Sununu ast SU Commencement

Yesterday, John Sununu gave the commencement address at Shenandoah University where I am professor of Religion.  Some of my colleagues and friends were upset at his invitation to speak.  I was not.  From what I could learn about quickly, he has been a moderate Republican and the only controversy surrounding him had to do with comments he made during the recent Presidential campaign as a spokesperson for Mitt Romney.  I was willing to overlook those comments on the grounds that people say all kinds of stupid things during the campaign.

Yesterday, he gave a completely unmemorable commencement address until the very end.  If I find a text of his comments I'll post them, but here's what I remember.  He said something like, "So as not to disappoint those of you who are expecting me say something controversial..." He then referenced President Obama's commencement address at Ohio State saying something like "his praise of big government there."

Then he cited a quotation which he said has been variously attributed (I think he said to Ronald Reagan and other back to the Founding Fathers):  "A government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have."   He got applause from a significant percentage of our students to which I immediately commented:  "Isn't it interesting that people who got their education with the help of state and federal low interest loans applauded those comments."  I was thinking "big government" aways means "government that does things for other people, or government that does things I don't like."

Interestingly what President Obama actually offered was a serious and thoughtful discussion of the role of government.  (See below,)  Sununu took what I call a potshot (which all of us, myself included, are prone to take, especially in conversation), by which I mean a short, trite, criticism lacking any substantial justification.  It's a rhetorical device that "works" when one is talking to people who already agree with you or when you are not interested in dialogue or persuasion but only to rouse fellow partistans.   

Such potshots are IRRESPONSIBLE in a context like a commencement address, both because one can't assume the agreement of your audience and because of the academic settings.

This is also interesting. In researching the quotation he used this morning, I discovered on the Monticello website: " Neither this quotation nor any of its variant forms has been found in the writings of Thomas Jefferson.  Its first known appearance in print was in 1953, although it is most likely older.  It appeared frequently in newspapers in the 1950s (usually unattributed), and was even used in political cartoons.  It was copyrighted in 1957 by the General Features Corporation, as part of a syndicated newspaper feature called "Today's Chuckle."  It later became a popular saying among Republican politicians.  Governor Harold W. Handley of Indiana used it in his annual message to the Indiana General Assembly in 1961;[3] Barry Goldwater was quoted using it in his 1964 run for president;[4] and Gerald Ford is on record using it in an address to a joint session of Congress on August 12, 1974.[5]  It was attributed to Ford as early as 1954, however,[6] and Ford's assistant, Robert Hartmann, said that Ford claimed to have heard the quotation "early in his political career" from Harvard McClain at the Economic Club of Chicago.[7]

This quotation was not attributed to Jefferson until relatively recently."

(http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/government-big-enough-to-give-you-everything-you-wantquotation)

Sununu's comments is an indication of why we are in a political morass right now.  He and his Republican colleagues are making it impossible for us to have a serious conversation about the role of government in our lives and, given the budget situation about which all of us are concerned, a thoughtful approach to eliminating bad programs (while enhancing support for that which is truly essential).

What Obama actually said:

"Colleagues with whom I shared a joyous commencement:  Here's what Barack Obama actually said about government in his Ohio State commence address.  Please pass this on to others who were there.  Warren

And that’s precisely what the Founders left us — the power, each of us, to adapt to changing times. They left us the keys to a system of self-government, the tools to do big things and important things together that we could not possibly do alone — to stretch railroads and electricity and a highway system across a sprawling continent. To educate our people with a system of public schools and land-grant colleges, including The Ohio State University. To care for the sick and the vulnerable, and provide a basic level of protection from falling into abject poverty in the wealthiest nation on Earth. (Applause.) To conquer fascism and disease; to visit the Moon and Mars; to gradually secure our God-given rights for all of our citizens, regardless of who they are, or what they look like, or who they love. (Applause.)

We, the people, chose to do these things together — because we know this country cannot accomplish great things if we pursue nothing greater than our own individual ambition.

Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems; some of these same voices also doing their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave and creative and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.

We have never been a people who place all of our faith in government to solve our problems; we shouldn’t want to. But we don’t think the government is the source of all our problems, either. Because we understand that this democracy is ours. And as citizens, we understand that it’s not about what America can do for us; it’s about what can be done by us, together, through the hard and frustrating but absolutely necessary work of self-government. (Applause.) And, Class of 2013, you have to be involved in that process. (Applause.)

The founders trusted us with this awesome authority. We should trust ourselves with it, too. Because when we don’t, when we turn away and get discouraged and cynical, and abdicate that authority, we grant our silent consent to someone who will gladly claim it. That’s how we end up with lobbyists who set the agenda; and policies detached from what middle-class families face every day; the well-connected who publicly demand that Washington stay out of their business — and then whisper in government’s ear for special treatment that you don’t get.

That’s how a small minority of lawmakers get cover to defeat something the vast majority of their constituents want. That’s how our political system gets consumed by small things when we are a people called to do great things — like rebuild a middle class, and reverse the rise of inequality, and repair the deteriorating climate that threatens everything we plan to leave for our kids and our grandkids.

Class of 2013, only you can ultimately break that cycle. Only you can make sure the democracy you inherit is as good as we know it can be. But it requires your dedicated, and informed, and engaged citizenship. And that citizenship is a harder, higher road to take, but it leads to a better place. It’s how we built this country — together."

Cycling Meditation

Pastor’s Column, 

Madison Eagle 

May 16, 2013

Almost fifteen years ago, I began riding a bicycle on the roads of Madison County.   My motivation was to improve my health and control my weight.    I have come to see love for cycling in relation to my Christian faith.

The most significant relationship has to do with the importance of the body in a Christian worldview, and, the responsibility we recognize to be good stewards of our physical health.   According to the first story in the Bible, upon beholding the completed creation, God declared it all good.  The earth is good, the plants and animals are good, human bodies are good!  

Most important of all, in terms of the importance of the body in the Christian worldview, is the preposterous claim the New Testament and Christian tradition makes: that in Jesus, the Carpenter Prophet of Nazareth, the very Word of God “was made flesh and pitched his tent among us.”

Because of all this, those who are shaped by Christian faith can never ignore the importance of the body or deny our responsibility to and for the body—our own and those of our brothers and sisters, especially the poor.

One of the very earliest ideas about Jesus that the church very quickly recognized as a threat to the faith was the idea that Jesus wasn’t really human; that he didn’t really have a body; that he didn’t really suffer, bleed, and die on the cross.  It only seemed that he had.  This heresy was called Docetism from the Greek word that meant “to seem.”

It’s easy to see the attraction of this view.   How can God who is infinite take on the finite, we wonder?  How can God who is awesome in power be fully present in a limited and weak human being?  How can God who is the very source of life, experience death?   Yet, the teachers of the early Church quickly recognized that to accept such a view undermined much of what was essential to Christian faith and life.

I fear that many contemporary Christians are practical Docetists.   While we affirm with our lips that Jesus is fully divine and fully human, we don’t really take the human part seriously.  As a result, we don’t take seriously the goodness of our bodies and the importance of caring for them.  

There is a second respect in which cycling has become an important part of my Christian discipleship.  Surely, every authentic Christian life must include regular time for solitude in the presence of God.  Time alone on a bicycle cruising the beautiful Madison countryside is no substitute for weekly worship with the Christian community or even personal prayer. But for me, it has become a significant dimension of my “time apart” to reflect, to celebrate the goodness of life and to “hold in the Light,” as our Quaker brothers and sisters like to say, those matters of deep concern to me.

Finally, one of the things I’ve been able to do as a cyclist is to use my love for the sport as a way of raising money to support charities.

Every June, I cycle across the state with a group of 15-25 Virginia United Methodists to the church’s annual conference.   Along the way, we stop to visit as many local churches as we can.  Our purpose is to increase support for the offering that will be taken at Annual Conference. The offering funds important ministries in Virginia and around the world that serve the needs of children for better education, health care, or nutrition.  

This weekend, I’ll be riding in the 26^th Annual Tour de Madison.  It is not a charity ride, but I am grateful that it too provides aid to local groups needing financial support.  This year, for example, volunteers from Rochelle Ruritan Club will be helping out for the first time.  I can still remember how excited they were about the donation they will get for their efforts:  “Oh, that will be a great help to our college scholarship fund!”

What are you doing to care for your body?   Are you able to find time apart for solitude before God?  What creative ways do you have for “doing all the good you can, to all the people you can?” (John Wesley)

All Things New—A Sermon for Easter Season

We are a people of hope and this is our season of hope.  We are a hopeful people because the woman who went to the tomb discovered that Jesus was alive.  God had raised him from the dead.

And we are hopeful people because in faith we embrace the promise that God’s victory over evil, sin, and death in Jesus shall be our victory as well.   Not only has he been raised, by faith we believe that we shall be as well.

We do not look forward to death or dying.   We still contemplate our own demise with no small measure of anxiety.  We surely grieve at the loss of those near and dear to us.  Surely, we find premature, senseless death, particularly of innocent people through disease, violence, natural disasters, hunger, and accidents a source of despair—even when it affects people unknown to us.

Still, by faith, we are able to say, however feebly, however uncertainly, still with conviction and hope: Oh death, where is thy victory, oh, grave, where is thy sting? 

We are surely people of hope. 

But let me invite you to consider the possibility today, that we are not nearly hopeful enough!   We have not embraced the fullness of God’s promises to us as the Scriptures bear witness to them.  

What I remember being taught in the church in which I was raised as a child was that I had an immortal soul.  I was told to believe in God and to believe in the atoning death of Jesus Christ so that I could have forgiveness.  Then, at my death my soul would go to heaven.    And I suspect that most Christians today, possibly most of you sitting here, believe something like that.

I don’t know when I began to notice a problem with that belief.  It may not have been until I was in college or seminary, but at some point I came to realize: that’s not what the Bible says and that’s not even what the historic creeds of the church say.

You know the Apostles’ Creed, don’t you?   What do we say there?  “We believe in God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth.  And Jesus Christ, his only Son our Lord,” etc.  And, finally, “we believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of the saints, the forgiveness of sins, THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY, and the life everlasting.”

There is nothing there about an immortal soul; we talk about the resurrection of the body.   Think about the Easter stories: They don’t say that what the women got to the tomb, the found Jesus body but that he appeared to them in spirit or as a disembodied soul.  No, that’s not it.  The tomb was empty.  His body wasn’t there.  He wasn’t there!

I shall never forget a pastoral visit I made as a young pastor to a man affiliated with the church I was serving at the time.   I had never met anyone or heard of anyone before or since who was so ravaged by illness and disease.  His whole life, his whole existence from the time of his birth had been nothing but illness, disease, and deformity.

What I have never forgotten is the question he asked me very early in our conversation after he had told me about all the things that ailed him.  “Preacher,” he asked,  “Do you think in the next life I’ll have a better body than this one?  Do you think I’ll get one that’s better than most peoples’ since the one I got this time is so much worse?”

I cannot tell you how happy I was to be able to say to him, “Brother, I can’t tell you that you’ll get a body that’s better than everyone else’s.  But, I can tell you this: the promise of the Bible is that you will get a new one, a better one because ‘death will be no more; and there will be no mourning, no crying, no pain.’”

So you believe you have an immortal soul that’s going to heaven when you die?  Brother or sister, I’m here to tell you: the good news is even better than that!   You will have a new body!  We believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting! 

But there is another respect in which I suspect our hope is sometimes too narrow.  Another respect, related to this one, in which we have not embraced fully the promises of God to us. 

One of the most incredible passages in the Bible—the most hopeful, if you will— is the one from Revelation chapter 21.  It says in part: “ Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away… And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.’  And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.”

The visionary of the Revelation was probably quoting a passage from the prophet Isaiah there.  It was the Old Testament reading for Easter Sunday.  You may have used or you may not have.  If you did, listen to parts of it again:

65:17 For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth.…

… no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in Jerusalem, or the cry of distress.

65:20 No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.

65:22 They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; …

65:23 They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity;

65:25 The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent--its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the LORD.

Am I wrong to suggest that these expressions of hope from Revelation and Isaiah suggest that ultimately a biblically formed hope, a fully Christian hope is for a world in which there is no injustice, no human deprivation, no war.

Think of it this way: the promise is that there will be no crying, no pain, no death.  You and I read that, and because our lives are so privileged, so relatively free of tragedy and injustice and violence we associate the absence of crying and pain with that which accompanies our mostly natural deaths at ripe old ages.   But for the vast majority of people in human history, even for millions upon millions of people today, the primary source of crying and pain and grief is not natural death at a ripe old age.   Rather it is famine, and injustice, and war!  If God’s promise is to put an end to crying, and pain, and death, it is the promise of an end to hunger, and exploitation, and war!   If God’s victory over death is also a victory over sin, then surely it is victory over these realities that are but products of human sin!

God is making all things new!  Our hope is for our souls made new, and our bodies, because God is making all things new!   Our hope is for ourselves made new as individuals, but also for the renewal and transformation of our friendships, our communities, our economies, and our politics, because God is making all things new.  Our hope is our human reality but is also for the animals; the rivers and mountains and seas; the polar ice caps, the forests, meadows, and plains, because God is making all things new: a new heaven and a new earth!   We hope for eternity, but we are hopeful within time within history, because God is at work even here, even now, making all things new.

Let me get very personal for a minute, if you will allow me that indulgence.  For a long time now I have noticed that I’m not much interested personally in life after death!   For a long time I’ve thought that the most important thing about being a person of faith was what it does for us here and now in terms of giving us a way to make sense of a difficult world and to find a way to remain joyful, and loving, and hopeful in it.   And for me throughout most of my life that has been enough.

I had thought that as I got older the matter of life after death would interest me a great deal more.   But it hasn’t.  Indeed, as I’ve gotten older and the reality of my own death, when I allow myself to contemplate it, has gotten nearer I’ve found myself thinking and saying out loud from time to time: “You know if I were asked, ‘what do you think happens when you die?’ and everything depended on my getting the answer right, I think I would say ‘I bet when we die we’re probably just dead! I think that’s probably all there is.’”  

But recently my thoughts have taken a different turn.   I’ve been thinking: it’s so easy for me to be agnostic if you will about life after death; easy for me not to need that hope because I’ve had such an incredibly fortunate life!  I was raised in a loving family; my world has never been threatened by violence on a day-to-day basis; I’ve never experienced injustice or known hunger.  How easy it is for me to say this life is good enough!  Life owes me nothing!  God owes me nothing!

But what about people whose lives have been permanently scarred by sexual abuse as children?  What about those millions of Africans that were kidnapped from their homes and forced into the bottoms of slave ships? What about the one’s who died in those hell holes?   What about people whose lives have been cut short by disease, or famine, or war? What about the thousands of children who die every day to this day from malnutrition and the parents who’ve had to watch their children die helplessly?   What about the people whose lives have been filled mostly with struggle, with fear, with suffering, with mourning and tears?  How dare I speculate that this world, this life is all there is?   How dare I serenely enjoy the love, the beauty, the security I’ve known saying “this is good enough!” in the face of their suffering?

In truth this world isn’t good enough, even if it’s been good enough for you or for me, until it is good enough for all of us!  And thanks be to God, the promise to us is that it shall be.  God is making all things new.

Just as I was thankful that I could say to that very deformed and ill man so many years ago, “The promise of the bible is that you will have a new body,” I am thankful that we can say to all those whose lives have been devastated by abuse, or war, or famine, or injustice: “It shall not always be so.  One day you will enjoy a world without crying, without pain, without tears because God is making all things new!”

Now let me back off a bit and come down to earth a bit here at the end.   Let me “get real” for a minute as we might have said when we were youngsters.  I don’t know exactly what I’m talking about when I affirm the resurrection of the body or a world without injustice, or famine, or war. 

I don’t understand the physics or the biology of a resurrected body.  I have no idea what its molecular structure will be.   We are dealing with mysteries; things beyond our full comprehension.   And the New Testament writers were aware that they were dealing with mysteries here. They affirm that the tomb was empty, that the resurrected Jesus ate and drank, and bore the marks of his crucifixion in his resurrected body.  But they also say he passed through locked doors and seemed to appear and disappear at will.    Paul says of our resurrection that we will have spiritual bodies.   What does that mean?  Is that an oxymoron? A logical impossibility like a “round square?” 

And I surely don’t claim to understand exactly what a new heaven and a new earth means.  What will it mean to live in a world without injustice, and war and famine?  How will such a world come to be? What is it’s relationship to the world and the history we know inhabit? We are surely dealing with another mystery here. 

We are dealing with mysteries, but I believe they are essential ones.  There are profound matters at stake in our embracing the fullness of God’s promises to us, in our affirmation of the hope for the resurrection of the body and a world made new, God’s Kingdom, God’s will being realized here on earth as it is in heaven. 

Put simply what’s at stake is this: we can only live into the way of eternal life, we can only live into the life of love, especially for the poor and vulnerable to which Jesus calls us if we value, take seriously, honor the body, the flesh, this material world, human history.  In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth; the spiritual and the material worlds, eternity and time and God called it good.   God called it all good.

 In the fullness of time, the very Word of God through whom everything that is came to be, became flesh, took on our physical, material reality, entered human history and lived fully in a particular community a particular economic and political context.  And the promise of God to us is that we shall be raised IN THE FLESH, with our bodies, new though they may be, to live in a world made new.

In the light of all this, there is no place among us for any attitude that disparages or discounts the significance of the body or the significance of the human struggle to find lives of meaning and purpose and justice here and now!    WE have not been alone, but Christian people have always been and continue to be first among those who work tirelessly to feed the hungry, to accompany the poor, to work tirelessly in the world for justice and peace.   And what explains our place among that company is our conviction that the one we call God has called us to such commitments and God has done so because we are those who he is forming to bear witness, to be a sign and a seal, of his that great promise: behold, I am making all things new; I shall dwell among my people; there shall be no crying, no mourning, no pain, no death, no war, no famine, no injustice.

Thanks be to God we have that hope! 

A Response to Dinesh D'Souza

Dinesh D'Souza's "parable"

A friend on Facebook posted a link to this video and commented, "Makes sense."  I wrote the following suggesting why I don't think it makes sense.

In the interest of greater understanding, I wanted to try to explain why I don’t think D’Souza’s arguments here make much sense.   I’m only taking the time to do this because I think his perspective is extremely helpful for getting at the core of some of the important things you that have you and I (and millions of others) in such profound disagreement about public policy issues.

Let’s take first his claim that the element of compulsion (when people are forced by the government to pay taxes to help the poor) strips the virtue from the act of helping.  (He uses the image or “parable” of Obama on a horse with a gun forcing Peter to give his sandwich to Paul.)

While there is surely an element of compulsion in taxation, the parable be uses exaggerates that element.   Taxation is not one group forcing another group to relinquish something against their will to a third group.  Taxation is what and how we all decide together to contribute to be able to do the things we think are necessary and best done together.  There is an element of compulsion for sure, but it is only truly unjust compulsion or oppressive compulsion when I am excluded from the process of deciding how we tax and what we tax for.   Remember the charge of the American patriots against George the Third wasn’t “taxation is compulsion,” it was that there was “taxation without representation.”  All of us have to pay taxes for things we don’t necessarily think are justified. Let’s argue about tax rates and government’s proper role. Those are legitimate and reasonable things we have to discuss in a democratic society.  The problem with parables like D’Souza’s is that in misunderstanding taxation (and the element of compulsion in it) it totally undermines the whole basis for taxation. Put differently, it really makes ALL taxation suspect.

Is there, as he suggests, no element of virtue in the paying of taxes as he suggests?  Surely there is none if his parable appropriately imagines what’s going on when democratic societies tax, but as I’ve said, I don’t think it does.   Understood as a corporate process whereby we (through our democratically elected representatives) decide how much we are going to pay to do certain things together, there is clearly an element of virtue throughout the whole process.  Determining what tax rates are fair involves moral judgment; deciding what things are appropriate for us to do together involves moral judgment; willing and joyfully paying our taxes at the rate we have determined together is appropriate, to enable us to do things we have determined together are necessary is certainly virtuous! 

 In the context of how I understand taxation (as how we decide what we are going to do together and how we are going to pay for it, rather than as conceived in D’Souza’s parable), I think there is a profound element of moral virtue in the current debates. I think those who are willing to pay higher taxes to support programs that are necessary to help poor people are displaying love and generosity.

Even though I think he’s wrong about the role of virtue in taxation, I think I would disagree with him even if there was no virtue in it. For me, the fundamental issues is not whether your and my virtue is expressed in the process whereby the needs of the poor are met, but whether the needs of the poor are met!  I think about he biblical idea of the jubilee from Leviticus.   Every 50 years the land in Israel was redistributed back to its original owners; debtors were let out of prison; slave debtors were set free.  It was not an appeal to voluntary charity suggesting that making sure poverty did not become entrenched was a good thing only if it was an expression of individual virtue exhibited through voluntary.  Rather, making sure poverty didn’t become entrenched was a good thing whether the individuals who paid for it liked it or not!  Of course, I would say, ultimately that the jublilee provisions were an expression of the virtue of the Israelite community.

A second big idea I see here is the claim that taxation is legitimate to do things (like provide for military) defense that help everyone.     This is D’Souza’s attempt to rescue his overall argument against taxation/compulsion. Yes there are some things, he wants to say, that it’s okay to force people to pay for, but those are only things that serve everyone (like military defense) but not things like welfare programs which only help the poor.    He says that “robbing Peter to pay Paul (poor welfare recipient) hurts Peter.”    At least robbing Peter to pay for military defense helps both Peter and Paul and presumably that makes it legitimate.

I’ve already suggested that taxation isn’t robbery.  But what I want to address here is the assumption that when you and are taxed to help lift others out of poverty that only hurts us.  That strikes me as complete nonsense.  Of course, it “hurts” me in the sense that I have less money in my pocket.  But it doesn’t only hurt me.   All the evidence suggests that inequality is increasing and that upward mobility for those at the bottom is minimal.    What I think I am seeing, is that many, many working class and poor folk are becoming more and alienated.  The feel themselves excluded. They don’t trust our institutions. They don’t think the society “works” for them. They don’t see themselves as having a stake.  They live in a completely different world from those of us who are “making it.”  (And I don’t just mean the really filthy rich. I think the typical poor or working class person in Madison Co. sees themselves as living in a different world from the world you and I live in—with our college degrees, our professions, our relative income security.)   It seems to me that all of our lives are diminished by this situation.  It creates mistrust, crime, incivility, etc.  I believe my life and your life will be better if we could change that, if poor and working class people among us actually experienced upward mobility and a sense that the our society “works” to meet their needs and sustain their aspirations.

Finally, just a brief word about D’souza’s wagon parable: some (government, Obama) forcing others (you and I and the rich) to pull the wagon (in which the poor ride.)  He says a couple of things in that context that seem foolish to me.   He says people will conclude it’s nicer in the wagon.   OK. Maybe there are some among us who would prefer to be dependent.  But I think what the vast majority of us want is a role to play in which we can use our talents and energies to do something useful to others and to our communities.  And, of course, we want to be able to make a decent living and fair wage for playing that role.  Moreover, it isn’t as if we are ever going to provide a level of welfare assistance that makes the wagon a cushy place.  Personally, I think everyone should be guaranteed enough to be able to eat, have a roof over their heads, and access to basic health care.  That’s a minimally secure existence, but surely not one that many would say is ideal, not a wagon its better to be in than outside helping to pull. 

D’ Souza also suggests that liberals/Obama are critical of “the wagon pullers” and believe in the “moral superiority of those in the wagon.”    I have no idea where he’s getting that.    I suppose it’s always possible to find some place where some liberal, even Obama has painted with such a rhetorically broad brush.   What I hear isn’t rich people are bad, poor people are good: but rich people are in a better position to make a higher share of the sacrifices necessary to create a better society.  And that better society isn’t one in which half the population is riding in a wagon pulled by the other half.  It’s rather one in which people are empowered to become wagon pullers and the wagon gets increasingly less crowded!

  If anyone is prone to making broad brush moral judgments based on class its people on the right. In fact, D’Souza is implying there are two kinds of people in the world: good moral productive wagon pullers; and bad, lazy, immoral wagon riders.  (Actually a third: liberals who force the good people to help the bad people.  They are even worse than wagon riders.)   

The Socialist Grading Scheme and Poverty

Many of you have probably seen the following story and commentary about a college professor who started a "socialist" grading scheme in class.  I decided to write a response.

First you will find the story and commentary then the response I have written.

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. 

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class".. All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A.... (substituting grades for dollars - something closer to home and more readily understood by all).

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.  When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. 

To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed. Could not be any simpler than that. (Please pass this on) These are possibly the 5 best sentences you'll ever read and all applicable to this experiment:

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

Can you think of a reason for not sharing this?
Neither could we.

Here's my response:

Yes, I can think of a number of reasons not to share it.

1. The analogy between grading and the economy is inappropriate in a variety of ways:

• ·      In a college classroom, everyone starts with am equal opportunity to succeed.  Not so in the economy.
• ·      In a college classroom, the intellectually and academically weakest have already been weeded out.  The economy includes everyone.
• ·      If you get an F in a college classroom you don’t die. If you don’t have access to food, shelter, and health care, in the real world, you die.
• ·      The Bible, which for me as a Christian shapes my worldview and moral perspective, never says anything about how to grade people in a class, but does say this and many other things like it:  “Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

2. No one is proposing either to “legislate the poor into prosperity” or to “legislate the wealthy out of prosperity.”

• ·      But it is a constant battle, especially during a recession and in a time of dramatic changes in the structures of our economy brought on by globalization, to protect the social safety net upon which those at the bottom depend for survival (not prosperity!).
• ·      There is every indication that the wealthy are doing incredibly well in our society!  And every reason to believe they can stand to bear a heavier share of the burden without undermining either their wealth or their incentives to produce.  (Which is being really generous because so much wealth is generated by producing nothing, but through financial speculation.)

3. The second and fifth points here are based on a wildly mistaken belief: that there are huge percentages of people in our society who do not work and have the idea that they don’t have to work.

• ·      Surely, there always have been and always will be lazy people.  And, there always have been and always will be people who take advantage of government programs, (though I think that’s probably no more of a problem among those at the bottom than it is those in the middle and the top and those in the middle and the top “cost” the public coffers much more).
• ·      From what I’ve read, the much more accurate way to envision our situation requires us to recognize that we have growing poverty in our country because manufacturing jobs have fled the country, labor unions are weaker than in the past, wages at the bottom of the economic scale have stagnated, and the minimum wage has not kept up with the cost of living.
• ·      All this means that if the people at the bottom are losing their incentive to work, it isn’t because there are significant numbers of people who think they don’t have to work, but because the experience of so many is that you can work like a dog at lower end jobs (that pay very little and aren’t required to offer benefits by keeping people part-time) and never have any prospect of upward mobility (which a recent study I read about a couple of weeks ago suggested is almost non-existent in the United States).