May 10, 2014
The Pope, the Perons, a mysterious “lock box”,
and why “mater si, magistra no” is still valid doctrine.
The term “ex cathedra” applies.

When Pope Francis, and blessed be his name, turned 13 the Big Boss in the City of Good Airs was Juan Peron. Just like Jesus forgave Mary Magdalene he forgave Eva Duarte. As Evita Peron she was a glass ceiling breaker long before its time. She turned her horizontal tango skills into a vast shopping spree.

Argentina was/is/and shall be a land that has received a wildly disproportionate share of God’s blessings. If it isn’t grown there it can’t be grown. Las vacas climb the Andes to graze there. Los toros swim mighty rivers to be with them. Almost as an afterthought world class wines are made there. They play soccer and polo superbly well.

And now comes the other zapato.

The country is almost 200 years old.

The only lasting contribution it has made to the Western Canon, to the ever expanding legacy of Western Civilization, is the tango. This version is the one that has 4 feet on the ground at all times. The obverse of that coin is that they stole it from the Italians.

It would be easier for Argentineans to get to Saturn as it would be for them to understand that as you sow so shall you reap.

Commercial contracts are made to be broken. Bonds are sold so they can be defaulted. The constant solution to inflation, the government imposed tax on the poor and the helpless, is to knock a few zeroes off the currency.

The descamisedas of Evita became the desaparecidos of Galtieri.

And no one said “Basta”!

When Jorge Bergoglio was just a joven he saw how businesses prospered. Buenos Aires was run by a South American version of Tammany Hall on steroids. The mordida became imbedded warp and woof in the DNA of Argentinean business. The alcalde had the ability to make things easy or to make things impossible. Worse, he could raise doubts as to who owned what. That was the world the Pope was raised in.


Alas, his major premise, the one that says business is corrupt and not entitled to keep what it produces, is based on a fallacy. Pope Francis saw the particular of the Argentinean market place and constructed a universal. That is offensive both to Logic, to empiricism, and worse, to fairness. If the subjective rule of a despot determines how filled one’s larder is concupiscence rules.

The evidence of your own eyes tells you that Switzerland and Hong Kong prosper. Cuba and Zimbabwe don’t. Piketty, the du jour prophet of top down redistributionism, essentially a mindset that proclaims that Cuba will be rich if Hong Kong becomes poorer, predicates his secular premise on repealing all the laws governing gravity. When that doesn’t work the 105% tax bracket will become the ideal.

“Such stupidity is not found in nature”.

Even South of the Equator debits still have to equal credits. His accountant father would see and have to square the circle of bribes, slush funds, fake contributions, and phantom purchases that are part of ongoing crony capitalism. Doubtless, his father would have taken an asi es la vida outlook because he lived in the real world and he had a family to raise. In Argentina it was the way negocio was done. Add to that was the simple truth that the Rule of Law was essentially foreign to Argentina. People were beaten; money was stolen; the new boss was the same as the old boss. Thus was formed his vision of wealth creation.

It became known as the “lock box” theory of wealth.

Sitting in the basement of the Big Boss’s castle was a room that housed a big safe, a “lock box” if you will. It was filled with wealth. [How it got there is a different question] A good boss would let some poor people dip their beaks in the trough where dinero flowed. A bad boss would cut back on the goodies.

If no consideration is given to how wealth gets into the “lock box” the only consideration is how fair will be the distribution of its contents.

The New Testament tells us to sell all and give to the poor. The downside of that fallacy is that the goose only has one life

I will know that my Redeemer liveth when I see a Kennedy fire sale at Hyannis to provide for homeless lactose intolerant trans-gendered AIDS victims. As soon as George Soros begins to pass out $20 dollar bills, only on days ending in Y, will we begin to see fairness ascendant.

Why not see if there are any Chinese billionaires who would like to own the Pieta? The distribution of the proceeds would be left to men [and women] known for their fairness.



“Chinese billionaires”? Maybe there were some good parts in Chairman Mao’s red book. What next? The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in a Seminole casino? Tradable indulgences? Commercially available transubstantiation? Purple hat bingos?

In the “solid world” of which Orwell spoke, in the world where “stones are hard and water is wet”, it is a hard fact that the “animal spirits” that Keynes spoke of is what fills the “lock box”. Samuel Johnson spoke of “the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice”.

Tuitions at Catholic schools are paid for with the after tax dollars of parents.

Would not Logic dictate that anything that makes that pie grow exponentially is good? The excesses caused by the fact that men are not angels will be with us forever. We have laws that punish the wretched excesses of the few. Alas, so many of them are caused by the less than deft hand of a government that, since it cannot adequately reward success, it is incapable of punishing failure. Vide Solyndra, VA hospitals, and everybody’s favorite, the Post Office.

The Medicis, the Krupps, Henry Frick, Walt Disney, Clarence Birdseye, Kemmons Wilson, Colonel Sanders, Andrew Grove, Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates, have done more for the untermenschen than can be imagined. The library I went to in Bayonne was built by Andrew Carnegie, at one time the richest man in the world. His legacy continues to this day.

Mother? Yes, and always.
Teacher? No.
And that is ex cathdera.




Kevin Smith