By Rabbi Ben Kamin
DEL MAR, California — This is not a political column though, obviously, it is driven by the current political season. It just seems to me that people with wealth are being lumped into a heap of suspicion, malevolence, and ill-repute. Beyond that, I know thoughtful people with money who are supporting the president in both Hollywood and New York and I am friendly with reasonable people who are hard-working and middle to lower income earners and that advocate for the Republican candidate.
When we turn this already skewed, acrimonious election into a litmus test about character based upon personal portfolios, we exacerbate the deepening class war that is sweeping this nation founded upon two principles: freedom for all, and the social impetus underpinning everything that is based upon capitalism.
Democratic President John F. Kennedy was the scion of a decidedly capitalist family who is associated with liberal purism; Republican Governor and Vice President Nelson Rockefeller was spectacularly wealthy who quietly helped to underwrite the US Civil Rights Movement and more than once bailed Martin Luther King Jr. out of jail in what was then the “blue-dog” Democratic South.
There are good people on Wall Street who are not systemically screwing all of us; there are more than enough crooks and thugs on Main Street—in the end, it’s a question of individual ethics and corporate deportment.
I personally know that the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, built on the site where Dr. King was assassinated, enshrining the finest and bravest human rights crusade in American history, is helped by the individual donations, ranging from $5-100 dollars a year. I also know that without the unyielding provision of a number of high-minded business foundations, it would have never been built in the first place, nor would it still be here.
In my work as rabbi for close to 35 years, I have personally observed the exceptional philanthropic kindness (sometimes performed anonymously, sometimes by people who were maddeningly in need of exaltation) of many very prosperous people. Ironically, some of the most powerful clergy in this country, who routinely preach about social justice and fair play, who weep on stage for the poor, are living quite affluent lives and enjoying high-flung perquisites that exceed the imaginations of their parishioners. Hypocrisy is not politically; it is biblical.
People with money have quietly built, staffed, and endowed churches, hospices, community centers, colleges, hospitals, and their taxes (along with those of us less-privileged) have built the interstate freeway system, put the US flag on the moon, preserved history and legacy in innumerable museums and libraries—even as business minds, working in a free society, devised the automobile, developed aviation, the cyber world upon which we all depend, invented artificial limbs, created the entertainment and sports culture that we devour, and provided the scientific means with which we have more-or-less neutralized the HIV crisis and stopped cancer from being an automatic death sentence.
Corruption and greed have turned many oil moguls into economic vampires and the American Congress has shamelessly grown dependent on patronage and devoid of principle. But I have personally observed parallel venality, insensitivity, and tawdriness at play in labor unions (which I support and venerate generally) and it is impossible to exonerate most social welfare and sectarian agencies from their own corruption and even cruelty. It’s not about the money; it’s about the hands that hold the money.
Obama will not lose the election because he didn’t have enough money nor will Romney lose it because he had too much. We are all just going to lose it if this is all about valuables and not values.
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Rabbi Kamin is a freelance writer based in San Diego. He may be contacted at ben.kamin@sdjewishworld.com