The Wealthy Really Are Different From The Rest Of Us

Despite the over-generalization of my title, it is clear to me that many of rich really are different from the rest of us, not just in terms of their material status, but in the way they relate to the world around them. Yet they fail to recognize their spiritual aridity.

In Matthew, 19:24, Jesus says: "Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."

Now, while some interpret that strictly to mean entering heaven, progressive theologians such as Marcus Borg suggest that it has a very real application in the here and now. The kingdom of God involves communion with our fellow human beings and the world in which we live, a world thirsting for social, economic and environmental justice. When we pursue those goals, say people like Borg, we are entering the Kingdom of God. The wealthy have a harder time of it, probably, because their wealth serves to isolate them from that communion.

And so the rich folk of California have quite a journey ahead of them. According to The Washington Post, despite the terrible drought that pervades the state, they don't think that the state-imposed water restrictions should apply to them:

Drought or no drought, Steve Yuhas resents the idea that it is somehow shameful to be a water hog. If you can pay for it, he argues, you should get your water.

People “should not be forced to live on property with brown lawns, golf on brown courses or apologize for wanting their gardens to be beautiful,” Yuhas fumed recently on social media. “We pay significant property taxes based on where we live,” he added in an interview. “And, no, we’re not all equal when it comes to water.”

Yuhas lives in the ultra-wealthy enclave of Rancho Santa Fe, a bucolic Southern California hamlet of ranches, gated communities and country clubs that guzzles five times more water per capita than the statewide average. In April, after Gov. Jerry Brown (D) called for a 25 percent reduction in water use, consumption in Rancho Santa Fe went up by 9 percent.

The attitude expressed above seems like a clear challenge to Michael J. Sandel's thesis in his book, What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, wherein he asks if there are indeed moral and social limits to what wealth should give a person access to.

Thus far, many of the 3100 residents have ignored the water restrictions, but as of July 1, more substantial financial penalties, and even restricted or terminated access to water, will be imposed. This is leaving them feeling most aggrieved:

“I think we’re being overly penalized, and we’re certainly being overly scrutinized by the world,” said Gay Butler, an interior designer out for a trail ride on her show horse, Bear. She said her water bill averages about $800 a month.

“It angers me because people aren’t looking at the overall picture,” Butler said. “What are we supposed to do, just have dirt around our house on four acres?”

Other wealthy communities are feeling similar outrage:

“I call it the war on suburbia,” said Brett Barbre, who lives in the Orange County community of Yorba Linda, another exceptionally wealthy Zip code

“California used to be the land of opportunity and freedom,” Barbre said. “It’s slowly becoming the land of one group telling everybody else how they think everybody should live their lives.”

Jurgen Gramckow, a sod farmer north of Los Angeles in Ventura County, agrees. He likens the freedom to buy water to the freedom to buy gasoline.

“Some people have a Prius; others have a Suburban,” Gramckow said. “Once the water goes through the meter, it’s yours.”

Clearly, the concept of shared sacrifice for the collective good is an alien one to some people. But to be fair, of course, that is an attitude not limited to one part of the socio-economic strata, is it?

For Your Sunday Reading Pleasure

While progressives in general, and bloggers in particular, are largely aware of the grave threat that the Harper regime poses to traditional democracy, I am always pleased when that message is conveyed to a larger audience, in this case readers of The Star. In the lead letter, Edward Carson of Toronto sounds the alarm:

Re: PM can't escape effects of Senate spending storm, June 6
Re: Harper’s cold shrug, Editorial June 5

A disturbing and unsettling habit of the Harper government is one of allowing a broad range of right-leaning ideological positions to triumph over historical evidence, empirical data and common sense in many of its strategic social, political, and economic plans.

When ideology is made into an operational weapon, or set into a global context, it begins by exploiting the vulnerabilities of those least likely to be able to defend themselves, in addition to overtly attacking those who oppose its doctrines and philosophies.

Throughout its years in power, the Harper government has embraced an ideology dedicated to a gradual, but carefully managed redefinition of Canada’s democratic values and freedoms. Characterized by a resolute, personal control over messaging, coupled with a singular management of policy and operational decisions, Harper’s autocratic style has over time incorporated a range of positions such as: wilful suppression or “re-interpretation” of information; attacks on the media and a devotion to a culture of fear, intimidation and secrecy; repudiation of common ground participation or reasoned compromise with its opponents; and control, misrepresentation, narrowing and elimination of scientific, social and financial researched facts and statistical data through targeted budgetary cutbacks, access limitations, security-inspired censorship and reductions in regulatory oversight.

“Majoritarian democracies,” as recently described by Milton Friedman, are democratically elected ruling parties who “interpret their election as a writ to do whatever they want in office, including ignoring the opposition, trampling privacy rights, choking the news media and otherwise behaving in imperious or corrupt ways, as if democracy is only about the right to vote, not rights in general and especially minority rights.” While referencing far-away politics in places like Egypt and Brazil, Russia and Turkey, that description of democratic rule should nevertheless resonate with many Canadians.

Democracy is at best a temporary gift to those given access to its power. Today, the real accumulating damage to our democracy under the Harper government is that the community of Canada is less and less about a collective “we” and more about a narrowing, ideologically driven realm of limited rights and freedoms, ideas and reforms.

No, we are not yet ruled by the autocratically and often tyrannical “majoritarian” rulers like those found in Egypt and Brazil, Russia and Turkey, but the qualitative differences are closer to those of degree, not of kind. The more we define ourselves through our newly “Harper-managed” democracy, any right we might claim to its moral or ethical high ground is at best a dream we once had, and now must search for once again.

Meanwhile, Keith R. Leckie of Toronto offers this concise assessment of Mr. Harper:

Harper has suggested Omar Khadr is a threat to Canada. Harper has scrapped the Health Accord, ratified FIPA, curtailed civil liberties, audited charities, muzzled scientists, abandoned Kyoto, punished refugees, ordered minimum criminal sentences, ordered super prisons, sold arms to repressive regimes, cancelled census to keep Canadians in the dark, had CRTC slash Canadian content rules, passed Bill C51.

Who is the bigger threat to the Canada we love?

Finally, a young person, A.J. Recana of Whitby, warns us about one of our greatest afflictions, apathy:

Indeed there are diseases in the world that can take away human life in the blink of an eye. But many fail to acknowledge the deadliest disease mankind has ignored: apathy.
We live in a culture where people are more offended by “swear” words than by famine, warfare and environmental destruction. Because of mass corporations and grand media conglomerates, their influence on the human population is substantial.

The saturation of media shapes how humans view the world and comprehend it. Kids today are socialized to be narcissistic when faced with societal, political and environmental issues and therefore have no interest in civic responsibility. Human unity, and the sacredness of the human person have been abolished by exposure to mass media, which has stimulated rates of obesity, depression and anxiety to skyrocket and still grow today.

Imagine if every human being chose one issue he or she cared about the most, and did something about it to eradicate the problem. It is time that we, as young, charismatic generations, turn to political reformation. It is time to take control of our environment, it is time to create our futures, and it is time to wake up.

Graeme MacKay Does It Again

From The Heartland

When moral imperatives and climate change denial meet head on, you know who feels they occupy the higher ground when The Heartland Institute is involved. The following video captures their reaction to the upcoming encyclical by Pope Francis on climate change. My favorite comment is made by the gentleman who just can't find it in his heart to forgive the Church its mistreatment of Galileo. I guess some folks just have very long memories:

I Wouln't Have Thought The Smell Of Sulphur Would Bother Him

H/t Graeme MacKay

UPDATED: I'm Outraged Over Her Outrage

Playing to her party's base, Health Minister Rona Ambrose yesterday expressed "outrage" over the Supreme Court's unanimous decision to make it legal for medical marijuana users to ingest their pot in any manner they see fit, be it oils, tinctures, cookies, or brownies. Given her well-demonstrated ineptitude in ensuring that Health Canada protect the health of Canadians, (apparently preferring to protect the health of pharmaceuticals' profits), something about which I have written at length on this blog, the integrity of yesterday's partisan denunciation of the court's decision must surely be called into question:



In the interests, as they say, of full disclosure, I do have a personal interest in this subject. My wife, for the past few years, suffered intractable and debilitating pain, pain that was relieved neither by over-the-counter medications nor narcotic painkillers. Happily, after recent surgery, most of that pain should be a thing of the past. Her suffering, however, was a disillusioning revelation to both of us; we had always assumed that most pain could be managed as long as doctors were willing to prescribe the necessary amounts of medication. This is not the case.

While I cannot say for certain that medical pot would have provided the sought-after relief, (and truth be told, my wife did not ask her doctor if he would prescribe it), I became resentful over two things: the fact that her access to it would have depended upon her doctor's beliefs and values, and the fact that Health Canada forbade the ingestion of medical pot in all forms except its dried form, which must be smoked or vaporized. Owing to a lung condition that she has, my wife would thus have been unable to use it in that form. Until yesterday's ruling, she would have been deemed a criminal.

Rona Ambrose asserts that research needs to be done to back up anecdotal claims of pot's medicinal benefits. She is surely being disingenuous here, given that big pharma will not undertake costly research into a substance that they cannot patent, and U.S,. medical research is severely circumscribed due to cannabis being listing as a Schedule 1 drug, reserved for the most dangerous of substances, right up there with heroin. Legal access is therefore difficult to obtain. Fortunately, in some parts of the world, enlighted attitudes coupled with compassion mean research is ramping up.

Beyond its benefits for pain relief, there are many claims to its benefits in treating intractable epilepsy:



And some in the medical community are quite receptive to the possibilities. Click here to play the clip.


If you want to read more about the above program and one mother's tireless battle to legally bring in a tincture from Colorado to her home state of Virginia to treat her saughter, click here. or watch the full program upon which the above is excerpted here. I watched the program when it aired, a good piece of journalism that one would have to be pretty hard-hearted not to be moved by.

Rona Ambose's obduracy of spirit, evidenced in her denunciation of the Supreme Court decision, is unacceptable and a gross insult to all who seek wider access to a medicine that may help them. The Harper regime's shameful trumping of ideology over compassion has no place in the Canada I know and live.

UPDATE: Even if you lack the time or the inclination to watch the Dateline program I described above, go to the 28 minute mark where you will see a vet suffering from PTSD who moved to Coloradeo to have access to marijuana. He displays all of the medications he was prescribed, which he says made him feel like a zombie, that he was able to dispose of once he started using cannabis to treat his condition. It is a powerful visual of what is at stake for the pharmaceuticals and suggests why they are likely a powerful force against widening marijuana's use.

How Much Do You Trust The Government?

The Harper and Liberal apologists tell us that Bill C-51 is necessary to keep us safe and protect our freedoms. I simply don't believe or trust them. Do you?



You can read more about these concerns here.