Debt and Poverty in a Christian Nation
One reason, I think, some people shun history is that historical context can be deeply disturbing — but that context also helps illuminate a better understanding of the present.
The following example is both disturbing (nearly impossible to believe) and an apt analogy for the current debate about college loan forgiveness.
Deborah C. England offers these sobering facts about marital rape in the U.S.:
Marital rape was a term that was viewed by the law as an oxymoron until shamefully late in U.S. history. Until the 1970’s, the rape laws in every state in the union included an exception if the rapist and the victim were husband and wife. In 1993, all 50 states had finally eliminated the “marital rape exception.” But the effects of these archaic exceptions persist and interfere with spousal rape prosecutions in some states.
Only over the last three decades have wives been allowed to pursue legal consequences for being raped in their own homes, by their spouse, and thus, far more women have lived under the specter of marital rape than not in U.S. history.
Should those women be so offended by the change in law that they resent the new (and morally justifiable) law? Should they demand that all women continue to suffer as they did?
Of course not.
That many suffered needlessly is not grounds for maintaining a wrong.
Many in the U.S. live under the burden of student loans because the U.S. has chosen not to fully fund K-16 education and has chosen to ignore predatory lending and abusive interest rates and repayment schedules.
Student debt relief is acknowledgement of a wrong — not a give-away, not a slap in the face of those who were equally wronged.
[Please continue reading HERE.]
