An Immoral Document

In the book, "God's Politics" and elsewhere, the Rev. Dr. Jim Wallis has made the case that government budgets are "moral documents," in that they lay bare the underlying moral codes of a nation's citizenry and leadership. While my opinion on the matter of budgets representing morals is somewhat different from Dr. Wallis', let us accept for a moment that he is correct.

We might then ask about the essential morality of a budget that projects an eye-popping $1.75 trillion federal deficit for fiscal year 2009. And while braying incessantly about what he "inherited" in the way of deficits, Barack Obama will create more debt in the next few months than his predecessor created in eight years, with the red ink extending to at least 2015. To put the nation in this level of long-term indebtedness is arguably the most immoral thing that government could do in the midst of economic turmoil.

Of all of the rat holes that the Recovery Act and Obama's 2010 budget will cram with borrowed money, the biggest boondoggle may well be the expenditures for so-called "clean energy." The hymnal from which the Obama Tabernacle Choir sings reads something like this on the matter of clean energy:

The clean energy sector presents us with immense promise - to develop and dominate a new industry sector and to create high-paying jobs here at home. From new, highly fuel-efficient cars to renewable sources of power, there are a host of emerging technologies that can spur the growth of new businesses while creating millions of new jobs.

In his budget overview, Obama also laments that "[w]e have yet to make important policy changes and critical investments in the clean energy infrastructure that we'll need to transform the economy." Obama proposes implementing a cap and trade auction to pay for "vital investments in a clean energy future totaling $150 billion over ten years," providing loan guarantees to leverage billions of dollars in order to increase our renewable energy generating capacity, developing low emission technologies and supporting "electric system transmission projects and carbon capture and sequestration projects."

There is only one catch in all of this. At present, clean energy provides a single-digit percentage of the world's energy, with 81 percent coming from fossil fuels. The problems with renewable energy sources such as wind and solar are legion, as described in an op-ed by Keith Lockitch of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.

There is a reason why less than 2 percent of the world's energy currently comes from "renewable" sources such as wind and solar - the very sources that are supposedly going to power the new green economy: despite billions of dollars in government subsidies... they have not proven themselves to be practical sources of energy. Indeed, without government mandates forcing their adoption in most Western countries, their high cost would make them even less prevalent.

Consider that it takes about 1,000 wind turbines... to produce as much electricity as just one medium-sized, coal-fired power plant. And that's if the wind is blowing: the intermittency of wind wreaks havoc on electricity grids, which need a stable flow of power, thus requiring expensive, redundant backup capacity or an unbuilt, unproven "smart grid."

Or consider the "promise" of solar. Two projects in development will cover 12.5 square miles of central California with solar cells in the hope of generating about 800 megawatts of power (as much as one large coal-fired plant). But that power output will only be achieved when the sun is shining brightly - around noon on sunny days; the actual output will be less than a third that amount. And the electricity will cost more than market price, even with the life-support of federal subsidies that keeps the solar industry going. The major factor driving the project is not the promise of abundant power but California's state quota requiring 20 percent "renewable" electricity by 2010.

Supporters of clean energy suggest that the same drive that enabled America to put a man on the moon should be applied to breaking America's "addiction" to coal and crude. The problem with the comparison is that while the research and technological wherewithal required to put man into space was already in application - some of it for centuries - the technical leaps required to support clean energy are decades from being actualized on a large scale.

No lesser light than Energy Secretary Steven Chu says as much. In an article published in the Chicago Tribune, the Nobel Prize winning scientist acknowledges that major scientific advances will be required if clean energy is to become more than a line item in a budget. The Tribune piece goes on to cite a government report that specifies the progress that will be required.

A recent Energy Department task force report details the sort of breakthroughs crucial to fulfilling Obama's vision of a "clean energy economy" that could slash dependence on foreign oil, combat climate change and ignite the next great domestic job boom.

The wish list includes cells that convert sunlight to electricity with double or triple the efficiency of today's solar panels; batteries that store 10 times more energy than current models; a process for capturing and storing the carbon dioxide emissions from coal; and advanced materials that allow coal and nuclear power plants to operate at hotter temperatures and higher efficiency.

Researchers are working on all of them. But what's required is more than incremental advances in technology. It is advances in understanding basic physics and chemistry that are "beyond our present reach," the report said. (Emphasis added.)

Despite the lack of available science to support massive expenditures, the Stimulus Bill will spend $8 billion on research, to include "$1.5 billion for carbon-capture research for coal, $2.5 billion for energy efficiency and $2 billion for the Energy Department's Office of Science - featuring... $400 million tagged for breakthrough research." For its part, the 2010 budget will allocate an additional $26.3 billion for the Energy Department, with much of that earmarked for research into renewable energy.

The salient immorality of all of this is simply that Obama is willing to spend money that is not available to pursue scientific goals that are as of yet unachievable. That none of this too-delicious irony breaks Obama from his ideological trance is troubling indeed. What is more troubling is that much of the spending in both the Stimulus Bill and this budget is similarly problematic. Perhaps Wallis is more correct than I previously acknowledged.

A book is a book is book, pt. 4 - The importance of making a distinction between the traditional role of religious bodies of fostering peace within and among individuals and the role newly assumed by the Christian Left of advocating an illusory absence of war among nations should not be underestimated. (It could be argued that the Christian Peacemakers in particular have completely taken leave of the commonly understood role of Christian denominations to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ; in Iraq, the Christian Peacemakers made it clear that they were not there to proselytize.)

The fact that neither the Christian Peacemakers or the Christian Left in general can’t or won’t make distinctions between the actions of regular military forces - motived in great measure by ideals codified in scripture - and those perpetrated by lawless bands of torturers, bombers and beheaders in the name of Islam confirms that they are not motivated by any interest in establishing righteousness on earth. Indeed, they are driven only by their desire to maintain for themselves an air of self-righteousness. (This is especially troubling when the James Loneys of the Christian Left seem to demonstrate a keen understanding of who they are dealing with through their own behavior.) But in order to be taken seriously as it pertains of the conduct of American foreign policy, the Christian left must demonstrate how implementation of its agenda would persuade al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and other organizations to abandon their destructive aims.

To begin with, what evidence have al-Qaeda or its confederates in the region given the West to suggest that they can be negotiated with? How would a $50 billion peace fund, as advocated by the National Council of Churches (and as discussed elsewhere), influence the behavior of young radicalized Arab men, when the Middle East itself already sits on oil reserves that would net them an unimaginable bounty that could be put to just as good a use? The Christian Left might also want to explain why terrorists are held to lower norms of behavior than their victims. It is nothing but unalloyed elitism to suggest that Arabs can only express their yearning for freedom and societal uplift through bombings and beheadings.

If America’s enemies in the Middle East are merely using the most expedient means in order to better their circumstances, where is the evidence that they are otherwise civil? If anything, Arabs world-wide have demonstrated their capacity for gross incivility in their violent overreaction to the October 2005 publication of cartoons about the Prophet Mohammad in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. But more to the point, where are al-Qaeda’s libraries and museums, its hospitals and institutions of higher learning? Indeed, where are the signs of its theological scholarship?

If we accept the argument of Jim Wallis, Ph.D., author of God’s Politics, that budgets are moral documents, what does al-Qaeda’s lack of obvious philanthropy – other than that of funding terrorist attacks – tell us about their morality. Moreover, if by using Dr. Wallis’ moral tape measure, we are found to be more just than our Islamofascist adversaries, are we not serving our highest moral purpose in resisting them? (Such would seem to be the case, as it is clear that we are fighting an adversary that equates weakness with evil, with our enemies within Islam concluding that any lack of resolve on our part is a consequence of our inherently malevolent nature.)

As the Christian Left continues to employ the same moral relativist gyrations as secular progressives to justify their shared agenda, the two become less and less differentiated. And in that situation, it is the Christian Left that loses, as it is the primary benefit of any religion is to prepare man for a relationship with something greater than himself. (I am put in mind of a comment that C.S. Lewis made in a letter to a friend, “I think we must fully face the fact that when Christianity does not make a man very much better, it makes him very much worse.”) By yielding to the basest instinct of secularism, namely the pursuit of personal convenience over morality, the Christian Left abandons the central message of Jesus Christ and thereby negates His authority.

"A morality of an indeterminate origin" - Previously, this page discussed the strange new moral code espoused by Al Gore in his meetings last week on Capitol Hill. By way of making the case that global warming was no longer an matter of science but an question of morality, Mr. Gore joined the growing cacophony of voices coming from the Christian Left that seek to corporatize and externalize morality, thereby rendering personal morality a moot issue (even as they and their fellow travelers amongst the burgeoning secular Left aver that Christian Evangelicals should not collectivize their values as it pertains to abortion and same-sex marriage.)

Unlike most moral codes, Mr. Gore's morality is entirely unconflicted, and surprisingly - considering the source - without nuance. It lacks any sort of constructive tensions between the individual and the group, belief and behavior or means and ends. As one gazes across Gore's ethical landscape, one sees no valleys of benighted confusion or clouds of doubt. All paths are straight and all roads lead upward and onward.

For example, if global warming is an enduring phenomenon, a reasonable person might conclude that agricultural growing seasons might be lengthened, at least in some parts of the world. If that were the case, it might suggest that more of the world's hungry might be fed with much less effort than is required presently. But in Mr. Gore's moral worldview, there is no ethical balancing required between the potential for increased global food production on the one hand and stable global temperatures on the other.

As noted earlier, Mr. Gore's moral abstractions are of a piece with those of others on the Left. Most notably of late, Rev. Jim Wallis, Ph.D. has repeatedly made the case that the budgets are moral documents "that that reflect the values and priorities of a family, church, organization, city, state, or nation." As discussed elsewhere, he has been particularly effective in making the case in his bestseller God's Politics.

Other priorities were just more important to the Bush administration than poverty reduction. Tax cuts that mostly benefited the wealthy were more important, the war in Iraq was more important, and homeland security was more important — all without the key recognition of how poverty, despair, family instability, and social disintegration undermine our national security. A budget based on a windfall of benefits for the wealthy and harsh cuts for poor families and children is an unbiblical budget... One result of the lack of White House leadership has been the steady rise in the number of people, families, and children living in poverty in each of the last three years, according to the 2003 U.S. Census report. And that is a religious issue.

To be sure, the morally sound among us are very much concerned about poverty and deprivation. But here too, Dr. Wallis' seems (naively in this writer's opinion) obsessed with the collective morality of government - as evidenced by its expenditures as opposed to its efficacy on behalf of the poor. If anything, the beneficence on government towards the disenfranchised should at least be viewed as an open question rather than accepted as a given.

Unfortunately the collateral effect of the implementing of these moral substitutions is the negating of any consideration of individual morality. So it is that many progressives - particularly those among the Hollywood power elite whose personal lives are an ethical cesspool - can conclude that George Bush is the most ethically challenged president in modern history. It also informs the behavior of college sociology professors and campus counselors who suggest that students may engage in any sort of debouched sexual activity as long as they practice "safe sex."

All of these supposed moral behaviors and others like them have one thing in common. They all provide a promise of a new "morality" This new morality holds out the promise of unlimited good for everyone, and most importantly, it promises a moral framework without internal conflict or cognitive dissonance. It can do so precisely because its adherents are bound to keep no commitments to anyone. This is a morality comprised solely of good intentions; to paraphrase George Stephanopoulos, it only keeps the promises it intends to keep. As noted elsewhere, in the end, this is not a transcendent moral code at all. It is but an orthodoxy whose primary value is the convenience of the individual who can externalize fault, culpability and shame.