(Clipped JDG's remakrs about economists)
You are saying that there is no such thing as a liberal economist, that
nobody who understands science can be anything but conservative, that
education will always destroy ideals? THere are people in the "trenches"
(some highly educated) who devote their lives to helping the poor and
downtrodden. Well liberalism is as much a job hazard for them as studying
science was for you, then! They tend to end up with a revulsion of power
structures like corporations that keep the poor in their place (and
government inasmuch as it as a tool of the RICH. Conservatives, and teh
wealthy, fear government PER SE because of the threat it will take their
property from them. "MY PROPERTY!" ("My corporate profits" means the same
thing.) I *don't* believe property should be so enshrined as a basic right
- neither did some of the Continental Congress which was why Jefferson's
original draft got changed! But conservatives seem to think it had stayed
the way it was, or wish it had.
In religious tradition, (including your own) wordly goods are dangerous to
the soul...the American value placed on property would have looked
ridiculous in the past, because everybody knew (even if they didn't admit
it to themselves and sermons had to admonish them) that it really belonged
to God and it was just a loan....the whole stewardship thing...standing up
for the poor has always been a major religious imperative. ANd even with
industry, there are STILL people oppressed by those above them. Not like
in the middle ages, but do you really delude yourself into believing
somebody from the ghetto has as much political power as you? No wonder so
many people don't bother to vote!
In college( yeah I went to one of those disgustingly liberal Jesuit
colleges, even though I'm not Catholic) I remember reading about Dorothy
Day and the Catholic Worker movement. (Her left wing views preceded her
conversion, but she wound up channeling it into following Jesus' request
that a certain man "go sell what you have and give to the poor and come
follow me." ANd i think the point of the lesson there was that the harder
it is for you to sacrifice anything the more important it is...) Some are
called to religious asceticism. Should THEY be Republicans?
Day was once quoted as "If you feed the poor, you're a saint. If you ask
WHY they're poor, you're a communist." (Oh, and I'm not quite as FAR left
as she was, but I bet you conservatives think anybody left of you is a
communist! They did in the 50s...)
Science does many wonderful things but I don't think it truly addresses
social injustice. There is *way* too much abuse in capitalism due to the
selfish ape in us all. Science lets us identify the problem but has been
lousy at proposing solutions. Technological fixes seem great a tthe time,
but often backfire. Can capitalism grow a conscience? Things got better
for the working class in the First World and many of them made it into the
middle clas eventually - until the developing world came along. Now other
countries are re-enacting the 18th century industrial revolution,
INCLUDING ITS WORST MISTAKES! Sweatshops, pollution, widening gap betwen
rich and poor, people trading rural poverty for urban slums....it's all
happening, and it all happened before in 18th century England when they
invented the steam engine and the weaving factory. WHy can't we stupid
apes ever learn anything?
(Blush) I admit to a closet weakness for John Grisham novels. Yeah, it's
trash. But many of the situations in his book The Street Lawyer (in which
a yuppie witnesses a violent act of retribution by a poor man, undergoes a
kind of secular conversion, and becomes a bleeding heart working in DC
slums) *are* drawn from real life. There really are people with law
degrees who could earn six figures if they chose but are *altruists* and
CHOOSE to work for a fraction of what they are "worth" on the job
market. They could represent corporations if they wanted to. They don't
want to. And I don't think they re political conservatives!
If economics is for conservatives only I want nothing to do with it. Much
of what you're taught is just about justifying the rich at the expense of
the poor anyway. How about a science dealing with wealth that takes
ECOLOGY into the equation? Kim Stanley Robinson started working on
that....
Kristin
