Right to work - or, my life as a 'scab'

When I was in high school and college, I didn't have the good sense to work part-time jobs during the school year or summer jobs that would actually look good on my resume or help me with my future career. I, in retrospect very stupidly, worked mainly construction jobs, primarily because my father worked for a steel company that supplied reinforcing steel to job sites, giving him good connections for me to get hired.
It led to some interesting jobs. One time I was on a cement crew, building curbs, gutters, and sidewalks for the company that was developing much of the industrial area known as Fulton Industrial Park in western Fulton County in Atlanta, Ga.
Another time I worked on the construction of  13-story building - not exactly a 'high rise' by Atlanta standards, but tall. They didn't quite know what to do with me on this job, because it was a union job and I was unskilled labor. I could, for example, pull nails but couldn't drive them (only carpentors' union members could drive nails); I could carry equipment for creating cinder block walls, but I could neither participate in the mixing of the concrete (despite my prior experience) nor the stacking or unstacking of concrete blocks, since that was for the masons' union.
Finally, they put me on what, at the time, was a job I enjoyed. On this site, they put together the forms for each floor on the ground (basically the support for the next floor of the building before they poured the concrete to create the actual floor), and then lifted that form in place by crane. They needed someone to ride the form into place in order to control and then release the straps once the crane had placed the next form (or floor) in place. That was my job, and it was really fun as the building got higher. The crane operator had a reputation for being crazy, and I think he liked to swing the floor while I was on it just to see me scramble to keep my balance. But when you're 18 years old, swinging seven or eight stories off the ground on a floating platform was fun.

However, because this was a union job, I was required to be in a union. My only option was the Common Labor Union, for 'unskilled' workers. I avoided the union man as long as I could, but one day he caught me with the question, "How do you stand with the union?" I paid the initial fee that started the process to being a full fledged member, but didn't want to start paying monthly dues because I was trying to save money for college.
I'd become what I thought was pretty good friends with this one carpenter - an apprentice actually. He'd been a Sears Appliance salesman who lost his job, so he joined the carpenters' union and was doing his apprenticeship on this job. I'd been working around wood all my life (my Dad's hobby was building, and he later started his own remodeling company), and I would often help this guy with the machinery and making proper cuts and even, on occasion, driving a nail when it was in a space he couldn't get to.
One day he was talking about the union, and I mentioned I hadn't joined the union. He looked at me in surprise, threw down his hammer, and walked over and said something to another guy, who threw down his hammer, and before I knew it, the entire work force of this construction site walked off the job.
"What happened?" I asked the foreman who had hired me.
"You're a scab,'' he said. "They won't work with you. They've shut down the jobsite."
"What do I do?" I asked.
He thought a minute, then said, "You're going back to school in - what? Three weeks? I'll pay you for two and you just go on home."
Once he told the union organizer I'd been let go, everyone went back to work.
I thought that was all pretty silly. But let me also say I worked another job - putting up billboards in rural Georgia (a company that led to my being involved in an exorcism, which I wrote about here) - that needed to be organized. The workers there were asked to do crazy things by management, sometimes even illegal, and weren't really paid as well as they should have been.
The concept of "right to work" is in the news a lot these days, because of unions trying to block Boeing's move to South Carolina or Gov. Mitch Daniels trying to make Indiana a 'right to work' state. Counting Indiana, there are 23 "Right to Work'' states in the union, basically in the South and Midwest. The northeast and far west are almost all "Non-Right to Work" states.
I've always worked in the South, which means in "Right to Work" states. That doesn't mean there were no unions, but that being in a union was not required to hold a job.
And when you get right down to it, "right to work" laws are all about whether workers in certain industries can be required to pay union dues or not. Simply put, "right to work" laws outlaw a union’s ability to require employees to pay union dues as a condition of employment. In states without "right to work" laws it is legal for a company and a union to agree that every employee in the bargaining unit pays union dues - whether he/she wants to be in the union or not - or gets fired.
This is important for unions, because the ability to collect union dues is how unions function, how unions are able to exist. Therefore, when workers don't pay dues, the union faces the very real possibility of ceasing to exist.
Now, I have worked in a job where a union did negotiate the contract for my group and I was treated accordingly, even thought I was not a member of the union and didn't pay union dues (this was a 'right to work' state). From the union's perspective, this was a legitimate problem: I paid nothing into the union but was entitled to both union representation in a dispute and the benefits (such as they were) of union-negotiated wages and care.
That's one of the negatives of "right to work" states: the union that has the monopoly bargaining power is required to represent non-members as well as dues-paying members. That makes the non-member a "free loader," who can expect the union representative work for him without, in essence, getting paid.
The flip side of this is - and this actually happened - I once tried to negotiate my own employment deal outside of the union agreement, figuring I was not a union-member and maybe I could cut myself a better deal. Unfortunately, the law doesn't allow for that because the union was granted the monopoly in negotiating my job position with management.
Much good has been accomplished by unions. But at the same time, despite what the unions would have you believe, there is a positive economic impact to "right to work'' laws for the workers. Those states do attract more business and incomes do, typically, rise. Unions are right that 'Right to Work'' laws entice companies to leave "Non-Right To Work" states.  But in Indiana, according to one study:

…if Indiana had adopted such a law in 1977, by 2008 per ca pita income would have been $2,925 higher—equating to $11,700 higher for a family of four.  Another way to put it: Indiana’s personal income in 2008 would have been $241.9 billion, 8.4 percent more than the actual $223.2 billion. Nearly $19 billion in annual income was lost because of Indiana’s lack of a right to work law.

It should also be pointed out that unions in "Non-Right-to-Work" states tend to back anti-free market politicians who tend to chase businesses away by creating more regulations and restrictions and increasing taxes on those companies. They make “union states” less attractive to business and, as a result, jobs - potential or real - are lost.

I know that unions have had and in some cases continue to have real value. But forcing people to pay union dues to have a job isn't what this country believes in, either.
I admired the loyalty of my friend who, upon learning I was a 'scab,' stood up for his commitment to his union and led a strike - however momentary it was. But I also feel everyone should have the right to associate or not-associate, whether work or politics or religion.
There was a good side to my union experience, however. I used those last two weeks of paid vacation to go to the beach where  ... well, that's another story for another day.

Turns out, the Staples Singers taught me all I need to know about pornography

I was thinking about pornography.
Well,  let's be clear: I wasn't thinking pornographic thoughts or images; I was thinking about pornography itself.
A friend of mine called me the other day to tell me about a young girl she is close to  (and by "young" I mean probably early 30s) whose marriage was shattered upon discovering her husband's obsession with pornography. The girl found out because she couldn't figure out why her husband had become, after so many years of marriage, abusive with her. One thing led to another and she discovered this whole other life that he was leading that she was completely unaware of, and the first step seemed to be pornography.
This really bothered my friend because it wasn't the first marriage in her circle that had been blown apart by basically the same thing. Indeed, I know of similar situations among people I know. And maybe you do, too.

When I was a kid (sigh! Here we go again) we heard about pictures of nekkid women (you might say 'naked,' but we used to say 'nekkid' - which sounds more graphic, doesn't it?). But it wasn't easy to find then (outside of certain issues of National Geographic, which wasn't quite the same). Maybe a friend's father got Playboy magazine (scandalous at the time), but I only heard about it. I did have a friend who allegedly had these playing cards he'd stumbled across somehow that had the black-and-white pictures of nekkid women on them. I say "allegedly" because I never really saw them. He kept them hidden in his basement, so terrified of someone finding out about his secret treasure that he refused to bring them out to show off. For all I know, they're still hidden above the heating duct, between two floor joists, way back in the dirt crawl space under his house.
Of course now you walk down any mall in America and can't avoid images that, in my childhood, would have been considered, well, pornographic (if we'd even known the word, which I don't think we did).
Walk down the mall? How about just turn on the computer? You can't hardly check email without some kind of picture or offer of someone 'looking' for you (and by that they really mean hoping you'd look at them).

When The Heir was just kind of coming to that age where I figured it was time to start talking about such things, with the noblest of intentions I decided to educate him about the kind of women he would run into as he grew up.
I told him there were women out there that didn't respect themselves, but that I wanted him to respect all women, whether they respected themselves or not. He asked how he would know the ones who respected themselves from the ones who didn't, and I just said that he'd know - it might be the way they dressed, or the way they acted, or their conversation, but he'd know.
It was stupid, I know. Not because it was so totally judgemental on my part (and such a guy attitude), but because from then on, whenever we were out in public, The Little Heir would walk along beside me, scanning every female he saw and then, in a sincere little voice that was just a little too loud, ask me, "Dad - does that woman respect herself? How about that one? Does she respect herself?"
You can't imagine the kind of looks I got (and, I admit, deserved).
I realize now of course that I had it backward. I should have been teaching The Heir - and myself - that the issue of respect was internal: the only respect I should have been concerned with was that The Heir learned to respect himself.
We had a later conversation about horror movies. A bunch of his friends had it in their heads to go see some slasher film, and The Heir was upset that The Trophy Wife and I wouldn't let him go. When he asked why, I told him that he needed to guard his mind, that whatever images he allowed in their would be there forever. The things he was likely to see in that movie (and others like it) would stay with him; once seen, there would be no way to erase them.
(Selfishly, of course, I was concerned about nightmares. I didn't want him going to sleep and waking up screaming, and then coming into my room and getting into bed with The Trophy Wife and I, afraid to go to sleep.)
Much later - to my chagrin - I realized the same truth about horror movies would apply to pornography: once the images or ideas are in your head, you can't get them out.
Complicating the problem is that it doesn't take long before the people in those images are no longer real people. Instead of being somebodies' daughter or sister they become objects of self-gratification, less than human. Nobody cares what the person in the picture thinks or believes or reads or listens to; nobody cares how she spends her holidays or what her dreams are. She becomes an object - a vehicle, if you will, like a car or train or plane whose sole purpose is to 'take you there.'
To think that the actors or models might have real emotions or feelings ruins the image. After all, cars don't have feelings and emotions, only a machine-like purpose.
Some people take care of their cars. Some people abuse them. Some people take care of the people in their lives; some people abuse them.
I know, I know - people have free will. Who am I to tell them it's not "respectful?"
And you're right. It's not my place.
My only responsibility is to respect myself - which includes how I allow myself to see others.
Don't misunderstand. I'm as tempted as the next guy when it comes to attractive women. And yes, I admit I've been inside a strip club in my life. But I was always so self-conscious that it was just uncomfortable.
I remember going with a friend of mine, way back before I was married. It was his bachelor party, and the 'best man' took us all to a strip club. We went inside for awhile, but after a few minutes I slipped outside where, to my surprise, I found the soon-to-be groom. We never said why we were outside. We just sat on the steps of the club and started talking, then laughing, then telling stories (lies, or near-lies), and generally having a great time.
I am probably messing this story up, but I remember reading C. S. Lewis (I think it was) put it this way: imagine going into a fine restuarant, and ordering the most expensive meal on the menu, having the waiter bring it to your table with a cover over it, and after much teasing and drama he pulls the cover off, and this incredible meal sits there on my plate and I look at it, admire it from all angles, joke about how good I bet it is - then pay for it and walk out, never having tasted it.
You'd think I was stupid, wouldn't you? But isn't it the same thing?
At some point, you get frustrated. And frustration leads, too often, to anger, and perhaps violence. While what you wanted, in the beginning, was something good and healthy, now it has become an obsession and you don't care how you get it. And it becomes wrong.
The actor, Paul Newman - considered a really good-looking guy - was once asked about the women that made themselves available to him, and if he wasn't ever tempted. Newman, married to a good Southern girl and a pretty actress named Joanne Woodward, answered this way: "Sure, I'm aware of it. I'm not dead. But why would I settle for hamburger when I have steak at home?"
Now, Woodward happened to be in the next room when he said it, and came storming into the room, unhappy at being referred to as if she were a piece of meat.
It was obvious they respected each other.
And themselves.
Turns out, the Staple Singers had it right: "If you don't respect yourself ain't nobody going to give a good cahoot ..."
Ah, let's just let Mavis tell it:

OK, that was supposed to be a video link of Mavis Staples. Maybe it didn't work. If not, and you want to hear one of the great soul singers of all time, click here

 Respect yourself.

The spirit - make that Spirit - of change

You don't know how often I find myself laughing at the tone of my own politically-infused blogs.
When I was young, I was practically a socialist: a long-haired, anti-establishment, and intellectually arrogant (embarrassingly so because I wasn't that smart).
I believed in things like the Zero Growth movement, which said we should stop the creation of new things until we make full use of the stuff we already have. My prime example was railroad tracks: I knew how many miles of tracks there were in this country that were rusting, and would argue against building bigger and faster highways and expanding airports when we could modernize existing railroads and introduce high-speed rails.
I believed in ideas that compensation for top executives should be tied to a scale based on the lowest-paid employee. That scale, I remember distinctly, was that the top executive should not be allowed to make more than 20 times that of the lowest paid employee, believing that a rise at the top should also elevate those at the bottom.
I was something of a libertarian, too. I believed our freedom meant I shouldn't have to stand for the Star Spangled Banner or the Pledge of Allegiance, that refusing to show that respect honored the Independence our country was founded on and lived up to the idea that "all men are created equal."
I was a Jimmy Carter fan long after even most Jimmy Carter fans had fled. I was a Southern Democrat, a "Dixiecrat'' or "Yellow-Dog Democrat" or whatever you wanted to call it.
So even now, to admit I've been voting Republican is kind of like, as a journalist, having to admit I've become a public relations flak. I'm still a little self-conscious about it, particularly around some of my oldest friends.
At the same time, I'm self-conscious and a little embarrassed at some of the things I used to believe.
Here's the thing, though: even though I've changed, there are still traces of the old me present in the new me. I still believe that the things I buy should be used up before I discard them, which is why I drive used cars until they practically fall apart, and I walk at night with an old 'disc-man' rather than an iPod (or whatever is the thing now) .... and of course, some people would say it's just an excuse for being cheap, but I'd like to think part of it is my old "Zero Growth'' ideas that are still with me.
Yet I have changed. We all do. Because we're all different, we all change in different directions and in different ways at different times.
I thought of this as I read the Apostle Paul, who lived in a time of great change.
Paul, as you can tell if you've read his letters, lived in a fledgling, emerging Christian culture where people worshipped God in different ways. Some worshipped on Sunday because that was the day of resurrection; some people still worshipped on Saturday because of Old Testament tradition of "remembering the Sabbath and keeping it holy."
And some "rested" on the seventh day, as God did, and worshiped on Sunday, the day of resurrection - for which I'm thankful, because it led to the compromise that gave us the idea of the weekend to bridge one week to another. (although there is very little 'resting' on Saturday and not nearly as much 'worshipping' on Sunday as there used to be).
Some Christians in those days were basically vegetarians, because the only meat they could get were left over after being sacrificed to idols and then sold (because, well, those 'gods' didn't consume them) and they didn't think it right to eat meat offered to gods. Some Christians didn't give a rip about false gods, they just wanted to eat meat and believed offering meat to gods was like offering meat to a tree or a stone - it wasn't going to be consumed, so why shouldn't they consume it? (Plus, it was cheap).
These kind of differences are throughout Paul's letters, and you can't help but get the feeling Paul rolls his eyes at so many of them, saying "Stuff like this - do it however you feel best, I don't care. Just do it for the Lord."
And he said, "Quit arguing over who is doing it the right way. Do whatever you do to honor God, not to look like you're 'holier' than the next guy and that you have some special insight into how God wants to be worshipped."
Just as Jesus is able to save people different from me, Jesus is able - over time - to change me into a different person. I know, because He has, and I'm sure (I pray) He's not finished.
But this isn't just about changing. Paul taught us that the power of the Gospel is in that while it changes us, it also causes us to care about people who are different than ourselves.  It happens at different times and in different measures for different people, but I know it happens.
And we have to allow people to change - even if we may not like or agree with how they've changed.
My wife and my daughter are very aware of other people, very sensitive to them and their insecurities, their embarrassments, their feelings. I have had to learn that, and it hasn't been easy. As people who knew me in my youth probably remember, I could be cruel - funny, but in retrospect, cruel. And I regret that.
But I'm changing.
Thank God.
Not me.

Obama and Lincoln: if one president is going to quote another, at least get it right

Context.

We all know how important context is when trying to understand history. Or The Bible. Or the Constitution. Or NCAA rules. Or the instructions your father gave you of what he expected you to do in exchange for certain privileges.

We all know of cases where people pull a verse of the Bible out because it sounds like it supports their particular point of view, but when you read the chapter or book the verse was pulled from, you realize it didn't mean what they said it means after all.

Monday in President Obama's State of the Union, he quoted President Lincoln as a way to throw a bone to the Republican Party (which, oddly enough, has done more for minorities - see Emancipation Proclamation and Civil Rights) and yet continue to make his point for big brother-style government.

Obama quoted Lincoln this way: "I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed: That Government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more."

Except the closest I can find (and other historians who have researched the quote seem to agree) is a quote from Lincoln that actually says: "The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves in their separate and individual capacities."

That, to me, is just different enough from the point President Obama was trying to make so as to change the context of the quote. Given what the government, over time, has convinced the American public are "entitlements," Obama seems to argue that Lincoln agreed Government should only do for citizens what they cannot do better by themselves.
I read Lincoln's actual quote as saying Government should do what people need to have done but "cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves ..." "
Now, maybe I'm just being picky, but I see a difference there.
Particularly when you go on to read the rest of Lincoln's speech, entitled "The Nature and Object of Government, with Special Reference to Slavery.”

And in it, Lincoln also said:
"Equality in society alike beats inequality, whether the latter be of the British aristocratic sort or of the domestic slavery sort. We know Southern men declare that their slaves are better off than hired laborers among us. How little they know whereof they speak!

There is no permanent class of hired laborers amongst us. Twenty-five years ago I was a hired laborer. The hired laborer of yesterday labors on his own account to-day, and will hire others to labor for him to-morrow. Advancement—improvement in condition—is the order of things in a society of equals. As labor is the common burden of our race, so the effort of some to shift their share of the burden onto the shoulders of others is the great durable curse of the race."

Unfortunately, government - and this began way before President Obama - has created a class that has to decide whether it's better to 'labor' or just continue to live off the rest of us.
One of the things we hear regarding illegal immigrants is that "those people" do the jobs Americans refuse to do, and without them who would do those hardest or dirtiest or lowest paying of jobs?
That's ridiculous.
The free market dictates that if those jobs need to be done, employers will pay whatever it takes to hire people to do them. So by not having illegals to bully into working for next to nothing, it might actually help the economy by raising wages!
That is, unless what is offered in wage is still less than what the government pays people not to work, to forget that "labor is the common burden of our race" but that some continue to try to "shift their share of the burden onto the shoulders of others."

President Obama is hardly the first president or politician or congressman or preacher or teacher or parent or neighbor to take something out of context in hopes of making a point.

Certainly he won't be the last.
That's why it's important for you and me and the rest of us to educate ourselves, to make our own decisions, to debate in the public square as to the way we believe is best for all of us to live together in peace.

And remember that a little context can make a big difference.

Instant reaction on the Eye of the Newt

It is no mystery as to why Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primary.
For all of his flaws (and there are many), there are two traits Americans have historically loved: underdogs and fighters.
There is no question Gingrich is a fighter. He is unapologetically grandiose, a man of incredible confidence and of grand ideas. I've read most of his books, and loved them all for their passion, their sense of history, and their sense of righteousness.
In his debates and speeches he has gained a following by taking it to the media, to the Democratic party, to the President of the United States, to anyone who challenges him. He is brilliant in his ability to think on his feet, his grasp of issues, and even when faced with a hostile audience (the black church in South Carolina), Gringrich stands behind what he believes and doesn't back down.
Amazingly, Gingrich has become the underdog in this political season. The more people dig up the many (and at times egregious) errors of his past and try to throw them in his face, the more support he gets from the American public who, down deep, loves to see public figures fall but also believe enough is enough, and grow angry when they think a man is getting kicked repeatedly for past mistakes.
The irony, for the Democrats at least, is that they are the ones who in the 1990s preached that President Clinton's sexual immorality was not relevant. And of course even some of our most beloved presidents from both parties are now known to have not been able to keep their marriage vows.
Funny that it matters now - and good that it does. The Republican party has prided itself as taking up the mantel of 'family values' and holding themselves to traditional standards while the Democrats have prided themselves on embracing non-traditional values. It is important that those values are kept in front of us as the standard we aspire to.
Rick Santorum, to me, is more faithful to those traditional conservative values than Gingrich and more consistent. As I told my son in a recent discussion, Gingrich portrays all the right values, Santorum lives them.
And Santorum has been a fighter, too. In the early debates, in particular, I was frustrated that he was always on the edge of the stage (a sign that he wasn't being taken seriously) and got so little air time. Santorum expressed that frustration frequently, too.
The problem is that when Santorum fights back, he sounds like he's whining. He can't help it. It's his facial expression, his tone of voice.
When Gingrich fights back, he sounds like Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, or a John Wayne-character who is willing to walk out on the street alone to stand up to the bad guys. And he resonates. And so I am grudgingly willing to accept Gingrich's personal infidelity, because I am calloused when it comes to the personal lives of people in power and repeatedly fall for the power of his vision.
My concern over Gingrich comes down too two issues.
One may sound strange, but I'm afraid he might be so good in a debate against President Obama that he actually turns the President into a sympathetic character. He can come across as an intellectual bully, and believe it or not I fear that could work against him.
The other is that those two characteristics that make Gingrich so admirable are also what I fear in him as a president. His record as Speaker - while he accomplished so much that is admirable and lead to some of the great gains of the Clinton presidency - is that he didn't play well with others. He is so confident in his own intellect that those around him have, in the past, complained that he won't listen to his advisers.
The fighter that I admire in Gingrich is not so admirable when he's fighting with his own advisers and staff. It's destructive. A President needs to have people around him who have different ideas, and the President needs to be able to listen, to consider, and sometimes even be willing to concede.
Which is why I continue to support Santorum.
But, to quote a certain bright young man who spoke to the Washington Post here, "That’s amazing we (Santorum) pulled (Iowa) out,’’ said Roecker Melick, 19, of Birmingham, Ala. If his first choice doesn’t prevail, though, Melick said, his Plan B is Gingrich. “He has a questionable personal life,’’ he allowed, in answer to a friend who was arguing that that was disqualifying. “But who knows more about Washington?”
Indeed, given the alternatives, I'll take my chances on an independent fighter who has ideas as grand as the country he loves ...
Almost as much as he loves himself.

The unintended legacy of great wealth

One of the luxuries of living the way I do right now is that I get to read a lot. At any given time, I'm reading several different books: currently by my bed, there is a Daniel Silva novel, a collection of Fred Craddock sermons in book form, David Mamet's "The Secret Knowledge,'' and I'm reading through the book of Jeremiah.
I think the reason I tend to read multiple books at the same time is to make each of them last longer. I love starting a new book; love being drawn into a good book; and begin to dread it when I cross that mid-point where I am closer to the end of the book than the beginning.
What is really cool, though, is when things I'm reading seem to tie together.
I had one of those experiences the other day.
I was reading in Jeremiah, where the prophet is railing against the sins of his countrymen (which is pretty much all of Jeremiah's writings, come to think of it). But this one verse struck me: Jeremiah 5:27-28 says, "... they have become rich and powerful and have grown fat and sleek. Their evil deeds have no limit; they do not plead the case of the fatherless to win it, they do not defend the rights of the poor. ..."
What struck me was that line, "they do not plead the case of the fatherless to win it." It would appear that the rich and powerful mentioned did indeed go about pleading the case of the fatherless, which would be a good thing. But they apparently did not do so to "win" their case.
So why did they do it? Why make a great show of standing up for someone when you're really not intent upon "winning?"
That's when I came across a quote by a writer with whom I am not familiar, Eric Hoffer, who wrote: "A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business."
There are a lot of ways to go with that, but reading the two passages in the same day created a connection for me.
Maybe this is a stretch (but it is my blog), but I started wondering who those people are whose own business might be so meaningless that they start trying to mind the affairs of others.
Who in our world often seems to want to tell the rest of us how to live? How about the so-called "elite" - the children and grandchildren of the ultra wealthy (the Kennedys come to mind; the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts as in the form of CNN's Anderson Cooper).
It's almost as if, since their future security had already been established by the hard work of their fathers or grandfathers or great-grandfathers, what was there for them to do but look around them and decide they know how the rest of us ought to live?
There is nothing these people can do that lives up to match the enormous accomplishments of their heritage, yet they have unlimited opportunities. And as Hoffer also wrote, "Unlimited opportunities can be as potent a cause of frustration as a lack of opportunities,'' and very often those people born to great privilege decide they make their mark by "helping mankind," - a good idea, except that they seem to always end upworking against the very beliefs or traits that drove their ancestors to levels of success that allowed their progeny the opportunity to be bored.
So you get the descendants of great capitalists attacking capitalism; you get children of great wealth-makers attacking people who are trying to create their own great wealth.
The history of revolutions is not of poor people rising up to throw off their supposed shackles; poor people are too busy trying to make something of their lives to start a revolution. No, it is almost always the ideas of the children of privilege who decide it is their calling to stir up the masses to revolution.
Karl Marx was born to a wealthy family (his mother's side of the family eventually founded Phillips Electronics), and lived basically as a leech off of Engels. Mao's father started out as a poor peasant who worked his way up to becoming a prosperous farmer. Castro was the illegitimate son of a wealthy farmer, and while there was stigma attached to that, Castro's father did pull strings to get young Fidel a quality education.
Anyway, I'm not writing a book on this. Those are just off the top of my head. I'm kind of just thinking out loud.
After the Johnstown Flood in Pennsylvania, the Andrew Carnegie crowd decided it was the responsibility of the wealthy to look after the less-fortunate (perhaps penance for their role - real or imagined - in the cause of that disastrous flood). But of course, "looking after'' too often meant "looking down on," even if they'd never admit it.
So the question becomes, do these people really take up their causes to win, or just to satisfy their own need to feel they matter?
Now, the problem with all this is that all of us are called to get involved - feeding the hungry, providing shelter to the homeless, visiting prisoners, treating the aliens among us with respect.
So where's does the line get crossed between caring and, as Jeremiah accuses the wealthy, "not pleading the case of the fatherless to win it?"
Maybe when we're actively engaged in creating our own lives while working to help those around us in their lives along the way. That should, theoretically, keep us from feeling superior; after all, we recognize we're all in need together, and in approving the condition of the 'fatherless,' we make our own lives better as well.

The clan of the elevator

One of the hazards of being me is that sometimes even the most ordinary and mundane activities strike me as significant - although I am rarely able to communicate exactly what that significance is.
Take, for example, riding elevators.
Not long ago I go on an elevator in a rather fancy hotel with another guy who, like me, was going to his room. I punched the button for my floor, and then he inserted his room key into the special slot that gave him access to one of the top floors, "secure" floors that implied some kind of status for being able to stay there.
In fact, I said as much.
"Wow, big timer, huh?" I said, trying to sound pleasant and funny; after all, this guy actually looked like he could have been someone important and I didn't want to blow the chance at what could be a meaningful conversation, the way I did when I found myself riding an elevator with Jesse Jackson in 1989.
He laughed, and said, "All it means is that I have stayed in this hotel too many times and they reward me with some kind of upgrade."
Nice guy.
But it got me thinking about the mini-universe of elevators. Or if not "universe,'' then mini-culture.
By that I mean I have started watching the way people interact - or don't interact - when on an elevator. It's interesting, because rarely are so many human beings confined in such a small space for a singular purpose (either going up or going down).
There is a certain immediate sizing up of people on an elevator, just as I did. We look for signs - the room key that allows access to a floor denied the rest of us, for example. But maybe it's the way people are dressed, the way they carry themselves. There are people who immediately move to the back but stay in the middle, as opposed to the people who move to the back and one of the corners or the people who move to the side but stay near the front or the people who stay near the front, blocking others from either getting on or off the elevator without somehow getting around this person.
There are the people who stand still and keep their eyes above the elevator door. These are the people who focus on the changing floor numbers. It can't be because they're afraid of missing their floor; the elevator will stop if they've pushed the proper button. But it's a way of having something to do, of finding something to stay occupied.
Then there are the people who look at the floor, or check their phones, or nervously glance around at every one else on the elevator before settling on "their" spot.
There are people who close their eyes. I have no idea why.
Sometimes people get on an elevator and feel the need to establish themselves immediately. They move away from the other people if they can. They check their watch to indicate they are on a schedule. They grimace, as if thinking something really important.
Then there might be that overly friendly person who decides to talk - not to anyone specifically, but to everyone in general.
And who hasn't gotten on an elevator and found themselves in a group where everyone knew each other, but not you? I was on an elevator in New Orleans and everyone that got on was laughing and talking about meeting in some room and ordering food or bringing drinks. It sounded fun, and I'd like to have been included, but of course I wasn't. I was an outsider - the proverbial 'alone in a crowded room.'
I remember a story that has been told about many people who fit the description, but I first heard it about Wilt Chamberlain, one of the most dominant athletes of all-time. He was over 7-foot tall, massive, a world class basketball player who also was a collegiate track athlete and later a world-class beach volleyballer; he remains the only man in professional basketball history to score 100 points in a game.
The story goes that two well-to-do women in New York City, in their furs and diamonds, stepped on an elevator with Wilt, who was holding his rather large dog on a leash. They didn't know who he was, and so they stepped aside and away from him. After the elevator door closed and they started moving, Wilt barked out "Sit!" and the women immediately sat on the floor of the elevator.
They heard Wilt start chuckling in that deep, bass laugh he had. "Ladies,'' he said, "I was talking to my dog."
The more I watch, the more I realize how people get on elevators and arrange themselves not only on conscious but also unconscious patterns of deference. There are unconscious arrangements based on gender, size, age, apparent status based on dress or attitude, desirability, sometimes even race or perceived threat.
And with every new person that gets on the elevator, who joins into the mix, the previously established order of the elevator changes. As people get on and off, it changes the atmosphere, the order, the balance of the elevator.
This is how we are as human beings in our larger cultural interaction, isn't it? We make snap judgments on how best to get along for however long we're together.
Most of us live off these judgments. We express our preferences instantly, without first engaging in discussion or research or any of the accepted means. It's just done.
Culture evolves that way. The predictability of culture comes only after we've already established the unconscious order, and that order is then - unless changed by discourse or research - passed on until it becomes an accepted part of the cultural order.
We can say we're all the same and believe we're all the same, but the truth is, we're all aware - sometimes painfully so - of inherent differences between us. And no amount of re-education or philosophy or religious belief ever changes that, no matter how much we insist otherwise.
They key is learning how to adapt as we ride along, to fit together in a cohesive community that learns how best to get along.

Or maybe it's just riding on an elevator and thinking too much.
Oh - and here's one more for you. When the elevator doors close, and I'm all alone (or almost alone), I've been known to do what my family calls "the elevator dance." You'll never see it; but if you're in a certain elevator in St. Louis, ask my buddy Grant McGowan. He's done it a time or two, too.