What is Good for the Common Good?

Imagine that we lived in a medieval kingdom where most of us were serf farmers, growing grain with the labor of our backs. Imagine that the king declared that one-fifth of our harvest would be taken for the kingdom. Now imagine if this choice were given: “The fifth of your harvest can be sold and invested in seed and fields and the animals needed so that our land will always produce food and your children and your children’s children will never go hungry. Or your harvest can be sold and the money handed to the rich lords and ladies of the kingdom so that they may rest in leisure and surround themselves with jewels and fine horses.” Given those options, which would you choose?

This doesn’t seem to be too difficult a decision. Yet when I see Republican leaders shake their fists at the President’s stimulus plan crying out in protest over “the deficit!” and labeling the Democrats as “tax and spend liberals!” it makes me laugh, only because the only alternative is to cry.

I want to ask those leaders if they were asleep for the past eight years when our “kingdom” was led by “borrow and spend” conservatives who borrowed huge debt against our children’s future to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest in our land. Did that “investment” lead us to prosperity?

My friend James and I were talking about economics and about Joseph, the son of Jacob who’s remembered by many as the man with the “amazing Technicolor dreamcoat.” After interpreting Pharaoh’s dream that warned of seven years of abundance being followed by seven years of famine, Joseph is put in charge, taking one-fifth of all the produce of the land during the good years and storing it. Later, it’s that stored grain that feeds not only Egypt, but most of its surrounding neighbors during the lean years.

James pointed out that “If Joseph were running for office today, he'd be criticized for ‘raising taxes’” and explained that the concept behind things like unemployment insurance is that one willingly gives up a portion of one’s wages when working so that, should the job be lost, there is income available in the lean years. But rather than putting our tax money aside in our good years after 2000 when we had a surplus, we gave that money to those who were already rich. Our failure to take a bit off the top of these recent peak years to smooth out the valleys means we are left without any “stored grain” in the lean years we are now experiencing. In James’ opinion, “this is like voters cutting unemployment insurance tax to $0 in good times and suddenly demanding huge benefits in bad times—that is effectively what the Republican policy has been over the past 28 years.”

So can we afford to spend more money that we don’t have? We must in order to ensure that future years are more abundant than lean. According to James, “We can't keep living on the generosity of the previous generations who were willing to pay taxes to build the highways and bridges we now take for granted. It's not only selfish, it's really rather foolish to assume the country we love somehow came out of nowhere without sacrifice. Every park we visit, highway we travel, all the electricity we get in a rural area (subsidized by the government), every GPS signal we get for free from a government satellite, and every bit of our internet surfing came about because some taxpayer in the past was willing to contribute a small part of their personal spending to help the common good.”

We spent eight years living under a tax policy that increased prosperity for a small portion of our population. It’s time to invest again in the common good that will help us all prosper.

We Humans Could Learn a Lot from Animals

Developing a kind of communion with animals has always been a source of joy for me, maybe stemming from how much I loved the movie "Dr. Doolittle" (the original with Rex Harrison). When he sang "If I could talk to the animals, just imagine it," I too imagined the wonder of that possibility.

I enjoy gaining more insight into the minds and emotions of animals and so a program on the National Geographic channel the other night about the development of dogs in the womb caught my attention. The program explored the ways that dogs were domesticated from wolves and how their characteristics differ as they develop during the pregnancy.

The program showed puppies growing in the wombs of a Golden Retriever, a Mastiff and a Chihuahua. I learned that though there are 400 canine breeds, they have all been traced back through their maternal DNA to only three wolves in Asia. Dogs are the most diverse species on the planet and it’s amazing to imagine that a Mastiff who can weigh almost 200 pounds has the same ancestors as that little palm-sized Chihuahua!

What also interests me is that no matter the external differences of any two dogs, they can easily become friends. When my dog Cotton approaches another dog, unless that animal is aggressive or unfriendly, he’s just as thrilled to greet one breed as another. He doesn’t let height or weight or length of ears or the lack of a curly tail cause him to keep his distance. He wants to romp and play with any kind of breed of dog that there is.

Yet look at the track record of us humans. We see just a few surface differences in skin tone or shape of the eye and we can be immediately distrustful. Or we might even go so far as to claim that person to be our enemy before we've had one conversation to get to know their temperament or their hopes and dreams.

I’ve heard Cesar Millan, better known as "The Dog Whisperer," discuss how dogs always live in the present, and, unless severely abused, will not hold a grudge. If only that were true in the human race! At any given time in our world, there are typically about 40 wars being waged and most of those are driven by racial or religious differences.

Thomas Merton, an author and Cistercian monk, once had an epiphany standing on a street corner in Louisville, KY where he looked around and saw that the people around him were "shining like the sun." He wrote, "Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed."

I saw a news clip online the other day about an elephant in a sanctuary who has become best friends with a dog there. The two are inseparable, and the female elephant even stood vigil outside the sanctuary office when the dog was recuperating inside after surgery.

On the day this column will be published, we'll be inaugurating our first President with dark skin, a man who won the election by a surprising majority, partly due to his stated desire to build friendships between the "elephants" and "donkeys" who are typically on opposite sides of the aisle of American politics. When I’m watching that ceremony with friends, I know my heart will swell. And if I had a tail, I bet it would be wagging.

(c) 2009 Sheri D. Kling

In Cars and Politics, New Thinking Needed

The very first car I ever owned was a light blue Pontiac Gran Le Mans. It was a lot of steel for a college junior to be driving around, but it came at a good price and I needed something safe. That car later carried me to Georgia where the radio played Kenny Loggins’ song “This Is It” as I exited I-75 in my post-college move to Marietta.

Next, I drove a Mazda and then a Ford, both with 5-speed stick shift transmissions that made the driving experience a lot more interesting. All of those cars came to me “gently used,” and I drove them well into six-digit mileage before they were “retired.” But after the Ford, I decided it was time for me to buy my first brand-new car.

Though I’d had a good experience with the Ford, it seemed that most American-made small cars of the time were rated poorly in quality and maintenance. The Japanese cars I considered lasted longer and got better gas mileage.

But there was a fairly new player on the scene, and though they were actually a division of General Motors, the Saturn car company downplayed their parentage because they were truly doing something different. Saturn built their cars using state-of-the-art practices and their employees were energized and committed n a way that seemed truly unique to that industry. That really got my attention, and so I purchased a Saturn sedan and loved it for a long time. Before Saturn came along, American auto manufacturers were stuck in a rut and it took someone who was willing to think in a completely different way to change that.

I feel that politics in our country is in the same kind of rut. No matter what party they belong to, it seems most politicians are willing to do and say whatever it takes just to keep their jobs, and the more divisive the language the better. It has all just become a game of shaking hands with the devil to raise money, pushing the agendas of the most well-heeled special interests, and telling the public whatever lies are needed to make sure they get re-elected. To heck with the painful truth of where our short-sighted decisions are taking us – whether that be into deep debt, environmental ruin or endless wars.

Most frustrating to me is the unwillingness of either party to see the deeper nature of things – both causes and effects. In my view, the Republicans want to make it all about personal responsibility and morality and turn a blind eye to the real systemic injustices that make it nearly impossible for a lot of people to get ahead. On the other hand, the Democrats want to make it all about fixing a broken system and helping people through government, while turning a blind eye to personal responsibility and self-sufficiency. This split-brain approach only serves to slap a few bandages on the bleeding while ignoring the life-threatening conditions underneath.

Just like when Saturn emerged on the automotive scene, I believe we now have a man on the political scene who really thinks differently and who recognizes that our national problems are not either-or. That man is Barack Obama. For me, he is a breath of fresh air in an environment that has become dangerously polluted. I first recognized his gifts in 2004 during his run for Senate and I hoped and prayed that he would one day become President of this country.

I can’t tell anyone else how to vote, but I can write here that I believe Senator Obama has what it takes to help us take our country back from the moneyed power brokers, the corporate lobbyists and the “same old, same olds” who have been driving us farther and farther away from who we were born to be back in 1776.