Recognizing Political Idolatry

If the human heart is a veritable factory of idols, as Calvin said, then it might be fair to say that theologians see themselves as the factory inspectors, called upon to discern and denounce idolatries wherever they may be found.  Sometimes, however, we are too content merely to take a superficial look at the packaging well after the product has entered widespread circulation, instead of venturing into the factory to see what's really going on.  Or, to drop the belabored metaphor, sometimes we are overly tempted to identify an idol merely by certain external characteristics rather than by whether it actually rules our hearts as such.  This is a particular temptation in political theology, where critics on both left and right are eager to identify Christian idolatries of the state.  

The right will tell us that we can recognise idolatry by asking whether the state claims to provide goods which only God can provide.  The modern state, we are told, is an overgrown Leviathan, one that presents itself as the saviour from all evils, the solution to all ills, as our modern Messiah.  Whenever someone suggests then that the solution for an economic crisis lies in state intervention, or that state action might remedy economic injustice, or perhaps that the state should be involved in ensuring universal access to healthcare, up goes the cry, "Idolatry!"  God has fixed particular, extremely narrow boundaries to the legitimate intrusion of political authority, we are told, and to ask anything else from the government is to substitute it for God himself.   

Critics on the radical left have their own version of this rhetorical move, one on display frequently in the writings of William Cavanaugh.

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Consumed: A Book Review

It took me more than a year to finish this book--sometimes, that should tell you something about me, but in this case, that should tell you something about this book.  While Barber's overall thesis is compelling and important, his presentation of it seemed calculated to alienate any possible allies.  Pompous and blustering, he writes most of the book's 339 small-font pages in a breathless, melodramatic tone of fervent moral passion and outrage (I suppose the subtitle should've warned me adequately: "How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole").  Now, this would understandable as an occasional device.  The subject is one that calls for moral passion and outrage, and I, for one, am sympathetic to the desire to indulge in rhetorically-charged passages chock-full of unusual polysyllabic words.  But intense rhetoric is only effective as an occasional device, as a departure from the benchmark of more restrained rhetoric.  Unfortunately, for Barber, the bombastic was the benchmark, from which he almost never departed.  And as you can imagine, that begins to grate on one. 

As part of his tirade against consumer culture, he seeks to include pretty much every example and phenomenon he can think of, regardless of whether it's relevant or compelling.  Instead of a focused account of some of the most alarming trends and damning evidence, Barber is determined to offer a comprehensive account of everything that is wrong with the world today under his heading of "infantilization."  Couple that with the fact that he seems to have been too pompous to have accepted any advice from his editor, and one has to endure many pages of irrelevant or laughably overblown laundry lists of complaints.

And yet, I did the book the honor of reading till the end, because I believe his overall thesis is compelling and very important.

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Down with Democracy?

The past 36 hours have witnessed a maelstrom of geopolitical and financial chaos to rival the most tumultuous days of September and October 2008.  The unlikely culprit?  Democracy.  The original article, for that matter--Greek democracy, for that matter.

For much of the past couple years, and increasingly in the last three months, world financial markets have been held hostage by the debt problems of a small Meditteranean nation that accounts of 0.5% of the world's GDP.  Whenever prospects for Greece looked better, stocks soared, bonds fell, the euro rose and the dollar fell, economists cheerily prognosticated on the likelihood of buoyant global growth over the coming months and years.  Whenever prospects for Greece looked worse, stocks plunged, bonds soared, the euro fell and the dollar rose, economists filled the airwaves with somber assessments of economic health and prophecies of impeding doom.  After the most most harrowing and pessimistic period yet, markets suddenly gained new faith in Europe at the beginning of October, and began a heady and exhilarating climb to new heights of optimism, capped off by an exultant surge last week as European leaders overcame their differences to agree on a dramatic and it seemed decisive solution to the Greek problem.  

But what goes up must come down, and Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou's announcement Monday night of a referendum pullled the rug out from under the market about as decisively as a terrorist attack on Wall Street could've done.  From Tokyo to New York, stock markets plunged, erasing their recent gains.  Bank stocks took what Obama would call a "shellacking."  US Treasury bonds rallied so fast that experienced traders were left dizzy and disoriented.  World leaders and economists erupted in furor--how dare he?  How dare he call a referendum?  Papandreou himself was suddenly sitting in the hotseat, facing a no-confidence vote and the defection of key party members, his government at risk of collapse.

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Documentary Roundup #1: Inside Job

In the last few weeks, my wife and I have gone on something of a documentary binge.  While there are of course wonderful documentaries about all sorts of things, the ones that I really get into are usually the hard-hitting exposes of political or economic deception that is being perpetrated upon us (e.g., Food Inc., perhaps my all-time favorite documentary).  All four of the documentaries that we watched recently (Inside Job, The High Cost of Low Price, Super Size Me, and The War You Don't See) fit that description, so in the next three posts I will be accordingly evaluating them on three different criteria.  First, message: what is the point they are trying to put across?  How are they trying to change the world for the better?  Is it an important, morally pressing, and coherent message?  Second, content/compellingness of argument: how well do they succeed in accomplishing their agenda?  Is their argument clear, do they bring relevant and compelling information to the table?  Is their evidence strong enough, and their answers to objections forceful enough, to persuade a skeptic?  Third, cinematography: is it a well-made film, enjoyable to watch?  Under this heading fall all the film rudiments--good script and organization, arresting visuals, good sound quality.

For good measure, I'll also throw in a docu-drama that we watched in the last few weeks, that is of historical, not political or economic interest--KJB: The Book that Changed the World.

Inside Job (2010) 

 Directed by Charles Ferguson 

Message: 5/5
Content/Compellingness of Argument: 4.5/5
Cinematography: 5/5

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Justifying Private Property (The Problem of Private Property, Pt. 6)

I will warn you--this post is a doozy.  Even by the preposterously lengthy standards of my posts for the past three weeks or so.  But as thoroughness is intrinsic to what I’m trying to do here, I’m not sure of any way around it.  The long and arduous trek, however, does yield some real fruit at the end (or at least I think it does...it's quite possible I’ve taken a wrong turn on the way there, in which case the fruit will probably end up being rotten, and I rely on any readers to tell me if this is so).  If you’re the impatient sort, you could just scroll to the bottom for the interesting bits, and see if they make any sense out of context.

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