"If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. "
Gal 5:15,16
You can't get away from it--when you read the papers or meet with friends or watch the news or check your Facebook account or visit Cafe Mom   or wait in line at the self-serve library checkout.  It's all chatter about socialized-medicine all the time.  I can't tell you how often in just this past week I have read or heard the political polices of President Obama (especially in reference to his proposed health care plan) being referred to as socialism, or, by his more vicious opponents, as communism.  Let's face it, Obama's not the first president or lawmaker to be accused of being, what my late Great Uncle Hermann (who fought in WWII--and who also, incidentally, had pet goats and collected photographs of roadkill and other dead animals), called a "pinko."   What kinda honks me is the fact that so many well-meaning and educated people care or understand so little about the difference between advocating for social justice and advocating socialism.  I was sort of baited to blog about it, but I will only do it this once. Then, rest-assured, you probably won't hear me chatter about it again. 

Okay, so call me pinko if you want, but really my beliefs have nothing to do with a modern institutionalized political or economic system. I do not subscribe to the theories of Lenin or Marx. I am a student of the human condition, of history, ethics, theology and anthropology.  I strive for faith, compassion and the fulfillment of holiness toward our fellow wo/men in this world.  I know the Bible teaches an economics of individual giving for the benefit and good of the whole :
"Our desire is not that others should be relieved while you are hard-pressed, but that there might be equality.  At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need.  Then there will be equality, as it is written: "He who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little."
--II Corinthians 8:13-15 (NIV).
I know that tribal societies and clan societies of the past also prospered under this belief.  Take, for example, the beautiful tribal economics of the Lake Superior Ojibway.  They believed that each individual was differently gifted, and thus differently able to contibute to their own household and to the tribal group.  He who is a good hunter and catches many deer one winter, shares all with the tribe.  If this same hunter does not do well, and his family is hungry, the other hunters of the tribe who have done well share their bounty with his household.  Some individuals are great story-tellers, some talented at nurturing the sick, some at tanning hides or trapping furs.  Others are afflicted and must be cared for--perhaps they are encouragers or spirit-lifting with their humor, or teach the children skills or ancient stories, but they cannot feed themselves.  To the group, they are not considered less, and their contribution is not given a lower value.  They are expected to benefit from the same quality of life as the member of strong mind and body who can spear a hundred dear.

Finally,  in the end, let's not forget where the word economics comes from: the Greek "oikos" (house) and "nomos" (custom or law)--therefore, "rules of the household."  Even the language denotes that we are family in matters of resources. 

End of story, Senator McCarthy.