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To: long-gone who wrote (71746)	6/14/2001 7:46:02 PM
From: Eclectus	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116753

Long Article by Bill Bonner GOD, MAN, AND ALAN GREENSPAN, Part II Life is full of paradoxes and ironies, dear reader. If it were not so, simple-minded bureaucrats might be able to plan the economy; Alan Greenspan, perhaps the best known public servant since Pontius Pilate, might be able to do as good a job of setting interest rates as the market. But life is not simple. It's most important features - love, faith, beauty, and stock prices - defy a thinking man's efforts and resist his theories; just as a man's wife frustrates his efforts at logical persuasion. Truth - such as it is - must be coaxed out by poetry...or by suffering. There is no other way. Today's letter examines one smallish question and raises a biggish one, in the following order. Why do Americans profess a greater admiration for the free market then, say, the French? Could it be that by submitting to God, they free themselves from the yoke of other men? A Daily Reckoning reader from Seattle sets the stage for today's drama: "In historically Catholic countries, such as France, the 'communion of saints' - the idea that we are all in it together, spiritually (see 1 John 5:16-21 and Col 1:24) and materially (private property ownership was delegated from God and to be used for the common good) led to what you describe. 'Solidarity' is a Catholic virtue which has been adopted by the Commies." Meanwhile, "in historically Protestant countries, such as the US and UK," he writes, "spiritual radical individualism was introduced by the reformation... That understanding of property is deeply Pagan in origin, but taken as Revealed Truth by most conservative protestants. "By and large, Fundamentalists and Evangelicals have a deep faith in the infallibility of the market which Catholics find incomprehensible..." "You have to have faith," I recall my friend Mark Skousen telling his French audience in May. "Faith in the invisible hand of God...faith that the market will work things out to the benefit of all." It is either faith in the market's invisible hand... or faith in the iron fist of government. What else is there, dear reader? A similar question was put to literary critic Harold Bloom by that well-known journal of theology, the Harvard Business Review. "American society is characterized by its devotion both to capitalism and to religion," observed HBR. "As an acute observer of the human condition," the theological journal continued its puff-ball pitch, "you are more interested in religion that in business. Why?" "I believe the ultimate concern of America, for better and for worse, is religion," Bloom replied. "I believe that it is religion in this country that refutes Marx. As I've said so often, religion is not the opiate of the American people; it is their poetry." That was the trouble with the play I saw in London, of course. The playwrite had the poetic talents of a tow truck. The central character of the play had discovered a letter from the 1st century, reporting that the resurrection of Christ had been staged by the Romans. (Those wily Romans!) But what is really shocking about the story of the resurrection of Christ is not that it might have been faked - but that it might not. Any clown can buy a dot.com stock or pretend to be a dead man. But rising from the dead - defying the laws of nature herself - that is a real trick. "The startling thing about the United States," Bloom continues, "is not that 93% of us say that we believe in God, which is, in fact, except for the Republic of Ireland, the highest percentage in the world. The really shocking thing is that 89% of us...say that God loves him or her on a personal basis... "All Americans are poets and mystics," Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote. "I presume that includes capitalists, too," added Bloom. Bill Bonner, Continuing his magical mystery tour of contemporary capitalism... Tomorrow: "A Snowball.com's Chance In Hell" and other darned cheap stocks... Eclectus Got God? Got Gold?