Pope Francis has weighed in on economics … er, justice … er, evangelism, er, a lot of stuff, which he quaintly thinks includes the poor:
We can no longer trust in the unseen forces and the invisible hand of the market. Growth in justice requires more than economic growth, while presupposing such growth: it requires decisions, programmes, mechanisms and processes specifically geared to a better distribution of income, the creation of sources of employment and an integral promotion of the poor which goes beyond a simple welfare mentality.
Todd Zywicki at the libertarian- and free-market-leaning Volokh Conspiracy snarks back:
Ever since the Galileo incident, the Catholic Church has generally tried to be careful to get its science right before it opines on ethical matters related to science. It takes seriously questions of bioethics and has developed internal expertise on those issues. Yet when it comes to economics, the Church seems to have no qualms about opining on issues of economics without even the slightest idea of what it is talking about.
I mean, seriously?
Zywicki’s point is superficially attractive: economics, too, is a science. But does he really think growth in justice requires no more than economic growth?
But some free-marketers are listening, and admitting that free market theory and practice haven’t squared up all that well. Free marketers should avoid recapitulating the old saw that “communism didn’t fail because it wasn’t really tried” by substituting “free market capitalism.” If human beings keep screwing up your model, there’s something deficient when your model passes from academic wankery into policy prescription.
Economics is a science only insofar as it guides us on how to achieve human objectives that don’t come from within economics, and it’s scientism, not science, to ignore that part that’s values.
On this Thanksgiving Day as I write, I lament lack of time to keep up with topics that I used to be “on top of” and which still interest me. One of them, coincidentally, ends up implicating the science/scientism distinction again.
The New York Times’ Linda Greenhouse, editorializes on the Supreme Court decision to take up the employer contraceptive mandate cases of Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties:
The religiously committed owners of the companies whose cases the court will decide – Hobby Lobby employs 13,000 people in its 500-store chain – say they object not to all birth control but only to the methods they believe act after fertilization to prevent a fertilized egg from implanting and continuing to develop. This belief is incorrect, as a brief filed by a coalition of leading medical authorities demonstrates; although there was once some confusion on this point, the disputed hormonal methods are now understood to prevent fertilization from occurring in the first place. European medical authorities recently reached the same conclusion and have changed the label on an emergency contraception pill to say it “cannot stop a fertilized egg from attaching to the womb.”
(Emphasis added)
I rushed to the brief she cites (here’s a more accessible version) and sought the confirmation that would be welcome (if not conclusive) news to me. There’s at least a whiff of confirmation there, but it’s obscured at first, then swept away, for purposes of the legal issue at stake.
Let me restate, in “shouts and large and startling figures,” the gist of the argument of the Brief Amici Curiae:
The morning-after pills in question prevent ovulation, not implantation, and Plaintiffs are obscurantists for thinking that preventing implantation is an “abortion” because that’s not how we scientists, dammit, define “abortion.”
What about the IUDs that prevent implantation, as some of them almost certainly do when used as post-coitally? Well, dummies, didn’t you hear us say that’s not how we scientists, dammit, define “abortion”?
Therefore, Plaintiffs’ religious objections to paying for contraceptives that prevent implantation are mistaken and can be ignored. Capiche?
Here’s a key summary from the original, lest you think I’m misrepresenting the gist:
Critically, because neither IUD has been shown to disrupt pregnancy, they too are properly classified as contraceptives, not abortifacients.
(Emphasis added) “Disrupt” and “prevent” are not identical, as Amici grudgingly concede, but only a disrupted implantation would be an abortion as we scientists, dammit, define it.
Because the employer contraceptive mandate requires coverage of intrauterine devices that prevent implantation, there’s nothing at all factually mistaken about Plaintiffs’ religious objections to the complicity in abortion required of employers by mandate. Some covered IUDs prevent implantation. But Plaintiffs commit the faux pas of disagreeing with scientistic ipse dixit about the non-scientific question of when it’s “abortion” to do a piece of work on the “products of conception.”
If the ACA cut back coverage to the pills, Greenhouse and the Amici could have a point. As it is, though, Greenhouse is the obscurantist because she ignored IUDs in her “this belief is incorrect” insistence.
Well, maybe on this topic I kept up well enough. But it cost me a lot of time I wouldn’t have except holidays.
And I’m thankful to learn that Plan B and Ella don’t prevent implantation, assuming it’s true. Which I really do lack time to investigate further.
Darn!
I am not shocked or scandalized by President Obama’s decision to confer the Presidential Medal of Freedom—the highest of honors that can be conferred on civilians—on Gloria Steinem, for example. Her aggressive advocacy of abortion (among other liberal causes) strikes the President as a good thing, because he believes that making abortion legal, making it as widely available as possible, and financing it with taxpayer money are all good things. I disagree, but I’m not the President. Barack Obama is the President. As President, he has the right to award presidential medals based on his own best judgments of good and bad, right, and wrong, justice and injustice.
So I’m not complaining—about that.
I am complaining, however, about the President’s decision to confer the Medal of Freedom on William Jefferson Clinton. This is indefensible. President Clinton disgraced the office that he held and Barack Obama now holds. The less important dimension of this disgracing of the presidency was Clinton’s carrying on a sordid affair with a White House intern. The more important dimensions were his lying to the American people, his perjury, and his obstruction of justice.
From podcast Episode 4 of the Congress for the New Urbanism with : “The best thing about the government of Prague from 1948 to 1989 was that it didn’t have much money for infrastructure, so it couldn’t ruin the city.”
Unfortunately, we had infrastructure money during the long insanity; we’re running out at a pretty inconvenient time.
Much Madness is divinest Sense —
To a discerning Eye —
Much Sense — the starkest Madness —
‘Tis the Majority
In this, as All, prevail —
Assent — and you are sane —
Demur — you’re straightway dangerous —
And handled with a Chain —
* * * * *
“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 