The St. Croix Review speaks for middle America, and brings you essays from patriotic Americans.
Joseph Fulda is a freelance writer living in New York City. He is the author of Eight Steps Towards Libertarianism.
Steven Lubet, a distinguished legal scholar who has written a most excellent book, The Importance of Being Honest (NYU Press, 2008), digresses from law to economics in Chapter 38, "The Bedouin Horse Trade," and from there to the mistaken view that sometimes economics doesn't work, and markets don't clear. Well, it just ain't so! Here he is telling us the story that "proves" his claim:
Petra is Jordan's fabled "rose red city -- half as old as Time." The Nabateans, who built Petra during [B]iblical times, located their capital in an almost impregnable mountain stronghold. Even today, it is possible to enter Petra only by passing through the Bab es-Siq, a narrow gorge nearly a mile long and never more than a few meters wide.
. . .
To make access easier, not to mention more romantic, the route of the Bab es-Siq was for many years plied by hundreds of horses-for-hire. For seven Jordanian dinars [JD] . . . a [B]edouin guide would take you into the site on horseback and meet you later to take you out again. The standard price was fixed, and tickets for the horses were sold at the entry gates.
Tourists could also walk into the site and negotiate for a one-way horse on the way out. The return-only transactions were conducted on a cash basis -- no tickets, no fixed prices. Here is where economics failed me. The standard academic model predicts that horse prices should fall throughout the day. As nightfall approaches and the ranks of tourists thin, guides should become increasingly willing to bargain for rides out of the site. This did not turn out to be the case. Indeed, the bottom-line fee for a horse was surprisingly nonnegotiable, sharply contrary to what would appear to be the seller's rational best interest.
. . .
It was an economic theory-confounding phenomenon. Guides with horses gather at the entrance gate to Petra each morning, making themselves available to arriving tourists. . . . Of course, no horses linger at the terminal in the morning because the [B]edouins all gallop back to the site entrance immediately after depositing their incoming riders. . . .
Things change in the afternoon. As tourists stop arriving and start thinking about going back to their hotels, the horses begin to congregate in the theater plaza. Some of the guides are there to collect return tickets, but most are available for cash hiring. I know this because virtually all of the guides solicit all of the tourists, offering "Horse? Horse?" The scene is chaotic; there is nothing approaching a queue.
This is a market that should clear if economic theory is worth a damn. . . .
But here is how it really worked. The first price quoted for a return siq was invariably 7 JD. . . . No matter how resolutely I bargained, the price never fell below 4 JD. On each of our three days at Petra we were very nearly the last tourists to leave in the afternoon, with the horses often outnumbering the remaining pedestrians by at least two or three to one. Still, the price never dropped below four dinars.
He is puzzled at all this, and as he ponders the intricacies of the markets, he turns to his kids for help. What do they teach us? "[Y]ou didn't offer enough money, Daddy, and they thought that you didn't respect them." Counters Lubet: "But they still should have preferred the money to just standing around not working." The kids answer: "No, Daddy, they would rather stand around than take less than they were worth."
Concludes Lubet:
From a common sense perspective, the answer is painfully obvious. Pride. They were desert horsemen, after all. . . .
No subjectivist would care to deny that pride may play a role in human affairs, including economic matters, but these desert horsemen already do this sort of work and already show an inclination to bargain, and cannot possibly all be motivated by the same level of pride resulting in exactly 7 JD for a round-trip fare. Rather, the market clearing price is 7 JD; Lubet misunderstands what a clearing price is. In the case of services, it is not that all services get sold no matter what. Yes, the demand drops throughout the day, but, and this is the key, the supply schedule drops in tandem, because the desert horsemen, along with their horses, grow more and more tired as the day wanes. As the demand goes down, so does the willingness to supply. The last hour of work is harder than the next-to-last hour. As the demand falls, the willingness to supply falls, too, in perfect equilibrium. And, it doesn't require mathematics to see this.
But I do not want to leave the reader with the impression that Professor Lubet's book is not a great read, chock full of information and insight. It is. But chapter 38 is just not informed by the insight Lubet shows everywhere else in the book. For a favorable review of the book as a whole, see my forthcoming (Spring 2010) review in the Journal of Information Ethics. *
"Such is the irresistible nature of truth that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing." --Thomas Paine
Craig Payne writes from Ottumwa, Iowa.
Perhaps many feel they have already read enough about the "New Atheism," as it has been labeled, to last them a good long while. Still, the fact remains this "New Atheism" continues its influence, and that many books presenting the case for atheism have been best-sellers in recent months. The best known of these in English are Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell, Sam Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation, and Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great, with its somewhat adolescent subtitle, How Religion Poisons Everything. These books, with the possible exception of Dennett's, are not written as philosophical works for an academic audience; rather, they are written purely as proselytizing tools, aimed primarily at converting the typical reader to the doctrines of atheism. When considered as such, they merit our attention, especially considering their apparent popularity.
However, sometimes it seems difficult not only to know where to begin, but even how to begin. The above-mentioned authors, Dawkins in particular, repeatedly attack belief in God as "irrational" and "illogical." However, when believers do respond to atheistic arguments with carefully reasoned logic, they are often derided as out of touch with the "real" world. For example, in his article "Holiday in Hellmouth" (The New Yorker, June 20, 2008), James Wood, himself a former Christian, paraphrases Bart Ehrman, another former Christian, as describing logical attempts by religious believers to defend God's existence as "obtuse and disconnected from life." Wood mocks these believers as living in the "sterile laboratories" of "white-coated philosophers" with their "logician's granules of P and Q." Ehrman himself, in his recent book God's Problem, seems to reject even the possibility of any logical arguments regarding the existence and goodness of God when confronted with the horrific magnitude of human suffering in recent natural disasters. One wants to ask atheists such as these: Well, are Christians rational or are they irrational? Are Christian thinkers guilty of excessive logic or of non-logic? What is it that you want out of believers? Or is this just a case of "any argument is good enough to beat Christianity with" -- even if it contradicts the previous argument?
In fact, based on reading The God Delusion and examining its index, it appears that Dawkins is not familiar with the work of virtually any contemporary philosopher of religion. In his rather amateurish biblical criticism, he at least quotes from some scholars such as the aforementioned Ehrman, who probably will become the news media's favorite "biblical authority" now that he has given up his faith. However, in the realm of philosophy, one searches in vain for any contemporary formulations of standard theistic arguments, though Dawkins refers to Thomas Aquinas (whom he misrepresents and misinterprets), Anselm of Canterbury, and Pascal. Does he not realize that philosophical theology continued on even after the 1600s? Where is any engagement with the likes of Alvin Plantinga, William Lane Craig, C. Stephen Evans, Eleonore Stump, Peter Kreeft, William Alston, J. P. Moreland, or Charles Hartshorne, just to name a few representative thinkers? All of these philosophers, except for Hartshorne, are still alive and writing. It would be unfair to expect Dawkins to tackle all of them, but at least an occasional nod in their direction would be appreciated. (Dawkins does briefly mention a fellow Brit, Alister McGrath, simply because McGrath wrote a book critical of him.)
On the other hand, despite this glaring omission of modern apologists in a book dedicated to arguing against belief in God, even the older philosophers mentioned are more than capable of handling themselves in debate. For example, Anselm of Canterbury's Ontological Argument for God's existence deserves much more careful analysis than Dawkins gives it. On pages 80-84 of The God Delusion, Dawkins refers to the Ontological Argument as "infantile," "logomachist trickery," and "pure armchair ratiocination," and says it should be converted into "the language of the playground." His parody of the argument follows: "A really really perfect thing would have to be better than a silly old imaginary thing. So I've proved that God exists. Nur Nurny Nur Nur. All atheists are fools." For those who have not read the book, these actually are quotes from Dawkins, who used to be a capable scientist, believe it or not.
Since next year marks the 900th anniversary of Anselm's death (April 21, 1109), perhaps this is a good time to re-examine this famous argument, to see if it really is as "infantile" as Dawkins claims.
Anselm had considered other arguments for God's existence in an earlier work, the Monologion, before he presented his ontological argument in the first three chapters of his Proslogion. In the latter book, he considers the biblical passage, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God" (Psalm 14: 1). But what is it about disbelief in God that is "foolish"? It does not immediately appear to be so; that is, it does not appear to be self-evident that God either does or does not exist. Eventually, as he prays to God for illumination, Anselm hits upon this line of reasoning: What is it that we are attempting to prove exists? That is, what is God?
God's definition, according to Anselm, is that of the Supreme Being, "that than which nothing greater can be conceived." From this definition flows the rest of the argument:
Hence, even the fool is convinced that something exists in the understanding, at least, than which nothing greater can be conceived. For, when he hears of this, he understands it. And whatever is understood, exists in the understanding. And assuredly that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, cannot exist in the understanding alone. For, suppose it exists in the understanding alone: then it can be conceived to exist in reality; which is greater. (from Chapter 2 of the Proslogion)
Although this may appear somewhat opaque, it really is not so. If God by definition is that than which nothing greater can be conceived, God at least exists in our minds, since we possess that conception of Him. However, for God to exist in reality is a greater conception of God than merely for God to exist in our minds. Since God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived, the greater conception must be true, and God must exist in reality. If we speak of God at all -- if even atheists speak of God in saying "God does not exist" -- we must speak of God as truly existing.
Many immediately view this argument with suspicion, as if a rabbit had been suddenly produced out of a thimble. Proving God's existence could not really be that easy, could it? The most influential critique of this argument came from Immanuel Kant in the 1700s, who argued that "existence in reality" cannot be considered as a meaningful predicate of anything. For example, if I were describing my car's characteristics, it would seem odd if I were to say, "My car is gold-colored, about ten years old, a Chrysler, and also actually exists in reality." Does the last characteristic add anything meaningful to the description? Likewise, could we say of God that God is all-powerful, all-good, all-knowing, and also actually exists in reality? "Existence" as such is not really a characteristic, argues Kant, and so treating "existing in reality" as a property of God's does not make sense. Besides, we commonly speak of many things, such as unicorns, without assuming thereby that they must exist in reality. Why should we treat God's existence any differently?
However, in Chapter 3 of his work, Anselm presents a second ontological argument which is quite similar to the first, yet which is different enough to address Kant's objection. What if we do not think of the quality of "existence," but rather of the quality of "necessary" existence, as referring to God? Would not this be a unique quality, a perfecting quality, one which would add to our conception even of actually existing things? As Anselm writes:
It is possible to conceive of a being which cannot be conceived not to exist; and this is greater than one which can be conceived not to exist. Hence, if that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, can be conceived not to exist, it is not that, than which nothing greater can be conceived. But this is an irreconcilable contradiction. There is, then, so truly a being than which nothing greater can be conceived to exist, that it cannot even be conceived not to exist; and this being You are, O Lord, our God.
In other words, one could conceive of God as a Being who actually exists, but whose non-existence is possible, rather like my car, or like me. On the other hand, one could also conceive of God as a Being whose non-existence is impossible; that is, God could be conceived of as possessing necessary existence as an absolutely perfect Being, a Being lacking no perfecting qualities. In this conception, God would not be like my car or like me; in fact, God would be in this sense unlike anything else that exists. If God is that than which nothing greater could be conceived, then God must be conceived in the latter sense, as being unique in possessing necessary existence. Logically, therefore, if God possesses the quality of necessary existence, then God exists: "I Am that I Am," as He describes Himself (Exodus 3: 14). Thus Anselm discovers why the non-believer is the "fool" of Psalm 14:1, for the non-believer appears to be implying something like the following: "God, the one-of-a-kind Supreme Being who possesses necessary existence and therefore must exist -- does not exist." Such a statement is self-contradictory.
Norman Malcolm, a 20th-century philosopher, took up Anselm's conception of the Perfect Being, the Greatest Possible Being, and moved it a step further. As pointed out by Aristotle (among many others), a Supreme Being would have no potential for change, since change implies either a decline from perfection or some kind of improvement on perfection, which are both incoherent. So a Supreme Being could neither decline nor improve in any way, as also the Bible says: "For I am the Lord; I change not" (Malachi 3: 6). Therefore, to paraphrase Malcolm's line of thought:
(1) If there is a God, then God has to exist. (If a Supreme Being exists, and cannot decline or pass out of existence, this Supreme Being necessarily exists.)
(2) If there is not a God, then it is impossible for God to exist. (If there is no Supreme Being, then a Supreme Being cannot come into existence, since coming into existence implies contingency and the potential for change. If God does not exist now and cannot begin to exist at some time, then it is logically impossible for God to exist, ever.)
(3) Either there is a God or there is not a God. In the study of logic, this is known as the Law of Excluded Middle: "P or not-P is always true."
(4) Therefore either God has to exist or it is impossible for God to exist. This is Copi's Law of Constructive Dilemma, or (3) applied to (1) and (2).
(5) It is not the case that it is impossible for God to exist.
(6) Therefore God has to exist, by applying the process of elimination to (4).
(7) Therefore God exists.
Notice that this argument shifts the burden of proof onto the non-believer. If someone wants to argue that God does not exist, that person has to disprove premise (5). In other words, the atheist has to prove that the existence of God is not simply unlikely, but that the existence of God is logically impossible. On the other hand, if God's existence is not logically impossible, then God's existence is entailed: Either it is impossible for God to exist, or God has to exist.
This argument for God's existence, if nothing else, is worthy of careful consideration. It is certainly not "infantile," as Dawkins puts it. In fact, as one considers the philosophical acumen displayed by these theistic writers as opposed to the lack thereof in Dawkins' book, one might call to mind an old saying about a pot describing a kettle's color.
Nevertheless, often the religious believer becomes overwhelmed, like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming truck, when confronted with the attacks of such as Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, Ehrman, and so on. Certainly the "New Atheism" seems to have momentum and popularity on its side, as well as seemingly plausible arguments. These people seem not only intelligent, but also supremely self-confident and patronizingly dismissive of theistic arguments. However, this feeling of being intellectually overwhelmed certainly does not have to be the normal state of affairs in the believer's life.
As Thomas Aquinas pointed out long ago, truth does not contradict itself. If something is a true object of knowledge by the light of faith, it will not directly contradict those true objects of knowledge we can reach by the light of logic. Therefore, the person of faith need not fear the divine gifts of logic and reason, which complement rather than supplant the gift of faith. After all, any true human knowledge ultimately arises out of the same Light, the Light which we may pray even the "New Atheists" also will eventually see. *
"He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree." --Roy L. Smith
Dr. Gary Scott Smith chairs the History Department at Grove City College, is a fellow for Faith and the Presidency with the Center for Vision & Values, and is the author of Faith and the Presidency: From George Washington to George W. Bush (Oxford University Press, 2006). This article is from V & V, a website publication of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College, Grove City, Pennsylvania.
On July 9, 1755, the "most catastrophic" day in Anglo-American history, Colonel George Washington was traveling with General Edward Braddock's army toward Fort Duquesne when they were ambushed by Indians and French hiding in the woods. In the ensuing massacre, hundreds of British soldiers, including Braddock, were killed or seriously wounded. Perched on their horses, officers were perfect targets. One after another, they were hit. Bullets ripped through Washington's coat, knocked his hat off, and killed two of the horses he rode.
Rumors circulated that Washington had been killed. On July 18, he wrote his brother from Fort Cumberland:
As I have heard since my arriv'l at this place, a circumstantial acct. of my death and dying Speech, I take this early opportunity of contradicting both, and of assuring you that I now exist and appear in the land of the living by the miraculous care of Providence, that protected me beyond all human expectation.
Two weeks later the colonel wrote to Robert Jackson, "See the wondrous works of Providence! The uncertainty of Human things!"
Preaching to a volunteer company of militia, Presbyterian minister Samuel Davies declared:
As a remarkable instance [of military ardor] I . . . point . . . to . . . that heroic youth, Colonel Washington, whom I cannot but hope Providence has hitherto preserved in so signal a manner for some important service to his country.
And so began the stories about Washington's faith in God and divine selection to lead the American people.
Although the religious convictions and practices of many presidents have been ignored, Washington's have been closely scrutinized and endlessly debated. Some authors have portrayed the Virginian as the epitome of piety, and others have depicted him as the patron saint of skepticism. The fact that Washington said almost nothing publicly or privately about the precise nature of his beliefs has evoked competing claims that he was a devout Christian, a Unitarian, a "warm deist," and a "theistic rationalist."
One point, however, is not debatable: Washington strongly believed that Providence played a major role in creating and sustaining the United States. In public pronouncements as commander in chief and president, he repeatedly thanked God for directing and protecting Americans in their struggle to obtain independence and create a successful republic. Arguably, no president has stressed the role of Providence in the nation's history more than Washington.
The Virginian planter was a giant even among the remarkable generation of America's Founders. His powerful physique, athletic prowess, stately bearing, personal magnetism, and incredible stamina impressed his contemporaries. More significantly, because of his exceptional character and extraordinary contributions, he has been deemed indispensable to the success of the patriot cause and the new republic. Risking his reputation, wealth, and life, he commanded an undermanned and poorly supplied army to an improbable victory over the world's leading economic and military power. He presided over the convention that produced the United States' venerable Constitution. For nearly a quarter of a century (1775-99), Washington was the most important person in America. As president, he kept the new nation from crashing on the shoals of anarchy, monarchy, or revolution.
Washington firmly believed that God controlled human events. In both his public and private writings, he repeatedly discussed how God providentially helped the United States win its independence against incredible odds, create a unified country out of diverse and competing interests, establish a remarkable constitution, and avoid war with European powers that still had territorial ambitions in North America. Because God created and actively ruled the universe, Washington insisted, people must revere, worship, and obey him. Although members of his staff wrote most of Washington's public statements, he oversaw the process, and therefore they expressed what he wanted to convey. Furthermore, Washington routinely used similar language in private letters he wrote.
Throughout his life, Washington appealed to "an all-powerful Providence" to protect and guide him and the nation, especially in times of crisis. Throughout the War for Independence, he asked for and acknowledged God's providential guidance and assistance hundreds of times. He told Reverend William Gordon in 1776 that no one had "a more perfect Reliance on the alwise and powerful dispensations of the Supreme Being than I have, nor thinks his aid more necessary." "The hand of Providence has been so conspicuous" in the war, the general asserted in 1778, that anyone who did not thank God and "acknowledge his obligations" to him was "worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked." After the war ended, Washington declared, "I attribute all glory to that Supreme Being," who had caused the several forces that contributed to America's triumph to harmonize perfectly together. No people "had more reason to acknowledge a divine interposition in their affairs," he wrote in 1792, "than those of the United States."
Scholars and ordinary Americans will continue to debate the precise nature of Washington's faith, but clearly it became deeper as a result of his trying and sometimes traumatic experiences as commander in chief of the Continental Army and the nation's first president, and it significantly affected his understanding of and his actions in both positions. *
"In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened." --George Washington
Paul Kengor is professor of political science and executive director of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. This article is republished from V & V, a website of the Center for Vision & Values. Paul Kengor is author of God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life (2004) and The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (2007). His latest book is The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan's Top Hand (Ignatius Press, 2007).
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a great figure of the 20th century, is dead at the age of 89. How does one adequately honor the man? It's impossible to capture in one column what Solzhenitsyn meant, experienced, and how he went about translating it to the West in an unprecedented way. Professors everywhere will struggle to fully convey his impact to their students. I will point to just a few things that stand out in my mind.
First was his creative, trenchant opening to his majestic, The Gulag Archipelago, the shocking firsthand account of the Soviet forced-labor-camp system, where tens of million innocents perished and countless more, like Solzhenitsyn himself, were held captive. Solzhenitsyn began his work with a mundane but instructive example: He cited an article in the journal Nature, which informed its readers, in a strictly scientific fashion, about a group of fleeing, desperate men in Siberia who, starving, happened upon a subterranean ice lens that held a perfectly preserved prehistoric fauna.
"Flouting the higher claims of ichthyology," narrated Solzhenitsyn, and "elbowing each other to be first," they chipped away the ice, hurried the fish to a fire, cooked it, and bolted it down. No doubt, said Solzhenitsyn, Nature impressed its readers with this account of how 10,000-year-old fish could be kept fresh over such a long period. But only a narrower group of readers could decipher the true meaning of this "incautious" report. That smaller club was the fellow gulag survivors -- the "pitiable zeks," as Solzhenitsyn called them. When your goal is survival, you survive, even if it means hurriedly devouring something that in a normal world would be carefully rushed to a museum.
As Solzhenitsyn knew, however, and proceeded to make clear in the pages that followed, Soviet Communism was no normal world. His groundbreaking work unearthed gem after gem to an outside world not yet fully acquainted with the "horror house" (Boris Yeltsin's characterization) that was the Soviet Union.
Among the many other items worthy of mention from The Gulag Archipelago was how Solzhenitsyn literally did the Lord's work by reporting on the Moscow "church trials" of the 1920s -- classic, prototype Communist show trials, aimed specifically at the Russian church. These were outrageous miscarriages of justice, the outcome always predetermined, and the goal to undermine Communism's most despised foe: God. Solzhenitsyn's reporting on these trials, including excerpts of exchanges between saintly priests and stooge apparatchiks, offered only one glimmer of solace each time another good man was sentenced to execution: every priest could identify with Christ's passion.
There was never a need for witnesses. Guilty as charged.
Some, like Severian Baranyk, were killed with a cross-shaped slash across their chests, or, like Zenobius Kovalyk, in mock crucifixions.
The Gulag Archipelago, plus other Solzhenitsyn masterpieces such as A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, may get a half-day-news-cycle worth of attention from our superficial media. That's too bad, since Solzhenitsyn's unfiltered voice in our press frequently exploded like cannon fire at the Iron Curtain.
The Soviets recoiled each time Solzhenitsyn's words were broadcast in the West. A striking case that enraged them twice over was when his words were (spiritually) employed inside the USSR by the visiting American president. This occurred on May 30, 1988 at the Moscow Summit, when President Ronald Reagan -- who had been quoting Solzhenitsyn since the 1970s -- met with Soviet religious leaders at the 700-year-old Danilov Monastery. Reagan said:
There is a beautiful passage that I'd just like to read, if I may. It's from one of this country's great writers and believers, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, about the faith that is as elemental to this land as the dark and fertile soil. He wrote: "When you travel the byroads of central Russia, you begin to understand the secret of the pacifying Russian countryside. It is in the churches. They lift their bell-towers -- graceful, shapely, all different -- high over mundane timber and thatch. From villages that are cut off and invisible to each other, they soar to the same heaven. . . . [T]he evening chimes used to ring out, floating over the villages, fields, and woods, reminding men that they must abandon trivial concerns of this world and give time and thought to eternity."
In our prayers we may keep that image in mind: the thought that the bells may ring again, sounding through Moscow and across the countryside, clamoring for joy in their new-found freedom.
The Soviets hated this. For Reagan to invoke Solzhenitsyn inside the USSR was bad enough, but to do so in behalf of religious liberty was galling. They wasted no time blasting this passage in editorials in their government-controlled newspapers. Reagan had dared cite Solzhenitsyn in the House of Lenin, an unacceptable blasphemy to the Gospel of Marx.
If a man's achievements can be measured by the vicious unholiness of his persecutors, then Alexander Solzhenitsyn will now enjoy a lifetime of heavenly rewards. Spared the martyrdom of the dead Russian believers who could not live to blow the whistle, it was left to him to witness to the outside world. It was a job that this faithful servant did better than any other zek. May he rest in peace, free from pain and elevated high above his tormentors. *
"We'd all like to vote for the best man but he's never a candidate." --Kin Hubbard
We would like to thank the following people for their generous support of this journal (from 9/13/2008 to 11/13/2008): Wayne H. Agnew, John E. Alderson, Jr., William D. Andrews, Ariel, Ronald Benson, Aleatha W. Berry, James B. Black, James L. Blilie, Thomas M. Burt, John D'Aloia, Maurie Daigneau, Joseph R. Devitto, Jeanne L. Dipaola, Gerald W. Foy, Reuben M. Freitas, Nancy Goodman, Hollis J. Griffin, Joyce Griffin, Daniel J. Haley, David L. Hauser, John H. Hearding, Thomas E. Heatley, Jaren E. Hiller, Joseph M. Irvin, Arthur H. Ivey, O. Guy Johnson, Michael Kaye, Margaret Kearney, Mary A. Kelley, Gloria Knoblauch, Angus MacDonald, Curtis Dean Mason, Stanley C. McDonald, Robert A. Moss, David Norris, Frederick D. Pfau, Gary J. Pressley, Patrick L. Risch, Robert E. Rolwing, Irene L. Schultz, Richard H. Segan, William A. Shipley, Thomas E. Snee, Norman Stewart, Robert H. Stratman, Michael S. Swisher, John West Thatcher, Robert D. Wells, Eric B. Wilson, James P. Zaluba.
Thomas Martin teaches in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. You may contact Thomas Martin at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
The death of Alexander Solzhenitsyn on August 3 reminded me of a conversation with Dr. Thomas Sutherland, the former Dean of Agriculture at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. As you may remember, he had been kidnapped by Islamic Jihad members and held captive for 2,354 days. In March of 1992, my wife Linda and I went to hear Dr. Thomas Sutherland speak at the "Fort Kearney Cattleman's Ladies Night Banquet." We went to see him for a couple of reasons: my father-in-law and his wife are first cousins, and we wanted to welcome an American home.
We arrived at 6:30 for the Social Hour. At quarter till seven Dr. Sutherland appeared, surrounded by former teachers, students, and friends from the University of Nebraska. We went over and introduced ourselves; my father-in-law had called and told him we were coming to hear his talk. The three of us then spent the next twenty minutes locked in conversation.
For over seventy months, he was chained to a wall with a group of men. The chain which was anchored to the wall ran through their leg irons. Most of his captivity was spent with Terry Anderson, whom at first, he confessed, he resented. You see, Dr. Sutherland was a college professor, and most recently a Dean, and Anderson was a journalist. Thomas resented the fact that Anderson knew more than he did, a common problem with PhDs, as Anderson had "read everything" and could discuss ideas. "I am a scientist," he told us.
For the most part I studied animals; you separate some cattle from others, run tests, do a statistical analysis and that's that. However, when I was with Terry Anderson, for the first time in my life I understood what it was to be educated. He had read everything. He became my spiritual inspiration.
What honesty!
I mentioned that Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, the author of the Gulag Archipelago, thought his time in solitary confinement to be one of the richest moments of his life, as all the external concerns that trouble the mind were removed and he was free to think. Dr. Sutherland's eyes lit up. He had been able to read Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle in captivity as their Jihadist guards had kindly brought them boxes of books. [The First Circle is a book about scientists, mathematicians, linguists, and academics who are thrown into a special prison where they work on government projects for Stalin. If they are successful, they may be allowed to return to their family; if not, they would be sent to Siberia into forced labor and likely die.] Dr. Sutherland said that he and Terry Anderson had discussed the book together. They had also read Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon. What a find.
We did not have time to discuss what exactly they had discussed, so as I was writing this back in my cell, I pulled down The First Circle and turned to the chapter "The Fifth Year In Harness." I thumbed to an idea that Sutherland and Anderson would have come across. Keep in mind as you read this passage that these men are chained together to a wall; they may even be in "the fifth year of their harness," and they do not know if they will ever again see the light of day.
When I was free and used to read books in which wise men pondered the meaning of life or the nature of happiness, I understood very little of those passages. I gave them their due: wise men are supposed to think. It's their profession. But the meaning of life? We live -- that's the meaning. Happiness? When things are going very well, that's happiness, everyone knows that. Thank God for prison! It gave me the chance to think. In order to understand the nature of happiness we first have to analyze satiety. Remember the Lubyanka [a prison] and counterintelligence? Remember that thin, watery barley or the oatmeal porridge without a single drop of fat? Can you say that you eat it? No. You commune with it, you take it like a sacrament! Like the prana of the yogis. You eat it slowly; you eat it from the tip of the wooden spoon; you eat it absorbed entirely in the process of eating, in thinking about eating -- and it spreads through your body like nectar. You tremble at the sweetness released from those overcooked little grains and the murky liquid they float in. And then -- with hardly any nourishment -- you go on living six months, twelve months. Can you really compare the crude devouring of a steak with this?
When Dr. Sutherland remarked about being educated, as opposed to "doing research," he was referring to this sort of passage which is packed full of ideas. Being educated means communing with the spiritual side of life, the side of man that is touched in the privacy of his own reflections on the artists and authors who speak directly to his soul.
Now reread the passage from Solzhenitsyn and look at what he says. Read carefully, be patient, and remember you are fixed to the wall; there is time to mull over the words and digest the ideas housed in them. Nerzhin, to whom these words belong, says that he had read men who pondered the meaning of life, but he never understood what they said, what they meant. The meaning of life? We live. What else is there? Happiness? When things are going my way, that's happiness. Then Solzhenitsyn throws you a curve. Keep in mind you are chained to a wall; you probably have even thought about taking your own life -- this idea will cross a man's mind, especially after months in confinement. Ready. "Thank God for prison! It gave me the chance to think." Now notice the analogy, thinking has to do with satiety, with being full, with being "thoughtful." Having the time to think is like eating soup in the Lubyanka prison, that thin watery barley without a single drop of fat. No excess. You do not eat it, you commune with it; you take it like a sacrament, savoring even the tip of the wooden spoon as you absorb the nectar of life.
As Sutherland read down the page he undoubtedly ran into this idea. Ready. Here it is:
Satiety depends not at all on how much we eat, but on how we eat. It's the same way with happiness, the very same. Lev, friend, happiness doesn't depend on how many external blessings we have snatched from life. It depends only on our attitude toward them. There's a saying about it in the Taoist ethic: "Whoever is capable of contentment will always be satisfied."
What are the odds of the Scotsman Sutherland and the American Anderson being chained to a wall, reading a Russian quoting the Tao and understanding what it means? [International Education?] The Russian Solzhenitsyn has been where you are, too, although it was in the depths of Siberia, and he is offering encouragement. He is saying to Tom Sutherland, as Tom is reading:
Your happiness does not depend upon your external blessing; you know this, you are chained to a wall; your happiness is a matter of your attitude, it is not how much you eat, but it is how you eat.
When Terry "talked" with Solzhenitsyn I would venture that he heard much the same, and maybe Terry realized that his life had been filled with books, but he did not have time to listen -- I do not know. Anyway after they read these lines, maybe Thomas and Terry read the passage aloud and then discussed it. They thought about their situation and maybe they were inspired by the words of Solzhenitsyn quoting the Tao, the Way, to go about living a life even while chained to a wall. I do not know if they were inspired by these ideas, and I do not pretend to understand their ordeal. These ideas are between them and Solzhenitsyn, and this is the wonder of being educated, the wonder of the "life of the mind," as a sacred form of communion where a person understands something clearly, perhaps for the first time in his life, as though it were a sacred message from his soul.
What is the Way? Read on. Solzhenitsyn has Nerzhin continue to speak:
On the planet of philosophy all lands have long since been discovered. I leaf through the ancient philosophers and find my newest discoveries there. . . . The books of the Sankhya say: For those who understand, human happiness is suffering.
These words in the Sankhya, a Hindu work, echo "Take up your cross and follow me." Joy in suffering! Life is a paradox. Solzhenitsyn goes on to explain:
Listen! The happiness of incessant victory, the happiness of fulfilled desire, the happiness of success and of total satiety -- that is suffering! That is spiritual death, a sort of unending moral pain. It isn't the philosophers of the Vedanta or the Sankhya, but I personally, Gleb Nerzhin, a prisoner in harness for the fifth year, who has risen to that stage of development where the bad begins to appear the good. And I personally hold the view that people don't know what they are striving for. They waste themselves in senseless thrashing around for the sake of a handful of goods and die without realizing their spiritual wealth. When Lev Tolstoi dreamed of being imprisoned, he was reasoning like a truly perceptive person with a healthy spiritual life.
An important man will not hear these words. He is too busy. In the university, for example, one can be consumed by activities outside the classroom and end up thrashing about in meetings that go nowhere, working on program reviews which will not be taken seriously, or in "assessment" which is like studying cattle, separating steers from bulls, doing a statistical analysis and storing the data in some administrator's office in anticipation of some team of evaluators who will appear and look at the numbers with all the wisdom of blind men reading the entrails of a sacrificial bull to decide where we should go from here. As though one could objectively measure what goes on in a student, or a professor, who is locked in soulful reflection and assign a number to it. The man who thinks education to be a public enterprise lives in a land where everything has been turned upside-down. Topsy-turvy-dom. He thinks happiness comes from "how much you eat," so he ends up serving Mammon for "thrashing after goods" that will be lost at death. Will the people "outside of education" ever realize the privacy of the endeavor? It is "how you eat" as in "how you think"; it is not "how much you eat" as in "how much you talk." When you talk "about" education, you do not participate "in" education.
In another passage of The First Circle, Sologdin says to Nerzhin:
You ought to find out where you are, spiritually, understand the role of good and evil in human life. There's no better place to do it than prison.
The life of the mind, the time to understand the role of good and evil from the inside, as Dr. Sutherland noted, is not available to scientists through their research, their "way." They can, however, enter into education by realizing that "spiritual wealth," the nourishment of the soul, is forged in reflection over ideas and images like those Solzhenitsyn presented to him and Terry Anderson chained to a wall in a cell. If a man is "in" education, he does not need to be in prison to be awakened to "the life of the mind." When a person reads for his life, he voluntarily imprisons himself; he shuts off the outside world for the inside world where he reads and subjects himself to the ideas of authors, poets, and philosophers. When he focuses his mind on ideas of consequence to his life, he communes through words filled with the spirit of souls distanced by time or miles from his own.
In conclusion, I am reminded of what Richard Mitchell, an English teacher and publisher of The Underground Grammarian, said about reading great books:
When we do sit among those best minds, we find that people we know to be "dead," no longer "meeting current needs," are, strangely, not dead at all. They speak to us with far greater power and effect than we can expect from most of the "living," whatever that might mean. And it is to us that they speak; we do not merely overhear them "meeting the needs" of their time and place and forming components compatible with their systems. They had us in mind, but not in our roles as temporary life-forms subject to the necessities of time and place. It is as though, out of something that is not bound by time and place, they spoke to the same something in us, knowing it would be there. And it is. I do not think it preposterous to say that they spoke as souls to souls. I don't know a better word.
Nor do I. *
"Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas." --Calvin Coolidge
Gary Gillespie is a retired medical doctor who practiced in Williamston Michigan.
In 1944, Nobel prize-winning economist, Friedrich von Hayek, authored a treatise which many consider his Magnum Opus: The Road to Serfdom, in polite and incisive terms, points out the hazards in allowing a nation's government to gain control of its economy, ultimately eventuating in the political transformations consistent with totalitarianism. Today, many feel America may be at a "tipping point": the future of our healthcare system perhaps represents the lynchpin in an economy which may eventually pull up and bind together the corners of a socialistic net about us.
The arguments for a socialized healthcare system date back at least to the days of the Truman administration. Those to follow, such as Senator Ted Kennedy, whose name has almost become synonymous with advancing such a healthcare plan, have worked tirelessly in attempting to bring socialized healthcare to America. The passage of Medicare legislation in 1965, although in essence representing socialized healthcare for those 65 and older, is often discounted by the media as such, possibly in an effort to dissociate its inefficiencies and increasingly precarious financial status from any future proposed socialized healthcare plans. Both Senators Clinton and Obama have campaigned aggressively for socialized healthcare, citing the need for universal coverage of an estimated 47 million Americans allegedly without insurance, and raising complaints over the growing cost of medical care in the United States. They often point to our unique position as perhaps the only highly developed nation in the world without such a plan. However, it is ultimately fair to ask whether these complaints are valid and, if so, could the majority of Americans benefit by changing from a system permitting the freedom of many choices in their healthcare to a program with significant limitations, such as seen in Canada and Europe.
There is now little doubt that the majority of Americans, together with perhaps a comparable percentage of physicians, are dissatisfied with our present system of healthcare. However, the claim that we have been witness to the failure of a free-market system in healthcare would be an unfortunate mistake. Having been a family physician for 30 years before retiring, I can say with confidence that the managed care companies with which I participated frequently crafted their fee schedules, as well as a number of sometimes restrictive regulations, in accord with Medicare guidelines, including treatment algorithms, which might be viewed as standards for care expected of their participating physicians. As a primary care physician, a number of companies also established my role as a "gatekeeper," deciding whether a patient's condition or request warranted a referral to another specialist or treatment facility, thus placing the onus for potentially limiting a patient's healthcare choices in my hands, and creating a potentially perceived false impression that I represented the de facto interests of the insurance company in such decisions. A comprehensive drug formulary for each plan, requiring special approval in order to prescribe a medication not included therein, required additional time away from patient care for both myself and my assistants, despite my opinion that the drug in question represented the one most appropriate for an individual patient's condition. These managed care policies themselves, as were their major medical counterparts before them, were in most instances the property of the employer, whose provision of their tax-favored premiums came from monies deducted from their employees' wages. Due to the existence of moral hazard, in which the individual patient was in effect spending someone else's money for his or her healthcare, a sense of ownership of the policy and a personal incentive to limit expenditures was lacking.
One could argue, in the midst of a basic economic debate over guns and butter, whether in fact we pay more for healthcare than we should. However, while examining this issue, the late economist, Milton Friedman, determined that significant medical costs stem from the administration of healthcare policies, regulation, and the marked inefficiencies embedded in our present system. As simply one example: A recent article in the Wall Street Journal points out that an oxygen concentrator can be purchased for approximately $600. However, Medicare instead pays for rental of such a unit from suppliers, who may not be required to submit competitive bids, for 36 months at a rate of about $195 per month, for a total cost of slightly over $7,000. The costs of durable medical equipment do not seem to undergo scrutiny or change, according to the article, despite the shaky financial status of Medicare, and represents but one area of healthcare's unnecessary spending. Another may be found in the mandates for coverage placed on insurance companies by individual states, running up costs for services and equipment which may generally be considered either unnecessary or not within the purview of the policies found in many other states. Such issues need to be addressed if we are serious about lowering healthcare costs.
Let's look at the question of the uninsured. Just who are these people? The Kiplinger Letter, a long-established financial advisory service, provides the following insights: of the alleged 47 million uninsured, 8.4 million are eligible for government programs, but are either not aware of this fact, or simply have not filled out forms; 10.2 million are non-citizens; 9.2 million have a household income of $75,000 or more, including those not who do not want insurance, while others may have a pre-existing medical condition which prevents affordable coverage. And 7.4 million between the ages of 19 and 24 either do not maintain access to healthcare, do not feel it is necessary, or can't afford it. According to Kiplinger, 70 percent of the uninsured are members of families with at least one full-time worker; 10 percent are members of a family with at least one part-time worker. Although few of us would likely deny that a state of insurability is desirable, do these numbers justify radically changing the healthcare system of over 300 million Americans? Should we force those who do not wish, for whatever reason, to have healthcare to accept it, as Hillary Clinton claimed recently was necessary for the viability of any national healthcare plan?
A sine qua non of any government's socialized healthcare plan is the power to control and ration healthcare to its citizens. Hopefully, the illusory claim that care under such plans is free has gone the way of unicorn sightings; its costs in reality are paid for through citizen taxation. In Canada, each province is allotted a monthly subsidy for healthcare by the government in Ottawa. Should a provincial healthcare system become depleted of funds before its next allocation of funding, those needing healthcare may not receive timely care. It recently became common knowledge in England that patients were waiting for what was considered inappropriately long intervals before obtaining care in Great Britain's emergency departments. Subsequent rulings designed to improve conditions have instead resulted in patients tying up emergency ambulance service while they wait in those conveyances, rather than in the hospital itself, in order to satisfy the government edict that patients were to be seen more promptly after signing in at hospital Emergency Departments. The documentation of those waiting weeks for service and medical interventions in Canada has resulted in discomfort, and in some cases possibly contributed to the deaths of those who, had they taken out a backup insurance policy for their care in the United States, would likely have promptly received it. It should also be noted that most of the national healthcare plans of other countries are now suffering fiscal problems of varying degrees, with increasing deductibles and co-pays added to their citizens' tax burdens in order to support their systems.
American healthcare is expensive. Through expanding such patient-driven insurance vehicles as Medical Savings Accounts, which combine a tax free allotment, similar to a medical IRA, to be used to subsidize the deductible of a catastrophic healthcare policy, a patient and his or her family can take personal ownership of their policy, can make nearly unlimited choices regarding healthcare, and are using their personal dollars, rather than those of someone else, and thus are more likely to utilize healthcare dollars in a prudent fashion. Such plans also allow price comparisons and bargaining with both hospitals and physicians; some studies show this growing trend can result in significant cost savings, as these policies increase in popularity.
It must be conceded that such plans will likely not be practical for everyone, but radical changes in our present healthcare delivery system, can only burden us with a lack of accessibility to good healthcare, and discourage the motivation of those who work diligently to provide new technology, pharmaceuticals, and a consistently high standard of care for Americans. It is crucial that any changes in American healthcare preserve our liberties and freedom of choice, along with our chosen physician, in determining the course of our diagnosis and treatment. Without preservation of individual freedom, a medical road to serfdom lies in wait: although appearing to be paved with good intentions, any socialized healthcare system transfers the freedom and responsibility for our healthcare from us to bureaucrats in Washington. America and Americans deserve better, and should understand that change does not always support the common good. *
"A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying that he is wiser today than he was yesterday." --Alexander Pope
David J. Bean is a freelance writer living in California.
In an article in the June issue of this magazine we speculated that the legislation passed by Congress in March was not going to cure the economic problem. In fact, we predicted that it would make the problem worse. The bank rescue bill worth about $29 billion which bailed out the bondholders of Bear Stearns is now generally recognized as a mistake. After additional intrusion by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department we wrote in the October issue that the government was still on the wrong track. Now, with the $700 billion bailout passed and beginning to be felt, people are starting to believe that maybe, just maybe, they can see the light at the end of the tunnel. But all of the previous attempts to fix the problem including emergency interest rate cuts, lowering of required backing capital, direct lending to investment banks, forced mergers of financial institutions and promises to buy bad mortgage-backed assets all have not had a positive impact on the overall economy.
Various theories have been advanced as to the root cause of the problem with most centering on politicians' and Freddie and Frannie's frenzied efforts to get more basically unqualified people into housing ownership. But this push was actually a result of the real problem which was the Federal Reserve Bank's desire to keep the basic interest rate low. The Directors of the Federal Reserve and the Chairman Alan Greenspan felt that after 9/11 the rate had to be low to prevent a panic. Unfortunately they kept the rate too low for far too long. And Ben Bernanke has continued the low interest policy that continues to pump money into the system instead of raising the rate and letting the market clear the losses. Of course this would have been very painful, and some unhealthy, non-systemically important companies would have failed, but sooner or later the losses will still have to be dealt with. Had they allowed the interest rate to rise in 2007 the liquidity that fueled the home mortgage boom would probably have been curbed.
With the legislation passed beginning in March of 2008, and the low interest rate continuing for the rest of the year the political pressure was on for banks and Fred and Frannie to make use of all this easy money and put it to work. Even the shareholders insisted and the CEOs believed that if they could get money for two percent and put it out at six or seven percent, well, they had better do it. Certain politicians encouraged Fannie and Freddie to keep up the socially engineered buying frenzy. Both companies kept buying up these questionable mortgages, packaging them into securities and selling them back to investors who believed they were as good as gold. But it was the expansive monetary policy that had generated this boom in this asset. The easy money policy had induced ordinary people to say, "Well, it's so cheap to acquire a house that is bound to appreciate, I had better get on the bandwagon." When house prices fell, the bubble burst and many people with the subprime mortgages found that they owed more than the house was worth, so they just walked away. Holders of the mortgage-backed securities had no way of knowing what percentage of the mortgage packages they held was solid and how much was worthless.
So that is where we are today. Banks and other investors holding these securitized mortgages in their asset base have no idea as to their actual worth or how to show them on their books. They hesitate to "mark them to market" because the result may destroy their asset base and put them out of business. And banks soon quit lending to anyone that was not absolutely solvent. This prevented banks holding mortgage-based securities from being eligible for loans so interbank loans were effectively shut down. The Fed and Treasury Department became frantic to get the bank credit machine working again.
What the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve are doing today with the $700 billion bail out is to gradually transfer all the accumulated losses to the taxpayers. Think about it: isn't that what is really going on? At first Secretary Paulson wanted to buy up the bad securities directly but that presented significant appearance problems. The current solution is to inject money directly into the banks that hold these securities and receive special stock in exchange. Supposedly, when the banks are solvent again (?) they can buy back the stock and the actual appearance of what has happened will be much less transparent and thus more acceptable to the people. Unfortunately the political social engineers now have their eyes on other industries such as pharmaceuticals, energy, and healthcare companies.
Several of the eleven large banks that had to agree to this plan did not need or want the money injection, but Paulson was concerned that if he didn't insist on the stronger banks participation that the weaker ones would still fail or at least be shunned as being suspect. The lending crunch is not because of a shortage of funds; it is that banks do not know for sure if the borrowing banks can repay the money. And the problem is that there still is no way of knowing what all those suspect mortgage packages are really worth. Some holders of debt like Bill Gross of Pimco are pushing for lower interest rates and a temporary government guarantee of all bank deposits with no dollar limits. In addition to keeping the money tap open, they also approve of the direct injection of public capital into the banking system. They understand what is going on and want to take advantage of the endless stream of public capital funds sloshing around the economy.
A few of our Senators and Representatives recognized the problem years ago. For instance in 2003, and again in 2005 Senator John Sununu from New Hampshire introduced legislation to give a new federal regulator power to oversee Fannie and Fred's holdings and to ratchet up their capital requirements. But Congress (Franks, Dodd, etc.) wouldn't even allow this legislation to come to a vote and Congress rejected his proposals. Finally they did incorporate some of his proposals in the current rescue legislation -- five years too late. Still, it is very doubtful that the economy is going to recover much until all of these losses are identified and transferred to the taxpayers. Even then they must be paid off by future national production that ultimately means more taxes.
Our economy is undergoing an overhaul that will probably be permanent. With all the government intrusions, mergers, and takeovers, Wall Street has been castrated and will never be the same again. Free markets are on the defensive even though it was free market politicians who tried to reign in Fannie and Fred. Government run banks will determine winners and losers on an unprecedented scale and our socialistic government will become more like that of Europe. Even so, it will probably be years before a stable, socialistic economy can emerge from the current wreckage. Businesses will have to adapt to an increased regulatory burden that will probably include direct subsidies. All of this is a result of our officials' loss of faith in the free market and their unwillingness to allow a very painful free market correction when the problem first appeared. Hang onto your wallet; we are still in for a rough ride. *
"Christmas casts its glow upon us, as it does every year. And it reminds us that we need not feel lonely because we are loved, loved with the greatest love there has ever been or ever will be." --Ronald Reagan
Tracy C. Miller is an associate professor of economics at Grove City College and contributing scholar with the Center for Vision and Values. This article is republished from V & V, a website of the Center for Vision & Values.
An Indian government official recently criticized the Bush administration for blaming the growing middle classes of developing countries, such as India and China, for rising food prices. Although he may have misinterpreted the president's remarks, his and other Indian critics' responses are worth thinking about. They argue that the United States is the real culprit behind high food prices. Has the United States played an important role in contributing to rising food prices and, if so, what should be done to correct the problem?
Growing world demand for food is part of the explanation for recent food price increases. Higher incomes of people in developing countries have enabled them to consume more calories and more meat, which has had an impact on food prices. The fact that many people in the world can afford better diets is something we should be thankful for, even if it results in higher food prices for us. What should concern us, however, is how the U.S. government has contributed to the recent run-up in world food prices by subsidizing the production of bio-fuels.
While a variety of factors have contributed to food price increases, the actions of the U.S. government to promote the production of corn for ethanol cannot be ignored. Joseph Glauber, the chief economist of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, predicts that 31 percent of the entire U.S. corn crop in 2008 and 2009 will be devoted to ethanol production. This growth in ethanol production is the result of the combination of a government mandate, a 51 cents per gallon tax credit for ethanol production, various other subsidies, and a 54 cents per gallon tariff on ethanol imports.
U.S. government mandates for increased ethanol production ignore economic reality, diverting a growing portion of U.S. cropland from food production without taking account of the cost of doing so. As more land is used to produce corn, production of other crops has declined to the point where the United States has actually had to import wheat. Because the United States is a major producer and exporter of food and feed grains, reductions in U.S. output have a major impact on world food and feed prices. As more corn is diverted to ethanol production from feeding livestock, meat prices have risen as well.
Corn is a very expensive source of fuel, not just because of its value in feeding livestock, but because of the resources involved in converting it to fuel. The amount of energy required to produce a gallon of ethanol is almost as much as the energy that results from burning the ethanol. When factoring in the other costs of using corn to produce ethanol, it should be evident why it is a waste of resources.
There is nothing inherently wrong with growing crops to produce fuel, even if doing so causes food prices to rise. Rather, the extent to which corn and other crops are used for fuel should be determined by the choices of consumers and producers in response to market prices that are unhampered by government intervention like those mentioned above -- this is also known as free market prices. Because free market prices reflect people's voluntary preferences, market prices serve as indicators of relative scarcity, reflecting the priorities of all who could potentially benefit from what could be produced from the land. Competition for resources in the market will result in those resources being used for purposes that consumers value the most. Without market prices, government officials lack the ability to estimate accurately the net benefits of additional ethanol production for society. Unlike consumers who bear the costs of their decisions through the prices they pay in the market, government officials do not bear the full costs associated with their decision to subsidize ethanol.
Ethanol subsidies and mandates also contribute to environmental degradation as more land is plowed and more pesticides are used to increase yields. They contribute to rising government deficits as well. The only reason for politicians to continue these policies is that farmers and residents of rural communities, whose incomes increase as a result, will reward them with more votes. If more Americans can become informed about how much this is costing the rest of us, perhaps our elected representatives will see that they might actually lose votes by continuing to support this waste of taxpayers' money. *
"Injustice is relatively easy to bear; it is justice that hurts." --Henry Louis Mencken
Christianity: Lifeblood of American Free Society (1620-1945), John A. Howard. Summit Press, P.O. Box 207, Manitou Springs, Colorado, 80829, ISBN 978-0-936163-49-9, pp.136, $15 paperback.
We have forgotten the courage of those who wrote the Declaration of Independence. Nine of the fifty-six signers died of wounds or hardship during the Revolutionary War. Five were captured or imprisoned. Wives, sons and daughters were killed, jailed, mistreated, persecuted -- but they would not abandon the principles of honor they knew. "Except the Lord build the House," said Benjamin Franklin, "they labor in vain that build it."
Our fathers were blessed that George Washington, as a president and general, was a Christian gentleman. His Christianity is hardly mentioned in our day. "The General (Washington) hopes and trusts that every officer and man will endeavor to live and act as becomes a Christian soldier defending the dearest Rights and Liberties of his country." A month later he wrote to say he deplored that cursing and swearing was growing into fashion "We can not hope for the blessing of Heaven if we insult it by impiety."
While Washington believed in national unity, he deplored the passions of party strife that tear the country into rival sections. While these passions are eternal and seem to be a natural behavior, they cause problems. We must find civilized methods of conversation. A country can be properly governed only when virtue predominates.
During the 19th century, hundreds of colleges and universities were founded by our churches. The curriculum was more concerned with the development of character and piety rather than the acquisition of skills and knowledge. The main purpose was to teach Christianity and proper behavior. This continues in our day and guides organizations that are not connected with our churches. Service clubs such as the Rotary are examples.
Notwithstanding the continuity of our Christian faith, that faith does not have priority in the teaching of our universities, print, broadcast media, or the entertainment business. Do they have basic principles? Are they devoted to entertainment only? I do not doubt teachers and entertainers impose standards on themselves, but they should be able to state those standards and live by them. We are a Christian nation, and that should be acknowledged and observed. Intellectual leaders should tell us what defines our culture. To make money is not enough. We don't have to be dull prudes but we do have to state and preserve who we are. Timothy Dwight, president of Yale University from 1795 to 1817, wrote "Without religion, we may possibly retain the freedom of savages, bears and wolves, but not the freedom of New England." *
The following is a summary of the October 2008 issue of the St. Croix Review:
In the editorial, "Deconstructing America," Barry MacDonald reviews a book by Herbert London about the progress of "secularism" -- God is being removed from the American culture.
Herbert London, in "American Denial," cites the many challenges that Americans are unwilling to face; in "D-Day for Israel," he considers what would happen if Israel attacks Iran, or if it doesn't; in "The Chinese Olympic Mask," he remarks on the politics involved in the games; in "Bipolar Foreign Policy Theory," he reviews a book that caricatures Neo-cons and liberals; in "Islamic Intimidation and the Random House Fiasco," he relates how an iconic American publisher lost its nerve.
In "The Great Terror at 40 -- Remembering the Western Elites' Enchantment with Communism" Allan Brownfeld recounts how Western academics, clergymen, journalists, and literary figures gave support to the Soviet Union; in "Murdered by Mumia: The Crusade in Behalf of a Convicted Cop-killer Reveals a Strange View of Murder on the Part of Elite Opinion," he shows how the murdered policeman's wife has combated the left's best efforts to pervert justice for three decades.
In "Drill Now," Mark Hendrickson states the reasons we should be drilling for oil immediately; in "America's Debt Problem," he points out the moral failings and the bad policies behind American debt; in "Thank You, Alexander Sozhenitsyn," he reviews the great Russian's life and accomplishments; in "Olympic Anecdotes," he recounts the high and low points of the modern Olympics and reminds us of the noble Olympic ideals.
David J. Bean considers the economy in "How Did the Cure Work," and sees continuing mismanagement by the Fed and Treasury involving Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He believes that economic trouble has spread to Japan and Europe.
Harry Neuwirth reminds us why we have been blessed in "Entrepreneurial Capitalism."
In "Obama Conceives the Inconceivable on Conception," Paul Kengor looks at Obama's statements on conception and stem cell research and sees a lack of candor; in "Obama and Abortion Survivors: Clarifying the Record," he reveals the extraordinary lengths Obama will go to defend Rowe vs. Wade; in "Where Are the Bush Democrats? The GOP Leadership Lurch from 2000 to 2008," he shows how G. W. Bush has failed to convey an inspiring, conservative message.
In "The Maniac," Thomas Martin expounds the views of G. K. Chesterton that there is a "Great Chain of Being," with God reigning over man. Martin opposes modern thinkers such as Charles Darwin, Thomas Paine, and Friedrich Nietzsche, who recognize no God.
Among other points, Robert Whitten in "Global Warming and National Security" points out that the great majority of scientists have little or no expertise in atmospheric science, and among atmospheric scientists and climatologists there is no consensus on Global Warming.
Jigs Gardner, in "Joseph Conrad and the Quest for Truth," writes about the ascendancy of New Criticism and high point reached in the quality of literature in the early 20th century.
John Ingraham reviews Government Pirates: The Assault on Private Property Rights and How We Can Fight It, by Don Corace.