After a while words mean what they usually mean. If everybody misuses a word, and they do so for several centuries, then they have successfully changed the meaning of that word. Words like conservative or capitalist get shanghaied, and there you are, left muttering that you didn’t really want to conserve the Great Society, and …
Financial Crisis in a Nutshell
Or, perhaps I should say, “financial crisis in a nuthouse.” Here is the basic reason why you should be urging your congressman to vote to keep Congress out of any financial rescue operation. The perpetrators of this crisis are brazen, and they are also in Congress. And in this last week, I have seen them, …
The Wall Street Wastrels
My friend and congressman, Bill Sali, voted against the 700 billionout package, and I would like to spend just a few minutes telling you why I am glad about that. About a third of the Democrats voted against it, and about two thirds of the Republicans did, and a well done to the Republicans thus …
Neck Deep in Shoes
The last chapter of Cavanaugh’s book deals with scarcity and abundance. The juxtaposition of the two is set up (as he discusses it) in the contrast between scarcity as the driving force of free market economics, and the abundance of Christ as displayed in the Lord’s Supper. “The idea of scarcity assures that the normal …
Vanity Fair and Globalization
Cavanaugh’s third chapter, on the global and the local, contains a lot of good discussion of the problem of the one and the many. Keying off the work of Roman Catholic Hans Urs von Balthasar, Cavanaugh offers the kind of insights that I am more accustomed to hear from Cornelius Van Til and Rousas Rushdoony. …
Hard-headed and Tender-hearted
Okay, we have seen that merciful intentions do not mean that the results actually are merciful. Being soft-hearted and soft-headed at the same time doesn’t help anybody. But of course — and here comes the point of this post — being hard-headed and hard-hearted is also a spiritual disaster. God calls us to be hard-headed …
Stupidity is not Compassionate
Just a short post to address two things at once. I have wanted to say something about the Wall Street meltdown, and I also needed to address a question raised in my last post on mercy and economics. The bottom line first. Should the taxpayers be bailing out Behemoth Banks, Leviathan Lenders, and Marduk Mortgage? …
Justice Java
William Cavanaugh’s second chapter of Being Consumed, on attachment and detachment, was — with the exception of a page or two — simply outstanding. His critique of consumerism contained some standard elements (but still driven home effectively), as well as some unique insights. For an example of the former, he points out how much contemporary …
Why Does Cavanaugh Believe Jeshurun?
I enjoyed and benefitted from William Cavanaugh’s Theopolitical Imagination, and am now working through his Being Consumed. The subtitle of this second book is “Economics and Christian Desire,” and I believe I really need to post a few installments on it. In my view, Cavanaugh is playing into the new Constantinian error and this is …
The Christian Foundation of Free Markets
Yesterday I recorded a series of short interviews that will be aired on the Moody broadcasting network sometime in the next few weeks. We were talking about the imminent release of Is Christianity Good for the World? and in that context the impact of the Christian faith on culture came up. In the course of …