What is the Amercian Dream?  Are we living in an age where a new fairness Dream is being thrust upon us?  Is this the Dream I have believed all my life?  Is this the Dream I wish for my children and grand children?  What is the Dream your encountering in your neighborhood?  Is this the one we want?  Is this the one we would die for?  Or are we just dreaming?  Is this dream real?  Are we awake?  Pinch me!

Conservatism, socialism, welfare and the common good are words tossed about in the wind, especially politically.  Who is the decider of the Common Good? 

The Common Good must overide conservatism and socialism, but how do we know when the term the common good is being exploted by agendas willing to compromise the common good ofr power and control?

Any definition of the Common Good should not support corruption of the rich or the poor.  The difficulty is not in conservatism or socialism but in humans willingness to use corruption rather than seek the truth which is the objective of the common good.  Both sides can articulate legitimate arguments. 

The use of God given talents and the associated blessings enable one to prosper which is a fundamental Gosple value not to be overlooked.  It is when becomes selffish and self centered that one can go astry.  Likewise the social concept of redistribution that discouarges the use of ones talents especially is treatened with removal of the talents another Gospel value.  When redistribution is used to gain power and control selfishness  and corruption begins to trump Gospel values.

The poor indeed will always be with us for one simple reason.  God gave humanity free will.  To chose good or evil.  To use one talents or to waste them.

The purest Amercian Dream lies hidden in Truth and the Gospel reveals the truth to the spirit while the world reamins blind.  Values where one freely choses to make full use of every God given talents and when excess richs oveflow to recognise the cries of the poor who for reasons they can not control become poor.

However the gosple message of the use of talents should not also be overlooked.  Remembering the one who freely choses to bury their talents must be allowed the difinity of failure and the suuffering which offers hopes of conversion.

Do we know our History?  It wasn’t so long ago!  After freeing the slaves, the government and the land owners needed a way to get the freemen (previously) slaves back into the cotton and other fields to plow, harrow, plant, and harvest the crop.

For decades after Reconstruction tenancy and sharecropping became the way of life in the Cotton Belt.  Imagine as late as 1930 there were 1,831,470 tenant farmers in the South. What began as a device to get former slaves back to work became a pernicious system that entrapped white as well as black farmers. 

http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/T/TE009.html

How does Pernicious measure up against the Common Good and Gospel values?  A very descriptive word – I wonder does this social justice language go over the heads of many?   Perhaps those who are free but entrapped in a system of tenancy and sharecropping are least able to discern the truth.  This system altough better than slavery offered some hope of overcoming poverty but very few realized that hope.  It often resulted in a kind of jumping out of the fire into the frying pan depending upon health, weather and the success of the harvest. 

In it’s favor however was hope and the reality success or failure was directly connected and related to ones efforts or work.  When a system is establsihed without a connection to the use of talents, the self investment one makes through works – well then it becomes a deformation of work and undermines the creativity and dignity of the human soul.  

In the case of tenancy and sharecropping the land owners and political rule makers have the upper hand.  The ability to create an image of freedom and success based upon ones own effort served to encouarge many folks to sign up.  Only later many would find themselves in gut wrenching situations and losing everything they had invested. 

Has tenancy and sharecropping mutated in 2011?  Do we have a system where people are rewarded for making no investment of time, the use of talents or the investment of treasure?  And is the reward they recieve based upon their individual creativety and work yet being insuffcient for them to escape from the grasp of the rule makers.

Could we be experiencing a new more severve case welfare corruption in 2011.  The image of fulfilling the dream, freedom and opportunity to chose without almost no self investment was created.  The housing crises that literally exploded in 2007 followed the image of tenancy.  Little or no investment on the part of the land owner or the tenant was required.  The criteria, regulation and oversight were sacrificed by people of power who were far removed from suffering any consequences – the political elite and money changers have not suffered any consequences.

A new class of people has been on the rise for many generations in this nation.  A new ruling class exists in the USA, unlike the founding fathers they have worked to establsih an image, vision and version of a new gosple that seeks government power and control.  It is stealthy and seeks to establsih a tenancy and sharecropping system unlike any before in the history of this nation. 

Slick talking image making leaders used ideas and words to create the image of being freed all the while laying the foundation and snares necessary to entrap and enslave generations to be the new poor by appealing to their thrist for hope and change they could believe in without definitions realted to Gospel values.