I continue to be amazed at how much relevance the books from this project have in today’s world.  Free to Choose was written in the 1970′s.  Yet much the book, and much of what we have covered here, could easily apply to today.

One of the interesting points in this last section was the inclusion of the Socialist Party Platform of 1928.  The Milton’s write this about the Socialist Party:

In our opinion the Socialist party was the most influential political party in the United States in the first decades of the twentieth century.  Because it had no hope of electoral success on a national level… it could afford to be a party of principle…The Socialist party never received more than 6 percent of the popular vote for President (in 1912 for Eugene Debs).  It got less than 1 percent in 1928 and only 2 percent in 1932 (for Norman Thomas).  Yet almost every economic plank in its 1928 presidential platform has by now been enacted into law.

They include those planks (along with evidence they have been enacted in Appendix A).  This is in-spite of the fact that both Republicans and Democrats have held the presidency since 1928. I think this is one of those lessons I mentioned earlier.  If the Socialist Party’s agenda can be enacted under Democratic and Republican congresses, it can happen again.

We have seen a number of socialist policies enacted over the last two years, and some during the previous eight.  Now that there is a Republican majority, we must hold their feet to the fire to  repeal those laws, and to fight some of the laws that have been enacted since 1928.  Here, the Friedmans have given us a starting point.  This section provides some “draft” constitutional amendments.  One of my favorites is written in language similar to the first amendment.   The Friedmans suggest we add:

“Congress shall make no laws abridging the freedom of sellers of goods or labor to price their products or services.”

Imagine if this was passed today.  Minimum wage laws would be gone.  I suspect many of the price controls that give the unions the ability to compete with the private sector would also be gone.

Free to Choose was a very well written and well thought out book.  It’s lessons are as important today as they were in the 1970′s.  If you haven’t read this book through the Book Notes Project, you should run out and pick up a copy.  You won’t be disappointed.

For Next Week: I have decided to take a week off from the Book Notes project.  I will be back in two weeks with a new entry.  I am starting Conscience of a Conservative by Barry Goldwater.  The book is less than 100 pages.  Between the week off, and the short book, I will probably cover the entire thing in my next post.  Have a good two weeks!

In this weeks reading the Friedman’s spend a lot of time comparing the government’s efforts at protecting the environment.  They look at the FDA, the Consumer Products Safety Commission, and finally the EPA.  For this weeks book notes, I want to focus in their comments regarding the EPA.   The point of the book notes project is to learn from previous thinkers lessons that may apply today.   I think there are tremendous lessons to learn from this section of the book.

Any discussion about the environment usually starts with some poor assumptions.  The Friedmans write:

Public discussion of the environmental issue is frequently characterized more by emotion than reason.  Much of it proceeds as if the issue is pollution versus no pollution, as if it were desirable and possible to have a world without pollution.  That is clearly nonsense.  No one who contemplates the problem seriously will regard zero pollution as either a desirable or a possible state of affairs.

This was true in the 1970′s and it’s true today.   When we talk about man-made global warming, we have to recognize that we can never have “zero pollution”.  In order to have any technology, and any real standard of living, there will be pollution.  We must decide what an acceptable level of pollution is.

This isn’t the only stumbling block to a rational discussion of the environment.  There is also a, “…tendency to pose it in terms of good or evil — to proceed as if bad, malicious people are pouring pollutants into the atmosphere out of the blackness of their hearts, that the problem is one of motives, that if only those of us who are noble would rise in our wrath to subdue the evil men, all would be well.”  I think that this is often the case with environmentalists across the board.

Personally, I believe the “man-made global warming” movement is more about control of people than about protecting the environment.  However, I am always willing to discuss the issue with anyone.  I think the Friedman’s have presented two great ground rules for the next discussion with my eco-friends.  If today’s environmentalist can agree that we will always have some pollution in the environment, and that most people who “pollute” aren’t evil villains with black hat’s and cheesy mustache’s, perhaps we can have a real discussion.  But that might be wishing for a little too much.

For Next Week: Finish the book!!

In Two Weeks: I plan on starting Conscience of a Conservative by Barry Goldwater.

Chapter 7 is entitled “Who Protects the Consumer?” Most of the quotes below are drawn from the second and third page of this section.  I thought it was so insightful that I highlighted it, and read it to my wife.  If you have a high school student in your house, you should have them read this part.

This section begins with the Friedman’s acknowledging that there must be some sort of consumer protections in place in the marketplace.  The question they ask is whether government interventions into the market work to protect the consumer, or work towards some other end.  I think this is particularly relevant today with as much intervention as we have seen by the current administration.

The Friedmans note that government intervention into the market increased after FDR’s New Deal.  Quoting the Friedmans,

Yet intervention remained fairly moderate and continued in the single industry mold.  The Federal Register, established in 1936 to record all the regulations, hearings, and other matters connected with the regulatory agencies, grew, at first rather slowly, then more rapidly.  Three volumes, containing 2,599 pages and taking six inches of shelf space, sufficed for 1936; twelve volumes, containing 10,528 pages and taking twenty-six inches of shelf space, for 1956; and thirteen volumes, containing 16,850 pages and taking thirty-six inches of shelf space, for 1966.

This growth seems large, but it is nothing compared to what would happen in future years.  In the 1970′s the ,”…number of regulatory activities tripled…”.  The Federal Register, would grow in 1978 to 36,487 pages and 127 inches.   I hate to think what the size of the Register is today.  But there is another side of this “growth”.  While the Register grew and grew:

…economic growth in the United States slowed drastically.  From 1949 to 1969, output per man-hour of all persons employed in private business — a simple and comprehensive measure of productivity — rose more than 3 percent a year; in the next decade, less than half as fast; and by the end of the decade productivity was actually declining.

So, like today, the federal government grew, while the private sector contracted.  Regardless of how well meaning the intentions of the individuals who enacted the federal agencies were, they didn’t help the private sector.  Instead, they hurt it by adding more and more regulations that were required and more and more fees that had to be paid for. The Friedmans include a great quote in this section that really sums it up:

As Edward Teller, the great nuclear physicist, once put it, “It took us eighteen months to build the first nuclear power generator;  it now takes twelve years; that’s progress.”

For Next Week: I want to cover up to “Government Revenue From Inflation” in Chapter Nine for next Sunday.   Have a great week.

The title for Chapter 5 of Free To Choose is “created equal”, and is taken from the Declaration of Independence.  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”  What does “created equal” mean?  The Friedmans would answer, “The clue to what Thomas Jefferson and his contemporaries meant by equal is in the next phrase of the Declaration — ‘endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.’  Men were equal before God. Each person is precious in and of himself.”

The Declaration focused on equality as “equal before God”.  There was no guarantee that anyone would become rich and famous.  There was no guarantee that you and I were to be paid the same wage.   However, we proclaimed to the world that no man was worth more than another in the eyes of God.  This couldn’t be reconciled with slavery.  In my humble opinion, these words, and the wiliness to fight for these words, set us on a path for the Civil War.

The Civil War changed our definition of “created equal”.  Again, looking to our reading this week, the Friedmans write,”Once the Civil War abolished slavery and the concept of personal equality – equality before God and the law – came closer to realization, emphasis shifted, in intellectual discussion and in government and private policy, to a different concept — equality of opportunity.”  This is very important because I believe it is key to the modern conservative / tea party movement.  There are only a few things the government can do to guarantee equality of opportunity.  The only way you and I can have a decent “equality of opportunity” is by ensuring the government removes any barriers that could get in our way.  Protecting against racial discrimination is one way.  Affirmative action isn’t one of those ways.  Removing the barriers to individuals opens up their full potential.  To me, this is the heart of conservatism:  letting people become the best they can be at whatever they choose to be.

I think it is important to note one thing here before we discuss today’s definition of “equality”.  There is no government or individual that can guarantee perfect equality of opportunity.  The government, made of imperfect men, must attempt to cover most situations.  Some situations will arise that government simply can’t address reasonably.  We need to recognize that the government isn’t the be all, end all.  Sometimes we have to overcome adversities on our own.  At the end of the day, we are responsible for oursevles.

The current definition of “equality” embodied in today’s liberal movement, Obamacare, and any number of laws that protect “the poor” is the “equality of outcome”.  This is the theory that no matter where you start in life, everyone should arrive at the same end point.  With the exception of death, that just isn’t possible.  Today’s liberal / progressive movement wants to pass as many laws as they can to try to acheive this goal.  Everyone is born with different skills.  While I wish I could be a famous movie star, God did not see fit to give me the face or body for such an endeavor.  God did give me the skills to provide an income for my family in a less sexy industry. I am able to provide some advantages to my family, and my kids, but not many.  These advantages are only because of the hard work my wife and I perform to help our family.  Other families have more or less advantages depending on how hard they are willing to work.  However, “equality of outcome” says that all children and all families must have the same advantages, regardless of their ability or willingness to work.  Think of the old Marx adage, “From all acording to their abilities, to all according to their need.”  There is not enough money to give all families the same thing.  The only way to try is to lower everyone to the same level, to take everyone’s advantages from them.  While the first two definitions of equality (equal before God and equal opportunities) are compatible with freedom, this most recent definition is not.  The only way to achieve equal outcomes is to remove liberty and freedom from some people.

Alexis de Tocquelville warned us about this, and the Freidmans remind us of his quote:

“There is…a manly and lawful passion for equality which incites men to wish all to be powerful and honored.  This passion tends to elevate the humble to the rank of the great;  but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to perfer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom.”

We are going in the wrong direction when we attempt to punish people for their performance and thier success.  The government should be working towards equal oppurtunities and let every man and woman decide their own outcome.

For Next Week: For next weeks reading I want to get into Chapter 7.  I plan on stopping at “Food and Drug Administration”.  Have a great week!

Shortly after reading the section discussing social security in Free to Choose, I had a discussion about the dangers and misnomers of Social Security with a friend.  Since this is an example of something we were reading translating directly into water cooler talk, I thought it was a good subject for this post.

The Friedmans do a very good job of pointing out that Social Security has some of the best PR in the history of politics.  We are to believe that social security represents some sort of retirement plan that is managed by the government.  Many of us believe that the money we pay into social security somehow impacts or helps to dictate the money we will receive when we retire.  Some of us are naive enough to believe that the money taken from our paycheck and our employer as a social security tax is actually set aside and is waiting on us to retire.  None of the statements above are true.  As the Friedmans point out, “Social Security is in no sense an insurance program in which individual payments purchase equivalent actuarial benefits…Social Security is, rather, a combination of a particular tax and a particular program of transfer payments.”  If social security was discussed in its true form, voters would be up in arms!  If you only remember one thing from this entire post remember this:

What we call social security is actually a tax program and a welfare payment program.  These two programs have nothing to do with each other.

The Friedmans go further and attack each of these separate components.  First, the tax portion is a regressive tax that actually discourages work.  A tax on any behavior discourages that behavior.  A tax provides a financial incentive to avoid the behavior.  The social security tax is, “…a flat rate on wages up to a maximum, a tax that is regressive, bearing most heavily on persons with low incomes.”  The poor pay a larger portion of their paychecks into the social security system.  When it’s time to collect, they don’t get a larger portion than a Bill Gates or a Rush Limbaugh.  How would this play in today’s political discussions?

The payments of the second program in social security are not based on how much is paid into the system or by any individuals financial standing.  There is a list of examples in this section of the book, but I will use one specific example to illustrate this:

A woman who has never worked, but is the wife or widow of a man who qualifies for the maximum benefit , gets precisely the same amount as a similarly situated woman who, in addition, qualifies for benefits on the basis of her own earnings.

According to social security laws, a woman can simply marry into the benefits.  I wonder how today’s liberals would feel about that.  Further, I wonder if there is any chance social security could be passed today if it was honestly debated.

Social security will soon be modified in some manner.  It simply won’t work paying out today’s benefits from today’s workforce.  We need to work hard to point out that social security is really a tax program and a benefit program cleverly hidden in a pretty package.  There will be many solutions for social security discussed over the next few months and years.  If we call it what it is, we stand a better chance of either repealing it, or fixing it correctly.

For Next Week: I want to cover up to “A Voucher Plan for Elementary and Secondary Schooling” in Chapter Six.  Have a good week!

Though the United States has not adopted central economic planning, we have gone very far in the past fifty years in expanding the role of government in the economy.  That intervention has been costly in economic terms.  The limitations imposed on our economic freedom threaten to bring two centuries of economic progress to an end.  Intervention has also been costly in political terms.  It has greatly limited our human freedom.

What amazes me about this quote is that it didn’t appear today on Red State, National Review, or the Weekly Standard.  Instead, it is buried deep in this weeks reading of Free to Choose.  My copy was updated in 1979.  This quote was written thirty years ago, before the latest EPA rulings, the newest auto safety requirements, and long before Obama care.

In this section of our reading, the Friedman’s argue that many of the taxes and controls the government put into place limit our very freedom.  Under the guise of protecting us, the government has gotten more and more involved in limiting our freedom.  While we still live in the free-est country in the world, the “soft tyranny” of the government threatens to remove more and more of that freedom.

Take cars.  In writing Free to Choose, the Friedmans make the passing comment that, “Our physician is not free to prescribe many drugs for us that he may regard as the most effective for our ailments, even though the drugs may be widely available abroad.  We are not free to buy an automobile without seat belts, though, for the time being, we are still free to choose whether or not to buckle up.”  I don’t believe there is anywhere left in the United States with even that small degree of freedom.  Today, when shopping for a car, you have to purchase one with not just seat belts, but air bags, and the correct government approved gas mileage.  Where does government get the authority to determine the very  mileage my car must achieve?  Each of these “safety” measures drives up the price of the car.  Higher and higher gas mileage requirements not only drive up the cost of the car, they make the car less and less safe.  There is only so much you can squeeze out of modern engines.  In order to achieve a higher miles per gallon rating after that, you have to make the car lighter.  The lighter the car, the less safe it is in a collision with a tractor trailer or a concrete barricade.

Once you have your car, you are still not free to use it as you see fit.  The law requires that you buckle up and that you turn your headlights on when it rains.  Some cities and counties even mandate how many people can be in the car in case of a teenage driver.  In the latest safety craze vs. freedom, you can’t text message in your car.  Want to use your GPS, apply make up, shave, or catch up on the morning paper?  Those are still legal.  But should you text your wife that you are heading home from work, watch out!

There is a chance that reading this you believe that these safety precautions are good.  I am not arguing that.  I am arguing that the government has decided that you aren’t capable of deciding what you can do in the car.  The government has decided it can better determine how many kids are in the car with your teenage driver than you.

As with most soft tyranny, these encroachments started one step at a time.  Imagine someone introducing a bill in the 1970′s that would force auto manufactures to include all of today’s safety requirements.  Imagine a bill being introduced that would include all of today’s laws about how you use your car.  The public would have lit their torches and handed out pitch forks.  However, by introducing one law at a time, the government continues to cut into our freedoms.

It may seem a silly thing to wail at, but by introducing these safety laws, the government has steadily driven up the price of cars.   By making cars more and more expensive, they have reduced the number of people who can afford to buy a new car.  The recent “cash for clunkers” program further reduced the number of people who could buy a used car.  Isn’t a car the ultimate symbol of our freedom?  The ability to drive anywhere we want in the country at moment’s notice allows us a freedom enjoyed in few places.  However, that freedom lessens the more laws that are passed the less freedom we have, and the less freedom to move around the country we enjoy.

Being part of any society requires that you surrender a certain amount of freedom.  However, when the government enacts these “safety” requirements, they take a portion of our freedom without asking and without a real need for it.  We have seen how far the government has advanced since 1979.  How far will it advance over the next thirty years?

For Next Week: I plan on covering all of chapter 3, and up to “Medical Care” in Chapter 4.   That’s around page 112 in my copy.  Have a great week!

This week we begin our reading of Milton and Rose Friedman’s Free to Choose.  I found so much in the first chapter that I wanted to discuss, I could probably write a post a day for the next week.

In this chapter, the Friedman’s spend a lot of time discussing the role of prices.  Prices serve three functions:  transmit information, provide an incentive, and distribute income.  The sections of the first chapter explaining these three functions are a must read.  However, I want to look at the story used to introduce these functions for this write up.

Having been born in the 70′s, I don’t remember much of the 70′s (I have been told many who lived through them don’t remember them either).  I have seen pictures and read stories about the terrible gas lines. In school, we were taught these gas lines were because of OPEC, and that not even the President could do anything to fix it.  I’ve even read about even and odd days at the gas station.  If your license plate ended with the right type of number, you could get gas.  If not, then you could get it tomorrow.  What I have never read or heard anywhere, was that these gas lines were actually the fault of the government:

The long gasoline lines that suddenly emerged in 1974 after the OPEC oil embargo, and again in the spring and summer of 1979 after the revolution in Iran, are a striking recent example.  On both occasions there was a sharp disturbance in the supply of crude oil from abroad.  But that did not lead to gasoline lines in Germany and Japan, which are wholly dependent on imported oil.  It led to  long gasoline lines in the United States, even though we produce much of our own oil, for one reason and one reason only:  because legislation, administered by a government agency, did not permit the price system to function.  Prices in some areas were kept by command below the level that would have equated the amount of gasoline available at the gas stations to the amount consumers wanted to buy at that price.  Supplies were allocated to different areas of the country by command, rather than in response to the pressures of demand as reflected in price.  The result was surpluses in some areas and shortages plus long gasoline lines in others.  The smooth operation of the price system – which for many decades had assured every consumer that he could buy gasoline at any of a large number of service stations at his convenience and with minimal wait – was replaced by bureaucratic improvisation.

This is a long exert, but I feel it is important for two reasons.  First, this is a very different story than we are taught in school, and that most of us are probably familiar with.  Second, we are in a situation today that may bring back these same gas lines.  The uncertainty in Egypt is likely to affect the price of oil.  If the Muslim Brotherhood takes control in Egypt, or if a new government in Egypt should go to war with Israel, oil prices are likely to go up.  We all know this.

However, the current hodgepodge of various fuel standards artificially affect the price of gas as well.  It also doesn’t help that the Obama administration has put a drilling moratorium in place for the Gulf of Mexico.  The administration has continued this moratorium in spite of being found in contempt of court for it.

There are many comparisons being drawn to the 1970′s and today.  The one overlooked by the media is the comparison with how much the government artificially affects today’s prices. I am really looking forward to the other comparisons we may find in this book.

For Next Week: I am going on vacation with my family this weekend, so I am taking a break from the reading.  I will be back in two weeks to cover chapter two.  Have a great two weeks!

In this weeks reading we finished Mere Christianity.  I think the book met my expectations for a great introduction to Christianity.  I think Lewis makes some very compelling arguments for a belief in both a god, and the Christian God.

In this final reading, I found a section in Chapter 9 very interesting.  Lewis discusses the “cost” of following Christianity.  In this case, Lewis argues that the cost of following Christianity is that the Lord will not just help us with those parts of our lives we don’t like, he will help us with all of it.  We can’t ask the Lord to help us with something like alcoholism, and not expect the Lord to affect our everyday lives.  Lewis uses this explanation:

When I was a child I often had toothache, and I knew that if I went to my mother she would give me something which would deaden the pain for the night and let me get to sleep.  But I did not go to my mother — at least, not till the pain became very bad.  And the reason I did not go was this.  I did not doubt she would give me the aspirin, but I knew she would also do something else.  I knew she would take me to the dentist next morning.  I could not get what I wanted out of her without getting something more, which I did not want.

I think there are times when we all face this.  We all would like help with the big things.  We would all like to be good Christians.  However, embracing Christianity means that we let God fix ALL of the problems with us.  The problems we want help with (like gluttony at Thanksgiving) as well as the problems we may not want help with (such as loving our neighbors as ourselves).  However, Christianity isn’t a cafeteria menu.   God loves us and wants to make sure our tooth doesn’t hurt anymore.  He will take away the pain we have tonight, but he will also work within us to fix that tooth for years to come.

There is a temptation to let God help us with the immediate problem, but not our entire life.  We would like to be a little bit better person, but not necessarily the person God wants us to be.  Lewis has a response for this as well:

We may be content to remain what we call “ordinary people”:but He is determined to carry out a quite different plan.  To shrink back from that plan is not humility: it is laziness and cowardice.  To submit to it is not conceit or megalomania; it is obedience.

I pray that I have the strength, the courage, and the obedience to follow God where he will take me.

For Next Week: I had planned to cover “Free To Choose” by Milton Friedman next week.  However, with the events in Egypt, and the involvement of Muslim Brotherhood in the protests demonstrations, I am considering shifting books.  “The Grand Jihad”, by Andrew McCarthy covers a number of things.  However, it also talks about the Muslim Brotherhood’s relationship to Hamas.  Which one would you prefer to read?  I will post a comment here around Wednesday with the final selection and what pages I will cover for Sunday.

Lewis covers a lot of material in this week’s reading.  I thought he gave a great explanation of why we should study theology.  I don’t think Lewis meant studying theology as in a college course.  I think he was meaning study at church, or like the discussions we have had here at  Red State.   There were two specific points I wanted to look at.

The first is in answer to an objection Lewis encountered at a talk he once gave.  An RAF officer objected to studying theology.  He called it “dogmas and formulas about Him.”  The officer pointed out that he had his own experience with God and that was more real than any religion he had found.  Instead of arguing with this officer, Lewis agreed with him.  But, he pointed out that there is a difference between our own personal experiences with God, and theology:

…when he turned from that experience to the Christian creeds, I think he really was turning from something real to something less real.  In the same way, if a man has once looked at the Atlantic from the beach, and then goes and looks at a map of the Atlantic, he also will be turning from something real to something less real:  turning from real waves to a bit of coloured paper.  But here comes the point.  The map is admittedly only coloured paper, but there are two things you have to remember about it.  In the first place, it is based on what hundreds and thousands of people have found out by sailing the real Atlantic.  In that way it has behind it masses of experience just as real as the one you could have from the beach; only, while yours would be a single glimpse, the map fits all those different experiences together.  In the second place, if you want to go anywhere, the map is absolutely necessary.  As long as you are content with walks on the beach, your own glimpses are far more fun than looking at a map.  But the map is going to be more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to America.

Lewis gives us a very concise reason we should read books like his, why we should have discussions with other Christians, and why we should take Theology seriously.  We each have our own religious experiences.  Studying theology gives us a picture of many, many experiences with God through the ages.  Just like we wouldn’t want to rediscover everything about math, we don’t have to rediscover everything man believes about God.  And if we should decide to be hard headed and try to learn everything on our own, Lewis gives us a warning:

Consequently, if you do not listen to Theology, that will not mean that you have no ideas about God.  It will mean that you have a lot of wrong ones — bad, muddled, out-of-date ideas.  For a great many of the ideas about God which are trotted out as novelties today are simply the ones which real Theologians tried centuries ago and rejected.

When I first read this, I wondered if Lewis would label the “DaVinci Code” crowd as one of the ideas that were rejected.  For that matter, the idea that man is destroying the planet isn’t a new idea.  Today we label it global warming.  In previous years it was called global cooling.  In earlier generations it was earth centered druids.   These people believed that mother earth ruled all, and man  was harming mother earth.  Today there are a great many ideas out there. How many of them were rejected by earlier, wiser generations?  We will only know if we study what those earlier generations have to say.

For Next Week: Finish the book!

In Two Weeks: I want to start “Free to Choose” by Milton Friedman.

Last week,  I wasn’t able to put an entry in here for the reading due to illness.  It looks like I wasn’t the only one sick, so I am going to cover pages 88 through 133 this week.

There are actually a number of points in this weeks reading that are worth discussion.  But as I looked back over the chapters, there was one section I kept coming back to.  I felt if we only remembered one thing from this weeks reading, this was it.  From the section on Morality and Psychoanalysis:

People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, “If you keep a lot of rules I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other thing.”  I do not think that is the best way of looking at it.  I  would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before.  And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature…

I think this is pretty significant.  In every decision we make, we face choices that will result in us being more heavenly or more hellish.  Some decisions may not have any real significant impact (do I eat the red apple or the green apple?).  Others may have lasting consequences (do I return the extra change the clerk gave me?).  The decisions we make lead us down one path or the other.

Sometimes we forget this in our everyday lives. Sometimes taking the easy way out is easier than doing the right thing.  To make ourselves more heavenly, we have to do the right thing, even if it’s not the easy thing.  If we have already made too many of the “hellish” decisions, we can start today with the “heavenly” decisions.

For Next Week:  I am carrying over the reading assignment from last week.  I am covering up to Book 4, Chapter 3.  Have a good week.