The Reticulator

Below is from Joseph Bottum’s eulogy of Richard John Neuhaus in the latest issue of The Weekly Standard.

I often refer to the fact that there used to be liberals but there is hardly a one still left. I usually point to Nat Hentoff as being one of the few remaining ones, but I should have included Richard John Neuhaus in that group, too. I wonder if the two ever met — the anti-abortion liberal who is an athiest, and the anti-abortion, conservative liberal who was a pastor and priest. I would have loved to sit and listen while those two talked.

Take abortion, for instance. In 1968, he won the award for best editorial of the year from the Catholic Press Association–Catholics liked giving awards to a Lutheran in those days; they thought of it as being bravely trendy and ecumenical–for an essay in which he cried, “The pro-abortion flag is being planted on the wrong side of the liberal/conservative divide.” It ought to be those heartless conservatives who want to define the fetus as a meaningless lump of tissue; it ought to be caring liberals who want to expand the community of care to embrace the unborn.

If he later came to have a kinder view of conservatives, that was because he finally met some of them. But the pattern established by abortion continued through to his death. His work in founding the communitarian movement in 1977 came not because he thought he had changed but because he thought the United States was abandoning its commitment to families and all the voluntary associations that Tocqueville observed as a defining part of a liberal republic. He wrote his most famous book, The Naked Public Square–his 1984 argument against the attempt to secularize every part of shared life–because he thought the nation was in danger of losing the religious dynamism that had fueled everything from Abraham Lincoln’s speeches to Martin Luther King’s protests.

Even his conversion to Catholicism in 1990, and his ordination as a Catholic priest the next year, could be understood as a standing-still while the world altered around him. This was a man, after all, who titled his account of conversion “How I Became the Catholic That I Was.”

Here’s the NY Times obit of Richard John Neuhaus. I had to go looking for it — it wasn’t on Google News. The Times is still good for obituaries, even if it sometimes manages to be snide about points of view it doesn’t understand.

President-elect Obama is lucky that his media followers don’t think carefully about what he says:

“Dec. 7 (Bloomberg) — President-elect Barack Obama said the U.S. recession will worsen before a recovery takes hold and that he will offer an economic stimulus plan “equal to the task” without worrying about a short-term widening of the budget deficit. Dealing with the loss of jobs, frozen credit markets, falling home prices and other signs of economic turmoil is “my number one priority,” Obama said on NBC today. Later at a Chicago news conference he said “more aggressive steps” are needed to cope with the housing crisis.”

1. So short-term the economy will get worse.
2. In the short-term the deficit is going to get worse.
3. His stimulus plan that we’ve been hearing about lately? A long-term infrastructure spending program.
4. And what is his long-term spending program going to do to the deficit? Something to worry about, maybe?

I had hoped that at this point I would be able to switch to saying something good about Obama’s idea of a long-term infrastructure plan. Yes, it will do more harm than good. Going into debt to solve a problem created by too much debt does not seem like a winner. But things like roads and bridges would give him something to show for our money in the end, even if it makes the financial situation worse and more drawn-out.

Unfortunately, I took the trouble just now to read beyond the headlines. It looks like he is using a very expansive definition of the term “infrastructure.” With the direction he’s taking, it’ll be a program to spend massive amounts of money on every special interest represented in Congress.

Saying something nice about Obama will have to wait for another time.

Computers in classrooms? I thought by now we had gotten over that fad and had been chastened by the results. And something that becomes obsolete in 5 years is not exactly infrastructure.

Greater broadband availability? Yes, that could be called infrastructure. But why should the government build this, when municipality after municipality has failed financially in its efforts to provide government-sponsored internet. Why not instead fix the tax and regulatory climate (including an abolishing or reform of the E-rate program) so that private companies will be motivated to build broadband services. Then local governments will have services to tax and so increase their revenues. And there will be obscene profits to tax, too, which will provide revenue. Why would government want to shut off its income-producing sources?

Technology in doctor’s offices? Spending on all this technology stuff may be a way to pay back all the high-tech workers and industries who spent so much money on his campaign. But why not instead create an economic climate in which doctors will be able to adopt the technology when it proves its ability to improve efficiency and make more money for them?

Sigh.

Say, what? Why is a government corporation with murky ties to tax dollars spending money to build office space for a profitable corporation? (URL here.)

Battle Creek Unlimited announced today revitalization plans for downtown Battle Creek, which could amount to $86 million dollars.

Plans include a LEED-certified office building adjacent to Kellogg Company’s headquarters. The building, developed by McCamly Office and leased to Kellogg Company, would relocate approximately 600 Kellogg employees from the company’s Porter Street location to downtown by late 2010.

Other potential plans include infrastructure improvements, a research center, relocating and expanding the Battle Creek Area Math and Science Center downtown and a downtown fitness and recreation center. BCU is pursing public and private funding to support the revitalization, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation could contribute up to $35 million to various aspects of the effort.

“Revitalizing our cities is a key component of our strategy to grow Michigan’s economy and create jobs, but it requires a strong partnership between public and private sectors,” Gov. Jennifer Granholm said in a statement. “I applaud Kellogg for its vision and generosity to make Battle Creek a dynamic city of the future.”

Why does a successful company like the Kellogg Company need to get into a “partnership between public and private sectors” to build office space? Why can’t it just build or lease its own office space like everyone else does? That kind of partnership is just a recipe for corruption. In fact, it is corruption on the face of it.

I’ve lived 30 years just outside of Battle Creek. There have been revitalizations of the downtown for as long as we’ve lived here, and the place is still dead. It’s been cleaned up a little since 30 years ago, and you no longer get quite the sense that it’s a ghost town with tumbleweeds blowing across the downtown mall, but there are now fewer places to shopping down town than there used to be. My hunch is that as long as there exists such an entity as Battle Creek Unlimited getting involved in revitalizations, it’s going to stay dead.

Interview with Robert Novak

He’s great, as always. Here is just one nugget out of many good ones: ”

A: I was very negative about the invasion of Iraq. That’s another subject I should have written more about, explained more. I thought the war was unjustified. But my stand led to a Novak-hates-his-country piece in the National Review, which caused me a lot of grief and cut me off at the White House. I should have explained more about why I took the position I did. I probably should have written more about foreign policy in general. If I told you I accomplished some huge feat, it wouldn’t be true. But I’m not ashamed of what I’ve written. I stand by it.

(I wish I had said more, too.)

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Ezra Levant: “Anti-Christian bigot Lori Andreachuk quietly moved out of HRC”

So in Canada, you can still get rewarded for human rights abuse. Just the same, I wish all of this was getting some coverage in the U.S. press. We’re supposed to be all excited in anticipation that the Obama presidency will make other countries like us again. But the same people who tell us to care more about what other countries think are paying zero attention to a huge free speech issue in Canada.

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Stocks Could Stabilize After Election

A news item from November 3, in the “Happy Days Are Here Again” department.