Steve Bannon's Address to the Human Dignity Institute

Steve Bannon: BuzzFeed News originally posted a complete transcript of the then–Breitbart News chairman’s remarks. This is a YouTube video of the opening remarks:

The Lutherans Know It Is Our Religious Freedom at Stake!

I watched and heard Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison's testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform yesterday morning at our First Things together.  

 

Wow!

Dr. Harrison is the President of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.  He testified on Thursday, Feb. 16., to discuss the recent U. S. Health and Human Services ruling mandating that all organizations no matter what their moral beliefs must provide an insurance mechanism that funds, without deductibles, abortion inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception. On behalf of the LCMS, Harrison spoke to the issue and how it violates our freedoms of religion and conscience. 

The Synod President also issued a statement on February 3rd, 2012 about religious freedom in response to U.S. Department's of Health and Human Services requiring religious employers to cover contraceptives, even those that can kill unborn children.

Nor are these solid Lutherans sucked in by the President's supposed "compromise:" Dr. Harrison said his  church remains ‘deeply concerned’ about health plan mandate despite the White House statement.

It is difficult to know how to react to the "compromise."  Is the White House completely ignorant of economics or is it just blatantly cynical?  The compromise allows organizations and companies(?) who morally object to exclude the mandated coverage from their plan, but then must direct their employees to riders which the insurer must provide free of charge.  The first law of economics is TANSTAAFL: "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch."  As Robert Heinlein portrayed so well in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, somebody pays.  The insurance company, forbidden to charge directly for sterilization, abortion inducing drugs, and contraception, will smear the costs into its rates.   





 

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1964) is my favorite science fiction book.  In it Robert Heinlein portrays a society then a century into the future.  On the earth's moon exists a colony initially established as a penal colony.  While new prisoners are deported to the moon, most of the inhabitants are the descendants of former deportees.   Much like the exiles on the First Fleet, the criminals are as likely to be political prisoners as ordinary law breakers.   (Colleen McCollough portrays British justice and horror of the process in Morgan's Run.)

The language spoken by the "Loonies" is a dialect of English with Russian and other words mixed in.  I suspect that Heinlein, an Annapolis graduate,  spent time in Australia either while in the Navy or subsequently.  There is a sprinkling of Aussie in the Loonies' vocabulary; the speech patterns remind me of Sydney;  and many of the social mores are understandable in terms of Sydney's history.  I tried to reread the book when I was in Australia (1991-3), but found that the publisher had Anglicized the language, i.e., translated American English into British English.  For an hilarious introduction to Aussie English, read John O'Grady's book.

Libertarian Heinlein teaches a fundamental lesson: TANSTAAFL or "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch."  This is a fundamental principle of economics and democracy, as the Revolutionary War proved to our Founding Fathers.

When I taught Economics 20 at St. Peters College (Jersey City), I would assign it as a reading.  The story allowed students to imagine an economy without the state.  The plot is great. Because it is science fiction, readers do not notice how seditious it is.

Buy it at Abe Books or on Amazon.

Beware: 2076 is coming fast!

The Case Against Global Warming

Has global warming become more polemical politics than science? That is the case made by filmaker, Michael Durkin. I am not a good judge of how accurate his argument is, but his review of recent paleoclimatic ages is great.

The video is supplied by Google.

The Great Global Warming Swindle

1 hr 15 min 56 sec - Mar 9, 2007
Average rating: (3171 ratings)
Description: Are you green? How many flights have you taken in the last year? Feeling guilty about all those unnecessary car journeys? Well, maybe there's no need to feel bad. According to a group of scientists brought together by documentary-maker Martin Durkin, if the planet is heating up, it isn't your fault and there's nothing you can do about it. We've almost begun to take it for granted that climate change is a man-made phenomenon. But just as the environmental lobby think they've got our attention, a group of naysayers have emerged to slay the whole premise of global warming.

Booms, Technological Babbles and Busts

Milton Friedman died yesterday.

When I was in graduate school in the late 1960s, many of my peers were disciples of Mao and romanticized that thug Che Guevara. They carried around with them The Thoughts of Chairman Mao ("The Little Red Book") as if it were a badge of honor. I vividly remember the ugliness at the American Economic Association meetings when Friedman gave his Nobel Laureate lecture amid angry prrotests and demonstrations.

The "Little Green Book" (his Capitalism and Freedom) was the first book that made me think critically and creatively in economics. From today's vantage point, it appears to have won the long war with "The Little Red Book." His ideas have seized the commanding heights. It is a great irony that the best words to put on his tomestone would be those of John Maynard Keynes, the dominant intellectual force in economics from 1936 to the 1970s and the king whom Friedman deposed:

"The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood . . . Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back."

- J.M. Keynes, General Theory, ch. 24.

Today's Wall Street Journal is a must read. Not only is there a lead editorial on Uncle Milton (no surprise) and a front page article, but they published a new article by Friedman himself ("Why Money Matters") on the editorial page that is a gem. It could as easily have been titled "Booms, Technological Babbles and Busts." Personally, I can't imaging still writing so lucidly and perceptively at 94. In fact, still breathing would be an accomplishment.

Fellow economist Michael Boskin leaves us with the image of Milton and Rose dancing at her birthday. The perfect signature on a full and fruitful life!

Pray for his soul and the wife who has lost a soulmate. May he be smiling down at us from the true commanding heights.