Tag Archives: ethics

Religion vs. Atheism in the Public Square

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The atheists are at it again.  The Daily Caller describes this situation in Warren, MI.

It seems that the city has allowed a Nativity scene to be displayed, as it has done for a number of years, in the City Hall lobby.  This offends the Freedom From Religion Foundation and a local associate, complainant Douglas Marshall.  Marshall wants to place his own sign next to the Nativity to balance the display.

City Mayor Jim Fouts appears to have a clear understanding of the issue at hand, though.  In response to last year’s letter to Fouts, in which Marshall also objected to the Nativity, the mayor stated that the city was not at all endorsing any religion; on the contrary, all religions were free to have their displays present:

Your objections focus on freedom of religion guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and that the nativity scene somehow was a violation of that constitutional right because [it] favors one religion over another. I vehemently disagree with your objection[.]  The city of Warren in no way whatsoever shows any favoritism to any religion. All religions are welcome to celebrate their religious seasons with a display in city hall[.]

Indeed, the 1st Amendment says this about the government’s role vis-à-vis religion:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

Eliding the reference to Congress, notice carefully that the clause discusses religion, and only religion; it makes no mention of atheism.  By Marshall’s own statement (see below), his view, and by extension atheism generally, is not a religion, and so his complaint is outside the scope of the Constitution: he has no constitutionally protected freedom of religion right to present his atheism in the public square (he certainly does have a freedom of speech right to do so, but this he seems not to assert).

This is, to some extent though, a sophistry.  Readers of my blog know that I’m as in favor of the free competition of ideas as I am of the free competition of a market place.  This is the sign that Marshall wishes to place next to the Nativity:

At this season of the Winter Solstice, let reason prevail.  There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell.  There is only our natural world.  Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.

Hmm….

Let him put up his sign.  Let the free competition of ideas play out.  The good people of Warren will see the right of this.

Politics and Racism

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There has been some press in the last few days (actually, in the last few years) about the role of racism in political criticism.  I want to look at the record, in this non-scientific review, and see whether there’s anything to that press.

This is Presidential Candidate Obama’s view from the campaign trail:

They’re going to try to make you afraid. They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. They’re gonna say, “You know what, he’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?”

Here’s President Jimmy Carter’s view, from a 2009 interview:

I think an overwhelming portion of the intentionally demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man. That he’s African-American.

Here’s Keith Olbermann, from his 28 January 2010 “Worst Persons” segment of his Countdown show, describing various commentators that had remarked on President Obama’s State of the Union speech:

…our winners, these guys, assessing not the speech but the president himself.  Eric Erickson, “cocky”…. John Hood, “flippant” and “arrogant.” Glenn Beck, “like a punk.”

…the racist white guys revert to euphemisms and code words and among the code words that they think they’re getting away with are “cocky, flippant, punk, and especially arrogant.”

There’s this from an August 2011 interview with Congresswoman Frederica Wilson (D, FL)”

TAMRON HALL: Let me get your response to David Axelrod saying the jobless issue, the unemployment issue, is not exclusive to one community.
FREDERICA WILSON: Well, it sounds good, but it is exclusive to one community….  Well, when you look at African-American males, 40% of them are unemployed, those under 30 years of age.  And I understand exactly that the entire nation must be involved in this recovery, but the black community is experiencing a great recession.  That’s what we’re experiencing.  And all of the growth in the past 30 years, we see it slipping away.  From home ownership, the middle class: it’s slipping away from our hands.  And it has a lot to do with a lot of issues: racism….

And this from our Attorney General, Eric Holder, in an interview from last weekend:

Mr. Holder said he believed that a few [of his “more extreme” critics] were motivated by animus against Mr. Obama and that he served as a stand-in for him.  “This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him,” he said, “both due to the nature of our relationship and, you know, the fact that we’re both African-American.”

To which, Congressman Joe (R, IL) Walsh points out that Obama’s continued silence in the face of Holder’s…remarks…demonstrates that the president shares in the blame for the attorney general’s choice of words.

What’s interesting is who it is that’s hollering “racism” and what the hollerers are doing about the actual issues before them.  Besides hollering “racism,” I mean.

Hypocrisy

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For some time, President Obama has been demanding that the payroll tax cut, due to expire at the end of this year, be extended for another year—the whole year, together with a blanket extension of the unemployment subsidy.  Leaving aside the wisdom of defunding Social Security as a means of providing a tax cut, or of paying the unemployed for not working, let’s explore what’s happened with Obama’s demand.

Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have refused to pay for a one-year payroll tax cut and the unemployment subsidy extension with any means that doesn’t include a parallel tax increase elsewhere, as they demand a continuation of their class war programs.  Failing to get agreement for that for a complete year’s extension, the Senate passed a two month extension of the tax cut and subsidy—with, I’m embarrassed to say, the complicity of Senate RINOs who lack the character or courage required to fight this class war.  Certainly, at the end of those two months, the Progressive demand for tax increases on Americans of whom they disapprove will resume, even more loudly.

The House had passed, some time prior, a bill that would have extended the payroll tax cut for the entire year, extended the unemployment subsidy on a gradually decreasing schedule, and paid for all of it without tax increases anywhere else, but with spending cuts only.

When the Senate passed their two-month bill, they ran for the exits to start their precious month-long vacation, their personal welfare being more important to these Senators than the welfare of us Americans.  On the way out the door, they ordered the House to pass the Senate bill with no further argument.

The House rejected the Senate’s failure and voted, instead, to send the two bills to a House-Senate conference committee to resolve the differences, as is the normal way of doing business in the Congress.  “Let’s get this done today,” House Speaker John Boehner told Obama in an effort to enlist the President’s help to get the bill which Obama has been demanding passed.  However.

Reid is actively refusing to negotiate.  He’s actively refusing to bring the Senate back—or to send any Senators back to take part in the conference committee.  He demands that his two-month bill be passed by the House as a precondition to any negotiations.  And he’s castigated those evil Republicans for holding out for Obama’s year-long extension.

Obama is actively refusing to negotiate on the passage of his own bill.  He says:

Now let’s be clear.  The bipartisan compromise that was reached on Saturday is the only viable way to prevent a tax hike on January 1. The only one.

So, Obama, who has been demanding a year-long extension of the payroll tax cut for Americans, doesn’t really mean it.  The only bill he wants is his pet Harry Reid’s two-month extension.  And an opportunity to fight again for divisive tax increases on Americans whom he doesn’t like.

The Euro and the Economists

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Spiegel Online International interviewed two German economists on the future of the euro.  One has an (incomplete) approach to a solution, the other still can’t see the problem.  The split between the two mirrors the split among politicians (although along different dimensions than the politicians), and the existence of the split is a demonstration of the lack of coherence in reaching a solution.  Which bodes ill for the euro and for the European Union.

The interview opens with this; I’ll cite one economist’s response, as the other is saying substantially the same thing I’ve been writing, and so he’s to a large extent preaching to the choir.

SPIEGEL: Mr. [Joachim] Starbatty, Mr. [Peter] Bofinger, can the euro still be saved?

Bofinger: …The highly indebted countries must be able to borrow at moderate interest rates so they don’t go bankrupt. This could be achieved with euro bonds. And if they can’t be implemented that quickly, the ECB has to stabilize the system. In doing so, it would not create inflation but would in fact avoid deflation.

Mr Bofinger is wrong on two counts, and his first error demonstrates his plain lack of understanding of the nature of the problem.  Disastrously indebted countries do not need to “be able to borrow at moderate interest rates.”  They’ll never be able to borrow their way out of a debt-based bankruptcy.  Disastrously indebted nations instead must stop borrowing altogether and reduce their debt through annual budget surpluses.  Moreover, budget surpluses achieved by taking money away from their citizens and so out of their economies in the form of higher taxes will only guarantee continued economic failure.  The borrowing must stop and the debt reduced through reduced government spending.  Secondly, throwing money at the problem via the ECB certainly will avoid deflation—by leading to explosive inflation from too much money chasing too few goods from too little production.

Bofinger goes on in response to another question:

German politicians have not acknowledged that these countries have already reduced their deficits significantly. Compared to 2009, deficits have declined in all of the crisis-ridden countries…. The markets haven’t even noticed this.

It’s true that the deficits have shrunk.  What the markets have noticed, though, is that reduced deficits means continued deficits which means still increasing debt for nations with too much debt already.

On Spiegel‘s question of EU-wide increasing yields on sovereign debt (which means it’s getting ever more expensive for governments to borrow), the two economists had this:

Starbatty: Because the trouble spots in the euro zone are not being isolated, the sparks are jumping over to the healthy countries. Everyone knows that if the weaker countries are to be rescued, two countries — Germany and France — will ultimately be doing all the heavy lifting. So the most important question is: How long are the Germans willing to pay? And how long are the French in a position to pay?

Bofinger: You correctly describe how the euro zone behaves today, with 17 different countries trying to address the problems individually. In fact, the real question is whether Germany can be everyone’s guarantor in the end. That’s why we have to turn things around and say: We will now act as a unit. If Italy can go into debt through euro bonds, it will always be able to raise money, even it has to refinance €300 billion ($400 billion) in debt next year.

Mr. Starbatty exposes the false premise of the fiscal union on offer: that the “weaker countries” should be rescued at all, and if so, by whom.  The German citizens are tired of being everyone else’s piggy bank, and the French, while slower to the realization, are rapidly losing their capacity, even as they remain (sort of) willing.  Bofinger, on the other hand, misses the problem altogether: the fiscal union both allows an Italy (or a Spain, or a…) to continue to borrow profligately, rather than bringing its debt under control, and it traps Germany (and France) into being the union’s piggy banks.

Here’s this exchange, also:

SPIEGEL: So are the euro countries too different to be welded together in a single currency, as euro critics have claimed from the start?

Bofinger: There are also big differences in productive capacity in the United States. The problem is that we in Germany have tried to become even stronger by holding back wages….

Starbatty: The mistake lies in the fact that the weak countries in the monetary union have not changed their policies. They have used the low interest rates to have a party….  …which is why we now have a large divide in the monetary union. Some are overly competitive, while others can’t keep up anymore.

Both economists have it wrong.  The variability in productive capacity isn’t the problem for cohesiveness.  The lack of common social and philosophical imperatives and the vastly differing views of the purpose of money are what make a cohesive fiscal union of all 17 nations impossible and that are pulling the 27-nation EU apart.  Separately, “overly competitive!?”  Only in the fantasy world of too big to fail does this contradiction make sense.

The interview goes on in this vein.  Without even an understanding of the nature of the problem, there can be no hope of a solution.  But let’s expand government (here in the form of more power to the ECB and a fiscal union layered on top of national governments), as one economist and a gaggle of politicians insist, anyway.

Read the whole thing.

Government “Largesse”

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A remark attributed to Margaret Thatcher from her beginnings in British politics in the late ’40s or early ’50s comes to mind.  She said, in essence,

[I]f you do not provide [for a rainy day–or for any other purpose] you cannot be certain that anyone else will.

This truism would seem self-evident, but I’m going to expound on it a little, anyway.  In the end, “you” is not all of us, but each of us.  Government is what is all of us, acting in concert through the mechanism of representatives we elect for the purpose.

If we, individually, do not provide for our own future, but depend on government—all of us—to do so, then none of us will be capable of providing.  If none of us is providing for ourselves, then we will not have the resources to help any other who has not provided, or cannot provide.  Rely on government?  Government can’t provide for any of us without taking from at least some of us.  That taking is not different in its effect on us from our own conscious decision not to provide for ourselves: what must be taken is exactly that which we would have put by for ourselves.

There’s more to this, though, than just the pecuniary aspect, and that is the morality of relying on “anyone else” to provide.  Leaving the matter to government (for instance), rather than to “anyone else” means ultimately that we must have the government provide for us—we will have become dependent on government, rather than reliant on ourselves.   Worse, a habit of dependency will develop, and the dependents will lose their ability to provide for themselves.

This does not change when that dependency is on “anyone else” instead of on government; it remains dependency.  Of course this is different from an occasional hand up.  From the perspective of Thatcher’s “you,” each of us (but not all of us) is that “anyone else,” and it certainly is our individual duty to offer a hand up (not a handout) to “you” in an hour of need.  Just as it is the duty of “you” not to make asking for, or accepting, such hands up so habitual that they become handouts, and “you” become dependent.