Two natural disasters

"No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." --From Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. Instead of staying home and experiencing an earthquake and hurricane in the same week, you pie maker was called away to prepare his first commissioned pie (recipe coming soon). However, he couldn't help noticing a little bit of a media tempest surrounding a GOP candidate's suggestion that the paired disasters might be a warning from the Almighty. Of course, we know that God is not in the whirlwind. Don't we? While your pie maker's economic life is dominated by methodological naturalism, he's not one to shy away from a good narrative. This one begins with Exodus. If one actually reads the Mosaic law, the central theme is loyalty to the one God of Israel, who brought his people out of slavery in Egypt. Because of their loyalty to and love of the greatest emancipator, the Israelites were commanded to treat one another fairly, to not exploit the poor, the orphan or the widow, It is certainly possible to acquire great wealth while following the law, but it commands the follower to avoid and charges the tax-collecting temple to enforce a ban (through dispute mediation) on the gleaning of fields and exploitive lending or business practices. Centuries later, the Babylonian exile forced ancient Israel to wonder what went wrong. Some of their prophets had warned of idolatry and injustice (not so much sexual morality, except as related to idol worship), but were ignored. Sitting by the waters of Babylon, they decided to take such warnings seriously and were eventually allowed to return home. Once there, the temptation to exploit and seek power in this life without divine guidance cropped up again and again. And so, again and again there were prophets warning of disasters that would befall them if they did not. One of these was Amos, whom the reverend doctor famously quoted above. The Thursday before Hurricane Irene arrived, a 5.8 magnitude quake hit Virginia and rattled DC. The District partially evacuated, and all of the monuments were shut down, including Dr. MLK Jr.'s. However, the next day, it was the wealthiest man memorialized on the Mall whose monument was closed indefinitely, That weekend, the national press and government had planned to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the speech quoted above with the formal dedication of the new Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. Instead, we are left to imagine the self-congratulatory speeches and pages about how appropriate it is that a man with an black African father should be President on such an auspicious day. About how far we have come as a nation from those bad old days, and how, while things aren't perfect, we are living out and up to Dr. King's Dream. Meanwhile, our gap between rich and poor grows. Laborers, when their work isn't simply offshored, find their livelihoods and safety threatened by an unraveling social safety, weakened unions and tax policy that favors the selling of debt by the very few over the production of goods by the many. That weekend, Irene rolled in with a lot of water and unleashed a mighty stream. Instead of putting a capstone on the work of the man who came to preach Amos to us, the story continues. If someone was trying tell us something, I doubt it had much to do with preserving the suburbs.