they know no limit in deeds of wickedness, they do not judge with justice the cause of the poor, they do not defend the right of the needy

Continuing with Walter Brueggemann's  Slow Wisdom As A Sub-Version Of Reality

Second.  The triad of fidelity focuses on the neighborhood as the triad of control is drawn to the club. The club is a staging ground for exclusion so that one need deal only with one of those one chooses who are most like us. It is a mark of privilege that brings with it the sense of knowing best and being right. It proceeds by excluding the other, variously Women or Blacks or Jews or the Poor.  And, of course, the best universities have been no more hospitable than the clubs with their exclusionary quotas.

But the neighborhood takes in all of us who move up and down the street. There is an egalitarian assumption about the legitimacy of all its members and the sharing of resources to which all are entitled.  Historically, without romanticizing a rural community before social stratification and division of labor and the development of surplus wealth - with the exception of the doctor - was more or less an egalitarian community.

But the urban reality of social stratification, division of labor and surplus wealth has largely destroyed that sense of neighborly egalitarianism. And, of course, the university is deeply enmeshed with that crisis. For admission is a ticket to entitlement.

We can no longer have affirmative action the urban elite court has ruled, so that the privileged who come from better schools are better prepared for applications and, so, on the basis of socially constructed merit can occupy the space and the fellowships.

We produce a class of managers of social symbols - of which I am a member - marked out at best by only a vague memory of having done real work. The process of privilege and entitlement evokes a stream of influence that culminates in might and wealth and a certain kind of wisdom.  And, of course, such a trajectory of control will hide behind a hundred defenses of pedigree and certification and gated communities and tenure and all the rest.

But the cadences of steadfast love concern the neighbors who are bound together in common need, common resources, and common dignity pledged to common goods.  So I am taken with the arguments of Peter Block who focuses on the mobilization of the neighborhood by which he means the quite concretely . . . the people on the block. His mode of asset-based community is committed to the proposition that the neighborhood, rightly mobilized, has all the assets necessary for the sustenance of healthy existence.

Of course, I am aware that every college and every university has endless program opportunities through which students can participate in the neighborhood on the ground. But as we all know and as students know such opportunities are marginal and incidental and are at best extraneous to the real requirements and payouts of education.

But we have in recent time witnessed the failure of the club. We have witnessed its bailouts in which ordinary taxpayers have footed the bill for the privileged.  And it will not do. Thus that I suspect a shift of emphasis from one triad to the other is a deep and systemic piece of work in the university.  The emergent awareness that the might-wisdom of the club has, in fact, failed and we fall back on the wisdom of the neighborhood that finds might, invulnerability and health and generosity and vulnerability and generosity are remote from the club that is prone to deny vulnerability and is organized against generosity.

It is no surprise that a Supreme Court comprised of the elite product of the Ivy League universities, the most elite, the worst of those as tickets to entitlement handed out to the already entitled, would destroy the meager program of affirmative action, a half-measure to hand out entry tickets to people excluded in the past and today, they are there to serve that class, with few exceptions in that court's history.   As I've recently pointed out with a link, the far older and far more successful CONFRIMATIVE ACTION, in which the children of the rich, those with a previous connection to Harvard, Yale, etc. those connected to its networks of the rich and powerful, alumni and donors (Jared Kushner, to name only one) and those it wants to put on its sports teams (whether or not they can be considered indentured servants or not, I will not go into) will never face such Supreme Court challenge or be endangered by the Ivy League "justice" that is given out by them.  And by "Ivy League" I include the Ivy equivalents which serve the same function in the America's putrid, entitlement sustaining "meritocracy."  

There is an undeniable problem with the statements about the virtues of the neighborhood as presented here,  neighborhoods tend to be stratified by economic class, by race and ethnicity and by chance.  They are stratified by redlining, by informal "gentleman's agreements" of exclusion and discrimination and, not infrequently, though violence.   The assassinations of Black People who were thought by private individuals and the police to not be in their place is as true as it is for other forms of exclusionary violence.  In some cases in the past, that was something of an expectation for LGBTQ people, it is certainly the case for Women who are as violently excluded from venues in towns and cities as they have been from private clubs.  There are places and circumstances in which the anti-egalitarian, discriminatory character of neighborhoods is not as strong, I would think that the differences in that are more profound at the different ends of the income scale,  rich neighborhoods have always been able to keep people they don't want in from even walking their sidewalks. 

There are times neighborhoods aren't neighborly in any broad sense. 

But I do agree with Walter Brueggemann's distinction between the two realms, a truly neighborly neighborhood or group, one which does not practice that kind of exclusion and the kind of club which is based in exclusion, which would not accept all comers.  

It is one of the reasons that even with the argument that many small towns in Maine not having schools and so it makes sense to pay the private schools in their area to take students, as argued before the Supreme Court I am entirely opposed to public education money going to any private schools, religious or secular.   The case will not have the effect of "leveling a playing-field" or even benefiting the education of the public,  The Republican-fascist Court will use the opportunity to damage a. the public schools who are bound to serve all comers and b. to enable the most discriminatory of private schools, enabling them to exclude even more than they have in the past.  Of course the Court will knock down the law from Maine that limited funding to non-religious schools, of course it will damage public education, of course it will increase the power of "religious schools" to discriminate against a range of people, LGBTQ at the head of that list.  

Even with the clarity that Brueggemann brings to his modern day application of the prophesy of Jeremiah, it is dealing with real life as real life is and so the more exigent and important the points is, the harder the issues of effecting its application will be.   The Prophets didn't tend to handle the easy cases, they go where no sociologist would dare to tread or, really, in places it would never occur to them existed.  Make that count twice for the Court as it is filled with its credentialed expertise well trained in the maintenance of privilege and exclusion and putting it in the language of even-handedness and non-preference and "color-blindness."  

A note to those who will, certainly, claim that when Jeremiah is speaking, he's being racially, ethnically and religiously exclusive, the popular atheist slam of the Jewish Prophets, including Jesus that they didn't intend for their best teachings to extend past their own People that The Law is explicit that when an outsider dwells among the Children of Israel, they are bound by the Law to treat them as they would treat each other.

When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien.  The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.
Leviticus: 33-34

Leviticus also says:

You shall have one law for the alien and for the citizen: for I am the Lord your God. 
24:22

and:

When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God.
19: 9-10

I know all the common atheist angles on these things, they repeat them often enough so I'll know.  

I will point out that all of those professed Christians who act as I noted above, they are in violation of The Law, something which concentrating on the Big Ten allows them to get away with.   Of course, the law of the United States doesn't contain such commandments, it being secular and whatever the Supreme Court says it is.