Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Liking McCain in Spite of Myself

I still have serious reservations about John McCain as president, but things seem to keep happening that make me like him more and more.

Hat tip: Drudge

Monday, March 24, 2008

More on Obama's Speech

Mark Goldblatt defends Obama, while Christopher Hitchens takes issue.* Meanwhile, Doug Kmiec, "a former constitutional legal counsel to two Republican presidents," endorses* Obama. I come down somewhere between Goldblatt and Hitchens, in large part because I think Goldblatt is wrong to dismiss Obama's policy prescriptions as "Obama being Obama", but right to be understanding toward Obama's refusal to disavow Wright (though Hitchens does make some compelling points).

If Obama is correct that federal education spending, economic protectionism, universal health care, and withdrawal from Iraq are the keys to racial reconciliation, then opposition to these policies are racist (unless there is some non-racist reason to oppose racial reconciliation that I'm missing). It follows from this that conservatives who want decreased government involvement in education and health care, support free trade, and believe it to be in the national interest to maintain our presence in Iraq are racists.

This is patently absurd. What's more, I don't think Obama believes this. But it does indicate, again, the discrepancy between Obama's rhetoric and his politics. Obama declares time and again that he wants to transcend our differences, to transcend not only race, but fundamental political and philosophical divisions as well, but his policies are of a decidedly left-wing bent. As I've said before, something has to give. Obama doesn't seem to think so:
"What I'm certain about is that people are disenchanted with a highly ideological Republican Party that believes tax cuts are the answer to every problem, and lack of regulation and oversight is always going to generate economic growth, and unilateral intervention around the world is the best approach to foreign policy. So there's no doubt the pendulum is swinging."
It is certainly true that the Republicans dropped the ball when they were in power on a whole host of issues, and they deserved to lose in 2006. It does not follow from this that conservatives are looking to abandon their belief in limited government and muscular foreign policy just because the Bush administration and Republican Congress were inept at implementing these conservative principles. Kmiec himself makes this point when he points out that his endorsement of Obama does not imply an abandonment of his conservative principles. He has made the bet that Obama's rhetoric will trump his policy proposals (except on the war in Iraq, where Kmiec and Obama are in agreement). I hope he's right, but I refuse to abandon my principles for Obama's dreams, no matter how audaciously he may hope otherwise.

*Hat tip: The Corner
**Hat tip: Drudge

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

No Iran-al Qaeda Links Either

That whole Sunni-Shia split kind of precludes that. Except that it's a load of bunk. Groups with major differences have historically worked together to when both sides believe it will be to their benefit. Think of Cardinal Richelieu siding with Protestant forces against the Holy Roman Empire to increase the power of France, or the United States and Great Britain making common cause with the Soviet menace to defeat the National Socialists. More relevantly, think of the Ayatollah Khomeini working accepting the aid of French radicals opposed to the Shah of Iran before stabbing them in the back. While each side will try to turn the outcome of events to its own advantage, there is no reason to believe that their sectarian differences will prevent them pursuing a common goal. Indeed, the evidence indicates the exact opposite.

Paging Jack Lynch

You might want to exploit this in your Congressional run. Then again, it might go over pretty well in the Ann Arbor area.

Obama's Speech

In light of recent events, Senator Barack Obama has given a speech explaining his views on racial issues, specifically as they relate to his firebrand of a pastor, Jeremiah Wright. As far as I'm concerned, he hit all of the right notes on Wright, condemning what Wright said without throwing him under the bus, and offering a human, if not exactly logically coherent, explanation for some of the things said and done by Wright. As long as Obama told the truth about his relationship with Wright and what he did and didn't hear Wright say. the issue is settled for me.

Obama then goes on to expand on what he thinks has to be done to bring about racial reconciliation, including making some points that conservatives have been making for years, such as blacks "
taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to
despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny." But this is also where Obama's speech starts to get worrisome. Just prior to this he had stated that
For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family.
He immediately goes on to say that "embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change." Assuming for a minute that this is true (it isn't), is simply believing society can change enough, or does someone actually have to do something to bring this change about? If so, who is that someone? Because the speech is political above all else, the most reasonable conclusion would be that the responsibility for changing society falls to the state, particularly the federal government. And what ought the federal government do to bring about this momentous change in society? Obama sets down the outlines of his program to bring about racial reconciliation, and it looks remarkable like embracing the typical progressive slate of programs.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.
Obama continues

In this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas
for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.
So, according to Obama, racial reconciliation must be grounded in massive increases in federal education spending; economic protectionism (leaving the whole NAFTA issue aside for the moment); government-provided health care; and fighting the perennial bogeyman, Washington special interests. So, apparently the key to reconciliation is recognizing that our social problems stem from the fact that the government isn't taking good enough care of us. Implicit in Obama's narrative is the idea that all social tension stems from economic hardship. More to the point, Obama seems to believe that national unity requires that the nation rally around a program of massive government action for the common good, defined in strictly economic terms and grounded in socialist principles.

Never mind the question of whether Obama's policy proposals would be efficacious if enacted, this is yet another example of how Obama's soaring rhetoric is at odds with his politics. He proclaims himself a transcendent figure capable of bridging the divisions in American society, but for large segments of the population, embracing his politics on social, economic, and national security issues means abandoning their own principles. Obama is not coming to meet them by offering some new political synthesis that eliminates the contradictions between the principles of the left and right, he is demanding that they bridge the divide by sacrificing their principles in the name of unity. Obama's nods to conservatism are in areas where no policy implications can be drawn, while an examination of the actual positions he has taken in the Senate show him to be to the left of all other Senators.

Obama's politics can be summed up by this line from his speech:

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
Simply put, Obama seems to be preaching statolatry, the worship of the state and the belief in its salvific powers. I say seems because it is possible to read just about any position you want into what he's saying, including libertarianism, but a perusal of his policy proposals gives the impression that the libertarian reading of Obama's speech is unlikely to be correct. Instead, he believes in the power of government to alleviate the human condition and bring about a peaceful and harmonious society. The problem with this is not that government has no role to play, but that the role Obama would assign it would have an infantilizing effect on the population. When people become dependent upon the government for their well-being, especially in the realm of providing for their material needs, they cease to view themselves as moral actors because they lose sight of what was their major obligation: providing for themselves and their families. Obama recognizes this when he speaks of "A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and
frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family,
contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare
policies for many years may have worsened." But he misses the point. When the state guarantees you a certain standard of living, you have no incentive to work for it. You only have incentive to work if you want your standard of living to be higher than the one provided by the government and want it badly enough that you're willing to go out and work for it. If the government is paying you enough to get by, a life of leisure looks pretty good, and idle hands do the devil's work.

But instead of getting government out of the way, Obama wants more of it, and this is largely anathema to conservatives (which is one reason why Mike Huckabee didn't gain much traction outside his evangelical base and John McCain has work to do to shore up his base). It is still the height of naivete to assume conservatives will abandon their principles for the sake of political unity when their raisson d'etre is to stand athwart history, yelling "Stop!"

Friday, March 14, 2008

Thursday, March 13, 2008

This Is Getting Ridiculous

A relatively weaker dollar is favorable to domestic industry because it makes domestically produced goods cheaper both at home and abroad, while making imported goods more expensive. Thus, in a time where American industry is struggling to compete with new industries in places like India and China, it makes sense to have a slightly weaker currency. But this is getting ridiculous. With the prices of oil and other commodities going through the roof as a result of the weak dollar, now being made weaker by the Federal Reserve's latest injection of liquidity into the market (though it may not be as bad as I think), I have to agree with Larry Kudlow: "It's time to resurrect King Dollar."

Oh, So That's What He Was Doing

"This isn't what it looks like. We were just having a naked prayer time."

via Drudge

Will Cuba Become the New China?

Fidel Castro's brother, Raul, is showing signs that he is willing to open up Cuba's economy to her people. Obviously, you can't draw any firm conclusions from one example, but this could be an indication that Raul will pursue policies similar to those of China: statist economic policies, with a reasonable amount of economic freedom (unless the State feels your resources are better used elsewhere), combined with strong repression of personal liberties.

Thursday, March 06, 2008

You Can Dress Up Like a Sultan in Your Onion-Head Hat

This video response to will.i.am's "We Are the Ones" video is pitch perfect.

Hat tip: The Corner

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

More Than Meets the Eye?

Peter Wallison has a piece discussing whether Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign is really as vacuous as many contend, myself included. He concludes that there is plenty of substance to the Obama campaign, just that it's a little warmed over. But Wallison opens his piece with the following:

The television images are striking. A handsome young candidate, an adoring audience, a beautifully delivered speech in which he offers to bring us together as a nation, and speaks of his "movement for change:" "I don't want to spend the next year or the next four years" he says, "re-fighting the same fights that we had in the 1990s. I don't want to pit Red America against Blue America, I want to be the President of the United States of America." Nice rhetoric. Is it real or is it theater? Relax: it's theater.

A visit to Barack Obama's website reveals that this is not a candidate who is offering a new left-right synthesis—a new way of looking at our politics and bridging the old Red-Blue divide. Instead, what we see in 60 pages of policy proposals and commitments are the same old ideas of the Democratic Left. Even the rhetoric is old.

This is precisely the point. There is a fundamental, even obvious disconnect between the policies Obama is proposing and his stated aim to unite the country behind his platform of hopeful change, but his actual changes are the standard Democratic policies Republicans have been fighting against since Ronald Reagan ran for president and conservatives have been fighting since the modern conservative movement cohered in the 1950's. We're not "re-fighting the same fights we had in the 1990s." These fights were never finished, and unless Obama expects Republicans in general and conservatives in particular to abandon their principles, to stop fighting for the policies they believe are best for the country for the sake of public unity is absurd. If he thinks political division is only about one faction or another gaining power for power's sake, he is sorely deluded.

Plainly, something has to give. If Obama wants to govern in a spirit of public unity, he will have to set aside his policy proposals, and if he wants to see his policies enacted, he will have to retreat to the dynamic of Red vs. Blue.* Either Obama's rhetoric is empty, or his policy proposals are empty promises. That is the choice he faces, and if he tries to avoid making that choice, it may get him elected, but it will ultimately cripple his presidency.

This raises some interesting questions. Is Obama aware of the inherent contradiction between his rhetoric and his policy proposals? If he isn't, do we want someone so naive in the White House? If he is, which aspect gives way, unity or policy? Ultimately, the question, "Where's the beef?" remains a valid question, though in a different sense. Is Obama interested primarily in uniting the country, using his platform to make him appear a more substantive candidate next to Senator Hillary Clinton (who has similar issues of substance as Obama, just less obviously so)? Is his rhetoric simply a front for his policies? If it is the former, his candidacy still lacks substance, validating the original sense of "Where's the beef?" If the latter, then Wallison's characterization is correct, and Obama's rhetoric of unity is patently dishonest.**

*No, not that Red vs. Blue.

**This is not necessarily to say Obama is lying. He would only be lying if he knew his rhetoric to be dishonest.

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Best for the Right

Jim Geraghty notes that Rush Limbuagh has been urging Republicans in Ohio and Texas to vote for Senator Hillary Clinton in today's primaries on the grounds that the longer the Democrats spend beating up on each other, the more it helps Senator John McCain. This is probably correct, but I wonder if it is really best for conservative political aims going forward.

As has been noted by many conservatives, Rush Limbaugh included, there are several significant issues between Senator McCain and the conservative base of the Republican party. These differences are so great and the bitterness they have engendered so severe that it is believed many will stay home on election day. More importantly, conservatives feel his favored policies, if enacted, on immigration, global warming and embryonic stem cell research would be detrimental to the welfare of the nation. Many conservatives are unsure of McCain, not willing to trust him on issues other than the war and want to see him make rapprochement with them by addressing concerns they have over these and other issues. In an election cycle that looks to favor Democrats rather heavily, McCain will need all of the support he can get, and he will especially need to shore up his conservative base if he wants to win.

However, the Clinton-Obama cat-fight threatens to disrupt this calculus. If they do enough damage to each other, McCain may well conclude that emphasizing his status as a maverick willing to break with the party he desires to lead provides him with a greater electoral advantage in the general election by appealing to independents put off by the internecine conflict in the Democrat party (which will only get nastier if Clinton believes she has even a ghost of a chance).

A settled Democratic nominee forces McCain to shore up his base and go from there. A nasty political brawl on the Democratic side makes it less necessary for McCain to appease would-be conservatives unsure about whether the costs of a McCain presidency would outweigh the benefits. That's not to say emphasizing his maverick status wouldn't work for McCain; it may well. But if the consequence of a McCain victory is "comprehensive immigration reform", a cap-and-trade system for carbon dioxide emissions, and embryonic stem cell research, conservatives may well view a McCain victory as being rather Pyrrhic.

Sunday, March 02, 2008

No Christian Case for Capitalism?

According to Robert Tracinski, Buckleyite Fusionism is dead. Tracinski claims this is because "its basic premise--that the moral foundation of free markets and Americanism can be left to the religious traditionalists--is false."

Tracsinski elaborates:
The reason for this shift toward the religious left is that religion cannot support the real basis for capitalism and a strong American national defense: a morality of rational self-interest. Christianity is too deeply committed to a philosophy of self-abnegation, a destructive morality that urges men to renounce any interest in worldly goods and to turn the other check in the face of aggression. The early Christian saints, for example, abandoned all material comforts and lived in caves--which is to say that their closest contemporary disciples are the radical environmentalists. As for foreign policy, St. Augustine spent a fair bit of his massive apologia for Christianity, The City of God, explaining to the Romans that being sacked by barbarians was good for them because it taught them the virtue of humility and cured them of their attachment to material wealth.
It is certainly true that Christianity has an ascetic streak. It is even true that Christians believe material possessions can draw people away from God if not viewed rightly. It is even more true that Christians believe that people who have much have a duty to help those who have little (and this goes for things beyond material possessions). In short, every point Tracinski brings up in support of his contention is true, but it does not follow that a Christian defense of capitalism cannot be made. Indeed, two papal encyclicals, Rerum Novarum, issued in 1891 by Pope Leo, and Centesimus Annus, issued one hundred later by Pope John Paul the Great, while not entirely uncritical of capitalism, heartily endorse the fundamental principles of a free market society and condemn not only socialism but the notion of man being dependent upon the State for his well-being:
For man, fathoming by his faculty of reason matters without number, linking the future with the present, and being master of his own acts, guides his ways under the eternal law and the power of God, whose providence governs all things. Wherefore, it is in his power to exercise his choice not only as to matters that regard his present welfare, but also about those which he deems may be for his advantage in time yet to come. Hence, man not only should possess the fruits of the earth, but also the very soil, inasmuch as from the produce of the earth he has to lay by provision for the future. Man's needs do not die out, but forever recur; although satisfied today, they demand fresh supplies for tomorrow. Nature accordingly must have given to man a source that is stable and remaining always with him, from which he might look to draw continual supplies. And this stable condition of things he finds solely in the earth and its fruits. There is no need to bring in the State. Man precedes the State, and possesses, prior to the formation of any State, the right of providing for the substance of his body. [RN, para 7]
Pope Leo goes on to highlight the evil effects produced by socialism and socialist-style policies.

14. The contention, then, that the civil government should at its option intrude into and exercise intimate control over the family and the household is a great and pernicious error. True, if a family finds itself in exceeding distress, utterly deprived of the counsel of friends, and without any prospect of extricating itself, it is right that extreme necessity be met by public aid, since each family is a part of the commonwealth. In like manner, if within the precincts of the household there occur grave disturbance of mutual rights, public authority should intervene to force each party to yield to the other its proper due; for this is not to deprive citizens of their rights, but justly and properly to safeguard and strengthen them. But the rulers of the commonwealth must go no further; here, nature bids them stop. Paternal authority can be neither abolished nor absorbed by the State; for it has the same source as human life itself. "The child belongs to the father," and is, as it were, the continuation of the father's personality; and speaking strictly, the child takes its place in civil society, not of its own right, but in its quality as member of the family in which it is born. And for the very reason that "the child belongs to the father" it is, as St. Thomas Aquinas says, "before it attains the use of free will, under the power and the charge of its parents."(4) The socialists, therefore, in setting aside the parent and setting up a State supervision, act against natural justice, and destroy the structure of the home.

15. And in addition to injustice, it is only too evident what an upset and disturbance there would be in all classes, and to how intolerable and hateful a slavery citizens would be subjected. The door would be thrown open to envy, to mutual invective, and to discord; the sources of wealth themselves would run dry, for no one would have any interest in exerting his talents or his industry; and that ideal equality about which they entertain pleasant dreams would be in reality the levelling down of all to a like condition of misery and degradation. Hence, it is clear that the main tenet of socialism, community of goods, must be utterly rejected, since it only injures those whom it would seem meant to benefit, is directly contrary to the natural rights of mankind, and would introduce confusion and disorder into the commonweal. The first and most fundamental principle, therefore, if one would undertake to alleviate the condition of the masses, must be the inviolability of private property. This being established, we proceed to show where the remedy sought for must be found. [RN, para 14-15]

John Paul the Great adds his thoughts in Centesimus Annus:

Two things must be emphasized here: first, the great clarity in perceiving, in all its harshness, the actual condition of the working class — men, women and children; secondly, equal clarity in recognizing the evil of a solution which, by appearing to reverse the positions of the poor and the rich, was in reality detrimental to the very people whom it was meant to help. The remedy would prove worse than the sickness. By defining the nature of the socialism of his day as the suppression of private property, Leo XIII arrived at the crux of the problem.

His words deserve to be re-read attentively: "To remedy these wrongs (the unjust distribution of wealth and the poverty of the workers), the Socialists encourage the poor man's envy of the rich and strive to do away with private property, contending that individual possessions should become the common property of all...; but their contentions are so clearly powerless to end the controversy that, were they carried into effect, the working man himself would be among the first to suffer. They are moreover emphatically unjust, for they would rob the lawful possessor, distort the functions of the State, and create utter confusion in the community".39 The evils caused by the setting up of this type of socialism as a State system — what would later be called "Real Socialism" — could not be better expressed.

13. Continuing our reflections, and referring also to what has been said in the Encyclicals Laborem exercens and Sollicitudo rei socialis, we have to add that the fundamental error of socialism is anthropological in nature. Socialism considers the individual person simply as an element, a molecule within the social organism, so that the good of the individual is completely subordinated to the functioning of the socio-economic mechanism. Socialism likewise maintains that the good of the individual can be realized without reference to his free choice, to the unique and exclusive responsibility which he exercises in the face of good or evil. Man is thus reduced to a series of social relationships, and the concept of the person as the autonomous subject of moral decision disappears, the very subject whose decisions build the social order. From this mistaken conception of the person there arise both a distortion of law, which defines the sphere of the exercise of freedom, and an opposition to private property. A person who is deprived of something he can call "his own", and of the possibility of earning a living through his own initiative, comes to depend on the social machine and on those who control it. This makes it much more difficult for him to recognize his dignity as a person, and hinders progress towards the building up of an authentic human community.

In contrast, from the Christian vision of the human person there necessarily follows a correct picture of society. According to Rerum novarum and the whole social doctrine of the Church, the social nature of man is not completely fulfilled in the State, but is realized in various intermediary groups, beginning with the family and including economic, social, political and cultural groups which stem from human nature itself and have their own autonomy, always with a view to the common good. This is what I have called the "subjectivity" of society which, together with the subjectivity of the individual, was cancelled out by "Real Socialism".40

If we then inquire as to the source of this mistaken concept of the nature of the person and the "subjectivity" of society, we must reply that its first cause is atheism. It is by responding to the call of God contained in the being of things that man becomes aware of his transcendent dignity. Every individual must give this response, which constitutes the apex of his humanity, and no social mechanism or collective subject can substitute for it. The denial of God deprives the person of his foundation, and consequently leads to a reorganization of the social order without reference to the person's dignity and responsibility.

The atheism of which we are speaking is also closely connected with the rationalism of the Enlightenment, which views human and social reality in a mechanistic way. Thus there is a denial of the supreme insight concerning man's true greatness, his transcendence in respect to earthly realities, the contradiction in his heart between the desire for the fullness of what is good and his own inability to attain it and, above all, the need for salvation which results from this situation. [CA, para 12-13]

John Paul goes on to re-affirm the Church's commitment to the free market:
34. It would appear that, on the level of individual nations and of international relations, the free market is the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs. But this is true only for those needs which are "solvent", insofar as they are endowed with purchasing power, and for those resources which are "marketable", insofar as they are capable of obtaining a satisfactory price. But there are many human needs which find no place on the market. It is a strict duty of justice and truth not to allow fundamental human needs to remain unsatisfied, and not to allow those burdened by such needs to perish. It is also necessary to help these needy people to acquire expertise, to enter the circle of exchange, and to develop their skills in order to make the best use of their capacities and resources. Even prior to the logic of a fair exchange of goods and the forms of justice appropriate to it, there exists something which is due to man because he is man, by reason of his lofty dignity. Inseparable from that required "something" is the possibility to survive and, at the same time, to make an active contribution to the common good of humanity. [CA, para 34]
The Pope even endorses the role profit plays in a market economy
The Church acknowledges the legitimate role of profit as an indication that a business is functioning well. When a firm makes a profit, this means that productive factors have been properly employed and corresponding human needs have been duly satisfied. But profitability is not the only indicator of a firm's condition. It is possible for the financial accounts to be in order, and yet for the people — who make up the firm's most valuable asset — to be humiliated and their dignity offended. Besides being morally inadmissible, this will eventually have negative repercussions on the firm's economic efficiency. In fact, the purpose of a business firm is not simply to make a profit, but is to be found in its very existence as a community of persons who in various ways are endeavouring to satisfy their basic needs, and who form a particular group at the service of the whole of society. Profit is a regulator of the life of a business, but it is not the only one; other human and moral factors must also be considered which, in the long term, are at least equally important for the life of a business. [CA, para 35]
Again, neither Pope Leo XIII nor Pope John Paul the Great fail to critique capitalism, but they do proclaim the necessity of a free market at the foundation of a just society. Their criticisms of capitalism are found in the error of reducing man and society to the market, as well as man's role as the steward of creation. Their criticisms of capitalism are grounded in the fact that man is a moral actor in addition to being an economic one and thus must use just means to pursue the end of providing for himself and his family (e.g conduct business honestly and do not wantonly destroy the environment, which is God's gift to man). Also, man must have (as has been mentioned above) an active concern for the well-being of his neighbor, rendering such assistance to him as he is able. Indeed, the more a man has, the more he is able to devote to helping his fellow man. Thus, an economic system which maximizes its output is an economic system in which people are able to contribute the most to aid those in need.

The response to poverty and even environmental degradation is not massive state intervention and regulation; it is personal charity and responsibility. Christ calls us to give of ourselves for His sake and the sake of our neighbor in need. He doesn't call us to leave the poor in the hands of the State.

There's nothing wrong with making an honest buck, or even a billion of them. In the end, it's what we do with our money that matters, not how much of it we make: to whom much is given, much will be required.

Saturday, March 01, 2008

Obama! Obama!

Jonah Goldberg finds this creepy. To me it's just one more example of the complete subjugation of substance to style that seems to typify Barack Obama.