I'm a Socialist? Thank you!

The theme of Public Radio's "This American Life "this week was "Red State, Blue State" and included stories of friends (or former friends), relatives, elected official and co-workers who had differing political views. It included sisters who could hardly speak to each other, one man married to the sister of another man's wife who said if his sister-in-law's husband votes for President Obama, he wasn't going to let him eat any of his astoundingly good barbeque, tri-tip steak, pulled pork and prime rib sandwiches for the four years of Obama's second term.

In most of the interviews, the biggest insult the conservatives could unload on liberals was "socialist." Oddly enough, none of those who were so labeled thanked their antagonists for putting them in such august company since Jesus could be considered an uber socialist.

Matthew 25:35-40 – ³⁵“For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, ³⁶I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.” ³⁷Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? ³⁸And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? ³⁹And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ ⁴⁰And the King will answer them, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”

Mark 12:13-17 – ¹³And they sent to him some of the Pharisees and some of the Herodians, to trap him in his talk. ¹⁴And they came and said to him, “Teacher, we know that you are true and do not care about anyone’s opinion. For you are not swayed by appearances, but truly teach the way of God. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not? Should we pay them, or should we not?” ¹⁵But, knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, “Why put me to the test? Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” ¹⁶And they brought one. And he said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” They said to him, “Caesar’s.” ¹⁷Jesus said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they marveled at him.

The Public vs. The Private

Oh, how I wish progressives/liberals/Democrats would heed George Lakoff!

In his piece, "The Wisconsin Blues," he says, "The Wisconsin recall vote should be put in a larger context. What happened in Wisconsin started well before Scott Walker became governor and will continue as long as progressives let it continue."

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/11880-focus-the-wisconsin-blues

In brief, Lakoff's premise is that the issue boils down to The Public vs. The Private and who's willing to put up the most dough to prevail.

Progressives believe that The Public is the mechanism "through which the government provides resources that make private life and private enterprise possible: roads, bridges and sewers, public education, a justice system, clean water and air, pure food, systems for information, energy and transportation, and protection both for and from the corporate world. No one makes it on his or her own. Private life and private enterprise are not possible without The Public. Freedom does not exist without The Public."

Regressives believe the role of democracy is to provide "maximal liberty to seek one’s self-interest without being responsible for the interests of others. The best people are those who are disciplined enough to be successful. Lack of success implies lack of discipline and character, which means you deserve your poverty. From this perspective, The Public is immoral, taking away incentives for greater discipline and personal success, and even standing in the way of maximizing private success. The truth that The Private depends upon The Public is hidden from this perspective. The Public is to be minimized or eliminated."

So, why does the regressive point of view prevail?

According to Lakoff (and I've read/heard this many times before) decades ago, wealthy regressives and corporate interests developed and financed "an extensive communication system of think tanks, framing specialists, training institutes, booking agencies and media, funded by wealthy conservatives."

Progressive counterparts, according to Lakoff, "have not funded progressive communication in the same way to bring progressive moral values into everyday public discourse." (Evoking the name of George Soros does not equate.)

"The result is that conservatives have managed to get their moral frames to dominate public discourse on virtually every issue."

According to another article I just read, "Jesus, the Radical Economist," 

http://consortiumnews.com/2012/06/11/jesus-the-radical-economist/

 in today's regressive/TPer/conservative world, Jesus, who was financially poor, would not be one of "the best people" but would "lack discipline and character" and deserve his poverty.

That is not conservatism. It's a Teflon, self-comforting rationalization of non-Christian me-ism posturing as conservatism, which to me is regressive rather than conservative principles.

Church Wants Government To Do What It Can't

Centuries after Jesus walked this earth, the Catholic church made a rule enforcing celebacy on its all-male clergy. Then it made another rule that prohibited its female parishioners from using contraceptives.

According to current statistics, 98% of those female parishioners have defied the dictum imposed upon them. I haven't seen any stats on the rate of clergy compliance with its rule, but the decades-old and ongoing scandal of clergy pedophilia might provide a clue.

So now comes the Catholic hierarchy demanding that the government do what it has so utterly and miserably failed to do.

After weeks of rancorous debate and vitriol about whether or not employers or their insurers should have to include contraceptives in their healhcare benefits, one of the highest ranking Catholic officials, Timothy Dolan, a cardinal who is New York archbishop, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and a former Milwaukee WI archbishop, weighs in with an opinion piece that was published recently in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel newspaper arguing that his church has a First Amendment right to impose its will on everyone. http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/it-is-a-matter-of-religious-liberty-3s4ipri-143003455.html

Even more galling than Dolan's contentions, which are not surprising, was that his piece was stripped across the top of the front page of the paper's Sunday opinion section with a half-inch headline and no countervailing voice anywhere in the four-page section, much less in an equally visible space.

There are many hypotheses about the purpose of the Catholic church's rules. Among the suppositions about mandatory clergy celebacy that has a lot of credibility with me is that it better enables the church to control the wealth amassed by the clerics through their various religious activities, particularly since celebate clercs have no families to support or heirs to lay claim to any assets or support.

Given the great wealth the church has amassed, it looks like that rule has worked. And, of course, the objective of banning contraception is to control women.

It's bad enough that a bunch of old men who, ostensibly, have no experience with or stake in the consequences of their own or anyone else's sexual activities are dictating the bodily functions, health decisions and reproductive destinies of woman. Far more insidious is trying to get the govenment to enforce Catholic rules, not only on its own flock, in the perverted guise of religious freedom and First Amendment rights, but to insinuate the church's rules on everyone else.

What is never mentioned in this discussion is that most if not all of the Catholic-affiliated institutions that oppose including contraception coverage in their employees’ benefits receive federal funding in one form or another. That includes indirect funding via use of government-provided infrastructure and public-safety services that they don’t pay for, thanks to being tax-exempt, and more direct funding via grants and programmatic subsidies.

Doesn’t that trample the liberties of those who morally, religiously and otherwise object to funding of the church’s ideology and practices?

What’s the saying? One person’s rights end where another’s begin.

It’s important to clear the smoke that is clouding this debate. The Catholic church needs to:

• understand that the views and rights of non-Catholics are equally as valid as the Catholic stance,
• focus on enforcing its own rules internally,
• quit trying to get the government to do its work for it, and
• stop trying to impose its version of morality on the rest of us.

That's being truly conservative.

Ayn Rand's Absurd Death Grip

Ayn Rand keeps rising from the muck to infect the thinking of what otherwise might be rational, intelligent people. National Public Radio most recently stirred the vat with a piece it labeled on its website as "On Capitol Hill, Rand's 'Atlas' Can't Be Shrugged Off" http://www.npr.org/2011/11/14/142245517/on-capitol-hill-rands-atlas-cant-be-shrugged-off?ft=3&f=111787346&sc=nl&cc=es-20111120.

I've ranted in this and other spaces before about Rand, but the pieces of the chopped-up snake keep growing new heads. We've seen them affixed to politicians like Paul Ryan and Rand Paul, for whom I think she was actually the namesake.

Here's the NPR promo blurb that bubbled up in my email inbox today touting its story that aired last week as one of its most emailed stories:

"In the 1950s, Rand felt that her ideal of unfettered capitalism was missing in politics. But today, her ideas are alive and well-represented in the U.S. Capitol. Her philosophy has sunk so deeply into our political thought, many people don't even recognize it as hers anymore."

First, anyone old enough to remember the 1950s, which I am, can recall that the 1950s was one of the most, if not the most, prosperous decades--at least for a vast swath of Amercans, not just a minute sliver of the richest--in the country's history. It is also nostalgically romanticized as the "good old days" and that time the TPers of today seem to want to take our country back to.

So if unfettered capitalism was missing, meaning that capitalism functioned, but with some semblance of responsibility that included controls, regulations, restrictions or whatever that enabled the nation to flourish economically, then that must have been a GOOD policy.

Beyond that, though, my view of Rand and her adherents/admirers is that they are nothing short of delusional. I won't go into all the flaws in Randism philosophy, politics and thinking, but here is my reaction to just one line in NPR's blurb:

"(Rand's) philosophy has sunk so deeply into our political thought..." That explains the greed, me-ism, hypocrisy and shallow, vapid thinking that has this nation in its destructive grip. Rand's path is a greased slide into the same fate that's bankrupted today's Greece, where Greeks refuse to pay taxes, and has led to the anarchy of Somalia, which has no central government. Randites are in complete denial of the very definition of "society" and the vital elements of a healthy, vibrant society. Take all the government services and benefits that Rand and her acolytes use and enjoy--including Social Security and Medicare, which Rand applied for under her married name to keep from being found out--and they wouldn't make it out of their front door. Heck, they probably wouldn't even have a front door or a house for a front door.

I posted a comment on this NPR story when it aired on Nov. 14, focusing on Rand's assertion that socialists and people on public assistance or who take money from the government are "moochers." Here's my comment:

"Ayn Rand and her ilk, whether called libertarians, anarchists or something else, are the real moochers. They want all the benefits of living in a society--public roads, breathable air, drinkable water, safe food and drug supplies, an energy grid, etc.--but don't think they should have to pay for it. The very regulations they eschew are as necessary for Americans' safety and well being as a strong military is for national security. The most frightening aspect of Randism these days is that so many are falling under its fatal spell. We can view the U.S. of the future by looking at Greece of today,where Greeks blow off paying taxes, and Somalia, which has no central government. Although Rand's hypocrisy is stunning (read her novella 'Anthem'), she was at least honest about being an atheist. Her politician acolytes of today, however, claim to be Christians, yet there is nothing in the philosophy Rand espoused that in any way resembles what Jesus taught."

It's gratifying to note that my comment got 65 "Recommendations", more than any of the other thousand-plus comments.

What Would Ghandi Say?

New York Times columnist Charles Blow posts the link to his columns on Facebook the day before publication and invites his FB Friends to let him know what they think. So yesterday I read today's column, "Them That's Not Shall Lose" @ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/opinion/25blow.html.

Among the comments he got was this one:

"Mahatma Ghandi: 'A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.'"

That brought to mind the biblical passage in Matthew in which Jesus said, "Truly I say to you, Inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of these my brothers, you have done it to me."

Another commentor was thinking along the same lines. She wrote:

"For the religious politicians see Matthew 25:41-46: 'Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, ...I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'"
 
And that brought to mind the Congressional debt-ceiling impass in which, from what I understand, Republicans are resolute about not ending government subsidies to highly profitable oil companies which benefit their obscenely rich executives, yet are demanding cuts in government assistance to "the least" among us.

Charles Blow included this quote in his column:

“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.”

One of his FB Friends observed. "...which is true, again, in like 10 different ways - literally, every thing costs more - interest is higher, offers for loans are worse and more costly and you money isn't at work on the stock market while you are at work making more - a hundred dollars for a poor person equals 10,000 in real life - and it REALLY does - it is EXTREMELY expensive to be poor - extremely. say it again and again - tell it over and over ..."

That's true not only for the individual who is poor, it is true for a nation that grows poverty, that increasingly widens the gap between its rich and poor citizens, that reduces the buying power of its middle- and low-income groups, which the U.S. is doing a lot of these days. 

It costs our country far more in financial and human capital and in national potential to not take care of its poor than it would if we did.

That just makes good truly conservative sense. 

"For the religious politicians see Matthew 25:41-46: 'Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, ...I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'"

Poor, Pathetic Paul

Paul Ryan has been called 'courageous' and 'brave' for the budget/deficit/debt plan he unveiled recently.

He is neither.

He is a coward.

There is absolutely nothing brave or courageous and everything cowardly about bestowing government-funded largess (paid for with The People's money) on the rich and powerful who don't need it and depriving assistance from the poor, uninfluential and voiceless who do.

Ryan and his sanctimonious political partisans would have been courageous and brave had they bucked their campaign/election benefactors and just said "NO" to their outstretched gold-encased and jewel-encrusted hands.

"NO! I will no longer play your game of bribery and mutual back scratching.

"NO, I will no longer defy and deny the teachings of the Christ who is the center, the core, the total truth of what I profess to be my Christian faith and the foundation of what I say is my spiritual belief, the Jesus who commands his followers to care for the poor."

Instead, Ryan and his ilk are too cowardly to defy the rich and the powerful for fear they will turn against them, withdraw their financial support and influence and see that they get turned out of office.

As truly conservative, I pity poor, pathetic Paul and his fellow hypocrites and their very liberal pandering to and paying off the rich and powerful.

As a Facebook Friend observed: "The real glue of social cohesion is empathy. Its utter absence in today's corporate hegemony is spreading a corrosive selfishness akin to Midas."