Inconvenienti Veritas

My view of St. Peter's cupola in 2011.

I don’t usually retain many Latin expressions, but for some reason the inscription inside St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome made an impact on me when I first saw it as a teenager in the mid-70's.  I can recite it from memory to this day:

"TV ES PETRVS ET SVPER HANC PETRAM AEDIFICABO ECCLESIAM MEAM. TIBI DABO CLAVES REGNI CAELORVM"  ("You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.")

I guess what must have made an impression is that, when I glanced up inside the basilica and saw the inscription, I actually understood what it said. I was thirteen, and that sense of awe that everyone gets when they first walk inside St. Peter’s basilica must have struck me as well, particularly as one looks up and sees the dramatic ray of light that enters through the cupola and spotlights the floor of the basilica. Which prompted me to conclude, my God, I can speak Latin! Well, not quite. It turns out that if you speak Italian you can almost get by on reading basic Latin.

  

Five years and three popes later, the Vatican had become more of a backdrop for me. I had in fact become a local in Rome, the kind that walks past St. Peter’s as if he might be walking past a McDonald’s. Perhaps with the occasional rolling of the eyes, when you become aware that there is a small fleet of tourist buses unloading Japanese, Chinese, Israeli, and Saudi Arabian, um, pilgrims.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not particularly religious. OK, who am I kidding – not at all. What I am is respectful of the essence behind all major religions. But my patience ends once you wander much beyond the essence. I believe the common denominator of all major religions is the prioritization of love, understanding, non-judgment, sacrifice, and humbleness.  When you start dragging the essence of religion into politics, greed, hyper-judgment, superiority, terrorism or war -- that's where you lost me.

With that in mind: considering that Roman Catholicism is the largest church within Christianity, and that Christianity has the most followers on our planet, then the “McDonald’s” I was frequently walking in front of in Rome was in retrospect no ordinary place. There's a picture somewhere of me shaking hands with a future saint -- Pope John Paul II -- which I realize is not the same as shaking hands with Ronald McDonald. In fact, I actually liked the old Polish pope, the first non-Italian in one million years (give or take.)

When John Paul II was succeeded by yet another non-Italian pope I thought the Vatican was just maybe turning a corner. Maybe the church had decided to get back to its more universal roots – and who knows, maybe to its essence. As coincidence would have it, I was back in Rome for a few days on business during that particular transition. I had the best seats in the house actually, as one of my high school buddies was NBC's Vatican correspondent at the time, and he invited us to his report on the same rooftop from where NBC is reporting the transition these past few days. Which brings me to the developments of a few weeks ago, when Pope Benedict announced he was resigning. Once again, I was cautiously optimistic: leadership is not something one should take into senility, it is something one should pass on selflessly.

O Tempora O Mores!

My optimism was soon enough tempered by the child abuse sex scandal that has dogged the church for so many years. I had two completely different personal experiences on that subject, one direct and one indirect. Indirectly speaking, I grew up in a home with a parent that always hinted at personal knowledge of sexual misconduct within the church while growing up. Yet my direct experience was quite the opposite. The years I spent under the wing of a Catholic school took place not far from the Vatican, literally just down the road. Part of my primary and all of my secondary education was completed at an American boarding school in Rome, run by Brothers of the Holy Cross (of Notre Dame fame in the US). I often credit the brothers for the only amount of respect I still have for the Catholic Church. They were a very good example to me, spiritually and intellectually.

So I will try hard not to “throw the baby out with the bathwater”, as the Catholic Church has offered the world many great things. It has provided refuge for persecuted peoples, food and shelter for the homeless, care for the sick; it has educated billions of people, something not many institutions can boast; and it has taught the great teachings of Jesus Christ, the “baby” in our baby and the bathwater analogy.

The “bathwater” was not exactly holy, historians have made sure we’re all aware of that fact. From the crusades to the inquisition, you can’t help but wince as a Catholic when you think about the overwhelming power-driven contradictions. Yet if power is something that the Vatican finally had to give up a long time ago, money is something they quietly continued to pursue. Which bought them  a different kind of power, with a behind-the-scenes stability perk. Sooner or later, never mind outsiders, intelligent insiders were bound to notice the proverbial elephant in the room. From a simple economics perspective, there is nothing humble about the Vatican. When the pope’s home looks more like Buckingham Palace than the much glorified humble beginnings of Christianity’s founders, there’s a disconnection. When an ex-pope is whisked away in a helicopter to a castle on a hill where he will retire, there’s a disconnection. But when an ex-pope and the school of cardinals he leaves behind seek immunity from prosecution in a massive child sex abuse scandal, there is a major problem.

I realize some Catholics have reconciled these contradictions, but I suspect too many are not even fully aware of them. My belief is that many Catholics have turned a blind eye towards these fundamental contradictions, which they may be confusing with turning the other cheek. I also believe too many Catholics are subconsciously proud of the grandiosity of the Vatican, almost as if it gives them a sense of historic validity and moral strength. To my knowledge, that is not what Christianity’s founder had in mind when he talked about strength.

The strength I interpreted, as in the rock mentioned on St. Peter’s cupola, was the strength of character, of sacrifice, and ultimately of love. That “rock” is what a child looks up to when he or she trusts an adult. But when the adult lays his hands on a child for his own sexual pleasure, the rock has been covered in slime. Estimated cases are not insignificant, in the tens of thousands (over 4,000 reported cases alone in the US). Pope Benedict’s attempt to underplay the abuse scandal in a speech he gave during Christmas of 2010, by implying that the modern world's moral relativism was at fault, was the last straw for me. In that speech he said, "In the 1970s, pedophilia was seen as a natural thing for men and children…" While he goes on to essentially confirm that he does not believe pedophilia is morally defensible, his mixed signals were reminiscent of the logic some politicians have used on the subject of rape: society’s at fault, everyone carries some blame.

Of course we all carry some blame – understanding that is part of the essence of Christianity. But pointing that out should not come at the expense of another inconvenient truth: accountability. When an adult implies to a child that what another adult did to him was partly his fault, the child no longer feels he is standing on solid ground -- the proverbial rock. If there is no rock, there is no Catholic Church. It is time for the Catholic Church to undergo some serious soul-searching. It cannot possibly continue to look at Jesus Christ on one hand, the Vatican popes on another, and reconcile the two.

God And Country

In the United States we often look up to our founding fathers with a respect that you don’t always see in other countries. In fact, the one thing most Americans agree on is that the founders were great men -- then it all goes wrong from there. Not always of course, Americans pulling together have undoubtedly accomplished great things. But to tackle at least one of the elephants in the room: the Civil War was definitely not a high point in U.S. history.  It was the mother of all pyrrhic victories if there ever was one, with approximately 625,000 self-inflicted deaths. That's over 50% higher than the American casualties of World War II -- and therein lies the elephant: it seems the enemy within is always the toughest foe.

Which is why our founding fathers must have had their fair share of existentialist dilemmas. Fighting a tyrannical government requires a well-armed militia -- until the tyrannical government is defeated. Then all of a sudden you are the government of a well-armed militia with an itchy trigger finger.

Our second president and founding father John Adams tackled the militia dilemma this way: “Never judge a king until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes.” I’m kidding, of course. He might as well have said that, but what he actually said was, “To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense, or by partial orders of towns, countries or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government. The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws.” (From “A Defence of the Constitutions of the United States 475 (1787-1788)”)

As if that table-turning moment wasn’t enough for John Adams, the matter of God and King -- sorry, God and Country -- must have caused some heavy soul-searching for him. The original U.S. Constitution only had one reference to religion, and it was a limiting one at that [Article 6]: “No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” Even 100 years later, the original Pledge of Allegiance did not contain the words “under God”. That was inserted in 1954 by Animal Farm’s Napoleon.  But in the pig’s defense: why on earth would our founding fathers, surely God-fearing men themselves, go through such trouble to keep God and religion out of the Constitution? Enter stage yet another foul-smelling animal: a doctrine known as The Divine Right of Kings.

In the 1500’s, over three hundred Protestants were burnt at the stake in England under "Bloody Mary" -- a Catholic-based persecution of Protestants, essentially because God told Queen Mary he was cool with it. When Thomas Wyatt the younger instigated what became known as Wyatt's rebellion, John Ponet, the highest-ranking ecclesiastic among those escaping persecution, allegedly participated in the uprising. He escaped after the rebellion's defeat, and subsequently published A Shorte Treatise of Politike Power. According to John Adams, Ponet's work contained "all the essential principles of liberty, which were afterward dilated on by Sidney and Locke", including the idea of a three-branched government.

And there it was, humanity’s first notion of an accountable government had been conceived. The proverbial over-the-head light bulb had switched on for great thinkers, starting with Mr. Age of Enlightenment himself, John Locke. Opposition to the Divine Right of Kings spread like lit gunpowder, from John Milton’s The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates to Locke's Essay Concerning The True Original Extent, and End of Civil-Government.  But the mother of all declarations against tyranny, divine or otherwise, was finally written by one Thomas Jefferson and his lesser-known collaborator, John Adams. Jefferson and Adams were indeed God-respecting men; but they left us with no doubt that what they did not respect was the idea of men governing with claims to God’s will.

Four score and seven years later, Abraham Lincoln, in his famous Gettysburg Address, did in fact say “this nation, under God”. But he also made certain that those same words were immediately followed by words that could have just as well been written by Jefferson and Adams: “a government of the people, by the people, for the people”.

Yes, we may not like the people, sometimes. OK, who am I kidding, most of the time. In the words of Helmut Schmidt, (West) Germany’s Chancellor during the late 70’s: “The Americans are what they are, but they are the only Americans we have.” I will trust imperfect Americans to govern over me, even if I don’t always agree with them. But I will line up behind enlightened men in revolution against tyranny, if our leader or leaders one day declare they’re on a mission from God (with all due respect to Jake and Elwood Blues).

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“The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?”


- John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, June 20, 1815

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I know it will give great offense to the clergy, but the advocate of religious freedom is to expect neither peace nor forgiveness from them.


- Thomas Jefferson

"We Have Met The Enemy, And He Is Us"

Walt Kelly's famous "We have met the enemy" quote dates back to the 1950’s. The line was first uttered by "Pogo", a 50's and 60's cartoon creation of Kelly's. Pogo was before my time, but as best as I can tell it seems to me he could have been Bloom County's "Opus" the Penguin's forefather. The brilliant quote was revisited again in 1970, as it became the poster tag line for the first “Earth Day”. A few thinkers have borrowed the clever thought since then, including Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and Woody Allen. But I think it is strange that we don’t hear the sentiment often enough. We have to admit, we spend a lot of time and energy hunting down culprits for problems we categorically blame others for, or at best, we partially “soft-blame” ourselves (“I was too nice and let them take advantage of me”, or “I voted for him, what a mistake.”)

Accountability is most certainly not an easy thing. And yet, great men and women believe it is the key to happiness. So why the resistance? I’m sure psychologists and sociologists have a few good theories on the subject. To keep my point short I won’t dig those up, but my bet is that it all has something to do with a vicious circle. Since we’re wired to frequently be on a blame witch-hunt, putting ourselves on the wrong side of the hunt is unacceptable.

Mainstream religions tend to teach some level of humility and repentance. That is great – if it weren’t for the fact that most faithful approach religion like they might approach spectator sports: it stirs up empathetic passions every Sunday, but less than 24 hours later our weekly descent into the dark side of the force is complete. Which makes you wonder: was it some kind of miracle that 39 men once signed a document that began with “We the people”, and it became one of the greatest documents in the history of mankind? I may be reading too much into it, but I always thought what was intended by “We the people” was fairly self-evident. Surely if the founding fathers had meant “They the people”, they would have written so.

Yet every couple of years, aspiring young American politicians find a stump, rally up a small crowd by engaging in an “us vs. them” rhetoric, and offer up a speech that invariably ends in something like this: “Let’s send a clear message to Washington, we will not tolerate their (whine, bitch, or moan of the day.)” Poor George, if the old expression “turning in his grave” were literally true, he would have drilled his way from coast to coast several times by now.

So it turns out that besides sending a politician or two from every state to Washington every couple of years, a group of guys in business suits and dark glasses board the same DC-bound flight. No, they are not security: they are the lobbyists that funded the politicians’ campaigns.

The reported expenditure in 2012 by Washington DC lobbyists was $2.5 billion, according to the Center for Responsive politics (OpenSecrets.org). That figure also happens to be slightly under the ten-year average. On a simple, linear math: during the official two-year term of congress representatives, that amounts to $5.3 billion; during the four-year term of a president, the expenditure reaches $11.3 billion; during the six-year term of senators lobbying adds up to $16.9 billion, and during a two-term president it reaches $22.6 billion. Senators are favored targets of lobbyists, given their significant influence, lesser spotlight than the president, longer terms, and more predictable reelection. Six years is also the threshold of pain for Wall Street, in terms of how long it is willing to wait for results. For perspective, using the six year total of $16.9 billion, lobbying represents 1.9% of the healthcare spending in 2011, and for the same year: 2.5% of defense, 20% of transportation, 37% of energy, 44% of justice, and 150% of interior, or commerce, or the EPA (source OMB – Office of Management and Budget.)

So here’s the trillion dollar question: is there anything about lobbying that is adding value to our quest to build a more perfect union? My answer is fairly uncomplicated (for a change): no. There are only two official reasons for lobbying in Washington: access to taxpayer funds, or access to special rights. Both of those accesses should not be unduly influenced by unelected interests. With all due respect to my senator, when $150 out of every $1,000 I make goes to Washington, his mandate on how to best spend that money should not come from the lobbyists who financed his election. The conflicts of interests are so blatant, I am left wondering how long are we going to simply stand there with a tear running down our cheek.

For every year that goes by and I do nothing about this, I certainly only have myself to blame. I am, it seems, my own worst enemy.

Why Republicans Are Half-Right About The American Entitlement Problem

The fateful remarks made by Mitt Romney at a private fundraiser during his 2012 presidential bid stirred up quite a controversy, as many of us recall. The one word that most people remember from that hidden camera video is “entitled” – which sums up the intention of his remarks: too many Americans feel entitled to something that they have not fairly earned. The 47% figure may have been over the top, but to be fair, who hasn’t exaggerated in private when frustrated by the dysfunctional behavior of too many people? Yes, I know. Just like Facebook’s amusing “Privacy Notice”, presidential campaigns come with the same disclaimer: if it’s private, don’t open your mouth.

I can’t cast stones in the exaggeration department. It has taken me many years to realize that exaggeration is a display of intellectual laziness. Meaning, you are trying to make a point that is not as valid as you say it is, so you stretch the truth beyond distortion to suit your agenda. Surely, “6.5%” of Americans that feel they are entitled to your money without contributing a cent does not stir up rage as much as “47%”. But we have to admit, the pre-exaggeration issue does raise an important question: who are the entitled ones, and how much value are they destroying?

The Heritage Foundation is a conservative think tank, with the majority of its members coming from Republican administrations. On a recent testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives (Committee on the Budget), Robert Rector, Senior Research Fellow from the foundation, shared a total welfare figure for FY 2011: $927 billion -- proportionally almost one trillion dollars. 

Dissecting the trillion-dollar figure we find that only $717 billion is at the federal level, since $210 billion are state programs. That translates to an allocation of $1,400 per federal taxpayer last year going towards federal welfare programs -- which further translates to $117 per month. Mr. Rector breaks down welfare into three general sub-categories: health (50%), cash, food, housing related (38%), and training related (12%). Let’s set aside the training impact, which even the Heritage Foundation considers an enabling program -- the opposite of entitlement. That brings our monthly, average taxpayer welfare impact to $105.

So who is sucking just around $100 per month from the average taxpayer, and feeling entitled to it? Well, the Census Bureau reports there are 40 million Americans that live in poverty -- meaning, they do not contribute to revenue.  Out of those 40 million, the Heritage Foundation recognizes about a quarter of them as being disabled adults, and another quarter as being children living in poverty. That would mean that there are roughly 20 million adult and able Americans that have become entitled to taxpayers’ funds, without any economic contribution from their part. That is in essence the entitled poor, at 6.5% of the American population.

Six-and-a-half percent of the American population is not a small amount of non-contributing, entitled citizens, compounding into a three-quarters of a trillion dollar burden. But at 5% of total GDP, that might still be a manageable number -- IF only that were the only source of entitlement.

Every time the board of directors of a major corporation lobbies Washington for entitled privileges that too easily enable job destruction, predatory competition, and regulatory manipulation, it inevitably results in the destruction of billions and ultimately trillions of dollars -- in favor of a few entitled rich. In terms of population, they are a relatively insignificant number, even less than the so-called 1%. But it’s not the population number that is of concern when it comes to the entitled rich: it is the impact and drain they have on the economy when they destroy more than they create. As an obvious example: between 2007 and 2009, U.S. homeowners lost a total of $7.3 trillion dollars in value. A few but deadly entitled rich created the bubble, enabled by Washington, and cashed-in before the bubble burst -- the oldest trick in the book.

Thankfully for the U.S., the vast majority of individuals, AND corporations, are value creators. Between the two, the U.S. is producing over $15 trillion dollars in value per year. When one of the entitled segments takes away 6.5% of the value, it hurts – no doubt. But when the other entitled segment takes at least another 6.5% chunk, on average, we are now at 13% destruction of value – and rising. Like unemployment or inflation, we may be able to handle a 6.5% bleed. But we cannot go on indefinitely with a double-digit destruction of value. It is too disruptive, and inconsistent with our claims to a first-world nation.

All Founding Fathers Are Created Equal (But Some Are More Equal Than Others)

Over the past few weeks, I counted at least two or three made-up quotes on different social media sites, attributed to the founding fathers on the matter of the right to bear arms. The most painful one is the "Liberty Teeth" speech attributed to George Washington -- jibberish that not only was never uttered by our first president, it actually insults his intelligence. No such worries in the past for both Playboy magazine and the NRA, both having published made-up George Washington quotes, only to retract them when asked to produce their sources (each other apparently).

Let's settle the founding fathers' "RoboCop Directives" debate once and for all, shall we? If anything is self-evident to me it's that nothing kept the founding fathers up at night more that the paradox of establishing and running a commanding government, while allowing its citizens to be armed to the teeth. George Washington's successor, who was also Thomas Jefferson's advisor on the Declaration of Independence, said it best:
  
"To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense, or by partial orders of towns, countries or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government. The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws." 

  
        -John Adams, “A Defence of the Constitutions of the United States”, 475 [1787-1788]

I believe this statement to be accurate, but I encourage its verification. Nothing threatens freedom more than blind zealousness. I am reminded on that note of a famous pig named Napoleon...

The infamous altered commandments from George Orwell's "Animal Farm" (1945)