The Forgotten Piece of the American Dream

It is often said that if you work hard in America, you can pull yourself up by the bootstraps and make something of yourself. This belief has been handed down to us from generations of pioneers, pilgrims, farmers and factory workers However, there is one very important detail we have forgotten from their stories: This is the American Dream. In other words, it is not the European Dream or some other dream. This has been possible primarily in America, and there are reasons for that.

As my immigrant grandmother used to tell me time and time again, hard work did not equal prosperity in 1920s Eastern Europe. In that time and place, you worked your fingers to the bone in the hopes of just barely scraping by, assuming some famine, war or repressive government did not completely wipe away your gains or even your very chances of survival. In America, by contrast, you worked your fingers to the bone in the hopes of building a better life for yourself as well as for your children and community. That was unprecedented in history, and the immigrants knew it.

The bottom line is that hard work is not all that is needed for prosperity. It is a combination of hard work and good economic and political policies that make prosperity possible. Most of our ancestors lived in absolute poverty through century after century of life as peasants in Europe, Asia, the Middle East or elsewhere. They worked hard but had little hopes of moving up in the world.

There are complex reasons why most of the population of Europe lived in perpetual poverty for century after century. All too often, we probably just unconsciously assume that civilization and technology had just not developed to the point where a better life were possible. I would suggest that the causes were actually the near-constant wars, political instability and third-world-type exploitation that robbed the poor and glutted the rich.

America was no walk in the park, either. 1890s America was a brutal place for most people. We hear some of the success stories, but there were many folks ground under the wheels of the industrial revolution who did not survive, and neither did their stories. Still, there was enough opportunity in America to make a critical difference. Most importantly, when the system got too oppressive, we changed it. There were always people trying to undermine the American Dream, and we have had to work hard and use our democratic voices to keep the window of opportunity open for as many as possible.

This is something to keep in mind as we think about the current budgets that are being proposed at the state and national levels. For the first time in the history of America, the younger generation is not doing better than their parents. Wages for middle class and the poor have been stagnant since the early 1980s, but the price of everything has gone up, as it naturally does. The middle class—which helped defined this country and make it what it is and was—is clearly shrinking. There is a tendency to blame the poor for their own problems: “They are poor because they don’t work hard enough.” That may be true for some, but it is not true for most. The amount of people in poverty is growing in just the last couple of years, and it would be silly to suggest that those people are simply not willing to work as hard as they did just a short while before. People say we do not need collective bargaining, that if we just work hard enough the rest will fall into place, as if multi-national corporations will just seek our best interests without any of us at the table to speak for ourselves.

Hard work does not solve all problems. However, hard work--in an environment that supports it--can be golden.

I visited the homes on Millionaire's Row in Rhode Island years ago with my family. You can tour the mansions of the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers. The tenements and shacks in which many of their workers lived have not survived to be viewed. 1890s America was a time when a few had unbelievable wealth and power, while most lived an impoverished existence with a lifestyle of malnutrition, 16-hour work days and child labor. When I read statistics that right now 400 individual Americans have more wealth than 155 million Americans combined, it is not hard to see that we are making an uncomfortable parallel to an age we should not revisit.

It makes no sense to me that in an effort to balance our state and national budgets, we are further cutting taxes on the very wealthy while demanding that the growing segment of poor and what's-left-of-the-middle-class pay for it. Right now, the rich are under-taxed compared to other periods of time, and their level of taxation is not preventing them from reaching unprecedented levels of wealth. However, the poor and middle class are struggling just to make ends meet.

What do we want our country to be like? Senator Bernie Sanders used the word "oligarchy" to describe this kind of nation we are heading toward--a small group of people controlling vast resources. We may already be there.

"Unions Got Too Greedy," They Say

People blame the unions whenever a company packs up its operation and moves it overseas. The classic Reagan-era excuse was that greedy and demanding unions got too big for their britches and forced otherwise benevolent companies to move away. But have you noticed that entire industries that have never had any experience with unions are also making a mad dash for the third world? Cases in point: the tech industry or the customer service call centers for any industry.

While the rank and file engage in a heated debate as to whether or not unions are justified, the CEOs have been running to the bank unabated. Regardless of which side you are on, if you are fighting that fight, then you (like me and many others) fell for the diversion tactic.

I propose another explanation: I believe companies packed up and moved overseas simply because they could. Advances in transportation, communication, as well as advances in the third world nations themselves, made it easier for multi-national corporations to set up shop in places like Indonesia, Vietnam, etc. The businesses themselves also matured to the point where they were ready for such a change. A lot of industries started off as mom & pop shops, quickly growing to a larger operation, then multiple operations, etc.

Whether Americans are unionized or not, there is no way we can compete with people willing to work for mere cents a day. Even factoring in the large transportation expenses and set-up costs, businesses have been exuberantly clear that the savings in labor more than make up for any additional costs for having a split operation (management in America, manufacturing in the third world). I have no doubt that the demands of unions were a factor that irritated businesses—no question. But unions were not the foundational reason that prompted this seismic shift that has been going on the last 30 years. Industries that have no experience with unions are following the same trends.

You could argue that multi-national corporation are no strangers to the developing world: sugarcane plantations and diamond mines have been around for 500 years, if not more. In those cases, though, I would argue that they had to be there. The businesses themselves would invest in the nation’s infrastructure since there was nowhere else to harvest that produce or mine those minerals. There is more flexibility with a modern sweatshop. It is an employer’s market, if you will. They can set up their factory anywhere, so they can put more pressures on the local governments to put in that infrastructure for them. They can wait until conditions are favorable.

Statistics are clear that there is no less wealth in America. It is just concentrated among an increasingly smaller and smaller group of people. Real wages for the lower and middle class have been stagnant for 30 years. I know this from personal experience: A union factory worker could make $10-12 per hour in the early 80s. He could support a family on a single income and do it quite well. I have meandered around factories, warehouses and other industries, and even in the year 2011 one would be lucky to work for $10-12 per hour. What kind of lifestyle can you have today making $10 per hour (roughly 20 grand annually)? The price of everything has increased sharply, yet wages have not kept up with inflation. The result: the standard of living has gone down for most Americans. We are in a 30-year slow cook, and the boil is coming on just gradually enough for us to not realize it until it is too late. I have heard that frogs will leap out if thrown into a pot of hot water, but they are unable to respond if placed in a pot of cool water that heats up slowly.

Unions raised the standard of living for the lower and middle classes of America. There is no question about that: Advances that were won by the unions were directly the same advances that increased the standard of living for workers: Higher wages, better safety conditions, child safety laws, the 40-hour work week—these were the achievements that improved the standard of living of the lower and middle classes and they were fought for and won in large part by the unions. The existence of unions was not a mere correlation to advances in the standard of living in America. They were absolutely causational.

Most Americans today probably would not have liked living in the America of 100 years ago. The “home of the free” was not much different than a modern third world nation—our forefathers worked 16-hour days in often deadly conditions “for peanuts,” as they would say. They lived in tenements and shacks. Maternity leave consisted of an afternoon off, if you were lucky. Have we forgotten Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle? The increasing gap between rich and poor is not an empty political talking point. It is the grim reality of daily life. Businesses and politicians capitalize (literally) on the fact that most people either do not know or remember what it was like just 30 years ago.

All of this does not bode well for those of us in America. Our labor is competing with third world labor. It does not look promising to imagine where this will lead when followed to its logical conclusion. I have a sinking feeling that we are going to find out up close and personal where it leads, though.

I definitely urge America and especially Ohio (which is right now fighting for the life of collective bargaining in the public sector) not to vote against the interests of organized labor. Like any human operation, you can point to some faults and flaws among unions, but I would argue that it is dangerous to conclude that we would be better off without any unions. "The unions once served their purpose, but now they more problem than they are worth," you may hear. But just as the rise in the standard of living corresponds to the rise in organized labor, so too does the decline in that standard of living correspond to the decline in organized labor.

Regardless of how we vote, my worry is that organized labor may not be as effective as it once was in securing a more even distribution of the wealth. The tools and methods it has used historically are harder to apply in the modern marketplace. Workers acting as a group were able to control the supply of labor into an economy and make demands as a result. That was very effective when the supply of labor was limited to a small region. Now that advances in communications and transportation have made almost the entire 6 billion people of the world as potentially a part of the labor supply of many industries, the kind of global solidarity that would be required to use the same union methods as before seems far outside of the range of possibilities right now. Companies can pick up and move so easily now.

The industries that have been able to maintain their collective bargaining power have been those where outsourcing is simply not possible—such as teachers, for instance. Still, every industry that maintains collective bargaining provides a "bump" in the standard of living for all of us. There is a positive spillover effect as even non-union workers demand better terms in their employment. Likewise, every industry that loses that right will most likely also be knock to other industries, too.

Here is the bottom line, and it affects your bottom line: Whether lower and middle class workers act collectively or not, the results will be felt collectively.

Insurance Speakeasy

I have been complaining about medical insurance companies so much in recent posts, I figured I needed to come clean about how it all ended up.

Yes, I was truly rejected a couple of times when I applied for health insurance due to having "medical conditions." There did not seem to be any options, and I was rip-roaring mad (as you might have noticed from my writing of 4 blog posts on this subject in the course of a couple of days), but then I got a good tip from an insurance broker:

A little caveat most folks do not know about (and which insurance companies do not go out of their way to tell you) is a little thing called Open Enrollment. It turns out all companies are required by law to offer insurance to any applicant through Open Enrollment regardless of medical condition(s). The only catch is they have a quota, and once the slots are filled the window closes. But it's like a password at a speakeasy. The conversation goes like this:

Me: Hello, could I have some health insurance with your company given my medical history?
Customer Service: No, sorry that is not an option. Have a nice . . .
Me: I see. Well, can I have insurance through your open enrollment?
Customer Service: Yes, we can go ahead and get you set up.

They do not go out of your way to let you know about this option, but if you speak the magic word, they have to let you in.

At a cursory glance, it seems like decent insurance. It is a little expensive but not out of reach. After all my yipping and yapping about insurance companies, I figured I should probably post this note to inform others and to at least partially redeem the insurance companies, even though they are not exactly doing this from the kindness of their hearts.

After I had accepted an Open Enrollment policy, another application finally got accepted, after numerous long discussions with medical personnel on behalf of the insurance company.

The same company rejected me last year when I applied, but they accepted me this year. I suppose my cancer had gone enough years to where I was acceptable to them. Who knows.

Getting a regular policy does not seem too much different than what I would have gotten through the company's Open Enrollment. The premiums and maximums were very similar. A few of the other terms were different enough that I was able to make an easy decision. They both seem to cover catastrophic occurrences quite well, but it's the day-to-day expenses where you can get eaten alive.

Sympathy for Insurance Companies

I can sympathize with the plight of insurance companies. In a purely capitalist system, there isn't much incentive not to be total assholes. As soon as you have one do-gooder business insuring people with cancer (like me), the sooner they'll be out-competed by the assholes on the block who aren't doing that and be put out of business.

One rotten apple spoils the whole barrel. Capitalism left unchecked tends toward the lowest common denominator.

That is why that argument is so clear for universal health care. If we all just get together and decide to share the burden and get 'er done, we can do it. Companies acting alone with no reward for taking on a financial burden won't insure the people who actually need it. They will sit up late at night trying to figure out ways to exclude people, which isn't a very good exercise for any human being to be involved in. Nobody should put themselves in a position where their job is to figure out ways to deny coverage for the people who most urgently need it.

The government shouldn't run health care, it just needs to remove barriers for people who need access to it and/or increase incentives for companies to do so. The government can help level the playing field so that business people who want to do good are not penalized for doing so. Let's help create a society where it is easier to be good, as Peter Maurin suggested.

I'm not saying capitalism is all bad. I'm just saying that there are some decisions that are best left to individuals to fend for themselves against market forces, and then some decisions are better left to large groups (like nations) to decide and enact en masse. Few people are trying to bring about socialism in America, and few are truly trying to bring pure capitalism (which is really another word for anarchy). The only question in American politics is agreeing on what we do individually and what we do collectively--either way it is still capitalism. Nobody is forcing the government on anybody if we all democratically decide that we would rather do something as a group than as individuals.

I'm glad we don't leave it up to the free market to determine how to drive on roads. I'm reasonably happy to know that when I drive on the road that anyone coming in the opposite direction is going to stay on the other side. Laws like this just make life easier, not more difficult. All these people spouting about how the "least government is the best" haven't seen how the business world works when left unchecked.

However, opponents like to throw out words like "socialism!" to scare people. Few people will do the relevant research to unpack all that loaded language. This is especially true in a nation where technical training is up but we have very little stock in educating people about logic and rhetoric (once pillars of higher education).

* * *

There's another argument for universal health care that few people are talking about: Entrepreneurism. How are we gonna dig our way out of this economic malaise? One surefire way is through innovation. Innovation is proven growth element in any economy. Any economist will tell you that the best way to encourage that is to reduce risk. Let's support an environment where people have fewer barriers to trying new things and let them take us to the next level.

I'm an entrepreneur. I'm ready to start my own business. I'm a director of a nonprofit organization. However, we need some time before we can turn it into an operation that can support salaries and insurance packages. The jump from a standard, off-the-shelf job into this is too steep right now. I'd have to fly without health coverage for a while. That's simply not an option. So instead of boldly going where no one has gone before, I'm looking into being a barista just for the health care. The availability of health care coverage is the biggest governor slowing down the whole process. Here I am, an excited and motivated citizen, ready to bring innovation into the economy, and I'm halted by a flawed health care coverage system.

The biggest problem is that our health care is all tangled up with employment. That needs to be unravelled. Perhaps it made more sense 40 years ago as many folks worked for large corporations like the Big 3 Auto and job transitions were more rare. Nowadays, there are many self-employed and other entrepreneurs, but the current health care infrastructure does not support their occupation choice.

Decades ago, companies found that they instead of paying higher wages, they could offer "wages plus benefits" to employees as part of their compensation package. It was a win-win: Companies could negotiate lower group rates so in a sense the employees were getting more bang for the bucks that the companies were spending on them. The problem is that we ended up with this convoluted system where health care is tied to employment. In our modern world where job transitions are higher than they ever used to be, the current system does not support our current work culture.

I Built Your Skyscraper, Now Where's My Dime?

I've always been sympathetic to some of the folk songs from the labor movements of decades gone by. However, I have to admit that sometimes I found their arguments to be less-than- convincing.

I never thought I'd be singing (for real) Brother Can You Spare a Dime? by E.Y. Harburg & Jay Gorney. The Weavers had a great version.

I used to think the song was well-intentioned, but still corny and melodramatic. Now I realize it is the cold, hard truth. Some realities in life we don't fully understand until we go through them ourselves. That is why Dorothy Day and many others have advocated for a lifestyle of intentional poverty, because if we are ourselves poor, vulnerable and at risk we will react differently to injustice. We'll be more urgent and more passionate.

In our current society, many have reasonably-solid health care coverage (or at least think they do), many don't. This divide makes it hard for one side to understand the other.

These words really ring true to me now in a way they didn't, before:

They used to tell me I was building a dream,
and so I followed the mob,
When there was earth to plow, or guns to bear,
I was always there right on the job.

They used to tell me I was building a dream,
with peace and glory ahead,
Why should I be standing in line,
just waiting for bread?

Once I built a railroad, made it run,
Made it race against time;
Once I build a railroad -- now it's done.
Brother, can you spare a dime?

Once I built a tower to the sun,
Brick and rivet and lime;
Once I build a tower -- now it's done.
Brother, can you spare a dime?

Once, in khaki suits, gee, we looked swell,
Full of that Yankee Doodle de-dum;
Half a million boots went sloggin' through Hell --
I was the kid with the drum.

Say, don't you remember, they called me Al?
It was Al all the time.
Say, don't you remember? I'm your pal.
Buddy can you spare a dime?

Aetna used to call me "Frank." It was "Frank" all the time. When I applied, they told me they couldn't wait until I joined their family! Anthem wanted to be my friend. Now it's "Dear Mister."

My own current insurance company (Aetna) has already refused me once when I attempted to go off the group policy into an individual policy. I'm in the process of applying again. I helped build their skyscraper. The only thing I did "wrong" was get laid off.

It's amazing how we as a nation don't honor the debts of those who have contributed. We take their earnest and naives contributions and leave them out in the cold on some technicality when they are no longer useful.

We do it to our troops. We do it to our laborers.

Insurance companies were glad to take my money when I didn't have a "pre-existing condition." Folks are scared not to have coverage if some tragedy strikes, so they pay in even when they aren't getting paid back. Now they are looking for loopholes to turn me away.

The song may have been crafted to make an argument for social security. Indeed, how do we as a society take care of each other? Are people only worth anything if they are fit and able to contribute? What happens when they grow old, sick or disabled, do we just turn them away? People deplete themselves working to build up our society. Yes, they got their paycheck, but we all benefit from their contributions. Are they only good when they can contribute then left to be cast aside later?

What about soldiers who are done with their service who find their needs still remain? What about laborers who worked to build up our nation who are now too old, sick or disabled to work? Right now, we just provide health insurance for those lucky enough to fall into a sweet benefits package and disregard those who fall through the cracks.

Not only are they our sisters and brothers, but they also helped build up the wealth and the world we live in. We are living off the sweat of their backs. But they're out in the cold, asking for a dime.

So many people try to denounce universal health care and social security as some kind of government "handout." This song helps illustrate the fact that we are inter-connected. If I'm going to risk my life and future in your army, if I'm going to risk my health building your skyscraper, then that demands that we have a longer-term relationship than just paycheck-to-paycheck.

I Keep Getting Dumped

Insurance companies have not been very bashful about telling me the reason why they are turning me down. Well, let me amend that--their detached electronic correspondences have not been very bashful.

It goes like this:

I have cancer, so therefore I don't have the option to have insurance through their company.

No joke. No exaggeration.

In other words, I don't have the option for health insurance because there is a high likelihood that I'll actually use it.

Now, I'm sure all these insurance companies can cite all their financial woes and show me charts about risk management. Call me crazy, but isn't there something fundamentally wrong about a system that is not meeting the need it is intended to meet?

That's like saying we won't spend tax dollars to build roads in a part of town with high traffic--too much risk that the roads will take a beating. That's like saying we can't put a police station in a part of town with high crime.

Maybe the Amish should only agree to build barns for people who live in the cities who, well . . . don't need barns.

My mom and dad have been especially insistent all my life on the importance of having continuous medical coverage. Don't ever go without it, they say. You gotta have health insurance, don't have gaps.

I bought into the whole idea that if I just did my fair share and kept myself continually covered, that companies would also do their fair share and continually insure me. That's the honest man's deal we all made, right?

I don't even like to mention that last point, because there are all sorts of very understandable reasons why someone may have a lapse in coverage. But that doesn't need to enter this discussion, because I've never had a lapse.

I should demand that I get my money back from all these insurance companies to whom I've paid considerably more than they have ever paid out for me over the years. By their logic, that would make sense, right? It goes like this: If they won't cover me because I'll use it, then they should pay me back for the times when I haven't. That would be the honest solution, don't you think?

So let's say I go without health insurance and neglect follow-up appointments and procedures for my cancer condition. Let's pretend for a minute that that doesn't scare the living shit out of me and affect my actual life. Let's just look at it in financial terms. Perhaps my condition will worsen being left untreated for several years. If/when I do get into an insurance policy, then my medical bills will be through the roof, much worse than if I had just maintained preventative care. Maybe at that point they will wish they had been continually covering me. Actually, they might try to deny me coverage for having a period of time without insurance. Now wouldn't that be ironic?

It's time we just recognize that health care is a value we all share, and we'd all like access to it. The current system is not working. Well, let me amend again: The current system is not working for me, even though I am one of the people who helped build it up.

I once built a railroad -- now it's done.
Brother can you spare a dime?

Would you like to live in a society where you had to pay a hefty fee every time you called the police and pay out-of-pocket for the officers who protect your home and business? Just imagine firefighters sending you a bill for services rendered! No, we recognize that police and fire protection is something we all want, even though some may need it more than others, often through no fault of their own. We share the financial burden because life would be absurd otherwise.

Whether it is police protection or health insurance, you can complain if some people are getting more out of the system than they are putting in. Or you can just consider yourself blessed that you don't need their help as much as others.

Health insurance is probably the best example going that capitalism by itself does not yield a beneficial result, and it certainly doesn't bring out the best in human nature.

I'm glad I'm not a person at an insurance company denying coverage to people. I'm sure they have built many walls within themselves to rationalize this. I'm sure the responsibility is spread out among so many people that no one individual feels like they are doing the screwing, they are just "following along with the company policies." Regardless of blame, the result is ugly.

It really isn't financially prudent for individual companies acting alone to insure a whole population without looking for ways to pick and choose. This is where some collective action as a group is important, because if we all act and pay together as a nation we can share a burden that no one (or perhaps no corporation) could (or would) handle on their own.

Health care is not much different than police, fire, public education, roads and other infrastructure--it permeates into every nook and cranny of everyone's life. Yes, health care is individual, but it is also very public (the statistics are quite good showing the relationship between individual health and societal cost). Life is just simpler and more humane if we all just take it on together, quit playing the have's against the have not's and quit rolling dice with our lives.

Pecking Order

I remember asking my dad if we could have backyard chickens back when I was growing up. I thought it would be fun to have chickens running around. His answer: "They'll shit everywhere!"

That was as far as that went.

Erin has been raising three chickens in her backyard for the past few months or so. Normally, I am not thrilled about having pets at this stage of life, as the workload and every day commitment can be a strain--weekend trips, late nights and coming and going at odd hours can be difficult if an animal is relying on you back home for food and companionship. However, these chickens are pretty easy to maintain.

They stand ready at the gate of their coop to be let out to roam every morning. Her backyard is multi-faceted and full of different terrains--tall weeds, bushes, tilled-up garden, flower beds--anything a chicken would want. They spend all day eating grass, bugs, grubs, compost or bird food, which makes me quite happy as the less they eat of the stock chicken feed the more healthy and nutritious their eggs will be. It also makes us more environmentally responsible as grain feed involves lots of transportation costs and has a carbon footprint.

At first, they didn't seem to be as messy as my dad predicted. However, as the weeks and months go on and the longer the chickens peck around the yard the more prophetic I realize my dad's words were. I have left a pair of shoes there strictly for backyard use, if you get my drift.

It's also going to be a problem during the planting season of the garden. No issue with them walking around already-grown plants, but when the land is bare and we plant seeds, I have a feeling there will be some turf wars between us and them. Methinks they will have to be limited to a certain part of the yard until the garden gets a chance to grow.

I noticed that one of the chickens is treated poorly. When food is delivered, the others try to squeeze her out and keep her away. I intervene and try to establish justice, but there's only so much a guy can do. I talked with Andy about this, and he related some gruesome stories about pecking order. Sometimes chickens will abuse a single chicken so bad that it gets utterly depressed, deprived and even dies from the treatment. Then they move on to the next, most vulnerable chicken. His words have haunted me for weeks.

It makes me have some serious doubts about animal (and human) nature. I tend to believe that our God-given nature is a key to our personal growth. I don't buy into that ugly strain of Christian theology that holds that our natures are utterly depraved and that we must forcibly resist our innate urges in order to be good. I hold a more holistic, modern approach that we can work with our natures in harmony and outgrow petty issues. This isn't to say that we are rosy-cheeked angels at all times, but it does mean that working with our nature is the path to growth, not working against.

I've seen pecking orders in many groups I've been in. I was in a rock band a number of years ago. There was always one member who was "the problem." For a while it was our singer, until he left and then the new singer became the new "problem." When he left, the three remaining members identified someone else from among ourselves, then when he left and there were two of us remaining, I was targeted and I knew it was time for me to be outta there. It wasn't that we were trying to bully, but there was something about focusing our angst on one member to weed out who we perceived as the weakest link. The complaints about that person were always valid, too, but there was something about the way in which it was done that concerns me. It is also amazing that the whole group was able to feel very unified while that "problem" member was present, but when he left the remaining members started being upset with someone who they had previously gotten along with!

Had we reached out and tried to work together, we might have been able to stick together as a band rather that always weeding out people as the way to solve a problem. Had we been more driven in our mission--rather than directing our energy toward picking each other apart--we could have moved forward together.

And maybe that's the key--we do have some issues in human nature that we have to work with. We can pick each other apart, for better and for worse. But if we remember to focus that same problem-solving energy on our mutual mission, maybe we can work through stuff. In this band, we were not even overtly mean to these people, but our level of angst with them probably created an environment that made them feel unwelcome and made it hard for us to work through problems.

Just because we should work with our human natures does not mean everything is perfect in our human natures. It is probably more about redirecting the same impulses for good rather than for not. The person is not the problem-some behaviors are. We should still focus on problem, but with the goal of working through them rather than culling the whole person from the herd.

Inconsistent Pro-Life People

People betray themselves by their inconsistencies. Not that any of us is perfectly consistent, but inconsistency certainly raises some eyebrows and starts people asking questions.

Take the recent controversy over Obama speaking at Notre Dame. Some were infuriated that a pro-choice president like Obama was given the attention and honors he got, given that the Catholic Church is decidedly pro-life.

On the one hand, this could deserve some congratulations. When many churches are accused of trying to be "all things to all people," here you have one that is willing to take a stand. Perhaps this is something to be proud of.

The anti-abortion stance of the Catholic Church is rooted in a respect for life--all life, all the time, everywhere. There are many Catholics who take a hard line stance on abortion, allowing no if's, and's or but's about it. To them, abortion is wrong and that's all there is to it. Okay, that's a respectable stance. Then ask them about war... euthanasia... the death penalty... these are often considered "negotiable."

Many of these folks who would not support abortion under any circumstances seem to have little regard for the dropping of thousands of megatons of explosives on foreign nations--bombs which kill, most certainly, a number of unborn babies. You may remember that George W Bush--the unrepentant architect of those very actions--also spoke at Notre Dame without a peep from the pro-life contingency.

The inconsistency of the response of folks at Notre Dame reflects a trend that you can see elsewhere among some American Catholics--not all, but some.

It seems that the people I am describing are not pro-life. They seem to be anti-abortion, they have a particular call and desire to stop abortions for whatever reason. Maybe they just like unborn babies and really want to crusade for them. Fine with me. But when it comes to truly understanding what the Church is calling us to understand when it comes to respect for all life, they don't get it.

To narrow the pro-life movement to just abortion is to miss the whole point--all life, all the time, everywhere. The crippled and able. The living and dying. The young and old, born and unborn, healthy and sick, smart and dumb, friend and enemy, neighbor and foreigner, guilty and not guilty, you name it. Life is a gift from God and must be respected through all its phases and manifestations--none is greater or more deserving of their life than another.

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

Fr. Scott gave some reflections on the "right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" in his homily today. This was in recognition of the influence of St. Robert Bellarmine in the formation of the US Declaration of Independence.

It is a very interesting list of rights. The order. The level of importance of each. Something to thing about.

It is curious to ponder what kind of list most folks would come up with if you ask what are the fundamental responsibilities of each person.

Or what list folks would come up with if it were a collective list rather than individual--we all advocate strongly for our own right to life, of course, but what about the right to life for the guy next door?

I'll go out on a limb here and suggest that most folks--even many well intentioned folks--would put the pursuit of their own happiness over and above someone else's right to life.

Now, folks won't necessarily come out and say that. This is something that comes from simply observing actions. Folks seem to put their time, talent and energy on their own happiness first. People literally exhaust their energy, their creativity and their bank accounts rehabbing their house, planning a vacation or doting over their friends and relatives. With some left over time and energy, some well-intentioned folks devote some resources to protecting the rights of others.

How different life would be if we all believed strongly in the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness--in that order--and included all humanity and not just ourselves! Just imagine how differently we would have to live in order to put that into practice and act as if we really believed it!

Virtue

I just read a book for class called The God of Faith and Reason by Richard Sokolowski. Neat book. One of the sections was on Virtue.

In our modern culture, we tend to praise people who hold up to their beliefs at great personal sacrifice. It is as if we only value something if it were hard to do. There is no way to tell by looking at someone if they have good moral fortitude. Morality is determined not by a deed itself, but by the personal motivation behind it. You can only tell by looking deep within a person and exploring their motives and their struggles and all the internal stuff that goes on. Good deeds by themselves are suspect unless they were done with the "right" attitude. Bad deeds may have some good in them if the person did the best they could and that was all they could manage to do. In fact, if something was enjoyable we tend to think it is less worthy of praise since the person must have done it for "selfish" reasons.

In other words, if you feed the hungry but you did it because it was fun, then you aren't as much an example of morality as someone who feeds the hungry despite wanting to do something else with every fiber of their being but who does it anyway because it was the "right" thing to do.

In the days of Aristotle, the ultimate moral category was the virtuous person. This was a person whose ideals and willpower were so much in line that s/he delighted in doing good. S/he wanted to do good. It was easy to do good. The virtuous person was held up as an ideal. This person had no internal conflict.

The person who was able to do good despite being pulled in contrary directions was actually secondary to the virtuous person.

Somewhere along the line, we lost that notion of virtue. We don't believe there are people who are naturally oriented to good or evil. We just believe that there are people who struggle with internal motives of all sorts, and we tend to value the person who is able to hold his or her head up highly despite being pulled in contrary directions. I have usually gone along with this view, but I am coming to appreciate the classical perspective a bit more.

Isn't it great to be so in line with goodness that you just want it and can't get enough? Isn't that a better goal to be than someone who wants to do bad but is able to pull themselves kicking and screaming to do something good? It is wonderful to have that self control, but isn't it better not to even need it?

So internal motivations still count here. But it is also true that a good deed is a good deed despite the intentions behind it. And a selfish motive may actually be the ideal! I dunno, I don't have this all worked out, but the gears are really turning on this one.

Eating Meat: Ethical Issues

Vegetarian culture would have you believe that simply not eating meat is the appropriate way to deal with ethical issues around animal cruelty and ecology. They have valid points, but the answer is not so simple:

If you choose not to eat industrial-raised meats, you are definitely saving animals from a cruel life and a cruel death. You are saving chickens from living virtually their entire lives in tight cages nor cows pumped full of hormones and antibiotics. However, what you are also doing is making it so that some animals are not raised at all. When the demand for such meats goes down, producers will simply raise fewer animals. Those animals will never have a life at all, cruel or otherwise. Would the animals really thank you for that? Hard to say.

You can eat sustainably raised meats. The problem is that the more animals raised on farms just translates into less land available as natural ecosystems. Maybe the chickens you ate were sustainably raised, but a small forest glen had to be cleared out to make room for them to live. Numerous animals in their natural habitat died off to make room for the livestock.

At this point in history, we are seeing the last remnants of widespread natural ecologies. What I mean is that human population is growing so densely over the earth that natural ecosystems will soon only exist in isolated pockets. Large-scale migrations of animals across hundreds of miles may actually cease to exist. When was the last time you saw tens of thousands of buffalo stampeding across the Midwestern plains? How many salmon waterways are still open today, compared to what their once were? You have animals like deer and raccoons who can slip in between the cracks and live between humans, but there is a great cost compared to what was once there.

I often opt for seafood at a restaurant. I prefer wild caught, since farm-raised fish are often worse for the ecology than wild caught. I figure that at least the animal lived a normal life and had a relatively normal death, for a fish. But I also know that the waters are being depleted. The more fishing that is done, the worse the oceans become. Many popular fish species are near extinction, and the ecology of the oceans hangs in the balance. Maybe this fish I am eating is a sustainable choice if you evaluate it as an individual animal, but the overall impact of the fishing industry brings suffering to untold millions of sea animals just to get me the few fish I eat. Am I saving animals from cruelty by eating this wild caught fish?

Eating meat is part of nature. Lions would die if they had to eat grass--they eat other animals. However, if the lions did not eat them, those prey animals would eventually overpopulate and die. The cycle of life and death is part of nature, and there is no way to escape it. If you could somehow disallow animals from killing each other, soon the lions would die of starvation and then their prey would fall on hard times, too. Perhaps an entire species of deer would die off due to overpopulation, rather than just a few being taken here and there by lions which keeps the whole species in check.

In our modern tree-hugging culture, we like to think that every living creature can live to full health and happiness all together in one loving ecology. That is not true: nature is a constant fight for survival, and one death only brings life to someone else. It's not pretty, but it is what it is.

The reputation of the Native Americans seems to fit the best: Take what you need, use what you have, and respectfully leave the rest.

The Freedom of Restrictions: In Economics, In Relationships

We often distinguish between two types of "freedom" in theology. The first is called the freedom from. This refers to freedom from oppression, from rules, from any kind of limitation. This is what most people have on their minds when they talk about freedom. They want to be un-tethered.

The second kind of freedom is freedom for. This describes the kind of freedom whereby you have the time, resources and capacity for a particular goal.

Going to school can limit freedom by having to take classes, do homework and pay tuition. But in the long-run, it can give you the freedom for a wide open future that you wouldn't have otherwise had.

This plays out in a committed relationship. You do lose the first type of freedom in a long-term relationship. You aren't free to date other people and there are bills to pay, diapers to change and school supplies to buy. However--here is what most people forget--you have the second freedom in abundance: The freedom to take that long-term relationship to the limit, something you would never have the freedom to do sitting on the sidelines going from one date to the other. It's the freedom to be a parent and a spouse and to grow in love.

Kris Kristoffersen understood this when he wrote, "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." A freedom from limitations by itself gives you nothing, unless it also provides the freedom for something.

The biggest mistake people make is spending a lot of energy securing the first kind of freedom while giving the second freedom only an afterthought. Yet, the second freedom is the most important one. Are we free to do what we want to do? Every decision we make is going to have limitations. The focus should not be about which limitations we can live with, but most importantly what opportunities we have.

A perfect example is my beloved stoplight scenario. At its most basic level, it is very true that stoplights limit our freedom. They tell us when to stop and when to go. However, a traffic light system keeps everyone moving like a well-oiled machine. The end result of this "restriction" is that we can drive where we want to more safely and quickly. This restriction increases freedom!

This is a simple lesson we all learned in elementary school fire drills: If we line up single file, we can all exit smoothly and safely. If everyone runs screaming for the door, we're going to have a pile-up and nobody's going to get out very easily at all.

Restrictions in the Economy

Capitalists usually freak out when they hear about restrictions. In theory, capitalism espouses a system of anarchy where the market should be kept totally free. The theory stresses that the fewer limitations the market has, the better the economy will function. Capitalists immediately assume that restrictions limit the ability of commerce to flow.

In reality, smart restrictions function like a traffic light system.

The more safeguards to protect people and institutions, the smoother it runs. I don't want to drive through a city without stoplights, nor do I want to work in a job market where I can be fired without provocation or be subjected to life threatening physical danger at any moment.

Businesses raged against regulations such as minimum wage, child labor laws, health insurance, unions, 40-hour workweek, the environment, you name it. But all of those things actually made their workforce more stable, healthy and happy. People were more productive and in turn spent their money back into the economy. Businesses did not lose productivity due to employees quitting or getting injured. By investing in safety, good wages and safeguards for workers, businesses prospered. Granted, these businesses did it kicking and screaming, as if they were in a hurry and held up at a red light. But they were not thinking about how everything would grind to a halt if there were not the occassional red light.

But then why are so many business people politically conservative? For a single business, it seems great to lower restrictions. Every law seems to hurt their ability to make money. In their minds, it makes all the sense in the world to unshackle them as much as possible.

What they don't take into account is the net effect of an entire system of people who have agreed to abide by a certain regulations. It does negatively impact an individual business in the short run if the government makes them pay their workers more through minimum wage laws or overtime requirements. All things being equal, now the business has to pay their workers more and they get nothing in return. However, if every business out there were doing this, the situation changes dramatically. Suddenly, all workers out there are making more money. And what do they do with their money? They spend it right back into those businesses!

In the above scenario, all businesses are taking a hit by paying their workers more. Since all businesses are doing it equally, there is no loss of competition in the market. This is why the government is the ideal body to mandate these changes--a single business would lose their competitive edge if they enacted these changes on their own, because other businesses would undercut them.

Businesses tend to support a conservative agenda because it speaks to these short terms fears, but you need to look at this with a prophetic eye to see where it's all going. Frankly speaking, the conservative agenda is not good for business. Too much unfettered capitalism just creates an unstable marketplace that is bad for business.

The Bottom Line

I've never forget a comic I saw on the office door of a college professor. It had four panels, each showcasing a different crisis in business: The application of Child Labor Laws, Minimum Wage, Safety Regulations, 40-Hour Workweek, etc. In each panel there was also a businessman screaming at the top of his lungs that these regulations would ruin his business! And in each instance, business not only did well but continued to prosper. We need to keep this in mind every time the business community tells us that some new regulation is going to ruin business.

In the year 2008, it is often those "environmental regulations" that are the scapegoat. Or universal health care. But look deeper: These programs may costs a lot, either to the government or business. But in the end, they will stabilize our society which lowers risks and will support the economy. Universal health care would give you the freedom to start new ventures, knowing your family is protected. Good environmental practices will improve our health and enable a future.

The Economics of Tax and Spend

In the closing days of the presidential campaign, it is a good time to sort through the piles of rhetoric that get shoveled our way. You hear a lot of talk about taxes and expenses. Some candidates complain about cutting taxes--how will the government pay its bills? Other candidates talk about raising taxes--how will people afford it?

It just doesn't work that way. We need to talk about how taxes and expenses are going to either stimulate or deflate the economy. That is the better way to look at it. You can have a situation where you lower taxes but the government actually ends up with more revenue in taxes--the lower taxes stimulate the economy enough to pay for itself. Raising taxes can also do the same! What's the right thing to do? The key is to figure out where the money is being invested, as I'll show below.

The Police Effect

Let's say the government raises taxes to hire more police officers. As a result, your city puts in a new precinct in a rough part of town. Folks are a little grouchy, since taxes went up to pay for it, but more jobs are created. The cops are spending their money in that neighborhood. The gas stations and donut shops are doing better business. Eventually, some enterprising people notice that there is a safe neighborhood where there used to be a rough one. They decide to open a business right across the street from the new police station. Soon enough, a second person opens another shop right next to them. Suddenly, a neighborhood that was once lacking in resources has new businesses, increased stability and a more vibrant economy.

Having the police around reduces risk in a neighborhood. Businesses are not as worried about break-in's or theft, anymore. People don't have to spend so much money buying bars for the windows or limiting their operations. Risk is one of those key indicators in an economy. When risk goes down, productivity goes up. Other folks who are less enterprising take the jobs that these folks left vacant, and some people come off of unemployment.

All this happened because we put a few more cops in a neighborhood? Yes! Sure, we paid more money for more police, but if it plays out right, you could have a small renaissance where we all benefit. All of this increased activity just turns into more tax revenue for the government.

You could follow all the possible ripple effects even further: There is more supervision for kids so they can be productive members of society rather than rotting away in a cell somewhere. If folks feel safer they might spend more money on their yard or their cars, knowing they will be protected. People might take more pride in their neighborhood which could be a boost of morale for everyone. Cops have special training, so that means there is a more educated workforce out there. The ripples keep going on and on.

The Teacher Effect

Let's say we raise taxes to put more teachers in the classrooms. All the same applies: There is an immediate boost as new jobs are created, and those teachers spend their money back into the economy. It also means that universities increase enrollment to train new teachers. More teachers also means that schools can hire art and gym instructors, hire more counselors and host more extra-curricular activities. All of these just turn into more opportunities for students to learn more and get more support. They also provide ways for kids to be connected who may not get that connection in a pure classroom setting. It also provides more mentors in different capacities, who may encourage kids to stay in school, stay out of crime and be successful. Violence should go down in schools, as well.

The result? Not only did we boost the economy by hiring more teachers, but through their work they help foster a smarter, safer, more stable population. Not only are teachers an immediate benefit to the economy, but the product of their work keeps reaping benefits as the years go on.

Just like lowering risk in the police example, innovation in the market is also another key indicator of growth. New ideas, education and technology are reliable factors for growth. We can expect long-term economic growth with a smarter, more experienced population.

The Military Effect?

Some say we should spend more on the military because it will stimulate the economy. At the outset, this is true. It follows the same initial pattern as if you hired more cops or teachers. The government will hire people to work in the weapons factories and in research and development. These people, in turn, will support the gas stations and convenient stores. Eventually, real estate agents start selling again so they feel comfortable enough taking their family out to dinner at a fancy restaurant, for example. It goes on and on, just like the previous examples.

The problem with military spending is that it doesn't create anything with a life of its own. If you make a bomb, then that bomb sits somewhere in a warehouse. You stimulated the economy in the short term by making the bomb, but once that money is spent, it is gone. The bomb has no further use to society, other than to blow up someone else's country--which you may rebuild but I wouldn't count on that, nor would I want an economic strategy based on bombing and rebuilding other countries! Admittedly, some innovation has come through military engineers, but I would rather have that innovation enter the economy directly and not in a small way as an after-thought of military research.

People: The Real Deal

So as you can see from the above examples, the real deal is not just a simple statement of who is raising or lowering taxes. There are good and better ways to stimulate the economy. Pay a guy to build a bomb, and the bomb sits in a warehouse and the guy sits in a factory. Pay a guy to teach our children, and not only do you have an active, vital teacher but he is also hard at work sculpting the next generation of innovators and productive members of society. That is the kind of investment that pays out for years and years.

So my advice: It is good to know how the government is taxing and spending. But look deeper: Think of all the expenses as investments. Are we spending our money on projects that are going to pay out dividends for years to come? Or are we throwing our money into things that have a limited impact? The government can stimulate the economy by hiring all sorts of people--we should be hiring people who, in turn, also perform a service that betters society.

Investing in people is the way to go: Police, education, social work, these are the kinds of things that build up the infrastructure of a society. These people all work to improve on key macroeconomic factors: reducing risk and increasing innovation. One person out of jail and into the workforce makes us all happier, smarter, safer and richer. This is really an extension of FDR's New Deal: building roads, bridges and dams not only puts people to work in the short run, but it also creates a transportation system which increases commerce and cuts cost, thereby continuing to support business in the years to come. It's a double pay-off.

These Democratic policies are not anti-capitalistic at all--in fact, they are entirely capitalistic. They support the system of capitalism so that it can run more smoothly. They function like the traffic light system: Businesses are more profitable when there is a well-policed environment. Businesses can innovate with a more educated workforce. Good social work can help people develop the social skills to work through difficult circumstances in their life--circumstances which keep people from being productive in society. A good counselor can help an angry teen find healthy ways to channel his feelings--instead of one more kid in jail, you have a potential role model in the making.

So not only should we ask our politicians how they are going to tax and spend--we need to ask them how they are going to invest in the future of this country. Some ways of investing can have an exponential impact while others just a linear one.

There are still scientists around today who were inspired and put to work by John F. Kennedy's science initiatives. For the last 40+ years, our nation has benefited from his prophetic investments into our future. Just think how another leader may set in motion the next generation of leaders and innovators who will continue to help us long after the job of that leader is done.

Tomorrow Morning, 9:00 AM

Wouldn't it be wonderful if everyone woke up tomorrow morning and decided unanimously not to do anything until all the suffering of the world were taken care of?

Some people say they are called to help the needy, like some kind of religious vocation. Some don't feel called. But do you feel called when your mother gets sick? Do you feel called when your best friend is in trouble? No, you respond out of a deep impulse within you. Instinctively, you jump into action, as if the whole world stopped right then and there. If your mother needed you, there would be no hill or mountain that could stand in your way.

I think this is what Jesus is getting at when he wants us to rethink our family relations. All people are your brothers and sisters. The same instinctive, immediate response to the suffering of one of your blood family members should be the same response you feel whenever anyone is suffering. All people are your family.

Our ancestors who lived several thousand years ago had an edge on us. Living in isolated villages, many of them probably lived out their entire lives without knowing that there is extensive suffering in the world. They went to sleep at night not realizing there were hungry people they could have helped.

If a neighbor fell on some catastrophe in one of those ancient villages, I would imagine people would have helped out. House burned down? Just stay with the folks next door. Food supply went bad? The town will pull together to cover the difference. How could you go to bed at night knowing the folks in the next hut are literally starving to death while you have plenty of food? You wouldn't let that happen. Human nature being what it is, I'm sure it was a few steps removed from utopia, but I think it is quite possible that basic needs were met in one way or another in a lot of these places.

We don't have that luxury today. We know that there are millions upon millions of desperately suffering people--from sickness, famine, war, drought, homelessness, emotional anguish, you name it. This is one of the most shocking changes in human culture over the last 100 years: We hear statistics like 'so many thousands of people die of hunger every minute.' People who lived previously saw suffering, for sure, but they didn't have quite that same information in front of them. What that does to our souls is something I don't want to consider.

I just wish all people expressed a collective "No!" one day. Let's not do a single thing until every person goes to bed with a full belly. Let's all stop everything we're doing and hit this hard--with the same fervor as if it were our very mother who were hungry, with the same immediacy as if it were our own levees that were about to fail. Let's take to the streets, boldly go where no one has gone before, and get 'er done!

To Pro-Life Voters

I sympathize with you. But let me clarify where I stand, as there can be some miscommunication with the terminology. I have what you could call a consistently pro-life position. I find myself not just against abortion, but also the death penalty, war, and anything that impedes and restricts love and life to grow, mature and develop. I find my pro-life expression in supporting the arts, in appreciating nature and beauty and education. It is just about the most unpopular stance to take in modern American politics.

In fact, "life" is the benchmark upon which I make all my moral decisions. Does something support life? Does something oppose life? That which supports life is that which I support. And so on. I see education as a pro-life stance. I see the environment as a pro-life stance. I see the arts, community building, peace making and war stopping to be pro-life.

In the Catholic world, we call this the "seamless garment" (John 19:23). All life is a single garment interwoven together, but without a seam or any sort of natural place where it would be logical to separate or tear it. It belongs together as one piece. The young, the old, the infirm, the unborn, the injured, the mentally retarded, the brainiacs, the soldiers, the saints--we're all woven into the fabric of life.

However, to advocate and support life at every stage means you run out of politicians to vote for.
Some people don't vote, as a result.

Some try to pick and choose--they are against abortion but can tolerate war and the death penalty, because in those cases at least you are getting the "bad people." Well, wars often involve carpet bombing civilians and many innocents go to death row. Not so simple. Some vote against war and the death penalty but shrug their shoulders over abortion--they figure it is already a law and there are some claims to womens' equality--claims they don't believe in, but it is easy to look the other way on this issue. We all find ways to justify our vote. You may find me doing it in this post, as well.

A Pro-life stance is not just about your relation to other people. It is about your relationship to yourself. What does it do to you when you justify killing another person? What has become of your own humanity when you find yourself finding excuses why this or that person or group is not worthy of life? Darth Vader didn't start off as a machine. As you can see from Luke Skywalker, it happened slowly--first his hand was replaced with a mechanical one. Then his heart was in play, and Luke had to choose: Life or machine.

The Betrayal of the Pro-Life Movement

I will say this to all the people against abortion out there: You have been betrayed. The Republicans have given you a lot of lip service and gladly took your money, but they have done NOTHING against abortion. NOTHING. Ronald Reagan took office in 1980, and there has been a strong pro-life Republican presence in Washington since. There have even been times when there has been both a Republican Congress and Presidency. Still, what have they done against abortion over the last 28 years? These were such "strong anti-abortion" people. Surely the powerful Ronald Reagan would have stood up to Congress to push some pro-life legislation through. Where was he?

They have led you to believe that somehow they "can't" do anything. They succeeding in convincing you that all they can do is slowly nominate Supreme Court justices, and that over time maybe just maybe they will be able to do something about abortion. But don't believe it. Congress or the President could have introduced, advocated for and supported all sorts of policies and legislation if they really wanted to do something about abortion. They could have let the Supreme Court fight it out. You could have seen these politicians talking about these issues when it comes time to make a law and not just when it comes time to get your vote.

In business terms, the pro-life movement didn't get much for the millions and millions of dollars it has invested. And I realize this is something that can't be looked at purely as a business investment. If nothing else, it is good some politicians are at least giving it lip service, even if that is all they are giving it. It keeps the conversation on the table and there are pro-life role models out there--sort of. But let's face it: Both the Democratic and Republican policies are not very pro-life at all--they just pick and choose some issues to support and others not to support, but they aren't driven out of an innate support for life itself. It is hard to see how George W. Bush values unborn babies when he seemed willing to go to war and blow some babies up for . . . what reason was that war for, again?

Right in line with that, John McCain is willing to use your pro-life sympathies to get your vote and your dollars. He says he will work against abortion as president. What has he done against abortion the last 26 years in Congress? Why is he waiting until now? In the meantime, he sees no sign of stopping a war that is killing lots of born and unborn children in another part of the world. I don't know what he'd do about abortion, but judging by his record I'd say it would be very little. But I do know what he'll do about the children in Iraq, as he has been very clear and consistent on that one.

I can't claim to know every bit of legislation ever attempted in the last 28 years. Perhaps I'm missing something. But you would think with all the talk around election time and the massive campaign machinery of the anti-abortion movement you would see a little more action than you do. I don't see anyone fighting this out on the streets of Capital Hill. And I believe there is a reason for it: They don't really plan to do anything at all about abortion.

If the Democrats were smart, they would take a softer stance on abortion which would undermine the Republican base. Had the Dems taken a more inclusive position when it comes to abortion, I am a firm believer they would have won the Presidency under both Gore and Kerry for sure, and possibly Dukakis and Mondale. The Democratic Party--a party supposedly of diversity--has taken a hard line stance on abortion and it probably lost them their edge in American politics. Who do you think those Reagan Democrats, Southerners and Catholics were who left the Democratic Party in droves in the 80s? That's right: The Pro-Life movement.

But pro-life is bigger than abortion.

I ask the pro-life voters to consider this as you vote. Are you getting what you think you are getting with the Republicans? Are they valuing and respecting your money and your vote? You already know my answers to those questions.

Abortion, Infant Baptism, Stoplights and the Western Mind

The Western Mind

In order to break the stalemate in the abortion debate, it may be useful to step back from our culture and look at it from a distance. When historians tell our tale, they will probably have a lot of words to classify our era, but among the terms would certainly be "western individualism." Just like the Renaissance, Dark Ages, Enlightenment and numerous other schools of thought before, there are themes deep in the psyche of each era. Each movement is characterized by a particular world view and assumptions.

Individualism is many things, but one of the defining points is that the individual is the ultimate reality. The more distinct and separate the individual is, the better. Our society is oriented toward the individual, with everything else taking second or third consideration.

Individualism is endemic in both liberal and conservative ideology. In fact, it is the axis on which those viewpoints revolve. We see this manifested in capitalism, our environmental approach as well as religious movements today. The rights of the individual are paramount, and the effects of our individual actions on each other and the world are an afterthought.

We are starting to collectively realize the shortcomings of such a worldview: When each of us is focused on getting something for ourselves we end up shortchanging each other and ultimately ourselves, as well. Many of us are now looking for a more holistic worldview in which we acknowledge our togetherness and inter-relatedness.

Stoplights

Half of Columbus was without power a couple weeks ago. It amazed me how slowly traffic moved without stoplights. Many of us usually dislike stoplights--we want to drive unimpeded and hate having to stop at every 3rd intersection for a red light. Yet, without those lights, we move at a snail's pace. Instead of a long line of cars moving through an intersection when it's their turn, you instead have one car at a time. It does make people become more aware and cooperate on their own, rather than mindlessly obeying a stoplight. But the end result is that it takes forever to get from one side of town to the other.

In the case of the stoplights, if we were to focus so much on the individual's "right" to travel without being told when to stop and go, we would end up with a society in which we are more limited than before. When every intersection is a 4-way stop no one gets anywhere. Taking your individual freedom away and making you stop at red lights and go on green actually gives us all more freedom when it is all said and done.

Infant Baptism

Let's look at religion as an example: The current evangelical movements strike a chord with a lot of folks today. The emphasis on a "personal relationship with God" is very individualized. Many people think of religious salvation in individual terms--this person gets saved and that one doesn't. Maybe you think we all get saved--each individual. Whether you have a conservative or liberal view, many of us are still looking at the issue on individual terms. By contrast, traditional Catholic views hold for the salvation of a people, consistent with Old Testament Judaism.

Many folks have trouble understanding things such things as infant baptism, such as in Catholicism. People don't understand how an infant baby can make a decision for Christ when the infant is just a few days old! Well, that's a misunderstanding--infant baptism is a community sacrament.

We celebrate the fact that God's grace is a gift and you can't actually go and get it yourself. It is a sacrament of God's promise and our hope that the gift will be there through no work of our own. In this light, infant baptism makes all the sense in the world. Celebrating our faith, hope and love that God's grace will shine on this person in whatever way God wants, we make our commitment to raise the child in the body of Christ--the Church. It may even make more sense than adult baptism, which emphasizes the individual's decision for Christ.

In my view, both baptisms are just fine. Each version emphasizes certain elements and not others. With adult baptism, it is easy to forget that the adult is able to make a decision for Christ only through the work of the Holy Spirit in the first place. With a baby, it is much easier to remember that the baby isn't making any decision at all and the child is totally dependent on God's grace. And with infant baptism the decision of the individual for Christ is still to come.

Abortion

Pregnancy really boggles the mind of a western individualist. How can it be that two bodies are joined as one? This issue is really not that hard for someone living in another time period, but for our era of western individualism, this is a real stumper. The decision that gets reached in the mind of the western individualist is that the baby must not be a real life. That is the only solution that makes sense to the modern person.

To acknowledge the life of the child (and rights) would be to challenge western individualism itself--it would be to acknowledge that there is something greater than the self. It is not just your body anymore, no matter how much western individualism tells us that we are entitled to think that way. The western mind simply cannot conceive of two bodies ultimately joined, and in frustration the western mind simply devalues one in favor of another. It doesn't know how else to handle this. However, you can see the discomfort in people around this--they know deep down this isn't a satisfactory answer.

Western individualism is ultimately limited. The truth is that we are fervently inter-connected to each other. The actions of one person can and do affect others, no matter how much the western mind wants to pretend that we are totally separate. We all live downstream from someone and upstream from another. Your right to smoke impedes my right not to breathe dirty air. None of us is totally "independent"--that is another myth of western individualism. Instead, we are all in various stages of growth and development, and each stage is vital to us. All day long my actions affect others, and their actions affect me.

A lot of the hot button social issues today can be intensely challenging to figure out--abortion, euthanasia, stem cell research, etc. We all have beliefs about life that we take for granted, but when we wrestle with extreme situations like these we can have real difficulty finding a way to make the ends meet. Some things just don't fit. It is easy to throw up our hands and be glad when we don't have to make decisions about these complicated issues. However, I would hold that when these issues are so challenging it is because they are exposing the limitations of our worldview. Maybe it's a sign to change our worldview. Individualism sounds fine in certain arenas, but it quickly falls short in describing what is going on here on earth as these issues show us.

We need to approach the issue of abortion out of the mindset of an inter-connected people, not as separate individuals who happen to be in society together. With individualism, we focus on the individual first, and we use our legal system to sort out what to do when the rights of one interferes with the rights of another. The focus here is the individual, with limitations imposed only when these clashes occur--considerations of society come second.

You see, the question in abortion is not a matter of deciding what the rights of the baby are versus the rights of the mother. The real question is deciding what the responsibilities of the baby and mother are to each other and our mutual responsibility as a society to and with these people. Only then are we going to get out of this abortion stalemate.

We are in stalemate, because we are asking the wrong question. We end up with all sorts of awkward ideas in order to maintain our western individual mindset, such as claiming that the baby is not a baby--or even if it is, it doesn't have rights because of some arbitrary criteria picked out of a hat such as which stage of development it is in. Let's be honest: Those criteria are not for the baby's benefit, those are designed to uphold the freedom of the mother first. In our society, the baby only has rights when the mother does not have to be involved anymore. So we define the start of the baby's life as the point by which the mother can check out--as if that actually has anything to do with the start of the baby's life at all.

A baby has become an object. The only way to support abortion is to devalue babies--probably the core value the human race has ever had. There is probably nothing that defines our species more than the intense love of adults for babies. This is the tie we have to sever in order to justify abortion. We have to make babies into objects.

I don't even want to imagine what that does to the human spirit or what long-term impact that will have on a society which is working hard every day to devalue life in all it's forms and reduce us all to mechanistic formulas--psychology, science, you name it. You see, the western mind does not just want to kill the unborn. The western mind wants to kill everybody. Scientists are working hard every day in their laboratories trying to kill us all as quickly as possible. "You see, there's nothing special about you--you're just a lump of cells in an impersonal universe!" That's what they tell us. I really have to ask why they are trying to hard to do this? They can't wait until they have taken everything special out of life. (Those of you familiar with G. K. Chesterton may notice his influence here, in particular on this last paragraph.)

Hy-phenators

Does anyone know how to solve the Last Name problem?

Lord knows we live in a patrilineal society. Our family name is passed down through the male line. Your last name is your father's father's father's father's name, on to infinity. Or at least for a long time.

People I affectionately refer to as "hyphenators" have come up with a partial solution. Mr. North and Miss South become Mr. & Mrs. North-South--or South-North. They may take away the Mr. and Mrs. titles, too, but that's a story for another day. The point is that they combine their last names into one. There is continuity with the past, and both sides of the family are appropriately represented in this new name. So far, so good.

Even further, women solve the problem of not having to give up their name in marriage. Now, I'm not entirely convinced that changing one's name in marriage is a bad thing, but it is problematic that only women are expected to do this. So hyphenating solves a lot of dilemmas. However, the cold truth is that this system isn't ending patrilinealism. The names are still the male names. The man brings his father's name to the marriage and the women also brings her father's name.

And then what happens to the kids? Do they use the hyphenated name? Or do all the boys get the father's last name and the girls get their mother's? It would be odd to group kids along gender lines like that. It wouldn't be healthy for boys to over-associate with their father and girls to their mother, but it's also not fair for them to get their daddy's name but not their mother's. But if you don't pick, you end up with a problem:

The hyphenators haven't give us much direction for the future. If the North-South's and the East-West's marry, are they the North-West's? Or are they the North-South-East-West's? It is unclear which direction they should go.

What happens when Joe North-South-East-West marries Jill Peanut-Walnut-Macadamia-Almond? It's so cumbersome, the analyst in me wants to simplify and call them the Compass-Nuts or something. That people and those people. It is a matter of grouping.

It is certainly fair to keep all the names, no question. But it is not long before this system becomes unwieldy and you end up with 216 names. You could just begin the system of hyphenation and pick an arbitrary point and continue forwrad. But as the names grow in length, there would have to be some kind of system to pick which names to keep. Do you pick the male names? Female? Draw a name out of a hat?

People in Spain actually hyphenate--sort of. They don't use a single surname like we do in America. People really do hyphenate and your official family name is as long as your family's memory can remember. Granted, you would only use your 32 surnames on a very rare occasion, such as the ceremony when you're installed as king. In most other cases, you would use 2 names. Yet, those 2 names are patrilinealy determined--one from your father's side and one from your mother, but both dominant names come through the male line. Your father's father's father's, etc. and your mother's father's father's father's, etc.

So how do you:
1. Maintain the tradition of family names
2. Avoid preference of one gender over another?

Each married couple could invent a new name. You could have a name for your particular incarnation of the nuclear family, but it would have no consistency over time and through generations. To me, this destroys the whole idea of a family name, and I would give serious pause before throwing out that tradition.

I'm somewhat partial to hyphenating. I've never thought of myself as Frank Lesko. I've more aptly thought of myself as Frank Lesko-Hricison-Burek-Yakubov. Those families are very alive to me. It is a little less true on my father's side, as most of those relatives are living in Europe and unknown to us, but the overall point is the same. Hyphenating gives voice to each of these. But each name is a misnomer of sorts. The people I call the Burek's are really the Burek-Jawarski's (I need to verify that name). Each name makes sense from my vantage point, as it is the name I've come to use for the particular group of people, but that particular people is also the product of several families coming together, each with their own names and lineage. Once I go back a couple of generations, I'm happy just using one name for each family group. And most outsiders are quite content to think of your family with only one name, as well.

Long last names are also giving more emphasis to an issue that may not be as important anymore. In the olden days, it was more relevant that a certain person was from the Carpenter-Tailor-Smith-Wesson clan. There were matters of inheritance and alliances that went along with that. The people you talk with will actually know each of those families and have a reference point. Nowadays, people move around so much from city to city it hardly matters. Outside of a small town, feudal land system, does it matter which clans you hail from?

Hyphenating may ironically make things simpler now that there are so many mixed families. Parents divorce and remarry, and with hyphenation everyone would know who comes from who without having to ask all the time. But isn't there something special about a family all coming together under one name? I do. But how do you decide on a name??

And yes, it's only a name, but we know names are important or we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Pet Peeve #37

You go to an event. It may be a lecture by some distinguished person or a panel discussion of experts. Perhaps it is a workshop and training. There is usually a question & answer session afterwards or even an open discussion.

I don't know if it's bad luck or what, but it seems every time I go to one of these things there is always somebody from the audience who gets up and proceeds to talk. And then talk. And talk. They go on and on and on. And on and on and on and on.

And I watch with both horror and intense curiosity, like watching an accident happen in slow motion. I just can't find it within me to understand how these people just don't know how inappropriate they are. We didn't all come to this event to listen to them. At one talk I attended recently, one of the keynote speakers was allotted 10 minutes for his piece, and yet an audience member later took at least 5 for his own "presentation"! I know I sound judgmental as hell, but how could they not know how unwelcome this is? The sheer rudeness leaves me dumbfounded. Often, these people are just rambling without a coherent thought, without taking a breath--no specific question or anything. And we all sit there prisoner to them.

The rest of us feel awkward as hell. Tell me how logical this is: It is rude to interrupt an event to give your own uninvited presentation. But yet the audience feels it is even more rude to interrupt that person! I just want to stand up and say, "You need to stop." This is where a good facilitator should step in and temper these folks.

This happens not just in lecture-type settings. I've also been in groups where this same phenomenon occurs: There is a round table discussion among equals, yet one person doesn't hesitate to absolutely dominate the discussion and go off on a 10-minute monologue. Do they not realize what they are doing? Or do they feel their opinions are so important in relation to everyone else's?

You can try to be sympathetic and say that maybe they just don't understand verbal cues or the phenomenon of taking turns in a conversation. Maybe they are innocently babbling. But I will assert that they are masters of these verbal cues. They speak in such a way as to never give anyone a chance to step in. They don't trail off, use concluding words or show hesitation in places where it would be natural for someone else to pick up the conversation. They aren't just naturally exuberant, they are planful to all get out, and they offer no quarter. The only way to step in is to forcibly interrupt them--which they know we won't do. Sheer obliviousness just does not apply. They work hard to maintain their place in the conversation. This is not an accident.

Road Rage Rant

The world is divided between those who support Road Rage and those who don't, and ne'er the twain shall meet. But before you go flipping the bird to some little old lady because didn't manage a stop sign in precisely the same way you think she needs to, consider this:

You have no idea who is in the car next to you. For all you know, that person has had the worst day of their lives--perhaps beaten by a boyfriend. They may have lost their job or are spending their nights taking care of a loved one who is slipping away to some illness. Perhaps it is an elderly person struggling to live independently or someone who has had a string of the worst-day-of-their-lives. There are some folks out there really living their lives and dealing with some tough stuff.

To be living with that kind of heartache and then for someone to erupt in a fit of rage because you didn't accelerate after a green light on cue like a trained animal is darn near inhumane.

I know it may sound hard to believe, but the world actually does not revolve around you. Assuming it should is probably where some of your rage is coming from. I realize you are stressed--but so are others. Your stress does not give you license to abuse others, and neither does your license.

Many of us drive slowly or cautiously. We're allowed. We are well within the legal limits. Before you spout that everyone should be 'off to the races' whenever they put rubber to the road, I will suggest that if there is anyone pushing the limits of the law and jeopardizing all of our safety, it would be those with Road Rage.

On Pushing Rivers--Let's Review

If you've been following this blog, you may have seen a trend that I have seen as well: I'm convinced that many of the problems with America stem from a pervasive attitude that we can force the world to be what we want it to be. We expend countless resources to do this, when it would be more effective, efficient and gentle to work with our surrounding and bend with them.

The following is a snapshot of ideas that have been discussed in previous posts. While they may seem to encompass varied topics, I am hoping the following shows a common theme among them:

Instead of finding a nice shade tree to relax under, we would rather rev up an engine and sit in houses and cars with air conditioning. People don't think of wearing lighter clothing or working at a slower pace in the heat. The term "climate control" sums it up. There is tremendous irony there, as people who live this way are not in control, but actually trapped in their homes and cars, powerless to thrive as the environment changes (they could if they just gave themselves a chance to adapt). A lot of people don't know that you can really thrive in the heat, but you have to give it a chance.

Instead of practicing a lifestyle of health and working with the body when it falters, our medical community is much more geared toward invasive drugs and surgeries. Do whatever you want, and our doctors will "fix" you when you get "broken." It is oriented toward forcing a cure rather than enabling health. Diet and exercise are considered as an afterthought, almost like extra credit or when all else fails. Any doctor will tell you that the best cures work with the body rather than against, but people often think (and act) otherwise.

Instead of appreciating rocky landscapes or desert foliage, Midwesterners who move to the southwest instead try to force a green lawn onto the arid landscape--even though water is scarce and introducing foreign species may upset the local ecosystems. They move all the way to the desert, but want to recreate Ohio.

Instead of trying to work with other nations, the USA instead follows the imperial model of using military force to get our way. The "War on Terrorism" is a perfect example. The notion that we can simply end terrorism by military force is actually impossible, if you consider the definition of terrorism--the last ditch efforts of a group of people with little to lose, who aren't afraid of dying, willing to commit acts of destruction to make up for their small political or economic power, all in an effort to disrupt the imperial power. Reducing communication and the political power of others leads to terrorism, it does not fight it.

When Senator Obama stresses the importance of maintaining dialogue with other nations, that simple and common sense attitude is just too radical for many Americans. Yet dialogue breeds negotiation which breed compromise and commitment. Sure beats the current model, which is "I'm not talking to you, but I'm gonna bomb you." I realize that negotiating with people who are already terrorists may be hard to do, but the idea here is that terrorists come out of a context. If there were more opportunity, if their culture had more of a voice, terrorists probably would not exist at all--and if they did, they would not have the popular support they depend on.

It is for reasons such as the above that America as a whole is often considered spiritually immature--still convinced that strength in isolation is the way to approach the world and solve problems. We're like a strapping young teenager who hasn't fallen flat on his face yet, only to discover later in life that you can't go through life forcing it to be what you want or "taking it on" yourself. Health, happiness and yes--responsibility--comes by being in relationship--with yourself, your surroundings, your community.

You don't pull no punches,

and you don't push the river.

-Van Morrison