the sword and the lie

From Daylight Atheis:

It is not just one tax that religious organizations are excused from paying, but an entire constellation of them. Clergy are exempt from federal taxes on housing and can opt out of Social Security and Medicare withholding. Religious employers are generally exempt from federal and state unemployment taxes, and in some states, religious publications are exempt from sales tax. Church benefit and retirement plans do not require the church employer to match its employees’ contributions. Churches are automatically exempted from filing annual public informational reports on their financial status and activities, and donations made to churches are eligible for income tax deductions. And, of course, the two major tax breaks: church groups do not have to pay income tax and do not have to pay taxes on property which they own.

A nice summation on what went wrong in Iraq from a reader of Andrew Sullivan’s The Daily Dish:

You stated that,”We tried to construct a constitutional order [in Iraq] for a non-dictatorial, national political settlement.”We did what, exactly?  Here’s what we did.  We disbanded the army, throwing thousands out into the street with no pay, no pension, no way to support their families.  We shut down the state-owned industries that produced goods and services basic to the national infrastructure, throwing thousands out into the street with no pay, no pension, no way to support their families.  And then we expected investors to line up while we threw reconstruction dollars at Halliburton and KBR and other American firms under no-bid loopholes in U.S. Government Procurement Law. Worse still, we eviscerated the civil service by purging it of Baath party members (who wasn’t a member of the Baath Party?  The cleaning crew?) thus ripping out the bare bones that would have supported the construction of constitutional order.  Never mind throwing thousands out into the street with no pay, no pension, no way to support their families.  We sat back while all these constitutionally and economically disenfranchised people looted what remained, said “stuff happens” and then proudly we pointed to purple fingers and claimed victory.We burned down the house, that’s what we did.

John Stossel on global warming activism, and the self-interest that may lie behind much of it:

It reminds me of George Mason University Economics Department Chairman Don Boudreax’s suggestion that such schemes really mean ‘government seizing enormous amounts of additional power in order to embark upon schemes of social engineering - schemes whose pursuit gratifies the abstract fantasies of the theory class and, simultaneously, lines the very real pockets of politically powerful corporations, organizations, and “experts.”’ He is so right. The abstract fantasies of the theory class will soon send huge chunks of your money to politicians, friends, activist scientists, and politically savvy corporations.

Several public intellectuals were recently asked what the “idea” of America was. Of course most had a grand vision that conveniently overlapped whatever their pet cause is. George Will, however, had a refreshing take on it:

It has been often said that any idea is dangerous if it is a person’s only idea. Talk about “the” American idea is dangerous because it often is a precursor to, and an excuse for, the missionary impulse that sleeps lightly, when it sleeps at all, in many Americans. After all, if the essence of America can be distilled to a single idea, it must be supremely important, and there might be a moral imperative to export it.

The ancient Greek poet Hesiod on the two goddesses named “Eris” or “Strife”:

So, after all, there was not one kind of Strife alone, but all over the earth there are two. As for the one, a man would praise her when he came to understand her; but the other is blameworthy: and they are wholly different in nature. For one fosters evil war and battle, being cruel: her no man loves; but perforce, through the will of the deathless gods, men pay harsh Strife her honour due. But the other is the elder daughter of dark Night (Nyx), and the son of Cronus who sits above and dwells in the aether, set her in the roots of the earth: and she is far kinder to men. She stirs up even the shiftless to toil; for a man grows eager to work when he considers his neighbour, a rich man who hastens to plough and plant and put his house in good order; and neighbour vies with his neighbour as he hurries after wealth. This Strife is wholesome for men. And potter is angry with potter, and craftsman with craftsman, and beggar is jealous of beggar, and minstrel of minstrel.

Hesiod, Works and Days, 11–24 Hesiod can be said to be rather libertarian in this moment. He has a pacifist’s disgust for war in his hatred of one Strife, but an entrepreneur’s appreciation for competitiveness in his appreciation of the other.

Chris Matthews, at least momentarily, abandoned his Machiavellianism to say something quite penetrating (even if it was borrowed from Fareed Zakaria) about terrorism and liberty:

MATTHEWS:  …I agree with what Fareed Zakaria wrote in “Newsweek” this week, which is terrorism isn‘t explosions and death, terrorism is when you change your society because of those explosions and you become fearful to the point where you shut out immigration, you shut out student exchanges, you shut people out of buildings, you begin to act in an almost fascist manner because you‘re afraid of what might happen to you.  That‘s when terrorism becomes real and frighteningly successful.  That‘s what I believe, and that‘s why I question the way Giuliani has raised this issue.  He raises it as a specter.  In a weird way, he helps the bad guys.

A really funny, and incisive take on Pascal’s Wager.

Louis XIV, the “sun king” of France from 1643 to 1715, is often marveled over by historians for his “magnificence”. Buy like most rulers with their own cult of personality, he did far more harm than good to his people:

The economic and financial condition of France at the beginning of the eighteenth century was truly pitiable. In spite of her great natural resources, the variety of her favourable climates, the fertility of her well-watered soil, and the thrift, industry, and intelligence of her people, the efforts of able ministers like Mazarin and Colbert to increase her national wealth had been rendered nugatory by the senseless politics of the Great Monarch. Costly campaigns abroad, ruinous extravagance at home, left the kingdom at his death, in 1715, with a debt of 3460 million francs, of which over 3300 had been contracted since the death of Colbert in 1683. His murderous wars, reducing the birth-rate, increasing the mortality, and “an act of religious intolerance, disavowed by religion” –the expulsion of the Protestants–had reduced the population by four millions, or 20 per cent, since 1660. Agricultural products had fallen off by one-third since he ascended the throne.

The Physiocrats, Henry Higgs, p. 5

This is what centralization of power around a few egos leads to: “costly campaigns abroad” (like those brought to us by today’s neocons), ruinous extravagence at home (like that brought to us by today’s “compassionate conservatives” and tax-and-spend leftists), and massive debt (like that brought to us by the combination of all of the above).

I saw the Golden Compass today. While the storytelling didn’t really draw me in, I really appreciated its message. In the other-world of the movie, society is lorded over by a global organization called the Magisterium, a parallel to the Catholic church during medieval and early modern times. Just like the church, the Magisterium actively and violently discourages free inquiry. It has a very individualist and libertarian bent. Well worth a watch for lovers of liberty of thought and action.

This is only the most extreme kind of example of the pernicious effects of indoctrination in education:

SAIMA KHAN wants to die a martyr. Life is transient, she told her father in a telephone call last week, and the real glory is to sacrifice it for Allah. Her statement would be alarming at any age, but Saima is only 10.