Editor: Douglas Drenkow

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JUSTICE: Crime & Scandal  | June 9, 2006


Editor's Note: "Progressive Thinking" served as the online archive of my socio-political writings; this was the last entry. See "Values & Issues" for indexes to the archives; and see also the special section of articles researched, indexed, and summarized -- to tell the story -- of the administration's mishandling of Hurricane Katrina.

FOR WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT A MAN

IF HE SHALL GAIN THE WHOLE WORLD

AND LOSE HIS OWN SOUL?

-- Mark 8:36

By Douglas Drenkow, Editor of "Progressive Thinking"

As Posted in BarryTalk and DailyKos.com

Put aside, if you will, logic and reason and science and math; accept, if only for a moment, the dogmas and doctrines of the Right purely on the basis of faith -- a virtue they claim as their own, allegedly lacking on the Left.

Even then, my friends, the righteousness of the Right collapses in upon itself.

If we were somehow to overlook the economic fact of life that the income and spending of poor and middle-class households constitute and drive most of the economic activity of the nation -- and that, thus, shifting the wealth from the bottom to the top is killing the goose that lays the golden eggs, ultimately impoverishing us all -- there would still be no justification for policies that enrich the rich at the expense of all the rest of us; it would simply be immoral.

If we were somehow to convince ourselves that the slaughter and maiming of tens of thousands of innocent human beings was necessary to advance our objectives overseas, even if the best evidence was that they posed no threat to us -- that ignoring the history of a people, the warnings of the world, and the consequences of our actions was the best way to conduct foreign policy -- there would still be no justification for waging a war that did not need to be waged; it would simply be immoral.

If we were somehow to get past the reality that intelligence obtained from prisoners subjected to extremes of physical and mental duress is iffy at best -- that desperate people will say whatever it is that their captors want them to say -- there would still be no justification for torture or any other form of abuse; it would simply be immoral.

If we were somehow to forget the fact that a workforce crippled by chronic and acute ailments from the merely irritating to the patently life-threatening is not working at full capacity -- that human resources, like infrastructure, require maintenance to maintain productivity -- there would still be no justification for a healthcare system allowing millions of people to suffer and die needlessly; it would simply be immoral.

If we were somehow to ignore the reports that the votes of millions of voters have gone systematically uncounted -- that the feedback mechanism that is democracy has not been fully informing the government of the state of the governed -- there would still be no justification for an electoral system that disenfranchised its own citizens on the basis of color, creed, or other such prejudice; it would simply be immoral.

If we were somehow to blind ourselves to the science that the climate of the world is radically changing due to human activities -- that unless we invest in new technologies, the old will increasingly threaten our lives and livelihoods -- there would still be no justification for killing our planet; it would simply be immoral.

If we were somehow to make ourselves oblivious to the fact that millions of schoolchildren are not getting the best education our society can provide -- that the only way our nation can compete in a global marketplace of all-too-cheap labor is to be as smart and inventive as we can possibly be -- there would still be no justification for not living up to our promise to leave no child behind, and in the humanities as well as the sciences; it would simply be immoral.

If we were somehow to accept the fiction that disinformation is ultimately more useful than information -- that democracy and prosperity can function and even flourish when voters and consumers are not entrusted with the facts -- there would still be no justification for media companies and government agencies misleading the people for profit and power; it would simply be immoral.

And if we were somehow to believe that it would be possible to make everyone in the world think and act the same way -- that in their heart of hearts individuals would hold only those beliefs forced upon them by society at large -- there would still be no justification for religious, sexual, or any other form of intolerance; it would simply be immoral.

No, even if the Right got everything it desired, as we are in fact seeing more and more every day -- if somehow their policies could overcome the limitations of reality and actually work -- there would still be no justification for the strong oppressing the weak, in every aspect of public and private life; it would simply be -- it simply is -- immoral.


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