Just say no

The latest Front Porch podcast is about whether or not to drug test welfare recipients. I voted not.

What he said

I'm not always on the same page with WV Metro News commentator Hoppy Kercheval, but he nailed it with this commentary on why drug testing TANF (welfare) recipients is a bad idea.

Meanwhile, kudos to WV Senate Minority Leader Jeff Kessler for putting the kibosh (I love that word, although I have no idea about its etymology) on another bad idea, to wit charter schools, which would siphon resources away from public education.

Myth-using a good word

I always kind of cringe when I hear the word myth used to signify commonly held but wrong belief, as in, for example, the myth of welfare dependency. I think of myths as stories that provide meaning to life. The word itself means something like plot in Greek. The more I think about it, though, wrongly held beliefs often do function as a kind of myth that does tell a story and provide meaning, even if it isn't accurate.

Today a friend of mine produced a well done blog post titled The "Welfare Dependency" Myth in West Virginia. It does a good job of pointing out that widespread dependency on such kinds of aid for families has in fact dramatically declined..

Still, the delusion of widespread welfare dependency does function as a dark myth that gives meaning to mean-spirited people who like to bash the poor, most of whom are seen as unworthy. This kind of myth justifies cutting such programs, sometimes even by claiming that this would really help poor people in the long run.

Since myths are something we apparently can't live without, the only viable course seems to be to come up with a better one.

I'VE BEEN THINKING THIS TOO. From the same source, here's another post about how Medicaid expansion can help deal with substance abuse, a major factor in prison overcrowding.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Red Prometheus

El Cabrero just finished reading David Priestland's grande book, The Red Flag: A History of Communism. It was very readable and non-polemical and included cultural as well as political matters in a global history of that very diverse movement.

Early on, Priestland invokes the myth of the primordial rebel Prometheus, who was terribly punished by Zeus. The young Marx referred to Prometheus as "the most eminent saint and martyr in the philosophical calendar."

Viewing the history of the movement through that lens, Priestland's final lines are worth pondering:

The history of Communism should have taught us two things. The first lesson, now drawn by many writers, is how destructive dogmatic utopian thinking can be. The second, rather more neglected today, is the danger of sharp inequalities and perceived injustice--for they can make that utopian politics very appealing. Since 1989 the dominant powers have learnt neither lesson. Reacting sharply against communist utopias, messianic dogmatic liberals have sought to export their system--sometimes by force--across the globe. Perhaps, only now, chastened by the crises of 2008, will we finally learn from the history of Communism. Only if we do so will we be spared another bloody act in the tragedy of Prometheus.

MASSEY MINE DISASTER. Here's NPR's coverage of the congressional hearing held in Beckley earlier this week and here's an interview with WV Senator Jay Rockefeller about the disaster from the Charleston Daily Mail. And, while we're at it, here's a take on Massey CEO Don Blankenship's leadership style from a business social responsibility blog.

WELFARE TO WHAT? Recession-induced cuts to child care may force low income workers out of their jobs.

OF TESTOSTERONE AND TRUST, one may learn something by clicking here.


GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Motes, beams and nations

El Cabrero has been musing lately about the political insights of 20th century theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, whose work has been vastly influential. Niebuhr was no fundamentalist but he took the idea of sin as in egoism seriously and applied it particularly to social and political life.

In Moral Man and Immoral Society, he was particularly skeptical about the moral claims of nations, which always justify whatever they do (however unjustifiable) in the most grandiose terms:

Perhaps the most significant moral characteristic of a nation is its hypocrisy. We have noted that self-deception and hypocrisy is an unvarying element in the moral life of all human beings. It is the tribute which morality pays to immorality; or rather the device by which the lesser self gains the consent of the larger self to indulge in impulses and ventures which the rational self can approve only when they are disguised.

There has probably never been a war of aggression or colonial adventure which wasn't justified in the highest terms by people who may or may not have actually believed it.

No nation has ever made a frank avowal of its real imperial motives. It always claims to be primarily concerned with the peace and prosperity of the people whom it subjugates.

Along with hypocrisy, nations also have self-righteousness down pretty good.

Nations will always find it more difficult than individuals to behold the beam that is in their own eye while they observe the mote that is in their brother's eye; and individuals find it difficult enough. A perennial weakness of the moral life in individuals is simply raised to the nth degree in national life.

DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS. I apologize to email subscribers. Yesterday, as I was working on a draft post, I must have hit the wrong button and a not-ready-for-prime-time post may have hit your mailbox. My bad.

MORE STUFF FOR THE COAL INDUSTRY TO DENY. Leading groups of scientists just published a report calling for serious action on climate change.

I WANNA READ the book reviewed here.

WELFARE MOMS. How are they doing these days?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Eat bitter

Doh! Block print from the Bubishi, a Chinese martial arts manual. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

El Cabrero has often thought that those who want to make the world less violent and more just could do a lot worse than study and practice the martial arts. I'll go a step further and particularly recommend those arts which entail sparring with live opponents who are not trying to make you look good or enhance your self esteem.

There's nothing like getting your clock cleaned a few dozen (or hundred in my case) times by people who are really good at it to give you a sense of realism and pragmatism.

One great lesson you get by making a habit of sparring it that the mere fact that you want something to happen or not happen by itself has absolutely no bearing whatsoever one whether you can be successful. Success happens, if it does, by paying attention to what is going on in the moment and adapting your actions to openings as they occur. And by paying your dues.

Most people who have been successful in sparring (or in lots of real life endeavors to which it is analogous) have had to take some lumps along the way. The Chinese have two great expressions for this needed step. One is that one needs to "eat bitterness" before one can eat sweet. Another calls for "investing in loss."

I've done plenty of both. I remember once very early in my karate career when my old man observed a class in which I sparred with my first instructor. I have since lost track of the teacher and wonder to this day if he was really as good as I remember him to be or if I ever got anywhere near his level in later years. His technique seemed impossibly strong and precise, his katas or forms were crisp and powerful. And he was a bad dude when it came to sparring.

On that particular occasion, we bowed as usual and he proceeded to mop the floor with me. I probably have been clobbered worse many times since then, but I can't remember when.

After it was all over, my dad said "You really had him worried in the first few minutes."

"Really?" I said, desperate for any encouragement.

"Yeah. He thought he'd killed you."

STIMULUS ACTION ALERT: the American Friends Service Committee is urging people to call their US senators and urge them to prevent the derailment of President Obama's stimulus proposal, which is facing hard opposition. AFSC is also urging that the Senate reject a flawed and error-prone anti-immigrant measure called E-verify. The toll free number is 1-800-473-6711. To find your senators, click here.

El Cabrero and amigos will be holding a public meeting in Charleston, WV tonight on the subject.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, Hooverism lives. And while the economy tanks, welfare rolls remain at or near their lowest levels in 40 years.

DYSTOPIA. Here's an abstract from an article from the Jan. 26 New Yorker about those who see gloom and doom on the horizon. It's worth tracking down the full article.

GETTING TO UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE. This article, also from the New Yorker, discusses getting there from here.

MALLED. America's love affair with shopping malls is in the post-honeymoon phase.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

How I read my way through the last economic depression

The theme at Goat Rope lately is hard times and how to get through them. The series began a week ago Monday. If you feel so inclined, please click on earlier posts. You'll also find links and comments about current events.

As I mentioned before, the 1980s hit West Virginia really hard, with massive layoffs and high unemployment. And the cavalry was not on the way. I remember it as a time of poverty as I scrambled to provide for two young children.

When hard times hit, of course you have to try to get yourself out of them. I looked for more and better work and scrambled to finish a degree. But you also have to stay alive in the meantime, physically and otherwise.

For me, reading was a kind of salvation. For some reason, I stumbled upon The Story of Civilization, a massive 11 volume popularized version of world history by Will and Ariel Durant. It was far from academic history and contained any number of howlers that would drive sticklers up the wall. But it was engagingly written and was a constant companion for many months during work breaks, sleepless nights and stolen moments.

The Durants would include discussions of literary classics in their rambles through history and I made a list and went back and read as many as I could.

All of which is to say that I made it through the Reagan era with the help of Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Plato, Herodotus, Thucydides, Shakespeare, and the like.

As poor as I was and as hopeless as the times seemed, I still remember the awe I felt on finishing Plato's Republic, the Oresteia of Aeschylus, and several of Shakespeare's tragedies and histories that I'd missed. That experience took me out, however briefly, from the grind and gave me a chance to think and reflect--and not to feel like a hunted animal.

There are some things you do that seem to take the life force out of you and leave you less than you were before, like zoning out in front of a television or playing video games during all your free time. But there are other kinds of things that seem to build you up. It could be a course of study, some physical discipline or learning an art or skill. These take effort and discipline but they can richly reward the time and trouble.

In my case, it helped me both to endure and eventually escape dire poverty--and left me with the will to do something about it when I had the chance.

R.I.P. the Bush administration's "ownership society."

WHAT A DIFFERENCE UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE MAKES. In another op-ed, economist Dean Baker points out that if General Motors was a Canadian company, it wouldn't be in need of a bailout.

HERE WE GO AGAIN. Welfare rolls are increasing for the first time since it was "reformed" in 1996.

MORE BAD WV NEWS. Century Aluminum in Ravenswood may close.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED