Loss of freedom

“Meanwhile, our attempt to maintain a “growth economy” in a measurably diminishing world is playing the devil with our traditional (and admirable) moral code, which our most prominent politicians now put to public use mainly to paint over our immoral behavior. We make war, we are told, for the love of peace. We subvert our Bill of Rights and impose our will abroad for the sake of freedom and the rule of law. We honor greed and waste with the name of economy. We allow ever greater wealth and power to accumulate in the hands of a privileged few only to provide jobs for working people and charityto the poor. And we sanctify all this as Christian, though the Gospels support none of it by so much as a line or a word. The violence underlying this hypocrisy is great, and so are the costs. The costs are economic, ecological, and political. Sooner or later, the increase of costs and better accounting are going to show that the costs are not affordable. Society’s leaders and would-be leaders will have to learn and teach that violent solutions never pay their way, but invariably produce a net loss to the world, to humankind, and to freedom and the rule of law. “

Wendell Berry