Why all the fuss about social justice?

Above is an infamous clip from earlier this year of Glenn Beck arguing that “social justice” should not be a part of a church’s mission, and that if his listeners found that their churches promote “social justice” then they should leave that church:

"I'm begging you, your right to religion and freedom to exercise religion and read all of the passages of the Bible as you want to read them and as your church wants to preach them ... are going to come under the ropes in the next year. If it lasts that long it will be the next year. I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words.

Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!"

Beck’s statement caused quite an uproar among Christian communities of faith around the country, as it is, on many levels, clearly antithetical to the teachings of Jesus, which call on Christians to aid those in need. 

And so we come on Thursday to Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, arguing against President Obama’s selection of Elizabeth Warren to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) which was originally her idea: (hat tip: Joan McCarter)

Gregg, the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and a senior member of the Banking Committee, expressed dismay at President Obama's decision to tap Warren as a key "adviser" to help set up the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency established in the Wall Street reform bill.

"My concern is that she would use the agency for the purpose of promoting social justice," Gregg said on ABC's "Top Line" webcast. The agency, Gregg said, should promote improving access to credit, as well as other financial services.

As McCarter rightfully notes, it seems absurd that a new agency expressly designed to protect consumers from predatory lending and other ills of the financial system should not, in Gregg’s view, work at shielding consumers from unscrupulous lenders, but should rather aid consumers in getting access to more credit, and hence, debt.  It has been widely noted that easy access to credit was one of the primary drivers of the financial and economic crisis we are now in, with banks holding billions in toxic mortgages due to their overly-relaxed lending rules and marketing products such as “liar loans” to those who couldn’t afford them, and yet Gregg thinks consumers need more, not less debt?  Ridiculous.

However, the more interesting point to me is that in Sen. Gregg’s worldview, a government agency created to protect consumers (meaning predominantly middle-class folks who qualify for and use credit) should absolutely NOT “promote social justice.”  Why is it a negative in Gregg’s book that there is finally one solitary agency devoted to protecting consumers in the financial sector?  But furthermore, why is “social justice” assumed to be so clearly negative in the right’s modern political discourse? 

In thinking about this issue, it occurs to me that there is a common thread one can trace from Sarah Palin’s demonization of then-Presidential candidate Obama for working as a community organizer, to Glenn Beck’s call to boycott churches that ascribe to a vision of social justice, to Sen. Gregg’s misplaced concern that the CFPB might (horrors!) do its job and protect the middle and lower classes.  The common thread I see is that in all three instances, you have those who sit at the head of the American social, political and economic hierarchies casting efforts to aid the underclass in gaining its rightful power and generating wealth (or at least not to hemorrhage that power and wealth any further) as illegitimate and “anti-American.”  We are all supposed to be seeking the American Dream, however when groups of people who have been systematically shut out from that dream attempt to reduce their barriers to entry, that becomes a Problem for the powers-that-be, and those groups’ efforts must be marginalized.  For the true aim in ginning up fear of the underclasses fighting for their place at the table in the name of “social justice” is to divert attention from the much greater miscarriage of justice that has been taking place in our wallets for years.  One is allowed to strive for economic power on an individual level, but when a concerted effort is made to point out that the game is rigged against those on the bottom and to change that fact, those on the top scoff at and denigrate that push for equality. 

If you look at the raw CBO figures, they show that a full tenth of the national income has shifted since 1979 to the top 1% of the country. The bottom quintiles have each given up a bit more than two percentage points each, and that adds up to 10% of all earnings. That 10% has flowed almost entirely to very tippy top of the income ladder.

Is the middle class worse off because of this? Of course they are. Income matters even if plasma TVs are cheaper than they used to be or if CPI mismeasures middle class consumption or if average households now contain 2.6 members instead of 2.7. If this massive income shift hadn't happened, middle class earnings would be higher, they'd be able to buy more stuff, and they probably wouldn't be in debt as much. And the top 1% wouldn't have quite so much idle cash lying around to do stupid things with.

This income shift is real. We can debate its effects all day long, but it's real. The super rich have a much bigger piece of the pie than they used to, and that means a smaller piece of the pie for all the rest of us. You can decide for yourself if you think this is something we should just shrug our shoulders and accept. (emphasis mine)

I’ve grown up believing that America roots for the underdog, but the recent turn in rhetoric against those who would organize and advocate on behalf of justice, no matter what kind, speaks of a wide swath of the American public giving in to their meaner side – just as our puppeteers intended.  They keep us all divided on social issues while they sneak their billions out the back door with their carried-interest tax breaks and loopholes for overseas earnings - the better to distract us from the fact that class warfare is alive and well, and the moneyed side always wins.  Meanwhile, those of us in the bottom 90% are fighting the wrong wars against the wrong enemies: ourselves.  Look up the economic ladder for a major source of our country’s troubles – the speculative rich and the rich politicians who make up their constituency (yes, in that order) and don’t denigrate the efforts of the courageous ones on the bottom who strive to help their fellow humans out of their collective misery. 

To return to the theme that started off this post, if you want to see the true roots of social justice in a Western religious context, Jesus gives you all the context you need in the following parable:

"But when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. Before him all the nations will be gathered, and he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then the King will tell those on his right hand, 'Come, blessed of my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry, and you gave me food to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me drink; I was a stranger, and you took me in; naked, and you clothed me; I was sick, and you visited me; I was in prison, and you came to me.'

"Then the righteous will answer him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry, and feed you; or thirsty, and give you a drink? When did we see you as a stranger, and take you in; or naked, and clothe you? When did we see you sick, or in prison, and come to you?'

"The King will answer them, 'Most certainly I tell you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.' Then he will say also to those on the left hand, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry, and you didn't give me food to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink; I was a stranger, and you didn't take me in; naked, and you didn't clothe me; sick, and in prison, and you didn't visit me.'

"Then they will also answer, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and didn't help you?'

"Then he will answer them, saying, 'Most certainly I tell you, inasmuch as you didn't do it to one of the least of these, you didn't do it to me.' These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."

Matthew 25:31-46 (emphases mine).

P.S. – Just to make it clear, politicians’ captivity to moneyed interests is most definitely a bipartisan and self-serving game, evidenced quite clearly when retiring Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana was interviewed by NBC’s Chuck Todd on Friday (hat-tip again to Joan McCarter):

TODD: Yesterday, the Census came out and said one in seven Americans are living below the poverty line. Do you look at that story today — you know, you open up your USA Today, right, and you see that story — and you see Washington is debating the tax rates for the wealthy, and you sit there and say, isn’t that a disconnect in America right now?

BAYH: It is a disconnect, Chuck. What we need to be focused on is growth, how do we create jobs, how do we expand businesses. That needs to be job one right now. And all these other issues involving, oh, fairness and things like that can wait. (emphasis in the original)

Ain’t gonna miss that guy in the Senate one bit.  He’ll be back soon enough as a lobbyist anyways, so really, his advocacy on behalf of extending the Bush tax cuts for his rich campaign donors and Wall Street buddies is ultimately a nice little deal to try and line his own pockets with more money that could have gone towards his pet  interest of deficit reduction.

On the events at the Lincoln Memorial today

There was no irony:

Palin, the GOP vice presidential nominee in 2008 and a potential White House contender in 2012, and Beck repeatedly cited King and made references to the Founding Fathers.

Cited King? 

Palin likened the rally participants to the civil rights activists from 1963. She said the same spirit that helped them overcome oppression, discrimination and violence would help this group as well.
"We are worried about what we face. Sometimes, our challenges seem insurmountable," Palin said. "Look around you. You're not alone."

Yes, those Tea Partiers must overcome the terrible unjust yoke of white privilege and better-than-average personal wealth in order to take back America!  Because the fact that between 78,000 and 96,000 more-conservative-than-your-average-Republican (oh, excuse me, independents, some) largely rode public transit to a national park while being protected by Park Rangers and local first responders to exercise their First Amendment rights clearly shows that their freedoms (as typically white, upper-middle-class, over the age of 50, married folk) are being impinged upon mercilessly. 

When did white people become the underclass?  When did white conservatives of better-than-average means begin to feel their staggering hegemony over our economy (and hence, our media, and hence, our society) slip from their grasp?  Are they worried that, horror of horrors, some of the economic and racial inequalities that have plagued our society from its inception might be even slightly realigned during the course of the Obama Administration? 

The ever-present cries of “wealth redistribution” are nothing more than dog whistles during a period of historically low tax rates, designed to gin up old reptilian-brain images of the mythical welfare queen who somehow manages to not only live and feed her child(ren) off of the hundreds of dollars a week that welfare provides, but to save up enough for a Cadillac.  Only if an entire segment of the voting population had absolutely no connection to the rampant destitution of inner city life in this country could they be hoodwinked so badly…and Reagan’s folks made the correct political calculation, one that resonated so deeply with the ids of white America that Newt Gingrich trotted out the same specter again to further cut the legs out from single mothers of a minority background everywhere with welfare reform.  Family values:

A recent study by the Children's Defense Fund reveals that the number of children in single-mother families living in extreme poverty went up 27 percent in the first year after welfare reform legislation was enacted. "Extreme poverty" is defined as income less than half the federal poverty line -- or less than $6,401 a year for a family of three. Reports from the states show a significant number of former welfare recipients who have subsequently been unable to buy food, pay rent or keep up with their utility bills.

 

And then ACORN.  Somehow a group that seeks to get low-income voters registered and to their polling places on Election Day “stole the election”? 

With more than 450,000 member families nationwide — 14,000 in Florida — ACORN is a grass roots advocacy group focused on health care, wages, affordable housing and foreclosure.

Hmm, seem like pretty decent folks to me.

This year, ACORN signed up 1.3-million voters nationwide and about 152,000 in Florida, mostly in Orange, Broward and Miami-Dade counties. ACORN estimates it flagged 2 percent of its Florida registrations as problematic because they were incomplete, duplicates or just plain bogus.
That's enough to give headaches to election officials and to provide ammunition to Republican activists.

 

You see, the only way the other side won’t call foul, is as long as all of those poor people living on the margins of society don’t show up to claim their constitutionally-mandated right to cast a vote in an election.  If they do, well, they’ll make sure they have to jump some hurdles to do it:

 

Because the only way to really ensure the continued hegemony of our economic overlords (and to further reduce the 16.6% average tax rate of the 400 highest-earning folks in America, who earned at least $139 million each in 2007 – the average tax rate of the same group was a slightly more conscionable 30% in 1995) is to keep the underclasses poor, disillusioned and without a solid stake in society.  Because if they were to gain a stake in society, then they might become afraid of losing it, and that might drive them to do the one thing that makes all American (wo)men equal: vote. 
And so I come to the question of the week, and perhaps of the entire Obama Administration: did you read the New Yorker article? 

In April, 2009, Melissa Cohlmia, a company spokesperson, denied that the Kochs had direct links to the Tea Party, saying that Americans for Prosperity is “an independent organization and Koch companies do not in any way direct their activities.” Later, she issued a statement: “No funding has been provided by Koch companies, the Koch foundations, or Charles Koch or David Koch specifically to support the tea parties.” David Koch told New York, “I’ve never been to a tea-party event. No one representing the tea party has ever even approached me.”

At the lectern in Austin, however, Venable—a longtime political operative who draws a salary from Americans for Prosperity, and who has worked for Koch-funded political groups since 1994—spoke less warily. “We love what the Tea Parties are doing, because that’s how we’re going to take back America!” she declared, as the crowd cheered. In a subsequent interview, she described herself as an early member of the movement, joking, “I was part of the Tea Party before it was cool!”  She explained that the role of Americans for Prosperity was to help “educate” Tea Party activists on policy details, and to give them “next-step training” after their rallies, so that their political energy could be channeled “more effectively.” And she noted that Americans for Prosperity had provided Tea Party activists with lists of elected officials to target. She said of the Kochs, “They’re certainly our people. David’s the chairman of our board. I’ve certainly met with them, and I’m very appreciative of what they do.”

 

You see, when average Americans say they’re going to “take back America” they may very well be truly concerned citizens upset about the way our country is going (or they might be part of the 18% of Americans who are wrongly convinced that our President is a Muslim…well which is it, did he have a pastor who preached that dangerous Christian “black liberation theology,” that was fanned into a fury by his primary and general election opponents, or did he not?  The “liberal” American media is having such a field day painting the man and his family as “Other” they’re mixing their memes up) but when one of the richest men in America has one of his loyal puppets saying the same thing, well, that just means they want a more malleable person in the White House, one who won’t try to do more than give lip service to reforming the financial markets and the tax code…their guy didn’t win last time.  Hence why you have these whining billionaires who have gotten so used to running the show in D.C. to their liking that now they’re throwing tantrums publicly about the prospect of their marginal tax rates being returned to where they were under Clinton.  They looted and stole from us, and their hubris made what was already a bad economic situation even worse in the end.  Worker productivity has steadily risen for years, and yet our wages have remained essentially flat:

 

But it serves the financial titans of the world very well to have those of us who constitute the “other 95%” bickering amongst ourselves, responding to race-baiting and baseless rumor and innuendo with rage and disgust while they make off like the bandits they are.  While we bicker, the moneyed class of tax evaders have convinced the political class (through strategic, bipartisan campaign donations, surely) that a deficit commission is what is needed right now, despite the fact that weak consumer demand is the true driver of this recession, and cutting spending is the exact opposite way to deal with that problem, unintuitive as that may sound when compared to one’s household budget.  What are the aims of this deficit commission?  Well, one of the most prominent members, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, who is regarded as a “serious thinker” amongst the Republicans on budget issues, has a Roadmap for getting our country onto a sustainable fiscal path.  That Roadmap would increase taxes on the bottom 90% of the population, while slashing taxes for the top 10%, slash and/or privatize entitlements, and would lead to rapidly ballooning deficits along the way.  Sounds swell.  The other big news out of the deficit commission this week that you may have heard is that one of the co-chairs, Alan Simpson, former Senator from Wyoming, referred to Social Security as a “milk cow with 310 million tits (sic).”  Simpson has made no secret of his distaste for Social Security, despite the fact that it remains the sole remaining income for many Americans whose other retirement savings have been wiped out by the stock market crash.  I know that on a personal level I certainly hope to have Social Security waiting for me when I retire, as subjecting the entirety of my savings for my golden years to the vagaries of the constantly-manipulated stock market is not something I’m terribly interested in doing. 

And so, my final plea to the world is this: don’t let yourself be hoodwinked!  Don’t let them pull the wool over your eyes!  If you’re vaguely upset about what’s happening in the world and you have the urge to do something about it, I beg of you, turn off Fox News, turn off your TV entirely, and read a newspaper, any paper, or get your news online, say from a news aggregator like Google News, which collects the news feeds from many different sources and presents them for you…as for the reason you feel upset, fearful, angry generally, but without a particular direction except at our President and anything remotely “liberal” or “progressive,” ask yourself what are your specific concerns?  What policies that have been passed are you upset about?  Why?  Does your response use the word “mandate” in it?  Well I suggest you read up on what else the various laws have in them, as in regards to the health care reform bill, there’s a reason it was 2000+ pages long – it achieves quite a lot of stuff, none of which involve “death panels,” for the record.  Here’s the perfect example of how Fox News hoodwinks its viewers, knowingly, and with virtual impunity:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Parent Company Trap
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

 

The overlords keep things purposely vague, so that those who take their marching orders from FreedomWorks and Americans For Prosperity are more open to malleability.  For instance, if the Tea Partiers are so angry about the bank bailouts, why, when a coalition of unions, the unemployed, and small business owners very publicly protested on Wall Street earlier this year, no Tea Party members showed up?  Could it be that such a display by the Tea Party would have been against the interests of those who fund their Astroturf grassroots rallies?  Steve Benen of Washington Monthly continues the theme:

MOVEMENTS ARE ABOUT SOMETHING REAL…. I tried to keep up on today's festivities at the Lincoln Memorial, but as the dust settles, I find myself confused.

For a year and a half, we've seen rallies and town-hall shouting and attack ads and Fox News special reports. But I still haven't the foggiest idea what these folks actually want, other than to see like-minded Republicans winning elections. To be sure, I admire their passion, and I applaud their willingness to get involved in public affairs. If more Americans chose to take a more active role in the political process, the country would be better off and our democracy would be more vibrant.

But that doesn't actually tell us what these throngs of Americans are fighting for, exactly. I'm not oblivious to their cries; I'm at a loss to appreciate those cries on anything more than a superficial level.

This is about "freedom."

Well, I'm certainly pro-freedom, and as far as I can tell, the anti-freedom crowd struggles to win votes on Election Day. But can they be a little more specific? How about the freedom for same-sex couples to get married? No, we're told, not that kind of freedom.

<snip>

Labor unions created a movement. Women's suffrage was a movement. The fight for civil rights is a movement. The ongoing struggle for equality for gays and lesbians is a movement. In each case, the grievance was as clear as the solution. There was no mystery as to what these patriots were fighting for. Their struggles and successes made the nation stronger, better, and more perfect.

The folks who gathered in D.C. today were awfully excited about something. The fact that it's not altogether obvious what that might be probably isn't a good sign.

 

Bob Herbert is right, America is better than this.  As Dr. King himself said 47 years ago (yesterday):

 

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

 

Who brings soul force to the Tea Party?  What in their message is not divisive and mean-spirited?  What raises us up to our truer calling of brother and sisterhood if Mrs. Palin slants all of her messages only to “real Americans”?  What if the majority of Americans view the night that President Obama was elected, not as the beginning of a slide into national dishonor, as the Beck/Palin worldview appears to believe, but as the heretofore unparalleled peak of our country’s national honor?  Would that shared sense not speak of the better angels among us?

Turn off these merchants of hate and division, and ask yourself what you fear, and why, and be honest about it.  All I’m saying is, if you’re upset and want to vote all the bums out this November (and please, do vote!) at least do it because you’ve come to your own conclusions and done your own research, not because your vote suits the agendas of those running the show from behind the curtain.