Politics

Pope Francis: Lost in Translation

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Priest and blogger Father John Zuhlsdorf argues on his blog that part of Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation may have been mistranslated. The Spanish reads,

54. En este contexto, algunos todavía defienden las teorías del «derrame», que suponen que todo crecimiento económico, favorecido por la libertad de mercado, logra provocar por sí mismo mayor equidad e inclusión social en el mundo.

The official English is translated as

In this context, some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world.

However, por si’ mismo (translated as “inevitably” above) actually means “by itself.” In other words, the Pope is saying the assumption that “economic growth, encouraged by free markets, will by itself succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world” is false. As Father Zuhlsdorf puts it,

But the real point here is that in EG 54 the author says that “trickle down” economics cannot by itself produce the desired result. That is, of course, correct. No economic plan will solve the problems of the poor by itself.  Economic plans must be carried out by people who have good, solid morals and values.

Easy for things to get lost in translation.

Am I Feminist? or: The Feminist Bait and Switch

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Joss Whedon

I have something in common with Joss Whedon. He doesn’t like the term “feminist,” and neither do I. We both think that feminism has an image problem. Whedon, who defines feminism as “believing men and women to be equal; believing all people to be people” doesn’t like the term because he thinks the “-ist” at the end fails to convey it’s universal appeal.

Let’s be real, Mr. Whedon. The last syllable of the word is the least of feminism’s problems.

I like Joss Whedon’s ostensible definition just fine. The problem is that he, like most self-declared feminists, doesn’t actually stick to it. Feminism is always introduced as something universal and apolitical like “concern for women’s issues,” but then in practice it always ends up being equated with left wing social politics. Do you care about women? Then you must be a Democrat. The Republicans have declared a War on Women, don’t you know?

Because the term “feminism” has become hopelessly entangled in partisan politics, it’s time to step back and differentiate between being concerned for women and feminism. We can find some common ground if we do that, and I can’t think of a better place to start then this famous clip from Patrick Stewart about the importance of opposing violence against women.

It’s a beautiful and moving speech. There’s nothing political about it, and there shouldn’t be.

Read more

Monday Morning Mormonism: Caring for the Poor and Needy

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2013-12-02 Hernando de Soto Polar

Another Monday, another post for Times And Seasons. This morning’s topic is the addition of the fourth point to the threefold mission of the Church: to care for the poor and needy. Why wasn’t it originally included in 1981? Why was it added in 2009? Read the post for my thoughts, and stay tuned for a longer treatment of the topic from Walker and me coming soon.

A New Facet of the Pro-Life Movement: The Fatherhood Movement

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2013-11-29 Delivery Man

This post was my first introduction to The Fatherhood Movement. In it, Alana Newman describes handing out fliers outside of screenings of The Deliveryman (Vince Foster comedy about a donor data of over 500 kids) because “We can’t all be scared, stay at home and never do the dirty work of questioning this industry.”

I clicked on over to her section on The Fatherhood Movement to learn more, and the first two paragraphs read:

I believe in Fatherhood. I believe poverty will be eliminated when the raw energy and genius of every adult man is channeled to serve and care for his children and community. I believe we need to lift up male strengths and good masculine character as assets in our quest for joy, health and wealth. I believe every child needs his or her father, but first we have to teach boys how to become men that are prepared for such a responsibility and can deliver on his role.

The absence of my own biological father in my life was crushing. The associated behavioral problems I exhibited could easily have been lethal. And I hurt many people on my path to where I am now.

There aren’t a lot of donor-conceived children who are old enough to really speak out about their experiences and impressions. And yet it seems that their voices should be the voices that matter the most, right? I don’t yet know how widespread the feeling of being deprived a father is, but it’s an issue I’ll be paying attention to. If I recall, it dovetails with the Catholic belief that children have a right to parents.

http://alananewman.com/the-delivery-man/

Good News, Pope Francis

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The media has exploded over Pope Francis’ recent apostolic exhortation. In it, he denounced social and economic inequality, which he declared are “the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation” and “trickle-down theories.”[ref]Economist Thomas Sowell has claimed, “No such theory [i.e. trickle-down] has been found in even the most voluminous and learned histories of economic theories…Yet this non-existent theory has become the object of denunciations from the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post to the political arena…It is a classic example of arguing against a caricature instead of confronting the argument actually made.” (Sowell, “Trickle-Down” Theory and “Tax Cuts for the Rich”. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2012, 1-2.)[/ref] The media hailed it as an anti-capitalist proclamation, while virtually ignoring other important factors like his attack on abortion.[ref]”Among the vulnerable for whom the Church wishes to care with particular love and concern are unborn children, the most defenceless and innocent among us. Nowadays efforts are made to deny them their human dignity and to do with them whatever one pleases, taking their lives and passing laws preventing anyone from standing in the way of this. Frequently, as a way of ridiculing the Church’s effort to defend their lives, attempts are made to present her position as ideological, obscurantist and conservative. Yet this defence of unborn life is closely linked to the defence of each and every other human right. It involves the conviction that a human being is always sacred and inviolable, in any situation and at every stage of development. Human beings are ends in themselves and never a means of resolving other problems. Once this conviction disappears, so do solid and lasting foundations for the defence of human rights, which would always be subject to the passing whims of the powers that be. Reason alone is sufficient to recognize the inviolable value of each single human life, but if we also look at the issue from the standpoint of faith, “every violation of the personal dignity of the human being cries out in vengeance to God and is an offence against the creator of the individual”. Precisely because this involves the internal consistency of our message about the value of the human person, the Church cannot be expected to change her position on this question. I want to be completely honest in this regard. This is not something subject to alleged reforms or “modernizations”. It is not “progressive” to try to resolve problems by eliminating a human life. On the other hand, it is also true that we have done little to adequately accompany women in very difficult situations, where abortion appears as a quick solution to their profound anguish, especially when the life developing within them is the result of rape or a situation of extreme poverty. Who can remain unmoved before such painful situations?” (#213-214)[/ref] While some are seeing Francis’ remarks as radical, it is virtually the same message found in, say, the exhortations of John XXIII (1961) or Leo XIII (1891). This just reinforces Nathaniel’s point in his post “Meet the New Catholicism, Same as the Old Catholicism.”

But I have some good news for Pope Francis and the media: things have been getting better for some time. The world isn’t quite on its way to hell in a handbasket. Furthermore, it was the “autonomy of the marketplace” that achieved one of the major Millennium Development Goals of halving global poverty five years early. And as I’ve noted before, global inequality is actually decreasing. A brand new study supports past research by demonstrating that–though inequality is still high and increasing within countries (not just in America)–global inequality has seen an unprecedented decline.

(Above graph provided by GMU’s Robin Hanson)

This is not to say that all is well. There is much, much more to be done. But these are positive trends; trends that caused one journalist to declare 2012 (at the dawn of 2013) the best year ever. We have seen incredible progress over the past couple centuries. If we want to address social ills like those Pope Francis spoke of, we should look to those policies (and yes, ideologies) that have made these positive trends possible.

The Pope Preaches Fairness, Is A Radical

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117049-pope-francisPope Francis’ recent “apostolic exhortation” criticizes certain aspects of modern society, championing equality and policies that guarantee opportunity and basic welfare.

Naturally, the Pope’s words are being and will be co-opted by the left as a long-awaited attack against conservative ideals and a tacit approval of redistributive policies, not excluding socialist positions.

While I can’t, myself, read the Pope’s document (my guess is because it hasn’t been translated to English), reading what’s being said in the news about it leads me to believe Pope Francis is not sanctioning socialism or anything like it, but rather calling for society to back away from “idolatry” in the form of obsession with wealth and status, which isn’t what I would consider to be an earth-shattering pronouncement. He asks for people to make giving to those less fortunate than themselves a priority, and for politicians to ensure everyone in their society has access to what most people around the world would consider to be basic necessities (education, employment and health care).

Perhaps the most potentially divisive comment made in the exhortation is, ironically, the Pope’s call for closing the inequality gap. I’m not sure what solutions he offers for fixing that problem, but it’s perhaps what the Pope points to as a cause for the gap’s existence that is the most interesting:

“As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems,” he wrote.

I don’t think many people are seriously arguing for absolutely unregulated markets, so I’m not sure what this statement is meant to accomplish, nor why it is (at least, going from the comments sections on the various outlets reporting this) being interpreted by leftists as a socialist call-to-arms and a radical departure from everyday Christian culture which, with its emphasis on personal liberty, responsibility and autonomy, is in their minds a spiteful dismissal of or, at best, indifference to the plight of the disenfranchised.

While I applaud Pope Francis’ for attempting to place emphasis on helping the less fortunate and shedding the pursuit of wealth at the expense of others, I’m more interested in learning what solutions he proposes to addressing what are, in fact, human failings, not unique to any corner of any political spectrum.

 

After-Birth Abortion

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You see a defenseless human being deserving our love and legal protection. Bio-ethicists see a fallacious appeal to emotion.
You see a defenseless human being deserving our love and legal protection. Bio-ethicists see a fallacious appeal to emotion.

A couple of bio-ethicists have recently made the case for after-birth abortion. Again. This isn’t news. The pro-choice logic has obviously pointed that way for years, and Planned Parenthood spokespersons and great pro-choice thinkers have been more than happy to advocate infanticide for decades. The only thing that’s new this time around is that a major outlet like Slate seems willing to talk about it.

(Side note: why is it that every time I hear about bio-ethicists it’s because they’re advocating new and exciting rationalizations for homicide? Is that just the career choice of well-adjusted homicidal maniacs these days? Is there an aptitude test somewhere that says: “Well, you can either become a mass-murderer or–to avoid vigorous exercise and possible jail time–you can just write long-winded treatises in favor of pushing the legal envelope on killing humans beings.”)

In any case, William Saletan is doing just that: taking the issue seriously. Saletan is, from what I can tell, a dissident pro-choice voice. He supports legalized abortion, but is highly critical of the arguments deployed by the largest pro-choice institutions. And, as he illustrates, this new modest proposal for infanticide (sadly it is not satire) causes problems for the pro-choice side by directly calling into question many of their key assumptions, such as:

  1. The moral significance of fetal development is arbitrary.
  2. Prior to personhood, human life has no moral claims on us.
  3. Any burden on the woman outweighs the value of the child.
  4. The value of life depends on choice.
  5. Discovery of a serious defect is grounds for termination.

The list reads like a pro-life critique of the current pro-choice rationales, and I think it’s going to be another example (partial-birth abortion was the first, no matter what Saletan thinks of the term) where it’s pro-choice extremism that really does more to damage the movement than pro-life activism ever could. It’s taken a long, long, long time but–I hope–eventually the American people will come to see abortion for what it really is. (Which, not to leave anyone on a cliffhanger, is simply the further exploitation of women as sexual objects.)

Scott Walker 2016?

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2013-11-26 Scott Walker

I know it’s silly, but my favorite candidate for 2016 is still Mitt Romney. Third time’s the charm, eh? But, since that’s not likely, I’m kind of desperate to find anyone who isn’t either Cruz or McCain. I feel like they represent the polar disparities of the GOP.

So the natural person to look to is Chris Christie, but some of what I’ve learned has made me wary of his campaign, including the difficulty the Romney campaign had in vetting him in 2012. Marc Thiessen at the WaPo makes the case that Scott Walker, current governor of Wisconsin and the only governor in US history to survive a recall,  should be on the radar:

Walker survived the 2012 recall by mobilizing his conservative base with his courageous, unflinching stand — and appealing to persuadable, reform-minded, results-oriented independents, who provided the critical margin of victory. That is precisely what Republicans need to do nationally if they want to win back the presidency in 2016.

A staunch, full-spectrum conservative who is reasonable and appeals to moderates? Yes, please. I thought this quote was funny as well:

Walker delivers everything Christie does it terms of appealing to the center — but without the ideological compromise. And he delivers everything Ted Cruz does in terms of taking the fight to the left — but without the losing.

Without the losing, in particular, would be nice.

Dishonesty and Government Job Selection

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“College students in India who cheated during an experiment were more likely to want to get a government job after graduating,” writes Business Insider. “Additionally, cheating in the experiment was predictive of actual corruption from government workers, showing that this sort of dishonesty could be linked to later corruption…”

The new NBER study could shed light on the source of government corruption: self-selection. Check it out.