Not exactly unheralded—he did get obits in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal—but deserving more attention is the passing of Norman Borlaug, Nobel Peace Prize winner and catalyst for the Green Revolution that transformed developing world agriculture.
As the headline to Gregg Easterbrook’s outstanding piece in the WSJ put it, he was “the man who defused the ‘population bomb.’” Yet, Easterbrook writes, “though streets and buildings are named for Norman Borlaug throughout the developing world, most Americans don’t even know his name.”
His death comes amidst renewed claims that our environment cannot sustain the world’s increasing population.
But the predictions of the present-day Thomas Malthuses and Paul Ehrlichs will always be wrong, because they lack the imagination to account for the future Norman Borlaugs.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Just about every state has dealt with the issue over the last few years, it seems. But here in Ohio, the legal status of gambling is the issue that won’t go away. It’s on the ballot again in November, this time as a constitutional amendment to permit casinos in four cities.
The issue is something of a dilemma for Christians with limited-government inclinations. In general we don’t want prohibitions on legitimate business activity or entertainment, and most Christians don’t consider games of chance to be inherently immoral. Yet the societal repercussions of Big Gaming don’t appear very attractive from any angle. For one, as Acton’s Jordan Ballor pointed out in his treatment of the subject a few years back, revenue from lotteries and other gambling represents an all-too-easy source of funds for expansive state governments. Even more serious, as a recent analysis by Fr. John Flynn on Zenit underlines, gambling often amounts to a regressive tax on the poor, who tend to throw away a much higher proportion of their incomes in this fashion than do the better off.
In any case, it appears that widespread legalized gambling is here to stay. So what now? Fr. Flynn has one important answer: a return to the classic virtue of temperance, “the moral virtue that moderates the attraction of pleasures and provides balance in the use of created goods.” (It was given sort of a bad name in the US in the early twentieth century when the “temperance movement” became the “Prohibition movement” and enacted the ill-fated 18th amendment, but there’s nothing puritanical about temperance.)
I’ve noted in other contexts the importance of temperance: for example, the implications to health care of moderation in food, drink, physical activity, etc. Its relevance for gambling is self-evident. And of course there’s consumerism, the mortgage crisis, and financial speculation. So, pastors, writers, teachers: we’re long overdue for some sermons, commentaries, and lessons on the contemporary indispensability of that ancient virtue, temperance.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Since it appears the health care reform debate isn’t going away any time soon (and, just maybe, has moved in a positive direction from where it started several months ago–e.g., one of the most dangerous proposals, the public option, is itself in danger), we’ll keep pressing the issue.
Two recent articles of interest:
David Goldhill in The Atlantic. Outstanding exposition of the dysfunctions of American health care and which policies will ameliorate rather than exacerbate them. It’s imperative that we revise our thinking about “health insurance,” returning it to a standard model of insurance. A key step is to shift the insurance tax break from employers to individuals.
Martin Feldstein in the Wall Street Journal. Agrees that tax reform is crucial, but, supposing that doesn’t happen, makes an interesting point about rationing and national spending on health care.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
We’ve said a lot already and will probably say a lot more about health care reform—its importance justifies the attention—but here are a few brief responses to President Obama’s remarks last night (based on the prepared notes posted at the White House web site).
If we do not reform health care, your premiums and out-of-pocket costs will continue to skyrocket. If we do not act, 14,000 Americans will continue to lose their health insurance every single day. These are the consequences of inaction.
I agree that reform is necessary. The potential for cost-savings by enhancing competitive incentives and bolstering individual responsibility is enormous. The proposed plans currently in congressional committees go the wrong way, and therefore, inaction is preferable.
If you already have health insurance, the reform we’re proposing will provide you with more security and more stability. It will keep government out of health care decisions, giving you the option to keep your insurance if you’re happy with it.
It is hard to believe that this claim is sincere. Obama has made a “government option” an essential element of any reform. A government option will almost certainly drive out private options, no matter how many promises concerning level playing fields are made. It seems reasonable to read this statement as, “If you’re very rich and money is no object, then you’ll be free to maintain expensive private insurance that contains all the special interest and ideology-driven mandates federal regulators will enact. Otherwise, you’ll be stuck with government health care.”
I have great health insurance, and so does every Member of Congress.
He’s on to something here. Federal employees don’t participate in Social Security, for example: they have a separate retirement program that invests actively in the stock market and delivers returns far superior to the New Deal dinosaur that the rest of us are compelled to fund [This claim in the original post is erroneous; see correction in comments below]. Any health reform plan must cover federal employees, including Congress. And no escape clauses (as in public schooling, which more than 4 in 10 congresspeople opt out of by sending their children to private schools): Members of Congress must be affected by health care reform in the same way that a majority of Americans are. So if a majority ends up covered by the public option, then every member of Congress must also be so covered (and no international medical tourism permitted).
Friday, July 10, 2009
As Congress continues to hash out what will likely be more or less bad health care reform legislation, it is worth considering what health care providers themselves can do to fix the system.
One outstanding case study is The Nun and the Bureaucrat: How They Found an Unlikely Cure for America’s Sick Hospitals. The book is a compilation of quotations, factoids, and anecdotes from employees and administrators of two hospital systems, Catholic SSM Health Care in St. Louis and Pittsburgh’s Regional Health Care Initiative. It tells the story of the implementation of “systems thinking” at these institutions. In short, the health systems’ executives perceived serious inefficiencies and dysfunctions in their hospitals (with, sometimes, life or death consequences) and determined to borrow a method successfully used in other business enterprises and apply it to the medical field.
Individual hospital outcomes reported include:
–85 percent reduction in hospital acquired infections (often fatal and each entailing costs of $30,000-90,000).
–medication error rate reduction from .16 per thousand dosages to .01 per thousand.
–reduction of acute diabetic complications from 13.5 percent to 5 percent.
Besides better patient outcomes and cost-saving, hospital staff reported higher levels of morale and satisfaction in their work.
In this particular case, conscientious and innovative CEOs initiated change. What might drive innovation and improvement more broadly in the health care sector is placing both control and responsibility squarely in the hands of “consumers” (patients), spurring competition and setting up the right framework of incentives. Any legislation that fails to recognize this connection will fail to move us toward a health care system that more effectively serves its intended purpose.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Evidently, the Obama campaign’s success has attracted imitators. From the People’s Weekly World:
CHICAGO — The Communist Party USA has established a new Religion Commission to strengthen its work among religious people and organizations. In its leadership are activists representing various religious traditions from around the country. Tim Yeager, a Chicago trade unionist and a member of the Episcopal Church, serves as its chair.
“We want to reach out to religious people and communities, to find ways of improving our coalition work with them, and to welcome people of faith into the party,” Yeager said.
I hesitate to say that “reaching out to religious people” is ever a bad thing, but… if this means a renewed effort to demonstrate some kind of compatibility between Marxism and Christianity, then we’ve seen this movie before. It was called liberation theology and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith pretty well settled the question back in 1984 and 1986 (at least as far as Catholics are concerned) in documents promulgated by the man who is now Pope Benedict XVI. The CDF carefully distinguished genuinely Christian forms of ‘liberation theology’ from objectionable versions, but it explained clearly that and why the categories of Marxist analysis and Christian theology are fundamentally incompatible.
The CPUSA recognizes the delicacy of the situation: “Yeager acknowledged that relations between some Marxist parties and religious institutions in other parts of the world have been marked by conflict.” Yes, such as Russia, Hungary, Albania, Lithuania, Cuba, China, Korea, and Vietnam, for starters. Although “marked by conflict” doesn’t seem quite to capture the phenomenon of churches and religious believers systematically targeted for annihilation by totalitarian states informed by an atheist ideology that views faith in Jesus Christ as delusional and a dangerous obstacle to progress.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
One of President Obama’s campaign promises was health care reform, and he is now trying to follow through. Last year I looked at the respective candidates’ health care proposals in light of Catholic social teaching. In the midst of a national debate on health policy, it is time to revisit the issue.
One of the best resources out there on the subject is the report from the Catholic Medical Association’s Health Care Task Force, published in the Linacre Quarterly in 2005. The CMA is genuinely committed to the principles of the social teaching, including access to basic health care for all, but recognizes that any reform toward that goal must take into account economic reality, must be cognizant of the drawbacks of further government expansion into this area, and must preserve the rights of conscience of religious medical providers and patients.
A good, brief, and more recent treatment is Jeff Mirus’s reflection on the subject at CatholicCulture.org.
Last but not least, Acton’s contribution to the debate has just been printed and is now available online: A Prescription for Health Care Reform, the latest in our Christian Social Thought Series. Physician Donald Condit outlines the principles of the social teaching, assesses the problems in American health care, and points toward fruitful avenues of reform.
What happens with health care policy will likely have major economic and moral ramifications for decades to come. It’s vital that we disseminate sound ideas such as those contained in these resources.
Friday, May 29, 2009
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) web site has a new page devoted to Catholic teaching on the economy. It is essentially a reorganization of existing resources, and it does helpfully provide access to the various bishops’ statements over the course of the last couple decades, as well as Vatican sources such as the Catechism and encyclicals.
Here is not the place to revisit the whole question of the USCCB and its economic proposals and statements. Suffice it to say that, in my view, its approach has been moving in a positive direction since the release of the problematic 1987 document, Economic Justice for All. There is more focus on principles: the Catholic Framework for Economic Life (1996), and the related Ten Principles with Reflection Questions push the conscientious Catholic in the right direction, without specifying policy stands that are contingent and debatable.
Monday, May 18, 2009
First Things revisits Archbishop Timothy Dolan’s reflections on the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and its role in American religious and political life, past, present, and future.
It was originally published in 2005, but deserves renewed scrutiny because Dolan was recently installed as the leader the Archdiocese of New York, widely perceived as the preeminent American see.
And his observations happen to be relevant to the Notre Dame controversy (see Michael Miller’s post below); and to the ongoing question of interpreting Catholic social teaching in the context of American politics (see Fr. Sirico’s post below.)
Said Dolan:
Bishops seem to sense that a return to the John Carroll-John England style of leadership might be in order. Above all, these patriarchs were concerned with building the Catholic Church in the United States. Bishops today increasingly ask whether it is now necessary to rebuild the Church in America, through reform and renewal. They wonder if we need to start internally, concentrating first on pastoral issues such as widespread catechetical illiteracy, the collapse of marriage and family life, the restoration of a “culture of life,” genuine liturgical reform, a return to the sacrament of penance, a national commitment to obey the third commandment, and the promotion of authentic renewal in the lives of our priests and religious…
Friday, May 8, 2009
What’s wrong with populism? Nothing, necessarily. But, to hazard a tautology, populism is only as good as the people. I think this territory was covered pretty well by Alexis de Tocqueville, whose view was in turn covered pretty well by Sam Gregg in his commentary of a couple weeks ago:
“The American Republic,” Tocqueville wrote, “will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”
As Sam notes, Tocqueville cited the importance of religion as a bulwark against the drift to despotism. I don’t think it’s any accident that there is a public policy lean toward socialism at the same time as a perceptible weakening of religious adherence. The relationship is complicated (plenty of liberty-loving agnostics; plenty of Christian socialists), but at the level of generalization, religion (Christianity in particular) fosters centers of authority and action that are independent of the state and resistant to tyranny. It encourages virtue and concern for the common good. In short, it promotes those traits that might drive populist sentiment and action in helpful rather than harmful directions.
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