Mapping the Issues

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

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

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

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.