Last Saturday I finally finished the Confirmation class I've had to attend this past school year. About half the classes talked about the 'community', but there was one class in particular that reeked of socialism.

    Each class was a lecture given by a different person each week. This particular class was titled 'Catholic Social Teaching'. It started out with the teacher asking everyone to take off their coat and look on the tag to see where it was made. Places such as China, Taiwan, Honduras, etc. were named. She then named out the salaries people per week make there. I can't remember the exact numbers but I know they were very low, $1 a week, or something like that. This was apparently supposed to prove that people in those countries are very poor. Which they are, but she forgot to take into consideration that in those places like that, a dollar would be worth MUCH more, then here. Well, moving on.

    Then, she asked where people bought cloths. People said, Wal-Mart, Gap, Old Navy, Target and others. She said(and I am NOT exagerating in any way) 'Those companies exploit people in poor countries! By buying products of those places you have said that you support the idea that people live in horrible conditions, for low pay! We must all boycott such companies, to stop such horrible practices!' So, I'm thinking 'What? You want us to go spend more money then we usually would in order to try to put Wal-Mart out of business, which would make lives for people in those poor countries even worse?' And here are the economics behind the statement 'Wal-Mart, Gap, Old Navy, and Target are great things for the people in poor countries'. 

    The companies mentioned above are all providing jobs for people, which they wouldn't have otherwise had. If they didn't have those jobs, then they would be getting NO money at all. Thus, if more factories were moved into the poor countries mentioned, there would be competition between the companies, and wages would rise. Telling the companies to move out, it like taking away those people's source of income.

    Is this so hard to understand? All it takes five seconds, to take a 'second thought' after hearing the idea, to disprove it. Then, I listened in utter shock as all the girls at my table start saying 'Yeah! We should boycott Wal-Mart!'. 

    Then she moved on to the topic of recycling. She said we should recycle our paper, because our trees are being destroyed, blah, blah blah, you've heard it all before. Here's the problem with that idea.

    When we recycle something we reduce the need for it to be produced. If there isn't a need for trees to be produced then they won't be. So, logically, if you want more trees, then you should strive to use as much paper as possible. A good example of this theory is chickens. There are tons, and tons, and TONS of chickens in the world. That's because people eat lots of chickens. If people stopped eating chickens in an attempt to 'save' them, then the need for chickens would go away, and businesses would stop raising chickens, thus drastically reducing the amount of chickens in the world.  

    Basically this lady just bashed money, and the market for an hour and fifteen minutes. It was just a bunch of anti-capitalistic trash. And at the end she announces 'This is Catholic Social Teaching!'. No it is NOT. Not even close. Her ideas are miles off. Her basic 'thing' was that the government should force all companies out of poor countries thus putting them out of business, and that we should all be happy little people running around in a jungle somewhere with no technology at all. 

  Oh, and the funny this is, that aparrently she has an mega membership at the local health club. Apparently, in her mind, using money to buy cheap clothes is evil, but using it to work out on fancy, expensive equiptment is perfectly alright!  

  This was the only class that was so strongly socialist, but about half of them total would speak about the 'community' and 'working together' to 'save the enviroment' the people in poor countries.

But thank goodness it's all over now. 

Oh, and apparently it's been discovered that there's warming Mars, which obviously has no people occupying it, thus strongly suggesting that Global Warming is in fact, caused by the sun.