5 for Christian wisdom, Chapters on Iraq Questionable, May 18, 2008
George Weigel
This was my first exposure to this author, who has 14 other books to his credit and was for seven years president of the ethics and public policy center. The essays that comprise the book were written over the course of 15 years, generally as lectures at Catholic centers of learning excellence. Each has a current introduction and explanation of provenance.
Highlights of this extraordinary work:
Six big ideas:
01 Religion and its moral views are a huge part of the public dialog
02 Abortion, euthanasia, and stem-cell research destructive of embryos violate first principles.
03 Free economy empowers the poor
04 Just war tradition balances freedom, justice, & security
05 John Paul II/Second Vatican was about challenging modernity to rediscover the value of truth and love
06 Catholic Church has a “form” from Christ
The author calls on reviewers to pay attention to his introduction to the book, which is indeed a very fine summary (but no substitute for a full reading). He outlines why he titled the book “Against the Grain:”
01 Political science is not just about statistics
02 Democracy is not just procedural
03 Challenges functional pacifism
04 Challenges the amorality of RealPolitic (AMEN!)
05 Asserts the inherent Christianity of America and the constant propositions (see The Thirteen American Arguments: Enduring Debates That Define and Inspire Our Country and also The Faiths of the Founding Fathers
06 Disintegration of mainline Protestantism *combined with* the abdication of universities from teaching values opened door for Catholic reflection but the door was slammed shut by the 1960's
I have a note at this point that the book is an inspiring example of political theology, and am surprised at its stark conservatism.
The author develops a theme throughout the book, to wit that there are three major spheres: the political, the economic, and the cultural, and that it is the Church–the Catholic Church alone among all religions in having diplomatic representation across 172 nations, that is a major player in the cultural arena while having a helpful influence on the other two spheres.
At this point I am furious to discover a really crummy index, mostly names. This work is too important to allow a lazy publisher to dismiss a proper indexing job, and I recommend the author demand a proper index for the paperback edition.
He cites John Paul II as saying that work is “becoming” not drudgery, and those who revere Peter Drucker will remember that he said precisely the same thing.
The author discusses how the Church “proposes”
01 Free *and* virtuous society (see my review of Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography
02 Combination of democratic political community, free economy, *and* public moral culture
03 Democracy and economy are not machines that can run on their own. See the many books I have reviewed on the complete break-down of the government, predatory capitalism, and the mass media that has betrayed the public trust.
04 Freedom must be tethered to moral truths
05 Voluntary associations are vital (and citing others, freedom must characterize both a choice of faith and a choice of society)
06 Wealth is ideas, not just resources. See The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom and The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks).
07 Poverty in the 21st Century is about being excluded from the network that can create infinite wealth in every clime and place. AMEN!
I have another six pages of notes but am certain to run into the 100 word limit. A tiny taste of what else this author offers all of us:
Three competing political theologies today: Pragmatic Utilitarianism (Europe), Political Islamism (Caliphate), and Catholic Social Doctrine. Not sure where that leaves those discussed in American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America).
Quote: “The social doctrine of the Church is rarely preached and poorly catechized.” Quoting John Paul II, “Bishops don't know the social doctrine of the Church.” (pages 23 and 24).
Five specific issues
01 Need to appreciate Catholic international relations concepts and doctrine
02 Inter-religious dialog and global “social question” must be addressed
03 Emerging global economy & the environment must be addressed
04 Life issues *are* social doctrine
05 Priority of culture and deepening of civil society matters
Church's first task is to *be* the Church, not be too accommodating of political and economic norms de jure, and fully represent the Catholic Church in the ideal. This book is a superb manifestation of that ideal.
The author suggests that the Church makes three contributions in support of democracy, its natural ally:
01 Makes room for democracy by rendering unto Caesar
02 Makes democrats (citizens)
03 Enables “giving an account”
The author articulates strong feelings of betrayal in how three Supreme Court Justices in particular have sought to elevate the individual's self-determination above communal moral precepts, and he is especially damning of the Clinton Administration for seeking to make abortion-on-demand a human right worldwide.
I must close without listing the elements of the Catholic theory of international relations, or the five realities facing the Church. Buy the book (or some other reviewer, take those two chapters).
On Iraq, he is way out of his league on intelligence and policy matters. I did not allow that to detract from my appreciation of the book over-all, for his is a great mind, broadly read, and most challenging.
+ Our society has structured inequality built in at all levels, and the blue collar and working poor populations will NEVER climb out of their pit unless we minister to them in an active manner.
+ The focus of the blue collar worker is the neighborhood, and a web of favors given and received, favors that define not just a community, but a covenant of community. See Off the Books for more on this.
+ Our “culture” has managed to make every individual that is structurally repressed feel guilty for not being able to rise above their circumstances because our churches and our state preach freedom of opportunity, but the REALITY is that the upper class web of connections trumps lower class striving every time.
+ The deindustrialization and deskilling of the economy (Bill Clinton's signal mistake, apart from being inept at getting single-payer health care where the working class would be the principal beneficiary) has deepened the disadvantages of race and gender in America.
+ The author does a superb job–truly a scholarly and responsible job–of properly reviewing applicable literatures and offering proper citation in text, not just endnotes, of a rich buffet of practical and intellectual contributions by others.
+ He discusses five types of blue collar groups:
– Blue Collar Winners, a threatened species
– Blue Collar Respectables, want family, school, and church to be in harmony, conformists, a morality of repression, lowered social norms make it harder to be “respectable,” and there is no social mobility
– Blue Collar Survivors, trapped like inmates, a daily struggle to stay even with life in the face of multiple challenges
– Blue Collar Hard Living, heavy drinking, marital instability, toughness, political alienation, rootlessness, present time orientation, strong sense of individualism
The author's greatest contribution is his full exploration of how a pastor in a blue collar neighborhood cannot think of themselves as being on the pinnacle of a pyramidal organization between the community and God, but rather as a member at the base, part of a web of giving and love, dignity and local empowerment. This book should be required reading for EVERY pastor of ANY faith. It should also be required reading for every Precinct Captain for any political party, ideally a third party such as the Libertarians or Greens. This book is a handbook for connecting, empowering, and enriching at the local level.
The author concludes that the “ward heeler” is the best model, an individual that is constantly moving throughout the community, touching each person and especially the many that do not come to church, offering favors with love, investing in each individual. I am MOVED by this book. This is pastoral reference A, and it is touching in its understanding while illuminating in its scholarship.
Citing Andrew Greeley the author notes that ethnic politics is not about ideas, but rather about intuitive brokering among a broad diversity of intersecting interests. He goes on to cite the three weaknesses of ethnic politics: it depends on the group being structured; it overlooks small but explosive groups; and it fails to engage the intellectuals.
This is where I experience two huge epiphanies (Republican word for Aha!):
1. At the blue collar level, the author tells us, patriotism is not just a given, it is an EXISTENTIAL deeply rooted part of being. This helps me understand why Reverend Wright's intemperate (but accurate) depiction of the USA and the crimes done “in our name” would cause anger among the white blue collar population. America right or wrong is a tangible value.
2. At the national level, any candidate who would lead America must trisect three groups: money, brains, and brawn. I do not see any candidate, although John McCain appeals to me if he can avoid Leiberman or Rice as a Vice President (I would recommend to him the protagonists in The Average American: The Extraordinary Search for the Nation's Most Ordinary Citizen, that is doing that. All three of the candidates are doing platitudes to the public with secret handshakes behind closed doors with the money people, and all three are completely neglecting the intellectual substance: we are hated or distrusted around the world; we are doing nothing to eradicate the ten high level threats to humanity; we are bankrupt as a Nation (financially, morally, culturally, and intellectually), and “there is no plan.”
I read this book while trying to see if a third party candidacy is still viable. In that context:
1) I have written off Obama. His rejection of Reverend Wright is the final nail in his political coffin this time around, he has become, as one Reverend of color put it, the “House Negro.” See Obama – The Postmodern Coup: Making of a Manchurian Candidate.
2) Bloomberg (see my review of Bloomberg by Bloomberg) needs to understand the difference between transpartisan ship and the two-party organized crime and spoils system, and then he needs to put his integrity on the line and go for the full enchilada.
Superb Primer for Any Level, Needs Two Missing Pieces, April 25, 2008
Worldwatch Institute
This a superb edited work that melds chapters (with notes at the end) from world-class authors on a broad range of topics.
I kept this at five stars until the end and then I could not stand it anymore. There are at least five reasons to reduce it to four. Here are the first two.
1. As someone who grew up with Banks & Textor and have created four analytic models in my lifetime, I am growing increasing impatient with the continued fragmentation of research and writing. There is a model available: ten threats (from the UN High Level Threat Panel), twelve policies, eight challengers. We need to start fusing, analyzing, visualizing and discussing all ten threats in relation to all ten policies. I am no longer content to read about water in one chapter, meat in another, and so on. Stop putzing around and create the EarthGame with all information, all languages, all the time–geospatially grounded of course–and let's get on with the task of identifying with precision the global range of gifts table down to the household level, from $1 to $100 million.
2. I am increasingly irritated by the little cabals that strive to cite only themselves, and furthermore, have their own language to distinguish them. “Get the price right” instead of “true cost”? Get over it. Enough already. I am also increasingly of the view that the Notes must be indexed. The notes are good, but when the lead chapter talks about “Adjust Economic Scale” and fails to cite Small Is Beautiful, 25th Anniversary Edition: Economics As If People Mattered: 25 Years Later . . . With Commentaries or Human Scale I growl.
Together with Plan 3.0 and Vital Signs, both linked by another reviewer, this book represents a fine stand-alone study set if you want to limit yourself to the WorldWatch oracles and dismiss all others.
Here is what grabbed me about this book:
+ Opens with utterly sensational four pages of “timeline” for 2007 with little blocks that are priceless. I really like this.
+ Chapter 1 does a fine job of listing:
– Four flawed economic assumptions:
– 1. Independence of economic activity from “infinite” nature
– 2. Growth should be the primary economic objective
– 3. Markets are always superior to governments at allocating resources
– 4. Humans are economic maximizers and place no value on community
This may sound simple but I admire it.
– The seven big ideas for economic reform:
– 1. Adjust economic scale
– 2. Shift from growth to development
– 3. Make prices tell the ecological truth [note: for World Index of Social and Environmental Responsibility–WISER–to not be in index irritates me so much I almost take the fifth star again).
– 4. Account for nature's contributions [I am infuriated by a second hand citation. I am not familiar with more than a couple of books, but to not mention Ecological Economics: Principles And Applications or The Future of Life moves this book, as very good as it is–toward Classic Comics book shallowness.
– 7. Value women [here I am irritated by the isolation of these authors and their citations from a broader understanding of why we should value women: because it is a proven fact that there is no better investment, dollar for development dollar, than a dollar spend educating women. That ripples through society and impacts on the men big time.]
The second chapter has a prices Figure showing that computer diffusion is growing arithmetically while cell phone diffusion is growing logrithmically plus. My comment: Nokia is slowing beginning to grasp what I told their Chairman a year ago: give the cell phones to the poor free, sell the call, not the phone (and my other idea, educate the poor one cell call at a time, starting with call centers in India and China, and then monetize the transactions. Having six farmers call in asking about the same animal disease is PRICELESS! How governments cannot understand this simple logic is beyond my comprehension.
Across the book the tables and figures are powerful but they are not integrated into a total model (e.g. you should not grow grain with water you cannot afford to create fuel instead of feeding a family when you could run 35 million cars a year on Cuban sugar cane sap).
Toward the end are two very important chapters, one on the financial implications of sustainability (i.e. what alternative vehicles can be used to push back on predatory lending, absentee ownership, and wasteful food practices) and on harnessing human energy (e.g. to plant trees).
I put the book down with irritation–Open Money, Collective Intelligence, even the word Citizen are not in this book–and I again harken to the need for an EarthGame in which all knowledge, all budgets, all citizens, can come together to game, understand, dialog, and decide.
We knew most of this stuff in the 1970's, 1980's, and 1990's–at the academic level–but the politicians were able to ignore us because a) the people were unwitting and b) low gas prices and high Exxon bribes were great for the smokey room crowd. That's over. It's time for the academy to start producing explicit recommendations and budgets, at the zip code level, that we can use to beat politicians into submission or out of office.
Please have it online by 4 July 2008, and thank you for all the wonderful work up to this point. Time to bring this program home.
This is a very serious movie and I volunteered to appear in it, April 22, 2008
Tommy Chong
I must disclose that I came into this movie at the very end when the brilliant producer realized I could provide a few bits that would bring it all together. I volunteered my time because I felt then–and I feel now–that this film was totally righteous. So I am listed as one of the “actors” but unlike some of them for whom file clips were used, I was taped speaking about this specific situation for this specific movie.
Our government is BROKEN. The civil servants and uniformed personnel are good people trapped in a bad system–a cesspool. Standing above them, hoarding the wealth, the power, and the personal privilege, are “elected” officials and their appointed cronies that have no business at all governing this great nation. They are inept and should be dismissed. We need a Constitutional Convention, an end to the Elctoral College, and deep Electoral, Financial, and National Security Reforms.
I have tagged this DVD with the word treason, because that is what CIA, DEA, the FBI, and the White House are guilty of when they protect drug wholesalers and allow entire neighborhoods to go down the crack drain, not because of Ricky Ross, but because of high crimes and misdemeanors all the way up the chain above him.
In my world, accountability is supposed to start and be enforced from the top down, not the bottom up. I hold John Deutch and later George Tenet accountable for failing to manage all five of the CIAs (the Wall Street CIA, the White House CIA, the front CIA, the paramilitary CIA, and the sodomy Safari Club CIA). I can only imagine the counterparts in DEA and the FBI and other elements of the government with the power to commit treason and get away with it while making a personal profit from the power We the People have assigned to them.
Ron Paul + Jesse Ventura = Critical Mass, April 21, 2008
Ron Paul
Ron Paul excels at the Constitutional fundamentals: individual liberty, sound money, and non-interventionist foreign policies. Although I am dismayed by his unwillingess to play well with others (Ralph Nader has the same problem, Jesse Ventura does not), and he does not have a strategy for governance as much as a laundry list of non-negotiable starting points, he is still, for me as an estranged moderate Republican, an inspiration for breaking with the two-party spoils system.
This is an eloquent book in which he draws with extreme care from the thoughts of others, always attributed in the text, and provides a series of arguments that do not call for the impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney, but certainly do call for the impeachment of the complicit Congress. Three books in particular support his angry denunciation of how Congress–both Republican and Democratic–has allowed the Executive to attack our civil liberties, sustain executive warmaking never intended by the Founding Fathers, and precipitated an unprecedented financial crisis. Congress standing still for “signing statements” [and I would add, for morons like Gonzalez that give all Latinos a bad name], is the last straw.
He cites Michael Scheuer with admiration, and as I am one of the very few to notice this in my reviews of Scheuer's books, I am delighted that he validates Scheuer's basic view, to wit, Bin Laden and terrorism against America are motivated by *our* presence in Saudi Arabia, our foreign behavior, our unilateral militarism, virtual colonialism, and so on.
He suggests that it was the Clinton Administration that first set the course on Iraq, being too willing to listen to lobbyists for Israel. Of course it was Cheney and Rumsfeld that gave Sadaam Hussein the WMD as–as the joke goes–kept the receipts.
He is very specific on Iran not being a nuclear threat to the USA (and in other writing, e.g. our weekly GLOBAL CHALLENGES report from the Earth Intelligence Network, we note that all the oil states are going nuclear as fast as they can).
He labels the neoconservatives as false conservatives.
At this point in my notes I have written “This is an original work rife with learned quotations from other scholars and practitioners.”
Halfway through the volume he takes issue with those who call for a “living” Constitution, and pointedly says that this would equate to a dead and worthless Constitution. Later in the book, but it goes beautifully here, he writes that the Constitution was intended to restrain government, not citizens.
He is also against the draft and income taxes, both of which suggest people are property of government and can therefore be forced into labor. As he states, “young people are not raw material” for the government to play with.
He cites former Comptroller General David Walker with admiration. Walker told Congress in the summer of 2007 that the USA is insolvent, and they ignored him. Today Walker runs the Peter Peterson Foundation and his mission is to educate citizens on their own governments high crimes and misdemeanors in the economic and financial arena.
He shares my view that the Federal Reserve should not exist and manufactures credit out of thin air, one reason we will see more credit bubbles.
He ends by pointing out that the Patriot Act not only violates all our liberties, but was unnecessary because the USG had all the information it needed in advance of 9-11 was was in his words, inept. I disagree. I am fairly certain Dick Cheney received nine different warnings, including from Pakistan and Israel, and he arranged an exercise so he could control the government and let it happen. I think Larry Silverstein, with Bush family assistance, planted controlled demolitions to get rid of his asbestos problem at tax payer expense, and I think Rudy Guliani should be indicted for his role in “scooping and dumping” fire fighter bodies in his rush to destroy the crime scene. See, among many other excellent books and videos, 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, First Edition
He favors the legalization of marijuana and is opposed to attention deficit and other drugs being prescribed to children without adequate testing. I put the book down wishing that Gary Hart, Dennis Kucinich, Ralph Nader, Ross Perot, Michael Bloomberg, Jesse Ventura, and Ron Paul could have formed a new party, the Constitutional Party, and cleaned house. I have lost all respect for Bill Bradley–he sold out to the Trilateral Commission and greed (as did Al Gore). See Obama – The Postmodern Coup: Making of a Manchurian Candidate
John McCain is walking a tightrope. In my view, if McCain can form a Transpartisan Cabinet now–even if only a transitional one–and get David Walker and Ron Paul to lead the group in creating a balanced budget that wipes out the national debt and begins pulling back from all our overseas bases, especially the secret ones that are not worth the outrageous $60 billion a year we pay for the 4% we can steal and not process), then I think it is possible some good may come from this election. Otherwise, it is just four more years, and we MUST create a new political party.
