Looks like we’d better keep a weather-eye on the Anglicans, too. Just came across this in Desire:

“… Empire cannot articulate to itself its suppressed knowledge of its own fragility; the king as dreamer knows something that the king as ruler cannot repeat. Yet at the same time empire cannot abide anyone having secrets, but must drag everything into the light by threat and cruelty so that it may be controlled. Thus it works its own undoing, eliciting the suppressed knowledge that will subvert its own fraudulent pretensions.“ — page 88, O’Donovan is discussing Psalm 138

… betcha that’s not Rahm Emanuel busy reawakening the democratic beast on the streets of Tehran this month

Now where were those guys in Nov ‘00?

I suspect he is right about where Calvin would have stood. Transparency equals honesty. It’s easy to understand why not bearing false witness is in the Top 10, it prevents a host of other sins!

Huizing also hit the nail on the head with this statement:

We have pushed back the limits of liberty and we have lost our sense of orientation.

That is as succinct a description of Washington as I have read in a long time.

Thanks for the kind words …

Now maybe I can get back to singing and working my way through The Desire of the Nations, by Oliver O’Donovan. I’m in correspondence with a Presbyterian minister in Ontario, and he recommended the spiritually oriented philosopher O’Donovan as a good guide for some of our present-day challenges. He also sent along this article, which is weirdly in sync with something Boyce said above:

“Swiss politician seeks inspiration from 16th-century Calvin”, by Stephen Brown, Ecumenical News International, June 15, 2009.

German theologian Klaas Huizing noted another aspect of the heritage of the Protestant Reformer. “What appears most strongly in the thought of Calvin [whose 500th birthday is this July 10th] is the idea of transparency. If we had applied this concept to the financial sector, we would not have let things get out of control in this financial crisis,” said Huizing.

In a way, we may be on the same page as the AEI crew (if perhaps in opposite sides of that page ) Open dialog can’t hurt, though, which was an important motivation for my taking on the above project.

Kudos and thanks for an amazing transcript. Doomers, you have no idea how many hours John put into this.

This is the longest post we’ve ever had, but there is a lot of information here.

Clearly our securitization system has failed us, and changes need to be made. The answers are beyond my range of expertise, but I’m glad you’ve made this material available to help with the debate. : )