I don't think it's hyperbole to say that we are in the grips of a struggle to decide who we are as a nation. What is more important to us?
Do we insist on low taxes on the wealthy? After all, as Americans partaking in the great American dream, we too might one day be wealthy and will want our taxes low. Do we buy into the argument that raises anyone's taxes is a bad idea? Do we buy into the argument this it is especially bad to allow the Bush tax cuts to end and let rates return to Clinton-era averages? Do we care that the middle-class is under attack and that large percentages of the middle-class are falling back into poverty. Do we care that the wealthy have taken the lion's share (and then some) of income and done so well this past 20 years, yet we refuse to force taxes higher on this group to ease us back out of recession?
Do we want to pay down the cost of our safety nets by removing social programs that have given a level of security to Americans who don't get wealthy? Or is it more important that most of us can work hard, save as best we can, and retire without the threat of homelessness or poverty, in other words are social safety nets worth the very real costs they require?
Reasonable people can disagree about this and both be right. But there are limits to this view. No safety nets is immoral, selfish, and foolish (for the wealthy). When in the past greed has ruled the writing of our policy, the poor always climb up and force change from the wealthy - restoring a semblance of equity - at least for a time.
I read
David Brooks recent column on empathy and find myself wondering where people like Brooks live - what planet, what conscious plane. I fear it is a place where other people don't matter, only they and those like them.
Mr Brooks sees Nazi soldiers weeping when they slaughter innocents, and instead of blaming the authority that commanded them to do it, he blames their own empathy. Something is deeply wrong with this mindset, and Brooks is not alone.
Here's a particular coherent comment on the article.
Mr Brooks--a Republican--has perhaps here articulated a fundamental flaw in the worldview of the present-day American conservative movement. He equates empathy with money. Empathy is compassion. Parents feel empathy for a distressed child, but so do strangers. I do not have to have a physical handicap to feel empathy for someone who does--it comes naturally. This makes me a larger human being--because I can relate to another human being who is not myself. And this is what makes human beings good. Republicans mock compassion as a weakness. This disavows the single greatest basic tenet of Christianity(or Buddhism etc). A homosexual who serves in the US military is booed by Republicans because he is homosexual. This is the way to savagery. This essay by Mr Brooks is both prescient and disturbing. I walk to work to save 80 cents every morning to save money for a Novice Monk named Onsi in Laos. My empathy makes his life better. In return, I get a form of grace. Grace, and a friendship that is beyond money, beyond corporations, beyond politics. Is is plausible to posit that Republicans are verging on becoming evil? Evil means unhuman. Empathy makes us human.
Who are we going to be, as Americans, 10 years from now. Do you care?
