Correction: The basis of Luther’s protest was Johann Tetzel’s sale of indulgences and emphasis on monetary donations for building large churches as a way to earn one’s way into heaven combined with his, Luther’s, paranoid schizophrenia, anti-semitism, alcoholism and his inability to control his libido.

Tetzel was not the “church”. Lusvardi needs to be careful that what he writes is accurate.

Mr. Napablogger: If I understand your statement correctly, you believe that conservatives are too dogmatic when it comes to wanting cuts in government services. Actually, cutting costs may be better than the alternatives.

If you raise taxes, government will just eat up all the monies and find another way to spend it all over again. Witness California.

Conversely, if taxes are kept low this just forces government to sell debt paper but this will have a bad effect on expenditures. If you raise taxes the revenues typically don’t go to reducing debts; instead they will be applied to new debt. The only way out of such a morass is to start cutting out government programs (which you say won’t work). Raising or lowering taxes will make things worse. So cutting costs may not be dogmatic but pragmatic.

Best regards,
Wayne Lusvardi

If you carefully read my article I stated there were two public religions: one economic the other environmental; not economic science vs environmental religion.

But if I had to pick between the two religions, history gives us an indicator.

Economic religion (aka The Protestant Work Ethic and Capitalism) has increased the standard of living in the world from everybody living at the level of Bangladesh prior to 1850 to the affluence and longevity of today.

Environmental religion hasn’t been around as long. In California it produced an energy crisis in 2001 when the EPA mandated the shut down of old polluting power plants to clean up the smog which resulted in a $42 billion bill that was rolled into a bond to be paid off with long-term energy contracts. It has also produced a judicial drought over the protection of the smelt in the Sacramento Delta that a Federal judge finally rules was based on bogus science.

There is a long list of environmental predations too long to list in California. But using history as a criteria, the environment has always been improved with a rising economy. So my choice is for economic religion. But the cultural elites religion is environmentalism – history be damned.

Having said that, Rodgers is a brave man and I am glad he is standing up to environmental dogma.