From: "The Last Puritan: Meet Marvin Olasky, Governor Bush's Compassionate
Conservative Guru" by Michael King
For Olasky, economics (like charity) is a very personal science,
with the Bible as prescriptive authority. He refers regularly to
something he calls "Bible-based free market economics," conjuring a
somewhat puzzling vision of yeomanlike Mom-and-Pop stores along the
banks of the Tigris and Euphrates. When I asked him what he might
mean, he eagerly recommended a book, Prosperity and Poverty, by E.
Calvin Beisner, in the Olasky-edited series from Crossway Books.
Beisner, the cover proclaims, has an "M.A. in Society, with
specialization in economics ethics [sic] and has studied Christian
ethics in economics and apologetics." According to Beisner's book,
the Christian God is a sort of cosmic Landlord, Overseer, and
Investment Banker, and each person's responsibility is to "maximize
the Owner's return on His investment." Such maximization requires a
pure form of laissez-faire economics under which, Beisner
apologeticizes, "Such things as minimum wage laws, legally mandated
racial quotas in employment, legal restrictions on import and
export, laws requiring `equal pay for equal work,' and all other
regulations of economic activity other than those necessary to
prohibit, prevent, and punish fraud, theft, and violence are
therefore unjust." One imagines that Beisner is a popular
after-dinner speaker at solemn gatherings of Christian businessmen.
Such passing summations, unfortunately, are not caricatures of
Olasky's thought, but in fact the root and governing ideas of most
of his writings. Indeed, since he was gathered up by the burgeoning
network of national conservative foundations and think tanks (the
Heritage Foundation, the Bradley Foundation, the Capital Research
Center, the Progress and Freedom Foundation, the Western Journalism
Center, the Acton Institute for Religion and Liberty, etc., etc.,
etc.), his work has become even more simplistic, moralistic, and
unreflectively reactionary.
Renewing American Compassion (1996) is largely a practical
companion to Tragedy, filled with anecdotes of small-scale
Christian charity projects, and concluding with pietistic
suggestions for readers who wish to engage in conservative
compassion. ("Teach rich and poor what the Bible has to say about
wealth and poverty. Help a poor person negotiate the legal system.
Employ a jobless person. Lead a neighborhood association in a poor
part of town. Start a crisis pregnancy center. Give a pregnant
teenager a room in your home. House a homeless person. Adopt a
child.")
Tom Walker
Sandwichman and Deconsultant
Bowen Island
(604) 947-2213
