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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