives are under the undue influence of social “wedge” issues.  But while the political Left relies on emotional appeal to further a hazy end of “progress” shared by the political bedfellows of victimhood, American conservatives look to widely-established and long-standing traditions as the means to preserve national well-being.  Broadly considered, these traditions share the spirit of and are inclusive of the Rule of Law.

The decisive factor in favor of conservatism may be the question of ends and means.  Not only are the ends of the Left mistaken, the means of achieving their ends leave us vulnerable to the imperfections of alliance-wrangling.  As Thomas Sowell effectively notes in Conflict of Visions, the ends are paramount to the Left, but the means are the key focus of conservatives.  With an aim to preserving the integrity of process rather than seeking to guarantee a specific result outright, the conservative vision offers the greatest chance of behavioral accountability from our leaders.  Conservative constituents demand fidelity to function, but liberal politicians, supposing a backdrop of knock-down, drag-out class war, must satisfy their constituents’ identity-based grievances by any means necessary.  And more often then not, the sausage-making that begets vaunted progress for the Left is deleterious to the national interest.

Its a paradox that those on the Left, who seek change by Rule of Gut, will always remain unsatisfied by their side’s inability to effect the immediate gratification they seek.  But we, whether at the election polls or in the course of day-to-day life, can avoid that frustration by choosing to live under the Rule of Law instead of the Rule of Gut.

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The Elephant in the Room of Economic Development

June 15, 2010 Leave a comment

A couple weeks ago, David Kestenbaum of All Things Considered reported on the Indian economy, artfully mixing interviews of Indian economic experts with the slice-of-life story of an elderly, impoverished, street-dwelling shoe-shiner Umrao Singh.  The words of both the Indian academics and Singh pointed to a shared sense of fatalism.  In pondering why the Indian growth rate has in recent decades been much lower than comparable developing economies, the experts jokingly alluded to the “Hindu growth rate . . . maybe it is there in the scriptures.”  Meanwhile, Singh justifies his poverty as he looks on the dwellings of his wealthy neighbors by saying, “this is what God has chosen for me.”  Like his countrymen, he concedes that “what is written is written, you can’t change it.”
A famous destination for seekers of wisdom, peace, and enlightenment in the 1960s, India has  regained the spotlight in recent years as a new wave of thinkers and celebrities have  attempted to answer the question of “happiness.”  Michael J Fox touted the Indian culture of cosmic acceptance in his 2009 TV special, Adventures of an Incurable Optimist.  I even read a New York Times article that somehow was able to proclaim a certain Tibetan monk as if with some degree of scientific authority, the happiest person in the world.  Fatalism and acceptance are compelling themes for the frenzied denizens of postindustrial societies.  But do these ideas really do justice to the marginalized poor in developing economies?  Given the shared outlook of Singh and his nation’s experts, and the fawning enchantment of India’s onlookers, does a problem of justice and marginalization even exist?

In his report, Kesterbaum supposed India’s problem was a lack of manufacturing jobs.  And while manufacturing has been credited with building the modern middle class everywhere from America to China, it is not the key ingredient that India lacks.  Rather the one thing that will satisfy the technical questions of the economists, the existential needs of the poor, and the postindustrial search for happiness is a proper fulfillment of the Christian concept of Imago Dei.  As apologist JM Njeroge noted in a recent interview, this idea is the root of much of human progress in recent centuries.

To answer the economists’ riddle, consider the innovators and the moralists who steered their societies through the original industrial revolution.  The scientists who accumulated knowledge of the physical world and the inventors who applied that knowledge as technology took as a given what astronomer-astrologist Johannes Kepler posited in the seventeenth century: because man is made His image, we can “think God’s thoughts after Him.”  Likewise, what would become the human rights movement snowballed with the successive propositions of moral philosophers.  In the American Revolution, we clearly see ideas and corresponding actions rooted in the affirmation that man is created in the image of God.  The same is true for subsequent moral movers, including abolitionists, suffragists, and labor activists.  Even when modern authorities on development point to the necessity of institutions like the rule of law, they are indirectly appealing to the outworking of Christian faith.

A society’s confidence in Imago Dei is also the basis for its sense of agency, without which the innovators, capitalists, and producers of wealth will find it hard to be motivated beyond immediate gain.  Wherever this notion does not prevail, you will see a society’s actors either jockeying among themselves for a sliver of a fixed socioeconomic pie, or consigned as ones marginalized without
hope for advancement.  But where there exists this understanding of agency, it enables those with economic capital to grow the sum of human wealth, and it allows both reformers and the destitute an actionable hope for change.  For this reason it is important that we permit ourselves to make meaningful distinctions between cultures and parse through the differing assumptions that animate them.

Whether informed by detached, journalistic diggings like Kestenbaum’s, or the ponderous musings of would-be “happiness” gurus, our notions of human development and spiritual fulfillment will remain incomplete if we forget that the Image of God has been the singularly transforming force for good in our world.

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Don’t Push the Green Button

May 15, 2010 Leave a comment

Having seen Iron Man 2, and then engaged in some thought and discussion about super heroes, I have come to conclude that the current crop of comic book heroes are the wrong ones for our society.  Last time I mentioned the naivete of the Superman and Spiderman protagonists, and I will say the same rules extend to Iron Man.  In a major way, the former characters are quite different from Tony Stark.  While the three suited-up men are always humbled by the formidability of their respective foes, the unsuited Tony Stark is not as bumbling as Peter Parker or Clark Kent.  But underlying Stark’s rock star persona is an earnest search for meaning and a desire to single-handedly bring world peace.  While these are nice sentiments becoming the likes of Madonna or Bono, the hero’s god-like abilities and achievements put him in a plane that does not intersect the viewer’s reality.

The most prominent offense of most super heroes is their ability to dodge the issues we must face in real life.  Early in Iron Man 2, the viewer discovers Stark is slowly being poisoned.  Without revealing too much of an utterly gripping plot, its safe to say that through a combination of deus ex machina and good old gumption, Stark is able to invent his way out of death–apparently overnight.  You might pause and ask if it is contradictory to shoot down Stark’s grit and determination as undesirable since I have previously defended the “bootstraps” idea of success in America.  The difference is that in reality, hard work is hard.

On the silver screen and in comic book pages, mythical heroes can magically make super devices and single-handedly resolve eternal dilemmas overnight.  But satisfying narratives need profound sacrifice–whether it is blood, sweat, or forbearance.  That is why the Gospel is so naturally compelling: God as Christ submitted to reality as we experience it, facing humiliation and death to bring a ringing victory over sin.  Many exemplary stories shine because of their portrayal of sacrifice, but for most comic book heroes sacrifice is either superficial or arbitrary.

The heroes that defy this trend tend not to be so singular or over the top.  The X-Men franchise is pretty solid, but the best may be Batman.  In The Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne and his fellow players must come to terms with a gritty world populated by jaded citizens and fallible heroes, a world that offers only heartbreak and insurmountable moral dilemmas.  While Batman is a rich, technological whiz like Tony Stark, he is not in danger of teaching the moral that pushing a green button will magically make life better.  Neither does Batman feed the idea that there are certain exceptional individuals we should look to solve our problems.  Rather, The Dark Knight emphasizes the democratization of morality and virtue, which is clearly born out in the climactic ferry boat stand off.

We may look to comic book blockbusters as just a little vacuous, harmless entertainment, but we should not be lulled into an unconscious acceptance of their implicit worldview.  Not all comic book movies were created equal, and I am not talking in terms of computer graphics and explosions.  It matters just how one goes about saving the world.

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Truth, Justice and the American Weigh

April 27, 2010 Leave a comment

A spike in news reporting on the Tea Party movement came with the passing of tax day earlier this month.  Orbiting around this media meme of course were various references to talk radio and certain polarizing cable news channels.  Time and again my attention returned to the contentious issue of media bias.  There is so little that can be widely agreed upon as a basis of conversation.  Does media bias even exist?  Is it desirable or to be avoided?

NPR’s All Things Considered ran a story last Friday featuring perspectives on three news organizations in Atlanta.  It was refreshing to hear mainstream media report with some candor on the nature of news gathering itself.  I found myself in basic agreement with the proprietor of the Atlanta Progressive News as he identified the corporate bias of big media, characterized reporters’ single-handed attempts to be the “arbiter” of truth as “arrogant,” and asserted that trust can only be built if news gatherers admit their biases.  This all stands in contrast with traditional notions of down-the-line objectivity that such a mainstream media staple as CNN, which Politico recently reported on, attempt to maintain.  But if the news business resembles anything like a marketplace of ideas, the old “dinosaur” media as Hugh Hewitt calls them are finally succumbing to leaner, meaner, and wholly worthy competition.

Why should we welcome the likes of FOX News, talk radio, devolved blogs, and the host of other aggressively biased reporters and commentators?  Contrary to late, platitudinous naysaying that the climate of our national dialog has taken a marked turn toward the uncivil, America has thrived under a long and continuous tradition of rancorously competitive news reporting.  Ad hominem slanders that would put current reporting flaps to shame were the staple of the nation’s earliest newspapers.  For decades, papers openly supporting one party or the other competed for readership in the cities they shared.  The conscious cultivation of the objective, altruistic “Voice of God” was something of an artifact of the twentieth century.  In the popular imagination, this was best exemplified by the earnest, selfless comic book superhero-reporters Clark Kent and Peter Parker.  As commendable as these paragons of integrity have been, they betray an all-too-simplistic popular culture conception of the relationship between news gathering, facts, and the truth.  If only real-life villains were always rich men and military brass with a penchant for violently vibrant spandex outfits!  This leaves no mention of scientists, the other revered revealers of truth, which will have to follow up in another entry.

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Bootstraps versus Knapsacks

March 26, 2010 2 Comments

The California state budget fiasco has afforded me some free time recently, so I’ve been doing some spring cleaning.  Among the relics I unearthed from recent months were the collected handouts for a class  on race taught at my church last year.  It was a sad reminder that leftist agitprop had infiltrated the Sunday classroom.  I mean no disrespect for those who earnestly pursue God’s will in matters of race and justice.  Yet,  the ideas propagated in those papers and discussions contribute to an unhealthy, counterproductive worldview.

One particularly troubling area of the race curriculum is its prescribed journey from bootstraps to knapsacks.  Since I first encountered these two concepts in the same context, they have always seemed at odds.  Bootstraps and knapsacks are mutually exclusive; people tend to love one and hate the other.  In one corner is the classic “up by the bootstraps” idea that hard work begets success in America.  As an alternative, progressives offer the red pill notion that any comfort, success, and prosperity are owed instead to an “invisible knapsack of privilege.”  No, you can’t make this stuff up.  The  idea originated in the 1980s with feminist Peggy McIntosh.  Now if you take success and prosperity to be synonymous with  being white, you have the original gist of the knapsack.

McIntosh’s personal revelations notwithstanding, I find the knapsack lacks effective explanatory power from where I stand as a mixed race, conservative man in a tremendously free and prosperous society.  I find it more relevant to look at success in America as a general whole rather than assume that success is the exclusive reserve of some monolithic group called  “whites.”  Yet knapsack proponents are eager to showcase McIntosh’s writing as a contrast to bootstraps in the hope of inducing an aha! moment that race is integrally relevant to American success.  Any serious-minded person who encounters these two tangling visions must decide which one will ultimately color (no pun intended) their own life at the everyday level.

In their existential tendencies, knapsack and bootstraps could not be more divergent.  In spite of its good intentions, knapsack supplants bootstraps’ twin senses of gratitude and agency with a new malaise of victimhood and guilt.  In doing away with bootstraps, knapsack denies us the ability to thank our parents, ancestors, and even our Creator for their respective roles in contributing to our current comfort and success.  From its secular Leftist roots, knapsack can only give us an impersonal, monolithic explanation that oppression is the true father of our prosperity.  Its as depressing as when Luke Skywalker discovers that Darth Vader is his dad. Progressive Christians mean well when they attempt to carve a path for American repentance, but they damage worldviews when they uphold knapsack and dismiss bootstraps.  American history is marked more by opportunity than by oppression.  But supposing the facts to be in dispute, such an assertion would be better defended in a separate post.  Existentially, bootstraps thinking cultivates an “attitude of gratitude” that in turn nurtures desire for stewardship. This then necessitates individual accountability, and all three of these are integral to Christian living.  Knapsack, however, turns us to navel-gazing and perpetually renewed  calls for dialog that might make good sound bites but do little to effect meaningful change.  Instead of attending ponderous powwows that reinforce progressive dogmas, Christians sincerely pursuing what is right and good should look critically at knapsack thinking and reclaim as their own the virtues of the bootstraps ethic.

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Markets, the Missed Opportunity

March 22, 2010 Leave a comment

As President Obama’s health insurance reform becomes a reality, its clear that what’s missing is the one best opportunity to get things right: the free market.  Although the president dismissed the market in saying  “Well, we’ve tried that,” nothing could be further from the truth.  Throughout the year of debate on the health bill, repeated calls by conservatives to allow for interstate competition of insurance plans were roundly ignored.  But if we were to try this, as well as decouple the plans from employer benefits, we would lower the barrier to market entry.  Then many firms would rush to compete for each state’s population of savvy customers, offering plans at lower prices.  Instead of looking to unsustainable free lunch subsidies and depending on the guesswork of Washington bureaucrats, we could have a dynamic system not unlike our current auto insurance market.  Then even a 25 year-old Starbucks barrista would not need to stay on his parents’ plan,  and maybe would no longer need to shack up in their basement as is the rage in nanny states like Italy.

The twenty-something loafer subsidy is not the only incentive in the current insurance reform working against us.  A redistributive tax-and-subsidy transfer of wealth will now extend the entitlement ethic to families making up to $88,000 a year!  While these perverse incentives further undermine our collective sense of personal responsibility, we also must cope with a general rise in taxes resulting from the legislation’s inevitable cost overruns.  Gird your wallets also as progressive activists file lawsuits to expand the entitlement footholds established by this legislation.  All this trouble heaps on top of Medicare and Medicaid sustainability issues that went unaddressed in the current reform.

As we begin to see the impacts of the reform legislation around us, we will do well to return our attention to the promise of the free market.  Top-down solutions failed the centrally-planned economies of the twentieth century, but the free market brought unprecedented prosperity to people of all stripes in the West.  Even glorious nanny state paradises like Sweden have turned away from big government after a time of accepting high unemployment and economic dysfunction.  Instead of propagating the lie of the free lunch, we should accord respect to individuals and let them make the tough choices only they can make to improve their own lot.  If we let go of the temptation to tax and subsidize beyond the scope of our already-established obligations, we will be able to sustain our collective prosperity.  Real progress for those in need does not come from redistribution but through opportunities afforded only by the free market.

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What does a duck think?

March 13, 2010 Leave a comment

Ducks are whimsical creatures.  Their gait is really an awkward waddle.  While they move more gracefully through air and water, they seem a little out of place on land.  While a lion earns fear and respect with its roar, a songbird garners praise for its melodies.  But with its loud, random staccato quacks, what does a duck get?  Perhaps it is called witty, or boastful, or maybe just snickered at.  And what of the particular joy with which ducks shovel mud for worms?  They could be humble ascetics, dirty hedonists, or merely oblivious of their niche.  What other living thing in creation can be so readily compared to Man?

Ducks are a sort of proof to me of God’s humor, or “mirth” as G.K. Chesterton concludes his Orthodoxy.  The odd peculiarities of our creation are not just random, they are design.  That’s something to rejoice in, because while God might have called someone to be a noble lion, or a graceful swan, there is also something of value in the humble station of a duck.

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