Mark, they are not necessarily in conflict, but if I have to choose between the two in a president, I'll always pick wisdom. Worth remembering that virtue is not   only a matter of sexual morality. Quite a number of the presidents you mention had a certain toughness (and clarity of purpose) that might not always have been cheered from the pulpit. 

So far as the question of monogamy is concerned, let's take a case from across the pond. The Duke of Wellington was one of the greatest of British military leaders and also a solidly conservative PM. He was also a legendary philanderer. In today's America he would have been removed from command, & the nation's top job would have beyond his reach. Misplaced priorities, methinks. 

Many thanks for the comments above, which I read with great interest. I fear , though, that I wasn't convinced.  Politics is a tough trade, and not always very pretty. To prevail in it can require the sort of personality that comes with traits that would be highly unlikely to be singled out for praise from the pulpit. This can be true even at the lower levels of the political ladder, but when we are looking at the qualities required in the individual picked to run the greatest power in a dangerous world, it must be true. One Carter was enough, more than enough.

Should we insist that our politicians are virtuous? No. Should we hope that they are wise? Oh yes. But virtue and wisdom are not always the same thing. 

Judging by the poisonous and profoundly PC authoritarianism that has characterized so much of the activity of the "devolved" Scottish government that already exists, I suspect that an independent Scotland would (alas) be even worse....

Context is vital here, I think. Many sports are violent. I wouldn’t want to tell a fan of American Football (dreadful game!) that, ex officio, he’s opposed to liberty. In any event, to reduce Burke’s views on this topic to that snippet is an over-simplification.  There are plenty of freedom-fighters who have enjoyed the exhilaration of battle. What matters is what that battle was for.

Rachel, that's very different to what I think. My own view is that, so far as the labor market is concerned, we have a surplus of both blue-collar and white-collar workers, and that that surplus will, over time, increase thanks to technology/globalization etc.  The growing numbers of unemployed will not be in a position to pay the pensions of the growing number of retired. We have our problems, sure, but, under the circumstances, a dwindling birth rate is not one of them.

I agree that some sort of RC ceremony (without, I hope, any moments of ostentatious abnegation like the one that marked the Empress Zita's funeral) is appropriate, but he should be buried in the Abbey.

Zita, of course, was famously pious in a time and a place where this was already a rarity. That was an act of conscious will. We can never know how Richard saw himself, but as a ruthless power-player who lived in a country where almost everyone--from peasant to king--was a religious believer of some sort or another, he is more likely to have focused on what set him apart from his subjects, and that was that very uncertain crown.  

Well, the failure to innovate  is, in a sense, a cost too. Possibly a huge one.

What's more,  if the US "has" to rely on immigrant workers to harvest certain of its crops (because of the failure to invest in innovation in this area) the indirect cost of that dependence means that the total cost of this exercise amounts to rather more than the very modest wages that the agricultural sector is able to get away with paying thanks to an American labor market badly distorted by current US immigration & immigration enforrcement policies.

Yes, the Economist ends on a cautiously more optimistic note too. The Romer piece referred back to the 1970s. So far as the mechanization of certain sections of agriculture is concerned, however, innovation has been in short supply. Conversely, the Japanese are forging on with robotics--because they have to.

From Jonathan Last's piece: 

America's fertility rate began falling almost as soon as the nation was founded. In 1800, the average white American woman had seven children. (The first reliable data on black fertility begin in the 1850s.) Since then, our fertility rate has floated consistently downward, with only one major moment of increase—the baby boom...

Yes!  And "a government is not the same thing as a country". Indeed it is not. Nicely put. 

I'm afraid that it's a very necessary question given Jonathan Last's closing comment that "if we want to continue leading the world, we simply must figure out a way to have more babies." 

As it happens, I don't think "more babies" is the way to preserve America's global leadership, but that's a secondary point.

Do we  really want to use "leading the world" as the way we define our country's defining national objective? I'd prefer something else. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness would do very nicely, as I am not the first to suggest...

Duane shows that heavy (I assume) Dr Pepper consumption does not damage the memory!  The workld's worst soft drink remains lethal to taste buds, however,  an offense both to science and to nature.

On the question of Coke (Coke Zero is the new nectar, incidentally), check out this.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/why-we-took-cocaine-out-of-soda/272694/

Var så god!

This struck quite a chord on a number of counts. It's also worth adding that religion evolved for a reason. The atheists who rage against it might as well rage against bipedalism. They would do better to focus on how the religious instinct manifests itself rather than on the existence of the instinct itself.

An atheist church? Yup. It is Alain de Botton's idea. FWIW I blogged a bit about at Secular Right, and I should say that not all atheists are into this sort of thing, nor even, are Church of England agnostics such as myself. *Not* having to probe the meaning of life can be one of the small reliefs ("blessing" goes too far) of having no religion -- and it frees up time too!

Hmmm

SR a site for ‘Village Atheists’?  I’m unsure what, other than a rather meaningless jibe, a ‘Village Atheist’ is supposed to be.  

The title of my post (“All too Fallible”) was a response to the title (“Papal Infallibility”) of Severely Ltd’s original post. It was a (mild) joke, not a theological opinion.

 “Minimally” educated on  religion? Not really for me to say, but I was well enough educated in it to pass a public exam (Divinity O level!) in the topic. I attended chapel once or twice a day through nine years of secondary school, & studied scripture there for six years. Metaphysics may not be to my taste, but religion as a historical, political and psychological phenomenon interests me a very great deal.  So there we are.