Liberty and Capitalism

#Pliefemi O. Taiuro, "Liberty for Whom," The Nation, 5. 17 - 24.2021. - "The freedom that [Patrick] Henry, a plantation and slave owner, and his fellow founders took to be worth defending, was also linked to the racial domination that organized life and labor in the American colonies." "For centuries, he, [Stovall], argues, writers, intellectuals, and politicians have tried various strategies to reconcile the United States' and France's brutal histories of racial domination, settler conquest, and slavery with their stated commitment to freedom." " 'Much as the United Sates and France sought to suppress the pirates, [Tyler] Stovall, author of 'White Freedom: the Racial History of an Idea' (Princeton University), contends, they sought to dominate and control the children in their own countries, and they did so in the name of a new form of freedom: one defined not by bucking formal power structures (as the pirates did), but by respecting them."

"In 1776, Jefferson famously wrote the Declaration of Independence, which held that 'all men are created equal, and endowed with an inalienable right to liberty,' even though he owned more than 60 human beings -- surely some sort of conflict, should we take his words literally." "Nevertheless, the conclusion of World War I marked a return to a politics that saw freedom as an ideal for some but not all." 

"The summer after the War's conclusion was known in the United States as the Red Summer for its massive wave of violence nationwide, as white mobs looked to restore the racial orders." "His [Stovall's] history of American and French racial politics outside of their domestic sphere is commendable, making these empires accountable for their total domains of control and influence , including their oft-ignored colonial endeavors and effects on global politics."

#Alyssa Battistonic, "Diminishing Returns," The Nation, 5. 17 - 24.2021. - "Yet it has forced many liberals to fiercely reckon with the features of capitalism that leftists have long lamented: the production of vast poverty amid obscene wealth, the consequence of economic powers, and the proliferation of crisis that disrupt the system's promised stability, and undermines human health and happiness." "For Milanonic [Branko, author of 'The Future of the System That Rules the World' (Harvard University)], the study of contemporary capitalism means recognizing internal differences within a unitary system. He identifies two main types: The meritocratic 'liberal capitalism of the West,' and the state-led 'political capitalism of China' and a number of other countries, in which a small elite has managed to entrench its position, even though equality of opportunity is ostensibly the norm." 

"Individual people who adopt lives of greater leisure will find themselves falling behind their hard-working peers, while nations that attempt to set shorter work weeks will find themselves overtaken economically, to the point that the citizens of richer nations will buy the very land out from under them. Yet it completely misunderstands the ecological problem we face today: not that we will run out of raw materials, but rather, that we will destroy the ecological functions that keep the planet habitable." "It is folly to think that one can reform capitalism without considering the changes reshaping the earth itself." 

#Esther Honig, "A Life," The Nation, 5. 17 - 24.2021. - "From November until late April, between 8,000 and 10,000 people, according to one estimate, cross the border daily, spending seven hours or more traveling from their homes in Mexico to work in Yuma's fields." "These commuters make up around a quarter of the estimated 38,000 farmworkers who shoulder Yuma County's $3 billion agricultural industry." 

"A study last year by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, found that farmworkers in the Salinas Valley, one of the nation's leading agricultural regions, had more than twice the infection [rate for the coronavirus], compared with the state population." "Last year, there were more than 213,000 H-2A workers, mostly from Mexico. Around 6,500 were sent to Yuma County... That's still a sliver of the estimated full-time farmworkers in the Valley, but in the past 14years, the number of jobs filled by H-2A visa holders has increased fivefold." 

ADDENDUMS:

*Talia Lavin, "Crowdfunding Hate in the Name  of Christ," The Nation, 4. 19 - 26.2021. - "The inclusion of some of the infamous figures on the alt-right creates a striking juxtaposition: evangelical Christians, who number in the millions in the United States, alongside fringe extremists -- white nationalist ideologies of the type that President Biden called 'demented' during a CNN townhall in February."

*Jeet Heer, The Nation, 4. 19 - 26.2021. - "The Republican fearmongering that Dr. Seuss being canceled is deeply cynical and dishonest. It also prevents the mature conversation that we need to have about racism in classic children's literature. "I think it's important to have a historical record of how commonplace and accepted racism was -- and the ways racialized groups responded to being stereotyped."

*Racism in medicine," TIME, May 10/May 17, 2021. - "It is past time for the world's leading medical journals to name racism, publish evidence on how racism harms health, and articulatee how dismantling racism can prevent health inequities." 

*"Fight cancer with data," TIME, May 10/May 17, 2021. - "For too long, electronic health records have been health system centric, making it difficult for patients, doctors, and researchers to track an individual patients' data over time, and across systems." "Better data sharing, and use of real-world evidence can lay the foundation for similar progress on other diseases, especially complex chronic conditions like heart disease and diabetes." 

*Alexandra Schwartz, "In Good Faith," The New Yorker, March 29, 2021. - "The term 'Ultra-Orthodox,' which many of the people whom it describes find to be pejorative, emerged some hundred years ago to distinguish between Jews who held to traditional customs, and those of a new sect, the Modern Orthodox, who strove to reconcile the demands of religion with the mores of secular life."