[Not-so] Love Lockdown, Prologue (1/4): Do Convicted Criminals dream the American dream?

Do convicted criminals dream the American dream?

Sure they do - Just look at freshly sentenced criminals Rajat Gupta (former Goldman board member), R. Allen Stanford (sentenced to 110 years in prison without parole), and of course Grandaddy Ponzi himself, Bernie Madoff. Hell, these guys even lived the American dream, with its fast cars, deep pockets, luxury yachts and diamonds for the ladies in life.

Now, these riches-to-rags storybook characters are scheduled to rot in a Federal penitentiary for the rest of their lives, leaving exponentially more finances and possibly life plans ruined in their wake. All this justice, of course, conducted in order to dissuade other current or would-be criminals from acting...in exactly the only way they know of how to get to the American dream - Get Rich or Die/Go to Jail Trying.

50 Cent was on to something

A rather paradoxical message, given the global rash of government-bank bailouts and the continued reliance on the instruments (i.e. financial markets) of who-dares-wins capitalism. But enough of this suddenly-fashionable bashing of fallen financial idols. It seems like just yesterday when activist judges, juries, and members of the media started defending the rights of convicted rapists, murderers, gang-bangers and the assorted denizens of American death row - new and vindicating/damning DNA evidence notwithstanding - so I'm sure public opinion will grow weary of its latest social witch-hunt sooner or later, and that District Attorneys/Federal Prosecutors will likewise find some other scapegoats upon which to build their reputations on the docket. Sooner or later, our generation's To Kill a Mockingbird of the early 21st century will be published, this time admonishing the veritable inquisition of financial criminals during a time of long-term recession and entrenched unemployment.

Yet even in a time of economic downturn, when Wall Street becomes an easy target of Main Street's wrath, no one seems to be pissing on how the wildly-popular (and mostly plastic) Kardashians, the train-wreck-of-an-excuse-for-a-man Charlie Sheens, or the well-paid, drug-snorting Lindsay Blohan-type celebrities don't pay "their fair share" of American taxes. Plus Justin Bieber- he's CANADIAN!! Where is that money going??

oh...nevermind.

What compelled me to finally write original content for the blog again - and a three-part series, at that - was a combination of many factors, the premier of which was my roommate's comment that, "no offense, but I think the American Dream is more of a Dream than a Reality."

Guest Post: Searching for the Übermensch in Universal Post-Secondary Education

From the ashes of civilization, the Philosophers will emerge from their forest hermitages and subsequently inherit the earth. Here is such a philosopher, hailing from Bremerton, Washington, and bringing with him musings inspired by the wild and wonderful Pacific Northwest. Please welcome Brett Aho, today's guest author and author of the blog "Searching for the Übermensch," who will be contributing philosophical insights to CR from time to time. Today's entry is cross-blogged to Conflict Revolution from http://brettaho.blogspot.com.

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UNIVERSAL POST-SECONDARY EDUCATION
By Brett Aho

One of the unfortunate phenomena of partisan politics is the manifestation of a blanket of deference one weaves for any set of ideals espoused by a certain party or politician. A shining example of this came in the past month, when the well-polarized Senator Rick Santorum made comments to a crowd about college education.

“President Obama has said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob… There are good, decent men and women who go out and work hard every day, and put their skills to test, who aren't taught by some liberal college professor (who) tries to indoctrinate them. I understand why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image. I want to create jobs so people can remake their children into their image, not his."

If you can untangle the basic gist of his statement from the jungle of populist conservative positioning, you will see that he’s simply stating, “not everybody needs to go to college”, which in itself is not an entirely unreasonable statement to make. Unlike most severely conservative viewpoints, it actually raises a topic worthy of debate.

Guest Post: Are Young People Selfish?

This post comes to us from CONFLICT REVOLUTION friend and loyal reader Kate Bermingham. Kate was asked to contribute her thoughts to the blog after sharing a very interesting piece of writing by Georgetown Professor Patrick J. Deneen, who essentially argues that while today's young people are more tolerant of individual differences among our peers, we are less likely to feel an obligation toward anyone else but ourselves. Very provocative stuff - here's Kate to break it down:

An apt diagnosis of the prevailing ideology of today’s young, educated elite, Patrick Deneen’s recent article “Campus Libertarianism up, Civic Commitment Down” raises an essential intellectual distinction that has a profound political -- and moral -- implication. Substantiating his observations with UCLA’s annual survey of college freshmen, “Today's students,” Deneen observes, “demonstrate an overall disposition toward ‘live and let live,’ in both the social and economic realms.” Many have, it seems, embraced a laissez faire posture toward the world around them – materially and culturally.

In contemporary America, mainstream politics (which arguably includes libertarians since the Tea Party surge and the semi-ironic worship of Ron Paul) are simply estranged members of the same philosophical family, descendants of Lockean political theory. Even the many sides of the debates that animate this blog largely belong to the same dysfunctional philosophical family: Liberalism (sorry, Steve). We believe that the discrete individual is the most fundamental unit of society and that political rights thus belong not to families, institutions, or communities – but to men, created equal. Unsurprisingly, we find agreement about this on all sides of the American political aisle for, as G.K. Chesterton first observed, Americans are a creedal people. This means to be American is not to be of a certain ethnicity, religion, or ancestry – but to be of a certain worldview – the one articulated in our founding documents.

"There is Nobody in this Country Who Got Rich on His Own"

After watching the below video, sent to him by Matt, Stephen was so enraged that he needed to respond to what he called "utter horseshit." As a man who doesn't use the word horseshit lightly, now is his time to refute this garbage. Here's the article that made Stephen so mad that he was ready to dump toxic waste into the Hillsborough River just to get back at Matt.

First, I'd like to start by agreeing with Elizabeth Warren, yes the wealthy did not spontaneously pop into existence. But does that really prove your argument or anything you really stand for? Actually, the way I see it it's painful to the liberal movement to remind us all of the Social Contract (which this argument plays off).

1 - Leave it to liberal "intellectuals" to reignite a debate that was settled in the mid-1700's. Yes, I understand the Social Contract, we all come together into society because alone we cannot provide all the goods society can. In return, we sacrifice some things. Fine, but I can't see how that leads to progressive liberalism, Matt if you would be so kind please explain.

Read the rest of Stephen's argument and check out Matt's response after the jump...