Obama

Sticking Up For the Little Guy

Obama is truly the peoples’ man!  He fights for the underdog – he plans to tax the wealthy and give to the poor.  A latter-day Robin Hood kinda guy.  Sounds great doesn’t it?  BUT these tales of Guy-Fawkes style hero-villains come with Caveats that are sometimes forgotten.

Obama is definitely not shy about his tax proposals, and I realised this morning that his presidency may be marked by quite a few concessions given to the working class families. Could this even mean a very slight shift towards SOCIALISM for America?

One of the most fundamental tenets of a democracy is the freedom of choice.  With choice comes risk.  With risk comes the potential to fail.  And failure results in poverty.  Poverty is an inherent component of democracy and something we cannot take away no matter how much we may want to.

Perhaps oddly, the statement many on the left will use to justify this, is an utterance you might expect from the religious right: “Love thy neighbour”, the basic idea that we all deserve a chance in life, or the idea that everyone is entitled to some kind of basic living certainly don’t sound like bad ideas.   But it’s actually the fairly inconspicuous words that polarise the debate : ‘deserve’, ‘entitled’.

To what extent am I responsible for my neighbour?

This is because the more conservative will tend to take a more competitive assessment of the situation – that wealth has to be worked for, risked, invested.  And that – having earned the wealth by the rules fairly and squarely – it would be unfair of someone to suddenly change all that and simply take it away to pay for someone else’ failure.

But in all of this it is easy to forget that some are born into a situation in which there is no opportunity to grow.  That – through no fault of their own – some potentially very useful members of society can become neglected.  Yet with the smallest of contributions, some of these people might become a great asset to their families, to their community and to their country.

Clearly no man is an island.  It would be foolish to assume that our success or failure happens in isolation with no impact to those around us.  Equally, there must come a point when one person says to another ‘I have only a very tiny stake in your life, and you must bear most of the risk’.

I am really looking forward to Obamas presidency. He goes against the grain of everything we’ve seen so far. And when people call him ‘radical’ I jump for joy because it shows how far he is from where we are at the moment, and this can’t be a bad thing.

Okay,  so it’s time for something different. As if by design, homosexuality seems to keep pushing it’s way into the news! Rev. Peter Mullen helpfully suggested that gay men should have their backsides tattooed with “Sodomy can seriously damage your health”. Perhaps he should have a tattoo on his forehead that reads “Christians Cause Pedophilia – after all, if gay men are statistically more likely to die from aids, then I might point out that a man of the cloth is statistically more likely to groom abuse young boys.

And today I am dismayed to read about the death of the Manchester Teenager Lee Simpson, who’s apparent suicide – rumour has it – was linked to bullying because of his sexuality.

These sorts of stories fuel my fire, make me feel ALIVE with passion and purpose.  And I feel the urgency to point out that Alan Turing - the father of computer science, was – in fact gay. Without his work you probably wouldn’t even be reading my words now!

This great man was arrested for being a homosexual (and this was in Britain!), he lost his job (which was – by the way – helping us break the German Enigma code).  He was forced to take female hormones as part of his parole condition, which would have destroyed any testosterone in his system, making him a chemical eunuch with non functioning testicles. He died a few years later in mysterious circumstances, with the three main contending theories: Some blame a British government and MI5 cover-up, others claim suicide and still others will say it was an unfortunate accident.

But in all of this, we loose sight of the true message. We like to think that Nazis were the baddies and hated Jews, gays and we were the goodies trying to save everyone’s lives. It makes us uncomfortable to think that many Jews lost their jobs in the UK around this time, were beaten or that many people like Alan Turing were arrested, imprisoned or killed all across Britain right up until the 60s for their sexuality. We lose sight of the real message by creating fictional media monsters like Nazis, Commies or al-Qaida, We forget that ANYONE can BECOME one of them.  Even someone who’s role is supposed to bring guidance and spiritual nourishment to the community.

I have sat by Alans’ statue in Sackville park in Manchester for comfort in some troubled times in my life.  Peter Mullens’ ideals aren’t big enough to show up on my radar or make me flinch. Quite the opposite – people like you help me find my voice and feel alive. I think it might be appropriate for Peter to visit the bereaved parents of Lee Simpson and do – what a man in his position should be doing … put a little good back into the community.