submandave

While I agree with much of what the President said in Oslo, I am cautious about believing that I really know what he meant. As John Stewart has been prone to point out lately, if one removes the byline this could just as easily been a speech given by the President in 2004, a President, incidentally, that both Senator and candidate Obama frequently and vehemently repudiated. Like many Obama speeches, though, there were significant places that required the audience to "fill in the blank," and therein lies the details.

While going on at length about the sometimes necessity of fighting, he was rather vague about the actual principles upon which this necessity might hinge. Judging from his administration's unwillingness to even engage diplomatically on the side of freedom and democracy in either Honduras or Iran (and actually officially siding against it in the case of the former), it seems fair to conjecture that this is not a principle upon which this President would rather fight than switch. Amongst the specifics he does mention, though, we find "human rights" and "economic injustice."

While it is difficult for anyone to find fault with the first in general, this very universal acknowledgement and acceptance has, in the last couple of decades, meant the co-opting of this rather nebulous phrase by almost anyone or any group advocating for anything. Some, for example, believe the causes of government guaranteed universal housing, food and health care fall under the banner of "human rights." Based upon his domestic legislative priorities, one might feel comfortable assuming the President falls more into this camp than any other. Considering that the President has often expressed confidence in the UN, perhaps we should explore some of what they believe are human rights, as set forth in their Universal Declaration of Human Rights: (emphasis added, comments in italics)

• Article 12. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
  (justification for "hate speech" laws?)
  
• Article 22. Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.
  (I'm not sure how the government is supposed to sponsor everyone's dignity, but I'm sure someone will try and tell me)
  
• Article 23. (1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
  (so, the government needs to guarantee you a job?)
  
• Article 23. (3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
  (there's an awful lot of nebulous "dignity" talk going around)
  
• Article 24. Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.
  (this human rights thing is sounding to me more and more like an employment contract between the government and its citizens)
  
• Article 25. (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
  (note to freeloader wannabes: pay attention to the use of the adjective "adequate")
  
• Article 26. (3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.
  (oh, well, guess we can forget this one...)

More disturbing for me, though, is his stated commitment to some idea of "economic injustice." While I might consider it unjust for a government to excessively tax its citizens or impose unreasonable restrictions on their freedom to engage in private, mutually beneficial economic agreements with other citizens, I somehow have a hunch this wasn't exactly what he was thinking about as he penned these words. In fact, if one were to Google "economic injustice," the entire first page concerns the advocacy of government-sponsored efforts to redistribute wealth to redress economic disparity between citizens. Characteristic of this sentiment is the 2005 essay by Jason Miller on a site called Metaphoria, which agonizes that "[s]tarting with Iraq, President Bush has dedicated himself to exporting economic injustice." Obviously it is far better to have oppressive despotism fueling uniform squalor (except for those favored by the ruling elite) than to have an environment of greater personal freedom that might allow some to achieve greater economic success than others. Again, judging from previous words and actions I can't help but believe that President Obama is espousing a support of this more conventional understanding of the phrase.

All of which leads to some interesting questions, if only one were to ask. If, as he said, the President believes "that a nation's hostility towards human rights and economic injustice cannot be allowed to thrive," and if we accept the concepts of "human rights" and "economic injustice" as outlined above, then how does that belief square against both the laws and capitalistic economic model of the very country he leads? Would one be justified in concluding that this has everything to do with his pledge to fundamentally remake the country? Or will we be encouraged by our "betters" to, once again, ignore the man behind the curtain and pay attention to the smoke and mirrors he presents instead?

Labels: policy, politics, socialism, The One

In thinking of both Sen. Obama's proposed "tax cut" and the sub-prime mortgage crisis I keep hearing the chorus from Arrested Development's song "Give a Man a Fish." Rare is the man who has been raised from his social and economic conditions without having to do the lion's share of the work himself. The dirty secret that politicians are loathe to admit but I will say without prejudice is that in most cases there is a reason those in poverty stay in poverty and in today's America it rarely has to do with oppression or institutionalized anything-ism.

Poverty produces poverty for the simple reason that it doesn't know how not to. If you give every family in poverty $1000 today you'd end up with a bunch of poor folks watching some really nice LCD HDTV sets but very little actual improvement in their general standard of living. Likewise, extending shaky credit to unsteady borrowers at the government's bequest was, from any objective position, a bad idea. Yet there was the perpetual idea that putting someone in a nicer house with a little money in their pockets would result in a mystical metamorphosis that would alter their entire lives and that of their children without having to do the heavy lifting of changing their economic patterns. It was nice to give big, three bedroom fish to all those hungry folks, but what are they eating today?

I said before the I say this without prejudice, and by that I mean that there is nothing intrinsic in the poor that requires they stay poor or that being poor reduces their worth as people. But being poor is not a phenomenon, but often rather the logical result of a pattern of behavior. Ask any entry-level employer and they'll tell you one of their biggest problems is just getting people to show up for work and doing it on time. I see it at my daughters' school, where I volunteer to help with morning traffic. The tardy bell rings and still the parents are pulling in or walking up with their kids, usually with no sense of urgency at all. And this is at a good school in a middle-class neighborhood. It pains me no end to see the bad lesson these parents are demonstrating daily to their children. (I am sure others have looked on me with the same complaint, but as this essay is addressing poverty and contributing factors I'll give myself a pass at this time)

If you really want to reduce poverty, then help develop a good work ethic to allow a person to get, keep and excel in a job. After that, teach budgeting skills and the idea of delayed gratification in order to encourage savings. Use that savings and economic sense to secure a conventional mortgage and you've taught that fellow how to fish and not just given him a meal. You've provided him with tools that allow him to make a secure economic base for himself and his family.

This, then, is what I see as the heart of the anti-redistribution sentiment felt by many Americans. Help out your neighbor, educate the poor, but handout after handout just prompts the response of, to quote one of my least favorite songs ever, "what have you done for me lately?" Unless a person changes their patterns of behavior it is folly to believe that the results of giving them $1,000 or $10,000 would be too different from giving them $20.

Labels: policy, poverty, socialism