The Kitchen Sink: LIMITING THE AMERICAN DREAM

The argument that people only work for rewards is a popular one with several of my friends, two of whom are millionaires. They explain to me that, if you take away the rewards (by which they mean monetary rewards), people won't work. Wealthy, middle income, or poor, they define and limit the American Dream to capitalistic ideals and that limited edition has become the political religion of our times. But I think that belief in capitalism as the one and only motivator and guide says more about those particular friends and folks like them than about the human spirit in general and actually short-changes their own humanity.

These friends have bought the simplistic myth of capitalism as a raison d'etre - I work, therefore I am. This misunderstanding or simplistic focus leads many of them to labor long and arduously at jobs they don't enjoy, and more of them fail than succeed. Hence the1%, the10%, and the 89% we see today.

By defining the American Dream as a narrow, a-moral economic system, they are liable to miss out on the true riches of the broader American Dream and the lifestyle it offers.  A good many of us define the American Dream more broadly and deeply as the freedom to be yourself and exercise your gifts for the good of yourself and your community - which includes the planet on which that community rests and by which it is supported.

Politics: SHARIA LAW IN AMERICA?

Watching the news of 2/16/12 and Congressman Issa's panel of men trying to pretend that they were not interested in the birth control insurance coverage issue raised by President Obama but only in the separation of church and state would have been funny except that what they did to legislative processes and what they're after isn't funny. Of course, the ruse didn't work; the pundits had a field day with the lack of women on the panel and the effort to promote the idea that most sexually active Catholics do not use birth control.


But from my window on the world, the pundits missed the best talking point of all: Sharia Law. Mostly male Christian elements in our legislature have previously done and are presently doing exactly what fundamentalist Muslims do when they impose Sharia Law. The rules they seek to impose may differ from Islamic extremism, but there are two important similarities.