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Some jottings about the news

.يا رب يسوع المسيح ابن اللّه الحيّ إرحمني أنا الخاطئ


Sunday, July 12, 2009  

From the LRC blog

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Two more religious ones

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Haddonfield Fine Art and Crafts Festival
Third row: Grace Church, Haddonfield. I think a Catholic rector passed through in the good old days. It has Stations of the Cross and a hanging Sacrament light. The other church is First Presbyterian. Fifth row: матрёшки. Sixth row: I like Orlando’s work. Seventh row: Jurassic Park: Donna and the dinosaur.

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Eirenikon is back

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Saturday, July 11, 2009  

Dumbing down the US Naval Academy
Pat Buchanan on this story

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Ukrainian pol who tried to revive paganism killed by lightning
He seems to have been an old Soviet pol who, after Communism fell, like the Nazis latched onto hyper-nationalism and, as part of that, pre-Christian religion. God have mercy on him.

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From Joshua

  • Godwardness: no-frills Catholicism with American soldiers in Korea, 1951.
  • The alternative tradition in America, part II (part I).
  • Summing up: It is possible that Sarah Palin was both unfairly mistreated and personally attacked by the media and many on the left, and that her family was rather ruthlessly and mercilessly run through the ringer ... and that she’s a not particularly bright, not particularly curious, once libertarian-leaning governor who sadly devolved into a predictable, buzzword-spouting culture warrior when she was prematurely picked for national office by John McCain.

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Minimum wage

In a free market, demand is always a function of price: the higher the price, the lower the demand. What may surprise most politicians is that these rules apply equally to both prices and wages. When employers evaluate their labor and capital needs, cost is a primary factor. When the cost of hiring low-skilled workers moves higher, jobs are lost. Despite this, minimum wage hikes, like the one set to take effect later this month, are always seen as an act of governmental benevolence.
From Taki.

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The most violent country in western Europe

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Friday, July 10, 2009  

£6m drive to cut teen pregnancies sees them double
Well, duh:

The Government-backed scheme tried to persuade teenage girls not to get pregnant by handing out condoms and teaching them about sex.

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Stories we’re not hearing
Thinking man of the left Huw is not suckered by Obama

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From Joshua

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From LRC

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Mancession
From T1:9

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The two-state solution, Israeli-style
From antiwar.com

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A sketch of Pennsylvania
More. From Deacon Jim.

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Thursday, July 09, 2009  

From Mark Shea

  • Ruth Bader Ginsburg: just enough of her, way too many of them. Her eugenics remarks which her NYT interviewer let go unchallenged, moving on to pro-abortion boilerplate.
  • Palin’s children were a huge issue in the campaign, not because she “used them as props”, but because the existence of Trig Palin was a grave threat to the worldview of the leadership of the Democratic Party and its most entrenched supporters. The visceral and insane hatred of that baby and of his siblings was breathtaking.

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From 2006: 21st-century Polish jokes
Steve Sailer on Borat

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Still more on Caritas in Veritate
George Weigel critiques:

There is also rather more in the encyclical about the redistribution of wealth than about wealth-creation — a sure sign of Justice and Peace default positions at work. And another Justice and Peace favorite — the creation of a “world political authority” to ensure integral human development — is revisited, with no more insight into how such an authority would operate than is typically found in such curial fideism about the inherent superiority of transnational governance.
And Damian Thompson has a go at the critic:
How dare he accuse Benedict XVI — a Pope who has bravely grappled with a crisis of worship neglected by his liturgically tone-deaf predecessor — of what amounts to intellectual cowardice?
Apples and giraffes. Santo subito was all that and more and I cheer his successor’s Catholic revival. That makes him no more an economist than a brain surgeon.

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Classical liberalism and Mill’s liberalism
From Joshua

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From RR

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Theologians don’t get economics
A left-libertarian has a go at Pope Benedict over his economics encyclical but if you filter out all the anti-Romanism (which makes libertarians look bad, no thanks) and his nonexistent alternative to the truth the Pope preaches, he has a point: mater, sì, magistra, no (on matters not de fide — orthodox Rome is not the personal cult of the Pope). There is no more such thing as Catholic economics than there is Baptist geology.

What the Holy Father and Jim Wallis’s kind don’t get is:

Each of us acts to promote our self interest — even the Catholic hierarchy. That motivation can lead to good and to bad but seeking “the common good” is more likely to lead to bad results than good.
The invisible hand.
When profit-making is politicized it leads to bad results. When profit-making is depoliticized it leads to good results. First, consider the depoliticized market. A depoliticized market is one where individual entrepreneurs are unable to impose their will on unwilling consumers. To a large extent the local grocery store is a depoliticized market (though even here politics can distort things). This store must entice you to buy there because it has no ability to force you to purchase there.

The result is that they have to make an effort to serve your good if they wish to make a profit. Because they lack the ability to use force they need your voluntary co-operation in order to make a profit.

The danger comes in when concepts like the “common good” are allowed to dominate. This concept is used to politicize the market. The argument is that an unregulated market is not one where the common good dominates so individuals act in bad ways. But how? Without the ability to force other traders into unwilling exchanges there is no ability to create exchanges where one party loses.

The only way to systematically destroy the mutual benefits of free exchange is to politicize the market. Politicization means that the state will forcibly intervene into the exchanges. But what can government intervention accomplish?

What the advocates of politicized markets really want is to force exchanges where one partner benefits and the other one loses. Ratzinger, totally ignorant of economics, believes that the political classes will use state power to force exchanges that benefit the poor and powerless.

Politicized markets attract predatory individuals who use state power for their own benefit, or for the benefit of their favored friends or supporters.

What Ratzinger wants is political control over markets. He fantasizes that political power will be used according to the values he espouses. In truth, that power will be used in ways quite different from what he wants.

Ratzinger wants a state system of redistribution of wealth. How ignorant can this man be? When power is in the hands of the powerful there is real wealth redistribution. But it comes at the expense of the poor and the powerless. One of the great myths of redistributive state is that it redistributes wealth toward the needy. While there may be some show-programs which appear to help the poor and powerless, for the most part redistribution will go up the economic ladder not down.
It reminds me of what LRC’s Morgan Reynolds wrote recently:
The true line of causation: high wages are an effect of high productivity and prosperity, not a cause of high productivity and prosperity. If it were otherwise, rather than producing themselves rich, all nations could simply declare all good things cheap and all wages high, thus abolishing poverty with pious hopes.
Paul Goings has written:
The traditional Catholic position, and ultimately S. Paul, insists that some form of government is essential for a functioning society, while leaving almost all of the details to prudential judgement in the context of a living magisterial apparatus.
Michael Bindner notes:
The Pope could probably be best pegged to the Christian Democratic Party label — they are conservative on life issues but modern liberal on economics. In the United States, we have no party that approximates what is in the encyclical.
From RR.

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There should be no special privileged class of protected groups in a democracy. A crime is a crime — period.
Camille Paglia via Rod Dreher

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From Steve Sailer

  • The diversity recession or how government trying to force equal outcomes in mortgage lending contributed to the housing collapse.
  • Palestine: Joe Biden is kind of a bozo. Funny how he was brought on board specifically to impart foreign-policy gravitas to the newcomer from the South Side of Chicago.
  • We’re in deep state. Matt Taibbi on the collapse and Goldman Sachs.
  • If Palin were a man, there’d be a wife to deal with the kids, so the Governor could get back to thinking about about non-family, non-local topics. This is all totally obvious, but nobody is supposed to mention stuff like this anymore. Echoing Becky?
  • Actions, consequences and the totally preventable Aids outbreak. It’s not the state’s job to protect people from themselves but...

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Wednesday, July 08, 2009  



From Joshua

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Papal encyclical Caritas in veritate
A few notes:

14: Paul VI reflected on the meaning of politics, and the danger constituted by utopian and ideological visions that place its ethical and human dimensions in jeopardy.
15 is true but not a state matter: neither subsidise nor outlaw contraception. And:
28: Openness to life is at the centre of true development.

17: A vocation is a call that requires a free and responsible answer. Integral human development presupposes the responsible freedom of the individual and of peoples: no structure can guarantee this development over and above human responsibility. The “types of messianism which give promises but create illusions” always build their case on a denial of the transcendent dimension of development, in the conviction that it lies entirely at their disposal.

26. Relativism... does not serve true intercultural dialogue.
On religious liberty:
29: The deliberate promotion of religious indifference or practical atheism on the part of many countries obstructs the requirements for the development of peoples, depriving them of spiritual and human resources.

32. The dignity of the individual and the demands of justice require, particularly today, that economic choices do not cause disparities in wealth to increase in an excessive and morally unacceptable manner.
Of course I agree on ‘morally unacceptable’. But ‘excessive’? True freedom and equality are of opportunity not outcome, the left (including the religious left, including the ageing RCs Pope Benedict seems to want to do something about) notwithstanding.
35. The market is the economic institution that permits encounter between persons, inasmuch as they are economic subjects who make use of contracts to regulate their relations as they exchange goods and services of equivalent value between them, in order to satisfy their needs and desires.
But of course there are whiffs (at least I think so) of meddling in the science of the market, a temptation for well-meaning Christians including of course Catholics.
It is in the interests of the market to promote emancipation, but in order to do so effectively, it cannot rely only on itself, because it is not able to produce by itself something that lies outside its competence. It must draw its moral energies from other subjects that are capable of generating them.
Granted, the market is not a complete worldview. But to try to tinker with it is ultimately as counterproductive as defying physics.
36. Therefore, it must be borne in mind that grave imbalances are produced when economic action, conceived merely as an engine for wealth creation, is detached from political action, conceived as a means for pursuing justice through redistribution.

The Church has always held that economic action is not to be regarded as something opposed to society. In and of itself, the market is not, and must not become, the place where the strong subdue the weak.
But people have free will and some will always make bad choices, which explains many of the unequal outcomes. Of course part (but not the only or most important part) of the church’s ministry is in alleviating suffering including from these consequences but the market ultimately works for the temporal benefit of the most people: promoting flourishing as the Schoolmen might say.

Getting back on track:
Society does not have to protect itself from the market, as if the development of the latter were ipso facto to entail the death of authentically human relations.

37. The Church’s social doctrine has always maintained that justice must be applied to every phase of economic activity.
The seventh commandment (against theft) and the do-no-harm principle: fair play and the golden rule.
62. Every migrant is a human person who, as such, possesses fundamental, inalienable rights that must be respected by everyone and in every circumstance.
More from Manion.

More links.

From Joshua.

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Speed traps and parking meters
From the LRC blog

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The LRC blog on the Pope’s new encyclical

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Tuesday, July 07, 2009  

Bull pulpit

The traditional news media are now fully embedded members of the Pentagon’s long-war sales force.
From antiwar.com.

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From Joshua

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