Here are the Crises. Where are the Statesmen?

What should we expect of our next president? What is the defining crisis of our times? It would help if we had a History of the Twenty-first Century, but that won’t be available for many years to come.

The remarkable thing about great statesmen is that, as though by intuitive grasp of the relative importance of things, they seem to see the present in the clear light of the future. Churchill, in the political wilderness, saw the monstrous threat of Nazism long before his more respectable contemporaries did. It was not a recent insight that he shared in his “Their Finest Hour” speech when he cast the coming Battle of Britain as a contest for “the survival of Christian civilization” and “the abyss of a new Dark Age.”

When we look for a presidential candidate, we are looking for a statesman.

Mitch Daniels says the great crisis is financial. There is a strong case to be made for this. But statesmen are also able to read and lead the public. Daniels stumbled in this. Last year, he told Andy Ferguson of the Weekly Standard that the next president would have to call a truce on social issues to focus on our nation’s more immediate and existential crisis of crippling debt. "It is just a suggestion I made once," he told World reporter Edward Lee Pitts. Both Pitts and Ferguson demonstrate that Daniels is pro-life to his bones. Ferguson quotes Curt Smith, head of the Indiana Family Institute, saying, “He has a deep faith, he’s totally pro-life, and he walks the talk.” Perhaps it was just a stumble. Perhaps he is a great man, and not the bean counter he appeared to be at that moment.

Newt Gingrich tells us that Islam will swallow us if we do not rally against it. This could be true, and rally we must. But in America, unlike Europe which has already committed moral and demographic suicide, we still have a backbone to stiffen, and our uniquely free society encourages Muslim Americans to moderate and assimilate. As for Newt, he is not a great man. He is strong on insight and analysis, but profoundly deficient in character. No man as morally hollow as Newt Gingrich should be President. We suffered that from 1992-2000. Newt is the Bill Clinton of the right

In yesterday's Worldmag column, I make my case that abortion and the disintegration of the family are the great moral crises that threaten to destroy the nation ("Facing the Crisis of Our Times").

As for abortion in particular, not only does it present serious demographic and workforce challenges, it is a moral blight that invites God's righteous judgment.

We need to repent of our evil, return to the Lord, and reform our ways. George Washington saw the flourishing of our nation as inseparable from our national repentance before God’s righteous majesty and from our trust above all in the strength of his arm on our behalf. He wrote at time when the Lord’s government of the nations was commonly recognized and with a clear political conscience for doing so.

In his General Orders of March 6, 1776, as Commander of the Continental Army, General Washington declared, “a day of fasting, prayer, and humiliation to implore the Lord, the Giver of all victory, to pardon our manifold sins and wickedness’s (sic.), and that it would please him to bless the Continental Arms, with his divine favor and protection.” (I thank Dr. Peter Lillback for sending me this reference.)

Big Government and Self-Government

Patrick Henry in the Virginia House of Burgesses, 1851, 

speaking against the Stamp Act

One of my students in her final exam essay wrote, "Why should I trust my government if my government doesn't trust me?" She wrote these words in the context of reflecting on the political problem, viz., "How do you enable to government to restrain the governed while at the same time obliging it to restrain itself?"

Her question is at the heart of the liberal-conservative debate in America today, and the line of that very practical philosophical dispute is showing up in some surprising places of late. On January 19, 2010, the citizens of Massachusetts have the opportunity not only to fill the Senate seat recently vacated by Ted Kennedy, but also to pass a judgment on the political vision our present government is aggressively pursuing, often in opposition to the clear consensus of the American people. People's attention is focused on the current plans for health care reform, for combating what is supposed to be global warming, and for reviving the economy. Behind these plans, however, are fundamental questions concerning big government and self-government.


Liberals see people as fundamentally needy on the one hand and unworthy of being trusted to provide for one another and themselves on the other. Thus, privatizing Social Security would be a disaster. People would lose all their money in the stock market. Only the government can be trusted to steward people's retirement funds wisely. (Of course, they don't steward these funds at all. They spend them, and trust that they can pay us out of the contributions from our children and grandchildren, a formula for bankruptcy when the baby boomers move fully into retirement.)

And people certainly cannot be trusted to provide for their aged parents, so all the elderly must become wards of the state. This, of course, schools people in the view that their parents are, in the end, none of their concern. Liberals take the same view of children. Get them as early as possible into the public school system. If you want to homeschool your children, (a) you must be crazy and thus incompetent, and (b) the education you provide must be strictly regulated by the local public school authorities, regardless of how bad a job they themselves are doing educating children.

By contrast, conservatives trust people to manage their own affairs according to their own lights and preferences. This may not be wise for every people in the world, but it is certainly fitting for a free people such as we.

Aristotle says that a citizen in the proper sense of the word rules and is ruled in turn, as opposed to one who is a slave by nature who, by definition, requires direction from another. A true citizen, therefore, is not simply someone who enjoys a particular legal status, but is someone who by his character is capable of self-government. This is someone who has the intelligence, moral character, and practical judgment to make life decisions of sufficient wisdom for living a life of human flourishing along with others of similar character.

In short, a free citizen must be virtuous. For this reason, Aristotle identifies aristocracy (rule by the  virtuous few, i.e. the genuinely virtuous) as the best regime. The citizens under that regime rule and are ruled in turn with a view to the common good, or at least the common interest, not seeking their selfish advantage. In other words, the more self-government there is, the more good government there will be. The more virtue there is among a people, the more they will be governed by what Thomas Jefferson called the natural aristoi.

Thomas Jefferson also said, "That government governs best which governs least." He wrote those words in the context of a fairly virtuous people. He might well have added, "...having the least need to govern." The more virtue in a people, the less need for government over a people. The more virtuous a people is, the less they are in need of the restraining power of government. They are largely governed from within. As another of my students put it in her senior thesis, "Since justice by definition entails a just observance of law, law enforcers are less needed for a just people." The internal policemen of their character renders the need for outside policing to that extent unnecessary.

Thus, conservatives are concerned for public morality because they are concerned about people's capacity for liberty, i.e. self-government, both individually and corporately. Liberals, on the other hand, understand liberty as self-indulgence and post-modern autonomy, the freedom to construct one's own moral universe and live accordingly, provided that one does not "harm" anyone else (that provision being a completely groundless restriction within a post-modern frame of reference).

Conservatives are concerned to support personal virtue among the people (yes, it requires support, largely from religion, especially Christianity), so that they can live with the dignity of free people in a free republic. Liberals are happy to see people indulging themselves in any way they please while the government manages and provides for them in as many spheres of life as possible. Thus, American conservatism tends toward republican liberty, while progressive liberalism tends toward, well, benevolent totalitarianism, which in the end, because human nature is what it is, becomes simply totalitarianism.

Thus, the government of a free people can trust the people to govern their own affairs while it attends largely to what in principle they cannot do on their own. This is not to be confused with libertarianism, because it recognizes the need for virtue in the citizenry, and also that public virtue requires appropriate (not oppressive) public support and protection. The Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy that Christians should pray for their governments so that those governments would fulfill their divine calling as government--no less and no more--"that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way" (I Tim. 2:2). What Paul means by a peaceful and quiet life is the liberty to govern one's own affairs, and to take a hand in the affairs of one's community, including taking care of the poor. This requires godliness, and is a life of human dignity. Good government provides for this liberty.

When government does not trust the people it governs, the people they distrust are either a slavish people or a free people. If they are slavish, the government indeed should not trust them, but should nonetheless take steps to cultivate better character in them so that they can live more as free people. This is statesmanship. Government that simply continues in that distrust and uses it as an opportunity to grow itself is just a form of mastery, and, as such, is not a government at all.

If the people it distrusts is a free people, then, as my student said, that people has no reason at all to trust their government. That government views them as slavish and will attempt by a thousand measures to reduce them to servile dependence. The Declaration of Independence describes this as "a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism."

Some people are called to die for liberty. Some are called only to vote.

Where Are The Manly Men For Public Office?

It is sad that it takes a woman these days to tell a man how he ought to behave. Dorothy Rabinowitz tells us "What Sanford Should Have Said" (Wall Street Journal, June 26, 2009).

"I come before you in what is clearly a predicament, but without, I hope any pretense. There's no pretense in having an affair -- affairs are real, very compellingly so. There are lies, yes -- to one's wife and family and staff -- but that's a different story. And while I'm on the subject, let me say the only apology I plan to offer in public is to the members of my staff I left in confusion about my whereabouts with nonsense about hiking on the Appalachian Trail.
"I have no intention of babbling about mistakes, or about problems of exhaustion and stress that could have led to my affair -- and no intention of standing here, like so many dolts before me, looking vacant and miserable, as though I'd just come through some kind of punishment camp that left me brainwashed.
"I had an affair, not an overnight encounter -- and an affair, as you ladies and gentlemen of the media know -- is about falling for someone in a way that makes you forget about everything and everyone else. It's true for men, it's true for women.
"I knew what I was doing, and, yes, I loved it, and all its pains, too. That is an affair. It works till its over, and the price can be high. I don't expect to allow that price to include talking about this to the media, or answering their idiotic questions about how my wife feels, or whether I've talked to my children, or whether I can still imagine myself a contender for the presidency.
"Furthermore, I've seen too many breast-beaters in my situation deliver public apologies to their wives and children before crowds of reporters. I have no intention of taking part in any such bizarre -- not to mention shameless -- spectacle. A man who apologizes to his wife and children, who holds forth tearfully about having betrayed them, for media consumption, is, anyway, too lacking in dignity to hold public office of any kind.
"So let's understand this. I plan to straighten my tie, button my jacket, maybe buy a new suit, and go forward to do what I have to do. Life's complicated, ladies and gentlemen, but there's work to be done. I'll have nothing further on this, count on it.
"All the best."

Rabinowitz knows what a manly response to the situation would be because, as a woman, she knows what a woman admires in manliness.
Now that Hillary Clinton has fired off her last round, are there any men left to take command in America? Let's not look to Sarah Palin to save us.

Anticipating the Obama Anti-Climax

David Brooks anticipates one or the other of these two Obama presidencies based on his historical and psychological assessments ("Thinking About Obama," New York Times, October 17, 2008):

And it is easy to sketch out a scenario in which he could be a great president. He would be untroubled by self-destructive demons or indiscipline. With that cool manner, he would see reality unfiltered. He could gather — already has gathered — some of the smartest minds in public policy, and, untroubled by intellectual insecurity, he could give them free rein. Though he is young, it is easy to imagine him at the cabinet table, leading a subtle discussion of some long-term problem.

Of course, it’s also easy to imagine a scenario in which he is not an island of rationality in a sea of tumult, but simply an island. New presidents are often amazed by how much they are disobeyed, by how often passive-aggressiveness frustrates their plans.

It could be that Obama will be an observer, not a leader. Rather than throwing himself passionately into his causes, he will stand back. Congressional leaders, put off by his supposed intellectual superiority, will just go their own way. Lost in his own nuance, he will be passive and ineffectual. Lack of passion will produce lack of courage. The Obama greatness will give way to the Obama anti-climax.

This dispassionate observer stance is ideal for a lawyer or professor, but not for a president. Obama has passed through life while barely touching it. You can read how this has been true at every stage of his life in "Obama is All About Obama."

But behind Barack is the very angry and activist Michelle whom Barack said would be his chief advisor. Expect a Michelle driven domestic policy. Look out, America! You're going to make her proud! And you won't recognize yourself when she's done with you.

Assess the Man, Not the Plan

Jonah Goldberg has a very fine column today ("The Best Laid Plans..." on how to assess a presidential candidate, and how NOT to. (I am so charmed by his reflections, that I have sent them around to all my students.) Let me tease you into reading it with a few quotes.

Some historians claim that 19th-century Prussian field marshal Helmuth von Moltke, not President Eisenhower, authored the aphorism that no plan survives contact with the enemy....

Even plans to build houses often require countless revisions. But planning for people is so much harder. Every weekend I have a plan for how my one 5-year-old child will spend her day. Keep in mind: I am literally the boss of her. She has no money, little education and no reliable means of escape. And yet, she foils my plans time and again. But somehow we're supposed to believe that a plan involving billions or trillions of dollars, millions of people (each with their own agenda) and thousands of communities influenced by countless interested parties and bureaucracies is not only possible, but the highest responsibility of our elected leaders....

But the point is that it is juvenile to believe that voting for a president is synonymous with holding a referendum on a plan. And yet we have these interminable, often Jesuitical debates on what the fine print of the candidates' plans says.

I am particularly fond of this one:

Even worse, after every debate we are subjected to an endless parade of focused-grouped "swing voters" who think they're oh-so-terribly sophisticated for wanting to hear ever more details about this candidate's plan for education reform or that candidate's scheme for health care. It's all absurd intellectual vanity. These voters are undecided not because they haven't been spoon-fed enough policy detail, but because they haven't been paying attention and haven't bothered to do even minimal research about the candidates.

And he wraps up with:

The real hints for how to choose a candidate, at least in a general election (as opposed to a primary), reside in the realm of judgment, philosophy, track record and temperament. And, using those criteria, the choice shouldn't be hard at all.

Thus, assess the man, not the plan.

Harold adds:

That Jonah Goldberg, he da man.

The Tragedy of Christian Compassion

"wise as serpents" - Matthew 10:16

Mike Huckabee is offering himself as a superior candidate for the office of President. He is doing this partly, and perhaps mostly, on the basis of his Christian faith and Christian character. His decisions, unlike those of his competitors, will be guided by compassion, as they were when he was the governor of Arkansas.

Of course, there is much to say for compassion. Before he wrote his book on compassionate conservatism, Marvin Olasky wrote The Tragedy of American Compassion on the way well-intentioned, but ill-informed and thus misdirected compassion has brought us into the spiraling dependency of our present inefficient and ineffective entitlement mess. Compassion is not a sufficient moral guide. It is a passion, a feeling. As such, it needs to be tutored, informed and wisely directed.

Gov. Huckabee appears to have heapin' helpin's of compassion, but is somewhat deficient in wisdom. Consider the following.

• Under pressure from then governor Huckabee, the Arkansas parole board released rapist Wayne Dumond from prison on condition that he leave the state. Shortly thereafter he raped and killed a Missouri woman. Read about it here (Arkansas Times) and here (National Review). Dumond's vigilante castration just after his arrest in 1985 as well as his Christian profession of faith appears to have influenced the governor's heart.

• As governor of Arkansas, he supported extending state taxpayer-funded college scholarships and in-state college tuition rates to the children of illegal aliens, i.e. students graduating from Arkansas high schools who are in the country illegally. His rationale for this is that we should not "penalize the children for the crime of the parents." But there is only so much money available for state college education, and every dollar that goes to an illegal alien, regardless of how well he or she performed in high school, is a dollar that is denied to a legal resident. That compassion is idiosyncratic, not intelligent, and thus not godly for Christian leader.

The more we get to know this man, the more examples of “the tragedy of Christian compassion”* come to light.

President Jimmy Carter was a man with a good heart who believed that good intentions were sufficient for good public policy. Niccolo Machiavelli was not a Christian, nor particularly compassionate, but he offers a wise critique of blindly sentimental Christian ethics.

A prince, therefore, so as to keep his subjects united and faithful, should not care about the infamy of cruelty, because with very few examples he will be more merciful than those who for the sake of too much mercy allow disorders to continue, from which come killings or robberies… (The Prince, chapter 17; Mansfield translation).

Of course, Machiavelli advocated making these judgments with no regard to justice apart from the appearance of it. But Christian statesmanship requires more than just a good heart. It requires a good mind: a good understanding of justice and righteousness, and a prudent judgment as to how to bring as much good as possible out of generally bad situations.

Candidate Huckabee would perhaps make a good pastor. But he lacks characteristics that are essential for wise and effective political leadership.

*I am indebted to my colleague, David Tubbs, for coining this phrase. Of course, he was playing on the title of Dr. Olasky's influential book.

POL 101 for Gov. Spitzer. Not a Good Grade.

Eliot Spitzer came to Albany in January as the you're-not-gonna-know-what-hit-you reforming governor. This hot shot prosecutor was expected to be a political steamroller, and of course a not-too-distant-future presidential candidate.

But I find that in politics nothing can be taken for granted (except taxes, I suppose).

But the Princeton and Harvard alum has found himself back in school rather than "teaching a few lessons" as we thought he would be. He recently shared this newly acquired insight: “Leadership is not solely about doing what one thinks is right.” You would think that someone would understand politics before he put himself forward as a political leader. (Consider Plato's comment on this in his "city as a ship" image in the Republic, 488a-489a.)

Let's assume that the governor is speaking honestly and that his driving passion is to serve what he believes is the public good. But politics is more than just good intentions. It requires knowledge, judgment and an ability to move people so that they want to follow you. Essentially it requires statesmanship.

Statesmanship is the just, prudent and persuasive exercise of authority.

• In order for your government to be just, you have to be morally serious, concerned not for yourself but for the public good. You are a principled political leader, not an ambitious pol.


• In order to be prudent, you have to recognize the natural limits to what can be accomplished through politics generally as well as in one's particular political circumstances. In 1787, you advocate the three-fifths compromise with the hope of defeating slavery down the road, rather than display your political purity and pass up the opportunity for a union of the American states. You must also have experience in order to judge wisely how to maximize justice in any given situation.


• If you share power with others, you need the ability to persuade them in order to bring them into concert with your just and prudent plans. This persuasive ability--mastery in the art of rhetoric--is also necessary if you wish not only to change things for the people, but also change the people themselves, to make them more inclined to justice and more open to persuasion by just arguments.
  

This week, in the course of just one day, Gov. Spitzer has had to withdraw his proposal to give driver's licenses to illegal aliens, an idea opposed by 70% of New York state voters, as well as his plan to charge sales tax on purchases make by New Yorkers over the Internet, an obviously unpopular move especially at the start of the Christmas shopping season. These sudden reversals in the face of opposition are not only humiliating, but politically debilitating. Hunter College political science professor Ken Sherrill is quoted as saying, “Spitzer has to understand that other elected officials have a responsibility to represent their constituencies.” When you share power with others, even with people of your own party, who are rightly jealous of their power and responsive to their constituencies, prudence dictates persuasion rather than mere pronouncements.

Sherrill draws our attention to the pitfalls of electing a prosecutor to a political office: “It’s one thing to not get along with people as an attorney general or as an assistant district attorney. But there’s a need for it in the legislative process.”

Thoughts rise to the Giuliani candidacy. We are tempted to support him for his toughness, whether in dealing with al-Qaeda or with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. But will the governing style the worked in New York City translate successfully to Washington DC?

FYI - a Wall Street Journal editorial today offers a very informative summary and reflection on the Spitzer record and style thus far. Here is a sample:

Given Mr. Spitzer's fall in the polls, it's tempting to say New Yorkers have learned something new about the man who said on his inauguration day that, "we must change the ethics of Albany and end the politics of cynicism and division in our state." But the bullying, the arrogance and the focus on destroying anyone who stood his way were on full display when he was Attorney General. Most of the media chose to overlook these qualities, instead extolling his "crusading" style....The only real difference between Mr. Spitzer now and then is that as Governor he is obliged to govern, as opposed to merely bringing charges amid a PR offensive and then settling before having to prove anything in court. His heavy-handed approach to the drivers license plan shows the limits of such behavior in a job where he actually has to persuade people.

Fred, Huck and Rudy Part II

 

There is a sympathy developing among Evangelicals toward Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, former baptist minister, and presently just-passed-into-double-digit-support candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.

But Pastor Mike is no evangelical dream. And he's no conservative fantasy either. John Fund entitled his Wall Street Journal article "Another Man From Hope," and he means that in the worst possible sense. Huckabee is "hard right on social issues but liberal-populist on some economic issues." Betsy Hagan, Arkansas director of the conservative Eagle Forum remembers that, as Governor of her state, "he was pro-life and pro-gun, but otherwise a liberal." Phyllis Schlafly, president of the national Eagle Forum, adds that, "He destroyed the conservative movement in Arkansas, and left the Republican Party a shambles." Blant Hurt of Arkansas Business magazine: "He's hostile to free trade, hiked sales and grocery taxes, backed sales taxes on Internet purchases, and presided over state spending going up more than twice the inflation rate." This does not look good.

Fund learned from Southern Baptist minister Rick Scarborough of Vision America, a Huckabee backer, that "When conservatives took over the Southern Baptist Convention after a bitter fight in the 1980s, Mr. Huckabee sided with the ruling moderates." He quotes Paul Pressler who led the conservative revolt within the SBC saying, "I know of no conservative he appointed while he headed the Arkansas Baptist Convention." Bill Clinton was a Southern Baptist of the "moderate" variety. Oh, and wasn't Jimmy Carter one of those too?

Fund reports a former top Huckabee aid saying, "He's just like Bill Clinton in that he practices management by news cycle. As with Clinton there was no long-term planning, just putting out fires on a daily basis. One thing I'll guarantee is that won't lead to competent conservative governance."

Perhaps these are just enemies telling tales. But those are a lot of tales. And John Fund has impressed me a reliable man. Quin Hillyer at The American Spectator, in "A Tale of Two Candidates," reports that Huckabee has a thin skin, a wicked temper, and all too many moral parallels with the other Man from Hope.

He used public money for family restaurant meals, boat expenses, and other personal uses. He tried to claim as his own some $70,000 of furniture donated to the governor's mansion. He repeatedly, and obstinately, against the pleadings even from conservative columnists and editorials, refused to divulge the names of donors to a "charitable" organization he set up while lieutenant governor -- an outfit whose main charitable purpose seemed to be to pay Huckabee to make speeches. Then, as a kicker, he misreported the income itself from the suspicious "charity."

Huckabee has been criticized, reasonably so, for misusing the state airplane for personal reasons. And he and his wife, Janet, actually set up a "wedding gift registry" (they had already been married for years) to which people could donate as the Huckabees left the governorship, in order to furnish their new $525,000 home.

It seems that former Arkansas governors have to be held to a higher standard of scrutiny. Once burned, twice cautious.

What we learned from Jimmy Carter is that there is more to good government than what seems like an Evangelical profession of faith. Some would say we learned that from George W. Bush as well (though we got two good Supreme Court justices and a few critically important vetoes out of him, all of which were closely related to that Christian faith).

In fact, an Evangelical Christian faith may not even be necessary for good government. Though there is no forgiveness of sins without saving grace in Christ (Ephesians 2:8-10), the Lord also gives common grace and distributes it quite liberally. This is why there are lots of decent and kind people who are nonetheless dead in their trespasses and sins. This is why there is much wisdom to be found in works by non-Christians like Plato and Locke, and even Machiavelli and Nietzsche (in many respects more than can be found in Christian authors). We don't read them only to "know what the enemy is thinking" and to understand the pagan darkness from which Christ saved us and where Western civilization has taken its wrong turns bringing us to our present sorry state. Common grace is also what God gives to the non-Christians who, despite their ungodliness of one kind or another, are nonetheless concerned and able to govern for the common good, i.e. as statesmen, punishing evil at home and repelling it abroad. Was Ronald Reagan a Christian? Was he born again? It's debatable. It is also irrelevant.

Mike Huckabee may be a Christian, but he should not be the first choice of conservative Evangelicals for their President.

Ominous Credit Squeeze

Political pundits and market analysts are continuously trying to discern the signs of the times, trying to pick out from among the seemingly innumerable particulars of life those few which, taken together, indicate the direction that politics, society, the markets, or the economy is taking, a direction which otherwise is wholly unexpected. We call this "connecting the dots." The dots are there. The trick is discerning which dots are the significant ones, and thus to be connected in forming a picture of the future. One of the things I try to do on my blog is throw dots out there that I think are significant.

Try these for dots.

I draw your attention to a report in today's New York Times, "Markets Fall as Lender Woes Keep Mounting" by Vikas Bajaj (August 4, 2007).

On the one hand, the economy is strong. Consumer confidence is high. Bajaj reports that, "yesterday’s jobs report was not weak enough to suggest that the Federal Reserve would cut its benchmark short-term interest rate when it meets next week." In addition, "investors now expect the Fed to cut its rate to 5 percent, from 5.25 percent by November...." On top of that, "businesses have been reporting strong earnings. Profits are up 9.6 percent in total for the 80 percent of the companies in the S.& P. index that have released results for the second quarter."

Sounds great! ...But...

Something is screwy in the housing market. Prices are ridiculous and there is trouble under foot.

When I was boy in 1972, my dad, a civil servant, bought a four bedroom home in a nice Toronto suburb for $45,000, a lot of m0ney at the time. His annual salary was roughly the same figure. Maybe it was less, but not a whole lot less. Today, on Long Island, for me to buy the same house I would have to pay seven times my income. (In addition, because of various forms of social decay which express themselves in the public school system through not only the students but also the teachers, we have the added expense of our children's private education.) What's happened?

Of course, since then women have flooded into the workforce. More dollars chasing the same goods = inflation. I know, it's more complicated than that. But it's partly that. In addition, credit has become quite freely available. No money down. 103% mortgages. People are in debt with second and third mortgages, car loans and of course high interest credit cards. More dollars chasing the same goods = inflation. People can pay more for homes, so sellers make sure that they do. The same is true of college tuition, by the way. Parents can borrow against their $400,000 homes, so colleges raise tuition and require it. (For the full story, see The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke by Harvard Law School bankruptcy professor Elizabeth Warren and her financial consultant daughter Amelia Warren Tyagi.)

With that in mind, back to the Bajaj article. Too many people can't live too far beyond their means indefinitely. A crash will come and pain will be widespread.

"Mortgage companies have significantly tightened credit lately to borrowers with weak credit histories and are even cracking down on those with solid records who are taking on riskier loans."

Steve Walsh, a Scottsdale mortgage broker, sees "a liquidity crunch. It’s a credit freeze." Again, Bajaj:

"Lenders say they are increasingly unable to persuade investors to buy packages of home loans made to borrowers with little or no down payment or those who cannot fully document their incomes. As a result, many companies are no longer offering such loans to potential buyers (emphasis added)."

Loans to people "who cannot fully document their incomes?" Will someone explain that? Richard F. Syron, chief executive of Freddie Mac, speaks of "excesses in the market in recent years." With reference to the evaporating, but shortsightedly overextended credit pool, he says, “There are...loans that probably should never have been made and providing more liquidity will make that situation worse in the long term.”

Douglas M. Peta, chief market strategist at J. & W. Seligman & Company, a New York investment firm, says, “It seems to me things got every bit as silly in the credit markets in the last few years as they did in tech stocks in the late 1990s.” The housing market is flat, and I have been hearing about a lot of foreclosures recently.

If we see tighter credit and a wave of foreclosures while the economy continues to grow, that means hope that one-income middle class families like mine might squeak into the housing market. Everyone else should read The Two-Income Trap and radically reconsider the meaning of the word "credit limit" before they become foreclosure statistics themselves. But will the falling housing market take the economy with it?

Lesson for citizen-consumers: live within your means.

Lesson for statesmen: the public good still includes fostering a virtuous citizenry. You cannot leave this to the market. Far from supporting citizen virtue naturally with an invisible hand, the market is more likely to be what you have to combat.

Hotel Rwanda Hospitable Again

Have you seen Hotel Rwanda? See it. I make all my Introduction to Politics students watch it (or Schindler's List, The Killing Fields, or The Inner Circle) to dramatize the fact that the stakes involved in politics are deathly high. In 1994, in a genocidal rampage, Rwandans from the Hutu tribe slaughtered 800,000 Tutsis and Tutsi sympathizing Hutus.

Now, 13 years later, Nicholas Kristof reports in The New York Times ("Africa: Land of Hope," July 5, 2007): Rwanda "is clean, safe and enjoying economic growth more than twice as fast as the U.S. or Europe." After the transition of many African nations to independence, "Africa drove over a cliff. Of those countries with good data, one-third now have lower per capita incomes than they did at independence (typically about 1960), and the five worst-performing economies in the world from 1960 to 2001 were all in Africa. What went wrong? The two most important reasons were that Africa was terribly governed and that it was torn apart by wars."

It is academically unfashionable to suggest that individuals, even "great men," shape and direct history, but Kristof points to the presidency of Paul Kagame who is "honest, intelligent and capable. President Kagame reads Harvard Businesss Review...." Kagame is candid in recognizing that his country lacks "that culture of hard work, that culture of being ambitious and wanting to achieve. I believe that those values were in Africans, but I don't know what dampened it -- what killed it." Kristof suggests that "malaria, anemia, worms and misrule" explain a lot. Of course, the misrule explains a lot of the malaria, anemia and worms. Marxist sympathizing, U.S. Constitution despising American leftists should take note.

Africa is the one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century. National independence, western educated leaders and an immense wealth of natural resources, yet devasting poverty, disease, despotism and bloodshed. Will the 21st century see the rise of Africa? Kristof sees hope: "when African countries have enjoyed stability and sound policies, they have often thrived. Indeed, the fastest growing country in the world from 1960 to 2001 was Botwana (South Korea was second, and Singapore and China tied for third). More and more African countries are now following the Botswana model of welcoming investors and obeying markets."

Hey, Mr. Kristof! Can you convince your friends in the Democratic party to show a similar respect for markets? (See The Wall Street Journal on the same day: "Trade Double-cross: House Democrats Go Protectionist," the lead editorial, and "Dodging the Guest-worker Bullet: the last thing our economy needed was the Senate's ham-handed attempt to regulate the flow of low-skilled labor," by Gordon H. Hanson, pp. A14-15.)

The words preached by Benjamin Colman in a 1730 sermon delivered in Boston are aptly noted here:

God hath set the world upon the gorvernments and rulers, whom he has made the pillars of it. ...[T]he peace, tranquility and flourishing of places are made to depend on the wisdom and fidelity of their rulers, in the good administration of the government. While the utmost misery and confusion defalls those places where the government is ill administered. The reason is given in the text [I Samuel 2:8], "God has set the World" on this foot; it can't stand on any other bottom. The virtue and religion of a people, their riches and trade, their power, honour and reputation; and the favour of God toward them, with his blessing on them; do greatly depend on the pious, righteous and faithful government which they are under." -- Political Sermons of the American Founding Era, Ellis Sandoz ed. (LibertyPress, 1991)