Here’s Colbert in one of his famous monologues skewering O’Reilly and making some good points. Unfortunately it is at best half true in so many ways. Thanks, by the way, to the Anwoth blog for pointing this video out.

The truth is that neithe the LEFT nor the RIGHT have done justice to justice. One need look no farther than Tim Keller’s book Generous Justice for a great critique and description of what God requires and what neither the Left nor the Right have pursued because that would mean bowing the knee to Jesus and royally eviscerating their own perks.

But by definition neither the Left nor the Right have been friends of the Family – or Jesus for that matter.

By definition the Left believes that capital should increasingly be micromanaged by the government. In practice the Right has acted as if capital should be increasingly deregulated and operated according to the tender mercies of oligarch capitalists and impersonal corporations that under law never die. Both sides, therefore, dismiss the commands of God in this regard as unaddressed to them.

I’m not against “capital” but it is only “capital” under the control of individuals and families that is a protection from either extreme of the “Left” or “Right”, statists or corporatists, Big Government or Big Business.

That’s why Chesterton, Belloc, Blond, Carlson, et al all demonstrate – the Left and the Right are mirror images of the same fundamental materialism and power seeking.

Whether statist oligarchs on the Left or capitalist oligarchs on the Right, both work to pursue their own interests and – guess what – preserving the natural family (and the Church for that matter) isn’t on the agenda!

Since the French Revolution, statists have worked to break down the natural family and make every individual immediately accountable and dependent on the state. For the same length of time if not longer, “companies” like the ones who financed the Pilgrims‘ voyage to the new world had no qualms about enforcing putting all the family members in their employ and stripping them of all property rights in order to secure a profit on their investment.

It took the allied forces of the Left (equity feminists) and the Right (the “libertarians”) in Sweden to bring the demise of intact family there as history shows.

We see the agendas of the so-called Left and Right merge into the “market economy”. Notice in America how those with a reputation as “capitalist entrepreneurs” (whom we associate with the “Right”)  like T. Boone Pickens are exposed as nothing other than Corporate Welfare Queens who plan to profit  by demanding virtually permanent Federal subsidies for their ventures. In Pickens’ most recent case he attempted this via the “Green” technology of “wind energy”. He wanted extended tax credits for this venture and, of course, wants the government to guarantee his investment will pay off by demanding “mandates” for the use of his service. Wasn’t using government coercion to achieve a certain goal a “Leftist” prerogative?

When the person too lazy to work seeking a handout is smells of urine and cheap booze  and lives on the streets, we snear at them and call them a bum. When the person too lazy to work seeking a handout smells of cologne and wears a three piece suit, we honor them as a “Entrepreneur”.

But make no mistake – in the end – whether it’s someone on the Left supporting preschool to college statist education like the Tennessee Democrat Don Bredesen or someone on the Right supporting the same thing like Tennessee Republican Lamar Alexander, neither has the family in mind. Whatever the “flavor”  of their legislation, both attempt to socialize the functions of the home and put children in the hands of the state from dawn to dusk. Their purpose? Educating children to be useful to Belloc’s Servile State transplanted in America. In result if not intention, their aim is to turn out compliant “human resources” adequate for serving the state or industry while the family continues to erode.

So laugh as you will at Colbert… he does make some good points.

But don’t believe for a second that either the “Left” or the “Right” has any bragging rights when it comes to protecting the family or the poor. In the end, they even merge to accomplish their work.

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But Perry County did not give up. If a new factory would come to Perry County (or at least not quickly enough to avoid the disruption – and no such factory HAS come), some forward thinking folks asked, “well what COULD work here?”

The answer was to create a “Digital Factory”.

The internet is no stranger to Perry County and people there could be trained to provide a variety of tech support and other jobs that can be done digitally and remotely.

Participants for the training are screened for their computer skills, customer service skills, and general knowledge through a variety of assessments provided through the South Central TN Career Center. They are then trained to perform the kind of tasks for companies willing to use remote workers. This work can range from “digital piecework” to programming depending on the participant’s skill level.

Graduates of the program usually become 1099 employees working for a number of companies who value the fact that these workers – in addition to their proven skills – have English as their first language.

Thus far, participants average $9 – $13 per hour upon completion of the program. One participant though is earning $25 per hour. The cost of living in Perry County is well below the national average and 20% below the Nashville area.

Thus far the Digital Factory has not replaced the loss of local factories, but the program does allow area youth to realize they can find “high tech” work without leaving the county and be paid for their skills.

A NEW KIND OF FACTORY IN PERRY COUNTY

VisionPerry, in collaboration with cTechnology, Inc. of Nashville, South Central TN Workforce Alliance, the Town of Linden, the City of Lobelville and Perry County Government, will be implementing a pilot training program to develop a ‘Digital Factory’ in Perry County. A recently published report prepared for the county by Strategic Development Group of South Carolina, portrayed an uphill battle in attracting a new traditional manufacturing facility to Perry County. The report cited the lack of a 4 lane highway and the remoteness of the area as being major obstacles. The ‘Digital Factory’ however, will take advantage of the Internet and is not affected be these obstacles. The program will be divided into various production lines requiring increasing skills, similar to a standard factory concept.

The Digital Factory will initially be housed at the VisionPerry headquarters, located 200 Main Street, Linden. VisionPerry has been outfitted with high-speed internet and has the technical capabilities to be utilized as both a training and work-center facility. Training programs are expected to roll out sometime in January and will initially place an emphasis on the development of customer service representatives. The self-paced training program will develop a skilled, certified workforce who will be in a position to support nationally-based companies with call center services. In addition to the customer service line, a digital ‘piecework’ line and a more highly skilled program line will also be developed over the next few months.

A basic ‘digital piecework’ trial with cTechnology partner Bizooki.com was tested with the VisionPerry staff involved in the testing. The digital piecework task was quite simple:find the required email address on a specific web site and paste it into a window on another screen. For each email address copied, the worker was paid 15 cents. Virtually anyone could be trained to do this type of work which the lowest skilled ‘line’ in the Digital Factory. At the high point of the project, the fastest staffers were between $8 to $19/hr. depending on personal speed. This type of work is suited for entry-level digital workers who may have little or no online experience and is project-based, not steady work. Like actual low-skilled factory work, virtual piecework can get monotonous but it can provide needed confidence to a non-technical worker that they are capable of online work. It also provides a test bed for gauging the workers ability to work in a Digital Factory environment where quiet and concentration are required.

A more highly skilled Digital Factory line will also be developed to be known as LAMP Programmers. LAMP stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PhP/PERL which are the most popular open source programming languages in the world. Tennessee has a large shortage of programming talent in LAMP and the Nashville market in particular is making every effort to encourage its growth. cTechnology has partnered with the Enterprise LAMP group in Nashville and is developing a strategy to train and place rural, LAMP-trained persons in these advanced, well paid positions. These workers will require approximately 6 months of training and internship with Nashville-based companies and will then be qualified for low level programming. However, this work in the programming world pays a competitive $15-$25 an hour! For larger shops, this type of work can be contracted. The plan is to develop a relationship with a Nashville-based software firm contracting our LAMP line at the Vision Perry Digital Factory for this type of work. Given the close proximity to Nashville, we expect the LAMP trainees to travel to Nashville 2-3 times a month to link into the LAMP User Group community for training and connection to their employers. This is currently the highest skilled ‘line’ in the Digital Factory.

This concept was proposed by cTechnology, Inc. to the TN Department of Economic Development and the research is funded through the states Rural Technology Assistance Grant program and the City of Linden through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). VisionPerry was chosen as a first launch site due to the major progress already made to create a community-based center for new economic development and has been instrumental in testing and further developing the concept. Beyond the online job training, business contacts and partnerships are being developed to outsource the newlabor force. Long term plans include the development of a large technology-savvy, regional digital workforce who can work remotely from centralized work-centers. The presence of such a workforce in the region will act as an attractor for new companies to the area.

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