Once upon a time there were certain religions granted official recognition as having members with conscientious objection to military service. In the conscription of 1917, only the Amish, Quakers and the Church of the Brethren were granted that status. (See "Conscription in the United States.") Since that time, the grounds for conscientious objector status have broadened considerably. Now we have the envelope being pushed into entirely new territory, a member of the Islamic faith claiming conscientious objector status after already serving in the military:

This has all sorts of interesting, and potentially dangerous, implications.

President John F. Kennedy, on May 25, 1961:

"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal before this decade is out of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth."

I must confess, I, too, am inclined to pessimism on this. Failure to address the reality of the homosexual marriage issue is only a symptom of the larger moral problems we face, or, actually, fail to confront in our society through a lack of moral courage and moral fiber. It is possible, if enough people in this generation pray intensely enough, we will survive as a democratic culture, but highly unlikely that this generation will see the light at the end of the tunnel.

One of the more reliable indicators of insanity is an unbroken pattern of behavior intended to achieve an ever elusive result. Openness to reality as it is requires that we adjust our strategy, or even scrap it and start over, when it fails utterly and repeatedly.

Dr. Thomas Sowell has written another helpful review of concrete examples of moral hazard built into the fabric of society by government policy. See "'Moral Hazard' in Politics." Although his examples are very important, and indicative of the general problem, they are the tip of the iceberg. Our society and our economy have become deeply corrupted by the systematic injection of moral hazard into their fabric.

As we approach the feast of St. Augustine, we might do well to remember his fierce defense of the theology of grace as against the Pelagian heresy. Pelagianism "is the belief that original sin did not taint Human nature and that mortal will is still capable of choosing good or evil without special Divine aid." Human history is a continuous demonstration of the falseness of this heresy.

As everyone knows, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his "I have a dream!" speech at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28th, 1963, 47 years ago, less than 5 years before Dr. King was martyred (prior to which he delivered his prescient Moses speech, "I've been to the mountain top!").

I'm not a student of Latin. Nevertheless, a little searching on the Internet yields the following from the University of Notre Dame Latin Dictionary and Grammar Aid:

sido sidere sidi and sedi sessum [to sit or sink down , settle, alight; to remain lying or fixed]; naut. [to stick fast, be stranded]; of feelings, [to subside].

Historical criticism has yet to systematically examine the failure of world communist states from the perspective of game theory. Was the reason for their failure the fact that they were bad at economic, political and military gamesmanship, or is there something deeper involved1? Of course, communist states throughout history have attempted to use reward and punishment in order to advance policy agendas. There is a legitimate question whether they could have been better at it. This seems to be an unstated question underlying the recent work of some game theorists.

1. 1. Of course, I have tried to argue here that the fundamental reasons include the false premise that centralized management is better than an open marketplace of ideas and entrepreneurship. This is the difference between supersidiarism and subsidiarism. Subsidiarism accounts for the brilliant success of the American economic and political framework, while supersidiarism accounts for the failure of collectivist states. The former motivates creativity, industry and energy, while the latter crushes it.