Herz for . . .

So this shut down has me thinking, and I'm probably about to make myself all sorts of unpopular, but that's better than unknown.

The problem here is not the thousands of Americans normally employed by the government who are out of work.

The problem is the loss of an ethic, if it was ever really there. Maybe it's just what we were told. Maybe it's the new deal, and maybe it started long before that. Maybe it's a competing ethic, but one that should not be attributed to the government.

Our Judaeo-Christian tradition certainly exhorts us to take care of our neighbor, but it never suggests that we have a right to our neighbor's support. We are taught to tithe, to support our priests, and can choose whether we want to do so or not. We have a long history of assistance and care, but no homeless person ever had a claim of support from his church, or synagogue, or the salvation army, or the countless charity hospitals that so many of our modern institutions grew out of.

What America has historically offered is a chance for people to make their own way, often against daunting odds. America became great on the backs of people who just wanted a fair shot, or even an unfair one. Just give us a chance . . .

And it's not just Judaeo-Christian, but the protestant exhortations to self-reliance, to each carrying his own burden. This isn't to say that people did not willingly take on the burdens of others as well. They did, but it was mutual aid societies, and unions, and philanthropists giving libraries and hospitals. And it was good.

This is insane. 'Iso,' a Deadly New Synthetic Opioid, Has Hit American Streets. If we'd just left heroin legal, we wouldn't be playing this "whack-a-mole" with ever more dangerous drugs.

I get it. Ideally life should be our drug, but somehow we haven't structured our society so that is most people's experience. Some people will throw their lives away. Some will do this with drugs. Let's at least make it legal, make it cheap, and make it as safe as possible.

It's kind of hard to make a difference with someone if he's already dead because of crappy drugs.

So I've been thinking and reading and reading and thinking, and letting myself get disgusted and inspired, and hopeful. And there are a lot of thoughts, and I don't know if I'll get to all of them, or if they'll come out in a way that they make a difference, but out they come.

Libertarianism

I spent some time recently with an article called 75 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice. The 75 things fell roughly into four categories: criminal system reform, "see something, say something," learn/expand your horizons, and make it right.

So this article is a specific view of the how to make it right, starting with how we've made it wrong: it seems to me if we'd been a little more libertarian in our outlook, we might never have built so much of the system that has such an unduly negative effect on the black man.

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They say the banks are flush with cash, probably better capitalized than they've ever been. So I'd like to throw some questions out since I don't feel quite competent to comment on monetary policy.

I do have a bias: I don't have too much sympathy for banks, or for much of Wall Street, or the many financial players who find a way to profit off of thin air. It particularly bothered my father that so many of these are Jews, not that it has anything to do with this.

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The following comment was made on Facebook by Alex Shapiro. I have no idea who he is, but I couldn't help responding, so I share with you:

My favorite part about the Coronavirus school closures is the extreme panic from communities and parents. “Where will kids eat?” “How will I provide child care?” “How will my kids socialize and see other people?” “How will I maintain a normal life and work routine?”

So go ahead and remember this.

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