Political Power and Jesus' Way: A Dictator Comes to Value the Kingdom of God

Religion and political power can be dangerous if combined and aimed at people deemed to be apostate or heretical. In calling for the Crusades, our Roman Catholic popes put their political power behind the theocratic and political goal of taking back Jerusalem “for Christ.” Those popes and the kings and soldiers who went to war with the Muslims there wittingly or unwittingly violated Jesus’s preachment to love rather than fight enemies. Christianity and political power have not mixed well, historically. The U.S. Constitution forbids the federal government and, presumably, the states, to establish or sponsor a religion or even favor one. Theocracies, such as those in the Calvinist colonies in New England (except for Rhode Island, which allowed freedom of religion), would be excluded as a political form for the Union as well as its member-states. Rather than meaning “sub-unit” or “province” as in Normandy in the E.U. state of France, the American Continental Congress has applied “state” in the generic sense of a polity with a yet-to-be-determined political system. Hence while the Articles of Confederation were in force, before the U.S. Constitution, the states could legally form theocracies. The film, The President (2014), is fictional, but this doesn’t stop its portrayal of a toppled president in hiding from looking realistic, given the cases of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. The character arc of the president while he is in hiding, or “on the run,” captures a generally unknown way in which Jesus’ preaching on how to enter the unknown Kingdom of God can apply to political power in a good way. This is not to advocate theocracy, however. Rather, individuals who wield power, whether in government or business, can come to see the very nature of power differently and gain new insight into the Kingdom of God preached by Jesus.

The full essay is at "The President."

It’s Only Fair

Astonishingly, organizations can violate their own mission statement without any manager or non-supervisory employee being aware of the violation. This can happen even when the people in an organization really do take their mission seriously. At Goodwill, the mission is to end poverty, a laudable goal. It follows explicitly (i.e., according to a sign in the stores) that “every customer has an equal opportunity to purchase any item for sale.” Although the sign bases this point on the fact that the goods “come from public donation,” I submit that ending poverty by giving the poor access to relatively low-priced merchandise is hampered if some customers are permitted to fill their carts with on-sale (i.e., color of week) items when the doors open. Certainly allowing those resale-minded customers to deprive other customers of a selection of items on sale (especially clothing, which even homeless people need) is not fair.

According to the sign, possible violations include any employee or volunteer of a store being able to purchase items in the store whether for themselves or others. “Nor may merchandise be reserved or set aside for anyone.” To be sure, recognition is also given to the possibility that a customer might think that the organization is not being fair. When I interviewed a store manager about whether allowing customers who resell items on sale in “garage sales” conveniently misconstrued as businesses to buy in such bulk that effectively deprives other customers, whose use for the clothing is for personal use, she dodged the question itself but took my point implicitly by admitted that she knew of no way in which the practice could be thwarted. I told her I had a few ideas, but she was not interested in them. I topld her I am a business ethicist and would be writing on this case. Patronizingly, she quipped, “Have fun writing your paper!” In retrospect, I wish I had replied, “Have fun managing!” How interested would the organization’s management be? I wondered at the time.

Goodwill could indeed have stepped in to prevent the obviously unfair practice of certain customers, who actually compete with each other in going around—as part of their re-selling businesses—to different Goodwill stores to swoop up as many shirts or pants on sale. 

A "garage sale" of a reseller open for business at her personal residence. Beyond the cars is the Goodwill store at which I had observed the opening of a major, half-off, sale on shoes and clothing (and misc) just a week earlier. Some of the athletic shoes, which sold for $7 without any negotiation (a sign that a reseller is hosting the "garage sale"), I had seen in a cart full of such shoes at the beginning of the sale at the Goodwill store. 

The personal-use customers can have little chance, or practical opportunity, to get an item on sale because Goodwill allows customers even at the opening of a sale to fill their carts entire of one kind of item (e.g., athletic shoes). Even if a wife/mother is buying athletic shoes for her husband and teenage kids, a whole cartful is suspicious. I witnessed a woman head immediately to the shoe section when the doors open and quickly throw as many athletic shoes in her card as she could before other customers had a chance to take advantage of the sale. Clearly, the monopolistic character of the woman’s behavior and that her commercial interests could eclipse the personal-use interest of other customers who would do without as a result not only reek of unfairness, but also violate the “equal opportunity to purchase any item in the store.”

A reseller had her cart full just seven minutes after the Goodwill store opened with a sale that would practically guarantee that the reselling would be lucrative. The number of men's shorts alone in this cart points to something beyond personal use. The resellers do not pay taxes on their profits because the sales, primped as "garage sales," are easy not to report. Legally, the income from genuine garage sales is taxable.

Meanwhile, Goodwill looks the other way undoubtedly because more revenue and less risk of having items unable to be sold are obtained when the re-sellers buy in bulk. In other words, the lack of recognition of the tilted status quo and of ideas on how to restore balance may not be accidents. A false premise that the status quo must be balanced, or that the status quo does not justify effort to achieve balance may also be in the mix. A policy could be put into effect that limits the number of same-classification items on sale that can be purchased by each customer.

Already I can think of ways in which the commercial customers could get around this limitation, for profit-seekers hate limits, whether internal or external. They could bring along family and friends to divide up the quickly stashed merchandise. They could fill their respective carts when the doors open and carefully stash their carts so to be able to make multiple trips to different cashiers.

At some point, however, store employees and even managers can be relied on to help enforce the policy by being on the lookout for such tricks. A customer’s claim that she needs a cartful of sneakers in order to try them on to find one that fits can be easily rebuffed. Only six items are allowed in the fitting rooms anyway. Such games and how to deconstruct them could be incorporated into training. It is not difficult, for example, to see people quickly filling their respective carts with one or two item-classifications shortly after the doors open. The store manager with whom I spoke had no problem in identifying the re-sellers who buy in bulk. Her hands’ off, laissez faire attitude was problematic as it did not fit with the organization’s mission to reduce poverty in a fair way, which in turn requires equal access to the merchandise. Hiding behind the relatively effortless status quo, as if it were intractable or even as fair as possible, evinces a willingness to live with an unfairness that could otherwise be reduced even if it cannot be eliminated. Not having any ideas when imperfect measures could make a dent evinces an unwillingness to think too far from the status quo (i.e., outside the box).

See "A Lack of Good Will at Goodwill."

See also Cases of Unethical Business: A Malignant Mentality of Mendacity, available at Amazon. 

Holding the U.S. Debt-Ceiling Hostage: A Case of Political Expediency over Statesmanship

In April of 2011, S & P lowered expectations on U.S. Government debt from “stable” to “negative.”  Astonishing, the $14.2 trillion U.S. debt was still rated as AAA. The shift in expectations did not trigger higher borrowing costs because the market presumed that a political deal lowering the deficit would be facilitated by the warning-call. At the same time, Congress and the U.S. president were grappling with the need to extend the federal debt ceiling. The federal government was projected at the time to reach its borrowing limit by May 16, 2011, though the Treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, said he could use accounting options to push the date back to July 8. He assured the public that Republicans in Congress had told President Obama that they would go along with a higher limit. “I want to make it perfectly clear that Congress will raise the debt ceiling,” the Geithner said.  He also said the Republican leaders had assured the president that they “couldn’t play around with the government’s credit rating. They recognize it, and they told the president that.”[1] Such a recognition and statement by the Republican leadership, if true, would evince statesmanship over political expediency, for Republican lawmakers could have leveraged their votes on raising the ceiling to get more in negotiations on the budget. This would be particularly notable considering that appropriations to keep the U.S. Government's non-essential operations going were pawns in a Congressional-presidential power-struggle during the Trump administration. 

However, Rep. Paul Ryan, chair of the U.S. House Budget Committee and later to become Speaking of the House, said that while it was true that nobody wanted the U.S. Treasury to default, “(w)e want cuts in spending accompanying a raising of the debt ceiling. And that is what we have been telling the White House.” A spokesperson for Obama said a debt ceiling vote could not be contingent on upcoming negotiations over the budget.  So, in effect, the matter of default on the U.S. debt was being used for leverage in negotiations rather than held as untouchable.  It is no wonder S & P lowered its expectations concerning the ability of U.S. Government officials to avoid default by failing to raise the federal debt limit. Had the lower expectations been assumed to be a wake-up call for federal lawmakers and the executive, S & P would have been naive.

To say that no one wants default but then to hold it ransom is disingenuous and duplicitous. It is as if to say, “I don’t want to do it but I have to,” when in fact the deed does not have to do it. We see such statements from corporate managers and customer service employees. “Unfortunately, that can’t be done”—weakness that seeks to dominate typically takes assumes the passive voice as if to hide—when in fact the person or especially his boss could. Company policies are in actuality guidelines. Sadly, customers typically enable the false rigidity by taking it at face value rather than questioning it by going above the employee or even manager. 

Rep. Ryan could have resisted the temptation to gain greater advantage on the budget by holding the debt ceiling hostage. Even if he made the statement to cover himself with his political base in Janesville, Wisconsin, he bore responsibility for giving the appearance of putting partisan advantage over statesmanship.  

Given the encroaching nature of expediency whether for power or profit (or both), even verbal statements can get the ball rolling even for other political parties. Soon the government's duty to act in the public interest becomes a mere byproduct, as if by accident rather than primary intention. Given human nature, political expediency and the desire to make even more money are inherently antithetical to any self-enforced limitation. Hence in government, we can say that statesmanship involves voluntarily giving force to a self-imposed constraint or limitation. 

1, “Geithner Confident Congress Will Raise Borrowing Limit,” USA Today, April 18, 2011, p. 6A.

On the Economic Justification of American Society and Federalism: The Oxymoron of Congress Mapping the Human Brain

In his 2013 State of the Union Address, President Obama cited brain research as an example of how the government could and in fact should literally “invest in the best ideas.”[1] He cited the $140 return to the economy from every dollar that had been invested to map the human genome, and added that funding the Brain Activity Map would be a job-creating investment in science and innovation. In terms of comparative economic advantage, he said, enlarging the “knowledge economy” would be a good strategy for maintaining a formidable standard of living. As laudatory as more knowledge of the human brain is, Obama's perspective suffers from economic reductionism and a lack of political basis.
Economic reductionism means that everything reduces finally to its economic impact. Mapping the genome may have good economic returns, but the impact in terms of human fulfillment is arguably much more beneficial and thus important. Finding the gene that causes baldness, for instance, would surely have an economic benefit for some, but the non-economic benefits to bald men would be much more important. More importantly, to the extent that mapping the genome has led to new treatments for illness, especially those that are fatal, the primary benefits have surely not been economic in nature. An old person who can live ten more years rather than one does not leap for joy because of the the additional retirement income. Because this is obvious, Obama's economic basis can now be seen as artificial or skewed at best even it it was politically and economically prudent for him to point to economic returns as they would have been particularly of interest to the companies that made campaign and other, less direct, economic contributions to the Wall Street president. Unfortunately, people reading or hearing his speech could have gotten the idea that the reduction to the economic effect is fitting rather than distorting. A government, after all, should look after the public good, which is not only economic. Of course, it has been by lip service to the general welfare that U.S. presidents have tried to justify federal spending in virtually any area, hence robbing the state governments of more and more sovereignty. 
That the federal government had any constitutional basis to be funding a map of the brain's activity is a question the federal president seems not to have considered. To be sure, balancing spending for the general welfare with the enumerated (i.e., limited) powers of the federal government is a difficult task unless the general-welfare spending is assumed to pertain only to the enumerated (i.e., listed) powers of that government. It makes no sense to say that government's powers are limited and yet spending can pertain to any domain, even preempting state spending. So by logic alone, it stands to reason that the spending clause must have been intended to furnish Congress with the authority to fund its enumerated powers.
Put another way for the faint of heart, if a positive economic return to the economy is the litmus test, then the federal government could intercede in so many areas that the state governments could eventually become little more than local governments. The crucial political benefit of federalism, wherein the state governments have the power to act as a check against encroaching or tyrannical federal power so the only check is not on the state governments by the federal government, is lost if federal lawmakers and the executive can amass virtually unlimited power for the U.S. Government (and themselves in the process!) especially if done at the expense of the states. 

A Congressional rendering of how the human brain might be mapped.      Source; nytimes.

Admittedly, a person could look at the U.S. Constitution and point out the spending clause, whereby the Congress has the authority to spend funds “for the general welfare.” in itself, the clause contains no limitation, and the general welfare is indeed wide in scope. Scientific advancement, it could be argued, is surely in line with advancing the general welfare of the people. Virtually any purpose, even those purposes in which the effect on the general welfare is merely a byproduct, could fit within the clause. To restrict the clause could foreseeably hold back the general welfare from what it would otherwise be. 
Turning to the enumerated powers of Congress, the commercial implications from mapping the brain's activity might seem to fit within the interstate commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution. After all, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in Wickard v. Filmore (1942) that even a farmer in Iowa who grows wheat for his family's own consumption can be subject to regulation. Even if his activity "be local and though it may not be regarded as commerce, it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce and this irrespective of whether such effect is what might at some earlier time have been defined as 'direct' or 'indirect."[2] The majority opinion reasons that the harvests of wheat for private consumption, if aggregated, would have a significant effect on the interstate wheat commerce. Even an indirect effect on the interstate wheat market can justify even the growing of wheat for private consumption being subject to the interstate commerce clause, and thus federal power. So it is no accident that the federal executive publicly justified the federal funding to map the brain's activity by characterizing such a map as "a job-creating investment in science and innovation." Obama may have engaged in warped economic reductionism in order to gain more power for his government. He and the federal court before him both distorted logic for the sake of additional power going to the federal government.
The institutional and personal conflicts of interest should be obvious. Since that ruling, the reach of the commerce clause has expanded. Even something that is not itself commerce can be federally regulated as commerce. This flawed logic should be enough of a red-flag to tell us that something went deeply wrong in the federal court's reasoning where federal power was at stake or could be expanded. 
In regard to funding the mapping of the brain's activity, commerce of the completed map could indeed extend beyond state lines (i.e., be interstate commerce), but to argue that the regulating of interstate commerce extends to investing in manufacturing of the product itself conflates spending with regulating, which is to set rules. 
President Obama could be challenged for his presumption that the federal government is the definitive level of government for virtually any matter of public policy to be enacted into law. He could have quoted from Alexander Hamilton, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and the first U.S. Treasury Secretary,  who had wanted the states to be mere districts implementing federal policy. Of course, he also wanted the U.S. president to be in office for life.
Before Obama was the federal executive, I asked Sandra Day O’Conner, a former justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, why the Court had allowed the Congress to encroach so onto state matters. "It takes a majority," she said (meaning of justices). Then she observed that Congress was “acting like a state legislature.” This remarkable insight would prompt me years later to wonder whether Obama himself was conflating the federal and state levels. He may not have fully realized the distinctiveness of federal government on the empire scale from governance on the state, or kingdom, level. Whereas an empire-scale government of a federation must take into account differences in culture, political and moral ideology, economy, and even religion that exist from state to state, a state government need not as a state can be homogeneous rather than diverse within. The British, who had once had an empire to manage, suppose their state in the E.U. is diverse. I submit that the E.U. itself is much more diverse from state to state, and so taking into account such differences is an appreciable aspect of E.U. governance but not of that of a state, even the United Kingdom (or California in the U.S.). Yes, Virginia, such a comparison is valid.
I submit that President Obama did not sufficiently heed the vital differences between the federal and the state governments. Nor have majorities of justices sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court. Viewing things from the perspective of the federal government, and even having its interests at heart, it is possible to interpret general welfare and the commerce clause so broadly as to warp logic and yet not even notice this or the eventual cost (to use an economic term!) to the Union itself (i.e., impairing its federal system). Economic reductionism can be placed in service, resulting in bloated federal power and a warping of priorities (i.e., financial as the definitive litmus test for everything, including the public good). Of course, big business feels right at home in such a society--societal norms and values reflective of those of business. Meanwhile, the warped system feeds on itself, without being noticed and becoming even more warped in the process. For all of the reliance on the general welfare, who exactly is looking out for it as regards the impact on it from the federal system of government and the economic reductionism? 

See related: Institutional Conflicts of Interest, Essays on Two Federal Empires, and British Colonies Forge an American Empire, available at Amazon.

1. John Markoff, “Obama Seeking to Boost Study of Human Brain,” The New York Times, February 17, 2013.
2. Wickard, 317 U.S. at 125.

Beyond Collectivism and Individualism: Freedom from Fear

In his speech on April 13, 2011 on reducing the U.S. Government deficits, President Obama identified two strains that had run through the country’s political history and thus informed the American political culture. “More than citizens of any other country” he said, “we are rugged individualists, a self-reliant people with a healthy skepticism of too much government. But there has always been another thread running throughout our history – a belief that we are all connected; and that there are some things we can only do together, as a nation.  We believe, in the words of our first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, that through government, we should do together what we cannot do as well for ourselves.”[1]  These two strains can be identified as individualism and collectivism, respectively. I contend that collectivism enables both individual and collective security. Individual security is oriented to a person’s survival and collective security is exemplified by national defense. 

In his speech, the president explicitly placed individual security within the collectivist strain. “Part of this American belief that we are all connected also expresses itself in a conviction that each one of us deserves some basic measure of security.  We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, hard times or bad luck, a crippling illness or a layoff, may strike any one of us.  ‘There but for the grace of God go I,’ we say to ourselves, and so we contribute to programs like Medicare and Social Security, which guarantee us health care and a measure of basic income after a lifetime of hard work; unemployment insurance, which protects us against unexpected job loss; and Medicaid, which provides care for millions of seniors in nursing homes, poor children, and those with disabilities.”  That is, limits to rugged individualism exist, whether in the state of nature or in an interdependent economy, and collectivized programs can bridge the gap on an individualized basis such that individuals can continue to enjoy liberty. The individualist/collectivist dichotomy is thus not so clearly dichotomist.

According to Obama, societal connectedness with others, something limited to the family or clan in the state of nature, implies the societal duty of individuals with economic surplus to contribute to the survival needs of other individuals, especially those who cannot fend for themselves. Individuals pay taxes and individuals receive sustenance benefits—the collectivism seems in actuality to mean systemic.

I have noticed that rich Europeans tend to acknowledge both that they too may someday be in need of such benefits, and that, under the principle of solidarity, a duty exists to pay higher taxes than otherwise so other people may survive rather than perish. As the American president pointed out in his speech, hard luck can befall each of us; no one is immune from calamity and ruin. Europeans seem to get this; American’s don’t.

Europeans also seem to recognize a basic psychological ease of mind exists in knowing that even in the worst-case scenario, a safety net exists. Even if a rich or middle-income American never needs to draw on Social Security and Medicare in retirement, whether due to age or disability/illness, the psychological security afforded by this recognition through life is surely worth something to the individual. Such a person (i.e., with economic surplus year to year) can justify on self-interest alone paying more in taxes to feel even this subtle peace-of-mind (i.e, individual security) through life. In other words, the narrow breed of self-interest (i.e., selfishness) that exists in American culture as a common trait among individuals is not even in the individual’s own interest. Such individualism is thus faulty.

I have not come across many rich Americans who recognize that they too may need such services (ignoring the stock market crashes of 1873, 1929 and others); such people thus view sustenance-oriented taxes as paying for lazy people to play or do drugs. Should such people therefore die? As disgusted as I am with the American inner-city “ghetto” mentality that potential employers justifiably eschew, I believe that to say people with such entrenched mentalities should therefore die for want of sustenance violates human rights, which are not conditional. Too many Americans may be guilty of an entrenched selfishness whose greed knows no bounds even at high levels of wealth. The selfishness that sees narrowly only that earning or amassing more wealth is possible at any level is utterly blind to the foundational peace of mind that comes with having confidence that a safety net even for oneself exists.

Together, callousness toward others less fortunate and selfishness concerning wealth are, I submit, just as ugly as a “fuck society, the rules don’t apply to me” ghetto mentality. A bad odor surrounds both even if some noses are immune to their own smell. In contrast, imagine a society in which the fear stemming from a recognition that survival itself is conditional even out of the state of nature, in “advanced” societies, is absent. The psychological effects even from the removal of such a subtle, subterranean fear, can be significant. My dad used to refer to “quality of life” as being an important attribute of reaching an old age. Yet the importance of obviating a sustenance-conditional fear in a person’s quality of life even when the quality is otherwise good tends to be missed by most Americans in their prime. The Titanic can’t sink!

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[1] Barak Obama, “Text of Obama Speech on Deficit,” The Wall Street Journal, April 13, 2011.