Category: Social Missions

Happy Fourth of July

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Edward Achorn in this morning’s Providence Journal reminded me of Abraham Lincoln’s great regard for the Declaration of Independence. In his editorial he quotes Lincoln in a speech made August 17, 1858:

‘ We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal: that they are endowed with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ This was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to His creatures. Yes, gentlemen, to all His creatures, to the whole great family of man.

In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on, and degraded, and imbruted by its fellows. They grasped not only the whole race of man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children and their children’s children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages.

Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so established these great self evident truths, ‘to protect people in future days when they might suffer under a government that forced its will on them for the benefit of economic and political interests, oppressing or stealing the labor of some to make others rich or powerful.’

They knew their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their father began – so that truth, justice, and mercy, and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of liberty was being built.

What a wonderful string of words….’This was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the universe.’ With great irony we now begin to realize the qualities of the Declaration of Independence’s economic thought (See blog on happiness).

Mr. Achorn assumed Lincoln’s words sound hopelessly old-fashioned in today’s world. Other than the ‘man’ antique language, I would hope we can still appreciate Mr. Lincoln.

Happy Fourth of July.

Vaclav Havel’s Critique of the West

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An interesting essay by Philip Howard.

Western governments, Havel said, are organized on a flawed premise not far removed from the Soviet system that had just collapsed. “The modern era has been dominated by the culminating belief,” he said, “that the world … is a wholly knowable system governed by finite number of universal laws that man can grasp and rationally direct … objectively describing, explaining, and controlling everything.”

These bureaucratic structures are profoundly dehumanizing, Havel believed, striving to control choices that should be left to human judgment and values. This “era of systems, institutions, mechanisms and statistical averages” is doomed to failure because “there is too much to know” and it cannot “be fully grasped.” The drive towards standardization is fatally flawed, Havel believed: “life is nonstandard.”

The heavy hand of centralized bureaucracy, Havel observed, makes everyone first powerless, then listless. “We have lost sense that there is a way out, lost the will to do anything,” he said. “The more we know about dangers like global warming, the less we seem able to deal with them.” These systems also marginalize community and leave people with a “fundamental sense of nonbelonging.”

Think of Havel’s statement:

“Politicians seem to have turned into puppets that only look human and move in a giant, rather inhuman theatre; they appear to have become merely cogs in a huge machine, objects of a major automatism of civilization which has gotten out of control and for which no one is responsible.”

Our Congressional politicians, and sadly our very well-meaning President, often look like puppets in an inhuman theatre.

…a crazy person running our nation.

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James Carville says funny things…and this one struck a chord.

As I watch the Republican debates, I realize that we are on the brink of a crazy person running our nation. I sit in front of the television and shudder at the thought of one of these creationism-loving, global-warming-denying, immigration-bashing, Social-Security-cutting, clean-air-hating, mortality-fascinated, Wall-Street-protecting Republicans running my country.

A Worst Case of Cultural Deterioration

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The past few months I’ve made a decision to aid and collaborate with two organizations in South Providence, RI. One is the Southside Community Land Trust, a wonderful organization that owns and aids the development of urban gardens. The other is Amos House. Amos House has been around for 35 years, starting as a soup kitchen in a two family house in a very poverty stricken area of South Providence. It now offers an array of social services to folks, many of them in desperate need of aid, food, shelter. Amos House is also a wonderful organization. Both organizations appear to have great staff…..and both organizations fulfill a personal need I didn’t know existed.

Yesterday I was walking around the Amos House campus with Eileen Hayes, their CEO. Part of their operation is across the street from what both of us assume is a significant burial ground. It is perhaps a few acres of hundreds of graves, contains a number of magnificent historical gravestones, and is surrounded by a fancy black iron fence. It is owned by Grace Chruch, a historic church in the center of Providence’s downtown area.

The cemetery is a disaster. Gravestones are all over the place – damaged, falling, fallen. There is no lawn or tree maintenance (we visited right after a major storm so there was some recent tree damage to add to the already unkept property).

It was sad. I cannot imagine how it could happen. I know Providence and Rhode Island are in a terrible economic state, but how could this occur?