« UN Popularity Starting to Tank | Main | Moonbattery's Beneficiaries »

February 23, 2005

Laziness Is Next to Godlessness

As Americans look in the rearview mirror to see our cousins across the Atlantic receding in a cloud of dust economically, some wonder why Europe can't keep up, despite not having to bear the burden of our enormous defense budget. According to a report, it could have to do with religion.

Niall Ferguson, a professor of history at Harvard University, examined the relationship between work ethic and religious beliefs in the context of divergent trends in the US and Europe. He found that religious belief in North America has been "amazingly resilient," despite the view of some that wealthy countries inevitably become less religious.

Across the ocean, European working hours and faith have declined in sync. In the US the working year has been getting longer; in Old Europe it has been getting drastically shorter. Americans "do more work. A lot more," according to Ferguson, adding that "Europeans now seem to believe in holidays, not in holy days."

The widening gap in productivity between the US and Europe coincides with a period of European de-Christianization and American re-Christianization.

Not that we don't have our share of the irreligious here too. Thomas Van Orden is a case in point.

Mr. Van Orden is a homeless person, or as he would have been called in more candid times, a bum. He used to be a lawyer, but his license kept getting suspended, "mostly for taking money from clients for work that he did not perform and for failing to pay fees ordered in disciplinary judgments." He got depressed, and his life began to "unravel."

But just because he doesn't work, doesn't mean he can't make his mark on society. While some of us are busy earning paychecks from which the Government takes a cut to finance Van Orden's food stamps, this noble crusader wanders around the Texas state Capital grounds, where he was indignant to see the Ten Commandments on display. Instead of looking for a job, he has kept himself occupied with a campaign to have them removed. Amazingly, the case has gone all the way to the Supreme Court.

So there must be at least one American the French could admire.

Posted by Van Helsing at February 23, 2005 9:00 AM