Last week I blogged about Bill Moyers’ recent interview with Bread for the World’s David Beckmann. Beckmann discussed, among other things, how current US farm policy distorts food aid programs for very poor parts of the world. You can read more from Beckmann at the Christian Century here. Beckmann is clear that it’s a complicated issue, but there are some fairly straightforward ways in which current policy favors big US agribusiness to the detriment of the recipients of aid.
Category: Politics
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Throne and Altar
A troubling article on the treatment of Protestant “sects” under a regime of strengthening ties between the Orthodox Church and the Russian state.
Russophile Fr. Chris has some comments here.
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Farm bill folly
I caught part of this Bill Moyers interview with Bread for the World‘s president Rev. David Beckman. Rev. Beckman talked a lot about the farm bill currently wending its way through Congress and how its distorted system of subsidies rewards big landowners and hurts poor people, both here and abroad. Worth watching if you’re interested.
Here’s another good piece on the farm bill.
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Culture of life
Should Catholic voters make the environment a priority in deciding which candidate to support?
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True patriotism
I’m reading Walter Wink’s book The Powers that Be, an abridgement of sorts of his “powers” trilogy, and came across this quote, which seems somewhat appropriate in the wake of the Obama/Jeremiah Wright flap, but also of more general application:
I love my country passionately; that is why I want to see it do right. There is a valid place for sensible patriotism. But from a Christian point of view, true patriotism acknowledges God’s sovereignty over all the nations, and holds a healthy respect for God’s judgments on the pretensions of any power that seeks to impose its will on others. There is a place for a sense of destiny as a nation. But it can be authentically pursued only if we separate ourselves from the legacy of the myth of redemptive violence and struggle to face the evil within ourselves. There is a divine vocation for the United States (and every other nation) to perform in human affairs. But it can perform that task, paradoxically, only by abandoning its messianic pretensions and accepting a more limited role within the family of nations. (p. 62)
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Environmentalism for the rest of us
I meant to link to this piece from Orion magazine earlier (via Russell I think). It’s all about cultivating an environmentalism that can appeal to working class people (specifically white ones in this case), not just by appealing to their interests, but by understanding and sympathizing with their culture.
It’s no secret that much of the explicit appeal of American-style conservatism to working class voters has been made by bashing the “liberal elites” who disdain working class culture and values. And it works because in a lot of cases it’s true. I know that I embraced conservatism to some extent because being a kid from a working-class background I found several of the upper-class liberals I encountered in grad school to be insufferable snobs. (I still find this to be the case sometimes, however much my “conservatism” has mutated since then.)
A Thinking Reed 