A seemingly ancient argument made by the religious right is that “America is a Christian nation.” That’s why all sorts of theocratic nonsense is justified. Let’s see just how Christian this country is.
1. Greed
Perhaps the easiest and most straightforward measure of the un-Christian character of the US is the economic system that affects everyone’s life, is essential to its prosperity, and remains fundamental to the country’s self-identity (especially given the Cold War). Capitalism depends on many factors, but one of the most important is greed or self-interest. Merriam-Webster defines capitalism as “an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.”
A company doesn’t survive unless it makes profit. The same is roughly true of individuals in a free market setting. Self-interest, then, becomes a matter of survival for economic actors, other things equal. Government in the US does various things to level the playing field and help those who can’t help themselves, but the underlying framework of the system remains dependent on greed. One does not need to discuss arch-capitalist and atheist Ayn Rand in order to appreciate this.
Some would argue that Americans give plenty of money to charity. The response would be simply: where did that money come from? From a greedy process, of course. By definition, anyone who donates to charity today donated less than their total wealth yesterday. And donation is only possible if there is wealth to donate, which requires a wealth-generating system, of which America’s is capitalism. The recent financial meltdown was caused in large part by unmitigated greed to the point of delusion on the part of some of the smartest players in the economy.
President Obama, always a good speaker, didn’t disappoint on rhetoric. The tone was upbeat and optimistic on continuing change. Inspiring words and ideas abounded. He spoke of strong values, of unity and the American character. However, in the area of policy, the speech came up short. As a general rule, Obama maintained his MO of emphasizing big ideas and high-level principles against which no one can reasonably argue (jobs, security, bipartisanship, etc), while serving up little in the way of substantive, original policy initiatives. Herein lies the asymmetry. On the one hand, Obama speaks of change, an overhaul of the status quo in government and new beginnings (even now, after a whole year in power). But on the other hand his policies, as I have argued before, are well ensconced within the established Washington common sense and economic and foreign policy convention wisdom.
He called for a freeze in spending outside of entitlement programs and defense—in other words, precisely the areas least in need of freezing. His other economic proposals were safely contained within the box of the establishment and orthodox economic paradigms. On foreign policy, no big surprises: a little less Iraq here, a little more Afghanistan there, and a net change of zero on the global American empire as well as America’s role in world affairs.
After a year in office, it would seem that we can characterize Barack Obama thusly: he is a man who is bright, well-spoken, personable, hard working and good-hearted. But when it comes to leadership, he is neither an iconoclast nor a revolutionary. He is a well-within-the-box policy maker who, although very left-wing as Presidents go, has the stuff of which compromise and incremental change is made—in ideological, intellectual as well as strategic terms. He would seem to have far too much respect and deference for established institutions and conventional wisdom. That’s not going to deliver “real” change in Washington D.C.
I recently came across an old video from 1997 of a debate between proponents of Intelligent Design and proponents of the theory of evolution. It is interesting to see the kinds of issues that were in contention back then (almost 13 years ago), relative to the knowledge and scientific advancements that we have now.
I’ve chosen the two parts that include an exchange between David Berlinski (supporting ID) and Kenneth Miller (supporting evolution) to highlight a few observations. One is that Miller articulately provides a good deal of evidence and solid reasoning (in these as well as previous videos in the series) that addresses Berlinski’s concerns, and subsequently the latter simply moves the goalpost, with the profound argument being, essentially, that he’s not convinced. Now, one must ask: how much evidence is enough to convince anyone of anything?
Obviously, absolutely nothing can be known with perfect certainty. Therefore the best we can do is to simply weigh all the evidence and data that has been gathered thus far and try to figure what is the most likely explanation. This approach will never, ever satisfy someone who demands perfect certainty, which is exactly what many proponents of ID demand vis-a-vis evolution, whilst nevertheless being exceedingly comfortable with less-than-perfect certainty in almost every other area of their life (including and especially their religious beliefs).
Another thing I noticed was that Miller says that there are roughly 100,000 genes in the human genome. Turns out that current estimates are significantly lower—mostly in the range of 20,000 to 70,000 genes that encode proteins, but nowhere near the 100,000 that was probably a reasonable estimate in 1997. (Some have recently put it at 150,000, but this is an outlier.) The importance of this is simply that if there are fewer genes that encode proteins, it necessarily takes fewer steps to get from a whale to a dog, or vice versa (especially given the abundant non-morphological similarities between these two vertebrate mammals), or from any given creature to any other, which was one of Berlinski’s issues.
Current Intelligent Design and creationist arguments have moved the goalposts once again, continuously demonstrating that it is their evidence-bereft religious beliefs that is really driving their agenda, not a true skepticism that questions ideas in the service of the quest for knowledge. Needless to say, they must be kept out of the schools.
President Obama recently announced new banking and financial reforms that indicate that while he clearly still doesn’t quite grasp the underlying economic and financial structures that fostered the crisis, he’s getting there. The Economist reports:
Though not a full return to Glass-Steagall, the law that separated commercial banking and investment banking in the wake of the Great Depression (and was repealed in 1999), [the new reform] is at least a return to its “spirit”, as one official put it. Reflecting the possible dent it could put in profitability, bank shares tumbled, pulling stockmarkets down sharply around the world.
Nowadays, if the big bank shares are tumbling, chances are you’re doing something right. That’s because their business models are shot through with flaws, and the kinds of things that benefit them (like unlimited state subsidies) are precisely the kinds of things that are anticompetitive and harmful to a well-functioning economic and financial system. Moving on, the Economist writes:
The first half of the plan concerns restrictions on the scope of activities. Banks that have insured deposits, and thus access to emergency funds from the central bank, would not be allowed to own or invest in private equity or hedge funds. Nor would they be able to engage in “proprietary” trading—punting their own capital—though they could continue to offer investment banking for clients, such as underwriting securities, making markets and advising on mergers.
The second part focuses on size. Banks already face a 10% cap on national market share of deposits. This would be updated to include other liabilities, namely wholesale funding. The aim is to limit concentration, which has increased greatly over the past 20 years, accelerating during the crisis as healthy banks bought sick ones. The four largest banks now hold more than half of the industry’s assets.
The first part has the right spirit—to limit the scope of activities, what a given institution can and cannot do. Here’s the problem: it’s backward-looking, not forward-looking. Note that institutions with insured deposits “would not be allowed to own or invest in private equity or hedge funds.” That seems perfectly reasonable, and it is, except for the inconvenient truth that in 20 years’ time, “hedge funds” may very well be obsolete. Financial and economic innovation ensure that over time, regulations that are tailored too closely to current conditions, current paradigms and current business models are inevitably rendered impotent. Given the relative infrequency of this kind of financial crisis, by the time something comparable is capable of occurring years from now, we can rest assured of two things, (1) that the character of finance, and of banking and investment practices, will have changed significantly, and (2) that the character of regulation will not have changed meaningfully at all.
That’s why a more explicit return to Glass-Steagall or something like it—which would deal with the basic kinds of activities (taking commercial deposits versus playing the stock market, for example), rather than the kinds of firms that do those activities (your local bank versus a Greenwich hedge fund)—would be much more effective and long-lasting. Indeed, Glass-Steagall seems to have been a quite successful piece of legislation, remaining relevant for many decades (from the 1930s until the turn of the century), despite the obvious changes in finance during that time.
In addition, the continued ability for deposit-taking institutions to engage in investment banking (precisely one of the hallmarks of Glass-Steagall was to separate the two) is troubling, because investment banking is not a particularly low-risk activity.
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Some of the biggest problems with the Obama and Democratic reform plans currently in play have to do with a knee-jerk reaction toward bigger government, new agencies, more regulators and increased power. As Nicole Gelinas of the Manhattan Institute has argued, the best ideas for regulation are often the old ones that have been around for a while, and that simply need to be updated, reinforced or just plain executed for once.
Some of her reasonable suggestions include the following:
… the government must once again insulate the core economic functions of long-term borrowing and lending from potential short-term excesses. The government can do this by requiring financial institutions to hold uniform levels of capital against all of their investments — cushioning them from some losses — so that firms cannot game the system by structuring some securities to avoid robust capital requirements. Government regulators should also require financial firms that depend disproportionately on short-term lenders for their own funding to hold more capital.
Note that this kind of an approach would be ingenious in the sense that it would allow government officials to adjust the percentage level of capital requirements in the same way they adjust tax rates, for example. Depending on new analysis or changing priorities, regulators could quickly, efficiently and straightforwardly alter the capital requirements. Just as tax rates are tied to the amount of income or the type of activity, the capital requirements could be tied to the amount of assets or the type of investment or financing activity, rather than what the firm is called or how its business model or prospectus reads. Remember that we already have a strong precedent for management of capital requirements: the central bank already imposes such rules on commercial banks as a tool of monetary policy.
Consistent with activity-based rules, as opposed to firm-based rules, Gelinas says:
… the government must re-impose clear, well-defined limits on activities such as borrowing for speculation. Financial firms should not be able to make hundreds of billions of dollars in promises with negligible cash down, as the insurance giant American International Group did through unregulated financial instruments called credit-default swaps. Nor should regular Americans be able to purchase homes with zero cash down, leaving them — and their lenders and the economy — unduly vulnerable to declines in the values of those homes.
So it looks like straightforward, common-sensical rules for lenders and borrowers of all sizes and scopes can be found being discussed on both sides of the political divide. One hopes that the powers that be are listening. Otherwise, we can all safely rest assured that a new, equally destructive financial crisis is looming on the historical horizon.
Tonight, Republican Scott Brown has won the senate seat formerly held by the late Edward Kennedy. It is the first time in a very long time that that seat will be occupied by a Republican, or by a non-Kennedy. It is also a very important development because of the staunch left-of-center character of Massachusetts. For that reason alone, this election should be seen as a clear message to the Congressional Democratic leadership that likely voters (which is a very different group from the general populace) are souring on their plans as well as their style of leadership. 62% of the Massachusetts vote went to Obama, and now, in the very next federal election, the tables have turned in unequivocal fashion.
Given Brown’s apparent emphasis during the campaign on the healthcare issue, his election from one of the first states to enact universal health coverage underscores the disillusionment with the proposals the Democrats have been offering. His association with the tea party movement, emphasis on his independence, and talk of “the machine” and “the people’s seat” also show the first clear indication that the tea parties and the general ideological and philosophical vibe they represent have the stuff from which electoral victories are made. And that is terrible news for the Democrats. It looks like those angry senior citizens at town hall meetings aren’t so inconsequential after all, Ms. Pelosi.
The liberals like to cite polls showing huge numbers of Americans want “healthcare reform,” without caring to discern what kind of reform it is they want. Confident they had a mandate after the November 2008 elections, the Democrats in D.C. have blundered their way through 2009, plowing ahead on healthcare and the “stimulus” in amateurish fashion, and now the electorate has begun to show it’s payback time.
In my humble opinion, the sheer incompetence of the Democrats in straightforward issues of governance and fiscal management is alone justification to give them a black eye this year. Despite this clear signal from the bluest of blue states, I fear that it will take a lot more Republican victories to convince the likes of Pelosi, Reid and Obama that before anything, the job of government is to govern effectively—regardless of its priorities or policy program—and not to manage an endless network of bureaucrats, unions and special interests that view the Treasury as an ATM.
If this was about health care, even though they get coverage in their commonwealth, the people of the Bay State will have sided with insurance companies and drug manufacturers over the the tens of millions of uninsured Americans, as well as the tens of millions more suffering from increased premiums and decreased coverage.
Etcetera, etcetera. The blind partisan progressives who judge a man by his carbon footprint have, disappointingly, consistently failed to come to grips with the fact that, as fantastic and beautiful their vision for the country may be, it is all for squat if their team just can’t run the country well. Then again, this is probably the permanent condition of partisans and ideologues (think of the Bush Republicans and their base). Obama himself is the perfect example of this: long on sizzle, but short on steak. In their euphoria, the Republicans and conservatives would be well advised to remember this lesson.
Only a fool would think that the Bay State has suddenly had rightist awakening. This isn’t about politics anywhere near as much as it’s about governance. Accordingly, anybody who is interested in retaking Congress or the White House should look to competent technocrats. If that means saying “thanks, but no thanks” to an Obama or a Palin, no matter how sexy they may seem, then so be it. This country needs leaders who can accomplish something, independent of whatever policy program, and the electorate may be starting to realize that.
