Economics. From the Greek oikonomia, which means literally the management of the household (oikos): making sure everyone has enough. A cognate is oikumene (community) from which is derived our word, ecumenical. United we stand, divided we fall. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Jesus the Christ and President Lincoln.
“You can either have large amounts of money in the hands of the few, or you can have democracy, but you can’t have both.” Justice Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court, 1939.
Our current economic scenario of inequality is severe and more serious than it was in 1929. Both political parties are hand maidens to the unjust economic order by which corporations have undue power on our political situation. When you have a social-economic-political system that has strayed this far with the majority of the money in the hands of a few you have a major threat to our equality, to our freedom, to the health and well being of a country.
George Washington in his farewell address warned us about political parties saying:
“They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put in the place of the delegated will of the Nation, the will of a party; often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the Community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the Mirror of the ill concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests. However combinations or Associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the Power of the People, and to usurp for themselves the reins of Government; destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion. Let me now. . .warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party.” September 19, 1796.
The warning about the spirit of the party couldn’t be more timely. In the past it has been the role of religion (from the Latin religio) “to bind together.” That is the root (radical) meaning. It lies at the heart of our faith and undergirds the health of our nation.
The Wealth of WholeHealth Movement therefore is a radically required revolution integrating five major components: Social Justice, Politics, Economics, Learning and Well Being. We are moving beyond the bubble, and as Ben Franklin said, “Either we all hang together or we’ll hang separately.” Doing nothing is not an option as our countries Wealth and Health depends on us.
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