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Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely

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  • The Rabbis and the Credit Crunch
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  • Speech Codes Limit Campus Freedom
    In this week#8217;s a href=http://www.acton.org/commentary/491_speech_codes.php Acton commentary/a, I researched and wrote about the danger of speech codes and the limiting of free expression on college campuses. Like many conservatives in an academic atmosphere, I have also lived through the deceit and intimidation of out-of-control ideologues on campus. It has been an issue I have been extremely passionate about since I witnessed and spoke out against administrators trying to squelch free expression while in school myself. br / br / An important reference, and recommended reading for anybody interested in this topic is ema href=http://www.shadowuniv.com/ The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America#8217;s Campuses/a/em. The authors Alan Charles Kors and Harvey Silversgate offer some essential comments: br / blockquotedivWhat remain of the 60s on our campuses are its worst sides: intolerance of dissent from regnant political orthodoxy, the self-appointed power of self-designated #8220;progressives#8221; to set everyone else#8217;s moral agenda, and saddest of all, the belief that universities not only may but should suspend the rights of some in order to transform students, the culture, and the nation according to their ideological vision and desire. /div/blockquotebr / The authors later add: blockquotedivThe theory of #8220;repressive tolerance,#8221; or, more precisely, its practice of #8220;progressive intolerance,#8221; still governs the extracurricular lives of nearly all of our students. It is easy, however, to identify the vulnerabilities of the bearers of this worst and, at the time, most marginal legacy of the 60s: They loathe the society that they believe should support them generously in their authority over its offspring; they are detached from the values of individual liberty, legal equality, privacy, and the sanctity of conscience toward which Americans essentially are drawn; and, for both those reasons, they cannot bear the light of public scrutiny. Let the sunlight in. /div/blockquotebr / Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) offered a a href=http://www.thefire.org/index.php/article/9986.html write up/a concerning my piece, and since they are the experts, it was nice to receive a positive endorsement from them. The research and action they have put forth on this issue is nothing short of remarkable. br / br / It was an incident at my alma mater, a href=http://www.olemiss.edu/ Ole Miss/a, which ignited a free speech discussion on campus, that brought my attention back to this important issue. I explained in my commentary: br / blockquotedivJust last month at the University of Mississippi, the campus newspaper The Daily Mississippian reported that the University Police interrupted a staged reading of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago. It was suggested that the readings be moved to a free speech zone or what the university calls “speakers corners.” An English instructor named Griffith Brownlee replied by reading the First Amendment and saying “The whole country is a free speech zone.” Once the university found out it was a department-sanctioned event they called the whole affair “a misunderstanding.” As Brownlee herself pointed out in the article, one suspects the irony of attempting to limit the words of an author who wrote against totalitarian tactics was lost on some school officials./div/blockquote

  • Seeking Stability
    At First Things, R.R. Reno posts a href=http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=1234 title=On the Square: The Challenge Facing Conservatisma thought-provoking analysis tying together the election, the financial crisis, and broader economic and cultural trends/a. To simplify somewhat crassly, he argues that conservatism promoted and helped to bring about a more dynamic economy; this coupled with the international instability caused by conservatism#8217;s foreign policy to create a widespread desire for stability; and this desire led to popular attraction to the candidacy of Barack Obama, notwithstanding his claim to be an agent of change. br / br / There is certainly something to this hypothesis, but there are also a couple problems.br / br / 1. Theoretically, there is some difficulty in identifying free-market conservatism with Bush-style foreign policy. Granted that there is a lot of overlap among the principal political figures, the promotion of democracy abroad (putting the most positive possible spin on the Bush agenda) does not intellectually equal promotion of free markets and trade. Certainly there are many libertarians and libertarian-leaning conservatives who have opposed much Republican foreign policy.br / br / 2. Historically, I#8217;m not sure that Reno#8217;s trajectory from economic stability to economic dynamism, with its implications for America#8217;s mood, entirely holds up. It#8217;s true that there is greater geographic and career mobility now than there was in the 1950s, but it#8217;s not clear that it is the result of what I#8217;ll call #8220;negative dynamism,#8221; for example, that people are forced to move or to switch jobs out of financial necessity. Instead, people are pursuing positive opportunities, and making decisions that approximate the following: #8220;I would rather make $20,000 more and live a thousand miles from the community where I grew up, than stay in that community and survive on less.#8221; I#8217;m not claiming that such a decision is good or bad, rational or irrational, only that it#8217;s a different sort of decision than one made by a frontiersman in the 1850s, who had to leave his family for six months and work on the railroad so as to avoid starvation. The feeling of instability, if it is indeed as widespread and decisive as Reno suggests, is more self-imposed than the product of impersonal economic forces. (All of which is a generalization intended to characterize most Americans, and not to deny that some are compelled by genuine economic necessity to one course of action or another.) br / br / With Reno#8217;s conclusion, however, I wholeheartedly agree:br / blockquotediv...American conservatism must recognize the primacy of social mores over economic philosophy and foreign policy. We need to expand an old argument. A democracy depends upon citizens capable of ordered liberty. And a culture that seeks economic vitality and is committed to global leadership also requires citizens who can distinguish responsible autonomy from a life of anomic desire. We can endure the inevitable risks of marketplace and battlefield—but only if we have some confidence about the stability of the deeper, more fundamental things of life./div/blockquote

  • How Obama Can Lead Us to Recovery
    I have been part of an email correspondence group for a couple of years now which includes a number of strong public policy thinkers. One of the best is a man named Francis Cianfrocca (aka #8220;Blackhedd#8221;) who writes regularly at Redstate. He has been spot on with regard to the current financial crisis. I#8217;ve read far better stuff from him in my inbox than I#8217;ve been able to find at CNBC or Fox Business News. All of this is to say that he is plugged in to the financial community and has a strong analytical mind for making sense of it all. br / br / a href=http://www.redstate.com/diaries/blackhedd/2008/dec/01/what-obama-could-do-to-calm-financial-markets/ title=nullHere is his latest/a. And here is a taste:br / blockquotediv Obama could sweep away a lot of this uncertainty and unreasoning fear with no more than a ten-minute news conference.br / br / He could stand up, with the towering Paul Volcker, the sour-pussed Larry Summers and the sardonic-looking Tim Geithner standing behind him, and say the following:br / br / emLadies and gentlemen, I#8217;ve consulted at length with my economic team. We#8217;re acutely aware that our economy is facing great uncertainty. We understand that our system is a capitalistic one. We intend to do whatever it takes to get business and capital working again, for the sake of every consumer and working person in America.br / br / We also recognize our critical responsibility to the rest of the world. As the pre-eminent economic power, it#8217;s up to us to lead global markets back to health and prosperity.br / br / I#8217;m announcing the following key decisions, which we will stand by until our markets are back to normal, employment is growing, and our economy is healthy again:br / br / All tax increases on capital, dividends, and business income are OFF THE TABLE.br / br / All protectionist legislation, including increased tariffs and import duties, are OFF THE TABLE.br / br / All new regulations, mandated costs and taxes on businesses, including export businesses, are OFF THE TABLE.br / br / That is all. Thank you.br / br / If Obama were to give this speech, you#8217;d see explosive market rallies, and everyone would heave a big sigh of relief.br / br / So how about it, Mr. President-elect?/em/div/blockquotebr / Sounds like some first class #8220;Nixon goes to China#8221; action to me.

  • The Economic Blame Game
    Yesterday#8217;s Grand Rapids Press had an attention-grabbing feature graphic, which highlights an online interactive #8220;game#8221; that gives more information about each of the candidates for the #8220;economic blame game#8221; bracket.br / br / div'http://www.mlive.com/grpress/news/index.ssf/2008/11/economic_blame_game_whos_at_fa.html'!-- s9ymdb:1360 --img width=453 height=387 src=http://blog.acton.org/uploads/large_bracket-econ.jpg alt= //a/divdiv

  • Thanksgiving: the best holiday
    In sports, there is a debate (between interesting and inane) about the meaning of a #8220;Most Valuable Player#8221; award: is it the best #8220;individual#8221; player (often measured in terms of a handful of statistics) or the player who is most valuable to his team (without that player, the team would not be nearly as good)?br / br / The same could be said for holidays. For Christians, the #8220;greatest#8221; holidays are Christmas, Good Friday, and especially, Easter. But I#8217;d argue that Thanksgiving is still the #8220;best#8221; holiday.br / br / Christmas has a lot of cultural and consumerist baggage. Good Friday is vital but not the end of the story. And Easter gets overlooked easily-- and in any case, doesn#8217;t have an easy or appropriate way to celebrate it.br / br / But Thanksgiving-- at least in its ideal form-- is awesome. It#8217;s a time for extended family to gather and reflect, a four-day weekend which begins with gratitude and ends with worship, a grand opportunity to enjoy the fruit of the earth in combination with creative human preparation, and most of all, a time to enjoy God#8217;s blessings and #8220;give thanks#8221;.br / br / In this sense, Thanksgiving is like every other great holiday. It is meant to be a special celebration of that which we should celebrate every day. From Valentines Day to Mothers Day, from Veterans Day to July 4th, we set aside certain days for explicit celebration. But at the same time, the #8220;event#8221; is meant to be a continuous #8220;lifestyle#8221;-- to celebrate, remember, or observe each of these every day of our lives. In this sense, all holidays are perhaps best understood through their etymology-- as #8220;holy days#8221;-- special but emblematic.br / br / Speaking of etymology, I#8217;m not certain that the words #8220;grace#8221; and #8220;gratitude#8221; are related. (A quick flip through my Websters does not resolve the question.) But they are certainly related conceptually. One angle on the Gospel is that Christians are grateful for God#8217;s offer of grace and are then drawn to feeling and expressing graciousness in every aspect of their lives.br / br / Thanksgiving allows Christians to celebrate God#8217;s grace in its many forms-- from the #8220;common grace#8221; extended to all to the providential graces of history through God#8217;s sovereignty, from the universal grace available to all in Jesus Christ to the specific graces afforded to each of us in our daily lives.br / br / In a sense, then, Thanksgiving allows us to celebrate Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter in one fell swoop. If so, maybe Thanksgiving is both the best and the greatest holiday of them all.

  • How Relevant are the Pilgrims?
    !-- s9ymdb:1359 --img width=350 height=262’s culture.br / br / The pastor of the church I attend preached an excellent two part series sermon on the Pilgrims. He discussed several lessons the Pilgrims can teach us, one was their wariness concerning the growing power of the state and how the state’s influence over the Church is harmful to religious liberty and freedom of worship. br / br / The Pilgrims were a separatist sect committed to breaking away from the Church of England; the differences to them were irreconcilable. Freedom for the Pilgrims might be different than the freedom many of us envision for ourselves. Freedom for them was the freedom to worship in spirit and in truth, free from outside government intervention and the Church of England’s influence. br / br / One the most important lessons that can be transferred to our era is that the Pilgrims understood that the more power that is centralized at the state level, the more power the government has to influence houses of worship and religious conduct. Understanding and defending our own Constitution and rights is essential to protecting the liberties and freedom we enjoy today. It is important to also note that there is a relationship between economic and social freedom. There is a danger of losing additional rights and freedom when a large segment of the population relinquishes economic freedom. There then becomes a greater dependency on centralized power. The ability of the person to create, innovate, and flourish becomes limited, as well as the ability to stand steadfast against the creeping loss of liberty. br / br / Because of the great persecution religious dissenters in England faced, the Pilgrims who landed in a href=http://www.pilgrimhall.org/arrival.htm Plymouth/a also taught us that maintaining freedom is very costly. When the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth half of those who made the voyage would be dead by spring. Yet none of the Pilgrims returned with the Mayflower when it sailed back to England in 1621. With the help of Native Americans, the Pilgrim tradition of Thanksgiving was strong and vibrant because their great sacrifice and commitment to religious freedom bore fruit. The burdens they would bear were tolerable to them because their strong belief that ultimately it would bring glory to God. We can surely find inspiration and motivation in understanding that if you want to keep your freedom you have to sacrifice and pay something for it. br / br / In 1647, Plymouth Governor a href=http://www.pilgrimhall.org/bradfordwilliam.htm William Bradford/a wrote in his notable historical work emOf Plymouth Plantation/em:br / blockquotedivLast and not least, they cherished a great hope and inward zeal of laying good foundations, or at least making some ways toward it, for the propagation and advance of the gospel of the kingdom of Christ in the remote parts of the world, even though they should be stepping stones to others in the performance of so great a work.br / br / Thus out of small beginnings greater things have been produced by His hand that made all things of nothing, and gives being to all things that are; and, as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here are kindled hath shone unto many, yea is some to our whole nation, let the glorious name of Jehovah have all the praise./div/blockquote

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