In fairness to Limbaugh, very few people can talk on the radio for 15 hours a week and hold an audience, much less avoid uttering inanities.

It is also indicative of starboard talk entering a fallow period.

You see rank and file Republicans throw around political terms like generic insults. "Obama Marxist Regime" is a nonsense phrase. Call him a Marxist, call him a jerk, call him a fag (the generic insult when I was in junior high school), call him a horse's ass (the generic insult my mother's contemporaries favored), what's the difference?

If the stupids have taken over popular talk.

As a self-professed liberal I've never really listened to Limbaugh. But many years ago, would be circa 1998 as I remember where I was in my car, I happened to turn on the radio and he was speaking. He was ranting about some soccer player in South America who was gay and had done something terrible, I can't remember what. He made the remark that this was par for the course for soccer players, implying that all soccer players were evidently gay and vicious. I thought, "this is great, now what happens?", and of course people started calling in very upset. Upset because they loved him, but they also loved soccer! He wouldn't really come out and say he had misspoken, but said something like, "I guess I was painting with a broad brush". Anyway, that said, I try not to listen to any political talk on radio or TV. They are paid entertainers, trying to keep their sponsors and make money. They may not even believe what they say. It is hard to imagine, for instance, that Ann Coulter really believes everything she says. She makes Rush sound coherent and thoughtful!

Whether or not I thought it was funny would depend completely on what was said, the tone, etc. The fact that his own audience was upset suggests that he seemed to be serious.

But I have to say: hardly a day goes by that I don't read or hear something equally obnoxious from a liberal or an atheist about conservatives or Christians.

I haven't read anything by Ann Coulter for a long time. I used to read her stuff when I ran across it and it was often quite funny in a mean way. But it seemed to get more mean and less funny.

No argument from me on that last point. Re Richard Lowry's personnel, I usually find Kevin Williamson entertaining. Offhand I can't think of anyone else there who is more than ok--I mean, the sort of writer I'll more or less automatically read just on the basis of his byline. I don't think I've ever heard Hewitt.

I've sometimes told myself to quit reading them. So many transient alarms...it's not really worth the time and tension. I did give up my NR subscription several years ago, but I still read their web site. I don't feel any particular need or desire to give up the New Criterion, but it's not primarily political.

It was certainly fun, twenty years ago, to hear Rush Limbaugh openly make fun of people like Jesse Jackson and NOW.

I can easily believe it, Maclin.

The trolls at National Review are a claque of adolescents. No, I mean professed supporters of something called 'conservatism' are dismissive of Lowry and National Review's central tendency, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes not.

The thing is, though, you read many of them and you realize something is deeply amiss among the attentive Republican rank-and-file. There is an intense culture of complaint which takes no interest in any kind of constructive policy adjustment and indulges in various sorts of magical thinking (such as the notion that the only institutional adjustments necessary are the repeal of the 16th and 17th amendments). Also, all politicians are contemptible bar the Tea partisan flavor-of-the-month (which is Ted Cruz at this time).

This observation is not calculated to increase my fan base! And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there's no connection. But I think it's because there is no real good conservative thought out there, at least none that is well known, that's there's no influence of conservative thought on the Pope's political and economic thinking. Because, say what you like about Michael Novak, for instance, and I have to say I always liked The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism and admire the guy for writing it, he was an important influence on John Paul II. You can say that's bullshit I guess and get angry and say the neo-cons only pretended to influence the pope, or that they should not have done. That's not my point. Whether they should not or not, my observative is that there is no sufficiently interesting Catholic or Christian 'Starboard' thought (as Arty would say) out there to influence the Pope. And he only gets his ideas from stuff that's around. His ideas don't rain down from the sky. My point needn't be taken as an evaluation, though everyone who reads this site knows me well enough to know how I evaluate it. But my observation is simply that unless there is good Christian political thought out there, the pope won't be influenced by it.

I did cover myself for that by saying, 'at least any that is well known'.

I agree.

"The personal obligations of communicants" is one of the things I had in mind in the longer piece, wishing the pope would speak more concretely to the faithful on this question, rather than--no, make that in addition to--talking in terms of structures and systems.

I think I almost wish he would speak more concretely to the faithful on this question, *rather than* talking in terms of structures and systems.

At any rate, I certainly am more interested in the former.

About Novak and the other pro-capitalism neocons, by the way: I thought at the time (20+ years ago) that they provided a needed corrective to the sort of soft socialism that tended to be the working model of Catholic talk about economic matters. But they had a tendency to err in the other direction, with a much too idealistic conception of how capitalism works. As I've often said, none of them seemed to have much knowledge of the actual business world--which is pretty much the same charge I'd make against many of their opponents.

Interesting that one of their critics, John Medaille, apparently has a fair amount of business experience.

I think he's a real estate agent. That aside, one of his signatures is his emphatic insistence that contemporary economics is all nonsense. Wouldn't take him too seriously.

I don't have a very high opinion of modern economics. Medaille is a real estate agent - or was. I'd like to read his book.

I have that ISI book (Toward a Truly Free Market?) but haven't read it. I read a chapter or two and it seemed pretty good, but I have a hard time making myself spend that much time reading about economics. Also, I've developed a bit of an aversion to Medaille because he's so snarky in other things of his I've read online. If you're going to do that, you need to be witty, and he wasn't.

One specific thing I remember is a crude and not even funny sexual joke about Sarah Palin. That put him in the "don't bother" category for me as far as casual online stuff is concerned. Presumably he doesn't do that in the book.

I only had time to read a page or so of the document you linked to, but I already hit something I don't understand: "marginalism." Is that a technical economic term? Theological?

Come to think of it, this could be why Medaille thinks "contemporary economics is nonsense." If it's all based on marginalism, as he seems to indicate, and he rejects marginalism, then he'd have to have fundamental disagreement with much if not all modern economics.

"I know it's an economic term but I'm not sure about its exact definition."

"Marginalism" is not a term used in economics. "Marginal" is a modifier used, as in 'marginal utility' and 'marginal cost' and 'marginal productivity'. Its use in microeconomics mostly concerns the forces which theoretically determine prices, not the 'value' of something. I cannot imagine why Medaille finds it objectionable, but then my exchanges with the chap (and with Thomas Storck) have always been unilluminating.

The last time:

http://the-american-catholic.com/2010/09/05/on-populism-the-tea-party-and-politics/

Here is Th. Storck

http://distributistreview.com/mag/2013/05/aquinas-on-buying-and-selling/

I do not think the topic is worth much of the sort of attention he gives it.

Well, John certainly displayed a lot more patience with the anonymous "Art" than I ever have in my own disputes with the guy. As a fellow left distributist, he has my sympathy. And if he is to be dismissed because he earned his bread as a realtor then I obviously can be laughed off the stage as a letter carrier. Please. And yes, I am of the school that considers millionaire theologian Novak and his peers as apologists for an evil system and enemies of the poor and of the working class. But then I have evolved into something of a revolutionary, albeit one promoting a "revolution of tenderness" in Francis' lovely words...

And if he is to be dismissed because he earned his bread as a realtor then I obviously can be laughed off the stage as a letter carrier. Please. And yes, I am of the school that considers millionaire theologian Novak and his peers as apologists for an evil system and enemies of the poor and of the working class.

"Real estate agent" is a banal descriptive term. Rob G said 'business experience' and 'real estate agent' describes it with specificity. I cannot imagine why it bothers you.

I am fascinated how you came by personal knowledge of Michael Novak's balance sheet. Novak is eighty years old and has since he left the seminary been employed as an opinion journalist and think-tank denizen. Generally, salaries in the philanthropic sector have more circumscribed boundaries than they do elsewhere. Novak's books are not the sort you make a pile out of. (Amy Welborn writes more popular literature than Novak; she once named the sum in royalties she usually receives from her apologetics series: around $14,000 per annum).

as apologists for an evil system and enemies of the poor and of the working class.

To which system are you referring?

Here is the comment I was trying to post last night when the problem was happening. (And by the way I haven't read any of the things y'all linked to above, apart from skimming one thing as noted below. Maybe while I'm eating lunch today.)

Tom is a good guy, and he knows his stuff, and it's good that he is thinking through these things.

But I can't make myself read that piece. I skimmed it, but I just don't want to take the time to follow the argument in detail.

Moreover, as much as I sympathize with the broad goals of distributism, I often find myself thinking that distributists are building elaborate machinery (not castles) in the air that wouldn't work too well if you tried to bring it down to earth. There seems to be a suggestion (like I said, I only skimmed) that someone ought to have the authority to set just prices for everything. Hard to see that working out very well.

Btw, I think Daniel's "millionaire theologian" jibe refers to a prize that Novak won some years ago--the Templeton prize, maybe?

Maybe you're seeing through the fog of war, but he was far more charitable to his interlocutors than they were to him.

Yeah, such gems as

"Wow! What you said about economists is 10 times worse that what I said; I just said they were ignorant; you’re saying they’re stupid. And Art, if they couldn’t see this train wreck coming, I see no reason to take their word on trade, or taxes, or anything else. "

Please yourself, Rob.

Ok, I read as far in that American Catholic exchange as the point where Medaille likens the Tea Party to the Nazis. That was far enough.

[laughing]

He may be right or he may be wrong about abstract economic ideas, but the stuff about the Tea Party was enough to make me discount his appraisal of contemporary politics.

I don't think so. I'd forgotten about it. Something Art said, I think?

I found it (the search function here sometimes actually works). It's in a comment on my first EG post. I'll just paste it in here for convenience:

"Art Deco: No, the comparison is very relevant. There is a secular trend in which labor is less physically taxing and hazardous.

Art, could you explain what 'secular' means in this context? I came across the term 'secular stagnation' a few weeks ago. I could not figure out what it means. I asked two other theologians, and like me, they had never heard the term 'secular' to have any other meanings than those that relate to religion. Obviously in latin, the saeculum is the world, so it could mean 'worldly' - but I do not know what 'worldly stagnation' is, or what a 'worldly trend' is. Please explain."

So it was here!

But what is a 'secular trend'? One that evolves over time? How could a trend not evolve over time?

The Templeton Prize was a cool million. And I figured that with all his enthusiasm for the virtues of the market that Mr Novak would have invested wisely. And he lived in Chevy Chase MD for very many years, one of the richest zip codes in the country, and now lives in Ave Maria Florida, a ghetto for affluent Catholics. He's doing fine, thank you. And if AD is the resident expert on economics for LODW....Yikes. Give me ten John Medialles any day.

No, and I am sure Mr Medaille does not either. In fact I rarely have any clear idea of what Mr Deco is saying, other than it is hostile to me.

And he lived in Chevy Chase MD for very many years, one of the richest zip codes in the country,

Alexandria, Va. is has income levels supposedly 83% above the national mean. I have a dear friend resident there in an apartment building which includes a pair of retirees, a flight attendant, and a postal worker.

Thanks, Marianne. I certainly had never heard that use of "secular" before.

Neither had I.

Art, you said 'secular trend'

I am not really arguing anything about Novak's balance sheet, because I have not seen it.

DN referred to Ave Maria, Fla. as a "ghetto for affluent Catholics". That particular county is too populous to be called a 'ghetto'. Some communities are above the mean and some are below, Collier County is above the mean, but scarcely farther above the mean than the 20 county New York - New Jersey metropolitan complex. As with the aforementioned residents of Alexandria, Va., non-affluent people do live in affluent neighborhoods. Some place that is as tony as Chevy Chase, that's not going to be the case bar for an odd oldster here or there. Also, neighborhoods change over time. Chevy Chase was largely constructed ca. 1933 for the burgeoning federal civil service. My mother with her family lived there for ten years, seven of them in a rented house infested with rats. It was an ordinary bourgeois neighborhood then, not a haut bourgeois / patrician neighborhood. (And, of course, middle class living meant one car, a coal furnace you stoked at night, and trouble with rodents). At the time, you could go to inner city high schools if your father was a federal employee; that was considered a perk because the local high school was considered a backwater.

Again, Novak's award was 800,000 sterling. Given exchange rates in 1994, that would amount to about $1,200,000. No clue what his tax liability would be. A man his age might have been advised to place 50% in bonds, 10% in the money market, and 40% in equities, shift assets to bonds as he grew older. Nominal equity prices have about quadrupled since 1994. It is a reasonable guess that the portfolio would have a value of about $1.67 millon today with interest and dividend income of about $60,000 before taxes. For someone in Novak's age group, it would be largely in municipal bonds so mostly tax free. Taxes and fees to portfolio managers would take about a third of that, leaving him $40,000 to spend.

By the way, the Sandalista just inaugurated as Mayor of New York has home equity worth $1.4 million. He is 52 and has worked in the public and philanthropic sector all his life.

There's nothing about defending capitalism in print that makes you a shrewd investor, and I would wager Novak isn't. He's a lapsed seminarian who verbalizes for a living.

Daniel brought up Novak's balance sheet to discredit him, a logical fallacy sufficiently distinct that it has an ancient proper name. Even were the argument valid, it would be irrelevant in Novak's case as he wrote The Spirit of Democratic Capitlism 11 years before the Templeton Foundation conferred that six-figure bon bon on him.

Dan one of the many things I like about LODW is that we get the whole spectrum of Christian political opinions here.

They need a cat or two. I live in a somewhat wooded area and I know the rats have got to be out there, but we've always had at least two cats, with at least one living mostly outside, and we never see either rats or mice.

Thanks, Grumpy. I'm definitely a Big Tent sort of guy when it comes to Christians and politics.

I said 'Christian' because there are some political ideas which are just out for any of us, for instance any kind of Ayn Rand no safety-net for the poor libertarianism, or any form of national socialism or plain socialism makes the State a Church, something deserving absolute allegiance, or the deification of insurance companies.

Esp. deification of the insurance companies. :)

I'm all for condemning things before the rear their ugly heads. :)

Art, you asked for precise complaints. Well, and this is not restricted to your economic "expertise", for one, your habit of stating convoluted rebuttals to the obvious. Yeah, I'm sure Novak lived in rat-infested hovels in Chevy Chase, or shared apartment buildings with my brother letter carriers. And if you think mentioning someone's wealth is an ad hominem when the discussion is about poverty and justice I really don't know what to say. One's life experience is relevant in the extreme when one is discussing the socio/economic system. Capitalism has been very good to Mr Novak. But this is what you do. God knows what satisfaction you receive for constructing elaborate defenses for the indefensible; maybe you are just a contrarian; in which case I can sympathize

And by the way, my knowledge of Chevy Chase is not merely academic. I had a girlfriend, a very serious one, in my mid-twenties, who lived in a big house overlooking Rock Creek Park. I spent a lot of time there, and after returning to the Church, worshipping at Blessed Sacrament on Chevy Chase Circle.

Daniel, whatever I "think" of it, the argument is ad hominem. That aside, it is irrelevant given the sequence of events in his biography, both because his writings preceded the award and because he is not defending his own life and vocation; the man has no history in the business sectors and neither did his wife.

You have a terrible time interpreting what people say to you and apprehending why they are saying it.

You have not offered any coherent complaint about my remarks on economic topics, or my background in the subject. I am not an expert. I have had just enough instruction to recognize when someone talks rot, and John Medaille talks rot. Sorry to break it to you.

Quite a rogue's gallery of capitalist tools here.

And an aspiring sellout. :^)
Of course the Templeton prize has gone to a wide variety of people, many not friendly to capitalism. I'm sure various influences have swayed whatever committee makes the choice. It's all pretty political, like the Nobel prizes. But Novak won for his work favoring capitalism, and got rich for his efforts. That is all I am saying. And I should note that what changed him from a socialist to a pro-market conservative was reflection on his family's story: from Slovak peasant immigrants to prosperous factory workers who gave him a college education and a ticket out of Johnstown. Problem is, the guy is 80, and still talks as if that is the status quo. That and I do not see him acknowledging that his family's prosperity was not handed to them by benevolent owners, but was wrested from them by the efforts and sacrifices -sometimes to the point of death- of organized labor.

Your second paragraph has blown several fuses in my brain.

I do think there's some potential here for you to impress the Templetonians. You could tweak your 1 Samuel book to emphasize the fact that the Israelites recognized that they would be better off having a rich guy rule over them, and God, in a pragmatic recognition of human weakness, decided to make the best of it and reluctantly agreed.

Economist Herman Daly has written that one of the things wrong with modern economic thinking is that is no longer a fully-orbed study that includes ethical and philosophical aspects, but that it has been reduced to what used to be called chrematistics, that is the "science" of making money.

In other words, economics is no longer a humane science but is instead an extended exercise in number-crunching. The mathematical, chrematistic aspect of economics has become the whole hog. It seems that anyone who takes this reductionist approach to economics wouldn't have much time for a Medaille or a Schumacher or a Roepke, or even someone like Fr. Albino Barrera, who has advanced degrees in both theology and economics.

I'm with Daniel - I like a little philosophy/theology to come with my economics. Otherwise, it's just glorified mathematics.

"I like a little philosophy/theology to come with my economics."

I certainly wouldn't argue with that, and I don't think anyone else here would. Nor, for that matter, would Novak, from what I've read of him. No doubt there's a place for studying economic data alone, as a sociologist studies social data. But economics in the larger sense, of trying to understand and prescribe--certainly that can't be pursued in isolation from theological/philosophical questions.

It seems that anyone who takes this reductionist approach to economics wouldn't have much time for a Medaille or a Schumacher or a Roepke, or even someone like Fr. Albino Barrera,

No, they would regard it as tangential to economic discourse and something they, as economists, were not much better at than the next fellow. (And the real problem with Medaille is with his positive statements, not his normative ones).

Medialle may look at it that way. He also makes pronouncements on current economic conditions and the utility of economics as a discipline.