My Agora Place

MAPPING THE 21ST CENTURY

2009-01-04T17:09:00.000-08:00

We are in a period of suspension between an old era (yet to be named) and a new era (also nameless) of fresh hope and opportunity for our nation and the world. So although we cannot predict the future it may be a good time to reflect on the forces that may shape our 21st century.

Who would have predicted two world wars, the splitting of the atom, computer technology, the discovery of antibiotics or modern literature, abstract painting or contemporary music in 1900? The only thing we know for sure is that there will be surprises, perhaps happening at a faster rate than ever before, impacting more lives globally than ever before. But that is all the more reason it is important to anticipate those larger forces that may shape our century.

One place to start is with the recent publication of the Atlantic Council report: Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World. The report begins with the following:

The international system—as constructed following the Second World War—will be almost unrecognizable by 2025 owing to the rise of emerging powers, a globalizing economy, an historic transfer of relative wealth and economic power from West to East, and the growing influence of non state actors. By 2025, the international system will be a global multipolar one with gaps in national power continuing to narrow between developed and developing countries. Concurrent with the shift in power among nation-states, the relative power of various non state actors—including businesses, tribes, religious organizations, and criminal networks—is increasing. The players are changing, but so too are the scope and breadth of transnational issues important for continued global prosperity. Potentially slowing global economic growth; aging populations in the developed world; growing energy, food, and water constraints; and worries about climate change will limit and diminish what will still be an historically unprecedented age of prosperity.

Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World http://www.dni.gov/nic/PDF_2025/2025_Global_Trends_Final_Report.pdf

(For a PDF version of the report click link below):
http://www.acus.org/publication/global-trends-2025-transformed-world

FORCES OF CHANGE

1. CLIMATE

Climate change is perpetual on our dynamic planet. The last 400M years have seen several periods of near total species extinction, global heating and cooling, ice ages, rising and falling oceans, atmospheric change, etc., as our tectonic plates shift. Adapting our expanding (several additional billion) population to global/weather changes will require a high level of intense interdisciplinary/international research and public policy based on science, technology and economics.

2. DEMOGRAPHY

The demographic profile of our world, at least for the next 25 years, is much more knowable and will present few surprises. While Western Europe and Russia continue to grow older, lose their work forces and net populations, Asia, Africa and Latin America will account for most of the population growth of 1.4B persons. These areas of the world are also among the most economically challenged. So with a high percentage of their populations 18 or younger, political instability is highly probable. Those states most susceptible to conflict are in a great arc of instability stretching from Sub-Saharan Africa through North Africa, into the Middle East, the Balkans, the Caucasus, South and Central Asia, and parts of Southeast Asia. The United States will be counter to the shrinking size of most developed nations with a rising population due to higher birth rates and immigration.

3. ENERGY

The quest for new energy forms will move beyond fossil fuel as we reach “peak oil”, perhaps before the mid point of this century. We will be on a tight race between our expanding populations, new levels of urban concentration and diminishing fissile fuel resources. Economic development, critical for the reduction of poverty, production of food, etc., will place energy as our top priority. It will drive virtually every element of our social, economic and political future, transforming the map of our political alignments and create the paradigm that will name our new century.

4. SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Ironically we live at a time when science and technology have a greater effect on our personal lives and political future than at any time in our 200,000 year history as Homo sapiens, yet the average person knows little about science or the logic of its inquiry. While physics plays a dominant role in providing the theoretical basis for the other sciences, its future may well depend on man’s ability to find the missing piece (Higgs bosom) in the puzzle of what makes our world (mass) hold together. Should this final piece elude us will be have to return to square one? In biology we have already begun a journey to better understand life itself and the workings of the human brain. The applications of pure science to the technology of energy, food production and the management of our natural environment and resources present both a great risk as well as amazing opportunity. It is estimated that by 2030 our demand for food will increase by 50 percent and 36 countries (1.4B people) will be without adequate water resources. Sudden breakthroughs in energy production alone could change the quality of life for every person (will be about 9 billion by the end of the century) on the planet. On the other hand, science mismanaged could be a terrible weapon of mass destruction, especially in the hands of non-state terrorists.

5. NATIONALISM AND THE AMERICAN EMPIRE

While it will maintain its economic and military primacy, at least through the next 25 years, we will experience “the rise of the rest” as noted in the work of Fareed Zakaria. (See http://www.newsweek.com/id/171249 and The Post-American World, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2008) The projected growth of Brazil, Russia, India and China will collectively match the original G-7’s contribution to the global GDP by mid century. China will be a dominant economic force and major player. India will become a major force as well, making it important for the U.S. to see itself as part of a tripolar economic reality.

6. A SHRINKING PLANET

There will be a concentration of new populations in economically and environmentally stressed countries. A potential for failed states, the interconnections of our economic/financial systems and the proliferation of technologically advanced weapons of mass destruction, diminishing fossil fuel resource, and environmental changes all point to the reality of a planet that is fragile. We are interconnected and vulnerable. A sneeze in Iceland can produce a pandemic in Africa.

ON THE POSITIVE SIDE

1. A WORLD OF MIXED ECONOMIES

The current world economic crisis, which has underscored the inter connectedness of every national economy, makes it clear that HOW economies work is quite different from their ideologies. There is no pure free market, communist system or socialist state. We are all mixed economies that are inter dependent for ideas, technology, trade and culture. This may be an ideal time to face the facts and overcome rigid outdated ideologies. In the United States we have a chance to get over the myth of our being a “free market” system. We have been regulating our system for years with import quotas, subsidies, price supports, etc. One might be a democracy without the mythology of capitalism, especially when its “unseen guiding hand” has been greed. This may be a time to become adults and celebrate a world of mixed economies. We in the U.S. may learn to match our wants more with our needs.

2. COMMUNICATIONS

Our technical capability for communicating with one another is growing, virtually daily, out of proportion to our ability to process and meaningfully respond to events. Sound bites and video clips have replaced careful analysis and thoughtful dialogue. Bloggers are displacing journalists. Media increasingly makes, not just reports, our news by how it frames events. Our positive challenge is to find ways of using the iphone-ipod-blogisphere as a meaningful source for information based knowledge and decision making. It will require neural networks that can sift and sort in nanoseconds but the potential is there for expanding the network of talent and human creativity of a much higher percentage of the 9B persons who will not only inhabit but contribute to the enrichment of our planet.

3. BEYOND NATION STATES

The concept of the “nation state” and national sovereignty attributed to Hugo Grotius’ On the Laws of War and Peace, four centuries ago, may be ready for a major revision. Regional “states” (E.U.) and alliances have proved far more effective than imagined. Most important, as pointed out by John C. Reppert in a recent (12-03-08) address at Eckerd College:

If economies, security, businesses, communications, environment, and health issues are borderless, what is it we expect borders to provide us? Are the UN Declaration of human Rights and the World Health Organization suitable models for the future? If not, what do we have to propose? Is the concept of inter ‘national’ relations a quaint concept of a time gone by and are our leaders capable or willing to offer options that preserve our values, our democracy, and our freedoms.

ON THE CUSP OR THE BRINK?

As Fareed Zakaria pointed out in the article cited above (Newsweek, December 8, 2008, p. 37):

This is a rare moment in history. A more responsive America, better attuned to the rest of the world, could help create a new set of ideas and institutions – an architecture of peace for the 21st century that would bring stability, prosperity and dignity to the lives of billions of people. Ten years from now, the world will have moved on; the rising powers will have become unwilling to accept an agenda conceived in Washington or London or Brussels. But at this time . . . there is a unique opportunity to use American power to reshape the world.

It is critical for the U.S. to use its resources carefully, aware that we live in a multi-polar world. We may be living on the cusp of major advances for our species or on the brink of a precipice of decline. Learning to make sense of it all will not be easy, but it will be essential if we want to make-a-difference in a century that will allow us to participate in the future, as never before.

Merle F. Allshouse

The First Day On the Journey Ahead - Nov. 5th 2008

2008-11-06T18:26:00.000-08:00

On November 5th images rush in our minds’ eyes: the victory speech to 100,000 Chicagoans in Grant Park welcoming back their victorious hero from a two year historic battle - http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/stateupdates/gGx3Kc ; celebrations of pride and praise in Obama's ancestral Kenyan village with his paternal grandmother dancing; joyful demonstrations of hope and joy in virtually every corner of the world; and the ringing antiphonal responses, Yes we can – Yes we did

But what did we do?

We opened a new chapter in American history, and closed one our most shameful. We have opened the way to finally healing the dreadful cancer of race that has so divided our nation, before and after the Civil War. The new chapter is open for us to write.
We invested our faith in a man with a vision of America that is “exceptional”, not because we are better than others, but because we have the power to reach out and make this a more peaceful and prosperous world. The President can inspire and lead, but we must be strong enough to feel compassion for and bond with the rest of the world.
We broke old customs of how elections should be organized, managed, and funded. The roles of the parties and lobbies may never be the same. It now depends on us to become involved at every level of our civil society.
We cried tears of joy and began to feel were truly the United States. We felt we were home again with a larger family. We felt the change from despair to hope.
We are involved and believe again. Our sense of the future changed from alienation to deep pride in our nation. We know the Constitution and Bill of Rights are alive and well.
We changed the nature of American politics and successfully challenged old assumptions, like “the Bradley effect.” Many aspects of the old culture-wars can be confined to the history books. The political/social landscape down to our day-to-day relationships are now different. Change has begun.

So we are now in the early morning hours between the election yesterday and the Inauguration. Full daylight will come with the State of the Union address. Then we must face the realities of global crises in economics and the environment, coupled with growing political instability and a proliferation of nuclear weapons. Our President believes that America can become a major leader in bringing peace and justice to a larger part of our nation and the world. But he made it clear last night that he does not have the power or strength to accomplish this vision alone; it is now up to us, We the People…

Yes we can and Yes we will…!

M.F.A.
11-05-08

Which Way Now America?

2008-10-18T08:17:00.000-07:00

As we have watched the U.S. and world economy over the past two weeks we have alternated among stunned silence, quiet panic, and repressed apprehension. It is no wonder since neither of our presidential candidates seems to be getting at the core of our political/economic crisis. Perhaps the reality of our crisis is too shocking for the general public to grasp, especially before an election, so it is best to take the safer road.

Perhaps after the election and certainly by the “state of the union” speech we should be able to face our future more honestly. By then we should be past tinkering-type programs that only put band aids on very serious wounds.

Meanwhile there is no excuse for the rest of us to run in neutral. Like many, I have been trying to think through where we are and our destiny as a political/economic nation. I am trying to encourage others to do the same and share their thoughts. Here are mine, begun in the previous blog, and now updated.

How did it all begin?

Since its founding our democracy has struggled with the issue of how to create simultaneously a political and economic system that would both encourage the human desire for freedom and meet the quest for personal security and well being. Our Constitution and Bill of Rights reveal the psychological recognition that our most noble and creative natures can thrive only if our social/political system will protect us from ourselves – the reptilian drives for domination and power. We call it the “balances of powers” or “checks and balances.” Today we are still living out the debates between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. The issues have never been clearly resolved. One thing is for sure, we fell short on the “checks and balances.”

Where are we now?

It is time to take off the emperor’s clothes and admit that the “free market” has not been “free” for decades. The real market is a byzantine mix of tax incentives, subsidies, price supports, import tariffs, etc., all fueled by special interest lobbies. We need to confess that for many years we have been operating much like the rest of our European democratic allies since the end of W.W.II. “Socialism” is not an evil term when it means a system that advances our social good, abhors poverty and seeks justice (fairness) in our economic life. Remember John Kenneth Galbraith’s remark that the only type of respectable socialism in America was socialism for the wealthy. Fifty years ago, in his The Affluent Society he argued that we were a nation living in abundance and had created excess with little public purpose. He urged the U.S., with its great capacity, to spend more of its capital serving the public good by pouring resources into education, health care and public parks.

As Christopher Jenks put it in Reinventing the American Dream, Chronicle Review, October 17, 2008:

. . . Both the Democratic and Republican versions of the American Dream will have to be rethought. They both focus heavily on income and material consumption. The idea that we can keep raising our material standard of living without making most of the planet too hot for human habitation is, I think, mistaken. Even the idea that we have 20 or 30 years to make the necessary adjustments appears wrongheaded.

So I'm afraid reinventing the American Dream really means trying to wean ourselves from the illusion that we all need and deserve more stuff. If we are to survive, we need a different definition of progress. That definition will need to focus on human needs like physical health, material security, individual freedom, and time to play with our children and smell the roses.

I'm not saying that material goods are unimportant. People need food to sustain them, a home in which they can afford to live until they die, and medical advice when they are sick. . . . . And I am quite sure that most of us could live without 85 percent of the stuff we buy in places other than grocery stores and gas stations.

An American Dream that doesn't destroy the planet will have to involve a more-equal distribution of basic material goods. It will also have to involve more emphasis on the quality of the services we consume than on the quality of our possessions. Perhaps most important, it will have to involve more emphasis on what we can do for others and less emphasis on what we can get for ourselves.

So where do we go from here?

1. Elect Senator Obama as our 44^th President since he can exercise the kind of leadership and command the national and international respect required to restore confidence in our democratic political system. As the editorial endorsement of The New Yorker (October 13, 2008) put it so well:

The election of Obama—a man of mixed ethnicity, at once comfortable in the world and utterly representative of twenty-first-century America—would, at a stroke, reverse our country's image abroad and refresh its spirit at home. His ascendance to the Presidency would be a symbolic culmination of the civil- and voting-rights acts of the nineteen-sixties and the century-long struggles for equality that preceded them. It could not help but say something encouraging, even exhilarating, about the country, about its dedication to tolerance and inclusiveness, about its fidelity, after all, to the values it proclaims in its textbooks.

2. Prime the pump gradually with stringent government oversight and appropriate tightening of credit and encouragement to live more simply and trim our wants more to our needs. And then stop priming the pump as confidence returns. This first step has already been taken with the nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and federal investments in our banking institutions.

3. Establish a reincarnation of the Resolution Trust Corporation, as we did in the 1980s with the S&L failures. At the same time institute the most effective aspects of the Glass-Steagall act. (The new version might be given the ironic title, the Greenspan Memorial Act.) We must not wait for the market to somehow magically tell us what the real values of our ponzied paper assets really are. We may never know. But we need to open the avenues of credit for legitimate and well regulated enterprises, those seeking mortgages within their ability to pay, and entrepreneurial innovative ideas that have genuine merit.

Tinkering with the present system will not be enough.

4. Create a major public jobs program as well as incentives for the creation of jobs from the private sector. BOTH (public & private) approaches are needed since the private sector will not be able to do it alone. Implement a major investment in our physical infrastructure including public forms of transport in our urban areas, upgrading of our energy grids, developments of practical alternatives to fossil fuels, and renovation of our schools and hospitals.

5. Invest in an upgrading of our human and social infrastructure with a national service program with a fresh emphasis on the education of teachers and health care professionals.

6. Admit to Americans now that we have a "hybrid" and not a "free" market economy. Make it clear that we will no longer reward or give social status to greed and avarice. We will no longer be proud to let 4% of the world's population consume 24% of its energy resources.

7. Encourage mergers and consolidations of corporations, large and small, to improve efficiency and productivity. For example, one or two major auto firms might concentrate on a hand full of models to meet the real needs of individuals and families. We certainly do not need the myriad of models now on the market, with their duplications. Such mergers of talent and innovation might speed our innovative capacities to produce one or two truly fuel efficient vehicles for mass consumption.

8. Recognize we will be balancing a recession with elements of inflation. We will need to tolerate an unemployment rate of between 12% and 15% with interest rates that do not exceed 10% and a GDP growth rates between 1% and 3%. The guiding hand will have to be very visible. We may well need to establish both wage and price controls.

9. Learn that our strength internationally is not measured by the tonnage of our weapons of mass destruction but by our ability to lead in the quest for social and economic justice at home and abroad. The overextension of our military presence and footprints world wide must cease. We must admit that our military domination and budget far exceed our national self interest.

10. We will learn to be proud of a nation that invests its resources in education, health care and improving the quality of life for all of its citizens. We will strive to be known again as the land of opportunity for all.

That is what change should be all about.

M.F.A.

Which Way To the Future?

2008-09-28T04:29:00.000-07:00

In this fiscal environment fools rush in where angels fear to tread. But since there are so few angels among the major players, the fools are prescribing everything from faith healing to major surgery. My foolish muse says it is time for a little demythologizing.

* Our democracy, since its founding, has struggled with the issue of how to create simultaneously a political and economic system that would both encourage the human desire for freedom and meet the quest for personal security and well being. Our Constitution and bill of Rights are case studies in the psychological recognition that our most noble and creative natures can thrive only if our social/political system will protect us from self destruction by our reptilian drives for domination and power. We call it "checks and balances." In many ways we are reliving today the debates between Alexander Hamilton and John Adams. The issues have never been clearly resolved.

* For some, our economic system (free market capitalism) is viewed as independent of our social contract. For others, our economic system has evolved as a hybrid to meet the changing needs of our social contract. For the former folks, the Paulson "clean" plan makes sense. For the latter, it seems clear that this is a time to adjust the hybrid so that it is more transparent, promotes the public trust and produces an economy that is less skewed to reward the few at the expense of the many.

* In short, it is time to admit that the "free market" has not been "free" for many decades. The actual hybrid market is a byzantine mix of tax incentives, subsidies, price supports, import tariffs, etc., all fueled by special interest lobbies. We need to confess that for many years we have been operating much like the rest of our European democratic allies since W.W. II. "Socialism" is not an evil term if it means a system which advances our social good, abhors poverty and seeks justice (fairness) in our economic life. Remember John Kenneth Galbraith's remark that the only type of respectable socialism in America was socialism for the wealthy.

So what does this all have to do with the current crisis?

* If we provide billions (maybe trillions) to rescue our monetary system, ala the Paulson "clean" plan:

a. The bail out will be subsidized by Federal bonds, a large percentage of which will be purchased by China, giving hem a larger claim on America's destiny.

b. The interest on the bonds will be added to the interest on the federal debt and paid in large part by our tax revenues.

c. The treasury Department will perform a symbolic wink and lease our economic system back to the same institutions (persons) that over sold our credit in the past, leveraged our assets and expanded our credit. We will do it all over again.

d. Most Americans will continue to play the game by consuming more than they need and maxing out their credit lines, while complaining about taxes.

e. The economic leaders will praise the "free" market and fund the political campaigns of these enablers.

* If we do nothing, just let the system blood-let itself and trust the invisible hand of the free market:

a. We would set off an economic earth quake the after shocks of which would be felt in most of the world's economies.

* So what should we do? Take some hard medicine.

a. If we do not "prime the pump" we would face a serious economic recession from which may take several years to recover.

b. If we fully "prime the pump" (maybe over one $Trillion)with tight oversight, we would fuel inflation and risk another cycle of leveraging/deleverging with potential serious political instability and loss of international credit.

c. So the solution is a political compromise:

1. Prime he pump gradually with stringent government oversight and appropriate tightening of credit and encouragement to live more simply and trim our wants more to our needs. And then stop priming the pump as confidence returns. This first step has already been taken with the nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

2. Establish a reincarnation of the Resolution Trust Corporation, as we did in the 1980s with the S&L failures. At the same time institute the most effective aspects of the Glass-Steagall act. (The new version might be given the ironic title, the Greenspan Memorial Act.)

3. Admit to Americans now that we have a "hybrid"and not a "free" market economy. Make it clear that we will n longer reward or give social status to greed and avarice. We will n longer be proud to let 4% of the world's population consume 24% of its energy resources.

4. We will be balancing a recession with elements of inflation. We will need to tolerate an unemployment rate of between 12% and 15% with interest rates that do not exceed 10% and a GDP between 2% and 4%. The guiding hand will have to be very visible.

5. We will learn to be proud of a nation that invests its resources in education, health care and improving the quality of life for all of its citizens. We will strive to be known again as the land of opportunity for all.

M.F.A.

2008-04-21T04:30:00.000-07:00

Why I Don’t Wear a Flag Lapel Pin

There is a crucial distinction between our nation’s flag when used as a sign vs. a symbol. It is this difference that leads many, including me not to wear the flag pin out of respect, not lack of patriotism.

A sign is designed to attract attention, to be noticed as a publicity artifact. Our visual world is virtually polluted with signs targeting consumers of a myriad of products. Signs urge us to vote for a stream of eager candidates and have become an important part of any media and propaganda campaigns. Our clothing and accessories have become transmitters of sign messages. And so too have our jewelry and our pins.

A symbol is not a sign reduced to a jewelry accessory to be worn for public display. Symbols are those signs that have been elevated to inspire and communicate an emotion about those values and emotions we feel most deeply. Symbols are not worn on the outside, they are felt from within. Tell me what a person is willing to die for, and you will reveal the deepest symbols of life. They cannot be reduced to signs without cheapening their ultimate significances.

My America is a symbol that cannot be reduced to a mere sign, a pin. America is the symbol of hope for a nation that can truly aspire to help create a world that is more just, tolerant and peaceful. We are a work in progress and a vision of what might become. That symbol should live deeply in our hearts and souls, not as a pin on our lapels.

Perhaps we need to know others more by their inner selves and less by their pins.

Bitterness???

2008-04-14T17:21:00.000-07:00

What is the negativity toward “bitterness”? Yes, bitterness can be a negative personality characteristic, especially among the classes of gifted and well endowed who don’t make it, but he is referring to the kind of bitterness that comes when we are victims of circumstances over which we have no control. It is when we are held accountable but are not responsible. That is the condition of many Americans today. So “bitterness” of this kind is a very appropriate emotion.

The context is important. My ancestors settled in PA in the early 1700s and were involved in the founding of Easton. I was born and raised in Pittsburgh and taught at Dickinson College in Carlisle during the decade of the 60s. A week there early this month revealed that not much has changed over the past forty years. They are a proud independent stock. Remember they created the Whiskey Rebellion and never forgave General Washington for marking west to stamp it out. This past April 1 it was the truckers in PA who protested the rise in fuel prices.

Do you remember the movie, “Network,” and the cry from the open apartment window, “I’m damn mad and not going to take it anymore?” He might have said I am “bitter” since he was exhausted by a system over which he had no control, yet suffered. So what do Pennsylvanian, and all thinking Americans, deserve to be bitter (angry) about? You know:

A war that we should have never started and were systematically lied to about, and still are from our own government;

The death of our youth who are recruited primarily from the under economic and social classes of our society;

The economy in which for the average worker the purchasing power is about what it was the in the mid 1970s, although they are working harder and longer;

An educational system that is not delivering quality education;

A health system that fails to cover far too many working class people;

Etc.

But more to the point: Obama is giving US the opportunity to realize that we do have more control than we realize. We should be bitterly disappointed in OURSEVLES. ALL Americans have the right to be bitterly disappointed with themselves. We continue to live the illusion that we have the highest standard of living, the best educational system, the finest health care, are the most innovative people and for more generous than any others. This is the rhetoric that feeds a myth perpetuated by our own historical/political amnesia.

Deep down we know that being honest will be difficult. It is time to tell the truth, but we prefer to pull back. We are bitter because we fear the truth will reveal that we have only ourselves to blame. Anger with ourselves may be the only bitter-sweet therapy for our own future as a nation. Then we can emerge perhaps with a new vision and energy to live and work for greater justice and pace in the world and move beyond our own national curse of race.

Merle F. Allshouse

p.s. Isn’t it ironic that a nation that believes it is “the best” is afraid of an elitist?

Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech

2007-12-11T10:54:00.000-08:00

SPEECH BY AL GORE ON THE ACCEPTANCE
OF THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
DECEMBER 10, 2007
OSLO, NORWAY

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Honorable members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen.

I have a purpose here today. It is a purpose I have tried to serve for many years. I have prayed that God would show me a way to accomplish it.

Sometimes, without warning, the future knocks on our door with a precious and painful vision of what might be. One hundred and nineteen years ago, a wealthy inventor read his own obituary, mistakenly published years before his death. Wrongly believing the inventor had just died, a newspaper printed a harsh judgment of his life’s work, unfairly labeling him “The Merchant of Death” because of his invention – dynamite. Shaken by this condemnation, the inventor made a fateful choice to serve the cause of peace.

Seven years later, Alfred Nobel created this prize and the others that bear his name.

Seven years ago tomorrow, I read my own political obituary in a judgment that seemed to me harsh and mistaken – if not premature. But that unwelcome verdict also brought a precious if painful gift: an opportunity to search for fresh new ways to serve my purpose.

Unexpectedly, that quest has brought me here. Even though I fear my words cannot match this moment, I pray what I am feeling in my heart will be communicated clearly enough that those who hear me will say, “We must act.”

The distinguished scientists with whom it is the greatest honor of my life to share this award have laid before us a choice between two different futures – a choice that to my ears echoes the words of an ancient prophet: “Life or death, blessings or curses. Therefore, choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.”

We, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency – a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential even as we gather here. But there is hopeful news as well: we have the ability to solve this crisis and avoid the worst – though not all – of its consequences, if we act boldly, decisively and quickly.

However, despite a growing number of honorable exceptions, too many of the world’s leaders are still best described in the words Winston Churchill applied to those who ignored Adolf Hitler’s threat: “They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent.”

So today, we dumped another 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet, as if it were an open sewer. And tomorrow, we will dump a slightly larger amount, with the cumulative concentrations now trapping more and more heat from the sun.

As a result, the earth has a fever. And the fever is rising. The experts have told us it is not a passing affliction that will heal by itself. We asked for a second opinion. And a third. And a fourth. And the consistent conclusion, restated with increasing alarm, is that something basic is wrong.

We are what is wrong, and we must make it right.

Last September 21, as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented distress that the North Polar ice cap is “falling off a cliff.” One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as 7 years.

Seven years from now.

In the last few months, it has been harder and harder to misinterpret the signs that our world is spinning out of kilter. Major cities in North and South America, Asia and Australia are nearly out of water due to massive droughts and melting glaciers. Desperate farmers are losing their livelihoods. Peoples in the frozen Arctic and on low-lying Pacific islands are planning evacuations of places they have long called home. Unprecedented wildfires have forced a half million people from their homes in one country and caused a national emergency that almost brought down the government in another. Climate refugees have migrated into areas already inhabited by people with different cultures, religions, and traditions, increasing the potential for conflict. Stronger storms in the Pacific and Atlantic have threatened whole cities. Millions have been displaced by massive flooding in South Asia, Mexico, and 18 countries in Africa. As temperature extremes have increased, tens of thousands have lost their lives. We are recklessly burning and clearing our forests and driving more and more species into extinction. The very web of life on which we depend is being ripped and frayed.

We never intended to cause all this destruction, just as Alfred Nobel never intended that dynamite be used for waging war. He had hoped his invention would promote human progress. We shared that same worthy goal when we began burning massive quantities of coal, then oil and methane.

Even in Nobel’s time, there were a few warnings of the likely consequences. One of the very first winners of the Prize in chemistry worried that, “We are evaporating our coal mines into the air.” After performing 10,000 equations by hand, Svante Arrhenius calculated that the earth’s average temperature would increase by many degrees if we doubled the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Seventy years later, my teacher, Roger Revelle, and his colleague, Dave Keeling, began to precisely document the increasing CO2 levels day by day.

But unlike most other forms of pollution, CO2 is invisible, tasteless, and odorless -- which has helped keep the truth about what it is doing to our climate out of sight and out of mind. Moreover, the catastrophe now threatening us is unprecedented – and we often confuse the unprecedented with the improbable.

We also find it hard to imagine making the massive changes that are now necessary to solve the crisis. And when large truths are genuinely inconvenient, whole societies can, at least for a time, ignore them. Yet as George Orwell reminds us: “Sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.”

In the years since this prize was first awarded, the entire relationship between humankind and the earth has been radically transformed. And still, we have remained largely oblivious to the impact of our cumulative actions.

Indeed, without realizing it, we have begun to wage war on the earth itself. Now, we and the earth's climate are locked in a relationship familiar to war planners: "Mutually assured destruction."

More than two decades ago, scientists calculated that nuclear war could throw so much debris and smoke into the air that it would block life-giving sunlight from our atmosphere, causing a "nuclear winter." Their eloquent warnings here in Oslo helped galvanize the world’s resolve to halt the nuclear arms race.

Now science is warning us that if we do not quickly reduce the global warming pollution that is trapping so much of the heat our planet normally radiates back out of the atmosphere, we are in danger of creating a permanent “carbon summer.”

As the American poet Robert Frost wrote, “Some say the world will end in fire; some say in ice.” Either, he notes, “would suffice.”

But neither need be our fate. It is time to make peace with the planet.

We must quickly mobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war. These prior struggles for survival were won when leaders found words at the 11th hour that released a mighty surge of courage, hope and readiness to sacrifice for a protracted and mortal challenge.

These were not comforting and misleading assurances that the threat was not real or imminent; that it would affect others but not ourselves; that ordinary life might be lived even in the presence of extraordinary threat; that Providence could be trusted to do for us what we would not do for ourselves.

No, these were calls to come to the defense of the common future. They were calls upon the courage, generosity and strength of entire peoples, citizens of every class and condition who were ready to stand against the threat once asked to do so. Our enemies in those times calculated that free people would not rise to the challenge; they were, of course, catastrophically wrong.

Now comes the threat of climate crisis – a threat that is real, rising, imminent, and universal. Once again, it is the 11th hour. The penalties for ignoring this challenge are immense and growing, and at some near point would be unsustainable and unrecoverable. For now we still have the power to choose our fate, and the remaining question is only this: Have we the will to act vigorously and in time, or will we remain imprisoned by a dangerous illusion?

Mahatma Gandhi awakened the largest democracy on earth and forged a shared resolve with what he called “Satyagraha” – or “truth force.”

In every land, the truth – once known – has the power to set us free.

Truth also has the power to unite us and bridge the distance between “me” and “we,” creating the basis for common effort and shared responsibility.

There is an African proverb that says, “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” We need to go far, quickly.

We must abandon the conceit that individual, isolated, private actions are the answer. They can and do help. But they will not take us far enough without collective action. At the same time, we must ensure that in mobilizing globally, we do not invite the establishment of ideological conformity and a new lock-step “ism.”

That means adopting principles, values, laws, and treaties that release creativity and initiative at every level of society in multifold responses originating concurrently and spontaneously.

This new consciousness requires expanding the possibilities inherent in all humanity. The innovators who will devise a new way to harness the sun’s energy for pennies or invent an engine that’s carbon negative may live in Lagos or Mumbai or Montevideo. We must ensure that entrepreneurs and inventors everywhere on the globe have the chance to change the world.

When we unite for a moral purpose that is manifestly good and true, the spiritual energy unleashed can transform us. The generation that defeated fascism throughout the world in the 1940s found, in rising to meet their awesome challenge, that they had gained the moral authority and long-term vision to launch the Marshall Plan, the United Nations, and a new level of global cooperation and foresight that unified Europe and facilitated the emergence of democracy and prosperity in Germany, Japan, Italy and much of the world. One of their visionary leaders said, “It is time we steered by the stars and not by the lights of every passing ship.”

In the last year of that war, you gave the Peace Prize to a man from my hometown of 2000 people, Carthage, Tennessee. Cordell Hull was described by Franklin Roosevelt as the “Father of the United Nations.” He was an inspiration and hero to my own father, who followed Hull in the Congress and the U.S. Senate and in his commitment to world peace and global cooperation.

My parents spoke often of Hull, always in tones of reverence and admiration. Eight weeks ago, when you announced this prize, the deepest emotion I felt was when I saw the headline in my hometown paper that simply noted I had won the same prize that Cordell Hull had won. In that moment, I knew what my father and mother would have felt were they alive.

Just as Hull’s generation found moral authority in rising to solve the world crisis caused by fascism, so too can we find our greatest opportunity in rising to solve the climate crisis. In the Kanji characters used in both Chinese and Japanese, “crisis” is written with two symbols, the first meaning “danger,” the second “opportunity.” By facing and removing the danger of the climate crisis, we have the opportunity to gain the moral authority and vision to vastly increase our own capacity to solve other crises that have been too long ignored.

We must understand the connections between the climate crisis and the afflictions of poverty, hunger, HIV-Aids and other pandemics. As these problems are linked, so too must be their solutions. We must begin by making the common rescue of the global environment the central organizing principle of the world community.

Fifteen years ago, I made that case at the “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro. Ten years ago, I presented it in Kyoto. This week, I will urge the delegates in Bali to adopt a bold mandate for a treaty that establishes a universal global cap on emissions and uses the market in emissions trading to efficiently allocate resources to the most effective opportunities for speedy reductions.

This treaty should be ratified and brought into effect everywhere in the world by the beginning of 2010 – two years sooner than presently contemplated. The pace of our response must be accelerated to match the accelerating pace of the crisis itself.

Heads of state should meet early next year to review what was accomplished in Bali and take personal responsibility for addressing this crisis. It is not unreasonable to ask, given the gravity of our circumstances, that these heads of state meet every three months until the treaty is completed.

We also need a moratorium on the construction of any new generating facility that burns coal without the capacity to safely trap and store carbon dioxide.

And most important of all, we need to put a price on carbon -- with a CO2 tax that is then rebated back to the people, progressively, according to the laws of each nation, in ways that shift the burden of taxation from employment to pollution. This is by far the most effective and simplest way to accelerate solutions to this crisis.

The world needs an alliance – especially of those nations that weigh heaviest in the scales where earth is in the balance. I salute Europe and Japan for the steps they’ve taken in recent years to meet the challenge, and the new government in Australia, which has made solving the climate crisis its first priority.

But the outcome will be decisively influenced by two nations that are now failing to do enough: the United States and China. While India is also growing fast in importance, it should be absolutely clear that it is the two largest CO2 emitters — most of all, my own country –– that will need to make the boldest moves, or stand accountable before history for their failure to act.

Both countries should stop using the other’s behavior as an excuse for stalemate and instead develop an agenda for mutual survival in a shared global environment.

These are the last few years of decision, but they can be the first years of a bright and hopeful future if we do what we must. No one should believe a solution will be found without effort, without cost, without change. Let us acknowledge that if we wish to redeem squandered time and speak again with moral authority, then these are the hard truths:

The way ahead is difficult. The outer boundary of what we currently believe is feasible is still far short of what we actually must do. Moreover, between here and there, across the unknown, falls the shadow.

That is just another way of saying that we have to expand the boundaries of what is possible. In the words of the Spanish poet, Antonio Machado, “Pathwalker, there is no path. You must make the path as you walk.”

We are standing at the most fateful fork in that path. So I want to end as I began, with a vision of two futures – each a palpable possibility – and with a prayer that we will see with vivid clarity the necessity of choosing between those two futures, and the urgency of making the right choice now.

The great Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen, wrote, “One of these days, the younger generation will come knocking at my door.”

The future is knocking at our door right now. Make no mistake, the next generation will ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask: “What were you thinking; why didn’t you act?”

Or they will ask instead: “How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?”

We have everything we need to get started, save perhaps political will, but political will is a renewable resource.

So let us renew it, and say together: “We have a purpose. We are many. For this purpose we will rise, and we will act.”

Speaking the Truth

2007-09-16T10:47:00.000-07:00

Perhaps the “truth” about Iraq and the real purpose of this war is becoming clear. It goes something like this:

America’s international power (empire) abroad is secured by its 82 military bases is 18 countries (in addition to about 218 bases in 46 US states);

Until this war we had only two bases in the entire mid-east (Saudi Arabia and Bahrain) to protect our interests in the future of energy. We desperately needed a larger footprint to protect both Israel as well as our own interests, Iraq seemed a natural choice, but Sadam would never have invited us, so we remove the impediment;
Whatever the future political configuration of Iraq, we will vigorously defend our long term interests by creating a virtually permanent set of major military installations, airfields, etc. in the Shia and Kurdish regions. This has been our pattern of interest-protection in Japan, South Korea, Germany, etc.;
It is unlikely that we will relinquish these bases in Iraq until we are no longer dependent on oil and Israel does not feel threatened by its neighbors. We will be there a very long time.

Why cannot our politicians just tell us the truth and stop insulting our intelligence? It is highly probable that both political parties would subscribe to this foreign policy. So why don’t we just say so and stop all the posturing?

Merle

Observations From The Ground

2007-07-14T06:00:00.000-07:00

The war in Iraq has been lost; we may win a few more battles (skirmishes) but the war is over.

Iraq’s “government” is not working because it is viewed by most Iraqis as an American puppet government; we have made a shame of democracy in Iraq.

If ‘the end” is not planned, it will be worse than the ill-conceived and poorly planned inception of the war. It will be worse and more chaotic than our withdrawal from Vietnam.

We must begin planning NOW for the “orderly” withdrawal of our military presence. It will take a long time, but the planning must begin now, even though there is no “announced” date for our withdrawal. Gradual systematic drawdown does not require any absolute dates.

The key issue has three dimensions, none of which are being discussed publicly:

1. How will we deal with the oil issues?

2. How many of our military bases (assets) in Iraq will we continue to occupy
and support after our official “withdrawal.” Our 250 plus military bases
throughout the world define our “Empire.”

3. How will the United States assist with Iraqi refugees and the thousands of
Iraqis who have been our allies and comrades in our misguided conflict?

Most important, we must LEARN from this experience and not just “cut our losses” as though it did not really matter. Our national character depends upon our facing the reality of what we have done.

++++++

* Note: These observations are virtually identical to the predictions many of us made in the fall of 2001, and communicated to our congressional representatives and the President, to no avail. It is time for our policy to be well “grounded” in reality.

It's Time to Resign

2007-07-04T15:41:00.000-07:00

It’s Time to Resign by Keith Olbermann: Broadcast on July 4, 2007

A Guest Editorial

For a live video click below:

http://thenewshole.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/07/03/256978.aspx

A Special Comment on what is, in everything but name, George Bush's pardon of Scooter Libby.
---
"I didn't vote for him," an American once said, "But he's my president, and I hope he does a good job."
That -- on this eve of the 4th of July -- is the essence of this democracy, in seventeen words.
And that -- is what President Bush threw away yesterday in commuting the sentence of Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

The man who said those seventeen words -- improbably enough -- was the actor John Wayne.

And Wayne, an ultra-conservative, said them, when he learned of the hair's-breadth election of John F. Kennedy instead of his personal favorite, Richard Nixon in 1960.
"I didn't vote for him but he's my president, and I hope he does a good job."

The sentiment was doubtlessly expressed earlier.
But there is something especially appropriate about hearing it, now, in Wayne's voice:
The crisp matter-of-fact acknowledgement that we have survived, even though for nearly two centuries now, our Commander-in-Chief has also served, simultaneously, as the head of one political party and often the scourge of all others.
---
We as citizens must, at some point, ignore a president's partisanship. Not that we may prosper as a nation, not that we may achieve, not that we may lead the world -- but merely that we may function.
But just as essential to the seventeen words of John Wayne, is an implicit trust -- a sacred trust:
That the president for whom so many did not vote, can in turn suspend his political self long enough, and for matters imperative enough, to conduct himself solely for the benefit of the entire Republic.

Our generation's willingness to state "we didn't vote for him, but he's our president, and we hope he does a good job," was tested in the crucible of history, and earlier than most.
And in circumstances more tragic and threatening.
And we did.... that with which history tasked us.

We envelopped our President in 2001.
And those who did not believe he should have been elected -- indeed those who did not believe he had been elected -- willingly lowered their voices and assented to the sacred oath of non-partisanship.

And George W. Bush took our assent, and re-configured it, and honed it, and shaped it to a razor-sharp point...,and stabbed this nation in the back with it.
Were there any remaining lingering doubt otherwise, or any remaining lingering hope, it ended yesterday when Mr. Bush commuted the prison sentence of one of his own staffers.
Did so even before the appeals process was complete…
Did so without as much as a courtesy consultation with the Department of Justice…
Did so despite what James Madison -- at the Constitutional Convention -- said about impeaching any president who pardoned or sheltered those who had committed crimes "advised by" that president…
Did so without the slightest concern that even the most detached of citizens must look at the chain of events and wonder:
To what degree was Mr. Libby told: break the law however you wish -- the President will keep you out of prison?

In that moment, Mr. Bush, you broke that fundamental com-pact between yourself and the majority of this nation's citizens -- the ones who did not cast votes for you.
In that moment, Mr. Bush, you ceased to be the President of the United States.
In that moment, Mr. Bush, you became merely the President… of a rabid and irresponsible corner of the Republican Party.
And this is too important a time, Sir, to have a commander-in-chief who puts party over nation.

This has been, of course, the gathering legacy of this Administration.
Few of its decisions have escaped the stain of politics.
The extraordinary Karl Rove has spoken of "a permanent Republican majority," as if such a thing -- or a permanent Democratic majority -- is not antithetical to that upon which rests: our country, our history, our revolution, our freedoms.

Yet our Democracy has survived shrewder men than Karl Rove.
And it has survived the frequent stain of politics upon the fabric of government.
But this administration, with ever-increasing insistence and almost theo-cratic zealotry, has turned that stain… into a massive oil spill.

The protection of the environment… is turned over to those of one political party, who will financially benefit from the rape of the environment.

The protections of the Constitution… are turned over to those of one political party, who believe those protections unnecessary and extravagant and quaint.

The enforcement of the laws… is turned over to those of one political party, who will swear beforehand that they will not enforce those laws.

The choice between war and peace… is turned over to those of one political party, who stand to gain vast wealth by ensuring that there is never peace, but only war.

And now, when just one cooked book gets corrected by an honest auditor…
When just one trampling of the inherent and inviolable fairness of government is rejected by an impartial judge…
When just one wild-eyed partisan is stopped by the figure of blind justice…
This President decides that he, and not the law, must prevail.

I accuse you, Mr. Bush, of lying this country into war.
I accuse you of fabricating in the minds of your own people, a false implied link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.
I accuse you of firing the generals who told you that the plans for Iraq were disastrously insufficient.
I accuse you of causing in Iraq the needless deaths of 3,586 of our brothers and sons, and sisters and daughters, and friends and neighbors.
I accuse you of subverting the Constitution, not in some misguided but sincerely-motivated struggle to combat terrorists, but to stifle dissent.
I accuse you of fomenting fear among your own people, of creating the very terror you claim to have fought.
I accuse you of exploiting that unreasoning fear, the natural fear of your own people who just want to live their lives in peace, as a political tool to slander your critics and libel your opponents.
I accuse you of handing part of this Republic over to a Vice President who is without conscience, and letting him run roughshod over it.
And I accuse you now, Mr. Bush, of giving, through that Vice President, carte blanche to Mr. Libby, to help defame Ambassador Joseph Wilson by any means necessary, to lie to Grand Juries and Special Counsel and before a court, in order to protect the mechanisms and particulars of that defamation, with your guarantee that Libby would never see prison, and, in so doing, as Ambassador Wilson himself phrased it here last night, of becoming an accessory… to the obstruction of justice.

---
When President Nixon ordered the firing of the Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox during the infamous "Saturday Night Massacre" on October 20th, 1973, Cox initially responded tersely, and ominously.
"Whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of men, is now for Congress, and ultimately, the American people."

President Nixon did not understand how he had crystallized the issue of Watergate for the American people.

It had been about the obscure meaning behind an attempt to break in to a rival party's headquarters; and the labyrinthine effort to cover-up that break-in and the related crimes.

And in one night, Nixon transformed it.
Watergate -- instantaneously -- became a simpler issue: a President overruling the inexorable march of the law… of insisting -- in a way that resonated viscerally with millions who had not previously understood - that he was the law.
Not the Constitution.
Not the Congress.
Not the Courts.
Just him.

Just - Mr. Bush - as you did, yesterday.
The twists and turns of Plame-Gate, of your precise and intricate lies that sent us into this bottomless pit of Iraq; your lies upon the lies to discredit Joe Wilson; your lies upon the lies upon the lies to throw the sand at the "referee" of Prosecutor Fitzgerald's analogy… these are complex and often painful to follow, and too much, perhaps, for the average citizen.
But when other citizens render a verdict against your man, Mr. Bush -- and then you spit in the faces of those jurors and that judge and the judges who were yet to hear the appeal -- the average citizen understands that, Sir.
It's the fixed ballgame and the rigged casino and the pre-arranged lottery all rolled into one -- and it stinks.
And they know it.

Nixon's mistake, the last and most fatal of them, the firing of Archibald Cox, was enough to cost him the presidency.
And in the end, even Richard Nixon could say he could not put this nation through an impeachment.
It was far too late for it to matter then, but as the decades unfold, that single final gesture of non-partisanship, of acknowledged responsibility not to self, not to party, not to "base," but to country, echoes loudly into history.
Even Richard Nixon knew it was time to resign

Would that you could say that, Mr. Bush.
And that you could say it for Mr. Cheney.
You both crossed the Rubicon yesterday.
Which one of you chose the route, no longer matters.
Which is the ventriloquist, and which the dummy, is irrelevant.
But that you have twisted the machinery of government into nothing more than a tawdry machine of politics, is the only fact that remains relevant.
It is nearly July 4th, Mr. Bush, the commemoration of the moment we Americans decided that rather than live under a King who made up the laws, or erased them, or ignored them -- or commuted the sentences of those rightly convicted under them -- we would force our independence, and regain our sacred freedoms.
We of this time -- and our leaders in Congress, of both parties -- must now live up to those standards which echo through our history:
Pressure, negotiate, impeach -- get you, Mr. Bush, and Mr. Cheney, two men who are now perilous to our Democracy, away from its helm.
For you, Mr. Bush, and for Mr. Cheney, there is a lesser task.
You need merely achieve a very low threshold indeed.
Display just that iota of patriotism which Richard Nixon showed, on August 9th, 1974.
Resign.
And give us someone -- anyone -- about whom all of us might yet be able to quote John Wayne, and say, "I didn't vote for him, but he's my president, and I hope he does a good job."
---
Good night, and good luck.

We will know we have "Won" the war, when:

2007-05-13T14:59:00.000-07:00

· We admit we have lost and that it was a tragic mistake from the beginning;

· We stop the myth of the “War on Terrorism” and begin to deal seriously with terrorism as effectively as other nations, i.e., with intelligence and not bombs;

· The U.S. foreign policy is built upon the strength of our economy and capacity to do good rather than our military strength;

· We are strong enough to not be driven by fear;

· We humbly admit that we have not “won a war” since W.W. II.;

· Our media take responsibility for its failures in leading the clarion call into the war;

· We demand that our journalists and congressional representatives stop communicating in sound bites that have no logical or historical context and begin to treat the public like rational adults;

· We start acting as thought we truly know how much our investment in our “military superiority” has left us poorer as a nation with a deteriorating infrastructure of education, health care, transportation, energy, the environment, etc.

· We can gratefully admit that our “empire” has run it course and we are ready to rejoin the community of nations, a bit poorer, but wiser.

Merle

Keeping the Air Waves Free for Democracy

2007-05-01T10:15:00.000-07:00

Comments before the F.C.C. Commissioners in Tampa, April 30, 2007

Dear Chairman Martin and Commission Members:

Thank you your opening statements and the opportunity you have given to citizens around the country to express their concerns about their airwaves – its ownership, use, quaity and how it “lies at the heart of our democracy” in the words of Chairman Martin.

I represent the interests of those seniors, described by Commissioner Copps, but also those of a person whose professional life has been in education and whose life is deeply committed to the pursuit of truth and the building of a more vital democracy. At the same time I fully appreciate the complicated roles played by Commissioners of the FCC as a Federal Agency. I have severed as a faculty member and senior administrator in both private and public institutions. Over thirty years ago I served as an HEW Fellow between the Reagan and Carter administrations and was deeply involved in the creation of the new Department of Education from its transitional headquarters in an abandoned warehouse in Foggy Bottom. Keeping our government sensitive to both the “public will” and the “public good” is a noble balancing challenge.

My comments deal with 1) Communication; 2) Mission; 3) Conglomerates; and end with a few modest conclusions.

Communication – The heart of the issue – Centralization vs. Decentralization

It is a tragic irony that while we live in the age of science, our government’s agencies use only a simplistic corporate model in which the efficiency and effectiveness of communication is measured only in terms of size. Even size did not assure the survival of the mammoth dinosaurs.

We need to apply what we know about “communication” in our biological, chemical and physical world to the life of our societies. Our own bodies are complex decentralized

systems, with information prompting actions, some involuntary, others requiring even more complex synaptic activity of our frontal lobes. Decentralization is the key to how our organic world communicates, from our genes to our brains. Centralization would paralyze the living organism. There are clear analogies in our political life.

Even in our physical world we know that the key to understanding the behavior of the largest and most complex systems in the activity of the smallest particles, some of which we yet hope to find in the new supercollider in Cern later this year. The micro-world is the key to our macro-world. Bigger is not better, or efficient or more effective in any aspect of our encounter with reality. So why should we even consider it as a way of building communication networks in our democracy? The more our media is diverse, plural and sensitive to their social environments the greater they will not just reflect the true nature of our democracy, but the more they will help it evolve into a strong social system.

II.

Mission of Media in our Democracy

The media through which we communicate has three basic missions in a dynamic democracy:

a. Provide the tools for more effective citizenship and wise decision making for the public good – NOT make us consumers of products and services;

b. Present issues for critical analysis and decision making – NOT edutainment;

c. Inform the public – NOT form a monolithic consciousness.

III.

Why conglomerates are destructive in our democracy

Conglomerates, as described so clearly by Commissioner Adelstein, are destructive for the growth of a living democracy for at least three reasons:

a. Competition is repressed;

b. Diversity is inhibited;

c. Conformity is valued more than the independent search for truth – e.g., Knight-Ridder was the lone voice of dissent and concern regarding the government’s reports of events leading up to and during the first four years of the Iraq war.

IV.

Conclusion

At this time in American history the FCC can best serve democracy if it:

a. Encourages a decentralized system of ownership and control;

b. Stimulates media that focuses on the smallest places of our democratic life in our local communities;

c. Avoids the current obsession with celebrities, trivia and violence.

Thank you for your consideration.

Merle F. Allshouse

Help Restore Sanity to Our Democracy

2007-03-30T11:36:00.000-07:00

From Dennis Kucinich’s web site: http://kucinich.us/

'Impeachment Has to Be on the Table.'

Kucinich Wants to Hear From the American People

"I don't think that it's wise for the House and the Congress, for co-equal branches of government, to essentially give the President carte blanche in his decision making by saying no matter what you do, impeachment is off the table."

Congressman Kucinich was asked about impeachment Wednesday in a live interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! Kucinich continued,

"I think that impeachment has to be on the table, and I also think that it's time to have a national conversation in cities, in towns all over America, about the appropriate conduct for a President and a Vice President, about whether it's right for a President and Vice President to lie to the American people and take us into war. About the erosion of civil rights in America and how that's come about as a result of this administration's conduct of the war.

"I think that it's time to have that kind of a discussion, and I’ve urged that from my website at kucinich.us, and I’m asking to hear from people about what they think, and I think that we need to make sure that this President understands that he can't do whatever he wants, that he is bound by the Constitution, that he is bound by national and international law.

So please log on to Kucinch’s website and let him know what you think. Help him help us make a difference and restore sanity and decency to our democracy in crisis.

Thanks,

Merle

A Week of Irony

2007-03-18T11:55:00.000-07:00

This is a week of irony. Monday (19^th) marks the 4^th anniversary of our current Iraq war and the next day is the beginning of spring.

Yes, in nature and history, there is a dialectic or yin/yang between evil and good, death and life, winter and spring.

With at least four civil wars raging in Iraq, we do not yet see any possibility of peace. After the warmest winter in U.S. history, we hope that spring will also include some cool breezes.

Isn’t it odd that our arrogance may be responsible for both upsetting the delicate chemistry of the atmosphere, accelerating global warming, and our hegemonic desire to dominate the world?

Do we have to wait for nature to teach us about the fragile nature of our evolving planet? Can we trust that our species may evolve to discover the self-destructive nature of war and unbridled hubris?

It is a week for serious reflection and action.

++++++++++++++++++

Merle

A Week of Irony

2007-03-18T11:48:00.000-07:00

This is a week of irony. Monday (19^th) marks the 4^th anniversary of our current Iraq war and the next day is the beginning of spring.

Yes, in nature and history, there is a dialectic or yin/yang between evil and good, death and life, winter and spring.

With at least four civil wars raging in Iraq, we do not yet see any possibility of peace. After the warmest winter in U.S. history, we hope that spring will also include some cool breezes.

Isn’t it odd that our arrogance may be responsible for both upsetting the delicate chemistry of the atmosphere, accelerating global warming, and our hegemonic desire to dominate the world?

It is a week for serious reflection and action.

++++++++++++++++

Merle

A MUST DO List To Restore Democracy

2007-03-04T14:03:00.000-08:00

Today (03-04-07) the New York Times editorial proposed a “Must Do” list for the American democracy as a “moral imperative to show the world the United States can be tough on terrorism without sacrificing its humanity and the rule of law.” Following is the Times’ list with a few editorial changes from yours truly:

· Restore Habeas Corpus

· Repeal the Military Commissions Act of 2006

· Ban Torture

· Stop Illegal Spying

· Close the C.I.A. Prisons

· Account for “Ghost Prisoners”

· Ban Extraordinary Rendition

· Tighten the Definition of Combatant

· Screen Prisoners Fairly and Effectively

· Ban Tainted Evidence

· Ban Secret Evidence

· Define “Classified” Evidence More Carefully

· Respect the Right to Counsel

· Close the Guantanamo Camp

Finally, change our mission, not just our tactics in Iraq. It is time for us to take back our democracy before we have totally lost it.

Merle

Can the Sword be Broken?

2007-02-18T07:58:00.000-08:00

I have been obsessed with the question of whether or not the homo sapien will ever give up the attractions of war and find surrogates in a world of perpetual peace. As William James asked, “Can we have a moral equivalent for war?” Is the tug of the reptilian brain we all inherit from our evolutionary past just too strong? Or can we someday have the courage to change deeply within ourselves?

Frederick Nietzsche’s vision is powerful and especially relevant for our current world, as we live in a nation that while the richest in history also spends more on war and the military than all the rest of the world combined and is by far the largest arms dealer the universe has ever known…..

And perhaps the great day will come when a people, distinguished by wars and victories and by the highest development of a military order and intelligence, and accustomed to make the heaviest sacrifice for these things, will exclaim of its own free will, “we break the sword,” and will smash its military establishment down to its lowest foundations. Rendering oneself unarmed when one has been the best armed, out of a height of feeling – that is the means to real peace, which must always rest on a peace of mind; whereas the so-called armed peace, as it now exists in all countries, is the absence of peace of mind. One trusts neither oneself nor one’s neighbor and, half from hatred, half from fear, does not lay down arms. Rather perish than hate and fear, and twice rather perish than make oneself hated and feared – this must someday become the highest maxim for every single commonwealth too.

From The Wanderer and His Shadow

...more later

Merle

Mars and Eros

2007-02-04T11:34:00.000-08:00

Reflecting on his experiences as a soldier in W.W. II, Glenn Gray wrote:*

How deeply is this impulse to destroy rooted and persistent in human nature? Are the imaginative visions of Empedocles and Freud true in conceiving that the destructive element in man and nature is as strong and recurrent as the conserving, erotic element? Or can our delight in destruction be channeled into other activities than he traditional one of warfare? We are not far advanced on the way to these answers. We do not know whether a peaceful society can be made attractive enough to wean men away from the appeals of battle. Today we are seeking to make war so horrible that men will be frightened away from it. But this is hardly likely to be more fruitful in the future than it has been in the past.

Gray then, somewhat naively, speculated that: More productive will certainly be our efforts to eliminate the social, economic, and political injustices that are always the immediate occasion of hostilities. Even then, we shall be confronted with the spiritual emptiness and inner hunger that impel many men toward combat.

He then soberly noted that: Our society has not begun to wrestle with this problem of how to provide fulfillment to human life, to which war is so often an illusory path. (first written in 1959)

*Glenn Gray, The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle, University of Nebraska Press, 1998. pp. 57f.

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Since these wise words we have had our wars in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq and the genocides in Rwanda and Darfur, to mention only a few. Will we ever find an erotic passion greater than war for the future of our species?

Merle

truth and TRUTH ?

2007-01-22T07:28:00.000-08:00

There is a new essay, “Scooter and me” by Nick Bromell http://www.theamericanscholar.org/wi07/scooterandme-bromell.html that should be “required” reading for every American, along with John S. Mill’s essay “On Liberty.”

As a life-long friend of Scooter Libby, Bromell raises important issues about the emerging war of fundamentalisms (liberal and conservative); their fundamental different understandings of what “truth” is; and of how we can maintain friendships with those we love but with whom we hold different views of what is at the heart of reality.

Bromell give us a lucid definition of the terms “liberal” and “fundamentalist.”

A liberal, as I use the term, is someone who never gives up trying to see the other person’s point of view. A liberal never stops doubting himself, for self-doubt is precisely what allows us to make room in our minds for someone else’s views and to keep the possibility of communication between us alive. A fundamentalist, on the other hand, is someone to whom the very idea of point of view is immaterial, or worse—the foundation of relativism. A warrior who pledges fealty to the god of one Truth, a fundamentalist searches for personal conviction, not mutual understanding.

He then argues that the end of the Cold War revealed what the conflicting political ideologies of that struggle had held in check and kept invisible: a deeper struggle between tradition and modernity, faith and agnosticism, monism and pluralism, fundamentalism and, yes, liberalism.

He wonders what if he encountered the wife of Scooter’s boss: If Lynne Cheney and I were to meet, here’s what I imagine she would say to me: “You liberals may have good reasons to be skeptical about the very possibility of the truth, but you insist on using the words true and truth as if they had real meaning without recourse to such a possibility. If you were intellectually honest, you would restrict yourself to words like correct and accurate. If you want to glorify your mere assertions with the numinous associations of the word truth, you should embrace the possibility of the numinous itself. By using true and truth while denying the very possibility of the Truth, you are trying to have your cake and eat it too. You want to use a word that comes trailing clouds of glory to ennoble your scrawny human enterprise and to conceal its dangerous vanity.”

And Cheney would be right. We liberals do want to hold onto the word true because we know that behind our policy proposals lurks a deep sense of right and wrong, a deep instinct about what makes life valuable and meaningful. But we do not fully articulate these beliefs, and we seldom even admit that we have them. Because they rest at bottom on conviction, not reason, and therefore cannot be justified without circularity, we hesitate to bring them into the open. We are nervous about admitting that in this sense our politics are as faith-based as those of any fundamentalist.

This is a failure of nerve, and it has two consequences: to people like Cheney we appear hypocritical, and to many others we appear uncommitted and indecisive. This is why the liberal temperament is challenged as never before. Everywhere in the world we are confronted by the fundamentalism that deposits bombs in commuter trains and that crafts Strangelovian strategies for global preeminence. In the face of these provocations, we are called upon to be firm but not inflexible, tough but not stubborn, determined but not dogmatic. We need something like faith, but it has to be a faith that makes room for the faith of others. Our deepest quarrel with fundamentalists in this country, then, is not about Iraq, health care, abortion, or gay rights. It’s about the very possibility of trying to be true without needing the truth. It’s about being able to commit to a truth while always remembering that this truth could be partial, incomplete, and provisional—a steppingstone forward, not an edifice of certitude.

Bromell concludes: Looking at the snow swirling past my north-facing window, I’m reminded of Wallace Stevens’s famous poem about the snowman who beholds the winter landscape and sees “nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.” We liberals think we’re very good at living without illusions, seeing only what is “there” and needing nothing else. And so we mock fundamentalists who see “the nothing that is” and who seek to supplement it with something more, something transcendental, something True.

But if we really want to come to grips with the exigencies of our time, we will have to learn, like the snowman, to see both ways at once.

Courage in the face of fundamentalisms is the capacity to “see both ways at once” knowing that the snow man is melting.

Merle

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Nick Bromell teaches English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His essays have appeared in The Boston Review, The Georgia Review, Harper’s, and The Sewanee Review.

A New Beginning

2007-01-06T16:49:00.000-08:00

It is not President G.W. Bush’s “legacy” that concerns me, but rather that of the U.S. How do we begin again? How do we rebuild our own faith in democracy and the trust of the rest of the world?

First we must be honest about the depth and breadth of destruction we have caused by an undeclared war that was based on deception, a lack of knowledge and cultural intelligence and basic hubris. So where do we start again?

Perhaps one place to look is at the “Four Freedoms” articulated by F.D.R: The freedoms of speech and expression; religion; and freedoms from want and fear.

The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world. We need to take a fresh look at the Patriot Act and abolish those items that restrict our basic freedom of speech and assembly.

The second is freedom of religion -- everywhere in the world. We must open our minds to the study of other world religions and teach about these basic value systems in our schools.

The third is freedom from want -- which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the world. We need to be more generous in the use of our resources to abolish hunger, fight AIDS, and meet our commitments to meet the UN 2020 goals.

The fourth is freedom from fear -- which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor-- anywhere in the world. We need to admit that we are the largest arms dealer in the world and begin the put restrictions on the dealing in weapons from U.S. sources. But most of all, we need to abolish the psychology of fear itself that this administration has used to paralyze most Americans for the last six years.

There is much more, but these four basic freedoms are a place to begin.

Merle

2007 - Welcome to TIVOland

2006-12-26T06:06:00.000-08:00

2007 – Welcome to TIVOland

Now I understand. For many years I thought our American popular culture suffered from historical amnesia. Mistakenly this was attributed to condition to an excessive desire for material consumption coupled with a decline in reading skills. Then I discovered TIVO, and it all became clear.

The TIVO technology illustrates the subjectivity of time, if not space. We can now so manipulate (rewind and/or) the “live” images on TV that “real time” is all but lost, or just a reference point, if that. TIVO has become the lived metaphor in which we live.

Perhaps this explains how the architects of the Iraq War have kept alive the projection of “victory.” By constantly replaying 9-11 it has become a perpetual present. The “real time” present can be bypassed by just never advancing TIVO far enough. Denial of the real present is a major benefit of those who live in TIVOland. Happiness can be found in just replaying carefully selected images (photo opportunities like “Mission Accomplished” of the past.

We need tot fear the reality of 2007. In TIVOland we can just keep adjusting the image. Now I understand why G.W. believes that doing more of the same is the best new strategy for “victory” in Iraq.

Happy New Year and write to your Senators and members of congress to help us accept the reality of 2007!

Cheers,

Merle

A Fitting Holiday

2006-12-09T10:14:00.000-08:00

These “Holiday” times are rich with religious and cultural metaphors – birth and new beginnings, festivals of lights, celebrations of the earth and sky, but what does it all mean? Our present is an “in between” time.

We are caught with one foot in the pre-modern world of religious story and myth. It is a world of cosmological metaphysics, laced with magic and childish wishful thinking. In that world of supernatural revelations and ritual we are given hope and meaning. Yet our other foot is firmly planted and direction set in a post-modern world. There we are free from the baggage of superstitions, but also alone. Our freedom has come at a price. Our cosmology is now an expanding universe of infinite galaxies and dark matter. And our human time and place in this scale of things is so infinitely recent and small.

So in this schizophrenic age we can begin to create new metaphors that speak the truth. Perhaps if we acknowledge our fragility in this universe and leave behind the religious dogmas and metaphysics that separate us, we can find ways to bond with others. Ironically, it is perhaps only by moving beyond religion that we can find the peace that religions always sought, but never realized. Our salvation is in our humanity, not in religion.

So let Christians celebrate the prince-of-peace within each of us and Jews find the light within our humanity and the rest of us express the joy of giving. That would be a fitting Holiday.

Cheers,

Merle

Who Speaks for Them?

2006-11-17T06:05:00.000-08:00

Saddam Hussein has been sentenced to death by hanging for his crimes against the people of his own nation. Perhaps it is a just sentence, but what about the crimes against humanity caused by our invasion of Iraq?

As of this writing we know of 3105 coalition deaths and 46,137 casualties and somewhere between 47,085 and 52,222 Iraqi civilians have perished. How do we count the cost of these losses in human and material terms? We have no estimate of the number of Iraqi “non-mortal” injuries, but clearly tens of thousands of our and Iraqi wounded will never lead normal lives again. Limbs are gone and brains are damaged beyond repair. A country has been torn apart economically, culturally and physically. The politics of the mid-east has been set on a more destructive course than ever in recent history.

And so who pays for this “crime” against humanity? They say the victors are never tried for war crimes, but in this case, are there any victors…but only the vanquished? And no one speaks for them.

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{For an up-to-date accounting of U.S. military, coalition, contractors, etc. killed, MIA, and wounded see http://icasualties.org/oif/
For a current count on Iraqi civilian deaths go to http://www.iraqbodycount.net/background.htm }

November 8th: The Morning After

2006-11-09T10:03:00.000-08:00

So November 7^th was an historic election for the United States. But what does it all mean? We may not have achieved a complete “magnetic shift” but clearly it is time to set a new course.

The votes were not so much an affirmation of a party platform or agenda as a clear rejection of our current president and his policies and performance (more performance) in foreign affairs and the war. It was as though Americans realized they were headed on a course for disaster, and a turn had to be made. But a turn where? Clearly more to the “center.” But now to what destinations do we plot our new course?

Those who will be moving to D.C. into their new congressional offices were often elected by slim margins. They should travel light and not unpack everything unless they are willing now to set a new national course and not just drift.

That new national course should include a vigorous and clear set of initiatives and legislation that inspires Americans to be proud of their nation once again. Even if the going is rough in the Senate and the President threatens with veto power, Congress can give us renewed faith in America by focusing on one project over the next two years:

· End the occupation of Iraq, deal with the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and begin repairing our international relations, foreign policy and credibility.

AND get reelected in 2008 with a Democratic platform that includes:

· Redefining national security as not isolationism from but engagement with the rest of the world

· Adjusting our tax policy to achieve a more equitable and fair distribution of our economic wealth

· A major reassessment of our foreign policy

· An aggressive program to end our fossil fuel dependency

· A complete overhaul of our national health care program

· Serious reform of our educational systems – K-12 and higher education

· Working with international alliances that seek to reduce world poverty and hunger and thus reduce probability for terrorism

· Advocacy of free and fair trade

The doors of opportunity seem to have opened once again for our Nation. Let us work to make sure our optimism is well grounded.

Merle

Facing the Facts

2006-11-05T13:05:00.000-08:00

What a nasty turn we have taken when Americans cannot face the facts. We are increasingly a class divided society; our wars are now fought by those on the underclass; at no time in American history has such a small percentage of Americans held so much of the nation’s wealth; the middle class is squeezed as never before and now has about the same purchasing power it did in the mid 1970s; and we have not won a war since W.W. II and we have already lost the war in Iraq. The debate is really over how to withdraw and call it a “victory.”

These are the truths that we must face and talk about if America is to claim its moral leadership in the 21^st century. We need the political leadership that will not be afraid of facing the truth and not covering it with symbols of false patriotism. Real patriotism speaks the truth!

Merle

Halloween Ghosts

2006-10-30T09:18:00.000-08:00

Halloween is more complex psychologically than we like to admit. As those ancient pagan Celts knew, the best way to deal with our fears is to objectify them into friendly ghosts. Yet, those spirits also reveal a dark side, the grim reaper that haunts our personal and cultural lives with every waking and sleeping moment.

So on this Halloween let me share some of those ghosts that have come to life and that I fear most. I fear that:

The War in Iraq is our nation’s most serious blunder from which we and the world will suffer for decades, perhaps centuries, to come;
Americans still live with a kind of “orientalism” that treats the people of the near east as less than fully human; a racism that undervalues their worth and value as persons; killing persons there is justified so we will be safe on our soil;
America has become a political system that assigns the fighting of its wars to the underclass;
As our middle class shrinks and a higher percentage of our wealth is retained by the smallest percentage of our population in US history, our society seems to have settled in for a long winter’s nap of consumption at Wal-Mart’s; our most precious freedom has become the “freedom to consume”;
We continue to confuse the national self interests of Israel with what is best for American foreign policy;
America cannot abide the truth that we have already lost the war in Iraq and have not really won a war since W.W. II;
No strong leader will emerge to lead the Democratic party, and it will break into a number of factions; and
While our balance of party political affiliations may shift in Congress and many State Houses on November 7^th, it will not result in any major policy changes reflected in our foreign or domestic affairs.

But there is hope that in future Halloweens we can retire some of these worn and useless costumes. Let’s work to bring on the spirits reflected in so much of our past as a nation that used its resources and intelligence to create a world of peace.

Merle

Paranoid or Perceptive?

2006-10-22T08:27:00.000-07:00

It is difficult to know what possessed The New Yorker to publish Nicholas Lemann’s article, “The Wayward Press: Paranoid Style” (October 16, 2006). http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060327fa_fact

His thesis is the simplistic notion that international political policy and events can never be the product of the ideological actions of a finite number of powerful and well placed individuals since human behavior is just too irrational, and paranoid induced plots are always just too rationale. Things happen by accident, not plan. Why is he wrong?

Let us take for a paradigm case the overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh, Iran’s prime minister in 1953. According to Lemann’s thesis it would be paranoid to think that a relatively small group of persons or “group think agencies” were responsible. It was just “people screwing up”. We know better. The individuals involved were Winston Churchill, Dwight Eisenhower, Foster Dulles, Donald Wilber, Kermit Roosevelt and agencies like the CIA, British Intelligence, U.S. State Department, and corporations like British Petroliam and U.S. counterparts. This is a lot of folks and many boards and high level committees. But it is still a finite number. Historians sooner or later can sort it all out. Most critical was the kind of momentum of “group think” that took place over a short period of time among this finite number of persons and groups. It is probably impossible to document those who objected in meetings, since they were most likely left behind.

Now why is it not rationale to assume that this same kind of model can be applied to other issues of foreign policy? The Iraq War I stuck in the craw of many neo-liberals (neo-cons) who were eager to complete a war that was never properly ended in their view. 9-11 was a logical rationale for Iraq II. It was only a matter of building the rationale, and the only obstacle was Colin Powell and the U.N.

Isn’t it contradictory to assume that while other states (rogue or actual) are capable of carefully planned international terrorist activities that we are just befuddled by the irrationality and complexity of human events? Perhaps it is part of the neo beltway brainwashing to label as “paranoid” anyone who seeks the truth about how our policies are formulated.

So please, Mr. Lemann, don’t tell us that we are paranoid if we believe that things get done by individuals working through relatively small groups with power and influence. It is called Democracy.

Merle

Paranoid or Perceptive?

2006-10-22T06:16:00.000-07:00

It is difficult to know what possessed The New Yorker to publish Nicholas Lemann’s article, “The Wayward Press: Paranoid Style” (October 16, 2006). His thesis is the simplistic notion that international political policy and events can never be the product of the ideological actions of a finite number of powerful and well placed individuals since human behavior is just too irrational, and paranoid induced plots are always just too rationale. Things happen by accident, not plan. Why is he wrong?

Let us take for a paradigm case the overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh, Iran’s prime minister in 1953. According to Lemann’s thesis it would be paranoid to think that a relatively small group of persons or “group think agencies” were responsible. It was just “people screwing up”. We know better. The individuals involved were Winston Churchill, Dwight Eisenhower, Foster Dulles, Donald Wilber, Kermit Roosevelt and agencies like the CIA, British Intelligence, U.S. State Department, and corporations like British Petroliam and U.S. counterparts. This is a lot of folks and many boards and high level committees. But it is still a finite number. Historians sooner or later can sort it all out. Most critical was the kind of momentum of “group think” that took place over a short period of time among this finite number of persons and groups. It is probably impossible to document those who objected in meetings, since they were most likely left behind.

Now why is it not rationale to assume that this same kind of model can be applied to other issues of foreign policy? The Iraq War I stuck in the craw of many neo-liberals (neo-cons) who were eager to complete a war that was never properly ended in their view. 9-11 was a logical rationale for Iraq II. It was only a matter of building the rationale, and the only obstacle was Colin Powell and the U.N.

Isn’t it contradictory to assume that while other states (rogue or actual) are capable of carefully planned international terrorist activities that we are just befuddled by the irrationality and complexity of human events? Perhaps it is part of the neo beltway brainwashing to label as “paranoid” anyone who seeks the truth about how our policies are formulated.

So please, Mr. Lemann, don’t tell us that we are paranoid if we believe that things get done by individuals working through relatively small groups with power and influence. It is called Democracy.

Merle F. Allshouse

On Please, Not That Briar Patch, Mr. President !

2006-10-15T11:21:00.000-07:00

At his last news conference President Bush argued that his administration and the Republican congress could take credit for America’s robust economy and the fact that we are safe on the home front. On these two issues he believed American voters would assure a continuation of Republican rule. Democrats should welcome this “briar patch.”

Is the economy strong? In 2001, the President inherited a yearly budget surplus of $284 billion. At that time, he predicted a $516 billion surplus for fiscal year 2006 yet the federal government ran a deficit of $248 billion last year missing its projection by $764 billion. President Bush considered this a “smashing success” calling the numbers "proof of "sound fiscal policies in Washington”. If the President is successful in implementing his economic agenda -- including making his tax cuts permanent for the wealthy -- deficits will total nearly $3.5 trillion over the next 10 years, a record high. The income and wealth gap between the upper one percent and the rest of Americans is higher than at any time since the Great Depression of the late 1920s and the purchasing power of the average middle class is about what it was in the mid 1970’s while real wages have not kept pace with inflation for the working person. Finally, our trade balances are reaching a critical point and soon we will be paying out far more to service our debt to the rest of the world than we bring in. Our debt financed consumerism may well spend the end of the American economic hegemony.

Are we more secure on the home front? This claim is more dangerous than delusional given the rate at which our foreign policy is breading the conditions of terrorism and hostility not just in the mid-east, but around the globe. A false sense of security is dangerous.

If our candidates are not talking about these issues, and the war in Iraq, seriously, then our democracy is in greater trouble than even our enemies imagine. The democrats could not have found themselves in a better republican briar patch.

A Transformative Thought

2006-10-07T07:35:00.000-07:00

But one persistent fact within this complex history of uneven neoliberalization has been the universal tendency to increase social inequality and to expose the least fortunate elements in any society – be it in Indonesia, Mexico, or Britain – to the chill winds of austerity and the dull fate of increasing marginalization. while such a trend has been ameliorated here and there by social policies, the effects at the other end of the social spectrum have been quite spectacular. The incredible concentrations of wealth and power that now exist in the upper echelons of capitalism have not been seen since the 1920s. The flows of tribute into the world’s major financial centers have been astonishing. What, however, is even more astonishing is the habit of treating all of this as a mere and in some instances even unfortunate byproduct of neoliberalization. The very idea that this might be – just might be – the fundamental core of what neoliberalization has been about all along appears unthinkable. It has been part of the genius of neoliberal theory to provide a benevolent mask full of wonderful-sounding words like freedom, liberty, choice, and rights, to hide the grim realities of the restoration or reconstitution of naked class power, locally as well as transnationally, but most particularly in the main financial centers of global capitalism.

From "A Brief History of Neoliberalism" by David Harvey, Oxford Univ. Press, 2005, p. 118f.

Toward a Political Credo for 2008

2006-10-04T04:22:00.000-07:00

A friend asked me about “my politics” the other day. Well, we all know that none of the traditional labels seem to fit any of us anymore, either “conservatives” or “liberals.” Goodness knows, the terms “Republican” and “Democrat” have certainly had a “magnetic shift” in the last century. So I had to abandon labels and come up with those key principles that I’d like to see a major candidate espouse. Sure, not everyone can be perfect, but my ideal candidate will believe in:

linking social with environmental justice
a fairer distribution of wealth
non regressive tax reform
limitation of corporate power and welfare
support for the rights and dignity of workers
a minimum living wage
support for public education with serious reform (not no-child-left-behind)
free trade that is also FAIR trade
support for international alliances, treaties and participation in cooperative efforts to find peaceful solutions to international disputes.

I still hope this “progressive” tradition is alive and well in America and that it will begin to infuse our political institutions.

Merle

Banned Books Week marks 25th anniversary September 23-30

2006-09-24T10:58:00.000-07:00

This is one of the most appropriate ways we can celebrate “Constitution Day” and the First Amendment:

From the web site of the American Library Association:
http://www.ala.org/ala/pio/presscentera/piopresskits/bannedbooksweek2006/bbwpk06.htm

More than a book a day faces expulsion from free and open public access in U.S. schools and libraries every year. There have been more than 8,700 attempts since the American Library Association (ALA) began electronically compiling and publishing information on book challenges in 1990.

Twenty-five years after the first observance of Banned Books Week, more than 1,000 people stayed past 1 a.m. debating a request to remove nine books - including "The Things They Carried" by Tim O’Brien and "Beloved" by Toni Morrison - from a Chicagoland school district. The books were ultimately retained.

For a list of banned books, go to: http://banned-books.com/bblista-i.html

The Other Side of Patriotism

2006-09-17T10:50:00.000-07:00

This week, reflecting on “Patriot Day,” a friend shared the following politically incorrect thoughts. Most of us have the utmost respect and sympathy for those who have died, serving their nation, in the belief that they were fighting for a larger good. One way of demonstrating that respect is to consider these thoughts:

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784), quoted in Boswell's Life of Johnson

When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882) , Journals, 1824

"My country, right or wrong," is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, "My mother, drunk or sober." G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it. George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

Hermann Goering: Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797, British Political Writer, Statesman )

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
Oscar Wilde ( Irish Poet, Novelist, Dramatist and Critic, 1854 -1900)

Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy
George Bernard Shaw ( Irish literary Critic, Playwright and Essayist. 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature, 1856 - 1950)

Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -how passionately I hate them!
Albert Einstein ( German born American Physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity. Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921. 1879 - 1955)

The time is fast approaching when to call a man a patriot will be the deepest insult you can offer him. Patriotism now means advocating plunder in the interest of the privileged classes of the particular State system into which we have happened to be born.
Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy ( Russian Novelist and Philosopher, notable for his influence on Russian literature and politics. 1828 - 1910)

Patriotism is the religion of hell
James Branch Cabell (1879-1958)

Patriotism is as fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave, blind as a stone, and irrational as a headless hen
Ambrose Bierce ( American Writer, Journalist and Editor, 1842 - 1914)

Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.
Guy de Maupassant (French writer of short stories and novels, 1850 - 1893)

Patriotisn on "Patriot Day"

2006-09-10T09:36:00.000-07:00

Patriotism

September 11^th is here again. It has taken on the trappings of a nationalistic religious icon with all the qualities of a media event. Worse, it is now used as a political weapon. Surely now that we have witnessed more Americans killed in Iraq than on 9/11, we have reaped our ironic vengeance of an “eye for an eye” on ourselves.

We now call 9/11 “Patriot Day.” So it is a good time to examine what a “Patriot” truly is, since we seem to have confused it with some kind of Rumsfeldian jingoistic nationalism. I was recently heartened to find a true Patriot where I least expected to find one, in the media. Keith Olbermann demonstrates the qualities of a Patriot – one who seeks and speaks the truth, regardless of the consequences. He is clearly in the Edward R. Murrow tradition. He has given me new hope, and thus I share with you his comments from Aug. 30, 2006.

Feeling morally, intellectually confused?

By Keith Olbermann
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12131617/
Aug. 30, 2006

The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.

Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.

Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis—and the sober contemplation—of every American.

For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence -- indeed, the loyalty -- of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants -- our employees -- with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.

Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of human freedom; and not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as “his” troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.

It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile it is right and the power to which it speaks, is wrong.

In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeld’s speechwriter was adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis. For in their time, there was another government faced with true peril—with a growing evil—powerful and remorseless.

That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s, had a monopoly on all the facts. It, too, had the “secret information.” It alone had the true picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in terms like Mr. Rumsfeld’s -- questioning their intellect and their morality.

That government was England’s, in the 1930’s.

It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone England.

It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all treaties and accords.

It knew that the hard evidence it received, which contradicted its own policies, its own conclusions — its own omniscience -- needed to be dismissed.

The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew the truth.

Most relevant of all — it “knew” that its staunchest critics needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the foremost of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile, at best morally or intellectually confused.

That critic’s name was Winston Churchill.

Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this evening. We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill.

History — and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England — have taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty — and his own confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office can not only make the man, but that the office can also make the facts.

Thus, did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy.

Excepting the fact, that he has the battery plugged in backwards.

His government, absolute -- and exclusive -- in its knowledge, is not the modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis.

It is the modern version of the government of Neville Chamberlain.

But back to today’s Omniscient ones.

That, about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this: This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely.

And, as such, all voices count -- not just his.

Had he or his president perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience — about Osama Bin Laden’s plans five years ago, about Saddam Hussein’s weapons four years ago, about Hurricane Katrina’s impact one year ago — we all might be able to swallow hard, and accept their “omniscience” as a bearable, even useful recipe, of fact, plus ego.

But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris.

Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to the entire “Fog of Fear” which continues to envelop this nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies have — inadvertently or intentionally — profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.

And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emporer’s New Clothes?

In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised? As a child, of whose heroism did he read? On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight? With what country has he confused the United States of America?

The confusion we -- as its citizens— must now address, is stark and forbidding.

But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and obscured our flag. Note -- with hope in your heart — that those earlier Americans always found their way to the light, and we can, too.

The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and this administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City, so valiantly fought.

And about Mr. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country faces a “new type of fascism.”

As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that -- though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.

This country faces a new type of fascism - indeed.

Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble tribute, I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist Edward R. Murrow.

But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could I come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew everything, and branded those who disagreed: “confused” or “immoral.”

Thus, forgive me, for reading Murrow, in full:

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” he said, in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.”

And so good night, and good luck.

Comments can be sent to Keith Olbermann at KOlbermann@msnbc.com

Two Days in September

2006-09-03T13:15:00.000-07:00

Two important events will take place this week:

Monday is Labor Day, but what exactly are we celebrating? The current reigning ideology in America has virtually killed the labor movement since 1970. We are living through what many economists are calling The Great Upward Redistribution of American society. The upper 1% enjoys a higher percentage standard of living and greater wealth than at any time since the 1920’, at the expense of working person. Since 2003 the median hourly wage for Americans declined by 2 percept which it rose by 17% for the upper 1 percent. Wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the gross domestic product since 1947, and the average purchasing power of the dollar is about where it was in 1977 for the average person. No wonder Wal-Mart is doing a big business! Remember on Labor Day that for the bottom 90% of the American work force, work just does not seem to pay or provide security the way it used to. Perhaps Tuesday is a good time to keep that thought.

Tuesday is Primary Day and many of us will be casting our votes to choose our favorite candidates for the November election. Some of us in Florida will wonder if our vote will really count, remembering all too well 2000. We need some of the passion demonstrated by the citizens of Mexico following their recent election. Unlike the followers of Lopez Obrador, who demonstrated with passion, when they felt the election results were not accurate, we just passively crumpled in a heap of cynicism. We need to believe in our democracy as much as our Mexican neighbors and refuse to accept the manipulation of voting records, whether by paper ballot, machine or computer.

So if we still believe that America is a land where the ideals of economic and social justice should be practiced at every level of society, then please get out an vote. And if your vote is not counted, then DO SOMETHING about it, and it will take more than letter writing.

What Is "Peace"?

2006-08-19T13:52:00.000-07:00

Peace is not the absence of conflict. Conflict (ethnic, racial, religious, ideological) is the nature of the species, as it slowly evolves. The challenge is how to achieve some workable structure, or context, in which to permit “conflicts” to occur, without endangering life itself.

When the UN was established it was assumed that “conflicts” would be between autonomous sovereign states. The trade off was clear: protection of sovereignty for agreement to follow the rules of conflict. The major powers, who had most to lose from unstructured conflict, would have veto power. That veto was for the protection of international checks and balances, requiring frequent compromise while giving the appearance of ineptitude. Making peace was the responsibility of sovereign states. Keeping the peace was supposed to be the province of the U.N. Peace cannot be kept, if it cannot be made first. Those were the old days. Where now can peace be made?

In the post W.W. II heady days, when we saw states being created, not failing, we did not perceive that the economics of technology would give relatively small groups, with ideological destructive missions, the destructive powers previously reserved for states. We never imagined that the world’s largest producer and dealer in weapons would be waging a Third World War against “terrorism,” with many of its own instruments of destruction, sometimes facing each other.

As George Will has recently carefully argued, the problem is that we have been trapped by our own vocabulary. We have assume that IF there is a “war” on terrorism, then we must fight it with the victorious strategy of W.W. II, as we would tame a rogue state…with massive air and fire power (Shock and Awe). If the Hezbollah is not a state, then we will make it into one, if only to “destroy” it. And if it refuses to behave like a state, then surely we can blame Iran or Syria and hold them “accountable”.

I fear that such twisted logic will only lead to further entrapment and wasting of our limited human and material resources. The instruments of war are not fungible. While we produce a majority of the world’s instruments of destruction and consume a majority of its resources, China builds its technological and economic infrastructure and waits.

There is no satisfactory answer to the search for peace unless we find a way and place where we can agree to disagree and stop the endless supply and build up of weapons of both mass and “limited” destruction. We have now been at war in Iraq longer than we were at war with Germany in WW II. States are best preserved and protected by effective internal security (police) and not by external war. If you trust our President, who wants us to believe that the focus of the “war on terrorism” has not shifted from Iraq to Lebanon, then we are surely doomed. No matter how much many would wish that we just forget Iraq and blot it from our nation’s memory, its lessons are too vivid to forget, and its aftermaths will be with us for decades, if not centuries.

Please let me know what you think!

Our Best Hope?

2006-08-11T15:58:00.000-07:00

Are we any worse or better off than at any other time of cultural conflict, war and human tragedy, when the poor suffer most? The first decade of the 21^st century gives promise of only the continuing human suffering and tragedies of the 20^th century, the bloodiest on record. We refuse to learn.

So what is there in the future?

I see this century as the war of monotheisms and the decline of western modernism. The only bright spot is the rise of China, a non-monotheistic culture based on ethics, not religion. In the ultimate struggle between China and Islam (Ethics vs. Religion) perhaps China. It may be our best hope.

Please let me know what you think.

Merle

Ancient Unlearned Wisdom

2006-07-27T14:08:00.000-07:00

Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant.

They make a wilderness and call it peace

---Tacitus, reporting the words of Calgalus

BEFORE the next July 4th!

2006-07-07T05:12:00.000-07:00

Before the smoke totally clears from another Independence Day, it may be useful to reflect on what I hope we can learn about our democracy before the next July 4^th celebration. Here are just a few of my top items. I would appreciate hearing about some of yours too.

· We need to struggle on behalf of a more truly independent and courageous press before our First Amendment rights are further diminished.

· We must find a way to get behind “official speak” from our political leaders to real communication about issues and events that affect our nation’s future.

· We need to insist upon more open and public disclosure about what is really happening in Afghanistan and Iraq with our various forms of national intervention, before we make further ventures into Iran or North Korea.

· We must begin an open national discussion of our policies regarding Israel and Palestine in terms of what really is in our national self interest in that region.

· We need to have our government establish a true national priority on research on alternative energy systems for transportation.

· We need to find and then campaign day and night for candidates who are intelligent, courageous, and willing to speak the truth on behalf of their constituents rather than follow the easy path of soft money.

· We need to give the real hope of Independence to the growing number of Americans who are shackled by poverty, lack of health care and poor educational systems. They are the true “tired, poor masses yearning to be free” in the shadow of the Torch of Liberty.

· Finally, we need to shine that torch once again on the “wretched refuse” we once welcomed to our shores, those lost in the tempest of the rhetoric about “illegal” aliens. They may just be our hope for the future.

I want to be proud again to “lift my lamp beside the golden door,” as Lady Liberty once did.

Biofuels Not the Solution

2006-07-02T08:45:00.000-07:00

Biofuels Are the Latest Greenscam

(A guest contribution)

By Karen Orr, Water and Wetlands Issue Chair and Energy Committee Member

Sierra Club, florida Chapter: From The Pelican, Summer 2006 Issue

The movement toward biofuels as an environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels is a greenscam with potentially disastrous consequences.

The Bush brothers, a cabal of giant agro businesses, their paid consultants and political cronies are behind a series of initiatives that involve massive taxpayer-funded subsidies to large environmentally destructive corporations. Sadly, they're aided by a number of well-meaning but misguided groups and individuals.

Biofuels derived from corn, palm, soybeans and other crops are not only environmentally destructive, they can't be produced profitably without massive subsidies -- subsidies that should be used for environmentally viable solutions such as conservation/efficiency initiatives and wind and solar energy.

Biofuels are an economic, environmental and humanitarian disaster:

Ø The production of biofuel from crops consumes more energy than it produces.

Ø The production of biofuel from crops will lead to more air pollution, irreversible soil depletion, natural gas depletion, water depletion and pollution, erosion, forest destruction, higher use of fossil fuels, pesticides, fertilizers and harm to animals.

Ø Crops to produce oils to meet the demand for biofuel are directly destroying tens of thousands of square miles of rain forest now.

Ø Fertilizer for biofuel production will lead to a massive increase in phosphate strip mining, destroyed wetlands, poisoned water and disturbed river systems.

Ø Conversion of U.S. farmland from food production to fuel crop production will lead to dependence on foreign nations for our food supply.

The overuse of toxic agrochemicals on subsidized Midwest corn crops has created a poisonous runoff that produces the gigantic summertime "Dead Zone" in the Gulf of Mexico. This 5,000 to 10,000 square-mile chemical gumbo suffocates all Gulf of Mexico marine life that cannot escape it.

The subsidies required to make biofuel production "viable" are more corporate welfare to the same giant agro companies damaging the environment now. They divert funds from real solutions such as conservation/efficiency initiatives, public transportation systems, increased use of solar and wind energy, and sustainable small-scale food farming vs. massive monoculture fuel crop production. Government mandates of biofuels for transport will further hasten environmental destruction.

We can't grow our way out of the impending energy crisis with more destructive practices that fuel more cars for more people to drive on more roads to more parking lots to buy more junk. There must be a massive shift in our thinking, behavior and consumption.

The biofuels scam must be stopped in its tracks. If it proceeds, we'll plunge further into debt, destroy irreplaceable natural resources and send another portion of the biosphere up in smoke.

For more information on biofuels, see:

Ø The Energy Justice Network fact sheet at www.energyjustice.net/ethanol/factsheet.html

Ø Feeding Cars Not People at

www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/11/23/feeding-cars-notpeople

Ø Worse Than Fossil Fuel at

www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/12/06/worse-than-fossilfuel/

The Idea(s) of Democracy

2006-06-24T07:21:00.000-07:00

It’s happening! The first issue of a new journal, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, is out. It is free online at http://www.democracyjournal.org/

According to the founders, its mission is to build a vibrant and vital progressivism for the twenty-first century that builds on the movement’s proud history, is true to its central values, and is relevant to present times.

This is no ordinary political magazine. Rather, its editors seek breakthrough thinking on the concepts and approaches that respond to the central transformations of our time: the breakdown of the ladder of upward mobility; the promise and problems of an information-based, globalized economy; new national security threats which cross old boundaries and defy old assumptions from jihadist terrorism and nuclear proliferation to climate change, pandemics, and poverty; and a society where people work and live in new and different ways.

This is not the old politics, warmed over. Democracy is not interested in either reiterating the conventional wisdom or maintaining unity around outdated orthodoxies. We see our role as upsetting tired assumptions, moving past outdated and obsolete divisions, and stretching the envelope of what is accepted by and of progressives.

With a bold invitation, the first issue is launched. We have no doubt that ideas can change the course of our nation. Now is the time to fashion a new progressivism for the twenty-first century, and we welcome all who are willing to join in this conversation.

Be sure to read the Message to Our Readers from the first issue: http://www.democracyjournal.org/article.php?ID=6465

And don’t forget to follow the developments at UNITY08: http://www.unity08.com

Check it out!

Get This Message to Washington - John D. Maguire

2006-06-16T17:10:00.000-07:00

GET THIS MESSAGE TO WASHINGTON!
John David Maguire
with author’s permission

On April 12 Bill Coffin, a prophet and patriot, died. He provides us a perfect text for this morning: “This war in the Middle East is as disastrous as it is unnecessary; perhaps in terms of its wisdom, justice, purpose, and motives, the worst war in American history. Of course we feel for the Iraqis, so long and cruelly oppressed, as we support our military men and women: But we don’t support their military mission. They were not called to defend America but rather to attack Iraq. They were not called to die for, but rather to kill for, their country, and in an illegal and unjust war opposed by the UN Security Council and virtually the entire world. What more unpatriotic thing could we have asked of our sons and daughters serving in the military?”

If that is true of Iraq, how truer it would be if we – out of desperation or demonic deliberateness – intervene with nuclear strikes in Iran? Just think of the numbers: An estimated 2.6 million people would die within 48 hours. Over 1,000,000 people would suffer immediate injuries. Over 10.5 million people would be exposed to significant radiation from fallout. It would be a collapse of a 60-year moratorium going back to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If we were to drop a nuclear bomb on Iran, it would be the third time in human history such a bomb had been used: Every time by the United States! And this time it would not even be at the end of a long, deadly and wearing war against a major opponent. Instead it would be another preemption, an American first-use against a country not at all an immediate threat to the US and its interest, but rather would be used as an extension of our attempt to impose US control on the Middle East.

We American people must wake up to where we are. We’ve been on the wrong road for five-and-a-half years. At every fork, we take the wrong turn. Now – this summer – we are at a crucial fork. One road leads to a hopeless, hapless, horrible pit where military power serves empire rather than freedom; where we lose from within what we’re trying to defend from without; where fundamentalism and the state scheme together to write the rules and regulations; where true believers in the Gods of the market turn the law of the jungle into the law of the land; where in the name of patriotism we keep our hand over our heart pledging allegiance to the flag while our leaders pick out pockets and plunder our trust; where elites insulate themselves from the consequences of their own actions; where ‘the strong take what they can and the weak suffer what they must;’ where we have become global bully boys, the scourge of the weaker, not a model or missionary of freedom.

The other fork in the road – the one we must take – leads to an America whose promise is ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all.’ There is nothing utopian about this. It leads to a world where every life is precious and of infinite worth. It leads to a world of justice, compassion, sustainability.

We are at that fork in the road. The time to take the road toward life is now. Our current nuclear threats to Iran underscore the urgency of the moment. In order to start down the right road, we must commit today to doing the following:

We must call on our representatives in Congress to pass immediately legislation prohibiting the use of nuclear weapons in Iran or elsewhere without further specific authorization by Congress.
We must insist that any military action against Iran requires specific authorization by Congress in conformity with Article I, Section 8, of the United States Constitution.

In order to calm turbulence and advance peace, we must insist that President Bush or his highest level emissary respond to Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recent letter and offer to meet with him to discuss steps toward a situation freed of the specter of nuclear weapons.

We must launch a blitz of letters to the media as well as the Congress, street demonstrations and activities in civic groups, to oppose the extension of war in the Middle East by the Bush administration, especially the use of nuclear strikes in Iran by the United States. Our lives, the lives of our descendants and the lives of many inhabitants of this globe are at stake.

We must assert our moral autonomy, our moral power, our moral insistence that we will not be a part of the dishonesty, the brutality, and the hypocrisy behind the current war of aggression. We must call together for an end to the insanity – an end to the obscenity – of the war in Iraq and certainly demand no new war in Iran.

Let’s crystallize our resolve by listening once more to William Sloane Coffin: “Our real mortal enemy is war, war itself. Let us not argue that we’ve had to go to war to defend vital interests. Those interests aren’t worth it. Nor let us argue that we must go to war to defend our democratic way of life. Such a way of life – governed and led this way – will not survive. Let us instead proclaim a new kind of patriotism, which takes as its object of ultimate loyalty not the nation-state but the human race (didn’t Margaret Meade say, ‘We have explored the entire planet and found only one human race’)?”

“Remember,” says Coffin, “There are three kinds of patriots, two bad, one good.” The bad ones are the uncritical lovers of their country and its loveless critics. Good patriots carry on a lover’s quarrel with their country, a reflection of God’s lover’s quarrel with all the world. We must join our voices, raise our voices in this quarrel. If you’re at the edge of an abyss, the only progressive step is backward!”

Today’s message is clear. Begin disengaging from Iraq and, for God’s sake, the world’s sake, the sake of humankind, no new war – particularly nuclear war in Iraq.

John D. Maguire

June 10, 2009

Institute for Democratic Renewal/Project Change *
A Joint Anti-Racism Venture
Claremont Graduate University
170 E. 20th Street, Claremont, CA 91711

When John Maguire retired as president of the Claremont University System the Institute for Democratic Renewal was formed to continue his passions for peace and justice.

Energy Policy Draft for Unity08

2006-06-10T14:15:00.000-07:00

A new potential “third way” is organizing on the internet, http://www.unity08.com

The site, Unity08, describes the effort as follows:

We’re a movement to take our country back from polarizing politics. In 2008, we’ll select and elect a Unity Ticket to the White House— one Democrat, one Republican, in whatever order, or independents committed to a Unity team. Come join us - and you don't have to leave your party to do it.

As Unity08 develops a “platform” of issues, there has been much discussion of energy policy. Following are my thoughts in four related points:

Technology: We should not succumb to the myth that all our problems will be solved by technology. We are still waiting for technology to solve the problems of global warming, the depletion of fish populations and the return of cod, the social problems of urbanization, the demographic issues, etc. etc. Technology deals with a small fraction of our major issues. Today’s technology is living off of yesterday’s science, and we are investing less today than we did yesterday in pure research. THAT is the serious issue that needs attention -- Support for theoretical research

Electrical Energy: The energy that produces the electricity that runs industry, keeps our cities and their inhabitants alive, well and comfortable will increasingly be supplied by nuclear energy. The old problem with waste is on the verge of solution. The issue here is building our uranium reserves; China may be ahead of us.

Transportation Energy: Oil may have already hits its PEAK, and geologists are pretty well agreed. So once we are on the downward slope of using our reserves, short to mid term efforts will be made to extract from shale (at higher cost) etc. There is no doubt that oil is a finite resource and we will depend increasingly on lower grade crude, at a higher cost. Demands for oil for transportation will force most governments to subsidize the price in one way or another and provide incentives for manufacturers to produce more efficient and alternative fuels and engines. We need to continue experiments with compressed natural gas (CNG), biodiesel, electric, ethanol, Fischer-Tropsch, liquefied natural gas (LNG), methanol and propane, etc. Tax incentives should be given to those investing in these alternatives as well as vehicles that are lighter and use alternative fuels. Short and mid term we need to push for more public transportation.

Foreign Policy and the dollar: Oil has been driving much of our foreign policy since WW II. It has formed our relationships in the mid-east and makes our dealings with the Saudis dangerous. For a while it looked like a great coup to have oil priced with the dollar as the sole exchange. We need to be prepared to have that change as China increases its ownership of the US debt, and has higher energy demands, the EU achieves greater independence from the US and the movement for a kind of mixed Pan Arab currency gains ground. The bottom line is that we need to strengthen the dollar through reducing our massive trade imbalance and debt.

MFA

Toward a Draft Platform

2006-06-04T14:15:00.000-07:00

A Platform?! I am not necessarily proposing a third party, although fusion voting is an excellent idea. (See previous postings). A broad based discussion of a new vision for America is the agenda, so why have a platform if we are calling for a bottoms up discussion and participation – a new idea in American politics? There are several reasons:

1. We need somewhere to begin; it is not our final destination. Like a seed, we need to plant something that can grow, or mutate, or find itself grafted. I am offering a beginning point for what may be a national agenda for discussion.

2. It can be used as a point of departure, not necessarily the destination.

3. This draft Platform will help sketch a broad outline and show how inclusive, not exclusive, the agenda might be as it develops.

4. The draft Platform is meant to attract participation by showing the breadth of the visioning process.

Put simply the objective is to form a vision of an America that serves as a world leader in international peace, a prime mover for the elimination of world poverty and hunger, a leader in the development of non fossil fuel energy alternatives, a facilitator for international cooperation in the battle against AIDS and other diseases, a leader in research and international cooperation for environmental issues such as global warming.

I envision the input being made through community (affinity) discussion or dialogue groups that will meet periodically (hopefully once a month) to attempt to reach consensus on issue topics that will be posted on a national web site. That web site will be the primary portal through which individuals can check on progress relative to the overall visioning process. Individuals will also be able to access this site to locate the meeting places and times of local dialogue groups. For those unable to join a group some means will be found for retrieving their contributions, but the emphasis will be on the process of community dialogue.

Why is this important now?

Kevin Phillips, once a leading Republican political strategist for the Reagan administration, has argued that our national survival may well depend upon a radical turn in current policy, and that means a new vision. In his newest book, American Theocracy, he argues that the current American empire has unfortunate precedents.

Militant Catholicism helped undo the Roman and Spanish empires, the Calvinist fundamentalism of the Dutch Reformed Church helped to block any eighteenth-century Dutch renewal; and the interplay of imperialism and evangelicalism led pre-1914 Britain into a bloodbath and global decline. The possibility that something similar could propel the United States into war in the Middle East—and that once again, God would decline to rescue his chosen people –is the precedent that needs to be kept in mind. (p.375)

So, in outline form, the draft Platform is composed of the following parts:

I. International

A. Establishment of Peace through vigorous international multi-lateral

treaties that include non-aggression agreements, non nuclear proliferation, and funding of U.N. peace keeping forces

B. Participation in all international efforts to stop environmental degradation and fight global warming.

C. Provide leadership in efforts to find alternatives to fossil fuel for energy.

D. Leadership in reaching goals to eliminate world poverty and hunger.

E. Participation in programs designed to reduce and finally eliminate diseases such as AIDS and malaria.

F. Supporting a more level trading field in world agriculture

II. National

A. Advocacy for clear separation of religion from public policy issues and affirming reason and science as the tools for policy formation, not religious faith and dogma.

B. Reduction of the national debt and foreign credit dependency

C. Closing the growing wealth gap between the upper 1% and lower three fifths of our citizens.

D. Major revision of our health and education systems.

E. Establishment of a minimum annual wage for every citizen.

F. Creation of a more equitable tax policy at every level.

To these major issues will be added regional, state and local issues relevant to individual dialogue groups.

Whereas third parties frequently become focused on only one issue, the effort here is clearly a much broader one. If an upwelling of commitment to this kind of platform became audible in American politics, then the two major parties would have to take these issues seriously and reform from within. That would be wonderful. But if not, then it is conceivable that down the road a new Third Party would have to be formed out of this Vision for America.

Let me know what you think!

MFA

Mapping the Issues

2006-05-29T08:38:00.000-07:00

Perhaps Memorial Day 2006 is a good time to ask if we are a nation that uses its GNP as an index of our true character, as individuals and as a nation. Martin Luther King was fond of saying that we never know what we are willing to live for unless we know what we will die for.
A nation that leads the world in the basic skills of consumption may be ready to ask the hard questions. What are our basic national values – the ones that we would be willing to die for?

Those who have followed this blog may agree that:

1. A growing number of Americans (whatever their political party or affiliations) feel the time is present for a serious national discussion of our basic values, especially in view of our role as the most economically and militarily powerful nation in the world today;

2. There is a broad perception that our nation has a limited time to set a new course for creative leadership to deal with global as well as domestic issues; and

3. Those concerned are skeptical about the potential for any existing political party to deal realistically and effectively with these issues.

So let me try to map out the terrain of issues that may form the broad agenda for a national discussion. The method and technology for this discussion is a future issue. For now, I just want to sketch the outline for a discussion... Each of these major topics will have numerous sub headings and issues. Here are a few major topics, and I await your additions, revisions and comments.

I. International

A. Structure and operations of the U.N.

B. Peace

C. International Law

D. Human Rights

E. Nuclear and Arms Proliferation

F. Environment

G. Trade

II. National

A. Basic Issues

1. Leadership – What is it individually and nationally?

2. Democracy – What kind do we have and what do we want?

3. Civic rights and responsibilities – What do we want and what are we willing to give?

B. Regional Issues

1. Northeast

2. Mid Atlantic

3. Southeast

4. Midwest

5. Southwest

6. Northwest

7. Mountain States

8. West Coast

9. Border States

C. Economics and wealth disparity

D. Diversity in all respects

E. Civil Liberties and the Public Good

F. Environmental degradation

G. Education at all levels

H. Democracy – its evolution and the Constitution

III. State Issues

IV. County Issues

V. City and Municipal Issues

Again, it is my hope that these, and other, issues would form the framework for a national vision discussion. Naturally:

A. Issues would be added as time goes on.

B. The overall national discussion would be organized through a web portal that would provide entry to each level of discussion for both individuals and groups.

C. Discussion groups would be organized at various levels and be both synchronous and asynchronous and combinations.

D. Each month a status report on each topic area would be posted and new discussion questions available.

E. As a consensus on any issue begins to develop, it would be “tested” for accuracy by each discussion group dealing with that topic as part of its vision agenda.

While there is no arbitrary deadline for consensus on any given issue, it is hoped that the results of this discussion would begin to inform and infuse the debates at all levels of American politics. As the size of the base grows, it cannot be ignored.

M.F.A.

For the Tenacious, No Road Is Impossible

2006-05-29T07:22:00.000-07:00

Nulla tenaci invia est via

Just four years ago when Micah Sifrey published his definitive work on American third parties, Spoiling for a Fight, he noted that of more than 200 third parties in American politics since 1800, only five significant parties remained: The Green, The Minnesota Independence Party, The Libertarian Party, the Vermont Progressive Party and the New Party. Today the web sites for the first two are for sale, and only the New Party (combined with the Working Families Party), the Libertarian Party and the Vermont Progressive Party remain.

We need to take seriously the agenda of The New Party: This movement describes itself as:

…an umbrella organization for grassroots political groups working to break the stranglehold that corporate money and corporate media have over our political process. Our current work and long-term strategy is to change states' election rules to allow fusion voting - a method of voting that allows minor parties to have their own ballot line with which they can either endorse their own candidates or endorse the candidates of other parties. Through fusion, minor parties don't have to always compete in the winner-take-all two party system and can avoid "spoiling" - throwing an election to the most conservative candidate by splitting the votes that might go to two more progressive candidates (ours and another party's). http://www.newparty.org/

The Libertarian Party http://www.lp.org/, the third largest political party in America is where we often find a meeting place where the far right meets the far left. Its credo reads as follows:

Libertarians believe the answer to America's political problems is the same commitment to freedom that earned America its greatness: a free-market economy and the abundance and prosperity it brings; a dedication to civil liberties and personal freedom that marks this country above all others; and a foreign policy of non-intervention, peace, and free trade as prescribed by America's founders.

Vermont’s Progressive Party http://www.progressiveparty.org/ is an outgrowth of twenty five years of local organizing. While hardly a national effort, it an important movement representing a focus for political and economic reform. As its web site states:

The Progressive Party is Vermont's fastest growing political party. We are focused on electing people to represent the majority of Vermonters. By majority we mean the people who work for a living. These are the folks, by and large, who haven't felt a big impact from the "booming" economy. Progressives believe that everyone who works full-time should be able to meet his or her basic needs, have access to health care and rest assured that his/her children will be able to go to college. Progressives believe we, as a state, have to direct economic incentives towards meeting these goals. People should be the primary concern of state economic policy -- not large, wealthy multi-national corporations as recent trends demonstrate.

For anyone who follows the political and literary scene today, our society is pregnant with the winds of change. Every few generations our democracy seeks internal reform and change. We know that if it does not come soon, if the structures remain rigid and brittle, we shall enter a period of real social, political and economic crisis. In the words of Justice William O. Douglas:

All political ideas cannot and should not be channeled into the programs of our two major parties. History has amply proved the virtue of political activity by minority, dissident groups, which innumerable times have been in the vanguard of democratic thought and whose programs were ultimately accepted.

BUT before we rush to identify ourselves with any given third party, we must have a sustained national discussion of the issues that are basic to America’s future, whatever party with which one might affiliate. Sifry has diagnosed the national psyche correctly:

Politics encompasses everything that we can and must do together. It includes how we educate our children, design our communities and neighborhoods, feed ourselves and dispose of our wastes, how we care for the sick and elderly and the poor, how we relate to the natural world, how we entertain and enlighten ourselves, how we defend ourselves and what values we seek to defend, what roles are chosen for us by virtue of our identity and what roles we create for ourselves….[these are] fundamental questions about where we’re going as a country, what the future should be for the generations that follow. We need to be able to ask those questions and deliberate their solutions, loud and long. p. 309.

We do not need a new third party to accomplish this discussion. We do need a new vehicle to facilitate and coordinate a discussion of these issue…we have the technology for such an endeavor.

Nulla tenaci invia est via. For the tenacious, no road is impossible.

M.F.A.

Laying New Tracks

2006-05-15T07:50:00.000-07:00

This week we move from the question of “leadership” to one of issues. Again, my hope is that our nation will become involved in a widely diversified community based discussion of what kind of nation we want to become – a dialogue about basic aspirations for this nation. But should not the agenda for this discussion be “open ended” as we argued that we need a style of “open leadership?” I will argue, YES, for at least two reasons.

First, the relatively recent political strategy of focusing on single issues, while perhaps effective in the short run, has only served to weaken our democratic governing structure. In Florida, Colorado and many other states the trend toward legislation by constitutional ballot initiatives has limited the flexibility of legislatures while serving the purposes of interest groups that can package complex issues into single issue slogans. This trend does not bode well for the creation of effective public policy, in the long run.

Second, the history of third parties that have run on single issue platforms has not been a happy one. In his column on May 3, Thomas Friedman called for the development of a new” third party.” He focuses on energy as the key issue around which a new centrist coalition can be built. He may be right, but for many Americans “energy” means cheaper gasoline prices, while Friedman has just the opposite in mind. The result would be a third party with internal disagreements and contradictory agendas.

So why not seek reform of the traditional two parties? The Republican Party will be going through a major trauma of self identity and the Democratic Party is already fighting for its new self consciousness. Senator Ted Kennedy has just published, American Back on Track, Penguin, 2006 http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780670037643,00.html While a step in the right direction, there are just too many of us who cannot be enticed into the old Democratic marching band, even with new tunes. The Democratic Party has been compliant on critical issues of Iraq, the “war on terrorists,” the environment, foreign policy, health care, taxes and the increasing income disparity, and issues related to the first Amendment and the “Patriot Act.” Many of us will not be going back.

So if we will not be enticed back into the two party system and resist the oversimplification of the single issue third parties, where do we go? Perhaps there is some direction given in James Carroll’s new book, House of War, Houghton Mifflin Co., 2006.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/10/1345217
Carroll’s thesis is that the United States has, since 1945, become psychologically addicted to the notion of the overwhelming power of our military. The religion of the Pentagon has led to our being the most feared nation in the world, considered by many to be the most threatening “rogue state.” Yet, we have not really “won” a war since 1945. The mythology we live will destroy us and like a cancer eat away at our national resources. This is not a single issue but rather a host of issues that include our domestic budget priorities and our foreign policy. We must find a way to make diplomacy, not war, our first reaction to international challenges. The policy of overkill has never solved international problems. We are still living out the policy agenda of a civilian who suffered from suicidal paranoia, James Forestall; while we should have taken more seriously the final warnings from a seasoned General and President, Dwight Eisenhower.

So our agenda is not to get back on the old tracks but to lay new ones for destinations forged by a serious national affirmation of hope – hope for a new and better future for America and the world.

MFA

LEADERSHIP

2006-05-07T08:25:00.000-07:00

In his column on May 3, Thomas Friedman called for the development of a “third party.” He focuses on energy as the key issue around which a new centrist coalition can be built. But today I want to look at the issue of “leadership” before we get into issues. Micah Sifry in his book, Spoiling for a Fight: Third-Party Politics in America clearly said that “there is an opportunity here for someone who will seize it,” but what kind of person?

Leadership? Is it a kind of spirit gift? Is it a technique or skill that can be taught and learned? Is it a quality that emerges in many of us, only when certain challenges and circumstances require a response? Is its capacity inherited? Do different cultures understand leadership in different ways? These and other perplexing issues have been the topics of analysis for historians, social behaviorists, and philosophers for many years.

Developing a climate for discussion that may result in a new vision for America will require leadership, but what kind?

David Hackett Fischer, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in history, has reflected on this topic in an attempt to circumscribe that unique form of American political leadership. He argues that whatever ones political orientation, left, centrist or right, the overwhelming consensus is that three presidents, Washington, Lincoln, and F.D. Roosevelt, were the most successful presidential leaders. What was it that they had in common? They were all from different centuries, different social classes, faced different issues, and were of different temperments. But what did they have in common?

Fischer argues that there were at least three shared characteristics:

· Each had a “cause,” not an “ideology,” that propelled them;

· Each believed that we were a society where the whole was more than the sum of its parts and where personal freedoms were for the common good; and

· Each was very bright, but not in an academic sense; and each learned to listen to diverse opinions and form policy out of that variety of perspectives.

This he calls, “open leadership” and it is the kind of leadership I hope our discussion of the renewal of America will honor and promote. Next week we will talk about issues.

A Community Vision: Principles of Creativity

2006-04-28T14:08:00.000-07:00

Our vision of America will certainly reflect the value of “creativity.” The First of May seems like an appropriate time to explore some basic principles of creativity. Historically our young culture has been characterized by its capacity to ask the “why” and “how” questions. As soon as a culture grows satisfied with its present or years only for consumption, the creative edge becomes dull.

Fortunately, there are efforts in many communities to awaken the creative spirit. One such effort is the subject of this submission. The possibilities for a revitalized America are alive and well and will embody these kinds of creative efforts.

Every community needs a core of creative persons from all endeavors to increase the pool of its most important resource, ideas and positive energy. Tampa Bay in Florida has such a group, and the following is from their web site: http://www.creativetampabay.com/index.php:

_________

Creativity is fundamental to being human and is a critical resource to individual, community and economic life. Creative communities are vibrant, humanizing places, nurturing personal growth, sparking cultural and technological breakthroughs, producing jobs and wealth, and accepting a variety of life styles and culture.

CreativeTampaBay is committed to the growth, prosperity and excellence of communities, and all who live and work there.

We believe in the vision and the opportunities of a future driven by the power of ideas. Ideas are the growth engines of tomorrow, so the nurturing of the communities where ideas can flourish is the key to success. Ideas take root where creativity is cultivated and creativity thrives where communities are committed to ideas.

Creativity resides in everyone, everywhere, so building a community of ideas means empowering all people with the ability to express and use the genius of their own creativity and bring it to bear as responsible citizens.

These principles are our call to action.

PRINCIPLES:

1. Cultivate and reward creativity. Everyone is part of the value chain of creativity. Creativity can happen at anytime, anywhere, and it’s happening in our communities right now. Pay attention.

2. Invest in the infrastructure that fosters creativity. That includes arts and culture, nightlife, the music scene, restaurants, artists and designers, innovators, entrepreneurs, affordable spaces, lively neighborhoods, spirituality, education, density, public spaces and third places.

3. Embrace diversity. It gives birth to creativity, innovation and positive economic impact. People of different backgrounds and experiences contribute a diversity of ideas, expressions, talents and perspectives that enrich communities. This is how ideas flourish and build vital communities.

4. Support the connectors. Collaborate to compete in a new way to get everyone in the game.

5. Value risk-taking. Convert a “no” climate into a “yes” climate. Invest in opportunity-making, not just problem-solving. Tap into the creative talent, technology and energy in our communities. Challenge conventional wisdom.

6. Be authentic. Identify the value you add and focus on those assets where you can be unique. Dare to be different, not simply the look-alike of another community. Resist monoculture and homogeneity.

7. Invest in and build on quality of place. While inherited features such as history, climate, natural resources and population are important, other critical features such as arts and culture, open and green spaces, vibrant downtowns and centers of learning can be built and strengthened.

8. Remove barriers to creativity, such as mediocrity. Those carriers include intolerance, disconnectedness, sprawl, poverty, bad schools, exclusivity and social and environmental degradation.

9. Take personal responsibility for change in your community. Improvise. Make things happen. Development is a “do-it-yourself” enterprise.

10. Honor the creativity in every person. High quality, lifelong education is critical to developing and retaining creative individuals as a resource for communities.

We accept the responsibility to be the stewards of creativity in our communities. We understand the ideas and principles in this document and will adapt them to reflect our communities’ unique needs and assets. We commit to ourselves and each other that we will go back to our communities and infuse these ideas in our personal lives, social lives, work lives, neighborhoods, homes, organizations and habits and share the accomplishments with each other so that we all can move forward and succeed together in a more creative Tampa Bay.

Perhaps their work and spirit can encourage others around the country to develop their own version of the “principles of creativity.”

Toward A Vision Borne of Optimism

2006-04-23T13:52:00.000-07:00

We have squandered our moral capital. We were once a beacon of freedom and hope; now we are too often a power to fear, a focus of hate. Our hubris, our distain for the views and interests of others exhibits a most unbecoming arrogance. We come across as bullies who use others and the natural order for our own small, petty and selfish perceived self interests. This must change. . We need a new vision, a vision borne of the optimism, a love for others, and a respect for difference, and a pervasive decency.

Hugh LaFollette, Cole Professor of Philosophy, University of
South Florida

Now that we have sketched out the geography of the American ideological map, one can see that while there is much that may divide us, there is “something” that also unites us as a nation. This “national spirit” may now be what can hold us together again as a nation and provide the foundation for a renewed vision of America.

A word of caution is in order. This effort is not a return to the post W.W. II exceptionalist view that America, unlike Europe, does not have deep differences that are reflected in our various regions. Yes, we did have a civil war; and between the two coasts is a great heartland, more rural and traditionally conservative than the more urban coastal regions. Those legacies will remain for many years. These regional differences must not be glossed or trivialized, for we need this diversity to forge a future for America.

But if a growing number of our current republicans and democrats believe that we need to do more than tinker with our institutions then mere reforms are not enough. There is a mounting consensus that the structures of our governing systems now inhibit participatory democracy and we have drifted into a deeper divide between those who govern and those who are governed. Various voices are beginning to call a new national discussion about a renewed vision for America. Perhaps through this discussion we can restore that phrase, “the public good,” that has all but disappeared from American political discussion and upon which our nation was founded.

One recurrent theme in our national psyche that might be a good place to start is with the feeling of “optimism” that has always been present (expressed in many different ways) since the bold writing of a constitution in 1776. Those root passions have never died and expressed themselves in reform movements from Jacksonianism to the New Deal and the Great Society. This root optimism believes that our democracy has the internal strength and wisdom to solve problems and that we do have some control over our destiny. Perhaps we still carry that Augustinian “city upon a hill” vision of the authors of the constitution, mixed with the spirit of the Enlightenment. This optimism argues that our democracy is “exceptional” in the belief that the purpose of our government is to protect the voices of the minority, for it is not always the majority that is right.

Of course, the irony of our current era is that this spirit of optimism has been given a new twist since the era of “Reagan optimism” in American politics. Our national spirit of optimism has been given an apocalyptic spin by religious fundamentalists and our foreign policy has been empowered by a “manifest destiny” to democratize the world, whether it wants it or not.

But is it really our historical spirit of optimism that leads our leaders to believe that we can “win” the war in Iraq, despite the evidence of civil war? Is it true “optimism” that leads us to think that we can use our military might to maintain and guard the “empire” despite the fact that we have not won a major conflict since the end of W.W. II? NO. We must distinguish national arrogance from the historic optimism that believed in the power of truth and goodness, not military might, to free persons from tyrannies and oppression, whether political, social or economic. It is that form of optimism that can perhaps form the foundation for a new vision of America.

Liberals and progressives will help develop the vision of a future in which America uses its wealth to respect cultural diversity while leading the developed nations in the agenda to end poverty and hunger (U.N. Millennium Goals). Conservatives and evangelicals* will help us reunite with our past, releasing new energy for the present and future.

The kind of future, empowered by this American optimism, will respect national sovereignties and build international alliances to protect the peace. America will assume new leadership in forging these alliances and lead the way on issues of the environment, human rights social and economic justice.

· Jimmy Carter, who describes himself as an “evangelical” makes the following important distinction between fundamentalists (who he believes represent a serious danger for America’s future) and evangelicals. He characterizes fundamentalism with the terms, “rigidity, domination, and exclusion.” More specifically, he finds that this new form of American political and religious fundamentalism, as expressions of an international phenomenon:

1. “Almost invariably, fundamentalist movements are led by authoritarian males who consider themselves to be superior to others and, within religious groups, have an overwhelming commitment to subjugate women and to dominate their fellow believers.”

2. “Although fundamentalists usually believe that the past is better than the present, they retain certain self-beneficial aspects of both their historic religious beliefs and of the modern world.”

3. “Fundamentalists draw clear distinctions between themselves, as true believers, and others, convinced that they are right and that anyone who contradicts tem is ignorant and possibly evil.”

4. “Fundamentalists are militant in fighting against any challenge to their beliefs. They are often angry and sometimes resort to verbal and even physical abuse against those who interfere with their implementation of their agenda.”

5. “Fundamentalists tend to make their self-definition increasingly narrow and restricted, to isolate themselves, to demagogue emotional issues, and to view change, cooperation, negotiation, and other efforts to resolve differences as signs of weakness.”

(See Jimmy Carter, “Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis,” Simon & Shuster, New York, 2006, p34f.)

Summary

Hugh LaFollette, a good friend and the Cole Professor of Ethics at the University of South Florida, summarized my somewhat rambling thoughts more succinctly, so it is the alpha and omega of this submission:

We have squandered our moral capital. We were once a beacon of freedom and hope; now we are too often a power to fear, a focus of hate. Our hubris, our distain for the views and interests of others exhibits a most unbecoming arrogance. We come across as bullies who use others and the natural order for our own small, petty and selfish perceived self interests. This must change. Reform won’t do. We need a new vision, a vision borne of the optimism, a love for others, and a respect for difference, and a pervasive decency.

Slicing Your Bread ?

2006-04-16T08:32:00.000-07:00

“Sliced Bread” is a wonderful example of how we can begin building a vision for a new America based on non-partisan politics. If you don’t know about this site, here is an introduction: See http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/about/overview

Since Sliced Bread is a national call for fresh, common sense ideas - a call for ideas that will strengthen our economy and improve the day-to-day lives of working men and women and their families. It’s also a place where ordinary Americans and experts alike can discuss the important economic issues of our times.

Our goal: An America where the American Dream is alive and well in the new global economy of the 21st Century. Global competition and the fast-changing world of work create opportunities and challenges that require bold thinking from political leaders. Not only is Washington not delivering, but policies are made without talking to ordinary Americans — yet who is better equipped to offer common sense ideas?

Since Sliced Bread seeks ideas that are original and creative, have the best chance of practical success and would most effectively:. . . .

Between October 5 and December 5, 2005, ordinary Americans submitted more than 22,000 ideas to SinceSlicedBread.com—and launched an unprecedented national conversation about how to strengthen the economy and improve life for working men and women and their families.

Here (http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/finalists) are the 21 finalists that the judges announced at the beginning of the first round of voting, on January 9, 2006.

++++++++

On Easter Sunday, 2006, Robyn Blumner, columnist for the Saint Petersburg Times, offered her own list of four key issues: http://www.sptimes.com/2006/04/16/Columns/Some_simple_ways_to_b.shtml

- Education: I don't understand why the richest country in the world isn't producing the best-educated citizenry. By skimping on education, we are handicapping the future for our workers and nation.

There is no real trick to raising student achievement. It takes excellent teachers, a small student-teacher ratio, a vibrant and challenging curriculum and a lengthening of the school day and calendar. (How many of us still need the summers off to help bring in the crop?) Vocational education for those not college-bound should be universal.

We should substantially increase teacher pay while raising teacher qualifications. You want to teach physics in high school? Then you should hold at least a masters degree in the subject. But then your pay should be commensurate with engineers'.

Schools should provide a place where children could be engaged all day long, from say 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., with either academic or athletic pursuits. Then working parents wouldn't have to struggle to find after-school care. I'm not suggesting that the formal school day be that long, just that schools offer constructive supervision before and after class, giving working parents a valuable benefit and keeping kids engaged in broadening activities.

- Transportation: Our nation's fixation with the car has taken us all for a ride. We are dependent on unfriendly and undemocratic nations for our energy supply, we pollute the environment and warm the planet, we have paved over America's fruited plains and we waste our lives stuck in traffic.

Since a new rail system isn't practical, a better idea for today's reality is Rapid Bus Transit. Riding the bus can be made desirable by making it convenient, quick and comfortable. There should be a dedicated bus lane on all major roads. A new innovation gives bus drivers the ability to electronically hold green lights, allowing for an even smoother ride in congested cities and an express ride in from the suburbs. Beyond the energy and pollution savings, consider the thousands of dollars every year that a family could defray in insurance, gas, maintenance, parking and car payments by getting rid of one car. For more information go to www.gobrt.org.)

- Health care: Two words: single payer. The national health insurance programs in Canada, Japan and Britain might not be perfect models, but our system is irretrievably broken. Employer-based health insurance is failing. It is hurting the viability of the private sector, particularly what's left of our industrial base, and holding workers in jobs that no longer challenge them. Imagine the employment mobility and entrepreneurialism that would be unleashed if workers could leave their jobs without losing medical coverage. If much of the rest of the developed world can do it, why can't we?

- Retirement: Social Security's solvency can buy itself another 37 years, to the year 2079, by simply removing the wage cap. In 2006, Social Security taxes will be paid on wages up to $94,200. Eliminate the ceiling and the system's prospects become much brighter.

++++++++

Please share what is on your list!

Merle

The Democracy Project

2006-04-09T14:54:00.000-07:00

The “Democracy Project” of the Society for Values in Higher Education is one significant example of the movement to rethink America’s basic values and seek a clearer vision for America. The following posting is designed to acquaint the reader with this important undertaking. You can receive more information about how you might participate by contacting the project’s director, Nancy Thomas at democracyproject@aol.com

About the Democracy Project *

Overview

Americans are discovering that discourse can be a persuasive tool and source of strategic power. There clearly is a national movement toward greater citizen engagement in the resolution of critical social problems, including those related to race, educational reform, environmental protection, community growth, and, more recently, homeland security in the post 9/11 era. A deliberative democracy engages citizens, encourages participation and collective action, and leads to meaningful, sustainable change.

The application of deliberative democracy in higher education has occurred simultaneously with the national movement to support democratic education, a movement that connects a number of educational goals: democracy building, globalization, civic education and engagement, diversity and intercultural learning, ethics, interdisciplinary studies, leadership programs, student activism, and others. As these conversations have begun to intersect, colleges and universities are turning to structured dialogue tools such as intergroup dialogue, study circles, national issues forums, and public conversations models. These tools have been incorporated in new classroom pedagogies (e.g., case method teaching, service learning, and other forms of interactive learning) as well as in decision making processes, thus creating a greater alignment between the values of liberal education and the experiences of students and faculty on campuses.

The Democracy Project began in 1999 as an exploratory initiative that examined models of deliberative democracy and higher education's capacity to engage those models. Working with pilot campuses and partner organizations that champion tested models - Study Circles Resource Center, National Issues Forums, Public Conversations Project, the Interaction Institute for Social Change, as well as SVHE's own "values audit" approach - we found that higher education can learn a lot from exemplars in public discourse and community action. WE now serve as a resource and advocate. We work with individual campuses and other national education associations.
_____________________________

· http://www.svhe.org/node/11

For a draft copy of the “Wingspread Declaration on Religion and Public Life: Engaging Higher Education” (1/24/06) go to:

http://www.svhe.org/files/WingspreadDeclaration.pdf

Merle

In Search of a Common Ground for Discussion About America’s Vision

2006-03-31T11:43:00.000-08:00

The previous characteristics of the political terms “liberal” and “conservative” were designed to sketch out the current cultural political boundaries that might frame our future discussion of America’s vision.

A fresh discussion of a new vision for America must begin somewhere in between these boundaries Otherwise we become deadlocked in ideological debates and the kind of rhetoric that has done little to advance our democracy or empower our citizens. We need to move forward!

I realize these two terms, liberal and conservative, do not exhaust the lexicon of current politics. Even the growing number of registered “independents” would not find themselves agreeing among one another on issues of foreign policy, human rights, the environment, etc. So let us say there are conservative and liberal independents. The key point is that our discussion will require that we navigate the vast area in between the far right and the far left. These extremes are the boundaries to be avoided for those who still wish to participate in this process of visioning the future of our democracy. Naturally these boundaries are only snap shots of an evolving social/political landscape. We need to find more points of agreement than disagreement around which we can form a new consensus for our fledging democracy.

The following reflections are designed to focus more sharply on the current ideological terrain of neoliberals (Wilson forward) and neoconservatives (Reagan forward). Again, the purpose is to provide some historical perspective and thus to better understand which issues will require our most serious attention and also where we might find our common ground.

These thoughts were prompted by the publication of Francis Fukuyana’s new book, “America at the Crossroads,” Yale Press, 2006. The shifts he is making from his previous more orthodox neoconservative view are important since they open a wider field for creating an emerging consensus about the need to revitalize our basic values and polities as a leading democracy. Also, since it is frequently argued that neoconservatives evolved or morphed from neoliberals, let’s try to travel some of that road to see if some core principles begin to emerge that might inform the visioning process.

I have isolated three basic principles that might characterize the neoliberals.

1. International relations (U.N. multilateral agreements, etc.) depend upon a commitment to the national sovereignty of all nations. Hence policies should not be based on moral judgments about the character of any given regime. This has been basic to the doctrine of political “realism” that formed so much of the bipartisan foreign policy for the twentieth century, up until President Reagan.

2. “Social engineering” as embodied in the “New Frontier” and the “Great Society” programs needed to be tempered by the realities of scale, resources and past experience. The issues of race, urban decay, education and welfare are far more complex that the many disillusioned older liberals ever expected in the days of unrestrained optimism.

3. Strengthening international law and forging a network of alliances, and active participation in the U.N. is the best foundation for justice and pace in a modern and globalized world. Again, realism requires us to recognize that the U.N. is designed to keep, not make, peace. At times, when a nation fails, and chaos reigns, the protection of human rights may require multilateral intervention, such as in Bosnia.

On the other hand, neoconservatives see these three issues from a different perspective:

1. The “moral character” of a regime does matter, and at times regime change may be necessary to protect human rights and facilitate the rise of democracies. There are “evil empires” that inhibit the innate human desire for freedom. U.S. intervention is not only justified but necessary to create a political climate for democracy, which will foster world peace.

2. All “social engineering” projects are suspect. Privatization of programs for the public good is the best solution. In principle, the less federal government the better. Government should not be taxing its citizens, since they know better how to invest their own resources.

3. The effectiveness of international law and agencies such as the U.N. to effect peace and security is in serious doubt. Internationalism threatens our national sovereignty. Since states are to be judged by their moral efficacy, they should not have equal status, as in the U.N. charter. The U.N. only encourages rogue states and threatens our national security. Overall, international laws and treaties only serve to limit our freedoms and curtail our capacity for unilateral action.

It is interesting that many former neoconservatives have begun to moderate their positions. William Kristol’s famous comment, “A neoconservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality” has taken a new twist. The reality of our experience in Iraq has perhaps revealed the naïve acacolyptic faith of the neoconservatives, just as much as the neoliberals were tempered by the reality of the “Great Society.” So let me turn now to a potential reformulation of the above three issues as an illustration of how a new less ideologically rigid discussion might begin as we search for consensus.

1. Leadership

We all believe that America should be playing a leadership role, as the largest economic force in the industrialized world. But that leadership cannot be based on a theory of moral superiority or some exceptional status in world history. Restoring our national pride will require more humility and less hubris. Our nation can be an exceptional leader by admitting that our history of self government is a relatively short one and that we have no special privilege or divine mandate to democratize the world. Our moral character will be judged by our generosity to share our resources and help others achieve their basic human rights. We know this must be done cooperatively. Leadership takes the exceptional courage of humility. The “liberation” of other regimes is no longer a principle of our foreign policy. But neither is the relativism of “containment.” We live in a time when leadership will be expressed through persuasive collaboration and coalition building and demonstrating through generosity the power of our belief in the future.

2. Building self confidence

The litany of doubt and frustrations about the status of the “home front” is growing. The infrastructure of our social institutions – education, health and the general public is weakening. Our standings among other industrialized nations in educational attainment, quality of health care and income disparity between the wealthy and the poor (with a shrinking middle class) is shocking. Evidence for our competitive decline is clear. Our national debt is funding excessive consumerism of fewer products manufactured in the U.S. The floor is open for serious discussion, not tinkering, about our systems of education, health care, social security, etc. This must be a non partisan effort. It is not far off to say that our national security is a stake with these issues.

3. International Diplomacy

America’s renewed vision will require us to become involved in the non-unilateral solutions to the dilemma of failed states ravaged by poverty and hunger. We need to become less concerned about the semantics of the definition of genocide and lead in the strengthening of the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. We can rebuild confidence in America’s role to take the environment seriously and explore alternative sources of energy. Nuclear proliferation has been exacerbated by our recent actions, and we can reverse those policies. International cooperation is our best national defense.

These three issues, Leadership, National Self Confidence and International Diplomacy are just illustrations of areas in which I believe we can begin a fresh nonpartisan discussion toward shaping a new National Vision.

______________________

Note: When referring to the U.N., I include the multitude of NGOs related to the overall mission of the U.N.

Knowing the "Enemy Within"

2006-03-26T14:13:00.000-08:00

Americans are becoming more alarmed (For example see: Francis Fukuyama’s new book, America at the Crossroads and Kevin Phillips’ recent American Theocracy) about the direction their political future. Democracies, under stress, can evolve into fascisms. Lawrence Britt, a political scientist, defined the 14 Characteristic of Fascism in the Spring 2003 issue of Free Inquiry magazine.

Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.
Supremacy of the Military
Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
Rampant Sexism
The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.
Controlled Mass Media
Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
Obsession with National Security
Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
Religion and Government are Intertwined
Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.
Corporate Power is Protected
The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
Labor Power is Suppressed
Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government; labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.
Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.
Obsession with Crime and Punishment
Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
Fraudulent Elections
Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

The Third Anniversary -- A Time to Remember

2006-03-19T10:23:00.000-08:00

On this third anniversary of our invasion of Iraq, it is important to recognize those civilians and combatants who have given their lives in this tragic period of history.

For an up-to-date accounting of U.S. military, coalition, contractors, etc. killed, MIA, and wounded see http://icasualties.org/oif/

For a current count on Iraqi civilian deaths go to http://www.iraqbodycount.net/background.htm

For an interesting web site from inside Iraq go to: http://www.uruknet.info

Defining "Conservative"

2006-03-12T10:17:00.000-08:00

Today’s posting, Defining "Conservative" is the sequel to Defining "Liberal" two weeks ago. This project is part of an effort to move beyond the polarities of “Liberal” and “Conservative” as they have paralyzed American life today. But before we seek a new form for our failing democracy, we need to define the boundaries of where we are today in terms of basic political values. The next step is to move beyond these restrictions and seek a fresh definition of our vision as a nation. So this has been a look backwards before we turn forward into a less defined world.

Again, these terms, “Liberal” and “Conservative” are NOT meant to be associated with specific political parties. Rather, they are a way of looking at the world. They reflect our deepest values and beliefs. It is out of some of these assumptions that the future will be forged, beyond our present Democratic and Republican parties.

“Conservative,” Webster defines as “tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions,” but it is much more, and these 11 points seek to define that conservative mind.

1. Human nature’s role in the larger ecological environment is to dominate and tame Nature.

2. Human nature represents the highest development of Nature. Man is substantially at the peak of the chain-of-being, the end of the process of development.

3. Institutions, like religion, are the creators of “civilization” and not the byproducts of civilization; thus protection of the institutional infrastructure of democracy is basic to the future of civilization.

4. Governments and voluntary associations depend upon the leadership of strong individuals and their values are “the individual writ large.”

5. Governments derive their powers and efficacy from individuals. In general, the best government is the least government.

6. There is a manifest destiny about human history. The special role of the U.S. in the 21^st century is to advance democracy.

7. Compromise on essential matters that affect our national sovereignty or ability to act unilaterally is impossible.

8. Preserving the values of the inherited past is our best path to the future; the past was better than the present. The “good” will prevail only if mankind routes out the evil doers and returns to it past values. Evil may prevail unless those who advance the “good” increase their power and influence.

9. Democracy represents the highest and best form of political organization. As cultures become more “developed” they will from democratic governments as a law of human nature. Adjustments may be required from time to time in every democracy, but we will not need a new form of government.

10. Diversity of ten leads to chaos and anarchy. Uniformity results in a stronger and more effective form of social organization. Dissent is dangerous.

11. Postscript: In the end, a free mankind will prevail.

Defining "Liberal"

2006-02-26T08:13:00.000-08:00

Some one once asked me, “What does a liberal believe?” Many have noted that the term seems vague and is rarely used these days, except in a divisive context. Webster leads us to the political party definition associating it with the “ideals of individual and economic freedom, grater individual participation in government and constitutional, political, and administrative reforms designed to secure these objectives.” So our history gives evidence of both Republican and Democratic “liberals.” Still unsatisfied, I have attempted to define the essential core of what I understand defines the “liberal” mind. So what do you think?

Human nature is an integral part of the larger ecological environmental system of the universe.
Humans, as we know them, are part of an evolving development of homo sapiens, and we are in “process.”
The achievements we call “civilization’ over the past six thousand years are represented in institutions (social and governmental systems) that are fragile and need constant care and feeding.
While individuals can accomplish much, there are great needs that only can be met by cooperative enterprises such as voluntary associations, governments, etc.
At times governments can accomplish what individuals cannot – both for the good and for destructive purposes.
Our futures, both as individuals and as a society, are not guaranteed, and thus we need to individually work toward ways of making our world a better place.
In this effort, we sometimes must choose between the lesser of two evils, and accept compromises.
There is at the core of humans a capacity for creativity, imagination and goodness; but there is also a capacity to hold on to the past, find security in the known and to exploit our fellow man. In that struggle, liberals believe that the good will prevail.
Democracy, as a form of social political organization, comes in many varieties and is only one of many potential systems that are constantly evolving and changing. There is no one universally “best” political system for every region of the world, since each region has unique cultural histories and traditions.
In all things the liberal is tolerant of diversity and seeks to maximize the good while minimizing pain and suffering. In all matters pride and hubris are to be avoided in the interests of playful creativity.
Postscript: In the end, Nature will have its way.

"Freedom" of the Press

2006-02-19T08:09:00.000-08:00

The First Amendment to our Constitution provides that "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom...of the press." Although the First Amendment specifically mentions only the federal Congress, this provision now protects the press from interference at all levels of government. That is the theory and myth.

The reality is that the First Amendment does not prevent the media from political and governmental “influence” or financial control by mega corporations. So is our press “free?” Aside from a few courageous journalists associated with the Independent Press Association http://www.indypress.org/site/index.html our media reflects corporate interests and content that reflects the intense desire of reports to keep their channels open to those with political influence. The result is an obsessive focus on “human interest stories” and an absence of in-depth investigatory reporting. Hence we have learned more about Dick Chaney’s “accident” quail hunting than we ever did about his role in engineering the war in Iraq, lying about the WMD that we knew Iraq no longer retained. How many Americans have any idea about the WMD we supplied to Saddam for his war against Iran? No wonder we were worried. The media, government and corporate policy makers can count on the memory loss factor of a majority of our citizens.

Perhaps it is appropriate that many persons get their “news” on the Comedy Channel’s Daily Show from Jon Stewart, or with the satire of Andy Borowitz. Rapidly decreasing newspaper subscriptions are resulting in more pink slips for news editors, leaving the “news” in the hands of young, underpaid, less experienced “reporters.” The result is that our news is without the context provided by those who have traveled broadly and have some experience with other cultures. So we have both “sound bites” and “word bites” taken from the wire services.

Today (02-19-06) the St. Petersburg Times http://www.sptimes.com ran an ad defining its “independence” as “freedom from control or influence of another or others.” Yes, this paper is one of the few that is not controlled by a for profit corporation but rather the Poynter Institute, a non profit organization http://www.poynter.org/ Yet the readers of this “independent” paper will not find editorials about Florida’s great sugar subsidy or concerns about current development issues when they involve downtown property owned by the Institute. Just what are the Institute’s financial interests and how do they influence the paper’s editorial policies.

What prompted all this was the flack over the satiric cartoons about Muhammad that ran in Denmark and prompted a violent response from conservative Muslims and a defensive salute to the “free press” flag in the West. Both responses are off target. The former reflect an internal struggle within Islam itself and the latter a misunderstanding of what needs to be “free” about the free press. Yes, images are powerful, more so than words. Thus cartoonists need to be very well informed; they are super-journalists. Satire is easy; insight is difficult. I can hardly wait to see how The New Yorker deals with the cartoon issue.

merle

Global Energy Futures

2006-02-13T07:52:00.000-08:00

Global Energy Futures was the topic of a discussion at the University of South Florida on February 10^th.
Following is the link to a summary of the discussion done by a reporter from WMNF http://www.wmnf.org/programming/news.php?ReportId=2814. It is worth reading.

A New Paradigm ?

2006-02-11T10:33:00.000-08:00

While Bill Cutler is developing a new paradigm for decision making and public policy, yesterday I had an epiphanal moment in better understanding the relationships among society, energy, nature, economics and science. The special insights were provided in a lecture at USF by Charles A.S. Hall. http://www.esf.edu/EFB/hall/

Hall is in the intellectual tradition of M. King Hubbert, Cutler Cleveland, Robert Kaufmann, Robert Herendeen, Robert Ayres , Colin Campbell and Jean Leherrere.

Hall argues that to understand EROI, the energy return on investment for any human activity we need to apply this key relationship. It is the most important defining issue of the future.

Energy delivered to society

EROI = __________________________

Energy put into that activity

Unfortunately this key relationship has been submerged by the increasing dominance of economic cost-benefit analysis.

There are limits to nature’s energy resources. (K. Boulding and H.T. Odum). We need to understand that our dependence on fossil fuel is suicidal. In terms of EROI, the following figures are sobering:

· In 1930 U.S. got 100 barrels of oil back for each barrel invested in seeking it

(EROI = 100:1)

· In 1970 about 25 for 1

· In 1990s about 11 to 18 for one

· Much less for finding new oil (EROI = 3:1??)

The energy pie is getting smaller at a very rapid rate while the hunger of mankind, especially newly developing economies such as China, is increasing at exponential rates.

So we need to make a major paradigm shift in understanding where wealth comes from. It is from Nature, and not primarily from capital or labor. Hall labels this new paradigm “Neophysiocrats” and is articulated in the works of Cleveland, Kaufmann, Gowdy, Krall, and Klitgaard.

The tragedy of our time is that economics has trumped science:

· Today two thirds of U.S. energy comes from oil (nearly two thirds imported) and gas, most of rest from coal

· New sources (except nuclear) remain trivial and are decreasing as %

· Neoclassical economics, including especially monetary cost-benefit analysis, has become the overwhelming choice to make public decisions.

· These ideas have become conflated with the anti-government conservative agenda

· “Let the markets make all decisions” economics has replaced science and any concern for limits to growth. Our patters of consumption are growing daily.

However:

· Oil supply is increasingly limited to a few giant fields, with 10% of all production coming from just four fields and 80% from fields discovered before 1970.

· Even finding a field the size of Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, by far the world's largest and said to have another 125bn barrels, would only meet world demand for about 10 years.

So what are our present options? Hall suggests:

· Fund windmills and certain solar

· Don’t count on Hydrogen, given the energy requirements to pull apart those hydrogen atoms (thermodynamics)

· Go nuclear big time (but not enough Uranium and Chinese have bought it anyway)

· Need Federal leadership

· Take seriously Haubberts observation that ““Our ignorance is not so vast as our failure to use what we know”

· Train our young people in an economics that is real and based on science

The key is to see Nature as our source of economic value for the future of our human experiment. If we continue to live the illusion that cost-benefit economics and the market will provide for energy alternatives, we misunderstand the relationship between technology and science. Technology in the service of bad economic theory will only dig our hole deeper, increase the gap between the haves and the have nots and lead to a dimming of our lights and our civilization.

Merle

Complexity and Decision Making

2006-02-10T18:21:00.000-08:00

Merle,

I read you e-mail with great interest. As you are well aware, we are in full accord on the issue you raise. You articulate the issue both in broad, general terms and also specifically with regard to technology and the power it confers to destructive fringe elements of global society, and the tendency of politicians, when faced with a daunting problem, to retreat into familiar although dysfunctional behaviors. The question you are leading to, I'm sure, is what can responsible people do about it? An aspect of the answer to that involves making the bridge between the broad worldview and specific timely actions that an individual can undertake.

When I had the opportunity to address your Forum last year, I presented the issue this way.

1. The contemporary world challenges us with a myriad of complex, contentious issues. The complexity is, in a certain sense, beyond human comprehension.

2. Our typical solution-discovery method for such challenges, politics-as-we-know-it, is fundamentally and incorrigibly incompetent as a methodology for addressing complexity.

The necessary conclusion one may draw from this dual premise is that we need to shift to a different paradigm. I would identify that paradigm as being essentially collaborative (as opposed to the adversarial nature of the current paradigm) and based on a systemically oriented worldview.

The collaborative aspect reflects the conviction that people of good will, regardless of how far apart their individual interest may be, can work together to find an acceptable solution. The attitude is "I can get a better deal by collaborating than I can by fighting, resisting, or walking away."

The systemic viewpoint can take two forms.

1. If the solution calls for the creation or modification of a purpose-built system (such as National Health Care), there are well-proven methodologies whereby a team can undertake a top-down system design and construction project.

2. If the problem presents as need for a change agent to operate within the context of a larger, self-organizing complex adaptive system, there are ways of understanding that situation that lead to effective strategies for the change agent.

Subsequent to the Forum, I've noted some progress in the direction of emerging the new paradigm.

1. The National Policy Consensus Center at the University of Portland has developed considerable detail for implementing a collaborative approach. You can see their material at www.policyconsensus.org.

2. I've become involved in the project to develop a new relicensing agreement under the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for the Lake Murray dam. This project is being lead by the utility that owns the dam, South Carolina Electric and Gas, in a collaborative manner. They've chosen the collaborative mode because they realize it is in their interest to develop community support for the relicensing agreement. The community and environmental stakeholders have engaged a consultant in Interest-based negotiations, Vicki Taylor, vetaylor@adelphia.net, who advises us on collaborative methods and who has conducted training for participants in the interest-based negotiations process.

3. Our local town, Chapin, recently engaged consultants connected with Clemson University to lead a visioning process for the town and surrounding region. My hope is that this will initiate a sustained effort to generate a series of coordinated projects that will coalesce the community and create the kind of outcome we'd like.

I'm sure that a little research would turn up many other examples of the collaborative approach.

I see this as the beginnings of a paradigm shift. So far it is happening in small ways in many places, more or less below the radar of those who are in thrall of the old, adversarial paradigm. The job that needs doing, as I see it, is to encourage and assist these examples of the new paradigm, and then to evangelize for the new paradigm, raising it into the collective consciousness so it becomes the default approach. For my part I'm doi9ng this by participating in these examples where and when I can, and continuing with my book, which someday I intend to publish.

Regards,
Bill Cutler
Bigbillcutler@aol.com

FEAR

2006-02-07T09:17:00.000-08:00

FEAR

I “fear” that at the core of our fears is the fear that we have lost control of the variables by which we have traditionally understood politics/society/economics and culture in general. The pace of change and events has become incrementally faster with each passing month. In many ways the last 200 years of human society, when we grew from a population of about 1B to 6.6B has been unprecedented in human history. We are in the middle of a rapidly moving current and have no idea where it is going.

What are the driving forces of this current? Academics increasingly are discovering that the old methodological paradigms just don’t work. Politicians run for easy answers and quick fixes. “Wars” have been waged against tyrants, poverty, etc., so it was the most convenient political metaphor (never mind that we have not really “won” a war since 1945). Sooner or later we will learn that the issues we face are so much greater than can be fit into the old “box” of “war” language. There is no precedent or easy analogue for where we are. And that IS frightening. Perhaps we cannot control the future any longer.

We really need to take a good look at those factors that are truly different and thus perhaps driving this current. One major factor must be technology. In the past few decades the cost of creating, possessing and using technology for destructive purposes has dropped dramatically. Now a small group of individuals can inflict the kind of catastrophic damage to a society than previously was possible only by other nation states or natural disasters. So we live in a mode of perpetual fear that no national state can truly protect us anymore. So in a state of first shock we run to the easy solutions: religion, isolationism, patriotism, better technology, etc. We fear that the homeland can never really be secure again. We cannot “fix” it.

Finally, I fear most the driving force of technology itself. There seems to be inevitability about the fact that new technologies “demand” to be tested. The old adage that “we will use it if we have it” seems to be the rule. Thus new military technologies demand to be “real world” tested, and real battles are the final reality testing grounds. So it is with communications technology. If we have the capacity to monitor massive amounts of data transmissions, then we will do it. The constitution really does seem to be showing its age and 18^th century irrelevance. Are we any longer a “nation of law”? I fear we are not.

Merle

2006-02-07T08:38:00.000-08:00

Welcome to My Agora

Like the ancient Agora of Athens, this site is dedicated to the free market place of ideas. Please feel free to take issue with the ideas expressed here. Visitors to this Agora should be prepared to "transform" their thinking. Transformatiave thinking occurs in the midst of a crisis in our lives. When our old paradigms and methodologies no longer work we can either cling, in paralysis, to the past, or seek out new solutions and keep questing. I invite you to join my personal quests and learn with me.

Merle F. Allshouse - Allshouse@ureach.com
http://www.allshouse-associates.com