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Part I: Stop the Circles!

Let me say, first of all, that I don't have a problem with circles. I'm not thinking specifically of the circles that Plato wrote and thought about, the kind he learned from Pythagoras, for these are really perfect and are not possibly exemplified anywhere in the universe. I'm also not talking about the dhikr of the Whirling Dervish, nor the circles kids make with crayons, nor the kind of circles that dogs make before lying down. No, I'm thinking about the kind of circles that, in the abstract, we recognize within the world's processes. Social scientists love these, because after a few revolutions these circles become something else, and this gives joy to the social scientist, because he now has something to anticipate and predict and argue about. That's why this is the stuff of theoretical disputations in history, economics, political science, the Farmer's Almanac, and the guy sitting in his underwear in his La-Z-Boy® recliner with a can of Schaefer Beer in hand.

And so the real problem is that some of these circles, once they've made a complete revolution, thereby making a complete "circle" so to speak, are turned into cycles. I don't necessarily have a problem with cycles, because some of these are a necessary fact of our existence. So I don't worry about the cycle of night and day, other astronomical cycles, agricultural cycles, weather and climate cycles, or the menstrual cycle. But I do worry about those cycles that, when they appear, you know immediately that we don't want these and want to stop them right away. We want to upend them from the inertia of their arc, to bend them back, and to send them off on a straightened path.

That's why I hate to repeat myself, and why the new Black Friday tragedies are so utterly deplorable. Here is complete convergence of psychology, economics, and social deviance—all in a swirl of fanaticism at the altar of intemperance. If there is a law of nature that necessitates this, we could simply repose with the Stoics and next year plan on parking ambulances (along with a phalanx of emergency response personnel) outside of Wal-Mart on the day after Thanksgiving, and then just count the number of dead or injured in the same way we calculate total sales.

Of course, trying to stop a cycle like this is much like standing on the railroad tracks and showing your palm to a Shinkansen high-speed train heading your way. So the proper strategy has to be in taking apart the several forces that push this into a circle in the first place. As I am wont to say: If it doesn't go around, it can't again be found.¹

Well, perhaps these forces are too strong for us. Perhaps we don't understand the forces well enough to deal them. Perhaps we won't have to. Paul Craig Roberts observed recently that the US is no longer a superpower, but is now "a financially dependent country that foreign lenders can close down at will."² So it could happen that these circles will be dissipated, evaporated along with the entire commercial structure of the United States, by actions from terrestrial powers much stronger than us.

Or we can recognize that these forces are the very same forces that have led us, as a nation, to go along with the sandy buy-and-spend foundation of what is supposed to pass for the American form of Capitalism. If we accept that the economy exists for the person, not the person for the economy,³ then we must accept that our government has an inherent duty to restructure the forces that have not merely enabled but have actually caused the people to pursue blindly, and frequently with irrational abandon, the acquisition of what are in fact luxuries, sometimes, as we have recently and sadly learned, at the expense of losing their shelter (their homes) in the process of this hideous pursuit. In this light, the "bail out" of our financial institutions, using the $700+ billion TARP funds, is merely an act of enabling, in the same abhorrent sense that persons enable the addictions of others.

Where do we start? We start not with the government, but with ourselves. We start by taking back our economy. It is ours and it does not belong to the government. We make or buy what we need, give to others as we are capable, and only then are the luxuries ours to ponder. We use cash, and agree to credit only when we are assured that we know we can fulfill the promise to repay it (otherwise, well, it is a lie). The consequence will be that we will have less than we thought we needed, we will make do with less than we have, and our government will also have less to spend for the luxuries that corporations swear we all must have.

1.  With apologies to the late Johnnie Cochran, from whose mantra I have borrowed. See "'If it doesn't fit, you must acquit'," CNN, September 28, 1995; "O.J. Simpson trial: The gloves don't fit," CNN (archived December 31, 2007).
2.  See his interview on Democracy Now! on October 17, 2008.
3.  There is much to praise in A Catholic Framework for Economic Life [PDF]. On November 2, 1996, the American Roman Catholic bishops summarized the Church's teaching on the economy: the economy exists for the person, not the person for the economy; all economic life should be shaped by moral principles; a fundamental moral measure of an economy is how well the poor and vulnerable fare; all people have a right to life's necessities and to productive work, along with a corresponding responsibility to provide for their families' needs, and an obligation to contribute to society; and workers, owners, managers, stockholders, and consumers should act as moral agents in economic life. This was itself a restatement of their 1986 pastoral letter Economic Justice for All.