The last of my essays on the Seven Deadly Sins, over at InsideCatholic.com—this time on that most fashionable modern pastime, Envy.

I opposed the bailout of the Wall Street banks—which was sold to us, remember, as a means of stopping a stock market crash. The crash happened anyway, and the banks have all stopped lending despite the promises of great heaping gobs of taxpayer money. By which I mean debt. In essence, we promised that our children or grandchildren would pay $700 billion (plus interest) to fund the retirements and investment portfolios of America’s richest, most reckless investors and CEOs. Now that this gambit has proven useless, we plan to give them the money anyway.

Had we not bailed out the banks, I would have opposed the bailout of our deeply flawed auto industry, and on the same Market principles. However, if we are employing the State to pour money into Wall Street, it is outright offensive to deny the same kind of aid to much less prosperous workers in a less influential region of the country. Using taxpayer money to bail out the plutocrats of New York City, then discovering the importance of Market principles when it comes to spending less than 1/20th of that money to preserve the jobs of American factory workers…. Well, it’s just a gob of spit in the face of Middle America.

On the other hand, as Richard Spencer aptly demonstrated, the bailout as structured by the corporatist Democrats in Congress would have turned these once-proud private companies into clones of the U.S. Post Office—subjecting them to bureaucratic initiatives and endless political meddling, under the aegis of (no kidding) an “Auto Czar.”  (If we MUST have an Auto Czar, could we at least recruit a Romanov? Throw us Legitimists a bone from time to time.)  Might as well give up the pretense, then, and switch all the auto workers from the UAW to the SEIU…. Under that kind of federal patronage, the auto “companies” (ministries?) would go right on churning out the 21st century version of the East German Trabant. I think Henry Ford, if he could rise from his grave, would rather dynamite his factories (ala Howard Roark) than “save” them through a plan like this.

So I’m delighted that the Republicans defied the last, yellow residue of the Bush administration and refused to back the Democrats’ plan. So now, it appears, that to bail out the auto industry, the White House will have to dip into the cash it had earmarked for the Richistanis of Wall Street. Whatever money they give Detroit will have to come out of the slush fund set aside months ago to avoid the collapse which has already happened. It’s all utterly corrupt and destructive to our economy’s future prosperity. We’d be much better off with straight-out protectionism—a tariff whose revenues go to reducing Americans’ payroll taxes, for instance. But at least the money we’re borrowing won’t ALL go to pay for extra au pairs, surrogate mothers, Botox treatments, and vacation homes in the Hamptons.  Some of it will help a few hard-working Americans who actually go to church and encourage their sons to serve in the army. That’s cold comfort, but it’s something.

What’s the difference between magnanimity and Satanic pride? Humility and cringing servililty? This week I look into the nature of Pride over at InsideCatholic. Here’s a sample: “Refusing to take any credit for good deeds we’ve done, to gratefully acknowledge our natural gifts, or to graciously accept a compliment can turn someone who misunderstands humility into a cringing, obsequious toady—the sort of Christian one would gladly feed to the lions, except he might make the lions sick.”

In one of its visionary moments, Youtube cautions us against ONE direction the “post-paleo” movement really ought not to take…. (Caution: profanity, subtitles.)

Today, over at InsideCatholic, I explore the vice that can infect and corrupt even the most devout modern Christians, a vice that really does transform Christian ethics into “slave morality.” Mother Angelica (who was immune) called it “misguided compassion.”

Whadda we have to be grateful for this year? Find out, over at InsideCatholic.com

This week at InsideCatholic I reflect on Edenic origins of avarice in Greed is for the Good.

There’s an inbuilt tension, not just on the Right but pervading the West, between two important goods: the efficient production and rational distribution of wealth provided by the Market economy, and the social stability and cultural continuity that come with enduring institutions. There’s no easy way to reconcile the two. With Tom Piatak, I mourn the destruction of the communities built up by the auto industry—while remembering that they themselves are the result of mass-production, which lured men off their family farms and made them wage-earners dependent on the caprices of the international market. The standard free market reply to his plaint about the devastation of the auto industry suggests that these men will, in time, find “more productive” jobs that meet market needs. Of course, the Market is far from free; our safety and wage laws, designed to protect social goods and promote that lost ideal, the “family wage,” make our workers uncompetitive with foreigners who are unprotected by such regulations (in China, Mexico, etc.). Nor would we wish to overturn such laws. The seemingly obvious answer is protectionism—except that such a policy raises prices across the board, the effect of which is felt most by… ordinary workers. Essentially, less-skilled workers must choose between higher wages and higher prices, or lower wages and lower prices. If we act as economic materialists, and pretend that all human beings are interchangeable—such that the descendants of slaves or war veterans or Founding Fathers mean no more to us than men waving newly minted green cards—then mass immigration is just another form of diluting the price of labor. Immigrants may run down our wages, but they lower our prices (if you leave aside the government benefits they demand—a BIG if).

A deeper question is raised when we remember the whole point Charles Murray was trying to make in The Bell Curve—95% of which had nothing to do with race: We have for the past generation at least allowed those on the right hand side of the Bell Curve—knowledge workers, bureaucrats, rhetoricians, journalists, sophists, etc—to shape policy and the economy to their own benefit. Not too surprisingly, there isn’t a large scale, self-identified, Low IQ Lobby to counter this trend. We must engage in a bit of paternalism, and say that it’s essential to preserve the human dignity and family stability of those less able to compete in a knowledge economy, to maintain a large range of jobs they can do at a decent wage inside the country. If we expect such people to pay taxes, act patriotically, and fight in our armies, we cannot allow the economy to freeze them out. They have the right, as citizens, to expect that the government will act to preserve their ability to work and support themselves. Does this mean full-scale protectionism? No, because that would raise all the prices they pay. Can we jigger protectionism so that it only affects the rich? I doubt it. Can we offer subsidy checks, drawn from progressive taxes, to supplement the incomes of the working class?  Degrading, and politically corrupting.

Remember that the basis of liberty is a citizenry which largely possesses either the skills or the property to support itself; that means a large body of independent farmers, craftsmen, shopkeepers, to counterbalance those dependent on wages or government benefits. That was Wilhelm Ropke’s insight, based on his study of European history. Switzerland developed and maintained its truly democratic, libertarian society because its culture valued the yeoman and the burgher over the lord and the serf. Jefferson hoped we could do the same. Of course, in an increasingly high-tech economy, not everyone is cut out (see The Bell Curve) for such economic independence. There will have to be wage earners, and wages.

What can the State do? How about this: Enforce Protectionism on the State, but not on the private sector. Mandate that all government expenditures must go to domestic producers—and wherever possible, to smaller companies or family farms. All military equipment should be domestically produced. Everything used in a school, or federally-funded hospital, or for civil engineering. This would make government projects more expensive, and somewhat less efficient, but it would maintain many jobs for less-skilled, less cognitively able workers. The public sector would be directly proportionate to the protected sector of the economy, allowing weaker citizens to benefit from the State, requiring elites who benefit from government intervention to subsidize the employment of less able citizens, and reasserting a certain patriotic solidarity among social classes. It might also lead to the shrinkage of government—which would free up more capital to fuel economic growth.

Not a perfect solution, but there aren’t any.

Those of us who remember such things, remember that today is Armistice Day—marking the conclusion of the war that fatally wounded our civilization. It also happens to be the anniversary of the destruction of the last best hope for the West. Into its wake rushed the madness of national, then international socialism. At last, it seems, the gap will be filled by our culture’s oldest enemy, Islam. (Thanks to the Western Confucian for calling my attention to this date.) Blessed Karl of Austria, pray for us.

Last week, on the eve of the elections, I warned about the consequences for Christians of a Democratic landslide. This week, over at InsideCatholic, I offer a mea culpa for the part we played in making the coming catastrophe possible. What was it that melted Catholics, in particular, from hard-headed Irish papists into Silly Putty in Obama’s sweaty palms? How did the Kennedy family plan ahead for Roe v. Wade?