We need to start using the word "Immoral".
Last edited Wed Jul 10, 2013, 09:06 AM - Edit history (2)
This has nothing to do with religion(while religious people of good will will likely agree with the list below, people who are guided by what Abraham Lincoln would call "the better angels of our nature"
I.E., by the strength of their own conscience and and their own humanity)
As believers, for whatever reasons we hold such beliefs, in humane, empathetic and compassionate values in politics, economics, and life, we have the RIGHT to speak in terms of right and wrong.
There are many things we CAN call "Immoral".
We can call massive CEO retirement packages immoral...especially when the companies that disburse them cut the wages. benefits, pensions, and worker safety standards of their non-economic aristocrat employees.
We can call the outsourcing of jobs from this country to other countries immoral, because it harms innocent people here and exploits innocent people there.
We can call the continued use of war by our leaders of both parties immoral, because it no longer solves problems and mainly results in the deaths of people who had nothing to do with the cause of those problems.
We can call the insistence of the international financial community on brutal austerity programs in the countries they loan to, rather than allowing the creation of a system by which whole countries can declare bankruptcy and be relieved of past debts imposed by exploiter nations on to nations of the exploited immoral, because it punishes the poor for the crimes of the wealthy.
We can call demands that countries which have overthrown tyrants must pay the debts incurred by those tyrants immoral, because it punishes the formerly oppressed for the actions OF their oppressors-it's the same thing as making a rape victim not only bear the child of her rapist, but pay for the gun he used to subdue her and the ropes he used to tie her up.
We can call voter suppression laws immoral...because they are implemented for a genuinely evil purpose...the mass reduction of voter participation by voters of the coming Rainbow majority and voters living under exploitation and the threat of poverty(or already IN poverty).
We can call efforts to make it easier for industries to pollute immoral...because such efforts are essentially the same as accepting the idea that, in exchange for "creating jobs" the industries that created them have the right to poison those they employ and those who live near the sites where those industries are located.
There are many other examples others can add below, but the language of morality is a language we need to reclaim...because it conveys the truth of the things we fight against and because it resonates in the hearts and minds of the people of this country and the world.
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Agreed, and well said.
with more people being aware of it and supporting it (if social media is any indication), so there is hope that may happen sooner rather than later.
you think the president will call the Koch Brothers or the far right in Congress immoral? 
people immoral when it acts primarily in the interest of monied corporate interests rather than we the people, when large profitable corporations often pay little or no Federal income taxes, when large corporation are often not criminally prosecuted for seemingly egregious criminality? 
