Five More
By John Taylor; 2009 May 10, Jamal 13, 166 BE
As promised, here is the continuation of the "ten things I hate," essay whose title I literally dreamed up a few weeks ago. I have taken headlines as my cue.
Ten Things I Hate, Number Six
I hate it when justice is misunderstood. Here is the headline that backs this up, from the online edition of the New York Times a few days ago: "This Is a Question of Fairness," with the by-line: "Other American politicians should follow the same path as John Baldacci of Maine, who is the latest governor to legalize same-sex marriage." (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/opinion/08fri4.html?th&emc=th)
This is a very large slippery slope down which society is sliding.
Over the last fifty years we went from a delicate balance of more complete support for marriage to one where this institution one among many, an equal with many other competitors, including corporations, bureaucracies and, now, homosexual unions. I cannot briefly address the whole issue, but it seems to me that one of the most treacherously slippery surfaces is the fallacious idea that "fairness" can be taken out of context or out of a particular time. This unfair fairness is what I hate, for it amounts to a denial of God, the only one to wield absolute justice. Fairness "right now," then, can be a rival to fairness "back then" and fairness "later on." The family exists out of the present, it links us to our genetic history, and carries our legacy into posterity.
So sure, you can pick out the present moment and say, with these officials, "It is not fair to pick out one kind of love for social support and not others." This is to misunderstand what the family and marriage are for. They exist not only to support society at present but to extend policy into our fate, to things to come. For the individual family does the same thing, it extends our brief time on earth with a longer past and future.
A few decades ago this was understood. There was an implicit contract that both government and individuals would sacrifice certain rights and privileges for the family and that families in turn would support them. As families became corrupt, they stood for less, they were less useful, and the exchange started breaking down. Now the bludgeon of "fairness" is being brought down on its head.
Who is doing this? Gays are a big red herring here. They generally have nothing to do with such legislation and are surprised to hear that they are getting a legal right to marry. If it is not a homosexual issue, then who is doing this?
The old.
Society is run by seniors and all government tends to be a gerontocracy. Normally this is a very good thing, because at their best an older leader is disinterested, detached from the results of short or long term policy since will not be around to suffer or gain. The good opinion of history is their main concern. But now selfish interest is blocking that. The old have been supported mainly by government and corporate pensions for many decades rather than by family members. The old see less benefit in giving exclusive privilege to heterosexual marriage. Disinterest dissolves into complacency. Complacency is Thing I Hate Number Seven. When family is so weak already it promises the old no glory from future generations, and the old respond in kind.
Ten Things I Hate, Number Eight
I hate the "Les Miserables" factor. We deplore the crimes of the poor and bring the full force of the law down on their heads while criminality of the wealthy is ignored and allowed to continue unchecked. For decades I have wondered at the massive, wholesale theft of our collective wealth represented by "offshore" banking. Back in the Eighties Richard Naylor's bestseller "Hot Money" calculated that national debts would be wiped clean if government coffers were not bled off by banking "confidentiality" by means of which the rich evade taxes and criminals launder ill-gotten gains. Here is the latest on that, again from a headline a few days old:
"The Government Accountability Office has found that 83 of the 100 largest American companies have subsidiaries in tax havens; it counted 83 subsidiaries for Procter & Gamble alone. Financial services companies had even more, with Citigroup showing 427 and Morgan Stanley, 273." - "Fed Says Ailing Banks Need $75 Billion, By Edmund Andrews, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/business/08stress.html?th&emc=th
So, should I be surprised that tax evasion by individuals is dwarfed by that of corporations? Procter and Gamble a criminal? That means every time you buy a bar of soap your money is contributing to the ballooning national debt, rather than supporting it? Actually it is much worse than that.
Ten Things I Hate, Number Nine
I hate unfair competition from Frankenstein monsters. Corporations compete with humans not only in crimes like evading taxes, they rival us in good deeds too. They skew charitable contributions by giving according to values that are not human, to causes that are not in the general interest.
And don't even get me started on what they do to politics. And as we just saw, dependence upon corporate pensions in place of family and faith group support degrades our support for the family.
Corporate values are partisan by nature. When I buy a bar of soap, I do not want my money to go to anything but what it took to make the soap. Corporations should have no right to make political, charitable or any other kind of contribution. Their money should be invested in what they make or the service they provide, and nothing else. Take apart the Frankenstein monster, bury the body parts from which it was made, and give humans and families a chance to compete fairly in social goods.
Ten Things I Hate, Number Ten
Hypocrisy has to be on the list. Without changing the subject from systemic thievery, and from the same day, here is the headline:
"Obama Calls for Curbs on Offshore Tax Havens"
"The proposed tax overhaul, aimed at benefits enjoyed by those harboring cash in offshore accounts, could help raise $210 billion, the administration estimates." (May 5, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/business/05tax.html)
This article criticizes this proposed law for trying to oversimplify a complex situation. Why is it so complex? Because you cannot govern a single world with multiple governments and multiple tax systems. As long as all are not unified under one authority it is just like plugging a single leak in a boat -- if water does not rush in your stateroom it will come in somebody else's and the boat will sink just the same. Now, with computerized banking and automated fund transfer, the "we are all in the same boat" analogy is perhaps obsolete. We should think of ourselves as all being in one balloon. One prick and the whole thing explodes.
All governments must cooperate and appoint a single taxation authority for the world, same way they must to halt global warming. Otherwise, talk of this issue is futile and all "curbs" half measures that will not work. To call oneself a world citizen and not bring about a world government is rank hypocrisy.
John Taylor
email: badijet@gmail.com
blog: http://badiblog.blogspot.com/
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