A Nation at Code Red

January 13, 2006

A Nation at Code Red

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." — Martin Luther King, Jr., April 4, 1967

By Rabia Terri Harris, associate editor, Fellowship magazine

In the hospital, when a patient’s monitors show a sudden drop in vital signs, a “code” call goes out. Medical staff abandon whatever they are doing and run to the scene. Emergency procedures begin.

As we commemorate the prophetic vision of Martin Luther King, let us consider the seriousness of our condition. The U.S. military budget has soared in comparison to potential competitors. The U.S. spends eight times more than China, a distant number two on the military spending hit parade. We spend 29 times more than the seven official "rogue states" (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, North Korea, and Cuba) combined. Our nation is absolutely without peer in accumulating the apparatus of death. Yet our sense of vulnerability keeps eating away at us – and whether we can really manage to protect ourselves remains an open question. In terms of real security, we have never been feebler.

Look at our vital signs. According to the National Priorities Project, last year's federal taxpayers purchased eight times more of this so-called "defense" than education; 11 times more "defense" than nutrition assistance; 14 times more than housing assistance; 17 times more than environmental protection; 32 times more than job training. Not that we were consulted, of course. Polls consistently show a different set of priorities. So just what is it that is being defended?

It is possible that we have an immune system problem. We seem to be attacking ourselves. Think of the surveillance, the breakdown of civil rights, the collapse of public discourse, the corruption. Think of how the Iraq war is destroying us.

The Chicago Tribune reported in December that 36 million people – 13% of the U.S. population! – experienced hunger or some food crisis in 2005. Meanwhile the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities found that millionaire households – 0.2% of the population – received 19.3% of all Bush administration tax cut benefits through 2004: a gift of $123,592 per mansion. Our public resource surplus has turned into a skyrocketing resource deficit, while the U.N. Development Program's GINI Index rates us below every other industrial democracy when it comes to equitable income distribution.

In school, a score that low signifies failure. In a hospital, it signifies approaching death. We are in a national spiritual emergency, and the patient is coding.

A correct diagnosis has been available for some time, but we have been in denial. And it was Dr. King, our great national physician, who made it, in one of his simplest and most powerful statements. It is unlikely you will find it quoted this Monday. He said: “There is something wrong with capitalism.”

What is wrong with capitalism is greed. And around the raw ugliness of our greed we have built a glittering edifice of hype. We proclaim our greatness to the world while rotting away inside. No combination could be more toxic.

Yet most of us are people of good will. So hope remains.

Responsible Wealth, a visionary group of rich Americans (drawn from the wealthiest five percent of U.S. citizens), has suggested one strategy. "In a market economy, the number one goal is usually seen as maximizing profits," they observe. "What if we made investments that instead sought to maximize justice?" The payoff, they urge, would not be loss, but enormous gain.

And let us not forget that in any spiritual emergency, the number one first aid measure is a massive infusion of truth. We need to rejoin what one administration official has derided as "the reality-based community." We cannot divert huge energies to spinning an imaginary world for ourselves and expect to survive.

More and more of us, fortunately, are beginning to find the courage to call a lie a lie. That is the path to life. Though it may seem harsh, we must commit to it. In an emergency, half measures will not do.

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