A Reformed Theological View Of Neoliberal Capitalism

 Either through explicitl statements or silent complicity, many American Christian leaders and laypeople from the Reformed Faith have provided support for our current economic system of Neoliberal Capitalism. Some of them think that our current form of Capitalism has not changed significantly from the past and thus today's Capitalism is part of the American way of life. Others also see significant connections between Capitalism and past Reformed believers all the way back to John Calvin. And thus a continued Church tradition of supporting those with wealth and power is being played out again.

Monica Schaap Pierce (click here for a bio), who is now teaching at Calvin University, has written a Reformed criticism of Neoliberal Capitalism in an effort to put distance between both the Reformed Faith and theology of John Calvin and Neoliberal Capitalism (click here).

What is Neoliberal Capitalism? To be clear, it is not the form of Capitalism embraced after WW II up through the 1970a. That was called the Bretton Woods system (click here and see the abstract and introduction to get familiarized with the two systems).

With Neoliberal Capitalism, we have a severe cutting of  social responsibility for businesses and the markets. That cutting of social responsibility involves the cutting of taxes and regulations. And the point is to have an economic system that is designed to maximize profits for all participants. We should note that maximizing profits is a cannibalizing ethic that devours all other ethics. What isn't discussed in the review is how Neoliberal Capitalism is perhaps the most anti-Democracy forms of  Capitalism. Why that is the case is because in a working democracy, the cutting of regulations and taxes to the bare minimum means that business and the markets are the least answerable to the people.

There is a global side of Neoliberal Capitalism and a domestic side. The global side emphasizes trade pacts that makes government policies answerable to trade pacts while protecting foreign businesses from national government scrutiny. The domestic side of  Neoliberal Capitalism looks to cut regulations that protect workers, consumers, and the environment as well as cutting taxes as much as possible. Both President Obama and Hillary Clinton pursued the global side of Neoliberal Capitalism, President Trump pursued the domestic side. We will have to wait to see how Biden's policies fit in here.

Pierce wants to first distance Calvinism from Neoliberal Capitalism. They have been closely tied together by some since John Calvin is seen as the originator of the Protestant work ethic. Pierce objects to Calvinism being so closely associated with Neoliberal Capitalism for two reasons. The first reason was that doing so only prescribes a single source for Neoliberal Capitalism. But more importantly, Pierce notes that Calvin was for sharing, helping the needy, and was more egalitarian so that people would have neither too little nor too much.

Pierce then describes how the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) addressed Neoliberal Capitalism in its Accra Confession that was adopted by WARC in 2004. 

Accra's problems with Neoliberal Capitalism include its overemphasis on consumerism, its destruction of the environment, and the ever widening wealth disparity between the different economic classes. Pierce mentions that the pandemic only amplified the problems that arise from growing wealth disparities.

Pierce goes on to mention how people of color suffer disproportionately from those effects. An example here is that problems with air pollution disproportionately affect people of color because it is the urban areas that are most affected by problems with air pollution.

Besides the physical problems that Neoliberal Capitalism visits on us, the Pierce says that the Accra Confession says that Neoliberal Capitalism teaches the following falsehoods:

1. Unrestrained competition, consumerism, and unlimited economic growth and accumulation of wealth are best for the whole world.
   
   
2.  Ownership of private property has no social obligation.
   
   
3. Capital speculation, liberalization, and deregulation of the market, privatization of public utilities and national resources, unrestricted access for foreign investments and imports, lower taxes and the unrestricted movement of capital will achieve wealth for all.
   
   
4. Social obligations, protection of the poor and the weak, trade unions, and relationships between people are subordinate to the processes of economic growth and capital accumulation.
   

Some of the above points reminds one of something Martin Luther King Jr. said during his speech against the Vietnam War (click here for the source):

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies... With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just."

Pierce goes on to make the point that Neoliberal Capitalism hurts us both spiritually as well as physically. It hurts us spiritually in terms of the kind of consumers we become, it attacks our concern for the poor and those whose labor is exploited in Neoliberal economic systems, and it feeds or greed and selfishness. It also invades many parts of our lives with advertising.

Reporting on the Accra Confession, Pierce states that Neoliberal Capitalism not only corrupts our understanding of Doctrine of Creation, it hurts our theological understanding of people. Then Pierce continues with how the Accra Confession ends with hope by reminding us of how we are tied to both God and each other.

Now I have tried to give a brief summary of Piece's article because I want people to read for themselves what she has written. What is welcomed here with Pierce's article and its reporting on the Accra Confession. It should be welcomed especially by those who have ties to the Reformed Faith. It should be welcomed unless, of course, other ideologies and loyalties have obscured the damage the Neoliberal Capitalism is doing not just to one's own nation, but to the whole world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week #5 Of The New Life

In last Tuesday's post, I tried to list those who are not in this together with the rest of us: namely those who cannot practice social distancing because of their jobs or their means of transportation.

But there are other people to include in that group as well. Another group includes undocumented migrant workers and the homeless. Then we can go from those who wish they had a home to those who wish that they didn't have to stay at home: those who suffer from physical and/or emotional domestic abuse. Such people need resources and perhaps a new, albeit possibly temporary, home for their own protection. People from both groups are people we should keep in mind and thus see what we can do to help if all of us are really going to be in this together.

Going from those who can't feel a part of the rest of us because of their economic or citizenship status, or their home situation, we need to think about those who say they are trying to help us but will look to exploit the attention around the virus to wrongly change the system. Currently under Trump, what we have we have is an Ayn Rand coup of the government. By Ayn Rand I mean we have a significant section of the wealthy who care so much for themselves that it is at the expense of others. In other words, they want to share as little as possible with the rest of society because they want to maximize personal profits. That can indicated by how their businesses treat their employees during the crisis. It can also be seen in what they want their purchased elected government officials to accomplish for them.

Under Trump's Presidency, the environment will suffer new set backs as his EPA has now decided not to enforce any EPA regulations. How long this lack of enforcement will occur is unknown. Will it occur just until the lockdown is over or will it last longer in order to "help" other some businesses cut production costs. In either case, what this means is that more toxins will be put into our environment especially in increasing the toxins in the air and water. Those toxins can compromise the health of everyone without having to be like a contagious virus. And those who suffer the most from increased pollution include those from urban areas who cannot practice social distancing because of their jobs and/or their means of transportation.

In addition, if Trump doesn't approve increased funding for our postal system, then we could see the privatization of the postal system. In our shareholder economy, the wealthiest of shareholders might like this because, like the Prison Industrial Complex, it becomes another venue for businesses to increase returns for shareholders by appearing to offer customers a great deal for sending mail but at the expense of many of the employees who will actually provide the services. One only needs to investigate the abuses practiced by the Prison Industrial Complex to see how privatizing services that were once reserved for the government to provide can easily lead to corruption and the harm of many people.

Likewise, we need to investigate how Social Security will be funded during this time. Will funding for Social Security be sacrificed in the name of tax relief? The end of Social Security will mean little to some, but can mean a lot to others some of whom are the most vulnerable fellow Americans. Some of the current Republicans, unlike their predecessors see Social Security as another trophy for privatization.  And that means that, with the end of government provided Social Security, Wall Street assumes control over quite a few more funds. Even Republicans like Reagan looked to protect Social Security. Not so with at least McConnell and very possibly Donald Trump.

What Republicans won't say is that what they fear in a centralized powerful government is what they crave for in an ever growing and thus a centralized economy, under Wall Street. And we should not be surprised by that. After all both political parties are, for the most part, owned and controlled by wealth. Some have already reclassified America as an oligarchy rather than a democracy (click here for media view and there for a more technical view of the problem).

What we need to realize in a society that employs a capitalistic economic system is that money can easily be converted into political power. And that is even more true with our current Neoliberal form of Capitalism than it was true with the post WW II Bretton-Woods system. The difference between the two is that government held on to some important controls of the economy that it yielded with Neoliberal Capitalism.

The more our political system is controlled by money, the more authoritarian our government becomes and that is true regardless of the political party that has power. The authoritarianism that exists when the Democrats are in power is far more subtle than what comes with Republican control. But it is is there in significant and real ways.

In other words, as we are all focused on the pandemic and the risks that we and our loved ones must undertake to survive, there are things happening behind the scenes that will greatly affect the world we return to after the lockdown has been lifted and the pandemic is over.

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For May 30, 2018

May 29

To R. Scot Clark and his blogpost on how the phrase ‘check your privilege’ is to be ignored because it causes harm rather than providing help. This appeared in the Acton blog.

Link to article cited by the blogpost:   http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/no-i-wont-check-my-privilege

The problem with the above article is that the article cited conflates the different kinds of privileges that exist rather than providing distinctions between privileges based in bigotry and privileges that are earned. That and article cited misrepresents the 1988 concept of privilege in terms of how it relates to racism and sexism. And all of that is done to discredit an anti-nonconservative viewpoint on privilege.

Asking people to check their privilege at the door can be done for multiple reasons. And thus automatically classifying the use of the phrase 'check your privilege' as an ad hominem attack is wrong. Quite often, people need to check their privilege at the door when discussing the plights of groups they have no familiarity with. Such examples can include a wealthy person blaming a homeless person for their status or a straight and religiously conservative Christian denying that the LGBT community has been significantly marginalized in America society for centuries. In either case, a person who has no experience with what the people from other groups experience is making claims about what life is like for people from those groups.

We could listen to two people from vastly different ideological camps talk about privilege. First is Anthony Bradley. Though I am not a fan of his conservative political-economic ideologies as they have been posted on the Acton blog, I will always be indebted to him because he helped me understand what privilege was in the first place by talking about how he has to cope with the lack of certain privileges while enjoying others. The following comes from one of his posts (see  http://blog.acton.org/archives/64617-racial-reconciliation-without-intersectionality-privilege.html  ):

In other words, to be an able-bodied, heterosexual, financially stable, evangelical white person walking around in America denying that he or she directly benefits from white privilege, regardless of family background, is to deny the truth...

As I have said before, whatever cultural privileges we have been given, either by race or class, what matters is whether or not we use our privileges to help those who do not have them. Our economic, genetic, or socially-conditioned privileges are not for the purpose of protecting and conserving said privileges for ourselves, but rather to pass on the benefits to others who are on the margins. Our privileges are bestowed upon us by God so that we may use them to love our neighbors well (Matt 22:36-40). It is by embracing God’s providence in this way that we are protected from the poison of envy or a sense of entitlement. Privilege is an opportunity to honor God through reciprocity and charity.

Now observe the similarities between the direction of Bradley's thoughts on privilege and what Noam Chomsky says (see  https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/talktojazeera/2013/01/201311294541129427.html   ):

The more privilege you have, the more opportunity you have. The more opportunity you have, the more responsibility you have.

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To Louis Markos and his blogpost that defends those in the military and our police forces. His defense is in response to criticisms of the military and police forces and some of the tactics they use to get the job done to protect us. My response only deals with the military aspect of the article. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

There is a larger world to our recognition of our military and others than what Markos acknowledges. That larger world exists outside the individual actions of our military that are either praised or condemned. That larger world has to do with the top of our military's chain of command. It has to do with why our leaders sent our troops either into harm's way or to provide harm's way for others. And we have to deal with this wider perspective if we are to do our part in ensuring that the sacrifices made by our troops are not exploited for whatever gains those at the top can garner for themselves.

However, we are told not to look at the larger world when our troops are sent into action. And the authoritarian in all us moves us to respond with a vibrant 'YES SIR!' to that prohibition. To respond that way helps us to feel a closer connection with the troops. But the problem with that authoritarian response is that it shows a preference for obedient ignorance over informed dissent. The authoritarian response to the prohibition into questioning why our troops are sent where they are is a selfish response for it makes life easier for us and makes us feel good about ourselves.

So if we really care about our nation and our troops, there is one thing we can never afford to do. We must never allow the valor of our troops to be used as a moral shield to protect our government's foreign policies from criticism. That is because whether our troops are really fighting for our freedoms depends on why our leaders sent them into action. And there have been too many instances in American history where our troops have been sent into battle for the benefit of some elites rather than for the freedom of all. And we have all had to pay the costs for the misuse of our military Including our troops.

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To Joseph Sunde and his blogpost criticizing Seattle’s plan of taxing businesses a fixed amount based on each full-time employee it has. This appeared in the Acton blog.

The problem with Sunde's approach is that it advocates for less social responsibility for those who have benefited the most from the economic system, the infrastructure and the multiple groups of stakeholders that exist in a given area. Not that all regulations and taxes are good, each regulation and tax must be judged on a case-by-case basis. But we should note that the more the tax burden is shifted from those who have more resources to those who have fewer resources, then the future becomes the demise of both infrastructure and the services for those in need. And after a certain amount of demise, those businesses that were given the biggest breaks, leave because their place becomes uninhabitable.

In addition, Sunde fails to appreciate the older definition of the term stakeholder. The older definition of the term 'stakeholder' included all that were impacted by the operation of the business. Such a definition stands in contrast to today's de facto definition of executives and shareholders and sometimes customers. In addition to that, Sunde fails to note how businesses benefit from quality societies that value fairness and human life, provide a good education, promote a good environment, and such. And because those factors contribute to a business's success, why should anyone believe that it is unfair for businesses to the biggest financial support to ensure those factors. To unnecessarily cut regulations and taxes for those businesses that both can contribute to and benefit the most from what a decent society can provide makes parasites out of these businesses.

In the end, Sunde fails to see that unnecessarily cutting regulations and taxes enables a pathological self-centeredness in businesses. Such is at the heart of all deals that government makes with big businesses to entice them to stay. For that self-centeredness  assumes that a business's only responsibility is to provide jobs for people so that the workers can support government services while those who financially benefit the most from a business's operation can better siphon off the profits of the business.

With today's neoliberalism that believes in cutting as much as is allowable a business's social responsibilities by unnecessarily eliminating regulations and taxes, we see an Ayn Rand coup in our government where everyone is expected to survive by fending for oneself regardless of how that hurts others. And that expectation become synonymous with personal responsibility. Eventually valuing human life disappears as the individual acquisition of profits and other things becomes more and more important than people.

Is Trump's 'America First' Just Another 'Am I My Brother's Keeper'?

Genesis 4:1-16 (click here for the text) tells the story of Cain killing Abel. After Cain had murdered his brother, God confronts Cain by asking where his brother is. Cain responds with a rhetorical question of his own. 'Am I my brother's keeper?' he asks  (Genesis 4:9). Of course, Cain's question was hoping that the answer would be 'no.' But it didn't work out that way.

One of President Trump's campaign promises was that he was going to enter into trade agreements with an 'America First' agenda. Such assumes that our trading partners would be responsible for putting themselves first in any negotiations. Thus, American negotiators would be responsible only for how any agreement would affect any Americans while negotiators from other nations would be the only ones responsible for how any agreement would affect their own nation. Thus, America would not be responsible for how any agreement would affect the people of other nations even if they were being exploited because each participating nation in any agreement would be responsible for itself only.

This notion that one party is responsible only for itself is the basis for today's Neoliberal Capitalism. Its idealistic believers are convinced that under a perfectly crafted Capitalist system, each participant could work for its own interests only without worrying about exploiting others because the system itself would prevent exploitation. But in short, what such idealists are really saying is that they don't want to be their brother's keeper; they only wish to be concerned for themselves. Of course, there are non idealists who also promote Neoliberal Capitalism and who say the same thing only they do so without any delusions of righteousness dancing in their heads.

We should note that nation first pursuits, like today's maximize profits ethic, is a reductionary one. All other guidelines, principles, and morals become sacrificed to gain the best one can for oneself. Even if doing so violates the law and hurts others, all must be sacrificed for the sake of what one wants. And because these approaches are reductionary, psychologically speaking, an all-or-nothing form of thinking starts to hold sway in evaluating one's actions or the agreements one makes with others.

But even more important is the denial that modern life makes us more and more interdependent. The more interdependent we are, the greater the moral responsibility we have for each other. That is because our interdependencies result in increasing the effects our actions have on others. And thus any attempt to deny the interdependencies that exist in our world must be motivated by other reasons than facing reality. Historically speaking, denying the interdependencies that exist in our world is motivated by ambition or greed.

The Reverse Logic Supporting Capitalism And Gun Rights

Sometimes an explanation really argues against what it is suppose to support. Such is true with the explanations supporting Capitalism and the use of the 2nd Amendment to oppose restrictions and regulations on the purchase and owning of guns. Why they are being mentioned together here is that these explanations are related.

How are these explanations related? It goes like this. The support for Capitalism and for those who use the 2nd Amendment as stated above rely on the presence of sin to justify their positions. Regarding the former, Capitalism makes room for the sin of greed while Socialism, according to some Capitalists I've discussed this with, can only work in an ideal world. Here, we should note that what is mostly meant by Socialism in this explanation is the idea of sharing. So what is being said here is that in an ideal world, it is realistic to expect people to share and thus Socialism could work. But in today's real world, such sharing flies in the face of reality so we need an economic system that is built on how people really are.

Regarding those who use the 2nd Amendment to oppose gun restrictions and regulations, they too believe that people are sinners. And so to counteract the harm of what sinners, especially evil ones, can do with weapons , which they will obtain regardless of what laws exist,  we need good people to have unrestricted access to as many weapons as possible. Only then can we say we have an effective deterent against the bad guys/girls who have guns.

These explanations, both revolving around sin, seem to make sense until one starts to think. For example, if people are as greedy and sinful as those supporting Capitalism say they are, does it make sense to reduce or eliminate those laws that place some limits on the exercise of that greed? If people are as greedy and sinful as supporters of Capitalism say they are, don't we need restrictions on how people can both acquire wealth and use it? That to let greed go wild, which is what today's Neoliberal Capitalism is designed to let happen, invites not only the rewards that come with exercising greed, but the costs and detriments too. And those costs include people exploiting others and the environment in order to acquire more wealth as well as people using their wealth to acquire more political power.

A similar challenge can be made to those who use the 2nd Amendment to oppose all gun restrictions and regulations. Without restrictions and regulations, do we not make as easy for those who are evil to acquire and carry weapons as those who are good? And if there is such a clear demarcation between gun owners who are good and those who are evil, wouldn't some more gun laws possibly reduce the number of bad people carrying guns? In fact, without such a clear demarcation, don't we need gun regulations and restrictions to limit the number of bad guys with guns. Yes, no set of laws can stop all instances of bad people acquiring and carrying guns. However, that is not the issue. The issue is whether we can reduce the number of evil sinners who are packing heat.

Unfortunately, the bottom line behind supporting the most unrestricted form of both Capitalism and the ownership of guns is the dollar.  That is because there is an inverse relationship between the making and keeping of wealth and the number of regulations and restrictions that are made a part of our economic system. Here we should note that this inverse relationship really applies only to certain elites in the private sector. The same inverse relationship exists between the number of restrictions and regulations placed on the owning of a gun and the profits made by gun manufacturers. So in other words, those conseratives who argue for fewer regulations and laws for the owning of guns are really blessing only a few, the manufacturers of guns, while putting more and more people at risk. Thus,  Conservatives who oppose more restrictions and regulations on both our Capitalistic economic system and the owning of guns are doing someone else's bidding. And they do so convinced that they are either acting on principle or that they are acting in their own best interest.

So while those who are against regulations and restricitions on our economic system as well as the owning of guns claim to be guided by principle, it seems that the only principle that exists is that of many being misused by a few for the benefit of the few.

The Status Quo Of Self-Destruction

Perhaps the following best describes what we see today:

[it] has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self- interest, than callous “cash payment”

With more and more of life following the business model, the desire to be profitable is moving more of us to be either cold and unforgiving or too lax in holding to necessary standards. Let's use education as an example.

In my teaching career,  I've seen for myself or heard from teachers of other schools acknowledging that unqualified students are admitted to schools in order to reach a certain student population. Some of these unqualified students will eventually dropout because of grades while others will find majors especially designed for them and their tuition dollars. I heard of one teacher who, while teaching basic freshman class, was told by one of her senior students  that that basic class was the toughest class she ever took. 

I and my colleagues from numerous institutions remember the notes received from university presidents which all but said that we were responsible for students who were failing our classes because all students who were admitted to our institutions were qualified to study there. Of course what provided dissonance to these notes for me were the students who couldn't perform basic arithmetic functions because of their dependence on calculators or could not read a textbook because of their dependence on the internet.

What I've seen schools do is to stop marketing a college education and to start selling the "college experience." And a growing part of that experience is found in entertainment and fun. Education, according to the actions and attitudes displayed by some of my past students, was becoming an inconvenience and the admission price to be paid for enjoying life in college. 

So what we see is less money being used to support academics and more money being spent on administration and nonacademic student services. Why? Because in today's businessfied colleges, it isn't reaching of academic milestones by the average student that is the goal, it is keeping enough customers happy so that college's ever increasing overhead can be financed. Students are being less and less looked at as people who need to learn and surpass fixed standards from the past and are more and more seen as objects of revenue.

Of course, our economic system can provide other examples where connections are reduced to the 'what's in it for me' mindset. The business world's mindset of what's legal is what's moral without mentioning that what's legal is for sale disingenuously shows the self-interest mentioned at the beginning of this post. Thus, those companies that can pay lobbyists to write legislation or direct policies that either reduce a company's social responsibilities, such as in paying less or no taxes, and/or garners business from the government, such as is done by those in the military-industrial complex, can, in "good conscience," profit from exploiting the public. Here we should consider those companies that supplement their payroll with government assistance programs as providing examples of acting in 'naked self-interest.'  This is exemplified when legislation aimed at raising the federal minimum wage is constantly defeated. Here, low-wage employees are treated as disposable objects of profit who can be easily replaced.

This 'naked self-interest' has also hit our beloved sports world where players are there to make as much money as possible off of their team's owners so that their first loyalty is to the paycheck. This  leaves fans to root for the uniforms rather than players.

The current battle in Detroit over access to water, underfunded public education, the resistance to increasing access to healthcare, the growing damage to the environment, and our crumbling infrastructure provide examples of the 'naked self-interest' of those who are working hard to avoid meeting their social responsibilities. Meanwhile the housing bubble, the military-industrial complex, the prison-industrial complex, and the way we fund our healthcare show that all others are exploitable in the search for profits.

But perhaps one of the greatest reminders of the truth of the quote at the beginning of this post is the growing replacement of the shareholder for the stakeholder which is taking place in the business world. A friend of mine told me of a business class he took where they were asked what should be done with a product that was found to be deficient in one's home country. The answer that was booed and rejected was the one that said to not sell the product elsewhere. The answer that was cheered was the one that said to put shareholder interests first by marketing the failed product in other countries.

Some workers tell me of how their interactions with workers from other companies reinforce the idea that shareholder returns is the predominant concern of those other companies. This concern is shown in the number and pay of the employees in those other companies and even in the stock available to order. Outsourcing work to other countries and utilizing sweatshop and trafficked labor, as does lack of concern for damage done to the environment, also reinforces the contention that shareholder returns is the highest and sometimes the only concern of many companies. 

Such would suggest that the '[it]' in the quote at the beginning of this post could be replaced with the word 'shareholder' and in many cases, that would be correct. But legislation supporting the police's ability to profit from seized personal assets, the revolving door between all sorts of government officials and private industry, the buying of our elections, and the corruptibility of many of our public officials shows that the shareholders is not the only group that can be substituted in the opening quote.

As we are both divided and isolated from others while being told that we are solely responsible for obtaining our own 'pot of gold,' we are becoming more, both as individuals and in terms of groups we belong to, vulnerable to being able to replace the '[it]' in the opening quote.

Where does the opening quote come from? It comes from the Communist Manifesto. And though the source might intimidate some of us out of agreeing with the quote, our daily experiences do not. And we should note that one does not have to agree with Marx's solutions to see how legitimate were his concerns. Thus, the '[it]' from the quote could be replaced with today's Capitalism. Sure, those who say that greed is part of the human condition are right. But what we should note is that some systems feed our greed more than others, especially those systems that celebrate greed because they see it as a source of energy.

Such leads us to one more quote. That quote comes from I Timothy 6:10 that tells us of the evil into which the love of money can lead us. This post has been just a small scratching of the surface of the truth of this verse.

One Man's Dream Is Another Man's Nightmare

The good news is this week is the 50th anniversary of the March On Washington For Jobs And Freedom. But the same is also bad news because of how we use Martin Luther King's words. For rather than letting his words challenge our hearts to change, we use his words to exercise our fingers. Yes, unfortunately, it seems that many of God's children in America, Conservatives and Liberals, Republicans and Democrats, and children of all colors, creeds and classes, use King's teachings to point the finger of blame at their opponents while raising the finger of pride because of their inflated views of themselves.

Before his speech, King was introduced as "the moral leader of America." But it is the approach of the pharisee from Jesus's parable of the two men praying (Luke 18:9-14) who interprets a message from a great moral leader as a personal communiqué of congratulations.  And, to adapt the words of Spock, it is only human arrogance that would assume that voices appealing to values and principle can condemn others only. But this is how King is celebrated by many today. Too many who commemorate him on birthdays and anniversaries are the self-righteous who claim to share his dream while King would call their dreams his nightmares.

In his 1967 book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos Or Community?, King summarized what he had been saying all along. He said that as long as things, profits, and property rights were more important than people, we could never abolish the real threats to our well-being. Those threats are "racism, materialism, and militarism." Note that each of these threats is an ism that possesses those who embrace them which leads them to oppress, threaten, and kill. And also use King's criteria listed here when examining the claims of following King's Dream made by others. Do they value things, profits, and property rights more than people or do put the welfare of others first?

What my fellow Leftists and Occupy Movement members and I must remember about King is that as much as he had opposed the previously mentioned threats, he had a passion for winning over his opponents as well as preaching against and abstaining from using violence, both external and internal. These passions of King are where we have failed horribly. Whether it is by our war of words waged against the police or the scapegoating of the 1 percent, not only have we shown ourselves to be ignorant of King's words and spirit, we have preferred targeting opponents for wrath rather than trying to change the world by longing for their repentance and conversion. And though we might legitimately lack affection for those who have brutalized us with batons and slandered us with false accusations, trying to win our opponents over is a mandate from King's dream, not an alternative strategy. 

And by scapegoating the 1 percent, we have sabotaged our efforts to make a new world possible. For a new world must include 100 percent of the people and not just 99 percent. In addition, though we might not be caught up in the sins of the 1 percent, we should not conclude that we are better people. It could be that we are innocent of those sins because we lacked opportunity. 

Regardless of why we don't share the sins of the 1 percent, we should note that we have sins of our own and thus need the compassion and patience of others to continue to change. And if that is what we need from others, shouldn't we show the same to our adversaries without compromising our message and diluting the legitimate complaints we have?

This approach of exercising compassion to win over the 1 percent may seem counterintuitive to what is needed to get what we want. For historically speaking, elites who abuse the rest must be compelled by pressure and demands in order to change. But why must we make winning over and pressuring to compel change an exclusive-or choice? Why can't we try to win over whom we can and peacefully pressure the rest?

To the conservatives who have either claimed to join King's cause or attempted to provide expert testimony as to why King's dream has failed, I would like to ask these questions. How much of King have you read? Do you realize that for as long as you make the plight of Blacks King's only concern, you have adorned his vision with myopia? 

And have you read his statements on economic justice? Do you realize why he predicted that the programs of "social uplift" initiated by President Johnson would fail? Do you know that, according to King, they started to fail when LBJ escalated the war in Vietnam? Did you know that King believed in a guaranteed income for all? Do you really think it was welfare, which would be supported by King, by itself that hurt Blacks and not the absence of additional programs that kept Blacks down?

Furthermore, why are you silent about the role that the private sector has played in sabotaging King's dream? Do you really believe that King himself would be a supporter of neoliberal capitalism  regardless of the content of the character of its managers? Haven't you noticed from the outsourcing of jobs, the exploitation of foreign labor, and the destruction of the environment, that when you maximize profits, you sacrifice people? And have you ever read King's criticism of capitalism in general? He said that that capitalism denies the reality of collectivism.

Neoliberal capitalism, which is the capitalism du jour, seeks to sever almost all social, economic, and moral responsibilities of both big business and the rich from the rest of society. At the same time, it seeks to prohibit government from serving its people so that private sector elites can profit by filling the void. Were these disconnections ever a part of King's dream? What did King say about things and profits being more important than people? And how does the neoliberalism inspired disregard for the environment fit into King's dream? How does free-trade policies that destroy the ability of smaller nations to produce their own food by forcing their local farmers to compete with our subsidized Big Agribusiness fit into King's dream?

And what about all of the wars you supported in the name of patriotism? Did you think King was bragging or lamenting when he called the U.S. government the "greatest purveyor of violence in the world"? How could those who share King's dream so wantonly wage war let alone do so while declaring that they are accountable to nobody? And how could those who share King's dream justify a rush to war based on lies? Didn't you read where King told us that our choice is not between "violence and nonviolence" but between "nonviolence and nonexistence"?

But we have to give some conservatives credit for stressing the importance of personal morals. And we have to give all conservatives credit for not being liberals. For most of what can be said about conservatives and their love for neoliberal capitalism can also be said about liberals except that liberals try to cover their tracks. And this is why liberals bear a greater judgment than conservatives. For while liberals consistently claim to champion King's dream, they disguise their passionate embrace of neoliberal capitalism and American imperialism by tossing a few social justice issue bones out to us dogs just to prove that they are a faithful master. 

But consider the attacks on the Occupy encampments, the war on whistleblowers, the expanded wars in the Orient with its climbing civilian death toll, America's increasing imperial reach into Africa, the forever failed promises to close Gitmo, the failure to criminally prosecute those from the financial institutions who committed fraud and money laundering, and the soaring claims to more authority and power paired with the even greater urge to void themselves of accountability. When liberals combine all of that with their love of neoliberal capitalism, realize that they are using a magic mirror when they tell themselves that they and King have the same dream.

We all have questions of conviction to consider when we read or listen to King's messages. We all have questions because we have all played sabotaging roles in derailing The Dream. Sure, some of us have also contributed to The Dream's realization. But if we are honest, we must admit that all of us have too many failures to point the finger of blame at others only.  I know for myself that how I conduct myself in debates, especially on blogs, sometimes employs an internal violence that King opposed. I also need to be more involved with people in the area where I live. 

If we really want to realize King's Dream, the first step we will take will be to look at our own failures and sins. And then we can reach out to help our fellow saboteurs who are also failing.