Obama's Bismarck?

Bismarck is burning. Not like the 1991 documentary film about debauchery in NYC, and certainly not the way fires of revolution have engulfed the Muslim Middle East. 

I toyed with entitling this post "Sink The Bismarck (Again)", but the famous German WWII battleship's fate carries less resonance in our culture with every passing year. 

Or how about "A Tale of 3 Bismarcks", given that the city and the ship were both named after the famous non-Socialist who invented the modern welfare state?

Today Bismarck—and all of North Dakota—truly is on fire. In a Chamber of Commerce kind of way. With Otto von Bismarck's cradle-to-grave Statism finally dying all over the world (see Greece, Ireland and Spain), and with the warship still mired on the bottom of the Atlantic, the town on the banks of the Missouri River is the only one of the three Bismarcks still kickin'. And how.

What was the unemployment rate in your state last month? Probably not 3.7% like North Dakota's. Taxes there are moderate, and it's a right-to-work state, attractive to new employers. The state's median household income has increased 17% in the last decade, triple the rate of Massachussetts and more than 10 times California's. Oh, and North Dakota has the lowest percentage of non-religious people of any state, and the most churches per capita. Coincidence?

In his Washington DC palace today, Otto von Obama sits grinding his teeth that he cannot exert his will in North Dakota as he can in Alaska, Utah, Wyoming and off the coasts of Louisiana, California and other states. But why can't the King of America issue edicts to stop the production of shale oil up by the 49th Parallel? Because the land up there isn't owned by The Crown. 

With so much of their land in private hands, North Dakotans are free to develop it for their good and ours. Their lignite coal provides 90% of the state's electricity, and the oil-fields up there are helping fill our gas tanks, while bringing wealth to the free people in and around Bismarck. 

I hope in the next election we'll chart a course for our ship of state more along the lines of our friends up yonder, and reject the path of the the man who brought the world National Health Insurance.

Review of "Doing Virtuous Business"

The critical factor in producing wealth is not land or toil or machinery. 

It is entrepreneurship: the imagining, creating, and running of an enterprise. 

This cannot be done without risk, and the successful entrepreneur takes risks, 

assumes responsibility for their outcome, and acts responsibly toward

those whom he includes in his gamble. That is how wealth is created. 

The hardest part of getting through Dr. Malloch's spirited defense of capitalism is the temptation to Google every juicy quote by Thomas Hobbes, Isaiah Berlin, Adam Smith, John Locke and other ancients, including Biblical writers. Malloch also quotes modern thinkers and business leaders, but this is a deeply conservative book—returning over and over to the underlying ethos phrased best by Edmund Burke: that the treasure of civilization is stored up in tradition, principle and prejudice. 


From this foundation Malloch identifies spiritual capital:  "the fund of beliefs, examples, and commitments transmitted from generation to generation through a religious tradition, attaching people to the transcendental source of human happiness." He demonstrates the reality of spiritual capital most clearly in China's recent resurgence. "Mao...set out to destroy Chinese culture and to trample on all pieties...he ruined the economy, murdered millions of people, and sowed wherever he could the seeds of hatred and distrust. Yet the spiritual capital invested by Confucius and his followers...remained ambient in the souls of the ordinary Chinese and has now begun to bear fruit [after] sixty years..."


Despite nods to a few outstanding Muslim or Hindu enterprises, Malloch is unashamedly Christian. His chapter on Virtue begins with "Aristotle’s list of the cardinal virtues—temperance, courage, justice, and practical wisdom". But he quickly arrives at Thomas Aquinas, who insisted that "charity is the virtue without which no other virtue [can be] perfected...following St. Paul’s famous evocation in 1 Corinthians 13. Charity...is a translation of the Greek agape, the New Testament name for the love that we can offer to everyone..."


Of course Adam Smith hovers over every page, not so much his themes from The Wealth of Nations as those from The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Though not a history book, Malloch illuminates Calvin's "Protestant work ethic" in the example Herman Miller Chairman Michael Volkema. And he recites an amazing number of corporate mission statements from England and America that list "honoring God" before mentioning "shareholder value"—which is found at the bottom of many such statements. There are many real-world illustrations like the Presbyterian underpinnings of real-estate developer Tom Cousins, the Southern Baptist convictions of Truett Cathy, CEO of Chick-fil-A and the redirected ministerial path of Sir John Templeton, arguably the world's most successful investor. 


Malloch lays bare the straw-man argument against capitalism that greed and lust for power animate and maintain the march of free enterprise. For every Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco there are dozens of honest, upright, spiritually-motivated businesses that seek—first and foremost—to do good. And Malloch includes an appendix entitled "A Gallery of Virtuous Companies". He painstakingly documents how successful businessman spend far more time actually DOING business than counting their money or gloating over defeated adversaries. Anybody who knows entrepreneurs knows it is the activity, the process, the delighted customers, the approval of peers, the satisfaction of providing jobs, the joy of running of the race—indeed the work itself—that motivates them and drives their profitability. Did you catch that? Profits flow out of the well of spiritual motivation, because money alone is insufficient to empower the imagination and life-force of all but the rarest individual. The critics of capitalism have it exactly backwards, and Malloch contends that Adam Smith, F.A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises got it right. 


"Religious...faith changes business for the better, just as it changes lives. It injects into business...spiritual capital. Agnostics and nonbelievers make use of spiritual capital as well, but only people of faith renew it. And by replenishing spiritual capital, they benefit us all." This is a book to be kept, not on the bookshelf, but in a conspicuous spot on every businessman's desktop. 


Doing Virtuous Business: the Remarkable Success of Spiritual Enterprise
by Dr. Theodore Roosevelt Malloch
$21.99 U.S.
Hardcover, 176 pages
ISBN-13: 978-0849947179
from Thomas Nelson (available March 29, 2011)


Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."

Review of "The Next Christians" by Gabe Lyons

Don't be Jerry Falwell, be Mother Teresa. 

That is the message—I kid you not—of Gabe Lyons' book "The Next Christians," which gives away the game in its sub-title "The Good News About The End Of Christian America." Clearly Mr. Lyons is no fan of Christianity as it has been practiced in this country. On page one he gives short shrift to his own Christian upbringing, graduation from a Christian college and how he eventually "began to notice" that many non-Christians between the ages of 16-29 have an "incredibly negative" view of Christianity. 

Really? Unbelievers are negative about our faith? Who knew? From that unremarkable insight, Mr. Lyons goes on to indict generations of evangelicals—never mentioning any generation of American believers he does admire—for what he calls "the loss of Christian influence in our culture." No one would dispute that there has been a loss—some loss—of Christian influence in America recently. But a case can be made that previous generations of Christians faithfully passed the torch after struggling with their "old wineskins," and that things would be much worse if not for the Jerry Falwells, Bill Brights, Charles Swindolls, James Dobsons, et al. 


But no, Lyons is near categorical in contending that Christian influence in America is gone. Finished. Lost. On its face this is a laughable assertion. I guess if one relies solely on Newsweek, The New York Times and CNN, as Mr. Lyons does, such a pessimistic conclusion about the state of America's faith is understandable. 


Starting from the rather shaky premise of his previous book UnChristian, that unbelievers reject Christ because believers are scolds, Lyons develops his prescription backwards from the prejudices of today's young non-Christians. Thus he himself scolds most American Christians as either Separatists (in three flavors: "evangelizers," "insiders" and "culture warriors") or as Cultural Christians ("blenders" or "philanthropists"). Of course he scores easy points on all of these folks—and I'd be the last to say American Christianity has no warts at all. The first part of his book alternates between sympathetic personal stories of "average spiritual sojourners" (Lyons description of unbelievers) and cautionary tales of rigid, judgmental, stone-age Christians. The second half tells of his hall-of-fame nominees for Next Christians: including anti-war radical Shane Claiborne, education reformer Sajan George and publishers Nick Purdy and Josh Jackson of Paste magazine. The common thread among his heros is that they're big on "engaging the culture," less interested in spreading the gospel.


Lyons was too young to have witnessed the invention of the parachurch organization or the birth of the Jesus Movement, or the impact of contemporary Christian music. I can attest that young believers back in those days were deemed "radical" by their parents and pastors. Lyons myopically contends that we are seeing a 500-year shift in Christendom, though he's very short on details. He could be right, but it'll take a hundred years for anybody to confirm. Surely believers of all generations have had successes and failures during their respective times . . . and Lyons himself cautions that Next Christians "won't always get it right." I found it telling that he decries his own Separatist upbringing, while admitting that he keeps many of today's cultural influences away from his own children.


This book reminds me of the "mockumentary" DVD Lord Save Us From Your Followers. I think Gabe Lyons is embarrassed by suburban conservative Christians, who are ridiculed in popular culture as backward, fearful and reactionary. Lyon's most annoying swipe is taken at the good deeds that are being done by putative Yesterday Christians. He says these churches are only doing community and humanitarian ministry because it's the "hip new thing." Please. Where was he when World Vision and Compassion International were founded? Not all Christians will emphasize the same kinds of  ministry or emit the same "vibe" favored by Lyons. Some Christians will rub certain types of unbelievers the wrong way, but those same folks will be exactly the kind of Christian needed to reach other kinds of unbelievers.


Lyons is right to celebrate Next Christians who are blazing new trails into unfamiliar territories of Christian service. But he paints with too broad a brush those who operate more traditionally and whose expressions of faith embarrass him. There most certainly are and will be Next Christians who will "do faith" differently than previous generations. But unless they are the last Christians, their kids and grandkids will reject the "old ways" as well.


Thank God we can have it both ways: give me a Jerry Falwell and a Mother Teresa.


The Next Christians: The Good News About The End Of Christian America
Gabe Lyons

$14.99 U.S.

Hardcover, 240 pages
ISBN-13: 978-0385529846

Doubleday Religion 

Released October 5, 2010
(Multnomah/WaterBrook sent me this book free as part of their "Blogging for Books" program)

How To Cut $63.7 Billion From The Federal Deficit

Why do we have a Federal Department of Education? Why do $63.7 billion of our tax dollars support 4,200 federal employees every year? Does the U.S. Department of Education build schools? Hire teachers? Establish curricula? Publish text books? No. The U.S. Department of Education does exactly one thing: it launders money.


By far most of those 4,200 employees spend their working days doling out our tax dollars to school districts that will dance to their tune. They package money taken from the states and—after paying for buildings and bureaucrats—they turn around and give some of that money back to the states. With strings attached, of course.


The role of educating children is not among the enumerated powers delegated by the constitution to the central government. And all powers not specifically granted to the feds "are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." So the States and the people are responsible for teaching our children. 


The States and the people did a pretty good job for the first 203 years of our Republic before Jimmy Carter foisted the Education Department upon us in 1979. Ronald Reagan, who once said a government bureaucracy was the closest thing on earth to eternal life, actually pledged to shut it down. Reagan replaced Carter and could have done us that favor, but his prophecy was more powerful than his pledge...and the E.D. lives today. 


Does anybody here believe that public education in America is improving? Not the producers of Waiting For Superman (available on DVD this Tuesday): "Among 30 developed countries, we rank 25th in math and 21st in science. In almost every category, we've fallen behind...except one: kids from the USA rank number one in confidence." Talk about cognitive dissonance. Is it any wonder that the politically-correct trait of "self esteem" is the greatest achievement of a government-dominated education system?


The Department's mission creeps and crawls deeper into every crevice of our society. Its tentacles grip ever tighter around the throats of our States and school boards. Its protector parasites grow fatter and fatter, feeding off their host's largesse and the union dues of many millions of teachers. And yet our children's test scores and competitiveness continue a long, slow decline.


A modest proposal: eliminate this wasteful, harmful agency and reduce the deficit by $63.7 billion.