Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Shopping for Better Things

Many people clip coupons.  I clip articles.  Save up enough of them and I can go to the grocery store of ideas and buy something.  So here are two clippings that when put together might feed a family of two for a couple of minutes.  Mallory, 6 seconds tops.

In the first article by Rabbi Geoffrey Mitelman, http://goo.gl/Qkqbm  he posits that too many people ask the question “do you believe in God?” In asking this, he says it begs a binary response.  And in a heated, polarized world a yes or no response has no where to go, or grow.  Plus, how can you really sum up thousands of years of progress across broad theological and rational spectrums with “yup” or “nope.”  Instead, the rabbi asks us to ask “How can we bring more justice and kindness into this world?”

Regardless of whatever particular worldview we hold, we have a responsibility to find ways to improve ourselves, our society and our world. … So by focusing the discussion around how people act more than on what they believe, we can now have a more productive dialogue. Yes, we may all be coming at this question from different ways, but now the arguments stop being attacks and counter-attacks about who is right, and instead, become an exploration about the ways we need to work together to create the kind of world we hope for.

imageHopefully we can agree on this point.  And if nothing else, article one leaves me with a positive future-focused attitude to bring to my next problem. 

My second coupon is my favorite kind, data. 

GlobeScan, an international opinion research consultancy, released a report asking Americans to agree or disagree with the statement “ [is the] free market economy the best system on which to base the future of the world?”  Another binary question.  But the results are worth exploring. http://goo.gl/KJdvS

Americans believe less and less that the free market economy is the best.  In 2002, 80 percent answered yes.  After the Great Recession, there’s a precipitous drop.  In fact, today it’s more likely that a Brazilian or a Chinese person would agree with the statement. Since both are humming economies, this isn’t really surprising.  But that Americans no longer believe in their chief product is astonishing.

The connection is that in the rush to be conservative, we’re scraping the very layers of this country that promise that tomorrow’s a better day.  If the market economy only exists to fuel the market economy while ignoring its citizen’s lives, how have we made the World better?  If you look at the budget and only see 1s and 0s, you’re missing the opportunity to realize that civilization is either moving forward or backward with every line item.  Scrapping high speed rail lines, killing funding for health care, and reducing elderly retirement and medical help fixes A problem, but not THE problem.    

Democrats need to frame the environment as “how do we make lives better?” and restore confidence in a shattered system.  This is the rubric of a progressive; this one is pushing his cart down the aisle.

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