A Moral Consensus

On Tuesday, President Obama participated in a summit on Overcoming Poverty at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. E.J.Dionne was the moderator and other participants were Arthur Brooks of the conservative American Enterprise Institute and Harvard University professor Robert Putnam. "The forum produced rare cross-ideological agreement, at least on the fact that eradicating poverty must be a national priority." http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/obama-poverty-racial-segregation-became-income-segregation

Here is another link to the event:  https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/05/12/3-important-thoughts-president-shared-poverty-america

Here is a transcript from the event:  https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/05/12/remarks-president-conversation-poverty-georgetown-university

Significantly, Arthur Brooks, who previously talked of "Makers and Takers", had this to say:  "That’s why I'm in this particular movement.  But we’ve gotten into a partisan moment where we substitute a moral consensus about how we serve the least of these, our brothers and sisters, where we pretend that that moral consensus is impossible,+++++++ and we blow up policy differences until they become a holy war.  That’s got to stop because it's completely unnecessary." 

He went on to discuss key principles he thinks we need to overcome poverty. I found his remarks to be very profound about how we chose to view those people who are caught  up in the poverty cycle. I will share a snippet here and you can go to the link to read the rest.  

He said:  "When you talk about people as your brothers and sisters you don’t talk about them as liabilities to manage.  They’re not liabilities to manage.  They’re assets to develop because every one of us made in God’s image is an asset to develop.  That’s a completely different approach to poverty alleviation.  That’s a human capital approach to poverty alleviation.  That’s what we can do to stimulate that conversation on the political right, just as it can be on the political left."

The President also had some very profound remarks on the topic of overcoming poverty. He talked of how racial segregation has been replaced by economic segregation. He said, "Now, that creates its own politics.  Right?  I mean, there’s some communities where I don’t know -- not only do I not know poor people, I don’t even know people who have trouble paying the bills at the end of the month.  I just don’t know those people.   And so there’s a less sense of investment in those children.  So that’s part of what’s happened." 

I would encourage the reader to click on the link above which has the entire transcript from the event. We can address poverty both at the Federal level and within our faith communities. Together we can help people. We need policies, laws, and money to overcome poverty, but, most of all we need the will to do it.