At the time, living in the semi-functional socialist order (which never had a realistic chance for reaching communism) I thought that was just a bunch of unsubstantiated crap.

Now, after the series of events from the past year or so that have shaken world economics, and world ethics too, I can’t be so blatant in my judgment. For the first time I really (and on my skin too, if that matters) feel where those socialist theories were going in their critique of capitalism.

It is obvious that if our legislative levels are motivated by profit instead of ethics, then we are living in a dictatorial regime which exploits the majority of its constituents who have no power, for the enrichment of the very few who do. Not much better than feudalism of dark medieval times. Needless to say, those poor peasants didn’t do much about it either – they just watched it happen, and paid their dues to the master.

Having lived outside this culture, as I know you, Naomi have too, the distinction between what Americans eat and Europeans eat is very eye-opening. I have no doubt that what others have reported is true as well, that American obesity, health issues and the like are all related to the way we eat.

I also think it’s not just what we eat, but how we eat it. My mother and father, one Dutch, the other French-Canadian, raised us feeding us three healthy meals a day. Today, I can barely get my American husband to sit down at a meal, let alone 3 times each day. Lucky for me, he’s a great cook, and as far as food goes, is health-conscious. So at least when we eat, it’s always homemade and nutritious. But the sitting down and enjoying food, taking the time to savor it, and taking the time to just prepare it, is something that I think many Americans are not doing anymore and maybe have never known in their lives. It’s scary to think how the next generation is going to eat, with this continuing trend.

One thing I think we may have going for us is that when the economy goes downhill, cooking at home may begin to increase. Going out or picking up a quick to-go meal will likely decrease. Maybe people will even begin growing their own food, put in their own gardens. I’ve thought of it myself.

This is the central issue in so many of our present conflicts, who somebody sleeps with, what a woman does about a pregnancy, even private ownership of guns. The issues all have to do with what rights society has over what an adult or adults do within their own private space. If a woman decides she can’t bring up a child, what affect does that have on society as a whole? On the other hand, if some dirtbag keeps a stack of firearms where a child can get at them or he can get at them when drunk or in a rage, that does affect society as a whole.

Society has rights, but the individual also has rights, and most of them boil down to the right to privacy. It wasn’t enough for women to be included as a form of man; in order to overcome centuries of misunderstanding, an amendment had to be added to the constitution to reinforce the concept of equality. The bits and pieces on privacy offered by the Constitution aren’t enough. A basic legal claim to it has got to be cast in stone, so that when such issues arise, judges have some basis on both sides when drawing a line between the rights of society and the rights of the individual.

If we had such an amendment in place, it would have been the law that would have stopped the right to lifers from persecuting abortion doctors. It took one getting murdered to bring that to a halt, but that such persecution continues I’m sure is the case, it’s just that the press is so tired of the issue that we don’t hear about it.

I suppose there’s been some talk somewhere about us needing such an amendment, but so far I’ve never seen it, and I’ve been looking for it for a long time. So it would be good to begin raising the issue.

The good news is that the California Supreme Court is already planning to hear arguments for the potential overturning of the amendment, based on grounds that it is unconstitutional. There was this article on it in the NY Times yesterday:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/us/21marriage.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

What I found particularly astounding is that the supporters of the ban are threatening to vote out the judges in 2010 if they do overturn it. It never ceases to amaze me how passionately some people will try to impose their idea of “morality” on others, and will stop at nothing until they have achieved their goal.

It is strange to me that Obama is against same-sex marriage based on his Christian view that marriage is a “blessing from God intended exclusively for a man and a woman.” While I don’t believe Obama is against gays in general, I don’t think he has deeply thought through his own position. He has said he won’t support laws that outlaw same-sex marriage and he opposed Proposition 8, but he won’t support the other side either. In one of his books he did admit that his unwillingness to support gay marriage is possibly misguided. My own opinion on that is he chose this side strategically so that he would get elected as president by Christians and other conservatives who also oppose gay marriage. It’s my hope that he will change his mind once he becomes president.

But as for that unanswered question about what marriage really means in today’s society, I do wonder. I asked a gay man I know what he thought of gay marriage and he was actually against it. He said that marriage as it is defined by most people is not fair to begin with, as it assumes a connection with religion (which isn’t really true if you get married in a town hall, not a church). He thought civil unions were much more true to the definition of what the gay couples really want, and that is just to be legally recognized that they are a union. Our society puts more importance on marriage than for instance Europe, hence the fact that the number of children born out of wedlock now surpasses the number born in wedlock in several western European countries. People who are getting married in Europe do it out of personal preference or because of specific legal or financial reasons, not necessarily to secure their civil rights as united couples or because of religion. I think for practical reasons, many don’t get married because there’s a 50-50 chance of divorce, so why bother go through the often damaging legal and financial hassle of dissolving a marriage?

In my opinion the problem in this country is not necessarily that religion is shaping government, but that there are so many people, intellectual ones included, whose ideas are still so misguided and out-of-date when it comes to gay rights.

Americans want to deny us what they
DEEM ESSENTIAL.

I personally have a HUGE problem with that, thus our united response:

The NATIONAL EQUALITY TAX PROTEST will be on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009.

Individuals are FINALLY gathering to TAKE A STAND against persecution from the Mormons & the Christian “Right”. No vote will be needed on this one, folks.

1) Most important: The integration of schools: children are born free of prejudice. That so many young white people turned to Obama recently is, I believe, due to the fact that, having known smart, honest, good-hearted black kids in school, they weren’t blinded to the good in him by inherited prejudice.

2) Also important: Advertising and film: since the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, Hollywood and Madison Avenue have more than made up for their decades of racial stereotyping and compartmentalization. It may be unrealistic to see a middle class suburban barbeque with all ethnic groups presented as close personal friends, but advertising is always looking to present some kind of ideal. Okay, so they make these commercials, not to help race relations, but to appeal to as many pocket books as they can at one go. Still, as they well know, images sink in and have an effect. The buddy movies have done the same thing. People who are in no position to have a close friend of another color can see such relationships portrayed in movies like the Lethal Weapon and Rush Hour series. (Does anyone remember Silver Streak with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, back in the 70s?). How about that fabulous spoof, not only of racial prejudice, but just about everything else in our society, Changing Places, with Dan Ackroyd and Eddie Murphy? Here’s another area where Capitalism has been one of the good guys. Hollywood has also contributed with serious movies like The Color Purple (when I saw it the entire theater audience, mostly white, including teenage boys, was in tears); Spike Lee’s biopic of Malcolm X; Glory, or the best of all in my book, Remember the Titans. Beginning in the 60s, Hollywood has made up for StepinFetchit by consistently portraying African-Americans in roles of leadership, as judges, bosses, heroes, even the President of the US. These images sink in. Television has followed suit. The per capita percentage of racial diversity in the US may not have been totally reflected in the pundits discussing the politics of the recent election, but it had to be pretty close.

3) The Bush Administration. Much as I hate to admit it, George Bush did African Americans a great service by ignoring the color line to appoint two of his most important cabinet positions to highly qualified persons of color.

We know where we’ve come from and how far we have to go, but we also need to acknowledge how very far we’ve come and feel some gratitude for those who helped by reaching out.

“In some new studies, psychologists have been able to establish a close relationship between diverse pairs — black and white, Latino and Asian, black and Latino — in a matter of hours. That relationship immediately reduces conscious and unconscious bias in both people, and also significantly reduces prejudice toward the other group in each individual’s close friends.

This extended-contact effect, as it is called, travels like a benign virus through an entire peer group, counteracting subtle or not so subtle mistrust.”

“In a series of studies, Art Aron and others have found that, by generating a single cross-group friendship, they can quickly improve relations between cliques that have been pitted against one another in hostile competitions. In a continuing study of some 1,000 new students at Stony Brook, Dr. Aron has found that merely being in the same class where other interracial pairs were interacting can reduce levels of prejudice.”

The entire article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/us/07race.html?th&emc=th

So how do we integrate our communities more? Obviously socio-economic factors play a large part in our segregated lives. I wonder what can be done to truly mix up this melting pot of ours.