Of Demagogues and Solving Problems

When demagogues, like Barack Obama, have major political setbacks, like Barack Obama, they usually resort to stirring up anger against a list of enemies. Obama has already begun that effort as his increasingly radical agenda has been difficult for even a growing number of congressional Democrats to bear. Expect him to turn up the volume on the loudspeakers.

For Barack Obama the list has been a catalog of “Big” this and “Big” that, including Big Oil, Big Coal, Big Insurance, Big Banks, Big Business, and so on. The formula involves finding a problem that Obama promised to fix but which remains unfixed, and then blame Big Something. A new set of policies is announced, involving giving the Federal government new authority over the economy, often some fundamental part of it, like healthcare, the financial system, or energy use.

Although his policies will purportedly be targeted on these Bigs, it is actually the general population on whom he paints his targets, the people whom he does not trust with making their own healthcare decisions, the people whom he does not trust with making their own choices of bank accounts and other financial services, the people whose very breath he considers the number one pollutant destroying the earth. It is the liberty of the people that is constricted by Obama’s policy prescriptions, which is undoubtedly why they attract so much objection from so many quarters.

Barack Obama will give a major public speech targeting Big Something for some punishing tax or regulation, and then declare, like some playground bully with a chip on his shoulder, “If they want to fight me on this, then I’m ready for them.” As one businessman reportedly commented late this week, “We are not looking for a fight; we’re looking to solve problems.” If he wants to play the bully, then let's give him the bully treatment, which is just to walk away and get on with our business.

Of Wet Wood and Government Jobs Programs

At best, it is like putting wet wood on a fire: the wet wood may eventually burn, but it takes as much or more energy from the fire to dry the wood out enough for it to be flammable. In the meantime, it creates a lot of smoke and hissing and fizzing, and you run a real risk of subduing the fire if not stifling it entirely. This is what government job creating programs are like.

Outside of very narrow exceptions government itself does not create jobs. It shifts jobs. That is because outside of its basic purpose of enacting and maintaining laws and providing for the common defense, government does not provide a new good or service that the private sector cannot do better. The chief reason why the private sector does better is that private activity is governed by market mechanisms. People can say no to your good or service if they do not want or like it and go to the business that does a better job. So people who stay in business are under constant pressure to do better in their business, or they eventually see their business decline or even disappear. Government is not subject to such a demanding disciplinarian. If you do not like the process for getting a driver’s license, where else are you going to go?

At least someone wants the driver’s license, and the program of screening out unqualified drivers—however imperfect it may be—is a service that people want. Very often, government job creation programs put people to work doing things that we would be better off not having done.

One of my favorite examples is the Roosevelt Administration’s Depression era jobs program, paying people to plant kudzu all over the South. They did that for years, until they realized that kudzu is an uncontrollable pest plant that grows and spreads and smothers every other plant and tree around it and is very hard to get rid of. It is sort of a metaphor for government jobs programs.

An additional problem with government jobs programs is that the government has to pay for them. Where does the government get its money? It gets it from the people who already have jobs. Those people will no longer have that money to spend at the store or for remodeling the house or going on a vacation or gaining an education or the million other things that people do with their money to put other people to work. You might call all of that private sector spending the people’s jobs programs. To get $50,000 to put people to work on a government jobs program you have to take at least $50,000 away from the people’s jobs programs. In practice, you usually have to take several times more than $50,000 away from the people’s jobs programs, because the government programs are run so inefficiently.

So when the government announces that its new jobs program is “creating” 100,000 new jobs, it does not report the 200,000 jobs that were displaced to pay for those new jobs. When you see those government jobs announcements, remember the wet wood on the fire and ask how much energy is being lost to make that new log burn?

Of Prophets and Modern Times

One of the most appealing and powerful messages of Christ’s Church in the latter days is the proclamation that prophets are once again on the earth in modern times, men through whom God speaks directly, clearly, and specifically on subjects relevant to man’s current conditions. This message is also one of the objections raised against the Church. It is curiously raised most often by some claiming a belief in God and Christ and in the words of the ancient prophets. Such objectors have to ignore a glaring logical inconsistency, of rejoicing in the word of God spoken long ago while resisting what the Lord might speak in their own day and time and in their own language. What is it about modern times that makes revelation from God less attractive or valuable?

Praise for prophets of the past while denouncing contemporary revelation from God is not new. Jesus faced the same attitude in the A.D. 30s. In the last days before He was crucified the Savior inveighed against such hypocrisy. “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.” That compares very closely with many today who flock to monuments and shrines to ancient prophets (or even pieces of ancient prophets), people who roundly condemn the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Jews, and Romans who persecuted and killed the prophets of old and crucified the Savior, people who picture themselves as being faithful disciples had they just lived in those days. With His perfect insight, Jesus rebuked their bluff. “Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets,” he said, “and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city” (Matthew 23:29, 30, 34). Many defenders of a dead Moses were unwilling to accept a living Christ--or the living prophets He promised to send them.

A common argument of believers in prophets who are conveniently dead is that the purposes of the prophets have ceased. In this view, the role of prophets was to prophesy of Christ and His mission, explain the doctrines of the faith, and pronounce commandments. That sounds nice and plausible only if you are careful not to study what the ancient prophets did and said.

Many of the prophecies of Jeremiah, for example, were focused on giving the Jewish leaders important political advice, such as encouraging the Jews not to double-cross the Babylonians by siding with the decrepit Egyptian empire. Isaiah was probably the most explicit and detailed in prophesying of Christ and His mission. Yet much of Isaiah’s prophesies were also devoted to counseling the leaders of Judah on how to respond to threats from their belligerent neighbors. The Jewish prophets of the Babylonian captivity counseled the people on how to draw close to God and stay out of trouble with their rulers. The prophets in the ancient Americas warned their people of invasion, advised their armies on how to defend against their enemies, and counseled them against the terrorists of their day.

That is to say, that whenever the Lord has had prophets on the earth these prophets have always been a precious resource for the daily lives of the people, their communities, and their nations, helping them to deal with what was then the here and now. Why would the Lord deny such blessings to His children today? Why would people embrace ancient divine revelation but recoil at it when offered in real time?

Revelation from the Lord has always been given in what were modern times, because those are the only times in which God’s children live. Just as it takes real food, not stories of food, to satisfy any current hunger, modern revelation from contemporary prophets is most important to those of us living in modern times. The great joy for us is that our loving Father offers us today a great feast equal to any He has spread in the past.

Of The Book of Mormon and Good Books

Early in the very beginning of New Year’s Eve I finished reading The Book of Mormon. I have done that several dozen times (if on different days) over the course of forty years, in three different languages: English, Spanish, and Russian.

I have read many other books over the same period of time and before. I have not read more than a few more than once and none more than four or five times. The Hobbit I have read three or four times (maybe five), and the same is true for The Lord of the Rings. O.K., I admit that I have read Goodnight Moon and Are You My Mother? to my children and grandchildren at least a dozen times, each taking about 10 minutes a reading (children willing and cooperating).

The point is that I have read many very good books, many excellent histories, biographies, legends, novels, fantasies, science fiction, international relations theories, and economic commentaries, among others. Not a one would bear reading over and over again.

The Book of Mormon bears reading again and again, and it bears it well for virtually anyone, regardless of age or intellectual background. I have found the same to be true for other holy scripture. I believe that to be true because of the nature of scripture. As Peter explained, God is behind holy scripture, working through “holy men of God . . . as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” (2 Peter 1:20, 21)

It is the spiritual power of holy scripture and the spiritual experience that occurs while reading it that make its continual review valuable and appealing. I recognize that those who approach holy scripture without that spiritual connection have found scripture reading uninteresting. With that spiritual connection, however, reading scripture becomes a revealing connection and communion with God, one that never grows old or commonplace.

Man is a three-fold being, made up of intelligence, spirit, and body. Holy scripture reaches all three. Through scripture our intellect is fed, our spirit nourished, and our physical body guided into the healthiest paths.

The Book of Mormon is a rich example of that scriptural power. It provides deep insight into the human condition, individually, as families, and as communities. As a witness of Jesus Christ, The Book of Mormon treats the human condition from an enduring and eternal perspective, since the eternal is the only sphere within which Christ operates. Again and again the book demonstrates the way to live “after the manner of happiness” (2 Nephi 5:27). So, while I may have read The Book of Mormon some three dozen times, I relish diving in and reading it more than once more.