Is Economic Analysis Just a Weapon in Public Policy Wars?

How Public Policy Became War, a recent book by David Davenport and Gordon Lloyd, documents one of the reasons why political debate has degenerated over the last few decades.

Faced with a problem—any problem—the political instinct is now to declare war.

Presidents of both political parties have declared wars on crime, drugs, poverty, and terrorism. Davenport and Lloyd note:

At first blush, one might think that declaring war on intransigent problems such as poverty or crime would be a good thing. As these domestic policy wars have evolved, however, five conclusions become relatively clear: (1) they do not generally solve the problem at hand; (2) they create roadblocks to better policy solutions; (3) they increase executive power at the expense of Congress; (4) their imagery is often negative and destructive; and (5) they never end. In a larger sense, these domestic policy wars also contribute to the contentious policy and culture wars that have plagued Washington in recent years.

Like many a thought-provoking book, this one answered a seemingly unrelated question I have long been pondering. Bear with me a minute on what will seem like a complete change of topic.

Read the rest at Public Discourse

Prospero’s Island

now, ‘t is true
I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples.

Thus says Prospero, breaking the fourth wall, at the end of The Tempest (by Shakespeare, but you knew that already).

Prospero, a magician with an island of his own, decides to forgive all those who wronged him, set everyone free, break his staff and drown his book and reclaim his status as mere human. Lots of interesting things to contemplate there, but for now, let’s just look at this epilogue.

The play has ended; everyone is going home. But, then Prospero walks out and announces to the audience (that would be you), that his fate now has to be decided. If you clap, he gets to go home. If you don’t clap, he will forever be trapped on his island in this play. Which will it be?

Now, you, like most of my students, may think this is a pathetic bid for applause at the end of a performance. But, give Shakespeare a little credit here and imagine this is a rather important part of the play itself. You have just become part of the play. You not only have the opportunity to decide Prospero’s fate, you must decide his fate. Either you clap or you don’t. Prospero is waiting.

You are still thinking, “It’s just a play.” But wait. Earlier in this play, Prospero puts on a play of his own, and that play gets interrupted when Prospero remembers he has other things he should be doing.

These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Here is the question: in that last sentence, who is the “we”? Just the people in the play? Ah, but remember that epilogue? You are one of the actors in this play.

Are we the stuff which dreams are made on? Dear Reader, are you and I characters in a play? Is all the world a stage (different play, same author)?

The question of whether we are all just characters in a play left a room full of normally quite boisterous Mount Holyoke students silent. Truth be told, I am not sure whether the silence was born of deep contemplation or incredulousness that I was asking such a painfully silly question.

But, as I sit here writing my monologue, there is nobody else on the stage with me right now. There are a couple of distant figures walking across the lawn in the background outside the window of my office. But the only conversation going on is me talking to you, the audience, Dear Readers.

Of course in the play that is your life, you are right now reading a letter written to you by a character (me) who is off-stage right now. Maybe there are other people on the stage with you right now. Maybe not. I have no idea—that’s not my play.

Prospero doesn’t want to be left on his little island in his play. To get off, he needs you to clap. Did you help him out yet? Or is he still stranded there? Of course, as soon as you clap, you are acknowledging that Prospero is real. So maybe you shouldn’t clap and just leave him on his island in his play.

Prospero is begging you to help.

Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself and frees all faults.

You and Prospero aren’t all that different, are you? You too lack spirits to enforce and art to enchant. You too are on an island in your own play, bound by the limits of your humanity. You too need others or your end truly is despair. You too are asking for prayer to assault Mercy itself that you will not be left alone on your island with all your faults unforgiven, bereft of the power to leave without the aid of others who have no more reason to aid you than you have to aid Prospero.

A decade later, John Donne picked up the theme.

No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Is that just wishful thinking?

You are surrounded by Prosperos, not the magician with the staff and the book and the power to create a world, but the human at the end who lacks the power to escape the island. All you have to do is clap. But to do that, you have to notice Prospero first, you have to delay leaving the theater just a moment, linger briefly on the stage of the other person’s life before dashing off to the next exciting adventure in the play of your own life.

Smile and say “Hi” to someone today…even to the stranger who wanders briefly onto your stage by mere accident.

More Surprises in The Brothers Karamazov

As I have noted before in this space, one of the amazing things about The Brothers Karamazov is that it contains within it a zillion different themes.

I recently read it with one of my reading groups.

I was talking with one of the students a few days before we were going to meet and asked her which of the endless possibilities she thought would be an interesting discussion. Her reply, to put it mildly, surprised me.

She really wanted to talk about Perezvon.

If you haven’t read the book, the name means nothing to you. If you have read the book, the name also means nothing to you. You are wondering “One of the monks? People in town? Lawyers? Kids?”

Don’t feel bad that you do not remember Perezvon.

Perezvon is the dog. And, you may not even remember there was a dog in the novel. In a 750 page novel, he gets a couple dozen pages of screen time.

I expressed my skepticism that the dog could merit much discussion. To which I got this reply:

It can’t be hard to talk about Perezvon. You get this book full of insane rants about everything from free will to murder to loyalty to moral guilt, and yet the thing that makes the saddest character happy is finding his dog. I mean, Ilyusha is this insanely troubled and problematic kid, he’s literally dying, but he’s thrilled when he sees Perezvon again. It sort of makes me want to give up school and reading and history and just live on a ranch. Plus, then you have the whole thing where Kolya keeps his dog from him, prolonging the suffering in an attempt to make the dog even better and whatnot. It’s tragically beautiful.
(Izzy Baird, e-mail to author, February 1, 2020)

As I thought about her comment, I realized that the episode with Perezvon is even more interesting than I thought when I first read Izzy’s comments.

We need to revisit the story. Perezvon was not Ilyusha’s dog. He was a stray dog. Ilyusha, a young kid was induced to throw a piece of meat to the stray dog which contained a pin inside it. The idea was to enjoy the amusement after the dog gobbles up the meat and is tortured by having a pin in its stomach. (People can be cruel.) Ilyusha tosses the meat, the dog gobbles it up, and runs off in great pain presumably to die of internal bleeding. Ilyusha is devastated at what he has done.

Shortly thereafter, Ilyusha is on his own deathbed when one of the other kids, Kolya, shows up with Perezvon. Kolya found the dog shortly after Ilyusha’s act; the dog had not actually swallowed the pin. Then in order to surprise Ilyusha, Kolya spent weeks training the dog to do all sorts of fun tricks. One day, Kolya brings Perezvon to Ilyusha’s bedside. Ilyusha is incredibly happy.

It is, indeed, tragically beautiful.

Here is what is particularly fascinating. The story of Perezvon is a retelling of a rather more famous story. The stray mangy dog is wounded and presumed dead. Then one day the dog comes back transformed into a newer, more vibrant and whole self. It is a story of the death of the old dog and the rebirth as a new dog and the new dog is so much more glorious than the old dog. Ilyusha goes from the grief of knowing he killed to the old dog to the joy of realizing that the dog has been reborn in a new glorious state.

Sin and cruelty lead to death. But death is not the end. The end is glory.

Oh, Dostoevsky is a clever writer. The Perezvon story is a microcosm of the entire Brothers Karamazov. The themes of death and rebirth are everywhere in the novel, including in what seems like an interesting little aside to the larger tale. Noticing that, you suddenly realize that the story of Perezvon is embedded in a longer story of Ilyusha’s death, which is part of a larger story of Alexei bringing redemption and life to the Ilyusha, Kolya, and their friends. That story is thrust right in between the arrest and the trial of Dmitri, who will have his own experience of dying to his old self and being reborn after his vision of the Wee One.

Stories within stories within stories all pointing the same direction. Yeah, this really is the greatest novel of all time.

Bibliography
Baird, Izzy. E-mail to author. February 1, 2020.

[Izzy told me I had to provide a proper citation and a bibliography when I told her I was going to quote her. She also insisted that I use Chicago-style citation methods. Izzy is a historian and thus does not know that APA is the vastly superior citation method. APA does not include personal communications in the bibliography; Chicago does. So, yes this bibliographic entry is completely redundant and useless, but I know I would be roundly chastised by Izzy if I did not include it, and truth be told, I already get chastised by Izzy for enough things.]

Binging on Daily Devotionals

The Daily Devotional is a staple in the lives of many Christians. Set aside 15 minutes, read a short inspirational or thoughtful thing about God, think about it briefly, pray, and then go on with your day. Once you decide to do this, the first challenge is to find a good devotional booklet.

R. C. Sproul was a natural in this genre. He perfected it in a radio program and a zillion books. To take one example, three years before he died in 2017, he published Everyone’s a Theologian: An Introduction to Systematic Theology, which you would be excused for imagining is a work with long, intricate chapters exploring theology in a systematic fashion. Instead, the book has sixty chapters, each one about five pages long. Two months of daily devotionals in one book!

One of the interesting things about having an industry built around you is that your death does not end your publishing career. Growing in Holiness: Understanding God’s Role and Yours has the odd feature of looking like a book Sproul wrote, but the back cover notes that it is “drawn from lectures of beloved theologian R. C. Sproul,” which makes one wonder what “drawn from” means and who did the drawing, or more accurately editing, of this book.

The book is in the genre of “half-time pep talk.” It is an earnest: “You are doing great! Don’t lose hope now! Just keep working hard and you will succeed!”

The content is a bit repetitive, not surprising in a mysteriously edited book drawn from lectures. We have a chapter on how 1 Corinthians 13 (the love chapter) is parallel to the Galatians passage on the fruit of the spirit, immediately followed by a chapter on the Galatians passage on the fruit of the spirit. The chapter entitled “The Assurance of Salvation,” showing that assurance of salvation come from being confident in Christ, is immediately followed by the chapter “Confidence in Christ,” which explains how confidence in Christ gives us assurance of salvation.

The biggest problem with a book like this is reading it as if it is a book with a developing argument. It is better seen as a whole series of daily devotions strung together. If you are going to read it, don’t make the mistake of setting aside an evening and reading it straight through.

Insofar as there is an overarching theme in the book, it is, as the title suggests, growing in holiness, or, using a theological term Sproul really likes, “sanctification.” How do you become more holy? Slowly.

Remember there aren’t any shortcuts. You may find various resources at Christian bookstores on how to be a spiritual giant in in three easy lessons, but you are wasting time and money reading a book like that. Why? Because there are no such easy lessons with three quick steps. It’s work—pressing work, demanding work—and it requires a plan. Which is precisely why Jesus tells us there is a cost to discipleship.

To become more holy, you have to work at it, year after year after year. “Patiently pursue love” is Sproul’s pithy formulation. For a reader who is growing weary on the Christian walk, for a reader who is frustrated that perfection has not yet arrived, for a reader who is about to give up the struggle to be good because it seems so hopeless, Growing in Holiness says, “Don’t give up hope. Just take one more step. You can do this.”

What keeps the book from being a dull refrain is the endless set of asides or slightly different ways of framing the admonition to patiently pursue love. As befits a long series of short homilies, the quality of these framing devices varies hugely in quality. We could map them into the good, the bad, and the ugly. Let’s look at some examples.

The Good. In the section on the fruits of the Spirit, Sproul gets to “goodness.” What is goodness? When you say someone is a good person, what do you mean? It’s an odd word to define, but Sproul’s definition seems to come out of nowhere. “One of its dimensions in biblical terms is the ability to appreciate excellence. We have been born again with an ability to appreciate the good, the true, and the beautiful.” How does this manifest itself?

I love to walk into cathedrals. There is a sense of transcendence that I experience just by the very atmosphere the Gothic architecture communicates. I become pensive, contemplative. It centers on the exalted nature of God. I enjoy choral music by Handel, Mendelssohn, and Bach, where the finest artistry was done to the glory of God. Many people overlook that Bach was desperately opposed to the Enlightenment. He consciously intended his music as an apologetic for Christianity.

My first reaction on reading that was incredulousness. Is Sproul really saying that one of the fruits of the Spirit is that you like Bach? Don’t get me wrong, I love Bach. But, is that really what goodness means? Hard to believe it is.

Then I realized: I can say “Alyosha is a good person.” I can also say “Bach wrote good music.” Does “good” mean the same thing in those two sentences? What is the connection? Something worth pondering—which is exactly the point of an aside in a Daily Devotional. I doubt these thoughts will go where Sproul wants them to go—I have a very hard time believing that because of the work of the Holy Spirit Christians appreciate Bach more than non-Christians do—but, there is something there worth pondering.

The Bad. In the section on obstacles to overcome, Sproul tell us “This is so basic and central to Christianity that to deny it is basically to deny the essence of the faith itself.” What is this most central doctrine of the faith, this doctrine that to deny is the same thing as denying Christ Himself? The existence of a singular malevolent being, the devil named Satan. Most Christians accept the existence of Satan. But to elevate belief in Satan to the same level as belief in Christ, to say that thinking that there may not be a unique being called Satan is to “deny the essence of the faith itself,” is wildly too strong a claim.

What is Sproul’s evidence for the existence of Satan? Here is where it gets rather bad. The Lord’s Prayer. You know the line: “Deliver us from…” Is it “evil” or “the evil one”? Experts on Greek disagree which is right. But Sproul knows it is “the evil one” and he knows “the evil one” means Satan, so there is proof that doubting the existence of Satan is the same as denying the essence of the faith.

Not good. Not good at all.

The Ugly. At least the Satan passage could be excused as Sproul just fighting a linguistic war with other translators. Not so his ruminations on some aspects of growing in holiness. There is a bizarre Legalistic Calvinism lurking at the center of some of Sproul’s admonitions. This merits examination.

Sproul wants to give the readers assurance of their salvation. If you are saved and you know it, great. If you are not saved and you know it, also great (well not great that you are not saved, but great that you know you are not saved). But, there are two other categories. There are people who are saved and don’t know it and people who are not saved and don’t know it (they think they are saved). How do you find out if you are in one of those categories?

Well, Sproul argues, look at how you are behaving. If you aren’t following the rules, then you are like the Pharisees and not saved. Jesus chastises the Pharisees for tithing mint and dill but neglecting mercy and faithfulness. And, Sproul notes, lots of people in churches are not even doing as well as the Pharisees. “I’ve read studies that indicate only 4 percent of members of evangelical churches tithe today, which means that 96 percent of professing evangelical Christians systematically rob God of their tithes.”

Lest you think that is an isolated example

I think it’s theoretically possible for a regenerate Christian to fall into such slothfulness in his spiritual growth that he neglects the means of grace—the assembling together of the saints—and that he gets himself into a pattern where he doesn’t go to church except twice a year. That is conceivable, and it is possible if you are numbered among those people that you are still in fact a Christian.
   But, dear friend, the odds against it are astronomical.

The odds are against it? Uh, are we playing the odds here? Is the test of faith simply going to church and giving 10% of your earnings (before or after tax?) to God? Sproul knows better than that. I know that isn’t what he really means. But it is what he is saying.

Reducing growing in holiness to the question of how much to give to your local church or how many times a month you attend church services cheapens the underlying message of the book. Patiently pursue love—that is excellent advice to growing in holiness. Make sure you tithe? That is awful advice to growing in holiness. The difference? The first is a change of heart, which will inevitably lead to better action. The second is a change in action, which may never result in a change in heart. Sproul would almost certainly agree with that, which is what makes parts of this book so incredibly disappointing.

Too Good For His Own Good

DC Comics has of late received a well-deserved reputation for making some very bad superhero movies. It’s not entirely their fault.

Who is the greatest DC Superhero? You only have two choices: Batman or Superman. You probably picked Batman. And there is the problem.

We can call it the Superman problem. Superman is, to put it mildly, a bit overpowered. He has extraordinary strength, can fly really really fast (not just faster than a speeding bullet—faster than light), has impermeable skin, X-ray vision, heat vision able to burn through just about anything, cold breath able to freeze just about anything, superhearing, and just in case that isn’t enough, he can hold his breath for a super-duper long time. Weaknesses? Well, just one. His X-ray vision does not work through lead.

Oh yeah…and kryptonite. A green rock which instantly reduces Superman to complete and total helplessness whenever he gets near it. Fortunately, kryptonite is extremely rare on Earth, so people can’t just get some whenever they want to thwart Superman. Also fortunately, despite the fact that there is so little kryptonite that nobody can just go get some, there is always some available whenever the plot needs Superman to suddenly get weak in order to provide some drama to the situation.

If you have a Superhero who is literally indestructible and has a massive array of offensive powers at his disposal, how do you write a story for him?

Batman is easy. He has no superpowers, just a lot of toys. He is dark, brooding, and psychologically interesting. It is easy to create intricate plot situations for him.

That is the DC problem: the most superpowerful of all their superheroes, the superhero everyone knows, is just too powerful to figure out how to craft a plot around him.

Or so I thought.

Then I read Superman: A Celebration of 75 Years. I had not read many old Superman comic books because I was convinced they would be rather dull and repetitive. Villain comes along, Superman shows up, kryptonite shows up, Superman finds way to get away from influence of kryptonite, bad guy loses. Lather, rinse, repeat. What could be interesting about that?

What I found instead in this book was a marvelous set of rather fun stories. The fun part was not the drama of watching Superman figure out a way to beat the villain. That is part of the fun of a Batman story, but plays very little role in providing the enjoyment of a Superman story.

What makes Superman so interesting? He is a really good guy. Really good. He stands for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Bad things come along and here is this absolute paragon of virtue who never wavers. He just does the right thing. Over and over he does the right thing. Someone is in danger, he helps them. Someone has an evil plan, he stops them. Nobody dies. Good wins.

Why isn’t Superman the most popular Superhero of all with endless amazing movies about him? Because of the answer to this question: Do you want the heroes in your story to be good?

The antihero is all the rage these days; a morally reprehensible person who does good things for all the wrong reasons. The morally tortured hero is also all the rage these days; the hero who wants to do good but has some character trait causing an internal moral tension. Interesting superheroes have flaws, right?

So, imagine a superhero who is strictly Good. He is Just. He cares about Truth. He fights for the American Way. Ok, that last one instantly raised your hackles. Who talks like that today?

So, set aside the American Way bit for a second. Superman is perfectly Good and fights for Truth and Justice. Would you like to read a bunch of stories about a guy like that? No wonder DC can’t figure out how to make a decent movie with Superman in it. Who wants to watch a movie where the hero is Good and Virtuous?

In other words, the reason Superman stories are so hard to craft has nothing to do with the fact that Superman is so powerful. The problem is that he is so good. It is easy to write a story where this incredibly good and virtuous hero does incredibly good and amazing things. If it made us happy to see good triumph over evil, to see selflessness rescue people from tragedy, then Superman stories would be as good as we can get.

Superman is, in other words, a role model. You would never tell people they should be more like Batman or Deadpool. But, being more like Superman would be highly commendable. He is selfless, always helps others who are in need, always stands up against evil and injustice, always cares about Truth. He is the very model of the good person, the good citizen.

Indeed, Superman is such a fantastic Role Model, you might even want to set him up as your National Hero. Let’s identify his goodness with the country. Let’s say Superman fights for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Let’s set this as our aspirational standard. We want a nation that is good enough that Superman could be our National Hero.

We do have National Days for everything else, so I hereby propose that Congress pass a law making Superman the official Superhero of the United States. Then they should declare a day to be National Superman Day. On that day, we all celebrate by being good to one another. Any objections?

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