Minor Thoughts from me to you

Decision Points by George W. Bush

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

When I read political memoirs, I'm typically looking for one of two things: a much better understanding of the politician or a much better understanding of the decisions that were made and the day-to-day, nitty-gritty detail of events that led into the decisions. Sadly, with this book from "43", I got neither.

President Bush had an active presidency and was often juggling many simultaneous crises. I was hoping for a look at what life was like in his White House. How crazy does a typical day look when you're juggling a Social Security reform bill, a war in Iraq, and a belligerent North Korean state all at once? Sadly, I never found out. By organizing the point around different topics and focusing on one decision point at a time, he stripped events from their context, rendering them sterile and unmoored from the emotions of each year of his presidency.

I was also greatly disappointed by the lack of detail surrounding each decision point. Many of the descriptions boiled down to a very simple formula. "An event happened. I had a gut feeling but knew I needed to consult with some trusted advisors. My advisors confirmed my gut instinct and I implemented the plan. Ultimately, I was disappointed in the outcome and I know realize that I should have changed my tactics (but not the overall plan). Today, America is better off and I'm glad I made the attempt, even if it didn't turn out quite the way I'd hoped it would."

I wish I could say that I exaggerate and that there is a higher level of detail in the book. I can't. The Harriet Miers debacle, for instance, only takes about a page to relate. I've watched the West Wing. I know that a huge amount of work goes into the selection of a Supreme Court Justice. Going into the book, I wanted to know a lot more about the process that led to picking Ms. Miers as a nominee. This book did nothing to satisfy my curiosity.

People who already love President George W. Bush will probably love this book. Those of us who read it hoping to find a reason to reevaluate his presidency will have to go away disappointed.

Everyone is discussing tax cuts -- and tax hikes -- right now. The prevailing opinion seems to be that the tax cuts for "the rich" (defined as anyone making more than $500,000 a year) have to go.

The problem, as I see it, is that the income tax rate essentially doesn't matter. Income tax revenues (the actual amount of money collected) have stayed flat over the last 50 years even as income tax rates have fluctuated wildly.

Cutting taxes for the rich hasn't led to a massive drop in tax revenues. When Bill Clinton left office, in 2000, income taxes made up 12% of GDP. In 2008, income taxes made up 10% of GDP. As a percentage of GDP, the Bush tax cuts led to a very small drop in tax revenue. In actual dollar terms, the Bush tax cuts didn't create any drop in tax revenues. In 2000, the government collected $1.5 trillion of incomes taxes. In 2008, the government collected $1.8 trillion of income taxes.

In fact, federal government revenues have more than tripled since 1965.

Note the uptick in federal revenue starting in 2004, after the Bush tax cuts were passed. Taxes as a percentage of GDP stayed relatively constant (or fell slightly) even as tax revenues were increasing dramatically. That's because the economy started growing as soon as the tax rates were cut. People paid more in taxes even as their tax rates fell. From a government's perspective, that looks pretty good to me. You could argue that the growth is coincidental to the tax rates. (I don't believe that but you could choose to argue that.) But I don't see how you can argue that the tax cuts actually cut federal revenues or hurt the economy.

The real problem with the federal budget isn't tax cuts it's spending. We don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem. In 2000, the federal government spent $3.2 trillion. In 2008, the federal government spent $5.3 trillion. In eight years, federal spending increased by an incredible 65%. Why do we even have anyone arguing that the government needs even more money? Does the government do everything so efficiently that there is no fat anywhere in the federal budget? When was the last time you saw legislators seriously looking for money to cut out of the budget instead of looking for more ways to tax citizens? When was the last time you saw a government agency get its budget truly cut instead of just getting a cut in the rate of increase?

Income tax rates aren't the problem. Government spending is the problem. Until we start talking seriously about cutting spending, we won't make any progress on cutting the federal deficit and the federal debt.

If you want some ideas about what spending to cut, I'd start with Downsizing the Federal Government.

(Numbers from US Government Revenue and the Heritage Foundation.)

It's popular these days to say that "you can't legislate morality". I've even said it a time or two myself. But is it true?

I read an article a couple of days ago that challenged my thinking on that question: Why We Can't Help But Legislate Morality. In it, Micah Watson argues that morality underlies every law that's passed.

It is of course true that some laws will be better conceived than others, and many may fail entirely to achieve their purpose. But that they have a purpose, and that the purpose includes at least an implicit moral element, is incontrovertible. One need only ask of any law or action of government, "What is the law for?" The answer at some point will include a conception of what is good for the community in which the law holds. The inversion of the question makes the point even more clearly. What would provide a rationale for a law or governmental action apart from a moral purpose?

...

Of course, some choices will fall within the discretion of a polity's citizens. Not every decision has profound moral consequences. But even drawing the line between morally innocent choices and morally culpable choices demonstrates our moral understanding. Abraham Lincoln made this clear in his debates with Stephen Douglas when he noted that Douglas' professed ambivalence about whether states voted for or against slavery showed that he did not think slavery belonged in that category of actions that are truly morally wrong. If you don't care which way a state votes on slavery, then you clearly don't view it as a horrendous moral evil. Rather, you treat it like a state lottery: it is fine if the people want it and vote for it, and it is fine if they don't.

The logic of morals, then, means that there can be no right to do a wrong. Built into the notion of wrong is the corresponding truth that an authority is right to punish perpetrators of the wrong. The idea that government can act as a neutral arbitrator between competing notions of the good life is ultimately incoherent because the idea itself promotes an underlying conception that this arrangement will lead to the best state of affairs.

Every one acts on their understanding of what is moral -- what is best for society. People advocate for higher or lower taxes because of a belief that the rich either need to bear more of the burden or that people are entitled to keep what they've created. People advocate for more or less international trade because they either believe that it's more moral to buy from others no matter where they're located or they believe that it's more moral to buy from your own countrymen. Morality underlies all laws.

The true question is not whether or not a law is legislating morality. The true question is whether that moral issue is critical enough to justify creating a law against it.

Obamacare represents the biggest expansion of taxpayer-funded abortion in American history.

Thankfully John Boehner, our probable next Speaker of the House, is one of the most pro-life people in Washington. Boehner would like to pass a bill "to codify the Hyde amendment ... which would prohibit all taxpayer funding of abortion across the board." I hope he's successful.

Thanks Z, for the link to this video.

Derek Lowe has a very interesting post on Where Drugs Come From:

We can now answer the question: "Where do new drugs come from?". Well, we can answer it for the period from 1998 on, at any rate. A new paper in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery takes on all 252 drugs approved by the FDA from then through 2007, and traces each of them back to their origins. What's more, each drug is evaluated by how much unmet medical need it was addressed to and how scientifically innovative it was. Clearly, there's going to be room for some argument in any study of this sort, but I'm very glad to have it, nonetheless. Credit where credit's due: who's been discovering the most drugs, and who's been discovering the best ones?

Spoiler: Overall 58% of all new drugs come from the pharmaceutical companies. BUT, 53% of all drugs for unmet needs came from either biotech companies or universities and 56% of all truly novel drugs came from either biotech companies or universities.

My conclusion: all 3 sources are important parts of the drug innovation system and we shouldn't bash or diminish the importance of any of the 3 sources.

Obamacare delenda est

James Byrne wrote about new developments in cancer treatment for Scientific American. Researchers are looking at ways to use bacteria to kill cancerous tumours, without making you sick the way chemotherapy and radiation do.

The usefulness of bacteria is limited to certain types of cancer as the requirement for this therapy to be useful is tumours large enough to be dead in the middle.

...

Large tumours with dead or necrotic nodes (necrosis can develop as one large deposit or multiple small foci in the centre of the tumourous tissue) are very common and in many cases act as a marker of the primary tumour where metastases are observed. This makes them very interesting target locations for therapeutics even though direct treatment of the necrosis itself has not been shown to aid recovery.

The current limitations with traditional treatments are reasonable well known and this stems largely from the nature if these therapies. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy are designed to kill all fast growing cells including cancerous cells but other cells grow quickly too leading to hair loss, depletion of the immune system, fatigue and fertility problems. It's the inability to target the therapy that results in much tissue damage associated with treatment. So naturally its been suggested that if a there were a way to target chemo- or radio- therapy these treatments would sho significantly less toxicity. But how do you target tumours alone?

It is here that bacteria can prove their worth. Bacterial species such as Clostridia, Listeria monocytogenes and Salmonella cannot grow well or in some cases at all in the presence of oxygen and so find it very difficult to grow in most locations of the body unless its necrotic.

...

Despite the positive activity observed over the last 20 years in particular a purely bacterial therapy for cancer treatment will not be the full answer to cancer. The real promise lies in combination therapies that place bacterial approaches alongside traditional approaches.

Under extensive research now is the possibility of altering Clostridial species the express pro-drug converting enzymes such as Cytosine Deaminase (CD) or Thymidine Kinase (TK). CD converts the non-toxic 5-Flurocytosine into the cytotoxic 5-Flurouracil and TK phosphorylates the non-toxic Ganciclovir converting it into the active toxic compound. Ordinarily chemotherapeutic agents are administered intravenously and allowed to spread throughout the entire body before eliciting their effects on the quickly reproducing cells of the body. By including the pro-drug converting enzymes within the Clostridia the non-toxic pro-drug can be administered in higher concentrations, as the toxic form will only be present where the bacteria are expressing the enzymes required for its conversion.

I'll freely admit that I only understand about 50% of this article. Here's what it sounds like to me. Bacteria grow best in the dead cancer cells. Researchers will put chemotherapy drugs inside of the bacteria. The bacteria will travel through the body, looking for the dead cancer cells where they can grow and survive. Once the bacteria start reproducing, they'll release the chemotherapy drugs, which will attack the living cancer cells. Between the bacteria attacking the dead cells and the chemotherapy attacking the living cancer cells (and only cancer cells), the combination drug will knock out the tumour without knocking out the rest of your body.

I think the whole article is definitely worth a read through. (If nothing else, you can check my understanding of it.) This is the kind of medical research that really excites me. I really hope researchers are successful in targeting cancers this way.

Obamacare delenda est

Don Boudreaux talks about the two ways to be 'pro-business':

There are two ways for a government to be 'pro-business.' The first way is to avoid interfering in capitalist acts among consenting adults - that is, to keep taxes low, regulations few, and subsidies non-existent. This 'pro-business' stance promotes widespread prosperity because in reality it isn't so much pro-business as it is pro-consumer. When this way is pursued, businesses are rewarded for pleasing consumers, and only for pleasing consumers.

The second, and very different, way for government to be pro-business is to bestow favors and privileges on politically connected firms. These favors and privileges, such as tariffs and export subsidies, invariably oblige consumers to pay more - either directly in the form of higher prices, or indirectly in the form of higher taxes - for goods and services. This way of being pro-business reduces the nation's prosperity by relieving businesses of the need to satisfy consumers. When this second way is pursued, businesses are rewarded for pleasing politicians. Competition for consumers' dollars is replaced by competition for political favors.

Just for the record, I believe in the first kind of pro-business policies. I'm adamantly, vehemently opposed to anything that involves tariffs, subsidies, or special incentives. Businesses should rise and fall based on only two factors: how happy they make their customers and how well they do at predicting the future and planning accordingly. Businesses shouldn't be succeeding or failing on any other basis.

Obamacare delenda est

Alex Tabarrok recently wrote a great explanation of the economic concept of deadweight loss:

Imagine that you want to go to New York on a trip. You value the trip at $50 and a bus ticket costs $40. Do you take the trip?

A. Yes. The value ($50) of the trip exceeds the cost of the ticket ($40) so you travel to New York.

How much consumer surplus (net value) do you get from the trip?

A. $10=$50-$40.

The government taxes bus tickets which raises the price of a bus ticket to $60. Do you take the trip?

A. No. The value of the trip is now less than the price of the ticket.

What happened to the $10 consumer surplus which you used to get when there was no tax?

A. It's gone since no trip takes place.

Did the government get any tax revenue from you?

A. No.

Key idea: Consumers lose but the government does not gain from trips that are not taken.

Conclusion: Deadweight loss is the value of the trips (trades) which do not happen because of the tax.

When you hear someone mention the "deadweight loss of taxes" on the economy, this is exactly what they mean: taxes that result in the government not getting money and consumers not getting what they wanted.

Obamacare delenda est

Here's your dinner post, just to get your mouth watering.

I'm really starting to enjoy Indian food but it usually looks like a lot of work to prepare it. I recently discovered The Indian Slow Cooker -- a collection of recipes, for making Indian food in a crock pot.

A Chicago TV station did a video segment on the book.

It looks really intriguing and I'm tempted to buy the book, just to try out a few of the recipes.

We're going to run out of oil someday -- whether it's now or 75 years from now. Plastics are pretty important and we'll need a way to produce them once we run out of oil. Given all of that, how cool is this?

Engineered yeast could produce low-cost plastics from renewable resources:

The researchers engineered C. tropicalis to transform fatty acids into omega-hydroxyfatty acids, a monomer that when polymerized provides a variety of options for developing new bio-based plastics with attractive physical properties. Usually, these acids are difficult and expensive to prepare using traditional methods. The key to getting the yeast to produce large amounts of omega-hydroxyfatty acids was eliminating certain enzymes that further oxidize these acids into unwanted diacids. The researchers identified and eliminated 16 genes and other oxidation pathways, which resulted in a 90% reduction in the activity that converts omega-hydroxyfatty acids to diacids.

As the scientists explained, this new engineered strain of C. tropicalis provides a foundation for the development of low-cost methods of producing omega-hydroxyfatty acids for conversion into plastics. Plastics produced by this method could have a variety of uses, as previous research has shown that plastics produced from a very similar omega-hydroxyfatty acid are strong, ductile materials. The plastics could have applications in lubricants, adhesives, cosmetics, and anti-cancer therapies, and could also be recycled through a conversion process that results in a biofuel similar to biodiesels such as Soy Gold.

Obamacare delenda est

Richard Hannon, an executive for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona, wrote an opinion editorial for the Wall Street Journal yesterday. In How Medicare Killed the Family Doctor he talked about how Medicare's costs exploded between 1965 (when it was created) and 1990. In 1966, the Medicare budget was a mere $3 billion. At that time, the House Ways and Means Committee estimated that the budget would grow to only $12 billion by 1990. Instead, it was $107 billion by 1990.

To fix the cost problem, Medicare in 1992 began using the "resource based relative value system" (RBRVS), a way of evaluating doctors based on factors such as education, effort and specialized training. But the system didn't consider factors such as outcomes, quality of service, severity or demand.

Today most insurance companies use the Medicare RBRVS because it is perceived as objective. As a result of RBRVS, specialists--especially those who perform a lot of procedures--do extremely well. Primary-care doctors do not.

In short, this is one of the major problems of a third-party payment system. Doctors aren't evaluated and paid by patients based on how good they are, how popular they are, or how effective they are. Instead, someone other than the patient judges a doctor's value and pays him according to a strict pay scale. Doctors have little to no ability to raise or lower prices or to set one price for a bundle of services.

This third party payment system sharply limits the way doctors can compete for patients or appeal to patients for business. It also sharply limits the ability of the patient to reward the doctor for good service or punish the doctor for poor service. When that kind of feedback is eliminated, is it any wonder that we spend more time waiting in clinic waiting rooms than we do actually seeing the doctor? Or that the doctor can often seem more interested in hustling us out the door instead of listening to our medical history?

Our doctors do not work for us, they work for the insurance companies. And that's a big problem with third-party payment for medical care.

Obamacare delenda est

John Goodman recommends A Radically Different Approach to Health Insurance:

Middle-class families need health insurance to protect themselves from the financial devastation of a catastrophic illness. But many (arguably, almost all) of the most serious defects of the health care system are created by third-party payment of medical bills.

After 5 years of supporting the billing departments of different healthcare organizations (and using my own healthcare), I've come to agree. Increasingly, I want the choice to spend my own healthcare dollars with the doctor of my choice, for the services of my choice, without having to get approval from an insurance company first.

I truly believe that the lack of competition in our current healthcare system is what's killing American healthcare. And we won't see true competition until we stop relying on someone else to pay our healthcare bills. Sadly, Obamacare will only make this problem worse.

Do read John Goodman's recommendation. He describes how you could pay for healthcare yourself without bankrupting yourself.

Obamacare delenda est

If you hanker for a more civilized era in politics, this snappy video will give you what you're looking for.

For more on this, check out a Minor Thoughts favorite: Scandalmonger. (Though I have no idea why the paperback edition is $11.90 and the Kindle edition is $17.99. It's sheer highway robbery, if you ask me.)

How Many 'Flood' Synonyms Do You Know?

Well, given the fit of pique being thrown by most political reporters, the thesaurus isn't adequate to describe the sums of money being spent this election cycle. Four billion dollars? Yes, it is a lot, but consider the stakes. Here's another interesting number: $414 billion -- the interest the Treasury paid on our national debt this year. Worried about foreign money? Try that on for size.

Allison Hayward is the vice president of policy at the Center for Competitive Politics, a nonpartisan, nonprofit group dedicated to protecting First Amendment political rights.

I'm going to continue talking about what I learned in Chapter 1 of In Search of a Confident Faith. Last week, I talked about the first half of Chapter 1.

Philosophical Aspects of Faith

After unpacking the three theological aspects of faith, the authors move on to three philosophical aspects of faith. These are degrees of belief, confidence in and confidence that, and changing beliefs.

Degrees of belief:

The first philosophical aspect of faith is that beliefs are not binary. It's not true that you either believe something completely or disagree with it entirely. Beliefs are expressed in degrees of confidence. You can either believe something (51-100%) confidence, disbelieve something (0-49% confidence) or be completely counterbalanced (50% confidence or no confidence either way). This is true of everything in our lives, not just religion.

For instance, I'm 90% confident that Republicans will retake the House this year -- I believe it. I'm only 40% confident that Republicans will retake the Senate -- I disbelieve it. You can see that it would take a lot to change my belief about the outcome of the House elections but only a comparatively little to change my belief about the outcome of the Senate elections.

For a Christian, it's possible to believe in God with only a 51% or 55% confidence. You would believe, but your faith wouldn't be very strong. You would be constantly reevaluating your beliefs and seeking new evidence to either increase or reverse your existing beliefs. This is important because it indicates that the presence of doubt is not fatal.

... It follows from the fact that confidence comes in degrees, that in order to grow in Christ, it is not enough to assess what we do and do not believe. Rather, it is crucial to assess our degree of belief.

A Christian with doubts isn't a heathen or someone to be feared. A Christian with doubts is someone who's less than 100% confident that Christianity is true -- but still more than 50% confident. What's needed isn't blind exhortation to "have more faith" but more evidence to create confidence -- to create more faith.

Confidence In vs Confidence That

This second philosphical aspect of faith is fairly simple. You can have "confidence in" in an object (such as a automotive transmission) or a person (such as your wife). You have "confidence that" an alleged truth is actually true. For the record, I don't have confidence in my car's transmission but I do have confidence in my wife. I have confidence that the earth orbits the sun. I don't have confidence that anthropogenic global warming will destroy mankind.

Two important things follow from the distinction between "confidence in" and "confidence that." For one thing, the proper value of each rests on the worthiness of its object. Regarding "confidence in," its proper value is derived from the reality of its object and the object's dependability or trustworthiness.

... Regarding "confidence that," its proper value derives from the fact that the object--a particular claim--is actually true and not false.

... The second implication of the distinction between "confidence in" and "confidence that" is that while truth is an important aspect of biblical faith, faith goes beyond accepting certain truths and crucially involves "confidence in" and reliance upon a Person--the Triune God.

Changing Beliefs

The final philosophical aspect of faith deals with how to increase your faith in something or someone. The authors take pains to point out that beliefs can only be changed indirectly -- never directly. You will never increase your own faith or someone else's faith by merely commanding greater faith to exist.

The good news is that you can indirectly control what you believe and how strongly you believe it by freely choosing to do certain things that develop God-confidence as a byproduct.

In essence, persons do not have direct control over what they do and do not believe (or regarding the strength of their beliefs), but they do have indirect control over their beliefs. Put differently, one's beliefs (and their strength) are not directly subject to one's free will, though other activities that indirectly produce (or strengthen) belief are subject to one's free will.

Why Do We Have Faith

The Hidden God

Finally, Moreland and Issler address the question of why we have to have faith in God at all. Unfortunately, I thought this was the weakest part of the entire chapter. They start out by talking about the hiddenness of God.

... God is not interested in merely getting people to believe he is there. That's why he doesn't write something in the sky for all to see. Rather, he is interested in forming a community of people--his kingdom covenant people--who have entered that community voluntarily and uncoerced, and they have done so for the right reasons, among which include the desire to be with and like God himself.

... the Bible clearly teaches that there is knowledge of the existence of God (Psalm 19; Romans 1). What is hidden is God's manifest presence and some of his intentions.

This is worded as though Moreland and Issler believe that the two ideas are in conflict with each other. That it would be impossible for people to enter God's community voluntarily and uncoerced unless God were hidden. That may very well be true. Scripture is full of statements about man being unable to resist worship (or even keep living) in the unmediated presence of God.

Moreland and Issler themselves don't make any attempt to defend this assertion. They simply throw it out there. That greatly weakens their next two points.

Faith is How We Live Our Lives

... The second response is that, in light of the fuller understanding of the nature of faith provided above, it becomes evident that faith--confidence in and confidence that--is the very rail upon which we live our lives.

Everything we do, everyone we admire or detest, every emotion that we have comes from our specific beliefs and how strongly we hold those beliefs. My beliefs shape my daily thoughts, guide the priorization of my goals, and produce my daily behaviors. Change my beliefs and you change who I am. Change me from a raging free market capitalist to a committed liberal democrat and you'll change a lot of what makes me "me". Likewise, change my Christianity to atheism and you'll also change a lot of what makes me "me". Sure, I won't become a different person entirely but my priorities will change. My reading list will change. Some of my emotions will change.

My beliefs -- and the faith I have in those beliefs -- define who I am. Christianity is "merely" one element of my personal matrix of beliefs. Having faith in Christianity doesn't make me more or less rational than having faith in capitalism or faith in the ability of the Green Bay Packers to reach the Super Bowl. Faith is faith. It's the object of faith and the evidence for that faith that matters in determining whether or not I'm crazy.

Faith and people

Finally, faith is how we related to people all around us. All of our social interactions are driven by the faith (or lack of faith) we have in the people we meet each day.

we flourish in the presence of trust from others, offering confidence and trust is one way to show respect to and value other persons, and reliance on and confidence in another are essential to the way persons work together and cooperate with each other.

... Imagine what would happen to personal flourishing, individually and communally, if there were no such thing as trust. When we recall that faith is not blind choice but is trust, reliance and confidence, it becomes clear that the existence of faith is merely one important aspect of the nature of persons and the proper way they relate to one another. Furthermore, God-confidence is fundamental to living well in this universe, as Hebrews 11:6 teaches: "And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him."

Christian faith, ultimately, comes down to how much you know about God, how much you believe what you know, and -- from that -- how much confidence you place in God to do right and to be worthy of worship.

Several months ago, I started reading through In Search of a Confident Faith. I quickly discovered that it had a lot of good information that I both wanted to remember and wanted to pass along.

I put my reading on hold until I could actually document things systematically. I'm finally at the point where I managed to write about Chapter 1, so I'm now going to inflict my enthusiasm on you.

Introduction

What is faith? Is it an existential leap into the unknown? Is it a blind hope that somehow everything will work out okay, even if you don't know how? Is it wishful thinking without a solid foundation? Or is it something more?  J.P. Moreland and Klaus Issler tackle this topic in Chapter 1 of In Search of a Confident Faith.

They say that faith is more than just the idea of blind trust that the word conjures up in modern Western thought. Instead, they argue, faith is something that must be built on a solid foundation, if it's to be worth anything at all. They start out by proposing to drop the word "faith". It's too confusing and -- by now -- has too much baggage associated with it. Instead, they encourage you to think of it in terms of three synonyms: "confidence", "trust", and "reliance". They say "We can see that if faith is essentially trust and confidence, its proper exercise crucially requires reasons, evidence, and knowledge."

Without reason, evidence, or knowledge, no Christian should hold Christianity to be true. Faith without reason and evidence is mere wishful thinking. They want to encourage Christians to question their faith and to discover what -- if any -- foundation they have for their faith.

If Christians have a solid foundation for their beliefs, then they can have great confidence in those beliefs, great trust in those beliefs, and a great reliance on those beliefs. They'll know why they have those beliefs and won't live in constant fear that they've misunderstood something or have wasted their lives on a delusion. Having a confident belief is vital to actually living as a Christian.

Because many Christians don't have a strong foundation of evidence for their faith, they are deathly afraid of doubting Christianity. This fear comes from a fear of what other Christians might think, a fear of what God might think (if he even exists), and a fear of what unpleasant truths they might discover if they ask too many questions. To combat these fears, Moreland and Issler proffer three different types of uncertainty -- only one of which is sinful.

one must distinguish among (1) unbelief (a willful and sinful setting of oneself against a biblical teaching), (2) doubt (an intellectual, emotional or psychological hindrance to a more secure confidence in some teaching or in God himself--I believe something but just have doubts) and (3) lack of belief (I don't believe something but know I should and want to--I need help).

Theological Aspects of Faith

Moreland and Issler begin to move into the meat and potatoes of the chapter. They unpack three historical theological aspects of faith. True faith starts with knowledge and ends with full fledged commitment. These three theological aspects of faith are faith as knowledge (notitia), faith as assent (assensus) and faith as commitment (fiducia).

Notitia

Notitia refers to the content of faith, primarily the assertions of Scripture and theological, doctrinal formulations derived from Scripture. ... Notitia is also defined as knowledge of the meaning of or as understanding the content of doctrinal teaching. This clearly implies that far from being antithetical to faith, knowledge is actually an important ingredient of it.

Faith starts with simply knowing what the truth claims of the Bible (or anything, really) are. Is it claimed that stealing is honorable or dishonorable? Is it claimed that the poor are victims of their own stupidity, victims of the oppressors, or something else entirely? Is it claimed that the world is screwed up from the result of unwise choices or from malevolent evil? Is it claimed that the path to salvation lies in increasing knowledge or in humble submission to another? Every religion or set of ideas has its own set of facts. In the first stage, notitia, you don't have to agree or disagree with any of them. You just need to know what they are.

Assensus

Assensus refers to personal assent to, awareness of or agreement with the truth of Christian teaching, and, again, it is primarily intellectual, though as we shall see in chapter three, there are clear affective and psychological components to assensus. Medieval theologians distinguished varying degrees of assent to something, with "full assent without hesitation" as the strongest form. The important thing is that it is not enough to grasp the contents of Christian teaching; one must also accept the fact that this teaching is true.

To get to this stage, you have to actively weigh the evidence for the facts that you've learned as part of notitia. You have to listen to the arguments pro and con. You have to apply your own reason and understanding. Only when you've agreed that the facts are, in fact, true can you move to assensus.

Fiducia

Finally, fiducia involves personal commitment to its object, whether to a truth or a person. Fiducia is essentially a matter of the will, but because Christianity is a relationship with a Person and not just commitment to a set of truths (though this is, of course, essential), the capacity to develop emotional intimacy and to discern the inner movements of feeling, intuition and God's Spirit in the soul is crucial to maintaining and cultivating commitment to God.

To be honest, I don't see a huge gap between assensus and fiducia. I know there can be a gap between claimed agreement with the Bible and actually living out a life of commitment but I don't think there should be. I think that if you really and truly whole-heartedly agreed with something that it would be hard to avoid living your life according to that belief. And, for Christians, agreement with Scripture is an agreement that you can have a personal, life altering relationship with the Being that created everything. If you agree with that, how can you not have a personal commitment to obeying that God fully?

But, of course, it's impossible to argue or guilt someone into a relationship with God. Moreland and Issler recognize that.

Merely exhorting people to be more committed to God—"just have more faith"—seldom produces greater confidence and dedicated trust in God. Rather, what is needed is a realistic picture of a flourishing life lived deeply in tune with God 's kingdom—a life that is so utterly compelling that failure to exercise greater commitment to life in that kingdom will feel like a foolish, tragic missed opportunity for entering into something truly dramatic and desirable.

That finishes up the three theological aspects of faith. Next week, I'll continue talking about Chapter 1 and I'll cover the three philosophical aspects of faith as well as the question of why it's necessary to have faith at all.

I was wrong last night. I was attempting to argue a point about stimulus spending and whether or not government spending actually helped an economic recovery. To offer some support for my position, I tried to relay from memory a point that David Henderson made over at EconLog. To wit, Keynesian economists predicted that the end of government spending after World War 2 would precipitate a massive rise in unemployment and a return of recession.

David Henderson quoted Paul Samuelson's prediction, from before the war ended.

When this war comes to an end, more than one out of every two workers will depend directly or indirectly upon military orders. We shall have some 10 million service men to throw on the labor market. [DRH comment: he nailed that number.] We shall have to face a difficult reconversion period during which current goods cannot be produced and layoffs may be great. Nor will the technical necessity for reconversion necessarily generate much investment outlay in the critical period under discussion whatever its later potentialities. The final conclusion to be drawn from our experience at the end of the last war is inescapable--were the war to end suddenly within the next 6 months, were we again planning to wind up our war effort in the greatest haste, to demobilize our armed forces, to liquidate price controls, to shift from astronomical deficits to even the large deficits of the thirties--then there would be ushered in the greatest period of unemployment and industrial dislocation which any economy has ever faced. [italics in original]

Samuelson predicted that the government would act to avoid this catastrophe by slowly ramping down spending and acting to increase public employment.

For there is every reason to believe that we shall not be lulled into a feeling of false security by the last war's experience or by the half-truth that the end of the war will witness a boom. No doubt, we shall retain direct controls for a period after the conflict ends. We shall taper off war production gradually. We shall undertake income maintenance in the form of dismissal pay for soldiers, unemployment compensation, direct and work relief expenditure. It is probable, although less certain, that, in addition, the Federal government will initiate employment maintenance measures such as large scale public works, etc. But even these will not be adequate to maintain full employment or any approach to it.

Here's what Henderson said actually happened:

This reinforces the lesson from the far more extreme U.S. experience after World War II: Between FY 1945 and FY 1947, federal government spending was cut by 61 percent. This was a 27-percentage-point drop from 41.9 percent of GDP to 14.7 percent of GDP. Yet the unemployment rate over that same time rose from 1.9 percent to only 3.6 percent. The postwar bust that so many Keynesians expected to happen never did.

History shows that it's possible for government to sharply slash spending without sending the economy into a tailspin. So far, so good. This I remembered last night. Then I tried to remember what David Henderson said about the GI Bill. What I remembered reading was that comparatively few people took advantage of the GI Bill and that it didn't have a huge effect on the company. What Henderson actually said was that comparatively few people took advantage of it in any one year.

Of course, direct controls were removed relatively quickly, certainly within a year and a half of the end of the war. War production did not taper off gradually but plunged. I don't think there was any dismissal pay for soldiers. You could see the GI Bill as a form of relief expenditure, but if I recall correctly, at any given time only about 500,000 people were taking advantage of the GI Bill to get education. [italics mine]

Oops. As I learned last night, 7.8 million veterans eventually took advantage of the G.I. Bill.

Thanks to the GI Bill, millions who would have flooded the job market instead opted for education. In the peak year of 1947, veterans accounted for 49 percent of college admissions. By the time the original GI Bill ended on July 25, 1956, 7.8 million of 16 million World War II veterans had participated in an education or training program.

Now I'm intrigued by the qualification "education or training program". If we're going to count the G.I. Bill as stimulus, I think it makes a difference whether someone went to an actual 2-4 degree program or whether they just went to a training program and then entered the workforce.

Is David Henderson right? Were only about 500,000 people at a time taking advantage of the G.I. Bill? I don't know. I've been having a hard time tracking down the number of students enrolled in college during the 1940's. According to a 1947 Census report, 62.2% of the 6-24 year old population was enrolled in school. Of the 18-29 year old cohort actually enrolled in school, 75.1% of them were veterans. But I'm having a hard time tracking down the actual absolute number of people enrolled in school.

Answers.com has an estimate, but I'm not sure where it's sourced.

Initial expectations for the number of veterans who would utilize the educational benefits offered by the G.I. Bill were quite inaccurate. Projections of a total of several hundred thousand veterans were revised, as more than 1 million veterans were enrolled in higher education during each of 1946 and 1947, and well over 900,000 during 1948. Veterans represented between 40 and 50 percent of all higher education students during this period.

While the G.I. Bill also had an impact on home sales following the war, its unemployment provisions were little used.

Millions also took advantage of the GI Bill's home loan guaranty. From 1944 to 1952, VA backed nearly 2.4 million home loans for World War II veterans.

While veterans embraced the education and home loan benefits, few collected on one of the bill's most controversial provisions--the unemployment pay. Less than 20 percent of funds set aside for this were used.

Job training and higher education certainly took off after World War II, much of it aided by the jobs bill. But overall government stimulus was negative as government spending was cut sharply and as millions of service men and women returned to the civilian workforce. In contrast to Keynesian predictions, the economy responded with a surge of growth and not another slump into recession.

I'm no fan of President Obama. But I believe I have good reason for disliking him.

For instance, take the appointment of Dr. Don Berwick to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Dr. Berwick was nominated for the post just a few months ago, back in April. Yesterday, the President decided to bypass the Senate entirely and just give him the job through a recess appointment. Why? Well, the White House Communications Director made the President's position quite clear:

Many Republicans in Congress have made it clear in recent weeks that they were going to stall the nomination as long as they could, solely to score political points.

Yes, it was all the fault of those evil and nasty Senate Republicans, the source of all evil in this country. Now, that may very well be true. Most Senate Republicans are rather spineless, greedy, and craven. But, as the Senate Republican Policy Committee pointed out, they never even got a chance to stall, prevaricate, or vacillate.

In this context, it's worth pointing out that Democrats never called a hearing on Dr. Berwick's nomination. Republicans have no ability to "stall the nomination" in committee - and nothing prevented the majority from calling a hearing, or voting to report the nomination out of committee. They chose to do neither.

In fact, they were quite eager to have a conversation about the importance of the post and the merits of the nominee.

Second, CMS is one of the largest agencies in the federal government. This fiscal year, it will disburse $803 billion in benefits - making CMS larger than all but 15 of the world's economies. And of course, its responsibilities will only grow under the health care law, as the CMS Administrator will be responsible for implementing more than $500 billion in savings from the Medicare program, and an unprecedented expansion of Medicaid as well. Yet both Republicans and Democrats will be denied any opportunity to question Dr. Berwick about how he plans to implement the law, and manage CMS, because the President decided to make a recess appointment before the confirmation process began in earnest.

This recess appointment is more about our President's moral cowardice than it is about the Republican's moral cowardice. Dr. Berwick, together with the President, is a proponent of some ideas that a majority of Americans don't like.

Dr. Donald Berwick has been awaiting a nomination hearing in Congress since Mr. Obama tapped him for the post in April. Since then, Republicans have attacked the Harvard professor and health policy expert for making favorable statements about Britain's government-run health system and for endorsing certain health spending cuts.

Democrats have been concerned that Dr. Berwick's confirmation hearing would be a bruising battle. Republicans indicated they would use the hearing to revive their arguments that the health-overhaul law will lead to a government takeover of the health system.

ABC reported that Republicans were rather looking forward to this nominating hearing.

But Republicans were not delaying or stalling Berwick's nomination.

Indeed, they were eager for his hearing, hoping to assail Berwick's past statements about health care rationing and his praise for the British health care system.

"The nomination hasn't been held up by Republicans in Congress and to say otherwise is misleading," said Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, which would have held Berwick's hearing.

Grassley said that he "requested that a hearing take place two weeks ago, before this recess."

Berwick's nomination was sent to the Senate in April, and his hearing had not been scheduled because he was participating in the "standard vetting process," a Democratic aide on the Senate Finance Committee told ABC News.

But speaking not for attribution, Democratic officials say that neither Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., nor Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, were eager for an ugly confirmation fight four months before the midterm elections.

Even the New York Times managed to notice that something wasn't quite right.

The recess appointment was somewhat unusual because the Senate is in recess for less than two weeks and senators were still waiting for Dr. Berwick to submit responses to some of their requests for information. No confirmation hearing has been held or scheduled.

The holding and scheduling of confirmation hearings is at the discreation of the Senate majority. Democrats have a 59-41 advantage in the Senate. If they truly wanted to, they would have no problem scheduling a hearing, voting the nominee out of committee and then approving the nominee with a full Senate vote. Senate Republicans would have had little real opportunity to stop the process.

Instead, the President and Senate leadership ignored their Constitutional duties out of fear of the American public. They were afraid of political fallout from letting the American public watch the hearings and see what their nominee really believed -- what the President really believes. This isn't a mark of a great leader. It's the mark of a political coward. And it's just one of the many reasons why I don't like President Obama.

I just heard about this today, courtesy of PJTV (the May 26, 2010 episode, "Euro-Style Liberalism Leads to Euro-Style Violence").

Three die in bank during Greek riots - USATODAY.com

Riots over harsh new austerity measures left three bank workers dead and engulfed the streets of Athens on Wednesday [May 5, 2010], as angry protesters tried to storm parliament, hurled Molotov cocktails at police and torched buildings. Police responded with barrages of tear gas.

The three bank workers a man and two women died after demonstrators set their bank on fire along the main demonstration route in central Athens. As their colleagues sobbed in the street, five other bank workers were rescued from the balcony of the burning building.

A senior fire department official said demonstrators prevented firefighters from reaching the burning building, costing them vital time.

"Several crucial minutes were lost," the official said, visibly upset. "If we had intervened earlier, the loss of life could have been prevented."

Demonstrators set a bank on fire, trapping 3 people inside, and then prevented fire fighters from getting to the people to either release them or put out the fire before they burned to death.

This is absolutely unaccceptable. It's mob rule. Mobs cannot be allowed to firebomb buildings and then prevent the fire department from reaching the building. The solution: the next time it happens, give the police the authority to fire into the crowd to disperse it. With real bullets, not rubber bullets.

I almost wish I lived in New Jersey. (Almost.) I'd like to vote for this guy.