Caring Democracy

In 1991 there were articles in Europe’s press about the aging population. How would 1 million thirty-somethings care for five million 80 year olds? You’d have medical bills, hospice costs, transportation costs, and countless other expenses in caring for the elderly, all on the shoulders of people who have children to support. But there is an advantage; you’ll have more mentors to care for the younger generation.

Caring Democracy discusses the origins of the idea that the politician is responsible for the nation’s social progress, as well as economic. Though not mentioned in this book, you can see examples with New York City in the 1960’s, when the governor, Nelson Rockefeller, increased funding for public arts and housing. Then again, he did create the Rockefeller drug laws and their outrageously high sentences for drug offenders, but I guess every politician is allowed to make a mistake.

The author of this book refers to Marion Young’s “social connection” to show how easy it is to contribute to the problem by hypocrisy. For instance, a group of university administrators might claim their school is dedicated to progress, while at the same time their sports team’s jerseys are made with sweatshop labor. The hypocrite liberal is unfortunately rather common today, especially in New York City. Take as an example the Village Voice newspaper, which claims to care about the people, but in the last 20 years got the bulk of its advertising through ads for prostitution. In addition, the Village Voice never made any real effort to recruit and train minority writers, which is exactly what Andrew Young did with his City Sun from 1984-1996.

What Caring Democracy doesn’t answer, however, is the reasons for the US v Europe discrepancy in the aspect of caring for the population. Countries like Italy, Finland, and the Netherlands have fewer people to care for, in addition to them being smaller. Their defense budget is miniscule compared to that of the USA, so there’s more money to set aside for social welfare. Lastly, these European countries are homogenous, so there’s no debate going on in the legislature about minority issues. Here in the USA, politicians waste time trying to prevent same-sex couples from having civil unions, then they waste time trying to ban hijabs in courtrooms, then they’ll honk like a bunch of geese about how they want to remove Darwin’s theories from the public school curriculum. While all this is going on, teenage girls of their own faith and color are getting pregnant, and forget about birth control, because if there’s anything more wicked and immoral than believing in evolution, it’s getting an abortion.