June 8, 2008 archive

Cross posted at  KOS

Social Justice. Some of us were introduced to the idea in church, appropriately because Jesus preached social justice. Altho social justice is an important theme in all major religions, some churches like the Catholic Church have offices of Social Justice. In deed the term was coined by a Jesuit priest in the mid 1800’s, based on the teachings of Thomas Aquinas.  

It got a lot of press both good and bad in the 60’s when Jesuit priests preached social justice and organized the impoverished of South America. Social Justice is the heart of Liberation Theology and Black Liberation Theology.  Follow me below the fold for a little background on social justice, why shooting the messenger is counter productive and oh yes, the grand experiment of YES WE CAN.

Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

57 Stories.  U.S. News (done), Politics (done), Business (done), and Science (done).

Final edition until June 28th unless someone picks it up.

1 War bill helps Iraqis, may ignore Katrina victims

By JOHN MORENO GONZALES, Associated Press Writer

2 hours, 16 minutes ago

Nine Comments

Yesterday was interesting.  There were so many comments I made which I could have expanded upon…whole chapters in their own right.  What generally happens at a time like that is that nothing happens.  The comments just drift away into nothingness.

So I grabbed an assortment and decided to comment on the comments.  And stuff happens.  If it weren’t for the fact that my computer is currently crashing, I might have selected an assortment of thoughts from those responses and turned them into a poem.  Sometimes, however, stuff doesn’t happen.

For those looking for an etymological moment, I give you

woman

From late O.E. wimman (pl. wimmen), lit. “woman-man,” alteration of wifman (pl. wifmen), a compound of wif “woman” (see wife) + man “human being” (in O.E. used in ref. to both sexes; see man).

You see, the thing is that originally man (or homo in Latin) meant human being.  Wer (or Vir in Latin) meant male man.  Wif  meant female man.  They were less knowledgeable about other possibilities at that time than we should be today…one would think.

In the late 1200s (after the signing of the Magna Carta, one might notice) wer stopped being and man became the word used to refer to a male human.  Those things we said before about human beings?  They now mean males only.

Cf. Du. vrouwmens “wife,” lit. “woman-man.” The formation is peculiar to Eng. and Du. Replaced older O.E. wif, quean as the word for “female human being.” The pronunciation of the singular altered in M.E. by the rounding influence of −w−; the plural retains the original vowel.  Women’s liberation is attested from 1966; women’s rights is from 1840, with an isolated example in 1632.

Liberals need another George McGovern-and perhaps conservatives do too

In the home stretch of the ’72 campaign, [George] McGovern said, “Government has become so vast and impersonal that its interests diverge more and more from the interests of ordinary citizens.”

I was digging around the internet for statistics on liberals, conservatives, and moderates. And ran into a conservative (Bill Kauffman) writing with reverence about the left’s George McGovern. Interesting, I thought.

Especially the part where he talks about McGovern crediting George Wallace’s appeal as a candidate to “a sense of powerlessness in the face of big government, big corporations, and big labor unions.” He asked Wallace for his endorsement, though as he recalls with a smile, “He said, ‘Sena-tah, if I endorsed you I’d lose about half of my following and you’d lose half of yours.'” Well, maybe, guv-nah-but just think of the coalescent possibilities of the remaining halves.

“It is not prejudice to fear for your family’s safety or to resent tax inequities. … It is time to recognize this and to stop labeling people ‘racist’ or ‘militant,’ to stop putting people in different camps, to stop inciting one American against another,” said McGovern, who called the Wallace vote “an angry cry from the guts of ordinary Americans against a system which doesn’t seem to give a damn about what is really bothering people in this country today.”

What hits me in my gut is that last line…

…an angry cry from the guts of ordinary Americans against a system which doesn’t seem to give a damn about what is really bothering people in this country today

Senator’s Barack Obama and John McCain are working overtime to change the Electoral Map of our country in an effort to win over States that have been recently voting either Democratic or Republic in our current 2008 Presidential Election.  

Both Presidential Candidates are in serious need of changing the Electoral Map, as the polls are showing possible pick-up’s in States that have traditionally voted for one party or the other during a Presidential election.

From Washington Post:

The 2008 general election will pit the best-organized nomination campaign in the history of modern Democratic politics against the battle-tested machinery of the Republican Party, with both Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) determined to shake up an electoral map that has been virtually static over the past two elections.

Democrats enjoy a highly favorable electoral climate at this start of the general election, created by gloomy attitudes about the state of the country and economy, President Bush’s low approval ratings and negative perceptions of the GOP. But as Obama shifts his attention from his primary victory over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) to his test against McCain, the electoral map nonetheless foreshadows another highly competitive race in November.

McCain and Obama offer a rare combination of nominees able to poach on the other party’s turf. Both have proven appeal to independents. McCain will target disgruntled Clinton supporters; Obama will target disaffected Republicans. Women, Latinos and, especially, white working-class voters will find themselves courted intensely by the two campaigns.

Keep your eyes and ears peaked for this coming week, when the whittle prince makes the rounds of his final goodbyes to Old Europe, many, my guess would be, will not enthused with welcoming his horror, whoops sorry, his honor.