Polianiac

I really could not believe what I was hearing. In the Republican response to Obama’s address, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal was running through his litany of alleged “wasteful spending” consistently mischaracterized by Republicans in the recent Stimulus/Rescue/Survival Bill: “It includes $300 million to buy new cars for the government, $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a ‘magnetic levitation’ line from Las Vegas to Disneyland, and $140 million for something called ‘volcano monitoring’…”

Something called ‘volcano monitoring’? Like monitoring volcanoes in the Cascades, Alaska, and Hawaiian Island chain that could potentially impact millions of U.S. citizens, not to mention U.S. commercial interests? Holy God! Holy God in Heaven, are they really questioning the wisdom of volcano monitoring?

Is this really the message the Republican Party wishes to send? Well if so, I will meet you half way on this: Governor Jindal, Governor Rick Perry of Texas, Gov. Barber of Mississippi and Governor Christ, Florida: Why don’t we just cut funding for the National Hurricane Center also? That way we can say we marginalized all sciences equally.

Mission Statement of The Family Research Council

“Family Research Council (FRC) champions marriage and family as the foundation of civilization, the seedbed of virtue, and the wellspring of society. FRC shapes public debate and formulates public policy that values human life and upholds the institutions of marriage and the family. Believing that God is the author of life, liberty, and the family, FRC promotes the Judeo-Christian worldview as the basis for a just, free, and stable society.”

Honestly, until this weekend, I had never read the Mission Statement for Dobson’s Family Research Council. I will admit I find it politically amazing. (Please note the “small p” political.) Why is that important you might ask…  From my chair, it is important because the small “p” always informs the capital “P” Political in a democratic (?) society.

I have a couple of questions about this mission statement:

How do we get from “shapes public debate” to “formulates public policy”?

Where does a “politically constituted regime” (in the Classical sense) fit into this schema, other than within a theocratic construction?

Since when is the “public sphere” and “the private sphere” conflated within a Gestalt that ignores the United States Constitution?

Amendment 1 - Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression. Ratified: 12/15/1791.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. (http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#Preamble)

I realize one usual argument in favor of this “world view” is that FRC is not advocating for an established “Religion”. Please note: “religion” in the Constitution is written as a lower case “r” in anticipation of this very eventuality. I have a hard time reconciling “Judeo-Christian” as any-thing other than “established religion”.

How would this worldview inform all policy as to how we engage with “others”, (those who freely choose to not hold with this one “worldview”) particularly “others” who are national citizens of this country founded as the United States of America and “others” around the globe?

Enlighten me please…

Let’s set socially constructed “political correctness” aside for a moment and interrogate the concept of Diversity.

Diversity is a social construct I find myself learning to loathe. Therefore, for now, I am going to bracket “diversity”. “Diversity” is defined as 1. “a variety of something, such as opinion, color, or style” 2. ethnic variety, as well as socioeconomic and gender variety, in a group, society, or institution, 3. discrepancy, or a difference from what is normal or expected.

To definition one: I find the biological view of human beings, which inherently posits homo sapiens as a naturally occurring biological organisms like fruit flies, mold, and fungus, disheartening. I accept we are biological creatures; however, I do not accept we come in varieties. To accept this underlying assumption negates what I know to be scientifically confirmed through the Human Genome Project (among other scientific achievements): Today, common man exists as homo sapiens sapiens. Genetically, there are no variations. The world created as if there are variations is not found in Nature, it is found in the realm of social construction as political. It is divisive, conflicted, and antagonistic. I realize my view will be rejected by creationists, eugenicists, KKK-type groups, and any other fundamentalisms which allow “the-other” to be placed in a socially-constructed hierarchy below “self”. (Thank you John Wesley, Martin Buber, and Emmanuel Levinas). 

To definition two: See my response to definition #1!

To definition #3: “discrepancy, or a difference from what is normal or expected.” (My head just exploded!) “Diversity” inherently presumes and promotes the view of man rooted, grounded, and supportive of Eugenics, “racism,” and “other-ness”. Therein I find a fatal flaw. By “supporting diversity” we are asked to support that we are not equal in any view: biological, social, or political. We are asked to support the existence of a “norm” and “norms” are constructs of man and mankind alone.

For me, the Golden Rule answers the question of “diversity”. I wish we would reconsider the wisdom of this social concept… or maybe the intentionality…

Would it help if the financial package was called a Survival Plan? We seem to be locked in some rhetorical blather over “stimulus”; so would it help to call it something else?

The problem with linguistics is no matter how hard you want to cloak it; paradigm shifts are un-cloak-able when examined as text in discourse. I believe what is at stake in this argument is that word I have learned to loathe: privatization. I think that is the source of the angst. There are those among us who actually believe after thirty years of living under progressively “privatized” government we have not had enough. Well let me be clear: I have had enough!

From David Harvey’s A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005), “Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade. The role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such practices” (p.1). Any of that sound familiar?

Welcome to the Neoliberal world!

The part that makes me sick is that Karl Marx is the winner here. I truly wish we as a people could have been the ones to prove him wrong. So far, all I can say is that man has failed to demonstrate himself capable of self regulation. Until that day comes, we need government to protect us — especially from ourselves.  And for those who have not had enough? How Marxist of you!***

***Thank you Rafael! :) 

David Harvey, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center, City University, New York