Hudge and Gudge Watch: Big Business squashes your rights

It is common thinking among conservatives that the government getting too big is the only problem, and once that is dealt with our freedom will be secure.
However, this view forgets that big business can be just as bureaucratic and invasive as big government.
Recently this year, a hospital decided that it will no longer hire anyone who smokes. You thought the government was the only one running the anti-smoking campaign? Think again. It was neither the first nor will it be the last.

According to the hospital's new policy, anyone who tests positive for nicotine in their drug screening will now be considered in the same group as illegal drug users. From the article:

As part of the pre-employment drug screen, they will be looking for nicotine. If a prospective employee tests positive for nicotine, the offer of employment will be rescinded. Even nicotine gum or the patch would make a potential employee ineligible.

Officials with Memorial say the new policy isn’t designed to save money on health care costs, but because a hospital should set a healthy example to the community.

“I understand the concerns people have, but we are here for the health of our community,” Brad Pope, vice president of human resources said. “Like it or not, what’s proven is that tobacco is the most preventable cause of death and disability in the United States. I think the Chattanooga and surrounding communities should expect this from Memorial.”

Thus, based on an unprovable statement with no evidence to back it up (as the majority of people who smoke do not even die from it) Gudge is now going to tell his slaves what they can do when they sit at home in their living room in a manner that concerns him in no way whatsoever. Now what concerns me here is not that a majority of us here at the Review smoke (even though such contributes to our sober and balanced atmosphere), nor the fact that I smoke and I love smoking and would no sooner part with my pipe than I would with food, I might very will have a distaste for smoking and be alarmed by this event.

Mr. Pope has decided that he is the Pope of the holy office of discipline in his company, and he is going to regulate not just what the employees of his temple of Asklepios do while they're there, or with company things (which he is within his right to do), but what they do with their own things at home (which he is not). Imagine Dr. Smith at home in his living room. He decides that he should like a small cigar to go with his coffee while he reads his a very thrilling novel. No, my Pope (that is of the HR department) will fire me. Or again Dr. Smith is invited out for a round of drinks with some friends, but wait, they smoke. Not only might nicotine get in his blood stream from second hand smoke, but he will get it on people at work through third hand smoke. So Dr. Smith is now forced to contract his social circle.

Moreover, as Mr. Pope has pontificated, the hospital is not treating smokers in the same class as those who use illegal drugs because they think it will save them money on insurance, but because they are positively opposed to the thing in itself, irrespective of whether or not the research behind it is correct. The hospital is not saying "do not smoke in the building around the patients" etc. which is reasonable on various levels. They say do not do it at home. What else might a Mr. Pope decree with the dubious infallibility of statistics and studies? What about obesity? We saw the spectacle of a woman nominated for Obama's Surgeon General who was slightly pudgy, shapely might be the correct description, rejected on the basis that she was fat and this would send a bad message. What if Chatanooga's Pope should decide that the hospital needs to set the standard and fire anyone who is fat (or perceived to be fat, since our society has a strange and unhealthy obsession with being skinny, the goal should be to acquire fitness)? Dr. Smith, even though you are an award winning pediatrician who has worked with children for 20 years, you don't set the example of what a healthy person should look like because you are fat. You have been excommunicated.

Then it comes down "If anyone should on his own time eat at McDonalds, anathama sit." If that sounds far fetched and ridiculous, think again. It follows exactly from big business getting the power to determine what you can and can't do. The Nazis embarked on a massive anti-smoking campaign, and the reason was if people could accept the government's right to regulate their personal behavior, they could accept the principle that the government can regulate other behavior, and they selected that which was becoming scientifically unpopular and thus could have the weight of doctors, scientists and the gestapo behind it. Soon any behavior seen as unpatriotic, much like "counter-revolutionary" in the Soviet Union, became criminalized. How has big business gotten this power might you ask? Gas prices. Not from the gas prices, but rather the gas prices show us how they have gotten a strangle hold on us. We can't afford to lose our jobs, particularly in a volatile economy, and we can't afford to not work. This is why when gas prices went over $4 people continued to buy, although other sectors of the economy weakened, not because people are addicted to oil, but because without it we can't get to work, and end up living in the street.

In truth, big business is little different than big government. They think that they own you, the former because they pay you, the latter because they take from you. Next it becomes, I don't like the Pope (because Mr. Pope correctly observes that there can only be one at one time) so anyone whose religious affiliation is Catholic must be sacked. This has already been done for any appointment in congress who might be Catholic and faithful to the Church. Then perhaps you drink coffee. Coffee is found to cause heart problems based on these studies, so drink tea instead. Testing positive for coffee in your system will lead to rescinding of job offers or firing. Then, it will become more ridiculous, not to mention stressful without that cup of kona in the morning. On the other hand, in Michael Novak's estimation that might be a boon to capitalists in the medical field.

One may not like smoking, I for example detest cigarettes, but proudly smoke a pipe and cigar, but none of that really matters. What matters is neither big business nor big government (hudge and gudge) believe in the family. They both believe the man who works for them is but a cog in their machine, and that his is their cog in their machine. The big business doesn't believe in the family because it is inconvenient for him, the government because it believes it is the Pater Familias. Since the two become more and more alike, the two begin acquiring the other's traits, like a married couple who begin to behave like each other. The family becomes inconvenient to the state, because the state brings about a new concept of the family that clashes with tradition, so it forces compulsory education where its policies are right and mom and dad are wrong, or children can be taken away because parents taught the wrong values. The big business begins thinking it is the head of the family, and begins to control it. Yet that is the future because big business and big government are the same thing.

Now the libertarian, or some other fool who doesn't believe in the effects of original sin but sees man only in a vacuum of reality, might remark, well, work somewhere else. The market will not allow them to continue for long if that is what people want. In a vacuum that might even work, but in reality it is senseless.

In the first place, one may not be able to get another job. Let's even say he can, to get away from a tyrannical HR Pope, he must contend with other businesses which will eventually adopt the same thing. The libertarian fails to take into account what is fashionable, except in the metric of selling garbage, which capitalism does very well. It takes good products, like a bit of virginia cut tobacco leaf rolled up into a natural tobacco paper, into a disgusting capitalist product half tobacco and half chemical filled saw dust and bleached paper, not to mention fiberglass filters. It is good at selling crap, but we must not forget that when the wealthy put their wealth to something, it creates an effect irrespective of what people want. The wealthy want women to be dressed up like prostitutes even at age 4, so they flood stores with clothing of this style and mark it $4. A sweet dress such as girls about 4 should be wearing, $20. There is no market force involved, but the forces of the wealthy and social destruction. Nevertheless, let us say again that Dr. Smith has several children, and as costs go up providing for his family has gone up. So maybe he can't leave, but wishes to escape the bull of his HR Pope, yet is stuck there. So he must change certain virtues he engages in at home to suit his employer, which are but the beginning of the first. Most men will fall into this category, especially when real unemployment numbers factor in pretty high.

It is much like the gas prices. The market can bear it not because that is what people want to pay, but what they must pay to avoid being fired and living with their family on the street. It is why people worked 15 hour days before government correctly began regulating big business, not because they wanted to, but because they had to. The big business is betting that if you don't like it you will step in line, because (especially in this economy) you must or else risk joblessness and homelessness.

Nevertheless, let us suppose that Dr. Smith does move. He moves to a new city where he knows no one, that he doesn't care for because that is where he could get a job without a Pope of the home as well as the workplace.

Why should a man leave off of hearth and home and go to a new place? There are all kinds of legitimate reasons, war, or personal tragedy, or some other calamity, but not because he is required to give up smoking at his former job! Its ludicrous. Hearth and home are no longer the sacred domains of the family, but subject to the whims of the bureaucratic befuddlements of Hudge and Gudge. The Caesars rose to many heights, they also descended to many lows, but they never descended so low as to try and be worshiped as the gods of the hearth and home. Big business has done Caesar one better.

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Distributism is Dying...

... or so I've been told.

It wasn't but four years ago that I stumbled upon Distributist Perspectives Vol. 1. It was a Christmas gift from my parents. Along with it came two other books. The first was "I'll Take My Stand" by the Twelve Southerners. The second was "Who Owns America?" edited by Agar and Tate. Unbeknownst to me, the writers and content of both "I'll Take My Stand" and "Who Owns America" were in some way or another linked to those persons and ideas contained in Distributist Perspectives Vol. 1. Chalk it up as a strike of providence. 

Upon reading these books, it didn't take me long to see the similarities. All three were traditionalist, skeptical of all things big, and agrarian to the core. Furthermore, the writers all appeared to see a connection between the political economy and culture. They talked of art, literature, and architecture. In brief, there was a consensus amongst the contributors that the debates surrounding the political economy were not merely academic. Rather, these debates hit to the very center of who we are as individuals, as a city, and as a nation.

Some may insist that the ideas advanced within these books fall within the losing column of history. I would beg to differ, though only with the luxury of hindsight. While one should readily admit that there was relatively little progress made during the lifetimes of these particular men, it would be foolish to confine the win and lose columns of history to the lifespan of a group of writers. 

At any rate, there are those who point to the burgeoning of Big Business, Wall Street, and the service economy as proof that the American people have no interest in the ideas typically associated with distributism. Some may even note the fact that a large portion of Americans claim to love Capitalism, while very few have ever heard the word distributism, and even less of its substance. These facts, at least for the anti-distributist, serve as evidence that distributism is on its deathbed waiting to be put out of its misery. Or, if they are generous enough to grant that there will always be a remnant of those willing to identify themselves as distributists, they will ridicule the school of thought as a fringe movement made up of discontents and those overly infatuated with all things nostalgic. 

But are these so-called evidences proof, as the antagonist would insist, that distributism is dying? As I said earlier, I would answer this in the negative. For these so-called evidences can be seen and interpreted in many other ways. 

Take for instance Big Business. It certainly appears to be thriving. On the other hand, even giants like Wal-Mart are having to rally the troops in hope of figuring out ways to bypass what has recently become a storm of opposition.  One need only watch the documentary "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price" to see just how strong, and coordinated, the opposition has become. 

But this, in and of itself, does not answer the question as to why so many people continue to frequent these behemoths. Truth be told, the answers are as simple as they are complex. We know that there many shoppers that have been pigeonholed into believing that they cannot afford to shop anywhere else. There are others who could shop elsewhere, and who decry the loss of small business, but who would prefer watching the local hardware dealer go out of business than to pay what could only be described as a reasonable price for goods  and services of better quality. Sadly, there are also those who simply don't care what happens to their neighbor, so long as they save a few pennies here and there. Of course, they shun from their conscience all guilt for having fed companies that rely for their existence on what amounts to nothing less than slave labor in foreign countries. For these particular shoppers, it is a matter of "out of sight, out of mind." To make matters worse is that the vast majority of these people don't realize that their low prices are also tied to government subsibies. These come from local, state, and federal dollars, and they come in frequency and figures that would be the envy of any local business owner. So while the answer to this question may seem easy to the antagonist, the truth of the matter is that the issue is much more complicated than it may first appear.

Wall Street is an entirely different story. The average Johnny Q and Sally Sue have little care for what goes on there. As The Nation pointed out so accurately in 2002, people don't typically go to work in order to purchase stocks. Where the common folk of yesteryear may have been somewhat indifferent to Wall Street, this can no longer be said. Instead, indifference has turned into outrage. Faulty prices, rabid speculation, credit swaps, and the stock market's subtle, but now apparent, interconnectivity with even those who know little about the numbers and letters flashing across the bottom of the television screen, has resulted in a collective man-hunt, with Wall Street as its target. Add to the flames the "revelation" concerning the government's obvious preference for the well-being of Wall Street insiders over against the common good, and you have a sure recipe for populist outcry. 

People are outraged. This much is certain. But what is more telling than their outrage is their not wishing to better familiarize themselves with the beast. Rather, many prefer to see it go the way of the dinosaur, or at least to be treated like a plague that needs isolation and strict supervision. Regardless of how the hucksters on Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue wish to spin this, the American people have quickly grown a healthy distaste (and distrust) for Capitalism's casino and the gamblers who frequent its halls.

As for capitalism, while the word is commonplace amongst the citizenry, very few know what it really entails. Most tend to boil it down to a free market where people can compete with others and earn money along the way. This is typically dovetailed with the notion that less government intervention is good. 

While all this sounds well and good, it fails to take into account the fact that, as Chesterton put it, one of capitalism's greatest inadequacies is that it creates too few capitalists.  To add insult to injury, the average citizens knows as little about little of the current status of wealth in the United States as they do about the meaning of capitalism. I'm willing to bet the farm that were the citizenry to be fully aware of the figures concerning the distribution of wealth and land in this so-called capitalist society, they would, unlike Chesterton, be astounded. 

Let's take the 2006 Federal Reserve, Department of Treasury survey as a practical example. We begin with $100. Then we add 100 people. Now,  a perfectly equal distribution of wealth (which is not the goal of distributism) would be $1 per person. As it stands right now, the 50 individuals at the bottom of the stack have $0.05. Collectively, they make up $2.50, leaving $97.50 to be divided between the remaining 50. The next 40 have $0.70 of wealth, or $28 collectively. The next nine have $4 of wealth, or $36 collectively. Now this leaves one person remaining. This single individual would, per $100 mentioned earlier, have in his or her sole possession $33.50. 

To say that this is horrifying would be to trivialize the meaning of horror.

One may rest assured that when these figures come to light, as they are with the passing of every day, people will begin to see the forest for the trees. They'll begin to connect the dots, finding a line between Big Business, Wall Street, and what parades around as capitalism. It is here, at this moment and at this time that distributists can smile and wink at the antagonist, knowing full well that the confidence of the naysayer was built on what was little more than a phantasm waiting for the right moment to disappear.

Distributism isn't dead. It isn't even dying. No, distributism is coming to light. It is, as John Medaille would say, "the wave of the future."

The road is destined to be hard, as money and power never fail to put up a good fight. But those rumbling underfoot, fueled by ideas penned by those of old, may be too much for even the giants of today to withstand. In the end, being perceived as finding a home in history's losing column may have turned out to be a boon rather than a bust. 

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