AnarchoCatholic: Musings of Ultramontane Liberals

Civic Literacy Quiz

Can you beat my score? I missed four. One stupid mistake, and three other reasons to home school your kids.

You answered 56 out of 60 correctly — 93.33%
Average score for this quiz during September: 75.3%

"The average college senior knows astoundingly little about America’s history, government, international relations and market economy, earning an “F” on the American civic literacy exam with a score of 54.2%. Harvard seniors did best, but their overall average was 69.6%, a disappointing D+."

H/T to Vox Day.

JMM

Federal farm subsidies cause distortion and hurt farmers

A recent article in the WSJ confirms what many economists and small-government thinkers have been saying for some time: federal subsidies distort the market, disincentivize or prohibit entrepreneurs from entering the market, and cause increased prices.

Bioethics Defense Fund

I just wanted to make note of this fine organization that seeks to find legal solutions in defending human life at all stages.  Catholics should look into this organization and think about financially and spiritually supporting their efforts in the future. 

Islamic Finance article

I welcome our readers to indulge in my most recent article, Islamic Finance: Origins, Emergence, and Future. Criticism, if constructive, is welcome indeed.

SBW

Ron Paul & the Administrative State

Mr. Joe Carter at the Evangelical Outpost critiques Ron Paul's libertarian message as adolescent and not even worth engaging.  Joe essentially assumes that the modern administrative state is here to stay no matter what, and to seek to dismantle it in any way is lunacy. 

Matt Robison of New Liberty Creation gives an excellent response here.  Here's my response:

Hints at why some evangelicals convert

Heb 5:12-14

12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food.

13 For everyone who partakes {only} of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant.

14 But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.

(NAU)

For a thinking Christian who has spent any considerable amount of time in a typical American evangelical church, one wonders whether these congregations are not just subsisting on any milk, but that of the spoiled variety. An article (subscription required) in this month’s First Things, Dean Curry attempts to describe why this is so.

A Tribute to Trade

This article changed my view of libertarianism entirely.  The day I read it, on September 12th, 2001, the libertarian scales from my eyes fell, and I became a Rothbardian-Rockwellite.  I'm one hell of a lucky guy, as somebody who once worked in both WTC1 and WTC2, I am blessed to have no longer been working in those buildings for the horrid event of 911.  Further, I can attest that fewer words have been able to express, what the World Trade Center was essentially all about, like these:   

"We often hear platitudes about the brotherhood of man. But you don’t see it at the United Nations or at the summits of governments. There you see conflicts, resolved usually by the use of other people’s money taken by force. But at the World Trade Center, the brotherhood of man was an every day affair.

"It didn’t matter if you were a small rug merchant in Nepal, a fisherman off the Chinese coast, or a machine manufacturer in the American Midwest, the people who worked here put you in contact with others who valued what you did and what you could give to others. Consent and choice, not conflict and coercion, was at the core of everything. Their watchword was contract, not hegemony."

When I worked in WTC2 for Eurobrokers, I worked with a five person 'link' desk where there were two New Yorkers, one Cockney Englishman, one Jewish Englishman, and a French Swiss woman.  Those five linkmen shouted out bids and offers for eurodollar deposits from London, Brussels, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Geneva, Frankfurt, Munich, Luxembourg, Rome, Tel Aviv, Karachi, Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago.  The brokers of the NY office would receive these world wide bids and offers, communicating them to the New York bank branches.  These NY based brokers represented the NY, New Jersey, Connecticut, England, France, Switzerland, Japan, and China.  While there were arguments, smashing of phones, and sometimes even fights, more often than not, at the end of the day all was forgiven and forgotten, because tomorrow you might need Tommy or Joey to help you get a deal done.  Of course, the United Nations fails to do in its entire lifetime charter what was done at the World Trade Center in a matter of an hour. 

CK

Beware of men, unless they have the attributes of women

A recent commentary in the WSJ discussed the fears and frustrations of men when surrounded by children.

These days, if Rian Romoli accidentally bumps into a child, he quickly raises his hands above his shoulders. "I don't want to give even the slightest indication that any inadvertent touching occurred," says Mr. Romoli, an economist in La Cañada Flintridge, Calif.

Ted Wallis, a doctor in Austin, Texas, recently came upon a lost child in tears in a mall. His first instinct was to help, but he feared people might consider him a predator. He walked away. "Being male," he explains, "I am guilty until proven innocent."

Such fears are generated because men are now being "profiled" to determine their "risk" in being around children.

It's true that men are far more likely than women to be sexual predators. But our society, while declining to profile by race or nationality when it comes to crime and terrorism, has become nonchalant about profiling men. Child advocates are advising parents never to hire male babysitters. Airlines are placing unaccompanied minors with female passengers.

Here is a first hand example of a father being profiled by the state for having his own child on his lap.

At Houston Intercontinental Airport, businessman Mitch Reifel was having a meal with his 5-year-old daughter when a policeman showed up to question him. A passerby had reported his interactions with the child seemed "suspicious."

All of this in a society that encourages the enjoyment of pornography, adultery, sodomy, and free sex without any consequences or secondary impact. And lest the blame put squarely on the feminist groups, men should bear some responsibility as natural leaders for all of this destruction by ceding their authority away to the popular poison, refusing to think or take a proper stand, and trying to act and become something that they are not. 

SBW   

Getting "sqeezed" by the state

Building on the post below, check this story out concerning a seven-year old girl who was threatened and eventually shut down by a "city inspector" for operating her beverage stand without a beverage license. "You can't sell pop without a license," the inspector claimed.

It must be granted that such occasions of abuse are indeed rare, but they do occur and such behavior speaks of a larger growing problem in America in general: that of thinking of the "government" in terms of an omnipotent all-benevolent entity distinct in itself and untouched by sin. Need a problem to be fixed, get the government, and that means the federal government to do it.  Some examples that come to mind include: education, health care, definition of marriage, food quality, mortgage regulation, etc. As society becomes more fragmented because of individualism, these same individuals depend on an evermore powerful state to "win" and accomplish the competing special interests. And instead of entities and businesses being accountable to the market or even the people, we ask the state to use its monopoly of force. Thus, instead of actually competing in the marketplace for lemonade or beverage sales, we simply enact oppressive regulation, employ bureaucrats with special titles and badges, and interested individuals influence the market to their advantage.

Also building on a similar story and on the post below, check this story out where these two young entrepreneurs were shut down for not having a license, at the behest of their competitors, mind you.

Also, link here to a free PDF file of listing various tragic and outrageous stories of government regulation.

SBW