The following is an excerpt from a sermon given by Rabbi Shalom Lewis in Atlanta:

We must be diligent students of history and not sit in ash cloth at the waters of Babylon weeping.  We cannot be hypnotized by eloquent-sounding rhetoric that soothes our heart but endangers our soul.  We cannot be lulled into inaction for fear of offending the offenders.  Radical Islam is the scourge and this must be cried out from every mountain top.  From sea to shining sea, we must stand tall, prideful of our stunning decency and moral resilience.  Immediately after 9/11 how many mosques were destroyed in America?  None.  After 9/11, how many Muslims were killed in America?  None.  After 9/11, how many anti-Muslim rallies were held in America?  None.  And yet, we apologize.  We grovel.  We beg forgiveness.

The mystifying litany of our foolishness continues.  Should there be a shul in Hebron on the site where Baruch Goldstein gunned down twenty-seven Arabs at noonday prayers?  Should there be a museum praising the U.S. Calvary on the site of Wounded Knee?  Should there be a German cultural center in Auschwitz?  Should a church be built in the Syrian town of Ma’arra where Crusaders slaughtered over 100,000 Muslims?  Should there be a thirteen story mosque and Islamic Center only a few steps from Ground Zero?

The following is an excerpt from a sermon given by Rabbi Shalom Lewis in Atlanta:

Now before some folks roll their eyes and glance at their watches let me state emphatically, unmistakably – I have no pathology of hate, nor am I a manic Paul Revere, galloping through the countryside.  I am not a pessimist, nor prone to panic attacks.  I am a lover of humanity, all humanity.  Whether they worship in a synagogue, a church, a mosque, a temple or don’t worship at all.  I have no bone of bigotry in my body, but what I do have is hatred for those who hate, intolerance for those who are intolerant, and a guiltless, unstoppable obsession to see evil eradicated.

Today the enemy is radical Islam but it must be said sadly and reluctantly that there are unwitting, co-conspirators who strengthen the hands of the evil doers.  Let me state that the overwhelming number of Muslims want nothing more than a Jeep Cherokee in their driveway, a flat screen TV on their wall and a good education for their children, but these good Muslims have an obligation to destiny, to decency that thus far for the most part they have avoided.  The Kulturkampf is not only external but internal as well.  The good Muslims must sponsor rallies in Times Square, in Trafalgar Square, in the UN Plaza, on the Champs Elysee, in Mecca condemning terrorism, denouncing unequivocally the slaughter of the innocent.  Thus far, they have not.  The good Muslims must place ads in the NY Times.  They must buy time on network TV, on cable stations, in the Jerusalem Post, in Le Monde, in Al Watan, on Al Jazeena condemning terrorism, denouncing unequivocally the slaughter of the innocent – thus far, they have not.  Their silence allows the vicious to tarnish Islam and define it.

Monetary debates were even the stuff of popular culture (at the turn of the 20^th century). Indeed L. Frank Baum’s enduring The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published in 1900, has been read as an elaborate allegory for the monetary politics of the era.  Dorothy stands for the American people at their best; Aunt Em and Uncle Henry, the struggling farmers;  the cyclone, the financial storms and political unrest of the 1890s.  Slippers of silver (not the ruby ones of the movie version) tread the path of gold (the Yellow Brick Road) that leads to the Emerald City of power (Washington).  There are the unemployed factory worker (the rusting Tin Man), the farmer (Scarecrow), and in some interpretations, pacifist William Jennings Bryan himself (the cowardly lion with a frightening roar).  The wizard, in allegorical readings, is a political charlatan, in some versions Mark Hanna, the strategist widely seen as manipulating William McKinley.  (If only the book had been written later, literary economists could have painted the wizard as chairman of the Federal Reserve.  Alan Greenspan, after all, was likened to the Wizard of Oz, the man whose aura of mystery and power exaggerated his wisdom and capacity to control events.)

From In Fed We Trust- Ben Bernanke’s War on the Great Panic by David Wessel

The default belief  of our economic history of the last 100 years has been an acceptance of the dynamic growth of capitalism punctuated by excesses of market greed that have to be corrected by the singular wisdom of government regulation.

On closer examination many of those moments of market greed and excess look more like incompetent government meddling caused the problem.

During the Depression of 1929 we saw 10,000 banks collapse in the United States. Yet during that same period the number of bank failures in Canada were zero.  Was Canada spared the depression that engulfed the United States? No, but Canada was spared a regulation that prevented banks from crossing state lines.

Bending to pressure to protect local banks from encountering big business center banks, they got relief and protection from the Federal government in the restriction of interstate competition.  But that also severely limited their flexibility in dealing with a crisis, a limit that did not exist in Canada where risks were spread over larger areas and underutilized assets could be easily relocated.

Yet to respond to the bank failures that the government largely caused they created the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation).  FDR opposed the FDIC because he saw it would create a sanction for reckless behavior and penalize prudently run banks.  FDR capitulated in a compromise and the FDIC began by insuring deposits for $2500 in 1934. It was raised to $5,000 in 1935, $10,000 in 1950 (Truman), $15,000 in 1966 (Johnson), $20,000 in 1968 (LBJ again), $40,000 in 1974 (Nixon), and then $100,000 under Jimmy Carter in 1980.  Bush raised it to $250,000 before he left office, but it is due to revert back to $100,000 in 2013.

Ten years after Carter raised the limit we experienced the Savings and Loans meltdown, caused by the excessive risk taking in that industry. The government again intervened and created the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) to dispose of failed thrift institutions taken over by regulators after January 1, 1989 in an orderly manner.

The FDIC created the moral hazard FDR feared. It privatized the profits and socialized the risks.  This behavior was repeated, but on steroids, with the implicit assumption of risk by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Housing was deemed a federal priority, and helping the poorer people get into housing has been a priority since Fannie Mae was created again by FDR in 1938.  But housing prices were highest and least affordable in select areas where local ordinances had restricted supply and raised prices far more than in areas were market forces prevailed.

Tax policies such as mortgage interest deductions and preferred capital gains treatment increased the demand for housing. The Community Reinvestment Act, passed under Carter but exploited under Clinton and Bush, pressured banks to make mortgage loans to less and less qualified buyers. Fannie Mae guaranteed loans, clearing the ratings agencies which had a government protected franchise; to give higher ratings than these mortgage backed securities could have conceivably obtained on the merits of their assets. This widened the market for these securities and caused even more money to be driven into the housing market from all over the world creating the bubble that had to burst.

To compound the damage the government required a mark to market rule for valuing these mortgage loans at the worst possible time; when no market existed.  The market to market rule causes valuations to go to extremes, high and low.  This caused capital to dry up and regulations required banks to rebuild capital reserves instead of making loans. Then at a time when information was critical to valuing these securities, the government suspended short selling, a critical source of such information.

During the recent financial disaster, Canada did not exhibit near the real estate collapse we did in the United States.  In Canada they had far less exposure to sub prime loans, large down payments were still required while we all but eliminated down payments for the poorest home buyers in the name of ‘compassionate conservatism’, and mortgage borrowers in Canada were still held personally liable for their loans. Canada had tougher and more prudent lending standards, but they avoided the fiasco foisted on us by well intentioned but misguided moral supremacists on the government payroll.

The government in the U.S. inflated this bubble as eagerly as any on Wall Street, but our government “had a much bigger pump”.

Seventy five years ago we could have looked to our northern neighbor and learned better behavior instead of demonizing capitalism. Today we can learn the same lesson, but again we seek to demonize the private sector for conditions created by incompetent government regulation. Wall Street clearly has its demons to account for, but its greed was enabled and often encouraged by incompetent regulations and policy that has a long history.

As we crave more government oversight we should ask who will oversee the government that has demonstrated such spectacular failure.

Cutting the size of government is as essential to the body politic’s health as a weight-reduction program is to restoring any human body that excess has caused to degrade into obesity. Just as someone who is serious about his health asks, “Do I need cupcakes at all?  Didn’t I get along even better before I made them part of my life?,” proof of the Country Class’ seriousness is whether it asks, “ Do we really need the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities?  Didn’t we get a long perfectly well before we had the Corporation for Public Broadcasting?  If America was better educated before we established a Department of Education than it has been since, why do we continue to have such a department?”  Reducing agencies’ budgets is unserious. If a job should be done and the agency is doing it, why cut?  But if it is not, why not abolish?

Yet shedding fat is the easy part. Restoring atrophied muscles is harder. Re-enabling the body to do elementary tasks takes more concentration.  Does the Country Class really want to govern itself, or is it just whining for milder taskmasters?

From The Ruling Class – How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It by Angelo Codevilla.  This is from the book that was excerpted in the American Spectator and I have posted several excerpts from it.  It is one of the most perceptive views of our state of political affairs and clarifies much of the energy and real source of the Tea Party movement.