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Anger serves its best purpose in the psychic economy when it's channeled into constructive action. Our aim in this multi-part essay is to set forth a constructive Progressive agenda for the next four years. However, before we can lay out that agenda, we first need to lay a little groundwork. We hope you'll indulge us.
"I trust that God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job.”
— George W. Bush
We heard a lot about "values" in the last presidential election. Did conservative Christians get "Jesus in the White House" when they voted for George Bush?
Pretty clearly not.
It was Jesus who said "I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." That seems like pretty unambiguous language to us. Yet George Bush is worth some $18 million, while Dick Cheney, weighs in at around $50 million. Rich men both, by any account, and, it seems, men not about to enter the kingdom of God any time soon on that account alone, never mind the destruction of the environment, the no-bid Haliburton contracts, the prisoners languishing without trial at Guantanamo Bay, the deaths of many thousands of Iraqi civilians in an elective oil war, the inexcusable horrors of Abu Ghraib, the farming out of detainees for torture in foreign lands, and so on through a long, long, long list of actions which, we're pretty sure, are not even remotely representative of what Jesus would have done (and most of which are vastly more serious issues than Clinton's sexcapade, which had no bearing on the presidency, at least, no bearing until it was intentionally turned into a smear).
However, although we don't have anything remotely resembling the ethos of Jesus in the White House, we do have yet another serious issue on the boil, thanks to its current inhabitant.
To quote a recent poll, "55 percent of Mr. Kerry's supporters said that Mr. Bush's supporters did not share their views and morals; 54 percent of Mr. Bush's voters said the same thing of those who voted for Mr. Kerry.
"In addition, 70 percent of Mr. Kerry's supporters said they were more worried about candidates who 'are too close to religion and religious leaders' than about political leaders who 'don't pay enough attention' to religion, after a campaign in which Mr. Bush repeatedly spoke of God and his faith. By contrast, 52 percent of Mr. Bush's supporters said they were more worried about public officials who 'don't pay enough attention to religion and religious leaders.'"
Pretty clearly, by playing to the religious right for political gain, Bush has done the one (and only) thing he does exceptionally well: polarize the nation, and, of all things, on the subject of values.
His timing is bad, and his politicizing of values is becoming tragic. That's because there really is a moral crisis in America. But the real moral crisis can't be laid at the feet of Hollywood, or of "liberals" (a term which we would be hard pressed to even define as it is presently abused), at least not to any large degree. It has, rather, two other primary causes. The first cause is almost universal moral confusion, concerning which I'll have more to say presently, and the second cause is money.
Since Bush claims his favorite political philosopher is Jesus, we'd suggest he have the following passages from the Bible concerning money tattooed on his chest: "Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income," "This is what the wicked are like—always carefree, they increase in wealth," and, perhaps most of all, "He who oppresses the poor to increase his wealth and he who gives gifts to the rich-—both come to poverty." The disadvantage of these tattoos, of course, would be that he could never undress, lest the offending passages heave into sight; but the advantage would be that he wouldn't have to pray for the much-needed guidance he claims to seek: he could simply read it right there on his chest.
Now, a passage that we don't find in the Bible, but which perhaps ought to be there, is this observation by Benjamin Watkins Leigh, made at the 1829 debates on the U.S. Constitution held in Virginia:
"Power and property may be separated for a time, by force or fraud — but divorced, never. For, as soon as the pang of separation is felt . . . property will purchase power, or power will take property."
If we rephrase this insight in a more modern vernacular, we get something like this: "Wealth yields power, and power yields wealth." Now, if there can be such a thing as a law of history, this is one of them. In fact, we like to refer to it as "Leigh's Law." The term "property" here refers, of course, to wealth, and we can reframe Leigh's Law as a kind of enlargement of Lord Acton's celebrated observation to the effect that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Here's the restatement: "Power yields wealth. Wealth yields power. Absolute wealth yields absolute power." And, again, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Together, Acton's Law and Leigh's Law identify the two forces that underlie the rise of all empires — and, even more so, the collapse of all empires. Associating primarily with others like themselves, and lacking for nothing, the propensity of the extremely wealthy is to lose all sense of social reality (Marie Antoinette's misattributed "let them eat cake" captures the attitude well). Unfortunately, it is a strong sense of the reality of others that underlies much of morality. Consequently, as the wealthy and powerful increasingly lose their sense of social reality, they squeeze for more, and more, and still more, and class warfare intensifies . Families in which both parents are under strong pressure to work because wages are low and middle-class taxes are high are families which cannot help but be poor environments for children to grow up in, because there's no substitute for the loving attention of a parent. Poorly reared, the next generation sinks lower. (By the way, we're generalizing about the wealthy here. There are, fortunately, many exceptions, though not enough to offset the tendency we're concerned with.)
The symptoms of Leigh's Law are all around us. Wrist slaps for white collar crime. A decaying educational system (that, significantly, isn't attended by the children of the wealthy — take those of Bush, for example). Enron and WorldCom. Offshore tax havens. The ever-increasing and ever-accelerating concentration of wealth and power into fewer and fewer hands. The elective oil war in Iraq. And not least of all the employee-squeezing, small business-destroying, and ever-expanding Wal-Mart. We could go on, but the reader need look no further than the headlines of his (very possibly corruption-afflicted) newspaper. The one beneficial lesson taught to us by the example of Enron is this: there is no "market solution" for corruption. Sooner or later, unless it makes for the broader distribution of wealth by design, as it now makes for the concentration of wealth by design, the market and corruption become synonymous. The "market solution" currently in place can only end with a handful of individuals owning virtually everything. This observation has only been lost on the American middle class. Those already wealthy don't seem to be objecting too strenuously. Certainly, they aren't bucking the trends that Acton's Law and Leigh's Law speak to.
We said above that there were two causes of social decay. We've just spoken to the corrupting influence of excess wealth. What about the other issue, that of moral confusion?
As we note elsewhere at this site, we are the inheritors of a tragic culture war. The origins of the war lie, in part, in the rift between science and religion (though also, and at least equally, in the rift between commercialism and religion). The good news, however, is that the primary causes of that war have already been laid to rest. Further work is needed on all sides to bring about cultural peace, but the preconditions of that peace now exist. The best thinking of philosophers and scientists now offers us a quite different worldview from that of Newton, and it is one with a secure place for both morality and life purpose. Religious humanists, such as Huston Smith, have established the foundations of a potentially powerful ecumenical movement, which aims at uncovering the legitimate, and rational, core of all the world's religions. Many Protestant theologians have already gone far toward freeing religious conviction from its less reasonable elements. All of this has set the stage for real movement forward toward cultural and religious amity, and indeed vision, for the first time in centuries, if not millennia. Despite the severity of the challenges that face us, there is no reason, in principle, why the 21st century shouldn't be the century of wisdom and the flourishing of morality and human purpose.
No reason, that is, except for George Bush, and those like him, who seek to make political hay (and consequently wealth) out of the old divisions.
The culture war that Bush and Friends of Bush are fostering is a red herring, just as red as they come. Not because conservatives aren't rightly concerned about the corruption and decay of American society, but because, bamboozled by Bushism, they haven't yet understood its roots in Leigh's Law and Acton's Law. As much as it may alarm the homophobic, homosexual marriage wouldn't bring about the downfall of civilization—but class warfare just might. Still, what a wonderful hot-button distraction, and what a great way to keep the pot boiling. Above all, what a great, if supremely cynical, way to stay in power (and in a position to increase that wealth).
Even as class warfare manifests itself in all its dreary ugliness on the domestic front, it is mirrored in exploitive foreign and economic policy. The "New American Century" sounds to our ears remarkably like the "thousand year reich" Hitler spoke of. Iraqis aren't flocking to the promise of freedom and democracy because they "hate our freedom," but because neither freedom or democracy is on offer, only a puppet regime controlled by Friends of Bush. But the rest of the world understands what has happened in Iraq, even if many Americans haven't yet. Saddam Hussein is long gone. There were no WOMD. There was no al Qaeda link. What is underway now is a war of occupation—the very opposite of the installation of democracy, which is the last thing the FOB want. Apart from a puppet government, what Iraq will also end up with is US military bases sitting on top of all that wonderfully profitable oil. To choose another choice item of FOB policy, we have the militarization of space, a subject Americans haven't yet heard much of anything about. Is the intention, then, to blow up terrorists from near Earth orbit? Assuredly not. Global domination is the name of the game here, too.
On the economic front we have globalization, which is nothing but all-out economic warfare disguised as aid to the poor. And it's not just economic warfare on third world nations: it also undermines US national sovereignty, and will inevitably destroy the US middle class. Perhaps worst of all, the secretive and non-elected institutions of globalization have consistently sought to supplant national laws with international trade policy that trumps those laws. It has become, in fact, a global proxy government for the ultrawealthy.
What, then, to do in the face of so much distilled evil? Move to Canada? Sit around in the dark feeling bad? Most certainly not.
We'll begin detailing the agenda in the next essay in the series. Those who want to get an early start can read up in the field guides to politics and economics linked below. But for now believe that there is much that can be done, and Progressives are just the ones to do it.
(For related insights see also:the true political spectrum, class conflict, democracy, populism, plutocracy, oligarchy, and the links below.)
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