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ET COGNOSCETIS VERITATEM ET VERITAS LIBERABIT VOS

SLUH REVIEW Vol. 1 Issue 6 A journal of Faith, thought, and civics January 11, 2010

A Look at Tiger

By Adam Cruz, Writer

Almost as soon as the news came out about Tiger Woods and his alleged affair and following car crash, the excuses for Woods started flowing from the mouths of both sportscasters and my SLUH chums. “He’s human, everybody makes mistakes, even sports stars,” some said. “Why should his sins be the public’s knowledge? It’s his private deal,” said others. Or my favorite: “He’s a great golfer, who cares what kind of guy he is?”

Well guess what? I don’t buy it, not for one second.

It’s not like we’re talking about a one-time mistake here by Woods. His affair had been going on for nine months, and at least twelve women have come forward as mistresses of his. What Woods did was not a one time, forgivable, human mistake. For heaven’s sake, the guy could fill a twelve month calendar with his mistresses. It was a truck-load of mistakes, a decade full of infidelity to a wife, a wife that bore his first child and is a former super model. Does that mean Elin Nordegren is sinless? Absolutely not. And are Woods’ “transgressions” unique? Not at all, I’m sure there are men unfaithful to their wives around America. Does that make it right? Not at all. However, lucky for them and us, these other adulterers are not the role models for our children. Unlucky for us, Tiger is.

Which brings me to my next point, on Woods’ fame and the excuse that his private life should remain private. Like it or not, Tiger, you’re a role model to thousands of kids. They see your advertisements, they watch you golf, they read about you in the newspaper. And they model themselves after you. When I used to mini-golf, and I’d make a tough shot, I’d react like I had seen Woods react. And I don’t even like golf. So maybe Tiger’s private life should be his business and nobody else’s, but the fact is, it isn’t private, and that won’t change. He is

a public figure, a role model for children of a generation filled with role models on steroids. To many, Woods was a white knight, a guy of whom I could say to my kids, “Hey, look at him. He has all that money, and he is a good family man.” I’m willing to bet that’s the last time you’ll hear that about Woods. Even if you take out all the affairs (I know, tough to take out a dozen women), he certainly hasn’t been admirable—he still hasn’t left his house and is sitting out a year. Add coward to the list—a long, long list.

And by far the most ridiculous claim is using Woods’ success to alter his actions. Who CARES how many majors he’s won? Proportionality. Be a great golfer, Tiger, be my guest. But get off my commercials, and my magazines. Being a good golfer isn’t enough, not to be in the eye of my children at least.

It’s about time I make the assertion that this is NOT a personal attack on Woods. He is one of many in a long line of morally questionable professional athletes. That won’t, and possibly can’t, change. What I am attacking is our society, and the justification and immunity we give famous athletes. The same nation that publically united against Bill Clinton cheers on Ray Lewis every Sunday. The guy murdered somebody, fellas, whether he got away with it or not isn’t the point. We can’t seem to forget or forgive Steve Bartman for keeping the Cubs’ century of futility intact, but the best selling jersey for the NBA last year was Kobe Bryant. You know, Kobe Bryant. The same guy who allegedly raped a woman seven years ago. And admitted it. On National TV. Leonard Little, drunk driving, killed a pregnant woman. His sentence? Two years of Community Service, which was in fact worked AROUND his practice schedules. And don’t get me started on Major League Baseball. Sammy Sosa suddenly can’t speak English when he’s put in front of Congress? Gag me. The fictional show, Playmakers, put it best by saying, “As long as your

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making plays, the rules don’t apply.” It’s true, sadly. We will continue to cheer on Donte Stallworth, who killed a man drunk driving, and we LOVED Roger Clemens (again, don’t get me started). As if this wasn’t bad enough, we have a double standard of it all. Michael Vick is public enemy #1 to some people, for dog fighting, and every Saturday we cheer on two time national champion Florida, who has had 28 players arrested in the last four years.

Recently, Mark McGuire decided to come out of the hole he had been hiding in the last two years and fess up about steroids. Some in the press called in honorable, and he got a standing ovation at winter warm up. But like so many athletes around him, amidst all the dishonor and humiliation he has brought the sport, his family, and himself, Big Mac proved there is something bigger than his muscles: his ego. He wouldn’t admit steroids helped his homerun totals. Sorry Mark, but when you’re ready to drop your pride and really apologize, I’ll listen up.

Disagree with all of this? Name on NBA star who you can say, for a fact, hasn’t committed at some time an immoral act seen by the public. Seriously, name one.

At least part of this is our fault. We revere the homeruns, the three-pointers, the touchdowns; we relish it all and treat the men who produce them like gods. Gods can do whatever they want. But some athletes are moral. I bet the back-up left guard for the Cleveland Browns is a GREAT guy. And golfers have united against Woods since the fans haven’t, asserting that although they may not possess his skill they also do not possess his morals. The guys who work hard to keep their job? They’re the role models. The all-stars? You can keep them and their million dollar checks.

As always, there are exceptions. Kurt Warner is a great guy, a man I’d be proud to be and would be proud to show my kids. Yet we booed Warner horribly (yes we all did, even you) when he stopped performing. And now that he’s good again, we suddenly love him. Warner didn’t change, he kept giving to the same charities and preaching the same old story. We changed, hinging on his interceptions. Woods, Lewis, Rothelisberger, take note. Watch Warner. Learn. And maybe you won’t end up like Steve Mcnair (shot dead by his mistress this past summer).

Can we learn a lesson from all this? Perhaps next time we see Leonard Little sack the quarterback, we’ll cheer a little less. Or maybe we’ll appreciate it more that the terrible players on the futile Rams DON’T make the news. And maybe, just maybe, if you’re a famous athlete someday, you’ll remember the little kids who pretend they’re you on the playground, or the 18 year olds who enter the league with you as their prime example.

As for Woods, maybe his “transgressions” will be forgiven and, more probably, forgotten. Who knows, his wife could forgive him. He could give to a bunch of charities, and do a bunch of events. He could win the PGA tour, and the Masters, and a year full of tournaments.

But frankly, I couldn’t care less.

Comic Book Economics, Part II

Logan Hayward, Junior Editor

In the last edition of SLUH Review, I introduced a basic beginning to the plot of Irwin Schiff’s comic book masterpiece How Economies Grow: And Why

They Don’t. This book analyzes simple theories of credit and production, those same simple theories that provide a basis for a free market economy. These simple theories, when applied to all economic questions, would maximize production and minimize government intervention. The simple theories include:

1. The amount of wealth in an economy can expand. 2. The manufacturing of new things of value is called production. 3. Credit, when rationally given to those likely to produce excess, expands production. 4. In a true free market, credit is given to those debtors who are most likely to produce more things of value. 5. Taxes merely divert production, or actually decrease it. 6. The government possesses no actual savings, but rather, it can only use the profits of the production of others.

These theories can destroy any argument for government loans. The first theory destroys the redistribution of wealth argument, which can take the shape of offering government loans, as I

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examined in my first SLUH Review article. The second theory is only a definition. The third theory is the key to refuting all statist arguments for government credit expansion. As Henry Hazlitt notes in his Economics in One Lesson, credit is something that people have, even before they have it in monetary form. The word “credit” comes from the Latin verb credo, meaning “I believe”. Credit is faith that the debtor will repay his loan, most always with interest. The loaner, who presumably has more money than the person applying for a loan, believes that the potential debtor has good credit. If he did not believe that, he would not be lending to him! However, government would only have incentive to lend to those who do not receive loans, because they are not (by Theory 4) likely to produce more things of value. The government’s incentive would be naturally to win votes and/or to indulge their bleeding hearts. The government (by Theory 6) must either tax people to obtain the funds to help those people who do not possess credit, or they must print more paper or otherwise cheap money, which eventually must destroy real wealth via inflation. This brings me to the next portion of How Economies Grow: And Why They Don’t to which Mr. Irwin Schiff has brought his attention: monetary policy.

At the end of my last article, I mentioned that the enactor of the pernicious policies is named Franklin Dee. There is actually a Franklin Dee and a Franklin Dee V, the latter of whom is the principal bad guy in the later pages of the book. Franklin Dee V’s cronies developed a scheme to take the real wealth of the island. Remember: the economy at this point had been using fish, i.e. items of real value, as the principal form of currency. But soon, the government began demanding that banks accept Franklin Reserve Notes. So, if a citizen came to a bank with a Franklin Reserve Note (essentially an easy government loan), he was legally entitled to an amount of fish worth (allegedly) the same amount as his Franklin Reserve Note. This sad development is an allegorical reference to the government’s alleged guarantee of a supply of gold equal in worth to the worth of all the Federal Reserve Notes (dollar bills) in circulation. Well, eventually the French realized that the United States government was lying about the amount of gold to which the bearers of dollar bills were entitled. So they started cashing in their dollars for gold, thereby draining the supply of gold from the United States. President Nixon eventually closed the gold window in 1971, and the

government was allowed to create more potentially worthless dollar bills. On the fictional island on which the characters of How Economies Grow: And

Why They Don’t dwell, a series of government accretions in the monetary business destroys the economy. In another allegory, Franklin Dee V and his cronies gradually force other citizens to turn in their good fish for bad fish, thus drying up the market’s saving reserves.

So this comic book has shown that government can only divert or destroy real wealth. It diverts wealth by taxing Citizen A to give to Citizen B, and it destroys wealth by inflation and giving productive citizens’ money to unproductive citizens. I don’t think I could learn any of that from Calvin and

Hobbes!

A friend asked me a good question before I started writing this article. To paraphrase him: Won’t the increasing supply of fish devalue the currency?” Of course, rare things are usually more expensive than are common things. Naturally this applies to money as well—the supply of precious metals in the world is limited, whereas paper comes from trees, which can reproduce. So obviously, gold and silver currency will always eventually beat the value of paper currency. In the case of the island, the fishers were harvesting a supply of fish that was, for all intents and purposes, infinite, because fish reproduce. However, good, healthy fish will always be worth something, because they contain energy. Also, the islanders were presumably free to harvest wealth from other sources. In such a free market, the supply of wealth will match the demand for it. On the other hand, paper currency, when enough of it is produced, necessarily becomes almost worthless—as it did in the Weimar Republic of Germany and Zimbabwe.

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The Right Question

By Luke Chellis, Senior Editor

Many times asking the right question is harder than coming up with the right answer. Are you a liberal or a conservative? Do you believe in the individual or the community? Are you in favor of high taxes or low taxes? These are the sort of inane questions that populate every political spectrum quiz and define 90 percent of political commentary. Only one question matters. Do you believe in allowing people to work together, play together, and live together peacefully or do you believe in forcing people to do what you want?

Any other political question simply falls away if you confront this question. Should you force people to care for their health in a certain way or should you let people find the best way? Should you force people to loan money to the people you think deserve it or should you let people loan according to their own sense and their own morals? Should you force people to give food stamps to people you think deserve it or should you let people work together to make sure everyone gets fed? Should you force people to ‘marry’ heterosexually or should you allow them to choose their own terms of association? Should you force people to accept democracy or should you let them find the best way to peace?

I believe in peace. I believe in a good God that has created a good people. People are naturally harmonious, not naturally in conflict. If you let people, they will follow their consciences and do what is right. They will care for each other, increase their wealth, share their wealth, serve each other, and serve God.

I believe that healing should be brought to everyone who needs it, and my mom works for a Catholic hospital that never turns anyone away and foots the bill for those who can’t pay. It cost the hospital $12 million last year alone. I believe that credit allows us to be more productive, and people like my parents take out a mortgage to buy a house. I think it would be a shame to see people starve, and so we always toss in a few dollars when the St. Vincent DePaul Society drops in at my parish. I don’t believe homosexual marriage is wholesome, but I have homosexual friends. If he wants to call his relationship with his partner marriage, let him. I won’t and my Church won’t. I can still treat them

with respect. I believe in constitutional government, but I made a lifelong friendship with a communist in China.

Government is force. Government can only be force. The reason is that no one can opt out of complying with the government, or else it wouldn’t be the government. If you don’t pay taxes, the government sends its armed constables to take it from you at the point of a gun and lock you up. If you want to drive a car, you have to show proof of insurance, or else the armed police officer arrests you. Government is force.

We need government. We need government to force people not to murder and steal. We need government to prevent assaults, rapes, and fraud. But a good government is never the aggressor. Good government doesn’t force people to be good, an impossible self-contradiction. Good government is only there to keep people from forcing others to do what they want. Government is force; good government is always retaliatory force, the force necessary to banish force from all human relationships.

If people aren’t forced to feed the people on food stamps, will they go hungry? If you think so, if you think force is necessary to make people be good, my question for you is this. Who is it you don’t have faith in? Yourself? Your neighbor? The Church? God? Should it be you who forces us to be good? If we all did what you wanted, would we be happy? Would you be happy? Have faith in God. Have faith in peace.

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