Pagans and social justice

APaganplace,

I have also noticed how the very folks who want to eliminate as much assistance as possible, also want to eliminate as much education assistance as possible. So much for "teaching them to fish."

Having a good-sized chunk of your population chronically sick, under-educated, barley making ends meet, insecure, and terrified of having things get even worse, that sounds like a recipe for success! (Heavy sarcasm alert.)

Yeah, Gimpi, it's amazing how people get social justice turned around backwards to mean its opposite is somehow supposed to be virtuous:

They also claim that somehow already over-worked and under-effective religious charities can somehow take up the slack for a public system that, while, yes, also under-funded and not-effective enough, still serves millions in need who don't 'win at the competition game.'

Even if 'private religious charities' *could* suddenly up and take over all that the government does, they couldn't do it **without becoming just as big and bureaucratic and expensive as the government agencies they seem to want to dismantle**.

Frankly, if they want to make the government programs more effective, the answer isn't to take them apart, or continually hire more bureaucrats to be tasked with paying out as little as possible and taking away as many benefits as possible, but rather, perhaps, to *increase the security in social security,* ...instead of having a lot of people barely-getting by and spending their lives just trying to keep their heads above water, not cause they have too little "incentive from poverty," but because they have *too little to work with, and too big a gulf between being able to do everything and being able to do anything.*

If we want to get people out of the 'welfare trap' (so-called, as though people would be better off without any) ...then these agencies (public and private) should focus on investing on those in the system who actually can get out, if given a stable and secure basis, and something to work with.

Yanking the safety net doesn't encourage injured people to walk tightropes.

I find it fascinating that basic human virtues such as compassion, empathy and a desire for justice are being redefined as "the definition of Fascism." This brings up a couple of things. One, some people should invest in a good dictionary. Two, apparently we don't teach reading for comprehension or understanding context well at all.

There is nothing wrong with taxation to help for the sick, the disabled or the suffering. Teaching someone to fish is fine, if they are able in body and mind, (and someone wants to buy the fish). If they aren't, (or if the fish-market has been tanked) what then? The vast majority of folks aided by taxpayer-funded aid are the elderly, the disabled (Social Security and Medicare, the terminally or chronically ill (Medicaid), and those getting temporary aid (Unemployment insurance). This is, to paraphrase an earlier blogger, "the definition of 'common good.'"

As to the notion that this should be voluntary, just look around the world. Where that has been tried, you have streets clogged with hopeless and sick beggars, children starve to death in the streets and honest work will barley keep body and soul together. It is no more theft to use tax funds to provide protection against losing your job or health insurance than it is to use tax funds to protect against crime or fire.

Good work Starhawk and don't worry to much about the idiots who compare you to Hitler and Stalin because if what you had to say had no value those folks would be raving about someone else.

Starhawk criticizes Glenn Beck but criticism is a two-way street.

To wit:

http://brian.carnell.com/articles/2005/starhawk-the-pagan-pat-robertson/

"Earlier this month, I mentioned my disdain for pagan activist Starhawk. But I did not appreciate just how nutty she is until my wife directed me to Starhawk’s A Pagan Response to Katrina.

The article is bizarre through-and-through, but the highlight is the Pat Robertson moment,

The forms and names we put on Goddesses, Gods, and Powers help translate those forces into terms our human minds can grasp. And so the Yoruba based traditions that originate in West Africa have given the name ‘Oya’ to the whirlwind, the hurricane, to those great powers of sudden change and destruction. Santeria, candomble, lucumi, voudoun, all include Oya in some form as a major orisha, a Great Power. Offerings are made to her, ceremonies done in her behalf, priestesses dance themselves into trance possession so that she can communicate with directly with the human community.

No city in the U.S. has more practitioners of these traditions than New Orleans. On the night the hurricane was due to hit, I made a ritual with a small group of friends to support the spiritual efforts that I knew were being made by priestesses of Oya all over the country. We were in Crawford, Texas, at Camp Casey, where Gold Star mother Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in Itaq, camped near Bush’s ranch to confront Bush with the painful reality of the deaths his policies have caused. Many of the supporters there were from New Orleans, worried about their homes, their friends and families. The overall culture of the camp was very Christian—we found no natural opening for public Pagan ritual, although a number of people did indicate to me quietly that they were ‘one of us.’ But our little group gathered by the roadside, cast a circle, chanted and prayed.

We prayed, speaking personally in the way humans do: “ Please, Mama, we know what a mess we’ve made, but if there is any way to mitigate the death and the destruction, to lessen it slightly, please do.” That same night Christians were praying and Orisha priestesses were ‘working’ Oya, and the hurricane did shift its course, slightly, and lessened its force, down to a Category Four.

And New Orleans survived. Not without loss, and death, but without the massive flooding and destruction that was feared. We all breathed a sigh of relief.

Robertson, of course, infamously claimed that through prayer he prevented Hurricane Gloria from striking Florida in 1985. In contrast, Starhawk’s accomplishments seem a bit underwhelming."

But maybe the Triple Goddess and the Horned God will also bring social justice to the globe??

"No wonder we're losing our homes and struggling to put food on the table, let alone paying our bloated health insurance premiums. How did this happen?"

The Reagan Revolution tax cuts embody:

1. Continuing effort to return to the Gilded Age by concentrating wealth at the top. Nice, I guess, if you are at the top.
2. Privateering of public assets for private profit.

The health care system was built mostly by Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish charities for the common good, and doctors largely educated at non-profit university medical centers. These assets were then privatized for profit by a successful lobbying campaign in the state legislatures. Result? Skyrocketing healthcare costs spiraling out of control driven by billion dollar bonuses for executives and "stockholder good".

The power grid was built by public utility companies for the common good with a guaranteed rate of return that financed investments in power plants and grid. The privateers also commandeered these public assets singing siren songs of how cost would be driven down by the "free market". The result? Vast profits for the privateers from Wall Street deals that loaded up the power plants with debt. Electricity rates spiraling out of control to cover the profit from all that debt.

When free market privateers commandeered public assets for private profits we all suffered. Redress of this misappropriation of public wealth is then called "socialism" by Beck and his ilk.

Umm... wrong again. The Goddess is not "the proletariat". Did you get that big five-syllable word from Beck, too? The closest idea of the Goddess that your tiny little tea-soaked brain can grok is "Mother Nature".

Unlike you, I've actually studied the Soviet Union. Health care is NOTHING like the Soviet Union. I suggest that you read some history, or watch the History Channel.

BTW, if you'd read Starhawk's Wikipedia entry, you'd see that she's a Jewish Pagan. I don't always agree with her on some things, but she's spot-on with this one.

Star always makes more sense if you understand that by "Goddess" she means "the proletariat."

She is the nearest thing to an atheist Pagan you will find. Her "Goddess" is other people, not a nonhuman intelligence or anything other than human.

Al Moonlight

Will anyone look at what Starhawk has actually written, other than our fellow Pagans? She proposes compassion, and half the responders have turned it into the downfall of human society. Stop the semantic arguments. If anyone disagrees with what Starhawk has said, fine, but taking it in all different directions gets nobody anywhere. Are you so afraid of handing a single dollar to a single actually lazy person that you're willing to ignore millions of starving, sick, miserable, honest people? Are you so convinced that you deserve more than the average person that fairness and justice scare you this much? Is another person's happiness and well-being the price of your own?

I'm all for teaching people to fish instead of giving them fish. The whole point of evening out the socio-economic structure is not to create another imbalanced structure but to create something self-sustaining. At the current rate, the middle class will disappear. I was always partial to that saying that amounts to: If you don't stand up for other people, there will be nobody left to stand up for you.

I support you, Starhawk, as I always have. Thank you for being a voice of reason, justice, and the Pagan community.

Oy... another one who gets their history from Glenn Beck.

What Lenin and Stalin did was NOT considered to be "social justice". It was collectivization - forcing small farmers to sell their land and work in groups, confiscating their property to add to the "collective". How can you even compare the starvation of millions of people in forced collectivization to what Jesus preached about taking care of the poor?

As for Abraham Lincoln, he would be rolling in his grave at the thought of the Tea Partiers. Unless, of course, you're one of these "South will rise again" types that hates Lincoln for freeing the slaves.

This "Tea Party" thing is all about race. Poor whites don't want blacks and browns getting more than they do. Nobody would be questioning Obama's birth if his name was Barry O'Brien.

Speaking of Beck, your "champion of the common man" made $32 million last year. Calling the President a socialist must be good for business.

Thank you, Starhawk, for your fair-minded call to sensibility and justice amidst the deafening roar of greed, ignorance, and fear-mongering in today's media and political landscape. Your voice and presence are so deeply encouraging and appreciated.

Captainspalding, I think you need some therapy, my friend. You've got some issues.

Maybe that guy Lincoln was a little too conservative for you.
Right?

"You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away men's initiative and independence.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.
"
— Abraham Lincoln

Good grief you sound like Stalin, Lenin, Mao, and all the other evil men who murdered their own peoople in the millions to achieve "social" Justice.
You stand with the likes of Stalin, Lenin, etc. with your creed of Social Justice.

While I agree with Starhawk on this and a great many things I have to point out that this is not compassion in the eyes of a real conservative. By real conservative I mean a conservative that actually believes in the conservative philosophy as a matter for the greater good as opposed to those that "believe" in it for their own financial gain.

The real kind of conservative looks at the liberal philosophy and sees a handout to people that don't have the self control to save up for those things they would otherwise use credit for, etc. They look at people that can't pay their bills as people that are just poorly disciplined and buy compulsively. In some cases this is true and people definitely need to rein in their spending and start buying things that will make more money in an ethically sound way.

The conservative version of compassion is a sort of tough love that says teach them how to be disciplined and show them how to manage their money so they are stronger on their own. It's a sort of teach "them how to fish" stance.

The problem is that the people who are really in charge of the conservative movement that know how to use money like this aren't telling the true conservatives how they made their millions (with a few exceptions), if they did these well meaning folks would turn as far to the left as I am.

I'm bringing this up because the far left has been out of touch with what the low/ middle class right wing peeps really think. You can't tell these guys that they are being uncompassionate because that closes them down. It also isn't true in many cases, but they need to see the true form of the wizard behind the curtain, then their view of compassion will change on it's own.

Take it easy,
Rob

What was the old quote - "When I give food to the poor, people call me a saint. When I ask why the people are poor and don't have enough to eat, they call me a communist."

Thanks, Starhawk, for making sense in all of this screaming. It's all in the Threefold Law - what you give out, you get back X3. If you give out anger and bitterness, you'll get that thrown back in your face. If you give love and compassion towards those less fortunate, you'll get love and compassion from others in return.

And frankly, CaptainSpalding, you need to go back and read some history. Hitler was aligned with the industrialists in Weimar Germany, including I.G. Farben and Daimler Benz. And the "Prince John" of the Robin Hood legends was the King John that was eventually forced by the noblemen to sign the Magna Carta. Not to say that he wasn't an evil SOB who stabbed his brother in the back. But the country was already going broke because they were funding the Crusades.

Thank you so much, Starhawk, for your wise comments and for reminding me of the tools that Daly bequeathed us.

Actually what you're saying is that it is the government's duty to seize private property if it benefits the "common good". This is Fascism by definition. And the problem with it is "common good" usually means "whatever the leaders want."

Robin Hood was a man who went on the Christian Crusades to fight the Muslim. He then came home and discovered that because of his service, he was an outlaw and that taxes were so high no one could make a living.

That doesn't sound like you. You sound more like King John sucking up the taxes and "redistributing" it to your friends - which was who was getting rich in the Robin Hood story.

Your rant reminds me of another person's rants. Said individual decided that the rich held too much power in his society too. He pointed out to his countrymen that rich people in the media, banking, industrialists, and other sectors had too much influence in society. He decided to "redistribute" their wealth to his starving countrymen.

That man was Hitler and he started small too - with riots and demonstrations. In fact, his infamous death camps weren't set up until after he'd been in power for 5 or 6 years.

But all of this aside, what gives you Starhawk the right to decide? Who made you so wise that you can sit in judgement of everyone else? Just because you don't see what bankers are doing in their day to day lives you've decided to kick them?

You remind me of a Dark Age Hierophant: because my God(dess) is so holy and pure it justifies any action we take in her name.

Don't care how many books you've written. Don't care how many degrees you hold. Wrong is wrong.

Thanks for the points you made, and thanks for their delivery.
As a Pagan, I was grateful you contextualized so well for whom you were writing in the first paragraph, and for what we work in common.
Then the Daly, eternal framing of the points themselves:
BECKoners, RUSHans, and Reagan-wielders are rhetorically reversing the villainy of the wealth redistribution they've done for decades. Re-redistributing, to be seen as something new, requires a massive forgetting of Reaganite history and its tripling of USans' debt as we were conned into double-lining the full pockets of the rich.

Thank you for your content, and thank you especially for a delivery that can get it into our third eyes and ears.

Blessings, as always,
MiRobin

It's so wonderful to see one of our predominant Pagan authors featured here. I've always admired Starhawk for her stances with respect to social justice and ecology. Now, if only the rest of the world could follow such a great example...