SmallBites Friday Five 5-21-21
20-30m – Review the stuff you slept through in econ and government with this Lumen course. Approach the information with a clear mind and decide, if you could choose, whether you would still choose capitalism, based solely on the description of its merits.
15-20m – This is helpful for those thinking the socio-economic card is in play rather than the race card. Read this short pamphlet with your classes. Enslavement and forced labor might be responsible for the cheap jeans you are wearing.
10-15m – Watch this epic von Mises vs. Marx rap battle from The American Institute for Economic Research. If you can decide which is better by listening to their arguments, let me know, because it seems there are fine points on both sides. The big take-away is that neither system is inherently good or evil.
5-10m – Figure out why people are crying Marxism with this history.com article on Karl Marx, who he was, who he became and how he became our Big Enemy. Watch the video as well. Spoiler alert, it all started with him spurring on workers to organize for fair wages and conditions, and even advocating that the working class be the ruling class (gasp) since they were doing all the work anyway.
0-5m – Read last week’s blog and choose to include everyone’s stories in your teaching. You may not embrace every part of CRT, but you can’t reject the part that advocates for maintaining a world view that embraces diverse historical perspectives and cultural ideologies.
After I had spent every school year being taught about the supreme democracy practiced in the US contrasted with the evil ways of the Red Commies, Sting, in one pop song, taught me to consider the fact that the Russians love their children too. I remember the song and how it caused me to think about whether nations could be good and evil. “There is no monopoly of common sense on either side of the political fence”, he sang. The poignancy accelerated my burgeoning quest for truths and answers to my through-a-glass-darkly questions, yet unasked.
Commies were evil, and the people who headed up sundown towns, burned Black Wall Street and put young Native American children in “Indian Schools” to “Kill the Indian and save the man”, were the good guys. Somehow, the duplicity all came crashing down to the message in this one song. As the questions began to form, I started to seek answers and to realize that no one system is inherently good or evil. I remember thinking that Jesus and the parable of the fishes and loves of bread seemed a lot like communism or socialism. Now, am I ready to trade free market living for a spot in Cuba? No, not even for a 1955 Chrysler convertible. But, do I think that the same greed that makes communism an ill-advised system also makes capitalism an unfair system for the common man? Mebbe so.
Many of the murky questions have formed over the years; why does the wealth gap never close, if America is “the land of opportunity”? Why wasn’t back pay given to the enslaved when they were freed? Why haven’t we done more to honor treaties and land agreements that were dishonorably handled with Indigenous nations? Yes, many questions but not many more answers. And if I come up with answers, what will my part be in the solution?
This article is less a spot for you to pull information and answers from, and more a place for you to begin questioning. Is our way the only way? Are our systems right and the systems that do not mirror our own wrong? Or have we been given the blinders of indoctrination so that we can see our systems for right in order to be satisfied with their offerings?
Only you can decide how much questioning you can take before feeling uncomfortable and perhaps even disloyal. My ask this week is that you wade just a little ways from your shore of comfort and take a look at what’s out there. Maybe, just maybe, you can see our system as flawed, as any human system is. Maybe you’ll learn to accept those flaws and maybe that will make you a better patriot than those who insist on looking away. Ask a few questions, consider a few ideas that are new to you. At the least, you’ll learn something you did not know. At most, you may gain understanding for a different perspective and that is a win for us all.