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raveneye: interesting scenario. a bit unnerving.
the more general question this church-as-charity raises for me is that this model was dominant in the 19th century and failed miserably.
the assumptions then seem like those of the bushpeople today: that poverty is a function of individual moral failings, therefore it made some sense to enlist the aid of churches for redemption at various levels. then, as now for the american right, the correlate is that there is nothing necessarily wrong about the operation of capitalism as a system, no real problem with the destruction of the lives of those exlcuded from holding capital. the invisible hand mythology dovetailed nicely into a christian mythology. what is real is rational because the invisible hand of god says so.
these assumptions were, and are (more so now) insane.
the shift back toward this already-antiquated, already-proven-ineffectual model slides across a wholly irrational view of the welfare state, how it came into being, what its meanings are, its relation to taxation etc. constructing this view has been an important political function of the conservative media apparatus at least since the earliest phases of the clinton period.
the main shift in assumptions that played out across the period that lead up to the development of the welfare state was simple: what was at stake was not the redemption of individuals, but the survival of the system itself.
the uneven distribution of wealth creates fundamental political torsions at the heart of the capitalist order.
the welfare state was an attempt to co-opt this political threat.
these problems have not gone away.
you would have to be blind to the actual history of capitalism to think otherwise.
the bottom line: i do not understand what bush is doing with this "faith-based initiative" idea at all. the question of hiring practices simply follow from this bigger irrationality, repeat the problems that attend it in general at a particular level.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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