This Sunday I’ll be giving a talk at Fountain Street Church on the life and work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. His unfinished Ethics is a tantalizing work, full of insights and conundrums. Here’s what he writes in the essay, “On the Possibility of the Church’s Message to the World,” with regard to the church’s engagement in social justice:

Read more on PBR: The End of Poverty…

Starting this year, the Acton Institute is planning to give out the Samaritan Award every other year. This will allows us to better streamline the award process as well as to more smoothly integrate the results of the award into our Samaritan Guide database.

Read more on PBR: Ministries that Matter…

AS NYT columnist Frank Rich observed earlier this week, it’s hard to find much sympathy for Rick Wagoner. “Sure, Rick Wagoner deserved his fate,” writes Rich. “He did too little too late to save an iconic American institution from devolving into a government charity case.”

Read more on PBR: A Cautionary Tale…

President Obama took time out over the weekend to respond to this week’s PBR question: “Let me assure you in the days ahead my administration intends to do to every industry in this country exactly what we are doing to the automakers.”

Read more on PBR: President Obama Responds…

This past week, President Obama forced the CEO of General Motors to resign. The real significance of this may be lost on most people. Some might say, “Well, if General Motors is not doing well, the CEO should be replaced.” The major difficulty with this is that this is a special power of the GM Board of Directors, not the President of the United States. Effectively, this makes President Obama the Board of Directors of General Motors, and any other company he wants to control, and makes the Board a mere figurehead. Slowly but surely, this is moving us to a fascist form of government. In fascism, the companies still exist, but the government tells them what to do. This was similar to Mercantilism, which was the predominant economic system in Europe from about the 1600s until 1800, more or less. Mercantilism was the system of economics that Adam Smith wrote against in his famous An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which most people shorten to the cryptic Wealth of Nations. Smith was trying to show that government control of business impoverishes nations. Instead, he posited “a system of natural liberty,” which allowed people to follow their natural pursuits, take on the risk of doing so, and allow the market, that is, the countless decisions of people, to decide the outcome. It was the realization of the truth that Smith expressed in his work that subsequently brought prosperity to countless nations.

Now we are returning to the old system, under a new guise. Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner recently asked Congress to grant him unprecedented power to shut down any company that, in his opinion, is dangerous to the overall economy. Note that there are no specifics to this power—it would be at his discretion. For those who have read my blog entries “The Economics of Politics,” you can see that all of this is a grab for what politicians live for—power, and power alone. Politics attracts those kinds of people. When asked by a Congresswoman where in the Constitution he went to get justification for this type of power, Geithner expressed incoherent babbling. It did not seem ever to cross his mind that he needed Constitutional justification for such an assumption of power. Again, this is typical of fascism. A crisis is, if not created, then hyped, panic flamed up, and people in this panic are willing to trade their freedom for security. Only too late will they realize that the situation was not as bad as the self-interested government officials portrayed it. The power will have been granted, and only a miracle will pry it away from the hands of the government. Once taken, government almost always keeps a power.

Getting back to General Motors, its problems go all the way back to government-imposed protective tariffs, which are a remnant of Mercantilism. Corporations seek to be protected from foreign competition so they do not have to work to keep up. The government, bowing to pressure and false economic theories, puts tariffs and quotas on imports to raise their prices higher than those of the domestic product; in this case, cars. The car makers then can do whatever they want because consumers face a choice of either us or nothing. In the 1970s, when we began allowing imports, the American car companies were caught, and almost went out of business. They finally got their act together when a new wave of government regulation on cars was imposed, thus raising the cost of domestic cars. To boot, the latest situation is that the Federal government is dictating to the car companies what types of cars to make, all in an effort to be “green.” The problem is that the market does not want these cars, so the company is forced to spend millions on cars they cannot sell. Then the government says, “Oh, it would be terrible if the companies failed; so many would be put out of work. So we have to bail them out again, and since we are ponying up the money, we now have a controlling interest in them, we can call the shots, we can tell the company what to produce, we can fire the executives, and when the company comes in with a loss, we blame the company again, bail them out again . . . .” And the circle continues. Remember, this government is the same one that has brought us the Post Office, the Department of Motor Vehicles and the public school system. All those who believe that the government can bring us out of a recession should remember that it was the government that caused it in the first place. Remember the housing bubble?

What a racket!

Read more on PBR: The Old System under a New Guise…

It made headlines last week when General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner was asked to resign by representatives of President Obama. Fritz Henderson, G.M. President, was announced as Wagoner’s successor to the top spot in the troubled car-manufacturer.

Read more on PBR: Government Bailout Control…

Sports are still able to foster human virtues, especially classical virtues like courage and fortitude. Like any good thing, sport all too often risks becoming an idol, not because of any fault within the institution itself so much as the fault lying within each human participant.

Read more on PBR: Glory and Money…

Fr. Kevin’s talk raised a number of questions about the status of sports in our society. Here are some of them:

• Have we lost a healthy sense of leisure and play, to the point where sport and entertainment have become similar to a religious ritual or duty?

Read more on PBR: A Healthy Appreciation…

From the question of performance-enhancing drugs to antitrust issues in the BCS, government involvement in professional sports is a common occurrence nowadays. Then-President-elect Obama said that he would favor a playoff system for Division I college football and that he would “throw” his weight around a little bit in pursuit of that agenda. Congress recently announced plans to take up the question of antitrust issues with the BCS.

Read more on PBR: The Virtue of Sport…

It is our pleasure to welcome guest ramblings on the PowerBlog, and we are happy to feature this contribution from Jonathan Petersen, former Sr. Dir. of Corporate & Internet Communications at Zondervan. His 22 years at the international book and Bible publisher included directing public relations, corporate communications, and marketing strategy for general retail stores, direct mail, and the Internet. Prior to Zondervan, he was founding religion news editor and anchor for United Press International Radio Network. A member of the Online News Association, he can be reached at www.JonathanPetersen.com.

Read more on PBR: Institutionalized Citizen Journalism?…