It was late at night in a dodgy neighborhood of Athens, Greece. I argued with a cab driver who clearly wanted to be rid of his irksome passenger and call it a night. I’d arrived at the Athens train station after midnight after a long ferry and train trip from Brindisi, Italy. I clutched a piece of paper with the phonetic spelling of the address I wanted to go to, a house owned by the American embassy. The cabbie, probably thinking he’d get in one last fare before heading home, had put my luggage in the trunk and ushered me into his car.

Apparently my phonetic spelling and pronunciation were off the mark—it was, roughly, Popiomati Street—and the cabby started to unload my luggage on the corner of a neighborhood that was not the type the embassy would find amenable. No, I insisted, this isn’t right, pointing at my piece of paper and throwing my luggage back into the cab. (This was long before the days of cell phones.) He pointed to the street sign written in Greek lettering and, using volume to make up for my lack of comprehension, emphatically said … something. Unfortunately, it was all, quite literally, Greek to me.

I remembered that experience when I read about a new book by sociologist Christian Smith called Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults. In it, Smith, along with his co-author Patricia Snell, interviewed thousands of “emerging adults” ages 18 to 23 for their views on religious and moral issues.

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Today is tax day. As millions of Americans finish filing their 2010 federal income taxes, 47 percent of their fellow citizens will pay no federal income tax.

That’s right. Nearly half the country pays nothing* towards a government that in theory represents everyone. A family of four earning $50,000 pays nothing in federal income taxes. Nearly 40 percent of those 47 percent actually profit from the tax system, getting back in credits more than they would have owed. They’re actually paid to not pay taxes!

Politicians of both parties going back decades share the blame for this. They promise something for nothing to taxpayers to get their votes, then try to make up the difference by higher taxes on the “rich” or by borrowing the money. (The top 10 percent of earners pay 73 percent of the taxes, but realize that “rich” starts at $366,000 in earnings, and some of them are actually small businesses that file taxes as individuals.) We constantly hear pleas for the “rich” to pay their “fair share,” but that’s a mighty weird definition of “fair” if in reality it means the lion’s share. Besides, we can raise taxes on the “rich” to levels unseen in decades and still not make a dent in the federal deficit.

Nearly half of the country couldn’t care less that the Federal Reserve has said that if current policies persist, in a mere 10 years the country will have to pay $1 trillion a year just to pay the interest on all the money we’ve borrowed. That’s $1 trillion before we spend a single penny on defense, highways, Social Security, or anything else. But to 47 percent of Americans, it’s someone else’s problem.

There’s something wrong here. How can we as a country deal with the very serious financial situation we’ve spent ourselves into when so many people have no personal stake in the matter? Where is the sense of shared sacrifice that is part of citizenship? This sense of entitlement by so many, stoked by politicians eager for votes, is a moral corruption that will destroy us faster that massive debt ever will.

*Yes, I’m aware that most people still pay state and local taxes. But then again, so do the “rich,” so that issue is largely moot.

This week Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn signed a bill abolishing the death penalty in Illinois. His primary concern with the state’s system for capital punishment was possible error. “If the system can’t be guaranteed, 100-percent error-free, then we shouldn’t have the system. It cannot stand.” The next day, Ohio executed a convicted murder using a new, single-drug system similar to that used to euthanize animals.

The death penalty invokes strong reactions from people on both sides of the issue. Some liken it to state-sanctioned murder. Others call it justice. The late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin headed the conference that drafted the church’s “Seamless Garment” document, which claimed that capital punishment was inconsistent with an atmosphere of respect for life.

But does being pro-capital punishment inherently make one not pro-life? I, for one, happen to believe not. I’ve wrestled with the issue for years—I did a college independent study on Cardinal Bernardin’s work in 1985—and have come to the conclusion that, in the end, being in favor of capital punishment is itself pro-life—in theory. Please bear with me as I lay out my reasoning:

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As expected, Congress voted to repeal the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy concerning homosexuals serving openly in the military and President Obama signed the repeal into law. Despite a lot of misgivings and reasons for leaving the policy in place, some of which I made here here, Congress has commanded the entire Department of Defense to implement a new personnel policy—even as our military fights two wars.

This change will not be without repercussions. I have no special crystal ball, but having spent as much time as I have in and around the military, I’m fairly certain in my predictions. Most will take time to become apparent. The “slippery” in slippery slope need not imply suddenness, but as with most such slopes, you find yourself at the bottom without having been aware of the slow, downward movement, wondering how you got there.

First, what will not happen. There will be no mass exodus of people from the military in protest, despite what some commentators have claimed. These pundits, many of whom have not served in uniform, underestimate the professionalism of our military men and women, who will follow the orders they’re given, even if they personally think they’re wrong. Even a strong critic of the change, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos, said that if the Congress and commander in chief so order, he and his Marines will salute and implement the order to the best of their ability.

What will happen will show up first in the chaplain corps. There has always been some tension for military chaplains in fulfilling their two functions: counselors as well as spiritual leaders of their various faiths—Roman Catholic, the various Protestant denominations, Mormon, Jewish, Muslim, and now even Wiccan. In some situations, such as on a small Navy ship or a remote base, a person may have to see a chaplain from a different religious background. In such situations, the chaplain must try to remain as general as possible in his spiritual discussions while still offering good counsel to the service member, as chaplains are not allowed to try to convert a military member to their particular religion tradition.

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My wife’s mother died this week. Catherine Wilson Payne, born in Fleetwood, England, in March 1929, had lived a rich life and raised four children to healthy, productive adulthood—one of them my wife, Colette. Mamma Payne proudly doted on her eight grandchildren from her home in Sanderstead, south of London. She was an affable, gregarious woman who could strike up a friendly conversation with a lamppost and you’d half expect the lamppost to respond.

My wife’s pain was palpable, especially since the death came rather quickly and she was stuck here on this side of the Atlantic because of weather delays throughout Europe. I understood her pain. My father died in July. I had seen men die before, some of them friends, but no death hit me as hard as this, a deep rending in the depths of my spirit that I’d never felt with other deaths.

It’s always difficult having a death in the family, but this time of year seems especially inappropriate to have to deal with this pain. Or is it?

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One of my favorite movies is The Karate Kid. Who can’t identify in some way with Daniel Larusso, uprooted from all that is familiar by his single mom and plopped down in a new environment where he is the outsider, the new kid who becomes automatic bully bait for the tough guys at school.

A lot of people think the main lesson of The Karate Kid is that perseverance and hard work pay off in the end. And while that’s certainly true in this story—Danny does win the big karate championship in the end—that’s not the main point.

The key moment in the movie is when the inscrutable Miyagi tells Danny to wax his car. Danny has made a deal that if Miyagi will teach him karate, he must do what Miyagi wants, no questions asked.

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The Department of Defense is preparing to officially release the results of its survey on the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding homosexuals serving openly in the military. That is, of course, after someone leaked the results early, probably to try to influence events. The wording of the leak was significant: It said 70 percent of survey-takers thought that the effect of lifting DADT would be “positive, mixed, or nonexistent.”

What percent of the 70 percent fell into each of the three categories is left to the imagination. For instance, what if 90 percent of those 70 percent thought the effect would be “mixed,” i.e., some good, some bad? Would that effect the ultimate decision? I ask, because I suspect that if a large percentage of those had said “positive” or even “nonexistent,” we’d be hearing about it. In other words, I think it’s safe to guess that 30 percent of those surveyed are against lifting the ban, and a significant percentage of those remaining 70 percent have mixed feelings. In short, only a minority of those surveyed think the effects will be positive or nonexistent. But why be exact when we already have a compliant press summarizing the findings by eliding the distinctions and stating only that 70 percent thought the change would have “little or no effect.”

Note that only 44,000 members of the 1.5 million-strong U.S. military even responded to the survey, and even granting a full 70 percent seeing “little or no problem,” that still means only a bit more than 5 percent of everyone in uniform has expressed an positive opinion. Another statistic: overall, female service members, who make up only 20 percent of the entire U.S. military, were “substantially less likely to perceive negative impacts following repeal than male service members” for “all the issues asked about in the survey,” according to the report. So only a minority of a minority seems okay with the repeal of DADT.

It seems the fix is in.

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