This page will be updated from time to time as I think more.
It's over here, darling.
I'm sick of "liberal," which means open-handed and generous, being used as a dirty word.
I'm sick of scapegoating, although I'm tempted to throw a little of it GOP-wards. I'm sick of hearing the barefoot told to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
I'm sick of topheavy bureaucracy and waste, too, but administrative anorexia is not the way to go, either.
I'm likewise sick of the fact that "the wages of the world are being set in South China," whereas the prices of the world are apparently being set in Beverly Hills.
But most of all, I am sick unto screaming paroxysm of the assumption that you and I are powerless about all this.
Last time there was an economic paroxysm in the U.S., one woman, Dorothy Day, stepped into the breach -- followed almost at once by a crowd of sympathizers and fellow-travelers who brought the Catholic Worker movement to life. Yes, it began in the 1930's, but it's not dead by any means. There is a Catholic Worker House alive and well in my hometown, Berkeley, California.
Dishing oatmeal at People's Park is not going to put an end to the social inequalities in this country, but at least it will mean fewer people starve or freeze to death while we band together to work this out. At least it will buy time for those who must "set a table for Misfortune" (it's a Bible joke, folks).
It has been said that handouts make the poor "dependent." Well, sweetheart, they are already "dependent" now. If no "handouts" are available, a good many of them will be dead. Can you prove that this is a good thing?
"The poor you have always with you," said Jesus (when excusing someone who had bought him a bottle of expensive perfume). This only means that we bleeding-hearts will never be out of a job. I have no more patience with those who think "liberation theology" is an oxymoron, though god forgive me, I used to be one of those people myself. When I wasn't busy trying to be a "good Christian", it was obvious to me that "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs re-structuring." (Martin Luther King, Jr., as quoted by Gerry Griffin).
You may want to see your taxes lowered, and think that gutting welfare and other social programs will do it. You may think that private charities will do the job better. Please remember that most charities count on government money for a large chunk of their budget. Are you willing to give as much to charity as you now pay in taxes?
I was struck by an unpleasant thought while reading this passage from Paul Colinvaux's Why Big Fierce Animals Are Rare:
Gause kept his paramecia in the glass tubes of a centrifuge, which let him spin them in the machine each day to force the animals to the bottom while he poured off the exhausted food solution in which they lived without losing any animals. He could then top up the tubes with fresh nutrient broth. Any one of the common species of Paramecium would live alone very well in these tubes. From the eight individuals Gause put in at first, a thriving population of thousands would grow and this final number would remain constant for as long as he cared to spin them out daily in his centrifuge and replace their food supplyIf two of these species were placed together into the same tube and allowed to crowd, they must willy-nilly compete for that daily finite dose of nutrient broth
No matter how many times Gause tested two chosen kinds of Paramecium against teach other the outcome was always the same, complete extermination of one species, and always the same species
There are two obvious gut reactions to these results: one is amazement that what we expected to be a permanent struggling balance in fact became a pogrom, and the other is wonder at how the losing species can exist at all. This second thought holds the key to the whole affair and leads us to know that Darwinian struggles in the real world mean neither endless fighting nor deadly massacre but muted struggle.
The various kinds of paramecia live together in nature; thus there must be circumstances in which the outcome of one of Gause’s set-piece battles would be reversed. Gause . was able to reverse the outcome of one struggle by a minor change of technique. Like other protozoa, paramecia were known to secrete chemicals into the water that were toxic to other animals; they were inclined to live by chemical warfare. But when Gause changed the water each day, he removed any such chemicals. So he tried leaving most of the water in and topping up with nutrient concentrate instead of changing the whole broth daily. In one of his series of experiments this was enough to reverse the outcome; the animal that had before always been the winner was now always the loser.
Then Gause stumbled across an even more revealing history, for when he tried yet another pair of species of Paramecium against each other neither became extinct but went on living indefinitely together in the tubes. .[O]ne species of Paramecium was living in the top halves while the other species lived in the bottoms. These kinds of Paramecium had found unconflicting ways of life possible in even those simple glass tubes of broth; they avoided competition by dividing the space between them. What obviously had happened was that one kind concentrated toward the bottom, where migrants from the other were overcome, whereas the second kind tended to swim toward the top, where their superior concentrations let them win. Stragglers into the wrong habitat space did indeed suffer deadly competition and struggle, but those of the majority who stayed where their own special strategy for life usually directed them were safe except from competition with their own kind.
There have been many other experiments like those of Gause, using many different kinds of animal and plant. They all result either in total victorious annihilation or in a sharing of the habitat in ways that prevent competitioncontinued strong competition between species is impossible. The different kinds must be kept separate. This at once leads to a splendid comprehension. Animals and plants in nature are not after all engaged in endless debilitating struggle, as a loose [careless] reading of Darwin might suggest.
.Competing animals will not coexist. The decisive experiments were done by the Russian biologist, G. F. Gause, at Moscow University in the grimmest days of Stalin's time. What he did was to set up numerous contests between different species of . Paramecium to see if he could fault the predictions of the mathematics.
Splendid it may be. All it suggests to me is that racial segregation is by no means unique to human beings. Animals and even plants do it. It seems to me that peace of a kind is obtained at the price of freedom. These attacks on a stray member of the wrong species remind me of the African-American man who was murdered when he strayed into Bensonhurst in search of a used car. Was George Wallace a bigot, or was he only stating a fact of life, when he shouted "Segregation forever"?
Might not the facts of life change, though, over time? Mark Belletini speculates that we may be evolving from a race of savannah-dwellers into a race of city-dwellers, that in a few thousand years a week's camping trip might give us the screaming fantods. Similarly, Dale Arnink says that the current intolerance that we see dominating the current U.S. political scene is actually a rear-guard action by people who feel marginalized; that the meme of tolerance is well on the way to swamping the meme of intolerance, so that the intolerant are having trouble finding a niche in our culture.
If so, I thank the alleged God! For I do believe that all bigots ought to be taken out back and shot.
Look at it this way:
The Christian Reconstruction folks believe that Jesus won't come back until the world is firmly in the hands of people who live by his principles.
Well, actually, a case could be made for that -- that's somewhat akin to what the Jews mean by "Messianic times"; that what the Bible calls "The Messiah" is actually a successful communal effort at liberation.
Oh, if only Rushdoony and company thought so highly of human nature! What they really mean, of course, is that Jesus will not come back until American law includes certain selected portions of Leviticus.
The result will be millions of Americans living by principles they do not believe in. A lifetime of enforced hypocrisy. (I've already had mine, thank you.) Jesus said that hypocrites, like he judged the scribes and Pharisees to be, were "liable to the judgement of Gehenna" -- at risk of hell.
Revelation 21:8 says that liars are among those destined for "the lake of fire." And what is a hypocrite, willing or not, but a liar?
Friends, I tell you, the Christian Reconstructionists are leading millions of Americans straight to the fires of hell! Brothers and sisters, this is a menace that must be stopped!
On the other hand.
Maybe Mark Twain was right:
"Heaven for climate; Hell for company."
Remember
Qui tacit consentit
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What Freedom Means to Me
Quote as you damn please, just so you get the facts right