A couple of weeks ago I sent a letter to the editors of my local daily paper criticizing the argument and conclusion of a liberal cartoonist who portrayed “The Rich” as a large, predatory fish chasing after those poor, little “working class” fish. A few days later, to my surprise, I received a letter in the “snail mail” from an old friend whose views are decidedly liberal. I had clearly upset him with my brief remarks in the newspaper.
What follows is my reply to his note:
Brad,
It was great to hear from you! Hope you are doing well. It’s actually a pleasant change to receive a letter in the “snail mail” rather than the ubiquitous email.
About your note – I was disappointed you felt you needed to resort to sarcasm. I think you could have made your point without it.
Speaking of your point, let me see if I can summarize it: You seem to suggest that I think the rich are getting a raw deal, when in fact no one should really be concerned about the “wealthy” (of course, we have not actually defined this term) because they already have way more than they need, certainly far more than the “poor”. The Bible underscores this point because there are passages in both the Old and New Testaments that put riches and the wealthy in a bad light.
You missed my point entirely, Brad. My primary concern is for the Truth, and for just and Constitutional government. It is true that a relatively small percentage of the population holds most of the wealth. It’s also true that this small percentage of the population also has the highest income levels. But it is also true that this same group of people pay most of the federal income taxes in this country. That is as it should be. The cartoonist I wrote about suggested that this group of people was trying to take the remaining wealth from the rest of the population. This statement suggests that economics is a “zero sum” game; that the wealthy get that way because someone else is getting poorer. This violates basic principles of economics. All it does is pit one class of people against another. Is that right?
It’s been said that the gap between the “rich” and the “poor” in this country is widening. Does that mean that the rich are getting their wealth from the poor? Not at all! It just means that the wealthier percentage of the population is getting wealthier at a faster rate than the least wealthy percentage. History has shown that living standards for all Americans have continued to increase.
So who are “the rich”? In many cases, it will be people who have built small businesses, which provide jobs and fill important needs in local economies. In other cases it will be professionals such as medical doctors or lawyers, from whose services society benefits. Executives of major corporations are in this “rich” category, but their salaries are driven far more by competition within the free market for executive talent than by some arbitrary standard that says $200,000 per year is more than enough for anybody. For that matter, why are college football coaches paid millions of dollars a year? Isn’t this excessive? It all depends on whether football coaches are considered “worth it” – our society has decided that it values watching good college football teams compete, so there is a lot of money in that particular segment of the economy. The salary of a good football coach is also driven by competition for coaching talent (just like it is for professional sports players).
It’s not fair, nor is it logical, to draw the conclusion that people who have a lot of wealth don’t deserve it! In fact it is a sin, because it violates the commandment not to covet (Exodus 20:17).
As for the Bible’s views on wealth, when you really look at the passages related to riches or property (including the ones you cited) you find that a biblical worldview respects private property and does not make any judgment about the inherent state of being wealthy or poor. The point Jesus makes numerous times is not that being wealthy is bad, but that having great wealth provides sinful human beings with great temptation to place their security and their pride in their possessions, rather than in Christ. Jesus never condemned Nicodemus or Joseph of Arimathea for their wealth. When the rich young ruler came to Jesus to ask how he might inherit eternal life scripture says that Jesus “looking at him, loved him” (Mark 10:21). The point really was not that he needed to give up his wealth to become poor (as if there is virtue in being poor), but that he not love his money more than God – in contrast to Zaccheus who so loved Jesus and was so grateful, that he paid back multiple times what he had extorted from his victims.
In fact, both the commandments not to steal (Ex 20:15) and not to covet indicate the importance of private property in the life of the people of God. Nowhere in scripture is it commanded or even suggested that it is right for the state to take money from “the rich” and give it to “the poor”. Numerous provisions were made in the bible to provide for the poor (not farming up to the edge of your field, leaving the “gleanings”, not shaking down all of your olives off the tree), including inheritance laws and, significantly, the year of jubilee (Leviticus 25) which meant that every 50 years, property would revert to its original owners.
From a purely economic standpoint, society in the United States as a whole (“poor” included) would benefit from lower tax rates. It has been shown time and again that lower rates of taxation actually generate more revenue to the Federal government because wealth that would otherwise find its way into a tax sheltered investment is now freed to invest in wealth-creating industries that provide value and jobs. Even John F. Kennedy, during his administration, made significant reductions in the tax rate for that very reason. The purpose of taxes is to raise money to run the government, not to punish people who ostensibly have “more than enough”. If super-wealthy individuals like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet think they could afford to pay more in taxes, they are welcome to write the government a check – why do they need to change the tax law?
Brad, I honestly don’t know why so many folks who call themselves “progressives” get so angry and resort to name calling and class warfare. I’m sure they think it’s a matter of social justice. It’s pretty easy to stand back and say the government should tax that rich guy over there at a higher rate so that the poor guy over there can have more money, and thereby incomes will be more “equal”. It’s harder to get personally involved in ministering to the poor. Government administered social welfare programs have not won the “war on poverty”. They have only bankrupted the government and contributed to the breakdown of the nuclear family and the perpetuation of an economically dependent underclass.
As you can see (I hope!) I have given a lot of thought to this. I want you to know that I respect you for writing me, and I hope we can continue to be friends!
Monday, December 13, 2010
Friday, October 29, 2010
The Underground Fire
When I was a Boy Scout, we were taught the proper method of extinguishing a campfire: First, make sure you douse it completely with water to remove the heat and stop the combustion, then stir the ashes around with a green stick to make sure there are no remaining embers and separate any fuel sources from each other, and finally dump some dirt on top of the remains to choke off any possibility of oxygen seeping in and letting a stray coal ignite into flame.
If all you do is dump dirt or sand on the campfire, the flame will go out and the fire will appear to be extinguished. But the fire has not gone out – there are live coals still smoldering deep in the dirt, ready to awaken back into flame if uncovered. In some cases, hot coals can start an underground fire that works its way through tree and plant roots, exploding into flame at a point distant from the original campfire.
I’m belaboring this point because I want to make sure you follow my reasoning as I use fire as a metaphor for our current military involvement in Afghanistan (and, to a lesser extent, Iraq).
Our overt use of military power in Afghanistan is like a flame. Just as fire is a highly visible and powerful force that can provide warmth, generate power, and generally be of service to humans, overt military power can accomplish objectives that clearly serve humanity. However, without a clear and unambiguous mission for that military power, it can become as destructive as a fire that has jumped beyond the fire pit to spread uncontrollably to the surrounding forest. Support for this war is draining away as it drags into its tenth year without a clear sense of any overarching mission or progress.
Not only are we fighting the Taliban insurgency, now we’re having problems with our supposed ally. New revelations about the level of corruption within the Afghan government have surfaced. President Karzai himself is quoted acknowledging receiving payoffs from Iran, “They do give us bags of money—yes, yes, it is done, we are grateful to the Iranians for this”. In a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Fouad Ajami, a professor at Johns Hopkins University states, “The brutal facts about Afghanistan are these: It is a broken country, a land of banditry, of a war of all against all, and of the need to get what can be gotten from the strangers. There is no love for the infidels who have come into the land, and no patience for their sermons.
“In its wanderings through the Third World, from Korea and Vietnam to Iran and Egypt, it was America's fate to ride with all sorts of clients. We betrayed some of them, and they betrayed us in return. They passed off their phobias and privileges as lofty causes worthy of our blood and treasure. They snookered us at times, but there was always the pretense of a common purpose. The thing about Mr. Karzai is his sharp break with this history. It is the ways of the Afghan mountaineers that he wishes to teach us”.
The reason we went to Afghanistan in the first place – ten years ago this month – was to find Osama Bin Laden, capture or kill him, and as many of Al Qaeda as possible, and punish the Taliban for giving sanctuary to this organization. We supported the invasion because we were striking back at the terrorists who attacked us on September 11th, and those who harbored them.
But now the mission is no longer clear, and the nation-building we thought we were attempting with Mr. Karzai’s support is being undermined by the very people we’re trying to help. We need to refocus on the original mission, but with a different strategy. To return to the campfire metaphor, we need to extinguish the “flames” of our overt military presence in Afghanistan – pull out all conventional and even special operations forces. Let the world think that the United States has had enough and is going to give in to the prevailing opinion that any military engagement in Afghanistan is unwinnable. Let our enemies think they have won.
Let the flames be smothered, but let the embers continue to burn deep underground. We should begin to wage a covert campaign against Al Qaeda similar to the patient but brutally effective campaign the Israelis launched to seek out and assassinate every member of the Black September organization that attacked the Israeli Olympic team in 1972. Such a strategy would be so low key and secretive that no one in the US government would even know enough to take credit for any success or place any blame for failure. The strategy would have to be plausibly deniable at the highest levels of government. Sure, it would be of questionable legality, but the Bush administration was accused all the time of waging an “illegal” war.
Such a strategy is effective because it is efficient: it will only take the disappearance and/or death of one or two key individuals to begin to frighten and confuse the remaining organization. A frightened and confused organization is an ineffective one. The military has known for years how effective and efficient a good sniper can be at demoralizing the enemy.
Just as the smoldering embers of a smothered campfire send out fingers of fire below the soil, a covert operation, based on the highest quality intelligence and meticulous analysis, will systematically spread fear and destruction among our enemies and achieve the results the flames never could.
If all you do is dump dirt or sand on the campfire, the flame will go out and the fire will appear to be extinguished. But the fire has not gone out – there are live coals still smoldering deep in the dirt, ready to awaken back into flame if uncovered. In some cases, hot coals can start an underground fire that works its way through tree and plant roots, exploding into flame at a point distant from the original campfire.
I’m belaboring this point because I want to make sure you follow my reasoning as I use fire as a metaphor for our current military involvement in Afghanistan (and, to a lesser extent, Iraq).
Our overt use of military power in Afghanistan is like a flame. Just as fire is a highly visible and powerful force that can provide warmth, generate power, and generally be of service to humans, overt military power can accomplish objectives that clearly serve humanity. However, without a clear and unambiguous mission for that military power, it can become as destructive as a fire that has jumped beyond the fire pit to spread uncontrollably to the surrounding forest. Support for this war is draining away as it drags into its tenth year without a clear sense of any overarching mission or progress.
Not only are we fighting the Taliban insurgency, now we’re having problems with our supposed ally. New revelations about the level of corruption within the Afghan government have surfaced. President Karzai himself is quoted acknowledging receiving payoffs from Iran, “They do give us bags of money—yes, yes, it is done, we are grateful to the Iranians for this”. In a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Fouad Ajami, a professor at Johns Hopkins University states, “The brutal facts about Afghanistan are these: It is a broken country, a land of banditry, of a war of all against all, and of the need to get what can be gotten from the strangers. There is no love for the infidels who have come into the land, and no patience for their sermons.
“In its wanderings through the Third World, from Korea and Vietnam to Iran and Egypt, it was America's fate to ride with all sorts of clients. We betrayed some of them, and they betrayed us in return. They passed off their phobias and privileges as lofty causes worthy of our blood and treasure. They snookered us at times, but there was always the pretense of a common purpose. The thing about Mr. Karzai is his sharp break with this history. It is the ways of the Afghan mountaineers that he wishes to teach us”.
The reason we went to Afghanistan in the first place – ten years ago this month – was to find Osama Bin Laden, capture or kill him, and as many of Al Qaeda as possible, and punish the Taliban for giving sanctuary to this organization. We supported the invasion because we were striking back at the terrorists who attacked us on September 11th, and those who harbored them.
But now the mission is no longer clear, and the nation-building we thought we were attempting with Mr. Karzai’s support is being undermined by the very people we’re trying to help. We need to refocus on the original mission, but with a different strategy. To return to the campfire metaphor, we need to extinguish the “flames” of our overt military presence in Afghanistan – pull out all conventional and even special operations forces. Let the world think that the United States has had enough and is going to give in to the prevailing opinion that any military engagement in Afghanistan is unwinnable. Let our enemies think they have won.
Let the flames be smothered, but let the embers continue to burn deep underground. We should begin to wage a covert campaign against Al Qaeda similar to the patient but brutally effective campaign the Israelis launched to seek out and assassinate every member of the Black September organization that attacked the Israeli Olympic team in 1972. Such a strategy would be so low key and secretive that no one in the US government would even know enough to take credit for any success or place any blame for failure. The strategy would have to be plausibly deniable at the highest levels of government. Sure, it would be of questionable legality, but the Bush administration was accused all the time of waging an “illegal” war.
Such a strategy is effective because it is efficient: it will only take the disappearance and/or death of one or two key individuals to begin to frighten and confuse the remaining organization. A frightened and confused organization is an ineffective one. The military has known for years how effective and efficient a good sniper can be at demoralizing the enemy.
Just as the smoldering embers of a smothered campfire send out fingers of fire below the soil, a covert operation, based on the highest quality intelligence and meticulous analysis, will systematically spread fear and destruction among our enemies and achieve the results the flames never could.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
The Excluded Middle
The Constitution of the United States is such a fundamental and influential document that it is completely understandable that it would be the center of attention and controversy with respect to the nature of what we believe to be true and significant as a people. As such, the Constitution is subject to a scrutiny that suggests that its propositions and proscriptions are open to interpretation.
Over the last two centuries, there has arisen a concept of political ideology that appears to dispose itself along a spectrum from extreme to extreme – extreme right (facism) to extreme left (communism). Well meaning people from both “extremes” have attempted to make their case for the truth of their position. The so-called “moderate” individual might “split the difference”, and find a middle position that seems to be reasonable and truthful at the same time.
Thus, a common response to the daily back and forth of views on the left and the right is to think that the “Truth” lies somewhere in the “reasonable” middle; the centrist viewpoint. Such a position is considered unassailable and more than likely where the real answers to problems lie. That mode of thinking may pass the test of political correctness, but it doesn’t pass the test of philosophical scrutiny.
The Truth lies where it is – objectively – regardless of where we are positioned on the spectrum of political or ideological views. I’m reminded of the concept of statistical sampling: The mean of the population is a parameter one can never know exactly, but it is “true”. We take a random sample of that population and derive the statistic, the sample mean, which is an estimate of the “true” population mean. From there we can build a 95% confidence interval for the location of this true value. But this interval may or may not enclose the true population parameter. All this tells us is that if we were to construct 100 intervals from 100 random samples, that 95 of them would enclose the “true” population mean. It’s possible (with a 5% chance) that we’re wrong.
Therefore a search for Truth should not be driven to the center from the “extremes”; it should be undertaken objectively, without regard for what society deems far right or left. The Founders, in their wisdom, created a document that attempted to derive a basic set of laws for the nation based on the objectively true principles of liberty and justice as authored by God. But, since it is a creature of man, the Constitution is not perfect. So it allows for amendment. Even the Declaration suggests that a free people reserve the right to overthrow a government destructive of those basic God given rights and start over.
The notion of a “living” Constitution suggests to me that it is possible to ascribe more or less (or different) power and authority to the words of the document based on the exigencies of a particular societal problem. To return to my statistics analogy, this is like constructing a 100% confidence interval: we fit the “Truth” to a space between the extremes we have settled on. The problem with this is that there is no such thing as a 100% confidence interval (unless, of course, your “sample” is the entire population, in which case you would *know* the truth because you had perfect information).
Truth exists. It may actually lie outside the boundaries with which human beings have constrained it. The truly virtuous person will pursue it wherever it may lead, and will not be constrained by boundaries imposed by a fickle society.
Over the last two centuries, there has arisen a concept of political ideology that appears to dispose itself along a spectrum from extreme to extreme – extreme right (facism) to extreme left (communism). Well meaning people from both “extremes” have attempted to make their case for the truth of their position. The so-called “moderate” individual might “split the difference”, and find a middle position that seems to be reasonable and truthful at the same time.
Thus, a common response to the daily back and forth of views on the left and the right is to think that the “Truth” lies somewhere in the “reasonable” middle; the centrist viewpoint. Such a position is considered unassailable and more than likely where the real answers to problems lie. That mode of thinking may pass the test of political correctness, but it doesn’t pass the test of philosophical scrutiny.
The Truth lies where it is – objectively – regardless of where we are positioned on the spectrum of political or ideological views. I’m reminded of the concept of statistical sampling: The mean of the population is a parameter one can never know exactly, but it is “true”. We take a random sample of that population and derive the statistic, the sample mean, which is an estimate of the “true” population mean. From there we can build a 95% confidence interval for the location of this true value. But this interval may or may not enclose the true population parameter. All this tells us is that if we were to construct 100 intervals from 100 random samples, that 95 of them would enclose the “true” population mean. It’s possible (with a 5% chance) that we’re wrong.
Therefore a search for Truth should not be driven to the center from the “extremes”; it should be undertaken objectively, without regard for what society deems far right or left. The Founders, in their wisdom, created a document that attempted to derive a basic set of laws for the nation based on the objectively true principles of liberty and justice as authored by God. But, since it is a creature of man, the Constitution is not perfect. So it allows for amendment. Even the Declaration suggests that a free people reserve the right to overthrow a government destructive of those basic God given rights and start over.
The notion of a “living” Constitution suggests to me that it is possible to ascribe more or less (or different) power and authority to the words of the document based on the exigencies of a particular societal problem. To return to my statistics analogy, this is like constructing a 100% confidence interval: we fit the “Truth” to a space between the extremes we have settled on. The problem with this is that there is no such thing as a 100% confidence interval (unless, of course, your “sample” is the entire population, in which case you would *know* the truth because you had perfect information).
Truth exists. It may actually lie outside the boundaries with which human beings have constrained it. The truly virtuous person will pursue it wherever it may lead, and will not be constrained by boundaries imposed by a fickle society.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Is Denmark so Bad?
The other day I caught a portion of a story on NPR’s “All Things Considered” about tax rates in Denmark. It seems that every year there is a report issued that lists every country in decreasing order of tax rates, and apparently Denmark tops the list year after year as the nation with the highest tax rates.
I didn’t quite catch the percentage of income taxation, but the NPR story did point out that there is a 25% value added tax on all goods and services, and a 200% tax on new automobile purchases! Yes, you heard correctly. To buy a vehicle worth $20,000, a Dane would have to shell out $60,000! I suspect that most of what one earns in Denmark is paid to the government through either income taxes or VAT.
You might expect the Danish government to provide ample benefits and social services for this high rate of taxation, and you’d be right. In addition to free, universal health care, there is a retirement entitlement, and unemployment benefits are paid for up to four years. Most of the people interviewed for the NPR story were actually very happy to pay these high taxes because of all the benefits they received.
A Danish economist and university professor was interviewed who said that, on the whole, the Danish system of social welfare allows employers to be very agile in terms of hiring and firing. Employees can be let go (and rehired) very easily, but with generous unemployment benefits, they usually don’t worry about income. The only downside he suggested was that, “Some people will take the opportunity to stay unemployed because they're paid to stay unemployed”, leading to slower economic growth.
Having lived in Europe on three occasions, I really appreciate the orderliness and security one experiences there. You go to any café in Europe and you can expect a relatively high level of service. Roads and streets are well built and well maintained. Houses are constructed to last hundreds of years. The standard of living seems to be uniformly high.
So, did we get it wrong in the USA? Has Denmark in particular and Europe in general figured out the secret of the ideal utopian lifestyle?
Somehow, though I will be the first to admire all Europe has to offer, I don’t think their economic wonderland can last. In the years immediately following World War II, the Germans, and indeed all of Western Europe, worked feverishly to rebuild their devastated nations. Within only a decade or two, Western European countries had returned to a standard of living nearly on a par with that of the United States. Europeans, particularly the West Germans, worked very hard and productively, building an enviable economy and high living standards for her citizens. When I was first stationed in Germany in 1980, virtually no Germans used credit cards. But in the last three decades, the European worker through the agendas of social democracy, has seen his work week reduced to 35 hours, his vacation increased to more than six weeks per year (in addition to Christmas holiday break) and has acquired numerous other social benefits. Increasingly, Europeans want both the benefits of the welfare state and the income to choose a consumerist lifestyle – buying on credit, having the latest gadgets, better cars, etc.
You can’t have it both ways.
Ultimately, government cannot directly contribute to the growth of an economy. Only business activity can do that. Governments can only redistribute wealth, they cannot create it. To be sure, governmental policies can create an economic environment conducive to the creation of wealth, but they cannot by themselves “grow the pie” larger.
So, should we in the USA emulate the European style of social democracy? It is certainly tempting. However, it’s important to realize that the United States is orders of magnitude larger than Denmark, or even Germany, in terms of population and size of the economy. What might work for delivering services for taxes paid in Denmark would be utterly unworkable in the US. Our Constitution is structured in such a way that it only proscribes limited functions to the Federal government, and reserves the remainder to the States and the people. This suggests that our citizens would be better served if Federal taxation were minimized, with social services primarily provided at the State and local level, where there is more of a direct relationship between the people and the government.
I’m willing to be proved wrong, but I think that the best balance between government and the private sector in providing needed services is to default to minimum essential governmental services, particularly at the Federal level. This gives maximum freedom to individuals to choose their own destiny. It tends to foster a robust and resilient economy where localities are free to choose the degree to which they are taxed and receive local government benefits.
Ultimately, I believe that welfare states tend to stifle the individual initiative and innovation necessary for lasting economic development and the growth of living standards. It may be only a matter of time, but I think that the trend in Europe toward increasing reliance on the benevolence of the state will result in an ultimately unsustainable system in danger of collapse. My hope is that if and when that collapse comes, it will not be catastrophic.
I didn’t quite catch the percentage of income taxation, but the NPR story did point out that there is a 25% value added tax on all goods and services, and a 200% tax on new automobile purchases! Yes, you heard correctly. To buy a vehicle worth $20,000, a Dane would have to shell out $60,000! I suspect that most of what one earns in Denmark is paid to the government through either income taxes or VAT.
You might expect the Danish government to provide ample benefits and social services for this high rate of taxation, and you’d be right. In addition to free, universal health care, there is a retirement entitlement, and unemployment benefits are paid for up to four years. Most of the people interviewed for the NPR story were actually very happy to pay these high taxes because of all the benefits they received.
A Danish economist and university professor was interviewed who said that, on the whole, the Danish system of social welfare allows employers to be very agile in terms of hiring and firing. Employees can be let go (and rehired) very easily, but with generous unemployment benefits, they usually don’t worry about income. The only downside he suggested was that, “Some people will take the opportunity to stay unemployed because they're paid to stay unemployed”, leading to slower economic growth.
Having lived in Europe on three occasions, I really appreciate the orderliness and security one experiences there. You go to any café in Europe and you can expect a relatively high level of service. Roads and streets are well built and well maintained. Houses are constructed to last hundreds of years. The standard of living seems to be uniformly high.
So, did we get it wrong in the USA? Has Denmark in particular and Europe in general figured out the secret of the ideal utopian lifestyle?
Somehow, though I will be the first to admire all Europe has to offer, I don’t think their economic wonderland can last. In the years immediately following World War II, the Germans, and indeed all of Western Europe, worked feverishly to rebuild their devastated nations. Within only a decade or two, Western European countries had returned to a standard of living nearly on a par with that of the United States. Europeans, particularly the West Germans, worked very hard and productively, building an enviable economy and high living standards for her citizens. When I was first stationed in Germany in 1980, virtually no Germans used credit cards. But in the last three decades, the European worker through the agendas of social democracy, has seen his work week reduced to 35 hours, his vacation increased to more than six weeks per year (in addition to Christmas holiday break) and has acquired numerous other social benefits. Increasingly, Europeans want both the benefits of the welfare state and the income to choose a consumerist lifestyle – buying on credit, having the latest gadgets, better cars, etc.
You can’t have it both ways.
Ultimately, government cannot directly contribute to the growth of an economy. Only business activity can do that. Governments can only redistribute wealth, they cannot create it. To be sure, governmental policies can create an economic environment conducive to the creation of wealth, but they cannot by themselves “grow the pie” larger.
So, should we in the USA emulate the European style of social democracy? It is certainly tempting. However, it’s important to realize that the United States is orders of magnitude larger than Denmark, or even Germany, in terms of population and size of the economy. What might work for delivering services for taxes paid in Denmark would be utterly unworkable in the US. Our Constitution is structured in such a way that it only proscribes limited functions to the Federal government, and reserves the remainder to the States and the people. This suggests that our citizens would be better served if Federal taxation were minimized, with social services primarily provided at the State and local level, where there is more of a direct relationship between the people and the government.
I’m willing to be proved wrong, but I think that the best balance between government and the private sector in providing needed services is to default to minimum essential governmental services, particularly at the Federal level. This gives maximum freedom to individuals to choose their own destiny. It tends to foster a robust and resilient economy where localities are free to choose the degree to which they are taxed and receive local government benefits.
Ultimately, I believe that welfare states tend to stifle the individual initiative and innovation necessary for lasting economic development and the growth of living standards. It may be only a matter of time, but I think that the trend in Europe toward increasing reliance on the benevolence of the state will result in an ultimately unsustainable system in danger of collapse. My hope is that if and when that collapse comes, it will not be catastrophic.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
My Movie "Pitch"
For years, “Ben Hur” was my favorite movie of all time. I was too young to have seen it in the movie theater, but every year one of the broadcast networks would show it on TV around Easter. So I’d sit on the floor of my parents’ bedroom where the portable black and white television was, and allow myself to be caught up in the grandeur of Rome and the powerful story of the triumph of love and forgiveness over hate. I never failed to cry at the end when the powerful Miklos Rosza score swelled as Judah Ben Hur gazed upon the clear, healed faces of his mother and sister, who had been miraculously cured of leprosy following Christ’s crucifixion.
I love big blockbusters. Having been a fan of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy since I was a kid, I was overjoyed that it was brought to the screen so magically and yet still stayed faithful to the story. I was spellbound by the recreation of ancient Rome in “Gladiator”. But it’s the religious epic that has always captured my imagination. I can still remember Victor Mature as the Greek slave Demetrius in “The Robe”, or “Demetrius and the Gladiators”.
There have been dozens of movies about the life of Christ, some highly fictionalized and others more faithful to the Gospels. Cecil B. DeMille gave us the life of Moses in “The Ten Commandments”, there was “Brother Sun, Sister Moon”, about the life of Saint Francis of Assisi. And there have always been the numerous “sword and sandal” flicks about ancient Rome or Greece.
But I don’t recall a movie ever having been made about the fascinating and intersecting lives of the two greatest Christian Apostles, Saint Peter and Saint Paul. So, here is my “pitch” for just such a motion picture.
The basis for the movie would be the Biblical book, “The Acts of the Apostles”, which takes up where the Gospel of Luke leaves off with the ascension of Jesus into Heaven. It records the birth of the Church at Pentecost, and follows the lives and ministries of Peter, James and the other Apostles during the earliest days of Christianity. It records the dramatic conversion of Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus and the beginning of his missionary journeys as Paul.
The movie would also weave into the narrative the “back story” behind many of the letters Paul and Peter wrote to the churches scattered throughout the ancient world.
But most significantly, it would illuminate (in a fictionalized way, of course) the tension between Peter and Paul. Both were Jews, but Paul clearly saw his mission as being the apostle to the Gentiles, whereas Peter, at least initially, still believed in the centrality of keeping the ancient Jewish Law as vital to the life of the church. I think this tension would make for a very compelling story, and the fact that Peter eventually had a vision in which it became clear to him that the good news of the Gospel of salvation was for all people, suggests a resolution of that tension in the sovereignty of God’s will for the church.
I tried to search for a book that might form the basis for a screen play for my movie (working title, “Apostle”) but the closest I could find was Taylor Caldwell’s classic 1974 bestselling novel, “Great Lion of God”, a fictionalized account of the life of Paul. There is also a new non-fiction book about the tension between Peter and Paul entitled, “St. Paul vs. St. Peter”, by Michael Goulder. It has received pretty good reviews, and could serve to provide some background material for a screenplay.
As for actors who would play the starring roles of Peter and Paul, I have no idea! Certainly not Tom Cruise or George Clooney! Maybe it would be better to hire relatively unknown actors so people can really focus on the beauty of the story.
So there you have my “pitch” for a big, religious blockbuster about the lives of St. Peter and St. Paul. It would be better, I’m sure, if I already had written a screenplay and was trying to persuade a movie studio to produce a film from it. But this is the blogosphere, and maybe someone out there reading this might take on this project. I certainly don’t have any financial interest in making this movie – I just want to see it!
Maybe a film like this is already in someone else’s head or is in the works. If so, I pray that it will bear fruit, and that one day we will see the drama of the early church and her greatest Apostles unfold on the big screen!
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