Where are our priorities?

We are called in sacred text, at least those of us within the Christian community who hold the Bible dear, to love our enemies, to feed the poor, to shelter and take care of the widow, the orphan, and so on. This morning I read Frida Berrigan’s statistics, just a few of which are appalling (whole article here). For instance, by some calculations we spend $763,000 a minute in the war. That same amount would provide Head Start for 115 children for a year. Or, she notes that that works out to $12,730 a second spent on war, which is twice what the US spends on primary education per YEAR per child ($6,043). Do we understand what we are allowing our government to spend our hard earned monies on? There’s a new poll out in MN this morning that suggests that, contrary to what some of the media have been reporting, 77% of Minnesotans support an income tax increase. When you ask people about specific service cuts vs. tax increases, they are most often favoring tax increases rather than cutting services. I think the next task for those of us trying to live faithfully (that is, full of faith) ought to be “regime change” here at home (using our democracy to its fullest, rather than simply living with its rhetorical flourishes).