A
great piece by Bob Herbert on FDR's "
Second Bill of Rights" (also the subject of a
book by UofC's Cass Sunstein).
Other than
Thomas Frank, George Lakoff offers the most insightful analysis of social/political polarization in the U.S. -- not Red vs. Blue, but
Strict Father vs. Nurturant Parent, where the key distinction lies in liberals' notion of
Morality as Empathy: Empathy itself is understood metaphorically as feeling what another person feels. We can see this in the language of empathy: I know what it is like to be in your shoes. I know how you feel. I feel for you. To conceptualize moral action as empathic action is more than just abiding by the Golden Rule, to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The Golden Rule does not take into account that others may have different values than you do. Taking morality as empathy requires basing your actions on their values, not yours. This requires a reformulation of the Golden Rule: Do unto others as they would have you do unto them.
***
...conservatives also see morality as empathy and nurturance, but they assign a lower priority to them than liberals do. The result is that nurturance and empathy come to mean something different to conservatives than to liberals. In conservatism, moral nurturance is subservient to moral strength. Thus, moral nurturance for a conservative is the nurturance to be morally strong. For conservatives, moral empathy is subservient to moral strength, which posits a primary good-evil distinction. That distinction forbids conservatives from empathizing with people they consider evil, and so empathy becomes empathy with those who share their values.
***
...[L]iberals too have the metaphor of Moral Strength, but it is in the service of empathy and nurturance. The point of moral strength for liberals is to fight intolerance and inhumanity to others and to stand up for social responsibility.
***
Strict Father morality allows one to impose experiential harm on others in the name of the abstract metaphorical principle that Morality is Strength. In short, strict father morality allows you to hurt people in the name of morality. That violates experiential morality, which is the foundation of every abstract moral system. *** [T]he foundational and empirical pathologies in strict father morality, and, hence, in conservatism, are inherent and cannot be remedied. They make strict father morality an inherently pathological moral system.
His book
Moral Politics elaborates on these ideas (though I haven't read it yet). Beyond the religionists who continue to subjugate their entire lives to The Good Book, what is perhaps more problematic is the fact that the political economy infrastructure built by the strict father system (e.g., capitalist oligarchy) continues to be supported by so many people for whom religionist dogma is
not the determinative Word. It's like a disease where the virus ("God") has been destroyed, yet the symptoms persist. It may just be too early in the post-
telescope/
microscope era to expect a full recovery.
"One must choose between God and Man, and all 'radicals' and 'progressives,' from the mildest liberal to the most extreme anarchist, have in effect chosen Man."
-- George Orwell
Speaking of Strict Fathers, it's genuinely disturbing to see and hear the reports about the choice of the new #1 Catholic (aka Old Guy in
Silly Outfit): A local news report interviewed a grade school kid who said, "Since I'm a Catholic, it's really exciting to hear they chose a new pope." A 10-year-old says he "is a Catholic"?!?! This is how religionists manufacture demand for their commodities of
fear and ignorance -- get 'em while they're young.
"Although the notion of one god may give comfort to those in need of a daddy, it reminds the rest of us that the totalitarian society is grounded upon the concept of God the father. One paternal god, one paternal leader. Authority is absolute."
-- Gore Vidal
Of course religionism has consequences beyond its psychic abuse of the pious and their offspring: Religionism and capitalism feed off each other, perpetuating the "Strict Father" model of oppressive patriarchy, so
well exemplified by the late Pope JPII:
His commitment to the patriarchy was total. Not only would the church continue to be completely male dominated, but challenges to the patriarchal family like a woman’s right to choose when and if to have a child—including both contraception and abortion—as well as the right of lesbians and gays to same-sex relationships were to be condemned.
Terry Eagleton was
dead-on about Karol Wojtyla:
The greatest crime of his papacy, however, was neither his part in [the child molestation] cover up nor his neanderthal attitude to women. It was the grotesque irony by which the Vatican condemned - as a "culture of death" - condoms, which might have saved countless Catholics in the developing world from an agonising AIDS death. The Pope goes to his eternal reward with those deaths on his hands.
The
new guy appears to share
JPII's opposition to the "
liberation theology" movement that has preached the social gospel and worked for social justice in Latin America.
Pipecock Jackxon's take on these pious patriarchs:
Tic tic toe. Big Ben de time clock is my headmaster. Together we interpretate disaster for the popes, de deacons, and de pastor, for all who don't piss, shit and poop, and spit and fuck (makin' love like it is), hold up them hand and God will strike them with lightning, 'cause He know that they will be committing a sin, that their grandfather and grandmother did in the beginning, tempted by sin.
As George Bernard Shaw said, "Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn't!"
Speaking of patriarchy, invisible guiding forces, and oligarchical imperialism, Mike Wallace (
not the
"60 Minutes" guy) wrote an
interesting review of a book by Steve Fraser,
Every Man a Speculator: A History of Wall Street in American Life. Seems like a timely read, given the
attempt to destroy, via
crisis-mongering, the
most successful social welfare program in history:
...there must be many Americans who see the privatizers' ugly effort to divide children from parents for what it is--a menace to contemporary family values. Most people know full well that Social Security has not only been a lifesaver for the old but has provided a measure of independence to the young, shifting some of the burden of caring for aged parents to the country's broad collective shoulders. *** [Fraser's] sweeping historical reconstruction is a powerful reminder that our current economic arrangements are the product of centuries of debate and struggle, not the inevitable legacy of invisible "market forces."
No, those forces are not invisible -- they're very much corporeal.
This NYT Magazine piece lifts some rocks to shine the light on the radical anti-democratic ideologues taking over the federal judiciary, including some candidates for the Supreme Court who make
Tony Scalia look like a moderate.
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
How 'bout some
good news, for a change:
--
Maryland Stands Up to Wal-Mart--
Union Blues Lift in Chicago-- Bush Admits Errors, Reaches Out to Global Community... well,
maybe not.
"What is objectionable, what is dangerous, about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents."
-- Robert F. Kennedy
And, oh yeah, Americans are still
killing and
being killed in Iraq for no good reason --
especially not the hollow excuse, perpetuated in the military-industrial media, that the U.S. military is there to protect Iraqi civilians from insurgents:
attacks on military occupying forces, and by extension mostly US military forces, accounts for 75% of all attacks. Meanwhile, civilian targets comprise a mere 4.1% of attacks. This reality is at striking odds with the general picture painted in the press of a narcissistic, mindless and sinister insurgency simply bent on chaos and destruction.
Maybe
Robert Wilson has a better explanation than George Lakoff for all of this retrograde, destructive behavior:
The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer. This may be the single most important key to the political behavior of Western Civilization.
The sun may be shining and the air may be warming, but these are dark days indeed. Forecast: mostly fucked.
"The less reasonable a cult is, the more men seek to establish it by force."
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy."
-- Baron De Montesquieu
"When one man is dying of hunger near another who is ill of surfeit, he cannot resign himself to this difference unless there is an authority which declares, 'God wills it thus.' Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet."
-- Napoleon Bonapart
