Michael links, through Brian Leiter's blog and Daily Kos, to a "depressing map showing income drop under Bush." Here is a New York Times story on the same issue.
A quick thought: Clearly, Governor Jennifer Granholm -- a Democrat -- of Michigan, where the "income drop" is most pronounced, has to go! Go De Vos! Beat Granholm!
A more serious question: What, exactly, does the map mean?? No doubt, and this is particularly true for those of us -- that is, for all of us -- who don't really understand the ins and outs of labor economics, the news that wages are dropping should cause us to be concerned, sit up, and try to figure out what is going on. After all, "under Bush," the economy has grown, notwithstanding the bursting of the Clinton-era tech-bubble, the September 11 attacks, and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. If it were the case that, despite this growth (which was not inevitable, was it?), Americans in the middle-, working, and lower classes were worse off, it would indeed be upsetting, and "depressing".
This map does not show, though, that Americans' standard of living is declining. It isn't. This Bureau of Labor Statistics report, "100 Years of U.S. Consumer Spending," might be of interest here. See also this recent Washington Post op-ed on why statistics like those in the map o which Michael links provide an incomplete picture of poverty and well-being.
Nor does the map accurate depict developments regarding Americans' real, total compensation (including benefits, insurance, pension contributions, etc.) According to this BLS chart, real hourly compensation in the non-farm sector has increased consistently since the 2001 recession. See also this post, by our fellow MOJ-er Steve Bainbridge, on whether statistics like those depicted on the map ignore the realities of the "ownership society."
Clearly, a map showing declining median wages in the face of growth and productivity increases is politically useful in September of an election year. And, we might conclude that, even the full picture of the economy (i.e., one that factors in real compensation and the considerations outlined in the Post op-ed) is troubling, perhaps because of the disparity between those at the top and the bottom. (See theseold MOJ posts on income inequality.) We might think that even real, total compensation is too low, and failing to keep pace with American workers' increased productivity. And so on. But, if it turns out to be the case that, while median wages are not growing, real compensation and consumer spending are, is this something that is "depressing"? Morally objectionable?
William Thro, state solicitor general for Virginia, recently published an essay with the provocative title "A Pelagian Vision for Our Augustinian Constitution: A Review of Justice Breyer's Active Liberty," 32 Journal of College and University Law 491 (2006). (HT: Bob Anthony).
He writes: "While the Christian Church resolved the theological issue in the fifth century, humanity continues to grapple with the broader question. For a nation, the collective answer to that question inevitably will determine how it organizes its government." The author suggests that Breyer's pelagian tendencies cause him to devalue such structural safeguards as state sovereignty (rejecting by implication the Catholic concept of subsidiarity and the Calvinist concept of sphere sovereignty) in his interpretative method.
[This may be of interest to MOJ-readers. Lifted from Brian Leiter's blog. Posted by guest-blogger Benj Hellie.]
Depressing map showing income drop under Bush
That's median income,
folks. Despite the fact that the economy has been growing at a slow but
consistent rate, median income has been dropping in nearly every state,
in some cases, quite dramatically -- in excess of 10% (!) in five
states. Obviously, there has been a tremendous looting of the great
majority of Americans by the ultra rich, who not only have absorbed all
that economic growth for themselves, but are actually *taking away* the
small gains made since the early seventies. Indeed, we have heard for
years that incomes have barely risen since then, but now it seems quite
likely that under Bush, we have seen an absolute income drop, returning
to the levels of the 1960s.
I suspect that many readers of this blog are professionals, who
regard steadily increasing income as a given. Can you imagine if you
had to take a 10% income cut? This is stark, terribly bad economic
news: most of America is effectively living through an economic
depression.
Marie Failinger just brought to my attention the Journal of Lutheran Ethic's exploration of Deus Caritas Est. The editorial synopsis of the September issue follows:
This month five more authors join the four from the August issue to offer their reflections on the pope’s letter. Three of the authors focus on theoretical themes arising from the letter and two draw out the practical meaning of love.
[2] In a wide-ranging article, William Buckley, a Roman Catholic, introduces Pope Benedict and his encyclical and places them in historical perspective. He interprets the encyclical in terms of its eucharistic liturgical catechesis and points to a history shared by Benedict and Luther.
[3] Mary Gaebler takes up Benedict’s claim that eros and agape cannot be separated and turns to Luther texts to investigate whether or not Luther affirmed eros or self-love as part of the Christian life.
[4] Michael Rothaar writes on why and how the pope’s letter on love is helpful to him in his pastoral ministry.
[5] Mark Peterson, viewing Deus Caritas Est from the perspective of Lutheran social ministry, praises the centrality of love of neighbor in the letter and notes areas for further elaboration.
[6] Michael Trice argues that an in-depth reading of the encyclical shows that Benedict missed the opportunity to develop two important themes about love and community.
This new paper, "The Moral Subject of Property," by Carol Rose, looks really interesting. Here is the abstract:
What kind of person is presupposed by property law? This paper, written for a symposium on the morality of law, investigates the morality that is expected of participants in property regimes, and it argues that property presupposes a "second-best" morality. The presumptive property subject is a self-interested being, but also one who has a modicum of cooperativeness. But is such a second-best morality good enough to command respect? Critics complain that it is not, and that property concedes too much to human self-interest. This paper explores three areas where this critique arises: the claims that initial acquisitions are based on wrongful behavior, thus tainting subsequent ownership; that property results in unequal distributions of wealth; and that commercial property's alienability corrupts the human understanding of love, generosity and good civic behavior. The usual property-based answer to these critiques is that property nevertheless makes us all better off. Thus claims and responses do not meet, with one side speaking of personal morality and the other referring to the public welfare. Nevertheless there are several ways in which property's more forgiving second-best standard may also call into question the personal moral character of a more demanding first-best standard.
I appreciate Eduardo's response to my post about Rauch's review of Ponnuru's book. (That sentence is a parody of blogging, isn't it?)
That said, the force of Eduardo's and Rauch's critique continues to elude me. That is, I do not see why those who believe -- as I do, and as Ponnuru does, and as Eduardo does -- that abortion generally involves wrongful homicide, and that our Nation's tolerance (let alone constitutionalization and celebration) of private violence against unborn children is shameful, are therefore required, for consistency's sake, to believe that women who have abortions, or doctors who perform them, should be punished in the same way and with the same severity as are persons who "murder" adults. Nor do I see why those who believe that abortion generally involves wrongful homicide are therefore required, for consistency's sake, to "fire-bomb[] . . . abortion clinics" or take to the streets.
Eduardo writes:
But if abortion is murder, then the scale of the injustice being perpetrated on a daily basis in our country alone (not to mention the world) is truly staggering. Over six million innocent human lives have been intentionally taken in the United States under the Bush presidency alone. Why does President Bush get a pass for this? No doubt some will point towards his rhetoric of life and the limited actions he has taken, which admittedly would not have been taken under a different administration. But if abortion is mass murder on the scale of a Holocaust every eight years, shouldn't he be doing more? Where is the sense of urgency? If abortion is mass murder, the President should be filibustering, refusing to talk about anything else, shutting the federal government down until he gets his way, not taking his eye of the ball and fighting wars in Iraq, negotiating trade agreements, cutting taxes, or making speeches about the problems with social security.
Well, I suppose one reason why "Bush [might] get a pass" on this is because he is, in fact, doing what can be done, within the constraints of horribly misguided constitutional law, to change people's minds about abortion, and thereby hastening the day when the wrong of abortion will be as clear to most people as it is to Eduardo and me. Eduardo knows as well as I do that "filibustering," etc. would be, given the givens, utterly useless. I do not see why those who believe that abortion is wrongful homicide are required to indulge in useless (indeed, counterproductive) dramatics, even when the wrong being combatted is as great as this one, when smaller steps hold out the promise of actually changing people's minds.
I am inclined to agree with Eduardo that there is a difference -- one that is relevant to the perpetrator's culpability and deserved punishment -- between procuring or performing an abortion and maliciously causing the death of an adult. True, both involve the deaths of human beings, and both are wrong. But, it seems to me, the state-of-mind, or mens rea is almost certainly different (if only because the humanity of the victim, and therefore the wrongfulness of the conduct, is impossible to avoid in the latter situation), and so it does not seem to me odd, or hypocritical, to concede (as Ponnuru does) that the law may treat them differently.
We have just gone through that time of liturgical year when the daily Gospel readings from St. Matthew are replete with Jesus's critique of the scribes and Pharisees--"Woe to you Scribes and Pharisees...!" Yesterday's Gospel for the twenty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time from St. Mark was a climax for this series of admonition to the lawyers of his time. Jesus calls them hypocrites and accuses them of disregarding and defiling God's commandment. The source of this defilement, he says, is not from outside the person but from within. He strongly rebukes the legal profession of his time. But for those of us who might wonder if there is hope for lawyers, regardless of the era in which they live, the first reading from the Book of Deuteronomy provides some valuable insight into what God asks of us through His commandments. If we allow ourselves to be open to God's intelligence and wisdom, human governance and the law that is made and applied under it can make the human family and its nations great. Moreover, if we lawyers are free for God's intelligence and wisdom, think of the benefits that can be derived for those whom we encounter. Some of them may be skeptical and others may be quite critical of such a project. But, there may well be those who see that there is something beyond the present moment and the political caprice of the day. As we begin a new academic year, we might consider how the lessons from these passages of sacred scripture might make us not only better teachers but more effective ministers of God's justice in this world. RJA sj
It's good to be back in the U.S. after two excellent weeks in Europe (including in Siena, Italy teaching at a European summer school on church-state relations on which I'll blog a little).
On SSRN, Allan Samansky (Ohio State) posts an article arguing that the Internal Revenue restrictions on tax-exempts intervening in political campaigns in favor of particular candidates should not be applied to churches, at least as to "core" religious activities such as sermons:
There are convincing arguments for treating churches differentlyfrom other section 501(c)(3) organizations when interpreting andapplying the prohibition against intervening in politicalcampaigns. The article recommends that pastors and other churchleaders be able to communicate with members about the merits ofpolitical candidates without risking loss of favorable taxstatus. Such leniency for churches is consistent with thelegislative history of the prohibition and would not violate theEstablishment Clause of the First Amendment. Furthermore, strictenforcement of the ban against participation in politicalcampaigns by churches risks violating the Free Exercise Clause ofthe First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of1993.
UPDATE: I just noticed Rick's post on this below. I agree with Rick that the LAW treats all sorts of homicides differently, but usually not based on the mere identity of the human victim. (Imagine a law, for example, that classified the killing of very old people as a less serious form of homicide than the killing of someone in the prime of life.) If anything, we normally think of the killing of the very young and defenseless as a particularly egregious form of murder, not as something worthy of lesser forms of punishment. All of this points, in my view, in the direction of the conclusion that we do not intuitively view abortion as falling in the same legal category as murder. Moreover, in addition to the legal distinctions on which Rick focuses, there's the question I address in the body of this post below, i.e., of the moral quality of the act, and the moral and political response it demands from those who equate abortion and murder.
*******
In a recent post, Kevin Drum (rightly, in my view) takes Ramesh Ponnuru to task for, on the one hand, equating abortion with murder, but, on the other hand, refusing to advocate the sorts of actions that moral assessment would seem to entail. In an essay that is forthcoming in Commonweal, I make a similar point. Commenting on an op-ed that Robert George and N.D. law prof. Gerard Bradley wrote for the National Review during the past election, I argue that the simple equation of abortion and murder is an argument that proves way too much.
According to Ponnuru, “Eight-week-old fetuses do not differ from 10-day-old babies in any way
that would justify killing the forme . . . . The law will
either treat the fetus as a human being with a right to be protected
from unjust killing or it will not.” According to George & Bradley, the importance of the death penalty pales in comparison to the "scale of the wrong anything approaching 1.3 million deaths per year by abortion." They go on to compare the issue of abortion to slavery in the nineteenth century.
I have no doubt that George & Bradley (and Ponnuru) fairly reflect the tenor of authoritative Catholic teaching on abortion. Here's my problem with this position, though. (I take it that this is Kevin Drum's objection as well.) Why don't the actions of those who engage in this heated rhetoric match their words? The United States fought a war over slavery (among other things) that killed half a million people. John Brown went to the gallows for attempting an armed abolitionist uprising. These actions seem justified to me in light of the gravity of the injustice. But if abortion is murder, then the scale of the injustice being perpetrated on a daily basis in our country alone (not to mention the world) is truly staggering. Over six million innocent human lives have been intentionally taken in the United States under the Bush presidency alone. Why does President Bush get a pass for this? No doubt some will point towards his rhetoric of life and the limited actions he has taken, which admittedly would not have been taken under a different administration. But if abortion is mass murder on the scale of a Holocaust every eight years, shouldn't he be doing more? Where is the sense of urgency? If abortion is mass murder, the President should be filibustering, refusing to talk about anything else, shutting the federal government down until he gets his way, not taking his eye of the ball and fighting wars in Iraq, negotiating trade agreements, cutting taxes, or making speeches about the problems with social security. Abortion opponents should be taking to the streets to prevent the ongoing murder. Catholics are not pacifists, so perhaps armed intervention would be justified. (In light of the equation to murder, I think it is apt to ask what our faith would require of us were we to have lived in Nazi Germany. I assume armed resistance would have been morally permitted.) The destruction of property (e.g., the fire-bombing of abortion clinics at night after delivering a warning to ensure no loss of life) would seem like an easy case.
Of course, I don't think any of this is really justified. Whatever one thinks of the morality of abortion, I think there is cleary a difference between, say, procuring a first trimester abortion and murdering an adult (or even a newborn infant). The simple equation of abortion and murder seems to me to obscure the moral complexity of abortion, a complexity that even its most strident (mainstream) opponents acknowledge with their actions and prescriptions, if not their words. Ponnuru, for example, refuses to endorse the imprisonment of women who seek abortions. I wonder what he thinks of violent resistance.
