On the Christmas Season and Giving:
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)

In lieu of a proposed Christmas truce spoken of earlier, I am not going to talk about a lot of the subjects and mentalities that I would normally discuss. That can be done later and indeed I intend to not resume discussion on those subjects until at least Tuesday of next week possibly later. In the meantime, I wanted to note a few things on Christmas and the subject of helping other people in need.

Too often we hear of those who like to call themselves "peacemakers", "lovers of the poor", or whatever they choose to call themselves who seem to want to raise that concern of theirs in every conversation. Giving to others in various ways is something that should happen everyday of the year in some form or another and for many people, it does even if this does not go reported by themselves or by others. Christmas is certainly a season of more than the normal giving of assistance to others in need -of this there is no question. What is not generally reported is that charitable giving is usually greatest amongst those who do not blow trumpets and call attention to themselves and those who do the latter usually give less. Nonetheless, the Scrooge myth is often perpetuated by the latter sorts who show no small degree of ignorance of (i) the facts of reality{1}, (ii) how an economy actually works{2}, and (iii) ignorance of the very Judeo-Christian tradition on giving to others. Or as Jesus noted in Matthew's Gospel:

Take heed that you do not your justice before men, to be seen by them: otherwise you shall not have a reward of your Father who is in heaven. Therefore when thou dost an alms deed, sound not a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be honoured by men. Amen I say to you, they have received their reward. But when thou dost alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doth. That thy alms may be in secret, and thy Father who seeth in secret will repay thee. [Matthew vi,1-4]

Take care to remember that the Gospel injunction on giving to others is very clear that it has no reward if you draw attention to yourself in doing it. And remember my friends: those who try to make themselves look the most compassionate among us usually give less than those who give in silence without others knowing about it. And because they draw attention to themselves in doing so, they have already received their reward as Jesus said. Do not be like them. Do not draw attention to yourself when helping other people. Keep it between yourself and God. But by all means, help out however you can in accordance with your means to do so. And have a blessed Christmas my friends -see you sometime next week.

We consider Christmas as the encounter, the great encounter, the historical encounter, the decisive encounter, between God and mankind. He who has faith knows this truly; let him rejoice. [Pope Paul VI]

Notes:

{1} We will revisit these themes after Christmas as celebrated in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. (No slight to my eastern brethren who celebrate according to the Julian calendar but I do not intend to hold the truce for three weeks time.)

{2} See footnote one.

On Capitalism, Economics, the Fundamental Rights of Man, Free Trade, Etc:
(With Kevin Tierney)

The following chat is from a fifteen minute block of time yesterday a few days ago when I was taking a break from work. The parties involved will be marked by name, all timestamps removed, and any really egregious spelling goofs on either side fixed. Without further ado...

Kevin: I think what is needed is someone who can criticize the capitalism at all cost mentality without being a marxist or a populist

me: sadly, conservatives are as liable to avoid critical interactions as the liberals they criticize for not allowing them a lot like the apologists in the oligarchy

agreed and without shilling for that illogical drivel known as "distributivism (aka "distributism"). I think a lot of marxist sorts use that as a shield to hide their true views.

Kevin: here's a quick step in the right direction, in free trade agreements, insist on a "no slave labor" clause

me: nice...and insist on the freedom of labour unions to assemble and barter for the workers if the workers want them...why not drive up the cost of labour down there lol

Kevin: hahaha

me: that was a half-serious comment -obviously I do not want people shafted who toil at labour

Kevin: it would be a popular move, those who hate "wallmart slave labor" would support it, unions would support it, protectionists would support it recognizing that unions help out, etc

me: frankly, the only ones who would oppose it are those who believe that business is not requiring of any checks on industryand that would smoke them out

Kevin: since it's a matter of national trade, this is the purpose of the state, one of the areas they do have a right to intervene

me: yes indeed...the problem is, those who want to try and do away with nationalism do not want it

Kevin: and it says that those wishing to trade with America, to acquire her wealth, should also have certain standards

me: oftentimes they are the same people who want to put recourse in faceless bureaucracies who are incapable of getting anything done secularly in the UN...ecclesially those who want to see bishops conferences handle everything...birds of a feather

Kevin: that would do much to help regulate free trade right there, without the need of protectionist tarrifs and the like since we are sending a message that yes we want to trade with the world, but that America will refuse to profit off the exploited

me: yep, amazing how we hash out another major point of civilizational contention in a matter of minutes

Kevin: lol

me: which is why the bureaucracies would not want to hear from us...btw...I am planning to contact Tim Eyman (a major initiative pusher in our state) and suggest to him my rider reform proposal for the Washington legislature... it is almost three years old now but I see nothing in it that needs revising at this time

Kevin: i think people need to also understand the difference between the capitalist mindset and the consumerist mindset...today they are one and the same, but Adam Smith would be abhorred by it

agreed...I just emailed you my rider reform proposal

Kevin: today's economics are rather that of John Stuart Mill than of Adam Smith...Mill believed in liberty absolute

me: yep...

Kevin: whereas the founders and men like Smith believed in a liberty that had it's limits

me: Bastiat believed in liberty constrained only by the fundamental rights of man -and that law's purpose was to safeguard those rights...and that those rights precede all manmade legislation as they are God-given{1}

Kevin: such as Madison's viewpoint that capitalism and America need morality to survive, to them morality was part of that restrainer...probably the only naievete in the founders was thinking that this could be achieved without a strong robust religious body closely monitoring the state

me: well, they had experience of a religious body in that position and it was not a nice situation...and being aware of the historical clashes of church and state probably preferred an environment that was conducive to religious expression without requiring religious profession

Kevin: well the only problem there was the religious body was under the control of the state...a strong independent church is normally within the state's best interest

me: of course the popes have long appreciated the US's approach to religion when it suits their own interests...I have in mind Gregory XVI's famous statement "in no place do I feel more like the pope than in the United States"...Gregory was not a fan of democracy by any stretch but he appreciated I am sure that his encyclicals and other writings were allowed to freely circulate in America in a way other nations did not (even some catholic ones)

Kevin: why for example I would love to have a president one day invite the main religious leaders and remind them that it is their job to clothe the naked and feed the hungry, not Washington's and use the bully pulpit to rally them to that job, secular charities as well Bush's "faith based initiave" was anything but that, rather it used the power of the purse to attempt to make churches move. Many rightly saw that as unconstitutional not to mention dangerous for churches

me: what you propose is very congruent with the Constitution. The Founders did not want a state church but they did want morality and religion to have an important and influential role in the nation...going so far as to view the Constitution as unfit for a people who were not moral and religious. No law can suffice in the absence of a general approach that sets solid public standards regardless of what people do privately: a subject I have discussed before and which bears reiteration at least in link form in lieu of what you just noted.

Note:

{1} Readers can review the side margin of this weblog and peruse the archives for threads I have written on the fundamental rights of man if they are interested. (More will be touched on in this area in the new year.) I have not only merely reiterated Bastiat as several others have or applied it to modern situations but even developed the theory further in light of contemporary realities.

As the aforementioned theory (when properly applied) would fix so much of what is wrong with our society, it is my sincere hope that others can brought to see the wisdom involved and that it may provide them with solid reference points for the cultivation of the natural lights of reason and logic. For people with conservative intuitions, it can put them on a solid and consistent foundation in their arguments to better persuade those of good-will. For those who are espousing various forms of socialism, hopefully it will help them to see where that mentality inexorably leads if they are consistent in their application of it.

To revisit briefly a publicly noted checklist of stuff I wanted to tend to as per earlier this month...

--A reader wrote me asking about the concept of "implicit faith." I have been working on a thread to post pertaining to that subject which should be ready soon.

Done.

--Due to some feedback on yesterday's brief exposition on the hypocrisy of the apologetics oligarchy, I will be responding to at least one piece of email received on that subject within the next week or so.

The text is done but I will wait until after Christmas to blog it.{1}

--The last thing I expected was a criticism of my prayer for the soldiers blogged yesterday but indeed I got some from a former soldier. A response to those criticisms will be forthcoming.

About 90% done. I hope to post it after Christmas and before New Years Eve.

--As several readers have sent me links to the Iraq Study Group recommendations as per yesterday's request, I will be looking them over and considering how to deal with them in the coming days. Right now, I am leaning towards listing them all in bullet form and noting which ones are practical or otherwise achievable and which ones are impractical or otherwise not worth taking seriously.

As few people seem to be taking this report as seriously as I initially anticipated, I may well not go ahead with my originally planned project. I mean, how seriously can I actually take a report with a recommendation such as this one:

direct US dialogue with Syria and Iran over Iraq and the Middle East.

If that group is incapable as a whole of realizing that we have already tried this and it has not worked, then I fail to see what more I can say about their "recommendations" other than I respect the humility of Lee Hamilton viz. the recommendations and despise the pompous attitude of James Baker pertaining to them.{2}

--I am working on a response to a friend who is critical of women being allowed to vote to be blogged when it is ready.

Done.

--Some "points to ponder" threads are planned from Allen Bloom, Herbert Butterfield, Mike Mentzer, Cardinal Ratzinger, Greg Mockeridge, Fr. John Laux, Albert Cipriani, Ayn Rand, and Stephen Hand among others.

Thus far only the one from Ayn Rand was blogged.{3} The others will be gotten to in good time.

--A weblog thread of miscellaneous links with assorted commentary is also in the works to be completed soon. (The hold up here is determining how many links to use and what subject matters to cover.)

I will try to finish this between Christmas and New Years Eve. Anyone with links they want me to consider, by all means send them to me.

--A weblog update is being worked on bit by bit to be posted within a week or so.

I am significantly behind on this -it will take up whatever freetime I have for this blog in the coming days and in the day or so after Christmas.

--Some administrative fixes are being made to make the weblog easier to operate from this end.

The beta update feature I had in mind is not available for this blog yet due to the number of posts we have in the archives. Ergo, the next update will be as ponderous as the previous ones to do but my readers are worth the time to get it done.


Notes:

{1} Consider this my own version of a "Christmas truce" if you will.

{2} For those who continue to ignorantly presume I am a shill for Republicans, Lee Hamilton is a Democrat and James Baker is a Republican.

{3} I did blog something from Pope Benedict XVI but the specific passage I have in mind with that series was from his pre-pope days.

On the Intensity/Duration Equation, Physics, and Trying to Understand Engineering Majors:
(With Tim Tull)

I find myself intrigued at times when considering the statements that have crossed my keyboard which receive reader feedback. As it is now, a statement I made in years past which encapsulates one of my own foundational presuppositions -and which has been reiterated a few times since in soem form or another-- was the subject of a recent email from amateur historian (and WW II expert), Guinness lover, onetime-soft-liberal-turned-ardent-conservative, engineering major, and general all-around renaissance man Tim Tull.{1} In responding to my reiteration of what has become practically a proverbial mantra of sorts in one of the blog posts put up on the eve of the November elections, I found an email containing several bits from Tim which included this one (my previous words in blue font, most recent ones in darkgreen font, and Tim's words in darkblue font):

"I remind you of the theories of motion as discovered by Sir Isaac Newton. If an object in motion will remain in motion, then attempts to stop that object will not succeed without a greater or equal force being involved."

Commentary: The unit of Force in the International System of Units (SI) is the Newton. Units on a Newton are kg-m/sec^2. In other words, it takes one Newton of force to accelerate a 1 kilogram mass 1 meter per second every second. And accordingly Newton's Second Law tells us that force equals mass times acceleration or the famous F=ma.

So if we apply 10 Newtons of force for one second to accelerate a stationary object to 10 meters per second, we can easily demonstrate how to declerate the object back to a stationary state with LESS "force" by applying a 1 Newton force on the object in the opposite direction for a period of 10 seconds or for that matter, any force less than the initial 10 Newtons for a sufficient length of time.

A force balance is only necessary if we are trying to prevent acceleration.

To put it in other terms, a wife can either get a garage cleaned in 3 months by nagging her husband for weeks on end or can achieve the same results in a quick time by clubbing him over the head with his TIVO box.

I am sure this is what George Orwell would have called physics-speak. As I was not sure if the email was a confirmation of my proverb or an attempt at refuting it,{2} I sent the following email to Tim.

In other words, my analogy was flawed???

To which Tim responded as follows:

The analogy was fine. It's basically correct. Essentially, any problem in aerospace engineering essentially can be solved from the equations expressing continuity of mass, momentum or energy. And those three equations all come directly from Newton's Second Law. So literaly, we owe a tremendous amount to that equations and at this stage in my education, we are still evaluating it on a daily basis in it's expanded forms. Its' good stuff.

Of course my approach to these matters were based on my indepth understanding of exercise science and its effects on the human physiology spanning fifteen plus years. Tim's was by the route of advanced physics which is one of the subjects he is studying for his advanced engineering degree. I am sure for those reasons there are differences in language and the usage of terms with our respective points of reference. But both underscore three fundamental factors which need to be accounted for at all times and they are as follows:

--One should never underestimate the importance of reason and logic when it comes to properly apprehending objective reality.

--Different approaches or schools of thought in the sciences will have different terms which may not necessarily mean the same thing; ergo taking this into account to avoid context-switching is important.

--One should make sure they do not rashly walk into a discussion of the natural sciences with an engineering major lest they find themselves confused by the latter's use of terms.

Thankfully in Tim's case, he will be finished with his engineering degree in one more year and can return to speaking normally again ;-)

Notes:

{1} For more information on Tim, see the guest editorial posted here for some tidbits.

{2} I thought it was an attempted refutation and I was all ready to point out by sound rational argumentation why this mantra is based on the laws of nature and thus immutable. But then I got the brilliant idea (since I was at best adequate with complex physics models back in the day) to simply ask Tim what he was saying.