"Our two chief weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency..."
>"To have a clear faith according to the church's creed is today
>often labeled fundamentalism," he said, "while relativism, letting
>ourselves be carried away by any wind of doctrine, appears as the
>only appropriate attitude for the today's times. A dictatorship of
>relativism is established that recognizes nothing definite and
>leaves only one's own ego and one's own desires as the final
>measure."
>
>The church has been shaken by "numerous ideological currents,"
>Ratzinger said. "The boat has been unanchored by these waves, thrown
>from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, up to
>libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from
>atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to
>syncretism, and on and on.
>
>"An adult faith does not follow the waves of fashion and the latest
>novelty," he concluded.
>
>
>Doug Henwood wrote:
>>NEWS ALERT
>>from The Wall Street Journal
>>
>>April 19, 2005
>>Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany was named the new pope.
>>___________________________________
>>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>>
>
>___________________________________
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
-- "Burke ever held, and held rightly, that it can seldom be right toŠ sacrifice a present benefit for a doubtful advantage in the futureŠ. It is not wise to look too far ahead; our powers of prediction are slight, our command over results infinitesimal. It is therefore the happiness of our own contemporaries that is our main concern; we should be very chary of sacrificing large numbers of people for the sake of a contingent end, however advantageous that may appearŠ. We can never know enough to make the chance worth taking. There is this further consideration that is often in need of emphasis: it is not sufficient that the state of affairs which we seek to promote should be better than the state of affairs which preceded it; it must be sufficiently better to make up for the evils of the transitionŠ"
--John Maynard Keynes
____________________ J. Bradford DeLong Department of Economics U.C. Berkeley, #3880 Berkeley, CA 94720-3880 (510) 643-4027 delong at econ.berkeley.edu http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/