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Roosting Roosters

3.27.08 @ 12:01AM

TWO WRONGS DON'T MAKE A...
Re: Lisa Fabrizio's Is the Rev. Wright Right?:

Ms. Fabrizio writes a very good column this time. She is undoubtedly correct in her analysis of the situation. I am concerned, however with one of her points. I believe that our modern society MAY have left the point too far in the rear view mirror.

Lisa writes; "We used to salute as 'Captains of Industry,' risk-takers who invested their own money in order to found solid companies which used their profits to create jobs for all classes of people. These men drove the machine that fueled the American dream."

Lisa, I am not convinced that we do not still salute them, on the rare occasions that we can find one. I am also not sure that there are enough of them left to count on the fingers of one hand without fingers left over. It seems to me that you would be hard pressed to identify an individual or company that invested significant sums of their own money in some new idea or process. At least not without a considerable contribution, in the form of subsidies and grants from state and national levels of government, our tax dollars at work, whether we like it or not. When was the last wonder drug brought to market without government funding for research and development. When was the last energy source or system developed without significant government funding. Even the Internet was developed in university labs by researchers that were in whole or in part funded by government grants -- the grants were not specifically for the Internet, but money in fungible. And these are just examples. I would argue that the point applies across the spectrum of business, industry, and innovation.

Lisa, please identify a dozen or so current "Captains of Industry" that are risk takers. They are, for the most, part folks that went to school until they had their MBAs in hand. They then hired on to some semi-large to gigantic corporation and rose within the ranks on bureaucratic skills, along with making good safe decisions that could not get them in trouble. In due time, after serving their time in the ranks, they were given the keys to the executive elevator, and they were on their way, they had broken through. Now they could sign on to their executive contracts that guaranteed good salaries, giant bonuses, plentiful stock options, and no take backs for poor performance. If fact, if you manage to lose money, to tank your company, you will be released from the Captain's chair with a severance package that would have made King Midas steal off like a thief in the night. They are, too often, little more than the private sector equivalent of a GS-18 or so in the federal Civil Service. Think the auto companies, think ENRON, think Wall Street, think the whole financial industry, think on and on.

Would you seriously argue that FedEx or UPS is the same excellently run company that it started as, that they have not deteriorated from the start up risk takers? Are you seriously suggesting that Sam Walton is not doing 9000 RPMs in his grave to see what WalMart has become? Do you even remember when everything sold in WarMart was made in the USA? Did you even know that Mr. Sam used to visit each and every store every year, and that he opined that if you could be reached on your office phone, you were not doing your job? If you can't think of a hundred more examples, then you aren't trying.

Now I don't completely blame the corporate executives alone. A good start on the problem would be to disbar 25% of the lawyers in America and reduce the admissions to law school by 50% per year ad infinitum. Nevertheless, I would suggest that the people and companies that fulfill the perimeters that you lay out in the quoted paragraph above are a rare breed indeed. The folks in the very top strata of business today are a very hard group to love and admire, even for a hard core, Milton Friedman, Conservative, Capitalist like myself.

But hey, the rest of the column is great.
-- Ken Shreve

Excellent Lisa! "The truth will set you free!" This is the kind of dialog that needs to be discussed in the MSM in order to bring it into the nation's consciousness and dispel the many falsehoods about which party is really to blame for so many of societies' ills. Unfortunately, the falsehoods being perpetuated by the dishonest media is by the very same MSM (that should be looking out for us).
-- John Nelson
Hebron, Connecticut

Fabrizio makes good use of the phrase "chickens have come home to roost" by reversing its original meaning and also Wright's intent. She points out that the terrorists attacked on 9/11 because the U.S. is promoting good values in the world, values that they oppose.

It is worth mentioning, however, an obvious point I have not noticed being mentioned by the media. This phrase, as Wright surely knew, had been used by Malcolm X (sound familiar?) when JFK was assassinated. And Malcolm X added: "Chickens coming home to roost never made me sad. It only made me glad." It was too much even for Elijah Muhammad, who banned him from public speaking for 90 days.

The sentiments of Malcolm X resembled those of Vietnam's First Lady who seemed to assert that JFK earned his assassination by what he did to the Diem brothers. She meant: live by the sword, die by the sword; and she and Malcolm X meant: I'm not sad about what happened. What Wright seemed to mean was that the U.S. had earned and provoked the 9/11 terrorist attack by acting with bad values in the world. Bad karma. Inevitable result.

For a similar echo of Malcolm X, there is the Nov-Dec 2001 issue of The Link that included published responses by various authors to 9/11. Edward J. Dillon said of the 9/11 events: "The chickens have come home to roost." He then also affirmed a street way of saying this about 9/11 that he had heard: "What goes around, comes around."

Wright likely got carried away by his own performer approach to preaching and by the dramatic effect he knew the awful words of Malcolm X would have as he entertained the people. His style seems to be resemble both Red Foxx and Sherman Hemsley as George Jefferson. The preacher as clown.

Regarding Obama blaming evil on corporations and "the System," recall that a tendency in the three liberations theologies (black, feminist, and Third World) is to overemphasize sinful social structures. A similar overemphasis on racism, sexism, and classism is promoted by post-modernism. It's true that a Catholic cardinal emphasized what might be called "social sins" in his recent highlighting of current new sins. But he did not intend to violate the warning by Pope John Paul II that an overemphasis on structures inappropriately denigrates the core of evil: individual sins -- whether committed by whites, browns or blacks, by males or females, by rich, middle class, or poor.
-- Richard L.A. Schaefer
Dubuque, Iowa

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