The abuses of communism, and of capitalism

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Monday, 20 May 2013 01:44
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In 1968 nine friends and I from Rome’s North American College visited the U.S.S.R. at a time of international tension. Flying out of Prague, Czechoslovakia only two days before Soviet troops invaded that capital to put down the unprecedented “Spring of Freedom,” we were with Czech students who were panic-stricken at what they learned in Moscow from Pravda and Izvestia. We Americans went to the U.S. embassy and got them teletype news from the Associated Press and UPI.

In that seminal year of student protests, they wanted to picket in Red Square, but we convinced them otherwise. The trip was a package tour we had put together, complete with a Soviet tour guide our own age who was fluent in English. Slava was approved as a true believing Marxist who could be trusted with skeptical Americans challenging the economics and politics we found. It was not that long since the end of World War II, which cost the U.S. 350,000 military deaths — and Russia 20 million military and civilian deaths. The siege of Leningrad alone cost over a million fatalities, with horror stories of hunger survival. This was part of the reason their standard of living was far below what we had enjoyed in the U.S.

We saw the lines of people waiting to buy not theater tickets but bread, shoes and clothes. The famed shortages of consumer goods occasioned black humor among Russians: if they declared communism in the Sahara desert on Tuesday, there would be a sand shortage by Thursday. All citizens were provided meager social services whether or not they showed productivity on the job, prompting the joke that “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.” Slava proudly took us to an auto show, with the Soviets’ latest. Detroit had nothing to fear.

True, the Red Army was a fearsome force, one that no American general ever wanted to take on. I would have been arrested if caught photographing a soldier in uniform on the street, so different were their laws.  But the Kremlin showed us how to so misappropriate government spending on behalf of the military that its peacetime economy was in shambles. Between this and Pope John Paul II supporting Solidarity, the world saw the incredible sight of the Soviet empire collapsing in on itself between November of 1989 and January of 1991. It fell of its own dead weight.

I went to the U.S.S.R. with no illusions about the likelihood of that kind of economy working. About the only place it could is in a Benedictine monastery, where they also have no private property, where the workers own the means of production, where they have a classless society, and several other similarities. Only one thing was different: you could walk out of the monastery if you chose.

When I hear Tea Party gripes that our government is suffocatingly socialist and mammoth in scope, I want to line up a package tour of old Soviet Russia and show the critics how ludicrously wrong they are.  I see in America selfishness so naked that it has no problem denying handicapped people or marginalized minorities or job-seeking unemployed the very thing for which there is government: providing for the common good, not just for the 1-percenters. They would not believe that the U.S. is the most lightly taxed of all industrialized countries anywhere, providing guns and butter like no other. And they would see no inconsistency in their claiming a huge, expensive government yet demanding an ever larger military, which already swallows two thirds of the discretionary federal budget. That makes it by far the biggest part of government.

For the life of me I cannot understand how struggling middle-class voters can vent spleen and spew venom on behalf of the truly greedy. How are they so easily gulled? I can see how the wealthy would and do, bothered by nightmares of angry peasants at the barricades. But how the wealthy so mesmerize the non-wealthy is beyond me. One does not become wealthy by voting like them. The evidence shows the opposite.

Historically, capitalism came first, ages ago. Its many abuses of rich on poor, boss on worker, oppressor on oppressed generated a powerful opposite force called communism. If you don’t like communism, blame capitalism. Pope John Paul in Centesimo Anno showed his life experience of the evils of both in his native Poland.

Yet westerners only quote the parts where he scored Marxism. Isn’t that odd?

Life lessons from Cardinal Bernardin and Dorothy Day

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Monday, 20 May 2013 01:44
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The late cardinal of Chicago, Archbishop Joseph Bernardin, came to the conclusion near the end of his life that all pro-life issues are connected. He taught that if someone was concerned about the environment, logically he or she would have to take a consistent pro-life stance on war, for instance. He used a biblical image to show the cohesiveness of the many separate secular issues. He likened them to the seamless garment of Jesus which the soldiers of the execution squad did not want to divide up, as was their right. Better to throw dice and let one winner take all instead of destroying the cloth. It was all of a piece, not in pieces sewn together.

Even fellow bishops took issue with his all-or-nothing approach, let alone some of the Catholic laity. While the bishops were unanimous in their opposition to abortion on demand, nowhere near as many joined him in objecting to wars waged without sufficient reason, or not as a last resort, or with inadequate differentiation between civilians and combatants. A great deal more controversy seemed to color challenging our State Department and White House when it came to contesting the legitimacy of wars rather than abortion. For this reason, other bishops feared Catholics would jeopardize their position against abortion if they were to attack the seemingly far more secular moral crisis of war. Better to stick to sexual morality and to abortion.

A few months ago I was in the position of speaking to a Catholic and Jewish audience at the Katz Jewish Community Center in Cherry Hill. The subject was the morality of abortion. Another panelist claimed he did not see what difference it made that a newly conceived embryo had its own DNA, distinct from those genetic signatures of both parents. It seemed to me that if anything would argue to the brand new originality and individuality of a new person, this would be it. What more could you ask of something or someone so small?

Perhaps my rejoinder was not forceful enough because a woman in the audience said that social justice people like me argue against war well enough but are silent about abortion. I responded that I take my leadership from Rev. Daniel Berrigan, S.J. While he has unimpeachable credentials in the anti-war movement, perhaps she did not know that he opposes abortion as well. It is the seamless garment factor. How can one be credible in opposing death in one field but not in another? How can one protest Roe v Wade while supporting the death penalty?

Father Berrigan in turn is a disciple of Servant of God Dorothy Day, whose canonization proceeds in Rome. Of the many pro-life issues she said, “They all hang together.” She too opposed abortion, and in a way that no man could: she had had one, which she deeply lamented in later life. She gets the credit for initiating most Catholic opposition to the Vietnam war, a stance that came to fortify many U.S. bishops. They originally hesitated, fearing this issue was too secular for spiritual leaders. They also worried that Catholics would be seen as second-class immigrant citizens disloyal to the flag. Yet a surprising number of bishops in their youth had joined the Catholic Worker, the New York-based newspaper and movement of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin.

Day left no doubt about her position on Vietnam: she said, “Pack the jails with our young men. Pack the jails!” She wanted a flood of conscientious objectors to so clog the court system that resistance would bring down the war effort. While she faulted resisters like Father Berrigan for sabotage raids on draft offices to destroy files as happened first in Catonsville, Md., since violence could result, she wanted other civil disobedience. She practiced this by refusing to cooperate in citywide civil defense drills during the fifties. Authorities ordered New Yorkers to clear the streets by going down into the subways to rehearse in case of a missile attack by Moscow. She claimed this only enhanced the prospects of war by preparing for it.

So may a pro-life advocate pick and choose among the controversial pro-life issues as though at a salad bar? May she or he be a cafeteria crusader against abortion but ignore the many crimes of violence against women who become pregnant when abused? May one weep at the Sandy Hook savagery but defend the well disordered militia that presently is armed to the teeth?

Good liturgy uses the words of Scripture

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Monday, 20 May 2013 01:44
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We are over a year into the new wording of Mass, with congregation and celebrant adjusting to the changes.  Anything one repeats enough becomes easier because it becomes more familiar. It has not been easy, with the priest’s page-turning and with nearby folks in the pews still saying the old way as we read the prayer cards with the new. They told us it would take time.

One of the many changes that people have asked about is the prayer just before Communion. We admit our unworthiness, a good affirmation if we are about to commune, or communicate, with the Lord who chooses to become so close and accessible. We used to say, “Lord I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.” The meaning was clear even to the children.

We now say, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.” It seems strange, even if we can see the closeness of the two statements, but we wonder if the new way means the roof of our mouth.  If so, that is awkward devotion. But the prayers of good liturgy consciously try to use the words of Scripture, God’s word in human words, which are no good to us if we do not understand them. And since Scripture was written millennia ago, it might need some explanation if it is going to be our prayer, our thought.

Matthew (chapter 8, verses 5-10 and 13) narrates how a Roman centurion, a commanding officer, came to Jesus hoping that he could prevail on the Lord to work one of the miracles he had seen and heard about. So he asked Jesus to come to his house where his serving boy was paralyzed on a sick bed, suffering painfully. Yet the soldier knew the strict customs of the Jews, most of whom considered him and his troops an unwelcome and in fact a hostile and menacing force. Romans had occupied Israel since 63 B.C., when General Pompey invaded and took control. In an empire that in its best days stretched from Scotland to India to Morocco, tight control was used to crush any uprising. And in Jesus’ Israel, many were trying to marshal that very thing.

The Zealots were the insurrectionists — terrorists, if you will — who were called, in Latin, Siccarii, dagger carriers. They did not just carry them. They used them to try to overthrow the Roman rule violently. Simon the Zealot was one of the Twelve, something that did not keep Jesus from including him in his band of followers.

The strict customs forbade Jews from even entering a gentile’s house, much less a hated Roman’s. So in deference to Jesus’ Jewish sensitivities, the centurion asked Jesus to heal the boy from a distance. He claimed to be unworthy of having Jesus enter his house, but really he knew that a good Jew like Jesus might be forced to decline. He said, “I am not worthy to have you under my roof. Just give an order and my boy will get better. I am a man under authority myself and I have troops assigned to me. If I give one man the order, ‘Dismissed,’ off he goes. If I say to another, ‘Come here,’ he comes. If I tell my slave, ‘Do this,’ he does it. Jesus was amazed on hearing this and remarked, ‘I assure you, I have never found this much faith in Israel.’”

We learn that the serving boy was healed at once, but we see Jesus amazed at the faith of a Roman being better than that of his own disciples. And all the while the soldier left Jesus free to obey the customs about visiting gentiles without mentioning the prohibition. If the new Mass prayers have us quote this Roman, it is to have us express his faith in Jesus, really present in the Eucharist, available to us who admit we are vessels unworthy of him.

This is one of the many instances in the new liturgy’s wording where the change really is not about taking us back to the fifth century Latin, which standard was proposed to us by the Vatican but is not always self evident. If sinners like the heathen military man can rise to faith in Jesus, we can confess our sinfulness and be on the way to a healing of our own.

Rusting tanks and obsolete warships

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Monday, 20 May 2013 01:44
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Frank Sinatra had a song about a silly old ram who thought he’d butt a hole in a dam. High hopes and a little perseverance helped him take out a billion kilowatt dam. Persevering, hoping and hard-headed Americans for decades since World War II have wanted somehow to stop the foolishness of heaping two thirds of the discretionary federal budget on arms each year. Yes, they knew the importance of a robust defense. Yes, they understood the Soviet menace. But when was it enough? And may we now give our heads a rest?

In our nation’s effort to pay down the national debt and balance the budget, we have faced and are facing periodic crisis deadlines that, if neglected, will bring down the economy. Like any family budget, so the national one has to see both increased income and less government spending. It has to be both. One is not enough. But both are painful to parts of the population, so the inclination is to burden the less vocal or powerful. That means more taxes for the middle class and less spending for the poor.

So in recent months we have been astounded to see a successful start to trim Defense. Outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned that bad things would happen if the sequestration mechanism kicked in by law. But the solution reminded me of the controversy years ago about closing military bases to save money.  Not wanting to touch the deadly third rail of cutting some favored base, Congress decided to make up a bipartisan list of bases that would be automatically closed if agreement about closures could not be reached by congressional horse trading. That took the heat off individual congresspersons. And we saved a ton of money. Anybody now miss the closure of Clark air base and Subic naval base in the Philippines?

Many Americans are under the impression that the hundreds of our domestic bases mean prosperity for the cities near them. Indeed, after World War II government made the conscious decision to locate them in the poorest parts of the country. That way jobs and salaries would help locals. But the corresponding impression that arms manufacture also means prosperity has a flaw: as we continue to make more and more weapons systems, even those the generals and admirals do not want, we use government money in the least efficient way.

If the idea is to stimulate the economy, given that military subcontractors are in every congressional district and not by coincidence, we are doing it inefficiently. If we build a tank, it will circulate back into the economy comparatively little money. Once the employees of the defense contractors are paid, the tank sits in the rain at an armory rusting. It is useless even to clear snow. We sink obsolete warships for fish habitat. But if we used the money for socially geared needs, like roads and bridges and teachers and medics, much more money would cycle back into the economy for the good of all.

Military brass officials have testified that weapons makers badger them to buy product they do not need.  So their highly paid lobbyists go over the heads of the joint chiefs and appeal to Congress, saying that the subcontractors in their districts will benefit. But nobody complains that this is Big Government. Nobody compares this waste to welfare for the rich contractors. Nobody notes that the 9/11 terrorists used box cutters.

Then, trying to make lemonade with these lemons, the war economy sells cheap to allies our war material. This helps rectify the overseas balance of payments. Many do not know that our foreign aid, about 20th in generosity proportionately worldwide, consists of vouchers given to our friends which can only be redeemed by American defense contractors. We do not give surplus crops as aid, unless in extreme foreign emergency. And we do not give away bales of cash, as libertarians charge.

The standard retort to this is that we don’t appreciate the sacrifice of our volunteer service personnel. I certainly do. While many poor in so mismanaged an economy must enlist to get a job, the valor and courage of our military cannot be overstated. In fact, arguments like this try to get them out of harm’s way when politicians, many of whom never wore the uniform, send them to places like Iraq for no defensible military reason. None of the 9/11 terrorists was an Iraqi. Most were from our ally Saudi Arabia.

 

 

Widely accepted fallacies that defy evidence

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Monday, 20 May 2013 01:44
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What a relief that as fall yielded to winter, the Mayan calendar’s expiration did not end the world. I was so worried. And a week and a half later, the financial world also kept from flying into smithereens as our political leaders veered away from the dreaded cliff of doom. I don’t know how much sleep I lost over that. They have to schedule these things farther apart: a body only has so much adrenaline.

The temptation is to blame the media for such idiocy, saying they want to sell papers. But with Phineas Taylor Barnum rightly saying that there’s one born every minute and two to take his money, we get an idea of our reputation of gullibility. H.L. Mencken, the Baltimore newspaperman who died in 1956, chided our credulity when he said that no one ever went broke underestimating the American electorate. For our ability to buy anything advertised to us, he invented the term “Boobus Americanus.”

Have you ever catalogued the number of things we, even with our incredible communications technology, take as true when evidence or experience tells us they are false? Because such widely accepted fallacies have been around so long, we say they must be right.  Take war. Essentially we decide that we are going to get our troops out on a field and annihilate the other side’s troops, perhaps with better weapons and training and preparedness. So we build robotic aircraft to carry Hellfire missiles undetected over enemy territory and fire them at unsuspecting targets, wiping out civilians nearby who are dismissed as collateral damage. Sorry, no hard feelings.

Gun possession also has been around a long while.  Perhaps it shares war’s worry about the appearance of too little testosterone that it positively shouts for the right to carry guns never foreseen by the authors of the Second Amendment. These authors specified that Americans may bear arms when assembling a well-regulated militia. Today’s police and military fill that bill, not private citizens. By extension, why can’t I claim the right to own a bazooka, or maybe one of those drones. I could say it is for self defense.

How about abortion? It has been legalized here and in many other countries. Its presupposition is that the baby is not a legal person by edict of the high court, so it may be terminated the way a cancerous tumor may be. Somehow the court decided that a woman’s right to privacy outweighs the baby’s right to birth. But then, kidnapped Africans in America’s 19th century were also told by the court that they were not recognizable as legal persons. Once again, nothing personal intended. Today we no longer have slaves picking cotton, thanks to the Thirteenth Amendment, even if there are more slaves today in the world than before as forced laborers or as sex captives. But as with the above lunacies, no one raises a cry. Or if they do, they are dismissed as fanatics forcing their faith on others. The Taliban has poisoned the well with its religious extremism, making social justice advocates look as believable.

And then there is the impossible to understand clamor from some in the middle class that the rich not be taxed. This would take money away from the private sector, where it could start factories and create jobs, and give it to government so it can make some more anti-poverty programs. Here the charge is that its motive is to buy votes from the poor and win elections. The only snag is that money for the rich goes to Cayman Islands wealth generators while money to help poor goes immediately to food and clothing stores. Any economist will tell you that money in circulation benefits us all while money just for the rich seldom creates the many mythical jobs to stimulate that circulation. Comparatively little ever trickles down. Why do you suppose that Jesus likened the attitude of the rich toward money to a camel passing through a needle’s eye?

Our country today faces arterial sclerosis because lenders fear to lend, employers fear to employ, and consumers fear to consume, each afraid that a sudden downturn will leave them high and dry. The term is money velocity, the speed with which it travels through the arteries of the national economy. It should be called money molasses in winter, so great is the fear four years after the Great Recession ended.  I’d like to see proof of this last.

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