Wealth “Out of Thin Air” — The Proper Role of Government in Prosperity — Part 1

If you have never studied economics, you need to understand the strange and magical math of exchange before I make my next points.

Case Study 1

Baskets and Spears (borrowed from Bill Whittle)

On Robinson Crusoe island, there are two populations, mountain and lowland. The mountains are rugged and agriculture is nearly impossible. There is, however an abundance of large game to be hunted as well and wild berries, tubers and roots to be harvested. In order to hunt the large game, the mountain dwellers became expert spear makers. They extract ore from the surrounding hills, temper and polish the steel then fasten the steel point to a polished, straight stick. The spears are marvelous. They have to be in order to ensure community survival. The mountain dwellers also make baskets to haul berries, bulbs and roots. The baskets are poorly made by comparison and are in need of constant repair. Time spent to make a spear is three hours. Time spent to make and repair a basket is six hours.

The lowland population is made up of gatherers and as such, they have become expert basket weavers. Their baskets are so tightly woven that they hold water. This has allowed them to harvest fish from the sea and keep them alive for days in the village. They also plant and harvest various small crops. Their baskets are strong and light and rarely fail. They also make spears to hunt fish and small game, but the spears are poorly made, rarely effective and are in constant need of repair. It takes three hours to make a basket and six hours to make and fix a spear.

One day, a lowlander meets a mountain dweller for the first time. The lowlander admires the mountain dweller’s spear and the mountain dweller admires the lowlander’s basket. They each exchange with the other and both are benefited. The lowlander saves at least three hours and owns the best spear in the village. The mountain dweller also saves at least three hours and owns the best basket in the village. The three hours is calculated by counting the six hours saved in making an inferior basket for the mountain dweller and in making an inferior spear for the lowlander. Then subtract the time it took for the mountain dweller to make his superior spear and for the lowlander to make the superior basket and you have a three hour savings for each. Both villages are so excited about the prospect of the time savings associated with exchange that they agree to free association. Both are made wealthier and decide to take their time savings and invest that time in better plumbing, running water, recreation, and better housing.

Wealth is created out of thin air!

But the magic does not end there. Suppose that both communities made spears and baskets of equal quality. Suppose that it took the average mountain dweller 10 hours to make a spear and 11 hours to make a basket. Suppose that it took an average lowlander eight hours to make a spear and 10 hours to make a basket. The lowlanders are better at both spear and basket making. So it makes NO sense to exchange, right? WRONG.

Do the magic math!

Suppose that during a year each community wants to have 1,000 new spears and 1,000 new baskets. If they work on their own, it will take the lowlanders 8,000 hours to make to make spears and 10,000 hours to make baskets for a total of 18,000 total work hours. For the mountain dwellers it takes 10,000 hours to make 1000 spears and 11,000 hours to make 1000 baskets for a total of 21,000 work hours. The combined total is 39,000 hours.

Magic!

If the lowlanders focus on spears and the mountain dwellers focus on baskets in spite of the fact that mountain dwellers are inferior at both spear making and basket making, most assume that there is no gain or at least that there is no gain for the lowlanders. If lowlanders specialize in spears, it would take them 16,000 hours to make 2,000 spears. If the mountain dwellers specialized in baskets, it would take them 22,000 hours to make 2,000 baskets. The total number of hours worked is 38,000 hours. They have just magically created 1,000 hours of wealth out of thin air! Individually, the lowlanders are better off by 2,000 hours and the mountain dwellers are worse off by 1,000 hours. To make it work for both sides, they could split the surplus and both be better off by 500 hours each.

Wealth is fabricated out of thin air!

There is no finite pot of wealth in the universe that has to get divided up and in the division, some get richer and others get poorer on an absolute scale.

Case Study 2

The Bonus (Also Bill Whittle)

You work for an insurance company. You sit at one of several desks among several other employees that do similar work as you. One morning get a call from a vice president who asks you to come to his office. When you enter, he greets you with a warm handshake and a big smile. He thanks you for your good work over the last year and explains that the company is enjoying windfall profits. He hands you a check for your good work. As you leave his office, you look at the amount on the check. You are stunned. The check is for $100,000. At first you think it must be a typo. You look the check over carefully and realize that the amount is correct, and you start thinking of all the things that you could do with $100,000. You can pay off your student loans, buy a new car and still have money left over for a few vacations.

Later, in the lunch room, you tell your co-workers about your good fortune. They congratulate you and tell you that they all received $500,000 bonuses. You can’t believe it. Suddenly, the sweetness of the $100,000 has turned acrid as you now contemplate what you could have done with the $500,000 that you did not get.

The story describes the ugly side of human nature. A biblical parable teaches the same lesson.

Matthew 20:1-16

1 For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard.
2 And when he had agreed with the labourers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard.
3 And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standing idle in the marketplace,
4 And said unto them; Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they went their way.
5 Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise.
6 And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle?
7 They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive.
8 So when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward, Call the labourers, and give them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first.
9 And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny.
10 But when the first came, they supposed that they should have received more; and they likewise received every man a penny.
11 And when they had received it, they murmured against the goodman of the house,
12 Saying, These last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day.
13 But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny?
14 Take that thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee.
15 Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?

Some people (maybe most) would rather be equally poor than unequally rich.

With these two case studies as a backdrop, we can introduce government as a party to exchange.

Stay tuned for part 2

Doing the November Cow

I’ve had occasion to relate a rather crass story about two bulls on a hill, the one young and the other old. First the story, then the application.

There were two bulls on a hill, the one young and the other old. The young bull surveys the cows below and with youthful exuberance, suggests to the old bull, “Hey, I have an idea. Why don’t we run down the hill and do one of those cows?” The old bull considers the young bull’s suggestion for a moment, then says, “Why don’t we walk down and do ‘em all?”

I was impressed by an idea expressed by one of Maria Angelica’s posts where she said,

“what you conservatives better understand is that winning the Latino vote would secure your political sway for decades to come. Liberals and democrats understand this. They cater/pander to the Latino community. If not for George Bush’s relative popularity among Latinos, you would have likely had a two-term Gore White House.”

You can read the rest of her piece, HERE.

So there is rabid vitriol afoot in conservative circles. You can join several facebook groups on either side of the debate, and the shouting match may further mobilize conservatives into an anti-incumbent frenzy that will last through November. Conservative’s will claim a well-earned victory, and the young bull will have run down the hill, spewing snot and other fluids, and will have done the November cow.

I, for one, would rather win the war than the battle. A strategic (old bull) would suggest a different approach. Here are some ideas:

• Better enemy selection. There are two possibilities. You can blame federal bureaucrats for inferior immigration policy (a view legal and non-legal immigrants agree with), or you can blame illegals (a view legals and non-legals despise). The President has taken a conciliatory approach and blamed the bureaucrats and thereby increased his already lock on the Latino vote. So what? you ask. If he enjoys a Latino lock in 2012, he will be nigh unbeatable.
• You are not going to ship all illegals home. There is not enough money or political will to build a fence (or any other barrier mechanism of man and materiel) deep, long and high enough to stop US entry. So you have an alternative. You can be like the guy in the bar in Belfast, Ireland who goes off on an ale-induced rant about the rotten English (nothing gets done, but it sure feels good). Or you can 1) understand the other position and 2) broker a solution that will win confederates that really enjoy high alignment with conservative aims.
• You can stop drinking Kool-aid.

Liberals are thinking of the 2016, 2020, 2024 and even the 2036 elections.  Conservatives are excited about November.  Take a lesson from an old bull.

Feminists and Fox News

Over toast and tea this morning, as I channel surfed to CNN, a dollop of marmalade fell from my toast and soiled my silk pajamas.   The spill can be remedied.  But in my urgency to clean the spill I dropped my remote as my surfing landed squarely on fox news.  There are choices to be made in life.  I foolishly opted to take care of a potentially sticky mess which meant that Fox News remained on the telie screen.  Before life returned to normalcy, the supposedly fair and balanced one ran a piece on the UN electing Iran to be a member of its Commission on Woman’s Rights.

Read the story HERE.

I had to chuckle.  What a crazy, mixed up world where the conservatives are outraged and the feminists are silent over such obvious pandering. This just shows how successful we have been in an aim that we would rather not discuss in too much detail.  To describe this aim, you will need some background.

61.3% of all animated Disney films are about children of deceased or absent mothers. Here are a few examples:

Snow White

Dumbo

Bambi

Cinderella

Jungle Book

The Little Mermaid

Beauty and the Beast

Aladdin

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Tarzan

Lilo and Stitch

Brother Bear

The fathers in these stories are mostly irrelevant, dictatorial or absent as well.  This could be read as saying that the ultimate setback to overcome is the loss of a mother.  When the hero succeeds in the end, she has done so without a mother present which would be heroic indeed.  A proper reading suggests that strong mothers are unnecessary to development.

We continue our concerted effort to de-motherize women.  Within the United States we bifurcate possibilities for women into a dichotomy of becoming either objects of sex or agents of corporate/political power.  We offer Barbie on the one hand and Pelosi on the other, and, at least in The US, we are astonishingly successful.  On the Barbie side, the existential pain of Barbie envy has enriched plastic surgeons, internists, drug manufacturers, diet potion manufacturers, and Oprah.  Oprah is there to blow sunshine up skirts when envy remains upon realization that 1) there is not enough money and 2) life is worse now than it was before.  The remedy is to swallow a pill, curl up on the couch and absorb the digital version of the same psycho-trope.

The alternative is power.  Any alternate choice is tantamount to gender betrayal, which is what makes Palin problematic for us.  We must continue to tag her as stupid, radical and dangerous.

Outside of the US, the strategy is different.  The emasculation of motherhood is at it’s most overt level in Iran and other like nations.  If females are controlled by threat of death, if they are denied free education, if they are denied free interchange of ideas with half of the population, it is easier to control the indoctrination of their offspring.

To come full-circle, had I taken a random, hypothetical survey last week which asked, “Who is more likely to protest the inclusion of Iran as a member of an international women’s rights committee, Fox News or NOW?”  What do you think the results of the survey would have been?

Illegal Immigration Part II

First let me say that I am happy to have a conservative forum where I can express some of my ideas.  As you might imagine, I run in pretty liberal circles.  Just a quick note on that, what you conservatives better understand is that winning the Latino vote would secure your political sway for decades to come.  Liberals and democrats understand this.  They cater/pander to the Latino community.  If not for George Bush’s relative popularity among Latinos, you would have likely had a two-term Gore White House.  Latinos share several core values with conservatives.  These should be pointed out and, where there are differences, these should be discussed and debated gently and not with megaphones and draconian legislation.  A conservative/Latino voting coalition would be nearly impossible to beat.

Second, You have to understand my background.  I grew up in the barrio in Tucson, Arizona.  My mother and father, both illegal at the time, had seven children of which I am the fifth.  They came to the United States to flee suffocating economic oppression.  They have always honored their native culture and spoke Spanish exclusively to their children.  At the same time, they insisted that we adopt the customs of our new country and made sure that we gave our full effort to studies.  Though never rich, my recently deceased father was a proud citizen.  He loved the United States and what it gave him.  He said, once, that it would be impossible for him to re-pay the United States for all that it had done for him.  His plea to his children near the end of his life would be for us to continue the repayment effort.  Because of that, I took school seriously.

It was my study of law and economics that spurred extra-curricular detailed studies in US history and government.  Though we share little racial/cultural heritage, I am forever bound to Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson.  Freedom is the bonding agent.  In spite of serious conservative leanings on issues of freedom, I side with the President on Immigration Policy.  I may not have chosen the best video to display in my last post.  Here is my own Immigration proposal, which mirrors the president’s.

Immigration Policy

Every immigrant wishing to become a citizen should be required to register to become a citizen.  If they register, they will be given immunity from deportation and be allowed to work during the registration period.  The registration period is 18 months long.  During that time, each applicant must:

• Achieve basic English proficiency
• Pass an immigration test heavily weighted toward US history, government and law
• Pay a $3500 fine to completely cover associated administrative costs
• Not commit any crime during the 18 month period (traffic and similar law infractions are excepted).  If a crime is committed, the applicant forever forfeits citizenship rights and will be immediately deported or prosecuted under US law.
• Be subject to US income and other taxes.

Besides this, the borders must NOT be closed but must be regulated.  If there were a far easier way for citizens of other countries to immigrate, non-criminal, illegal immigration would cease.  Border agents would no longer be over-burdened and could focus in on keeping bad elements out of the US.

I welcome any and all dialogue on this site or to my personal email, mariaangelicaleonchamorro@gmail.com

The Immigration Mess in Arizona — The Obama Solution

María Angélica León Chamorro graduated from Brown University with a degree in Economics and a Law degree from University of Arizona. She founded the group, Senda Reál América which lobbies on behalf of immigrant interests in several states.

Anthropologists tell us that we American’s are all immigrants or children of immigrants. Not even the Native American tribes are really native. They are transplants who may win an American genealogical longevity argument, but in the end, they owe their origins to Euro/Asian/Middle Eastern populations. Around 250 years after the first modern Europeans began colonizing, a bold, yet well-conceived, experiment in government created a wildly liberal immigration policy. The policy is shocking to modern politicians and anthropologists.

David Grant wrote previously in, American DNA, about the apparently backward notion of inviting:

your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me

Really? We are not asking for the professors, the doctors, the lawyers, the politicians and the business tycoons? You must be joking! How would we get along without the elite? You are telling me that we are embarking on the boldest governmental experiment ever conceived, and we are asking for “wretched refuse?” The key great-nation-making qualifier in the poem, and really, the only one that matters, is “yearning to breathe free.” Think about that! America threw down the gauntlet. America brashly claimed that, “Out of your rejects, we can create a nation better than yours by about any measure. Out of this wilderness, we will outproduce you in industry and agriculture. We will rule the seas, the land and the air. We will dominate global trade. We will create unimaginable wealth, and we will do it all with your refuse! Keep your doctors, lawyers, philosophers, politicians, princes, artisans, land owners and industrial magnates. We need none of them. Freedom will sanctify both soil and toil, and out of these will grow unimaginable wealth in art, science and industry.” Somewhere between the writing of that poem and our current immigration angst we lost site of what made us great.

The Agony in Arizona

Arizonans live near a porous border with a struggling state, in this case, a Mexican state that has failed in border regions. Lawless border areas have become a breeding ground for gangs of drug thugs, human traffickers, vigilantes and wretched refuse who often do not survive desert crossings and border breaches. Arizona has been abandoned by the legal prescriber and intended enforcer of immigration policy, the federal government. I am convinced that after one day of issue discussion, a random class of fifth graders could come up with superior immigration policy to what decades of Democrats and Republicans have been able to concoct.

The end result of the Arizona law, which allows police to, upon suspicion that a person in question is an illegal immigrant, ask for documentation, will have two effects. The first has already happened and will be described at the end of this post. The second can be demonstrated by the recent rise in Audi dealership revenue in Scottsdale. Every trial lawyer in the state is spending in advance of what will surely be vast income augmentation.

America Versus Europe

During the last two centuries, it was not uncommon for a European in power to demand proper identification of a subject. The response would be a submissive document delivery and hope that arrest quotas were filled. The American response would look something like this:

Suspicious Officer: (They look like they might be illegal immigrants.  They are short, brown, and their English is really bad). May I see your documents?

Luis Hernandez: Tell you what, medio pendejo, you can stick your request donde el sol no brilla!

Suspicious Officer: You are under arrest!

Luis Hernandez: Perfecto! My abogado is going to love this. Nos vemos in court!

Months later a court docket arrives, “Hernandez v Arizona.” Some time later, the law is overturned for being unconstitutional, the lawyers are richer, and Arizona is poorer (but some politicians may save their miserable skins by taking a stand).

The first effect previously mentioned, is that Arizona’s angst is now in the national spotlight. President Obama has already spoken on what I believe is sound immigration policy. Given his proven ability to create policy against tremendous odds, he may be able to push needed immigration reform through as well. By taking a stand, Arizona has created the necessary impetus to push policy. Take a look at what he proposes–

Most of Summalogica readers are asking, “Chica, have you lost your mind?” You probably fall into one of three categories:

1. You believe that I am consorting with the enemy and that no matter what Obama says, it is wrong for America because he said it. I have nothing more to say to you.
2. You believe that the ideals that the President expressed, though valuable, will end up nationalizing something, centralizing power, benefiting a union, increasing the national debt, or somehow continuing similar encroachment on freedom. I am sympathetic to your distrust of all things political.
3. You disagree with me for reasons independent of political figures. If you fall into this category, please engage in the comment section of this post.

You can also send me an email: mariaangelicaleonchamorro@gmail.com

María Angélica

Mary’s Elation Painting and Description–Del Parson

The Painter:  Del Parson

His Title:  Touch Me Not

My Title:  Mary’s Elation

I have included my first description following the painting….

Last night as I was visiting a painter friend, I noticed that he had placed a new painting on one of the living room walls. At first glance, the painting was simple and unremarkable. As if unable to stand, the woman in the painting knelt beside a man in a flowing robe. Only part of the man’s torso was visible as well as the lower part of his arms and hands. His hands carried the mark of the signature nail imprint. This event was post resurrection and pre-ascension. The woman was grasping the robe of the man and the man had placed a gentle, comforting arm around the woman’s shoulder.

The woman’s expression was that of profound elation, faith, love and relief. Her eyes were closed, her mouth partly open and the expression showed why she was kneeling; she was so overcome by the experience that she hadn’t strength to stand. There was great clarity and vision in Mary Magdalene’s aura. The relief came from the physical manifestation of a promised return. The love came from being reunited again with perhaps her husband and at least her friend, in the most profound sense of the word, that she believed she had lost. The faith came from the current and continued removal of death’s permanence. The elation came from a culmination of the turning of overwhelming emotions from loss, distance, suffering and yet hope, to fulfillment, life, love, assurance and fecundity.

The painter told me that several had been gently critical of the paining because of the Master’s command, “Touch me not!” The transliterated Greek word for touch as it is used in the verse is Haptomai. Haptomai does not mean ‘touch’ as in ‘make any physical contact.’ It comes from the transliterated Greek word, Hapto which means to fasten to or adhere to. The additional definition to Haptomai is to cling to.

I love paintings that are able to capture events, especially those events about which I have had a mistaken perception. I had certainly read over the passage in John many times and had perceived a rather majestic Messiah stopping Mary Magdalene cold in her advance and telling her, that for some divine reason I did not understand, she was forbidden to touch him until he had ascended to his Father. The expression on Mary’s face, her clutching his robe and Jesus’ comforting arm in her shoulder feel much better and make more scholarly sense. His ‘touch me not’ should be read as saying, in ultimate gentleness and affection, “I cannot stay and you must not hold (delay) me. I must go to the Father now.”

The fact that the account comes from the gospel of John is noteworthy. I would expect Luke to describe the situation more physically. John did not see the need. I think John describes the embrace between Jesus and Mary with the correct translation of the word, ‘touch.’

The painting is not yet in print. When it is, I will ask for a signed copy. When I have a digital image, I will post it on this site.

Big State Nightmare

Hi Folks,

By way of personal preface, I like all of you, but I do not care if you dislike me. That is to say, it’s OK if you impugn my humanity. Also, in writing, I strive for economy. That requires attempting to use the single best word to convey nuance of meaning, even if it strains the limits of a reader’s lexicon. I do not apologize for this. If you don’t know what a word means, look it up in a dictionary. If you leave me a comment containing a word I don’t know, I will do the same, grateful for the enrichment.

Jeremiah Flint, PhD

The preface for this article is two stories in the press I came across recently. I submit them as a composite metric of current German morality. The first reports the conviction of a Catholic Bishop, Richard Williamson, in Germany who was convicted in a German court for denying the Holocaust. Read the article here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100416/ap_on_re_eu/eu_germany_holocaust_denial

The comments in question were made by Williamson, who is British, during an interview he gave in Germany to Swedish television. See the interview here:

Prior to stumbling upon this article, I was unaware that it is a crime in Germany to deny the Holocaust on the premise that it constitutes an incitement to anti-Semitic behavior. Watching the interview, it is clear that Williamson calls in question the scale of the Holocaust, and the method by which it was accomplished. I read up a bit on the Bishop elsewhere and it is also clear to me that he leans in an anti-Semitic direction.  I am not sure how anti-Semitic he is, but I am aware that there are those who hold the view that somehow, the Jews merited the horror of the Holocaust, which I believe claimed at least 6 million lives. That view is reprehensible to me.  But that is not the view he expresses in the interview.

Without question, shouting “fire” in a crowded theater can hurt people and justly incurs the condemnation of society as a criminally irresponsible act.  Germany has decided that what you just watched on YouTube was a criminally irresponsible act.  To me, killing 300,000 Jews in concentration camps is every bit as reprehensible as killing 6 million.  Every life is precious. But so is free speech, because it makes life more precious. This guy may be nuts. But are you sure that an idea you find reasonable will never be subject to this kind of codified political correctness?

The next story is about a young woman in Germany who faced the possibility of losing her employment benefits for refusing to seek work in the sex industry. Read the UK Telegraph article here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/1482371/If-you-dont-take-a-job-as-a-prostitute-we-can-stop-your-benefits.html

This one speaks for itself.  At least it does in the ranks of decent people. And I do not hesitate to suggest that a society who would uphold such a law has lost its grasp of decency.

To me, these two stories, taken as a composite, are a portrait of what some have referred to as “The Big State Nightmare”.

The large issue for me in the dichotomy of these two stories is the moral turbidity and confusion that, historically, always seem to both support and grow out of the “big state” in an awful, parasitic symbiosis. Yes, I am saying that moral decline and big government are mutually enabling.

The miracle of this nation is built upon the premise that our rights and responsibilities derive from God, not institutions or individuals. I recently heard a radio commentator articulate this principle in response to a caller’s suggestion that the Republicans would get a lot more traction, get a lot more people in the tent, if they would run on a primarily fiscal-conservative platform more neutral to “moral” issues like abortion. The commentator pointed out that if you try to obviate or ignore God and his preferences in the political dialogue, you have ceded your claim to unalienable rights.

That’s a really important point. But which God, with which attributes? Could this miracle ever have caught its first breath in the arms of the midwife of Islam? Or secular humanism? The wisdom of the Greeks, English Common Law and the Decalogue were crucial bodies in the system our founding fathers aligned but they were not the strong force that held – and holds them – together. That strong force, I assert, is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob Himself, who gave the Law to Moses – and who also gave the Sermon on the Mount. That strong force is what saw Washington through the winter in Valley Forge, and many others through the darkest times this nation has seen. It also asks, “who is my neighbor?”.  For America, that neighbor has included not only millions of Jews in concentration camps, but also post-war Japan and Germany.  A secular nation does not behave that way.  Nor does an Islamic one.

The Republic, undergirded by the Declaration and the Constitution, is a God-given gift. It is much like the gift of God to Abraham by way of covenant which enabled Abraham to obtain peace, freedom and abundance. So our American gift is really a covenant inextricably intertwined with the privilege and burden of choice. And, like the ancient knight said to Indiana Jones, we must “choose wisely”.

The matter of what we uphold or reject as a society really is a choice of life or death implication.  Ours is a conditional charter. The freedom and abundance we have enjoyed as a nation are historically unparalleled. They have come to us, ultimately, only by the grace of God after doing all we can to build, to grow and to be good. My worry is that our Nation’s covenant with God is like the proverbial pearl of great price that people will trample under foot as they essentially seek to obviate God.

Many conservatives have vented angst about leftist monopoly of the media megaphone. I recall the celebrities paraded out for the post – 9/11 telethon. Many invoked the name of God and called for prayer. I believe they were sincere. But I also believe most of them forgot about it a few days later and went back to whatever. We can’t, we won’t prevail as a free nation if we keep “going back to whatever”, if we are not a nation under God. If one believes there is a God, and that God had a hand in the birth of this nation, then it is reasonable to believe that same God has sustained it through difficult times on his own terms, or else he is merely an idol fashioned vainly by men for the purpose of their own validation.

The questions of who he is and what his terms are for a nation to whom He has granted so much – again, I believe they encompass the Decalogue, the Sermon on the Mount, and the US Constitution – are the great points on which the fate of this nation hangs.  We have become a people attuned to demagogues who give us bread and circus. Who tell us that we can indulge ourselves on debt and be prosperous, on immorality and have peace.  Who, in fact, would have us forget the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and George Washington and simply support our president. In reality, they have, in great part, succeeded in selling the Rolls for scrap to fashion a sparkling new Yugo: the new morality of multiple categories of recycling bins, hybrid cars, fake fur, neutered pets and condoms for one-night-stands.

Everyone belongs in this tent, except, of course, those who think it might be a bad idea for seventh graders to put condoms on bananas in health class. This is the current iteration of the historical morality of the big state. Now, think about it: currently and historically, does the big state stay big without owning the definition of morality? If not, is not logical to assume that the big state will make a heavy stake in defining morality? That diseased definition is much like the counterfeit cup grasped by the greedy fool in “Last Crusade” who chose poorly and ended his days in death and horror.

That moral counterfeit cup, to me, is the ultimate big state nightmare. And that’s the punch we’re poised to gulp. The Republic, undergirded by the Declaration and Constitution: our divine charter that allows us to continue to choose. But to retain that charter, we have to choose to be good, and no society chooses to be good for long without choosing the God of Liberty.

Finally! My Book List

I have promised this to scores of students and can finally deliver.  Thanks to all who suggested titles.  Please comment on things that ought to be included. If you click on one of the books in the carousel to buy a book, it will cost you no more and I will donate 20% of the proceeds to charity (win/win). I have created categories for easier perusal.  I will post descriptions and reviews soon.  If you want to write a review, I will include it with my own.  Oh, and if you want to know how to do the Amazon carousel thing, send em an email.  dave@summalogica.com

Cheers,

Dave

Resistance

Man’s Search for Meaning — Victor Frankyl

The Gulag Archipelago — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

And There was Light — Jacques Lussuyran Top Ten Pick

Philosophy Light

Screwtape Letters — CS Lewis

The Prince — Machiavelli

The Great Divorce — CS Lewis

The Abolition of Man — CS Lewis

Mere Christianity — CS Lewis

The Dancing Wu Li Masters — Gary Zukav

Philosophical — Medium Difficulty

Fear and Trembling — Soren Kierkegaard

Continental Philosophy since 1750: The Rise and Fall of the Self — Solomon

The Republic — Plato

Early Socratic Dialogues — Plato

Candide — Voltaire

Philosophical — High Difficulty

Thus Spoke Zarathustra — Fredrich Nietzsche

Beyond Good and Evil — Fredrich Nietzsche

Politics — Aristotle

The Sickness Unto Death — Soren Kierkegaard

Totality and Infinity — Emmanuel Levinas

Concluding Unscientific Postscript — Soren Kierkagaard

Works of Love — Soren Kierkegaard

Heavy Fiction

The Brothers Karamazov — Fyodor Dostoevsky Top Ten Pick

Atlas Shrugged — Ayn Rand

The Name of the Rose — Umberto Eco

Foucault’s Pendulum — Umberto Eco

Lord of the Rings — J.R. Tolken

Romeo and Juliet — William Shakespeare

Macbeth — William Shakespeare

Hamlet — William Shakespeare

Medium Fiction

Pride and Prejudice — Jane Austen

Sense and Sensibility — Jane Austen

Uncle Tom’s Cabin — Stowe

To Kill a Mockingbird — Harper Lee

Catcher in the Rye — J.D. Salinger

the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn — Mark Twain


The Odyssey — Homer

1984 — George Orwell

The Count of Monte Cristo — Alexandre Dumas

The Lord of the Rings — J.R Tolkien

Moby Dick — Herman Melville

Les Miserables — Victor Hugo

Light Fiction

Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus — Orson Scott Card

The Chosen — Potok

The Life of Pi — Yann Martel

Ender’s Game — Orson Scott Card

Saints — Orson Scott Card

Stone Tables — Orson Scott Card

Animal Farm — George Orwell

Business

The Goal — Eli Goldratt Top Ten List

Good to Great — Jim Collins

The World is Flat — Thomas Friedman

Critical Chain — Eli Goldratt

It’s Not Luck — Eli Goldratt

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion — Robert Cialdini

The Road to Serfdom — Hayek

Freakonomics — Leavitt and Dubner

The Wealth of Nations — Adam Smith

The Work of Nations — Robert Reich

Superfreakonomics — Leavitt and Dubner

Outliers — Malcolm Gladwell Top Ten List

Tipping Point — Malcolm Gladwell

The E-Myth — Gerber

Blink — Malcolm Gladwell

Out of the Crisis — W. Edwards Demming

Capitalism and Freedom — Milton Friedman

History

The Civil War: A Narrative — Shelby Foote Top Ten List

The History of Civilization — Will Durant

1776 — David McCullough

Democracy in America — Alexis de Tocqueville

The Lessons of History — Will Durant

The Political Writings of John Adams — George W. Carey

The Federalist Papers — Jay, Hamilton and Madison

The Anti-Federalist Papers — Patrick Henry

Misc

The Poetry of Robert Frost — Robert Frost Top Ten List

The Closing of the American Mind — Harold Bloom

Dumbing us Down — John Taylor Gatto

The Ancient State — Hugh Nibley

On Food and Cooking — Harold McGee

Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible;with Greek and Hebrew Dictionaries — James Strong

Compact OED

Religious

Book of John — New Testament — King James Version Top Ten List

The Book of Mormon — Translated by Joseph Smith Jr.  Top Ten List

Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt — Parley P. Pratt

Approaching Zion — Hugh Nibley

Joseph Smith Rough Stone Rolling — Richard Lyman Bushman

The Lord’s Question — Dennis Rasmussen

The Peacegiver — Jim Ferrell

Children’s Lit

Love You Forever — Robert N. Munsch and Sheila McGraw

You are Special — Max Lucado Top Ten List

First Amendment Conundrum

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

“Idiot!”

“How could you wear a shirt like that?”

“My Uncle died to protect that flag, A#$ H#&%.”

The shirt I wore had an image of a burning American flag on the front with the caption, “Burn, Baby, Burn!”  It was misleading for me to wear it.  I love the flag of the United States of America because of the freedom and justice that it represents.  But, when faced with a choice between violating the First Amendment and allowing for flag burning, I side with free speech.

On t he shirt’s back was printed the First Amendment.  People seeing me from behind became instant friends, and anyone seeing my approach would become instant enemies.  I would not wear that shirt today, mostly because I can blog my message, which is that the Constitution stands alone among the world’s government documents as the greatest ensurer of the possibility of freedom, and it deserves protection at the dangerous end of both pen and barrel.

Germany has no such statute as evidenced in the following article.

Bishop convicted for denying Holocaust

AP – FILE- British Bishop Richard Williamson, second from left foreground, is escorted out of London’s Heathrow …

A court in the Bavarian city of Regensburg found Williamson guilty of incitement for saying in a 2008 interview with Swedish television that he did not believe Jews were killed in gas chambers during World War II.  The court ordered Williamson to pay a fine of euro10,000 ($13,544).  The Roman Catholic bishop was barred by his order from attending Friday’s proceedings or making statements to the media.

His lawyer, Matthias Lossmann, told The Associated Press after the court ruling that Williamson has yet to decide whether he would appeal.

Denying the Holocaust is a criminal offense in Germany.  The court ordered a fine of euro12,000 for Williamson last year, without a trial. But the bishop appealed, forcing his case to be tried publicly.  Lossmann said that Williamson had explicitly asked the Swedish television crew conducting the interview not to broadcast it in Germany.  In issuing her ruling, Judge Karin Frahm said the bishop could not have expected that the clip would show up on YouTube and be seen directly in Germany, and that led her to reduce the fine, court spokesman Bernhard Schneider told the AP.  The journalists who conducted the interview ignored a court order to attend the trial, Lossmann said, leaving the judge to rely on written statements as testimony.

“That does not do a case like this justice,” Lossmann said.

The interview was conducted near Regensburg and was granted shortly before Williamson’s excommunication was lifted by Pope Benedict XVI, along with that of three other bishops from the anti-modernization movement of the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.  The American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors said in a statement it welcomed the ruling as “a symbol of modern German determination to prohibit the dissemination of Holocaust denial on its soil.”

The U.S.-based group’s vice president, Elan Steinberg, called Williamson’s remarks vile and craven and called upon his order and the Vatican to cut all ties with him.  The lifting of Williamson’s excommunication sparked outrage among Jewish groups and in Israel. The Vatican’s handling of the affair prompted criticism from German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Six million Jews were killed during the Nazi Holocaust, many of them murdered in gas chambers.  Williamson lives in Britain.

Let’s be honest.  As I read this, my emotional side was cheering that this disgusting human being will see the inside of a jail cell.  My emotional side wants Williamson to suffer for denying one of the greatest atrocities in human history.  But had he denied the Holocaust in the United States, in spite of how much I may despise man and message, I would defend his right to state it.  the Constitution is under assault and must be defended even when its defense allows for increasingly distasteful outcomes.

There is precedent for free speech curtailment in Germany.  It happened about 75 years ago.  I have to wonder if Hitler would have even been a possibility had the German Constitution contained, First Amendment rights that were respected by patriots.

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