A child's heart

Teach your children well ...

It's been awhile since we talked in the public forum about teaching character to our children. Recent decades are marked by the absence of critical focus on the issue.

Character development has perhaps not been adequately addressed at the family and community levels for more than a generation, with attendant outcomes including a progressive tendency to violence at the fringes and dishonesty in the marketplace. The nuclear family and inter-connected community have declined in cultural relevance.

New in our culture, many schools, school districts, and even states are now requiring that character education be addressed in the classroom.  Some are stipulating the traits to be taught.  Is their list a good one?

Government has again stepped in to pick up what the community has been unable or perhaps inadequately aware to address. It's a beginning, I suppose. Government does a number of large-scale things well. Is this one that government should handle on our behalf?

What might be the differences be if this is done by family, by community, or by government? Can government serve as an extension of community?

Interestingly, there are variations among nations and communities when it comes to the character of their children. The wealthiest aren't the most gracious, the most hospitable, or the most generous. Or the most noble. Not by an extraordinary margin.

Perhaps there's a lesson here for the current generation of parents.  And churches.  As busy as life is these days, this is just a small step below breathing in terms of importance.  It shapes the future for our child and what kind of person they might become.

Decisions based on evidence

Government serves the rich.  Not exclusively, but primarily. 

Business serves its own interests, the bottom line.  It does whatever is necessary to accomplish the goal.

The rich and their corporate counterparts exercise their not insignificant influence in favor of their continued success, of course.  All at the expense of the working class.

We've been told that reducing tax rates on the wealthiest would encourage the economy, but the evidence is otherwise.

Historical evidence demonstrates the United States has had some of its strongest periods of economic growth while taxes were high. As the graph shows, some of our most robust periods of growth in gross domestic product (GDP) actually occurred while taxes were very high:

During the 1950s the USA experienced some of the sharpest periods of economic growth with the top marginal tax rates for the richest Americans above 90 percent! Marginal tax rates were adjusted upward in the 1990s, again with strong economic growth.

If tax cuts worked, Bush should have had a great economic record.  The tax cuts never trickled down.

It was not a plan.  It was a play for the advantage of wealth.  It worked quite well; the gap between rich and poor in America has widened impressively.

That's the productivity of individuals being converted into wealth for the few.  The working individuals received none of the benefit, and in fact, lost ground financially.

have been disenfranchised by the wealthy, by the corporate, by the political; at least the evidence suggests that to be the case.  What decisions remain to us?

The touch ...

It's a simple world for many folks.  

We did that. 

Without a second thought, Wall Street plunged the world into the Great Recession, and along with the ethanol industry, pushed people across the line to starvation the following year.  The U.S. and U.K are complicit as is the E.U. in activities with similar unmitigated risk and impact.

This is globalization.  We didn't mean to, but we've connected this father in Africa and billions more to the world marketplace.  When our Wall Street marketplace hiccups, prices respond around the world sometimes, and our African friends suffer.  For them, the fluctuating price of a commodity like corn meal can have a significant impact.  They spend perhaps half of their budget on corn meal.  If the price changes, they have little capacity to adjust.

For an actual case example, a family with 6 members has an aggregate income of about $95 per month; $45 is dedicated to corn meal, the staple for everyone here.  When the price rises as it did, they can't afford to eat.  The dilemma leaves the family undernourished for more than a year before they can adjust.  They cannot afford school fees, so the children lose another year. 

In the lowest quintile for income, they were coping; they were balanced however precariously on the good side of the survival line.  Then the developed world reached over and touched their community ever so slightly, and people went hungry and began to die.  The economic recovery for the poor in their part of the world will take perhaps a decade, but you don't recover the years lost.

Now, in the west, we're not terribly afraid of such things, of what the economy will do; annoyed, perhaps, but not afraid.  Perhaps we didn't really want to retire anyway.

Similarly, we're not overly fearful of climate change, government upheaval, political flailing, ...

Westerners are not particularly afraid because they live up in the rarefied atmosphere of the developed world where they're insulated from the worst of such things.  Not that they deserved having it easier than others might, and certainly not that there was any superior worth in their lineage while another fell short.  They're fortunate, extraordinarily blessed.  And protected from minor changes.

Our friends in Africa have no such protection, no such defense.  They're more wary than I of big government, big marketplaces, of big countries with good intentions.  Their experience so far is mixed.

Welcome to the 21st century and the reality of globalization.   Either we'll refine the way we'll do things globally or "bull in a china shop" will take on a whole new meaning.

While many aspects of the global market are beneficial, it's still a moderately risky and volatile process.  Much of the world has benefited from globalization with notable reductions in area poverty, but sub-Saharan Africa has not.  International discussions with such concerns in mind are barely begun.  Theories abound but for the moment, facts remain scant, and everything we touch carries a measure of risk for others.

A Sovereign Fiscal Responsibility Index

The Global Village: Connect World Drives Economic Shift

The World Bank: Data and Research



Meanwhile, dozens of organizations try to fill in the gaps.

World Vision is at the top of my list.

Things I like about government ...

Good government isn't automatic.  

• It's a science and task for dedicated folks.  There are skills needed along with vision and character to do it well.  True?   
• Of course, recreational complaining is included for us armchair quarterbacks.   
• From the list I've collected below, note the ones you like.  There don't seem to be many that I'd like to do without, really.  
• And I'm begrudgingly thankful for those who have dedicated their skills and careers to doing these things well.  Even Obama.  Romney, not so much.  Or Coolidge.
• God bless them each one.  Even this pig-headed, polarized, and seemingly foolish Congress.

Complaining can be both sincere and recreational.  Things in general or something in particular, our government needs to hear about it when they're off the mark.  And we should enjoy participating in the processes. It is, after all, our government.

Government is what 'we' do in this country to get along.  At least, that was the original intent.

Supreme Citizenry

The world changed on January 21, 2010, three years ago today.   With little fanfare, corporations became people. 

On that date the Supreme Court of the United States decided that corporations, be they American or foreign, are afforded the same rights as a single individual when it comes to contributing money to a political cause or candidate.

For about a hundred years, the sanctity of a citizen's vote and participation in the government was protected by law.  One citizen, one vote, one voice.  The supreme court changed that by giving corporations unlimited freedom to buy the support of candidates and to influence the process of law.  It's done now, and there's little we can do about it.

We should note that the Wall Street crimes leading up to the Great Recession of recent memory weren't actually illegal.  They had been legalized a few years prior.  The Wall Street play on derivatives was classified as gambling and illegal until the federal government changed the law at the request of ... Wall Street.  The world-wide crash that followed was paid for by everybody except the perpetrators.  The recovery for all but the wealthy will take another decade or more at best.  Neither the financial industry nor the federal government acknowledge their culpability in the matter. 

Now that corporations have been given unrestricted freedom to influence the process of government, we can expect other such interesting occasions.  Government now serves the rich almost exclusively, and by extension, they serve the business interests who sponsor legislation and prophesy prosperity. The two major parties are equally owned and influenced by their wealthy constituents now.

How might a corporation wield their influence?  In favor of legislation that restricts their business or imposes on their profitability?  Hardly.  Even when the risk is borne by the consumer and otherwise unmitigated, corporations have historically chosen their bottom line over the good of the consumers.  The Ford Pinto's explosive tendencies come to mind as neither the first nor last such amoral activity in the business world.  Businesses work from and for the bottom line; little if any altruism intrudes; morals and ethics are more matters of regulatory compliance than of desire to do rightly.  It's a result of the rules that govern the marketplace in which they must participate to exist. 

Our individual vote is no longer the tool of influence that was originally hoped.  So what's next?

How might we, in good conscience, express our concerns with the direction the nation has taken?  Should we?

PERFECT!

Ever considered what your life might mean?  When you get to the end, what would be good and memorable and worth the 70 or 80 years you spent doing it?  The following article by A. W. Towser offers some interesting insight.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS LATELY CARRIED an interesting if somewhat depressing story out of London about a certain British peer who had died just a few days short of his eighty-ninth birthday.

Having been a man of means and position, it had presumably not been necessary for him to work for a living like the rest of us, so at the time of his death he had had about seventy adult years in which he was free to do whatever he wanted to do, to pursue any calling he wished or to work at anything he felt worthy of his considerable abilities.

He devoted his entire adult life to
breeding the 'perfect spotted mouse'.

And what had he chosen to do? Well, according to the story, he had "devoted his life to trying to breed the perfect spotted mouse."

Now, I grant every man the right to breed spotted mice if he wants to and can get the cooperation of the mice, and I freely admit that it is his business and not mine. Not being a mouse lover (nor a mouse hater for that matter; I am just neutral about mice), I do not know but that a spotted mouse might be more useful and make a more affectionate pet than a common colored mouse. But still I am troubled.

The mouse breeder in question was a lord, and I was born on a farm in the hill country of Pennsylvania, but since a cat can look at a king I suppose a farm boy can look at a lord, even look at him with disapproval if the circumstances warrant. Anyway, a man's a man for a' that, and I feel a certain kinship for every man born of woman; so I cannot but grieve for my brother beyond the seas.

Made in the image of God, equipped with awesome powers of mind and soul, called to dream immortal dreams and to think the long thoughts of eternity, he chooses the breeding of a spotted mouse as his reason for existing. Invited to walk with God on earth and to dwell at last with the saints and angels in the world above; called to serve his generation by the will of God, to press with holy vigor toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, he dedicates his life to the spotted mouse not just evenings or holidays, mind you, but his entire life. Surely this is tragedy worthy of the mind of an Aeschylus or a Shakespeare.

Let us hope that the story is not true or that the news boys got it mixed up as they sometimes do; but even if the whole thing should prove to be a hoax, still it points up a stark human tragedy that is being enacted before our eyes daily, not by makebelieve play actors, but by real men and women who are the characters they portray. These should be concerned with sin and righteousness and judgment; they should be getting ready to die and to live again; but instead they spend their days breeding spotted mice.

If the spiritual view of the world is the correct one, as Christianity boldly asserts that it is, then for every one of us heaven is more important than earth and eternity more important than time. If Jesus Christ is who He claimed to be; if He is what the glorious company of the apostles and the noble army of martyrs declared that He is; if the faith which the holy church throughout all the world doth acknowledge is the true faith of God, then no man has any right to dedicate his life to anything that can burn or rust or rot or die. No man has any right to give himself completely to anyone but Christ nor to anything but prayer.

The man who does not know where he is is lost; the man who does not know why he was born is worse lost; the man who cannot find an object worthy of his true devotion is lost utterly; and by this description the human race is lost, and it is a part of our lostness that we do not know how lost we are. So we use up the few precious years allotted to us breeding spotted mice. Not the kind that scurry and squeak, maybe; but viewed in the light of eternity, are not most of our little human activities almost as meaningless?

One of the glories of the Christian gospel is its ability not only to deliver a man from sin but to orient him, to place him on a peak from which he can see yesterday and today in their relation to tomorrow. The truth cleanses his mind so that he can recognize things that matter and see time and space and kings and cabbages in their true perspective. The Spirit-illuminated Christian cannot be cheated. He knows the values of things; he will not bid on a rainbow nor make a down payment on a mirage; he will not, in short, devote his life to spotted mice.

Back of every wasted life is a bad philosophy, an erroneous conception of life's worth and purpose. The man who believes that he was born to get all he can will spend his life trying to get it; and whatever he gets will be but a cage of spotted mice. The man who believes he was created to enjoy fleshly pleasures will devote himself to pleasure seeking; and if by a combination of favorable circumstances he manages to get a lot of fun out of life, his pleasures will all turn to ashes in his mouth at the last. He will find out too late that God made him too noble to be satisfied with those tawdry pleasures he had devoted his life to here under the sun.
~ A. W. Toser