My first book, Go Golden, explores the practical application of the Golden Rule and the ethics of Permaculture in our daily lives. It’s out now from Wipf and Stock Publishers.
Go Golden by Dillon Naber Cruz
Underwear repair.
Copyright Dillon Naber Cruz
A few days ago, I decided it was time to repair three pairs of underwear that were a bit worse for wear so to speak. The elastic in the waste band had stretched to the point where the skivvies were just about unserviceable. Instead of throwing them away like most people would do, I grabbed a pair of scissors and some strong glue, and went to work. It was a simple procedure: cut out a small square from the elastic band, stretch the ends together, apply glue to both sides of the cut, and press the cut square onto the glue. Voila! I gave my newly repaired briefs a full test to see if the repair was successful and so far, so good.
Now why would I do that when I could just run down to the big box retailer and buy another three pack? Allow me to explain. These particular under garments were purchased a few years ago from a local Sears. Cash was tight, and I was in need of some new briefs. I knew that in so buying these from a local big box, rather than searching for ethically made, organic cotton underwear, was a compromise of my ethics — as is so much of what we do in American life. The people who sewed the package of underwear most likely work in sweatshop conditions in a foreign nation and wouldn’t be able to afford the garments they were making for American shoppers. The cotton was grown with toxic chemicals which destroy soil and sometimes people’s lives. For those reasons, I wanted to extend the life of the garments for as long as possible to honor those who made them and to lessen my own personal dependence on big box retail establishments. Not to mention the fact that landfills are full of clothing that is intentionally manufactured in a shoddy manner ensuring people have to keep buying more and more sweatshop made garments.
Another reason to repair them is that in so doing, I am adding to the myriad small ways which I enact permaculture’s system of ethics and principles. Repairing lessens wastes and consumption. It stimulates creative thinking to solve problems. It slows us down. Permaculture gives us a framework to step outside of the norms of consumer-based capitalism. This framework is vital if we are going to have any chance of ensuring that our planet is habitable. My forthcoming book, Go Golden: Applying a Universal Religious Teaching and the Ethics of Permaculture to Create a Sustainable, Just, Happier World addresses issues related to our consumer habits and legitimate needs. Look for it soon from Wipf and Stock Publishers in 2019.
Learning to walk.
Copyright Dillon Naber Cruz
It’s not quite lunch time here in Lancaster, PA where I live and I have already walked a few miles. My first errand of the day was to go get a haircut. There is a shopping center about 1/2 mile from my home with an old school independent barbershop among the various retail establishments. Rather than get in the car, I decided to walk, which is something I have been doing for many years now. The first time I really thought about how much walking I do, was when I first listened to Bill Bryson’s Appalachian Trail travel narrative A Walk in the Woods. In it, Bryson noted that Americans walk very little compared to people from other countries and in many instances, our communities and shopping areas are actively hostile to pedestrians. He recounted a harrowing excursion to try to get to a store across a multi-lane road. It was less than a quarter of a mile, but ended up being a trip akin to a jaunt through a minefield. Consider the number of places where there are no easy ways for people on foot to cross multi-lane roads . There are a number of places here locally where at intersections there are “No Pedestrian Crossing” signs at all four points of the intersection and other places where pedestrians are left to dodge traffic. What is a walker to do, levitate? I lived in England at the time I listened to Bryson’s book and in some ways I was influenced by the culture of walking there–there are public footpaths crisscrossing the United Kingdom and plenty of pedestrianized shopping areas for instance–and thus began walking more when feasible. These days, that practice has only increased. I would love to see public footpaths all over America…bring back the commons.
After my haircut, I walked home, grabbed my laptop, and then put it in my bag to leave home again. This time it was to walk downtown to a coffee shop, to get some writing done. It’s about 3/4 mile from my home to this part of downtown. Fortunately, Lancaster is a reasonably walkable city, though outside the urban center, it’s not so great. A week or so ago, I walked to the dispensary where I get my medicine for PTSD, to resupply. It was a Sunday afternoon, and as I no longer watch the NFL due to the blatant corruption, the health implications of playing football, turning a blind eye to abusive and criminal behavior, and the failure to support black players kneeling to protest systemic injustice, I had nothing particular to do. According to the pedometer on my phone, the round trip was 7 miles. It gave me great exercise, filled my time pleasantly (except when I had to dash across the four lane Manheim Pike) and more importantly kept my car parked in the driveway. I blew past the recommended number of daily steps for someone my age (46) and by the time I got back home, I felt like I’d had a good workout. Off the couch and on my feet…the mental boost as well as the exercise made “walking” that errand worthwhile. Usually, I choose to walk anyplace closer than 2 miles if I won’t be carrying anything cumbersome or heavy and the weather is cooperative, i.e. no torrential downpours.
The health implications of a sedentary lifestyle fueled by often unhealthy diets high in sugar, high fructose corn syrup, along with other toxins from our broken industrial agriculture system and the processing of foods, are being seen in the United States. In 2013, the Centers for Disease Control determined that 80% of Americans do not exercise enough. (1) As a result, too many people are overweight, and an alarming percentage are considered medically obese. Just adding more walking to people’s days would help to reduce the health problems associated with obesity. Americans on average walk about 5,900 steps per day, which is approximately 3 miles. That may sound like a lot, but a person is considered sedentary when they take 5,000 or less steps per day. (2) Clearly Americans need to learn to walk again for their own health, but also the health of the planet. We simply cannot keep driving so much if we are going to have a habitable planet, not to mention the inescapable reality of peak oil. Governments and private citizens should be using that oil for things like planting millions of trees, keyline plowing the grain belt to recharge aquifers and to prevent soil erosion, putting in swales, ponds for water catchment systems, and other biosphere regenerating strategies that permaculture designers advocate for.
I am a big fan of Charles Dickens’ novels and often listen to them as I go on my walks. He preferred his works to be read aloud when he was alive in order to bring the novels and his amazing characters to life. I can see why and have been listening to them for years. When I do, I am reminded of how much more sensible people could be in some ways during Dickens’ lifetime. Kitchen gardens, coppice and pollard groves, and community life are frequently mentioned as is the level of activity people routinely engaged in in those days. Often his characters end up walking many miles in the course of a day and to them it is nothing unusual. Currently, I am listening to Our Mutual Friend and one of the characters, an elderly woman proclaims that she is healthy and vigorous enough to walk 20 miles “if put to it.” Imagine that. I’ve walked over 15 miles on occasion in recent years, but never as a matter of course, and there are some days when I fail to walk even a mile. Clearly, I can do better.
This is not just a public health issue. It’s related to transportation, city planning, climate change, and the way our culture is currently designed. That design is terribly flawed as is evidenced by our current planetary predicament. Walking more is a small, slow solution that most people can practice in order to lessen our ecological impact, put us more in touch with our communities, and to improve our general health and well-being. Let’s learn to walk again and let’s do it now. The planet is counting on us.
(1) https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cdc-80-percent-of-american-adults-dont-get-recommended-exercise/
(2) https://www.businessinsider.com/heres-how-much-the-average-american-walks-every-day-2015-7?op=1
Getting acclimated to colder weather.
Autumn has finally arrived in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States where I live. For much of the summer here in Lancaster, PA we had unusually wet weather from about June until now, and with that extra rain, came soupy, moisture soaked air that made going outside even briefly a sweat soaked undertaking. Less than a week ago, temps were hovering in the 80s with high humidity and then suddenly the temperature dropped precipitously with highs in the low 50s and lows dipping close to freezing for the past few nights. This has people turning on their heating systems to make the indoors feel like spring.
This morning when I woke up to feed the cats, I checked the thermostat downstairs. It read 59 degrees (F). That’s the coolest it has been so far in my house this fall but I have yet to turn on my heat. Instead, I am acclimating myself to colder temperatures indoors so that when the outside temperatures get truly cold, I will be able to keep my thermostat turned down to somewhere between 62-64 degrees. So far, I haven’t felt ‘cold’ though I have been quite cool. To counter that, I just wear an extra layer. Yesterday, I cured my cast iron skillets in the oven for the first time in a long time, which helped warm it up nicely. I plan to make some homemade granola soon, and would like to learn to bake my own bread too. All of which would provide supplemental heating to the house.
So why am I doing this? To put it simply, because I believe that we are entering a phase of energy descent, meaning that the cheap fossil fuel energy we’ve enjoyed for the past 250 years or so (since the dawning of the Industrial Revolution) is running out and we have no viable alternatives that will allow us to consume energy in the way we have for so long done. That means, we will likely have to get used to not having air conditioning in the summers and heating in the winters (nor will there be personal automobiles once peak oil truly takes effect.) The other reason to acclimate one’s self to the seasonal temperature variations is that burning fossil fuels is heating the entire planet to levels that will make the climate even more wildly unstable than it has been in recent years. So in that sense, I am simply responding to the new reality and trying to decrease my consumption of nonrenewable energy like natural gas, which my furnace uses to heat the house.
When Jimmy Carter was President, he took steps to lower the carbon footprint of the White House. He wore sweaters to keep warm and had solar panels put on the roof. It’s a shame that more people didn’t follow his lead way back then, and even more of a shame that Reagan came in an reversed all of those measures thus ensuring that nation would be lulled into more consumption of oil, gas, and coal. How stupidly short sighted. Now we are at a place where we literally have no choice but to change our habits. Sometimes that can be as simple as getting acclimated to the weather each season. Think of how much energy could be saved if everyone in America turned their thermostats down to 63 degrees in the winter, and then go turn yours down.
Peace be with you.
Copyright Dillon Naber Cruz
Climate Change: Our tremendous opportunity
Copyright Dillon Naber Cruz
The mainstream media is finally getting the message on global climate change as the latest report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was released a week ago. Dire predictions of climate related catastrophes affecting civilization within a very short time table, 12-22 years, have been made because humanity has with willful obtuseness altered the biosphere to such an extreme extent through burning fossil fuels and deforestation. Ecologists, climate scientists, permaculturists, and others in the scientific and agricultural communities have been making these warnings for decades, largely to no avail. I remember learning about “global warming” and dwindling fossil fuel resources in elementary school in the early 1980s while living in Kansas City, MO. That was not long after the gas shortages that shook America in the 1970s. This information is not new, despite long term climate change denying protestations from fossil fuel companies and the politicians that they’ve bought with blood money.
The IPCC report warns of a 1.5 degree Celsius rise in overall global temperature which is important because such a rise in temperature would become a tipping point for when climate becomes completely unstable thereby putting millions of lives at risk and making mass exoduses of people likely from areas soon to be inundated by coastal flooding, islands being subsumed by rising ocean levels, and the increased incidences of super storms. It’s all incredibly daunting and I remain skeptical that governments in affluent nations will truly give these issues the attention they deserve and make the “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society” (1) that the IPCC deems necessary. The American government, under Trump’s leadership has shown itself to be as abjectly selfish as the man himself, as the Trump administration has set forth a scorched Earth policy that will enable he and his cronies to hoard the wealth now while the planet burns. (2)
In America, we need a fundamental rethink about how we engage life. Currently, much of the fruit of American society is foul because of hubris, selfishness, narcissism, so-called “rugged individualism,” and our national history of systemic oppression which is still a cancer to our nation and culture. As David Holmgren wrote in Permaculture: Principles and Pathways we’re like the teenager who wants everything NOW without consequences, and because of this immature mindset we’ve allowed the perpetuation of all manner of sins – rampant militarism, resource theft, slavery (chattel and the for-profit prison variety that is becoming entrenched in the U.S.), blatant sexism and misogyny, the intentional impoverishment of people of color in poorer countries, and the myriad other abuses brought about by the “love of money” known as capitalism, so we can maintain our comfortable lifestyles of conspicuous over-consumption by shopping til we drop…
Studying permaculture has taught me that “the problem is the solution.” Seeing things in this way helps us to change our thinking in response to some pressing issue. In this instance, the problem is an unstable climate and a potentially completely uninhabitable planet for human beings, brought on by our selfishness, greed, and a failure to recognize and live within the Earth’s carrying capacity. That’s a damn big problem, which will require an equally large solution. Herein lies our tremendous opportunity, which is to eschew and undermine the current system as often as possible, while engaging in both bottom up community building in our neighborhoods, hometowns, and cities, as well as top-down political activism to hold the government accountable for keeping the planet habitable, in order to design and create a society that works with nature and not against it, fosters symbiotic and harmonious relationships between humanity and the biosphere, and regenerates natural systems in order to stabilize the climate. Permaculture design, regenerative agriculture, ecological reforestation, and restoration ecology, coupled with a more thoroughly egalitarian social structure that encourages “power with” others rather than “power over” others will enable us to respond proactively and creatively to climate change.
We have the tools; what we need is the will, personal as well as political, to proceed to engage in the drastic measures required to allow for the furtherance of human culture and humanity in general. Human beings are not a keystone species, unlike the ostensibly humble prairie dog, so the planet’s biological capabilities will not collapse along with civilization and humanity. Life will proliferate and evolve without us if we fail to take the requisite action to remove carbon from the atmosphere. The drastic measures enacted should include at a minimum: the immediate cessation of the extraction, refining, and production of fossil fuels, re-localization of food, fiber, and building materials, mandatory no-fly days at commercial airports worldwide (a Sabbath for the Earth from airplane exhausts), a massive redirection of funds from the military towards afforestation, reforestation, and ecological restoration projects, the immediate banning of the production and use of toxic agricultural and industrial chemicals, the restoration of riparian buffers along major rivers, estuaries, and other bodies of water, transition to organic and regenerative small scale agriculture to include retrofitting suburban lawns into food growing spaces, an immediate ban on all disposable plastic and other non-biodegradable consumer items, reconfiguration of the transportation systems away from personal automobiles, mandatory no-driving days in all major cities, and the immediate and for all time repudiation of the notion that monetary profits are more important than the natural capital that perpetuates life on Earth. This is just a start. Much more needs to be done, depending on conditions in the bioregion in which people live. We really do not have much of a choice in the matter if we want our loved ones in current and future generations to have a chance to survive. If we consider it an invitation to live a more productive, meaningfully engaged life, in cooperation with our neighbors near and far, and as a completely positive and necessary step, instead of coming at the problem from a place of fear, then I like our collective chances. Humanity has solved big problems before with collective action, intelligence, and determination. Here’s our chance to do so again.
(1) https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/07/world/climate-change-new-ipcc-report-wxc/index.html
(2) https://www.livescience.com/63709-trump-climate-report-7-degrees.html
Permaculture at home
Copyright Dillon Naber Cruz
A little over two years ago my wife and I purchased our first home. By American standards it is modest at just under 900 square feet and while not exactly a fixer upper, it does need some work–kind of like me! The front yard is tiny, approximately 100 square feet, and had been contaminated by an unscrupulous handyman who cleaned his paint brushes with thinner there which he spilled onto the soil. The previous occupants of the house mowed this space and used the area behind the house as both parking and a place to work on cars. It too was contaminated by oil and other automotive products. It is heavy clay soil that retains a lot of moisture and needs some TLC.
Since moving in, I spent some time observing my tiny yard, and also stopped mowing the front yard and the strip of vegetation along the east side the borders the alley. Letting nature take its course revealed a profusion of morning glories in the front of the house which created a gorgeous natural shade for the front porch which faces south,. Along the fence, a beautiful vine regrew that covers the fence with deep green vines and pretty white flowers late in the growing season. I let the dandelions grow because they are an important source of bee food early in the spring, not to mention their edible and medicinal benefits (I would not use them from my yard, however, due to the aforementioned contamination). My neighbor asked me if I wanted him to mow it all for me our first year here which provided a great teaching moment as I extolled the virtues of all the “weeds” growing in my yard!
Last season and early this spring, I added spent mushroom grain to the front yard as a means of hopefully cleaning the contamination (see the work of Paul Stamets and others using mushroom mycelium as a form of bioremediation) as well as to add fertility to the soil. This myceliated grain came from friends of mine who grow edible and medicinal mushrooms by inoculating logs the grain and mushroom spawn. I also added it to a bed in the back that had two stumps in it, both of which are now myceliated thoroughly, which will eventually decompose the stumps while adding nutrients to the soil. It was also added it to the small pile of brush and green “waste” that hides behind my car. It too will help break down the pile into valuable compost. The mushroom grain has added a thin layer of humus to the soil and judging by the abundance of flowering plants growing, it has increased the fertility. I pulled up some wild onions a few weeks ago that were spreading too quickly. The size of the onions was astonishing in comparison to the ones I have foraged in the past. This is likely due to increased fertility from the mushroom grain and other permaculture management strategies.
I planted some perennial and annual flowers to the pollinator garden in front to increase diversity of species and add even more color. Likewise, in the back yard, I converted the space closest to the kitchen door into a container garden for growing more flowers and herbs. This year, I decided to grow more leafy greens to have them at hand, instead of walking the half mile to my community garden plot for them. I saved those community garden beds for tomatoes, peppers, and potatoes, all of which take up too much space for my back yard. I rearranged the pots this year to take better advantage of the morning sun because the back yard is on the north side. This slight adjustment also gives the plants better evening sun as well as the shadows move along with the sun as it makes its way over the horizon.
Permaculture is about working with nature. Sometimes that means letting nature get on with it and seeing what happens. Sometimes it means rearranging pots to get better sun or selectively weeding when a plant is becoming over abundant. It doesn’t take an enormous amount of space to increase diversity and create a cultivated ecosystem like the miniature meadow ecosystem I have co-created with the plants, insects, and a tree in my front yard. We need less lawns and more organic gardens that increase diversity, foster life, and build community.
Some shots from our wild gardens and kitchen garden.
Connecting with our choices
I quoted this today in my thesis so I thought I’d reblog it.
Applying self regulation and accepting feedback is one of Holmgren’s principles of permaculture. To apply this successfully it is helpful to see how the choices we make affect the world around us. The following video uses examples from my own life to show how my personal choices literally affected millions of people rather than just me.
Confessions of an addict
Copyright Dillon Naber Cruz
My name is Dillon Naber Cruz and I am an addict. As an addict, I know that when I act upon my addiction, I hurt other people, I hurt the planet, and I hurt myself in the process. Though I know these things, I seemingly remain powerless to stop the cycle of addiction and I continue to use of all of the things that are causing so much damage to me and others.
I am addicted to having electricity on demand. It doesn’t matter if I wake up in the middle of the night, which is a frequent occurrence with me as a result of PTSD, I want to be able to turn on EVERYTHING that I own at will, regardless of the costs to my global neighbors, my local bioregion, and the planet itself. I am addicted to having electrical power whenever and where ever I am. I use that electrical power to write this blog, cool my bedroom at night, have lights on in rooms sometimes even if no one is in them, amongst many other uses of electricity. Sure it’s true that I do pay extra to purchase my electricity from suppliers who provide it from renewable sources, but the fact remains that I am addicted to on demand electricity, which is seriously contributing to climate change and will make it all the harder to adjust to a time when on demand electricity is no longer available due to resource depletion.
I am addicted to entertainment. Spectator sports, sitcoms on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime, movies, video games, podcasts, books, and the occasional night out to see an concert all make up the overwhelming amount of choices that I as an American take for granted when it comes to being entertained. Of course, all of this entertainment comes with a price in terms of electricity, electronic devices to watch it or play it all on. Then there are the questionable cultural practices resulting from the entertainment world that skews reality such as the absurd amount of money that athletes, film and TV stars make in relation to their actual societal contributions and the amount of waste that is generated by the press as they report even the most mundane and quotidian details of their lives and livelihoods. We are able to be entertained 24 hours a day 7 days a week and as a result I am addicted to it.
I am addicted to cheap gasoline that allows me to drive all over the place, whenever I so choose. It’s true I do walk a great deal more than most Americans and I ride a scooter that gets “excellent” gas mileage as my personal primary transport rather than buying a second car, but sometimes I just jump in our truck and drive around the county for no other purpose than to pass the time and take in the scenery. I do this despite knowing that burning fossil fuels is contributing to rampant climate change by adding too much carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and knowing that we are well above the 350 p.p.m. of atmospheric carbon dioxide that ensures a relatively stable climate. I’ve lived most of my life in America where we as a culture seemingly feel entitled to fill our vehicles up with ludicrously cheap gasoline to drive, drive, drive, our outsized SUVs, sports cars, and pickups without regard to anything or anyone. Our nation fights wars, deposes democratically elected leaders, and essentially steals the wealth of other nations to feed our heroine like addiction to gas and oil. Millions of lives are lost so I can drive with or without real purpose. Like drug dealers who peddle their poisons to children, politicians get paid handsomely to enact laws that ensure the maintenance of the fossil fuel status quo, keeping the citizen’s addicted to oil, while hindering any real, achievable change in terms of advancing transportation technology, environmental safety, and innovation while actively ignoring the incredibly real phenomenon of peak oil. My habits and patterns of transportation prove that I too am addicted to oil and gasoline.
I am addicted to feeling comfortable. Sure, sometimes during the day I wait until it is over 80 degrees on the first floor of our modest two bedroom home before I turn on the window unit air conditioner, but many summer days I choose to turn it on so I can feel cooler despite the fact that I grew up in Texas without air conditioning. In the winter, I turn the thermostat on the heater up to 65-67 degrees so I can be warm. The colder it is outdoors, the harder my heating system has to work, thereby burning more natural gas, just to keep the indoor temperature up to spring like levels even in the dead of winter. I also shower frequently, sometimes everyday, thus using up and potentially polluting precious water (depending on the personal hygiene products used) as well as burning more fossil fuels to heat the water. In so doing, I am allowing vanity to override my concern for the planet and its people.
I’m addicted to convenience, ease, and choice when it comes to food and drinks. Though I lament the packaging that much of the food I buy comes in, I buy it anyway contributing to the massive amounts of waste that ends up filling the landfill in the southern area of the county where I live. Rather than exclusively buying whole foods and cooking things from scratch, I often purchase prepackaged items like frozen pizzas, cookies, pastas, condiments, sauces, beverages, and so on seemingly ad infinitum. Though I do grow some of my own produce, mostly vegetables, I also buy fruits and vegetables even when they are out of season and have to be shipped hundreds if not thousands of miles from where they are grown to my plate, so I can eat whatever I want at any time of the year, which is definitely working against nature. I know that eating seasonal, local and organic produce would be far better for my local economy and the planet in general but I remain addicted to choice and convenience.
Some people reading this may be thinking, “What are you talking about? That’s basically what everyone in America does.” Those saying that would of course be correct, most everyone does do those things, and herein lies the problem. As Bill Bryson notes in his excellent book At Home: A short history of private life we are profligate in our use of resources in a way that globally speaking is avaricious. To give the gist of Bryson’s point, the average person in Tanzania takes an entire year to use the resources that it takes the average American to use in less than 29 HOURS. Our rapacious greed in consuming resources is incredibly wasteful and also hinders the potential and quality of life of billions of our global neighbors, all of whom are equally worthy of comfort, safety, and convenience as we are. Of course, many people in America have no idea about this disparity in resource utilization and the quality of life it engenders for us nor does the average American know a great deal about the comeuppance we in the industrialized world will receive when peak oil (along with peaks in natural gas, uranium, and coal) becomes unquestionably the reality if we choose not to transition to a much more intelligent and resilient way of life that must include personal and societal sacrifice. We can do better, we are called to do better, and if we want to survive, we sure as hell better do better.
One of the principles of permaculture is to make the least change for the greatest effect. Despite the confessions outlined above, I have made many changes to my life and continue to make them in order to live more lightly on the Earth and to treat my global neighbors better. Clearly though, I have a long way to go, and identifying my addictions to what I call “American Privilege” is a good first step. This is not said in order that I sink into a torpor of self loathing and guilt–nor is it to guilt trip for you who may reflect on your own life and patterns of consumption as a result of reading this. Rather it is in the spirit of the self audit, as outlined by David Holmgren in his book Permaculture: Principles and pathways beyond sustainability, which is an excellent tool for self assessment so one can begin to make changes both large and small to live more equitably with our global neighbors thus embodying the Golden Rule- or the Rule of Reciprocity as it is also known. The twelve principles of permaculture as presented in Holmgren’s book could be seen as a great 12 step program for humanity to design a world that is free of fossil fuel addiction. I pray for the strength to implement it in my own life.
Peace be with you.
A Marine’s call to remembrance on Memorial Day
Me operating a USMC Caterpillar 130G road grader at Pohaku Loa Training Area in Hawai’i.
My senior year of high school was 1989-1990. About midway through that year, I went to the school to get on the bus to go to a town nearby to play in a basketball tournament. Before getting on the bus my teammate Allen’s father was talking to a group of people about how Allen had just signed up for a 6 year commitment in the Marine Corps Reserve. I stood there in rapt attention and because I wanted a way out of town and a way to get away from a less than ideal family situation, I impetuously asked to be put into contact with the recruiter. It was not long before Sargent Holmes was in our dining room in the small North Texas town where we lived extolling the virtues of life as one of “the world’s finest.” I decided to join for four years of active duty and based on my Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test scores, I had my pick of occupational specialties with a few exceptions. Sitting in the recruiters office I picked three different potential fields and was later given the M.O.S. (military occupational specialty) of 1345-heavy equipment engineer. A few months after my high school graduation I went to boot camp at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego, CA. We arrived on August 13, 1990, a mere 11 days after Saddam Hussein had foolishly invaded Kuwait.
I received my specialty training at Camp Lejeune, NC and then was stationed to the Marine Corps Air Station at Kaneohe Bay on the island of Oahu in Hawai’i. In 1993, while on a routine training operation on the Big Island of Hawai’i, I was severely injured while performing preventative maintenance on a DTC 8606, a rough terrain fork lift, that we used to load ammunition and other military gear in support of the Third Marine division’s war games on the island. As a result of the accident I sustained muscle damage to both legs, tore a ligament in my right knee, developed back problems, and also ended up with post traumatic stress disorder. As a disabled veteran I was able to get a B.A. in history with financial help from the Veteran’s Administration. Those studies informed me in a way that the Marines and high school never had and are largely responsible for the following paragraphs.
Fast forward to 2017, and Memorial Day. As a former Marine (once a Marine, always a Marine) I want people to truly engage in remembering on Memorial Day. What do I want you to remember? Several things that fall under the umbrella of “the costs of war.”
The first thing I want people to know and to remember comes from the pen of Major General Smedley Butler, who at the time of his retirement from the Marine Corps, after a 33 year active duty career, was the most decorated Marine in the history of the Marine Corps. He received two Congressional Medals of Honor, the highest honor a member of the military can receive, along with a “fruit salad” of other medals (so called because of the various colors of the different ribbons of the medals.) He wrote a book entitled War is a Racket after his retirement. In the first chapter he wrote:
WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.
How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?
Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few — the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.
And what is this bill? This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.
For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.
(Full text of the book can be found here) War is a Racket
So the first thing I want all Americans to know and to always remember is the wisdom of General Butler who said that war is a money making scheme in which the rich profit and the poor pay with their lives. It is NOT about preserving freedom or protecting us from enemies bent upon our destruction. The U.S. has not been invaded by a foreign power since 1812 and the enemies we fight are most often small countries whose militaries are incapable of attacking New York City, Des Moines, Iowa, San Francisco, CA or any other place on American soil.
The second thing I want people to remember is that the costs of the wars America engages in are enormous in terms of lives lost. We are often told to honor our veterans and those who gave their lives to protect our freedoms, which as previously seen is a completely spurious notion, but we are never asked to remember the millions of civilians maimed and killed as a result of American bombs being dropped or American troops invading countries full of poor people and resources that serve “American interests.” Those interests include oil, favorable taxation for American businesses, or land to put military bases on for strategic purposes. We are seldom told about the war crimes that occur (look up General Norman Schwarzkopf as one example) and often are kept from the truth about how many innocent lives are lost both directly as a result of bombs, missiles, bullets, and tanks as well as indirectly due to the loss of infrastructure, medical services, and the chaos of war in areas with deep seated, historical conflicts that are exacerbated by U.S. military interventions such as Iraq and Syria. Nor are we often aware of how the US government both engages in state sponsored terrorism like the “shock and awe” bombing campaign in Iraq and supports those who engage in similar acts of state sponsored terrorism such as our continual support of regimes in Israel and Saudi Arabia as well as a plethora of horrific dictators on nearly if not every continent.
How many innocent lives are lost? It’s incredibly difficult to say. During the Korean War, between 1.5- 2.5 million civilians were killed depending upon the source. The county I live in now in Pennsylvania only has around 600,000 people in it by way of comparison. For the war in Iraq, according to the website Iraq Body Count, between 175,000 to 195,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed, though the Washington Post notes that the number could be much higher (see Why do we ignore the civilians killed in American wars? ) My point is this, millions of people have lost their lives because of wars instigated by American foreign policy, wars that never needed to happen in the first place. The lives of the Koreans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, Iraqis, Yemenis, and Syrians are all every bit as valuable as the lives of Americans. None of those people was a threat to American soil, American lives, or American infrastructure. They were killed so someone, somewhere could make a profit. Our troops, whom we are constantly told to support, were used to kill and maim them in acts of state sponsored terrorism that are condoned by the American public in the name of “patriotism” and sold to us on the nightly news by media companies greedy for the advertising revenue that invariably comes in by the bucket-load when America goes to war.
So on this Memorial Day, I beg you to remember the millions of innocent victims of America’s wars. The millions of women, children, fathers, wives, husbands, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and dear friends whose lives were robbed from their families, all in the name of protecting “American interests.” Remember them, put yourself in the shoes of their family members, and think how you’d feel knowing that your loved one died so someone in a foreign country could make even more money. Then demand that the U.S. end their proxy wars, end their support of state sponsored terrorism and dictatorial regimes, stop the sale of arms to nations around the world, and use to use the troops solely for defense and infrastructure improvements. These wars are fought in the names of all Americans, using our tax dollars, while infrastructure in America crumbles, and social services are cut. There’s nearly limitless money for war but little for the poor and that is a travesty.
Remember.
A Multi-ethical Response to the Universal Health Care Debate
Please note: Due to my inability to format this well, footnotes will appear in parenthesis within the text and the sources at the end. Right click to open links in a new tab.
copyright by Dillon Naber Cruz
The issue of providing single payer universal health care for all American citizens is surprisingly contentious and has lead to many heated arguments among people who find themselves on opposite sides of the issue. I have heard everything from the idea that healthcare is a human right and that no one should go bankrupt because of a medical issue to arguments from others who proclaim that universal health care is socialism and takes away or limits our freedoms. The arguments against it are surprising to me given that our neighbor to the north provides universal coverage to its citizens as do many of America’s allies in Europe, many of whom rank much higher in the indices of happiness as measured by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network of the United Nations. (1) America is experiencing a drastic drop in rates of happiness, in large measure because of an insistence upon policies that promote economic growth while subsequently cutting social support benefits thus creating angst among American citizens. Nordic countries experience much greater happiness despite lower GDP (2) and the long, cold winters of their northern latitudes. Scandinavian countries feel happier in some respects because they need not fear losing everything as a result of injury, illness, or the birth of a child.
The focus of this essay is to answer the question, “Should the U.S. guarantee health care to all of its citizens that is sufficient to cover all of their medical needs?” I will be arguing in favor of so doing from both the deontological and teleological ethical frameworks. Briefly defined, deontological ethics are those focused upon rules, and teleological ethics are based upon the consequences of a given action. For example, from a deontological perspective one might say, we must drive the posted speed limit regardless of circumstance because that is the law; while from a teleological perspective one might say, it is important to drive the speed limit because doing so lessens the number of accidents and helps to save our limited fossil fuel resources. Thus my argument in favor of single payer universal health care for all Americans from a deontological perspective will be focused on certain rules already in place within the government and within Abrahamic religions and from a teleological perspective will be focused on a variety of outcomes some of which have already been shown elsewhere to be favorable.
The Deontological Case for Universal Health Care
The law in the United States requires its citizens to pay income taxes based upon how much one makes in wages, salary, interest earned on certificates of deposit or savings accounts, as well as earnings from the stock market, inheritance, or winnings from legalized gambling. Because this is the law of the land we as citizens must pay our taxes whether we, or the Republicans and Libertarians amongst us, like it or not. Taxes are a fact of life and the money generated in taxes goes towards a wide variety of social services that make the United States a “first world nation.” From a Kantian perspective (3) then, the intention is for the government to use the revenue generated from income taxes to run the machinery of government for the benefit of American citizens while providing services to the public in the areas of national defense, veteran’s programs, the State department and foreign aid, disaster relief, social welfare programs such as food stamps, infrastructure, medicare, and medicaid, as well as transportation, social security, and funding NASA amongst others. Americans therefore have a moral obligation to pay their taxes to help run the government so that the government can provide the services to society that it intends to provide.
Taking this one step further, paying taxes can be seen as a Kantian categorical imperative in that doing so should always be applied to those who make enough money to pay taxes for the reasons outlined above. Do I want everyone who earns enough taxable income to pay taxes in order that the government can function as intended so as to provide the societal benefits that tax dollars finance? Yes I do, therefore paying taxes should be a universal maxim that everyone who makes enough taxable income should follow. (4)
From a deontological perspective then it has been established that we must pay our taxes. That in turn begs the question, where should those monies be applied? How to answer that question for people of faith seems relatively easy to me. What does our scriptural tradition say? Rosenstand notes that the Golden Rule is “certainly one of the most widespread rules of ethics in existence, finding expression in religions and moral teachings throughout recorded history.” (5) This is certainly the case within Judaism and its offshoots Christianity, Islam, and the Baha’i faiths. As one who is both culturally and a practicing Christian, albeit imperfectly, I will focus on the expressions of the Golden Rule as found within the Jewish scriptures and other writings as well as those in the Christian testament. (6) Leviticus 19:18b commands that Jews “shall love your neighbor as yourself” while in Tobit 4:15 it reads, “And what you hate, do not do to anyone.” (7) The Talmud says, “What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. This is the law: all the rest is commentary” Talmud, Shabbat 31a. (8) Jesus of Nazareth seemingly concurred with this Talmudic statement in Matthew 7:12 where he is said to have stated, “In everything do to others as you would have them do unto you; for this is the law and the prophets” and again in Luke 6:31 he offers the maxim, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” (9) He further expands on this theme in the prelude to the parable of the Good Samaritan when the lawyer responds to Jesus’ question with quotes from Deuteronomy 6:5 (“You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your might.”) in conjunction with the afore quoted Leviticus 19:18. Our neighbors according to Jesus are even those people whom we may otherwise despise as was the case between Jews and Samaritans in Jesus’ day. These passages show that the Golden Rule and its close scriptural cousin, the Greatest Commandment, are foundational to the Christian faith and find their roots in the the Jewish scriptures and other writings that Jesus quoted. They are also nearly, if not completely universal maxims as is attested by their presence in some form in faiths as disparate as Hinduism and Satanism. (10) Because these rules are so foundational to Christianity and Judaism it is incumbent upon Christians and Jews alike to follow them for it is a religious duty for adherents of those faiths.
According to the Pew Research center, Christians as of 2014 make up almost 71% of the U.S. population. Other religious faiths make up nearly 6% of the population while those who identify as atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular make up the remaining almost 23%. (11) Those numbers point to an overwhelming majority of the American population who by their own admission identify with faiths which have as a foundational tenet the Golden Rule. Because this is the case then, it follows that the adherents of those faiths, be they political representatives or constituents, should as a matter of course want their tax dollars to go towards programs such as universal health care. I know of no person who would want themselves or family members to be at risk of going bankrupt due to inadequate health insurance. I know of no person who would like to face paying the excessive costs of buying out of pocket health coverage in the wake of losing a job during difficult economic times. I know no person who would want a loved one or dear friend to die simply because the costs of treatment are too high to pay for. In other words, I do not want myself or any of my family members to be put in the position of financial ruin or premature death because healthcare is too expensive. Therefore, I want my tax dollars to be reallocated so that all Americans regardless of age or economic status are fully covered and according to my understanding of the Golden Rule all Christians should want the same thing. We cannot avoid taxes so let us pay taxes in ways that allow us as people of faith to follow our faith more assiduously.
The Teleological Argument for Universal Health Care
We now turn to the teleological or consequentialist ethical argument for universal health care. One of teleological ethics champions was Aristotle who believed that to be virtuous was to be happy. (12) Utilitarianism’s proponents on the other hand see their “moral guideline a rule that encourages them to make life bearable for as many people as possible.” (13) Another way of looking at teleological ethics is to say that “the ends justifies the means” and do those results save more than the harm potentially created. In other words, does it work? (14) What would be the consequences of Americans applying the Golden Rule in regards to providing single payer universal health care for all American citizens?
As previously mentioned, Americans are becoming less happy despite comparatively high income levels and standard of living. In 2017, the predominant global superpower and self styled greatest nation on Earth ranked 14th in happiness having dropped down one place from 2016. Co-editor of the World Happiness report, Jeffrey Sachs, stated, “As demonstrated by many countries, this report gives evidence that happiness is a result of creating strong social foundations. It’s time to build social trust and healthy lives, not guns or walls. Let’s hold our leaders to this fact.” (15) Given that health and happiness go hand in hand (16) it is not surprising that Scandinavian countries with universal health care rank so high on the list of World’s Happiest Countries (though that is not the only reason for their happiness.) (17) Also notable is the fact that in rich nations mental health issues are highly problematic (18) and it can readily be inferred then that without adequate health care those mental health problems cannot be addressed appropriately thus leading to further unhappiness. In light of these facts, it stands to reason that one of the consequences of universal health care would be an increase in the happiness of American citizens and with all the benefits being happy provides, that can only be a good thing.
Looking beyond the borders of the United States, implementing single payer universal health care could benefit the global community as well if the budget for national defense was drastically reduced in order to pay for the implementation of single payer universal health care. In recent years according to Politifact.com, discretionary spending on the U.S. military takes up 54% of the budget while overall spending on “defense” is at around 16% while discretionary spending on health and human services is at 9% and overall spending in that category is at 28%. (19) For 2017, the discretionary spending budget for the Department of Defense proposed by the Obama administration was $582.7 billion. (20) If Christians take Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount seriously, this number must needs be seen as obscene in light of the fact that U.S. has not been invaded by a foreign power since 1812 and was last attacked by a foreign country on “American” soil in 1941. (21) Additionally, the United States outspends the next several countries combined in terms of “defense” spending.
Further consideration too must be given to the fact that war is a money making scheme and often robs military members of their lives or all too frequently leaves their bodies and minds irreparably damaged. Major General Smedley Butler, who retired from the Marine Corps after 33 years of service as the most decorated Marine in history, proclaimed that war is a racket that seeks only to enrich a few people without regard to the cost in lives. (22) The consequences of America’s interventionist military policies at home and abroad is absolutely staggering in terms of lives lost, physical and mental injuries such as PTSD, not to mention the ecological degradation, infrastructure destruction, and loss of historically and culturally important sites and artifacts that results from dropping tons and tons of ordinance on poor people in countries who are no threat to the people or landscape of the United States of America. In President Barack Obama’s last year in office alone, the American armed forces dropped 26,171 bombs (23) and just this week it was reported that in Mosul American bombs inflicted an estimated 200 civilian casualties there, (24) one of many such murderous incidents within the past several decades. This kind of state sponsored terrorism is a direct violation of the Golden Rule, the Greatest Commandment, and Jesus’ other teachings regarding peace and treatment of the poor and marginalized, who are most often the hardest hit by war as is evidenced by the current refugee crisis. I know of no sane person who would want bombs to be dropped in American cities, nor do I know anyone who would want to sacrifice a family member or friend so that a defense contractor can increase its earnings for its shareholders. I can imagine no one if full possession of the facts that would say adding another $50 plus billion to the DoD budget would be a good idea. Why then would Christians sanction the dropping of bombs upon our neighbors elsewhere?
Reallocating funds from the bloated $582.7 billion discretionary budget for the Department of Defense to a comprehensive single payer universal health care program for all Americans would doubtless have a substantial effect on the nation and the world. Americans should have an informed say in where their tax dollars go and currently that say is far too small because of politicians in league with war profiteers and the media outlets who are enriched by increased advertising revenue when reporting on military actions abroad. A healthier America would be a happier America and we could use a boost in happiness as is plain to see by the anger being shouted from people of various political views. With universal health care people with preexisting conditions could get them treated, and those who are waylaid by illness or injury would know that they at the very least have true access to excellent care and therefore a good chance of recovery if the conditions are not terminal.
The ripple effects globally would be far reaching once the U.S. contracted the size and scope of its military and military operations around the world. As of 2015 there were over 150,000 members of the U.S. Armed Forces stationed overseas. (25) Bringing those troops home and having them serve here in a variety of capacities such as infrastructure improvement, disaster relief, and other ways of utilizing their military occupations would benefit local economies and communities as well as costing less. Fewer military operations and dropped bombs benefits everyone and would no doubt go a long way towards improving America’s standing internationally. America’s Christians would also be able to implement more faithfully the basic tenets of the faith personally and at a national level thus becoming more virtuous Christians that treat their neighbors with the love that Jesus said we are to enact towards our neighbors and our supposed enemies. Providing universal health care is a good place to start that process.
My View
The above arguments constitute my actual view regarding universal health care. I lived in the United Kingdom for two years and while their system at that time was not perfect, it was far superior to the system in the United States in that no one went bankrupt or died because they could not afford to pay. I believe that healthcare is a human right that should be given to all people without regard to ability to pay out of pocket. As taxes are a fact of life, I want to see tax dollars going towards things that are uplifting to individuals and to our society at large. I take the Greatest Commandment and Golden Rule seriously. These basic tenets of my faith are the rubric from which I attempt to live my life and how I want to see Christians around the world engage with our neighbors. I am also a firm believer that to be a Christian is to be a pacifist because that is what Jesus explicitly taught and he is my locus of authority in matters of faith. Though I am only just beginning to understand mimetic theory, I have enough of a grasp on in it to believe that we must make non-violence the root of our behavior so that it can be mimicked by people around us thereby ending the horrific cycles of violence around us thereby making more people agents of shalom. (26)
Being non-violent as a nation would mean that we could spend hundreds of billions less on warmongering and resource grabbing around the world and use that money to take care of the ‘least of these’ along with everyone else in America. We have systems in place that can facilitate the allocation of funds into a single payer universal health care system. America can benefit from looking at the models in place in other nations whose universal health care programs are already successful and serving their citizens well.
In addition to major cuts to the DoD budget, it is imperative to increase the tax income from corporate profits. Too many companies are making huge sums of money and then exploiting loopholes to avoid paying much if anything in taxes. (27) Once again Norway can provide knowledge in this area because their corporate tax revenue as a percentage of their GDP is the highest in the world and four times higher than the United States’ rate. (28) They also taxed corporations at 25% as of 2016. (29) If companies making billions in profits annually were taxed at 25% then tax revenue would clearly increase exponentially making funds available for programs of social uplift rather than war. We as a nation are approaching spiritual death as a result of the nation’s spending habits and constant cuts to social safety nets. (30)
Cutting the “defense budget” and taxing profitable corporations responsibly would move the US political scene from the Randian ethics espoused by Republicans such as Paul Ryan to a much more overtly progressive one that would finally put people over profits. I firmly believe too, that those who have been duped by the Randian wolves in sheep’s clothing, would soon see the virtue in social safety nets when people become happier, healthier, and less riddled with angst and anger. It is of course anachronistic to suggest that Jesus would have been a progressive politician but I cannot read the gospels and be anything other than a progressive in today’s postmodern world and that for me means advocating for single payer universal health care among other social safety nets designed to help the least of these who are Christ’s children.
(1) Jeffrey D.Sachs. “Restoring American Happiness” in The World Happiness Report eds. John Helliwell, Richard Layard, and Jeffrey Sachs. https://s3.amazonaws.com/sdsn-whr2017/HR17-Ch7_lr.pdf, accessed 3/27/2017.
(2) Jeffrey D.Sachs. “Restoring American Happiness” in The World Happiness Report eds. John Helliwell, Richard Layard, and Jeffrey Sachs. https://s3.amazonaws.com/sdsn-whr2017/HR17-Ch7_lr.pdf, accessed 3/27/2017
(3) Nina Rosenstand. The Moral of the Story: An Introduction to Ethics 7th edition, (McGraw Hill: New York, NY, 2013,) 282-3.
(4) Rosenstand, The Moral of the Story, 286.
(5) Rosenstand, The Moral of the Story, 573.
(6) I use the term Christian testament as opposed to New Testament because I am uncomfortable with the term “Old Testament” to refer to the scriptural writings of the Hebrew people. Without an old there can be no new.
(7) Leviticus 19:18, Tobit 4:15, quoted from The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha, (NOAB4) ed. Michael Coogan, (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2010,) 171, 1375.
(8) Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance. “The “Golden Rule” (a.k.a. Ethics of Reciprocity)Part 1: Passages in religious texts in 14 faiths from the Bahá’í Faith to Satanism” http://www.religioustolerance.org/reciproc2.htm, accessed 3/27/2017.
(9) NOAB4, 1756, 1841.
(10) ReligiousTolerance.org http://www.religioustolerance.org/reciproc2.htm, accessed 3/27/2017.
(11) Pew Research Center, “America’s Changing Religious Landscape.” http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/, accessed 3/27/2017.
(12) Rosenstand, The Moral of the Story, 457.
(13) Rosenstand, The Moral of the Story, 231.
(14) Dr. Lee Barrett, Ethics class lecture, Lancaster Theological Seminary, 2/15/2017.
(15) Katia Hetter. “Where are the World’s Happiest Countries,” http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/20/travel/worlds-happiest-countries-united-nations-2017/index.html, accessed 3/27/2017.
(16) Carol Graham. “Happiness and Health: Lessons-and questions- for public policy.” on http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/27/1/72.full, accessed 3/27/2017.
(17) New York Health Insurers Daily blog roll. “The world’s happiest countries and their health care systems” September 13, 2013, https://www.nyhealthinsurer.com/2013/blog/the-worlds-happiest-countries-and-their-health-care-systems/, accessed 3/27/2017.
(18) Richard Layard quoted in “Where are the World’s Happiest Countries,” http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/20/travel/worlds-happiest-countries-united-nations-2017/index.html, accessed 3/27/2017.
(19) Lois Jacobson. “Pie chart on ‘federal spending’ circulating on the Internet is misleading.” August 17, 2015 on http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/aug/17/facebook-posts/pie-chart-federal-spending-circulating-internet-mi/, accessed 3/27/2017.
(20) U.S. Department of Defense Press Release. February 9, 2016 Release No. NR-046-16 https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/News-Release-View/Article/652687/department-of-defense-dod-releases-fiscal-year-2017-presidents-budget-proposal, accessed 3/27/2017.
(21) I place American in quotes here because while Hawai’i was a U.S. territory in 1941, it was illegally annexed in 1893 largely at the behest of Sanford P. Dole, the pineapple magnate. Having lived for 7 years in the Hawaiian Islands studied Hawaiian history and being a liberation theologian I am sensitive to the injustices perpetrated against the native Hawaiians whose lands were stolen without recompense and without giving Native Hawaiians the same federal recognition that other indigenous peoples get.
(22) Smedley Butler. War is a Racket, https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html, accessed 3/27/2017.
(23) Medea Benjamin, “America dropped 26,171 bombs in 2016. What a bloody end to Obama’s reign.” The Guardian Online US ed. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/09/america-dropped-26171-bombs-2016-obama-legacy, accessed 3/27/2017.
(24) Tim Arango and Helene Cooper. “U.S. Investigating Mosul Strikes Said to Have Killed Up to 200 Civilians” New York Times Online, March 24, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/24/world/middleeast/us-iraq-mosul-investigation-airstrike-civilian-deaths.html, accessed 3/27/2017.
(25) Julia Zorthian and Heather Jones. “This graphic shows where US troops are stationed around the world.” Time. October 16, 2015. http://time.com/4075458/afghanistan-drawdown-obama-troops/, accessed 3/27/20107.
(26) For more on mimetic theory from a Christian perspective see Michael Hardin’s The Jesus Driven Life: Reconnecting Humanity with Jesus 2nd ed. (JDL Press: Lancaster, 2013.)
(27) Mike Krantz. “27 giant profitable companies paid no taxes.” USA Today, March 7, 2016. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/markets/2016/03/07/27-giant-profitable-companies-paid-no-taxes/81399094/, accessed 3/27/2017.
(28) Mark Provost. “US Fiscal Debate Could Learn From Norway.” Truth Out, February 8, 2013. http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/14434-us-fiscal-debate-could-learn-from-norway, accessed 3/27/2017.
(29) Trading Economics. “Norway Corporate Tax Rate 1981-2017.” http://www.tradingeconomics.com/norway/corporate-tax-rate, accessed March 27, 2017.
(30) Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Beyond Vietnam: A time to break the silence.” April 4, 1967. http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_beyond_vietnam/, accessed 3/27/2017.
Creation Care, Neighbor Care, Future Care- The world through a permaculture lens 