But if that answer looks like a dodge, if you mean what PHILOSOPHICAL argument is best, I think it's the moral argument that C.S. Lewis begins MERE CHRISTIANITY with, and which Dostoyevski shows in even more convincing form than abstract logic, namely life consequences, in CRIME AND PUNISHMENT and above all THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, that "if there is no God, then everything is permissible." Why not, if you never get caught? Dr. Rieux, in Camus' THE PLAGUE, can never solve his (and Camus') greatest riddle: If there is no God, and you can't be a saint without God, and the meaning of life is to be a saint, then how can anyone ever find or live the meaning of life?
Peter Kreeft Interview David Farel, Writer Peter Kreeft, a prominent philosopher, writer, and aplogist, recently agreed to an exclusive interview with the SLUH Review. Here are his responses to questions posed by the SLUH community. This interview has been edited for length.
David Farel: In your 45 years teaching at Boston College, what have you found to be the biggest obstacle to your students' faith, and how have you addressed it? Peter Kreeft: I honestly don't know, because I don't know what most of my students are thinking or believing or why. No teacher does, unless he has only a few students. University teaching is not Socratic dialoging or Oxford tutorials. I can only guess, and my guess is that, like most young Americans, they are simply too in love with the world to be in love with God very much. Not a surprising answer, or distinctively modern. But money, sex, and power (autonomy, 'freedom') have always been the three biggies, which is why poverty, chastity, and obedience are the three monastic vows. Today sex obviously comes first. Boston College is just as much a free whore house for its "men" (playboys, really) as any "secular" university, and that's got to be more exciting than conventional religion. That's the elephant in the living room that nobody wants to mention.
DF: On your list of twelve ways to know God, you wrote that we can find God in great literature. Which books and authors (not only of literature) have most influenced you, and if you had to list five must-reads for Catholics or Christians, what would the five books be? PK: John's Gospel, Frank Sheed's translation of Augustine's Confessions, Pascal's Pensees, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, and Dostoyevski's Brothers K. DF: What makes a school--whether grade school, high school, or college--truly Catholic? PK: Very simple: Its teachers really believe and love the truth and goodness and beauty of the Catholic faith. Lacking that, nothing works; with that, nothing else matters.
DF: What do you believe to be the most effective argument for belief in God? PK: No competition here: saints. You can't refute Mother Teresa. Eleven ordinary schlemiels became saints hanging around Jesus; only one angry revolutionary failed.
DF: What advice on living the faith would you give to a high school student today?
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Some workers lose their jobs. Perhaps a small business sets aside $1000 each day for its employees. Before the minimum wage law came around, the small business offered a wage of $5 per hour to its employees, and enough people agreed to price their labor at that amount, that the business could hire twenty people to work ten hours each day. However, now the minimum wage law prevents the employees from working below $10 per hour. The small business can either cut hours or cut workers. Let us say the business decides not to cut hours. It can now only afford to pay, out of its original funds, ten employees for ten hours each day. The other ten workers have to find new jobs. 2. The workers have tougher work to do. If the small business had decided to cut hours instead of workers, it could perhaps continue to pay all twenty workers $10 an hour…for five hours of work each day. In order to keep up with consumer demands, the workers will probably have to be more productive—which probably won’t be easy. 3. The price of goods increases. Perhaps the small business determines that it simply cannot meet consumers’ demands for its products by decreasing its workers or hours. They need to have ten workers, and they need them to work for ten hours per day. The company thus decides to increase the prices on its products. So if the business, in order to make the $1000 per day necessary to pay its employees, sold five-hundred ice cream cones a day for $2 each before the minimum wage, they now try to sell fivehundred ice cream cones a day for $4 each. 4. The company owners take home lower salaries. Let us say that the company owners (or “fat cats”, if you wish), decide that they want their workers to like them, and they want the consumers of their products to like them. They therefore do not cut workers or hours, and they do not increase their products’ prices. They themselves take the hit, and cut their own salaries. This may be a fine solution in the
PK: Be a rebel. Be countercultural. Find God by looking deeply at your own heart (not just feelings) and conscience, in brutal honesty. Settle for nothing less than the voice of God, not your own voice or other people's. Other people are precious but they are not God. Neither is political correctness.
The Minimum Wage Logan Hayward, Senior Editor
What is a wage? To paraphrase the late economist Henry Hazlitt, a wage is a price on labor. A person can sell his material goods, or he can sell his labor. Most people would respect the laws of supply and demand for material goods: as demand (desire plus means to acquire) for a certain type of good increases, the supplier can increase the price of the goods. If demand for that same good decreases, the supplier must cut the cost of the good. People are willing to pay hundreds of dollars for an iPad, but I doubt those same people would be willing to pay hundreds of dollars for a pack of gum. People are willing to pay more or less money for different material goods. Why isn’t labor any different? Most people would be willing to pay more for an education than they would for a shoe shine, of course. So, teachers are able to charge consumers a higher price for their labor than shoe-shiners are—they have higher incomes. There is nothing immoral or irrational about that. But some people say that everyone who works a regular job is entitled to a minimum wage. The law should not allow them to sell their labor below a certain price. Although this is equivalent to telling a child at a lemonade stand, “You may not sell this lemonade below this price,” the minimum wage might seem humanitarian and necessary at first glance. After all, we do not want to live in a world where impoverished people work exhausting jobs for little compensation. However, the minimum wage hurts many people in the economy. Let us say a government sets a minimum wage of $10 per hour. What are the possible outcomes?
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people.”1 The federal government is not meant to do anything but what the Constitution says it can do; everything else should be done by the states or localities. Most countries have a national government, but we have a federal government. The difference is shown by John C. Calhoun, Vice President under John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, saying, “…{our government} is federal and not national because it is the government of a community of States, and not the government of a single State or Nation.” 2 In most European democracies, the national government makes the decisions that affect the entire nation, but in the United States, the States make decisions that affect only those who live in the state, and the federal government should theoretically make decisions mostly on foreign policy. James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, clarifies: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce.” 3 All welfare programs, regulation, and most taxation should be left for the States to do, not the federal government. For example, there is no reason to have a national minimum wage or other regulation such as a carbon dioxide emissions standard. Individual states can choose their own minimum wage. California can have a minimum wage of $10 if it wants, but Texas need to have one at all if it doesn’t want. People in each individual state can choose what minimum wage is best for them. The same is true for other regulation; if Massachusetts is worried about global warming, then they can set an emissions standard as a state. If Alabama isn’t worried about global warming, then they don’t need an emissions standard. If the people in one state don’t believe in an emissions standard, then why should the federal government force them to have one just because other parts of the nation want them? If people are unsatisfied with their State’s laws, they can vote their elected officials out of office or move to a different state that is more consistent with their
short term, but not in the long run. Before, people had liked the looks of the owners’ lives. The owners could live in luxury. But now, the owners have less luxury. The amount of people who want to do their job decreases. Before, the title “Company Board Member” attracted the best and the brightest, but now, the smart, hardworking people who wanted to provide comfortable, even luxurious, lives for their families decide that that title has lost some of its luster. They pursue different careers, and the next generation of company owners is not as innovative and hard-working as the last one. 5. The company dies. Everyone is without a job. The company tries one of, or some combination of, the above strategies, but it does not work. People do not buy so many of the company’s products as they did before the minimum wage came. The owners may try to take out loans to keep the company running, but success is unlikely. Eventually, the company declares bankruptcy and ceases to exist. Now all people who worked for the company, from the richest executive to the lowliest manual laborer, make no money whatsoever. These situations may seem like exaggerations. But could the minimum wage have any long term benefits? The minimum wage always hurts somebody, whether employer and employee, and in the long run, it hurts both. There are better ways to help workers than banning them from working below a certain wage.
States’ Rights Dominic LaMantia, Core Staff
Federalism is a concept espoused by many our founding fathers, a concept that is lacking in today’s America. The tenth amendment shows how our founding fathers wanted the relationship between the federal government and the states. It states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the
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political philosophy. People can live in the political environment that they choose. Because the States can make their own laws without interference by the Federal Government under Federalism (as it is intended), the States will range from all across the political spectrum; some states will very conservative, others very liberal, others libertarian, and the rest everywhere in between. Liberal States can provide health care, pass stimulus bills, provide welfare, and tax and regulate corporations. Conservative States can have very low taxes and a free market, ban abortion, and allow gun ownership. The competition among the various different state governments ensures that only the most efficient and effective governments have economic and population growth. States will adopt the policies that work, and drop the ones that don’t. This allows for experimentation. One state can try legalizing marijuana and if it doesn’t work, the damage is contained to one State. But if it does work, other States can adopt it as well. Different States can experiment with different health care programs as they do now, but also with welfare and other social services. States can copy policies that are effective in other States and institute those policies on themselves, but they can avoid instituting
failed policies. If the Stimulus Bill were really so effective at combating unemployment, then, under Federalism, individual States could pass stimulus bills. Those states, according to Democrats, would have a lower unemployment than a State that instead drastically cut taxes. We could all then see a side by side comparison of policies that progressives and conservatives want to institute. Whatever policies work, whether it would be stimulus spending or tax cuts for example, could then be applied by other states. If an idea is ineffective, then other states would not adopt that policy, which is why Federalism should be a bipartisan idea-- if each side is so sure that its own ideas are effective, let them be applied at the state level. There is no reason why progressives and conservatives together cannot support the Constitution and federalism. Because federalism is unfortunately ignored by most members of both parties, we have more of a national government today than a Federal one. Perhaps it is time to go back to saying “The United States are,” instead of “The United States is”. There is more than one state in America.
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