You may have missed it and the media certainly did not promote it, but one of the most significant events in modern history occurred only about two weeks ago—the inauguration of Hamid Karzai as President of Afghanistan.  Let’s think about this momentous development.

• First, some background.  For nearly a decade, the US did nothing about the growing use of Afghanistan as a base for al Qaeda.  President Clinton fired a few cruise missiles at Osama bin Laden’s camps, but to no avail.  Then came 9/11/01 and the US made war on the Taliban and al Qaeda; within 100 days, al Qaeda was routed and the Taliban overthrown.  Then came the first election in Afghanistan’s history, followed by the inauguration of President Karzai, a deeply respected leader, who now thanks the US for liberating his country.  (One of the faculty members at the University I lead just returned from a ministry in Afghanistan, where she ministered especially to women in that nation.  Universally, she observed the gratefulness of the Afghan people for what President Bush had done.  In fact, she was there during the US presidential election and the people with whom she met were all grateful that Bush had been reelected.)  Incredibly, we are talking about Afghanistan, which only three years ago was not just a hostile country, but an utterly untouchable one.  President Karzai controls Kabul, the major cities and much in between.  He is also successfully leveraging his power to gradually extend his authority as he creates entirely new federal institutions and an entirely new military.  He is gradually winning control and support from the traditional warlords and is thereby gaining legitimacy through the entire country.  Critics try and diminish the significance of what has occurred in this country but Charles Krauthammer reminds us of one central truth:  “Who is responsible for this [miracle]?  The New York Times gives major credit to ‘the Afghan people’ with their ‘courage and commitment.’  Courage and commitment there was, but the courage and commitment were curiously imperceptible until this administration conceived of a radical war plan, executed it brilliantly, liberated the country and created from scratch the structures of democracy.”  “Afghanistan is the first graduate of the Bush doctrine of spreading democracy in rather hostile places.”  It at least deserves a significant moment of some celebration—both within the US and throughout the world.

• Second, why is it important that Afghanistan is a democratic nation?  As Michael Ignatieff reminds us, “For the first time in history, a majority of the world’s peoples live in democracies.  In a dangerous time, this is about the best news around, since democracies, by and large, do not fight one another, and they do not break up into civil war.”  Ignatieff cites persuasively a new book by Morton Halperin, entitled The Democracy Advantage.  In this book, the author shows that poor democracies deliver more growth, lower infant mortality and higher life expectancy. . . . Democracy is the one political system that says to every individual: you matter and your vote matters.  So bad leaders can’t treat democrats like fools and expect to get away with it.”  The United States can help give people a chance at free elections (e.g., Afghanistan, Iraq), but it is the people themselves who must anchor free institutions in their own soil.  The evidence from Iraq is that millions of Kurds and Shia, and some Sunnis, passionately want free elections in their country.  There is no reason that American soldiers cannot help them ensure a relatively free electoral process in January just as they helped out in Afghanistan.  “This moment, frightening and precarious as it is, is the last chance Iraqis have to exit from the black tunnel of Ba’athist rule and the chaos of incipient civil war.” 

See Krauthammer’s article in the Washington Post (10 December 2004) and Ignatieff’s article in the New York Times Magazine (12 December 2004), pp. 29-34.

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ECONOMIC REALITIES: SOME FRIGHTENING TRUTHS

As we begin to close out the holiday shopping season, there are some harsh and brutal realities that face the American economy.

• First is the matter of debt.  A New York woman, Antoinette Millard, is suing American Express for improperly soliciting her to sign up for a credit card, on which she has now accumulated nearly $1 million of debt.  As absurd as this victim-mentality-type of court case is, it does point out that consumer debt drives the America economy.  After all, the US economy depends on its citizens’ penchant for spending with abandon.  Consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of the nation’s $11 trillion economy.  But now the outlook for consumer-driven growth is in doubt, given the low savings rates and high debt levels of many American families.  In October, according the Commerce Department, personal savings was a meager two-tenths of 1 % of their disposable income.  The rate implies that a family with take-home pay of $40,000 saves an average of $1.50 per week.  In contrast, the average American household now spends 13% of its after-tax income to pay debts, the highest percentage since 1986.  Although much of it goes to pay home mortgages and car loans, the average American household is also carrying more than $8,000 in credit card debt!!  Every 15 seconds, someone in the US goes bankrupt, five times the rate in 1980.  As Steve Lohr has shown, “Consumer debt is, in a sense, a freedom.  It has allowed consumers to buy things that would have been beyond their means. . . .”  The big issue is whether this democratization of money and finance has on balance, been a positive or a negative thing.  It is difficult for me to see an average $8,000 credit card debt as a positive thing!

• Second is the matter of the declining value of the dollar.  Why is the dollar in such decline; and is that important?  Americans have become global consumers of last resort, gobbling up far more than the US produces by importing from economies that churn out far more stuff than they can consume at home.  These countries send us things to eat, wear, drive and plug in.  We buy from thriftier economies, mainly in Asia, and they lend us $1.8 billion every day.  This has, quite frankly, been a very good deal for America.  We have been able to live beyond our means.  Interest rates have stayed low because foreigners have been happy to purchase huge amounts of our debt issued by the US Treasury and mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  To keep their exports attractive to US consumers, Asian economies have pegged their currencies to the dollar (e.g., China, Hong Kong and Malaysia) or actively sold them for dollars (e.g., Japan, Korea and Taiwan).  They have, in essence, taken the money the US sent them to buy imports and lent it back to the US.  For that reason, both China and Japan have a very significant investment in the US economy and the dollar and in the stability of both.  The problem now is that the dollar continues to slide and foreigners are growing reluctant to hold even more dollars.  The gap between US exports and imports and the amount of US borrowing is getting uncomfortably large by historical standards.  The US is expected to borrow $670 billion this year from the rest of the world.  That works out to an unprecedented 5.7% of the US gross domestic product, about twice as large as many mainstream economists consider sustainable.  The value of US assets abroad is now far less than foreign-owned assets in the US.  The net difference is a staggering 25% of GDP.  Over all, the solution for the US is that it must save more and borrow less.  US businesses are saving a lot these days—in part because they have been reluctant to invest.  As the first part of this perspective has shown, American families are not saving anything at all.  And the federal government is borrowing at unprecedented rates.  Simply put:  The US government must get its deficit under control and the consumer must stop borrowing so much and save more!  There is no other solution, either short-or long-term.

See Steve Lohr, New York Times (6 December 2004) and David Wessel, Wall Street Journal (2 December 2004).  I relied heavily on Wessel’s analysis of the dollar situation.

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HOLLYWOOD’S HERO: ALFRED C. KINSEY

One of the major holiday movies recently released by Hollywood is Kinsey, starring actor Liam Neeson as Alfred Kinsey.  The movie depicts Kinsey as a crusader against hypocrisy and superstition, a scientific warrior going into battle against what he disparagingly called “morality disguised as fact.”  How should we think about this movie?

• First some background.  Alfred Kinsey published his pathbreaking books, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the American Female (1953), both of which revolutionized American thinking about sex.  Kinsey’s data, taken from in-person interviews with 18,000 people, led to provocative and shocking conclusions about American sexuality.  There is no question that his population samples—volunteers, with an overload of prisoners and college-educated women—were flawed.  Therefore, his conclusion, for example, that 10% of American males are homosexuals is deeply flawed!  Modern researchers, using much more reliable samples are reaching conclusions that point out the flaws of Kinsey’s research methodology.

• Second, as A.O. Scott has shown, “the movie combines Kinsey’s scientific zeal with a sense not only of his personal blind spots, but also of the limitations of scientific knowledge as a means of understanding sex.”  That Kinsey, for example, refused to judge any of his interview subjects may have been methodically sound, but his detachment from the emotional consequences and moral implications of his own actions, shows how truly flawed a man he really was.  Kinsey, determined to bring sex into quantitative, empirical focus, to marry physiology and statistics, “was grandly idealistic and curiously myopic.”  He conducted experiments with his research assistants and their wives in a manner that was highly questionable and certainly ethically wrong!  Further, he desired it disentangle sex from emotion and intimate depth, an impossible thing to do, for that is not how God made humans.  Simply, put, one cannot study sex in isolation from emotion and intimacy.

• Finally, there is no question that Kinsey was a complicated, dysfunctional man himself.  He came from a very dysfunctional family and his father’s problems had a profoundly negative impact on Kinsey.  Further, Kinsey himself was an immoral man, who was unfaithful to his wife and engaged in homosexual relationships.  The movie, Kinsey, does depict some of this dysfunction and does show the complexity of his personality, but really does not reach any ethical conclusions about Kinsey himself.  Because of his personal dysfunction and significant immorality, it is difficult to accept his work as credible and it is even more difficult to hold him up as a model scientist.  A troubled and complex man, Alfred Kinsey was more of a tragedy than a hero.  He illustrates rather powerfully the axiom that if you violate God’s ethical standards, including those dealing with sexuality, there is a consequence.  God provided the gift of sex as an aspect of the beauty of marriage.  Anything that steps outside that parameter will result in dysfunction and monstrous tragedy.  Alfred Kinsey offers compelling evidence of that truth and that is very sad.

See A.O. Scott’s review in the New York Times (12 December 2004) and Claudia Kalb, “Let’s Talk About Sex” in World (8 November 2004), pp. 48-49.

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