Family Cons v. Market Cons

Yuval Levin, senior editor of New Atlantis journal, serves up an interesting argument in this week's Weekly Standard. In his article "Putting Parents First," Levin acknowledges the very real tensions within the American conservative coalition between those committed primarily to protecting free-market economics and those committed primarily to preserving traditional structures of family and community.

Levin writes:

As the modern conservative movement took shape, conservatives were spared the full burden of mitigating these internal tensions because they confronted adversaries, at home and abroad, who opposed both of the goods conservatives aimed to advance. The left at its height viewed capitalism and traditional social institutions like the family as equally unjust and oppressive, and sought to use government power to replace or to undermine both.

This allowed conservatives to serve the cause of family and market by opposing big government. That doesn't mean the conservative coalition always held together amicably, but a common enemy can go a long way toward smoothing over differences. And opposition to government was not just a slogan. It genuinely served the interests of the family and the market in a time when both were under siege. It truly was the case, as Ronald Reagan put it in his first inaugural address in 1981, that "in this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."

Levin argues this strategy no longer holds, or will not hold much longer (I agree.) In other words, the "Leave Us Alone" coalition increasingly is turning on itself. He sees the solution in conservatives of various stripes concentrating their policy proposals not on the "investor class" but on the "parenting class" and includes specific recommendations for public policy.

I'm not as optimistic as Levin that this coalition can be reconfigured. But his analysis is insightful, and should prompt some interesting discussions across the conservative landscape, especially perhaps among those of us who ask more and more, "What hath Jerusalem to do with Wall Street?"

Comments

[chasid]

Only in the last few years has this incongruity struck me. It's almost as if I've been waking up from a dream. Truly, the sacred institution of the family as a merry, militant gospel troupe has little or nothing to do with that of the family of the American "consumer unit."

[Bobby Winters]

This strikes me as a used way of dividing up the world. I would put myself in the category of "family conservative." Whatever party focuses on this might become what this country is sorely lacking, the party of the "regular person."

[Gintas]

I found the use of the phrase "creative destruction" in the article quite Orwellian.

[Judy Warner]

"Creative destruction", as defined in Wikipedia, "introduced in 1942 by the economist Joseph Schumpeter, describes the process of industrial transformation that accompanies radical innovation. In Schumpeter's vision of capitalism, innovative entry by entrepreneurs was the force that sustained long-term economic growth, even as it destroyed the value of established companies that enjoyed some degree of monopoly power."

That is, in our economy things change -- it's not static. New ideas come along, new companies form, old ones die out. It produces anxiety. We seem to be in a period of rapid change now and it produces a lot of anxiety. You can't turn off the process. The article talks about ways to mitigate it to ease daily life for families and individuals going through the anxiety.

On the other hand, it is really up to the individual family how to deal with the tensions in society. You can choose to pursue wealth and have two parents working long hours and neglecting the children, or neglecting to produce children. Or you can work things so that the mother is at home and the father doesn't work every waking minute. You can buy a McMansion, or you can live in a townhouse. You can live in the Washington suburbs, or you can live in a small town with a low cost of living. There's a lot of choice in America and you don't always need the government to ease the anxieties of life.

[Gintas]

As expected "creative destruction" comes from an economist. What a dismal science indeed! And one of those dreary Austrians, too. Here's a great example of this "creative destruction". There's more destroyed than just creaking dinosaur companies.

[GL]

Thanks for the link to the article by Levin. He has indeed hit upon the problem. As with most, if not all, political movements, the conservative movement that began as a reaction to the New Deal and the Great Society had within it the seeds of its own weaknesses from the start. The phrase by Reagan that government was the problem had a lot of power and truth in it when he uttered it in 1981, but it has created a belief among Americans that government is the enemy when in fact the Scriptures teach that government is just as ordained by God as is the family and the Church. My father's generation, which lived through the depression and fought and won WWII had a great deal of faith in government, too much I believe, but our generation has too little. As is often the case, the pendulum swings too far the other way to compensate for the over reaction to which it is responding.

What we need now are policies that favor strong, large and stable nuclear families made up of a father, a mother and several children. Tax policy would help a lot here. The market has benefited from such policies for the past two decades. For example, long-term capital gains taxes are lower than taxes on earnings. This favored the interest of market conservatives, but not necessarily family conservatives. Tax reform which favored married couples with several children would be helpful here. Shifting the relative tax burden to those who do not have children to rear while providing substantial relief to those who are investing in the future by procreating and rearing the next generation must be part of a family-friendly agenda. Reform here is needed not just in the income tax, but also in the social security and medicare taxes. Allan Carson, a frequent Touchstone contributor, has written quite a lot on this topic.

Opposition to gay marriage is important for a number of reasons, but one is that marriage laws should be used to favor those who can procreate for the same reasons that tax laws should favor those who procreate. The pro-life agenda is very important to a family-friendly policy agenda as well. It is no mere coincidence that the legalization of contraception and abortion and no-fault divorce laws accelerated the problems already created for families by the industrial revolution. Until and unless Roe is overturned, family conservatives need to focus on finding policies that discourage "choosing" abortion and the use of contraception and impose heavy financial burdens on men who father children out-of-wedlock and fail to marry the mother. Doing the right thing should be rewarded and failing to do the right thing should be punished.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>As expected "creative destruction" comes from an economist. What a dismal science indeed! And one of those dreary Austrians, too. Here's a great example of this "creative destruction". There's more destroyed than just creaking dinosaur companies.<<<

As is to be expected, people enjoy blaming economics for the decline of cultural standards. Let's leave alone for the moment the fact that you are bemoaning the decline of an Ireland that never existed outside of American movies. Ever visit "pre-Celtic Tiger" Ireland? You wouldn't want to live there--and neither did the Irish, for that matter (which is why there are more of them here than there). Everybody hates modernity--from the comfort of their modern existence, that is. Everybody blames capitalist "Creative Destruction" for the death of their own pet rock.

Well, let's look at places where "creative destruction" is eschewed.

On the one hand, we have the Third World. Enough said.

On the other hand, we have the socialist democracies of Western Europe. Everything family friendly you could want is there--vacations longer than the work year, free health care, free day care, paid maternity and family leave, jobs protected by law, unemployment benefits that equal 90% of pay and extend for years, incredibly generous state pensions again equal to most of one's salary, fully vested at age 59 (55 for French public servants) and indexed to inflation.

So, in these family-friendly places, we should see high fertility rates, high rates of marriage, many intact and happy families, right.

That's a rhetorical question, you don't have to answer.

Stop blaming capitalist economics for the failure of Churches and other social institutions to uphold behavioral standards and instill moral values. In fact, capitalism only works if it is backed up by precisely those standards and values. That's why sober, disciplined, hard-working, hell-ridden Protestants led the charge into the industrial revolution, and happy-go-lucky Catholics got left behind--except for those who came here and became Protestants in all but name (an American Catholic is essentially a Protestant who digs Mary).

In fact, strong families can only prosper in two situations.

One, a clan-based society in which the family is not only the basic economic unit, but also the fundamental unit of social protection. Everyone in the clan is good, everyone outside the clan is bad. Makes for strong family ties, but not much else.

Two, a laissez-faire capitalist system in which people are free to make their own way according to their own vision, including the formation of free mutual benevolent associations, religious congregations, social institutions, neighborhoods and so forth. With minimal government intrusion, there is nobody to undermine the family, nobody to instill values counter to the family's on the children. Minimal government intrusion means people get to generate, invest and dispose of their wealth as they see fit. Wealth can transfer from generation to generation, encouraging people to plan long-term, and not to seek instant gratification. Minimal government interference means people have to look to their own care and well-being, which means mom and dad are going to have enough kids to take care of them when they are old, and will instill in those kids the obligation to do so. Minimal government interference means that people have to save against a rainy day, which also inhibits feckless spending.

And minimal government interference means that a person with a good idea is free to take that idea and run with it. The discovery of kerosene destroyed the whaling communities of Nantucket and New Bedford. Was that a bad thing? Ford's development of the affordable motor car destroyed the entire horse-and-buggy industry. You willing to turn in your car for a horse? The automatic elevator put elevator operators out of work (except in some parts of New York City, where the unions were so strong that well into the 1970s, elevator operators could be found in high-rise buildings, pushing the buttons on the self-service elevators). How many people have ever waited in line for gas in New Jersey, because the laws there prohibit self-service pumping? Ever wonder why there are firemen on electric locomotives?

For that matter, ever wonder why unemployment in France is 12% and in Germany 9%, while here it is 4.5%? Ever wonder why the United States has created tens of millions of new jobs since 1990, while all of Western Europe has created fewer than a million? Ever wonder why Muslim immigrants in France and Germany are mired in poverty, while here they are among the highest paid of immigrant groups?

If it makes you all feel better, blame capitalism. Blame modernity (which many of you mistake for modernism). And then look at the alternatives.

[GL]

Stuart,

Do you favor a truly "laissez-faire capitalist system" where government does not favor or disfavor capital over labor, say by providing significantly lower tax rates for the former than it does the latter or which does not have intellectual property laws which create government mandated monopolies? I am not opposed to the government encouraging economic growth by such mechanisms, but that is not a "laissez-faire capitalist system" and market conservatives need to quit pretending themselves and others that it is. If they did, then perhaps family conservatives could get some of the favorable treatment they need as well.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Do you favor a truly "laissez-faire capitalist system" where government does not favor or disfavor capital over labor, say by providing significantly lower tax rates for the former than it does the latter or which does not have intellectual property laws which create government mandated monopolies? <<<

Government should not interfere in contractual matters between employers and employees.
Government should not tax investments at all, since investment is the seed corn of future prosperity.
Government should not tax businesses at all, since there is, as a matter of practical reality, no such thing as a "business tax"--businesses merely pass on their costs to consumers, which results in reduced sales and thus lower employment.
Government should protect intellectual properties, since, as Paul said, the journeyman is worthy of his fee, and those who work with their minds are no different from those who work with their hands.
Governments should not create monopolies, but on the other hand, I have yet to see a government anti-trust suit that made sense or benefited the consumer.

>>>I am not opposed to the government encouraging economic growth by such mechanisms, but that is not a "laissez-faire capitalist system" and market conservatives need to quit pretending themselves and others that it is. If they did, then perhaps family conservatives could get some of the favorable treatment they need as well.<<<

The answer to the entire problem is to go back to first principles, and get the government out of the business of business. All of our problems today--whether it is the inordinate influence of money on politics, political corruption, corporate welfare, market distortions, high taxes or high deficit spending--all go back to the same cause: the government is involved in aspects of personal and economic life from which the Constitution specifically barred them.

But you know why that is so: people think there is a free lunch. As Cicero, the eloquent poop-head once wrote, democracies collapse when the people realize that they have to power to vote themselves money. The problem in the United States today is exacerbated by the extreme progressivity of the tax system: those who benefit from entitlements and transfer payments are not the people who actually pay to fund them. If they had to bear even a small part of the cost (the visible cost in the form of tax payments out of pocket, not the invisible costs such as lower wages, higher interest prices and rates and reduced levels of employment), they wouldn't be as gung ho for them as they are now. Thus, tax progressivity is a trojan horse: under the guise of "fairness" (those who can afford it pay more), a progressive tax system creates a climate in which politicians can pander for votes by offering the electorate things "free of charge".

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>He sees the solution in conservatives of various stripes concentrating their policy proposals not on the "investor class" but on the "parenting class" and includes specific recommendations for public policy.<<<

This is a false dichotomy: for the most part, the parenting class IS the investor class. Parents are the ones who set up retirement accounts and education accounts, carry mortgages, buy life insurance and the like. Parents want to leave something to their children; policies that allow them to do so will benefit parents AND investors, the majority of whom ARE investors.

On the other hand, parents are no different than the majority of the great unwashed: you can always buy (or rent) their votes by promising them something for nothing--though you would think their experience as parents would make them wiser on such counts.

[GL]

Why should investment receive a favorable tax rate vis-a-vis labor if government is to stay out of managing the economy? Government does manage the economy under the current system, favoring investment over labor. Again, I am not opposed to this, but let's not pretend that market conservatives are not promoting policies that favor the investor class over the working class. All you have to do is look at tax policy to understand that we do not have a system where government stays out of the business of business and I have yet to meet a market conservative who truly believes we should. Your answers above show you don't. I don't either, but I am not saying that I do.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>My father's generation, which lived through the depression and fought and won WWII had a great deal of faith in government, too much I believe, but our generation has too little. <<<

Your father's generation had a very ambivalent attitude towards government. Most of those who served in the military in World War II came home with extreme resentment towards authority in all its forms, an aversion to what in the military was called "chickens--t", and a desire to break free of the bonds of commitment that were imposed on them by the war. On the other hand, those bonds were too strong for them to break, societal expectations constrained them to living the kind of regimented bourgeois existence they had hoped to escape. They thus spent considerable portions of their lives in a state of quiet resentment. A lot of them passed on this resentment to their children (the boomers).

At the same time, this resentment also created a sense of entitlement on their part. They fought, they suffered, and thus the government owed them, big time. The GI Bill (which laid the foundations for the destruction of the American university system) was just the beginning. You see a lot of this even today, where, despite the fact that those over 65 are the wealthiest demographic cohort in the United States, the elderly constantly lobby (successfully) for additional entitlements and benefits, enabling them to maintain their lifestyle at the expense of their children, and their children's children, all the while opposing any reforms or changes that might enable their descendants to enjoy a standard of living close to their own.

[Seth R.]

I think "religious Americans" risk being painted into a restrictive political box, both in how they are labled by innaccurate media portrayals and in how they eventually come to see themselves and define their own faith.

It's important to move beyond the tired old Evangelicals = Republicans equation. Let them be Evangelicals first, and Republican second, if at all. Catholics first, Democrats second, if at all.

It is also important to remember that American politcs needs religous people to wage a battle for ALL the political platforms. Sound religious values must be injected into the Democratic party just as much as into the Republican party.

It's very easy to get cynical about the Democrats. They provide plenty of opportunities to be sure. But we can't afford that kind of defeatism. This is a long hard slog for enlightened governance. It's important that Christians not concede the field in the battle of ideas - on either side of the political spectrum.

[Seth R.]

Incidentally, I wish the conservatives would stop placing the same unjustified blind faith in "Big Corporations" that the liberals place upon "Big Government."

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Why should investment receive a favorable tax rate vis-a-vis labor if government is to stay out of managing the economy?<<<

Well, if you want to be that way, why is government levying anything more than excise taxes?

But, if we accept that the government will continue to tax income, we might point out that investment income has already been taxed once, when the money invested was earned. Capital gains are therefore money taxed twice, which (as in the case of inheritance taxes) is manifestly unfair, to say nothing of unwise, in that it discourages investment, which is generally believed to be a beneficial activity for all of society. Someone who decries the "consumer" mindset must be aware that the alternative is the "investor" mindset, that puts money away for the future. Moreover, investment is a risk proposition. There is no guarantee that any investment will make money (though most do, over the long term). The government does not share in that risk, therefore, it should not be a beneficiary from the money put at risk.

>>>Government does manage the economy under the current system, favoring investment over labor.<<<

How so? Who do you think invests the money?

>>>Again, I am not opposed to this, but let's not pretend that market conservatives are not promoting policies that favor the investor class over the working class.<<<

Stop living in the 1920s. The working class IS the investor class.

>>>All you have to do is look at tax policy to understand that we do not have a system where government stays out of the business of business and I have yet to meet a market conservative who truly believes we should.<<<

I do entirely believe the government should be out of the business of business. And that means, of course, that it should not tax businesses, since the power to tax is the power to destroy. Once business is taxed, the door is open to all sorts of incentives, subsidies, credits and the like. In effect, this allows government to pick the winners and losers. And again, as I note, and you ignore, there is no such thing as a "business tax" in the first place. Business taxes are merely a very inefficient form of tax farming. Why should business be the publicani for a government that lacks the honesty to tell the voters how much it wants of their money?

>>>Your answers above show you don't.<<<

Not really. I just recognize that a tax on capital is a tax on income, and that a tax on business is really just a tax on the consumer. And that entitlements and transfer payments are merely a way of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Though it should be the other way around, since Paul had a job, and Peter lived off of subsidies.

[Judy Warner]

The GI Bill (which laid the foundations for the destruction of the American university system) was just the beginning.

I have long thought this but have not been sure. On the one hand, the veterans who used it to go to college right after the war benefited greatly; I have heard accounts all my life of how serious and hardworking those vets were in college. It seemed to be an injection of intellectual capital into the economy that was extremely valuable.

On the other hand, it ended up watering down the intellectual standards of colleges and universities; it introduced the idea that vast numbers of people are qualified to go to college; it made Americans think that someone else should pay for their college education. Can you help me sort this out, Stuart?

[Tony Esolen]

I'd like to distinguish between government and government. Could we agree that if the federal government confined itself to those functions that are specified for it in the Constitution, the following things would be true? (I am not saying necessarily that all of them are good things.)

1. The government would probably be able to stay afloat on a modest VAT tax, or on a combination of the VAT and tarriffs; if it were necessary to preserve the dastardly federal income tax, the rates could be reduced to zero for most people.

2. The Social Security vampire would finally wake up one day with a stake in its heart. That means that

3. Families would have to take care of themselves, the children seeing to their parents, as once their parents cared for them when they were helpless.

4. Medical costs would sink dramatically; right now, Medicare allows those costs to float. There is very little pressure to keep the costs reasonable. It is not clear to me that medical care would improve; it seems possible that very high-cost medical procedures would never be developed, because the "market" for them would be too small. On the other hand, with costs lower in general, the insurance companies would have more breathing room to pay for the occasional expensive procedure.

5. College costs would sink. See 4 above; federally backed student loans, sometimes at rates below anything that the market would warrant, have simply been folded into the operating costs of the college and passed on to the parents. That means

6. Some colleges would collapse; others would have to make do with smaller administrations; still others would require their faculty to teach more courses, cutting into their time for writing articles on the patriarchal image of the mule in Anabaptist apocalyptic at the siege of Vienna.

7. The number of women running for Congress would drop like a stone; by compensation, political activity at the local, county, and state level would grow more heated.

8. Big businesses would be less capable of squeezing their competition by pretending to lobby against regulation, while all along helping to write the regulations that they will be able to suffer but that will kill their smaller competitors. An unrealistic desire to reduce risk to zero put out of business a lot of perfectly fine dairies, farms, restaurants, et cetera....

[Matthias]

The working class IS the investor class.

That's close to true if you define the investor class as consisting of anyone who holds direct or indirect interest in a share of stock in a corporation. But that would be silly. While it's true that the percentage of Americans who own some stock or mutual fund shares has exploded in the past generation, the vast majority of stock ownership is still concentrated in the top wealth levels.

When people speak of "investor class" they don't have in mind a factory worker who makes $40,000 a year and has $40,000 in his 401(k). They're thinking of the man with $40,000,000 in stock who has no need to work at all (though he might). You can't say the two have very similar interests in economic policy.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Incidentally, I wish the conservatives would stop placing the same unjustified blind faith in "Big Corporations" that the liberals place upon "Big Government."<<<

Actually, big corporations tend more to favor statist solutions, therefore are attracted to the Democratic party, which, despite its anti-business rhetoric, can be counted upon to propose legislation that gives large corporations a competitive advantage over small businesses (since big business can absorb the costs, and small businesses can't). Conservatives, as a rule, favor small business AND small government.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>That's close to true if you define the investor class as consisting of anyone who holds direct or indirect interest in a share of stock in a corporation.<<<

That's what it does mean.

>>. But that would be silly. While it's true that the percentage of Americans who own some stock or mutual fund shares has exploded in the past generation, the vast majority of stock ownership is still concentrated in the top wealth levels.<<<

Actually, if you look at mutual fund capitalization, you would have to concede that a very large portion of equity is held by small investors.

[Bobby Winters]

>>>5. College costs would sink. See 4 above; federally backed student loans, sometimes at rates below anything that the market would warrant, have simply been folded into the operating costs of the college and passed on to the parents. That means

6. Some colleges would collapse; others would have to make do with smaller administrations; still others would require their faculty to teach more courses, cutting into their time for writing articles on the patriarchal image of the mule in Anabaptist apocalyptic at the siege of Vienna.<<<

This might happen, but then only the wealthy schools like Harvard, Yale, and company would be around. The power base would be narrower and the Elite more elite. True, we wouldn't be trying to educate everyone anymore. True we wouldn't be teaching in college things that should have been taught in high school. Those folks that you think would be teaching more would be out pounding the pavement because they didn't go into academe to teach.

[Francesca Matthews]

Levin makes an interesting point when he says, "The greatest threat to the interests of families and free markets today is in fact the tension between them." The coalition between libertarians and traditionalists has been tied together with weak string for some years now and is finally showing signs of breaking apart. David Kuo's "Tempting Faith" presents some intriguing descriptions of how cultural conservatives have been manipulated as a voting block and now, after years of having promises tantalizingly held just beyond the horizon, are finally showing signs of cynicism.

Politically charged religious institutions, such as the National Association of Evangelicals with its close links to the Bush White House, are much undermined by the behavior of leaders such as Ted Haggard. Sadly, my liberal friends now see Haggard and his unfortunate problems as the face of opposition to gay marriage.

GL makes an excellent point when he says, "Until and unless Roe is overturned, family conservatives need to focus on finding policies that discourage 'choosing' abortion and the use of contraception and impose heavy financial burdens on men who father children out-of-wedlock and fail to marry the mother." Government policies could certainly help to reduce abortion without criminalizing it. We see this in European countries where policies such as in depth health and sex education and state financial support for mothers and children combine to produce an abortion rate that is considerably lower than it is here in the US and teen pregnancy rates that are lower.

[Francesca Matthews]

I can see no reason why social and economic conservatives should align. Europe tends to be both culturally and economically more liberal than the US, but correlation does not imply causation and there is no reason to believe that pro-family tax relief and universal health care would cause a breakdown in the nuclear family. In fact, most of the very traditional, "Quiverfull" families that I know exist within a socialist structure -- the military. There, where housing and health care are guaranteed for them and their children, they can be more comfortable having extremely large families. The challenge these families face is to provide for all of their children after they turn 18, which is why some of them tend to encourage early marriage for their daughters and a military career for their sons.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>1. The government would probably be able to stay afloat on a modest VAT tax, or on a combination of the VAT and tarriffs; if it were necessary to preserve the dastardly federal income tax, the rates could be reduced to zero for most people.<<<

The rate IS effectively zero for most people, due entirely to the extreme progressivity of the tax schedule AND the broadening of the Earned Income Tax Credit. The bottom half of the income ladder paid all of five percent of income taxes last year. The top five percent of income earners paid twenty five percent; the top ten percent paid nearly half. That leaves the middle class--the 51st to 90th pecentiles--paying about 20%. The reason that all income tax cuts favor "the rich" (of which, I am shocked to learn, I am a member) is that the "rich" are the ones paying all the taxes.

>>>Medical costs would sink dramatically; right now, Medicare allows those costs to float. <<<

Iron law of economics: You get more of what you subsidize. Subsidize medical prices, and you get higher prices. People don't know what stuff costs, because they don't pay for it themselves, ergo, a six dollar Tylenol is cool with them.

>>>College costs would sink. <<<

I believe I covered this at length elsewhere. Our university-employed compatriots took me to task for it, but I still stand by what I wrote.

>>>Big businesses would be less capable of squeezing their competition by pretending to lobby against regulation, while all along helping to write the regulations that they will be able to suffer but that will kill their smaller competitors. An unrealistic desire to reduce risk to zero put out of business a lot of perfectly fine dairies, farms, restaurants, et cetera....<<<

Preaching to the choir again, Brother Tony. But right on.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>> In fact, most of the very traditional, "Quiverfull" families that I know exist within a socialist structure -- the military.<<<

The military is not socialistic by any means. It is ruthlessly meritocratic on the one hand, and quasi-feudal on the other. It is also not a self-sustaining entity: it exists because We the People establish it. In fact, we disband the military every 30 September and raise it again every 1 October. In the meanwhile, the military produces nothing and in fact spends most of its time sitting around waiting to do its job.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>.David Kuo's "Tempting Faith" presents some intriguing descriptions of how cultural conservatives have been manipulated as a voting block and now, after years of having promises tantalizingly held just beyond the horizon, are finally showing signs of cynicism.<<<

Without bothering to mince words, let's just say that Kuo's a total jerk whose understanding of the political process would seem naive to a third grader, and whose book is intended mainly to make the guy money. To be honest, until he showed up to do his interviews, nobody I know (and I move in political circles) knew this guy from Adam. Certainly he wasn't a heavy hitter in any of the Faith Based programs I know.

[Seth R.]

I think Kuo is only important insofar as he embodies a wider trend of opinion within the Evangelical camp.

[LAbriAlumn]

SK,
God's Law requires fair contracts, and the civil governance has the duty to provide recourse for justice. That is quite different of course, than Keynsian economic manipulations.

GL,
ending the death tax helps family farms and family owned-and-operated shops far more than it helps plutocrats.

It was the WWII generation who coined the notion that the scariest words in English were "I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help you" Not Ronald Reagan - he was simply the first president with the guts to repeat it.

Seth,
The Democrats drove the Christians out when they forbade Gov. Casey to speak, simply because he wasn't a pro-abort. The Democrats - the National Socialist Democrat Worker's party - are beyond help. The GOP is faltering badly, and just may go the way of the Whigs, and for the same reasons.

Tony,
1. VAT tax is a bad thing, and not Constitutionally permitted (I strongly favor removing the 1913 amendments in order to restore the Republic), VAT taxes tax the same thing over, and over, and over again. The federal government is only allowed to levy taxes from the several States, and possibly to erect tarifs which would be a great boon to this country by making manufacture a going proposition again. (contra the LFCs, the sumum bonum is not the bottom line, human happiness is not determined merely by monetary gain).

2 & 3, it has always been so, but things are so far advanced that a whole generation would die in poverty, of poverty, if that were done all of a sudden.

4. The Church needs to regain the ministry of medicine. As a business, or as a State activity, medical care is rationed, frequently based upon the calculated future ability to pay, or to pay taxes. It is already very nearly that in England.

5. The private colleges are many times more expensive than the Land-grant colleges. Why is that?

Francesca,
Which is why the Ted Haggard debacle was so manipulated by the Left. The whole question of megachurches and "seeker-sensitivity" is 'a whole 'nother issue.'

Why, pray tell, if rationed health care and State control over education and culture (for example, the persecution of home schoolers in Germany under an upheld Nazi-era law), is producing a rapidly declining population, if in fact abortion rates are so low as you claim? Something doesn't add up.

Early marriage is turning out to be the healthiest and wisest thing, though my generation has suffered greatly at the hands of those who taught otherwise.

From your comments, is it then the case that the Orthodox Church rejects the concepts in Humanae Vitae?

[LAbriAlumn]

Francesca, correlation does not -prove- causation. But it may imply that it may well exist.

Seth, Kuo gives all the appearances of being a Thanocrat agent provocateur.

[Francesca Matthews]

Stuart Kohl writes, "Without bothering to mince words, let's just say that Kuo's a total jerk."

It's odd how all the Bush insiders who get fed up, break away and write about their first-hand experiences are subjected to vitriolic ad hominem attacks.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>.It's odd how all the Bush insiders who get fed up, break away and write about their first-hand experiences are subjected to vitriolic ad hominem attacks.<<<

Who are these "Bush Insiders?" Could we even number Kuo among the "Insiders"? Or was he rather just a marginal hanger-on who is just a little too impressed with his time inside the White House? A jerk he was, and a jerk he remains.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>I think Kuo is only important insofar as he embodies a wider trend of opinion within the Evangelical camp.<<<

The trend that says, "If I don't get my way, I'm taking my ball and going home"? One is reminded of Marc Knoll's remark that "The problem with the Evangelical mind is that there is not much of an Evangelical mind".

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>God's Law requires fair contracts, and the civil governance has the duty to provide recourse for justice. That is quite different of course, than Keynsian economic manipulations.<<<

But of course. So, how much of that needs to happen at the Federal level? And even at the state and local level, just how much of a government do you need? Not much.

>>>ending the death tax helps family farms and family owned-and-operated shops far more than it helps plutocrats.<<<

Indeed, if you are rich enough, you can certainly afford the lawyers and attorneyes needed to set up the trust funds and other mechanisms to circumvent the Death Tax. Of course, that is not the most productive use to which the money might be put, so even indirectly the Death Tax is a drain on the economy.

>>>VAT tax is a bad thing, and not Constitutionally permitted<<<

Anyone who has lived in a place where VAT is applied knows just how bad it is. The Constitition provided for a government funded by excise taxes, mostly on imports. We did very well on that, and given the size of the economy, we would do just fine if we depended on that again.

>>>The private colleges are many times more expensive than the Land-grant colleges. Why is that?<<<

Because nobody pays full price, and because the government is quite willing to make money available at below-market rates (through Pell Grants and student loans). Since users are insulated from the market by such mechanism, there is no price discipline in higher education. As to land-grant and state colleges, these are directly subsidized by tax payments, hence tuition does not represent true cost, and political pressures keep a lid on tuition increases.

>>>The whole question of megachurches and "seeker-sensitivity" is 'a whole 'nother issue.'<<<

A more basic problem is the whole "Let Jesus into your life" attitude, in stark contrast to the Biblical and Patristic injunction to "Live in Christ"--i.e., to let your life into Christ's.

>>>Early marriage is turning out to be the healthiest and wisest thing, though my generation has suffered greatly at the hands of those who taught otherwise.<<<

Indeed, the problem isn't teenage pregnancy, but pregnancy out of wedlock, regardless of how old the unwed mother might be.

>>>From your comments, is it then the case that the Orthodox Church rejects the concepts in Humanae Vitae?<<<

Oh, no! Not again!

[David Gray]

>One is reminded of Marc Knoll's remark that "The problem with the Evangelical mind is that there is not much of an Evangelical mind".

Given that his name is Mark Noll that is perhaps an unfortunate quote to bring up. Also might be more useful coming from an Evangelical...

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Given that his name is Mark Noll that is perhaps an unfortunate quote to bring up. Also might be more useful coming from an Evangelical...<<<

Is this the old "Takes one to know one argument"? Because Noll is not alone in noting the anti-intellectualism that infects many elements of the Evangelical movement, and, to a large extent, its absence from the great debates of our time. Where are the great Evangelical philosophers, poets, novelists, jurists? Just wondering.

[Francesca Matthews]

Labrialumn writes, "Why, pray tell, if rationed health care and State control over education and culture (for example, the persecution of home schoolers in Germany under an upheld Nazi-era law), is producing a rapidly declining population, if in fact abortion rates are so low as you claim? Something doesn't add up."

There is a cultural paradox here. Why do primarily secular countries, such as Holland and Germany, exemplify more prolife behaviors than the relatively religious USA in areas such as lower abortion rates, abolition of the death penalty, and universal health care? There are some interesting comparisons of abortion and pregnancy rates among young people at http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/PUBLICATIONS/factsheet/fsest.htm , none of them favorable to the US. For example, the teen abortion rate in the US is nearly eight times higher than that in Germany and nearly seven times that in the Netherlands. Providing guaranteed health care for the military and pensioning them off after 20 years has not induced secularism.

I don't know what the answers are here, but each side surely has something to learn from the other.

The lower reproduction rate in Germany has much more complex roots than hostility to homeschooling. I am sure homeschooling, haven proven so very successful over here, will eventually take root in Europe. There have recently been some high profile cases of homeschooled prodigies going to Oxford as preteens, which can only help the movement.

[Francesca Matthews]

Stuart Koehl writes, "Who are these "Bush Insiders?" Could we even number Kuo among the "Insiders"? Or was he rather just a marginal hanger-on who is just a little too impressed with his time inside the White House? A jerk he was, and a jerk he remains.

I found him sincere and I can certainly identify with his disenchantment with political machinations and manipulations. Ad hominems do nothing to detract from his arguments. As shown by the recent elections, the experiences and awarenesses of many cultural conservatives have them looking for answers in new places.

[James A. Altena]

Dear Prof. Esolen,

"I'd like to distinguish between government and government. Could we agree that if the federal government confined itself to those functions that are specified for it in the Constitution, the following things would be true? (I am not saying necessarily that all of them are good things.)

1. The government would probably be able to stay afloat on a modest VAT tax, or on a combination of the VAT and tariffs; if it were necessary to preserve the dastardly federal income tax, the rates could be reduced to zero for most people.

2. The Social Security vampire would finally wake up one day with a stake in its heart."

Well, here comes the skunk into the garden party, since I work for the IRS as a lower-level grunt. (It was not planned, but an accident of life within God's providence.)

First, an official disclaimer for the record. Anything I write here represents strictly my private views and is not a statement on behalf of the IRS.

Second, I am not here to defend the current tax system (many of us in the IRS would love something vastly simpler ourselves, such as a modified flat tax), or to criticize various alternatives (VAT, national sales tax, etc.) regarding which I do not regard myself competent to evaluate. I simply wish to make a couple of points, on this rare occasion where I disagree with Prof. Esolen.

a) The federal income tax is constitutional, having been duly authorized by constitutional amendment. (Subscribers to conspiracy theories as to how the 18th Amendment was never actually ratified, etc., please board an alien space ship in Roswell, NM and fly back to your home planet.) There seems to be a curious implicit notion in some quarters that amendments somehow are not part of the constitution, or as fully part of it as the original text from 1787, or that amendments somehow inherently betray the original intent of the Constitution (in which case one wonders why the Constitution even provides for itself to be amended).

b) In reflecting upon the current US tax system, I was puzzled as to why we would come up with something so convoluted as to require filling out an extensive and complex annual form (which many folks must now pay to have prepared professionally) facilitated with various means of tax withholding, in comparison to the seemingly much simpler European systems of the VAT, sales taxes, etc. [By the way, the dreaded Form 1040 is currently being re-vamped to make it much shorter and simpler by removing many of its lesser-used entries to a new separate schedule; the new version will debut in 1 - 2 years.]

It finally struck me that the answer is that -- even if it isn't working, or working well -- the intent was in part to maintain a greater general awareness by citizens of the correlation of taxation to governmental power and thereby implicitly encourage the citizenry to limit taxation. Taxes such as the VAT, sales tax, etc. give the illusion of being paid to a business, not directly to the government, as part of the cost of an article of merchandise. An income tax has no such camouflage. Voters can see their tax rates, and that the money is going directly to the maw of the federal government. The reason this isn't working as intended is because taxpayers (as both individuals and businesses) have decided not to hold the government responsible for spending. Instead, they try to vote themselves a succession of free lunches by having their congressmen carve out innumerable exemptions, deductions, rebates, and subsidies in the tax code from higher rates ostensibly set to pay for more government-provided social services.

E.g. one of the biggest simplifications in the tax code, which would also allow a major reduction in income tax rates, would be to eliminate the deduction for home mortgage interest. The chances of that occurring are considerably less than those of a certain proverbial snowball in a certain theological locale. As P. J. O'Rourke noted years ago in his book "Parliament of Whores", at the end of the day the real whores are John Q. Public.

I also disagree strongly that Social Security is a "vampire." That is not to defend the current mess in how it is structured and run, or to oppose modifications or proposed alternatives such as mandatory IRAs. But at about as painless a cost as any federal program can ever have, it has massively reduced old-age poverty from the levels existing before its inception, and for that we should all be grateful to God.

The idea that eliminating Social Security will lead to children taking care of parents, etc. is simply wishful thinking and a vain romanticization of the past. It's likewise wishful thinking to presume that every person will: a) be solely responsible for himself financially, b) always make correspondingly prudent choices; and c) thus be adequately sheltered from all misfortunes or else provided for by family and private charity. And I am concerned about the sinful human inclination of selfishness and pride in some people (and I've personally witnessed this) that, under the guise of providential retributive justice, positively desires and enjoys to see the imprudent or unfortunate suffer want and even starve.

Partly (even largely) on the prudential grounds that I'm not interested in subsidizing anyone else more than I have to (as distinct from voluntary charity), a program such as Social Security that (with amazingly relatively little intrusiveness, given its scope) so successfully curbs the practice and effects of imprudence and alleviates wins my favor. (There are very few other government programs of which I would say the same. E.g. "welfare reform" has made a start, but has much further to go.) It's rather like seat-belt and motorcycle helmet laws (which I also favor), which at a minimal cost (either financial or social) significantly reduce medical and insurance costs by reducing major injuries, and also enhance driving safety by keeping people in proper position and thus contributing to greater control by the driver over the vehicle (seat belts) or from losing control by getting hit in the head by flying gravel and dust (motorcycle helmets).

I'm all for personal responsibility, both fiscal and moral. But I'm also all for dealing with the real world of fallen human beings who aren't very responsible (else they wouldn't sin and then try to minimize it). The issue is not whether, but when and how and to what degree, to consider minimal prudent restraints on general human folly where the benefits demonstrably outweigh the costs. I believe Social Security in some form (not necessarily the current one) to be one example of this.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Why do primarily secular countries, such as Holland and Germany, exemplify more prolife behaviors than the relatively religious USA in areas such as lower abortion rates, abolition of the death penalty, and universal health care?<<<

It depends on how you trim your sails. Yours are trimmed to make "pro-life" comply with a particular political platform.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>> I am sure homeschooling, haven proven so very successful over here, will eventually take root in Europe. <<<

Highly dubious proposition, given state hostility to the movement. In most places, home schooling is in fact illegal, and parents have been prosecuted for keeping their children out of school. Considering that the EU is attempting to extend its dominion over education, to establish a single European standard, and that the EU is dominated by France and Germany, the two states most hostile to home schooling, I don't see any real change in that direction.

[Judy Warner]

To really compare abortion and teenage pregnancy rates in Europe and the United States, you'd have to compare by social class and ethnic group. I suspect that the white middle-class rates are similar to Europe's. The rate among blacks is much higher than among whites and that pulls the overall rates up. The United States is a much more diverse country than any in Europe, and many statistics look bad for us when they are aggregated. For instance, crime rates in most of our northern states are lower than anywhere in Europe.

At any rate, the abortion rate and the teen pregnancy rate in this country have been dropping for a while, without the introduction of any of the measures Francesca mentions.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>I found him sincere<<<

The world is full of sincere jerks.

>>>I can certainly identify with his disenchantment with political machinations and manipulations. <<<

So, what you are saying is that, despite ALL of the support the Bush administration has given to faith based initiatives, in the face of concerted opposition from the other party and certain elements of his own, it just isn't ENOUGH for you. Go into politics with that attitude, and surely you WILL be disenchanted.

Don't watch sausage or legislation being made. It isn't pretty. But remember that three-quarters of life is just showing up. The game is rigged, but if you don't play, you can't win.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>The federal income tax is constitutional, having been duly authorized by constitutional amendment.<<<

Of course, "constitutional" is not synonymous with prudential, and many amendments to the Constititution have proven to be, shall we say, "unfortunate"? There's Prohibition (though people came to their senses quicker than expected), the direct election of Senators, and of course, the catastrophic Fourteenth Amendment, so poorly written that it has allowed the reach of the Federal government to extend far beyond the boundaries considered by the Founders. I will leave out Female Sufferage, because I live in a house full of women.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Taxes such as the VAT, sales tax, etc. give the illusion of being paid to a business, not directly to the government, as part of the cost of an article of merchandise. An income tax has no such camouflage. Voters can see their tax rates, and that the money is going directly to the maw of the federal government.<<<

However, the practice of withholdng camouflages the total tax burden, or to use an analogy, it allows the frog (us) to be boiled by inches, whereas if we were tossed into a kettle of boiling water (by being presented with a tax bill on 1 January every year), the frog (us) would hop out of the pot (i.e., there would be a rebellion). One of FDR's more inspired moments was making withholding mandatory--it freed politicians from the problem of making the people pay up exhorbitant amounts in one lump sum.

[GL]

The working class IS the investor class.

That's close to true if you define the investor class as consisting of anyone who holds direct or indirect interest in a share of stock in a corporation. But that would be silly. While it's true that the percentage of Americans who own some stock or mutual fund shares has exploded in the past generation, the vast majority of stock ownership is still concentrated in the top wealth levels.

When people speak of "investor class" they don't have in mind a factory worker who makes $40,000 a year and has $40,000 in his 401(k). They're thinking of the man with $40,000,000 in stock who has no need to work at all (though he might). You can't say the two have very similar interests in economic policy.

Amen.

According to census data from 2000, the median net worth (all assets less all liabilities) of Americans was just over $46,000. People with net worths of less than $47,000 (including home equity) are not the investor class. But even that is too broad a sample. For households headed by those 34 and below, the median net worth was less than $5,900 and for those between 35 and 44, it was less than $34,000. Those are the households having and rearing children. They need help and trickle down economics hasn't done it. By every measure, income and wealth distribution is wider now than anytime since the great depression. Those folks are expecting some help and if we want them to vote for pro-life candidates and to form larger families, we are going to have to provide them with some help. They are the folks who are really beginning to question why they should vote for the pro-life party when they aren't able to get ahead for their own children and feel that they must limit their family size just to get by.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>According to census data from 2000, the median net worth (all assets less all liabilities) of Americans was just over $46,000. People with net worths of less than $47,000 (including home equity) are not the investor class. <<<

That's "per capita" net worth. Work it out for a family of four. Also note that 2000 data predates the run-up in property values, which means that most people who owned a house back then and held onto it, have seen their net worth increase on the order of 100% (based on 10% per annum increase in value, compounded annually). And a home is the largest and most valuable investment that an American family has. And of course, when you sell it, if you don't roll it over into another home, your profit is considered a "capital gain", and taxed accordingly.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Can you help me sort this out, Stuart?<<<

Both sides of the argument are correct. The vets were studious and hard-working. But most of them did not really need or use the college education they got with the GI Bill. Rather, it became a form of vocational education, and the purpose of the university changed to cater to that need.

[Tony Esolen]

Ah, Stuart, when were you ever one to back down from a tussle?!!!

James,

I don't think I wrote that the federal income tax was unconstitutional; if I did, mea culpa. I've seen the VAT tax at work in Nanada, and it has the significant psychological demerit of being decoupled from any observed chicanery going on in Ottawa. It does, however, have the significant merit of being painfully hard to increase. People there as here are strangely ignorant of simple rules of arithmetic and economics that might sink them or float them, as they choose. They feel, immediately, a one or two percent increase at the gas pump, and will squawk about it, but do not understand compounding, or opportunity costs, or the law of subsidizing that Stuart mentioned above, or the rationing that must result when prices are kept artificially low.

James, I do agree that, as federal programs go, Social Security has been almost miraculously non-intrusive. I also concede that, were it to be eliminated, some elderly people would be indigent that now live reasonably well, on a combination of their own pensions and Social Security. On the other hand:

The existence of Social Security, while providing a measure of independence for the elderly, has also released their children from any perceived obligation to care for them.

It has also made conceivable one new thing in the world: men and women utterly detached from any family, growing old alone. The old "welfare state" or Social Security WAS the family, and initially, as I understand, the Social Security program was simply meant as a subsidy for the most unfortunate, and as a small pension for the aged generally.

If you eliminate SS, you return about 14% of my salary to my pocket. That really is a lot of money, supposing that it remains untaxed. If I invest it in conservative stocks or treasury bills, I should make an average of 6-8 % per year, meaning that my investment will double every decade.

SS is probably the single biggest expense, bigger even than insurance, preventing a small employer from taking on an additional worker.

You're certainly right that there are fewer elderly people among us who are destitute than there were in the 1920's, not to mention during the decade of the Depression. But I wonder just how much of that is attributable to Social Security rather than to the general growth of our economy and the invention of life-saving drugs. (On the side, I wonder if anybody with actuarial tables can tell me about how many years of our increased longevity are due to antibiotics alone; antibiotics that, relatively speaking, cost but a few cents.)

I'm not one of those folks who breathes fire at the mention of FDR's name. I do think that SS, if it were to be eliminated, would have to be phased out very gradually. But James, will you admit that it has been a part -- along with the education industry at all levels -- of recasting the family as having to do with comfy feelings, and not the deep claims of kinship?

[LAbriAlumn]

Mr. Koehl, I agree with nearly all of your responses to my post.

Mr. Gray is correct: Mark Noll is not an Evangelical. It is the very evangelical orthodoxy of certain thinkers that he criticizes as evidence of "lacking a mind" - belief in the inerrancy and authority of Scripture, including the first 11 chapters of Genesis. Anyone lacking that belief is by definition, not an evangelical.

Philosophers:
Jonathan Edwards
Alvin Plantinga
William Lane Craig
Francis Schaeffer
(others whose names escape me at the moment)

Poets:
Poetry is in sad decline in the last few decades. I will have to reach back, and be very incomplete.
T. S. Eliot
George Herbert

Novelists:
Lars Walker
Paul Willis
Stephen Lawhead (not up to Great standard, admittedly, but he tries)
John Bunyan
John Milton
George MacDonald
etc.

Jurists:
Since there is a self-governing exclusive principal at work in the modern judicial branch, that isn't quite fair.
Simon Greenfield
John Whitehead
Various unknowns in various Christian legal defense agencies
Most of the Founding Fathers
Rev. Samuel Rutherford
John Knox
etc.

Francesca Matthews -(whom I know realize is not the same person as Fredrica Matthews-Green - thanks to the rather fuzzily-working neural net between my ears),
My point was that the population decline rates in Europe do not correspond to any high view of human life or of marriage, so I find the claim of a lower abortion rate to be suspicious. Europe is not less sexually immoral than America. Yet the population of Europeans is declining dramatically (this continues through the Urals in Russia) So something is missing, or just plain wrong in the "equation" Possibly abortion has been redefined?

Kuo's argument was that right before a major national election which would decide the abortion issue for the next generation, that evangelicals simply not go to the polls, which could only help the Party of the Culture of Death.

That seems to be a very transparent attempt -by- the Culture of Death to win the election by means of an agent provoceteur.

I think you mean the 16th Amendment and not the 18th, and amendments can be repealed by the due Constitutional process, which is all that I was suggesting: namely that we repeal both the 16th and 17th amendments, thereby restoring the Republic.

[Francesca Matthews]

Judy Warner writes, "To really compare abortion and teenage pregnancy rates in Europe and the United States, you'd have to compare by social class and ethnic group. I suspect that the white middle-class rates are similar to Europe's. The rate among blacks is much higher than among whites and that pulls the overall rates up."

While it is true that abortion rates are higher among blacks and poor women, the rate for white women in the US is still higher than the aggregate figure for all women in the countries I have mentioned.

[Francesca Matthews]

Stuart Koehl writes, "Highly dubious proposition, given state hostility to the movement. In most places, home schooling is in fact illegal, and parents have been prosecuted for keeping their children out of school. "

Actually homeschooling is legal in most European countries, but it's highly regulated and is still uncommon. It was recently declared illegal in Germany, spurring a backlash of support for the movement (nothing like taking something away to make it more desirable.) Bear in mind that homeschooling was illegal in most states here in the US as recently as 1981 and some states have more regulation than others. I have to submit standardized scores for my school age children every two years and these scores have to "indicate progress." If I fail to do this, I could face prosecution. It took years of advocacy, lobbying and legal battles before homeschooling became tolerated and now it's a pretty mainstream option. Homeschooling is so good for many children that I think it will continue to grow in all parts of the world. Actually, with the development of "virtual schools" (we have three public virtual schools here in Colorado that allow children to work primarily from home,) I think we may eventually see some sort of symbiotic merger between public schools and homeschoolers.

[Bobby Winters]

(((>>>Can you help me sort this out, Stuart?<<<

Both sides of the argument are correct. The vets were studious and hard-working. But most of them did not really need or use the college education they got with the GI Bill. Rather, it became a form of vocational education, and the purpose of the university changed to cater to that need. )))

And isn't having a job a wonderful thing? Isn't having received an education wonderful too?

I can name any number of folks that came through in khaki socks for whom their education has added to the quality of their lives. I meet more of them every week who, through ROTC, are becoming the first in their families to be educated. They are working for it, and by golly, they appreciate it.
Hardly any of them are going to translate Dante or analyze military data, but they will have choices that they didn't have before.

[Francesca Matthews]

Stuart Koehl writes, "It depends on how you trim your sails. Yours are trimmed to make "pro-life" comply with a particular political platform."

Not at all. Respect for life transcends all politics. The sail trimming that concerns me most is that some people close their minds to even considering alternatives, however successful, that promote life, and do so because of their own knee-jerk prejudices.

[Bobby Winters]

>>>Homeschooling is so good for many children that I think it will continue to grow in all parts of the world. Actually, with the development of "virtual schools" (we have three public virtual schools here in Colorado that allow children to work primarily from home,) I think we may eventually see some sort of symbiotic merger between public schools and homeschoolers.<<<

There is quite a range of virtue among home schoolers. In my community, there are folks who home school because they are too lazy to get up early enough to get the kids off to school; either that or they don't want the teachers to smell the meth-lab on them. I know others who are putting their children through the Trivium, and I get a monthly newsletter that the kids put out. One half is being prepared to be a burden on society, and the other half part of the solution. I would like to minimize the first class and maximize the second.

[James A. Altena]

Dear Prof. Esolen,

I agree with virtually all of your response. And I wasn't trying to imply that your personally said the income tax was unconstitutional; I was trying to make a more general point, and to fend off in advance certain types who have seized on nearly identical language and run off in that direction. Apologies for the misunderstanding there.

I do think SS may have contributed inadvertantly in some degree to the loosening of family bonds in the manner you suggest, though probably significantly less than you do. But I also don't think those bonds were as tight as often supposed (looking back upon three generations of my own paternal family history -- what little I know of it -- as a sorry example to the contrary). And simply abolishing SS (or even gradually phasing it out) is not going to bring that supposed prior situation back, because the underlying social and moral ethos has been eroded. Given the modern push for euthanasia, I think it far more likely to lead to a "Soylent Green" scenario for the elderly instead.

It's the old saw: "One you open a can of worms, the only way to recan them is to get a bigger can." You can't go back to the old can; it just doesn't work.

[Bill R]

With all due respect, Labrialumn, your list contains more than a few persons who are not evangelicals: Eliot, Herbert, Macdonald were orthodox Christians, but not evangelicals. Edwards, Bunyan, and Milton were Puritans. Let's face it: what we call "evangelical" is only about two or three generations old and we haven't been around long enough to produce a lot of big names.

Mark Noll calls himself an evangelical and I think we should respect that, whether or not we agree with all of his positions. From what I've read of Noll, it is not one's stand on Scriptural inerrancy that he uses to define whether or not one has a "mind." He appears to be lamenting the general lack of intellectual engagement by evangelicals with the broader Christian and the non-Christian world.

[David Gray]

>Mark Noll calls himself an evangelical and I think we should respect that, whether or not we agree with all of his positions.

I wasn't trying to argue otherwise. The comment was directed towards the other party.

dave

[Judy Warner]

I can name any number of folks that came through in khaki socks for whom their education has added to the quality of their lives. They are working for it, and by golly, they appreciate it. Hardly any of them are going to translate Dante or analyze military data, but they will have choices that they didn't have before.

I'm not sure that's true. The standards of high schools were much higher in past generations. You've probably seen the eighth grade test from the 1800s that has circulated around, with questions very few college graduates could answer today. The opening of colleges to mass attendance has made it possible for the high schools to lower their standards so drastically. These guys would have gotten a fine education by finishing high school if standards remained as they were.

As a result of this lowering of standards, many if not most young people spend their last six years in school learning very little. Almost every teenager I have ever met detests school and thinks it's a big waste of time. This is one reason home schoolers do so well by comparison; they simply spend some time learning each day, and thus pull ahead of most of their age group.

I would like to see compulsory schooling end at about age 14. Many teens, especially boys, whose lives are being wasted in school, could find something productive to do, whether that's vocational education, useful work, or following an interest in another way. Many would probably return to some school or another after they discovered what they were interested in, something that's difficult to do in today's schools. Our admirable community colleges could replace many high schools. They are already beginning to do so, as home schoolers use them for coursework they cannot get at home, and many high schools have arrangements with the community colleges for their students to take courses there. Since community colleges are at about the same level that high schools used to be, this makes sense.

[Francesca Matthews]

Bobby Winters writes, "There is quite a range of virtue among home schoolers. In my community, there are folks who home school because they are too lazy to get up early enough to get the kids off to school; either that or they don't want the teachers to smell the meth-lab on them. I know others who are putting their children through the Trivium, and I get a monthly newsletter that the kids put out. One half is being prepared to be a burden on society, and the other half part of the solution. I would like to minimize the first class and maximize the second."

I completely agree, which is why I don't object to regulation.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Let's face it: what we call "evangelical" is only about two or three generations old and we haven't been around long enough to produce a lot of big names.<<<

Given the range of Evangelical beliefs, can one actually arrive at a consistent working definition of "Evangelical Christian" beyond mere self-identification?

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Not at all. Respect for life transcends all politics. The sail trimming that concerns me most is that some people close their minds to even considering alternatives, however successful, that promote life, and do so because of their own knee-jerk prejudices.<<<

Some people, however (and I am not pointing fingers or naming names) use a defintiion of "pro-life" which is not consistent with the Christian Tradition. The Christian Tradition, as it was understood at least since the 4th century, was not by any means pacificistic, nor did it condemn the death penalty, nor did it prescribe socialized medicine (though it encouraged Christian physicians to be "unmercenary"--see Saints Cosmas and Damian), nor did it prescribe government transfer payments to the poor (though it encouraged individual Christians to be charitable to the needy--and most were). On the other hand, condemnation of abortion reaches back to the Apostolic Didache of the first century, and Paul in Romans 13 certainly intends the state to wield the sword of justice--which, all modern attempts to the contrary, was not a metaphor: justice wielded a sword, the ancients having no conception of imprisonment as punishment (it was merely a place where people were held pending trial and disposition of their cases) but relying instead on fines, corporal punishment, and the death penalty.

By trying to extend the umbrella of "life issues" so broadly, some Christians are clearly trying to sanctify a political agenda.

[Clark Coleman]

GL: Your comments about capital gains taxes and estate taxes are straight from the class warfare playbook. Consider a couple of facts:

1) Capital gains tax receipts have increased within two years of each capital gains tax cut, to the point where the federal government was raising more money with the lower rates than it would have been projected to raise with the higher rates. Therefore, no revenue was lost that must be recouped from "taxes on labor."

2) Estate taxes account for a trivial portion of federal government revenues. The economic inefficiency of devoting so much educated talent (e.g. tax lawyers and accountants) to working around the estate tax laws greatly exceeds the possible revenue benefit. Furthermore, even some liberal-left economists have come out against the estate tax because it discourages savings and encourages "spending it now," which is not needed in an economy where the balance of saving vs. spending is already poor.

Your comments are just the tip of the larger iceberg in this whole discussion: Much of the "tension" between the market and the family is a false tension that comes from economic and political ignorance.

[Clark Coleman]

Levin's article started to get a little better in the second half, but the first half was one of those nightmares in which almost each sentence is false and requires a page-length rebuttal, which is not possible. I did not finish reading the second half, because when someone fails miserably at the diagnosis, then I do not trust his proposed remedy.

Time permits only one example. He makes an off-hand remark that welfare reform has made the government no longer a major enemy of the family. The conservative objection to the welfare state has been primarily stated in terms of the effects on family formation and illegitimacy. Uncle Sam is the sugar daddy, therefore poor women do not need to marry in order to be able to afford to have children. Welfare reform has forced many such women to work, yet the illegitimacy rate for black America has barely been dented. To declare victory for welfare reform and turn our attention elsewhere before we figure out this problem and solve it would be a disaster for pro-family conservatives.

Furthermore, with enough of a welfare state, the phenomenon crosses all economic and ethnic lines. Witness the greater than 50% illegitimacy rate in Sweden, for example.

This remark by Levin is typical of the neoconservative agenda at the Weekly Standard. The neocons have given up on real conservatism and have sold out to liberalism and modernism. They constantly proclaim that small-government conservatism is dead and we need to move on. (Hence the haste to claim that big government welfare programs are not such a problem any more.) It is sad that any conservatives would trust their pronouncements. They are liberal wolves in conservative sheep clothing.

[GL]

Stuart said,

That's "per capita" net worth. Work it out for a family of four. Also note that 2000 data predates the run-up in property values, which means that most people who owned a house back then and held onto it, have seen their net worth increase on the order of 100% (based on 10% per annum increase in value, compounded annually). And a home is the largest and most valuable investment that an American family has. And of course, when you sell it, if you don't roll it over into another home, your profit is considered a "capital gain", and taxed accordingly.

Sorry, Stuart, but you are wrong. The data was household wealth. Do you seriously think that the median family of four in 2000 had a net worth of nearly $200,000? If so, you are really out of touch with the real world. You need to get out and see how the other half lives.

As to the run up in housing prices, that is true in some areas, but not in many others. If your house was in Las Vegas and you sold at the top and moved to say Memphis, where I live, you could really move up or get a similar house and invest the rest in securities or elsewhere. If you did what many families did and borrowed against your equity to maintain a life style you couldn't afford or bought at the top of the market, times are getting ready to be very bad for you, if they are not already. My brother-in-law handles foreclosures in five states. He always did well. He is now raking in money like never before. (He also works with banks to find ways to help marginal cases find ways to keep their homes.) And if you did not already own a home before the prices went up, in many markets it is now very hard for a young family to buy in.

Again, I am not opposed to treating capital formation and investment favorably -- if you read my first two post in full, you would see that. I just believe that young families with children need to be favored in the tax code and in other ways just as investment has been. We are not a pure laissez-faire capitalist system.

Our system is anything but hands off. Anyone who thinks otherwise just doesn't understand what goes on in Washington. I frankly think that that is a good thing. Government should create policies that favor activities that are good and disfavor activities that are bad. It is time it began to implement more such policies favoring stable marriages between one man and one woman and the procreation and rearing of large families. Those are good activities.

Do you not favor this Stuart? If so, what is your gripe with me as I stated in my first two post that I favored tax and other policies that favor captial formation. Surely you are sophisticated enough to understand that we don't live in a laissez-faire capitalist system. Surely you understand that current policies favor the very rich more than working stiffs. If you don't favor policies that favor stable marriages between one man and one woman and the procreation and rearing of large families, why not?

[Bobby Winters]

>>>
I'm not sure that's true. The standards of high schools were much higher in past generations. You've probably seen the eighth grade test from the 1800s that has circulated around, with questions very few college graduates could answer today. <<<

I've seen the famous 8th grade test. I've not seen the norms on it, nor have I seen any data run on it on the population to which it was given. I've not seen what the same cohort of students would score on one of our tests today either.

>>>The opening of colleges to mass attendance has made it possible for the high schools to lower their standards so drastically. These guys would have gotten a fine education by finishing high school if standards remained as they were.
<<<

This is an assertation. I assume you've proof of it.

[GL]

Clark,

You simply did not read my post. I said I favored favorable treatment of investment.

Here is what I said,

Do you favor a truly "laissez-faire capitalist system" where government does not favor or disfavor capital over labor, say by providing significantly lower tax rates for the former than it does the latter or which does not have intellectual property laws which create government mandated monopolies? I am not opposed to the government encouraging economic growth by such mechanisms, but that is not a "laissez-faire capitalist system" and market conservatives need to quit pretending themselves and others that it is. If they did, then perhaps family conservatives could get some of the favorable treatment they need as well.

So I said I favored favorable treatment of investments and never mentioned estate taxes at all. Again, however, if someone says working class families need some help, the people who have hijacked the term conservative howl. Levin is right and if the Republican party doesn't figure that out soon, it will be in the minority for years to come. That is too bad as the Democrats will never be pro-life or pro-family.

[Clark Coleman]

There is an interesting exchange on the very topic of religious conservatives at tension with small government conservatives. Dick Armey has an opinion piece here and James Dobson has a response here. Armey posts a rebuttal to Dobson's response here.

[GL]

The top five percent of income earners paid twenty five percent; the top ten percent paid nearly half. That leaves the middle class--the 51st to 90th pecentiles--paying about 20%.

Well, according to the Census Bureau, in 2002, this was the income distribution:

The top 5% in income received nearly 22% of all income in America that year. According to Stuart's data, they paid 25% of all income taxes. Just about 3% more than their share of income.

The top 20% received almost 50% of all income in America. Stuart's data is that the top 10% paid about 50% of taxes. I have not looked it up, but I'll take his word on it. As the top half of the top 20% would have earned a greater share of total income than the bottom half of the top 20%, we can again see that they paid somewhat more than their share of total income, but not significantly more.

Naturally, those in the bottom quintile (those with incomes at or below $17,916 per annum) paid little in income taxes because they earned little income (specifically 3.5% of the total income).

So these high income earners paid a slightly higher share of income taxes than their share of income, but not a significantly larger amount. This is example of where one needs more information than the percentage of taxes paid by various percentiles to evaluate the information given.

The top income earners pay most of the income tax because they earn most of the income. Our income tax system is somewhat progressive, but not grossly so. And, of course, this does not include the Social Security taxes, which are regressive. Nor does it include state and local taxes, which in many cases are notoriously regressive. Social Security taxes and state and local taxes thus mitigate the slight progressivity of the federal income tax.

[GL]

By the way, it was Ronald Reagan who first sought to mitigate against the regressivity of the Social Security tax by pushing for the enactment of the earned income tax credit. I guess he was a bleeding heart liberal.

[GL]

Actually, the ETC was enacted first under another Republican, Gerald Ford. It was Reagan who really expanded it to be meaningful. He declared it to be "the best anti-poverty, the best pro-family, the best job creation measure to come out of Congress."

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>By the way, it was Ronald Reagan who first sought to mitigate against the regressivity of the Social Security tax by pushing for the enactment of the earned income tax credit. I guess he was a bleeding heart liberal.<<<

Given that he could not do the right thing and ABOLISH the Social Security System, the biggest con job since Emelio Ponzi, the EITC was the least he could do.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Actually, the ETC was enacted first under another Republican, Gerald Ford. It was Reagan who really expanded it to be meaningful. He declared it to be "the best anti-poverty, the best pro-family, the best job creation measure to come out of Congress."<<<

He was wrong. The best anti-poverty, pro-family, job creation policy is one that encourages people to get married and stay married. A stable family is the best predictor of financial well-being.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>The top income earners pay most of the income tax because they earn most of the income. Our income tax system is somewhat progressive, but not grossly so. <<<

On the other hand, the bottom 50% pay none of the taxes and get all the benefits, which allows politicians to pander to them by offering "free" goodies. This is a variation on the "Tragedy of the Commons"--when something belongs to everyone, it belongs to no one, hence there is no incentive to be a good steward of resources. When people receive all the benefits of something but bear none of the (visible) costs, they likewise take irresponsible positions.

[Seth R.]

James, I have to second your statements about how we romanticize the past and dream up some imaginary golden age in America's past where all the women were strong, all the men were good looking, etc. etc.

I once heard it said that "Nostalgia is taking an old worn memory down from the attic of our minds, dusting it off a bit, and selling it for more than it's worth."

[Bobby Winters]

The sticky wicket here is generational poverty. Jesus said the poor would always be with us. Only gradually do some of us see the truth in that, but it doesn't stop us from wanting to help.

Below is a piece I wrote some years back on generational poverty from an up close and personal point of view.
++++

Building Fences

"What 'cha doing, Mister?" the dirty-faced little waif asked me. She, at the tender age of six, was the eldest of three sisters who lived in the house next door. They were all ill-kempt and each had a different last name. They were a blended family, and from talking with them, I had discovered that each had siblings elsewhere.

"I am building a fence," I said feeling guilty.

"Why?" a very simple question that was hard for me to answer.

Her family had moved in late the previous fall. They were the latest in a series of renters who had resided in the house next door. When we moved into the neighborhood, the house had been owned by an old man who had loved flowers but lived in a nursing home. His dutiful son-in-law had always come by to take care of the place to keep it nice looking. So we had the perfect neighbor, One whose lawn was always groomed but who never made any sort of demands on us.
Then the old man had died, and the house had sold and was rented out. The current tenants were not the ideal neighbors. They had allowed garbage to accumulate all winter in there back yard. They had just put it in garbage bags and let it pile up.

Then there was the dog. He pulled free from his leash and got into the garbage which the wind blew into our yard.

All of this I did my best to ignore. I grew up in the country, and I was taught that whatever someone did on his own property was his own business.

These were country folk too, and they had never learned how to live in town. Perhaps, my wife and I could have taught them, but that would have been difficult because they didn't realiz that they needed to learn anything.

But then something happened that scared me. Their young children started coming into my back yard playing on my children's swing set while we were not around. It then occurred to me that even though these folks had not learned how to hire a garbage service or how to keep a dog properly tied, that they probably did know how to sue and probably would do so quicker than you could say "attractive nuisance."

So when then little girl asked me why I was building the fence, the true answer was, "To keep you and your sisters the out of my back yard."

I said instead, "I wanted to build a fence."

"Why?" she asked. This is a game that can go on forever.
I was being hit in a tender spot because of stories that my father had told me about what his life had been like while growing up.

My father's family had been very nomadic. They had been share-croppers, and then the oilfields in Oklahoma started coming in, and Grampa gave up farming and started following the oilfield construction business. When an oilfield comes in, they need a lot of workers, but once it is producing they need fewer. Eventually most of the people are laid off and have to move on.
Dad's family was one that had to move on a lot. He always told about the snotty people who never treated them right. In my eyes, I was now being one of those snotty people. So much so that I was putting in a chain link fence around my house to keep the dirty little kids away.

"Because," I told the little girl.

"Can we help?" she drove a dagger into my heart.

I had set the corner posts on the previous day and was at that point digging holes for the posts in between.

"I'll let you know when you can," I said.

She and her little sisters soon lost interest and began to play in their driveway.

I got back to fence building. Soon the post holes were dug, and I was ready to set the posts in concrete. After all, it takes quite a fence to keep such creatures at bay.

I went to my truck and fetched an 80 pound bag of concrete and tossed it on a yard-cart in order to wheel it to a place where I could mix it up. There was a problem, however. The yard-cart was an ancient one which had been designed before lawyers were around showing us a better way to live. The wheels on it acted as a fulcrum, and the weight of the concrete falling from a height of three feet drove the handle of the yard-cart into my forehead.

I made not a sound other than, "Yah-umm,” and only that very quietly. After a minute, I noticed that my glasses were gone, and then I heard a tiny little voice, "Here are your glasses, Mister." My neighbor girl handed them to me.

I went back into the house while feeling my forehead. There was a knot there that was bigger than a robin's egg but not as big as a hen's.

The first phrase out of my mouth was, "Don't worry; it is not as bad as it looks."

"It's just your head, so I am not worried," my wife said.

I finished the fence, and the summer passed.

Our neighbors moved. They had stopped paying their rent and water bill, and so after a month without water it was probably a good idea.
We still have the fence.

[LAbriAlumn]

The claim that 'evangelical' is only two to three generations old would come as a great surprise to the Evangelical Movement of the Augsburg Confession of the Catholic Church, the first evangelicals.

The Pilgrims and Puritans would have been considered evangelicals.

John Wesley, William Wilburforce "the benevolent empire" were all considered evangelical.

The recapture of the term by Carl Henry, Harold O. J. Brown and Francis Schaeffer was rather more than two or three generations ago.

Evangelicalism -does- have a definition. Just as I could call myself a Catholic, but could still not receive the Body and Blood of our Lord, so also merely calling onesself an evangelical doesn't make you one.

The foundational beliefs consist of the inerrancy and authority of Scripture as defined in the Lausanne Covenant and the two documents of the Ecumenical Council of Chicago on inerrancy and hermeneutics. Belief in the content of the three ecumenical creeds, and the necessity of personal conversion, and the substitutionary, penal atonement of Christ are all key beliefs.

Due to the rise in popularity of evangelicalism, existentialists, neo-orthodox and others have tried to call themselves evangelical, perhaps to help book sales, but that doesn't make them evangelicals.

I believe that should answer several questions and objections.

Seth,
Thing is, here in fly-over country, life really is and even more so, was, what you consider to be impossible. It is a different culture than that of the urbans and the bicoastals.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Ecumenical Council of Chicago<<<

This one must have escaped the guys who compiled the Typicon. Which Emperor of the Romans convened it? Which Bishop of Rome ratified it?

[GL]

On the other hand, the bottom 50% pay none of the taxes and get all the benefits.

Well, my household's income is well within the top 50% and, frankly, I consider myself and my family to be a great beneficiary of the system which my taxes help fund.

Warren Buffett said, "If there is a class war in America, my side is winning." In his annual letter to shareholders in 2004, Buffet wrote, "We hope our [Berkshire Hathaway corporate income] taxes continue to rise in the future—it will mean we are prospering."

I guess it all depends on how you look at it.

[GL]

Given that he could not do the right thing and ABOLISH the Social Security System, the biggest con job since Emelio Ponzi, the EITC was the least he could do.

***

He was wrong. The best anti-poverty, pro-family, job creation policy is one that encourages people to get married and stay married. A stable family is the best predictor of financial well-being.

Well, what do you know? We do agree on some things. ;-)

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Well, my household's income is well within the top 50% and, frankly, I consider myself and my family to be a great beneficiary of the system which my taxes help fund.<<<

Name a few, and then consider how much better you could do if you could dispose of your own resources. And finally, consider how much more efficiently a private entity could do that which the government is doing for you.

[GL]

Bobby,

Thanks for the story. I'll have to buy one of your books sometime. I looked a while back and saw that they are available through Amazon.

[GL]

Name a few.

1. Military defense.
   
2. Court's to settle disputes and the laws which they apply to protect my interests.
   
3. The public schools in which I was educated, including elementary, secondary, undergraduate, graduate and professional.
   
4. Clean water to drink and bath in.
   
5. Santitation. (The primary reason why I can expect to live to be in my mid-80s instead of my mid-40s like those who lived 100 years ago.)
   
6. Advances in health care funded by federal research grants.
   
7. Paved roads.
   
8. Fire protection.
   
9. Police protection.
   
10. Highway patrol.
    
11. Ambulance service.
    
12. Electricity (I live in TVA country).
    
13. Lakes and public parks.
    
14. Airports.
    
15. Air traffic controllers.
    
16. Regulated securities markets in which to invest.
    
17. The Internet which was originally funded and developed with federal tax dollars.
    
18. I could go on, but you asked for just a few.

    Government can and has made many mistakes. It has also provided many benefits. I for one am grateful for the latter and, like you, rail against the former. The former, however, do not cause me to forget and deny the latter.
    

[GL]

Closing the list.

[Bobby Winters]

>>>Thanks for the story. I'll have to buy one of your books sometime. I looked a while back and saw that they are available through Amazon.<<<

Thanks, GL.

[Clark Coleman]

GL: Here are a couple of your comments that I was reacting to. I think you will agree that you have posted more than once on this thread. The fact that one post you quote does not set up the false tension I describe does not mean that others do not.

For example, long-term capital gains taxes are lower than taxes on earnings. This favored the interest of market conservatives, but not necessarily family conservatives.

As long-term capital gains tax rates being low INCREASED the revenues from those taxes, I am not sure what you mean by the phrase "not necessarily family conservatives."

Again, I am not opposed to this, but let's not pretend that market conservatives are not promoting policies that favor the investor class over the working class.

Again, using a lower long-term capital gains tax rate increases revenues by stimulating the kinds of investment that produces long-term capital gains (also producing jobs for real families through such investment). The phrase "favor the investor class over the working class" betrays not only the class warfare rhetoric I decried, but also the economic and political ignorance of the effects of these tax rates I criticized.

Estate taxes were mentioned only in passing by Mr. Koehl, not by your posts; my mistake there. Sorry. I did not go back and read more carefully before posting.

[Matthias]

Name a few, and then consider how much better you could do if you could dispose of your own resources. And finally, consider how much more efficiently a private entity could do that which the government is doing for you.

Mr. Koehl:

I fully agree with the statement you are responding to here. I came from a family that was at times very poor. Today my household is in the top 10% of income and wealth. How did tax-funded government programs help me along the way?

Food Stamps kept me and my siblings adequately nourished when my parents were unemployed.

A public school system that was still quite good in places gave me an education my parents could never have paid for.

I learned to use computers through a taxpayer funded education program. This laid the foundation for the employment that I had during college and for my future career.

Federal grants (Pell and others) and subsidized student loans enabled me to attend an elite private university that my parents could never have dreamed of paying for.

I was a net recipient of government aid for the first 20+ years of my life. I am now a net producer of government aid as a high bracket taxpayer. I have no problem with this whatsoever. I believe without the government funded programs mentioned above I would probably be as poor today as my parents were thirty years ago.

[GL]

The phrase "favor the investor class over the working class" betrays not only the class warfare rhetoric I decried, but also the economic and political ignorance of the effects of these tax rates I criticized.

Clark,

What is your view of the growing disparity between the various quintiles of household income? What about the growing disparity in wealth? Do you think that the policies over the past 25 years have contributed to that?

The issue I was addressing was not the impact on tax revenue or even whether the capital gains tax cuts were good or bad. I believe that overall they were good. The question is who benefitted most from them. The answer appears clear. This leads to the question of what can be done to provide similar benefits to those who have lower incomes and wealth.

I did not call for socialism nor for a repeal of the capital gains tax cuts and other incentives to investors. I called for tax reform that favors traditional nuclear families with children to rear over taxpayers who are not married or have no children to rear. Just as favoring investment has led to a boom in investment, perhaps modified tax policies which favor marriage and children would help those in our society who marry, stay marry and have children. All good things from the perspective of a true conservative.

Again, government should discriminate in favor of activities which are good for society (investment, stable marriages, large families, etc.) and against the things which are bad for society (co-habitation out-of-wedlock, divorce and no or few children in families). You apparently have no problem with tax policies that favor investment (which is without question taxed at lower rates than earned income). Do you have a problem with tax policies that favor stable marriages and large families? If so, why do you favor the former and not the later?

If you disagree with my positions, fine, but answer my positions and not the strawmen which you and Stuart have erected.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>I was a net recipient of government aid for the first 20+ years of my life. I am now a net producer of government aid as a high bracket taxpayer. I have no problem with this whatsoever. I believe without the government funded programs mentioned above I would probably be as poor today as my parents were thirty years ago.<<<

The programs of which you speak were in fact relatively modest thirty or forty years ago. Today, they are bloated and inefficient. Some, in fact, have been causes of dependency and corruption. The food stamp program has only recently begun to reform itself (partly through the use of technology in the form of debit cards), but you would have a hard time pursuading me that food stamps per se have done much to eliminate malnutrution in the U.S. In fact, money being fungible, it merely allows those who would misuse what money they have to do so and feed themselves (I see this daily at my local Safeway, even in highly affluent Fairfax County). I would much have preferred an "in kind" program, which at least would ensure that people got a basic dietary ration. However, as the purpose of the food stamp program was only partially to feed the poor, this approach was rejected because it did not support the farming and grocery industries.

The public school systems have long since ceased to perform. They were hardly performing up to snuff in my day, which was the late 1960s. Since then, they have become an unmitigated disaster. Since the public school systems in many major urban areas spend between $12-15,000 per student K-12 ($21,000 in the District of Columbia--though nobody knows for sure, due to sloppy accounting), the money could simply have been given to you in the form of a voucher, allowing your parents to shop around for the best education for you. Public schools, forced to compete for students, would have gotten better in a hurry, or died of starvation.

It's nice that you learned to use a computer through a taxpayer funded program. Show me where in the Constitution the government has a mandate to do this. Why should it be limited to computer science? I want to be an airline pilot--I should get government-funded flying lessons.

>>>Federal grants (Pell and others) and subsidized student loans enabled me to attend an elite private university that my parents could never have dreamed of paying for.<<<

Did it occur to you that because of those Pell Grants and subsidized loans, colleges have been insulated from price discipline, and thus have been free to raise tuition at a rate twice that of inflation? Maybe, had the government not been subsidizing colleges, they could have kept their costs under control, and more people could afford to go--not that most people actually need to go. College should not be the "new high school". Although, judging by a lot of the grad students with whom I interact (I hire quite a few as interns, and provide assistance to others as part of my Fellowship), it would be more accurate to say that college is the new "middle school".

>>>I was a net recipient of government aid for the first 20+ years of my life. I am now a net producer of government aid as a high bracket taxpayer. I have no problem with this whatsoever. I believe without the government funded programs mentioned above I would probably be as poor today as my parents were thirty years ago.<<<

Somehow, I really doubt that.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Military defense.
Court's to settle disputes and the laws which they apply to protect my interests.
The public schools in which I was educated, including elementary, secondary, undergraduate, graduate and professional.
Clean water to drink and bath in.
Santitation. (The primary reason why I can expect to live to be in my mid-80s instead of my mid-40s like those who lived 100 years ago.)
Advances in health care funded by federal research grants.
Paved roads.
Fire protection.
Police protection.
Highway patrol.
Ambulance service.
Electricity (I live in TVA country).
Lakes and public parks.
Airports.
Air traffic controllers.
Regulated securities markets in which to invest.
The Internet which was originally funded and developed with federal tax dollars.
I could go on, but you asked for just a few.<<<

To deal with these in order:

Military defense and the court systems are explicit mandates of the Federal Government enumerated in the Constitution (though the state and local courts were envisaged as having principal responsibility for most criminal and civil matters)

Public schools are not enumerated in the Constitution, and no amount of argument can convince me it should be a Federal responsibility. Indeed, the performance of American schools since the establishment of the Department of Education would argue that Federal involvement in this area is counterproductive. As to the performance of public schools generally, it's abysmal and getting worse. I think you operate under the misapprehension that such schools were meant to educate students. John Dewey and his associates were very explicit about the real purpose of public education: to socialize youth in such a way as to make them docile and productive industrial workers. Secondarily, in many areas, public schools were established mainly as a way of keeping Catholics in their place.

The rest of your list shows that you have a very muddled idea of how government is supposed to work under the U.S. federal system. Most of the functions you listed are local or state responsibilities, not Federal ones. Therefore, they should be funded and managed at the local or state level, and the Federal government should not have any real role to play in them. As it stands now, most of what the Federal government does in this area is to take money from one location and give it to another, taking a large passthrough charge in the process. The process also creates the opportunity for legislators at the Federal level to engage in the most eggregious form of pork barrel politics, of the kind most people find so objectionable except when it involves their pet rock.

I will point out that airports are mostly run by regional authorities or chartered corporations, and are wildly inefficient. Give them to the airlines to run. The air traffic control system could be privatized without missing a beat--and it would get its modernized systems a hell of lot faster than is presently the case under the Federal procurement system.

As to the regulated securities market, you'll have to show me how ours works so much better than that of Hong Kong, which is almost totally unregulated. Nothing the government does to regulate securities markets is as effective as the things the market itself does to malefactors. The government can fine and imprison people. The market kills companies. The latter gets people's attention a lot more than the former.

The Internet was developed by DARPA for defense purposes. It was, therefore, a legitimate government enterprise that had a fortuitous spinoff. Again, you have problems separating legitimate from illegitimate activities for the Federal government. I could say something about the quality of civics education at those great public schools, but why bother?

[GL]

Stuart,

You asked me how I had benefitted from government, not how I had benefitted from a specific level of government nor whether the programs from which I benefitted were provided by the level of government which I believe most appropriate. I do agree with the notion of federalism (which is very closely related to the theory of subsidiarity) and that government services and decision should be made at the lowest possible level where they can be effectively provided or made. Had you asked me which level of government should provide the services from which I have benefitted, we likely would agree to the extent that we agree that government at any level should do these things. Again, however, you construct a strawman, this time that I am advocating that the national government should do all these things, and then attack the strawman.

It is likely, however, that I do favor more government than you do. I am in favor of public sanitation, fire protection, police protection, roads, public funding of education (including vouchers). Theoritically all of these could be privatized. I believe that this would be a big mistake. For example, poor families would have a hard time paying for quality schools without some form of public help. I am more than happy to pay taxes to help them, understanding that it is an investment in the future economy of this nation. State and local government should indeed do most of these things.

Perhaps you need to be clearer in your questions and/or more careful in reading the question you asked and response given. I answered the question posed, not the question you not seem to believe you posed.

[GL]

By the way, Stuart, please list those public services (from any level) you have received in your life for which you are grateful (whether you believe government should have provided those services or not). Ingratitude is not a virtue.

[GL]

Also, Stuart, should the federal government regulate the securities market? Do you have investments? Would you be content to have those investments made in an unregulated market?

[GL]

And by the way, Hong Kong will not work for your unregulated investments. After the 1987 stock market crash, regulations were adopted and implemented to protect investors.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>> I am in favor of public sanitation, fire protection, police protection, roads, public funding of education (including vouchers).<<<

Police and fire services are legitimate government functions. Sanitation can be (and in many places is) privatized--and usually the service is better (I'm still waiting for my leaves to be vacuumed up--a month after the scheduled date). If all the money spent on education were returned to the people, I think they could find some way to educate their children--because for all the money we're spending, they ain't being educated right now.

>>>By the way, Stuart, please list those public services (from any level) you have received in your life for which you are grateful (whether you believe government should have provided those services or not). Ingratitude is not a virtue.<<<

The basic ones which government ought to provide--military security, domestic police services, fire services (though I have yet to use them) and public highways (paid and maintained mostly at the local level--though the most useful road in this area, the Greenway, is in fact a privately operated toll road).

>>>Also, Stuart, should the federal government regulate the securities market? Do you have investments? Would you be content to have those investments made in an unregulated market?<<<

Most regulation merely imposes needless costs and drag on the market--witness the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (which, ironically, even Democrats want to roll back or repeal). My investments are secured by the good word and bond of the companies in which I invest. If they break their word, they're out of business.

>>>And by the way, Hong Kong will not work for your unregulated investments. After the 1987 stock market crash, regulations were adopted and implemented to protect investors.<<<

As compared to the regulations present in the U.S. market (which are already driving foreign companies to list in London rather than New York, which is why NASDAQ wants to buy the London exchange), the Hong Kong regulatory regime has a light hand--and probably wasn't needed in the first place.

[Bill R]

“The claim that 'evangelical' is only two to three generations old would come as a great surprise to the Evangelical Movement of the Augsburg Confession of the Catholic Church, the first evangelicals. The Pilgrims and Puritans would have been considered evangelicals. John Wesley, William Wilburforce "the benevolent empire" were all considered evangelical. The recapture of the term by Carl Henry, Harold O. J. Brown and Francis Schaeffer was rather more than two or three generations ago.” -- Labrialumn

The term “evangelical” goes back to Scripture, of course, but its present use, as you note, goes back to Carl Henry, Harold O.J. Brown, and Francis Schaeffer. But that wasn’t “rather more than two or three generations ago,” as Brown is still alive, and Henry and Schaeffer passed away only a couple of decades ago! Modern evangelicalism is really a post-WWII phenomenon. (You might have noted that the Lausanne Covenant goes back only to 1974.) If what Stuart is referring to as “evangelical” is any conservative Protestant, then yes, we have many illustrious names to point to since the Reformation. (Hey, you forgot to mention Luther and Calvin!) But his point goes to the modern evangelical movement, and there he has a point (a small one, perhaps, but a point).

[Bobby Winters]

>>> I'm still waiting for my leaves to be vacuumed up--a month after the scheduled date.<<<

You have convinced me. Relying on the government does breed decadence. I never would've believed that you didn't rake your own leaves. ;)

[David Gray]

>But his point goes to the modern evangelical movement, and there he has a point (a small one, perhaps, but a point).

Actually a decent to large sized point. But one best made by an evangelical (like Noll). Perhaps Stuart should turn his concern to problems within Eastern Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism, given that he has a foot in both of those camps.

D.G. Hart has argued that confessional protestants (and presbyterians in particular) should perhaps reconsider whether they are really evangelicals or not. I think he has a point worthy of serious discussion.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>You have convinced me. Relying on the government does breed decadence. I never would've believed that you didn't rake your own leaves. ;)<<<

Oh, we do rake our own leaves. There's a pile approximately ten feet long and three feet high along the curb. The County tells us we can't burn them, we can't bag them, and we can't put them in our trash cans. Rather, they tell us to pile them up at the curb, and then a big vacuum truck will come and suck them up.

They put a sign up on the corner saying that the leaves would be vacuumed on or around 31 October. It is now 27 November--and the leaves are still there.

On a related topic, the County keeps promulgating ever more complex and arcane recycling rules for us. But there is no evidence whatsoever that recycling in Fairfax County is either necessary or economical. If it was economical, then someone would pay the county for the right to collect the recyclables, or at the very least, should offer us money for it.

[GL]

Stuart and Clark,

Trying to move beyond our debate on government in general, would you support tax breaks and other policies that favor stable marriages between one man and one woman and larger families (e.g., more children and multiple generations in one home)? If not, why not? From what each of you have posted, it appears that neither of you have a problem with tax breaks and other policies that favor investment.

[Bill R]

"Actually a decent to large sized point. But one best made by an evangelical (like Noll). Perhaps Stuart should turn his concern to problems within Eastern Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism, given that he has a foot in both of those camps.
D.G. Hart has argued that confessional protestants (and presbyterians in particular) should perhaps reconsider whether they are really evangelicals or not. I think he has a point worthy of serious discussion."

It's a fair point, David, although I have no problem with raising issues that other Christians have within their communities, as long as it's not polemical in nature. Occasionally Stuart skates close to the line, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt here.

I have feet in both the evangelical and confessional camps, and yes, I am more comfortable these days identifying with the latter. Still, I've tried to avoid separating them where possible.