Religion Dispatches
…% increased by 256%; the poorest households saw an increase of 11%; middle class homes, 21%, much of which was due to the arrival of two-job families. And yet, Fischer bemoans the fact that the government is willing to spend a little more to help those who are suffering, while not making one peep about how giving more money to those who need it the least will blow a hole in the deficit. The prophet Amos says don’t think that God doesn’t notice thi…
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…ses the resources of design to solve social problems, visited my brother’s class in architecture school and described one of the first design contests he held. He asked people to come up with the best design possible for a mobile AIDS clinic for a town in a country in Africa. He posted the deadline, and he waited. He didn’t think anyone would submit anything, but on the day of the contest’s deadline, a delivery man from Federal Express rang the do…
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…e of fatalism. It accepts as more or less inevitable that there is a lucky class, which gets a good education and nice jobs, and a less lucky majority, condemned to insecurity, unemployment, and bad culture. For all its anti-racism, it accepts the economic perpetuation of racial segregation with a shrug. Only Marxism can reject fatalism and see inequality as an injustice that cries out for full and immediate rectification. This is what keeps Eagle…
Read More…society that we never notice them anymore — until a little boy walks into class in a dress. Despite their status as victims, however, what these women did to this mother is nothing short of bullying. Their reactions — even though they may come masked as “concern” — really spring from an unconscious place of deeply internalized misogyny. More importantly, these mothers are models for their children — and in attacking this mother for “allowing” her…
Read More…le often caricatured as a “red bishop” who preached a communist message of class struggle that supported the armed Zapatistas, Bishop Ruiz consistently espoused a vision of nonviolence and peaceful mediation. In 1999 he founded the Father Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Centre and his life as a whole reminds us that the Latin American Church has been and still is the Church of the Poor. Bishops Ruiz’s death marks the passing of yet another pri…
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…, “more moral policing by big government.” Did these electeds never take a class in logic? Do they really “think with their d—-s?” Forgive the expression, but it fits. Political logic would attach family planning to a decrease of the deficit and increase the funding for it. One d-word appears to be in the way of another. More unwanted children require more schooling, polices and services. Duh. To even bring up the possibility (just raised, and tha…
Read More…It’s not going to work. We are in the midst of a full-on, honest-to-gosh, class war. Gov. Walker and governors like him all across the nation are trying to take a slice out of the ass of the poor, the working and middle classes, so that they can defend the privilege of the rich not to pay high taxes and corporations to, well, pretty much to do whatever the hell they want. Walker and his colleagues have no vision of community, no understanding of…
Read More…lievers in our Lord Jesus Christ, with equality across racial, gender, and class differences.” On the other hand, a statement of faith for an alliance to promote adoption? Even if it is meant to be a church-based movement, this strikes me as rather odd, as does the first article in that statement: “We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.” What that has to do with adoption is beyond me. Still, the bo…
Read More…ica did not develop a strong socialist movement. Capitalism should lead to class conflict and eventually to a revolution and socialism, these Marxists argued, but America was an exception to this rule. Alpers points out that it was the neoconservative interventionist foreign policy of the 1990s and the two Bush administrations that prompted folks on the right to claim American exceptionalism as its own. Lurking in the background of this unilateral…
Read More…is trying to get more Muslims writing for TV and movies in Hollywood. The number of US Muslims accused of terrorism dropped by half in 2010, a new study reports. A pair of doves just didn’t want to leave the Pope’s window this week. People who believe the end of the world will come on 12/21/12 are flocking to a French mountain. A Norwegian boy fended off a pack of wolves by terrorizing them with a song by the slightly Christian band Creed. German…
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