The Culture of Apology

The Doctrine of Discovery is how Europeans, and then the United States, justified the conquest of indigenous peoples in the 16th through 19th centuries.

title to lands lay with the government whose subjects explored and occupied a territory whose inhabitants were not subjects of a European Christian monarch. The doctrine has been primarily used to support decisions invalidating or ignoring aboriginal possession of land in favor of colonial or post-colonial governments.

Last year the World Council of Churches repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery. Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori:

The nations from which the settlers came, and the new nations which resulted in the Americas, sought to impose another culture and way of life on the peoples they encountered. Attempting to remake the land and peoples they found “in their own image” was a profound act of idolatry.

The age of Western expansion was marked by brutality, subjugation, and exploitation, and it is consistent with their faith for Christians to repent and make amends, even if the sins were committed by one's ancestors.

History teaches, of course, that imperialism was not confined to the West; the Russian, Ottoman, Mongolian, and Mayan empires slaughtered millions more than the West ever did, but no apologies ever came from those quarters. Another example of Western exceptionalism--not the imperialism, but the culture of apology. © 2013 Stephen Yuen

Perspectives on Unemployment

The Wall Street Journal:

Just 88,000 jobs were created last month, far below February's 268,000 gain. The unemployment rate, derived from a separate survey, dropped to a four-year low of 7.6%. But the decline was prompted by nearly a half-million workers leaving the job market, not job growth.

The Economist:

UNEMPLOYMENT in the euro area reached a record high in early 2013. According to Eurostat, the European Commission's statistical service, unemployment in the 17 member states stood at 12% in February (and in January after a revision), the highest in the euro area's history.

David Letterman:

Yesterday [was] take-your-son-or-daughter-to-work day. You know, that's how we got Kim Jong-Un!

You know, for a lot of people it's take-your-son-or-daughter-where-you-used-to work.

And in China, kids take their parents to work!

The business pubs make you think, but David Letterman makes me laugh. Right now I'd rather laugh.

Fear is Ascendant

Fear controls our lives.

Many of us fear bad or crazy people with guns, so we buy a gun ourselves. That protective behavior raises the fear quotient, because those who don't have guns fear everyone who has one, not just the aforementioned bad or crazy people. (It doesn't help in the gun debate, by the way, that opponents are calling each other stupid and evil. Anger and demonization of the other adds to the general meanness of civic discourse and leads to hardening of positions.)

The fiscal cliff has been in the news. This colorful metaphor is most likely an exaggeration of what will happen to the economy under higher tax rates and reduced government spending. True, there are some sectors, like defense, that will fare much worse than others (and for whom the cliff imagery may be apt), but few economists are forecasting a widespread collapse or even a near-collapse like the one in 2008. These comforting rationalizations, however, mean little to the stock market, which has been dropping in recent days.

Then there's the Mayan prophecy of doomsday on December 21, 2012 (if you're reading this after Thursday, hooray, mankind dodged another one).

Your humble observer can't wait for these latest concerns to be resolved (or forgotten) so that he can go back to worrying about global warming, the war on terror, Iranian nuclear weapons, and the breakup of the Euro. Ah, the good, old, less-fearful days. © 2012 Stephen Yuen