Reasons and Opinions

One Year On...

2007-07-11T17:05:00.000-05:00

Reasons and Opinions was born this time last year. Those of us who founded it thought long and hard about a name (at one point we considered bloggy-woggy-- no joke!). Originally intended as a group blog among some friends, it gradually evolved (not by my choice!) into a solo adventure. But now, a year later, and after more than 300 posts, the time has come to shift directions a little. I have become a contributor on an excellent Catholic group blog, Vox Nova, and most of my blogging energy is now spent over there. Frankly, I have no time left to do any original blogging here any more, and most of my recent posts have simply been cross postings from Vox Nova.

With that in mind, I'm going to put Reasons and Opinions on hiatus for a while. I'm still blogging-- just over at Vox Nova. Frankly, I just don't see the point in continuing to cut and paste every post over here. I won't say this is the end, as I may well come back here at some stage in the future. For now though: it's been a fun ride, I've learned a lot, and I'm grateful to all of you who bother to waste your time reading my random scribbles. Actually, I have no real idea who reads this! So, if you would like to provide any general feedback, positive or negative-- now is the time to do it! And if you don't want to comment here, just send me an e-mail. Most importantly: bookmark Vox Nova. Do it now!

All the best,

Morning's Minion.

Iraq War: the Disproportionate Evils That Just Keep Coming

2007-07-06T13:02:00.000-05:00

As is now evident to almost everyone, the Iraq war failed to meet the strict just war criteria. At the outset, as was made plain by the Vatican, the war did not garner the approval of the proper authority in this particular case, the United Nations. For what right does one country have to unilaterally invade and occupy another country, half way around the world? None. But let's set this aside for a minute, and go through the just war conditions, one by one.

Was the damage inflicted by Saddam Hussein's Iraq "lasting, grave, and certain". Well, we were peddled a story about Saddam possessing weapons of mass destruction-- nuclear, chemical, and biological-- that could threaten the US and the world at short notice. Sounds pretty "lasting, grave and certain". Except it was not so. There were no such weapons. An honest mistake? Hardly. The Bush administration (shepherded by Dick Cheney) deliberately put forward dubious evidence that over the qualms of the intelligence community and other experts. In short, they lied, obfuscated, cheated. And since Satan is the father of all lies, is it any surprise that events rapidly descended into chaos? It is also pertinent that this war was conceived in the shadow of the fallen towers, by a confused and angry nation desperate to lash out at the most obvious enemy. Saddam Hussein, with his demonic visage and even worse history, was well suited to such a role. We know that vengeance, absent justice, is seriously sinful. But it gets worse. We were also told that Saddam Hussein was in league with Osama Bin Laden and had a hand in the attacks. Take some lies, add some vengeance, stir in all up in a cauldron of fear, and what do you get? That answer is now far too obvious.

Let's move on. Was it truly the case that "all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective". Not in the slightest. The administration short-circuited a UN process. This war was a war of first resort.

Were there "serious prospects of success"? That depends on perspective. Nobody doubted that the might of the US military would overpower the troops of a tinpot Arab dictator. But it was always quite evident from the beginning that the war could also unleash the kind of chaos that was next to impossible to defeat. Which brings me to the next point...

... the oft-neglected "disproportionate evils" critique, or, to state it properly: "the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition." War proponents in the US often get this backwards. They see the awesome power and precision of modern weaponry and delude themselves into thinking that civilian are somehow safer than in times past. This is a generation numbed to the glorification of violence in popular culture, where war is just another video game writ on a large scale: lots of high-tech wizardry and "cool" explosions, and no human suffering in sight. As the old Peter Gabriel song so aptly says: games without frontiers, war without tears. Except war does bring tears. War brings about great human suffering, death, carnage, and destruction-- whether we choose to see it or not.

The Iraq war has caused untoward carnage. At this stage, nobody really knows the death count. At the low end, Iraq's health minister estimated 100,000-150,000 civilian deaths, extrapolating from 2006 statistics from morgues and hospitals. Using survey evidence, the reputable British medical journal, the Lancet, claims an unfathomable 655,000 deaths. This report has faced severe criticism, but they stand by their statistical methodology, which they claim mirrors the approach taken in places like Kosovo and Afghanistan. But the point is not to quibble about statistics (even if behind every statistic is a human being made in the image and likeness of God). Whatever position you take, the extent of human suffering (that could have easily been avoided) is evident.

But while the disproportionate evils condition encompasses civilian deaths, it goes far beyond it. And this is where many of the pro-war brigade simply put on their blinkers and see no evil. The disproportionate evils stirred up by the Iraq war include the complete destabilization of the country, the knock-on effects in the region, and the massive increase in worldwide terrorism that has germinated in the ensuing chaos and lawlessness.

The war draws angry militants from all over the world, allows them unimpeded training in terrorism, and at the same time inspires a whole new hate-inspired generation. These trained militants, experts claim, are using their training in other parts of the world. As pointed out recently, the recent evil attacks in London can be traced clearly to the Iraq war. As Josh Marshall puts it, we are seeing the first wave of graduates from the Iraq School of Terrorism. The Iraq war is the one of the greatest gifts Osama Bin Laden ever received (second only to his escape from Afghanistan, arising again from Bush administration incompetence). Ominously, experts are seeing a huge influx of funds and resources, out of Iraq to Al Qaeda headquarters in the tribal regions of Pakistan. In an almost demonic irony, the link between Iraq and Al Qaeda is now more obvious than ever. And the world is paying the price.

Could this not have been foreseen? Of course it could have been, and indeed it was, to those who chose to look. Can can anybody even remotely familiar with the complex confessional mechanisms of the long Lebanese civil war feign surprise at the outbreak of civil war between the various groups in Iraq? And given the perceptions of the west (and especially the US) in the Arab world-- a history of post-Ottoman colonialism, the tendency to forcibly remove leaders that did not do the west's bidding, an insatiable thirst for oil, and a callous one-sided tilt in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict-- how in the name of God can they claim surprise at not being welcomed with flowers and open arms? The mainstreaming of torture only added (a great deal of) fuel to the fire, but evil has a way of doing that. No, all of this could have been foreseen, should have been foreseen. And the US bears grave responsibility for unleashing such carnage.

Such nuance and complexity was smothered by the utopian dream, the desire to bring "freedom and liberation" to the Iraqi people. Actually, this was a latter-day excuse, after the earlier lies and misinformation were exposed. But the specter of a messianic mission to use attain peace through violence using a secular ideology should have raised alarm bells immediately. As Christians, we know freedom and liberty come only through Christ. There is no other savior. For all messianic dreams and utopian visions in the past, all attempts to re-create our common human destiny along a predetermined path, from the French Revolution to the rise of communism, have ended in horror and bloodshed. We should have known.

When all else is lost, the defenders of the Iraq war resort to what I call the "Saddam Bad-man" theory. Yes, Saddam Hussein was a brutal murderous thug, who engaged in great evil. They will offer huge numbers of civilians killed by Saddam Hussein, all the while disparaging similarly large estimates of violent deaths, post-Saddam. But this is not the point I want to make. Sadly, there are many Saddam Husseins in the world. I look at Kim in North Korea, Mugabe in Zimababwe, the thugs in Sudan and Burma, Karimov in Uzbekistan. The list goes on. Based on the "Saddam Bad-man" theory, should the US not invade these countries too and overthrow their leaders? While was Iraq singled out? I think we can pretty much all agree that the North Korean regime is probably the gravest threat to world peace today. Surely toppling this regime would meet the conditions of a just war? And yet, nobody (outside the American Enterprise Institute, anyway) is seriously considering such a course of action. Why? You guessed it. The potential for massive disproportionate evils.

War may sometimes be the answer, but (in our modern world at least), it is rarely the answer.

Sicko is Healthy

2007-07-02T16:19:00.000-05:00

There is a lot of knee-jerk reaction against Michael Moore's latest indictment of the US health care system, Sicko. But, overall, the experts pretty much agree that he gets the big picture right. Here's the New Republic's Jonathan Cohn, who writes extensively on health care:

"As Sicko rolled, it did little to allay my fears. I spotted plenty of intellectual dishonesties and arguments without context--enough, surely, to keep right-wing truth squads (and some left-wing ones) busy for weeks... Still, by the time the final credits ran, it was hard to get too worked up about all of that. Because, beyond all the grandstanding and political theater, the movie actually made a compelling, argument about what's wrong with U.S. health care and how to fix it. Sicko got a lot of the little things wrong. But it got most of the big things right."

CNN (taking a short break from incessant Paris Hilton coverage, so it seems) also got their fact checkers on the job, no doubt expecting a bonanza of error-laden propaganda. But it was not to be:

"Moore covers a lot of ground. Our team investigated some of the claims put forth in his film. We found that his numbers were mostly right, but his arguments could use a little more context. As we dug deep to uncover the numbers, we found surprisingly few inaccuracies in the film. In fact, most pundits or health-care experts we spoke to spent more time on errors of omission rather than disputing the actual claims in the film"

I've already laid out many of the problems with the US health care system in my argument in favor of a single payer system last week. The analysis backs up what I was saying, including the fact that the US spends far more for health care than the rest of advanced world, and attains far less in return. Perhaps the most pertinent statistic is the one from the World Health Organization, showing that the US is ranked only 37 in the world in terms of health care outcomes (while both France and Canada make the top ten). They also show the relative inefficiency of private insurance: while Medicare eats up about 1 percent on overhead, private insurance companies waste between 10 and 30 percent (as I noted in my post last week, this is because so much effort is put into screening people). In criticizing Moore, Andrew Sullivan puts forward the most bizarre argument I've seen yet: the anti-US health care position ignores the fact that much of it is under the auspices of the government anyway. Since this is the most efficient part, the obvious conclusion from Sullivan's thought process is "Medicare for all"!

Opponents of single payer systems usually retort to two tactics: they play up waiting lists, and they argue by anecdote. And yes, in some universal health care systems, there are waiting lists for non-emergency elective surgery such as hip replacements. But that is not true everywhere. France has no waiting lists, allows free choice of doctors, and offers access to highly advanced medical care to those in need. And, in fact, the absence of waiting lists for elective surgery in the US has a dark side, as it reflects an over-supply of specialists relative to primary care physicians. This is not too surprising, given that specialists earn a whopping 300 percent more that primary care physicians here, as opposed to a norm of 30 percent elsewhere. Clearly, something is amiss.

So bear that in mind next time some smug free-marketer talks about waiting lists for hip replacements in Canada, or how Canadian doctors are trying to enter the American market. And keep some of these figures in mind too:

Health Spending per capita: US-- $4,497; Canada-- $2,483

Healthy life expectancy: US-- 68.1; Canada-- 70.5

Standardized death rate (per 100,000): US-- 670; Canada-- 561

Infant mortality rate (per 1,000): US-- 6.9; Canada-- 5.3

Child mortality rate (per 1,000): US-- 7.6; Canada-- 5.7

Maternal mortality rate (per 100,000): US-- 10.5; Canada-- 5.8

Number of uninsured:US-- 45 million; Canada-- 0

The question is, though, will people be able to see the big picture, and the basic truth in this movie, or will be they blinded by the minor inaccuracies, the stupid visit to Cuba, and the personality of Michael Moore himself?

600,000 Dead Germans

2007-06-27T12:10:00.000-05:00

A recent Commonweal issue included a review of a book entitled The Fire-- The Bombing of Germany, 1940-1945 by Jorg Friedrich. The reviewer was James Sheehan. The book describes the bombing of civilian targets as a key battle tactic by the UK and the US during the second world war. The idea was to break the morale and destroy the productive capacity of the Germans. All in all, about 600,000 Germans were killed, and three and a half million homes were destroyed. Friedrich's book, in the words of Sheehan "seeks to convey the horror of the bombing with examples, a litany of relentless suffering that describes the air war's impact".

Sheehan tries to make a moral argument in favor of this tactic, and I believe he falls flat on his face. Noting that this strategy contributed to the allied victory, he asserts that there was no alternative. Otherwise, the Germans could have prolonged the war, leading to more civilian deaths in the long run, and leaving the Nazis free to further their murderous campaign. Sheehan argues as follows: "Assessing the morality of the bombing requires us to weigh the consequences of the alternatives, and to ask whether the means used were proportionate to the good that was sought." He goes on: "For the practitioners of war, the problem of ends and means is especially difficult because in war the means are always evil: violence is never contained, innocent blood is always shed." Hence, he concludes, the bombing was a necessary evil.

But evil is never "necessary". Sheehan makes the same mistake made by those who defended the actions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and who give the nod to torture today: they fail to recognize that some acts are intrinsically evil, evil in their very object, and can never be defended by appeal to intent or consequence. And the prohibition in the natural law against killing innocent human life is absolute. Instead, Sheehan embraces proportionalism, the notion that assessing morality is simply a matter of weighing the different options, and choosing the best of the alternatives. He embraces consequentialism in that the "end" of defeating Germany quickly justifies the "means" of fire-bombing cities.

Sheehan would do well to review the classic double effect principle, now being debated at Vox Nova (here and here). For, as we know, proportional calculations do indeed play a role in the calculus, but only if we pass two hurdles first: that the act itself is not objectively evil, and that the person making the choice does not share the intent of any evil side effects. If the act is intrinsically evil, it cannot be justified by using a proportionate reason to do it, or as a proportionate response to some circumstance. In the current case, we do not even get past square 1. Deliberately attacking civilians can never be justified, period. Pope John Paul devoted his greatest encyclical, Veritatis Splendour, to exactly this issue. He says it quite clearly: "circumstances or intentions can never transform an act intrinsically evil by virtue of its object into an act subjectively good or defensible as a choice."

Of course, assuming that the second world war met the just war criteria, then simply fighting the Germans would not in itself be an evil act. This is a crucial distinction that Sheehan sweeps over when he claims that the means are always evil in war. So, when assessing civilian deaths in war, proportional calculations come into play if the protagonist does not target them directly. But even here, there is a tendency to be overly-lax in the application of proportionality to real world considerations. Simply not willing the deaths of civilians is not enough. A too-ready acceptance of "collateral damage" may be gravely immoral. At least, in the days of world war 2, the carnage was difficult to hide. Today, thanks to technology and the media, we are inclined to view war as one giant video game, abstracting from human suffering. Just as in a game, "surgical" bombs take out their targets in a "precise" manner. But war is not like that, and we (as a society) often turn a blind eye to this messiness, and we do not want the tranquility of our live shattered by such images. Commentators decry Al Jazeera for showing images of death and suffering from the American war machine on TV, and the domestic media refrains from showing them. There is a reason that the Church notes that the bar on on the proportionality consideration is set higher with the destructive capacity of modern weapons. And yet, in contemporary society, there is often a feeling that the bar should be lowered.

In conclusion, the bombing of Germany killed 600,000. According the the British medical journal, The Lancet, the Iraq war killed 655,000. Even if the American bombing of Iraq did not target civilians in the way that the forefathers did in Germany, can we simply appeal to proportional considerations to defend this body count? I would submit that this is a gross abuse of just war theory, and the overarching principal of double effect, to make such an argument.

Health Care Reform: In Defense of Single Payer Systems

2007-06-25T16:44:00.000-05:00

In this (long) post, I will make the case for single-payer health care on equity and efficiency grounds. I will start by showing that the US lags the rest of the advanced world in health care. I will then discuss the current predicament, leading into options for reform. I will argue that the consumer-driven approach to health care is fundamentally flawed, and that a single-payer system offers the greatest benefits.

The US health care system in a comparative perspective

Let me start with a simple observation: the US spends more than any other advanced country for health care, and gets less in return. According to data from the OECD, the U.S. spends $4,497 a year on health care per capita (in PPP dollars), as opposed to a G-7 average of $2,524. And for almost double the spending, the outcomes are far worse. Life expectancy in lower in the US. The infant, child, and maternal mortality rates are substantially higher. Americans have fewer doctors per capita, go to the doctor less often, and are admitted to hospital less frequently. They are less satisfied with the quality of health care than those in other countries. And of course, the US stands apart from other advanced countries by having a a huge hole in the health care net, as around 47 million people (including 8 million children) are uninsured. The leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the US arises from unpaid medical bills.

A recent study by the Commonwealth Fund shows is illustrative. in a detailed study of six countries-- Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, the UK, and the US-- America ranks last along an array of indicators, including: quality care, access, efficiency, equity, and healthy lives. Yes, the US is still at the bottom of the heap in access, even worse than those countries that ration health care. The explanation is straightforward: cost. The US system is terribly efficient, largely due administrative overhead (more on that later), but also because patients tend to end up in the emergency room for cases that should be dealt with by a primary care physician. Death rates in the US from "conditions amenable to medical care" are 25-50 percent higher than elsewhere in the study. And when it comes to equity, "Americans with below-average incomes were much more likely than their counterparts in other countries to report not visiting a physician when sick, not getting a recommended test, treatment or follow-up care, not filling a prescription, or not seeing a dentist when needed because of costs." A staggering 40 percent of lower-income Americans reported avoiding seeing a doctor when sick during the past year for cost reasons.

The current impasse

Much ink has been spilled analyzing the current predicament. Paul Krugman and Robin Wells argue that the predominant employer-based system in the US came about almost by accident. During the second world war, although there was a labor shortages, firms were prevented from offering higher wages. The loophole they found was offering health care benefits. Unions supported this policy because unions largely negotiated at the firm level, unlike at the political level as in some European countries.

But with rising health care costs, this employer-based system became untenable. The long-term rise in health care costs are well-known, in the US and elsewhere. Much of this relates to new and improved medical technology. It is important to note, however, that costs have been rising in both public and private insurance, and that Medicare premiums have actually expanded at a slower case than their private sector equivalents. So this is by no means a case of runaway big government. But it does place great pressure on old-style employer-based insurance, and the numbers covered by these schemes is falling rapidly. More and more are falling outside the net. At the same time, as costs increase, the inherent inefficiency in the American health care system becomes magnified. Clearly, the current framework is unsustainable.

Basic health care economics

Before analyzing the issues, we need to review a few basic concepts. There are two key issues in health care economics, adverse selection and moral hazard. Let's start with adverse selection. Let's say an insurance company offered policies to a certain group, based on the average person's health in the group. Who would join? The less healthy, as for them it's a great deal. Premiums would rise, and more healthy would drop out, until the insurance company is left with the worst risks. Insurance companies deal with problem by carefully screening out the highest risks, and devoting immense resources to the task.

What about moral hazard? Moral hazard simply means that not bearing the full cost induces overconsumption. If something is free, or subsidized, you will consume more of it than if you had to pay for it. In the domain of health care, some argue that the very nature of insurance causes you to over-consume, pushing up costs. For these people, the solution is forcing the patient to pay more out of his or her own pocket.

Consumer-driven health care?

One solution, pushed by many in the Republican party and the pseudo-conservative world would move toward a system of individual health insurance. Adherents argue that this would bolster flexibility, allowing people to transfer insurance between jobs, and save money by making people more financially responsible for their health insurance choices. And so they propose tax-advantaged health savings accounts. The idea is that people can park some of their savings in these tax-free accounts, using them to meet medical expenses. There will be a residual catastrophic insurance policy, but with a huge deductible. Now, this all makes sense only if you believe moral hazard in the biggest problem in health insurance. In other words, if you are forced to pay out of pocket for more of your own health care, you will refrain from overconsuming, holding down costs.

The problem with this mode of thinking is that people simply do not consume health care as they consume ordinary goods and services. As quoted by Malcolm Gladwell, Princeton economist Uwe Reinhardt makes the point that moral hazard arguments are overblown as “you always hear that the demand for health care is unlimited. This is just not true. People who are very well insured, who are very rich, do you see them check into the hospital because it’s free? Do people really like to go to the doctor? Do they check into the hospital instead of playing golf?” A RAND study back in the 1970s showed that people, when faced with higher co-payments, did indeed cut back on the medical care they sought. But here is the problem: they cut back equally on frivolous and not-so-frivolous care.

If you follow the train of thought in the moral hazard argument to its inevitable conclusion, you will conclude that the problem in American health care is not too little insurance, but too much of it. In fact, those without insurance often choose to be without insurance as they are young and healthy, and this is (by the logic of the Bush administration and its allies-- see the 2004 Economic Report of the President) not a bad thing at all. So the solution is not to insure the uninsured but make the insured behave more like the uninsured. Bush himself complains that bad incentives allow workers to choose "overly expensive, gold-plated plans". Does this sound a little like bizarro-world yet?

As Gladwell notes, the unspoken word in this whole debate is poverty. About a third of those lacking insurance lie below the federal poverty line. This is not mentioned in the arguments for consumer-oriented health care. There's another problem, something Krugman and Wells refer to as the 80-20 rule: 80 percent of medical costs derive from 20 percent of the population. A mere 1 percent account for 22 percent of expenses. These are the people with serious long-term illnesses that require constant treatment. On the other hand, about half of the population has practically no medical expenses at all. This kind of skewed distribution suggests there is a lot more going on than moral hazard.

Which brings us back to adverse selection. The fundamental flaw of the individualist approach is that it encourages adverse selection. Think about it. The young and the healthy would benefit from health savings accounts, as they pay very little on health care. Those who are left behind in the traditional insurance plans are the older and the sicker, who will face higher premiums from a diminishing (and less healthy) pool. Traditional employer-based insurance, already under grave strain, would wither away. This is exactly the problem of moving from social insurance to actuarial insurance. Social insurance involves a social bargain. By paying similar premiums, the young and the healthy agree to subsidize the old and the sick, on the basis that if they themselves ever need help, it will be readily available. Actuarial insurance treats medical insurance like car insurance, based on individual situation and risk.

The advantages of single payer

So what is the alternative? Well, there are two core principles that must be met. First, there should be some mechanism to prevent adverse selection. The old employer-based model was able to guard against adverse selection, partially at least, by pooling the risk over a large group of workers. But now? This is why the health care reform plans by people like John Edwards and Arnold Schwarzenegger impose "community rating" requirements that forbid insurance companies from discriminating between people. Second, there needs to be universal coverage, which is why most reform plans offer financial aid to the less well off to purchase insurance (Edwards promises to roll back Bush's tax cut on those earning more than $200,000 a year to pay for it). Coverage needs to be mandatory, to prevent emergency rooms taking on the burden of leading with the sick-- a sure recipe for ballooning costs.

There is one simple solution to all of these problems: follow the lead of most advanced economies and move to a single payer system, where a single entity, usually a government body, provides insurance. The US has a wealth of experience with a successful single-payer program called Medicare. Although this violates every ideological bone in a psuedo-conservative's body, it turns out that Medicare outscores private insurance on both equity and efficiency grounds. As well as providing universal health care, single payer systems can be pretty cost-effective. Why? A number of reasons:

First, the administrative costs are far less. As Paul Krugman notes, Medicare devotes less than 2 percent of its resources to overhead, while private insurance companies spend as much as 20 percent on profits, marketing and administrative expenses. Two-thirds of the administrative costs of the drug companies are devoted to marketing and underwriting. The reason for the discrepancy is that private insurance companies need to weed out high-risk customers, screening applicants carefully.

Second, and related, moving to a single-payer system reduces the administrative costs arising from excessive fragmentation and administrative duplication in the health care market. The current health care jungle explains why the US is slower than other countries at adopting electronic medical records that can both reduce costs and save lives by reducing errors.

Third, costs can be contained by using the negotiating power of the single payer to get better deals from suppliers, including drug companies. As it stands, Medicaid recipients and those under the auspices of the Veterans Administration get deals on drugs similar to Canada. Everybody else pays a lot more.

Fourth, a single payer system would make it easier to focus on preventive care, and to look after the patient in a holistic manner. Eliminating the fragmentation and complexity would make it much easier to facilitate such a policy. It would also end the incredibly inefficient practice of using emergency rooms as primary care providers. Although preventive care is cheap and saves money in the long-run, it is not necessarily in the insurer's immediate interest. An example of how this can be put into practice is the Veteran's Administration, where the underlying philosophy is a lifetime relationship with clients. This makes it easy to keep track of patients' medical histories, facilitates better use of information technology, and encourages cost-effective preventive medicine.

Overall, then, one solution to the American health care crisis would be to simply adopt a "Medicare for all" solution. This would be paid by a dedicated tax that would almost certainly be less than current health care premiums. Coverage would automatically be universal, cheaper, and more focused on preventive care. Before people drive themselves into a tizzy over "socialized medicine", it is important to note that, under such a system, people would be be able to choose their own doctors. And there is no reason why private insurance companies could not participate in the system, provided they played by the rules.

Of course, the main complaint from opponents of single-payers systems revolves around long waiting lists. Rationing by cost, they say, is replaced by rationing by time. Of course, one could argue that a short wait is eminently more preferable to not being able to afford care in the first place. Remember the results of the Commonwealth Fund study: the US is at the bottom of the list in terms of access, even without rationing by time. The US has a distinct insider-outsider model of health care access, where insiders get every medical treatment they desire (at whatever cost), and outsiders get nothing. Krugman and Wells liken this to "robbing Peter of basic care in order to pay for Paul's state-of-the-art treatment."

At the same time, these waiting list problems are overblown, driven by revolving anecdotes and urban legends. Krugman and Wells also note that, while there are sometimes long waiting lists for elective surgery, this is not the case in all single payer systems, and anyway, the "waiting list procedures" account for only 3 percent of US health care spending, so the cost is decidedly minor. As noted by Jonathan Cohn, critics spend a lot of their time focusing on the UK and Canada, two of the most centralized systems in the world. Note that the UK really has socialized medicine, where doctors work for the government, and it tends to spend very little on health care. Cohn instead would divert critics attention to countries like France, Japan, and Switzerland, all offering high-quality universal care with no waiting lists and free choice of doctors. Patients in these countries see doctors more and spend more time in hospital, all the while securing better health outcomes at lower cost.

The Catholic Perspective

Moving to a single-payer health care system is justifiable by appealing to Catholic social teaching. The existence of 47 million people without health insurance, many of whom are below the poverty line, is a scandal, showing neither solidarity nor a preferential option for the poor. Catholic social teaching emphasizes that the provision of basic health care is an essential component of the common good that all societies are called upon to foster (Compendium of Social Doctrine, 166). Also, the preferential option for the poor relates to social and well as individual responsibility and embraces "those without health care" (Compendium of Social Doctrine, 182).

It should be noted that the proposed solution by many pseudo-conservatives, pushing for consumer-based health insurance also feeds into a radical individualism with little place in Catholic social teaching. For the basic argument is that the young and healthy should be free to spend less on health care by not being forced to subsidize the old and less healthy. This violates the principle of solidarity.

What about subsidiarity? Catholic objectives to a single-payer system are largely based on subsidiarity considerations. The Church justifiably opposes "certain forms of centralization, bureaucratization, and welfare assistance and to the unjustified and excessive presence of the State in public mechanisms" (Compendium of Social Doctrine, 187) on the grounds that bureaucratic modes of thinking tend to downplay the dignity of the person. It is important, however, to note that subsidiarity and solidarity go hand-in-hand: "Solidarity without subsidiarity, in fact, can easily degenerate into a “Welfare State”, while subsidiarity without solidarity runs the risk of encouraging forms of self-centred localism" (Compendium of Social Doctrine, 351). Therefore the role of the state should be neither "invasive nor absent". The state can have a role "when the market is not able to obtain the desired efficiency and when it is a question of putting the principle of redistribution into effect." (Compendium of Social Doctrine, 353). Well, if one thing should be clear by now, it is that the market does not work well in the domain of health care.

But the caution holds. A health care system overly-laden with an interpersonal bureaucracy is not in accord with human dignity. But what is the essence of subsidiarity in health care? It is that the patient should be able to choose his or her own doctor, and build a personal relationship. This is why long-term preventive care, sadly undeveloped in the current US system, is so critical. At the end of the day, does it really matter to the patient if a large impersonal government or a large impersonal insurance company is making the decision for the patient? The current system in the US is not one based on subsidiarity. Indeed, any form of risk-pooling (through government or private insurance companies) automatically implies a modicum of centralization. There is no way to avoid it. What we must do is make it less impersonal. In fact, if we regard bureaucracy as synonymous with overhead, then bureaucracy is actually more pronounced under the current framework in the US, lessening the link between the institution and the patient's care. And one more thing. Remember that the last attempt to curb burgeoning health care costs was by restricting consumer choice and letting insurance companies make key medical decisions. Absent reform, this approach-- not exactly aligned with the principles of Catholic social teaching-- is still on the cards. Also, as noted, single payer systems support an emphasis on preventive care that is laudable. But, at the same time, we must resist the urge to overly-centralize in a single payer system. The patient must remain in control of his or her destiny. In this regard, the French model works better than the overly-centralized British system. But we should remain open to alternative models that achieve the same results.

In conclusion, it is not enough to oppose these proposals using the catchall "subsidiarity" critique. It is necessary to put forward a reform agenda that would guarantee all the benefits of a single payer system in a more decentralized manner.

Excellent Advice for the Democrats

2007-06-23T15:46:00.000-05:00

In a thought-provoking New York Times op-ed today, Melinda Henneberger has some harsh words for the Democrats on the abortion issue. Henneberger has taken it upon herself to visit 20 states, talking to women on all ages, races, and income levels on this issue. She is now convinced that the female vote ebbed away from Kerry in 2004, not because Bush scared the hell out of them with images of phantom ghoulish terrorists, but because of his stance on abortion. Granted, Henneberger is arguing from anecdote rather than statistics, but I think she might have a point.

She noted that most of these women are instinctive Democrats. They support social spending. They oppose Bush's war. They do not feel at home in the Republican party, but still hold their nose and make the switch. Hennerberger notes that a lot of the problem is attitude. When two-thirds of Americans favor either a complete ban or restrictions on abortions, continuing to couch any attack on "abortion rights" as a line in the sand to be defended at all costs simply sounds extreme, rigid, and out of touch. In fact, she claims the Democrats have helped Karl Rove by consistently exaggerating the threat to Roe v. Wade from the election of Bush, boosting his pro-life credentials substantially. The classic example is the sense of manufactured outage over the Carhart decision on partial birth abortion. Instead of acknowledging it as a narrow decision that does not ban all late-term abortions, Democrats jumped immediately into Chicken Little mode, decrying the end of civilization as we know it. And all this over a procedure that most voters regard (quite rightly) as little different from infanticide.

So what should the Democrats do? I do not expect them to suddenly shift gears and come out in favor of a pro-life constitutional amendment. But I do expect them to show more respect to the pro-life cause, and to the people who view abortion as one of the most important issues in the seamless culture of life. I expect less snarky comments about religious extremists and theocrats. I expect less condescension. But above all, I would like them to acknowledge that the optimal abortion rate is a zero abortion rate, and that policies should be set with such a goal in mind (even if they don't want to criminalize it). The problem is, though, if abortion is a "right", how can too much of it be "wrong"?

The person who said it best is actually Archbishop Chaput, coincidentally in an interview with Melinda Henneberger:

"You can have good Catholics who say that they’re not for the criminalization of abortion, or they want to take gradual steps toward eliminating it by convincing the public that this is a bad thing. Those are all legitimate political positions-as long as you’re really moving towards the goal of protecting unborn human life. You at least have to have the goal."

I fear that unless Clinton and Obama (and the others) start paying attention, they could be in trouble in 2008, despite the plethora of advantages in other policy areas. And they would have only themselves to blame.

The Senate's Energy Bill

2007-06-22T17:56:00.000-05:00

By a 67-25 majority, the Senate passed an energy bill that would increase fuel efficiency requirement from 25 to 35 miles per gallon; the first improvement in such standards in almost two decades. The new standards come into effect from 2020, and (here is the best bit), the industry attempt to maintain higher standards for "light trucks" (read: SUVs) was beaten back. Hooray! Of course, Bush could always veto, but the sizable majority increases the pressure on him to sign. Incidentally, all of the Democratic presidential candidates (Biden, Dodd, Clinton, and Obama) supported the bill, while the two Republicans (Brownback and McCain) were absent.

Of course, I would like to see this twinned with an increase in the gas tax, which remains far too low in the US, imposing (as economists would say) a negative externality: by not paying the full social costs of driving, every driver simply drives too much. Steve Levitt (of Freakonomics fame) argues that the various social costs call for a roughly $1 a gallon increase in gas taxes. This is not a "leftist" issue. Greg Mankiw, formerly Chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers and currently an advisor to Mitt Romney, also backs a $1 increase in the gas tax.

But which policy is best? Personally, I prefer the increase in efficiency standards, in part because gas taxes are highly regressive (the poor bear a disproportionate burden). Also, the consumption of petroleum products is notoriously price-inelastic (people will still drive, no matter the cost!). But, weighing against this, the gas tax raises valuable revenue, and, as noted by Kevin Drum, higher efficiency standards may actually prompt believe to drive more too!. So I think the best conclusion is: both, please.

Markets and Middlemen

2007-06-22T11:10:00.000-05:00

You hear it all the time, even from many Catholic thinkers: Big Government is bad, markets are good. Now, I'm certainly not going to argue that governments should be running steel mills, but there are clearly areas where the profit motive can lead to highly inefficient (and even unethical) outcomes. I'm talking about social policy, where profit-making entities merely (in the manner of Tony Soprano) take their skim from an enticing pile of cash without providing any real benefits whatsoever. In other words, they engage in classic rent-seeking behavior, seeking to extract "uncompensated value from others without making any contribution to productivity". Let me provide two example, one in education, and the other in healthcare.

Education loans

As noted by TNR's Jon Chait, the old student loan program was inefficient. Third-level students borrowed from private lenders at interest rates set by the government, and the government agreed to cover any defaults. Bill Clinton decided to cut out the middleman, by having the government make the loans directly. Estimates suggested billions of dollars in savings. Clearly, the middleman loses. And clearly, the middleman was not happy. The lenders allied with a powerful chunk of so-called conservatives to fight what Grover Norquist referred to as the "government takeover of the student-loan program." And so a compromise was hammered out. Both schemes would stay, and the college would decide which to choose. The reformers were not unhappy, as they assumed the cheaper direct loans would win. But it was not so. Colleges started edging back toward the old model with private lenders. Conservatives gloated, complaining about the "shoddy management and financial losses" of the direct loan scheme. The truth turned out to be otherwise. Indeed, the earlier Sopranos analogy is quite apt, because the lenders simply bribed the colleges into choosing them. Classic rent-seeking activity!

Medicare

Traditional Medicare, a single-payer system (the government pays doctors and hospitals) is actually a lot more efficient than private sector alternatives, though you would not always know it from listening to the rhetoric. Again, we are told that bringing a cold dose of market efficiency into the Medicare system would yield innumerable benefits. In the 1990s, as related by Paul Krugman, the government tried to entice people to leave traditional Medicare for private plans, with the government paying a fee instead to the HMO. But there were problems. No longer able to engage in adverse selection (weeding out the sickest), HMOs could simply not compete with Medicare, an efficiently-run program without a huge overhead. That wasn't the end. In 2003, unwilling to throw in the towel, the Bush administration began heavily subsidizing HMOs to induce them to keep taking Medicare patients. This program now costs 11 percent more per beneficiary than traditional Medicare. Clearly, a direct transfer from the taxpayer to the insurance industry!

But then the drug companies wanted a piece of the action. Possibly anticipating more unfavorable comparisons, Bush's Medicare drug coverage (Medicare Part D) takes traditional Medicare out of the picture entirely, as the government does not pay directly for the drug. Instead, the participant joins a private insurance plan, and the government then sends out the subsidy. There are two problems with this. First, the government is prohibited from negotiating prices with the drug companies. Of course, the "conservatives" will decry "socialist price controls". This is pure rhetorical nonsense, as the negotiation is market based. If the government has greater market power, so what? Consumers benefit (technically, the government takes advantage of is monopsony power). This, plus the skim that the insurance company takes for acting as middleman, pushes up costs dramatically. Doesn't this sound like Tony Soprano is in charge of health care too?

Krugman concludes with a moral point: "The costs imposed on Medicare by gratuitous privatization are almost certainly higher than the cost of providing health insurance to the eight million children in the United States who lack coverage". Indeed.

The Current Supreme Court-- What Is It Good For?

2007-06-21T17:55:00.001-05:00

I've already written on how the Roberts court is extremely supportive of the death penalty. Now, David Savage in the LA Times notes that the court is also uniquely friendly toward business and corporations. The Court has already issued a dozen rulings this term that limit damages and make it harder for people to sue corporations. The court is seen as tilting more toward business than even the Rehnquist court.

As for all those good pro-life people who cheered when Bush appointed Roberts and Alito to the Court-- I recommend the song that ended the Sopranos franchise: Don't Stop Believing...

Michael Novak's Shoddy Economic Analysis

2007-06-21T15:08:00.000-05:00

Over at the First Things blog, Michael Novak has written a detailed post against what he sees as persistent criticism of the "American economic system" (is there any real doubt where his allegiances truly lie?). He wants to hone in on such criticisms using "the fires of critical thought". Except than when he gets down to his actually arguments, he shies away from critical thought and instead relies on ideologically-tinged obfuscation.

I wish to deal only with one point he made. He criticizes the assertion that income inequality is growing in the US, with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. To make his point, he cites the result of a recent study by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), analyzing the income growth of low income households with children over the past 15 years. One result of this study is that the income of the bottom 20 percent increased dramatically from 1991-2005. Novak concludes: "This is, of course, because the welfare reform act brought millions in the bottom quintile back into paying jobs. This seems to me like a good, Christian thing to do."

Novak seems to take his cue from the notorious Wall Street Journal editorial page, which jumped on the findings as a change to mock the "class envy" peddled by John Edwards and others. But there is a problem. This CBO study was commissioned by Republican Judd Gregg, and the choices of start and end dates were somewhat auspicious. 1991 was a year of deep recession, and 2005 was a boom. So, as noted by TNR's Jon Chait, if you start in a recession and end in a boom, then you expect incomes to be rising. Incomes of the poor, and of everybody else, always rise and fall with business cycles.

In fact, if you look at the data, you will see an interesting pattern. While the real income of the lowest quintile of households with children rose by 35 percent from 1991-2005, this increase was concentrated in the 1990s. In other words, real incomes of the poor rose by 51 percent from 1991-2000, and actually fell by 11 percent from 2000-05. To put it crudely, the poor got richer under Clinton, and poorer under Bush. If Novak is truly concerned with "critical thought", be would be touting the accomplishments of Bill Clinton, and deriding the economic performance under Bush!!

But of course, it is not that simple. It is actually really hard to disentangle the effects of policy and the economy on these changing patterns. Strong economic growth in the 1990s was the proximate cause. Clinton's sound budget-balancing policies certainly laid the groundwork for this boom, but it would be facetious to credit him with the IT-related expansion. But a remarkable fact about this period is that the rising tide really did lift all boats. In terms of policies, Novak mentions only welfare reform. This is somewhat disingenuous, as the CBO report describes three key changes: (i) welfare reform, requiring participation in activities as a precondition for cash benefits; (ii) a large expansion in in-work benefits, through the earned income tax credit; and (iii) an expansion in children's health insurance. Contrast this with the Bush years, when the income of the bottom 20 percent dropped precipitously. Of course, the administration cannot be blamed for the 2001 recession, but a valid question is whether the income of the poor have reached where they were at the peak of the last cycle. And the answer is no.

Novak is on even shakier ground when he discusses changes in middle-class incomes. Here's what he says:

"Incidentally, the middle class also gained significant ground between 1992 and 2005, in large part under President Clinton but going even higher under President Bush. The median family with children earned $8,500 more in purchasing power (after inflation) in 2005 than in 1990. Put another way, the level of income of the bottom half of the population moved much higher in about fifteen years. The steady progress of the middle-class family, as well as of the poor household, is also a good outcome, is it not?"

There are so many errors in this statement, I don't know where to start. Again, he is doing his "bottom of cycle to top of cycle" comparison, which makes no sense. Yet again, the real income of the middle quintile rose under the Clinton administration, and fell under Bush. But let's look a little deeper into median real income growth, based on Census data, as this reflects the true economic welfare of the middle class. During the Clinton years, between 1992-99, real median income rose by 14 percent. In contrast, it fell by 3 percent from 2000-05, and each year saw another decline until 2005.

Let's look deeper into the recent period, 2000-05. This was by no means a recessionary episode; the real economy expanded by 12 percent over this period, and productivity rose by 17 percent. What's going on here? Basically, the middle class stopped participating in the economic expansion. Workers are working harder, and are more productive, but their pay and living standards stagnate. Meanwhile, corporate profits soared. According to research by Robert Gordon and Ian Dew-Becker, the productivity gains went to the top 10 percent. This lies in stark contrast to the 1990s, where the large productivity gains (related in part to the IT boom) were shared more broadly.

Note that the rising inequality is a long-term phenomenon. The top hundredth of the US population had an 8 percent income share in 1980, and this rose to 16 per cent by 2004. The 1990s boom did not reverse this long-term trend, but it smoothed out some of its negative consequences by lifting all boats. Economists still don't fully understand the underlying dynamics. While, as noted by Jon Chait, Clinton's fiscal responsibility combined with downward redistribution stands in stark contrast in Bush's fiscal irresponsibility combined with upward redistribution, the patterns in pre-tax income are too stark for fiscal policy to play much of a role. Economists posit a number of explanations for these longer-term trends. First, there is "skill-biased technical change" or the idea that new technologies place a huge premium on brain over brawn. But there are problems with this hypothesis. Europe faced the same technology shock, but did not see a huge rise in inequality. Moreover, wages of engineers and computer scientists did not grow as would be expected. But CEO compensation doubled.

What are some other explanations? Well, first, globalization has changed the balance of power between labor and capital. Second, the continuous pattern of de-unionization has left workers adrift, as profits are not shared. Third, the stagnating minimum wage has reduced purchasing power at the bottom.

These are all big issues, deep issues, worthy of debate. But you would not notice any of this from Novak's little pro-capitalism rave. The mission statement of First Things is to forward a "religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society." How does peddling pro-rich policies, ignoring the real problems of the middle class, making facts subservient to ideology, and deliberately obfuscating the data achieve this goal?

Is Scalia Dissenting Again?

2007-06-20T17:05:00.000-05:00

Remember Scalia's attack on Evangelium Vitae, when he mocked John Paul's teaching on the death penalty by calling for "new staffers at the Congregation for Prudence in the Vatican."? And now Scalia's keen sense of dissenting irony strikes again. This time, the topic is torture. And, no, Scalia is not writing a treatise on the topic in First Things. Rather, he is ad-libbing about a television show.

Scalia is a huge fan of 24, the show where the main protagonist (Jack Bauer) regularly tortures people for information. Here's what Scalia said:

"Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. ... He saved hundreds of thousands of lives... Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?.. any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don't think so."So the question is really whether we believe in these absolutes. And ought we believe in these absolutes?"

Actually, Antonin, as Catholics we do believe in these absolutes. We live our lives by them. We believe torture is intrinsically evil, never justified by intent or circumstances (and those circumstances include Jack Bauer-style ticking bomb scenarios). We are not proportionalists, we are not consequentialists. Scalia once explicitly mocked Evangelium Vitae; is he now implicitly mocking Veritatis Splendour, possibly the most important of all the late pope's encyclicals? I don't want to get into too much detail here, as I've discussed the main points on why torture is absolutely unacceptable from a Catholic point of view on my very first post on Vox Nova (see here).

Sadly, Scalia's comments feed into two prevailing trends among a key element of the contemporary American right: first, the embrace of torture (just look at a Republican presidential candidate's debate), and second, the blurring of fact and fiction, reality and fantasy. You might not realize it from Scalia's rhetoric, but Jack Bauer is a fictional character. The show is supposed to be about entertainment, not a guide to foreign policy. I am a big fan of the Sopranos, but this does not mean I support "whacking" one's enemies as a solution to life's problems! From the early days of the Bush administration, Ron Suskind noted the very postmodern denial of all objective truth among some in this group, especially when a Bush aide remarked that "we create our own reality". And today, pluralities still believe that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and strong links to Al Qaeda. In such a nihilistic world, facts and opinion are intertwined, and reality and entertainment are blurred.

But there is a dark side to applying this philosophy to 24. A few months ago in the New Yorker, Jane Mayer noted that glorifying torture on TV was having an effect on the real world. Mayer:

"However, it had become increasingly hard to convince some cadets that America had to respect the rule of law and human rights, even when terrorists did not. One reason for the growing resistance, ... was misperceptions spread by '24,' which was exceptionally popular with his students. .. “The kids see it, and say, ‘If torture is wrong, what about '24'?’

Although reports of abuses by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have angered much of the world, the response of Americans has been more tepid. Finnegan attributes the fact that 'we are generally more comfortable and more accepting of this,' in part, to the popularity of '24,' which has a weekly audience of fifteen million viewers, and has reached millions more through DVD sales.

The third expert at the meeting was Tony Lagouranis, a former Army interrogator in the war in Iraq. He told the show’s staff that DVDs of shows such as '24' circulate widely among soldiers stationed in Iraq. Lagouranis said to me, 'People watch the shows, and then walk into the interrogation booths and do the same things they’ve just seen.' He recalled that some men he had worked with in Iraq watched a television program in which a suspect was forced to hear tortured screams from a neighboring cell; the men later tried to persuade their Iraqi translator to act the part of a torture 'victim,' in a similar intimidation ploy."

Remember, an official Pentagon survey of US troops in Iraq showed that more than a third support torture for gathering information, 40 percent support torture to save the life of a fellow soldier, and two-thirds would turn a blind eye to mistreating civilians. Where are they getting these attitudes? 24? The Bush administration? Probably both.

In earlier times, successive US administrations stood by the Geneva Conventions. No more. Which brings us back to Antonin Scalia. He was a key dissenter in last year's Hamden v. Rumsfeld case, which threw out Bush's military commissions on the grounds that their structures and procedures violated both the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions (especially Common Article 3 which states that detainees shall not suffer torture or outrages upon personal dignity.) As noted by Marty Lederman, the most significant finding of this ruling was that the Geneva conventions applied to Al Qaeda suspects. For the US has always applied these "minimum, fundamental standards to all detainees, whether or not the detainees themselves were party to (or abided by) Geneva or not (including, for instance, the Viet Cong)." This long-standing practice ended in 2002 when the Bush administration determined that Common Article 3 did not apply to Al Qaeda, and that for all others, the standards were to be applied only "to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity." In Lederman's view, therefore, the most important aspect of the Hamden decision was its ruling on Common Article 3, not what it had to say about the military commissions themselves.

But Scalia was a dissenter on this decision. His dissent was primarily on the question of jurisdiction, and he did not address Common Article 3 directly, but his silence in the face of suffering is telling. Note that the minimum protections accorded by Common Article 3 are fully in accord with Church teachings on the dignity and intrinsic worth of each and every human being. These are principles that every Catholic should support vigorously. In his World Day of Peace message, Pope Benedict lauded international humanitarian law, and called for it to be reaffirmed in "present-day situations of armed conflict, including those not currently provided for by international law". But why bothering listening to Benedict, or more pertinently, to Christ, when Jack Bauer can save the world?

The Welfare State-- Right and Wrong Reasons

2007-06-19T16:32:00.001-05:00

(Cross-posted from Vox Nova).

It is a well-observed fact that the US eschews the kind of welfare states popular in Europe. Favoring low taxes, and hence a smaller government, the US offers fewer benefits (unemployment insurance, pensions, disability payments, childcare subsidies etc.) and less income security. The ratio of social spending to GDP remains low.

What accounts for the differences in preferences? According to a triumvirate of top economists (Alberto Alesina, Edward Glaeser, and Bruce Sacerdote), the reasons are largely cultural. For a start, the US is a curiosity among advanced economies in that it is governed by 18th century principals that were designed to, first and foremost, protect private property rights. With much upheaval caused by war in Europe, the old system was largely swept away, and a more democratic one arose to take its place. The US also never faced a major socialist threat that prompted center-right politicians to embrace the welfare state, as occurred in Europe. Again, part of this is cultural, with entrenched individualism (abetted by low population density), and part of it reflects the majoritarian electoral system that makes it hard for the rise of other parties.

But these authors pinpoint two specific factors that they believes explains a lot of the US-Europe difference on this matter. The first is ethnic or racial heterogeneity. The basic argument is that people are more comfortable redistributing income to those of the same race or ethnic group. Americans are inherently opposed to "welfare" because a disproportionate amount goes (or is perceived to go) to minority races. On the contrary, a country like Sweden has been historically quite homogeneous (although this is changing rapidly). The second argument relates to attitudes toward the poor. The authors quote the World Values Survey to show that 60 percent of Americans, but only a quarter of Europeans, believe the poor are lazy. In contrast, the numbers are almost reversed when it comes to believing the poor are trapped, and whether luck determines income. They show that the more people believe luck drives success, the larger the social spending.

If these indeed are the two key arguments that explain the cross-country differences in welfare spending (and they use statistical techniques to come to this conclusion, not mere conjecture), then this is highly problematic from a Catholic point of view. Opposing redistribution on the grounds of "hostility between the races" is not in accord with recognizing the dignity or intrinsic worth of the human person, and it deviates from an appropriate sense of "catholicity" (not placing boundaries on who our neighbor should be). Believing the poor are lazy comes directly out of Calvinism, through the belief that God rewards the elect with earthly success. Quite clearly, this is not how Catholic social teaching treats the poor.

Therefore, from a Catholic point of view, the main reasons for the small size of the welfare state in the US seem to violate Catholic social teaching. Does this mean the US is impelled to move toward European-style welfare-state policies? Not at all. It is quite possible to argue that some welfare-state policies create a culture of dependency that in itself violates the dignity of the human person. And there is no doubt that this became an issue in many European countries, leading to low labor market participation, marginalization, and ghettoization, prompting reform.

But at the same time, this is not a license to ignore the plight of the poor altogether. Just look at some basic statistics. In 2000, the poverty rate in the US was 17 percent, against an EU-average of around 9 percent. Moreover, the countries with the largest social spending ratios have the best poverty outcomes-- Denmark (4 percent), Sweden (5 percent), Netherlands (6 percent).

The key then, is to reduce poverty without creating a culture of dependency. The Nordics have one solution. They offer generous replacement rates (if you are unemployed, you get paid a lot) but for limited periods and on the condition you enter training programs and other active labor market policies. Also, it is easy to hire and fire, meaning that you don't see the kind of dual labor markets that exist in France, leading to the disenfranchisement of large classes of people (including Muslim immigrants). In other words, the Nordics subsidize income loss, but not job loss. The economy retains sufficient flexibility, but the worker is not forced to bear excessive risk. It works.

Of course, it is expensive, and Americans are notoriously averse to higher taxes. But I'm not sure it is really possible to tackle poverty on the cheap. There are a few things that can alleviate the pressures without adopting a full Nordic model. First, in-work benefits such as the earned income tax credit can be expanded-- this is a great boon to the working poor. Second, childcare should be subsidized to alleviate the pressure on working mothers. And third, we need to move to a system of universal health insurance (of course, to be truly cost effective, this should ideally be a single-payer system, but this is an argument for another day).

Sadly, too many in the US dismiss the welfare state as an outdated relic from socialist Europe, often for the reasons enunciated by Alesina-Glaeser-Sacerdote, ignoring the plight of the poor in their own country. And Catholics will routinely dismiss a core aspect of Catholic social teaching as mere prudential judgment. As I've said a million times by now, prudential judgment is not a license to ignore, but the application of Catholic teaching to changing concrete facts and circumstances. In terms of addressing poverty, there is more than one solution, but there needs to be some solution.

Neuhaus and Nationalism

2007-06-18T14:46:00.000-05:00

(Cross-posted from Vox Nova).

The presider of First Things, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus is a fan of nationalism, so it seems. In attacking Cardinal Mahony's staunch defense of immigrants, he writes:

"But most striking and, I believe, unfortunate is the cardinal’s conceptually confused but unmistakable attack on the nation-state, both in its domestic responsibilities and in the international order. Such an attack has no warrant in Catholic social doctrine."

Clearly, Neuhaus needs to invest some quality time reading Vox Nova! He is also mistaken. From its onset around the time of the reformation, the Church vigorously opposed nationalism because it sets limits and conditions on who is considered our neighbor, thus violating the Catholic principle. There is a reason why the Vatican is a staunch supporter of the United Nations in the international arena.

And in the immigration debate, Catholic social teaching recognizes the role of the state as strictly limited. In this, Katerina posted an apt quote from Pius XII recently: "Since land everywhere offers the possibility of supporting a large number of people, the sovereignty of the State, although it must be respected, cannot be exaggerated to the point that access to this land is, for inadequate or unjustified reasons, denied to needy and decent people from other nations, provided of course, that the public wealth, considered very carefully, does not forbid this." Borders serve a purely administrative function, and are not endowed by any pseudo-mystical quality.

But the opponents of immigration are not concerned with allowing workers to migrate from deprived regions to wealthier ones in an orderly manner, meeting their material needs as well as a legitimate demand for labor on the other side. No, the issue for them is almost entirely cultural, and reflects an antipathy to Spanish-speaking Latin Americans. This is the defining issue.

Here's the funny thing: most of the harshest languages emanates from the evangelical right. A while back, Eduardo Peñalver at Commonweal discussed a poll of the Family Research Council's (FRC) members showed that 90 percent of them favored deportation of the 12 million or so undocumented workers. Moreover, according to a Pew poll, 63% of white evangelicals view immigrants as a "threat to U.S. customs and values," compared to 48% of the population as a whole. So, while Jesus threatens those who do not welcome strangers with damnation, much of the anti-immigrant rhetoric derives from the evangelical right. And as we've discussed frequently in these pages, there is a strong tendency within some elements of that group to fuse Christianity with American nationalism. In this vein, it is the height of irony for Neuhaus to mock Mahony for quoting scripture like a protestant.

Economics and Immigration

2007-06-18T14:44:00.000-05:00

(Cross-posted from Vox Nova)

In the Vox Nova comboxes on a recent post on immigration, I argued that the negative wage effects on low-skilled workers from an influx of immigrants were limited. Jonathan took issue with this claim, referring to the work of George Borjas. His point warrants an answer, and empirical analysis trumps mere assertion (in the reality-based community at least!).

Let's address the big picture first. There is little doubt that immigration increases overall GDP per capita, or the overall pie, through its direct effect on the growth in working age population. This allows for higher growth, lower inflation, favorable fiscal outturns, and less problems with longer-term sustainability arising from pressure on aging-related expenditure (especially since immigrants have higher fertility rates). It is by no accident that the countries most open to immigration (US, UK, Ireland, Sweden etc.) have grown most strongly over the past decade while immigration-phobic countries have lagged. As an example, the UK Treasury has boosted its long-term growth rate by 1/4 percent as a direct result of higher immigration inflows. This is by no means insignificant!

So far so good. But the argument usually revolves around the losers from immigration, and there are losers. If there is an influx of workers of a certain skill type, then the increased supply of labor can be expected to depress the wages of native-born workers of a similar skill type. Nobody disputes this basic economic logic. What people dispute is the relative magnitude of the effect.

One of the leading labor economists researching this topic is David Card of UC Berkeley. Card shows quite convincingly that local labor market outcomes of low-skilled native-born workers are barely affected by changing labor supply. Card also shows that, despite large-scale immigration in intervening period, the wage gap between dropouts and high school graduates is virtually unchanged from 1980. In the New York Times, Eduardo Porter provides an illustrative example. Many immigration opponents look at the experience of California, where the wages of high-school dropouts fell by 17 percent from 1980-2004. The effects of immigration? Well, no. The wages of high-school dropouts in Ohio fell by 31 percent over this same period, which did not have an influx of "illegal" immigration. Clearly, something else is going on here, a long-term pattern of increasing inequality that is worthy of further debate, but is not really relevant in the immigration context.

The sanguine findings of Card were disputed by others, notably Borjas and Katz. These researchers estimated the "illegal" Mexican immigrants between 1980 and 2000 lowered the wages of high school dropouts in the US by 8.2 percent, a not insignificant number. For a start, we need to realize that this result is an outlier, and indeed, Borjas and Katz refer to Card's results as the conventional wisdom. But there are a number of methodological problems with this work. First, as noted by Brad deLong, these coefficients are imprecisely estimated (large standard errors), in the sense that there is a one-sixth chance that the effect is actually positive. More pertinently, Borjas and Katz failed to adequately account for the fact that businesses react to increased labor by increasing investment. Indeed, certain businesses would probably not even exist without cheap immigrant labor. Taking these effects into account knocks the Borjas-Katz number down to 3.6 percent.

Overall, then, the consensus is that the effect of low-skilled immigration on native wages at the low end of the market is negligible, and declining as Americans become better educated and number of high-school dropouts continues to fall. As David Card says there is a "surprisingly weak relationship between immigration and less-skilled wages." A consensus figure lies closer to 1 percent, with Borjas-Katz providing the upper bound of the range of estimates.

How should we, as Catholics, analyze this debate? We need to look at the common good, and that means the global common good, not just the welfare of those persons who happen to possess US passports. Clearly, the Mexican immigrant benefits by increasing his and his family's economic opportunity. The US as a whole also benefits. There are some losers at the lower end of the wage distribution, but the effects are small. This does not mean they should be ignored, as that would violate the preferential option for the poor. But stamping down on immigration will do little to help them, while causing a great deal of suffering elsewhere. Subsidized training and other active labor market policies (like in Denmark) might be an apt response. Finally, something we do not hear much about in the debate, is the economic effect on Mexico. Surely, if there is a movement of labor between Mexico and the US, any downward wage pressure in the US will be accompanied by upward wage pressure in Mexico? Low-skilled Mexican workers will be made better off. As Catholics, their welfare matters too.

In Defense of the United Nations

2007-06-15T13:19:00.000-05:00

(Cross-posted from Vox Nova).

It has become fashionable, especially in America, not only to view the UN as irrelevant, but to gleefully compile litanies of abuses committed by the New York-based international organization. This gets us nowhere. The key question to ask is whether or not the UN is relevant, or even essential, in the modern world. I believe the answer to that question is a resounding "yes". With that in mind, corruption and incompetence calls for reform, not scorn. Think of some other examples. One thing that irritates me in the US is the incompetence of local school boards and teachers unions, but this does not mean public schools should be abolished. And while we are on the topic of enduring institutions, I would remind everybody that the stench of corruption emanating from the Vatican was once so strong that certain so-called "reformers" denied its legitimacy altogether...

In fact, UN peacekeeping has been a major success, in spite of a few high profile shortcomings. A few years back in the New Republic, Gregg Easterbrook discussed patterns of war over the past half century. While the prevalence of war rose from the 1960s to the mid-1980s, it fell sharply thereafter. Global military spending is also on the wane. Very few nations have increased military spending over the past decade. A major exception is, of course, the US, which accounts for 44 percent of global military spending. Now, as Easterbrook notes, the major contributing factor to a more peaceable world was the end of the cold war, as the superpowers ended the multitude of proxy wars that caused so much carnage and suffering. But second on the list is the rise of peacekeeping, especially under the auspices of the UN. In fact, UN peacekeeping turned out to be an excellent investment, and the RAND corporation concluded that most UN peacekeeping operations were successful. Of course, these factors are intertwined, as the end of the cold war and the dissolution of hostile blocs meant that countries were now more willing to look to the UN for guidance.

How should we approach this issue as Catholics? Well, we should start by noting that the Vatican is a huge supporter of the UN system. Following up on themes stressed by servant of God John Paul, who noted that the UN was "a moral center where all the nations of the world feel at home and develop a shared awareness of being, as it were, a family of nations", Pope Benedict has this to say:

"The protection of human rights is constantly referred to by international bodies and, in particular, the United Nations Organization, which set itself the fundamental task of promoting the human rights indicated in the 1948 Universal Declaration. That Declaration is regarded as a sort of moral commitment assumed by all mankind. There is a profound truth to this, especially if the rights described in the Declaration are held to be based not simply on the decisions of the assembly that approved them, but on man's very nature and his inalienable dignity as a person created by God. Consequently it is important for international agencies not to lose sight of the natural foundation of human rights. This would enable them to avoid the risk, unfortunately ever-present, of sliding towards a merely positivistic interpretation of those rights. Were that to happen, the international bodies would end up lacking the necessary authority to carry out their role as defenders of the fundamental rights of the person and of peoples, the chief justification for their very existence and activity."

And indeed, as noted by John Allen, in discussing the just war principles, the Vatican leans closer and closer to defending military options only in cases of humanitarian intervention guided by the UN. The key issue is sovereignty and proper authority. As Allen says, from the Vatican's perspective, sovereignty is becoming increasingly vested in international organizations such as the UN. It is pretty clear that one of the reasons that the Church opposed Bush's Iraq war so vigorously is because if failed to follow the lead of the UN. When asked to expound on the Iraq war, then-cardinal Ratzinger referred frequently to the importance of the UN, with statements like: "The United Nations is the [institution] that should make the final decision", "The fact that the United Nations is seeking the way to avoid war, seems to me to demonstrate with enough evidence that the damage would be greater than the values one hopes to save", and "It is the instrument created after the war for the coordination -- including moral -- of politics".

The issue of often couched in terms of justice and solidarity. As Cardinal Lajola said a few years back:

"It is clear here that the military and economic superiority of one country, while giving rise to a particular moral responsibility vis-à-vis other nations (the principle of solidarity), does not automatically translate into an institutional pre-eminence with the subordination of other members (the principle of equality)."

Vesting the UN with such sovereignty makes particular sense in a world with a myriad state and non-state actors where technology, globalization, persisting injustices, and rapid information flow can magnify any disproportionate blowback from military actions. From the point of view of Catholic social teaching, a vital UN is especially apt. For the principle of subsidiarity suggests that most decisions should be taken at the local level. The principle of solidarity implies the need for an over-arching institution that brings all people together. You can see where I am going here. Those most opposed to the UN are those most wedded to the absolute sovereignty of the nation state and the ideology of nationalism. This is especially the case in the US where politicians compete to out-jingo each other by mocking the UN and announcing that American soldiers will never serve under UN commanders. And therein lies the problem. In a globalized world, what right does one country (the US) have to invade and occupy another (Iraq), half-way around the world and posing no direct threat, without the explicit approval of the community of nations? None whatsoever.

So, yes, reform by all means, and stamp out abuses, but do not question its legitimacy.

The End of the Sopranos

2007-06-14T13:07:00.000-05:00

(Cross-posted from Vox Nova).

A while back in Commonweal, Cathleen Kaveny penned a thought-provoking essay entitled "Salvation & ‘The Sopranos’", where she explored themes of sin and redemption through the lens of this gritty mafia drama. Kaveny explores the role of fate, concluding that a main moral of the story is that "we are trapped in a world ruled by an inexorable fate that seizes upon our moral failings in order to bring about our ruin." Moreover, "the world of The Sopranos ... seems infused with a cosmic retributive justice, which even Tony himself dimly perceives, although his own time of reckoning has not yet arrived." A dark message.

Kaveny proved highly perceptive, as this theme wove through the entire final season. At the beginning of the penultimate season, the show explored Tony's experience while in a coma after being shot, a kind of "purgatory", where his ultimate fate was clear. There was no way out. He was being guided towards his destiny, and it was not a joyous one. Led by his cousin (whom Tony had murdered), he was beckoned into a warmly-lit room where he could clearly see the contours of his mother, the selfish and narcissistic Livia (who herself had conspired to have Tony killed for the indignity of placing her in a retirement home). Tony did not want to enter, as something seemed wrong, very wrong. Luckily, he came out of the coma right at that moment.

The following two seasons deal with how Tony responds to this existential experience. Knowing what lies in store for him, will be change? Can he change? The world of David Chase is a very different world from Dickens's A Christmas Carol. There is no redemption brought on by a vision of the future. Even though Tony is fully aware of his destiny, he does not change, will not change, cannot change. This is a dark and pessimistic vision, especially from a Christian perspective. Chase conjures up a world in which nature is suffused not by grace, but by anti-grace. There is no possibility of redemption, even for those who come to grips with the meaning of damnation. Throughout the Sopranos, Tony's therapy sessions always offered the possibility of a breakthough, that an increasing self-awareness would foster change. But no, we learn that not only has therapy been utterly useless, but that it may even be counterproductive, bolstering the ego of a sociopath.

And not only is individual redemption impossible, but the "anti-grace" projected by somebody like Tony destroys and corrupts all around him. When his sister Janice tries to manage her anger, Tony goads her into losing her temper, and takes pleasure in the outcome. Christopher's attempts to steer clear of drugs and alcohol are teased mercilessly, with predictable results. When Tony realizes that Bobby has never killed a person, he forces him to do so, for no other reason than to destroy his soul. Carmela's conscience is bought by a house, and piles of hidden cash. AJ's depression and intense focus on evil in the world connote some semblance of moral self-awareness, but in the end, he too is bought off by an offer to work in the move industry for another mobster. And Meadow, who previously had the greatest chance of escape, of redemption, will now end up as a debased mafia lawyer.

Throughout the final season, Tony's mind became ever more intently focused on his fate, his destiny. He knew his downfall could come from any number of corners. Something as unlikely as a dropped gun in the snow a few years back could lead to his indictment. For Tony, there were only a limited number of options. He could be killed, jailed, or grow old and fade, turning into a shadow of your former self.. None of these options appeals. At one point, Tony gets irritated with the constant reminiscing about the past, as he sees clearly the limitations of a bankrupt lifestyle. Johnney Sac dies horribly from lung cancer. Uncle Junior is in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's. And then there is Pauley, a pathetic washed-up joke; Tony is so disgusted that he even ponders killing him at one point. And he is constantly on edge over the FBI, wondering who the next informer will be. And, towards the end of the season, Phil Leotardo provokes a full-scale war, and Tony's name is foremost on the hitlist. Any number of paths, all leading to the same ultimate destiny: damnation.

And yet, with this knowledge, Tony cannot reform. Given the limitations of this moral universe, the best he can hope for is to avoid his fate, postpone the inevitable. People become mere obstacles to be removed. Tired of Christopher's problems, and nervous he will turn informer, Tony takes advantage of a car crash to kill Christopher, by suffocating him as he lies slumped over the wheel, blood dripping from his mouth. It is not mere coincidence that there was a certain amount of ambiguity over this murder-- did Tony engage in "mercy killing", or did he callously remove an obstacle? In the end, the motive hardly matters, as the act was an evil one. After Christopher's murder, Tony's mood changes. His luck at gambling turns around remarkably, and, in one of the defining moments of the entire show, he stands in the middle of the Nevada desert, high on drugs, and exclaims: "I get it!". And what does Tony "get" exactly? A realization that he can control his own universe, his own fate? Here lie shades of original sin, as Tony wants to be like God, and subverting the order of creation and the "moral norms that govern the use of freedom" (CCC 396). Is he similarly deluded?

"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?" This line from Yeats underpins the final season, and is repeated almost like a mantra by AJ. In the wake of grave evil, what follows? In such a world devoid of the redemptive power of Christianity, the message is obvious. Evil wins. Like the darkness that Tolkien envisioned coming from Morder to envelop the whole world, everybody in the Sopranos has been corrupted by evil. In fact, the Tolkien analogy is apt. The fate of people like Johnny, Pauley, and Junior is similar to the fate of Smeagol who becomes Gollum. Evil traps them. And the world of the Sopranos is also akin to the world portrayed in Eliot's The Waste Land, but with no cry for renewal at the end.

It is fitting that the final scene has the nuclear family sitting in a diner together, the embodiment of old-style clean cut "family values". It is also fitting, and brilliant, for Chase to cut to blackness, and silence, to end it. Sure, people were disappointed by the ambiguity of the ending. But think about it. We know there are many different paths to Tony's ultimate destiny. He could have been shot that night. He could have been indicted that week. He could have lived for many more years. But in the end, there is only one certainty: blackness. A void. The second death. And that is how Chase chose to end the series. In reality, there is no ambiguity at all.

Caiaphas and Truman

2007-06-10T19:59:00.000-05:00

(Cross-posted from Vox Nova).

"You know nothing, nor do you consider that it is better for you that one man should die instead of the people, so that the whole nation may not perish."

-- Caiaphas (John 11:49-50).

"Having found the bomb we have used it....We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans."

-- Harry S. Truman, 1945.

Catholic Justices Vote the Wrong Way.. Again and Again and Again....

2007-06-10T19:56:00.000-05:00

(Cross-posted from Vox Nova).

Michael Perry over at Mirror of Justice notes that a recent Supreme Court decision made it easier for prosecutors to exclude people who express reservations about the death penalty from capital juries. The appeals court judge (whose decision was overthrown) granted a new trial on the grounds that a certain juror was excluded simply because "he did not perhaps show the kind of bloodthirsty eagerness" to impose the death penalty. The five Catholic justices had no problem with this. The four non-Catholics dissented. According to the New York Times, legal experts claim that this decision "will make the panels whiter and more conviction-prone."

This is just the latest in a series of judgments whereby the five Catholic justices joined together to remove any potential hurdles to the greater application of the death penalty in American courts. Last month, a case revolved around whether or not a prisoner who would not let his defense attorney present mitigating evidence during his original trial could change his mind and get a new hearing. No way, said Justices Thomas, Scalia, Kennedy, Roberts, and Alito. As Stevens noted in his dissent, the man had a "serious organic brain disorder", and his lawyer did not uncover this fact during the trial. And before this, all but Kennedy voted the wrong way in a sequence of three death penalty-related cases.

Now, there are those who will undoubtedly defend the actions on the majority on legal technical grounds. There are those who will argue that there is no authoritative Church teaching directing how to vote on these kinds of procedural grounds. But this is surely misguided. While the Church does not claim that the death penalty is always and everywhere wrong (like abortion), it does carve out conditions under the death penalty may and may not be immoral, namely, that there must be no other way to defend society. Note that this teaching is not merely a prudential judgment but a moral principle governing particular circumstances, and requires religious assent. The prudential judgment in this case is that no death penalty in the United States meets this strict condition. But this can hardly be disputed! Given this situation, should Catholic Supreme Court justices not try to "err on the side of life" as much as they can within the law? And why are they not doing so?

In fact, the Catholic majority on the Court has actually made things worse. As Patti Waldmeir in the Financial Times wrote last month:

"The recent addition of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, the Bush appointees, might have substantially shifted the balance of power on the court on death penalty issues, experts said. Before their appointment, the court had done much to chip away at the edifice of the death penalty by insisting on improvements in legal representation for capital defendants and ruling unconstitutional the application of capital punishment to juveniles and the mentally retarded."

I will leave you all with some food for thought. Many Catholics believe the appointment of Roberts and Alito to the Supreme Court was of signature importance, justifying sticking with the Republicans in spite of everything else. But what if their appointment has zero impact on abortion, but a substantial negative effect on other aspects of the culture of life?

The Lesson of Franz Jägerstätter

2007-06-10T19:55:00.000-05:00

(Cross-posted from Vox Nova).

As noted by the Catholic Peace Fellowship, the Church has recognized Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter as a martyr for the faith, clearing the way for his beatification, and ultimately, his canonization.

Jägerstätter was an Austrian farmer who refused to be drafted by the Nazis. He was advised to cooperate by his parish priest and his local bishop, on the grounds that he needed to support his family and that he had a responsibility to obey legitimate secular authority. But Jägerstätter refused. He reasoned very clearly that while obedience to the government was ordinarily required, this was not the case in gravely evil situations. To be drafted by the Nazis was to collaborate in evil. "Following orders" was not a licit defense. He was executed by the Nazis in 1943.

The case of this martyr offers lessons for today. We hear far too often, including from Catholic voices, that military personnel must obey legitimate authority. But no individual person should obey an order that is immoral. In fact, it is the duty of every Christian not to cooperate in evil, no matter what commanding officers or governments declare. An official Pentagon survey of US soldiers in Iraq recently came out with some shocking findings. More than one third support torture for gathering information, and this rises to 40 percent to save the life of a fellow soldier. Two-thirds would turn a blind eye to mistreating civilians or wantonly destroying property. Less than half think that non-combatants are worthy of respect and dignity. And 10 percent have actually mistreated civilians.

In such an environment, we need to appeal to the example of Franz Jägerstätter. No, the US army is not comparable to the Nazis, lest anybody accuses me of going there. But such a complacent attitude to torture and other abuse does entail cooperation in evil, and if the "legitimate authority" (either the military or the civilian government) gives such orders or sets such policy, then the individual solider is duty bound to disobey. As Jägerstätter realized, to do otherwise would place his soul in jeopardy. And while Catholics can sometimes disagree on the morality of specific wars, it is essential that every person in the military be granted the right to selective conscientious objection, so that Catholics and others can opt out of wars they deem unjust (as the Church described the Iraq war) without penalty. In the current atmosphere that practically forbids any criticism of American military personnel, I think it is extremely important to make these points.

Loving and Hating Freedom

2007-06-10T19:53:00.000-05:00

(Cross-posted from Vox Nova)

One thing we hear constantly in America is how people love and appreciate their freedom. This ideal of liberty and freedom as enjoyed in a liberal democracy is often elevated to the status of a pseudo-religion, the result of the fusing of nationalism and Christianity. And of course, George W. Bush embraces a particular messianic notion of this "religion", by attempting (with catastrophic consequences) to redeem and re-fashion the world with liberal democratic values-- in his own image. Notice how close this reasoning is to Marxism, with its notion of deterministic progression in history and man-made salvation. No wonder it is bound to fail.

But I digress. Even ignoring the messianic element, many Americans (of all political persuasions) will make constant references to their freedom and how grateful they are for it. Some politicians make crude caricatures about how the enemies of America "hate us for our freedom". But what does this mean? Here's the rub: the US is no more or no less free than any other liberal democracy, certainly among the advanced economies. And yet you do not hear this kind of rhetoric in European countries. A citizen of tiny Iceland, a democracy home to a mere 300,000 people, would never claim that he loves Iceland for his freedom. It makes no sense. It's ludicrous. All European democracies come with political freedom. It's simply a system of government, not a religion.

Some will of course claim that the US stands apart. But what makes America different? For a start, the US can offer certain economic opportunities not available elsewhere. Some things come with its natural position in the world. By virtue if its size, it can avoid large swings in economic activity and exploit economies of scale. And the fact that the dollar is a reserve currency means that the US can borrow pretty cheaply and not have to worry about the kind of macroeconomic imbalances that bedevil other countries (to a degree, at least!). Policy also matters. Its openness to immigration boosts living standards. Its relatively liberal product and labor markets give it the flexibility to adapt to new challenges and technologies. But other countries offer these benefits too, including the UK, Ireland, and some of the Nordic countries like Sweden.

Of course, there are also economic downsides in the US. Poverty and inequality are among the worst in the advanced world. It also sits at the bottom of the list for social outcomes like health and education. Sure, many seek to enter to US, largely from Latin America. But most from the more deprived areas of eastern Europe want to move to the western part of the continent, not cross the Atlantic.

But what has any of this to do with freedom? Not a thing. It's a question of economics. Indeed, it can be argued that the two-party system combined with the ability of vested interests to use practically unlimited funds to influence policy actually hinders democracy in the US. No, the concept of freedom in this discourse has no practical relevance-- it is a freedom of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from a nationalism-oppressed brain. We all enjoy the political freedoms that come with liberal democracy. It's just that the US enjoys no monopoly here.

There is a dark side of course. People are still being sent to war for this "ideal". How does occupying a middle eastern country relate to securing "freedom" at home, not to mention abroad?

Catholic League Watch 7

2007-06-05T10:24:00.000-05:00

The Catholic League claims that its aim is to "safeguard both the religious freedom rights and the free speech rights of Catholics whenever and wherever they are threatened." But, in reality, it functions as a rather shrill organ of the Republican right, and little more. This is the seventh post in the series.

This aspect of the blog has been a little inactive these days. But then again, Bill Donohue is at his blustering best during election season. Remember his differential treatment of Bush and Kerry? And here he doesn't disappoint either. In a recent press release entitled "Look Who's Supporting Obama", Donohue claims Obama's website lists testimonials of "three controversial clergymen" including a Chicago-area Catholic priest. Among the accusations are that these clergymen condemned zionism, and blamed 9/11 on American foreign policy, received an award from the Nation of Islam, befriended Louis Farrakhan, and demonstrated against a gun store.

Now, if Donohue has complained about the unseemly nature of member of the clergy aligning themselves with partisan political campaigns, he has a point. I can't speak for the protestants, but no Catholic priest should do such a thing. But this is not Donohue's point. He appears to have no problem with Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life endorsing Sam Brownback. And on the protestant side, he never complains about the fact that the Falwells and the Dobsons have done their very level best to align Christianity with the Republican party. No, it is the politics that Donohue has a problem with. Aside from the other complaints, to criticize somebody for "blaming 9/11 on American foreign policy" is ludicrous. In fact, only the hyper-nationalist and self-deluded refuse to admit that American foreign policy (especially the lop-sided support for Israel) has no hand whatsoever in promoting a terrorist backlash. Donohue should check what prominant Catholic leaders have to say about such subjects. But there are other religious leaders who blamed Americans for causing 9/11-- Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Where was Donohue then?

No, Donohue's only role is a partisan role. He adores religiosity in Republicans and abhors it in Democrats. Bush was a Christian, Kerry was a phony. God forbid that Obama ever gets himself a religious outreach adviser. Remember 2004? Kerry had two advisers, one after the other. Donohue claimed that the resume of one (Mara Vanderslice) is "that of a person looking for a job working for Fidel Castro", while another (Brenda Peterson) is lambasted for opposing "under God" in the pledge of allegiance. Yes, core Catholics beliefs under attack! Contrast this with his now infamous defense of Bush's Catholic liaison, Deal Hudson. After allegations that Hudson abused his authority as a Fordham professor by having sexual relations with a young, disturbed 18-year old female student, Donohue blamed the victim, decrying the allegations of a "drunken female he met in a bar." Even for Donohue, that's a low blow.

Democratic Musings

2007-06-05T10:23:00.001-05:00

(Cross-posted from Vox Nova).

I'm still trying to make my mind up about Sunday's debate of Democratic presidential candidates in New Hampshire. Conventional wisdom places Hillary on top, but I don't see it: I still find her rather wooden and overly nuanced (but she did net one good line in: quipping about Bush's diplomacy, she noted the tendency to send Dick Cheney around the world-- hardly diplomatic!). Likewise, Obama disappointed. When I read his speeches, I find the rhetoric harking back to a more eloquent time, and there are shades of Bobby Kennedy. But I'm not sure he is good on his feet. Surprisingly, I was most impressed by the passion and knowledge of Joe Biden, even though I disagree with his recent vote on the Iraq bill. And then there is Edwards. I found him highly impressive, especially when be openly touts his humility, admitting he was wrong to support the Iraq war. Given the current incumbent, a little humility refreshes like a gust of cool air on a humid day...

And what of the topics? Pretty much all agree on Iraq, which is good. Also, I really like the attention given the health care. I would have liked for more on global warming. And I would have liked questions on abortion, the death penalty, and torture... Still, it makes a refreshing change from the gaggle of preening adolescents on the Republican stage, each more eager than the other to prove himself a tough guy (see here for more on that).

Brownback Strikes Back on Evolution

2007-06-03T07:27:00.000-05:00

Last month, I noted that Sam Brownback was one of the three Republican presidential candidates (out of ten) claiming not be believe in evolution. I criticized that denial in light of Brownback's Catholic faith.

Well, Brownback addresses his many critics in a New York Times op-ed. He starts off by the saying the right things, such that it is wrong to "drive a wedge between faith and reason". But then he says the following:

"If belief in evolution means simply assenting to microevolution, small changes over time within a species, I am happy to say, as I have in the past, that I believe it to be true. If, on the other hand, it means assenting to an exclusively materialistic, deterministic vision of the world that holds no place for a guiding intelligence, then I reject it."

Now, as noted over at Mirror of Justice by both Rick Garnett and Eduardo Penalver, this is an exercise in obfuscation. Why? Because he is confusing two issues: the notion of an infinite creative intelligence, and "microevolution, small changes over time within a species". He is speaking in code, easily understandable to the proponents of the American design movement.

We need to be careful careful when we use the term "intelligent design". At some fundamental level, Catholics must believe in an "intelligent designer", as hand of the creator guides the evolutionary process. But it is important to note that the American-created "intelligent design" movement does not merely postulate that God is the Creator of everything out of nothing and guides all of creation (sensible), but encroaches on scientific territory by questioning the evidence for evolution (not so sensible). As pointed out by Jerry Coyne in the New Republic a few years back, a key premise of intelligent design is that organisms appeared simultaneously, and have existed that way ever since. While they accept the idea of "microevolution" (within-species changes), the intelligent design crowd casts doubts on "macroevolution" ("large scale changes, leading to new levels of complexity".)

Seen from this angle, Brownback's strange choice of wording makes more sense. As Penalver points out, the senator is trying to have his cake and eat it, by appealing to reason, but being careful enough not to antagonize his fundamentalists backers who love intelligent design. Notice that the denial of evolution is concentrated in a small group of American evangelicals, and is not an issue in any other country. The reason is straightforward. American fundamentalists believe God's word is a fixed text rather than reason incarnate, making the complementarity between faith and reason less essential. I think that Brownback, a Catholic covert from evangelical fundamentalism, still may have some distance to travel in this area.

Lessons in Torture from the Nazis, Russians, and Chinese

2007-06-01T12:01:00.000-05:00

(Cross-posted from Vox Nova).

Andrew Sullivan is creating quite a stir on the internet with his post on the Gestapo's interrogation techniques. Loosely translated as "enhanced interrogation techniques" they include food deprivation, hard beds, dark cells (sensory deprivation), sleep deprivation, and exhaustion exercises. Sullivan notes that the guidelines are quite strict about when these techniques can be used, and that the idea was to torture in a way that left no marks. Of course, if these "techniques" are familiar, it is because they are remarkly similar to those put in place by the Bush administration. Note that the Gestapo list is actually more restrictive, insofar as it excludes hypothermia and the Khmer Rouge-perfected technique of waterboarding. Also, as time passed, the restrictions placed on these techniques became more fluid, as, in the words of Sullivan, torture takes on a life of its own. Of course, a Catholic would recognize the power of evil to corrupt...

At the same time, Talking Points Memo notes yet another antecedent for the Bush torture techniques: the Soviet Union and communist China. During the cold war, US special forces received training in how to survive the kind of techniques that might befall them should they be captured. Such techniques included sleep deprivation, isolation, sexual humiliation, nudity, exposure to extremes of cold, stress positions, sensory deprivation (visual and auditory), exploiting prisoners phobias (notably fear of dogs), and threats against family members. Sound familiar? These techniques morphed from what the US feared would be used against them by brutal dictatorships into techniques they themselves used.

Sullivan also discusses a fascinating case from Norway in 1948, whereby three Germans were on trial for using these "enhanced interrogation techniques". The court convicted the Germans of war crimes, and rejected the "following orders" defense. On their side, the nazis argued that the torture techniques did not result in death or "permanent disablement". Exactly as Bush administration official John Yoo defined torture: "death, organ failure or the permanent impairment of a significant body function." Is this how far down the moral quagmire the US has sunk?

For more on the Catholic approach to torture see here.

On the Justice of War

2007-06-01T11:58:00.001-05:00

There is an interesting debate going on at Vox Nova on the subject of war. See my take here. And see Christopher Blosser's response here. My Vox Nova colleagues also make excellent points.

Good Discussion on Vox Nova

2007-05-29T14:40:00.000-05:00

Michael Iafrate has penned an excellent post entitled Memorial Day and the Religious Syncretism of the State, making the point that there is far too much fusion between Christianity and secular nationalism in the United States. Check it out! I contributed two pieces in response: America is Not Exceptional and Nationalism and the Church. See what other have to say as well...

Some on the right are already jumping up and down. Good!

Bush Remembers Bin Laden

2007-05-29T10:28:00.000-05:00

After years of not even mentioning his name, and even declaring that he was not concerned about him, Bush suddenly reminds the world that Bin Laden is not only still alive and kicking, but very much a threat. What to do with this incredible chutzpah? Andrew Sullivan pretty much says it all:

"Al Qaeda surely never had a more helpful man in such a powerful place. After over six years of this presidency, Bin Laden is still at large. Five and a half years after Bin Laden's religious tools murdered 3,000 innocents, this president still cannot find or capture or kill him. Five and a half years after that dreadful day, al Qaeda's reach in the Middle East is more extensive than ever, centered in Iraq, where it was barely existent before the war. Over four years after invading Iraq, the security situation there is as grave as it has ever been. Tens of thousands of innocents have been added to the three thousand murdered on 9/11 - many of them unspeakably tortured and murdered by death squads or Islamist cells empowered by Bush's jaw-dropping negligence. Over three thousand young Americans have died in order to give al Qaeda this victory and this new platform.

Here is Bush's gift to the victims of 9/11: two new al Qaeda safe havens - in Anbar and in Pakistan. He gave Zarqawi a second career, by refusing to kill him when had a clear shot in 2003, and then allowing him to run rampant across Iraq for several years. Islamists, moreover, are far closer now to getting their hands on WMDs than they were when Bush became president - the very casus belli I foolishly bought to go to war with Saddam. Given the financial boost al Qaeda has gotten from the Iraq invasion, the massive propaganda coup they have won by Bush's authorization of torture, and the triumph of Iran as a consequence of Bush's non-existent "strategy", isn't it simply a fact that Bush is the best thing to happen to al Qaeda since its founding? Is not the record now clear that, whatever their intentions, Bush and Cheney have actually advanced the day when Islamist terrorists will kill and murder more Americans?

If a Democrat had been responsible for endangering America in this fashion, the Republicans would have impeached him by now. If a Democrat had bungled a war as obviously as this president - a war, moreover, that he has described as an existential struggle for our survival - the Republicans would long ago have Carterized him..

The gravity of the mistake this country made in 2004 by re-electing al Qaeda's best bet is only now sinking in as deep as it should. I fear, however, that we have yet to experience the full and terrifying consequences of that historic mistake."

Why are the leading Democrats not making these points every single day?

Can Catholics Vote for Pro-Abortion Politicians?

2007-05-23T18:39:00.000-05:00

(Cross-posted from Vox Nova).

We seem to be skirting around this issue on the blog, so I would like to address it head on. On whether a Catholic can vote for a pro-abortion candidate (I will refrain from the "pro-choice" euphemism), a number of Catholic commentators say they cannot, and quite vociferously.

The most sophisticated reasoning on this front is laid out by the Catholic Answers voter's guide. In a nutshell, this group argues that there are five non-negotiable issues in current US political discourse: abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage, embryonic stem cell research, and human cloning. Catholics are told to "find out where each candidate stands on each of these issues. Eliminate from consideration any candidate who is wrong on any of the five issues. Vote for one of the remaining candidates." How were the issues chosen? Because "involve principles that never admit of exceptions and because they are currently being debated in U.S. politics". Priests for Life come to a similar conclusion, though focusing on the issue of abortion, stating unequivocally that "support for abortion is enough for us to decide not to vote for such a person." On the EWTN website, Fr Matthew Habiger of Human Life International also concludes that "to vote for such a candidate is to willfully participate in that candidate's choices and deeds..It is a sin, and must be repented."

First things first. The Catholic Answers guide, and the opinions of the others, do not speak for the Church teaching when it comes to voting. The only organization in the United States that can speak authoritatively on this issue is the USCCB, and it has issued its own (somewhat different) voter's guide. This careful document presents a broad spectrum of Catholic teaching and calls for Catholics to be "political but not partisan... principled but not ideological... clear but also civil... engaged but not used." Wise words.

The Catholic Answers guide is tragically flawed. For a start, why only five "non-negotiables"? They most certainly do not overlap with the broad array of acts recognized as intrinsically evil, which cannot be defended by appeal to intent or circumstance. It is possible to argue that attacks on the sanctity of human life are paramount, and should come first. In this light, the first four qualify. But gay marriage? A valid teaching, sure, but should it be on par with the core gospel of life issues, ahead of all other teachings? And why is there no mention of torture? As I discussed recently, torture is an intrinsically evil act, a non-negotiable; an attack on human dignity directly following genocide, abortion, euthanasia and suicide in Gaudium Et Spes; and currently condoned in prominent US political circles. But it warrants no mention in the voter guide. Why not?

The whole recourse to "non-negotiable positions" when it comes to voting can box a person in. If one believes in such positions at the ballot box, then how many are there? And how can a voter validly choose between one candidate who supports non-negotiable A (say, abortion) versus another who supports non-negotiable B (say, torture). As noted by one of my favorite Catholic bloggers, the iconoclastic Zippy:

"If there are in fact non-negotiables - and I think there probably are, though what makes voting for a candidate and his policy non-negotiably wrong is not yet clearly established - then voting in a way which chooses one non-negotiable over a different one is inherently proportionalist. What that implies is that modern democracy is a kind of lex orandi (or behavioral training ground) for the lex credendi of proportionalism."

In other words, it is not licit to choose the lesser of two evils, by arguing that abortion is far worse than torture. Adopting a rigid set of "non-negotiables" in the polling booth tends to lead to a proportionalist trap. Taking this reasoning to its logical conclusion, then Catholics should stay home on voting day. But this goes against the bishop's advice!

Fortunately, there is a way out, and it involves making a careful distinction between voting and actively supporting a non-negotiable policy. The crux of the argument is that voting for a candidate is not the same thing as voting for the act itself, and that a candidate's support for an intrinsically evil act is an expected but unintended consequence of voting for that person. In other words, a person is not voting for more or less abortion; there is no "on-off switch" that gives you abortion if you vote A and no abortion (or even less abortion) if you vote B.

Before going any further, let's look at what then-Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in his famous letter to Cardinal McCarrick back in 2004:

"A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate's permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia. When a Catholic does not share a candidate's stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons."

This is key. Formal cooperation in evil mean that a person "freely participates in the action(s) of a principal agent, or shares in the agent’s intention". Clearly a voter's proximity to an intrinsically evil act is a lot less than a legislator's, and voting for such a candidate can be licit for proportionately serious reasons. More precisely, an act that may lead to foreseeable evil consequences can be permitted if the act in itself is not evil; the evil effect is not intended as a means or an end, and the good attained is proportionate to the evil arising from the act.*

Voting itself is not an evil act. And clearly, if you support the evil act when you vote, then all bets are off. But what if you are conscientiously opposed to abortion, when can you vote for a pro-abortion politician? Well, you would need to ask a number of questions. First, how much power will the politician have to affect the evil act? Second, would he or she be effective in bringing about the policy? Third, if the policy is enacted, would it be effective in achieving its ends? And after this, the relative gravity of the good and evil effects must be considered. Nothing here is certain, and the person must act in the realm of probability, which of course allows for prudential judgment.

And on the abortion issue, here are questions that must be addressed in the US political context:

Will the legislator be able to influence abortion? What if the office has no authority to address this issue (a local office, for example)? And even with national office, how much influence does an elected representative at the legislative or executive level have in affecting the legality of abortion, given that the "right" ultimately derives from the Supreme Court?

How much focus should there be on changing the composition of the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade? How can we be certain that judges will choose this path, and how do we weigh the potentially harmful decisions they may make in other areas? And even if Roe v. Wade is overturned, will the incidence of abortion truly diminish, or will it just shift to the state level?

Is criminalization of abortion sufficient? Evidence from elsewhere (Latin America in particular) points to a booming abortion industry even when it is not legal.

How much attention should be paid to the economic factors that affect the abortion decision, given that most women opting for abortion are economically disadvantaged, and (as I noted yesterday), there is a strong link between poverty and abortion. Will policies that focus on poverty, economic opportunity, and access to adequate health care and child care be more effective than coercion?

And what if the pro-life politician scores poorly on other policy issues, such as war and torture, especially if he or she makes barely a dent in the incidence of abortion?

Note that each of these questions entails an element of prudential judgment. Honest and serious Catholics who abhor abortion can come to different conclusions, and vote for candidates with vastly differing opinions on matter. The problem is when one side turns an issue that is non-negotiable in terms of moral licitness into a non-negotiable in terms of voting. It then risks aligning the Church with a single political party. Just look at the Catholic Answers list. As EJ Dionne noted, "The leaflet might as well have said that voting for President Bush was a non-negotiable position for Catholics". Its selectivity surely violates the USCCB's call to be "political but not partisan."

These principles are all basic to Catholic moral reasoning, and yet many today seem to have forgotten them. Back in the 1980s, moralists Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle, and John Finnis argued that the nuclear deterrent was intrinsically evil given its intent to kill innocent civilians. But they never argued that Catholics should not be allowed to vote for candidates supporting the nuclear deterrent, for the reasons explained above. It's funny how those who take pride in their orthodoxy sometimes forget the basics.

[* For more detail, see Moral Theology for the Voting Booth and Voting and "Non-Negotiable" Issues by Christopher Decker, 2006.]

Abortion and Economics

2007-05-22T14:58:00.000-05:00

(Cross-posted from Vox Nova).

What does abortion in the United States look like? The Guttmacher Institute explores this issue in some detail. For a start, it notes that 57% of women opting for abortion are economically disadvantaged. In fact, the abortion rate among women living below the federal poverty level ($9,570 for a single woman with no children) is more than four times that of women above 300% of the poverty level (44 vs. 10 abortions per 1,000 women). And when asked to give reasons for abortion, three-quarters of women say that cannot afford a child. At the same time, black women are almost four times as likely as white women to have an abortion, and Hispanic women are two and a half life times as likely. Almost half of women terminating their pregnancies have had previous abortions, and 60 percent of abortions are concentrated among women who already have children.

Clearly, the importance of economic factors is stunningly obvious. Let's explore some of the larger trends. The Guttmacher Institute also presents detailed statistics on the abortion rate (abortions per 1000 women, age 15-44) and the abortion ratio (abortions per 100 pregnancies ending in abortion or live birth). Since 1980, the pattern of abortion has been trending downwards. The rate fell by almost 10 percentage points since 1980. Although the trend was more or less continuous, the steepest decline occurred during the 1990s. Matching rates of decline to presidential terms is enlightening. During Reagan's eight years, and the first Bush's term, the average abortion rate fell by 0.3 percentage points a year. But under Clinton, this rose to an annual average 0.5 percentage points. Under the second Bush (with the caveat that data only go to 2003), the rate of decline fell by 0.1 percentage points a year, practical standstill. The data for the abortion ratio are even more stark: here, the decline under Clinton is double that of the overall Republican average. So, there we have a seeming paradox: the largest decline in abortion took place under the sole Democratic presidential regime over this period. And yet the pro-life movement is strangely silent, and still hitches its wagon to the fortunes of the Republican party.

Let's go a little further with this empirical exercise and look at poverty rates. The poverty rate, whether measured by individuals or families rose under the first Bush administration (average half percentage point a year), fell dramatically under Clinton (average half percentage point a year), and rose again under the younger Bush (quarter percentage point a year). Are these trends related? Casual observation would say yes. But let's get a little more rigorous, and look at some empirical evidence. In particular, let's do a simple ordinary least squares regression of the abortion rate and the abortion ratio on a constant plus the poverty rate, 1980-2003. Here are the results:

Abortion rate = 2.06 + 1.71 * Poverty rate (R-squared= 0.37)

Abortion ratio = 9.43 + 1.32 * Poverty rate (R-squared= 0.44).

Both poverty coefficients are (highly) significant at the 1 percent level. This suggests that if we can reduce the poverty rate, there will be a more-than-proportionate reduction in abortion. Of course, these results can be challenged on the grounds that the data could be non-stationary. Running the regression in first differences should remove trends:

Change in abortion ratio = -0.25 + 0.37 * Change in poverty rate

Again, this is significant at the 1 percent level (but using the abortion rate is not). Remember, this is a very simple methodology to explore a rather basic hypothesis. But it seems clear that economic factors, insofar as they affect poverty, affect abortion patterns. Mapping these results into policy would suggest that the pro-life movement should broaden its scope to encompass economic as well as coercive strategies, since the ultimate goal is the reduction in abortions. It is also for this reason that I am highly skeptical about the need to vote Republican on pro-life grounds. But can the pro-life movement wrest itself from the grasp of the Republican party?

Al Gore and the Media

2007-05-21T17:29:00.000-05:00

The appalling state of the US media is a pet peeve of mine. Now, Al Gore rushes on the scene like a breath of fresh air. In his new book, he decries the absence of serious debate about the Iraq war, noting that "all of the evidence and arguments necessary to have made the right decision were available at the time and in hindsight are glaringly obvious." So what went wrong? Who or what is to blame for this travesty? More Gore:

"[T]he Executive Branch of our government has not only condoned but actively promoted the treatment of captives in wartime that clearly involves torture, thus overturning a prohibition established by General George Washington during the Revolutionary War. It is too easy—and too partisan—to simply place the blame on the policies of President George W. Bush. We are all responsible for the decisions our country makes. We have a Congress. We have an independent judiciary. We have checks and balances. We are a nation of laws. We have free speech. We have a free press. Have they all failed us?"

Gore thinks he has an answer:

"American democracy is now in danger—not from any one set of ideas, but from unprecedented changes in the environment within which ideas either live and spread, or wither and die. I do not mean the physical environment; I mean what is called the public sphere, or the marketplace of ideas.

It is simply no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse. I know I am not alone in feeling that something has gone fundamentally wrong. In 2001, I had hoped it was an aberration when polls showed that three-quarters of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on Sept. 11. More than five years later, however, nearly half of the American public still believes Saddam was connected to the attack.

At first I thought the exhaustive, nonstop coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial was just an unfortunate excess—an unwelcome departure from the normal good sense and judgment of our television news media. Now we know that it was merely an early example of a new pattern of serial obsessions that periodically take over the airwaves for weeks at a time: the Michael Jackson trial and the Robert Blake trial, the Laci Peterson tragedy and the Chandra Levy tragedy, Britney and KFed, Lindsay and Paris and Nicole."

Of course, Gore is correct. It's not just a crass and shallow media, it's the complete abrogation of responsibility that contributed to a completely uninformed public, prey for the empty sound bites of the Bush administration. Lest we forget, "more than five years later...nearly half of the American public still believes Saddam was connected to the attack." Had the media done its job properly, would there be a difference? Undoubtedly. And it certainly bears some of the blame for what happened.

As an aside, we can be fairly certain that a Gore presidency would not have wallowed in the intrinsic evil of torture. And I'm pretty sure abortion rates would not have risen either. So where does that leave us....?

The Economic Costs of Global Warming

2007-05-21T12:39:00.001-05:00

In debating this issue with bloggers Domenico Bettinelli and American Papist, the issue of the economic costs of taking action against global warming arose. Specifically, these guys accused me of proposing policy actions that would "wreak havoc on the global economy for one thing, leaving millions in poverty" (Bettinelli) and "destroy the very things it is trying to protect... such as the care of the impoverished, and concern for developing and 3rd-world countries"(Papist). I think the time has come to address this point, and in doing do, to refer to the most important study to date on the costs of global warming, the UK-treasury mandated Stern Review.

Bottom line of this comprehensive report: by not acting, the costs of climate change will eat up 5 percent of global GDP each year, which could rise to 20 percent, taking into account a wider range of risks. In contrast, the cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions would amount to 1 percent of global GDP a year. The major economic costs go far beyond the inconvenience to the American lifestyle of high gas prices, as "hundreds of millions of people could suffer hunger, water shortages, and coastal flooding". The most vulnerable, the poorest countries, will suffer "earliest and most", even though they are least responsible for global warming. Moreover, the next 10-20 years will prove absolutely crucial, rendering little time for complacency. Clearly, the benefits of decisive early action outweigh the costs.

Now, these results are not uncontroversial. In particular, the discounting assumptions have been heavily criticized in some quarters. It is customary in these exercises to discount the future simply because it is the future-- attaching less weight to the welfare of tomorrow than today. Stern rejects this methodology on ethical grounds. Hence his estimates of the damage caused by global warming are larger, simply because his discount rate is so much smaller.

There is much to like in this analysis from a Catholic perspective. If the true definition of "prudential judgment" is the application of Catholic doctrine to changing concrete circumstances, then the Church has an urgent duty to speak on this topic. And the Holy See observer to the United Nations, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, echoed the Stern Review when he noted that global warming will impose a disproportionate burden on "the poorest and weakest who, even if they are among the least responsible for global warming, are the most vulnerable because they have limited resources or live in areas at greater risk." He called for a shift from the "heedless pursuit of economic growth" toward an approach more respectful of Creation.

The discounting assumptions underlying the Stern report are also worthy of support from a Catholic perspective, as they do not fall into the utilitarian trap of assuming our lives are worth more than the lives of those not yet born. And, yet, how much of the current global warming denial is motivated by selfishness, by a tendency to heavily discount the future? See here for a tongue-in-cheek answer!

Are Catholics Liberal or Conservative?

2007-05-18T23:50:00.000-05:00

(Cross-posted from Vox Nova).

I have to admit, I hate these two words in current American discourse. I keep thinking of Inigo Montoya in Princess Bride when he says: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." And it's true, these terms have become catchall slogans to identify party allegiances rather than any underlying philosophy.

For Catholicism is essentially conservative, in the true sense of the word. We start from the obedience of faith, meaning the "full submission of intellect and will to the God who reveals" (Dei Verbum). We believe in the single sacred deposit of the word of God, the memory of Christ, entrusted to the Church. Our wisdom is inherited. Some things the Church knows for sure (and applies the technical term, infallible), while other things, though less certain, still require religious assent. And even when there is development of doctrine, the Church moves like a glacier, always ensuring there is appropriate continuity with the past. So, yes, this is conservative in the sense that we value the importance of tradition and stress the truth of the core teachings on faith and morals, irrespective of culture, society, circumstance.

But this is not conservatism as many (most?) on the right in America today define it. Let me list three aspects of modern "conservatism" that goes against the approach I have outlined above.

First, the radical individualism and utilitarian ethic that underpins laissez-faire capitalism is not conservative, but "liberal" in the true sense of the word. Real conservatism stresses the paramount importance of the common good, the commonweal.

Second, the nationalism that pervades much of the American right-wing movement also springs from the modern liberal tradition. It creates a pseudo-religion based on the nation, and violates the Catholic principle that all human beings are our brothers and sisters in Christ. Moreover, it takes a militaristic turn in the US that is frequently not in harmony with the memory of Christ.

Third, the function of law should be to protect the common good, not the prevention of vice and the promotion of virtue. Private morality is not an appropriate subject for the force of law, and yet many on the American right would disagree.

The Catholic approach is not ideological, in the sense that the modern "liberal" and "conservative" movements are ideological. I am rather fond of Cardinal Dulles's simple definition of prudential judgment as "the application of Catholic doctrine to changing concrete circumstances." That suggests a fundamentally empirical rather than an ideological approach. It means taking the principles we believe in and applying them to practical problems. What a breath of fresh air that would be?

Vox Nova!

2007-05-17T18:12:00.000-05:00

I'm a contributor on a fascinating new blog called Nox Nova, with some quite illustrious folks from the Catholic blogosphere. Check it out! I'll be posting a lot of the same things over there as here.

More On Catholic Bloggers And Global Warming

2007-05-17T13:10:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I talked about the American Papist. Today, let's focus on another A-list Catholic blogger, Domenico Bettinelli, who denounces the Vatican for embracing global warming "lies". In particular, he condemns Archbishop Migliore for supporting the scientific consensus that made-made global warming is real, necessitating policy actions. Bettinelli claims this is a lie, "based on the lies in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s false reports."

Wow, pretty strong language. I assume Bettinelli has some serious evidence to back up these conspiratorial claims. In fact, his "evidence" consists of an essay by Orson Scott Card. And who is this Card? An eminent scientist, no doubt? Forget it, Card is a Mormon science fiction novelist! Now, this is hardly surprising, given that the Republicans often appeal to the overflowing wisdom of pulp-fiction author Michael Crichton on the issue of global warming. As it happens, Card simply reprises the tired old cliches-- hockey sticks, medieval warming periods-- that have been debunked over and over and over again. At the same time, it is clear that he does not understand the concept of statistical inference (of course the climate models cannot be "certain"!). But it is this anti-intellectual streak that pervades the whole debate.

Are the predictions underpinning the IPCC report wrong? Perhaps. But not in the way Bettinelli and his friends seem to think. In the latest issue of Science (and you need more than an ability to write a good page-turner to get published here!), climatologists provide evidence that climate models may be understating the rate of global warming, and that the IPCC is far too conservative. In other words, it may be even worse...

But it's not really about scientific methods. The use of pseudo-science and quackery is just a handy tool. The American right hates global warming for a bevy of reasons. Some relate to evangelical theology-- the right to dominate the earth, the idea that God wants Americans to be wealthy, the immanence of the end times, an anti-intellectual streak. Others relate to crasser materialism, and a utilitarian calculus that sharply discounts the welfare of future generations.

If these scenarios come to fruition, this could be one of the most pressing moral issues of the day. Here's what I don't understand. Even if you are skeptical of the predictions, surely even a small probability of an event with disastrous consequences should be an argument for taking action today? After all, this is what sound risk management is all about. And as the consequentialist president once said, isn't it better to err on the side of life?

Nor are the arguments made by the deniers consistent. When I brought up the issue of the very existence of a number of Pacific islands under threat, the American Papist jumped into Marie Antoinette mode and retorted: " People can move off an island, it wouldn't be the first time." How utterly callous. He also complains about my tendency to "denigrate the standard of living NOW in vague hopes that something better will result in the future." At the same time, he criticises me for placing physical ahead of spiritual welfare. Which is it?

When it comes to Catholicism, the essence of Papist's argument (and, I assume, the others) is that Catholics are "free to disagree on prudential/judgmental matters... the Pope himself is NOT claiming infallibility on these issues.." This a a bit of a red herring that I've dealt with in the past (see here and here). For a start, Papist throws around the word "infallibility" in a sloppy manner. We need to make a few very careful distinctions here. If you refute an infallibly-defined doctrine, you are placing yourself outside the Church. But very few doctrines are infallibly defined. There is also a class of non-infallible teachings in the domain of faith and morals that are nonetheless part of the ordinary magisterium and require "religious assent". And third, the Church makes statements where prudential judgments come into play, and Catholics are indeed not bound by these judgments.

But we need to delve a little deeper. Prudential judgment simply refers to the "application of Catholic doctrine to changing concrete circumstances" (Cardinal Dulles's language). It is not a license to ignore, or to deride. But many nonetheless use this catchall phrase to justify dismissing any Church statements that contradict whatever secular ideology is in play. It seems especially dubious, in the area of global warming, to dispute the very nature of the "changing concrete circumstances" themselves. Undergirded by reason, the Church will of course accept scientific wisdom, as it is not her role to challenge. The area for legitimate debate surrounds the appropriate Catholic response to these circumstances. One can consider many options, but one simply cannot close ones eyes and pretend the problem does not exist. But that is not the debate they wish to have.

In conclusion, I fail to understand why certain Catholic bloggers would be driven to embrace these positions. Why is it that they feel compelled to disagree with the Vatican on every issue where there is a divergence with the American right-wing agenda? That is telling.

Daniel Pipes and Catholic Exchange?

2007-05-17T11:38:00.000-05:00

What is Catholic Exchange? In its own words, "Catholic Exchange is a non-profit media organization that seeks to bring the Good News of Jesus Christ as proclaimed by the Catholic Church to the world through the modern tools of mass communication". Sounds good to me. And yet one of its listed columnists is a man called Daniel Pipes.

Who is Daniel Pipes? Broadly speaking, he can be defined as "an American historian and counter-terrorism analyst who specializes in the Middle East." In reality, Pipes is a rapid supporter of Israel, with a penchant for demonizing Arabs and Muslims. He has an apocalyptic vision in which radical Islam is engaged in a winner-takes-all war against the western world. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? He defended internment of Japanese-Americans during the second world war. And of course, he sees the parallels today, arguing that "There is no escaping the unfortunate fact that Muslim employees in law enforcement, the military, and the diplomatic corps need to be watched for connections to terrorism, as do Muslim chaplains in prisons and the armed forces...Muslim visitors and immigrants must undergo additional background checks."

He is at his most extreme when discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and declared unequivocally that "There can be either an Israel or a Palestine, but not both.. to those who ask why the Palestinians must be deprived of a state, the answer is simple: grant them one and you set in motion a chain of events that will lead either to its extinction or the extinction of Israel." He even founded Campus Watch, designed to root out "anti-American and anti-Israel" biases. Of course, he will loosely throw around the "anti-semite" slur against anybody who disagrees with the policies of Israel.

Now, Pipes is entitled to his views, but what in the name of God is he doing writing for Catholic Exchange? How does his venom contribute to bringing the "Good News of Jesus Christ as proclaimed by the Catholic Church to the world"? As I noted yesterday, the support for Israel from the likes of Falwell and Dobson arises from their bizarre dispensationalist theology, not from anything in Catholic teaching. In recent times, the Vatican has never recognized the existence of the state de jure, only de facto. In other words, Israel is a secular state with the rights and responsibilities of every other secular state, with no God-given "land grant", and certainly not one that can be taken by force. In fact, the Catholic church is admirably even-handed in its approach to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. I ask again: what is Pipes doing on Catholic Exchange?

Salvation and Lost

2007-05-17T11:23:00.000-05:00

I'm a huge fan of the show, Lost. Its intricate plots, puzzling mysteries, and thoughtful character development make it the most intriguing show on TV. Of course, like everybody else, I have no idea where the writers will eventually take us...

Recently, I noted that the writers have been exploring the theme of sacrifice in the last few episodes:

First, we learn that Desmond used to be a monk, and was uneasy of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac on God's orders. In that episode, Desmond struggles with the issue of "sacrificing" Charlie-- his visions of the future caused him to see Charlie dying, and a rescue attempt. Desmond feared that he needed to let Charlie die to allow this scenario to evolve. In the end, he doesn't do it. He is unwilling to sacrifice an innocent for some unknown "destiny".

Second, Ben asks Locke to kill his father in some kind of ritual sacrifice as an initiation rite. In this, the Others seem almost demonic. Despite the fact that his father tried to kill him, and left him in a wheelchair, Locke cannot do it. Instead, he cons Sawyer into killing him. As we would say, this is formal cooperation in evil, and doesn't let Locke off the hook...

Third, Sun is pregnant and in a no-win scenario. If the child was conceived on the island, she will probably die, but she will know the father is Jin, her husband. If the child was conceived before they arrived on the island, the father was the guy she was having an affair with. Sun wants the first scenario to be true, for her husband's benefit, even though she would lose her own life. She is happy when this is confirmed.

Fourth, Desmond again presents Charlie with a dilemma. He sees him dying again, in the context of disarming some system that jammed signals from the island. If Charlie does it, he dies, but everybody can be rescued. But this time, Desmond tells Charlie. In a very moving episode, Charlie accepts this responsibility.

Very interesting discourse on the different forms of sacrifice!

Hitchens, Falwell, Hannity, and Reed

2007-05-17T11:02:00.000-05:00

I'm not a fan of Christopher Hitchens, from his attack on Mother Teresa to his support for Bush's war to his snarky close-minded approach to religion. But they guy is certainly eloquent, and facing him in an argument must be a daunting task. Michael Crowley from TNR's The Plank discusses a clip of Hitchens debating Falwell's legacy last night with Sean Hannity. Watch it. For a start, Hannity is no match for him. After laying into Falwell's dubious theology, Hannity turns to Ralph Reed for the other side of the argument. Hitchens, in classic form, starts interrupting and referring to Reed as part of the "Abramoff faction", repeating that name over and over. A brilliant tactic, given Reed's close association with Abramoff and the fact that Abramoff had, among other things, lobbied for the sweatshops owners on the Northern Mariana islands, who were implicated in forced abortions and forcing women into prostitution. Hypocrisy is not the word!

But, watching the clip of Reed, something else struck me. Despite Hitchens's constant hectoring, Reed tried to list the core values that Falwell stood for. If you were asked to list the five key principles that guided Falwell in 10 second, what would they be? This is illuminating. First, the protection of innocent human life. Second, the sanctity of marriage. Third, support for Israel. Fourth, anti-communism. Fifth, opposition to "radical Jihadism". Now, are these values from the gospel or from American foreign policy? No, this is a Christianity pollluted by a very bad theology, and welded to American nationalism.

James Dobson and the Middle East

2007-05-16T17:16:00.000-05:00

Andrew Sullivan links to a discussion between James Dobson and fellow traveler Joel Rosenberg about a book the latter has written about Armageddon and the current middle eastern situation. Here is a favor of the discussion:

"Dobson: Joel, we've just read quotations telling us that a nuclear attack on the United States in the long run is inevitable. ... We know that appeasement never works. How can you negotiate with people whose stated intention is to kill you?

Rosenberg: you can't. ... our command is to "be strong and courageous." That's what God said to Joshua four times in the first chapter of Joshua. We who have the Holy Spirit in us should not cower in the face of this, because the Muslims are lost, and because they are lost they are being driven I believe by THE ENEMY in a way that will confront us but we know that Jesus Christ is powerful and we know he is moving in the Middle East.

Dobson: We know the Lord is in control. We know that he has never lost a battle. And we know he loves us, and he loves the nation of Israel and has made that clear for thousands of years. So what should we do?

Rosenberg: I think the bottom line is found in Matt 28, verses 18-20, where Jesus says "All authority under heaven and earth has been given to me, therefore go and make disciples of all nations." Jesus is calling us to go reach the nations of the Middle East, Russia and elsewhere....God says he is going to supernaturally intervene, we're talking about fire from heaven, a massive earthquake, diseases spreading through the enemy forces. It is going to be such a clear judgement against the enemies of Israel that Ezekiel 39 says that will take seven months to bury all the bodies of the slain enemies of Israel. And the birds of the air and the beasts of the field are going to eat many of these slain soldiers. "

This is lunacy, but should we be surprised? I've always argued that the zealous support for Israel in the US owes more to fundamentalist protestant theology and less to the "Jewish lobby". There are various hues to this theory. In its most extreme form, dispensationalists believe Israeli strength against its neighbors will help bring about the second coming of Christ. Of course, ironically, the Jews are damned in the end. A less extreme reading holds that the Jews have a divine right to the land of Israel.

Catholics believe differently. While the Jewish people are our forefathers in faith, they have no divine land lease. Neither does anybody else. In fact, Jesus made it quite clear he was not interested in a political campaign to get rid of the Romans. He emphatically rejected reclaiming the Promised Land by conquest. The false messiahs who were his competition embraced the idea. Their efforts led to the destruction of the Temple and Masada, as well as the abolition by the Roman Empire of the province of Judea. In recent times, the Vatican has never recognized the existence of the state de jure, only de facto.

The views of Dobson and his friends are not just examples of bad theology to laugh about (like Scientology!). No, they have chilling implications. They are behind the obstinate refusal of the US to play fair in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. And ominously, Dobson is now talking to Bush about Iran, and making comments about how we cannot appease Hitler/Ahmedinejad. Again, their messianic Calvinism allows them to divide the world into two groups, the good and the bad, assured that the bad will eventually perish. Going to war is nothing to be feared, as God will look after his own. As Catholics, we need to stand up to this insanity. It's the theology, stupid.

But where are the Catholics? Our old friend Bill Donohue is busy attacking Catholic Democrats and praising Jerry Falwell's "moral courage so often lacking in religious leaders of all faiths." What else is new?

Now Catholic Bloggers Join the Anti-Global Warming Brigade

2007-05-16T15:58:00.000-05:00

Earlier, I compared the views of the Vatican and Jerry Falwell on global warming. The former was sober, accepting the validity of the scientific consensus, and discussing the moral and ethical implications. The latter was more concerned with the rapture and American capitalism. I also recently discussed a plethora of reasons as to why the American right disdains global warming with so much vehemence. Although the post was decidedly tongue-in-cheek, it did raise some core issues, in that many evangelicals have totally bought into laissez-faire individualism, which--combined with a voluntarist de-emphasizing of the relationship between faith and reason and an overwhelming belief that they are the elect and may even be living in the end times-- leads them to downplay and ridicule the burgeoning scientific consensus that man-made global warming is very real.

And yet, I see an prominent Catholic blog, American Papist, has cast his lot in with the worst of the deniers. And by worst of the deniers, I mean Senator James Inhofe, the man who uses novelist Michael Crichton as his "expert witness" and who calls environmentalists Nazis. He claimed global warming was one of the greatest hoaxes of all time, and that even the weather channel is involved in the conspiracy. Huh? Suffice it to say, most of what Inhofe says about global warming is utter rubbish. To see a thorough refutation of all his phony arguments, see here. And yet American Papist links with seeming approval to this clown's latest release, which claims that more and more scientists are switching from believers to skeptics (actually, it's the opposite, as latest evidence suggests that risk analysis underpinning in the climate models is now skewed sharply upwards, meaning that it may actually be worse than the baseline).

Let me not conclude without raising some other facts about Inhofe. He one of only nine senators to vote against the McCain amendment banning torture. He uses a fundamentalist reading of the Old Testament to justify a hyper-support for Israel. And he thinks the 9/11 attacks were part of divine retribution for not doing enough to help Israel. When you piece it together, his global warming denial fits with his peculiar (and misguided) theology. But why would a serious Catholic blogger want to jump on this bandwagon? Does Neuhaus's alliance with the evangelicals really stretch so far? As Topol said in Fiddler on the Roof: "If I bend that far, I will break".

The Race to Replace an Adolescent President

2007-05-16T14:25:00.000-05:00

Many see Bush as an adolescent president. The put-down nicknames. Addressing a prime minister as "Yo, Blair". Yelling "air assault" on his bicycle. The Beavis and Butthead laugh. The cockiness. The dumb jokes. The disdain for learning. The insecurity. The petulance and stubbornness. The intellectual laziness. The tendency to surround himself with fawning sycophants. Yes, all the hallmarks of a spoiled adolescent. But there is one adolescent trait that stands out above all others: the swaggering machismo, the willingness to punch first and think later, the fear of being seen as weak. The wanna-be tough guy.

That's Bush. And even though the contenders for the Republican nomination are running as fast as they can from a hugely unpopular president, there is one aspect of Bush's personality that they all want to make their own. Yes, the adolescent aggression. Just look at the pathetic display of psuedo-cajones at last night's Republican debate in South Carolina. As Digby notes, they "sound like a bunch of psychotic 12 year olds" for whom it's "all about the codpiece".

Dispiritingly, many of the candidates were only too willing to embrace the intrinsic evil of torture, except for John McCain, who has actually been tortured, and the contrarian Ron Paul. Specifically, both Giuliani and Tancredo backed waterboarding, a technique perfected by the Khmer Rouge. Pumped-up Rudy wants them to use "every method they can think of". Keeping up with the both the adolescent theme and the Republican penchant for blurring reality and fantasy, Tancredo says he wants Jack Bauer (to huge applause, of course). Romney just looked sinister when he all-too-enthusiastically invoked the Orwellian phrase "enhanced interrogation techniques" with a manic glint in his eye. He also wants to double the size of Guantanamo (again, to applause). Even Brownback, a nominal Catholic, expressed his support for torture. Clearly, somebody needs to tell Brownback that supporting torture is not really that different from supporting abortion, in that both positions are underpinned by consequentialism. And if Romney loves torturing people so much, how genuine do you think his conversion to the pro-life cause actually was?

Think about this. Only 20 percent of the Republican candidates think there is something very wrong with torturing people. In fact, as John Dickerson noted, " some candidates appeared ready to do the torturing themselves". And this is supposed to be the "moral values" party? God help us.

But there was one ray of hope on the podium last night: Ron Paul. Although I certainly don't support his libertarianism, he was the only candidate who spoke common sense. The only candidate who looked like an adult rather than a strutting teenage boy. And while the other candidates thumped their chests and parroted brainless slogans such as how they "hate us for our freedom" (the award for supreme stupidity goes to Tancredo for claiming that it's a dictate of the Muslim religion to kill Americans) , Ron Paul actually told the truth. He talked about the blowback that comes from Americans intervening in the middle east. What's more, he even raised the role of America in deposing the legitimate Iranian government in 1953 in support of shah Pahlavi, who brutal dictatorship brought about the 1979 revolution. We know what happened thereafter. He related to history, culture, context. Wow. How rare and and yet how refreshing.

Just look at the Iraq debacle. Anybody with even superficial knowledge of the colonialist carve-up of the Ottoman empire and the underlying ethnic divisions would have realized that the sailing would not be smooth. Add to this toxic mix the perception that the US government is overly-biased toward Israel and in the thrall of the energy industry, and... well, the results won't be pleasant. And of course, the infantile machismo that not only refuses to face reality but actively supports even harsher methods, including torture, only makes things worse. As Andrew Sullivan noted, "The more Arabs and Muslims feel alienated and attacked by the U.S.. the more support terror will get, and the more power al Qaeda gains". Somewhere, in some cave, Osama Bin Laden is laughing. Don't these juvenile clowns realize how much damage they are doing?

And yet, only a single candidate in ten is intellectually capable and brave enough to think through the issues. This ability of course, is not prized in adolescent culture. Already, there are ominous signs that Paul is on the verge of being shunned and boycotted by the conservative movement. How utterly depressing.

Was Falwell Motivated by Abortion?

2007-05-16T13:09:00.000-05:00

It is becoming part of conventional wisdom that the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision led to Jerry Falwell becoming politically active. As the New York Times wrote in its obituary this morning:

"... Mr. Falwell said the 1973 Supreme Court ruling legalizing abortion, Roe v. Wade, produced an enormous change in him. Soon he began preaching against the ruling and calling for Christians to become involved in political action".

Except that it is not true. At that time, as noted by Michelle Goldberg, opposition to abortion was seen as was "seen as the province of Catholics, a group then widely despised by fundamentalist Protestants." Falwell's denomination officially supported abortion throughout the 1970s. This is not a matter of left-wing revisionism. Take it from Richard John Neuhaus, who knows something about the subject:

"Among the religious institutions of national influence, the Catholic Church stood alone in protesting the immediate evil and long-term implications of Roe v. Wade. Although it is largely forgotten today, evangelical Protestantism was in support of Roe v. Wade. Years after the decision, the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant association in the country, was passing resolutions in favor of a woman’s “right to choose.” ...Evangelicals viewed the protection of the unborn as a “Catholic issue,” and anti-Catholicism in evangelicalism was much stronger than it is today."

So what provoked Falwell's conversion? Race. Goldberg nails it:

"No, what really galvanized the religious right were Supreme Court rulings stripping whites-only Christian academies, like the one Falwell founded in 1966, of their tax-exempt status. Fervent opposition to abortion, which eventually cemented the alliance between conservative Protestant and Catholics, came later."

We need to recall how Falwell and his acolytes viewed the issue of race back then. Falwell was a big-time segregationist, and spoke in favor of racist positions (such as opposing Brown v. Board of Education) and was highly critical of Martin Luther King. Although he recanted on segregation later in life, he opposed sanctions on South Africa throughout he 1980s and called Bishop Tutu a phony. And of course, the whole "southern strategy" of Richard Nixon was underpinned by a subtle, if unspoken, racism.

So, as I've noted before, the logical conclusion is that Falwell and his fellow evangelicals embraced the pro-life cause because it became politically expedient for them to do. It was the Trojan horse for them to push forward with a social agenda that did not have the moral clarity of abortion. Racism became uncool, but by wrapping themselves in the pro-life mantle, a new cohort of southern politicians could actually claim the moral high ground, while barely changing their core beliefs. But there was far more...

Remember also what the original Moral Majority movement was all about: "pro-life, pro-traditional family, pro-moral and pro-American." Falwell successfully welded together a the pro-life position with a larger secular ideology, one based on free-market individualism and a vigorous pro-American nationalism. There is a direct line from this philosophy to religious conservatives embracing war and torture today, because it is the "pro-American" thing to do. It also explains why this movement is largely silent on issues of poverty, inequality, healthcare, and the environment.

In a nutshell, embracing the abortion movement had the benefit of deflecting attention from the obvious conflicts between a Christian organization and the many injustices ignored by the prevailing individualist and nationalist ideology. The evangelical right (who would become the backbone of the Republican party) used the abortion issue as a veil to garner Catholic support, and to hide their real agenda. In other words, they would play the seductive pro-life tune to seduce Catholics into becoming Calvinists. In that, Falwell was spectacularly successful. The big losers? Catholics.

American Health Care System is Atrocious

2007-05-16T12:35:00.000-05:00

Kevin Drum links to a cross-country study of health outcomes undertaken by the Commonwealth Fund. Basically, in a detailed study of six countries-- Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, the UK, and the US-- America ranks last along an array of indicators, including: quality care, access, efficiency, equity, and healthy lives. And while the US spends far more on healthcare than elsewhere, it is the only country in the sample not to guarantee universal health insurance, which explains the poor outcomes along the access and equity dimensions. But the US falls down in other areas too.

Let's start with quality. The US scores poorly when it comes to chronic care management and safe, coordinated, and patient-centered care. As Kevin Drum notes, "when it comes to various sorts of preventable medical errors, we're absolutely terrible." It lags in the adaption of information technology.

In terms of access, the US is at the bottom of the heap, even though those with insurance can easily access specialists. The problem is not that access is denied by long waiting lists, but (more insidiously), by costs.

How about efficiency? Still at the bottom. Given the huge outlays and poor outcomes, the US receives an appalling return on its healthcare investment. Of course, much is eaten up in insurance company administrative costs, costs that single payer systems (think Medicare) can avoid. And in the US, patients tend to end up in the emergency room for cases that should be dealt with by a primary care physician.

Equity. Here I will quote directly from the executive summary: "Americans with below-average incomes were much more likely than their counterparts in other countries to report not visiting a physician when sick, not getting a recommended test, treatment or follow-up care, not filling a prescription, or not seeing a dentist when needed because of costs." A staggering 40 percent of lower-income Americans reported avoiding seeing a doctor when sick during the past year for cost reasons.

And finally, healthy lives. Death rates in the US from "conditions amenable to medical care" are 25-50 percent higher than elsewhere in the study. Appalling.

You know, John Edwards is one of the few national politicians talking about the need for universal health insurance. And yet the Republicans can only babble on about his haircuts. Talk about Nero...

Cardinal Rodriguez on Communion and Excommunication

2007-05-16T10:43:00.000-05:00

Rocco Palmo links to an excellent interview with Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga, archbishop of Tegucigalapa in Honduras, and possible future pope. He was asked about the recent furore over Benedict's reiteration of basic canon law concerning the eucharist, that was so misunderstood by the press. But Cardinal Rodriguez makes a brilliant distinction between the application of canon law, and the more crass political attempts by some on the American right to deny communion to certain politicians (see here for my take). Here's his distinction:

"Q. Do you agree with the Pope's statement that pro-choice Catholic politicians merit excommunication?
A. It is canon law that everyone who works for abortion is excommunicated. It's not something the Pope invented. If you favor abortion, you are outside the communion of the Church. And it was necessary to say that. There are people in Mexico saying I am Catholic and I support abortion rights. This is a contradiction in its very essence. As a teacher of the Church, the Pope has a responsibility of teaching when something happening is wrong.

Q. Do you agree with bishops who deny giving Holy Communion to the these politicians?
A. This is a different point. For who am I to deny Holy Communion to a person? I cannot. It's in the tradition of moral theology that even if I know a person is living in grave sin, I cannot take a public action against him. It would be giving scandal to the person. Yes, he should not seek [communion], but I cannot deny it from him...."

Excellent answer!

Global Warming: Vatican Vs. Falwell

2007-05-16T10:33:00.000-05:00

Via Rocco Palmo, the Holy See observer to the United Nations, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, said the following:

"The scientific evidence for global warming and for humanity’s role in the increase of greenhouse gasses becomes ever more unimpeachable...The consequences of climate change are being felt not only in the environment, but in the entire socio-economic system and, as seen in the findings of numerous reports already available, they will impact first and foremost the poorest and weakest who, even if they are among the least responsible for global warming, are the most vulnerable because they have limited resources or live in areas at greater risk.... In order to address the double challenge of climate change and the need for ever greater energy resources, we will have to change our present model from one of the heedless pursuit of economic growth in the name of development, towards a model which heeds the consequences of its actions and is more respectful towards the Creation we hold in common, coupled with an integral human development for present and future generations."

And then there was Falwell:

"I can tell you, our grandchildren will laugh at those who predicted global warming. We'll be in global cooling by then, if the Lord hasn't returned. I don't believe a moment of it. The whole thing is created to destroy America's free enterprise system and our economic stability."

What a charlatan (see here for why the right hates global warming). Anyway, I'm so glad the "one true religion... subsists in the Catholic and apostolic Church"!

Follow-Up on Fertility Rates

2007-05-15T16:01:00.000-05:00

A commenter on France Vs. United States post argued that the high fertility rates in France reflect the propensity of Muslims to have more children, and that the fertility rate of non-Muslim women is shockingly low. This is one of those great urban myths of the right, peddled by scare-mongers like Mark Steyn (who simply does not understand statistics, by the way). The truth is a lot more complex. In the words of Jean-Michel Charpin, Director of the French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) "the fertility rate among France's immigrant population was slightly higher than among the population at large, but said the difference was minimal".

The logic of Steyn goes like this:

"Which country has the healthiest fertility rate? France. Which country has the most Muslims? France. Which country has the second healthiest fertility rate on the western end of the Continent? Denmark.Which country has the second largest proportion of Muslims? Denmark. Get the picture?"

Actually, Steyn does not "get the picture" at all. Reviewing Steyn's book predicting the demographic inevitability of an Islamic takeover of Europe, Johann Hari notes that "he offers no statistics on the European Muslim birthrate". Hmm, no statistics to back up the central contention of his book? Sounds a little like truthiness to me! How delightfully Bushite in approach!

Let's again appeal to OECD statistics (the most recent statistics in OECD's Society at a Glance: OECD Social Indicators - 2006 Edition). Here are some fertility statistics:

United States 2.01
Ireland 1.97
Iceland1.93
New Zealand 1.90
France 1.89
Australia 1.75
Norway 1.75
Netherlands 1.73
Denmark 1.72
Finland 1.72
Sweden 1.65
United Kingdom 1.64
Luxembourg 1.63
Belgium 1.62
Canada 1.52
Portugal 1.47
Austria 1.40
Switzerland 1.40
Japan 1.32
Germany 1.31
Italy 1.26
Greece 1.25
Spain 1.25
Korea 1.17

Now, wedged in between the United States and France lie Ireland, Iceland, and New Zealand. I don't see Muslim immigration as driving fertility in these countries! Look at the next best countries on the list-- the Nordics like Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Why is fertility so high in this part of the world? Well, it actually has a lot to do with the much-maligned welfare state, at least in its Nordic incarnation. A few years back, Joëlle Sleebos, at the OECD looked into the statistical determinants of fertility. The first thing she noticed was that there was a gap between actual and desired fertility, as families wanted the "two child norm". This divergence, despite the mocking tones of Steyn and others, reflects economic considerations. Accordingly, policies that make childrearing less costly tend to raise fertility. Such policies include subsidized childcare, generous maternity and paternity leave, and family-friendly finetuning of the tax-benefit system. Not surprisingly, the Nordics have come the furthest on these grounds, while the Mediterranean countries lag.

Note that Steyn looks at his non-facts and concludes the opposite:

"The state has gradually annexed all the responsibilities of adulthood - healthcare, childcare, care of the elderly - the point that it's effectively severed its citizens from humanity's primal instincts, not least the survival instinct."

This is totally backwards, and a good example of ideology trumping fact.

Guns and the Culture of Death in Virginia

2007-05-15T15:12:00.000-05:00

Mayor Bloomberg of New York is trying to crack down on gun deaths in his city. Finding that many of the firearms on the city streets are coming from Virginia, at one point accounting for almost half of guns recovered by the police, Bloomberg decided to send in undercover agents to gun stores in Virginia to conduct sting operations. The idea is to see if gun shops will sell guns illegally, involving "straw purchases, in which one person legally fills out a form and buys a gun for someone else." As a result of these operations, New York filed lawsuits against six gun shops in Virginia that sold guns illegally to undercover agents.

How did Virginia respond? By having a group known as the Virginia Citizens Defense League raffle off guns to aid the guns shops under investigation. Yes, that's right, they gave out free guns. Even Governor Kaine, who has sharply criticized Bloomberg's tactics noted that when he "read about a group doing this, it just makes me wonder what makes them tick." Of course, the top Republican elected officials defended the gun giveaway, partly on the grounds of giving the finger to Mike Bloomberg. So shortly after the Virginia Tech massacre, this is pretty insensitive, to say the least. Nobody seems to care about the proximity of the actions and policies of Virginia to gun deaths in New York city. Is this cooperation in evil, I wonder? How remote?

Something is rotten in the state of Virginia.

Catholic Judges Vote the Wrong Way, Again

2007-05-15T11:04:00.000-05:00

I noted recently that the Catholic Supreme Court justices had voted against Catholic teaching on the death penalty in three separate cases. Well, oops, they did it again. This time, the case revolved around whether or not a prisoner who would not let his defense attorney present mitigating evidence during his original trial could change his mind and get a new hearing. No way, said the illustrious Catholic justices Thomas, Scalia, Kennedy, Roberts, and Alito. It was the non-Catholics (Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer) who voted to uphold the prisoner's rights. As Stevens noted in his dissent, the man had a "serious organic brain disorder". And his lawyer did not uncover this fact during the trial.

Now, there are those who will undoubtedly defend the actions on the majority on legal technical grounds. There are those who will argue that there is no authoritative Church teaching directing how to vote on these kinds of procedural grounds. But this is surely misguided. While the Church does not claim that the death penalty is always and everywhere wrong (like abortion), it does carve out conditions under the death penalty may and may not be immoral, namely, that there must be no other way to defend society (see here, here, here, here, and here for more). No death penalty in the United States meets this strict condition, and hence Catholics are obliged to oppose capital punishment in this country. In the present case, it would seem that "erring on the side of life" calls for granting a new trial.

And anyway, as Patti Waldmeir in the Financial Times wrote, this is part of a more general trend:

"The recent addition of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, the Bush appointees, might have substantially shifted the balance of power on the court on death penalty issues, experts said. Before their appointment, the court had done much to chip away at the edifice of the death penalty by insisting on improvements in legal representation for capital defendants and ruling unconstitutional the application of capital punishment to juveniles and the mentally retarded."

Thanks to the Catholics, we now have a much more pro-death penalty Supreme Court. Can we please, please, please have some moral consistency?

France Vs. United States: An Argument From Economics

2007-05-14T15:59:00.000-05:00

Mirror of Justice has been hosting an interesting debate about the efficacy of the French economy and social system. On the one hand Greg Sisk argues that Catholic social teaching should not support economic systems that lead to a dominant centralized state and widespread mandates on the private sector. To make his case, he provides a litany of problems with the French system, including a stagnant economy, high unemployment, an ingrained entitlement mentality, and "a failure to contribute much of anything in the way of creative increases in wealth to the world economy". On the basis of such a record, he concludes that:

"[I]t vitally important to regularly remind all of us that faithful recognition
of our responsibility for the common good, a sincere and sacrificial endorsement
of the preferential option for the poor, and a firm commitment to the central
role of the family in society should not shade into uncritical support for the
secular welfare state nor be confused with a political platform for new
government programs, economic controls, and regulations or unfunded mandates to
be imposed on employers"

On the other side, Thomas Berg argues that the picture painted by Sisk is little more than a crude caricature. He notes that France has "lower abortion rates, longer life expectancy, lower infant mortality rates, and lower homicide rates" and argues that the welfare state has something to do with this, especially since it subsidizes childcare. Health outcomes are also better. Berg then notes that French productivity is similar to the US, and that the French are merely choosing to work less to enjoy more leisure and family time.

To assess these issues, let's use a tool that is somewhat out of fashion in these days of truthiness and relativism: facts and figures. First, Sisk claims that growth in the US is three times that of France. But to arrive at this figure, one must cherry-pick the data carefully (I suspect he looked at a single year-- I could also do the same, and find years were French growth was higher--2000, for example). In fact, since 2000, the average growth rate in the US was 2.7 percent, as opposed to 1.9 percent in France. Higher, but not astronomically so.

To go further, let me introduce a simple arithmetic exercise, highly useful when examining these kinds of empirical issues. The cleanest measure of living standards is GDP per capita, or real GDP (Y) divided by population (POP). Let H be the total number of hours worked, and L be the number of employees. We can therefore state the following:

(Y/POP) = (Y/H) * (H/L) * (L/POP)

What this does is break income per capita into three distinct terms. First, Y/H is real output divided by hours worked, or productivity per hour. H/L is hours worked per employee, or average hours. And L/POP is the ratio of employment to population. When one of these ratios changes, living standards move. This is a simple but powerful tool.

Now let's look at the numbers (the source for everything is OECD). I will restrict my analysis to the last decade, and compare France and the US. First, living standards are lower in France; in fact, GDP per capita in France is just over three-quarters that of the US. But what causes this? How about productivity, that core driver of growth? No, productivity per hour in France is pretty much on par with the US. Berg is right. The difference is explained by the other two factors. Hours per worker are, on average over the past decade, about 8 percent lower in France, and this has been made a little worse after the introduction of the 35-hour work week. But again, this is largely a social choice in France. The French are willing to accept lower living standards in return for more leisure and family time. Not all happiness is monetary!

So far so good. But there is a dark cloud on the horizon. The third category, the ratio of employment to population, is substantially lower in France, standing at about 84 percent of the US rate. [A quick aside: France might be catching up, as its private sector employment grew far more rapidly that in the US over the past decade]. Delving deeper, France's low employment rate is particularly pronounced among the young and the old. And this is where there is some merit to Sisk's arguments. It is indeed possible that generous welfare benefits, including inducements to early retirement, induce some to exit the labor force. At the same time, France's rigid employment protection legislation creates a dual labor force comprised of secure insiders and agitated outsiders. This is the cause of much of youth unemployment, and, more ominously, it lies behind the frustration of the North African immigrants who cannot pry open the labor force.

But this does not mean the welfare state should be dismantled. If you look at some of the greatest success stories in generating employment over the past two decades in Europe, you will find small-government countries like Ireland and the UK, but also big-government countries like Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands. What binds these countries together is not the size of the welfare state, but the underlying incentives. Here's a hint: all of these countries have low employment protection laws, and few regulations on the product market. Take the Danish system. If you are unemployed, your replacement rate is nearly 100 percent, as you gain from welfare pretty much what you earned at work. But this is not a free gift! The unemployed are forced to take part in labor market programs, and the welfare runs out after four years. Also, it is pretty easy to be fired in Denmark, as the cost of being unemployed is much lower. Somehow, this system works, leading to a dynamic economy combined with generous social protections.

One other thing to note, from the point of view of solidarity and the preferential option for the poor, is that both poverty and inequality are extremely low in countries like Denmark and Sweden, but quite elevated in the US and the UK. The poverty rate in the US is around 17 percent, as opposed to 7 percent in France, and 4 percent in Denmark. Gini coefficients (measuring income inequality) tell a similar story. Something to bear in mind.

Let's conclude with some data on social outcomes. For education and health, the US spends a lot, and gets a poor return on its money. On primary education, the US spends $8,305 per student, while France spends $4,939. On secondary education, the US spends $9,590; France spends $8,653. In terms of outcomes, the upper secondary graduation rate in the US is only 75 percent, while it is 81 percent in France. And math scores (based on the 2003 PISA test) are extremely low in the US: 483 versus 511 in France and an OECD avearge of 507.

The story is similar when it comes to healthcare. France spends $2,401 per capita on health, while the US spends $4,497 (almost double!). In return, life expectancy is 68.1 in the US, 71.5 in France. Infant mortality: 4 per 1000 in France, and 7 per 1000 in the US. And maternal mortality: 8.8 in France, and 10.5 in the US. I guess socialized medicine has some benefits after all! [One more aside: the inefficiency of the US system stems from the fact that the insurance companies cream off a huge skim as middlemen, but that's a story for another day.]

Unsatisfactory Mormon Documentary

2007-05-11T15:31:00.000-05:00

I watched the first part of the PBS documentary on the Mormons last night and found it somewhat lacking. Sure, the attempt to provide balance was laudable, but certain aspects of Mormon theology were simply not mentioned, and may even have been covered up. While it did note that Mormons view God and Jesus as bodily creatures, we got no further indications of Mormon cosmology, its strongly Gnostic undertones, and its great difference with Christianity.

It is crucial to note that Mormons believe that human spirits existed with God before the creation of the world, and that man and God are co-eternal. All spirits, including Jesus and Satan, are seen as spirit children of heavenly parents. God's plan involved sending these spirits to earth in bodily form behind a veil of forgetfulness to obscure humanity's divine origin. Humans had free will, and those who obeyed God's commandments could return. Jesus, identified as the God Jehovah in the Old Testament, volunteers to go to earth to help humanity on its return journey to God, by overcoming sin and death. Lucifer objected to this plan, arguing that free will should be taken away, so that salvation could be assured. The rejection of his argument led to a war in heaven and Lucifer's expulsion.

Upon death, humans enter the spirit world, awaiting final judgement, after which they are sent to one of three heavens or kingdoms. Ultimately, humans can achieve their destiny of becoming Gods, just as God was once mortal. As the well-known Mormon dictum goes: "as man is, God once was; God is, man may become". And God is viewed as living on or near a planet called Kolob, and pious Mormons (those in the highest heaven, or celestal kingdom) can follow similar paths, becoming Gods, ruling their own planets, and bearing spirit children.

These tenets adhere closely to classical Gnosticism. Gnosticism believes that within every human being is a "spark of the divine" that is itching to escape the confines of the world (sometimes seen as evil, the creation of a lesser God) to be re-united with a greater God, from whence it came. As with Mormonism, what underpins Gnosticism is the idea that the difference between "God" and creation is one of degree, not of kind, and the view that humanity is returning to some kind of equality with "God". And yet, PBS opted not to explore this fascinating but somewhat bizarre cosmology.

One further quibble, relating to the discussion of the infamous Mountain Meadows massacre, in which Mormon settlers brutally murdered a group of migrants from Arkansas-- up to 140 men, women, and children. The documentary went to great length to provide extenuating circumstances, detailing the oppression against Mormons and the pervading sense of persecution. One commenter argued that Brigham Young simply went too far. The next time PBS or anybody else does a documentary about the Catholic church and mentions the inquisition, the crusades, or Galileo, I expect a similarly sympathetic portrayal of extenuating circumstances. I won't hold my breath.

Ten Reasons Why The American Right Dismisses Global Warming

2007-05-11T10:19:00.000-05:00

Friday seems to be the day for lists. So, here we go, in no particular order:

(1) If Al Gore is for it, we must be against it. That's politics after all (Don't tell them that Nicolae Ceausescu banned abortion, by the way...)

(2) Environmentalism is a hippy-dippy new age religion that must be opposed. So, if some tree-huggers believe in global warming.... see point (1). Actually, the Church teaches that "Care for the environment represents a challenge for all of humanity" and Pope Benedict recently condemned the "destruction of the environment, its improper or selfish use, and the violent hoarding of the earth's resources".

(3) A willingness to ignore scientific consensus. In other words, faith and and reason are in opposition, "truth can contradict truth". But we believe that God is reason and infinite intelligence, and that faith and reason are intimately entwined. We simply cannot appeal to faith to dismiss basic scientific tenets that we do not like. That would be voluntarist. Or it could simply reflect the Bushite post-modernism that denies objective truth and endeavors to create its own reality, re-modeling facts in its own image.

(4) A love of consumerism, materialism, individualism. This truth we hold to be self-evident...

(5) American exceptionalism, or the belief that America is somehow exempt from the responsibilities of other nations. This often relates to the Calvinist notion that America is uniquely favored by God, comprising the "elect", those chosen by God to be saved through no action of their own. That pesky UN certainly has no right dictating to America!

(6) A theological position that supports using the earth as mankind sees fit. At its most crude, this approach has been defended by Ann Coulter: "God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said, 'Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It's yours." In one sense, this follows naturally from (5). Needless to say, this position is diametrically opposed by the Church.

(7) If the rapture is coming soon, why worry about global warming? Only the damned (read Europeans and other assorted non-Americans) will be left, and the heat they will face won't be from the climate!.

(8) Anti-intellectualism. After all, global warming is made up by all those pointy-heads, when we can see quite clearly that this winter has had some really cold days. (The Matt Drudge contribution to the debate). This populism plays very well in the United States, especially in the Republican sphere.

(9) The American culture of suburbia that developed in the wake of the second world war. It's almost built into the genes that people travel everywhere by car, and that big SUVs are needed to cart kids around. A more sophisticated version of this argument holds that Europeans don't own big SUVs because they don't have kids, which makes Americans morally superior. But why are SUVS needed for kids in the first place?

(10) Comfort with passing problems to the next generation. This is especially true of baby-boomers. Let's cut our own taxes and run up massive debt, leaving the burden for future generations! And anyway, we'll be long gone by the time the icebergs melt, so why worry? Live for the moment!

Did I miss anything?

Should The Liturgy Be Dumber?

2007-05-10T20:56:00.000-05:00

Rocco is reporting some renewed criticism of the upcoming English translation of the liturgy by Bishop Donald Trautman, chair of the USCCB Committee on the Liturgy. According to Trautman:

"What will the person in the pew hear and comprehend? Will the words “prefiguring sacrifices of the Fathers” and “born ineffably of the inviolate Virgin,” for example, resonate with John and Mary Catholic? Is this prayer intelligible, proclaimable, reflective of a vocabulary and linguistic style from the contemporary mainstream of U.S. Catholics?... In the new missal you will hear awkward phrases like “We pray you bid.” This is not American English. Ponder these concrete examples and judge for yourself."

First things first. The liturgy is supposed to glorify God and unite us with God. It should be soaring, majestic, transcendental, poetic. We are ill-served by the current, rather banal, translation, and I, for one, will welcome the new translation with open arms. Trautman, in his zeal to dumb down, does not give the congregation enough credit (nor do a good number of priests with their homilies, but that's another story.) But there's something else. This is the English language translation. There is no such thing as American English. There will be one translation for the entire English speaking world. Really, American exceptionalism knows no bounds...

More on Communion Politics

2007-05-10T18:41:00.000-05:00

The Vatican is scrambling to prevent any misinterpretation of Pope Benedict's remarks pertaining to the excommunication of politicians who voted to legalize abortion in Mexico. No, said Rev. Lombardi, the pope is not planning to excommunicate anyone, but "legislative action in favor of abortion is incompatible with participation in the Eucharist". This has a feeling of deja vu surrounding it, given the attempt of some on the American right to inject this into the presidential election of 2004, an unconscionable attempt to exploit and politicize the Eucharist.

Everything I have to say on the matter is here. I have nothing to add to what I already wrote back in January.

When Is A Terrorist Not A Terrorist?

2007-05-09T16:04:00.000-05:00

Via Kevin Drum: international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles is free today. There is stark evidence that the Department of Justice never really cared about this case, botched it up, and may not even appeal. Now, the word "terrorist" is assuredly over-used, but this guy certainly meets the classic textbook definition: he "plotted the bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people, and he has admitted being involved in hotel bombings in Havana". And now he's enjoying life in Miami.

I guess the "war on terror" is not global after all, as it excludes terrorist actions against "enemies" of the United States. Sounds like moral relativism to me. Then again, this is not a new phenomenon, as, during the heyday of IRA terrorism, their representatives moved with impunity in prominent US political circles. Most of the cash that paid for the bombs was raised in the United States, and those donors had (and still have) blood on their hands.

Hilarious aside: both Venezuela and Cuba sought his extradition in 2005, but these requests were denied on the grounds he might be tortured. Tell that to Maher Arar.

Pope on Oscar Romero

2007-05-09T15:42:00.000-05:00

Before his trip to Brazil, the Italian press is reporting that the pope mentioned Oscar Romero:

"'I have no doubt he will be beatified. I know that the cause is proceeding well at the Congregation for the Cause of Saints,' but said he did not have precise information.' He was certainly a great witness for the faith, a man of great Christian virtue who was committed to peace and against dictatorship.' Recalling that Romero was assassinated during the Consecration of the Host, he said it was 'an incredible death.'"

Amen!

Christianity and Immigration: Cardinal Mahony Or Utah Republicans?

2007-05-09T10:44:00.000-05:00

According to the Utah Republicans, Satan is behind illegal immigration. Yes, you heard right. Here is the quote from Andrew Sullivan's blog:

"Utah County Republicans ended their convention on Saturday by debating Satan's influence on illegal immigrants...Don Larsen, chairman of legislative District 65 for the Utah County Republican Party, had submitted a resolution warning that Satan's minions want to eliminate national borders and do away with sovereignty. In a speech at the convention, Larsen told those gathered that illegal immigrants 'hate American people' and 'are determined to destroy this country, and there is nothing they won't do.'...Illegal aliens are... trying to 'destroy Christian America' and replace it with 'a godless new world order - and that is not extremism, that is fact,'"

And here is Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles courtesy of Rocco Palmo:

"In Catholic thought, the human person should not serve the economy, but the economy should serve the human person, so that each person and his or her family can live in dignity and without want and can move, if needed, to find the place of hope... The current reality in our nation, however, is that we accept their labor, their separation from family, their taxes, and their purchasing power, yet we do not offer the undocumented population the protection of our laws. While such a system might meet our economic needs in the narrow measurement of monetary gain, it fails to meet the broad definition of oikonomia or the call of Scripture... Thus, to restore order to God’s household, we must ensure that all are welcome to the table. This means that we need to reform our immigration system in order to provide legal protection for those who live on the margins of our economy and are not invited to share in the banquet: the undocumented and future migrants who come to our nation, to work, to join family, or to support family at home....Any law that does not serve justice violates basic human dignity and human rights...Current immigration laws are, in a word, unjust....When convenient politically, we scapegoat the immigrant without acknowledging our complicity...In the area of immigration, the Church leadership argues that our country has a moral obligation to change the law because it violates the order of God’s household and undermines basic human dignity."

Now, which of the two views is more compatible with Christianity? Let me give you a hint:

""Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.' Then they will answer and say, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?' He will answer them, 'Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.'" -- Matthew 25: 42-45 (NAB).

The position of the Utah Republicans reflects a secular nationalistic ideology, tinged with religious (Messianic) overtones. In particular, it violates the "Catholic principal", the idea that there should be no boundaries on who is and who is not our neighbor. Borders serve a practical administrative function, and should not be endowed with mystical qualities. By the way, this is not mere prudential judgment to be blithely dismissed, but a core component of the Church's social teaching. For much more on how Christianity should inform the immigration debate, see here and here.

Support the Troops?

2007-05-08T14:43:00.000-05:00

An official Pentagon survey of US soldiers in Iraq throws up the following points:

More than one third support torture for gathering information.
40 percent support torture to save the life of a fellow soldier.
Two-thirds would turn a blind eye to mistreating civilians or wantonly destroying property.
Less than half think that non-combatants are worthy of respect and dignity.
10 percent have actually mistreated civilians.

I find these statistics staggering. And yet, as in any organization, the ethical standards are set by the top. If Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld say torture is OK, is it any wonder that the soldiers on the ground feel they have a green light, and that this kind of treatment is legitimate?

Let's break this down yet again. Torture is condemned unequivocally in the conciliar document Gaudium Et Spes. Specifically, it condemns ""physical and mental torture and attempts to coerce the spirit". The encyclical Veritatis Splendour went even further and said it was intrinsically evil, meaning it cannot be legitimated by intent or consequence. That rules out saving lives, ticking bomb scenarios, and all other sorry excuses for violating the God-given dignity and integrity (the intrinsic worth) of a person. You cannot use human beings as a means to an end, treating them as a mere object. Consequentialism is wrong. Note that this applies to psychological as well as physical torture, which experts believe is actually more harmful. Lest there is any remaining doubt, the Compendium of Social Doctrine declares that "international juridical instruments concerning human rights correctly indicate a prohibition against torture as a principle which cannot be contravened under any circumstances."

And yet, we have arrived at the situation whereby a president who flaunts his Christianity actively supports and implements a policy that is evil. Note that the proximity of Bush and Cheney to each specific act of torture is far closer than an average Democrat's proximity to each specific incidence of abortion. And yet this is something you will not hear from the right. Nor will you hear it from Catholic apologists like Jimmy Akin, who actually come dangerously close to defending torture.

I've talked about this many times, but it bears repeating. Akin errs when he defined torture as "the disproportionate infliction of pain". If not disproportionate, then not torture, then not evil. This is not much different than Bush official John Yoo defining torture as "death, organ failure or the permanent impairment of a significant body function". Coming up with a quantitative definition always means that something falling just below the standard does not constitute torture. Obviously, psychological torture is not torture. Akin also posits that waterboarding may not be torture under his definition if there is "no, less painful way, to save lives". This is a truly appalling exercise in naked consequentialism, no different from justifying the use of nuclear weapons during the second world war.

Let us remember the words of the martyr Oscar Romero: "There is no dichotomy between man and God’s image. Whoever tortures a human being,whoever abuses a human being,Whoever outrages a human being, abuses God’s image."

Bushies as Sopranos

2007-05-08T13:15:00.000-05:00

During its ongoing discussion of the final season of the Sopranos, Slate proposes a game called "Bush-Soprano Mix 'n' Match". The idea is to "name a past or present member of the Bush administration or family and find the corresponding figure from The Sopranos' cast of characters". OK, I'll take the bait! Here are my initial thoughts (subject to later revision!):

George Bush: Tony Soprano, of course.

Laura Bush: Carmelo Soprano. Denial, denial, denial.

Jennifer Melfi: Daddy Bush (understudy: James Baker).

Livia Soprano: Barbara Bush. Icy! Explains a lot about the son...

Johnny Sack: Dick Cheney. Sees himself as superior to Tony. Ruthless.

Christopher Moltisanti: Alberto Gonzales. Hapless sycophant.

Uncle Junior: John Bolton. Cuckoo!!

Silvio Dante: Karl Rove. The voice whispering in Tony's ear.

Pauley Walnuts: Donald Rumsfeld. Incompetent, useless, and ruthless all in one!

AJ Soprano: Harriet Miers. No comment necessary!

Tony Blundetto: Colin Powell. A favorite of George-Tony, crossed Johnney Sack-Cheney, and needed a whacking.

Bobby Bacala: George Tenet. Trying to keep his hands clean yet remain part of the inner circle..

Janice Soprano: Condi Rice. Almost like family..

Karen Hughes: Meadow Soprano. Painting the family in a positive light!

Phil Leotardo: Scooter Libby.

Ralphie Cifaretto: Bernie Kerik.

Little Carmine Lupertazzi: Jeb Bush. Hiding out in Florida...

Hesh Rabkin: Jack Abramoff. The Jewish business partner...

Pussy Bonpensiero: Paul O'Neill. Part of the inner circle, betrayed the family early on, whacked.

The Cost of War

2007-05-08T10:54:00.000-05:00

Endless carnage in Iraq: $456 billion and rising.

Cost of eliminating starvation and malnutrition: $54 billion a year.
Cost of a year of primary education for every child on earth: $30 billion.

So, this shameful war could have fed and educated the poor of the world for over 5 years. But, you know, at least Bush is pro-life...

Mitt Romney: Stupidity on Steroids?

2007-05-07T15:23:00.000-05:00

A number of commentators (Kevin Drum, Spencer Ackerman, Daniel Larison) have picked up this little nugget from the last GOP presidential hopefuls debate. Remember, Mitt Romney likes to come across as a tough guy. He recently claimed he was a lifelong hunter, but never had a license and went on only two hunting trips in his life (that's not much more than me-- actually, that's two more than me...) But there's something about Republicans needing to prove their manliness by being willing to shoot things, or (more likely) ordering others to do the shooting. And any sign of thoughtfulness, of introspection, is a sign of weakness. So, when asked about Bin Laden, Romney jumps straight into Arnie-mode:

"We'll move everything to get him. But I don't want to buy into the Democratic pitch, that this is all about one person, Osama bin Laden. Because after we get him, there's going to be another and another. This is about Shi'a and Sunni. This is about Hezbollah and Hamas and al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is the worldwide jihadist effort to try and cause the collapse of all moderate Islamic governments and replace them with a caliphate. They also probably want to bring down the United States of America. This is a global effort we're going to have to lead to overcome this jihadist effort. It's more than Osama bin Laden. But he is going to pay, and he will die."

This little nugget encapsulates everything that is wrong with the Republican approach to national security. First, the obligatory cowboy rhetoric.. "he will die!!!". But more importantly, the appeal to simplistic rallying cries makes for an incredibly stupid foreign policy, a continuation of the disastrous Calvinist-inspired Manicheanism of the Bush administration that led to the present ruinous debacle in Iraq. Romney is lumping together groups that do not belong together, just to prove he is a non-nonsense tough guy. Here is Ackerman:

"Mitt Romney's War: the total conflation of all Islamist movements. Not only is the Muslim Brotherhood not a jihadist organization, but its very lack of jihadiness is what spawned Ayman Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Suffice it to say that there is no caliphate on heaven or earth that will simultaneously satisfy Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, which goes a long way toward explaining why there is no concerted "worldwide jihadist effort" by these groups to establish one. "

And Larison:

"Ackerman is right that Romney’s remarks in the debate make no sense, but they are worse than he thinks. Not only is there “no caliphate on heaven or earth that will simultaneously satisfy Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood,” Hizbullah presumably wouldn’t even want a caliphate at all, since the last intertwining of Shi’ism and ideas of having a khalifat as such was in Fatimid Egypt more than a few years ago. Plus, the Fatimids were Ismailis (though not, strictly speaking, Seveners), and Hizbullah today is from the Imamiyyah or Twelver Shi’ite branch, which makes the likelihood of this predominant strain in Iranian and Lebanese Shi’ism indulging dreams of a restored caliphate in Cairo (where no Shi’ites today dwell) even more remote."

Now, understanding these distinctions requires a modicum of intelligence and thoughtfulness, or at least a willingness to learn. But this is exactly what the modern Republican party, with its premium of folksy populism, will not give us. Hence we are left with the simplistic "with us or against us" rhetoric that isolates decision making from all notions of history, context, culture, and nuance. Instead, every enemy is part of the march of "islamofacism", a term decried by Larison as possibly "the most stupid of the current century". So, simply to appease Romney's sense of manliness, we need to accept an utterly vacuous and dangerous foreign policy." More Larison:

"Romney shares in their profound confusion (or deliberately misleading rhetoric) for the same reason: all these diverse and disparate groups must be brought together under a single, frightening label and they must be made out to be enemies of America, whether or not these descriptions are plausible, true or reasonable.....In other words, the word we use to describe our enemies must be meaningless in order to accommodate the maximum number of enemies. If there were ever a politician who was perfectly suited to an age in which words should be entirely malleable and subject to the political needs of the moment, it would have to be Romney. Romney and rhetoric about Islamofascism were made for each other."

How thoroughly postmodern. It would be comical if it were not so tragic...

Abrogation of Media Responsibilities

2007-05-07T13:42:00.000-05:00

The sad and sorry state of US journalism has been a pet peeve of mine for a long time now. We all know that Fox News is little more than an arm of the Republican party. CNN, once a half decent organization, has descended into a sleazy pit with a screeching Nancy Grace and a fawning Larry King. Forget what's happening in the world, let's talk about celebrities, bland human interest stories, and missing white girls.

A few cases stand out starkly. Last month, Time magazine ran with a cover story called "Talibanization", dealing with the rise of extremists in the tribal areas of Pakistan. An important story, surely, and available to Time readers all over the world, with one exception: the United States. Yes, the US edition ran with a cover story on religion in schools. Newsweek did exactly the same thing last September. While the rest of the world read about "Losing Afghanistan" and the return of the Taliban, US readers were treated to a more important and timely story: a look at photographer Annie Liebovitz's new book. And CNN's dirty little secret is that its international edition is far better than the domestic counterpart, broadcasting quality material on world affairs.

As part of this soft-focus agenda, an unwritten rule of political reporting is that you cannot attack "powerful government officials". This is an argument made recently by Glenn Greenwald in the context of an attack on Keith Olbermann for being too partisan in his reporting. With Olbermann's popularity soaring on the back of his crusading zeal against Republican corruption and incompetence, certain journalists are arguing that MSNBC is going too far in mixing reporting and opinion. After all, the argument goes, even Fox does not put Bill O'Reilly out there as a news anchor. Greenwald immediately rips this argument to shreds, noting that the preeminent Fox "anchor", Brit Hume, makes partisan statements on a daily basis. Recently, he concluded a story about Jack Murtha by concluding that the Democrats are not serious about national security. Fine lines indeed!

Hume is a quintessential "loyal Bushie" and yet remains highly respected among his peers. What explains the double standard? It's far too easy to take the bait and groan about an inherent "conservative" bias in the media. No, something far more subtle is going on here. As Greenwald notes:

"What Olbermann actually is, first and foremost, is a critic of the government who adopts an aggressively adversarial posture towards the President and those in power. That actually is -- or at least used to be -- called "journalism." What ought to define the function of political "journalists" is that they exercise adversarial oversight over government officials. That is the only thing that makes a political press worthwhile.

Even if one concedes for the sake of argument that Olbermann is a "liberal," what clearly emerges from all of this is that it is not inappropriate in any way for a "journalist" to express political and ideological views, even the most extreme, offensive and partisan views. The behavior of Brit Hume and Chris Matthews leave no doubt about that.

What is "inappropriate" -- really, prohibited -- is for a journalist to express certain types of political views, in particular the views expressed by Olbermann. That is why his status as a "news anchor" supposedly "stretch(es) traditional notions of journalistic objectivity."

Olbermann's real journalistic crime is that he is too critical of powerful government officials. That is the real crux of Olbermann's commentary -- criticizing Bush officials for their abuses of power, exploitation of fear and terrorism threats for political gain, and blatant corruption. Whereas in the past, exposing abuses of power by our most powerful officials and criticizing corruption was the hallmark of a real journalist, that behavior is now considered out of bounds, the mark of an unacceptable ideologue, not a journalist. "

This is the crux of the issue. Its about a symbiotic network of cronyism, whereby the ruling political elite shower favors on the established media elite in return for a respect veering on fawning obsequiousness. The one thing a journalist is not supposed to do is be disrespectful. That breaks the golden rule of modern journalism. It also betrays the very concept of what journalism is supposed to do. And of course, the Bush administration exploits this weakness to great effect.

The media in other countries is not like this. In fact, political journalists believe that asking tough questions is their job, no matter how uncomfortable it makes them feel. Just look at the kind of hard-hitting European interviews that make politicians squirm and sweat in their seats. Back in 2004, Irish television reporter Carole Coleman interviewed Bush in a style typical of Irish TV. As Bush repeated his talking points on Iraq, Coleman continuously interrupts with comments like "Indeed, Mr. President, you didn't find the weapons of mass destruction" and questions like "Do you not see that the world is a more dangerous place [because of Iraq]?" As the interview progresses, Bush becomes more and more irritated that this lesser mortal dares to interrupt his well-rehearsed screed. Afterwards, the Bush administration complained to the Irish government and cancelled an interview with Laura Bush. But there was nothing unusual about this interview from an Irish journalistic perspective. Or a British one for that matter. After the Coleman interview, a Bush supporter I know told me that he thought Coleman was terribly disrespectful to a head of state. Lost on him was the notion that Bush is an elected representative, not an untouchable monarch. And they claim to be "leaders of the free world"... God help us!

This is the sorry state of American political journalism. It's no wonder that this cosy cabal reacts strongly to those who challenge this status quo, even in jest. Remember that phony outrage from the journalistic community that surrounded Stephen Colbert's performance last year at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner? His sin was skewering the media with lines like ""Over the last five years, you people were so good--over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn't want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out."? The establishment media found him rude and unfunny. Because he hit them where it hurt most.

The Seven Step Program for American Right-Wing Catholics

2007-05-04T16:08:00.000-05:00

If you want to be a successful right-wing American Catholic, you need to follow the following seven steps. It is extremely important that you master each step before you move on to the next one. Only then will everything fit together, and you will find total peace and enlightenment, and those pernicious liberals can't touch you....

(1) Make friends with the evangelical right, and ignore the aspects of their theology that conflicts with Catholicism. At the same time, attack your fellow Catholics on the left. This is a good warm-up exercise, as it is not intellectually very challenging.

(2) Tell Catholics that they are prohibited from voting Democratic because of their position on abortion and embryonic cell research. If you are feeling really zealous, throw in gay marriage for good measure. For bonus points, come up with some bogus theological justification (if in doubt, just crib from Catholic Answers).

(3) Insist that the bishops deny communion to all Democrats. Feel free to denounce the 99 percent of bishops who do not follow your advice. The key to a success at this stage lies in displaying the right amount of self-righteous outrage.

(4) Dismiss Catholic social teaching not mentioned in stage 2 as "mere trifles". Be as dismissive as possible, and don't forget to make condescending remarks about Europe. Make sure you have plenty of good anecdotes. Denounce high taxes, and talk about the long waiting list for hip replacements in Canada.

(5) Adopt a zealous America-first nationalism. Make sure to note that anybody who opposes Bush's war is a Euro-weenie, and being a pope does not let you off the hook! To ensure that everybody knows how reasonable your position is, point out the fact that your enemies are inflicted with "Bush Derangement Syndrome" and are leftist moonbat loons. Make sure to denounce Euro-weenies and the United Nations. Bonus points if you can twist just war theory to support the Iraq war!

(6) Time for consequentialism: the end justifies the means! Make sure you point out that America did no wrong whatsoever during the second world war, and make those fools understand that nuking the hell out of those Japanese cities was the only way to defend lives. And point out to those "liberals" that torture may be needed to stop terrorists nuking cities (theological source: Jack Bauer on 24). If you are feeling really clever, you can try and argue that Pope John Paul did not really say what they think he said.

(7) Disregard facts, including scientific facts. Dismiss evolution and global warming as liberal hoaxes. Now you are ready to create your own reality, and your task has been accomplished. Congratulations!

The Attraction of Buddhism

2007-05-04T13:24:00.000-05:00

"Spiritual but not religious". As an underlying philosophy, this has never been more popular, alongside a vocal disdain for "organized" religion. As I discussed numerous times now, this reflects the popularity of Gnosticism in American society, and Gnostic energy often gets channeled in a Buddhism direction, owing to key parallels.

Let me just review Gnosticism (see here and here for earlier discussions). Traditional Gnosticism believes in a Platonic metaphysical dualism that sees the world and all of creation as evil. Since creation is evil, it cannot have been created by a benevolent God. No, the creator is an evil God, a demiurge, often identified with the God of the Jews. Beyond all this lies a greater God, a good God. And here is the crux: within every human being lies a "spark of the divine" that is itching to be re-united with this greater God and escape the confines of the evil materialistic world. And how to escape? Escape comes through knowledge, gnosis, often hidden esoteric knowledge available only to a select few.

Now, at least on a superficial level, this has some overlaps with Buddhism. At is basis lies the underlying principle that life involves and endless cycle of suffering, and suffering is rooted in desire. The Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, provided a basic road map to escape the cycle through the suppression of desire. The term "buddha" is used to denote anybody who has attained "awakening" (enlightenment/ Nirvana) and has escaped earthy suffering. Many are taught this knowledge by others in an esoteric fashion.

Many like to argue that the advantage of Buddhism is that it has no doctrine, is not organized, and it has no notion of a personal God. It is easier, conceptually, to view it through the frame of Gnosticism. Buddhism and Gnosticism both see the difference between "God" and creation as one of degree, not of kind, and view humanity as returning to some kind of equality with "God". Creation is not good, and the ultimate goal is liberation from the world. Of course, such an escape is not simple, and requires arcane knowledge ("gnosis") and ardent practice, and is only available to an elite few.

In contrast, Christianity views creation as the result of a beneficial Creator. God created everything that exists from nothing. Creation is good, but humanity is sinful. The essence of Christianity then, is that God became human to overcome this sin, and to allow humanity to become one with God. Note the clear difference: union with God is not a natural "homecoming"; it is rather a gift, a privilege. Moreover, this form of salvation is available to all, not just a small elite. The "institutional" church is simply the entity through which Christ mediates grace.

Why, then, are so many Americans attracted to Buddhism? Actually, what they seek is Gnosticism, rather than Buddhism. They merely see much of Gnosticism inside Buddhism. Part of the attraction springs from a very post-Enlightenment denial of objective truth. If truth is more relative than objective, then how can there be such a thing as sin? It's far easier to assume a natural unification with God after death, with no heed for the consequences of your behavior. Who needs doctrine when all that matters is the "spark of the divine" within me? Experience trumps everything! At the same time, the entrenched individualism in American society rebels against anything vaguely communitarian, especially an entity that claims to know the truth. Far easier to follow your own path! This can so easily feed the narcissism and sense of entitlement that pervades much of modern American culture and society (is it any wonder that Buddhism and Scientology are most popular in Hollywood, the ultimate pit of narcissism?). The notion that one can be a sinner is repellent in the popular mind. No, Gnosticism makes you feel special. I'm OK, you're OK! Do what makes you feel good!

There is a darker side to this, of course, as it can feed into the doctrine of American exceptionalism, that sees America as unique, specially blessed by God, not subject to the same rules and constraints as other countries. And if creation is not fundamentally good and in need of renewal, then why should be it not exploited through violence and environmental degradation?

This lies at the root of the American love-affair with Buddhism, and why it is seen as superior, better than those nasty "organized" religions. Though I would contend that Buddhism has some serious flaws, much of this crowd is attracted to a very shallow version of it, a Buddhism of the mind, not rooted in reality. Note, for example, that traditional Buddhism is concerned with suppressing the ego, the very opposite of the modern American instinct. No, Gnosticism is at fault, and Buddhism is largely guilty by association.

One final thought: one of the much-touted "attractions" of Buddhism is that it is inherently peaceful, tolerant, and non-violent. This is utterly false. Just look to the political turmoil in Sri Lanka. Here, a nationalistic and xenophobic brand of Buddhism is highly influential among the Sinhalese minority, and is not above denying equality to the minority Tamils, or using violence to impose its will. Remember too, in Vietnam, it was the Buddhist monks who burned themselves to death. And yet the Hollywood brigade tends to ignore these inconvenient facts...

Catholic Candidate Denies Evolution

2007-05-04T10:00:00.000-05:00

Absolutely surreal. When asked who did not believe in evolution, three of the ten Republican candidates for president raised their hands: Mike Huckabee, Tom Tancredo, and Sam Brownback. Now, Brownback is a Catholic convert from evangelicalism, and a darling of the right. Clearly, some of his evangelical mode of thinking has not left him.

As I discussed recently, there is no inherent conflict between faith and evolution, as long as boundaries are respected. Therefore a person of faith should not castigate scientific findings about evolution that are accepted by all but a handful of quacks, and a scientist should likewise refrain from arguing that evolution proves the absence of a Creator (it proves no such thing). Way back in 1950, Pope Pius XII declared that there was no opposition between evolution and the Christian faith. While Pius was tentative, Pope John Paul II stated very clearly in 1996 that "new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis." Cardinal Schonborn, who has reflected a lot on the topic, sums it up: "I see no difficulty in joining belief in the Creator with the theory of evolution, but under the prerequisite that the borders of scientific theory are maintained." And Pope Benedict recently voiced similar thoughts: "The question is not to either make a decision for a creationism that fundamentally excludes science, or for an evolutionary theory that covers over its own gaps and does not want to see the questions that reach beyond the methodological possibilities of natural science."

The title of John Paul's 1996 address was "Truth Cannot Contradict Truth", which is quite apt. In other words, as Pope Benedict is fond of saying, faith and reason are perfectly compatible, because God's own word is Reason (Logos), who is God himself. Catholics believed God gave his own Word or reason so we could become one with him, and, in his essay, Pope John Paul appeals to Aquinas when be notes that "man's likeness to God resides especially in his speculative intellect, for his relationship with the object of his knowledge resembles God's relationship with what he has created". God is reason and infinte intelligence, and faith and reason are intimately entwined. We simply cannot appeal to faith to dismiss basic scientific tenets.

But if you believe that God's word is not reason incarnate, but a fixed text, then none of this holds. This explains why there is such a strong correlation between denial of evolution and American-style evangelical fundamentalism. After all, evolution conflicts with the literal text of Genesis. It is important to note that the American-created "intelligent design" does not merely postulate that God is the Creator of everything out of nothing and guides all of creation (sensible), but encroaches on scientific territory by holding that organisms appeared simultaneously (not so sensible). It is denial. But the argument is a little more nuanced than simply appealing to biblical literalism. At the heart of the issue is the relationship between faith and reason. Systems of text-based revelation veer away from an idea of God that is reason, truth and infinite intelligence, and toward a notion of God as pure will which leaves the door open to God' purposes being arbitrary. This is voluntarism. It also, by the way, is the point Pope Benedict was making about Islam that landed him in such hot water last year (see here and here). We must always remember that faith and reason are compatible.

In conclusion, Brownback, as a Catholic, should know better. In a sense, Tancredo's response makes more sense. He has left the Catholic church for evangelicalism. To have embraced a voluntarist God is therefore compatible with his conversion. But Brownback still has some distance to travel. Lest there is any doubt about this hypothesis, simply note that the denial of evolution is concentrated in a small group of American evangelicals. You do not see Christians around the world disdaining science in such a manner. And it goes beyond evolution. Just look at the global warming debate. In a recent poll, despite the overwhelming consensus of the evidence, only 13 percent of Republicans in Congress believe human activity is leading to global warming. And, as with Brownback on evolution, they have backers among the Catholic right. I'll have more to say about this soon...

Hurricanes and the Bush Family

2007-05-02T21:39:00.000-05:00

A recent article talks about a GAO probe into a little incident of corruption in New Orleans.

First, "when the Army Corps of Engineers solicited bids for drainage pumps for New Orleans, it copied the specifications 'typos and all' from the catalog of the manufacturer that ultimately won the $32 million contract"

Second, the pumps were installed before the 2006 hurricane season, and turned out to be defective.

Third, Jeb Bush used to work for the company in question, and they are major Republican donors.

Thank God there was no major hurricane last year. But can you honestly trust these people? Even when it comes to protecting people, corruption comes first (actually, Halliburton blazed the trail on that one..)

Defending War Crimes

2007-05-02T20:50:00.000-05:00

Daniel Larison provides a good summary of a trend on the right that I have long noticed: the defense of war crimes. Larison notes, quite accurately, that there is a certain mysticism surrounding the second world war where criticism is simply not tolerated. Hence, not only do you find people defending internment, carpet-bombing, and the use of nuclear weapons on civilian populations, but, the argument goes, if they did it in world war 2, it must be fine....

I've already argued once that the right derives the wrong lessons from the second world war, but that is not the point of the current post. No, I want to make a far less subtle point here: that this reasoning is nothing short of depraved. For a flavor, here is Dean Barnett:

"Unfortunately, given the nature of the war we’re in, certain moral compromises are a necessity. Using coercive interrogation techniques is one of them. What’s most infuriating about the anti-torture people is their tacit assumption that you can fight a war without making moral compromises. War is all about moral compromise. It’s not in the normal order of things to kill others. The very aim of war is to do just that. In World War II, we did terrible things like the fire-bombing of Dresden, the massive bombing of Tokyo, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While all these actions were terrible, they were also necessary. And justifiable."

And here is Thomas Sowell, who seems to be something of a guru to Jimmy Akin, who runs his own little parallel magisterium in California (hint: it drops all the stuff that goes against the Republican party). Here's what he has to say:

"There is a reason why General Sherman said "war is hell" more than a century ago. But he helped end the Civil War with his devastating march through Georgia -- not by cease fires or bowing to "world opinion" and there were no corrupt busybodies like the United Nations to demand replacing military force with diplomacy."

And one more, courtesy of Larison. This time, it's Charles Krauthammer, the dean of the torture fetishists:

"When the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor, it did not respond with a parallel "proportionate" attack on a Japanese naval base. It launched a four-year campaign that killed millions of Japanese, reduced Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki to cinders, and turned the Japanese home islands into rubble and ruin. Disproportionate? No. When one is wantonly attacked by an aggressor, one has every right -- legal and moral -- to carry the fight until the aggressor is disarmed and so disabled that it cannot threaten one's security again. That's what it took with Japan."

Of course, the partisans of the National Review make arguments along these lines quite frequently when they defend torture. Amazingly, many of these people are Catholics, and staunch "pro-life" Catholics to boot (the quotes are intentional). Then again, as I've noted before, one of the biggest abortion opponents of all, Phyllis Schlafly, held similar views. In her words:

"The atomic bomb is a marvelous gift that was given to our country by a wise God... Dropping the bomb on Hiroshima meant the difference between life and death to hundreds of thousands of our best and brightest young men."

I've said this many times, but it is well worth repeating. There are a number of fundamental moral principles that we Catholics believe to be true. First, it is never licit to do evil so that good may result. Second, the deliberate taking of innocent human life is always wrong. A nuclear attack on a city by its nature targets non-combatants, making it intrinsically evil. Carpet bombing is intrinsically evil. Torturing somebody to get information is intrinsically evil. Interning innocent civilians is intrinsically evil. In fact, quite a lot of acts during the second world war were intrinsically evil, which as we know means evil in their object, so that they can never be justified by appeal to intent or circumstance (which is, of course, what the observers quoted above are doing).

This is the essence and heart of right-wing cafeteria Catholicism. It is not about the minimum wage, or tax policy, or immigration, or even poverty. No, it is about the deliberate embrace of an intrinically evil act, an act that violates the God-given life and dignity of human beings, which in a very real sense is the foundation of everything we believe.

The trap they fall into is consequentualism, an end-justifies-the-means ethic that rapidly collapses into complete moral relativism, the denial of any objective truth. In a cold utilitarian fashion, all you need to do is weigh up the good and bad side effects, and of course the scales are always tilted to "our" side because "our" cause is just and "our" guys lives are worth more. The fact that this is always the outcome should spell out very clearly what is wrong with this approach.

Note that many moralists holding the strongest positions against nuclear weapons are also some of the staunchest opponents of abortion and euthanasia. Germain Grisez and John Finnis argued that even the nuclear deterrent is deeply immoral, on the grounds that nuclear deterrence entails an intention to kill innocents. Elizabeth Anscombe dubbed Truman a war criminal, and vehemently protested Oxford's granting him an honorary degree in 1956. She noted that in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, "it was certainly decided to kill the innocent as a means to an end". No, it is simply impossible to be opposed to abortion and yet support the use of nuclear weapons if such opposition is for the right reasons.

Listening to the Passion this Good Friday, it dawned on me that Caiaphas was an early consequentialist. John's gospel notes; "It was Caiaphas who had counseled the Jews that it was better that one man should die rather than the people." By justifying the death of innocents in support of some greater good, many on the right are latter-day Caiaphas's. He was wrong then, and they are equally wrong today. At least as wrong as those who support abortion.

Catholic Judges Don't Take Long To Be Inconsistent

2007-05-01T21:03:00.000-05:00

While the "Catholic bloc" stood together on the partial birth abortion case, it did not take long for this alliance to be pulled asunder. As noted by Eduardo Penalver, all but Kennedy voted the wrong way in a sequence of three death penalty-related cases. Of course, as some also argued in the context of the Hamden case (pertaining to the applicability of the Geneva Conventions), the voting was purely based on a procedural point of law. This is the position adopted by Rick Garnett, Panalver's Mirror of Justice colleague, who notes that there is no "authoritative church teaching involved in what amounts to a "question whether a federal judge reviewing a state court's denial, on procedural grounds in state postconviction proceedings, of a death-row inmate's ... claim is required to vote to reverse that denial".

But as I noted before, Church teaching pertaining to the death penalty is not mere "prudential judgment" that can be blithely dismissed. While the Church does not teach that the death penalty is always and everywhere wrong (like abortion), its moral licitness depends on the intent and circumstance. In other words, we are talking about principles governing circumstances rather than judgements about particular circumstantial facts. Here, the Church does carve out conditions under the death penalty may and may not be immoral, namely, that there must be no other way to defend society.

How does this relate to the judiciary? Penalver makes the following point:

"Given the immorality of the death penalty in all but exceptional cases (what I take to be the authoritative teaching of the Church) and given an American death penalty that goes substantially beyond what the Church would allow, it seems to me that Catholic Justices are under at least some moral obligations with respect to the death penalty."

That sounds about right. Frankly, I fail to understand how the kind of legal "originalism" so favored by conservative judges can be compatible with a Catholic approach to the law. Its focus on text rather than the natural law is surely inspired by Protestantism. For Catholics, the natural law must transcend all positive law. I am not encouraged when I hear judges speaking out against Roe v. Wade simply because it created a far broader right to "privacy" than was ever intended. This is undoubtedly true, but not relevant. They should oppose abortion because it is wrong, and no positive law can make it right. What if the original constitution had included a specific right to abortion? It would still be wrong, despite the original intent. The same holds true for the death penalty. In cases pertaining to the God-given human rights and dignity of the person, appealing to legal procedural niceties simply will not cut it. There are moral issues involved, at least as important (if not moreso) than the vote of a legislator.

And, as we have seen with the recent death penalty cases, the Catholic justices did not take long before they started deciding as non-Catholics...

Jack Valenti Funeral

2007-05-01T16:55:00.000-05:00

As was reported today, the funeral Mass for Jack Valenti, former head of the Motion Picture Association of America, took place today at St. Matthew's Cathedral in Washington DC. It was an amazing scene at the cathedral, where the likes of John Kerry and Ted Kennedy mingled with Kirk Douglas, Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta Jones, and Steven Spielberg. News reports refer to the remarks made by Kirk Douglas about his friendship with Valenti. What the news reports do not mention is that these remarks took place during what was supposed to have been the first reading at the Mass! An interesting case of liturgical deviation indeed...

Gnostics of the World, Unite!

2007-05-01T12:39:00.000-05:00

The New Republic's Michael Crowley is reporting that Mitt Romney's favorite novel is a tome by L. Ron Hubbard. Crowley thinks this is "amazing". I find it less so, since Mormonism and Scientology are both made-in-America Gnostic religions with science fiction undertones. Gnosticism appeals in America because of its individualism and sense of narcissism.

Traditional Gnosticism believes in a Platonic metaphysical dualism that sees the world and all of creation as evil. Since creation is evil, it cannot have been created by a benevolent God. No, the creator is an evil God, a demiurge, often identified with the God of the Jews. Beyond all this lies a greater God, a good God. And here is the crux: within every human being lies a "spark of the divine" that is itching to be re-united with this greater God and escape the confines of the evil materialistic world. And how to escape? Escape comes through knowledge, gnosis, often hidden esoteric knowledge available only to a select few.

Both Mormonism and Scientology have imbibed key aspects of Gnosticism, in that they see the difference between God and creation as one of degree, not of kind, and view humanity as returning to some kind of equality with God. Mormonism views God not as an uncreated supreme being who created everything out of nothing (the Christian view) but as (in the words of Damon Linker) "a finite being who evolved into his present state of divinity from a condition very much like our own and then merely 'organized' preexisting matter in order to form the world". Pious Mormons hope to be "Gods" some day, in charge of their own planet. Scientologists believe that there are trapped "thetans" (immortal spiritual beings) inside every human body yearning to escape. This, in particular, is no more than traditional Gnosticism with some science fiction thrown in for good measure. No wonder Romney likes it!

Double Standards Yet Again

2007-04-28T16:29:00.000-05:00

Harry Reid makes a factual statement that the "war" in Iraq is lost, and is hounded mercilessly. Mitt Romney makes a normative statement it would be too much effort to get Bin Laden, and.... you guessed it, nothing. But could you imagine the reaction is a leading Democrat had said such a thing...

Bush Makes the World Safer!

2007-04-28T16:25:00.000-05:00

Then how do we explain the 30 percent increase in terrorist attacks in 2006?

No wait, the Bushies create their own reality, I forgot, where there is no evidence for evolution, SUVs are good for the environment, tax cuts boost revenue, and Bush keeps everybody safe...

Fate And The Sopranos

2007-04-27T09:18:00.000-05:00

This has been one of my favorite shows since the beginning, and this final season is nothing short of stunning. A few months back in Commonweal, Cathleen Kaveny penned a thought-provoking essay entitled "Salvation & ‘The Sopranos’", where she explored themes of sin and redemption through the lens of this mafia show. Kaveny explores the role of fate, and uses some anecdotes from the show to conclude that a main moral of the story is that "we are trapped in a world ruled by an inexorable fate that seizes upon our moral failings in order to bring about our ruin." Moreover, "the world of The Sopranos ... seems infused with a cosmic retributive justice, which even Tony himself dimly perceives, although his own time of reckoning has not yet arrived." A dark message...

The show is downright pessimistic in its approach to redemption. Kaveny provides three examples of the subversion of redemption: redemption through psychotherapy, redemption through Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), and redemption through Christianity. In the first case, Tony Soprano's experience with therapy allows him to understand the pernicious impact of his dysfunctional family on his nature. But not only does he not change, he deliberately conspires to make sure his sister Janice's therapy does not work either. In the second case, Tony and his cousin Tony Blundetto mock Christopher's attempts to stay sober, and Christopher himself encourages a friend from AA to get mired in gambling, with inevitable results. Finally, the Christian theme relates to Tony and Carmela's relationship, where Carmela carries substantial guilt relating to her complicity in Tony's "business". After a threatened separation, he agrees to reconcile only for "blood money", $600,000 for a house she wants built.

Kaveny wrote this before the final episodes began. But the themes of fate and retributive justice only grow more stark with each passing episode. Tony's visions when he lay in a coma at the start of the last season are absolutely crucial, and form the backdrop for everything that will happen. There, he saw himself as somebody named "Kevin Finnerty" (infinity?) trapped in a place he could not leave. His cousin Tony Blundetto, whom he murdered, invited him into a house, where he thought he could see his mother. That was his fate. There was no way he could avoid it. But avoid it he did, as he came out of the coma. And least for a while. Avoiding danger, and cheating fate, is a theme in Tony's life. He avoided going to jail with his cousin because an early panic attack caused him to be absent on that fateful night when Blundetto was arrested. But Tony can feel things closing in. In the first two episodes of the new season, law enforcement officials are waiting as his gate each morning. Once case is over a dropped gun from a few years back (ironically, during an incident when Tony escaped the FBI takedown of New York mob boss Johnny Sac), but that dies. Tony's anxiety grows. In the most recent episode, the FBI are digging in an area where the body of Tony's very first murder victim is buried, and Tony is scared. But again, somebody else takes the fall. Retributive justice. But for how long can be escape his fate?

Tony's years of therapy, combined with his near-death experience, have led him to the realization that his life is precarious, not to mention the salvation of his soul. But he cannot change. When we awoke from the coma, there was a moment that suggested he wanted to be free, but he could not do it. At the same time, he realizes he is trapped in a deep pit. When he was young, he looked up to Pauley; now, he sees Pauley as pathetic, a joke. The old stories from the past now irritate him. Likewise, Uncle Junior has become a caricature of his former self in a mental institution. Johnny Sac, once a ruthless and all-powerful boss, dies from lung cancer. Phil Leotardo and Little Carmine are tired of the life, and want out. Christopher continues to distance himself. A feeling of lethargy, or resignation, hangs over the entire season. It almost feels like everybody is playing their part, going through the motions, but with little conviction.

And yet, at the same time, tension is everywhere. If feels like something is going to explode. The first episode of this season showed Tony, Carmela, Bobby and Janice enjoying themselves playing cards at a lake house. But you just knew something was going to happen, and it did-- Bobby attacked Tony for insulting Janice. Tony's response is not violence. No, he seals Bobby's fate in another way: he instructs the guy who has never killed anybody to commit his first murder. An amateur, Bobby leaves plenty of evidence at the scene. And in the most recent episode, tension mounted when Tony and Bobby were on a fishing boat, as the fate of Big Pussy was in everybody's mind.

And so, we do not know how they will meet their fate, but meet it they will. There are a million permutations of how cosmic justice could be served. And yet, can there be hope for redemption? The darkening atmosphere suggests not. There is certainly no sign of grace or redemption in David Chase's created universe. This is not the Lord of the Rings; it is the antithesis of Tolkien's cosmology. At the end of the day, is David Chase trying to tell us there is a radical division between grace and nature, a bridge that cannot be crossed? That might not be a Catholic message, but it is one that might well resonate with contemporary culture.

The Root Of All Anti-Catholicism

2007-04-26T21:04:00.000-05:00

There is a lot of debate over Pope Benedict's lamenting the loss of Christian faith in Europe and elsewhere, and its relationship to secularism and relativism. Many of these analyses have been insightful. Other less so. In the latter category comes an essay in the American Prospect by Adele Stan, arguing that:

"Europe's rejection of Catholicism has less to do with a loss of spirituality by the people of God (as the worldwide congregation of Catholics became known during Vatican II) than with a rejection of an authoritarian institution many regard as, at best, morally inept; at worst, morally bankrupt."

I think this mode of thinking can explain most brands of anti-Catholicism. It's loyalty to an institution, a sinister foreign one as many on the right used to believe, or a hypocritical authoritarian one, as many on the left believe today. This results from a profound misunderstanding of how the Church sees revelation, and how it sees itself. The Church sees its role as preserving the memory of Christ, the Word or Wisdom of Reason of God. Some of this memory is contained in scripture, but some of it is not. But there is a single deposit of faith that the Church holds. Sometimes, it takes the Church a while to figure this out, but we take comfort in the unbroken line of the apostolic succession from the original apostles to the bishops of today, and from the knowledge that our core beliefs have never changed. To be a bit more formal, the Church believes that the fullness of revelation subsists in the Catholic church. This is all that scary-sounding words like "infallible" actually mean; it has nothing to do with a subservient "pray, pay, and obey" attitude.

I think if people had a clearer understanding of these issues, there would be less misunderstanding. The pope and bishops are not "authoritarian"; they are as bound by tradition (the deposit of faith) as you or me. Claiming that we have the fullness of revelation is not saying we are better than anybody else (just look at the history of the papacy, for God's sake!) but merely that we believe that certain things are true. There are two key stumbling blocks: first, the idea that there are objective truths beyond the empirically falsifiable, and second, that we are part of a whole and not just individuals that can choose whatever path we feel like. The Enlightenment, for all its other benefits, challenged these principles, and I think society is worse off for it. Individualism, relativism, and utilitarianism have dangerous consequences. Getting modern society to face these issues is foremost on the agenda of Benedict.

Stan argues that the integrity of Catholicism is compromised by its own history. There is a kernel of truth in what she says. Surely, the Church lost much of its moral authority in the aftermath of the first world war after various churches identified too closely with the authorities of the particular state. I would go further and say that most of the mistakes of the Church over the past two millenia arise from an overly-close relationship with secular authorities. A key lesson for today is that the Church must eschew nationalism. It must strive for something larger, if not a latter-day Christendom, then at least something broader than the petty nation state. Here I think is the plain where the Church can meet European secular humanists (Americans are still too steeped in nationalism). But there is a long journey ahead...

Archbishop Burke Takes a Step Backwards

2007-04-26T20:14:00.000-05:00

This story received a lot of coverage today, from Rocco Palmo, Open Book, and Evangelical Catholicism among others. It turns out that Archbishop Burke of St. Louis picked a fight with singer Sheryl Crow! The latter was supposed to appear at a benefit concert to aid a Catholic hospital in the area. The archbishop, citing Crow's support for abortion and embryonic stem-cell research, protested and asked for her invitation to rescinded. The institution (SSM Cardinal Glennon Children's Medical Center) refused and Burke resigned from the board of governors and issued a statement saying that:

"When, for economic gain, a Catholic institution associates itself with such a high profile proponent of the destruction of innocent lives, members of the Church and other people of good will have the right to be confirmed in their commitment to the Gospel of Life."

Burke clarified that his opposition was based not on Crow's personal beliefs, but on her public advocacy for these issues. First of all, calling it "economic gain" is callous. I believe the benefit was designed to raise money for sick children. If Burke really wanted to rail against immoral "economic gain", he could have a field day with the Bush administration's corruption...But I digress. So where to begin? For a start, this was a pretty stupid move. If the aim is to promote Catholic teaching on these topics, it clearly backfired. This kind of ham-fisted intervention just creates sympathy for Crow.

My main problem, though, is the inconsistency. Yet again, we have criticism of a public figure (I suppose an entertainer qualifies as a public figure!) based on opposition to selective moral principles, in this case, abortion and embryonic stem-cell research. Of course, one could argue that, unlike issues like tax policy and poverty, there is no room for diversity of opinion among Catholics. They are wrong in their object, irrespective of intent or circumstance. But as I've said over and over and over and over, so are many other issues. The illicitness of using nuclear weapons is non-negotiable, but would Burke call for a boycott of conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly for saying things like the "atomic bomb is a marvelous gift that was given to our country by a wise God" (see here for the story and argument). And what about torture? So many public officials and backers of the Bush administration today defend torture on consequentialist grounds. Would Burke issue a blanket ban? And remember before Northern Ireland peace process when Sinn Fein still supported horrendously-evil terrorist acts, and were still invited to march in the New York St. Patrick's Day parade, right past the cathedral? Were was the outrage then?

To be consistent, the Church would be shunning a lot of people! But here's the rub: it should not be making these kind of personal attacks in the first place. Yes, the Church needs to speak clearly and not to compromise on its moral teachings, but it needs to do so in a consistent manner. Its main selling point is that it offers a consistent ethic of life that transcends secular categories of "liberal" and "conservative". The key is to persuade, and nobody who is inconsistent can persuade. It needs to persuade those who today are not persuaded. It benefits nobody to preach to the choir, making a bunch of conservatives feel good about themselves. Instead, the Church needs to challenge secular humanists to recognize the virtue of the consistent ethic of life, the seamless garment. Cherrypicking the issues simply won't wash.

Archbishop Chaput Takes a Step Forward

2007-04-26T19:48:00.000-05:00

In the latest Commonweal, Melinda Henneberger reports on an interview she conducted with Archbishop Chaput of Denver in which she quizzes him on abortion politics. Chaput, remember, was one of the more vocal bishops who spoke out against John Kerry's position on abortion back in 2004. As noted by Cathleen Kaveny, a New York Times article at the time noted the following:

"Archbishop Chaput said a vote for a candidate like Mr. Kerry who supports abortion rights or embryonic stem cell research would be a sin that must be confessed before receiving Communion."

Of course, Chaput was part of a tiny minority of bishops to say such a thing, and this small group was chastised by their brother bishops. But that was 2004. Today, Chaput says something quite different. He seems to desire only that politicians address abortion as a fundamental issue, and not simply ignore and bury it. He states that his "aggressive stance" during the last election arose from a frustration with the fact that treating abortion as one of many moral issues had become a license to dismiss it. He goes on:

"Do I think there are people in the last election who voted for a prochoice candidate and did so sincerely after reflection and prayer? Yes, I do. Did they do wrong? No, they followed their conscience. But that serious reflection and prayer, that’s really important, and not just being swayed by party sympathies or that’s the way you always vote. It has to be about the issues."

This is exactly right. Chaput even goes further, stating:

"You can have good Catholics who say that they’re not for the criminalization of abortion, or they want to take gradual steps toward eliminating it by convincing the public that this is a bad thing. Those are all legitimate political positions-as long as you’re really moving towards the goal of protecting unborn human life. You at least have to have the goal."

Read that again, for it is profoundly important. For a start, Chaput is acknowledging that the elimination of abortion involves issues of prudential judgment (the link fleshes out the argument). In other words, betting everything on picking judges to overturn Roe v. Wade is not the only game in town. I also believe that Chaput is offering an olive branch to the Democrats. He is saying something like: we can tolerate you not wanting to criminalize abortion, or moving slowly, but you cannot pretend that this is a "right" that must be defended at all costs. That can never be defended. Clearly, he does not want a repeat of 2004 when it seemed that he was supporting Bush and his whole sorry agenda (he wasn't). But unless Clinton and Obama listen, history could repeat itself. Come on folks, it's not that hard...

Very Quick Thought on Abortion in Latin America

2007-04-26T10:10:00.000-05:00

Today's Financial Times had an interesting observation. Noting the restrictive abortion laws throughout Latin America, it argues that many left-wing leaders who might be sympathetic to liberalizing such laws refrain from doing so out of loyalty to a Church that stood by them during the heated political struggles in the 1970s and 1980s.

Interesting. But, according to the dominant right-wing position in the United States at least, the Church is supposed to focus only on "non-negotiables" like abortion while eschewing social justice concerns. Had it done so in Latin America, the current political climate would be far less favorable to the Church, and abortion laws would probably be looser. But of course, thinking through the consequences of their actions is not a major strength of the American right these days!

It Was Eighty Years Ago Today...

2007-04-26T09:11:00.000-05:00

With the barrage of anti-Catholic bigotry surrounding the alignment of Supreme Court votes in the recent partial birth abortion case, it is well worth reflecting on another case where the Catholics (or in this case, the Catholic) stood apart. I'm referring to the May 2, 1927 case of Buck v. Bell, which dealt with issues of eugenics and compulsory sterilization (almost eighty years ago to the day).

In 1924, Virginia adopted a eugenics statute, with the aim of sterilizing the mentally retarded. The case involved an attempt to sterilize an 18-year old girl named Carrie Buck, who was mentally retarded, and also accused of prostitution and "immorality". It went all the way to the Supreme Court, which decided in favor of sterilization by a whopping 8-1 majority. Here's what Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in his majority opinion:

"We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind."

There was a lone dissenter in the case, who happened to be the only Catholic justice on the court, Pierce Butler. With the benefit of hindsight, we look back in horror at this decision. It was a naked appeal to moral relativism, an exercise in callous utilitarianism. Nowhere did it acknowledge the God-given human dignity of the person in question. And yet, the Catholic justice stood alone. Perhaps he was the subject of anti-Catholic attacks for his dissent. Did he see something the others could not?

Eighty years into the future, will people be looking back and applauding the stance of the Catholic justices in Gonzales v. Carhart, wondering in horror how the weight of established opinion favored such a procedure that again appealed to cold utilitarianism?

Poverty and Choices

2007-04-25T13:36:00.000-05:00

Mirror of Justice links to an interesting study by the Center for American Progress entitled "From Poverty to Prosperity: A National Strategy to Cut Poverty in Half." A noble aim, given that almost 40 million people live in poverty in the United States (one in eight), and poverty rates have risen dramatically under the Bush presidency (from 11.3 percent in 2000 to 12.6 percent in 2005). These figures are among the highest in the developed world. Inequality is also mushrooming, with the richest 1 percent of the population holding the largest share of income since 1929.

The study puts forward four key recommendations that, if implemented, would reduce poverty by 26 percent immediately. The recommendations are: (i) raise the minimum wage; (ii) expand the earned income tax credit (in-work benefits); (iii) provide childcare subsidies to poor families; (iv) expand the child tax credit.

The overall cost of these measures: $90 billion a year. To put this in perspective, Bush's tax cuts cost around $400 billion a year, while tax cuts for families making more than $200,000 a year alone costs more than $100 billion. And of course, the Iraq war: $420 billion and counting...

So there is a choice. It is possible to reverse the fiscal irresponsibility of the Bush era, and still enact policies that would dramatically reduce poverty rates. Do we want to help the poor and the needy, as Christ commanded, or do we want to give handouts to the rich and spend money on war? For a Christian, the answer is clear. For the Bush administration, not so much.

Does Bush Still Not Care About Bin Laden?

2007-04-25T12:52:00.000-05:00

It turns out that the Taliban is giving Osama Bin Laden full credit for the attack on the US military base in Bagram, Afghanistan, during the visit of Dick Cheney. Although Cheney was unharmed, 23 people died in this attack. I wonder if Cheney shares his bosses views about Bin Laden. Remember, Bush-- ever anxious to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and had no weapons of mass destruction-- got quickly bored by the Saudi terror master. On a number of occasions, Bush made statements like "I truly am not that concerned about him" and capturing Bin Laden is "not a top priority use of American resources."

The mind boggles. Imagine a Democrat had made these statements. And then imagine the intensity of the right-wing noise machine in the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Cheney. In a sense, though, the Democrats have only themselves to blame. The reason: every time a Bushite makes a ludicrous statement about how voting for Democrats means everybody is going to die, the typical response (as Kevin Drum puts it) is "whining". For instance, Rudy Guiliani, his campaign under attack from all sides, whips out the fear card. Instead of using this as a chance to explain how Bushite policies have been such a dramatic failure on national security grounds, we are subjected to balderdash like "Rudy Giuliani today has taken the politics of fear to a new low" (Obama) and "One of the great tragedies of this Administration is that the President failed to keep this country unified after 9/11" (Clinton). This just makes the Democrats look weak and whiny, and plays into Republican hands. What's so hard about pointing out that Bin Laden is not only alive and kicking, but up to much mischief, and that Bush bears some responsibility?

Update: Josh Marshall nails it.

"Democrats should just hit right back on how President Bush has been helping Osama bin Laden for almost six years. Sounds harsh. But it’s true. Consider the facts. President Bush had bin Laden trapped in the mountains of Tora Bora. But he let bin Laden get away because Bush wanted to focus on Saddam Hussein instead. The president and the White House tried to lie about this during the 2004 election. But since then the evidence has become overwhelming. President Bush decided to let bin Laden get away so he could get ready to attack Saddam Hussein. So pretty much anything bin Laden does from here on out is on President Bush. And how about Iraq? President Bush has screwed things up so badly that he’s created a whole new generation of recruits for bin Laden. He’s created a whole new army for bin Laden. Not by being tough but by being stupid. And by being too much of a coward to admit his mistakes once it was obvious that the occupation of Iraq was helping bin Laden specifically and the jihadist agenda in general. After half a decade, the verdict is pretty clear: President Bush has been the biggest ally Osama bin Laden has. He’s helped bin Laden at pretty much every turn — even if only by his own stupidity, incompetence and cowardice. And when the next big terrorist attack comes, we can thank President Bush for helping make it happen."

Obama Continues to Inspire

2007-04-24T14:34:00.000-05:00

Who else today can speak the truth so eloquently, without spin and subterfuge?

"But if the next President can restore the American people’s trust – if they know that he or she is acting with their best interests at heart, with prudence and wisdom and some measure of humility – then I believe the American people will be ready to see America lead again. They will be ready to show the world that we are not a country that ships prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far off countries. That we are not a country that runs prisons which lock people away without ever telling them why they are there or what they are charged with. That we are not a country which preaches compassion and justice to others while we allow bodies to float down the streets of a major American city. That is not who we are."

Amen.

Partial Birth Abortion And Catholic Judges

2007-04-24T14:11:00.000-05:00

As was well noted, it was the five Catholic Supreme Court justices (Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy) banding together that upheld the ban on partial birth abortions last week. We should all remember what this practice entails: pulling the baby out apart from the head, sticking a pair of scissors into the baby's skull to kill him/her, then using a suction to suck out the brains. As barbaric a procedure as one can possibly imagine. A procedure that the weight of public opinion is against, and that figures like Daniel Patrick Moynihan deemed to close to infanticide for comfort. And yet... the leading Democratic nominees have all criticized this decision. Are they so in the thrall of the abortion lobby that they cannot stand up for what is right, even in this most extreme of cases? Don't they realize that this is why the Catholic vote keeps slipping away?

And please, spare me the specious arguments based on the mother's health. To those making this argument, I would propose the following: how about banning all abortions except when the life of the mother is endangered? We all know how the pro-abortion lobby would react to this proposal. No, it's not about the health of the mother. Shed the pretence.

But this is also no time to pat the Bush administration on the back. True, Roberts and Alito made the right call in this case, but they have not stood up for the dignity of life in other cases (remember Hamden and the Geneva Conventions?). And, as most experts point out, the impact of this decision on the actual incidence of abortions will be negligible, while the carnage in Iraq continues to mount. Thank you indeed, George W. Bush.

But the most appalling reaction of all is the one that pins the blame on the Catholic faith of the aforementioned five justices for this decision. Cartoons are circulating of five Supreme Court justices wearing miters. As this link shows, the ugly anti-Catholic prejudice being generated by some on the left matches the old bigotry on the right portraying Catholics as agents on an insidious papacy. As reported by Mirror of Justice, one of the milder commentators, Geoffrey Stone from the Chicago law school put it as follows:

"What, then, explains this decision? Here is a painfully awkward observation: All five justices in the majority in Gonzales are Catholic. The four justices who are either Protestant or Jewish all voted in accord with settled precedent. It is mortifying to have to point this out. But it is too obvious, and too telling, to ignore."

Incredible. Since when did respect for human life become a value specific to the Catholic faith? Could one not argue that the since the two Jewish justices dissented, there is something inherent in Judaism that supports infanticide? Of course, this would be a despicable and outrageous argument. And yet, when you replace "Judaism" with "Catholicism", common standards of decency simply fall down...

Genocide in Turkey

2007-04-24T13:57:00.000-05:00

As noted by Daniel Larison, tomorrow marks the 92nd anniversary of the Turkish genocide against the Armenian people. The goal was clearly the obliteration of the Christian Armenians, textbook genocide. The best estimates are that about a million people died. A fervent form of "Holocaust denial" became entrenched among the Turkish authorities, through the present day. As Larison notes "denialism and Turkish republicanism have unfortunately combined; the hyper-nationalists today are only the most obnoxious of the denialists." In Turkey today, it remains a crime to simply state the historical facts and to even mention the word "genocide". The criminal code forbids "insulting Turkishness." Recently, Hrant Dink, an Armenian Turk, after criticizing Turkey's genocide denial, was prosecuted three times, and eventually assassinated by nationalists.

Now, right-wing culture warriors today will look at this story and paint a stark picture of Islamic aggression against a small helpless Christian community. But this is not accurate. The Armenians lived for centuries under the Ottomans. They may have suffered discrimination and a lack of true religious freedom, but they lived unmolested. No, it was secular nationalism that killed them, the pseudo-religion that exalts the Turkish nation. After all, it was on suspicion of aiding the enemy during the first world war (the Russians) that provoked the massacres. And it is that form of nationalism, dressed in patriotic garb, that can be truly chilling.

Who Cares What George Washington Thought, About Guns And Other Things?

2007-04-18T23:10:00.000-05:00

One of the most ludicrous positions in the US constitutional debate is the notion that one must remain wedded to intent of the original framers of the Constitution. In other words, it should not be a living document. I may start to sound like a broken record on this one, but this reflects a wholly Protestant approach, secularized sola scriptura. Catholics, of course, appeal to the unwritten natural law and try to discern what is right from basic principals. Everything stems from the fact that the Word of God is a person, Jesus, and not a mere text. It follows that the starting point is the recognition that every human being is endowed with God-given human dignity that must always be respected.

Now, if this is in accord with written law, fine. If not, then an effort should be made to change the law. The founders accepted slavery. We don't. We have learned that torture is gravely evil. We have come to the realization that the death penalty debases humanity, and should be used only when there are no further options. We continue to declare that abortion is wrong, even though we accept the equality of women because it is an attack on innocent human life. The natural law does not change. We just understand it better.

Today, after the Virginia Tech tragedy, the old debate over gun control has rekindled. Those favoring guns offer a literalist reading of the constitution. Others note that the "right to bear arms" refers only to state militias. But who really cares? Does it make any difference what a group of 18th century Americans thought? The issue before us should be: what best protects the common good, the free availability of guns, or some gun control? The answer seems easy. As I've discussed numerous times before, the gun death rate in the United States is off the charts. Why this is the case is open to debate. Some point to the legacy of popular revolution and the frontier culture, others to the acceptability of violence as a response to problems, others to a popular culture that glorifies violence, and others still to the greater diversity that breeds tensions. But one thing is certain. The free availability of guns is bound to lead to further bloodshed.

Think of the recent tragedy. The young perpetrator of the massacre was clearly mentally ill, seriously so. He was paranoid and delusional, and possessed violent fantasies. These unfortunate souls exist in every country in the world. But in most other countries in the world, they could not so easily come across such deadly weapons that could cause such carnage. Sure, there are other ways to commit mass murder, but they are a lot harder. The counter argument is always some bizarre definition of "freedom", as if freedom is a primary virtue that can never be compromised. In fact, freedom is compromised every day in the service of the common good, and this is equally true in the United States as elsewhere. Examples abound. The freedom to drive a vehicle at any speed, or under the influence of alcohol, is curtailed, and for good reason. Certain drugs are made illegal, again for good reason. On the topic of alcohol, most citizens of the world would regard the ludicrously high drinking age in the United States as an undue restriction on freedom. All but the most extreme libertarians accept the role of the government in regulating behavior in the interest of the common good. Of course, there can be legitimate debate over boundaries. (Hint: the common good encompasses all, not just subgroups such as fellow countrymen. It is separate from the promotion of personal morality).

After the recent tragedy, the world press was united in condemning the liberal gun laws in the United States. The standard reaction of the right was a firm "butt out", tinged with a smug sense of superiority. For America is "free", more "free" than any other country, indeed, the "leader of the free world". Sorry, Europeans are no less "free" than Americans, and certainly do not see themselves so, but they are safer. No, the old "freedom" excuse for scorning gun control is based on an outdated mode of thinking, one that supposes that citizens with guns are the best protection against a coercive state that may abuse its power. Which brings me back to my original point: George Washington and his friends may have good reason for holding such views. We certainly don't. It's high time to adopt a Catholic approach to the natural law, rather than fealty to a dead text.

"Charism of Political Discernment"

2007-04-16T17:38:00.000-05:00

A few days back, we saw Michael Novak and Richard John Neuhaus, Bush's favorite Catholics, making a last ditch effort to defend the Iraq war, and a rather feeble one at that. Now is the turn of the third member of the triumvirate, George Weigel. In a First Things essay, Weigel still defends the Iraq war, despite tactical mistakes along the way. It is interesting that Weigel, Novak, and Neuhaus do not seem at all chastened, even when others who supported the war (including the New Republic) have since repented.

In an excellent editorial, Commonweal takes Weigel to task for a position he has held in the past, that the political authorities are in a better position to assess the "morality and wisdom of war" than the bishops, as these officials tend to be "more fully informed about the relevant facts". Thus the charism of political discernment! In his latest essay, though, Weigel is strangely silent on the "charism" argument. This is hardly surprising, given how disastrous the Bush administration has been, displaying the polar opposite of a political discernment charism. It would be funny if it were not so tragic. But the Holy Spirit works in mysterious ways. The experience under the Bush administration has shown clearly that Weigel's argument is deeply flawed. It was the thin sheet he used to hide his ideological preferences behind some Catholic sounding catchphrases, and it has been abruptly whisked away, rendering him naked and rather unattractive at that.

Perhaps people should have listened to the bishops more closely then, as they should have listened to the last Pope Benedict during the first world war. As Commonweal puts it, "For a group that is supposed to lack the charism to make sound judgments about war and peace, the bishops have acquitted themselves far better than their critics." Indeed.

The Bush Bubble, Defined

2007-04-16T17:37:00.000-05:00

We all know about the bubble. Sycophantic insiders. Pre-screened audiences. Isolation from reality. But it's rare to see a legal argument admitting the existence of, and defending, the Bush bubble. The case centers around the "Denver Three", Denver residents who obtained tickets from their Republican congressman to attend a Bush speech in 2005. One of the "loyal Bushies" on duty noticed a "no blood for oil" bumper sticker on their car, and threw them out, impersonating Secret Service agents in the process (a crime, by the way). As noted by the Carpetbagger Report, "this was an example of American citizens getting escorted out of a public event, dealing with a public policy issue, on public property, featuring public officials, because someone didn’t like their bumper sticker." Charming. The evictees sued. And how did the Bushies respond? With this statement: "The president’s right to control his own message includes the right to exclude people expressing discordant viewpoints from the audience." There you have it, the bubble...

Gun Nuts Exploit Tragedy

2007-04-16T17:13:00.000-05:00

As I write this, I'm following the horrible story of the gun violence in Virginia Tech University, where a gunman brutally murdered 32 people today. We all know that the United States has some of the highest gun-related deaths in the world. What can we do about it? Well, if you are a gun nut like Glenn Reynolds, you could argue that the problem was the gun ban on campus. He notes that a bill to allow students carry handguns on campus was shot down and concludes "Had the bill passed, things might have turned out differently". At times like this, I simply think that the right is criminally insane. Think about it. A campus where every drunken frat boy has a handgun in his pocket. Wonderful. By this logic, Fallujah and Ramada must be some of the safest cities in the world...

What is the "National Catholic Prayer Breakfast" Anyway?

2007-04-13T14:52:00.000-05:00

Its mission statement:

"We have created the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in response to the call of Pope John Paul the Great for a "New Evangelization, new in order, methods and expression." We gather from across the United States of America for worship and fellowship. We gather to thank Our Lord for his abundant blessings upon this Land. We reaffirm our faith in Him and renew our dedication to this great Republic. We commit ourselves to providing for our brothers and sisters who are the most vulnerable in society, and we commit our country to the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary."

Look at the highlighted sentence. Doesn't that mix religion and nationalism? Doesn't Catholic mean universal, going beyond the confines of a particular country? And isn't there something a little discomforting about equating faith in God and "this great Republic" in the same sentence?

Bush Mocks Catholic Teaching

2007-04-13T13:18:00.000-05:00

At the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast this morning, Bush made the following comments:

"Renewing the promise of America begins with upholding the dignity of human life. In our day, there is a temptation to manipulate life in ways that do not respect the humanity of the person. When that happens, the most vulnerable among us can be valued for their utility to others -- instead of their own inherent worth. We must continue to work for a culture of life -- where the strong protect the weak, and where we recognize in every human life the image of our Creator."

Of course, he enunciates quite clearly the way Catholics view the culture of life, founded on God-given human dignity. What is distressing is that his policies bear so little relationship to such a guiding philosophy, and are often in stark contrast to Catholic teaching.

The culture of life. What about torturing people? What about imprisonment without charge? What about deportation in order to be tortured? What about rushing to war on a tissue of lies? What about elevating consequentialism as an over-arching principle? What making the world a more dangerous place? What about promoting a narrow nationalism? What about granting tax cuts to the super-rich, while cutting medicaid and food stamps? What about executing people at a brisk rate, denying them the proper legal defense, and then mocking pleas for clemency?

Whatever philosophy guides Bush, it is not Catholic. Just remember, Jesus reserved his harshest words for those who used religion for political reasons (the "hypocrites").

Lessons from Malawi

2007-04-13T12:28:00.000-05:00

As the bishops in Zimbabwe take a stand against Robert Mugabe's entrenched thugocracy, dubbing it "racist, corrupt and lawless", John Allen brings our attention to the role of the Catholic bishops in promoting change in Malawi, something he refers to as the "most remarkable, if largely untold, political interventions of the Catholic church in the 20th century." Malawi under Hastings Banda was a rather unpleasant place. A megalomaniac, Banda claimed personal ownership of the whole economy, and decreed that pictures of himself be placed in every office (and, even more bizarrely, insisted his image be broadcast before all movies). Critics were arrested, and often tortured and killed. Censorship was the norm, and the intelligence service was feared. And while millions lived in dire poverty, Banda secreted away his own millions. But Banda also maintained warm relations with apartheid-era South Africa, which led Reagan and Thatcher to turn a blind eye to his mis-rule.

In 1992, the Catholic bishops issued a stinging pastoral letter that was read in every single church. In it, they denounced income inequality, injustice, human rights abuse, corruption, nepotism, and the lack of free speech. In the words of the letter:

"We cannot turn a blind eye to our people's experiences of unfairness or injustice.. These are our brothers and sisters who are in prison without knowing what they are charged with, or when their case will be heard.. No one person can claim to have a monopoly on truth or wisdom... Nobody should have to suffer for living up to their convictions. We can only regret that this has not always been the case in our country."

The result was electrifying. People went crazy at Mass, and church attendance soared. The government attempted to crack down, and the cabinet even debated murdering the bishops. But the tidal wave could not be stopped. People started standing up to the security forces. Students began protesting. By 1994, Banda was gone. An inspiring story!

Bilal Hussein

2007-04-13T10:44:00.000-05:00

Andrew Sullivan raises the issue of Bilal Hussein, a press photographer in American custody without charge for about a year. In fact, the Bush administration refuses to bring charges; in fact, the accusations seemed to change "even in the course of a single press cycle". Even worse, "the U.S. Forces insist that they have secret charges which, in the manner of Franz Kafka's novel The Trial they are unwilling to present to Bilal Hussein". The manifold "suspicions" raised by military spokespeople have been exposed as false.

Who, then, is Bilal Hussein? Hussein was part of an Associated Press (AP) team of photographers that won a Pulitzer prize for coverage of the war in Fallujah in 2005. This sheds some light on a possible reason for Hussein's incarceration. The Pentagon was enraged by some pictures he took of fighting in the Al-Anbar province, pictures that disputed the established storyline. In fact, the administration was irked that these AP photographers won a prize in the first place. So the message is clear: toe the line on Iraq, or else...

Sadly, there is precedent. During the early stages of the war, the U.S. bombed Al Jazeera headquarters in Baghdad, killing reporter Tareq Ayyoub. It had done the same thing in Kabul, destroying the building. Coincidence? Hardly. Remember the leaked memo, describing how Tony Blair had tried to talk Bush out of bombing Al Jazeera? Of course, the Bush administration denied it, but the British government pursued charges against two civil servants under the Official Secrets Act for leaking the document.

No More Double Standards, Please

2007-04-13T10:36:00.000-05:00

Frankly, I'm sick of the media circus over the Imus psuedo-controversy. I don't care about radio "shock-jocks" and I don't care about basketball. I do care about hypocrisy, however, and what I don't understand is why one fool who makes racist comments is subjected to such vilification while right-wing blowhwards use this kind of language every day of the week. Yet again, the standards of civilized discourse tend not to apply to this sub-group. Media Matters does some sterling work sifting through some of the more outrageous statements against women and minorities from the likes of Glenn Beck, Neal Boortz, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage, Michael Smerconish, and John Gibson. Follow the link. My personal favorities: Michael Savage calling for genocide in southern Lebanon, Rush Limbaugh making fun of torture, and Neal Boortz advising Katrina victims to take up prostitution for a living.

Benedict Reflects on Evolution

2007-04-12T17:23:00.000-05:00

Writing in a new book, the pope states that neither a theory of creation that makes a mockery of science nor a theory of evolution that eschews any role for the Creator is acceptable. In his words:

"The question is not to either make a decision for a creationism that fundamentally excludes science, or for an evolutionary theory that covers over its own gaps and does not want to see the questions that reach beyond the methodological possibilities of natural science."

The pope did not endorse intelligent design, which is surely a disappointment to the American evangelical right eager for a Vatican ally on this issue. As I noted recently, there is a need to keep separate "physics" and "metaphysics" and let not the experts in one domain claim knowledge over the other. Religious believers should stay out of the scientific debate. It is important to note that "intelligent design" does not merely postulate that God is the Creator of everything out of nothing and guides all of creation (sensible), but encroaches on scientific territory by holding that organisms appeared simultaneously (not so sensible). Likewise, the claim of some neo-Darwinists that evolution proves the non-existence of God is equally ludicrous, as they step rather indelicately beyond science and into theological speculation. As the pope says "I find it important to underline that the theory of evolution implies questions that must be assigned to philosophy and which themselves lead beyond the realms of science."

Remember, this is a key theme of Benedict's, that faith and reason are not at loggerheads.

(Tip: Rocco Palmo.)

Life is Better Than Under Saddam, Right?

2007-04-12T17:16:00.000-05:00

Not according to Shlemon Warduni, auxiliary bishop of Baghdad. Last year, and interviewer asked about whether life was just as bad as under Saddam. The bishop cut him off:

"No, in no way. The comparison won’t hold up, it’s not even worth suggesting. Under Saddam there was dictatorship, the wars… but the people lived fairly well. Today there is the total insecurity, one can’t be sure in the morning of coming home in the evening, it seems absurd but that’s how it is. I can testify to it in person, if you’ll believe it."

Hmm, I wonder if Michael Novak is as disappointed with him as he was with the pope. What an ungrateful cleric, unwilling to thank his real Messiah, George W. Bush, for bestowing the freely-given gift of freedom and redemption! Just another euro-weenie trying to "stick it to the Americans". Actually, maybe Novak needs to live in Iraq to wallow in the glory himself...

(Tip: Evangelical Catholicism.)

Banana Republic Watch

2007-04-12T12:46:00.000-05:00

Josh Marshall has been at the vanguard of the US attorneys story, following its nefarious twists and turns and sniffing out conspiracies theories that, however unlikely, always turn out to have a kernel of truth. Today, he focuses on the real story behind the story: the Rovian voter suppression machine. He starts by noting a New York Times story that shows precious little evidence of voter fraud, despite the best efforts of the Republican noise machine to play up the issue over the past few years. Last year, there were only 86 convictions for voter fraud, and most of these were the result of simple mistakes. Possibly the most tragic case is that of Usman Ali, a Pakistani immigrant who filled out a voter registration form alongside the other forms he was handed by a brusque official at the DMV while renewing his driving license. For this "crime", he was deported to Pakistan. Charming.

This strategy was orchestrated by the Rovian machine, with the backing of the Republican National Committee. But what did they hope to accomplish? Again, Marshall is pretty clear:

"Republican party officials and elected officials use bogus claims of vote fraud to do three things: 1) to stymie voter registration drives and get-out-the-vote efforts in poor and minority neighborhoods, 2) purge voter rolls of legitimate voters and 3) institute voter ID laws aimed at making it harder for low-income and minority voters to vote."

In other words, it's all about keeping potential Democrats away from the polls. Remember those stories of posters plastered around black neighborhoods giving the wrong day to vote? Remember the stories of too few voting machines in minority areas, along with surpluses in Republican-leaning enclaves? Remember the New Hampshire phone-jamming scandal, in which Republicans were indicted for deliberately sabotaging the Democrat's get-out-the-vote campaign? And remember John Thune's narrow victory over Tom Daschle in South Dakota, that came on the back of massive intimidation of native American voters as Republicans harped on and on about voter fraud on the reservations? And, of course, who can forget the ur-scandal that opened the eyes of Republicans to the voter suppression potential, the 2000 voter debacle in Florida?

So, this strategy works. But the Republicans need compliant legal officials to keep pressing these bogus claims. And, as Marshall diligently points out, the US attorneys scandal leads back directly this strategy. As he puts it:

"Only most of the relatively non-partisan and professional US Attorneys simply didn't find any actual fraud. Choosing not to indict people on bogus charges got at least two of the US Attorneys (Iglesias and McKay) fired. And we are seeing evidence that others may have been nudged out less directly for the same reasons. In turn they've been replaced by a new crop of highly-political party operative prosecutors who, in the gentle wording of the Times, "may not be so reticent" about issuing indictments against people who have committed technical voting infractions with no intent to cast a fraudulent ballot."

Welcome to the Banana Republic...

Bertone Slams Media

2007-04-11T16:00:00.000-05:00

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone recently expressed frustration with the media's obsession with Church sexual teaching, at the expense of everything else. He noted:

"We face an extremely grave problem. The church's messages are subject to a type of manipulation and falsification by some western media...I see a fixation by some journalists on moral topics, such as abortion and homosexual unions, which are certainly important issues but absolutely do not constitute the thinking and work of the church...Why this deafening silence? We have to say the press does not write much about the social and charity work of thousands of Catholic organisations around the world."

Of course, it's not just gays and sex. To be fair, the media is quite capable of bringing up a diverse range of topics, such as the Inquisition, Galileo, sex abuse, and the Crusades. Oh, and how women are ill-treated in Catholicism, but apparently not at all (judging from media attention) in Islam or orthodox Judaism. Fair and balanced indeed!

The Democratic Party and Christianity, Again

2007-04-11T15:52:00.000-05:00

Why is it that the Democratic leadership refuses to accord the respect to Christianity that it accords to other religions?

Here is Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean's Easter message:

“Easter Sunday is a joyful celebration. The holiday represents peace, redemption and renewal, a theme which brings hope to people of all faiths. During this time Christians are called to remember who they are as people of faith, and that even the greatest of evils will not have the last word. It is also a time to reflect upon and be in solidarity with those who are persecuted and suffering among us. We should also use this time to honor those who continue to make incredible sacrifices for us, including our brave men and women in the armed forces serving overseas during this holiday. I would like to wish all those celebrating around the world this Sunday, a joyous Easter.”

What's missing? Any reference to the resurrection of Jesus the Christ, the whole point of the Easter celebration. Contrast this with the statement Howard Dean released for Passover:

"At sundown tonight, Jews around the world will begin celebrating Passover, a holiday that symbolizes the true blessing of freedom. For the next week the enslavement of the Jewish people in Egypt, their persecution and suffering and their eventual redemption will be remembered."

A little different, no? And they wonder why Christians flock to Republicans, in spite of policies that (to put it mildly) frequently deviate from Christian principles.... Will they ever learn?

(Tip: Andrew Sullivan).

Usual Suspects Attack Benedict

2007-04-11T14:55:00.001-05:00

With Benedict gaining more and more respect from previous critics on the left, it seems that the most trenchant criticism these days comes from the American right, especially when he touches on issues of war and peace. Recently, in his Easter Urbi Et Orbi address, he noted the following: "the Middle East, besides some signs of hope in the dialogue between Israel and the Palestinian authority, nothing positive comes from Iraq, torn apart by continual slaughter as the civil population flees". This "nothing positive comes from Iraq" provoked the ire of Bush's Catholic cheerleaders, Michael Novak and Fr. Richard John Neuhaus.

Here is what Novak had to say (in the pro-torture National Review):

"Benedict XVI's Easter Sunday remarks in St Peter Square hit a low point, I would think. He said that "nothing positive comes from Iraq." This is a very skewed report on the realities on the ground. But it might mean that the message the Pope wanted to convey is that of the American Left: 'Whatever the good or the bad achievements, it is time to get out.' In other words, not an accurate description, but a prescription for the near future.... [These words] sounded like a standard European view of reality — at least of those Europeans who have always disagreed with the American war aims, and now that things have become difficult and costly want to stick it to the Americans."

And Neuhaus:

"It is worth keeping in mind that in 2003 all the countries with developed intelligence services agreed that Saddam Hussein had or was quickly developing weapons of mass destruction that he intended to use in aggressive war.... It is further recognized by almost everybody that the current strategy led by General David Petraeus is a last effort to turn that situation around... I am impressed by the reporters and informed observers who have in recent weeks offered tentative but hopeful judgments about the success of the Petraeus strategy.... Pope Benedict is not so impressed. Catholics in particular pay close and respectful attention to the words of the pope, also when he is offering only his own prudential judgment with respect to this or that world problem. Admittedly, it is galling when Catholics and others who are usually blithely indifferent to church teaching seize upon a papal opinion with which they agree and, suddenly becoming hyper-infallibilists, elevate it to dogmatic status.... I hope he is wrong about there being nothing positive in what is happening in Iraq."

What strikes me most about these statements is the hint of desperation. After throwing in their lot with the Bush administration for so long, they find it hard to jump ship at such a late stage. Neuhaus is left is hoping against hope that the so-called surge will succeed, and repeating old lies about the whole world believing in the Saddam's weapons of mass destruction (it would ill-behoove a priest to admit that his culture war Bush and Cheney lied to go to war). There is also a tone of irritation. Neuhaus is angered by the notion that a man who prides himself on calling others to task for insufficient orthodoxy now finds himself on the other end of the stick. Novak is less concerned with theology than with the secular ideology he holds dearly, the Calvinist-inspired American exceptionalism that sees God giving the United States a divine mandate to remake the world in its own image (and getting rid of the "bad guys" in the process). Anybody who criticizes this is trying to "stick it to the Americans". It's sad, really, these guys just cannot let go. But that's what happens when you put nationalism instead of universalism, country ahead of God, expediency ahead of principle.

Most Beautiful Prayer Ever

2007-04-09T10:21:00.000-05:00

Looking toward a sea of candles in a darkened cathedral during the Easter Vigil, the deacon (or somebody else), after the Lucernarium, begins to intone the Exultet. Dating from the fifth century, this never loses its power:

Rejoice, heavenly powers! Sing, choirs of angels! Exult, all creation around God's throne! Jesus Christ, our King, is risen! Sound the trumpet of salvation!

Rejoice, O earth, in shining splendor, radiant in the brightness of your King! Christ has conquered! Glory fills you! Darkness vanishes for ever!

Rejoice, O Mother Church! Exult in glory! The risen Savior shines upon you! Let this place resound with joy, echoing the mighty song of all God's people!

My dearest friends, standing with me in this holy light, join me in asking God for mercy, hat he may give his unworthy minister grace to sing his Easter praises.

The Lord be with you. (And also with you)
Lift up your hearts. (We lift them up to the Lord)
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God. (It is right to give him thanks and praise).

It is truly right that with full hearts and minds and voices we should praise the unseen God, the all-powerful Father, and his only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

For Christ has ransomed us with his blood, and paid for us the price of Adam's sin to our eternal Father!

This is our passover feast, when Christ, the true Lamb, is slain, whose blood consecrates the homes of all believers.

This is the night when first you saved our fathers: you freed the people of Israel from their slavery and led them dry-shod through the sea.

This is the night when the pillar of fire destroyed the darkness of sin.

This is night when Christians everywhere, washed clean of sin and freed from all defilement, are restored to grace and grow together in holiness.

This is the night when Jesus Christ broke the chains of death and rose triumphant from the grave.

What good would life have been to us, had Christ not come as our Redeemer? Father, how wonderful your care for us! How boundless your merciful love! To ransom a slave you gave away your Son.

O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer!

Most blessed of all nights, chosen by God to see Christ rising from the dead!

Of this night scripture says: "The night will be as clear as day: it will become my light, my joy."

The power of this holy night dispels all evil, ashes guilt away, restores lost innocence, brings mourners joy; it casts out hatred, brings us peace,and humbles earthly pride.

Night truly blessed when heaven is wedded to earth and man is reconciled with God!

Therefore, heavenly Father, in the joy of this night, receive our evening sacrifice of praise, your Church's solemn offering. Accept this Easter candle, a flame divided but undimmed, a pillar of fire that glows to the honor of God.

Let it mingle with the lights of heaven and continue bravely burning to dispel the darkness of this night!

May the Morning Star which never sets find this flame still burning: Christ, that Morning Star, who came back from the dead, and shed his peaceful light on all mankind, your Son, who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.

Into Great Silence

2007-04-04T13:21:00.000-05:00

Last weekend, I saw this excellent movie centering around the lives of the Carthusian monks inside the Grande Chartreuse in the Alps. The movie is three hours long, and has practically no dialogue. All we see are scenes of the monks living their daily life as the seasons change. It is an immensely beautiful movie, and the viewer is almost touched by the grace exuded by these monks. The three hours pass by as as fleeting moment, much as their life does, engrossed as they are in searching for God. See this movie if you can.

In light of the upcoming Triduum, this blog will also go "Into Great Silence" for a few days. Let's set aside politics, take a leaf out of the Carthusians' book, and focus on more important things. At least for a few days! See you soon...

Conservatism and Nationalism

2007-04-04T12:51:00.000-05:00

At present, the American conservative movement is characterized by a deep and passionate attachment to nationalism. America first, patriotism, glorification of the military.. call it what you wish. Here's the funny thing: not that long ago, conservatism stood firmly against nationalism and all it stood for. Nationalism used to be synonymous with liberalism. The Church also recognized the dangers in unleashing an ideology that placed allegiance to some group-- nation, race, class-- above our common humanity. It foresaw quite clearly the downside of the pseudo-religions that rose up after the Enlightenment to take the place of a Church that had been discarded. Practically all the great evils in the world since the French Revolution can be said to derive from post-Enlightenment nationalistic ideologies. It is important to note that nationalism, no matter how embedded in consciousness today, is a relatively recent phenomenon. In earlier times, the ruler was regarded as having a divine mandate to rule, but this was contingent upon the ruler supporting the common good.

Today, we see the rotten fruits of nationalism still falling from the same tree, despite the death of communism and the most pernicious of the race-based ideologies. Just recently, Iran arrested some British military personnel and generated an anti-British nationalistic outcry, whipping up patriotism to bolster the power of the ruling despots. This is a technique that the Chinese have perfected. Robert Mugabe and the Sudanese demonize the outsiders to justify their murderous policies. Race-based nationalism is alive and well in subtle forms, even in countries like Japan. Even in the United States, nationalism is invoked to quash criticism of the war strategy, or the military in general, and to avoid any question of morality.

Nationalism is rapidly becoming a tired, jaded, bankrupt ideology. As Francis Fukayama noted:

"The EU's attempt to transcend sovereignty and traditional power politics by establishing a transnational rule of law is much more in line with a "post-historical" world than the Americans' continuing belief in God, national sovereignty, and their military."

Of course, Fukayama mentions God, nationalism, and militarism in a single breath as if they sprang from the same root. Nothing could be further from the truth, and the fact that many American conservatives meld them together is perhaps their greatest error. But Fukayama's vision is a good one. In his view, the future will downplay nationalism, and be based more on transnational authorities. Kind of like the Holy Roman Empire...

Gun Nuts and the District of Columbia

2007-03-29T10:23:00.000-05:00

Recently, a D.C. Court declared that the district's ban on keeping handguns at home is unconstitutional. In response, the pro-torture National Review organized a symposium that showed as much diversity as a Bush administration public event. The tenor of the opinion was that the Court was right to toss aside the ban, that the decision was a "masterful treatise", a restoration of "full constitution freedom" for DC, and would even help foster the "rights consciousness" of the American people (doesn't that sound vaguely Marxist?).

What you do not hear is talk of activist judges reading broad rights into the Constitution that are patently not there (since when did every gun nut with an SUV and suburban house constitute a "well-regulated militia"?). You do not hear attacks on courts thumbing their nose at the democratic wishes of the people. Yet so-called conservatives make these arguments quite vociferously in other cases, such as when the right to privacy was deemed to encompass the right to abortion. Sadly, opposition to "judicial activism" is not a principle, but merely a rhetorical device to support one's ideological agenda.

Of all the opinions expressed on the National Review symposium, the most laughable comes from John Lott, who notes that "the nation’s strictest gun-control laws, gun-control advocates have been embarrassed that the city has frequently had the highest murder rate of any large city in the U.S". Hence gun control does not deter crime! Given that there are no border controls in place between DC and Virginia, this is an utterly ridiculous argument. If you want real numbers, compare gun deaths in the United States and countries with broad based gun control measures. I raised this issue before, and here are the numbers again:

Gun-related deaths per 100,000 people:
U.S.A. 14.24; Brazil 12.95; Mexico 12.69; Argentina 8.93; Finland 6.46; Switzerland 5.31; France 5.15; Canada 4.31; Norway 3.82; Austria 3.70; Portugal 3.20; Israel 2.91; Belgium 2.90; Australia 2.65; Italy 2.44; New Zealand 2.38; Denmark 2.09; Sweden 1.92; Greece 1.29; Germany 1.24; Ireland 0.97; Spain 0.78; Netherlands 0.70; Scotland 0.54; England and Wales 0.41; Taiwan 0.37; Singapore 0.21; Hong Kong 0.14; South Korea 0.12; Japan 0.05.

There are many hypotheses for the high rate of gun deaths in the United States. Some point to the legacy of the Wild West, others to the acceptability of violence as a response to problems, others to a popular culture that glorifies violence, and others still to the greater diversity that breeds tensions. Whatever the reason, dishing out guns to people in such an environment is an act of gross irresponsibility. It's not an issue of "freedom" (most countries on the list above are at least as "free" as the United States), but rather a part of the gospel of life.