Capitalism Has Us All Upside Down

We Need to Realize That a Good Life

Is More Important Than Money

The political and economic debate in the United States and Europe revolves around public financial deficits and how best to resolve them while ignoring the deficits that most endanger our future. In the United States, as Republican deficit hawks tell the story, “America is broke. We must cut government spending on social programs we cannot afford. And we must lower taxes on Wall Street so more money can grow the economy, create new jobs, increase total tax revenues, and eliminate the deficit.” Democrats respond, “Yes, we’re pretty broke, but the answer is to raise taxes on Wall Street looters to pay for government spending that primes the economic pump by putting people to work building critical infrastructure and performing essential public services. This puts money in people’s pockets to spend on private sector goods and services and is our best hope to grow the economy.” Both sides have it wrong on two key points.

First, both focus on growing America's GDP while ignoring the reality that the benefits of GDP growth over the past several decades have gone almost exclusively to the top 1 percent – with dire consequences for the remaining 99% resulting in the worst epidemic of long-term unemployment and homelessness since the Great Depression. Second, both focus on financial deficits, which can be resolved with relative ease if we eliminate rampant waste in government domestically while bringing our troops home from overseas, where they are unwanted and unnecessary. To achieve the ideal of a world that secures health and prosperity for all people for generations to come, we must redefine the public debate about the choices we face as a nation and as a species. We must measure economic performance against the outcomes we really want, give life priority over money, and recognize that money is a means, not an end. The key point, which the deficit debates rarely address, is that one person or entity’s financial debt is another person or entity’s financial asset. We can only borrow money from each other. The idea that we borrow money from the future is an illusion.

From a societal perspective, total debts and assets are always in balance. Consequently, if we say that one person or entity has excessive financial debt, we in effect say that another has excessive financial assets. Reducing the financial debt of debtors necessarily requires reducing the financial assets of the creditors. In theory, we could instantly wipe away all financial debts through a universal forgiveness, a modern equivalent of the ancient institution of the Jubilee (see the Old Testament, specifically the books of Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy). Simply put, all debts that have been accumulated over a seven year period were universally and unconditionally forgiven. This was the law of the land in the Old Testament, written by Moses and dictated by Almighty God. Every seventh year was regarded as a “Year of Jubilee”, and yet only Jewish people and the Seventh Day Adventists still celebrate this important feast. The ancients recognized the significance of such action to restore the balance essential to the healthy function of the human community. The deficit-hawks recoil in horror at the very mention of this while frantically reassuring us that we can reduce government debt while leaving the financial assets of the rich untouched. It makes perfect sense in the fantasy world of pure finance in which profits and the financial assets of the rich grow perpetually even as growing inequality and wasteful material consumption deplete the social capital of community and the natural capital of Earth’s biosphere. A viable human future, however, must be based on living world realities rather than financial world fantasies.

Any normally intelligent 12-year-old is fully capable of understanding the distinction between a living forest or fishery and a system of financial accounts that exists only as electronic traces on a computer hard drive. Unfortunately, this simple distinction seems to be beyond the comprehension of the economists, pundits, and politicians who frame the public debate on economic policy. By referring to financial assets as “capital” and treating them as if they had some intrinsic worth beyond their value as a token of exchange, they sustain the deception that Wall Street is creating wealth rather than manipulating the financial system to accumulate accounting claims against wealth it had no part in creating. Real capital assets have productive value in their own right and cannot be created with a computer key stroke. The most essential forms of real capital are social capital (the bonds of trust and caring essential to healthy community function) and biosystem capital (the living systems essential to Earth’s capacity to support life). We are depleting both with reckless abandon. Social capital is the foundation of our human capacity to innovate, produce, engage in cooperative problem solving, manage Earth’s available natural wealth to meet the needs of all, and live together in peace and shared prosperity. Social capital is depleted as individualistic greed becomes the prevailing moral standard and the governing institutions of society deprive all but a privileged minority of access to a secure and dignified means of living. Once it is depleted, social capital can take generations to restore.

Biosystem capital provides a continuing supply of breathable air, drinkable water, soils to grow our food, forests to produce our timber, oceans teeming with fish, grassland that feed our livestock, sun, wind, and geothermal to provide our energy, climate stability, and much else essential to human survival, health, and happiness. It is depleted when soils are degraded, when oceans are fished to the point where whole species are threatened with extinction, when rivers and lakes are polluted, forests cut down, aquifers contaminated and depleted, and climate stabilization systems disrupted. These natural systems can take thousands, even millions of years to restore. Species extinction is forever. According to the World Wildlife Federation’s 2012 Living Planet Report, at the current rate of consumption, “it is taking 1.5 years for the Earth to fully regenerate the renewable resources that people are using in a single year. Instead of living off the interest, we are eating into our natural capital.” Unlike with financial deficits, simple debt forgiveness is not an option. There are no Jubilee celebrations when we take everything from the earth and put back nothing. When we deplete Earth’s bio-capacity – its capacity to support life in its many varied forms – we are not borrowing from the future; we are stealing from the future. Even though it is the most serious of all human-caused deficits, it rarely receives mention in current political debates.

When we assess economic performance by growth in GDP and stock price indexes, we in effect manage the economy to make the most money for people who have the most money. This leads us to the fanciful belief that as a society we are getting richer. In fact, we are impoverishing both current and future generations by creating an unconscionable concentration of economic power, depriving billions of people of a secure and dignified means of living, and destroying the social and biosystem capital on which our real well-being depends. With proper care and respect, biosystem capital can provide essential services in perpetuity. The reckless devastation of productive lands and waters for a quick profit, a few temporary jobs, and a one-time energy fix from Earth’s non-renewable fossil energy resources represent truly stupid and morally reprehensible deficit spending. Evident current examples include the internal combustion engines in our cars and trucks and mountaintop removal coal mining. The fact that we thereby deepen human dependence on finite nonrenewable fossil energy reserves and accelerate climate disruption make such actions all the more stupid and immoral. Financial system logic, which rests on the illusion that money is wealth, tells us we are making intelligent choices. Living systems logic tells us our current choices are insane and a crime against future human generations and creation itself.

The economy of a just and sustainable society needs a proper system of money creation and allocation that supports the health and productive function of social and biosystem capital and allocates the sustainable generative output of both to optimize the long-term health and well-being of all. We have got to figure out a way to reward individuals with a system of financial credits in proportion to their actual productive contribution to living system health and prosperity. The current U.S. money system does exactly the opposite. It celebrates and rewards the destruction of living capital to grow the financial assets of Wall Street looters at the expense of Main Street producers—thus concentrating economic and political power in the hands of those most likely to abuse it for a short-term gain that is motivated by grossly excessive greed.

Wall Street operates as a criminal syndicate devoted to the theft of that to which it has no rightful claim. It then bribes politicians to shield the looters from taxes on their ill-gotten gains and to eliminate social programs that cushion the blow to those they have deprived of a secure and meaningful means of livelihood. This brings us back to the real source and consequence of excess financial debt. In the big picture, the Wall Street 1 percent has divided society into a looter class that controls access to money and a producer class forced into perpetual debt slavery – an ancient institution that has allowed the few to rule the many for thousands of years. The immense burden imposed on the 99 percent by public debt, consumer debt, mortgage debt, and student loan debt is the outcome of a Wall Street assault on justice and democracy, while maintaining a system of enforced inequality. The resulting desperation and loss of social trust account for the many current symptoms of social disintegration and decline in ethical standards. These include growth in family breakdown, suicide, forced migration, physical violence, crime, drug use, and prison populations.

I grew up in America during a time when we took pride in being a middle-class society without extremes of wealth and poverty. In part, we were living an illusion. Large concentrations of private wealth were intact and systemic discrimination excluded large segments of the population —particularly people of color – from participation in the general prosperity. The underlying concept that the good society is an equitable society, however, was and still is valid. And from the 1950s to the 1970s the middle class expanded. But not any more.

Extreme inequality as exemplified by Capitalism, is both a source and an indicator of serious institutional failure and social pathology. Economic and social inequality is detrimental to human physical and mental health and happiness – even for the very rich. Relatively equal societies are healthier on virtually every indicator of individual and social health and well-being. In highly unequal societies, the very rich are prone to seek affirmation of their personal worth through extravagant displays of excess. They easily lose sight of the true sources of human happiness, sacrifice authentic relationships, and deny their responsibility to the larger society at the expense of their essential humanity. At the other extreme, the desperate are prone to manipulation by political demagogues who offer oversimplified explanations and self-serving solutions that in the end further deepen their misery. Governing institutions lose legitimacy. Democracy becomes a charade. Moral standards decline. Civic responsibility gives way to extreme individualism and disregard for the rights and well-being of others. To achieve true prosperity, we must create economies grounded in a living systems logic that recognizes three fundamental truths:

• The economy’s only valid purpose is to serve life.
• Equality is foundational to healthy human communities and a healthy human relationship to Earth’s biosphere.
• Money is a means, not an end.

Runaway public deficits are but one symptom of a profound system failure. They can easily be resolved by taxing the unearned spoils of the Wall Street looters, eliminating corporate subsidies, and by making offshore tax havens illegal, and cutting military expenditures on pointless wars that enrich only a few at the expense of the multitudes. They want to send your sons, daughters and grandchildren to fight their wars for them because it is allegedly the patriotic thing to do (but God forbid that they should ever send their own kids). Joblessness can easily be eliminated by putting the unemployed and underemployed to work meeting a vast range of unmet human needs from rebuilding and greening our physical infrastructure to providing essential human services, eliminating dependence on fossil fuels, and converting to systems of local organic food production. If the primary constraint is money, the Federal Reserve can be directed to create it and channel it to priority projects through a national infrastructure bank – a move that avoids enriching the bankers and does not create more debt. In addition, we must:

1. Break up concentrations of unaccountable power.
2. Shift the economic priority from making money to serving life by replacing financial indicators with living wealth indicators as the basis for evaluating economic performance.
3. Eliminate extremes of wealth and poverty to create a true middle-class society.
4. Build a culture of mutual trust and caring.
5. Create a system of economic incentives that reward those who do productive work and penalize predatory financial speculation.
6. Restructure the global economy into a planetary system of networked bioregional economies that share information and technology and organize to live within their respective environmental means.

Within a political debate defined by the logic of living systems, such measures are simple common sense. Within a political debate defined by conventional financial logic, however, they are easily dismissed as dangerous and illogical threats to progress and prosperity. So long as money frames the debate, money is the winner and life is the loser. To score a political victory for life, the debate must be re-framed around a narrative based on an understanding of the true sources of human well-being and happiness and a shift from money to life as the defining value. Wall Street interests would have us believe that the best way to save Earth’s biosystems is to put a price on them and sell them to wealthy global investors to manage for a private return. Rather than concede the underlying frame to Wall Street and debate the price and terms of the sale, indigenous leaders, the Occupy and 99% Movements, and environmental groups drew on the ancient wisdom of indigenous peoples to challenge the underlying frame. They declared that as the source of life, Earth’s living systems are sacred and beyond price. They issued a global call to recognize the rights of nature.

This debate highlights a foundational and inherent conflict between the rights of nature, human rights, property rights, and corporate rights. In current practice, based on the same financial logic that leads us to treat financial deficits as more important than social and environmental deficits, we give corporate rights precedence over the property rights of individuals. We give property rights precedence over the human rights of those without property. And we give human rights precedence over the rights of nature when it should be the other way around. To put it bluntly, America's leadership and the financial elite who are running our country into the ground have their priorities backwards. Furthermore, we – the 99% – will continue to pay a terrible price so long as we allow the deeply flawed logic of pure finance to define our values and frame the political debate. Therefore it is up to us, the 99%, to get these priorities put back in the correct order. As of this writing, we Americans are still trying to do this peacefully. After all, the only remaining alternative is revolution, and I have been convinced for many years that this will be the ultimate outcome. What is currently happening in Syria, Egypt, Spain, Yemen, Bahrain and Greece will soon be coming to our shores. The Occupy and 99% Movements are but a precursor of things to come here in the US.

There is no magic bullet quick fix. We must re-frame the debate by bringing life values and living systems logic to the forefront and turning the prevailing rights hierarchy on its head. The rights of nature must come first, because without nature, humans do not exist. As living beings, our rights are derivative of and ultimately subordinate to the rights of Earth’s living systems. Human rights come, in turn, before property rights, because property rights are a human creation. They have no existence without humans and no purpose other than to serve the human and natural interest. Corporations are a form of property and any rights we may choose to grant to them are derivative of individual property rights and therefore properly subordinate to them.

The step to a prosperous human future and a balanced environment requires that we acknowledge life, not money, as our defining value, accept our responsibilities to and for one another and nature, and bring to the forefront of the debate the social and bio-system deficits that are the true threat to the human future. Replacing cultures and institutions that value money more than life with cultures and institutions that value life more than money is a daunting challenge. Fortunately, it is also an invigorating and hopeful challenge because it reconnects us with our true nature as living beings and offers a win-win alternative to the no-win status quo. The only two alternatives are revolution (when all other means are exhausted, and we are very close to that point now) or human extinction.

The Seven Deadly Sins of America's Leadership

7 Deadly Sins America's Leadership

Commits Against Their Own People

The following list is a stomach-turning smorgasbord of every gut-wrenching, visceral injustice currently being committed by the very people that have been entrusted with the responsible and prudent leadership of what used to be the greatest country in the world, the USA. It has been my observation for some time now that the underpaid US workers that do have jobs, combined with the unemployed and sometimes even homeless American population, none of whom are able to find any work at all, are a ticking time bomb hidden in plain sight across America. The following is a listing of the abuses being heaped upon us, when in fact we deserve no such thing! The list doesn't include our most grievous offenses, those of military and economic warfare against the rest of the world. Sinful enough is our own behavior at home.

1. Sins against children

Perhaps "sanctity of life" ends at birth. According to Census Bureau figures, one out of every five American children lives in poverty. For blacks and Hispanics, it's one out of every three. UNICEF has reported that the U.S. has a higher child poverty rate than every industrialized country except Romania. We are near the bottom in all measures of inequality that affect our children, including material well-being, health, and education. One more fact before I move on: 1 out of every 4 American school children will rely on food stamps at some point for their sustenance and nutrition. In communities of color, this figure jumps to a truly shocking – and outrageous – 1 out of 2.

2. Sins against the poor

The U.S. poverty rate grew from 11.3% to 15.0%, a 33% jump, in just the last 11 years. The impact was felt primarily by minorities and women. The median wealth for single black and Hispanic women is shockingly low, at just over $100 (compared to $41,500 for single white women). Even more shocking – For every dollar of non-home wealth owned by white families, people of color have only one cent. Despite the continued economic assault on already-poor Americans, the number of TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) cases has dropped by 60 percent over the last 16 years.

3. Sins against students

Students at all levels have been losing their nation's support. States reduced their education budgets by $12.7 billion in 2012, and in 2013 the majority of states will be spending even less. At higher educational levels, Americans are paying much more than students in other countries. Only 38% of college expenses come from public funding, compared to 70% in other wealthier “first world” countries. While other nations continue to offer free tuition, with the recognition that education leads to long-term prosperity, the U.S. system has become more corporatized, to the point that expensive programs like nursing, engineering, and computer science have been eliminated to cut costs. The profit motive has blocked the path to academic excellence. But the worst part of America's treatment of its students has been the greed-driven debacle of over $1 trillion in predatory student loan debts, much of which can never be repaid. The same graduates who are obligated to repay those debts are the ones who can't find jobs, or who wind up working at jobs for which they are grossly overqualified. When you enrage a nation's youth, the seeds of insurrection have already been sown. All it will take is one good storm to make those seeds sprout, and the 2^nd American Revolution will be underway.

4. Sins against the middle class

The middle class, to say the least, is shrinking. In fact, America's middle class is slowly being liquidated. In 2011, according to a Pew Research analysis, 51% of the nation's households earned from two-thirds to double the national median income. In the 1970s it was 61%. One-quarter of America's workers are now making less than $22,000 a year, the poverty line for a family of four as of 2012. Thirty million Americans are making between $7.25 (minimum wage) and $10.00 per hour. With the transition of middle-class workers to low-income status, entrepreneurship is disappearing. Innovation doesn't come from the upper class. A recent study found that less than 1 percent of all entrepreneurs came from very rich or very poor backgrounds. Small business creators come from the hard-working, risk-taking, nothing-to-lose middle of America, but their entrepreneurial numbers are down -- over 50% since 1977.

5. Sins against the common good

A recent Tax Justice Network report placed total hidden offshore assets at somewhere between $21 trillion and $32 trillion. With about 40% of the world's most mega-rich individuals in the U.S., up to $12.8 trillion of untaxed revenue sits overseas. Based on a historical 6% rate of return, this is a tax loss of up to $300 billion per year, money that should be paying for the public needs of education and infrastructure. Tax avoidance is so appealing that 1,700 Americans renounced their citizenship last year. The American Thinker blog argued that "the U.S. tax code is so oppressive that smart and successful people are compelled to renounce their citizenship in order to keep more of their own hard-earned wages." Hard-earned, in truth, by the thousands of contributors to their financial success.

6. Sins against nature

A number of studies show that investment in renewable energy will create many more jobs than the fossil fuel industry. And the investment will likely pay off. A National Renewable Energy Laboratory analysis determined that "renewable electricity generation from technologies that are commercially available today... are more than adequate to supply 80% of total U.S. electricity generation in 2050." But now the prospect of cheap natural gas is leading us back to a dirty form of energy independence, with a continuing reliance on fossil fuels, and on the fracking technology that despoils our land and pollutes our water. The national commitment and political will needed for the long-term health of our nation is more elusive than ever.

7. Sins against common sense

The deception began, at least in the modern age, with Milton Friedman, who said "The free market system distributes the fruits of economic progress among all people... He moves fastest who moves alone." This unflagging adherence to free-enterprise individualism is consistent with Social Darwinism, the belief that survival of the fittest (richest) will somehow benefit society, and that the millions of people suffering from financial malfeasance are simply lacking the motivation to help themselves. Social Darwinism is a feel-good delusion for those at the top. Or, as described by John Kenneth Galbraith, a continuing "search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." A tenet of progressivism is that a strong society will create opportunities for a greater number of people, thereby leading to more instances of individual success. This is the common sense attitude suppressed by conservatives for over 30 years.

Putting an End to Abusive Authoritarians

Acute Hitler Syndrome – Why Ordinary People

Are Adopting the Tactics of Tyrants

Spontaneous acts of tyranny have been cropping up lately like cancer tumors: a food tyrant in Nevada raids a farm picnic and orders everyone to destroy their food (http://www.naturalnews.com/034125_f...), or student protesters in California get pepper-sprayed by thuggish cops who clearly enjoy causing pain and suffering (http://fieldnotes.msnbc.msn.com/_ne...); I watched all this with a sense of sadness and disgrace for the human race. And then a realization hit me like a sledgehammer; people are only following the examples set by others.

These random acts of tyranny aren't really random acts at all. They are the infantile acting-out of behaviors the childish American public has witnessed being demonstrated by their "leaders." The TSA sexually molesting air travelers isn't just a violation of fundamental human rights – it's also a demonstration to the mindless masses that this is now "normal" behavior in society. So as the masses observe Big Government reaching down their own pants, they now get the message that it's okay to sexually molest little boys at sports stadiums, or that it's okay to take children away from parents through C.P.S. and then rape them as part of child relocation "processing" procedures.

When the American people saw George Bush set up secret military prisons and condone water-boarding torture techniques, only to see even more of the same from president Barack Obama after voting Bush's party out of the White House, we the people are calling for Obama to stop this practice for good. Obama promised he would end torture, and then not long after becoming President, he expanded Guantanamo in Cuba and actually presided over an increase in funding for the military and all its secret torture facilities. The message to the American people? If Obama supports it, then torture must be okay. After all, he won a Nobel Peace Prize, so "peace" must be something that can be achieved through torture. Thus, we should not be at all surprised when torture increases under a new presidential administration. After all, those U.S. leaders do to other human beings exactly what they've been told is permissible. And yet, for some reason, these high-level government operatives who engage in these same torture techniques are never even questioned. This phenomenon of everyday American people mirroring the behavior of federal "authorities" who act as tyrants needed a name, and as I began to ponder this issue, the name came to me in a flash: I'm calling this phenomenon AHS, which stands for Acute Hitler Syndrome.

Acute Hitler Syndrome

Just as children mimic the actions of their parents, the childish minds of the insecure (and fear-pummeled) mainstream masses also mimic the actions of their parental role models. To many Americans – and especially those of a more liberal mindset – government takes on the role of their parents. The government is supposed to tell you what to eat, what to buy, what to believe and of course how to express your patriotism when needed to justify the latest war launched by a Nobel-Peace-Prize-winning warmonger. Government is the "authority" and the problem solver in the lives of these people. So naturally, in their childish mindset they seek to replicate the behaviors their parental role models are openly exhibiting.

Here's how this looks on the street: Your average city police officer is a wannabe tyrant who now, by watching the criminality of the federal government, feels he has permission to engage in the same tactics of intimidation and arrogance in ruling over the public (rather than serving to protect them). That's why so many big-city police officers have recently morphed into paramilitary jack-booted thugs; dressing in black, unlawfully arresting people for no justifiable reason, tasering innocent victims in wheelchairs, and generally acting out what is essentially a childish reflection of the very same tyranny they witness being demonstrated by high-level tyrants in Washington D.C. The FBI, for its part, is busy actually masterminding the very same "terror plots" that it then magically "prevents" with great fanfare. As recently exposed in The Guardian (and other newspapers), the FBI actually develops terror plots, provides the plans, weapons, funding, motivation and equipment necessary for these "terrorists" to carry out those plots (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/201...). This is a whole lot like playing a "big-boy" version of Cowboys and Indians, where all the scenarios are completely fabricated merely for the purpose of playing games as a source of entertainment.

Acute Hitler Syndrome is also now being seen in local schools, where "zero-tolerance" rules get children kicked out of the public education system for merely bringing a butter knife in their home-packed lunch, for example. Or a child caught with an aspirin tablet is labeled a "drug abuser" and condemned to special remediation classes. The tyrants are everywhere in American society now. Think about the tyrants that have now descended upon you in your own life -- the tyrant down at the DMV, the tyrant dog license enforcer, the tyrant building inspector and the tyrant food service worker, also sometimes known as "soup Nazis."

When you really think about it, there are tyrants everywhere now in American culture. The fabric of fear and terror is being woven into that fabric with every "the threat level is now orange" alert put out by George Bush, or every "spy on your neighbors" message broadcast by the ogre of offensive tyrants, DHS head Janet Napolitano (and let's not forget Janet Reno, the USAG who ordered 84 men, women and children to be roasted alive in Waco, Texas in April 1993). What these people claim to be doing – "stopping terrorism" – pales in comparison to what they're really doing; setting examples to be followed by every single person across America who finds himself or herself in a position of authority. That's it!We'll just ALL be tyrants! What a perfect solution.

Terrorizing innocents is now politically correct behavior

Through its moronic (and completely fabricated) war on terror, the national leadership in the USA has made it politically correct to terrorize anyone over whom you exercise power. If you're a librarian, you can terrorize little children over past-due books (that is, if children actually read books at all anymore). If you're a septic tank inspector, you can terrorize people over the layout of their septic pipes. If you're a doctor, you can terrorize people over flu shots and chemotherapy, all being aggressively pushed with the very same fear tactics now used at the highest levels of national government. The impact of all this is even international: Egypt's secret police group, famous for torturing dissidents, has just renamed itself "Homeland Security" in what appears to be homage to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (http://www.infowars.com/egypts-secr...). "Should we be concerned that a dictatorship which refuses to bow to the will of the people and allow democratic elections to proceed while engaging in savage attacks on demonstrators is re-naming itself after America’s foremost post-9/11 federal agency?", writes Paul Joseph Watson. "Egyptian authorities are justifying their brutal crackdown against protesters, with dozens killed over the last few days, by pointing to how U.S. law enforcement bodies are taking a 'firm stance' against Occupy Wall Street protesters."

Acute Hitler Syndrome happens because the political leaders of America have broadcast a message across the nation that terrorizing innocent people is not merely okay, but downright patriotic! Anyone who says they're not going along with all the terror nonsense, the spy-on-your-neighbor paranoia and the "worship-your-imperialist-government" cultism is immediately branded an "extremist." It's now "extreme" to not believe in torture and home-grown terror as a way to keep the “sheeple” in line. "Extremism" is now defined as opening your eyes, asking some commonsense questions, and refusing to follow the hypnotized masses as they are marched off a high cliff by the globalist population controllers.

Merely thinking for yourself, it turns out, is now "extreme." It's a brave new world after all, I suppose. Fear and paranoia is being marketed to the public in an attempt to transform the citizenry into a grand spy ring. The social acceptance of spying on your neighbors and promoting fear has reached a new fervor across America, very nearly reflecting that of Nazi Germany in the late 1930's. It's now okay to call 911 on somebody merely because they happen to be writing something down on a scrap of paper in a public park (that's one of the signs of possible terrorism, according to ludicrous DHS public service videos that only breed paranoid thinking). It's now okay to spy on everyone around you and secretly observe them to see what they're doing. It's now your duty to watch over every scrap of luggage at the airport and start screaming about terror threats if some poor sap walks more than 10 feet away from his bags for a few seconds. Recently, East Carolina University was thrust into a state of "lock down" for 3 hours after some spy-on-your-neighbor citizens reported a man walking around with an "assault rifle." That assault rifle, of course, turned out to be nothing more than a black umbrella (http://www.startribune.com/nation/1...).

But this is the level of outrageous hallucinations and total lunatic paranoia that has been unleashed on the American people today by a fear-mongering, imperialist government which worships fear and terror with almost cult-like zealousness. And they call conspiracy theorists paranoid? Maybe they should look in the mirror sometime; no well-informed conspiracy investigator would ever mistake an umbrella for an assault rifle in broad daylight.

The antidote is People Power

Fortunately, there's a ready solution to all this. The antidote to Acute Hitler Syndrome is decentralized management, a non-hierarchical model that can also be called "grassroots People power." There will be no more psycho managers, control freaks or power mongers. This is what happens when ordinary, everyday citizens realize that all government power comes from the People and that government is the servant of the People, not the other way around. So they take to the streets and protest. They take their money out of the accounts of globalist banks. They stop buying GMO's. They fight against water fluoridation in their local towns. They spread the word about Ron Paul back in '08. People Power is so powerful that it will sooner or later overcome Acute Hitler Syndrome, but only if enough people actually remember what liberty actually feels like. That's why I urge you to practice liberty in everything you do. Don't settle for tyranny when you can insist on liberty! After all, the Bill of Rights guarantees you a number of extremely important rights, many of which are now being quickly eroded. Stand up for restoring those rights and you will empower the phenomenon of People Power (grassroots liberty as defined in the Declaration of Independence as being “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”), which is the ultimate solution against Acute Hitler Syndrome.

You can also defend liberty by practicing common courtesy (and common sense) in your own positions of power. Don't terrorize people just because you can. Exercise common human decency and compassion for those who deserve your assistance. When you practice random acts of kindness, you alter the entire emotional landscape across America, replacing fear with kindness, replacing terror with confidence, turning negatives into positives everywhere we go. If corporate CEOs would practice this, then most corporations would probably go out of business because they're mostly in the business of screwing people over for a profit. Remember,"There is no such thing as a victimless billionaire". That level of wealth accumulation simply doesn't happen without taking from lots of others in the process. But remember: In the end, kindness will always win out over terror. Good triumphs over evil. Spread a little around, and you'll see what a world of difference it can really make. And try to remember not to carry black umbrellas around any liberal college campuses, or you'll quickly find out what Acute Hitler Syndrome really looks like.

Seven Facts for the Fourth of July

A July 4^th Memo To America

From a Concerned Citizen

One of the primary purposes of this Web ministry is to stand against social injustice and economic inequality in all its forms, as well as the extreme immorality of waging warfare. I firmly believe that any minister who does not do this is simply not doing his or her job while occupying the pulpit. In that case, all they would be doing is collecting a paycheck every Sunday morning for the sake of profit and materialism, forgetting that Jesus preached against this very thing over and over again. (But don't take my word for it, it's in all four gospels, go and read it for yourself.) Although Jesus did take His ministry to the religious establishment of his day, which centered around the temple at Jerusalem and the Sanhedrin (or Hebrew ruling elect) of that time, he was rejected and ultimately executed by them just as the Old Testament prophets foretold. Instead, He went to the poor and downtrodden, the outcast and the marginalized who otherwise had no voice at all. He ministered to the sick, the homeless, the addicted and the unemployed and all others who had nothing, with the knowledge that the indwelling of the Spirit of Christ is vastly superior to mere material possessions. I try my best to emulate this mind-set in my ministry and in the people I meet in order that my words and actions may most accurately imitate my Savior and the redeemer of my very soul, Christ Jesus the Lord.

In today's world there is social injustice everywhere you look. A veritable class war is ongoing here in the USA, throughout the Middle East, in Europe and in Asia that has the wealthy accumulating ridiculous amounts of wealth in a downright obscene orgy of greed, and all at the expense of the middle and working classes who are being economically decimated as a result. This illegal and immoral accumulation of wealth is unparalleled in world history. The signs and indicators of this obscene wealth that has fallen into the hands of an elite minority are everywhere. Mass unemployment is at every turn and stands at stubbornly high levels. If we look at the true levels of unemployment, which by definition must include those who are underemployed (working part time at one or more jobs when full-time employment is both desired and required) or those who have left the job market for good (like men and women in their middle 50's and older such as what I experienced first-hand), the true level of unemployment exceeds 24% in the US alone, not counting the rest of the developed world. Instead of creating more jobs that are the hallmark of any economic recovery, fewer and fewer people are doing more work for less pay. The rest of US and European workers are increasingly finding themselves out in the cold, often literally. In the meantime, those lucky individuals who still have jobs run the increasing risk of having their jobs out-sourced overseas for pennies on the dollar, or being replaced by workers from the third world who are being imported through H1B work visas by none other than the US federal government to work for wages that are a fraction of their American counterparts. Meaning, our US government has been short-changing its constituency in this manner for decades, but they can't keep it a secret any longer. As this is happening, the unending war in Afghanistan plus the clandestine wars being wage on every continent, are costing the US government $6 billion dollars each day, money that could be much better spent here at home to create some badly needed new jobs.

Clearly this is unsustainable and will bankrupt the country if it isn't stopped, if we are not there already. American capitalism and the American empire have run their course, and I maintain that capitalism as we have known it is on the deathbed of history where all empires go when they die. America is in decline while the former “third world” has become the developing world, and where even poor countries continue to develop rapidly. The combined economies of China, Russia, India and Brazil will all overtake the US economy by 2020 at the latest, with China in the lead. (the Chinese economy will be the world's largest by no later than 2016, a mere 3 years away; what will Wall St. do then?)

This is a series of social injustices that could be ended by creating jobs through large public works programs to give US infrastructure a badly needed overhaul and by an accelerated and invigorated space program, mankind's final frontier. On the other hand, there must be a program in place to retrain all the workers who have been unable to find jobs, and there is legislative precedent for this. In the mid-1940's after the end of WW2, Congress passed the GI Bill, as it was called. The end result of this was that hundreds of thousands of ex-soldiers who wanted a college education were given just that with no strings attached. It worked very well by reeducating an entire generation at only nominal cost to those who took advantage of it. Well, if it could be done in the 1940's, why not here in the 21^st century? What's holding it back you may ask, the cost? Let me illustrate why America can easily afford to do this. If the combined US military and intelligence communities set aside the financial expenditures equal to a single day's cost of the occupation in Afghanistan and put the money into an interest-bearing account of your choice, there would be sufficient funds for a 4-year college education for every school kid in America, from pre-K to a high school senior inclusive. And that's just from one day's expenditures!

But what do we have instead? American workers are being thrown away by multinational corporations as being no longer useful or too expensive to keep around, resulting in a wave of homelessness not seen since the 1930's. The majority of today's homeless population is college educated, not stereotypical street bums, not by a long shot, and that is a great social injustice. This has been going on for so long now that the American empire is dying as a result, of that we can be sure. The time to make alternative plans for a possibly rocky future is upon us now. As the Great Recession and its bogus “recovery” grinds on, politicians in most industrial countries have an incentive to make exaggerated claims about the supposed coming economic recovery. Some say the recession is over. Obama is in the group that claims we're “on the road to recovery," while other nations can only spot recovery "on the horizon." Below is my list of my “unlucky seven” facts that point to a more realistic and truthful economic and political outlook.

1) Central Banks are Clueless. The usual tricks that U.S. and European central banks use to avoid recessions are long-exhausted. Interest rates cannot get any lower. And because cheap money hasn't been working, the printing presses have been turned up considerably, into what the U.S. federal reserve calls quantitative easing – injecting trillions of dollars into the world economy, escalating an emerging trade war.

2) Trade War. Speaking of which, for a global economy to grow, global cooperation is needed. But in a major recession all countries engage in a bitter struggle to dominate foreign markets so that their own corporations can export. These markets are won by devaluing currencies (accomplished in the U.S. by quantitative easing), installing protectionist measures (so that a nation's corporations have monopoly dominance over the nation's consumers), or by war (a risky but highly effective form of market domination).

3) Military War. Foreign war is a good symptom of economic decay. The domination of markets – every inch of them – becomes an issue of life and death importance. Wars have been unleashed in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan and Yemen. "Containing" economies like China and "opening" economies like Iran and North Korea become more urgent during a major recession, requiring brute force and creating further global instability in all realms of social life.

4) U.S. Economy at a Virtual Standstill. The most important consumer market in the world, the U.S. is a nation of nearly bankrupt consumers. Well over thirty million Americans are unemployed or underemployed, while further job losses are certain, due to nearly every state's budget deficit. The New York Times explains: "Now states are bracing for more painful cuts, more layoffs, more tax increases, more battles with public employee unions, more requests to bail out cities. And in the long term, as cities and states try to keep up on their debts, the very nature of government could change as they have less money left over to pay for the services they have long provided." (12-05-10)

5) Bailout Capitalism. First it was the banks and other corporations that needed bailing out, and now whole nations. Western nations bailed out their banks by falling into the massive debt that they are now drowning in. Greece and Ireland have been bailed out, with eyes shifting to Portugal, Spain, and Italy. The entire European Union is being called into question as the Euro takes a beating in the bailout spree. If the EU is dismantled, the shock waves will quickly reach other economies.

6) Bailout Repercussions. All western nations -- including the U.S. and England -- are grappling with their national debts. Rich bond investors are demanding that these countries drastically reduce their deficits, while also demanding that the deficits be reduced on the backs of working families, instead of rich investors. This is tearing the social fabric apart, as working and poor people see their social programs under attack. In Europe mass movements are erupting in France, Spain, Portugal, England, Greece, Ireland, Italy, etc. Social stability is a prerequisite for a recovered economy, but corporate politicians everywhere are asking much more than working people are willing to give.

7) The Far Right Emerges. To deal with working people more ruthlessly, the radical right is being unleashed. In normal times these bigots yell furiously but no one listens. But in times of economic crisis they're given endless airtime on all major media outlets. The message of the far right promotes all the rottenness not yet eradicated by education: racism, xenophobia, religious intolerance, violence, and a backward nationalism that fears all things "foreign."

These core beliefs effectively divide working people so that a concerted campaign against the corporate elite is harder to wage. Meanwhile, labor unions, progressives, and other working class organizations are instead targeted. The above phenomena do not happen in a normal economic cycle of boom and bust. These symptoms point to a larger disease in the international economic system, a disease that cannot be cured by politicians who swear allegiance to this deteriorating system and to the wealthy elite who benefit from it. To ensure that the economic system is changed so that working people benefit, large-scale collective action is necessary, based on demands that unite the majority of working people: a massive job-creation program at the expense of Wall Street, no cuts to Social Security and Medicare, a moratorium on home foreclosures, passage of a $12.00 per hour minimum wage, and so on. With the unions in the lead promoting these demands, working people can and should put up a real fight.

The best solution that I can think of, then, that takes care of all this and more, is to come up with an innovative, effective and efficient nonprofit economy. Here are a few examples of what I mean: What's the underlying cause of the skyrocketing prices of fuel, groceries, college tuition, and medical care including the cost of private health insurance? All of the above industries needed more operating capital to keep going due to rising prices for goods and services that they purchase. But even more basic than that – the least common denominator – is the current corporate business model, where the shareholders needs come first instead of the customers and employees of the firm. More profits must be generated for this cadre of people whose demands for 'more' are only exceeded by their self-importance, and this must stop, the sooner the better. But what if this weren't true? What if the hundreds of billions in profits that each one of these enormous multinational corporations racks up each year were returned to the employees so they, and not the shareholders who don't do a damn thing anyway, share in the profits? If you multiply 500, the number of Fortune Magazine's biggest corporations, by all those hundreds of billions in profits they each made, that comes to a sum of money so huge that my calculator won't display the answer – it doesn't have enough memory. One thing is for certain; the time for employee-owned businesses has arrived.

If the US wants to clean up its act, a complete repudiation of capitalism and greed would be a very good place to start. Let's spend this coming week thinking of all the things we could do for each other and the whole world with the money that, as I write this, is still being hoarded by the few. Let's invent fair and equitable ways we can peacefully distribute it to the many.

Rich conservatives need to get their priorities straight

Greed and Jesus: Conservatives and the Rich

Just Don’t Get It

Cognitive dissonance is a person’s brain trying to decipher two contradicting realities. An example of this is often seen in an abusive relationship, where the man/woman obviously understands there’s abuse from their significant other, yet they love them anyway. Often their brain will then develop excuses for such action. It’s their fault or the other person has just been under a lot of stress. The reality is their brain simply cannot accept two different realities that contradict, so it creates another. This is never more prevalent than when it comes to conservatives and Christianity, the benchmark for which their entire movement is based. Still, they push policies that contradicts much of what Jesus taught.

Their entire economic policy states that we need to give more to those that have in order for the rest of us to enjoy the windfall of their generosity through increases in revenue. Let that sink in for a second. An economic policy based upon this notion: “If we feed greed more it will then benefit the rest of society.” When has greed ever benefited a society? So what does the Bible say about greed? “He that loves silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loves abundance with increase: this is also vanity.” (Ecclesiastes 5:10) It becomes a driving obsession to acquire still more. Once the acquiring has happened, then comes the need to protect what has been acquired. This is selfishness and it is sin, as it is written: “There was a man all alone, he had neither son nor brother. There was no end to his toil, yet his eyes were not content with his wealth. 'For whom am I toiling', he asked, 'and why am I depriving myself of enjoyment?' This too is meaningless – a miserable business!”(Ecclesiastes 4:8)

Once the greed-driven have acquired and protected everything in sight, they begin to covet still more. They are not satisfied with all they have; their eye is on all that they don’t have, as it is written, “Then Jesus said to them, 'Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions”. (Luke 12:15) This coveting begets more greed, the greed begets more selfishness, and the selfishness begets more coveting and so on to madness. “The sleep of a laboring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much: but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep.” (Ecclesiastes 5:12) By this point, there is no room left for God. Money is now the master of the house, as it is written, “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.” (Matthew 6:24)

Seems pretty straight forward. Greed is perpetual, and it feeds on itself, generating ever increasing amounts or degrees of greed and selfishness. The more one has the more they want. Isn’t that what we’ve seen in the last 30 years? Isn’t this what “Trickle Down Economics” has given us? In the last 30 years the Top 1% has grown exponentially, never more so than in the last decade. Yet what has it brought us? Economic failure caused by a cadre of millionaires crying out that they need even more. Many of the same businesses that proved in the 90′s, even with higher taxes, that they could yield historic growth are now fighting a return to those very same tax levels. They now claim economic prosperity isn’t obtainable at those “job destroying” levels of taxation. The fact is, they’re right. Their economic prosperity cannot be sustained at a higher level of taxation. The more we fed into this myth of Trickle Down Economics, the more lower taxes benefited them, the more they expect to expand their greedy nature. To raise their taxes would mean their giant profits would probably be taken down to just, well, big profits.

This isn’t about these businesses making profits, they can easily do that, but they want larger profits. What they had in the 90′s is no longer good enough, they want more. Of course it’s impossible to return to the very same tax rates that brought us the best economic growth in our history, because then their greed would have to return to a lower level, and as the Bible says, greed is perpetual and never ends. We gave them more and now their solution to fix our problems? You guessed it, they want even more! Isn’t that exactly what the Bible warns will happen? Did we not have wealthy Americans in the 50′s, 60′s and 70′s? The answer is yes, they just weren’t as wealthy. Trickle Down Economics was the catalyst for the acceptance of greed. It gave those with the most more and any mention of taking it back is met with a horrific depictions of economic Armageddon.

Does it make any sense? Why would we face economic disaster by returning to tax rates that had no problem making millions of Americans a lot of money? The answer is simple: Greed. We’ve gave them access to reach unheard of levels of wealth. We’ve allowed them to see year to year profit as insufficient; they want larger profits. Success for next year is based on beating the success of last. As the Bible says, it is perpetual and never ending. How does this make any sense? Jesus warned that money is the root of all evil, and the apostle Paul wrote that the “love of money” is the cause of all evil. The Bible states repeatedly that greed leads to madness. Yet here we sit with one of the two most powerful political parties, in the strongest nation on earth, supporting an idea that we need to support greed or else face economic destruction.

And there you have it, cognitive dissonance. The reality is that exactly what the Bible said would happen did happen. Yet their political ideology completely contradicts the realities we’ve seen and those the Bible supports. They preach Christian values at the same time they advocate a policy that says giving into greed will benefit our society. They vehemently denounce abortion while advocating war and conquest, resulting in 1.2 million civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan alone since 2001. So unborn babies get a great deal of attention in churches, but once you're born, you're screwed. The human brain simply can’t handle two conflicting realities, so it creates one of its own. The more we allowed the wealthy to have, the more they asked us to give. We did this to the detriment of our economy. If trickle down economics works, shouldn’t their success and our success mirror one another? As they gain, we gain. However, that isn’t what happened. The more they’ve gained, the more they wanted, and they've made sure they took it from everyone else.

Think of a small fishing boat. If weight is equally dispersed it’ll stay buoyant and afloat. But what if the weight shifts more forward or backwards, what happens? The boat becomes unstable. Now imagine if suddenly all the weight is shifted forward, what would happen? Simple – the boat will suddenly suffer instability, capsize then sink. As our nations’ wealth rushed to the Top 1% in the last decade, that’s exactly what happened, our boat capsized then sank. Does this contradiction between faith and political ideology suggest that conservatives believe Jesus supported greed? It looks to me like they believe he condemned homosexuals and demeaned women, and considered the poor as lazy people seeking a handout. So why not perpetuate the belief that He would have supported greed? Don’t let the Bible scriptures sway your views, it’s much easier to simply allow yourself to give into and concoct a delusional reality.

What conservatives have done is a complete distortion of the Christian faith. The so-called “prosperity gospel” doesn’t even fit into the very nature of what Jesus lived and died for. Every economic stance they support benefits the wealthy. How does it make any sense to have a portion of American society that pushes themselves as the Christian majority, the party of values and decency, and yet their entire economic stance contradicts what the Bible and Jesus says about greed? What conservatives claim to follow isn’t Christianity at all, and it sure doesn’t emulate Jesus. Remember what Jesus said about that, “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required”, meaning those who have the means to make a difference should do so unselfishly. Yet, to a conservative this is essentially “socialism”. It’s allegedly unfair. But isn’t Christianity about giving, loving, and helping those who cannot help themselves? These are the principles I try my best to live by as a Christian.

But I’m neither Republican or Democrat. I'm neither liberal nor conservative because I think there are good points to both sides. On one hand I could be considered conservative because I am in favor of small government and free enterprise. But I could also be considered liberal because I'm a firm believer in universal healthcare (no, not Obama-care because it seems woefully inadequate to the task), free higher education and a $12.00 per hour minimum wage. You know that the two-party US political monopoly lacks faith and morals. They envy the rich, and all of that rhetoric the “good” Christian Republicans use against people, yet none of it is true. Yet there they sit, a walking contradiction. A party who supports faith in God above anything and policies that favor greed over everything.

The Jesus I worship is a man who we should all strive to become because he is the Son of the Living God. Jesus was a man who didn’t judge, who stood for those who couldn’t stand for themselves, who never felt slighted or that life was unfair. Jesus was wary of people who spoke of God on their lips but lacked true faith in their hearts. He was a man who embraced everyone, even those who disagreed with him. A man who personified everything mankind should be. As for those conservatives, who knows what man they worship. If the policies they support are reflective of the faith they follow, it sure isn’t Christianity and that man sure wasn’t Jesus.

Christianity and Occupy Wall St. Are At Odds For No Discernable Reason

I Was Just Wondering Why

More Christians Don't “Occupy”

In light of all the recent news reports about the rioting in Brazil and the civil war in Syria, I have recently concluded that an Occupy-style political movement is the next logical step in the evolution of the protests down there. A more illogical step would be an internal conflict as bad as Syria's has become, provided that the Brazilian government doesn't foolishly force the hands of the protesters to take more drastic action. This reminds me of the Occupy Wall Street movement worldwide. When “Occupy DC” got started on Oct. 6, 2011 at Freedom Plaza, I was there for the first three days before returning to Atlanta. But there is one thing I have noticed since becoming a part of this movement nearly two years ago. Trying to get a conservative American Christian to join the Occupy movement is like trying to get the Pope to convert to Judaism or persuading an orthodox Jew to convert to Islam. My informal research tells me that conservative Christians from other nations are far more politically liberal than their American counterparts.

Why is there such resistance by conservative American Christians to the Occupy movement? After all, aren't those in the Occupy movement trying to speak out for those in need and against an economic system based on greed? Why would any conservative American Christian not want to join a group that tells us that our future depends on how well we cooperate with each other? The same thing goes for the “We Are The 99%” movement, which I chronicled in my 2011 book, “Middle Class Manifesto”. I also can't imagine why any rational person would have a problem with people who are protesting against economic inequality and endless wars. And why would any American Christian not want to join a group that promotes a more participatory and balanced democracy than what we have now?

Lately, some writers from the Left have attributed the political convictions of American conservative Christians to their faith. So what we have is a group of people mixing their religion with their politics for personal gain. The problem with this line of reasoning is that there are conservative Christians who also promote social justice and support more liberal and even Leftist views. The majority of such Christians, however, are not American. This should give us a hint of why many conservative American Christians are not occupying today. The reason for why they are not occupying is not because of their faith but because of something else. But what would that something else be?

When one is raised as a conservative Christian in America, there are certain associations made with the faith. One such association is made between American patriotism and Christianity. We were taught since when we were born that our nation was founded as a Christian nation by Christian Founding Fathers. Therefore, the American way, at least back when America was still a Christian nation, is the Christian way, so to criticize our Founding Fathers is to ridicule God and protesting against this Christian nation of ours is tantamount to attacking the Gospel.

Any attempt at reconciling our nation's history with the notion that America was ever a Christian nation places enormous demands on one's logical skills. While it is true that many of our founding fathers were Christians, the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the America's indigenous people combined with our nation's abuse and persecution of Black Americans, both up through and after the Civil War up until the 1964 Civil Rights Act, along with our emerging empire and use of dictators as proxy rulers over other countries, make it problematic to reconcile our history with Jesus Christ. And even when our history is partially acknowledged by the conservative American Christians, there seems to be an emotional disconnect that protects such a Christian from the dissonance that would otherwise be clanging forth. That is, we might acknowledge some of the abuses in the past, but we can still seriously call ourselves a Christian nation and a "city on the hill" without batting an eye? In the end, what the patriotic American Christian is saying to the world is that, despite the evidence, we must feel good about ourselves. We demand our Constitutional right to self-exalt, forgetting Jesus' warning about this very thing when he said, “Those who exalt themselves will be humbled, but they who humble themselves will be exalted”.

And what goes for American Patriotism, goes for capitalism. After all, since capitalism is our economic system and we are a Christian nation, logic seems to dictate that capitalism has become God's preferred economy. We supplement this reason with some common sense, reasoning that since the greatest prosperity in the history of the world has been enjoyed by Americans and we practice capitalism, capitalism must be God's economy. Such an argument has a point. That is, we as a nation have experienced some of the greatest prosperity in the history of the world. But there is a problem lurking in the shadows. For just as we must acknowledge the high level of prosperity we have enjoyed, we must also ask a very damning question. That question is, when in the history of capitalism has it prospered without exploiting large numbers of people? Many times those who were exploited were hidden from the view of most Americans though their invisibility does not contradict the fact that they were exploited.

And so what caused the Occupy and the “99%” Movements to emerge in 2011 continues to this day, and that fact is that far too large of a percentage of Americans have now become the victims of the same capitalist economy that they helped create. All of our hard work was for nothing. In fact, it has backfired on us all in the worst possible way by making homeless people out of formerly middle class workers. This has angered a whole lot of people, and rightfully so since we are on the receiving end of economic and social injustice every time we turn around. As a result, we have the current Occupy/99% Movements. These movements are challenging American patriotism by opposing the endless wars for profit while challenging capitalism by insisting that people and their needs have priority over those profits. Thus, suggesting that being patriotic and practicing capitalism has spread more evil than good is to try to Occupy the Gospel because of the close association many conservative Christians have made between it and both patriotism and capitalism. They that do this are forgetting the historical reasons for Jesus' crucifixion. He preached against organized government, which infuriated the Romans, and against organized religion, which enraged the Jewish ruling council of that time. If Jesus came back today, the conservative Christians, Evangelicals, and Charismatics would crucify him all over again.

But there is still another reason why conservative American Christians have still not joined the Occupy movement. That is because the Occupy movement is seen as a protest movement that does not respect authority. From an early age, conservative American Christians were injected with spiritual steroids when being taught to respect authority, exclusively from Romans 13 of course while ignoring the 4 Gospels, so that we not only learned to respect authority, we were compelled to worship it. We see authority figures as our saviors, and that is idolatry! To challenge the authorities, as it states in Romans 13: verses 1-5, is to challenge God himself because it is God who has put in charge every authority figure.

A side effect of our hyper regard for authority can be seen in our preference for labels over concepts and thus for credentials over reason. For example, we have taught to so respect our conservative teachers that we now have great difficulty in distinguishing between between conservative theologies and conservative politics and between liberal theologies and liberal politics. As a result, some tend to uncritically accept the tenets of conservative politics, not because it is biblical, which it is not, but because it has the conservative label. Likewise others will automatically reject, and have a phobic reaction to, liberal and leftist policies because of that label. This knee-jerk acceptance of whatever is conservative and rejection of whatever not conservative enables authoritarianism. For examples of this we need only look to Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and Kim Jong Un's North Korea, among numerous others. And just as self-exaltation is the reason why we equate American patriotism and capitalism with Christianity, so self-interest is the reason why we have a hyper regard for those in authority. That self-interest tells us to be good little boys and girls so that those in charge will reward us rather than spank us. And perhaps, it is a desire to remain children that leads us to authoritarianism's embrace over the self-rule that the Occupy and 99% Movements have been practicing. It is the desire to spend more time playing than making responsible decisions, to spend more time enjoying our trivial pursuits than being bogged down with the serious issues of life, and how we will be with one another that causes us to prefer rule by elites than autonomy. The reason why most conservative American Christians won't occupy isn't because of their faith, it is because of the extra ingredients added to their faith. Meaning, their faith is polluted with worldly things and concerns, another thing Jesus warned us about when he said, “A man cannot serve two masters. He will either cling to one and despise the other, or he will serve the other and reject the former. You cannot serve both God and materialism”.

The first duty of any government is to take care of its people

Caring for the Poor and the Sick

Is Government's Biblical Obligation

Today I will be adding to last weekend's commentary about why universal health care is so important. This week I will take this discussion to the next level upward, how this applies to other governing authorities that include our health and general welfare. There is hardly a more controversial political battle in America today than that around the role of government. The ideological sides have lined up, and the arguments rage about the size of government: How big, how small should it be? But I want to suggest that what size the government should be is the wrong question. A more useful discussion would be about the purposes of government and whether ours is fulfilling them in a Christlike manner. So let's look at what the Bible says.

The words of the apostle Paul in the 13th chapter of Romans are perhaps the most extensive teaching in the New Testament about the role and purposes of government. Paul says those purposes are twofold: to restrain evil by punishing evildoers and to serve peace and orderly conduct by rewarding good behavior. Civil authority is designed to be "God's servant to do you good" as it is written:

“For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from the fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience.” (Romans 13, verses 3-5, NIV)

Today we might say "the common good" is to be the focus and goal of government. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, just like the Declaration of Independence. So the purpose of government, according to the apostle Paul, is to protect and promote. Protect from the evil and promote the good, and we are even instructed to pay taxes for those purposes. So to disparage government per se — to see government as the central problem in society — is simply not a biblical position.

First, government is supposed to protect its people. That certainly means protecting its citizens' safety and security. Crime and violence will always be real in this world, and that's why we have the police, who are meant to keep our streets, neighborhoods, and homes safe. Governments also need to protect their people judicially, and make sure our legal and court systems are procedurally just and fair. The biblical prophets regularly rail against corrupt court decisions and systems, in which the wealthy and powerful manipulate the legal processes for their own benefit and put the poor into greater debt or distress. The prophet Amos speaks directly to the courts (and government) when he says, "Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts" (Amos 5:15 NIV).

But along with protecting, what should governments promote? The prophets hold kings, rulers, judges, and even employers accountable to the demands of justice and fairness, therefore promoting those values. And the Scriptures say that governmental authority is to protect the poor in particular. The biblical prophets are consistent and adamant in their condemnation of injustice to the poor, and frequently follow their statements by requiring the king (the government) to act justly. That prophetic expectation did not apply only to the kings of Israel but was also extended to the kings of neighboring lands and peoples. Jeremiah, speaking of King Josiah, said, "He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well." Psalm 72 begins with a prayer for kings or political leaders: "Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to a king's son. May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice. May the mountains yield prosperity for the people, and the hills, in righteousness. May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor."

There is a powerful vision here for promoting the common good — a vision of "righteous" prosperity for all the people, with special attention to the poor and to "deliverance" for the most vulnerable and needy, and even a concern for the land. The biblical understanding of justice is that the procedures must be fair and it demands unbiased courts (Exodus 23:2-8; Leviticus 19:15; Deuteronomy 1:17; 10:17-19). That distributive justice, or fair outcome, is also a central part of justice not just from the hundreds of texts about God's concern for the poor, but also in the meaning of the key Hebrew words for justice. Time and again the prophets use the words “mishpat” and “tsedaqah” to refer to fair economic outcomes. Immediately after denouncing Israel and Judah for the absence of justice, the prophet Isaiah condemns the way rich and powerful landowners have acquired all the land by pushing out small farmers when he wrote:

“Now I will tell you what I am going to do in my vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it will be destroyed; I will break down its wall, and it will be trampled. I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and briers and thorns will grow there. I will command the clouds not to rain on it. The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are the garden of his delight. And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress. Woe to you who add house to house and join field to field till no space is left and you live alone in the land. The Lord Almighty has declared in my hearing: 'Surely the great houses will become desolate, the fine mansions left without occupants.' (Isaiah 5:7-9, NIV). It is important to note that even though in this text the prophet does not say the powerful acted illegally, he nevertheless denounces the unfair outcome.

The real truth is that fair outcomes do not always match equal outcomes. Indeed, the historical attempts by many Marxist governments to create equal outcomes have dramatically shown the great dangers of how the concentration of power in a few government hands has led to totalitarian results. The theological reason for that is the presence and power of sin, and the inability of such fallible human creatures to create social utopias on earth. Yet the biblical prophets do hold their rulers, courts, and judges, and landowners and employers accountable to the values of fairness, justice, and even mercy. The theological reasons for that are, in fact, the same: the reality of evil and sin in the concentration of power — both political and economic — and the need to hold that power accountable to justice, especially in the protection of the poor and the sick. So fair outcomes, and not equal ones, are the goal of governments. Governments should provide a check on powerful people, institutions, and interests in the society that, if left unchecked, might run over their fellow citizens, the economy, and certainly the poor.

If government is rendered unable to punish evil and reward good when it comes to the behavior of huge corporations and banks, for example, exactly who else is going to do that? And coming to a better moral balance in achieving fiscal responsibility, while protecting the poor, should be a bipartisan effort. The radically anti-government ideology of the current right wing Tea Party ideology is simply contrary to a more biblical view of government, the need for checks and balances, the sinfulness of too much concentrated power in either the government or the market, the responsibilities we have for our neighbor and the God-ordained purposes of government — in addition to the churches — in serving the common good and, in particular, to protect the poor and visit the sick.