Beyond the free market

[ellisonz]

1. Pretty boilerplate abstract Harvard-style rhetoric.

"Instead, freedom was achieved when citizens were able to live meaningful lives."

What is a meaningful life? He doesn't get that this goes beyond "public policies that would protect individuals from extreme insecurity and exploitation." The issue is not public policy, the issue is spiritual, about how we allow ourselves to produce our own exploiters, or why so many accept this. If what freedom was being conceived is was so obvious, we wouldn't be struggling with the opposition in regards to the basic question of individual responsibility. I would argue that we do indeed need a "spiritual insurrection" against not just economic exploitation, but rather the exploitation of the soul in conditioning exploitation, otherwise there will be no change at all. People have to want to stop exploitation for its own sake, and start wanting something better. The question has always been, and remains one of morality and not economics/politics; we as a nation must ask what world we are prepared to accept.

I make no pretension to patriotism. So long as my voice can be heard on this or the other side of the Atlantic, I will hold up America to the lightning scorn of moral indignation. In doing this, I shall feel myself discharging the duty of a true patriot; for he is a lover of his country who rebukes and does not excuse its sins. It is righteousness that exalteth a nation while sin is a reproach to any people.

Frederick Douglass, Speech, "Love of God, Love of Man, Love of Country," 1847.