Six Of One

Megan McArdle has written an interesting piece pushing back against the argument circulating on the Right that Obama's (and Bush's) wasteful fiscal policies are risking hyperinflation, instead supposing that we will have to endure a fiscal crisis instead. She might be right, but it looks to me like a distinction without a difference.

The next big economic bullet we have to contend with is the threat that the government's access to credit in arbitrarily large amounts will be lost or reduced. As that happens, interest rates will rise and the federal government will have to make some very difficult decisions. Megan's argument seems to operate under the assumption that when push comes to shove, the feds will choose to cut entitlement benefits rather than attempt to inflate away the debt. If that's true we have certainly not seen any movement in that direction so far. I know if I owned long term Treasury debt I would be less than reassured by Megan. Furthermore the actual bondholders don't necessarily believe her either, their problem is that they really don't have any good alternatives.

The Obama Recovery

I agree with James Pethokoukis (and other commentators with a similar line) in the main, but his tone seems a bit churlish to me. The fact that GDP grew at 3.5% last quarter is good news, even if for technical reasons that number is exaggerating somewhat the growth in the real economy.

Instead of quibbling about whether last quarter's GDP growth rate was 3.5% or 2.0%, I would simply emphasize that appearances notwithstanding, we are actually in a recovery right now. This is what recovery looks like when Democrats are in power. If the voters want something better, they can vote Republican.

Obama On The Couch

“Barack Obama is a clever fellow who imbibed hatred of America with his mother’s milk, but worked his way up the elite ladder of education and career,” I wrote in Feb. 2008. He shares the resentment of Muslims against the encroachment of American culture, although not their religion. He has the empathetic skill set of an anthropologist who lives with his subjects, learns their language, and elicits their hopes and fears while remaining at emotional distance. That is, he is the political equivalent of a sociopath. The difference is that he is practicing not on a primitive tribe but on the population of the United States.” - David Goldman aka Spengler

We've seen quite a bit of this sort of thing from various people on the Right over the last year or so. Steve Sailer in particular has made an extensive study of it.

I have no particular beef with armchair psychoanalysis of political figures or prominent people in general. In many circumstances it's the only way to make sense of them. It's just that in this particular case I don't buy it, at least as it pertains to Barack Obama's performance as President of the United States.

Even if we accept that young Barack Obama was weaned on anti-Americanism, the 47-year old President Obama understands the gravity of his job and has circulated in "respectable" society long enough to render some analyses like Spengler's wrong if taken too literally. This is not just some speculation by the way, but clear from his performance through nine months in office. If Obama really intended to be the American Salvador Allende (and I for one was worried about it), he would have gone about things much differently.

No, the thing I fear about President Obama right now is that he is not just the President but also the First Groupie. Like some of his rockstar-worshipping fans, he in love with the sound of his own voice. As a consequence, he manages through atmospherics. The President's warm sonorous baritone isn't just a matter of soundbites, but serves in lieu of real engagement with America's problems.

Dede the Dissident Conservative

The tide has turned very quickly for Dede Scozzafava in the special election for Congress in the 23rd District of New York.

Just a week or so ago, prominent establishment Republicans wanted the Right to coalesce around Republican nominee Scozzafava when it was clear that conservative insurgent Doug Hoffman had the message and the momentum in the race. Now, in the last day or so and less than a week before the election, Scozzafava has not only dropped out, she has endorsed the Democrat in the race, Bill Owens.

Now Dede Scozzafava hasn't written any books about sustainable agriculture or climate change, but she seems to me to be the pol's version of the dissident conservative. We are led to believe such people are supposedly motivated by reasons of high principle. But it's a crock. What really counts is the repudiation of the legitimate lower case r republicans left in America, ie, people like the Palins.

Mixed Signals

Some of us on the Right are skeptical of the Church's instincts as it pertains to economic or political things. This is a matter of some exasperation for Church partisans. They can say, as Boethius does, "Look, the Church rejects socialism, the Church respects private property, the Church opposes class warfare. It says so right here in Rerum Novarum, written by the pope himself"

Well, our suspicions are not merely paranoia. Here's a couple of interesting links of back-and-forth from Rep. Joseph Kennedy and Abp. Dolan of New York (hat tip to the Corner). Note especially the words of Abp. Dolan: there's nothing in them that suggests any wavering on the traditional doctrines of the Church, in this case the prohibition against abortion. But, without explicitly agreeing, he seems to acquiesce to Rep. Kennedy's premise that of course we all support Democratic-sponsored health care reform once we can resolve these small side-issue dealbreakers.

Of course this ignores the multitude of problems with the various Democratic proposals that have nothing to do with abortion. So, statements such as Dolan's which I suggest are fairly typical are one step up and two steps back: the Church's doctrines are affirmed while at the same time seeming to place them in an improper or uncertain context and conceding too much to the Left on non-doctrinal issues.

The Priority of Labor

Boethius has written a lot of worth responding to. At the risk of repetition, let's pick up on this business of the priority of labor over capital one more time.

Boethius, speaking with the Church, is certainly correct in one sense: we can have labor without capital but we cannot have capital without labor therefore labor is literally first. But as I argued in a prior comment, most contemporary thought on about this topic is about the ethics of compensation: how much labor gets vs. how much capital gets.

But even if we accept this to be an error, the train of thought is still interesting for me at least. The idea is that the material goods of the world are ordered to human welfare. Labor, having priority, is more fundamental to human welfare than capital therefore it must be compensated at the expense of capital if necessary. What's interesting about this is that if even if some of the Left's premises are faulty, not all of them are. In particular, I have no problem conceding to the Left that the goods of the world are properly ordered toward human welfare.

But there's something of a paradox that says that if property that is held privately serves public ends better than property that is held publicly. But paradox or not, that's what the history of the last 150 years or so tell us very strongly. There are substantial costs in trying anything else.

"Nothing is more useful..."

...than to look upon the world as it really is." This migh be mistaken for one of Koz's fundamental assertions, but this quote in fact comes from Pope Leo XIII, in his criticism of socialism in Rerum Novarum, section 18. Since Koz has additionally asserted that what passes for Catholic Social Doctrine includes "Economics for Leprechauns and Unicorns," my goal with this series of posts is to explore whether the difference in apprehended reality can be accounted for by 1) the Church's social doctrine is incorrect or deficient in some aspects; 2) Koz's opinions, on the contrary, suffer from those defects; or, 3) what Koz is criticizing is not actually church doctrine, but popularized versions used by factions within the Church for political ends.

"Capital cannot do without labor, nor labor without capital [R.N. 19]," for example, seems to be another principle at odds with what Koz says is claimed by the Catholic left, which apparently implies that the Church should be more concerned with laborers than with capitalists. I would like to see a reference to where this is claimed, though I don't dispute that this is indeed claimed by many. The problem with this position, the distorted 'liberal' view, is also documented by Pope Leo, when he writes:

The great mistake made in regard to the matter now under consideration is to take up with the notion that class is naturally hostile to class, and that the wealthy and the working men are intended by nature to live in mutual conflict. So irrational and so false is this view that the direct contrary is the truth [19].

I would agree that there is largely a knee-jerk notion smoldering in areas of the American Church that capitalists, those who provide capital for the benefit of laborers, are basically evil people. Obviously the Church does not teach this, and by emphasizing the necessity of harmony between classes would actually seem to be closer to the Reaganometric 'trickle down' theory than, say, an Alinskian agitprop strategy. We will see, however, that this is far from a clear endorsement of a completely free market or 'unbridled captialism', though the extent to which the Church is clear on the precise duties of capitalists is still very much openly disputed by conservative Catholic economists. We have much more to wade through before weighing in on that dispute, but for today, suffice it to say that if Koz's criticisms are aimed at real assertions by real people, I would hold that they do not speak in accord with Leo XIII.

Is the Church by Nature Socialist?

At times, some within the Church have imagined that the ideal depicted in Acts 4: 32 should be the norm guiding the Church at all times:

"The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common."

For this reason, it has been an easy move for many Christians in the past 150 years to adopt a kind of de facto socialist point of view. However, already by the fourth century, and probably much earlier, Church Fathers were pointing out that this ideal from Acts was only lived in monastic settings, where in addition to a promise of poverty, monks and nuns also vowed celibacy. Marriage, being an institution of God for those in the world and not in monastic communities, necessitates the ownership of private property, which allows for parents to produce goods for the benefit of those who are helpless to do so for themselves, namely for children. Thus it is that Pope Leo XIII can write:

"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."

He also makes the interesting exegetical argument that God Himself ordained private property, by noting that the commandment, "Thou shalt not covet," makes no sense if what someone else has to be coveted is in fact common property.

Finally in this section of Rerum Novarum (11-15), the pope accurately predicts the drying up of capital (=means of production) in communist states (as Koz noted in a recent comment on the current state of Polish labor) when he writes:

"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."

It is worth noting that in both quotes, the interest of the Holy Father is in the alleviation of poverty, one of the Church's main projects while in the world. Thus, we see that the 'preferential option for the poor', is not an invention of Vatican II or socialists, but is inscribed in the very nature of the Church. However, when it comes to proposals on how to carry this out, the Church's preferential option, as we shall see, is realistic in the sense that it acknowledges the shortcomings of actual people and the need therefore of justice. The traditional definition of justice is the virtue of giving each person his or her due. In the area of our material existence, this means the preservation of justly acquired capital in the hands of the laborer who created it.

Labor, Capital, Private Ownership

First of all, happy feast day to all of you out there named Boethius, who died on this date in 525 or so.

And in celebration of this wise man's life, I will, at long last, begin contributing some observations on Catholic social teaching, as presented in the encyclicals beginning with the timeless Rerum Novarum of Leo XIII.

One should note, right off, that we tend to read these older documents especially in light of present concerns, and with a history of interpretation, not all of which, as Koz has rightly suggested, actually harmonizes with what Pope Leo actually wrote. Thus, there is a tendency to look for clues of the Holy Father 'taking our side' by condemning socialism or capitalism and promoting the other option. In fact, the very assumption of having to choose between one or the other is largely false and is one more aspect of the debate of recent decades that distorts the teaching (and again, with Koz I assert that this distortion frequently comes from Catholics themselves).

That said, it can hardly be denied that the Church from the outset has condemned socialism firmly; indeed, Rerum Novarum was written precisely at a time that the Specter of Communism was hovering expectantly over much of Europe, certainly over the future of the royal family in Russia. The problem with socialism according to Leo, is the denial of the rights of private property by the proposal of common ownership administered by the state. In defending the right of private ownership, the Pontiff indirectly sets out a principle with which Koz apparently takes exception, that is the primacy of labor over capital.

I will conclude today's post by suggesting that this principle, when reduced to a 'catchphrase' (as rightly portrayed by Koz a few weeks ago), gives the false impression that somehow capital is a bad thing or should be 'given fewer favors' by whomever is doling them out. That already gives away some of the problems of this leftist stance. Who is giving the favors away if not the state that has unjustly appropriated capital? But more to the point, there is no need to choose between capital and labor. Labor takes raw materials and produces capital, and capital in turn opens up opportunities for new labor and an improvement in man's situation that hardly is available to, say, settlers on virgin land. The priority of labor over capital follows from man's spiritual nature enjoying priority over his material nature. By use of reason and imagination, man changes raw material into workable capital. Capital as such, therefore, does not exist in nature, but is always a product of thinking man. As a product of man's spiritual nature, it is a good thing, and should not be disparaged. The question pressing Leo, as we shall see, is the problem, obvious in socialism, but also a problem in some expressions of capitalism, of working man unjustly deprived of the fruits of his labor, that is, of his own capital, and therefore of his freedom to improve his own situation. He is typically today deprived either by the state, or by unjust practices of those whose power is primarily economic.

Some Disguise

Steven Chapman tells us that 2016 Olympics not being awarded to Chicago is a "blessing in disguise." If that's so, the disguise wasn't very effective. I don't know of a single Chicagoan not trying to ride a gravy train who wanted Chicago to host the Olympics.

Economics for Leprechauns and Unicorns

Let's make a couple of clarifications with respect to Boethius' lastest post.

First of all, the is/ought gap I was talking about in this post is referring to Catholic Social Doctrine. Catholic Social Doctrine is primarily (but not exclusively) associated with a set of papal encyclicals starting with Rerum Novarum by Pope Leo XIII (and Boethius conveniently linked to). This is not the same thing Christian doctrine in general, Christian exhortations such as the commandment to love one's enemies, or Christian foreign policy.

Second, the is/ought gap is not about "goals" as much as premises. CSD often tries to instruct us on the proper social and economic relations in situations that are only vaguely recognizable to most of us.

If I had to reduce this to one example, I'd pick the "priority of labor over capital," a catchphrase of both the Catholic Left and the secular Left as well. First of all, it's fundamentally mistaken to think that the disparagement of capital is the way to meet basic human needs. But more than that, to a substantial extent the priority of labor over capital is a logical non sequitur. There is not necessarily any "they" who doles some goodies for labor and some for capital (and who is also subject to moral instruction from popes).

This is especially revealing in the context of the modern industrial welfare state. If the place where we arbitrarily choose between labor and capital is foreign for us, the modern welfare state plainly is not. Not every nation with a social-service apparatus is the same of course, but there's enough commonality to treat it as one phenomenon. But in spite of being a tangible reality for most of us, the social encyclicals speak of the welfare state only in vague terms. This leaves the field open for the Catholic Left to identify the expansion of the welfare state as the "Catholic" solution for modern social relations. Whatever may be said for that (and those of us on the Right are skeptical), the world that describes is a much more boring place than the one that actually exists.

The Sailer Strategy

For at least a decade, Steve Sailer has found a good niche in the punditocracy by looking hard at margins of politically correct mainstream discourse. Nonetheless, I've got a strong gut feeling that this is fundamentally misguided.

First of all, the "fundamental Manichaeism" of black-white race relations is weaker now than at any time in American history. For the most part our cultural narratives have moved on to other things. Besides that, I think it's more effective to attack the "coolness deficit" directly. The GOP should emphasize that voting Republican signals the voter's intent to earn their own living. And, mooching off the taxpayers is not cool.

Things as they ought to be?

Koz is mainly in the right to suggest that some, perhaps many, doctrines that have been advanced in the social encyclicals of the past 118 years seem at odds with things "as they are." By contrasting this to things as they ought to be, he implies that Catholic doctrine in general posits goals that are at odds with things 'as they are'; the root example being Christ's commandment to love, which receives plenty of lip service while Christian example too frequently is wanting in terms of performance. Those reborn in the Spirit are new creations, and yet they seem to change little, etc, etc. Chesterton's bon mot regarding Christianity never having been tried comes to mind.

That said, I think that Koz has a slightly different point in mind, that the encyclicals actually try to make observations of things as they and get them wrong; or propose ideals that might be fine if we were dealing with Christian kingdoms, but are very problematic when dealing leaders who are elected by population less and less evangelized and other nations that simply do not believe in the Christian gospel (i.e. Islamic states).

The difficulty in such charges is that the data is lacking, and I wonder what would happen if we actually examined specific phrases or sections of the social encyclicals, which are all readily available at the Vatican website (I may have left some out of that hyper-link barrage). Then analyze with respect to whether these things that ought to be can be understood without recourse to papal obtuseness.

More To Life Than Money

Here's a couple of interesting tidbits to put side by side (indirect hat tip to Tyler Cowen for both).

First, the heterodox economic "policy" department at Notre Dame is being disbanded. This department justified itself as an attempt to integrate Catholic Social Thought with modern economics. Believing what I do about modern major universities, this more or less amounted to rationalizations for some flavor of neo-Marxist, social democratic New Left politics. That could be too harsh, I am not that familiar with their work.

On the other hand, anyone who has been paying attention in the blogosphere surely knows that there is an economics department from a less prominent university which has been setting the world on fire for the last few years at least: the department at George Mason U.

This is an interesting state of affairs, especially in light of the history of Catholic Social Doctrine. I think it's fair to say that nowhere else is there a larger gap between things as they ought to be and things as they are. Independently of the reader's ecclesial affiliation, the encyclicals and other fundamental documents are substantial, profound meditations about social relations among people. Unfortunately, the constituents of Catholic Social Doctrine seem to describe with irritating frequency the correct course of action or state of mind for a world other than the one that actually exists to you and me.

Some Catholics both Left and Right, want to think this is another example of anti-Catholic bias, in particular the reduction of man to an economic beast. That's a bum rap. If the exponents of CSD could do their work in the idiom of (and accountable to) the standards of modern econometrics, they would get a hearing from mainstream economists. Unfortunately CSD loses quite a bit when viewed through the prism of empirical data, and what's left over isn't very interesting.

Of course, that's not the end of the story. A couple of months ago Pope Benedict XVI released CARITAS IN VERITATE, his third encyclical. This work has generated lots of commentary like all encyclicals. But my sense is, what sets this letter apart from the other social encyclicals is that it confronts the world of late industrial capitalism as we actually recognize it, instead of how the popes saw it.

As I finish, let's also note the particular constituents of "Masonomics" mentioned earlier. For me, there's two important points to gathered from Tyler's short list. One, that economics is not necessarily afraid of the gooier, less pecuniary parts of our psyche. They're part of life. And in the subtext, that George Mason is not afraid of the econometric standards of the rest of the profession. If you can pull it off, it's not a bad place to be.

What He Said, pt V

President Obama needs to make a decision: Either give the general the resources he believes he needs, or change the mission. I'm for changing the mission. Concentrate on the continued destruction of al Qaeda and its allies. Nothing else matters in this mess. - Ralph Peters

Most conservative commentators have been urging President Obama to deploy more troops to Afghanistan, but at least I've got Ralph Peters for company in going the other way. It seems to me there's some fairly obvious reasons why the strategic blueprint for Iraq shouldn't be exported to Afghanistan.

The consequences of troop withdrawal much different in Afghanistan than Iraq. Iraq, for all its flaws has been a nation and a civilization for a long time. If that were going to cease being the case because of lack of American security, America would have been blamed. Maybe we could live with that (fwiw, I could). But, whoever survived the rat fight after we left would have won lots of money, personnel, and resources at their disposal for terrorism, ethnic cleansing, diplomatic intimidation, anti-American propaganda and the rest of it. So we really did have to finish the job there, especially when there was a readily available means to do it.

These things do not apply to Afghanistan. There are no hungry bands of jackal-terrorists waiting to terrorize the docile civilians as soon as the Yanks leave. If anything, they go to Afghanistan for sanctuary, to get away from everybody else in the world who doesn't like them either. And given that we do not need nation-building in Afghanistan (and with doubtful likelihood of being able to accomplish it), we should adjust our personnel requirements accordingly.

The Few, The Proud

I am fundamentally ambivalent toward Rod Dreher's cultural program. But I am much less ambivalent in support of his argument against the popular Right opposition to "elitism". I remember this rankling me all the way back to 1996 wherein Vice Presidential candidate Jack Kemp campaigned against "elites", which was fundamentally misplaced even then. The Marines, brain surgeons, and the CalTech faculty are elites. At some level elites are plainly a good thing. Rich Daley and Chris Dodd are in no way elite, they are the Establishment. Those of us on the Right, especially, should not confuse ourselves about the difference.

My Party, pt III

I suspect Glenn Reynolds is right in his characterization of the Tea Parties as fundamentally anti-partisan. Of course this contradicts the liberal allegations that the whole phenomenon is just right-wing astroturfing. Still, this is not good news IMO.

We can sympathize with the Tea Partiers' suspicion that the two major parties in Washington are Tweedledee and Tweedledum. But ultimately that is a sucker's game. There is a fundamental difference between one party with actual prinicples who fails to uphold them in practice versus another party horrific prinicples or none at all. Public opinion can fight rear-guard actions well, but I strongly suspect nothing good is going to happen from Washington until the political prospects of actual Republicans are much stronger.

The Message, pt VIII

Hat tip to Reihan for this. Reihan argues that the Dems in Congress will eventually pass something, so we should consider mitigating the eventual bill to the extent that we can. I disagree, to the extent that Demo-style health care "reform" is not at all inevitable and in fact will substantially depend on the Republican message over the next six weeks or so.

As I have mentioned more than once, a big part of the GOP's decline over the last five years or so is bandwidth. The party's representatives could say whatever, and people simply quit listening. But right now, as it relates to health care, we've got bandwidth. It's been such a struggle to get to this point, we've got to say something to convey the idea that health care reform can be something other than a bigger welfare state.

Jokers pt II, Message pt VII

As longtime readers know, I am related to The Swing Voter, which is to say, my mother is usually a surprisingly reliable barometer of public sentiment. She loved the speech and thinks Republicans need to put something real on the table. She was shocked and appalled by the Joe Wilson booing. Until we get more reliable polls, I would assume that this was the general sentiment among independents. - Megan McArdle

I agree with Megan's mother on both counts. I didn't see the Obama speech, but the big controversy over Rep. Joe Wilson crudely interrupting the President can't help. No one is afraid of some old guy in a funny hat at a town hall meeting. But, a typical voter might very well be skeptical of an elected official who lacks enough self-control to keep basic decorum. In a slightly different context, Jon Henke gets it exactly right here, especially in the way cites the reasons William F. Buckley purged the John Birch Society out of mainstream conservatism. In short, we must attempt to demonstrate to the public at large that we ought to be governing.

Which, come to think of it, is a useful guideline for handling the substance of health care reform as well. First, that the status quo in health care system is not very good, so we have lots of opportunities to propose improvements to it that we're willing to be held accountable for. And more important than that, that we don't have to accept the liberals' framework for health care reform in the name of political feasibility. We should put together our proposals as if we were the governing majority, because if we handle this right we very well may be soon enough.

Time for the Health Care Debate

With apologies for my long absence, I return with an observation on Health Care. I recently assented to watch Bill Moyers opine on this topic on Bill Maher's show (hopefully earning some advance credit to my time in purgatory). Moyers, whom I consider a thoughtful, old-style Democrat, said something to the effect that universal health care is the sign of a compassionate society. It's hard to disagree with a statement phrased thus without sounding unfeeling; and indeed, I hardly could disagree with the root idea. The question for me, as always, is 'what constitutes the society to which you refer?'

It is obvious to anyone with rudimentary knowledge of economics and bureaucracy that health care for 260 million strangers is a nightmare. We don't consider the health of the French to be our concern. Why should Donald Trump be personally concerned with health care for a barber in Omaha? Or vice versa? My point being that a smaller conception of 'society' makes a realistic and 'targetted' compassion possible, whereas the United States is simply too large and diverse for that sort of thinking.

The worst part of the collectivistic thinking that drives so much liberal political thought is that for most people, it provides an excuse to be anything but compassionate. "I gave at the office" is a reasonable response to any actual human being seeking financial help from us. Ironically, it turns out to be roughly the same response that Scrooge gives to his bleeding heart nephew. Aren't there work prisons still operating? Scrooge no doubt felt that the money taken from him in taxes should be enough of his contribution to 'society', and this obviates the obligation he might have to giving a hoot about Tiny Tim, in spite of the fact that humanly speaking, he should care about him. He's the son of his only employee!

In any case, the quandary for conservatives as I see it is that, being tied for now to the Party of Lincoln and his grand, centralizing war and the rhetoric necessitated by it, we end up by default thinking in terms of a national culture and 'society' rather than particular local one confederated for common defense. Consolidation of the society is a bonanza for politically connected business, such as military contractors and Big Pharma. In my opinion, a principled conservatism much return to a political theory of local particularity and scale back on the march toward socialism, so ably abetted by Nixon and the Bush dynasty.

Hi Koz!