Category: progressivism
Wednesday, 12/3/14
Soma Today: Giving Tuesday
It’ “Giving Tuesday,” the day when our civil religion prescribes a token pause in our buying crap so we can resume shopping tomorrow with our consciences suitably whitewashed.
I don’t think it will work for me. I’ve been looking at the family budget, wondering “how can we be spending that much?” and then “how in heaven’s name can a family of four live on 80 hours of $7.25 per hour minimum wage by two workers – mom and dad both?”
There’s talk of a “living wage,” which is “the minimum income necessary for a worker to meet their needs that are considered to be basic” and a click or two up from subsistence. It’s thought to be sorta kinda progressive.
But it’s time for a periodic reminder of the idea of a “family wage,” which is “a wage that is sufficient to raise a family” as distinct from a living wage. It is advocated by the Great Reactionary Oppressor, the Roman Catholic Church, or so I and some Catholic intellectuals read it. The current status quo is supported by business interests, politicians, and sundry others who profit from it in sundry ways:
Be it remembered, however, that once upon a time, in a land far, far away spiritually, it was not thought that universal participation in the money-paid workforce was a thing ardently to be desired. Indeed, the “Family Wage” was the progressive desiderata for a time, and I consider it a mark of our gullibility and collective amnesia that we now pine for a “living wage” and think that life is incomplete without the
goodsshit we can buy if we – Whoa! What a great idea! – pool two or more living wages under one roof. Look! Kim Kardashian! Chaz Bono! American Idol! Shiny! (HT Mark Shea)The beast feeds itself. Mrs. Jones goes to work, the first on her block to do so. Before the Jones kids have become notably delinquent, the Joneses have compiled an admirable pile of
goodsshit we could buy if Mrs. Tipsy would go to work, too. And then the next family down the block follows suit, and before too long, nobody feels they can survive on a single wage. And maybe they really can’t (unless the Missus aggressively gardens, cans and freezes, and what kind of middle-class family still does that?! It’s barbaric!) because the extra worker supply has driven down wages.And retirement savings? Out of the question! What say we just keep on working? Life is meaningless without a nice paycheck anyway.
(Your Humble Scribe) Remember how Dubya admonished us to get out and shop, to show the terrorists they could not beat the indomitable American spirit? How pathetic we’ve become!
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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Sunday 11/30/14
Friday 11/21/14
Saturday, 11/15/14
Sunday, 11/9/14
Much bullshit is spoken about things we do “for the children.”
This is not bullshit. It is the author at his white-hot best:
It will be said that the one—the unrepentant or semi-repentant sinner, the one who wants to have the faith on his own terms—is “marginalized,” a word I detest, but which may serve my purposes this once. If adults in immoral sexual relationships are “marginalized,” Lord, let me speak up now for people who do not even make it to the margins, for the poorest of the poor, for people who have no advocate at all.
Let me speak for the children of divorce …
Let me speak for the children thrust into confusion, to justify the confusion of their parents or of people in authority over them …
Let me speak for the children exposed to unutterable evils on all sides. Here is a girl at age twelve who has seen things on a screen that her grandmother could never have imagined. She is taking pictures of herself already, and making “friends” among the sons and daughters of Belial …
Let me speak up for the young people who see the beauty of the moral law and the teachings of the Church, and who are blessed with noble aspirations, but who are given no help, none, from their listless parents, their listless churches, their crude and cynical classmates, their corrupted schools …
Let me speak up for the young people who do in fact follow the moral law and the teachings of the Church. Many of these are suffering intense loneliness. Have you bothered to notice? Have you considered all those young people who want to be married, who should be married, but who, because they will not play evil’s game, can find no one to marry? …
(Anthony Esolen, Who Will Rescue the Lost Sheep of the Lonely Revolution?)
See also the Update from the 31-year old former “prototypical ‘good Christian girl'” at Rod Dreher’s blog here.)
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Dr. Alfred Kentigern Siewers responds to a deservedly controversial piece floated by a Priest on the Orthodox Church in America’s “Wonder” site. The OCA version is down but the priest’s parish hosts a copy.
The priest author is just fine with some sorts of unrepentant or semi-repentant sinners who want to have the faith on their own terms, less hospitable toward convert “fundamentalists.” They don’t count. They don’t make it to his margins. They are stock figure bad guys. Maybe the poor Padre doesn’t have any of them in his parish, but only unrepentant or semi-repentant who heard that he’s especially friendly toward their sort and who hope to lead Orthodoxy into the promised land by the leading of “the spirit.”
[C]hanging the Tradition in response to American secularism paradoxically seems OK. This often involves a kind of cultural American phyletism–on the one hand criticizing the influence of American Orthodox converts, while on the other emphasizing the need to engage an imaginary homogenous American culture and to be less “old world.” Ironically, the “old world” element in American Orthodoxy often can be pluralistic and cosmopolitan by comparison.
(Dr. Siewers, emphasis added.)
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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 