This might be a stupid question, but what is poverty? Is it the inability to purchase? Is it a dearth of choices? Is it a lack of education?If it is a lack of education, was King Solomon or Julius Caesar poor since most of us, if not all of us, are better educated than either man? If poverty is the limiting of choices, is Bill Gates on a life raft in the middle of the Indian Ocean a poor man? Was Henry David Thoreau poor in his Walden Pond cabin, blue-blood as he was, even though he couldn't purchase anything on-line?
Or is poverty some combination of factors, some aggregate of 4 out of 10 criteria, or 6 of 7? Is it a mental condition – a mirage of the mind – or false perception based on the illusory promises of economics? Surely there have been millionaires who have lived as paupers, locked away in shacks or tenements: Is the miserly millionaire trapped in self-imposed squalor poor? Is the penniless pauper living in the king's castle as apprentice to the blacksmith poor? Is the young man who holds a Master of Arts from Syracuse poor merely because he chooses to live in the city's homeless shelter as a protest against the expectations of capitalism?
I've asked too many questions. But there is no doubt in my mind that poverty is an elastic, fluid or even vaporous thing. I know that I am poor in the eyes of the Vanderbilts, but I am rich compared to my neighbor. A homeless man in San Francisco is wealthier than a Haitian who has a home. Who then is poor? Conversely, who is rich?
For now, I will not answer these questions. Instead, today begins a Contratimes analysis of poverty and wealth in America; and of the ideas espoused to correct or eradicate that poverty, and, in some cases, that wealth.
***
Let me begin the analysis proper with this simple question (no question is simple, at least here): Why should anyone "care for the poor?"
The other day, during a televised press conference, President George W. Bush was asked the following question by a reporter addressed by the President as "April." I assume this is April Ryan of the American Urban Radio Network who covers the White House (please correct me if I am wrong). "April" asked:
Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, the Bible speaks of goodwill towards the least of these. With that, how are you going to bridge the divide of poverty and race in this country beyond economics and home ownership, that after Hurricane Katrina and also the Bill Bennett statements? And also, how can the Republican Party gain the black vote -- more of the black vote in 2008, after these public relations fiascos?
Please note something really important here (ignoring that the question is a fallaciously loaded question): The reporter unabashedly refers to the Bible – primarily Jesus' claim that His followers must serve "the least of these" as if each person is Jesus Himself – and thus refers to that Bible as a moral compass that should direct public policy. Problem?
Yes, there is, and it is a clear one: Arguments posited for "caring" for the poor, particularly arguments posited by leading Democrats, are religiously-based arguments. Hence, caring for the poor via public policy is a religious practice; and the justification for it comes directly from religious ideals, particularly Judeo-Christian ideals.
If you were paying close attention to the post-2004 election diatribes delivered by disappointed Democrats, you would have heard scripture cited repeatedly by such notables as Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Howard Dean. References to being "Our brothers' keeper", "Doing unto the least of these," "Turning the other cheek", and "Loving one's neighbor as oneself" came trippingly off the tongues of progressives everywhere. And these were offered largely as criticisms of Religious Right voters who, as you will remember, were blamed for turning out in droves to vote against the alleged compassion and social conscience of the Democrats' John Kerry. In light of the Religious Right's anti-Kerry votes, the Christian Right was not "very Christian" at all, or so judged leading Democrats.
Curiously, these Scriptural citations by Democrats were used politically to suggest that the Democratic Party was the "true" Christian party (you've heard them say this re: defense, healthcare, welfare, education, and civil rights) at the very same time Democrats were insisting that George Bush and Co. were attempting to establish a Christian theocracy!
In short, then, let us rip off the veneer and get to the heart of today's point: If separation of Church and State is so critical to leftists, why do they attempt to impose Judeo-Christian morality upon an apparently secular political state when it comes to poverty? Answer: they have never even thought about it.
Most of us haven't.
Why care for the poor? Who says we have to care for the poor? Who says "tax cuts for the rich" are unjust? Where, in this discussion, do we find our moral inspiration for fighting poverty in a secular state? Why should government be "our brothers' keeper"?
No one seems to notice that a reporter asked the President of the United States to use religion as a means to fight poverty through the vehicle of the state.
That is truly curious.
[Here endeth Part I. Part II begins here.]
Contratimes
©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
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