For those of us who harbor some nostalgic sentiment for this country’s agrarian past…

I’ve written previously about the corrosive effect of subsidies on American agriculture. Now, Denis Boyles, in a thoughtful piece on NRO, notes from a similar perspective the importance of entrepreneurial thinking in preserving the agricultural towns of rural America.

Here’s one piece:

When I asked Genna M. Hurd, the co-director of the Kansas Center for Community Economic Development at the University of Kansas and an expert in rural communities, what made the difference between a town that lived and a town that died, I expected her to give me the old saw about how it takes a school to save a town. Instead, she answered simply, “Local leadership and vision.”

Joe Carter, purveyor of the evangelical outpost (and, incidentally, now the managing editor for WorldMagBlog), had a discussion last week worth paying attention to on the specifically Christian pursuit of knowledge. He argues that this applies even in something so apparently noncontroversial as mathematics. Regarding questions of math and science, “Even the concept that 1 + 1 = 2, which almost all people agree with on a surface level, has different meanings based on what theories are proposed as answers,” he writes.

He also passes along the view of Leibniz:

When Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, an inventor of the calculus, was asked by one of his students, “Why is one and one always two, and how do we know this?” Leibnitz replied, “One and one equals two is an eternal, immutable truth that would be so whether or not there were things to count or people to count them.” Numbers, numerical relationships, and mathematical laws (such as the law of addition) exist in this abstract realm and are independent of any physical existence. In Leibnitz’s view, numbers are real things that exist in a dimension outside of the physical realm and would exist even if no human existed to recognize them.

This also happens to be the view espoused by Alvin Plantinga in a brief discussion at Calvin Theological Seminary last Thursday on his book, Warranted Christian Belief, although Plantinga discussed “things that exist in a dimension outside of the physical realm” in terms of possible worlds as thoughts of God.

On a somewhat related note, I’d like to pass along some words from Basil of Caesarea on the applicability of arithmetic to a discussion of the Trinity. We might ask, “What is divine math?”

Basil writes in his treatise On the Holy Spirit,

Count, if you must; but you must not by counting do damage to the faith. Either let the ineffable be honoured by silence; or let holy things be counted consistently with true religion. There is one God and Father, one Only-begotten, and one Holy Ghost. We proclaim each of the hypostases singly; and, when count we must, we do not let an ignorant arithmetic carry us away to the idea of a plurality of Gods. For we do not count by way of addition, gradually making increase from unity to multitude, and saying one, two, and three,—nor yet first, second, and third. (Ꝅ—45)

By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

Hebrews 11:3 NIV

The Kill Malarial Mosquitoes NOW! coalition announced today that Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has endorsed the campaign to use DDT as a primary weapon in the fight to control and eliminate malaria. The coalition wants 2/3 of world’s malaria control funds to be spent on DDT, or any more cost-effective insecticide, plus artemisia-based combination therapies (ACTs).

Archbishop Tutu describes malaria as a “devastating” disease that is holding back African development.

Many African countries desperately need cost-effective insecticides, such as DDT, to battle the deadly mosquitoes that transmit the disease. It is a human tragedy that children die largely because donors fail to support appropriate and effective solutions to this preventable disease.

Read more on this important issue and the latest list of endorsers of the KMMN declaration.

Aaah, the magical soothing balm that is government regulation!

The delightfully titled Now Batting for Pedro Borbon blog (“Manny Mota…Mota…Mota”) reveals the (predictable) results of governmental efforts to “increase transparency” in the business world:

So, let’s review. The law that was supposed to ensure greater transparency and make the stock market safe for all of us, especially the little guy, is driving companies to purge the little guy, become less transparent, and shun our world-class public capital markets.

Score another beaut for the Great Sausage Factory!

“We’re from the government, and we’re here to help you,” indeed…

Regardless, it seems to me that this is yet another opportunity to reflect on the importance of maintaining ethical business practices in both large and small corporations. As you recall, Sarbanes-Oxley was the congressional response to the various Enron-Worldcom type business accounting scandals in the late 90′s. Those scandals – a result of a distinct lack of ethical practices – resulted in a lot of people losing a lot of money, public distrust of corporations, and a resulting governmental response to the public outcry. The final links in this chain of events include massive new costs for businesses in order to comply with the new regulations, and now the phenomenon noted above. In other words, everyone loses. Returning to and reinforcing core ethical principles, however, creates a situation in which everyone can win.

A story on today’s Morning Edition by Claudio Sanchez examines the future of the school system in New Orleans following the hurricane Katrina disaster. New Orleans school superintendent Ora Watson complains that charter schools are stepping in to fill the void left when public schools were cancelled for the remainder of this school year.

She says, “There are so many different agendas. The mayor has decided that the city can run 20 schools under a charter. We have individual schools going to individual groups saying, ‘Would you charter me?’ They’re picking the school district apart. This is a real, real frustration.” Of course it’s easy to see why this would be a “real frustrating” for someone with a vested bureaucratic interest in maintaining the pre-Katrina state of publicly administered education in New Orleans.

According to the report, Watson worries that New Orleans could be the “first urban school system in America to be taken over by special interest groups.” I assume she means special interest groups other than the National Education Association.

Listen to the rest of the report for other viewpoints on reconstructing education in New Orleans. In many ways, the disaster can be viewed as an opportunity to improve a broken and failing system.

It’s clear that superintendent Watson is ardently opposed to introducing a principle of freedom of choice and competition into the system. For more on how competition, rightly practiced, can work in the educational arena, see this interview with J. C. Huizenga, chairman of the National Heritage Academies.

Jordan Ballor, associate editor at the Acton Institute, responds to a study published by Joan Silk, a researcher at the University of California, which finds that monkeys do not exercise compassion.

Silk’s team placed a chimp in a situation where it had the option of pulling one of two ropes. Pull the first rope, and the chimp received a bit of food. Pull the second rope, and the chimp received the same bit of food, but a monkey in a neighboring cage also received a similarly-sized morsel.

What Silk found was that “the chimps were entirely indifferent” to the situation of their neighbor. They pulled the first rope about half the time, and the rest of the time they pulled the other. And this indifference was manifested even though the neighboring chimp would often plead or implore its potential benefactor to pull the second rope. “They had their face right up there sometimes. But the begging gestures don’t seem to have had a big impact on the chimp’s behavior,” Silk said.

Ballor reflects on Silk’s research, commenting that “even though not all humans act compassionately, and perhaps not all animals act selfishly, the important reality to recognize is that we necessarily make moral conclusions about such behavior.” Selfless compassion, says Ballor, is a manifestation of the imago dei: “We were built for a purpose, to love God by loving our neighbor.”

Read the full commentary here.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Americans living in Europe were often scolded about the need for big, centralized government to look after the poor, and we heard yet again about the moral superiority of Europe’s social model over America’s market-driven one.

People who follow the Acton Institute and read the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page are too smart and well-informed to fall for such bromides. The American Entreprise magazine also devoted a whole issue debunking Europe’s claims.

But when mainstream publications such as Newsweek International can see the hypocrisy and obvious failings of European protectionism, we may be reaching a tipping point.

This week’s edition has an article on Europe’s increasing reluctance to expand global trade. The biggest culprits are France, Germany and Italy, the continent’s three largest economies but whose political classes, whether they be of the left or of the right, are beholden to trade unions and other opponents of increased competition. (The U.S. Congress is not spared deserved criticism, either.)

Part of the socialist mystique is that the poor are too vulnerable to survive market changes – but the Newsweek article shows how the poor also have the most to gain from increased trade. Europeans must start to understand that this affects not only the poor in Africa and Asia but in their own countries as well.

As Tony Blair recently told the European Parliament, “What type of social model is it that has 20 million unemployed?”

There’s a new venture, Kiva, that according to the founder Matthew Flannery is “a startup focused on connecting lenders with micro-businesses online. We provide the world’s first and only online micro-lending opportunity and just opened to the public 3 weeks ago. We have now started over 30 businesses in Uganda and are scaling at a rapid pace.”

The effort still looks to be in its infancy, but as of October 11 Kiva was officially out of “beta” testing. This means “we spent 6 months testing our software and our processes and we no longer consider this whole thing to be a ‘test’.”

Simply put, this is a great concept that can have real, concrete, positive effects in the lives of those living in the world’s poorest nations. Access to capital is a huge problem in many of these areas. Banks often cannot take on the risk of providing low-interest loans with terms long enough to spark development because of governmental, monetary, and economic instability in these countries. Now those of us who are concerned and live in the most prosperous nation in the history of the world can charitably take on that risk.

One of the great things about the microloan solution is that it attempts to find solutions that really work and address problems that arise in the real-world economic systems. These kinds of answers are an excellent alternative to economically misinformed campaigns like the “fair trade” movement.

Of course, not only for this particular venture but for all such efforts, effectiveness, transparency, and stewardship are key elements. Read more about Kiva’s due diligence process here.

The good news? “Due to the recent overwhelming interest in Kiva,” there are currently no businesses listed still looking for loans. The bad news? The need is great in the developing world, but it is difficult to bring these entrepreneurs to light. There is a lot of infrastructure work that needs to be done. Kiva is pursuing this in partnership with the Village Enterprise Fund.

HT: Seth Godin’s Blog

A flap over religion in schools developed last week at Newark High School in Delaware. According to reports, “The principal of a public high school apologized to parents for allowing a Christian-themed assembly that featured two Philadelphia Eagles players, saying he was misled about what the presentation would cover.”

“Principal Emmanuel Caulk of Newark High School wrote in a letter that he expected the talk by players Tra Thomas and Thomas Tapeh to focus on ‘values, choices and challenges that adolescents face in today’s society.’”

But apparently the players were to talk about such topics without any reference to their own experience…since that experience is Christian. Caulk claimed to be ignorant of the fact that Tra Thomas is a founder and spokesman for Athletes United for Christ.

“What we’re trying to do is to help the kids make better decisions in life. I guess I understand,” why some people objected,” said Thomas, “because you have other religions there. But we’re not preaching to the kids.”

He continued, “I’m just trying to get them to identify with me, the person, rather than just Tra Thomas, the football player, so we can relate to each other better. And my Christianity is a big part of what I am.” What might have been an acceptable post-modern claim to individuality in other circumstances is not acceptable for a Christian, apparently.

The requisite outrage from the ACLU was reflected in a statement by Drewry Fennell, executive director of the of the Delaware chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union: “Organizations like this one across the country are gaining access to schools through the famous people and entertainment value and then using those opportunities to proselytize.”

More details and reactions to the event are available here.

The critical error of events like this in public schools rests on the assumption that you can have a morality based purely on secular humanism. And this further assumes that such a position is not reflective of any particular “faith” or “belief system.” All morality is founded on a belief system of some kind or another. To expect that Christians can talk about, in the principal’s words, “values, choices and challenges that adolescents face in today’s society,” without reference to Christianity is patently absurd.

Scottish theologian John Baillie insightfully relates the following: “The progress of modern thought seems every day to be making it clearer that between religion and naturalism there is no final resting-place in humanism. As regards anything we are in ourselves naturalism is true, and ‘a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast’. When man ceases to be rooted in God, he relapses inevitably into the sub-human.” The final choice can only be made between naturalism or religion (supernaturalism).

Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck discusses the necessity for a supernatural foundation for a coherent system of morality. He writes,

The only true alternative to the recognition of the supernatural, accordingly, is not a rationalistic deism but naturalism, i.e., the belief that there is no other higher power but that which is immanent in the present natural order and reveals itself [there]. But then one loses all warrant for believing in the triumph of the good, the ultimate victory of the kingdom of God, in the power of the moral world order. For the good, the true, the moral world order, and the kingdom of God are matters that have no power to realize themselves on their own. The hope is that human beings will bring supremacy and yield to the power of truth is daily dashed by disappointments. Their triumph is assured only if God is a personal omnipotent being who, in the face of all opposition, can lead the entire creation to the goal he has in mind for it. Religion, morality, the acknowledgement of a destiny for humankind and for the world, belief in the triumph of the good, a theistic worldview, and belief in a personal God are all inseparably bound up with supernaturalism.

The secular humanist myth of morality without religion, supernaturalism, or faith of some kind is exposed for what it is in instances like this one. The sad part is, of course, that these children desperately need to be taught moral truths, but the public school system is increasingly unable and unqualified to do so, because of institutional, legal, and personal barriers.