{"id":41261,"date":"2019-04-29T06:00:24","date_gmt":"2019-04-29T10:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=41261"},"modified":"2019-04-28T18:07:13","modified_gmt":"2019-04-28T22:07:13","slug":"decadence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2019\/04\/decadence\/","title":{"rendered":"Decadence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A piece of fruit is green at first, but after awhile it ripens, reaching its peak of deliciousness.\u00a0 But if it continues to ripen past that point, the fruit starts to decay, until it becomes utterly rotten and decomposes.\u00a0 Not just fruit but other things can decay, including whole societies.<\/p>\n

This thought was occasioned by a George Will column<\/a> on how our politicians of both parties have been blithely raising the federal deficit.\u00a0 Will discusses an article on the subject by Hudson Institute scholar Christopher DeMuth entitled Welfare and Debt:\u00a0 A Moynihan Assessment.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Back in 1986, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the iconoclastic Democratic senator from New York, gave a talk in a church entitled \u201cThe Moral Dimensions of a Two Trillion Dollar Debt.\u201d\u00a0 In the course of his insightful analysis of the history of deficit spending\u2013which even progressives like FDR opposed\u2013Moynihan says this:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people who do the borrowing, which is to say elected officials, are not the ones who will do the repaying. The temptation is real to use debt not as a form of investment, but a means of consumption. Far from the denial of gratification, it can, and frequently does, reflect just the opposite.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Moynihan was alarmed when the deficit reached $2 trillion.\u00a0 Today it is $22 trillion, and it is slated to rise to $38 trillion in the next ten years.\u00a0 DeMuth goes on to chronicle how federal spending shifted from payments for \u201cpublic goods\u201d (defense, roads, infrastructure, etc.) to payments for private individuals.\u00a0 The economic analysis becomes a reflection<\/a> on \u201cour comprehensive rejection of constraint\u2014not only in public finance but in politics, in constitutional structure, in rhetoric, and in culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Our government, he says, \u201cis too little constrained by the objective facts of sustainable public finance, which we are either pretending do not apply to us or are simply ignoring.\u201d\u00a0 We are not constrained by facts.\u00a0 We are not constrained by anything<\/em>.\u00a0 As Will observes<\/a>, \u201cThe word that describes this is: \u2018decadence.'\u201d<\/p>\n

The economic and political problem is only one symptom of a larger cultural phenomenon.\u00a0\u00a0People today brook no constraints on their sexual practices.\u00a0\u00a0Our technology proceeds without constraints.\u00a0 Our religions are not allowed to impose constraints on our behavior.\u00a0 Our consumerism, our political demands, our art forms, our entertainment, our desires\u2013no limits; no constraints.\u00a0\u00a0This is decadence.<\/p>\n

Only dead things decay.\u00a0 A living culture\u2013or nation or arts scene or intellectual movement or religion\u2013acknowledges its limits and is defined by its constraints.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Photo:\u00a0 Rotten Apple by Kulmalukko via Wikimedia Commons [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0)]<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A piece of fruit is green at first, but after awhile it ripens, reaching its peak of deliciousness.\u00a0 But if it continues to ripen past that point, the fruit starts to decay, until it becomes utterly rotten and decomposes.\u00a0 Not just fruit but other things can decay, including whole societies. This thought was occasioned by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":41270,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,13,15],"tags":[8306,8303,824],"class_list":["post-41261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-economics","category-ethics","tag-constraints","tag-decadence","tag-federal-deficits"],"yoast_head":"\nDecadence<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Our deficit spending, says an economist, shows a government without constraints. But our whole culture has repudiated constraints. 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