Michael Novak On President Bush

the president has now changed strategy, as well as the generals charged with pursuing it. He now has commanders who believe in victory and who, in fact, designed the way to get to it.

You can argue that the president’s strategy to keep as low a profile and let the Iraqis do it was a mistake, since it encouraged local warlords to step into the power vacuum. But now the president has responded and changed.

The other argument is incompetence. But let’s be realistic here.

A long-established lesson is that even in the best of times, government is mightily incompetent—and the bigger government gets, the more incompetent it becomes.

The buck stops here, and the president is responsible for every government mistake and miscue. But let us not forget

the decisive steps President Bush took [after 9/11] allowed our economy not only to recoup the dreadful financial losses of September 11 but also to climb unparalleled heights.

We should not forget the recent epiphany of Theodore Dalrymple, in which he realized that the welfare state is built on the concept of failure, from top to bottom, and that its invariable response is to reinforce failure.

Of course if you believe, with President Bush and Michael Novak that “single most dominant issue we face remains the threat from jihadism,” then the question of whether we lose the battle of Iraq is a minor one.

The ugly words broadcast by the jihadists may seem mad, but they are matched by steady actions upon a world-wide front. Their stated aim is to convert us forcibly to Islam or to exterminate us until the caliphate stretches around the world: one religion, one polity.

If we believe that we are called to resist the militant surge of Islam then we have to do something about it.

In response to the jihadist threat President Bush set out to bring democracy to the Middle East. You can say that he is having quite a struggle. But you can’t say he didn’t have a plan, and you can’t say that he just sat around twiddling his thumbs.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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