Richard Larsen's Blog

As the stock market has been advancing into all-time high territory this week, many Americans are wondering how the economy can be so great while they’re struggling so hard to make ends meet.

“One man with courage makes a majority,” penned Thomas Jefferson. When that courage is armed with principle and backed by constitutional precepts, it’s formidable. Such was the case this week when Kentucky’s Junior Senator, Rand Paul, took to the floor of the senate in a one-man filibuster, reminiscent of the 1939 “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”

Listening to our top politician in Washington this week was reminiscent of Chicken Little’s apocalyptic warning, “The sky is falling.” In daily appearances the loss of 2.5% of the federal budget has been lamented, implying catastrophic consequences.

Historically, Presidential Inaugural Addresses have sought to inspire and unite the nation, and provide directional leadership for the next presidential term. Perhaps to some, last Monday’s speech did that. But to adherents of American exceptionalism, it was disconcerting.

The major news services this week universally proclaimed that the “fiscal cliff” had been averted by a last minute deal between congress and the White House. There were many components to the fiscal cliff, some of which have been addressed by the last-minute deal, and many that were not.

I was astounded recently to hear someone say they believe the talk of a “fiscal cliff” is artificial and not a legitimate threat. There is an artificial component to it in that government created it, but the threat is legitimate, and not only will it impact everyone of us in one way or another, even if an agreement is reached in Washington, but the cumulative economic impact could be significant.

The late Allan Bloom, professor of philosophy at Cornell, Yale, and the University of Chicago, wrote some twenty years ago in The Closing of the American Mind, “There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.” If all truth is relative, all morality becomes relative as well, for the elimination of absolute truth claims absolute morality as its first victim.