Near one of my workplaces, there is an older gentleman who is an expert at refurbishing furniture. He is also a book lover who hates seeing books thrown into the trash. So as he makes his rounds to various estate sales, he scoops up books that seem destined for the rubbish heap.
In case you haven’t seen it, the traditional public book sales, where interested buyers scan through titles to see what they might enjoy reading, have gone the way of the buggy whip. The last time I stopped at a library book sale, there were two frantic people with cell phones Velcroed to their wrists, racing through all the shelves of books.
They would pick up a book and aim their cell phone at the barcode on the back. If the dollar signs flashed positive for reselling, they threw it into a box. You may soon see it on eBay. The title, author, and content were irrelevant since the buyers looked no further than the black-and-white code on the back of the book, as they focused on how quickly they could keep moving.
In contrast, every day my friend with the furniture store puts a bookshelf out in front of his shop on Main Street. Above is a simple sign: Free Books. Walking by recently, I picked up a ragged old copy of Guide to Contentment, a collection of 1965 newspaper columns by Fulton Sheen. It contained what might be the best explanation of American foreign policy's current failures.
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In the section titled "Whom Not To Consult," Sheen may well have put his finger on America's current foreign policy failures. You be the judge.
The second type of counselor that should be avoided is the one who is immoral. An adulterer should not be consulted about purity, a thief about honesty, a divorced man about the meaning of marriage, a careless parent about juvenile delinquency or a crooked politician about international rights. Before seeking the guidance of a legislator about a minimum wage law, it is always well to find out how much he pays his servants. The robber does not want to have a policeman’s light shining upon him as he robs a safe. Neither did the evil like to have the moral law shining upon them in their misdeeds. In their darkness, they are incapable of taking a bewildered hand in the shadow and leading it into the light.
How very different is teaching from counseling. An immoral man is just as capable of teaching higher mathematics as a moral man. In fact, if his intellectual preparation and equipment are better his teaching is more perfect. But when one comes to what is called the practical intellect as distinguished from the speculative, then the way a man lives determines the way he thinks.
Well, with all their "business" ties to very generous foreign countries, how clearly are our leaders in the White House and Congress thinking? And, given the revelations coming out of the House of Representatives about the possible corruption of President Biden and his long list of enriched relatives with overseas business ties, is Sheen's point relevant?
Either way, it is good advice. And it may be as good an explanation as any for our utter failure to implement a coherent foreign policy. Right now, we seem to have a foreign policy based more on "old money" than current realities.
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