I probably wouldn’t bring this up but for the fact that liberals, and others, still talk occasionally about President Bush’s “failure” to bring our so-called traditional allies to the table (and, perhaps, into the war in Iraq).  As I have understood that argument, those traditional allies numbered four:  Germany, France, Great Britain, Canada (?) and Australia.  Well, two of those traditional allies who did come to the table and into the war are Great Britain and Australia.

Peter Hitchens discusses our relatations with the British:

“The two countries were at each other's throats many times in the 19th century. Powerful forces in Washington wanted to annexe Canada and much British diplomacy was needed to prevent this. A dispute over the frontier in the far North-West almost led to gunfire in the 1850s. And Britain came close to intervening openly on the side of the Confederacy in the American Civil War. A British shipyard built the Confederate raider CSS Alabama, which did terrible damage to the North's shipping. The victorious North did not forget, and sued Britain for the then enormous sum of £3 million in compensation. There was real resentment and anger over this. Senator Charles Sumner, Chairman of the powerful Foreign Relations Committee, said Britain's breach of neutrality was so serious that it had doubled the length of the war, and that Britain ought to hand over Canada to the USA as redress.”

But don’t think, Hitchens doesn’t like us.  Nothing could be further from the truth:

“I have lived in the USA and loved it. I like Americans. I am glad of the help the USA have sometimes given us, and not resentful about the times when they have pursued their own interests at our expense.”

Incidentally, yes, this Hitchens is related to Christopher Hitchens.  In fact, they are brothers.

I’ve been blogging a bit at Townhall.com.  (I especially like this post [The Tanker Brothers and The Red Sky Brothers might like it too], and this one.)  So far, to be quite honest, I’m not really pleased.  So far, it’s not as user-friendly as Blogger.  I hate to say it, but Blogger, for all of its butt-pains, is still superior.  I’ll stick it out for a bit, though, because that’s just the kind of guy I am.  Besides, to merely complain and not try to help with a solution isn’t very mature.

Why Congress itself may be the problem

In my previous post, I intimated that Congress might be at fault for the fact that the minimum wage is not keeping pace with executive salaries. For purposes of discussion, I accepted as true Byron Dorgan’s claim that if the minimum wage kept pace with executive salary growth it would be about $23.00 per hour. I don’t know that this is true. But it doesn’t matter, because it won’t affect my argument. (It also doesn’t affect my argument that the legislation has now failed. We’ll be having this discussion again soon enough.)

My argument is that the solution to the problem (that the minimum wage does not pace executive salary growth) actually came out of Dorgan’s own mouth. I also suggested that the fact that salary is determined by market forces and that minimum wage is not should have given Dorgan and other a clue to that solution.

Many people argue against the minimum wage by pointing to the fact that the vast majority of people making minimum wage are not trying to support families on that wage. I will not waste time making that argument. My main reason for that is that it is irrelevant. Having come to the conclusion that the market is the best determiner of wage (just as it is for salary), I do not want to employ an argument which still leaves open the possibility that Congress is a better determiner of an acceptable minimum wage than the market is.

My argument against congressional determination of a minimum wage is three-fold. First, as I’ve already pointed out, the market does a good job of setting executives’ salaries, as Dorgan himself recognizes; and this ought to be taken as evidence that the market can also set a minimum hourly wage. Second, such legislation actually puts out of work the very people Congress pretends to want to help. Third, the reason that, once Congress sets a minimum hourly wage, it doesn’t keep pace with executive salary is inflation, not corporate greed (or whatever other evil monster some prehensile politician wants to blame).

I

The first reason is that people who actually work for minimum wage (as well as, possibly, some who work for more than minimum wage) will work less; this means that, while their wage will increase, their actual income will decrease. Now, how can this be? Get your calculator handy: we have some math to do.Let’s imagine a business, any business. Let’s assume that in this business there are five controllable costs, v, w, x, y, and z. In our case, w represents labor, including executive salaries. (Non-controllable costs vary from business to business, so we won’t take them up here. If our make-believe business were a construction company lumber might be one of the other controllable costs.)

Let us say that, taking into account all other controllable costs, in order to be profitable our business cannot sustain labor costs in excess of 21 percent of adjusted gross sales. 5 percent of this is salaried management (who, by the way, may work up to 70 hours a week with no overtime). Our labor budget for hourly employees is then 16 percent. So, when we are planning our fiscal year we project our adjusted gross sales to be $32,000,000.00, giving us a labor cost (hourly wage employees) of not more than $5,120,000.00. To simplify things, let’s break this adjusted gross sales down to a weekly average (that is, divide it by 52): $615,384.62, giving us a weekly labor budget of $98,461.54.

To calculate the number of hours we need to schedule in order to reach this goal, we divide this figure by our average hourly wage. (We arrive at this average by totaling the hourly amounts each of our employees are paid and dividing this total by the number of employees.) Let's say that this average wage is $12.50. Dividing $98,461.54 by $12.50 we see that we can schedule no more than 7876.92 hours. If we schedule those hours and actually do at least $615,384.62 in adjusted gross sales, then we shall make our labor budget.Let us say, now, that an increase in the minimum wage increases our average hourly wage to the desired $7.25. This affects only any employees we have working for us who make the present minimum. Thus our average wage does not increase by the same amount as the minimum. But it does increase. In our case, it increases only to $12.76 per hour. That doesn’t look too bad, does it? Let’s see how bad it isn’t.

Using the same sales and labor budget figures, the number of hours we can schedule comes to 7716.92. This means that we shall have to decrease the number of hours that we schedule by 160.00 hours. 160.00. hours!!! When we divide that figure by 40 hours (i.e., the number of hours in a full-time workweek) we find that we have cut 4 full time employees.

We now have a question to ask ourselves, as good business managers. Are we going to let 4 full-time, experienced employees go? Not on your life. So where are we going to cut these hours? From those minimum wage workers, of course. Remember those poor people Congress was helping with that increase in the minimum wage? Many of them just lost their jobs. And guess what else? The amount of business our company is going to do didn’t decrease. So those employees who were not let go will now be working harder. And for a while they will be working harder with no immediate increase in their pay.

And don’t think those executives have it easy just because they didn’t lose their jobs. Or did they? Remember, we limited ourselves only to hourly employees because we are discussing the minimum hourly wage. But let’s assume all of them kept their jobs, along with all of the experienced hourly workers—all of whom are probably union. Those executives have to do the same amount of business minus 4 employees.

I know what you’re thinking. It’s only 4 employees, not very experienced at that. But remember, they were only less experienced; and that wasn’t going to be true very long. Also, the way that man-hours are calculated reveals just how valuable those less experienced employees may have become. 4 employees, working 8 hours per day each amounts to 32 man-hours of work per day, 160 man-hours of work per week, 640 hours per month, 8,320 hours of work per year, their skills and experience improving every day, every week. In their absence, that work will still need to be done.

I know what else you’re thinking. Why not just increase the labor budget and keep those 4 employees? That’s pretty easy to say. But recall that we are looking at only one of the many variables that affect the profitability of a business. If this were a construction company some of the other costs would include lumber, microlams, floor joists, sheet rock, nails (take a look around your house at all the stuff that was there before you moved your stuff in). How easy is it to control those costs? Do you know? Shouldn’t you know before you start screwing around with someone’s business? (Don’t forget that the suppliers of the materials I briefly listed also have their own costs—including labor—to meet.)

The only other way we can make our labor budget is to increase sales somehow, which we can do only by either increasing the number of people who choose to do business with us or by raising our prices just enough to cover the average wage increase we just experienced thanks to Congress. Of course, we'll have to raise our prices eventually; so will all of our competitors, who are having the same labor problems we are. It's just a matter of which of us will raise his prices first. Since none of us want to go first, all of us are going to cut hours from our minimum wage workers until one of us just has to start increasing prices.

This problem will affect anyone who has minimum wage employees; and as employers increase prices to offset the cost of the hike, the benefit will disappear. And when it does, there will be more demands to increase the minimum wage yet again...and again...and again; and so on. And when the wage is increased yet again employers will be faced with the problem the solution to which "caused" the need for the increase in the first place.So, the only way that Congress can make the minimum wage increase of any lasting value will be to forbid employers from cutting the number of hours worked. Not only that, but it occurs to me that Congress will also have to add a price freeze to the wage hike. In other words, businesses will be forbidden to raise prices (which will be defined as “gouging” in order to make people angry and support such a move). But of course, this price freeze won’t help with that other problem.

Let’s look at that problem.

II

Another problem with artificial increases in the minimum wage is inflation. In 1983 I bought a pickup truck for around $10,000. If I had bought that same, or a comparable auto, in 2000, then, utilizing Gross Domestic Product deflator method it would have cost me $15,375. Here's a funny thing: when I bought a new car in 2000 it cost right around $15,500! So the amount I was charged for my auto in 2000 was the same amount, adjusting for inflation, that I paid in 1983 for a comparable auto. Now let's look at the artificially (and arbitrarily) set (as opposed to market set) minimum wage. When I first started working, in 1982, the minimum wage was $3.35 per hour. It is now $5.15. Adjusting for inflation, using GDP deflator, that $3.35 would be the equivalent of $6.80 today. Clearly, this seems to bolster the argument for increasing the minimum wage. What it actually does is demonstrate the problem with setting the minimum wage by law: the law itself is not keeping up with inflation. To keep pace with inflation would require new minimum wage legislation every year or so. I think it’s easy to understand how automobile prices have managed to keep up with inflation, and how minimum wages will also if we let market forces set the wage. Unlike the minimum wage, automobile prices keep up with inflation because those prices are determined by the market, not by Congress; and the market is keeping up with inflation.Right now, the wage set by Congress is not keeping pace with inflation, because it’s locked in by law. So right now, that wage works well for employers. But we are being mentally lazy if we truly believe that a minimum wage can be effectively prescribed by law. When the minimum wage does go up, as it inevitably must (because Congress must repeatedly account for their screw-ups), that new wage will not keep up with inflation. It will be frozen in place while inflation increases.This, I think, explains much of the problem with executive salaries. The minimum wage is meant to be a wage paid to unskilled laborers. The unskilled have nothing to negotiate over. Executives are not unskilled. When companies are competing for executives whose skills they need, those applicants are able to negotiate better packages than the relatively unskilled. And, unlike hourly wage employees, whose wages are a function of the minimum wage, executive salaries, like auto prices, are likely keeping pace with inflation. As with auto prices, I find it easy to understand how executive salaries—without legislative interference—are able to keep up with inflation, but the minimum hourly wage can't. Hourly wages for skilled laborers are likely kept lower than they might otherwise be because they are all a function of the minimum wage; executive salaries, because they are unrelated to the minimum wage, are free to grow with inflation because these salaries are determined by the executive labor market. Clearly the market does a better job of determining salaries than Congress does of determining the minimum wage.There is another problem with the minimum wage. The last minimum wage increase (to $5.15) was in 1997, if memory serves. To keep up with inflation it should be about $6.07. But it isn't $6.07; it's still $5.15. Executives’ salaries are not now what they were in 1997. Now, let's say that Congress raises the minimum wage tomorrow to $7.25. That $7.25 will be ahead of inflation, which means that employers will be paying much more by far than even inflation requires. It raises the question: If, after the minimum wage increase to $7.25, employers will already be paying too much for their unskilled labor, why should they increase wages for their skilled labor?

But don’t worry. In a few more years, when that $7.25 has been deprived of all value due to inflation we’ll be at this again.

III

I have already mentioned—several times, in fact—that no legislation is required for executive salaries. Note also, that no legislation is required for professional athlete salaries. Clearly, the market does a decent job of setting the price when it comes to salary. Any yet, we are told that without a minimum wage legislated by Congress, people just won’t be able to live. Ostensibly, this is because businesses are greedy.

But if greed explains why wages will not be livable, it ought to explain why salaries are too low for executives to live on. That same greed which would purposely keep wage earners in poverty would surely do the same for executives, shouldn’t it? Of course, no one in Congress that I know of, is making the argument that executive salaries are too low for people to live on. Apparently, executives are doing well enough. One wonders how, with all that greed going around.

If employers were allowed to pay unskilled workers what those unskilled workers’ labor was worth to them (i.e., the employers) more of the employers’ labor budgets could be devoted to the pay of skilled workers, who because of their skills would be in as good a negotiating position as skilled executives.
Again, the question demands an answer from Congress: Why is it that executive salaries are so good that Congress sees no need to meddle with them?

This is the part where I go ad hominem. I think the reason Congress gets all on fire about the minimum wage is that there are more wage earners in the nation than there are executives. In a democratic republic when you’re a career politician you need a steady stream of votes. In order to get those votes, you need to appeal to a majority. And when that majority is wage earning, and relatively ignorant when it comes to economics, you can appeal for their votes on the basis of the amount of their employers’ money you are going to force those employers to part with, in taxes and wage increases. And it doesn’t even have to work; it just has to look good. The evil you may cause is irrelevant if your intentions are good, or at least you can say they’re good. Congress must keep doing this in order to have a steady stream of voters.

Whatever else these mercenary, vote-hunting politicians tell us, don’t let’s lose sight of two facts:

1. The Congress interferes with hourly wages by setting a minimum wage; and hourly wage employees are poorly paid, poorly fed, poorly sheltered, poorly clothed, poorly educated, underprivileged.

2. The Congress does not interfere with executive salaries—YET!!!—and executives are (relatively) well paid, well fed, well sheltered, well clothed, well educated, well heeled.

Employees whose incomes are set by the market are happy. Employees whose incomes are set by Congress are unhappy. The market compensates well and Congress doesn’t.

Minimum wage talk is a part of the whole politics of envy. It constitutes little more than a transfer of wealth. There is little difference between my putting a gun to you and telling you to give $7.25 to your neighbor and putting a gun to you to force you to give me $7.25 which I then give to your neighbor. In both cases, I have succeeded in robbing you of $7.25.

Towards a well-defined problem

In his Metaphysics, Aristotle says (and I happen to think he’s right), “For those who wish to get clear of difficulties it is advantageous to state the difficulties well; for the subsequent free play of thought implies the solution of the previous difficulties, and it is not possible to untie a knot which one does not know” (III, 1).

In the epigraph of the first chapter of his Miracles C. S. Lewis translates the first clause as, “Those who wish to succeed must ask the right preliminary questions.” Either way you translate it, the point is well made. Before you set out to solve a problem, it is well to be clear on the problem you are attempting to solve. And for my money there is no sphere of human activity where there are more people working will-nilly to solve more problems, having at the same time no precise statement of the difficulty they are attempting to get clear of.

Byron Dorgan was on Charlie Rose, recently, talking about the minimum wage. During the conversation Congressman Dorgan claimed that if the minimum wage had been keeping pace with the rate of growth of executive salaries then it would be $23 per hour. Maybe. It doesn’t really matter, because the solution to the problem should still have shot him right between the eyes. If he, and others, were not so busy trying to solve a poorly stated problem (i.e., the minimum wage is too low), he might have noticed that the real solution to the problem he thinks exists just about came out of his own mouth.

Note that executive salaries have increased without any help from Congress. Hmmmm. What explains this, I wonder. To listen to Democrats and quite a few Republicans you’d think that executives set their own salaries, or, alternatively, that executive salaries are the result of someone’s greed. There is a big difference between hourly wages and executive salaries; and I’m not referring to size. Now, either Byron Dorgan has no idea what that difference is or he does know what that difference is. (That’s logic!) In the former case, he is an ignorant politician, opining like a sage on topics he knows nothing about. In the latter case, he is a devious, lying politician, capitalizing on the general public’s general ignorance of economic realities for the advantage of himself and his party. (Just like many Republicans. I know.)

Rather than just out and tell you what is that significant difference between the minimum hourly wage and executive salaries, which would be fun, of course, let me just ask you two questions: (1) Which of the two is set by Congress? and (2) Which of the two is determined by the market?

Is it of no importance that the income set by Congress is the income with which Congress iteratively finds fault? Is it of no importance that the income determined by a freely operating market is the income which many think is “too high”?

I think one reason that many people don’t like conservative, capitalist, free market economic positions is that those positions are counterintuitive. They seem to go against most people’s intuitions. These positions require more thought than most people really have time for. Most people have time only for superficial examinations; and on the basis of those examinations it just seems to make sense that if people are not making “enough” then it is because employers just are not paying “enough.” The obvious solution to the problem is that the government ought to make employers pay “enough.” And yet, without any legislation from Congress on the matter, executive salaries increase exponentially in comparison to the minimum wage, salaries which are, ostensibly, more than “enough.” If the claim is true that businesses won’t “enough” unless Congress makes them, then why do many of those same businesses pay more than “enough” in executive salaries without being made by Congress to do so? (That was one of those “right preliminary questions,” if you follow Lewis’ translation.)

The asking of that question raises the possibility (perhaps even the probability) that the greatest problem with the hourly wage is Congress itself. After all, with respect to income, what Congress leaves alone flourishes; what it legislates stagnates.

Before going on, I really need to point out that one does not always have a right to one’s beliefs. People may believe that businesses won’t pay a “decent” wage unless forced by Congress to do so. But they may not have a right to that belief such that they may use that belief as the basis for certain legislative acts.

But surely, in America, under the protection of freedom of speech and so forth, we all have the right to our beliefs? We do. The sort of “right” that I am talking about is an “epistemic right.” So when I say that some people have no right to their beliefs, I mean that they do not have an “epistemic right” to those beliefs. And this is especially true, I think, if these beliefs are going to serve as the reason why the government is going to tell people what to do with their money.

Now, what do I mean by the phrase, “epistemic right”? An epistemic right is a bit like a legal right in that the issue is justification. In theories of knowledge, justification is a normative activity; in other words, there are rules to follow in justifying one’s beliefs. When one has followed these rules, one has“epistemic right” to one’s beliefs.

When C. S. Lewis first met his tutor, William T. Kirkpatrick (whom he called The Great Knock) for the first time, in attempt to make small talk, he said something like, “It's a nice day,” and The Great Knock said, "What do you mean by ‘nice’ and on what grounds do you attribute those qualities to this day?” My step-daughter (to whom I was a tutor myself during her high school years) will tell you that having an interaction with me can be much like Lewis’ experience with Kirkpatrick. (That last sentence was plot exposition.)

Now, when Kirkpatrick asked Lewis to present the grounds for his belief that the day was “nice,” he was asking Lewis for a justification of that belief. He was questioning whether Lewis had an epistemic right to his belief that it was a “nice” day.

So when I question whether people have an “epistemic” right to the belief that business will not pay a certain wage unless forced to do so by Congress, I am asking to be told what justifies this belief. Frankly, I don’t think there is a justification: most of those trying to solve the problem seem unaware that their beliefs about both the existence and the nature of the problem require any justification in the first place.

That justification, if and when it is given, must explain why it is that increases in executive salaries do not require Congressional interference but increases in minimum hourly wage do require such interference. While they complain about the minimum wage, Congress has yet to offer this explanation.

And the reason that Congress is not quick to give us this explanation is that, as I’ve already insinuated, Congress is the problem. Before I offer an explanation of how this is the case, I must digress in order to clarify what I’m up to.

II

A certain Christian organization, on whose email list I placed myself, recently emailed me (and everyone else on the list, of course) to ask that I call my Congressional representative and urge him to vote in favor of the minimum wage increase (to $7.25/hour). I was urged to say something like this:

As a person of faith, I believe that people who work hard and play by the rules should not be living in poverty. I ask that you vote in favor of legislation to raise the minimum wage to at least $7.25 an hour.

I cannot possibly do as requested. First, I was offered no justification for the belief that “people who work hard and play by the rules should not be living in poverty.” Second, I’m really not certain, for analytical reasons, that I truly understand what the proposition asserts.

Although, I changed my major, my initial academic training was in Philosophy. As a consequence, I cannot help but ask about the truth value of just about any proposition I read or hear. (Ask my wife.) Is it really true that “People who work hard and play by the rules should not be living in poverty”? How might one demonstrate that “People who work hard and play by the rules should not be living in poverty”? Supposedly, I am to believe this as a “person of faith.” My faith, I guess, instructs me that God has spoken on the issue and has said, somewhere, that “People who work hard and play by the rules should not be living in poverty.”

Much as I’d like to believe otherwise, I do not believe that my faith instructs me that “People who work hard and play by the rules should not be living in poverty.” Christians are taught many things about the poor. One of the things that the Scriptures do not teach is that those “who work hard and play by the rules” should not be among the poor. (Now, I suppose that someone could argue that while the faith does not explicitly teach that “People who work hard and play by the rules should not be living in poverty” the natural law does. But even if I grant that, which I won’t, while “the faith” and “the natural law” may overlap and intersect each other, they are not identical. This Christian group invoked “the faith,” not the “natural law.”)

The proposition (i.e., “People who work hard and play by the rules should not be living in poverty”) begs for analysis. Being an “analysis wonk,” I will give it the analysis that’s wanted.

There are at three concepts involved here: (1a) Hard (with respect to work) as opposed to non-hard, I guess; (1b) work; (2a) Playing; (2b) the rules; (3) poverty.

When you break it down like this (and I’m taking it easy on myself, because I’m extraordinarily busy) several important (preliminary!) questions emerge. And these are questions which I think ought to be answered before these people try to get anyone to act:

1. Why is it that only those who both (a) work and(b) play by the rules are entitled not to live in poverty? Why not those who merely work (hard, or not) but still play by the rules? Why should only those who work hard (and play by the rules) be entitled one to a ticket out of poverty?

2. What separates those who work hard from those who merely work? Does the phrase “work hard” mean “engage in physical labor”?

3. It’s clear enough what work is, I suppose. But what exactly do we mean by “playing by the rules”? “Playing” what, by the rules? The “Game of Life”? Is it possible to work hard, but not play by the rules? (I don’t deny the logical possibility, of course: it’s possible for a mobster to be as hard working as any executive.) If so, do those people have a right not to live in poverty? Or must they both a) work and b)play by the rules? Or is it really that “playing by the rules” is synonymous with “working hard”? If so, then why add the bit about “playing by the rules”? Why not just say that, “People who work hard should not be living in poverty”?

4. What are these rules the rules? In other words, if we are going to speak meaningfully about those “who play by the rules” we have to ask, “The rules for what?” Clearly, they are not the rules for basketball, baseball, football, or (heaven forbid!) soccer. So, what are these rules, the playing by which entitles one not to live a life of poverty?

5. Whatever these rules are, who wrote them? Where can we go to read them?

6. And just how did employers come to be bound by these rules? In football, baseball, and so forth, participants agree beforehand to abide by the rules, which are written, and which can be agreed to by all before play begins. Both teams agree to be judged in accordance with these previously agreed-to rules. In contract law both parties to a contract agree to the terms of the contract. So, even if I accept as true the proposition that “People who work hard… should not be living in poverty,” how did employers come to be responsible for ensuring that those who work hard don’t live in poverty? Is there a contract somewhere, signed by all employers and employees which stipulates something like, “Party A, hereinafter referred to as Employer, agrees inter aliathat Party B, hereinafter referred to as Employee, working hard and playing by the rules is entitled at Employer’s cost to a life free from poverty”? Or is this one of those things that we are all supposed to “just know,” like I “just know” that I am incredibly hot.

7. What is poverty? Who decides this? And why is the decision of these people normative for everyone else? (An assumption I have on the matter is that if people of faith are going to decry poverty and demand that government do something about it, then they should decry poverty as God defines it, and not as the government of the United States defines it.)

To avoid looking like I’m just playing games, I need to explain why those questions are so very important.

III

1. I happen to know a few things about the group who sent me the email. They don’t believe that anyone should live in poverty. They believe that poverty can be done away with and that Christians should work hard, and use the government, to bring about this happy result. So when they say that those who work hard, etc., should not be living in poverty, they are not being very honest. The purpose of this question is to get the problem well-stated. If you believe that no one should live in poverty, but you say that those who work hard shouldn’t, then you haven’t stated well the problem that you really want to solve. You are, in fact, being dishonest.

2. Use of the adjective hard may give the impression that there are those who do not work hard and that those who do not work hard, despite playing by the rules, may deserve to live in poverty. Use of the adjective confuses things a bit; it doesn’t elucidate.

3. This question must be asked because a well-stated problem shouldn’t specify two conditions, “a… and…b” which really are not two different conditions. Use of the conjunction and seems to indicate that people are entitled not to live if poverty if they satisfy two conditions: (1) working hard, and (2) playing by the rules. If one must meet the condition (in addition to working hard) of playing by the rules, it must be clear what, exactly, constitutes playing. It must be clear what is being played.

4. If following the rules entitles one not to live in poverty, it must be clear what is the connection between these rules and living in poverty. The identification of this connection must also include specification of the rules themselves.

5. We need also to understand the pedigree of these rules: rules which create a right and/or create an obligation should not come from nowhere; the “creator(s)” of these rules should have the authority to promulgate them and require obedience to them. (For example, Congress’s authority to legislate comes from the people (through the Constitution) of the states which form the union.)

6. Typically, if someone truly has a right, the enjoyment of that right does not cost others. My right to free speech does not obligate you to pay for me to have a platform from which to make my speech. My right to keep and bear arms does not require you to purchase my weapons and ammunition. If those who work hard and play by rules are entitled not to live in poverty, we should have an explanation for why they get to enjoy this right at the expense of their employers.

7. We can’t just assume an understanding of poverty. Poverty is different things to different people. There are people in the world who might prefer living in poverty in the U. S. rather than the poverty they live in presently. It isn’t enough just to say, in addition to all else, that people, for whatever reasons, are entitled not to live in poverty. We must distinguish, first of all, whether we are talking about absolute poverty of relative poverty. The former is defined as “the threshold below which families or individuals are considered to be lacking the resources to meet the basic needs for healthy living; having insufficient income to provide the food, shelter and clothing needed to preserve health.” The latter is defined as having “significantly less access to income and wealth than other members of society.” Unless this Christian group is going to base its positions on the politics of envy, it may be best to assume they have in mind absolute poverty. On their view, then, what they are saying is that people who work hard and play by the rules (whatever all of that may mean) are entitled to live above that “threshold below which families or individuals are considered to be lacking the resources to meet the basic needs for healthy living; having insufficient income to provide the food, shelter and clothing needed to preserve health.” But even if this is what they mean, we still really don’t have a well-defined problem. For what they want, on this view of things, is for employers merely to supply a lack. When one supplies what another lacks, that is charity. These people seem really to be saying that people who want charity must work for it. Now, I just happen to know that this is not what these Christians really think, which is why I assert that they don’t have a well-defined problem. Hence, they won’t be getting a solution any time soon. (Moreover, your employer will start treating you like he’s doing you a favor—charity—by giving you a job in the first place.)

That last parenthetical point hints at why we free market people tend to view employment in terms of market thinking. It isn’t because we don’t care about the poor. It’s because we draw a distinction between a job and an act of charity. These Christians—and certain politicians—confuse the two. On a market view, a job isn’t a bit of charitable giving on an employer’s part. My employer isn’t doing me a favor in giving me a job; and I do him no favors by working for him. The real truth is that I have a skill which my employer needs very much; and right now the market is not flooded with people who do what I do. It’s not that my employer can’t do the job that I do; he can. However, he cannot all the work that he has. He simply has more work than he can do himself. It is to both of our benefits that he hired me. That is what, among other things, markets exist for: to enable both the seller (i.e., me) and the purchaser (i.e., my employer) to benefit from the transaction. He “purchases” my labor at a price determined by the market for my skill-set. Right now that market is such that I make good money. But I digress.

In the absence of the clarity which would be derived by answering my seven question-sets, how now are we to understand the following?

As a person of faith, I believe that people who work hard and play by the rules should not be living in poverty. I ask that you vote in favor of legislation to raise the minimum wage to at least $7.25 an hour.

It isn’t as easy as all that, is it?

In my next post, I’ll explain why Congress is actually the problem. It’s going to be exciting.

I thought of another reason I might want to stop posting pseudonymously:  I don’t want people to think that I’m this guy.  I might not be better looking (although I do just happen to think I am), but I’m certainly not as goofy-looking.  Egads!!!

Hello,…I have tried talking to other conservative bloggers, but all they do is try to make me look like an idiot and  refuse to answer my questions.

First off, I'm a teenage Christian and I have liberal views, unlike most Christians I guess. However, I am strongly against abortion and gay marriage, and I believe in a stricter justice system (but not capital punishment, because I think it’s still murder).  So I think of myself as being more center than you, who call yourself a right of center Christian democrat.

It seems to me that you're completely supportive of Bush, but also pro life like me. So, what’s the difference between killing a baby, and killing a whole generation of Iraqi people?

How can you possiblye see a difference?  Don’t you think that in God's eyes, murder is murder, and no matter who you kill it's still a sin. I just don't understand how you can claim to be close to God when you  support a war for profit, which is completely against God's Word.  Jesus was a pacifist, wasn’t he?  Why should Christians be exempt from the duty of pacifism? We won’t solve the problem of terrorism by having more wars and death and violence.

Secondly, Jesus taught us to help the poor and needy. Conservative values are all about helping themselves.  They don’t care about the poor.  They seem to be saying, “Who cares about the poor! They should get a job anyway!” Conservatives believe in lower taxes, which in turn lowers social programs that help people at the bottom rung of the ladder. How can you possibly say that it is moral to prevent children from going to school and getting the proper healthcare just because they can't pay for it?   You people tell a single mother of two to get a job, but who will take care of her kids? How can Christians be conservative and adopt the  selfish and greedy values of making more money, getting more power, helping only yourself when it's obvious that God wants everyone to have a chance at living a happy, healthy life.

The reason I'm strongly religious is because I believe in God. We were put on this Earth to do good. I can't say that I know the Bible by heart, nor can I quote many scriptures, but I know that we show our true love to God when we are good people and we help others, rather than one-up them either by bombing their countries or by keeping the necessities of life all to ourselves and not sharing it with the needy.  If that’s true, how can you be so conservative?  It doesn’t make sense.

Dear Jane,

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to correct your understanding of conservatism, economics, theology, and Scripture—just to keep the list short.  I’ll just take each of your points, or questions, in turn.

I don’t think it very accurate to say that we are killing an entire generation of Iraqis.  Those who are being killed fall into two classes: combatants and non-combatants.  The combatants are being killed because they are combatants.  Babies, to my knowledge, are not combatants.  That’s the difference Jane, the difference between killing those who will kill you when they get the opportunity and not killing a baby.  And, since we probably won’t kill all of the combatants or all of the non-cambatants, I think it’s fair to say we’re not killing any entire generation of Iraqis.

Now, you’re correct when you say that in God’s eyes murder is murder.  But I think what you were trying to say is that in God’s eyes all killing is murder.  I can assure you that it isn’t.  How?  Because the same God who said “Thou shalt not murder” also commanded that murderers be put to death.  Murder just is not simply taking a life; it has to be taking a life outside of the bounds which God has provided for taking life.  Two of those bounds are murderers and combatants in war.  Sorry.  In this matter you were, as Jesus once told some Sadduccees, “mistaken, not understanding the Scriptures.”  Furthermore, any support I have for this war is predicated upon my belief that profit making, while it may happen, is not the purpose for the war, as you seem to believe.  (The fact that someone is making a profit off of something related to this war doesn’t prove that the war is all about profit.  That would be like saying that the purpose of eating is excrement, or that the purpose of the automobile is to produce carbon monoxide.)

I’m afraid that Jesus was not a pacifist.  As a Catholic, you no doubt believe in the Trinity, which means that you believe that Jesus is a member of the Godhead (i.e., the second Person of the Trinity).  As you read the Scriptures pay attention, in the Old Testament, to all the wars that the Godhead (which includes The Son) commanded.  (In the New Testament, in may interest you to know that the Revelation of John depicts Jesus as returning, dressed for battle, to do battle with his enemies.)  Now unless you are going to assert that The Son disagreed with the other members of the Trinity about all those wars, you’re just going to have discard the idea that Jesus was a pacificist.  (It may interest you to know that neither Jesus, nor any of the Apostles or early Church Fathers, made soldiers leave the military.  I mean Jesus healed a Roman centurion’s servant, of all things.)

Yes, Jesus taught us to help the poor and needy. But you are out of line to say that conservative values are “the selfish and greedy values of making more money” and that they don’t care about the poor.  As you grow up it will be well if you learn not to attribute evil motives to people who happen not to agree with you about how to solve problems.  It will also be helpful if you will learn to summarize positions, rather than caricature them.  For example, I could caricature your position by that liberals believe that our God-given duty to the poor is fulfilled simply by paying our taxes—like Ebenezer Scrooge.

The fact that conservatives do not believe that the State is an effective charitable instutition in no way supports your claim that they do not care about the poor.  Many, like myself, give to charities.  Jesus wants you and I to care for the poor.  The difference between you and I isn’t that you (a liberal) care for more about the poor than I (a conservative).  The real difference is that your care doesn’t cost you much of your own money, and my concern costs me twice: once when I pay my taxes and again when I give to the charities I support.  Looks like I care more than you do; all you have to do is pay taxes—if you even do that at this point in your life.  (After you have looked at the tax returns of all conservatives, then maybe you will be entitled to talk about how little they care for the poor.)

You have said that Jesus wants us to care for the poor.  Fine.  If you want to do charity, Jane, go and do charity.  But don’t use the State to take a man’s money to give it to another and call that your charity.  Jesus did not command that.  Your charity for the poor ought to cost you, not your neighbor.  Your neighbor, whether you think he pays too little in taxes or not, may be doing his own charitable acts.  But even if he isn’t, Jesus didn’t give you the authority to do your neighbor’s charity for him.

Now, about those taxes.  I don’t know who explained taxes to you, but he or she did a poor job.  Conservatives don’t believe in lower taxes.  We believe in lower tax rates.  Lowering tax rates doesn’t lower tax revenues.  This is because any tax is a tax on economic activity.  Because you will get less of what you tax the higher the rate of taxation, the lower the rate of economic  growth.  Lowering tax rates (i.e., the percentage of a person’s income which will be taken) increases economic activity, which increases income, which actually produces more tax revenues, even the percentage is lower.  Look at it this way:  10-percent is less than 20-percent, right?  But would you rather have 10-percent of  $10,000.00 or 20-percent of $500.00?  It isn’t enough to ask just by what percentage someones taxes were decreased.  You also have to look at by what percentage his income increased.  If his income increased, then, even if his tax rate goes from 20 to 10 percent the amount he actually pays in taxes may go up.  And this isn’t guessing, Jane, this is empirically verifiable.  I’m not talking about what we conservatives wish would happen to revenues; I’m talking about what really does happen.  More to the point, now that the numbers are in, I’m talking about what is presently happening to tax revenues. (Actually, nothing is empirically verifiable, but this would involve an explanation  of  the difference between verifiability and falsifiablilty.  Maybe you can ask your science teacher about that.)

Well, I think I have fairly answered your questions.  But I have a word of caution for you.  When you are confronting a view with which you disagree, you should seek to summarize the view, rather than caricature the view, as you have done in your email.

Former Colorado Governor Dick Lamm is in trouble for what State Representative Terrance Carroll calls  “demonizing” a group of people.  His “demonizing” consisted of referring to a group of people as “underperforming,” and then offering suggestions about how they might improve their status.

“Demonize” means to make a demon out of, right?  Now, as I understand it, a demon is an evil angel—one of those who rebelled with Lucifer.  So then a demon is really just an underperforming angel.  Gosh, that doesn’t sound so bad.

Why is God sending all those poor underperfoming angels to the pit?

More than likely, Carroll was trying to sound profound when he damned Lamm by giving faint praise to demons.  It doesn’t really matter.  What he said moved the discussion nowhere—not even backwards.  Whatever word you want to use to describe where blacks and hispanics are when compared to other minority groups the questions still remain:  What is the best course of action to take in correcting the problem? and Who is directly responsible for taking that course of action?  While he was busy uplifting demons (beings, by the way, who intend humans more harm than terrorists intend Westerners), Carroll managed, apparently, to offer no answers to the questions.  Unlike Lamm, who probably cares as little about demons as I do.

I've spent most of the last couple of days listening to Democrats--and a few Republicans--criticizing Iraq's Prime Minister Maliki for not condemning Hezbullah. To a normal person, this would mean that Democrats have been wrong about Maliki's being our puppet over there. But I suspect it won't be long before we'll hear the likes of Chris Matthews asserting that this failure of the Bush Administration to control its Iraqi Puppet Government is just further testimony to its incompetence.

Incidentally, Hezbullah means "Party of God." How long will it be before it becomes daily fare for Dems to refer to Republicans as something like American's Hezbullah?

maybe. Not today. But soon. Maybe.

Still thinking about joining the Great Migration to Townhall. I get tired of Blogger's garbage. Just need to check out Townhall some more. If their bugs are worse... . Maybe figure out a way to move my archives over there also. Perhaps I should ask Josue about that. I also need to determine whether I really need to continue to blog pseudonymously anymore. There was a time when it was necessary; and it may have passed. (Not to mention the fact that I like my real name.) But since it has more to do with others’ safety, privacy, etc., and not mine, I’m not sure. On the other hand if I start blogging elsewhere non-pseudonymously then how will anyone know it’s me? Hmmmmm. I could call myself The Blogger Formerly Known As Philologous.

As I mentioned in a previous post, which I inadvertantly deleted later, blogging was a little lighter than usual last week due to preparation for a sermon I was asked to deliver.  Before that post and it’s attendant comments were  deleted, several people expressed an interest in it.  It’s posted here.

CAVEAT:  I am not a pastor.  In fact, many people have difficulty “placing” me.  Let me help you:  Some years ago I was talking to an acquaintance about my research interests and some other matters.  After a few minutes he said, “So, if all you Christians were like an army, you work in the intelligence branch.”  I don’t know about all that, but I can’t come up with a better word-picture.  Although…I was thinking more like strategic studies than military  intelligence: I’m more egg-head than spook.  The Oracle could judge how apt these word pictures are.

…you might as well show up for it, because the other guys will.

Once again I find my attention drawn to my Christian brothers on the left end of the spectrum.  So, to take my mind off my empty stomach:

The new war in the Middle East
by Jim Rice

What is the proper, appropriate response of a nation to violent attacks by terrorists or other radical extremists? We have seen one model illustrated in the response of the British government to last year's attacks on London's public transportation system, in which 52 people were killed and 700 injured. The British rightly understood the attacks as terrorist acts, but responded in a measured manner, dealing both with the investigation of the terrible crime and the need for enhanced security in its wake. Pointedly, the British did not opt for a military response to these acts of terror.

We have also, of course, seen an altogether different model of response, perhaps most clearly exemplified by the U.S. invasion of two countries - one of which was an actual source of the terror - following the horrors of Sept. 11, 2001.

Unfortunately, it seems to be in the latter spirit that Israel responded to terror attacks in the past fortnight. Provoked by the Hamas kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, Israel not only invaded the northern Gaza Strip but also destroyed a significant portion of Gaza's infrastructure, including airstrikes against Gaza's power grid.

Likewise, days later, when the Syrian-backed terror group Hezbollah seized the opportunity to raid northern Israel and capture two Israeli soldiers, Israel responded with a massive attack on Lebanon's civilian structures, from the Beirut airport to a dairy factory, civilian buses, bridges, power stations, and medical facilities, according to reports. Hezbollah responded by firing hundreds of rockets a day - more-modern, longer-range rockets than in the past - aimed intentionally at neighborhoods in Haifa and other Israeli cities. The result, not surprisingly, has been the death of many civilians on all sides.

The situation is clearly complicated by the role of Hezbollah as a part of the coalition government of Lebanon, which seems unable or unwilling (probably both) to disarm Hezbollah, which effectively controls the southern part of the country. The new warfare in the Middle East is also made worse by the sinister political manipulations of both Syria and Iran, who seek to increase their own power in the region no matter the human cost.

As soon as you called this warfare, Jim, you undid just about everything you were trying to do in the preceding paragraphs.  And you are correct: this is the “new warfare.”

But Israel's use of military attacks in response to acts of terror raises many questions. The most important, perhaps, revolves around the issue of legitimate self defense vs. collective punishment. Israel is indeed surrounded by sworn enemies, including many who are demonstrably willing to violently destroy Israel. But does the real need for security justify the massively disproportionate response to an act of terror? Is the collective punishment of an entire population ever morally and ethically justified? As Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican Secretary of State, put it in statement July 14, "The Holy See condemns both the terrorist attacks on the one side and the military reprisals on the other," stating that Israel's right to self-defense "does not exempt it from respecting the norms of international law, especially as regards the protection of civilian populations." The statement said further, "In particular, the Holy See deplores the attack on Lebanon, a free and sovereign nation."

The collective punishment of an entire population?  It doesn’t help anything if you’re going to exaggerate like that.  If Israel is attacking the entire population, then why are Lebanonese fleeing from south to north?  Hmmm.  Must be peaceful in the north.  I’m just guessing, of course.  (Actually, no I’m not.)

I know it writes well to ask about “the massively disproportionate response,” but, even if I wanted to credit your assertion that Hizbollah’s act was properly a terrorist one and not an act of open war, this talk of proportionality just won’t do.  This isn’t a game of quid pro quo.  This is war.  In war you don’t simply give back no more than the  aggressor sends.  Once war is given, war is what you’re fighting; and you fight war by doing more damage to the enemy than he does to you.  You have to—you HAVE to—kill more of him than he does of you.  You have to destroy more of his than he does of you.  You have to destroy his morale.  More, Jim.  You win wars by doing more, not proportional.  You’re so full of your non-biblical defintion of peace that you cannot, I suppose, be prevailed upon actually to know anything about how a war is fought.  And that’s interesting when one considers just how much your God knows about how to fight a war.

Oh, yeah:  The Holy See can deplore whatever it wants.  But this is not an attack on a free and sovereign nation.  It’s a counter-attack against an paramilitary organization which happens to have outposts in South Lebanon.  And international law is a pipe dream, the product of treaties.  Treaties are entered into either by coercion, or if by free choice, because they are deemed to be in the best interest of the signatories.  Treaties are not eternal covenants.  Besides, I know of no treaty which Israel has with Hizbollah.  I do know that the UN have yet to enforce Res. 1559, which is, let’s face it, pretty typical.  If the UN will not enforce its resolutions then it falls to the nations who should be protected by those resolutions to enforce those resolutions themselves.  Personally, I hope Israel disarms Hizbollah themselves!  THAT will do a whole heck of a lot more than the UN can even talk about doing.

Even apart from the ethical questions raised by Israel's massive retaliation, there are significant issues of efficacy: Does it work? Is Israel made more secure by a militarized approach? Israel has destroyed 42 bridges in Lebanon this week, along with 38 roads, communications equipment, factories, runways and fuel depots at the Beirut airport, and the main ports of Beirut and Tripoli. And along with the material devastation, the attacks constitute a terrible, possibly even fatal, threat to Lebanon's fragile and fledgling democracy.

Well, this just shows how much you don’t know, but think you do.  This move isn’t design to make Israel more secure.  You’re not paying attention.  This move is design to get back two soldiers and to retaliate against a first strike.  And it is Hisbollah that constitutes the “terrible, possibly even fatal, threat to Lebanon’s fragile and fledgling democracy.”

Personally, I see Israel’s military action as “planning ahead.”  Unlike you, Jim, they seem to be taking very seriously the role of all this Twelfth  Imam business.  You are not paying attention.

Does the destruction of much of Lebanon's civilian infrastructure, so painstakingly rebuilt after years of civil war and occupation by both Israeli and Syrian forces, bode well for future peace between the neighboring states? In sum, will the Israeli attacks bring long-term security for Israel, or will they further ensure that the next generation of Lebanese and Palestinians - across the theological and political spectrum - grow up with an undying hatred in their hearts?

Well golly gee, Jim.  Let’s see.  Do the recent actions by Hamas and Hizbollah bode well for future peace between the neighboring states?  I am not aware that those neighboring states have given up their oft-professed goal of sweeping the state of Israel in to the sea.  It would great fun to hear you explain how all of the responsibility for peace in the area falls upon Israel.

The violence of Hezbollah and Hamas should be unequivocally condemned and opposed. It cannot be ignored or underestimated that the two terrorist organizations have as their goal the eradication of Israel. However, much U.S. media coverage of this new Middle East war paints a misleading picture of a tit-for-tat equivalency between the two sides: Hezbollah explodes a bomb in Israel, Israel responds in kind. While their intentions are indeed malevolent, the two terrorist groups have nowhere near the military capability of Israel, which wields one of the most powerful military forces in the world (with the aid, of course, of more than $3 billion per year from the United States). The death toll in Lebanon in the first six days of the war has been tenfold that in Israel - according to The New York Times, 310 people, most of them civilians, have died in Lebanon while Israel has suffered 27 casualties, 15 of them civilians, since Israel began its attacks. (Similarly, 4,064 Palestinians and 1,084 Israelis have been killed since Sept. 29, 2000, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society and the Israel Defense Forces, respectively.)

Your talk of “opposing” the violence of Hizbollah and Hamas is meaningless since you seem to believe that opposing that violence with force of arms is inappropriate.  And as for the fact that neither Hamas nor Hizbollah has the military capability that Israel does, well that’s just too bad.  Didn’t your Lord say to count the cost?  If Hizbollah and Hamas have bitten off more than they can chew and swallow, let them see to it.  They gave war; and war is what Isreal is now fighting.  To say that “The death toll in Lebanon in the first six days of the war has been tenfold that in Israel” means, since this is war, that so far Israel is winning.  Again: you can only win a war by doing more harm to the enemy than he does to you.

One of the most difficult aspects of trying to be a peacemaker in the Middle East context is the "separation wall" of understanding between the two peoples. The very definition of what is happening is understood in vastly different ways by the two sides. Supporters of Israel see the country attacked by its sworn enemies, and see in its response a necessary and justified act of national self-defense. Others see the region's most powerful military force (supported by the world's most powerful military force) illegally occupying Palestinian land and engaging in massive, disproportionate attacks on innocent civilians.

Actually, the real problem with your trying to be a peace-keeper, is the unbiblically narrow definition of peace that you’re working with.  You seem to be of the opinion that Scripture defines peace as the absence of war, or hostility.  You’re wrong—to put it bluntly.  You need to do a word-study of shalom.  Then perhaps you’ll understand why some of us believe that sometimes the way to peace is through war.  Some people, Jim, just have to be beat down:  the Cathaginians; the Muslims (Battle of Tours); the British;  the French, during the Napoleonic Wars; the Germans, the Japanes, the Italians.

As Christians committed to the cause of peace, our role is not to "take sides" in the struggle, in the traditional sense, but rather to constantly stand for the "side" of a just and secure peace. We can ignore neither the horror of suicide bombings against Israeli civilians (including direct attacks on school children) nor the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories (with all its "collateral damage" to Palestinian children). We must have the vision and courage to stand against the acts of violence by terrorist organizations, as well as the massive state violence by the region's military superpower, while avoiding the trap of positing a false "equivalency" between actions that are not equal.

Massive state violence?  You haven’t seen any massive state violence on Israel’s part, Jim.  Not even.  Right now, Israel is delivering a thump on the head.  Hold onto your lug nuts, brother.

We cannot allow ourselves to be paralyzed by the political, strategic, and moral complexity of the situation to stand back and do nothing. A first step toward a more comprehensive resolution is an immediate operational cease-fire. But that must be followed by a new way of thinking because, as a U.N. official put it yesterday, "The Middle East is littered with the results of people believing there are military solutions to political problems in the region."

It’s all very well and good for you to assert that we can “stand back and do nothing.”  But in order for us to do something Christians (which, I assume, is the antecedent to the pronoun we) must have standing to act.  We do not.

One has to wonder just how well you have really thought this through, as opposed to merely emoting, which is what it looks like you have done.  You call for an operational cease-fire.  One of the questions for which we still await an answer from Israel’s critics is:  How do you have a cease-fire with TERRORISTS???

You also call for a new way of thinking because, as you imply, we cannot have “military solutions” to “political problems.”  First, your authority for the claim is a “U. N. official.”  Are you kidding, Jim?  As long as we’re talking about solutions, do we really want to look to the U. N. as a body of experts on political problem solving?  Uh, I don’t think so.  Second, all sorts of political problems have had military solutions.  The (legal) causes of the American Revolution were political problems.  Military solution?  I’d call that a big “Yes.”  The causes of the Texas Revolution were political problems.  Military solution?  I’m thinking pretty much “Yes.”  The two Great Teutonic Migrations of the first half of the twentieth century were political problems.  Military solution?  Affirmative.

It is interesting to see the phrase, political problem.  In what way is this a political problem?  A political problem just must be a problem within a political system, involving the issue how a problem is to be resolved within a group.  The Israelis and Hizbollah are not members of a political system.  Hisbollah is a political party in Lebanon, a political party with—get this!—a military wing, like the Nazi Party had.  (Can you say, “SS”?)  What if one of  our (i.e., American) reform parties had its own well-financed and well-armed (probably by Halliburton) militia and started shelling the Mexican state of Sonora from Arizona, and that (playing make-believe here) neither the government of Arizona nor the U.S. federal government could do a thing about it?  What should Mexico do?  Call Interpol?  This is not a political problem, Jim.  It’s a military problem.  Just so you know for future reference:  When people start firing deadly weapons on you, you have a military problem.  Besides, (as Clausewitz said, and as everyone who has studied the profession of arms quotes), “War is but the extension of policy by other means.”  You may dream that those means aren’t truly necessary, but that doesn’t make it so.

Jim Rice is editor of Sojourners magazine.

A few things that can be done:

Be consistent in denouncing the violence of both sides - especially when it is deliberately aimed at civilians (or targets where great civilian "collateral damage" will be the result).

Well, insisting that there be not even “collateral damage” will, in this day and age, pretty much do away with “total war,” but only on the part of everyone but groups like Hamas and Hizbollah.

Pray for the emergence of new political leadership on both sides - both of which seem bereft of creative, courageous, moral, or even pragmatic leadership.

Only because you have defined your terms such that war is prima facie evidence of a lack of creative, courageous, moral or even pragmatic leadership.  And, uh, given that your God Himself commanded war, up to and including “civilian” targets, what does that say about Him?

Challenge any religious voices that seem utterly one-sided, completely neglecting the suffering and legitimate grievances of both sides.

Accepting reality, unlike you, doesn’t mean that we neglect any suffering or grievances.  That being said, however, while I will stipulate to Hizbollah’s suffering, I reject the legitimacy of their so-called grievances.

Pray for new ways for Christians and our churches to join our Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters in finding real and practical solutions for a just peace in the Middle East where two states can live with security and democracy.

Given war’s success in bringing about peace in the past it is probably a more real and practical solution than your “Can’t we all just get along?” approach.  Many Muslims do not want peace; they want to rid the world, or at least the Middle East, of Israel.  Are you saying that you are willing to go that far, if that is what it takes?

And pray for better solutions than endless war to solve the real threats of terrorism in our world, because if we fail, all of our children will be at risk.

So far, no war in human history has been endless.  As a Christian, you should know what kind of world you live in.  As such, you really shouldn’t be surprised by war; you should really be surprised by peace when it breaks out anywhere.

You’ve got to listen to this.  American whiner-brat.  It would be fun to respond to this silly girl myself, but Laura Ingraham does it better anyway.

It is 06:23 GMT, 21 July 2006. Finally able to get a connection. It is a dark and stormy night here in the desert, thanks to global warming, no doubt. From the darkness of my LP/OP I can hear the scurrying of the beetles and it makes me wonder if yet another rabbit has fallen into one of the window wells. I think, for just a moment, that I might get up and go down into the bunker and look, but I’ve been fasting for a whole twenty-three minutes now and I fear using too much energy unecessarily. Besides, in an emergency, that rabbit could be used as an alternative food source. Hmmmm. So can the beetles, for that matter. Rabbits probably taste better.

UPDATE: I doubt very much that beetles taste like chicken.

UPDATE: What about centipedes? I’ve seen two or three in the last couple of days.

UPDATE: What if we could build tanks that moved around like centipedes? They’re so cool. So are tanks. I wonder: If I’m ever in that area, would the Master Gunner fix it so I could drive a tank again for awhile? That would be so cool.

UPDATE: So would Tank Gunnery.

UPDATE: I was going to go Infantry. Then the recruiter showed me that demo tape of the M1. That recruiter was okay, I guess. For an MP. No offence MP’s. (Okay, but really, nobody likes you. Don’t blame me. I’m just the messenger.)

UPDATE: Of course, my feelings for terrorists make my feelings for MPs look like puppy love.

UPDATE: Should my mirror have a sign above it that says, "Warning: Persons in the mirror are uglier than they appear"?

UPDATE: No. My wife might think it was referring to her.

UPDATE: I’ll think I’ll watch an episode of Deep Space Nine.

UPDATE “Looking for par Mach in all the wrong places.”

UPDATE: Parachutes are cool, too. I wish I could go to Jump School again. That was a blast. I wish I could have learned HALO too. That looks awesome.

UPDATE: I still think I could have made it through the Q Course. Damned frostbitten hands!

UPDATE: Damned knee!

UPDATE: Damned ankle!

UPDATE: I’m glad my stomach doesn’t rest in my lap when I sit down. Where does your lap go when you stand up?

UPDATE: P. S. Although I am entered this period of fasting of my own free will, and fully knowledgeable of the risks involved in going 24 hours without eating I wish to declare my intention, should anything go wrong, to blame President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and SECDEF Rumsfeld. After all, this is their fault; they got us into this illegal war for oil in the first place. Had they not done so, Cindy Sheehan would still be a nobody; and this fast wouldn’t be necessary. (Besides, blaming the President has gotten to be such a fad that I can no longer bear to be left out.)

UPDATE: I’m still pissed off about Somalia.

UPDATE: P. P. S. Sweetie, should anything happen to me I just want to make sure that you are the one who ends up with my collection of Robert Ludlum novels.

UPDATE: “Sweetie” is what I call my daughter, not my wife. What I call my wife is classified.

UPDATE: Those beetles are making me hungry.

UPDATE: When I started up Deep Space Nine, I caught some coverage of some place in Israel which must have been bombed recently. Was that a cow carcass there in the background? Mmmmm. Barbecue.

UPDATE: I better go check on that rabbit. (It’s the humane thing to do.)

UPDATE: But first, the Tobermory!

UPDATE: Whew! Those steps may as well have been Mt. Everest! (I’ve never realized how dark it is down there, even with the lights on.) Those weren’t beetles. The wind from the storm is making the concertina wire rub against the building.

UPDATE: No rabbits either.

UPDATE: I find myself prepared seriously to consider the proposition that MREs really are an alternative source of food.

UPDATE: Ugh! It’s amazing what a picture of Cindy Sheehan will do to a man’s appetite. Why do I do such things to myself? At least she was dressed!

UPDATE: Was that woman ever attractive? She reminds me (with all due respect to her son [MHRIP] of my sixth grade homeroom teacher, Ms. Glore. We called her Mistress Galore. (Get it?) She made my skin crawl. Right now I’d like to give her a big, fat, wet kiss. (That would probably make her lifetime! And my wife jealous! Better not.)

UPDATE: Ms. Glore, that is. Not Cindy Sheehan!

UPDATE: Must have more Tobermory. I wonder what Mr. Sheehan drinks. Whatever it is, I should send him a case.

UPDATE: Klingon chicks are sooooooooooooooo glorious.

UPDATE: I’m glad my wife doesn’t read this blog.

UPDATE: Is it a bad thing that my wife doesn’t read my blog?

UPDATE: I really like the fact that my shoulder-girdle area is 15 inches larger than my waste. Does that make me vain?

UPDATE: Twenty-three hours to go.

UPDATE: Oops! As it turns out, my wife does read this blog. Gotta go!

UPDATE: Suddenly I can't stop thinking about huevos rancheros!

UPDATE: Wow! Flash flood warning out here in the desert! (I need to go down into the bunker and check on the, uh, beetles and rabbits.)

UPDATE: I forgot: beetles float!

UPDATE: Don't they?

UPDATE: Join my band of manly men, and you too shall have a manly laugh like this: Ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha-haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!!!

UPDATE: Nothing personal ladies. I like my ladies womanly, not manly, with womanly laughs, or giggles. Or whatever.

UPDATE: Unless they are like Klingon women. Ka' plah!!!

UPDATE: Well that was a knock-about of pure fun. Now it's time for that cornish hen. And the blood wine!

In just a few short hours (06:00 GMT) I begin my participation in the Tanker Brothers’ Rolling Victory Fast. To celebrate the event (and not merely my participation in it) I have composed a theme song. Well, not exactly, but it works for me.

The Great Rolling Victory Fast

(sing to the tune of “The Magical Mystery Tour” by The Beatles)

(Fall in,
Fall in for the Victory Fast,
step right this way),

Fall in,
Fall in for the Victory Fast,
Fall in,
Fall in for the Victory Fast,

Fall in,
(and that's an invitation),
Fall in for the Victory Fast,
Fall in,
(to make a reservation),
Fall in,
for the Victory Fast

The great Rolling Victory Fast
is waiting to make Cindy pay,
waiting to make Cindy pay

Fall in,
Fall in for the Victory Fast,
Fall in,
Fall in for the Victory Fast

Fall in,
(we've got everything you need),
Fall in for the Victory Fast,
Fall in,
(satisfaction guaranteed),
Fall in for the Victory Fast

The great Rolling Victory Fast
is hoping to make Cindy pay,
hoping to make Cindy pay,
the great rolling trip

Ah, the great Rolling Victory Fast,
Fall in,
Fall in,
for the Victory Fast

Fall in,
(and that's an invitation)
Fall in for the Victory Fast ,
Fall in,
(to make a reservation)
Fall in for the Victory Fast,

The great Rolling Victory Fast
is going to make Cindy pay,
going to make Cindy pay.

The great Rolling Victory Fast
is starving to make Cindy pay,
starving to make Cindy pay,
make her today.

And I haven’t even started drinking yet.

One of the things I like about Israel’s present course of action is that I like to see nations apply my first rule of diplomacy and defense policy: “Diplomacy ends when your opponent strikes. After that, the best course is to assume that your opponent intends to do to you the greatest harm possible and then beat him to it. This requires nothing more than beating him down and persisting in beating until he cannot or will not get back up. It also requires both the tools and the talent to give that beating.” –from Philologous Lector, “On Defense Policy”

Well, it beats the lefts rule of diplomacy and defense policy: “Whatever wars are breaking out in the world are the fault of President Bush—somehow.” Anonymous, “The Left-Liberal Political Playbook”

This insight into the fight that Hizbullah has picked with Israel is worth having.  I love the Israelis.  In my mispent youth I toyed with the idea of emigrating to Israel and joining the IDF.  Something about a people surrounded by enemies and still able to survive just appealed to my bellicose innards.

As is well known, the President has been in Germany visiting with Chancellor Angela Merkel.  As a politically minded Christian, I find her and her party very interesting.

Merkel grew up in the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany), the daughter of a Protestant (and Socialist) minister.  (Interesting fact: When she came of age in communist East Germany, she did not go through the secular, state ceremony; she elected to be confirmed in her faith instead.)  A physicist by education she is the first woman to lead the modern German nation-state since its inception in 1871, and the youngest Chancellor since World War II.  Next year she will be the first woman to chair the G8.

Her party, the Christian Democratic Union (party principles here), part of the international Christian Democracy movement.  (Incidentally, Mexico’s National Action Party—the party of President Vicente Fox and President-elect Felipe Calderon—is also part of the movement.)  The worldwide CD movement generally is characterized as being socially conservative and in favor of free markets with a government-enforced social conscience.

Merkel has been in favor of reforming Germany's economic and social system and has been thought to be more pro-free market and pro-deregulation than her party is.  She has advocated changes in German labor law, such as  removing barriers to firing employees and increasing the number of work hours in a week on the grounds that current law makes the country less competitive because companies can’t control labor costs when business is slow.  (I happen to know from personal experience that this is true.)

Merkel has also been an advocate for German-American friendship. In the spring of 2003, she went contrary to  strong public opinion and came out in favor of our invasion of Iraq.  The invasion was, according to her,  “unavoidable.”  She also went to far as to accuse Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of anti-Americanism. Some of her  critics have called her an American lackey for that position.  Merkel has criticized the government's support for Turkish membership in the European Union, arguing instead for a “privileged partnership.”  Now, on that matter, she was in unison with an overwhelming majority of Germans, who rejected Turkey’s membership in the European Union because of fears that large waves of immigration would impose a heavy burden on Germany and that there would be too much Islamist influence within the EU.

In many ways, Christian Democracy and the President’s “compassionate” conservatism share some important similarities.  (It should be noted, however, that Christian Democracy in Europe tends to be a bit right of center, while it is a bit left of center in Latin America.)  So there’s a reason why the President and the German Chancellor look so friendly in all the photos.

Therefore the war in Iraq is wrong.

Jim Wallis, editor in chief of Sojourners must think that such an argument is unassailable.

In what purports at first to be a touching tribute to his father, Wallis writes, concerning his father’s view of Hiroshima after the Bomb:

He admitted that he had not been sympathetic to the Japanese after they had attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, and especially after they and their German allies had killed so many of his friends. Along with many of his fellow soldiers, he felt they deserved the atomic bomb—though at the time, he said, few of them fully understood what it was.

But then he saw Hiroshima. As the two young Americans walked through the flattened rubble, they passed by a small pile of bricks that had been fashioned into a makeshift shelter. Suddenly, a little girl appeared from behind a wall. My father remembered her as about 5 years old, with dirty tattered clothes falling off her body. As far as they could tell, she was all alone with no one to take care of her.

As he talked about the child, he seemed to remember her vividly, as if it were yesterday. And he recalled the feelings that welled up inside him: She was just a little child, none of this was her fault, and she had nothing to do with it. They knew she would die soon, if only from the exposure to all that radiation. My dad, an 82-year-old war veteran, began to cry as he remembered a day more than 60 years ago.

“That’s war,” he said, “and that’s why I hate it.” He still believes that we had to defend ourselves from a direct attack in World War II. But why did they drop that bomb on civilian targets, he asked, cities with no military significance? They could have dropped them on a deserted island to make the point.

As you might guess, since I’ve decided to “pick” on him today, Wallis is going somewhere with this.  It isn’t a tribute to his dad, really.  But let’s pause to note just a couple of things.  First, Who in his right mind loves war?  (If you’re thinking Patton, please reconsider.  As much a fan of him as I am, I remain uncertain that he was in his right mind.)  No one loves war.  I bring this up because when Wallis’s father says, “That’s war, and that’s why I hate it” one can get the impression that there are those who love war and, therefore, engage in war.  Second, it seems that Wallis’s father was not very well informed as to either the military significance of Hiroshima or the nature of the war he was fighting.  Going in reverse order, WWII was a “total war”, whether we like it or not, whether the elder Wallis knew it or not—or even believed it or not.  It was total war.  And the definition of a target with military significance is difficult in total war.  And as for Hiroshima’s military significance, it has to be of some military significance that Hiroshima was the headquarters of Field Marshal Shunroku Hata's 2nd General Army Headquarters  (which was responsible for the defense of southern Japan), a logistics center for the Japanese military, as well as a communications center, and assembly area for troops.  No military significance?  One has to wonder if, say, Colorado Springs or San Antonio would, in the era of total war, be cities of any military significance in the view of the elder Wallis.

According to the elder Wallis, as arm-chair military strategist, we could have dropped the bombs on a deserted island in order to make our point.  It might be true that we’d have made our point, but only if the Japanese could be certain that if we failed to impress them with a bomb over a deserted island then we really would bomb a more significant target.  Does the elder Wallis have any evidence that, in fact, the Japanese would have believed that the next bomb would explode over such a target?  I’d like to see it.  I’d also like to see any evidence he has regarding our intelligence assessment of any nuclear capability possessed by the Japanese at the time.  In order for the elder Wallis’ strategy to work, we’d have needed to be awfully certain that the Japanese could not respond with their own bomb.  In the end, wasting ammo—even nuclear ammo—in a war makes no sense militarily.  Think of it: in any war we can always try firing our weapons over the enemy’s head to try to make our point.  Failing that, I suppose, it will then be okay if we shoot to kill.  Of course, the enemy will have been shooting to kill the entire time.

And if we had dropped a bomb over a deserted island and failed by so doing to impress the Japanese, what then?  I suppose that the elder Wallis would then approve our dropping the bomb over Hiroshima.  But then he would still have been confronted, all other things being equal, with that five year old girl.  Would he have been okay with that because, after all, we tried a deserted island first and it didn’t work?  Would he then acknowledge that dropping the bomb over Hiroshima was the right thing to do, in the circumstances?  I doubt it.

Wallis continues:

My dad has opposed every war since then and is especially upset about the war in Iraq. They just lie about it, and it was totally unnecessary, he said, as his tears turned to anger.
My dad is part of what former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw named the “greatest generation” ….
But my dad doesn’t like the direction his country has gone since his generation has retired. Now he often shakes his head while he watches CNN. “How do they get away with it?” he asks me on the phone.
Sitting with him at the memorial, it was moving to see how this war veteran has so turned against war and still feels the emotions that senseless suffering brings. Most of those who run our wars now are not veterans of any war and have little to say about the deaths that occur every day.
I wonder what would happen to them if a 5-year-old girl came out from behind the rubble of war to stop them in their tracks. But most of them never get close enough to the rubble to see her.

We knew the anti-War-in-Iraq business was coming, didn’t we?  It’s almost Sheehanesque.  But instead of claiming moral authority by hiding behind a deceased war-veteran son, Wallis makes his claim by hiding behind a living war-veteran father.  It may seem out of line for me to assert that of Wallis; after all he’s just reporting his father’s reaction.  But don’t let a certain subtle shift escape your notice.  In the fourth paragraph quoted above, Wallis stops reporting his father’s feelings and starts giving us his own:  “Most of those who run our wars now are not veterans of any war and have little to say about the deaths that occur every day.”

Laying this aside, let’s give Wallis’ point its due.  And that point is, as I take it, is that things would be different if it were the case that most of those who run our wars now were veterans of war.  Presumably they would then, like his father, have much to say about the deaths that occur every day; and they would do so with the moral authority possessed by his father, no doubt.  (And this assumes that these veterans of wars have not, like the elder Wallis, turned against all war, still feeling “the emotions that senseless suffering brings.”)  More likely, as his point seems to be, we’d never have gotten into this war in Iraq in the first place.  Surely that is the implicit assertion in this indirect question:  “I wonder what would happen to them if a 5-year-old girl came out from behind the rubble of war to stop them in their tracks.”  We know the answer:  If they are at all as reasonable—and as ill-informed—as his father was and remains, then we wouldn’t be in Iraq.  Those chair-polishing armchair warriors who’ve never heard a shot fired in anger would call the war off immediately.  Right?  I mean, who really wants to see a 5 year old girl die?

Of course, if that’s our plumb line, then would we ever have fought any war?  Would the rebels have called a halt to the Revolutionary War upon seeing the lifeless corpse of a five year old?  Should they have done?  What about the Civil War?  Should the slaves not have been freed because the war to free them might have resulted in the death of a five year old?

Rhetorical questions, of course.  And I suppose that Wallis might stipulate that at least one significant difference is this: that most of those who ran the Revolutionary and Civil wars were veterans of wars.  But would that really suffice?  Think about what he would be saying:  The death of a five year old is acceptable if most of those running the war are themselves veterans of a war.  I doubt Wallis wants to say that.  When he decided to hide behind his war veteran father, he probably hadn’t thought of that.

To this point, I’ve been crediting his claim that most of those running this war are not veterans of war themselves.  Is this true?  Part of the answer will depend on how he classifies someone as running the war, and indeed just what he means by the phrase “running the war.”

We could start with the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  General Pace (USMC) is a war veteran.  General Shoomaker (USA!!!) is also.  Moving down the ladder in a way (i.e., not operationally), the element having direct oversight of Iraq is the U. S. Central Command.  CENTCOM is under the command of General John Abizaid (USA!!!), who is a war veteran.

I suspect that when he talks of those who are running the war, Wallis means the civilian element running the war.   Rather than dispute the assertion, let’s stipulate to it and see what happens.  The question before us remains:  Is the war in Iraq justified, even if it results in the death of a five year old?  It is a reasonable question; it is also a close-ended question.  The answer will be yes, or no.  And regardless the answer (and regardless how that answer is justified), it must be a rational answer, arrived at by the application of the rules of logical argumentation.  And that means the combat service of those who run the war, or the lack thereof, is—get ready Wallis—irrelevant.  That’s right.  It is, even if true, ir-freakin’-relevant that those who are running the war are not veterans of war, or that they will never be “close enough to the rubble.”  (Something else I don’t think Wallis took into account when he decided to hide behind his father’s war service.)

In addition to arguing an irrelevancy, Wallis also makes another logical error.  He says, again, “Most of those who run our wars now are not veterans of any war….”  It is difficult to know what to make of the claim.  The “most” of what number?  I don’t really know the number of people Wallis thinks are running the war.  How many are there?  Fifty?  One hundred?  Three?  Let’s say that the number is fifty.  When he says that “most” of them are not war veterans, does he mean that twenty-six out of that fifty?  Let’s say that out of the fifty, thirty are not veterans of war.  That leaves twenty that are.  Given their experience, shouldn’t they be given greater weight?  What might they say to Wallis?  What if they told Wallis that, with all due respect, they disagreed with his father?  I doubt it would matter.  He probably wants to ignore them, focusing only on those who haven’t.  Actual war veterans might not help his case, to the extent that he makes a case.