Matters of Principle

We Americans may be entering (or have already entered) a period of national re-evalution.  It was fashionable a few years back for “values” to be a political buzzword, meaning if you believed in “values” (undefined) you voted in a certain way.  But now, we may actually be forced to define what our true values are.

In the past three decades or more we have all become consumers.  Bigger houses, bigger cars, more things.  At the same time we were producing less, importing more, and basing our economy on manipulating money to make money.  The results were predictable.  Huge trade deficits.  Selling US bonds to finance the deficits and to buy more things.

It’s pretty obvious we can’t keep doing this forever.  This pattern has brought us to the mess we are in today.  The question is whether we’ll find a way to pick up where consumption, money manipulation, and unproductivity left off, or whether we will restore a national economy that produces, saves, invests, makes things, and pays its way.

Ottawa, Kansas, in the 1950s was not a bad place.  We didn’t have the luxuries of today and we didn’t buy things we couldn’t afford.  But we had a roof over our heads, adequate nutrition, and affordable health care.  Everyone worked, in my case starting at the age of eleven.  (I don’t think there were child labor laws then.)  We didn’t spend money we didn’t have.  There were no credit cards.  And my parents would have been embarrassed to go to the bank and ask for a loan to buy more gadgets.  The Depression taught them, and they taught me, don’t go into debt.

Paul Volker is an economic statesman.  He has been saying exactly these things for more than thirty years.  The President should ask him to write this speech and  should give it several times as fireside chats.  I would be amazed if Republicans (or Democrats) found a way to criticize it.  What could be more conservative than restoring America’s fundamental values.

Posted in Uncategorized | | 56 Comments »

To declare the death of civility is, at least at this point, too dramatic and apocalyptic.  The time might come, however, in which its death in the American political arena could happen.  Thus, President Obama’s plea at last weeks prayer breakfast for those who believe in prayer to also believe in treating each other in the political arena with at least a degree of civility, respect, and decency.

It is fair to say that, at this moment, civility is asleep.  How else can we explain over-the-top allegations that the President is a socialist, or worse, when nothing he has done has even the taint of socialism.  His economic steps are either a continuation of Bush policies or investments to stimulate job creation and recovery.  How does calling this socialism advance any healthy agenda.

Some conservatives claim that ridiculous charges against Obama are no worse than liberal or left charges against Bush.  There is a small measure of truth in that.  As much as I disagreed with cutting taxes of the wealthy, especially in war time, the invasion of Iraq, deregulation of environmental safety, and letting Wall Street loose to create its own ruin, I don’t remember questioning President Bush’s patriotism or good intentions.  Others in my party did, however, and carried on ridicule of his military service well after it made any point.

But at its worst, I don’t recall any respectable figures on the progressive side suggesting he was a fascist, the rough equivalent of Obama’s alleged socialism.  There will always be those on both extremes who substitute ridicule and attack for constructive criticism.  And perhaps human nature is always thus.  Historians remind us of other bitter times in American political history when similar or worse behavior went on.

It, nevertheless, is a matter for hope that leaders of both sides and both parties will call out the extremists in their own ranks and disavow their conduct.  Probably won’t happen, because too many politicians think they need this radical energy bordering on hatred at election time.  But miracles do happen and men and women of good will, reaching across the aisle, even occasionally applauding presidential state of the nation speeches out of respect and civility, could reawaken it.  Or at the very least, they could create an example of civil leadership for us all.

Posted in Government and public policies, Uncategorized | | 27 Comments »

The most innovative strategy for homeland security has been proposed, a few years back, by Stephen Flynn.  He is an extraordinary citizen: former Coast Guard commander; Ph.D; advisor to the U.S. Commission on National Security; former senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations; now the new president of the Center for National Policy.

Steve’s strategy is simply called resilience.  In a word, he argues that our critical infrastructure–communications, finance, transportation, and energy–be reconstructed in such a way that any of its major systems, if attacked, could resume operations virtually instantaneously by constructing on-line, back-up systems.

Having this resilient capability itself is a deterrent to attack.  Why attack the U.S. communications system, if you are al Qaeda, when you know it will be up and running almost immediately?  Resilience is a national insurance policy.

Though Dr. Flynn has been arguing this case, including in books, articles, and speeches, for years, I doubt that you’ve heard of it.  The media have given it little consideration.  A good deal of the resistance to resilience is from the private sector ownership of these major critical industries.  Why spend hundreds of millions of dollars to make your systems resilient when it comes off the corporate bottom line and creates no immediate profits, revenues, or bonuses?  The U.S. government, for its part, is reluctant to create legislative mandates to require the private sector to do what is necessary, even though it is in our national security interest.

Our system of capitalism is all in favor of national security, that is except when it requires private investments to be made.  Thus, we are not resilient.  We are still vulnerable to attack.  And, unless leadership courage is demonstrated in Washington and in private board rooms across the nation, we will continue to be.

Posted in National and international security, Uncategorized | | 7 Comments »

On more than one occasion, I’ve raised the question whether the Constitution’s preamble, setting out our national purposes for “ourselves and our posterity,” creates a binding obligation on each generation to govern not only for itself but also for future generations.  The concept is a revolutionary one even for a new revolutionary nation.  The Constitutional, legal, and most of all moral implications of this mandate are staggering.

Professor Burns Weston and his colleagues at the University of Vermont Law School have done more scholarly work on this idea than any others I’m aware of.  Their publications are on the cutting edge of legal and political thinking concerning intergenerational accountability.  Every elected and appointed official, federal, State, and local, should be required to read what they have produced.

No current issue confronts this question more starkly than the climate legislation now pending in the U.S. Senate and the debate underway in Copenhagen.  If your political philosophy is everyman-for-himself-and-devil-take-the-hindmost, and especially if you are above a certain age, you can join the deniers and say: What the hell.  If, however, you possess any kind of moral sense (including those who make the loudest religious claims) and if you take the Constitutional obligation to “our posterity” seriously, you must consider the kind of destabilized world we are leaving for future generations.

And for those in between who will not take the trouble to learn, Dante offers the lesson: There is a special place in hell for those who, in times of moral crisis, preserve their neutrality.

Some issues transcend ideology and politics: poverty; nuclear arms races; war and peace; child nutrition; homelessness.  The future climate is one of these.  Presumably, those operating businesses that produce greenhouse gasses have children.  They may leave their children private legacies of wealth.  But they also are leaving them a public legacy of destruction that is possibly irreversible.

When one’s life is weighed on the scale of eternity, what is more important: money or a healthy climate?

Posted in Government and public policies, Uncategorized | | 6 Comments »

As in many things, American citizens cannot decide whether they want to vote for followers or leaders.  While decrying the lack of leadership in America, they punish elected officials who take unpopular, but forward looking stands, by turning them out of office.  Though claiming to want leaders, most Americans vote for followers.

It is very difficult, if not impossible, for a politician to be both leader and follower.  Let’s consider three examples: climate; defense; and health care.  Suppose a member of Congress is absolutely convinced we are near a tipping point where further increases in carbon emissions could have disastrous consequences for generations to come.  She is also convinced that the most effective way to avoid this catastrophe is a carbon tax or even, for that matter, a system of caps and trades.  The people of her State or district resist any change that would affect the status quo.  She follows the popular will, votes against dramatic change, and is reelected.

Where defense is concerned, a majority of voters believe the Pentagon budget is too large.  But the Senator from any given State knows that pieces of almost every weapon system are made in every State.  In addition, any vote for reforms in troop structures, weapons systems, or foreign deployments will be subject to the campaign charge that the Senator is “weak on defense.”  Better to follow the popular will than to lead.

Except for the very wealthy, almost all Americans know “something” must be done about our health care system.  They just don’t want any changes that might affect them, even changes that don’t have negative consequences.  How far out in front does a candidate or office-holder get in solving a problem that has refused solution for almost seven decades?

Inability to resolve contradictory wants is a sign of adolescence.  We can’t have leadership if we persist in voting for followers.  It is tempting to conclude that, if Americans truly want leadership, as they claim, that they reward it and not punish it—in effect, that they grow up.

There are ways out of this dilemma.  One is for leaders to become better at educating constituents.  In office my experience was that I could convince skeptical voters of the need for change if I took the time and trouble to explain why they couldn’t have it both ways, why we had to choose between the status quo and the future.  Another was to offer new approaches that the political system hadn’t already produced.  In a surprising number of cases, people would be attracted to an idea or new approach that was neither of the traditional left or right.  A third is to remind people that the big issues of the day do not affect just our generation but have profound consequences for their children as well, that there is a moral component that trumps immediate self-interest.

We are too far along in our history for Americans to continue to believe that they can persist in voting for followers and expect true leadership.

Tags: leadership
Posted in Energy, climate, and environment, Government and public policies, Uncategorized | | 13 Comments »