Posts Tagged ‘Western Civilization’
Best Sentence that We’ve Read in Awhile
And a Brief Mention about the Decline in Numbers of Religious Personnel
“Interfering with people’s property, labor, and exchange – except where necessary to uphold justice and sustain society – is a violation of the sacredness of the person.”
That’s from an essay by Greg Forster, “Sacred Enterprise,” in the Claremont Review of Books, Summer 2009. (Unfortunately, it’s only available on-line to subscribers.) He goes on to write, “And increasing the total amount of available wealth is morally good, so it is wrong to stifle economic growth or to force potentially productive assets to lie wastefully dormant…” (Think the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14 – 30) as justification for the first clause, and Cash for Clunkers as an example of the second.)
We only wish that Mr. Forster had chosen a different word instead of “justice,” because that loaded term is too often used to rationalize the meddling and interference that he is condemning.
In the essay, Mr. Forster is making a moral case for capitalism and markets. It’s an argument that current Church leaders could make, which would be consistent with their traditions and catechism, if they thought about economic issues a little more clearly than they do (and had a bit more training in both economics and history). In fact, for quite some time, Church doctors , e.g., St. Thomas Aquinas, and others – the Scholastic economists – did make such arguments. And those arguments had a tremendous and long-term influence on many – both religious and irreligious – including the founders of this great nation.
Mr. Forster mentions the book, The Victory of Reason, by Rodney Stark, which provides a good, general history of the Church’s positive influence on Western Civilization, including its role in the development and defense of capitalism. How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization by Thomas E. Woods, Jr. is a similar and fine book, too.
Those looking for more specialized books on economics and Catholicism should consider The Church and the Market, also by Mr. Woods and Faith and Liberty: The Economic Thought of the Late Scholastics by Alejandro A. Chafuen. Both of these show the congruity between Catholicism and private property and free enterprise. (We’ve mentioned all of these books at one time or another and highly recommend all of them.)
We wish that America’s Catholics bishops would consider the arguments found in such books before supporting government policies like nationalized health-care. In fact, we view such support for government aid (versus Catholic charitable aid and service) to be an abdication of the Church’s traditional role and responsibilities. Moreover, we think that as the Church veers from that role (as charity provider) it loses much of its vitality because it cannot recruit young, spiritual, idealists who are willing to serve those in need. (It’s a long, multi-part argument that we promise to make in the near future.)
Part of our argument is based upon our view that the substitution of government-provided aid for private charity is a social service analogue of Gresham’s Law, i.e., bad money drives out good money, and government mandates make the analogy rather complete. (As you may recall, Gresham’s Law states that when both pure and debased coins must be accepted as legal tender, the debased ones are circulated. It’s not much different than keeping the crispy new bills in your wallet and paying with the greasy, dirty old ones, except in Pittsburgh where it is rare to find crispy new ones.) By the way, the late Scholastics also knew and wrote about such currency debasements and viewed them as theft by the rulers and violations of the sacredness of the person, too. (There’s not much that is new.)
Finally, we’d argue that the difference in quality of service can be addressed with a simple question: who would you prefer to treat you: a member or employee of a charitable, religious organization or a member of the federal bureaucracy? Where’s the love, man? Yeah, it seems rather rhetorical, doesn’t it?
What a Civilized Country!
Approximately ten days ago, after his release from jail, we caught a brief glimpse of Bernie Madoff on the television news.
He was walking along the sidewalks of New York, presumably near his apartment, and he was surrounded by a swarm of news reporters and cameramen.
It seemed that someone accosted him – pushed him – but the episode didn’t last very long. We didn’t think much of it at the time and figured that it was a disgruntled neighbor who was also an investor in Mr. Madoff’s funds who had happened upon him and his entourage, and that was that.
Upon further reflection, we had our titular thought: what a civilized country we live in!
Many very rich, clever, and relatively powerful people seem to have lost substantial sums of money by investing with Mr. Madoff. Yet, he was arrested and arraigned and released on bail – all according to our laws – and upon his release he felt safe enough to venture into public.
To date he has suffered nothing worse than a push.
Thus, so far, it seems that his investors have been content to let the government take the lead in prosecuting him, and they have not implemented or acted on any vendettas or thoughts of revenge.
Now, this is the same country that responded quite aggressively to 9/11 – some say too aggressively – so, we don’t believe that we live in a sissified, effete country. (And it’s certainly not that way outside of the gun-controlled cities and states where our media tend to reside.) So, we’d argue that it is simply self-control (of others) that permits Mr. Madoff to walk the streets.
Of course, the future could prove us wrong and perhaps some folks are patient and want to serve their revenge cold. Until that time, we’ll marvel over the fact that Western Civilization seems alive and impulses seem to be well-controlled.
