The Preferential Option for the Poor and the Failure of the Political System

Eduardo Penalver on Monday lamented the failure of either the Republicans or Democrats to exhibit any genuine concern for the poor. He lost faith in the Obama administration early on when it became clear who his financial advisors were. My reaction is that the Democratic Party cannot escape the grip of big money until the system of campaign finance is altered. It is well know that Obama set historic records for accumulating small contributions; it is less well known that he attracted more money from large donors and raised more from them than did McCain.

The larger question is how could we have moved from a society in which it was politically attractive for Lyndon Johnson to wage a war on poverty to the present one? Gary Dorrien discusses the cultural roots of this in a lead essay in the Christian Century. He recognizes that Robert Bellah and his co-authors anticipated this in Habits of the Heart: "The Bellah group countered that America was wracked with terrible problems of economic injustice and moral cynicism. In the past, they argued, the ravages of American individualism had been mitigated by the influence of biblical religion and civic republicanism. These moral traditions taught an ethic of community stewardship and provided a litmus test for assessing a society's moral health. The test was: how does society deal with those who are less well off? Scripture condemns inequality and oppression, taking the side of the poor against the principalities and powers that exploit them. Republican theory from Aristotle to the American founders assumed that a free society could survive only if there is an approximate equality of opportunity and condition among citizens.

"The Bellah group acknowledged that these moral convictions had always been contested in the U.S., but they argued that these convictions were being erased. American youth no longer knew or cared about the biblical sources of the American experiment or the social gospel dream of a cooperative commonwealth. A new and largely unchurched generation voted for Reagan and cheered his broadsides against liberalism, unions, the welfare state, the feminist and peace movements and the mainline churches. The dominant trend in American life, according to the Bellah group, was toward an atomized society that reduced all moral and social issues to the language of possessive or expressive individualism."

Derrick Bell famously argued that racism would always be with us, but that was no excuse to abstain from fighting against it. Corporate power will always be present, but that is no excuse to give up. Fortunately, corporations do not always prevail over the common good and sometimes the views of corporations coincide with the common good. But restoring a concern with the poor as the basis for judging our society as opposed to the materialism promoted by our culture is a hard task.

Comments

[bible audio]

Really the government have to change my wish is through this website an revolution will be occurred and there would be no poor at all....

[Jimbino]

In answer to:

"The larger question is how could we have moved from a society in which it was politically attractive for Lyndon Johnson to wage a war on poverty to the present one?"

I submit that:

Men realize how much that war favors women, who work less, live longer and gain from the transfer of wealth from men to women.

The healthy young realize how much that war transfers their income and wealth to the old and infirm.

Singles (& gays) realize how much that war favors the heterosexual marrieds.

The childfree realize how much that war favors the breeders.

Most importantly, the black man realizes how much that war favors white women, who work less, live 10 years longer on SS and Medicare, while they themselves will die, on average, just 4 years after qualifying for Medicare and full SS.

Not only is the healthy, young, single, childfree black man totally screwed by the Great Society, but he will NEVER be seen among the tourist crowd at the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and even the Liberty Bell--all of which he is taxed to pay for. Instead he will be found in prison--born poor, mis-educated in public school, denied employment in his youth, punished for smoking the wrong stuff, injured by working for a pittance in mines and manufacturing and then left to rot until he dies at age 69.

Check it out.