Wealth Power Politics Jesus

The Author, Fred Lauck, is a well “decorated” Trial Lawyer… including the Alumnus of the Year in 2006 from his University of Detroit Mercy Law School and including the“Champion of Justice” Award from the State Bar of Michigan in 2012. For 44 years, Fred’s role as a trial lawyer has made him the “voice” for those who have no voice… that 99 percent of Americans who have no wealth, no power and no say-so.

I had the pleasure of reviewing Fred’s first book: Children of the Greatest Generation… An Emotional History (600 pages). Fred’s second book: Wealth, Power, Politics and Jesus enters the Great American Debate at just the right time in America’s history— a time when America’s “middle class” and the “American Dream” itself are under siege with greed, power, global economies, violence and even “organized religion” contributing to the demise… with organized religion losing the essence of the “Message of Jesus” by reshuffling the same “lip service” and formalistic “ritual” that Jesus railed against in his world of 2000 years ago.

In his book, Fred takes up the daunting task of contrasting and reconciling the modern realities of wealth, power and politics with the 2000 year-old “Message of Jesus”… the message of a “revolutionary” who lost his life because he took on the organized religious powers of his time with a “rebellious message” of peace, love, moral non judgment, forgiveness, acceptance, inclusion and compassion.

Fred opens up a “no holds barred” discussion on what it means (at least for him) to stick with and follow the “Message of Jesus” in today’s modern world of global warfare, preemptive strikes of “shock and awe” against world tyrants, lawsuits by Catholic Bishops over “birth control,” political unrest between Labor Unions and corporate America, moral dilemmas about the very “sanctity of life” that lies between the “right to be born” principles and “right to work” laws, the ever growing disparity of wealth in a global economy, the fallacy of the “self-made man,” the opposing economic theories of “capitalism” and “socialism,” the historical ebb and flow between “concentration” and “redistribution” of wealth, the political and economic realities of how greed, power, and the American “ruling class” brought America’s economic engine of “capitalism” to its knees with the financial meltdown of 2008, the ongoing efforts of the American Trial Lawyer to hold the American “ruling class” accountable for their misdeeds… and numerous other relevant “topics of today”… all measured against the still echoing and still reverberating 2,000 year-old “voice” of Jesus of Nazareth.

Fred urges all of us to stand up and unite with Jesus by adopting the same ever questioning and rebellious spirit of Jesus. In Fred’s words:

“My friends are ‘strong adherents’ of the Christian faith… but are, too often, not willing to even raise a question about their church, as they fail to use the greatest gifts God gave us humans: intellect and free will, not to mention the paramount obligation we all have… to individually reason our way to the safe ground of our own salvation.”

~ Downtown Freddie from Detroit