“Facing the choice of cash or liberty human beings will always choose the former because it spells safety.”

How else can you explain the popularity of Social Security and Medicare? I give up the liberty to dispose of my income (.765 cents of every dollar) money however I want, and in exchange I’m assured a modest stream of income and free medical care after I retire. If people were allowed to keep their money and they invested it conservatively, the average person would get nearly $5,000 per month at retirement, which is more than double the maximum monthly Social Security benefit. But of course, people don’t trust themselves, so they give up liberty now for security later . . . and force the rest of us to participate through demigod politics.

“Ochlocrats who never tire of accusing conservatives and Catholics of superstition, illogical traditionalism, and ‘unscientific’ procedure make an act of faith in the inner illumination of the individual and the infallibility of numerical majorities.”

I’m a firm believer that every man has an authority, a source of faith, which they accept as their guideposts in life. The arrogant man never questions whatever flits into his mind. The arrogantly religious man never questions his interpretation of the Bible. The free marketer never questions Ayn Rand. The Soviet never questions Lenin. The moron never questions science. The only difference with respect to authority is, are you aware you have one? If you’re conscious of it, you’re one step ahead of the rest.

“Medieval man (like every deeply religious man) was eschatologically static. To him time was a relative conception because his center–God–stood at the same distance to the year 1300 B.C. as to the year A.D. 1300.”

The medieval man appeals to me, especially since I’ve learned that, contrary to popular perception, he was not oppressed . . . far from it. The medieval man had more freedom than we do because the arms of government didn’t stretch like they do today. Granted, there were occasional atrocities committed by the ruling class against the lower ones, but the daughter of a poor man back then was far less likely to get raped by a king’s son than the daughter of a poor man is likely to get raped in her own neighborhood today. We live today in a culture of violence, and the modern State oversees that violence . . . and, in my opinion, perpetuates it through acts of aggressive taxation and militarism.

“The nonchalantly polite but nevertheless free interclass manners in the Catholic world are the natural consequence of a conventional (nonideological) egalitarianism, based on the profound knowledge that our final status–on the other side of the grave–will be basically different from our present one. Furthermore, because of the human fact that we are all images of God and potential saints (not excluding sinners like the young Augustine or Maria Magdalena), it follows that Catholics, grown up in a Catholic culture, pay reverence to everybody regardless of his color, class, and publicly manifested morality.”

The summed-up Catholic lesson in this passage: Don’t dis’ the guy who might be in a position to lobby to keep you on the right side of the Styx.

I’m hardly in a position to question KL on the idea that people in a truly Catholic culture, which tends to be hierarchical, recognize their fundamental equality, but I can never forget reading about the atrocities that the Portuguese explorers (all Catholic) committed against native peoples. This passage from David Landes’ The Wealth and Poverty of Nations stands out in my memory: “Vicente Sodre flogged the chief Muslim merchant at Cannanore (Malabar coast) until he fainted, then stuffed his mouth with excrement and covered it with a slab of pork to make sure he ate the filth.”

I realize, of course, that the atrocities committed by a handful of sailors from Portugal don’t impugn the entire Catholic culture of Europe. It’s also safe to assume that the sailing life attracted the roguish element. Still, just Mel Gibson’s conduct is an embarrassment for the entire Church, the actions of these handful of Catholic sailors is a shameful pox on Catholic culture.

“A reading-writing education as such has benefited nobody, has elated nobody spiritually or culturally. There is no need to go to the other extreme and to believe that the knowledge of the three R’s is basically destructive, but nothing is more stupid or unrealistic than to judge the level of other countries by the number of illiterates.”

And, as a corollary, nothing is more stupid or unrealistic than to judge the level of our country by the number of literates.

It reminds me of a Dear Abby column I saw earlier this year. A mother wrote, saying that she couldn’t get her children to read, until she came up with this novel approach: she turned off the volume on the TV and turned on close-captioning. The result: The children had to read in order to watch TV! Dear Abby was elated with the advice and passed it onto her readers.

Such idiocy could pass for intelligence only in a culture of mass education. The three R’s are valued as ends in themselves, instead of means to greater things. Reading for the sake of reading is about as healthy as eating for the sake of eating. Eating of any sort is good as opposed to starving, and reading of any sort (even the close-captioned reading) is better than no reading, but a diet of potato chips and ice cream doesn’t benefit a person’s health in the long-run, just as a diet of newspapers and dime-store novels doesn’t benefit a person’s mind in the long run.

“Bodies are mutually attracted by nearness, knowledge, and pleasure but souls by distance, mystery, and suffering.”

Such thinking could trend into Cartesian dualism, which undermines the sacramental nature of existence, but it’s always important to reassert that the soul and body are not the same. They’re friends. They’re even allies . . . in the war against the flesh and the devil. But the body is the weaker ally, so it’s important to nourish the soul so it can do its job of strengthening the person.

It’s interesting to think about what KL’s words imply about modern forms of “worship,” which emphasize nearness (”come together and hold hands”), knowledge (”make sure everything is 100% accessible to the average guy in the pew”), and pleasure (”we must entertain the congregation and make it more fun”).

“Only the select can be closely confronted with the Absolute without taking flight. Only the saints, but not the ‘commonsensical’ herd, can and will surrender to the ‘Holy Folly of the Cross.’ For this reason we have such hatred on the part of the mediocre man, who hates any sort of hierarchy, whether of the saints or of sanctity itself. Sanctity is not only an extraordinary condition but also an adventure. And adventure belongs to the domain of the ‘Romantic.’”

Great stuff, that.

Unfortunately, one can only thoroughly enjoy it if he is firmly convinced that he is not the mediocre man. Unless you clearly have the holy or intellectual or virtue mojo, it would seem a bit arrogant to hold such a conviction. Indeed, the mere fact that you hold it would indicate that you are the mediocre man. It’s almost like you’re on a circle of mediocrity.

Of course, one can transcend the mediocrity (which, incidentally, might also be called “lukewarmness”) by loving the saints and their sanctity, by accepting nature’s hierarchy and one’s place within it, by loving the romantic more than what KL refers to as the “herd instinct.”

If you want to develop your romantic over your herd instincts, KL offers a handy list of corresponding characteristics for each. For instance, “security and safety” are herdist, while adventure is its romantic counterpart. The part of the list I liked the most, though, came at the end:

The Herd Instinct (The Romantic Sentiment)
Feeling of the finite, fear of death (Sense of immortality), which leads to:
Exaggerated worship of health (Indifference to health)
The hectic life (The contemplative life)
Doctor worship (Worship of saints)
Speed (Slowness, procrastination)
Cowardice (Courage)
Cautiousness (Carelessness)
Escapism (Facing of issues)

The opposing traits in that list makes me nervous . . . makes me think about myself, my shortcomings . . . my lack of the sense of immortality.

All this, incidentally, comes in a book of political philosophy. Kuehnelt-Leddhin is a political philosopher with a sure-eye on God. I’m not sure we’ve had one of those since Thomas . . . not counting, of course, the popes. A true rarity in the modern world.

“Do people have to accept dollars or money? No, they don’t,” Gillie said. “They can accept anything they want or they can refuse to accept anything.”

He’s absolutely right.

The U.S. Treasury Department says the Coinage Act of 1965 says “private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether or not to accept cash, unless there is a state law which says otherwise.”

That allows gas stations to say they don’t accept 50- or $100 bills after a certain time of day in hopes of not getting robbed.

I don’t think that’s right. I did a little legal research by pulling a dollar bill out of my wallet and read it. It says, “THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE.” If you’re owed money, I believe you have to accept the dollar bill. Then again, if you have a contract in place (”I will fill your cavity in exchange for those three chickens”), maybe you can claim that it’s a contractual obligation that requires payment of the chickens. But even so, the law presumes that damages for a breached contract are payable in dollars unless your damages are so unique that the court needs to order “specific performance” (i.e., an injunction that forces a client to give up those three chickens) in order to make a party whole. It’s a bit tricky, but overall, I think the best you can do is to accept non-legal tender. I don’t think you can require it.

“President Barack Obama took aim at Republican lawmakers Monday, accusing them of holding the public hostage to Washington politics by blocking extended unemployment benefits for millions of out of work Americans.” I haven’t given it a lot of thought, but I think I agree with Comrade Obama on this one. I like the symbolic message of the measure (”no more handouts”), but this really cuts directly into people and the federal budget is huge and bloated. I would’ve started austerity measures someplace else. Where else? I don’t know. Give me twenty seconds of surfing time. I’m sure I can find hundreds of bloated federal department budgets and projects. (Later addendum: Link from TDE reader that corrects this post a bit.) * * * * * * * Okay, this intrigues me: Amazon said it reached a milestone, selling more e-books than hardbacks over the past three months. Anybody here use a Kindle? I’d love hear what you think of it. I’ve always wanted one, but figured I wouldn’t use it much. Plus, I make a lot of margin notations when I write, so I’m not sure that would work. * * * * * * * Speaking of Amazon: Please access Amazon through this site. The referral fees are greatly appreciated. * * * * * * I’m on board with this: Has endlessly skimming short texts on the internet made us stupider? An increasing number of experts think so – and say it’s time to slow down. Thing is, I think the Internet medium is built for speed. There’s something about it that pushes. The contrary is true with a book. On the computer, I’m surfing, bopping, jumping. With the book, I’m reading, stopping, wondering. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m inclined to think the Internet simply isn’t geared for careful reading. At least one person agrees:

Hitchings does agree that the internet is part of the problem. “It accustoms us to new ways of reading and looking and consuming,” Hitchings says, “and it fragments our attention span in a way that’s not ideal if you want to read, for instance, Clarissa.” He also argues that “the real issue with the internet may be that it erodes, slowly, one’s sense of self, one’s capacity for the kind of pleasure in isolation that reading has, since printed books became common, been standard”.