First Things RSS Feed - William McGurn https://www.firstthings.com/author/william-mcgurn en-us Copyright 2025 First Things. All Rights Reserved. ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) Mon, 20 Jan 2025 16:54:16 -0500 https://d2201k5v4hmrsv.cloudfront.net/img/favicon-196.png First Things RSS Feed Image https://www.firstthings.com/rss/author/william-mcgurn 60 Bob Casey’s Revenge https://www.firstthings.com/article/2005/01/bob-caseys-revenge https://www.firstthings.com/article/2005/01/bob-caseys-revenge Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 -0500 I can’t believe I’m losing to this idiot. So said John Kerry during the presidential campaign. Judging from the news stories following the election, many of his supporters appear to have had the same reaction”with no sense that the condescension inherent in their candidate’s statement helps illuminate the reasons for the election results.

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]]> Pulpit Economics https://www.firstthings.com/article/2002/04/pulpit-economics https://www.firstthings.com/article/2002/04/pulpit-economics Mon, 01 Apr 2002 00:00:00 -0500 In debates between Christian theologians and economists over the nature of capitalism, facts and figures count for almost nothing. At times the two seem to speak separate languages—perhaps most strikingly when they use the very same words.

On the one hand, economists purport to be practical people concerned not with the rightness or wrongness of actions but only with acquiring knowledge of the economic dimensions of those actions. Preachers and theologians, on the other hand, are just the opposite, focusing on those aspects of man that transcend material production; for them, man is possessed of a dignity that can’t be measured in per capita income. While it may come as a surprise to many, this difference in emphasis actually has the effect of leading our economists and businessmen to preach a message for the world’s poor that is charged with greater hope than what is typically taught by many of our leading theologians and preachers.

Take Asia, for example, and especially the comparative cases of Hong Kong and Manila. Until quite recently Hong Kong was the epitome of colonialism and the embodiment of dog-eat-dog capitalism; yet it was also attractive enough that even its poorest faced the future believing that it would bring greater improvement. And then there is the Philippines, a devoutly Christian nation that is home to some of the friendliest and hardest working people on earth, as well as to some of the cruelest exploitation of the poor by the rich outside the now-defunct Communist bloc.

The contradiction is summed up by the presence of more than 100,000 Filipinas in Hong Kong, many of them women with university degrees, working as maids to strangers’ children as a means of providing for their own back at home. For all the lectures on human rights and democracy coming out of Manila, the brutal fact of Philippine life is that millions of its people are forced to leave their families to do dirty work elsewhere because they have no way to feed their families—this in a strategically located land with an educated, English-speaking workforce and bursting with natural resources. That the only Catholic nation in all of East Asia is synonymous with misery and missed opportunities is troubling, to say the least.

Even those who know nothing else about economics know that its nickname is “the dismal science.” In the years since Thomas Carlyle coined the phrase in 1849, there have been plenty of others who have seen economists as little more than quartermasters in the Army of Mammon, toting up their accounts, oblivious to the human carnage around them. Indeed, badmouthing economists may be one of the truly universal traditions, shared by figures on the left, right, and center. Karl Marx called them “sycophants” of the bourgeoisie. Edmund Burke, father of conservatism, used the word pejoratively in his Reflections on the Revolution in France when he lamented that “the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.” More tartly, George Bernard Shaw is said to have observed that “if you laid economists end to end, you would still never reach a conclusion.” And who can match Edmund Clerihew Bentley’s four-line gem:

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]]> Dragon in a Three Piece Suit: The Emergence of Capitalism in China https://www.firstthings.com/article/2000/01/dragon-in-a-three-piece-suit-the-emergence-of-capitalism-in-china https://www.firstthings.com/article/2000/01/dragon-in-a-three-piece-suit-the-emergence-of-capitalism-in-china Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 -0500

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]]> Population and the Wealth of Nations https://www.firstthings.com/article/1996/12/004-population-and-the-wealth-of-nations https://www.firstthings.com/article/1996/12/004-population-and-the-wealth-of-nations Sun, 01 Dec 1996 00:00:00 -0500 By any measure, the future for this Asian country looked bleak. Enormously overcrowded, its normal population had skyrocketed, increased not just by a naturally high birthrate but also by revolution in a neighboring country—forcing thousands of desperate refugees upon its borders. Lacking natural resources and utterly dependent upon its unpleasant neighbor for water and food, the country’s situation had deteriorated so badly that a local UN official declared the only way for it to survive would be with massive Western aid. An American newspaper proclaimed the country to be “dying,” and the government itself inclined to despair. Its own annual report painted a graphic picture:

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]]> Don’t Bet Democratic https://www.firstthings.com/article/1992/08/dont-bet-democratic https://www.firstthings.com/article/1992/08/dont-bet-democratic Sat, 01 Aug 1992 00:00:00 -0400 Minority Party:
Why the Democrats Face Defeat in 1992 and Beyond
by Peter Brown
Regnery Gateway, 350 pages, $21.95

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