Page 34 - Liberating Liberals V2

The Mental Prison Break
that most politically correct insights aren’t great moral precepts, but their power can inhibit freethinking in those areas.
There are also secular thought shadows from history, culture and many other sources. They often appear to be logical, but are actually the result of the decisions of people in the past who do not deserve so much loyalty in our modern age. The 40-hour work week is one example. It began as a way to protect workers from even longer hours, and to promote
full employment. Yet it has hardened into a religious conviction even for many freethinking liberals.
As liberals, we have compassion for the unemployed and overworked, but we have to give unequivocal support to the 40-hour work week to,
in part, escape charges of laziness. However, in 1933 Congress came within five votes of passing the Black- Connerly, 30-hour-work-week bill.23 America was
just a few lousy Congressmen away from celebrating
a permanent, three-day weekend! Thus the 40-hour number is, in great part, an arbitrary choice.
Free-trade fundamentalists will insist that 40 work hours are necessary to compete in the global market. But the requirement that the world be arranged around cutthroat market competition is itself a fundamentalism.
Work is a great blessing and necessity. Forty hours of work on something you love is one of life’s greatest joys. But 40 hours for someone else’s
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