A Few Good Words

L'Absinthe, Edgar Degas (1876) While reading Joseph Minich's recent  Enduring Divine Absence ,  I was reminded of C.S. Lewis' first Screwtape Letter. In it, the demon Screwtape recalls a mini-crisis when the atheist "patient" he tempts considers Christianity. The danger passes as soon as the atheist walks out his front door: Once he was in the street the battle was won. I showed him a newsboy shouting the midday paper, and a No. 73 bus going past, and before he reached the bottom of the steps I had got into him an unalterable conviction that, whatever odd ideas might come into a man’s head when he was shut up alone with his books, a healthy dose of “real life” (by which he meant the bus and the newsboy) was enough to show him that all “that sort of thing” just couldn’t be true. He knew he’d had a narrow escape and in later years was fond of talking about “that inarticulate sense for actuality which is our ultimate safeguard against the aberrations of mere lo

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images There has been a dizzying array of White House scandals and controversies lately. You can be excused, then, if you've ignored more boring news about Trump's tariffs -- economic policies with the potential to be among the president's most fateful decisions.  To catch you up to speed: Since the beginning of 2018, Trump has imposed sizable tariffs on imported aluminum, steel, solar panels, washing machines, and Chinese electronics . Tariffs, for the uninitiated, are taxes imposed only on imported goods. If you squint very hard while talking about them, tariffs appear to help American businesses sell to American customers, bringing jobs to American workers and building the American economy. Virtually all (like, all) economists agree that these tariffs will instead  hurt  the American economy. 95% of top American business executives considered them a "moderate to serious risk." While Trump has cited historical evidence that tariff