GodblogCon 2008 is two weeks away. The Acton Institute is a proud sponsor of this event, held in conjunction with the BlogWorld & New Media Expo at the Las Vegas Convention Center, September 20-21.

The conference will be a great opportunity to connect with bloggers and internet figures you’ve only read about or corresponded with in a virtual environment. You’ll also have the opportunity to attend valuable sessions and learn the basics of blogging, vcasting, and how social networks work.

I found last year’s event to be really stimulating and it energized me for weeks and months afterward. If it fits into your schedule, you should really consider attending. Check out the website for more details about the schedule of events and roster of speakers.

Next week, in anticipation of the event, the PowerBlog will unveil its conference program ad…try to maintain your composure as the excitement builds.

The ninth week of the CRC’s Sea to Sea bike tour has been completed. The ninth and final leg of the journey took the bikers from St. Catharines, Ontario, to Jersey City, a total distance of 430 miles. By the end of tour, the riders had covered 3881 miles.

The “Shifting Gears” devotional contained a key biblical point in the day 57 entry. Reflecting on the separation from family members over the 9 weeks of the tour, hope was expressed that such an experience might “make us more aware of those who are constantly torn from their loved ones and remind us that the water of baptism is thicker than family blood.” As I concluded in a 2005 post, “The water of Christian baptism is thicker than the blood of natural flesh. ‘Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.'” The reality of baptism sets upon a path of service to our neighbors. This is a good point of departure for discussing questions of poverty and prosperity.

A good deal of the devotional focuses on the particularities of the experience of riding a bike. This is fitting because the text was designed for use by the riders of the poverty tour. But a few weeks ago I discussed another kind of bike rider, Pastor Bike of China, who was imprisoned because of his bicycle-based evangelism.

The good news coming out of China this week is that Pastor Bike has been released. Praise God.

My concern in following the CRC Sea to Sea bike tour over the last months has focused on the relation of material poverty to spiritual poverty. This remains an open question for me regarding the social justice advocacy of the denomination. There is a real danger that the social justice focus of the Christian Reformed Church will lapse into a post-milllenialist form of the Social Gospel.

The texts and materials of the tour itself were a bit uneven on this. In the end I think the focus is rightly aimed at divine reality. But the prudential judgments about how material poverty relates to spiritual concerns remains under-developed. When Jesus said, “The poor you will always have with you,” he was effectively saying that until he comes again we will always have to deal with the realities of sin and imperfection.

But he gave us guidance as to how to live in the midst of this sinful reality: “You can help them any time you want.” The one lesson we should take from this tour is that there is a real and pervasive Christian responsibility to give to the relief of the poor in a way that addresses both material and spiritual realities. Give thoughtfully and prayerfully. But be sure to give. For a moving testimony on this, see “Auntie Anne’s Pretzels founder cites personal faith, Bible verses as reasons to give.”

An interesting post over at First Things from Jonathan V. Last, who discusses why the left not just opposes, but hates Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. He identifies four particular issues, all revolving around her family, that provoke the left. It’s difficult to pull a quote out of the post; it’s all very good. But here’s a small taste to get you interested:

Governor Sarah Palin

…there is the left’s long-standing concern about overpopulation, which has become a staple of modern environmentalism, beginning with Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 best-seller The Population Bomb. Ehrlich preached a Malthusian near-future in which hundreds of millions would perish by famine as the world’s unchecked population growth spiraled to infinity. As it happens, Ehrlich’s predictions were entirely incorrect: Not only has increased food production reduced famine to a weapon of political conflict, but the world’s population growth has slowed to a crawl. Fertility rates around the globe are falling and world population will peak around nine billion by 2050. From there, we will experience population contraction.

But Ehrlich’s prognostications never fell far out of favor, particularly with environmentalists who take it as an article of faith that the planet is already overcrowded. To them, the prodigious Palin family is surely seen as taking more than its fair share.

I’m curious to see what PowerBlog readers think of John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin, and to have your thoughts on the Presidential race in general. I can say with certainty that this is shaping up to be one of the most interesting elections of my lifetime; what say you?

More Cultural Differences: Via A Second Hand Conjecture, here’s an interesting bit from the Volokh Conspiracy on the “western vibe” of the GOP ticket:

What is the “western” vibe? This is purely subjective, but to me it is the feeling of no-nonsense, self-reliant, egalitarian, outsiderism, sort of Barry Goldwater-ish. Is it libertarian? Not exactly, but it does have that sort of feeling to it, to me at least. It feels like Goldwaterism. And I think this trickles through to the worldview of the candidates and then to policy. It seems pretty clear to me (especially after last night) that John McCain sees himself as Gary Cooper riding into to town to single-handedly clean-up corruption and gun down the rascals…

…The only caveat to this is that McCain’s westernism is tempered by his military background. And frankly, this is what concerns me most about him–his mind seems like a command-and-control, top-down worldview. To put the matter more elliptically to many but more accurately to my thinking, I think he simply does not understand or trust the idea of spontaneous order. In his worldview, things happen (good or bad) because somebody makes them happen. This is not a worldview that is conducive to understanding spontaneous order. That’s a statist streak in him that offsets some of his westernism.

More fodder for discussion. Carry on.

Coming next spring is a major academic event at the intersection of theology and economics, the 25th anniversary conference of the Association of Christian Economists. Hosted by Baylor University and organized by Journal of Markets & Morality advisory board member John Pisciotta, the conference promises to deliver many sessions of interest. Birth of Freedom commentator Rodney Stark and Acton Lecture Series speaker Arthur Brooks will be among those giving plenary addresses.

Posted at present is the call for papers, and registration information will be forthcoming.

In the latest edition of an otherwise scholarly theological journal, a writer, who only ever writes about one subject, attacked the free market as usual. He wrote: “Neither can economics be satisfied with leaving human beings to the mercy of markets with their supposed ‘laws.’. . .” While there is certainly no space to take on his whole article, this part might just be the most serious error in it.

This particular writer, and those trained in his school, which he denies is the German Historical School, but it is, operate from a nominalistic approach. Nominalism, a school of thought begun in the Middle Ages by the Franciscan, William of Ockham, denies that there is any human nature. Therefore, human beings have no necessary consistency in them. In ethics, each person makes up his own code, and the codes can be very much at odds. To a nominalist, everything is will alone, not reason. This is why the writer in question asserts that people are at the “mercy of markets.” To those who think like this, everything is power. Even in moral theology, the reason one obeys the Ten Commandments is that it’s God’s will only, and there is no connection with those commandments and the nature of things. God could have commanded ten other things we were to avoid, and we would be required to obey them, because they are His will, even if they were the opposite of those actually listed. (I am sure many people would not have any trouble with the commandments were that the case) Thus, to those who think in this manner, markets are power, and that’s why there are no laws of economics. That’s why corporations are evil; because money gives them power, which they use to take advantage of others.

The truth of it is that human beings do participate in a common nature, created by God, and this common nature leads people to think and act alike generally speaking. The laws of economics come from this consistency of human nature. Markets do have laws because people make free choices as to what is best for them. The market exists for the sake of the consumer, which includes everybody. If I go to the store and want to buy bananas, and the bananas are rotten, why should I buy them; to support the farmer or the store? If we all did that, people would be encouraged to make junk and I would be encouraged to continue to buy it even if it did not fulfill my needs. Why would I do that?

Let’s take the example to a higher level. I know that there is a demand for office space in my city, so I want to build a tall office building. The office building has to be tall because land in a city is very scarce and therefore very expensive, so I have to build “up.” To do so I need strong steel. If company X has crummy steel, it will not hold up and the building will come crashing down at the first sign of stress. So I must go to company Y that sells steel that will be appropriate to the height of my proposed building. Should I buy the company X steel because I feel sorry for the workers who will not get my business? You tell me; rather you go tell that to the families of the victims of my collapsed building.

Will the steel from company X be cheaper? Perhaps. If I buy it and the building comes tumbling down, am I evil? Well, we cannot judge the soul of another, nor can we read his mind. One thing we do know is that this builder did ignore the laws of economics (and probably those of engineering as well).

Think about the decisions in your life, and see if there are no laws governing your decisions. If gasoline is $.10 per gallon cheaper in the next town, which is 45 minutes away, would you think it is worth it to drive there to get that particular gas, given not only the price but the time involved, and whether it is raining or snowing, and other things that you have to do? Well, you just did a cost-benefit analysis, which every sane human being does in their head many times a day whether they realize it or not. How can anyone say that there are no laws of economics.

Read more from Dr. Luckey at “Catholic Truths on Economics.”

Today Acton Media released a new video short titled, “What is Freedom?” In this short, experts William B. Allen and Samuel Gregg discuss the nature and implications of true freedom. The clip is first in a series of shorts designed to supplement Acton Media’s latest documentary, The Birth of Freedom. Comprised of footage that didn’t make it into the documentary, these clips provide additional insight into key issues and as such, could be considered the film’s “extended scenes”. Acton Media plans to release a new short each Monday. View the entire series, learn about premieres in your area, and discover more background information at www.thebirthoffreedom.com.

In a Zenit article titled “What is Good Journalism?,” author Marta Lugo interviews journalist and author Gabriel Galdón. He is professor of journalism and information ethics at Madrid’s CEU St. Paul University, and the director of the Observatory for the Study of Religious Information. By “objectivist” here, I take him to mean what American journalism professors teach as journalistic objectivity, i.e., reporting without political bias or any other slant that colors the information.

One of the problems of journalism’s objectivist paradigm is that there are million of events — published daily as news — that are of no use. They are ephemeral, vacuous and gobble up what is really essential. French writer Jean Guitton entitled one of his books “Silence sur l’essentiel” (Silence on the Essential). Often in the informative landscape there is silence on the essential and clamorous noise on the accidental and ephemeral.

Info-ethics calls, in the first place, for speaking about what people really need to know to be free and to struggle for their dignity. It is a different informative choice, but entails a radical change: from the “agenda setting” to the recipient.

August 28 at Denver’s Mile High Stadium, the son of a black African delivered a rousing acceptance speech for the Democratic presidential nomination. It occurred 45 years to the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln memorial and told America “I have a dream.”

Even Americans unconvinced that the Democratic nominee is the right choice for America should take heart from the fact that half a century after King struggled against vicious, institutionalized racism, the United States has become a place that can fairly consider an African-American for the highest political office in the land.

But if as King urged, we are careful to judge a person not by the color of his skin but by the content of his character, the convergence stretching across 45 years begs a question: Has Barack Obama’s political career embodied Martin Luther King’s dream of justice for all?

King dreamed of a day when his nation would “live out the true meaning” of a creed inscribed in the Declaration of Independence: “all men are created equal” and “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The reality is, Barack Obama supports policies that aggressively, even violently undermine that dream.

One might assume I’m referring to the rights of the unborn, and certainly Obama has voted consistently to deny unborn babies the right to life. Obama even blocked modest attempts to end the gruesome practice of partial birth abortion. After the cervix is dilated in this procedure, the baby–who often is old enough to survive outside the womb–is partially delivered, feet first. The abortionist then sticks a needle into the back of the child’s head and suctions out her brains. As an Illinois state senator, Obama twice refused to support a bill banning the practice.

While this is worth noting, I had in view a more startling instance of Senator Obama deviating from Dr. King’s vision of justice for all. Recently California pastor Rick Warren interviewed Obama as part of the Saddleback Forum and, at one point, asked the candidate, “At what point does a baby get human rights in your view?” The senator said that answering the question was “above my pay grade.”

Most of the subsequent media analysis assumed that his answer applied only to unborn babies. But the senator’s voting record tells a different story.

In 2001 and 2002, as an Illinois state senator, Obama repeatedly declined to vote for the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, a bill to protect newborns who survive late-term abortions. Senator Obama has asserted that problems in the wording of the bills drove his decisions not to support this and the partial-birth abortion bills. But in 2003 the Born Alive Infant Protection Act was sent to a committee Obama chaired, giving him the chance to modify anything about the bill he disliked. He never called the bill up for a vote.

Obama has presented himself as a pro-choice moderate. In fact, Obama is far to the left of his own party on the born-alive issue. A similar bill in the U.S. Congress was opposed by only 15 members of the House and was passed unanimously in the U.S. Senate. The bill was even supported by NARAL Pro-Choice America. This is not surprising: the bill outlaws infanticide. What is surprising is that Senator Obama could not find a way to support the bill.

In his “I Have a Dream” speech, King said, “Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.” But Obama has refused to extend justice, even the most basic human right, to a segment of the youngest children among us.

Some people have tried to minimize the difference between King and today’s abortion-on-demand lobby by pointing to an award King accepted from Planned Parenthood in 1966. But in a Feb. 25 written release, King’s niece, Dr. Alveda Scott King, noted that King accepted the award when “abortion was illegal in every state and before Planned Parenthood started publicly advocating for it.” In Planned Parenthood’s citation for the award, “not only is no mention of abortion made, it states that ‘human life and progress are indeed indivisible.'”

King’s niece added, “Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said, ‘The Negro cannot win if he is willing to sacrifice the future of his children for personal comfort and safety,’ and, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’ There is no way my uncle would condone the violence of abortion, violence that Planned Parenthood has always tried to mask, which brings painful deaths to babies and can result in torn wombs, serious infections, and emotional devastation for their mothers.”

The Declaration of Independence, and the U.S. Constitution that followed, called for a limited national government that protected the inalienable rights of its citizens. At least as regards health care, Senator Obama is advocating something quite different: an ever expanding nanny state intimately involved in our medical choices, and yet one unwilling to protect a newborn child’s inalienable right to life.

In his interview with Warren, Obama emphasized that as a nation we “still don’t spend enough time thinking about the least of these.” But who counts as “the least of these”? A newborn who has survived an attempt on her life strikes me as a pretty good candidate.

Laura Ingraham, the popular talk radio host, will be in Grand Rapids for an event sponsored by the Acton Institute on September 17. Please make plans to join us for this exciting event. Currently there are still tickets available and you can purchase them online through the Acton Institute here.

The event will take place at the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel, where Ingraham will speak, followed by a question and answer session. Also, there will be a book signing of her newest book Power to the People, and a dessert reception.

Ingraham is a refreshing conservative voice with great intellectual depth. I have always enjoyed listening to her commentary. Here is an excerpt from Power to the People:

Too often we have believed that “freedom” means that we have no duties or responsibilities to others. That “anything goes” mentality may appear to be empowering, but it is not. Instead, it creates a sense of anarchy that makes most Americans very unhappy.

The Founding Fathers did not risk their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor so we could become spoiled, pampered, narcissistic and focused solely on our own pleasure. An ordered society was the Founders’ goal — a place where we could live our lives in limitless possibility — but only if we fulfilled our obligations. They wanted us to have the liberty to tap into our creative powers, for our own good and for the good of our countrymen. This is the pathway to true happiness. But that society is only possible if we, the people, have a shared set of values, a common set of beliefs that bind us together. The Founders did not view liberty as a license, but as a sacred responsibility to be used for the good. They understood that liberty cannot be separated from virtue.

Distributism may be a foreign term to many, but it is a movement of some importance in the history of Catholic social and economic thought. Popularized especially in early twentieth-century England by the prolific writers G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, distributism has enjoyed mini-resurgences from time to time on both sides of the Atlantic. That it still packs some punch here in the U.S. is demonstrated, for example, by the recent creation of IHS Press. (IHS is not exclusively a distributist outlet, but distributist literature represents a significant portion of their publishing program.)

In a nutshell, distributism envisions an economic order modeled on the guild-dominated economies of medieval Europe. Advocates take Catholic social teaching seriously; indeed, they frequently insist that CST virtually obligates Catholics to support a distributist program. There is much of value in the distributist vision, including criticism of consumerist culture and an emphasis on wide ownership of property and communal cooperation. (See Wikipedia for a fuller, sympathetic treatment of the subject.) In practice, however, many observers believe that implementation of a distributist agenda would mean major regulation of and restrictions to entry to industries and professions, controls on prices and wages, and heavy-handed government involvement in the economy.

There have been few critiques of distributism published in recent years, but the renewed interest it is receiving demands that some attention be paid. Thus, the latest Christian Social Thought Series, from bestselling and award-winning author Thomas E. Woods, Jr.: Beyond Distributism. Order it now at the Acton Book Shoppe.