During Moon
Griffon’s Monday radio program (11 Dec. 2023), he recounted what he’s seen on
recent trips to Texas and Tennessee. He
sounded downright captivated by the large numbers of ‘young professionals’ and
‘construction cranes’ he saw; he proclaimed over and over again that economic
development is the ‘engine’ of a State’s ‘train’. Someone listening would come away with the
idea that nothing is more important to a community of people than her economy.
Is that the
case? Some simple thought experiments
will tell us.
Suppose
Louisiana’s GDP were growing at 5% per year, but that this led to a massive
influx of rude, know-it-all, Left-leaning Yankees from Boston, Mass., and
Portland, Oregon, etc. Would we be
content with such a situation?
Suppose
Louisiana’s GDP were growing at 10% per year, but that this led to a massive
influx of people even more culturally different than Yankees, such as
Indonesians, Turks, and Somalis. Would
we be content with such a situation?
Suppose
Louisiana’s GDP were growing at an astounding 20% per year, but that all this
material abundance caused most of the population to reject the Christian
Faith. Would we be content with such a
situation?
Obviously,
some things are more valuable than the economy.
Louisiana could learn some indispensable lessons from Europe in this
regard. Because of extremely low birth
rates, European countries have opened their borders wide to attract cheap Asian
and African labor to prop up their economies (and there are more sinister
motives, too); the
results have been devastating:
Mass migration
over the past two decades has changed the character of Western European
societies. Last year net immigration to the UK reached a record 745,000. In the
once-isolated and homogenous Republic of Ireland, one in five of today’s
residents was born abroad. These sorts of seismic demographic changes
inevitably raise concerns about how our countries and communities are being
changed, and why. They threaten to alter the meaning of citizenship, of our
stake in society. . . . To live in a multi-cultural
society, however, under divisive rules and self-loathing laws imposed from the
top down, feels more like a denial of the national culture and established
values that held people together. The woke EU elites are not merely oblivious
to these popular concerns. They have actively sought to weaponise mass
migration as a political and cultural ‘wedge,’ to weaken Europe’s traditional
national and community loyalties.
A talented
writer/analyst Perrin Lovett reminds
us, ‘The three pillars of Western Civilization
are Christianity, the Greco-Roman legacy, and the heritage(s) of the European
nations.’ Let us beware.
Holy men
down through the centuries have also warned about the negative effects of desiring
money, comfort, etc. A recent saint, St.
Theophan the Recluse (+1894), warns
us,
Woe to those who are rich, who are full,
who laugh, and who are praised. But good shall come to those who endure every
wrongful accusation, beating, robbery, or compulsory difficulty. This is completely
opposite to what people usually think and feel! The thoughts of God are as far
from human thoughts as heaven is from the earth. How else could it be? We are
in exile; and it is not remarkable for those in exile to be offended and insulted.
We are under a penance; the penance consists of deprivations and labors. We are
sick; and most useful for the sick are bitter medicines. The Savior Himself
all of His life did not have a place to lay His head, and He finished his life
on the cross — why should his followers have a better lot? The Spirit of Christ
is the spirit of preparedness to suffer and bear good-naturedly all that is
sorrowful. Comfort, arrogance, splendor, and ease are all foreign to its
searching and tastes. Its path lies in the fruitless, dreary desert. The model
is the forty-year wandering of the Israelites in the desert. Who follows this
path? Everyone who sees Canaan beyond the desert, boiling over with milk and
honey. During his wandering he too receives manna, however not from the earth,
but from heaven; not bodily, but spiritually. All the glory is within.
A much older
saint, St. John Chrysostom (+407), who remains nevertheless one of the greatest
preachers of the Church, adds to that his own warnings about aspirations for
wealth in
his commentary on St. Paul’s First Letter to Timothy:
. . .
The rest is
at https://thehayride.com/2023/12/garlington-is-economic-development-the-most-important-thing-in-society/.
--
Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us
sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!
Anathema to the Union!
