New America: back to the future

A Tunisian friend shared with me how amazing it was that women's rights continue to be one of the top priorities for the New Tunisia, the post-revolution Tunisia: "The French introduced that idea in 1952. Now it's such an important part of Tunisian identity it's a vision citizens hold for the country," he said.

This led me to wondering: what would make it to the top of the priority list if Americans stood up determined to reboot government? What is so essential to our national identity that it would be central to the New America?

I found myself coming back to something my step-father, a serious O'Reilly-loving Republican had said to me (a tree-hugging homo): "I think we need to get back to some of the basic tenets of democracy in the constitution."

I couldn't have agreed more.

I think if we had a good citizens' uprising the New America would be based in many of the principles of the Old America. In a word: all that democracy stuff.

Lest we forget we were pretty much the first country to be established solely on the idea that: we wouldn't bow down to people because of their lineage, the amount of stuff they own or their position in the church.

Instead we came together around the sacred notion of personal freedom and dignity built on informed choice. Central to that are debate and discussion. No longer would people come into office because of their money or birth but because of their capacity to listen to and speak convincingly to the needs of the people.

The more I thought about this idea the more excited I got. There are so many good things we could do to become more democratic.

The three core concepts of democracy that came to my mind immediately are:
1 - rotating leadership (we all take turns leading),
2 - a person's capacity to listen to the needs of a people and then speak convincingly to a crowd and
3 - the people's right to vote based on good information.

Just in the light of those three notions a whole slew of modern American practices suddenly seem completely unnecessary because they weaken democracy. Let me just tick off a few for starters:

That old electoral college has got to go - in the country that sorta crystallized democracy we really need direct suffrage. Standardized modern voting machines are a no-brainer. DUH! Term limits become the norm. Thirty-second sound-byte voting ads slapped together by marketing whizzes and sold for huge sums of money to local TV stations a week before the vote are just out.

In the New America real interactions with human beings just may become necessary.

The one place where this old-school form of democracy REALLY works of course is in the whole local-caucus-thing leading up to the giant presidential nominating conventions we put together every four years to elect our candidates for president. Surely that model will work great for the New America. These are after all the ultimate events of citizens coming together first on a grassroots level then building momentum over 18 months to ensure the most empathic, smartest and most powerfully persuasive person makes it to the top of the food chain.

What a let down! Go ahead; read Wikipedia. You'll see how since the 1970's these conventions have basically become three ring circuses that are rigged from the start with no real vote because the candidate is already chosen and the people making speeches are mostly already-elected party members. Most of the caucusing only happens in a couple of states anymore. What?! How can political leaders expect us to have good political debates if they don't include us in the discussion?

What a let-down to find out these are not really about the party bringing together the smartest and most articulate to put together a platform. Now I get why US parties don't really have detailed platforms and prefer to keep it blurry. Because they're not built plank by plank from the ground up. It also explains why candidates can pretty much present themselves as one thing then once they get elected behave in a completely different way (think Obama or Gov. Walker).

In the New America citizens will actually be interested in public debate in part because leaders will actually be engaging in it again. TV stations will have to hold equal time for each candidate and no one will be able to communicate to voters in scary ads or marketing-spin, simplistic blurbs.

The Virginia Constitution which predated and inspired the US's founding docs puts it nicely when they refer to state legislators:

...they should, at fixed periods, be reduced to a private station, return into that body from which they were originally taken, and the vacancies be supplied by frequent, certain, and regular elections, in which all, or any part of the former members, to be again eligible, or ineligible, as the laws shall direct. 

There's something to be said for stepping out of the DC bubble and going back into the constituency - coming back to life on life's terms for a while before returning to Washington or some other government position.

So another big loser in New America is of course the lobbies, the regulating commissions and the industries that hire recently terminated politicians and the many rotating doors between them and the legislature.

Suddenly under the bright lights of New American democracy these make no sense at all. After all isn't feeding a legislator paid-for bill proposals similar to being a legislator - only more slimy?

Of course legislators need experts from whom they can glean information in order to make their own informed choices but lobbyists can't be dominating their choices. We all know that behind lobbyists are industries and behind industries are campaign donations that legislators feel they can't live without.

Then of course there's the notion of representivity. Legislators are elected to be the voice of the majority of people who elected them. This feels like a lost notion to me. How often have you been polled? Do you feel heard? Just who are legislators listening to? And how?

So in the New America we will have harnessed technology so that communication between citizens and legislators is fluid and open. Legislators will have to confer with their constituents and will no longer be able to vote because of a lobbyist's or donator's influence. And if they do they will really have to explain clearly to their constituents why said vote was in the interest of a majority of those folks.

Which sorta leads to the next idea. Another biggy dear to the hearts of democracy lovers --and that the New America will insist upon --: the notion of equality in the face of the law. Not only won't wealthy individuals or corporations be able to find tax loopholes so they pay less than middle class or working class folks percentage -wise but the whole silly notion of "money as speech" and "corporations as individuals" will of course disappear.

Speech is speech. And citizens are citizens. Money cannot develop an argument, share it passionately with another human being and convince someone to vote for it. Money like a corporation cannot think, does not have dreams and aspirations. They do not have free-will.

So in our renewed democracy If a millionaire sends a check for $200,000 and I send a check for $2 - that doesn't make him anymore important than me. He still has one vote and I have one vote. My legislator still has to give my concerns equal voice to his concerns - even if the millionaire takes him out to lots of fancy restaurants (a dubious practice at best).

To get back to the idea of experts: learned people are a necessary part of helping make informed decisions. Democracy needs them from time to time to get expert witness opinions be it in a courtroom, in the press or in a legislative chamber.

But of course in this country where marketing was invented we have turned expertise into a commodity that we can grow, cultivate to our liking and then distribute nicely. We mostly call these think-tanks. But there are also communication agencies that just spend their time coming up with catchy phrases to turn a complex human political issue that has a real impact on the everyday lives of millions of Americans into a knee-jerk two-word slogan to be pushed away or adopted and repeated again and again until it has no meaning whatsoever.

Take for example a recent newcomer to the think-tanks: a certain Veronique de Rugy - a French economist with a Phd. I'd say more about her but it is virtually impossible to find any kind of information about her on the Web aside from her education and her professional affiliations.

These have her working for CATO, AEI, Mercatus and Reason - all of these are right-wing think tanks which most folks believe to be heavily funded by the Koch brothers. So her bias as an expert is pretty clear: she is a hardcore, small-government, low-taxes, free market kinda gal.

Now that these institutions have styled her an expert she can appear on various TV shows as, you guessed it, an expert. She is the poster-girl for free-market-at-all-costs folks because 1) she is a bonafide economist and 2) she talks about how bad the French model is for poor people.

The internet is covered with articles by her that usually have the word "Truth" in the title: The truth about healthcare, the truth about bio-terrorism, the truth about tax incentives...I imagine there were at least 30 other economists in her graduating class but thanks to a well-oiled system she is the one bending our ear about what's good for our wallets.

Nowhere does this expert on what is good for American pocketbooks mention how much money they give her to sell her Phd stamp of approval to all of these well-funded think tanks; one of whom has no doubt helped her get a work permit in the US. She doesn't mention how much FOX news pays her each time she comes on and defends a Republican idea then plugs her next book. She certainly doesn't mention how much money she does NOT owe a bank in France for her 9 years of higher education because she comes from a country where access to college is a government priority (for both left and right parties). And she is connected to an aristocratic family. I'll just hint at the idea that this most likely allows her to access to a rather well-connected network of folks born in high places.

Real democracy absolutely needs unbiased, fact-based experts who allow legislators and citizens alike to get access to cutting-edge information before they vote. Citizens need fact-based science and not values-based analyses. Of course no one is without bias but it is possible to strive to being really close. New America doesn't need any well-paid, well-connected "experts" who sell themselves to a spin-industry in order to influence the American people.

The next idea for New America is a doozy so I hope you're sitting down.

The phrase "too big to fail" got written into some government documents after the whole Savings and Loan implosion in the late 80's. Some policy wonk decided that certain financial institutions had become so important they were by nature infrastructural and if they collapsed the nation would go down with them. So in case of emergency they would have to be propped up somehow.

According to a recent bipartisan commission investigation, top banks did what they do best: they actually competed with each other to expand and make it to this imaginary list to get that protection. (Remember last decade when your local bank changed names three times in as many years?) The study shows that banks on this fictitious list were even able to offer better rates to borrowers compared to banks not on this list because they were implicitly backed by the US government.

Lo and behold - a sort of socialist protectionist mechanism allowed a bunch of really capitalist capitalists to make a lot of money (and we're talking about more money than most of us can even comprehend) with the help of a government safety net that ended up 1) sorta bankrupting the American people and 2) keeping the financiers out of jail.

Well, in a country that puts democracy first and foremost -- even before capitalism -- the most important natural resource is the brains of the citizens.

Well-working brains help citizens develop critical thinking and realize that too good to be true really is. They helps citizens to be both curious and cautious. Well-trained brains break down the barrier between those who have access to the latest information and technology which help make them more wealthy and the other people. They help citizens understand when a politician (or a journalist or a loan-maker) is selling you a line of BS or not. They help you see that when a government agency is saying "We can't afford it" what they really mean is that it isn't a priority. They help you get the fact that the upheavals of the economic crashes and bubbles aren't just an out-of-control phenomenon like an earthquake or a tornado but are actually designed by humans in order to make lots of money. Well-primed brains help you suss out that an article, an email or a Web page is 90% opinion being passed off as facts.

In order for those brains to work well they need to be:
1- in good health and
2 -taught in an environment that enhances creativity, critical thinking and a capacity to analyze.

These brains need to understand the importance of democratic discussion, Socratic thinking, checks and balances, the importance of voting.

So in the New Democracy of America - the two things on top of the "Too Big to Fail List" i.e. the two things that are democratically infrastructural are not GM, Goldman-Sachs, the Pentagon or the highway system. They are: education and healthcare for all citizens.

I can already hear you saying: Whoa! That's Socialism!!

But in a healthy democracy where the central concern is about keeping citizens involved in and enjoying the workings of citizen-centric government, these are the two components everyone should go to extreme lengths to protect.

And of course in this healthy new democracy the government doesn't think twice about implementing this policy because they themselves are active citizens with their ears and eyes open to the needs of their fellow citizens and not some elite who drops in for the occasional congressional visit while benefiting from a health insurance, an income and a lifestyle that look absolutely nothing like the real life of their constituents.

Imagine the money we would save from people no longer buying into fraudulent Ponzi schemes. We would save even more on healthcare costs since we know that educated people actually integrate public health messages more readily.

Some of the great advantages this New America will enjoy:

- News outlets will be more focused on communicating with citizens on the ins and outs of what goes on behind closed doors in our nation's capitals and less about what goes on in the bedrooms of the rich and famous - because an educated people will actually be interested in government and will have forced government -and the corporations they work with - to be much more transparent.

- The official government line will not just be what the White House dictates. Members of congress will have strong voices and a variety of positions on the same issue. Secretaries will not just toe the party line but will be real leaders with real ideas who are not afraid to say when they disagree with the President. Because in a healthy democracy citizens don't have to be subjected to black and white thinking, they can actually tolerate complex, subtle variations on the same issue.

- New political parties will emerge - some based on region (Western States Party), some based on cultural values (The Green-First Party), some based on a single issue perhaps (The Low Tax Tea Party). The Tea Partiers won't simply have to merge into the GOP to have legitimacy.

- The level of opacity will go down and transparency will go up as more and more people are involved in the actual political process of their town, their county, state or country. Opacity is the enemy of democracy.

- Not too surprisingly opacity is the friend of capitalism ("Read the fine print" didn't come into our colloquial language for nothing). Lots of money gets made daily because people including regulators don't understand the complexities of what is being bought and sold. But a stronger democracy - one where people exercise their right to assemble and share information, their right to have clear language and transparency, their right to say no -- actually makes for healthier capitalism. It also leads to the creation of more citizen-centric capitalism such as cooperatives, credit unions, member-owned car insurance organizations. Imagine a non-profit HMO where the term "member" actually means you can attend a general assembly, have a say in the way the organizations is being run and vote to have your premiums lowered during the better years...

- Education will no longer be an ivory tower. We won't have to stand in line to get access to a doctor, begging him or her for expertise because we'll have far more doctors per capita than we do now. Colleges won't just be these expensive places in charming towns where people disappear for four years of blissful thinking. Instead they'll be like community colleges - where well-educated local citizens teach people of all ages at an affordable price. Recent statistics from the OECD show that though we were on par with other rich countries in college enrollment after World War Two we have fallen behind to almost half of most other rich countries ever since. And a recent US study shows that knowledge of the social sciences is suffering greatly among kids in America due to the focus being put on reading and math as driven by No Child Left Behind.

(So in the New America people will actually know what socialist means when they throw it around and they will stop equating it with Nazis.)

- We will create flexibility to engage in new government entities: maybe five of the New England states will come together and create a regional parliament to oversee certain legislation, several of the Mountain States will create an elected government entity designed to protect the environment and develop a green transportation plan that serves both commerce and citizens, DC will become a state with real representation, while Hawaii and Puerto Rico will decide on Self-rule (and we will celebrate their determination --or not-- to democratically stand on their own two feet!). Metropolitan Chicago (which covers two time zones, four states and multiple counties and cities) will get to decide if they want an extra layer of government to manage certain parts of their lives and eliminate others.

- We will eliminate other unneeded government entities: in my own neighborhood I regularly cross paths with police from the public transportation agency, the nearby US Mint, the university around the corner, the municipal government and the county. But when I have a problem and need a cop to come to my house I get lost because I am at the intersection of four precincts. Perhaps if we open a better dialog between citizens and government we'll come to the conclusion that all of these police agencies are actually costing us a lot of money and not really accomplishing much.

- Medical care will no longer be a privilege. We will be able to walk into medical centers and receive care with the same ease as we receive services in a courthouse, a police station, or a DMV.

- Foreign Policy will no longer be that well-kept secret at the State Department. American citizens will actually have a say in how we want to participate in other countries' affairs. Americans will be able to question the massive amounts of money poured into Defense and whether that's really how we want to make use of our wealth. They'll be asked to wonder what it must be like to have a foreign country keep a military base on their sovereign soil and whether that's really the way we want to behave in the world.

- By improving the dialog between those who govern and the governed, the government will have to be more accountable meaning citizens will have a clearer idea of the many roles government actually does play in their lives. Not only will citizens cease to fantasize that government only supports welfare moms and immigrants, they will also have a clearer notion of which industries we taxpayers subsidize and why.

- That friggin' comma in the second amendment will finally be decided upon because we'll actually be able to sit down and write a modern constitution that works for us all - and that includes gun lovers (but not militias).

- Some members of congress will not be high-paid lawyers because real people with smarts and drive and passion for democracy will be able to get elected without needing to give ad agencies and TV stations millions of dollars in campaign funds.

- One-man-show non-profits like Grover Norquist will no longer be able to hold the American people hostage with a single issue. Citizens groups' weight in legislation will be based in part on the number of citizens -- (ie the "demo" part of democracy) they actually regroup and not because of their power to bully or charm.

- Heated issues that seem to touch our very identity such as gay marriage, immigration, the right to bear arms and the role of religion in government will no longer be hashed out in courtrooms or ignored entirely for fear of not getting re-elected. Town-hall meetings will be organized and people from neighborhoods will come together to discuss their ideas. These ideas will be pooled and shared with elected officials who will actually attend some of the meetings.

- Emails from candidates or their campaigns won't just be requests for money. They'll actually ask you to participate in a discussion, design a real platform, vote for a position, hold a house party, boycott a group, stand in the streets and distribute pamphlets.

- In the New America young people will be so interested in geo-political issues they'll actually be making the news. Instead of the same old comb-over, face-lifted journalists of the last thirty years - who stoop to lower and lower heights to attract higher ratings - the cast of Glee (or 90210 or something similar) will be using their brains instead of their buns and pecs to gain fame. The next morning kids will be so excited they'll be tweeting one another:
"omg! did u c bieber tear up obama last night?! cool!" or
"lindsay really hit putin hard on corruption"

When I read over this I realize that all of this civic participation takes time. This is tough at a time when many Americans desire more training and have to work three jobs to pay for their healthcare and mortgage. Plus many have been taught that education is a bad thing, that critical thinking and analysis are for wimps.

Ironically I conclude that this deep democratic change will actually have to come from people near the top of the American economic-influential pyramid. The irony of history is that the aristocrats developed the theories to put themselves out of a job in part because they had the free time and good health to think about better ways for society to live. These European aristocrats inspired Washington, Madison and Jefferson to become citizens and no longer subjects of their cousins the monarchs.

I know all of this wreaks of European Social Democracy but I'm afraid if we don't create an American version of that social model (one that includes creative, market-driven aspects but also citizen-centered qualities) we will end up with becoming the model at the other end of the spectrum: the China model. All the wealth and decision-making power will be concentrated into few hands while huge masses of poorly-paid laborers will be moved about at the whims of the elite. In some ways it feels like we're already there.

So here is a 10 point recipe for leaders in America to shift more and more toward the second model:

1 - Keep putting reasonably-priced, widespread higher education at the bottom of the priority list
2 - Keep making healthcare more and more expensive and harder to access
3 - Keep all of the money at the top while preaching the power of the ever-out-of-reach trickle-down effect
4 - Keep speaking to Americans like they are stupid
5 - Keep hiding the back room deals from Americans
6 - Keep making elections about money and spin rather than about human connection, empathy, analysis and discourse
7 - Keep telling Americans they should be happy to have a job even though their wages and benefits have decreased over the last 30 years
8 - Keep impoverishing the political debate by using snappy catch phrases, robocalls and prostitutional media coups
9 - Keep replacing fact-based analysis with values-based analysis, blurring the line between research and opinion, journalism and entertainment
10 - Keep demonizing any other social model besides our own

Liberal white haters

A couple months ago I was reading online comments to a political article and was really intrigued by this one: "The problem with white liberals is that they hate white people and can't admit it."

As time went by I couldn't stop thinking about it. It reminded of the time I was flying over London as the Princess of Wales's corpse was being wheeled through the city center and the mid-eastern man sitting next to me said, "You know she was pregnant with his baby. They knocked her off because they couldn't have a Muslim heir to the throne."

Before opening my mouth to say that I thought the idea absurd I remember thinking, "Of course that's what it looks like from the perspective of a brown-skinned man whose religion has been the second class citizen of the world for the last four hundred years." So yes - I get it. I see how one might easily imagine such a theory if one were Muslim. But that doesn't mean it's true (or false).

My fantasy is the author of the white-hating comment is a white male, who is unemployed and wasn't unhappy with the recently-defeated democratic majority in DC. But who knows?

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I remember the day it really came home to me what it means to be afraid of difference. I was at a party where there were a very wide variety of human forms: men, women, gay, straight, brown, yellow, black, white, rich, poor, artists, bankers. And I remember thinking: I LOVE this!!! I LOVE when it gets all mixed up like this!

But I wondered what if instead of pleasure I was feeling discomfort or even fear? And what if that fear were of the same intensity as my pleasure?
Wow! That was a blast! - just trying to imagine that feeling was pretty powerful.
So that's what racism feels like! Whew!

Basically it looks like this:
- I'm a Y, all Y's are good
- All X's are bad
- Therefore I hate all X's

But what I find particularly fascinating in the reader's' scenario is the mental leap that goes beyond the above syllogism. It looks like this.

- I am a Y, all Y's are good
- All X's are bad
- I hate all X's
- You are a fellow Y but you have compassion for an X,
- Therefore you hate me.

Of course I would totally I understand the much more classic:

- I am a Y, all Y's are good
- All X's are bad
- You are a fellow Y but you have compassion for an X,
- Therefore I hate you

This is the adult version of the high school boys who beat up fags. Then one day they beat up one of their own because he actually starts to get to know a fag and finds out the fag's not a bad guy after all. Or the radical Zionists who beat up a fellow Jew because he starts to wonder if the settlements really are a good idea.
You get the picture.

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As a psychotherapist I see that unfortunately for a lot of people shifting out of one mental position to explore another is often a REALLY tough thing to do

For instance lots of folks go to therapy to ask what they can do to change their spouse - (even when their spouse is a fellow Y!). A therapist's job is to invite the patient to do detective work: what do you suppose makes your spouse tick? why do you think s/he responds that way? what was his/her childhood like? what do you suppose makes you respond this way? is one person's way actually better than the other's? how is that?

What happens in therapy is really simple. People start to use their imagination. They use it to wonder about the other's perspective. Then they start to make room for someone else's reality in their mental schema. What I've discovered is that this is often new for folks, particularly men. In many cases they have never been taught how to use their inner world as a way to imagine what it might be like to put themselves in the other's shoes.

The outcome of this type of therapy is that people generally realize they don't need to change their spouse at all, that their spouse is not so bad after all. They discover they can learn to sit with their discomfort and they actually end up becoming more accepting, more loving. Sometimes, in the face of this new, more loving attitude - the other spouse actually ends up dropping the annoying behavior without so much as a nudge.

So why don't most people use their imagination to wonder about other people's reality?

My impression is that for many people it's frightening to imagine what it's like to be poor, to be black, to be bullied, to be raped, to be Jewish, to have cancer, to be a woman, to be evicted. They usually only start wondering about it when they are forced to. I imagine this is why the members of congress who've had some kind of degenerative illness in their family were more apt to recognize some of the fatal flaws in our healthcare system.

But even bigger than avoiding discomfort it because most people actually walk around with an internal pattern that pretty much convinces them that, unless proven otherwise, not-like-me humans want to do some form of harm to them. And if those not-like-me humans happen to have a bit of power....watch out! So they don't want to use their imagination to feel what the other might feel because it's more familiar to cling to the notion that the other is out to harm them.

Which brings me to my BIG question. Maybe I'm a fag but what I personally don't understand is why we don't see the following more often:
- I am a Y
- I look around me and see that my world is mostly made of Y's, some good some bad.
- I'm pretty comfortable being a Y.
- I encounter an X
- I wonder what it's like for an X to navigate a world mostly run by Y's, I wonder what are all the unspoken Y rules I don't see anymore, I wonder how I can help the X better navigate the world of Y's, I wonder if the X has anything to teach us Y's about making our world better, I wonder if the X thinks I'm a jerk because lots of Y's speak disparagingly of X's.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I recently attended a graduation ceremony for adults in an urban professional certification school. The certificates varied but they were all paths to more expertise and a better job or a raise in pay. Most of the graduates were over 30; three-quarters had brown or black skin - not a reflection of the general population of the city we were in. "Pomp and Circumstance" was playing over the loudspeakers, blue polyester gowns were worn, tassels were dangling appropriately. I was really proud of my white, middle-aged mom friend who had recently struggled with bankruptcy and worked hard to complete a nine-month course with honors. I duly yooohooed her when she reached the podium.

But what brought me to tears was when a young lady, walking with difficulty, visibly Latina, struggled up onto the stage to get her certificate. She was closer genetically to the Indigenous people of Central America than to the European populations that came later and she had clearly suffered some kind of physical handicap. I imagine her journey to that point must not have been an easy one and it broke my heart open with a mix of joy and sorrow.

Now maybe my thoughts about this young lady were completely crazy. Maybe her family's been in the US for five generations and maybe they are millionaires and maybe she doesn't speak a word of Spanish and maybe she walks with a limp because she fell one day on her father's 75-foot yacht painlessly but with lasting effects.

But maybe not.

What I am sure of is that my strong feelings for the Latina did not lead me to suddenly disdain my white friend. In the same way when I wish Happy Holidays to people who may or may not be Jewish, Muslim, Shintoist or Buddhist - I don't hate Christians (although some of the louder more obnoxious ones do get on my nerves). When I enjoy speaking the second language I worked hard to acquire I don't hate all English speakers.

I am not saying I am better than anyone else. In that high school gym graduation I was able to have compassion for that woman - other times in my life I jump to immediate dismissive conclusions about people based on things as simple as a sentence, an accent or a piece of clothing.

But as I approach the end of this essay and remind myself that it's customary to offer some kind of solution the conclusion I find myself coming to (much to my surpris) is: Americans need to study more History and Geography. We need more Social Studies. And not just the white-washed, Texas Board of Education version; we need the dark, earthy, Wikileaks version. We need fewer romantic-comedies and more really good documentaries. We need fewer Olbermanns and Becks and more deep investigative journalism.

Because when we get glimpses into, say, the history of the papacy, the truth behind Love Canal, the history of colonialism, the Birmingham riots, the Spanish-American War, the tragic deaths of western-bound settlers in America then we see that humans are more complex than we think and we get to know ourselves a lot more. We get to feel proud of our country but also get to feel shame and disappoint and rage at our country. It's not easy. It's not comfortable. But it's healthier than the black and white thinking.

It's much more comfortable for us to just live in the present and keep wandering around with permanent smiles distributing business cards because every other human is a potential client.

I'd even go so far to say we need to study Social Studies in discussion-format type classes. So we can digest this stuff together, these complicated stories of struggle and victory. We need to learn to think critically about history and politics, to distinguish between slanted and good journalism, to understand power dynamics, economic dynamics, demographic dynamics.

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When I was a young journalist I was on assignment in Jerusalem. I was probably 25 or 26 years old, college-educated and well-traveled. While there I discovered a rather significant detail about Christianity. Despite the fact that I had been raised by a pious Christian family who actively studied the bible, I had never been informed of this simple fact and was actually a bit embarrassed not to know it. Jesus was a Jew! Who knew? Once my anger had passed (since I'm quite sure this was willfully kept from me) I remember thinking: Wow! That makes the whole story SO much more interesting and in my eyes made ole JC a much more likable guy!!

So to get back to the reader's comment. No we white liberals don't hate white people (ourselves or other white people) but we don't glorify them either. We've learned too much about the complexities of the human experience to do either.
And I think this country could use more of that.

Giving and taking freedoms in America: our national disconnect

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Long live freedom of (unethical) speech

While the Supreme Court of the United States was busy on the East Coast deciding that no law should "chill" the free expression of words as a favor to the citizens, the Federal Circuit Court in California was busy witnessing just how the free expression of some words can lead to disaster for certain citizens.

Indeed with the help of conservative lawyer David Boies, expert witnesses described how they managed to get Proposition 8 passed.

Through Boies' simple questions and answers we had the veil lifted on something far broader and more destructive than a simple group of citizens exercising their democratic right to persuade voters. Little by little, we were able to see how with the help of big money, powerful churches, deceptive Web sites, lying medical experts/scientists and simplistic, frightening TV ads, an organization was able to fuel fear and enmity among one group of Californians toward another.

Amazingly these same witnesses who devoutly fought against gay marriage also recognized under oath that most findings demonstrate 1) marriage would be a stabilizing element for both gays and the greater community and 2) hateful language of the type they dabbled in leads people to commit violent behavior on gays (and presumed gays).

But our supreme court believes it is important to allow all citizens to hear ALL the arguments and to decide for themselves - no matter how untrue, how damaging or how hate-filled those arguments are.

In the US there is a law against what the court calls "fighting words" i.e. it's illegal to stand in front of a crowd and scream "Kill the Jews" or "Attack the nigger" because this may cause "imminent danger" but this same Court legally protected a person who burned a cross on a black man's lawn in the name of free expression.

In most rich countries this would be a form of "hate speech" - words or actions which foment hatred against a group of people. Much of the early hate speech legislation was passed in Western Europe after the fall of the Nazi party: a party that was freely elected to power by a starving nation that wanted scapegoats to blame for the fall of their empire. Wikipedia classifies hate speech legislation under censorship.

After centuries of controlled speech it must have been incredibly difficult for these countries to come up with such legislation so dedicated are they to the free speech they struggled so hard to attain. But the war's wound was huge: millions of dead on all sides.

My experience of and contact with legislators from western European countries suggest they have no more contact with minorities or poor people than our legislators in their DC millionaire club. I imagine that like US senators these contacts are mostly limited to hired help. I don't have any reason to believe they are more imbued with empathy or Christian forbearance than are their American counterparts.

No, it seems to me their progressive laws that not only protect citizens from hate speech but also protect them from corporate abuse and offer them government-guaranteed cheap education, healthcare and childcare do not come from the fact that they are more representative of the poorer classes.

However one thing they do have that we seem to lack is a deep sense of and respect for history.... particularly the horrors of history.

This is a vitally important difference.

The Organization for Economic and Cultural Development, a 30 member non-profit that we belong to and pay to study our various social and economic trends released a study on higher education among the member countries. The US was the only country in which the percentage of 25-35 year olds who had been to college was the same as the percentage of 55-65 year olds. That is to say that in 30 years we have not been able to increase the percentage of Americans who graduate from college. What's more we know that fewer and fewer people who are in college are interested in such things as liberal arts and history preferring instead MBA's and technical degrees.

And history itself is such a malleable thing these days.

A few weeks ago on my local PBS station a documentary called the "History of Freedom" was aired. I sat and watched the formulaic talking-head professors with suits and ties go on about various historical moments and their interplay with churches - an interesting notion.

Little by little it became clear this very slick documentary was peppered with bias and downright errors -- the biggest of which was the notion that the French Revolution ended in a massacre whereas the American Revolution (which happened around the same time and was helped by the French) ended in prosperity because we Americans had God on our side. Not so for those bad anti-clerical French leaders who had turned their backs on the church. (By the way, no mention is made of the massive fortunes amassed by the clergy and their uncomfortable proximity with the ruling classes.) The message of this documentary was similar to those of the conservative Christians of the Texas Board of Education trying to strong arm biblical references into the nation's Social Studies books just last week.

A quick Google search connected me with the makers of the film: The Acton Institute, "an ecumenical think-tank dedicated to the study of free-market economics informed by religious faith and moral absolutes". This no doubt venerable institution was absolutely unethical in two ways: 1) by mixing history with their own fantasies of how they wish history had been (for which they can perhaps be pardoned since after all history can be quite subjective since it's usually written by the victors) and most of all 2) by not disclosing to viewers from what perspective they are speaking, from what bias they are presenting history and instead distributing a documentary as science.

I am quite sure that an Indigenous American would not consider the American Revolution to be blood free, nor would a black man shipped here as merchandise.

Our world has a very long history of incidents in which better informed people took advantage of less informed citizens, mostly in the commercial realm. Here in the US my mind immediately goes to the purchase of Manhattan for $27 worth of baubles, the bundling and selling of average Americans' mortgages and the sale of nonexistent swaths of Wild West land to uneducated immigrants who starved to death.

Of course we can always say, "It's just business."

For me, a marker of a civilized nation is one in which those of us who have had the privilege of eating to our fill and accessing healthcare, the privilege of attaining a higher education, the privilege of being able to communicate our ideas in clear ways have a duty to use our knowledge to serve humanity in ways that help her thrive and grow, not in unethical ways that serve only our selfish desires.

But abusive speech and its older brother hate speech will continue feeding violence in America until the day we step out of our naive belief that all speech is inherently good and really take responsibility for the abject damage it has caused in the lives of our fellow citizens.

Faster, faster, faster...

When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 many of the western European communist parties were forced to really rethink what it meant for them to be communist. In a very short time the French Communist Party lost more than half of its members. Naively I imagined their defection would mean real growth in the governing Socialist Party, the next one over from the left. Instead a majority joined the racist, populist National Front - at the furthest right end of the right-left spectrum! If this were a fancy dinner that would be like switching from your fish fork all the way over to the tiny espresso spoon.

This notion left me perplexed. What could possibly have motivated such a huge leap? Then it occurred to me: the one thing that connects both ends of the political rainbow is strong desire for change right now. Not in a year, not in a month. RIGHT NOW.

Recently on NPR, an American expert was commenting on China's unearthly capacity to expand the various infrastructural systems so quickly. He was talking with admiration about how rapidly they'd multiplied the miles of high speed train lines and quipped that we Americans can't possibly compete with or imagine such rapid growth. This echoed the comments of a young art dealer friend recently back from a trip to Shanghai: "The US is so screwed."

As a man who sold my services to French civil servants for many years, I was used to thinking of the US as one of those places on earth where things actually get done pretty quickly. It was strange for me to think of the US as a slow country - at least in this respect.

But the truth is it is easy to get things done quickly when leadership has no opposition and all other political parties are banned. Dictatorships and oligarchies will always be able to react more quickly than democracies because they simply have no or little need for discussion, no regard for people's rights, no time for a free press and little consideration for justice.

(Let's save for a later date the blog discussion about how ethical it was for us as a country to transfer the lion's share of our manufacturing base to just such a country while invading others in order to teach them democracy.)

One of the myths Americans like to tell themselves is that faster is always better. As a turbo-capitalist country we have grown accustomed to having many things quickly, without having to sit in that uncomfortable yearning zone of absence-of-gratification.

We don't like that.

We like to have democracy but we want the decision-making to go quickly. We wouldn't be without a judicial system but hate when it goes slowly and deprives us from acting on our urges for revenge. We love being protected from corporate malfeasance but can't stand that regulation slows down manufacturing and commerce. We enjoy having weekends and like our salaries to be higher than say China but have no patience for labor unions and their never-ending negotiations and picket lines.

It seems to me the closest we've ever come in my lifetime to that kind of oligarchy --in which commerce, manufacturing, military and legislators seem uncomfortably intimate-- was under George W. Bush and a Republican-dominated congress in which no legislation or policy seemed to meet the needs of the 50% of Americans who hadn't voted for them.

Interestingly, this need for "quick change now" corresponds nicely with the beliefs of what I call the Evangelizing Class: the 20 or so percent of Americans who believe that everyone should behave like them. They aren't really interested in the slow process of debate, negotiation, or discussion. They are not interested in listening, in meeting the other person right there where he or she is, and seeing how they can find some kind of common legislation.

No - the Evangelizers don't care who you are or what you think. What they know is that your way is wrong and theirs isn't. Their favorite mode of debate is the use of the Victim-Perpetrator game: insult and accuse, then say you are a victim when insulted back, rinse, repeat.

It's the opposite of discussion, antithetical to democratic debate and it's the perfect fodder for today's news media that's struggling to survive a slow economic death.

P.S. Another myth: We also like to think that we can have all of these perks --we call them freedoms-- without paying for them. How American of us to always be on the look out for a great deal - even on democracy!

The Courage to Trust International Collaboration

My personal take-away from the nearly-forgotten swine flu is that we Americans mostly have a really hard time dealing with anything that might be Bigger Than Us.

My first hunch was when Y2K hit and much to my surprise my otherwise rational neighbors began organizing to save water and stock food.

Then came 911 and Americans were running around dumbfounded that anyone would want to do this to us.

"Why do they hate us?" people wondered aloud somehow forgetting the fact that we've been manipulating smaller countries in unsavory ways for decades.

And of course the obvious bigger-than-us thing is the way we spend billions of dollars fleeing the grim reaper with facelifts, rejuvenation Ponzi schemes and fashions that are 30 years too young for us.

Perhaps I got used to living in a country which had been invaded by its nearest neighbor three times in under 75 years; a country where we all mechanically knew what to do when terrorist alerts were announced because we had been bombed before. There is after all something very humbling and challenging in recognizing that terrorists are on your very territory and could cause harm at any time.

Each time questions of porous borders, viruses, terrorism or invasive species come up we as a country have a VERY powerful fear reaction and start talking about fall-out shelters, military action, eradication schemes and quarantine islands.

I think the root cause is mostly historical - we are used to crossing the watery thresholds separating us from most of the world where we do things to others. We're not used to having things done to us on our own turf. We're impenetrable, that is, we do the penetrating thank you very much.

On a personal level the only way for me to overcome my own fears is to safely expose myself to whatever it is I'm frightened of - within reason of course.

I wondered what might be a safe, bigger-than-us thing America could expose itself to in order to get over her fear of anything bigger -- and the resulting paranoid illusion of needing to control everything.

It occurred to me we actually have a really good living example of how a country (actually several) decided to create something bigger than itself : the European Union.

I can already hear you chuckling: "Yea but they got their ass kicked in the war!" Of course. "They were dying empires living in a world dominated by the communist-capitalist spitting contest". Yes - I agree. "And it takes them forever to get anything done." Couldn't agree more.

But whatever their motivation, a group of sovereign countries really did willingly come together and create something they would all agree to pledge allegiance to. Unthinkable in North America. It hasn't been easy. And the outcome has been far from perfect but the process has been incredibly rewarding. (Imagine for just a moment trying to organize international elections to create a democratically elected body to oversee certain aspects of administering Canada, Mexico and the US).

Just recently the UK had to dump thousands of DNA records it had been calmly collecting on every person who'd ever been arrested in that country. The European Court of Human Rights, which they helped create, considered it unethical. Something similar happened for gay rights in otherwise homophobic Poland. Ireland wouldn't have had its economic boom if it hadn't been for the flow of European subsidies to help it build infrastructure (obviously the low corporate taxes helped a lot too).

We Americans have had our opportunity to act in similar ways. But here are just a few examples of how we have refused to submit ourselves to something bigger than us:
- when we don't like judicial decisions we discredit the judges by calling them "activists"
- we trash the Geneva Convention in a time of war
- we poo-poo the UN - created in San Francisco (and regularly default on paying the annual dues we've agreed to)
- we walk away from the global warming agreement
- we carefully offer some NAFTA privileges to Canada but not to Mexico
- we make treaties with sovereign nations then disregard them
- we support countries in organizing democratic elections then remotely organize a coup when we don't like the outcome.

Our Guantanamo Bay dilemma is just the most recent fumble: we believe in the rule of law yet don't organize proper trials on a proper sovereign soil for "outsiders".

The power of a system like the EU is that multiple partners actually help to keep one powermonger from serving him or herself an extra big piece of pie. Thus the bigger-than-us principles that become law mostly exclude corruption and hegemony and usually include such elements as parity, equality, social justice and heightened individual rights.

Of course this also means the participants willingly step into a system of which they are unsure of the outcome but instead learn to trust.

We're living in a world that is becoming more and more multi-polar with rising powerful economic players (Turkey, Brazil, China, India). At the same time we are realizing the cost of stretching our own monetary, scientific, military and humanitarian capacities beyond our capability.

I feel quite strongly that if we don't agree to step into those uncomfortable moments of relinquishing our illusion of control and agree to join Bigger Than Us systems, co-built on rigorous values, we will be left by the wayside by some and continue to be considered the Bastille that needs storming by others.

Erich Fromm said, "Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties."

Letting go of certainties is often a test of faith, surprisingly a notion this country was founded on and its people often tout.

End of An Era?

When I first moved back to the US I remember riding around my rather upscale town, seeing big open derelict spaces left behind by dead industries and nearby direly poor districts inhabited mostly by people of color.

I said to myself, "The Bastards!! Of all the nerve!!"

I was used to the untarnished image of America as seen from abroad. It was the country touted as "Number One" in the world, and California, the seventh largest economy on the planet, was its crown jewel.

But the truth is I never saw urban decay or poverty to that extent in France where I was based.

Little by little here in the US I saw the devil in the details: mind-wrenching traffic jams because the highway systems don't keep up with the growing population, regular deaths from train accidents because no one invests in overpasses, beautiful urban green spaces that never get tended to, homeless people pissing on themselves next to high-rolling financial planners.

Then I got my first job and couldn't get a doctor to accept me despite my shiny new healthcare policy. After that I went to grad school where I painfully forked over $25K for a masters (gulp) - and that’s cheap, I discovered!

A few years ago France elected their first ever money-loving president, a man who avowedly hangs out with mega-rich businessmen and believes in the power of entrepreneurship. Quelle scandale!

France was tired of watching people in the US and the UK make huge salaries, buy lots of brand-name creature comforts and benefit from much faster national growth. They were fed up with selling their beautiful family farms to foreigners with higher incomes.

They realized they needed a leader who could deregulate, speak up to the unions, make hiring and firing easier, and break through some of the unusual relationships French have to money, government perks, entrepreneurship and vacation.

I imagine I am not the only one noticing that our wonderful laissez-faire capitalist system that the world envied us has just seriously tanked.

And most experts agree we’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg.

Suddenly it's the cold shower after a long party and we're noticing that we haven't done a very good job at keeping our roads in good shape, our electrical grid up to speed, our schools and hospitals working and our prisoners locked up. Not to mention develop smart public transportation strategies and green energy. We're wondering why we don't have enough doctors per capita and we're starting to worry because we no longer have the top research schools in the world to attract the grey matter we once did.

I am by no means saying France is perfect - far from it. Having worked in government-run hospitals, to just mention those, I can cite dozens of ways to improve them.

However there is a fundamental difference that is noteworthy: France’s heavier taxes and regulation allowed it to have all of the above-mentioned things we need, plus everyone has the assurance that they’ll get healthcare and access to a higher education for a very low price (France actually has too many doctors and you can still get a house call for a reasonable price, imagine that!)

I have also spent plenty of time in poor countries: Morocco, Algeria, Palestine, Thailand, Eastern Europe.

I love dirt roads, mud houses and thatched roofs. I enjoy the sluggish speed of a crowd-filled bus or a rickety train. I enjoy having a huge service industry - because few people have a post secondary education. I fondly remember a three hour haircut/massage/shave in Thailand that cost me about 4 dollars and was a delicious part of my stay there.

In Morocco friends of mine returned to the shop of a wood worker who had built a door for their house. They wanted another one only this time they wanted it with the elaborate, hand-carved moucharabia design. When they asked the price of this second, much more labor-intensive door, the old woodworker looked at them perplexed. “Why would the price be different?” he replied, “It’s the same amount of wood.”


Labor laws are weak in these countries and people are regularly abused by employers. Weekends and vacations are not very clearly delineated. At the same time all of these countries also have a small minority of extremely wealthy individuals who navigate a parallel world that looks something like that of a 19th century colonial land-owner.

These are two different models on the continuum of how a country can be run and I’m not suggesting that we should become one or the other, though I do see aspects of both in this supposedly wealthy country of ours.

I think it is pretty obvious that we need to make some clear legislative decisions toward which way we want to go.

Do we want to keep defending our survival-of-the-fittest system where every man is free to create his or her own wealth and the infrastructures get kept up when the market demands it or do we want to pay the cost of enhancing quality of life for all levels of society at the risk of slower growth and less dynamism?

But before we really engage in that debate it seems to me there are two notions that many decision-makers don't want to embrace. In doing so they are hampering the efforts to decide on a solution.

1 - The trickle-down model just failed (or seriously floundered at least).

Highly sophisticated electronic tools, globalization, greatly increased distances between buyers and sellers, enamored blindness for profit-at-all-cost all skewed seriously skewed the game and turned it into something not very pretty. Giving huge sums of free money so that the same people can go back to business as usual isn't the answer.

2 - Running a modern democracy is expensive.

Even if we never espouse the idea practiced in all the other developed nations that we need to invest in the well-being of our citizens through cheaper health-care and low-cost education, its' imperative that we recognize that it costs a lot of money to keep up highways, dams, courts, antennas, buses, hospitals, law enforcement, prisons, food production, embassies, parks, coasts, government buildings, schools, museums, wars, military personnel and equipment.

How do we maintain these things if we are convinced that lowering taxes and smaller government are ALWAYS the answer?

To quote the pot-selling son of a retired Marine in the film American Beauty: “Never underestimate the power of denial.”

God and Incestual Behavior in America

Another holiday season has come and gone and I am still not sure I believe in God. To be more precise I am not sure whether God made us or we made God so I guess technically I believe in some form of godliness.

In an edition of the New York Times last week a lawmaker from Kentucky was describing all the ways he has illegally mixed church and state for decades claiming that without god: "America would be anchorless." A few pages away two economists gave a detailed description of how major players in the financial universe, both private and public, behaved unethically (and in some cases illegally) to slowly build up to our present-day financial and economic disaster.

When I was an adolescent proudly evangelizing in mid-western strip malls I truly believed that the only way to be a good person was to adhere to very narrow, specific tenets of one form of Christianity.

Young and naive, I understood little of the power of such human characteristics as loyalty, honesty, balanced actions, critical thought, empathy. Today, having traveled to many countries, seen more than my share of deaths, wealth and poverty, I would say my position has changed somewhat.

But I do wonder just where we learn to set aside ethical principles in order to, for instance, make absurd amounts of money (or if indeed we had them to begin with)? How does a man like Donald Rumsfeld, a self-avowed adherent to devout Christian principles, justify spending so much of his life backing initiatives that cause death and pain? How does a Madoff brazenly steal from Jewish philanthropic organizations? How does a Jewish state created after the atrocities of World War II fall into creating so much havoc in the lives of others?

One thing I have noticed about people who don't exhibit a strong personal ethic is a profound aptitude for what Erich Fromm called incestuous behavior. In the incestuous system these people cling to a group identity and lack any kind of critical thinking towards the actions of that group or that group's leadership, even behavior they would find abhorrent coming from another group's leader. These groups can be small such as a fraternity, a platoon or a football team or as large as having an address in the Hamptons, a member of the Southern Baptist Convention or resident of the state of California.

Studies show that the desire to be in relation to others actually trumps the desire to make good decisions. I believe this incestuous pull is the very mechanic that drove rich people to blindly sell unethical mortgages and poor people to somehow believe they could get something for nothing.

Fortunately I have seen that incredible acts of kindness or cruelty don't seem to have anything to do with whether one is a believer or a non-believer, educated or not. Clearly some people -both in and out of churches and schools- have chosen to live with a conscience and an attention to Life at certain moments of their existence. A rare few have chosen to devote their very lives to these endeavors.

Perhaps in the end God is nothing more than the call to be a good person and resist that incestuous pull. I feel fortunate enough to enjoy sufficient stability and serenity in my own life today to be able to notice it when I see it in front of me.

Dare I say, "Thank god!"?

The high price of principles

Nota bene: My blog entries have been disheveled by Thanksgiving and the flu - my apologies!

I was struck by the fact that the following three sentences from newspaper articles floated across my screen in the last few days.

"Even though corporate profits have doubled since recession gave way to economic expansion in November 2001, and even though employee productivity has risen more than 15 percent since then, the average wage for the typical American worker has inched up just 1 percent (after inflation)."

and

"But many analysts said they saw no signs yet that the economy was nearing a bottom. American consumers, who for decades have been the country’s tireless source of growth when all else failed, have cut back on their spending more sharply than at any time since the early 1980s."

and

"Over all, the report found, published college tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007, adjusted for inflation, while median family income rose 147 percent."

Now I am no economist but I do remember thinking back in 2005, "Be careful Mr Bush. You simply can't shift the wealth toward the top, preach no-end-in-sight fear and revenge and not expect crime rates to go up."

(Keep in mind this was back when we had pundits and government officials tossing justice to the wind and gleefully spouting off about how we need to "take out" this person or that one.)

My thought was that you can only push poor people so far before they break, especially if you don't give them health care or access to higher education.

But in fact I was wrong. From what I can tell crime rates haven't changed all that much - unless someone is hiding precious data from the public. But instead of widespread human collapse it's the major institutions, the core of our economic structure, that are falling all around us. And you know it's bad when the Republican leadership is considering a socialist move like taking ownership in the Big Three.

Contrary to what it may seem, I am not a communist. I do believe in the creative powers of capitalism. What I don't agree with is when we put profit over the basic ethics of democracy, justice and equality.

What are we to think about a country that allows nearly one quarter of its population go without health insurance? Or a public school, sitting on free government land, that only offers courses that the elite can afford? Or corporations that would rather pay an untrained 16 year old in China than an untrained 30 year old in Detroit or Alabama (or for that matter a country that swears up and down it won't do business with evil communist countries then in a decade hands the lion's share of its manufacturing to one)?

What are we to think about a justice system that works best and most effectively for people with a lot of money? What are we to think of a ballot initiative system that pays $10 for a signature or a legislator who prefers to follow policy handed to her by a corporate lobbyist rather than stand for her principles? Or even very simply what are we to think of a public service like TSA in our airports that offers people with more expensive plane tickets better service?

In the 19th century we fought our bloodiest battle because the southern states only wanted the right of freedom to be extended so far. They knew if it were extended to blacks, their successful agricultural economy would collapse. Suddenly the lofty ideas of equality borrowed from the French philosophers and embodied in the US constitution weren't such a hot idea. But have we really changed that much since then?

We were all stunned that the murderers of Mumbai were poor villagers who were brainwashed and bought for minor sums to go attack civilians, but everyday in America we put our principles aside in the name of profit.

Mormons who represent 2% of California's population used their majority power in Utah to collect $40 million and influence a vote to take away the rights of a minority two states away. In an age where politics get played out on the TV screen, we only get to hear from candidates who have the money to pay the high costs of advertising. And our democratic debates get washed down into very costly and highly insipid, thirty-second sound bites. Our department of defense was so eager to find warriors that they convinced the justice department to waive sentences of felons who agreed to go fight in a war. From my house I can see a bridge that was declared unsafe for earthquakes in 1989! Hundreds of thousands of people cross it weekly and we still haven't replaced it even though I live in one of the most prosperous areas of the country.

A few years ago federal legislation passed to limit the amount of money that a candidate could spend on an election. The next day the National Rifle Association announced they would sue the US government for violation of their first amendment rights. Not remembering any reference to guns in the first amendment I googled the bill of rights. How could the first amendment possibly affect their (ad nauseum) precious right to tote guns, I wondered. Of course the NRA were referring to their freedom of speech -- as in money = speech.

And there you have it in a nutshell.

A true democracy struggles everyday to uphold the notion that each voice is equal. But in a country where dollars speak loudest democracy slips away.

Is it possible we fought a war to become proud citizens of a new country rather than subjects of a frumpy king and instead became lowly consumers in a giant market?

Taking away rights of minorities

I'm organizing a petition drive and I need your help. I want to put a proposition before California voters to change the constitution once and for all. The new law is very simple : "All people in California will have equal access to all parking spots."

This may seem like a minor matter but let there be no mistake: the very fabric of our society is at risk. In the last 10 years, during this recent period of huge wealth growth, perhaps while we were all preoccupied with house flipping, activist judges agreed to allow the number of prime parking spaces and placards for people with disabilities grow at an astonishing pace.

I want to make things clear from the very start: This is not about handicapophobia! I have always been a friend of the blue placard; I have loved ones and family members who know people with disabilities. But this proliferation must stop!
It doesn't seem like an unreasonable demand. I'm sure it will handily get a majority vote.

And here's why:
1) We are headed for a serious recession, perhaps a depression. We know that in order to stimulate the economy it's important to eliminate as many barriers as possible between a consumer and a purchase.
How many of us will waste precious time driving in circles in a Safeway or Big Lots parking lot while handicapped people can just drive up to any blue spot (the ones closest to the door of course) and roll away in their wheel chair scot-free?
Imagine the devastating effect this is having on commerce, small and large. People are growing impatient, feel disrespected. Just this week Circuit City has announced it may go bankrupt and one need look no further than the 12 or so spots out in front of the stores that create a veritable wall of China between the store and the many able-bodied shoppers who could be in there stimulating if they had better access.
Did not George Bush himself say that shopping was the most patriotic thing we could do to save our country after September 11? Shopito ergo sum.
2) How many of us have tried to get to an important meeting, --a meeting that will stimulate the economy BTW-- and we've been delayed because a handicapped person who may or may not have a job, was taking the last prime metered spot? Here we are, pockets full of quarters ready to stimulate, and they're blocking the metered spots. And for no fee! How is that going to stimulate the economy?
3) More important than economics though: as handicapped people present themselves as more and more "normalized" our children are being taught in our schools that it's "okay to be handicapped". Zealous teachers have actually come out and proudly admitted to embracing these kinds of beliefs in first and second grade classes. It goes without saying that this is all part of the Handicapped Agenda.
And if we keep giving handicapped people special privileges, like more ramps and curbless street corners, and braille in the subway where will it stop? They'll just want more and more.
Soon they'll want to adopt children.
4) Focus on the Family leader Dr James Dobson, surely sees himself as a modern day prophet when he predicts to the millions who listen to him that gays getting married will lead to the collapse of our healthcare system and possibly social security. But prophet he is not! Because this is a preposterous notion. If his PhD were in public health he would know that allowing the Gays to marry is a good idea since it will actually save us all money. Studies show that ostracizing them causes them to have higher incidences of stress-related medical conditions. Imagine the savings!
On the other hand imagine what I predict truly WILL happen to the health industry: Right now an entire generation of children are being raised on the idea that it's normal to be handicapped and the idea that if they become handicapped themselves they will get choice parking spots in big box stores all over the nation. Imagine what will happen when they turn sixteen. Frightening thought, isn't it?
5) Finally, did our Lord not say that "He who is first will be last and he who is last will be first?" Could there be a clearer mandate? These people have been first long enough. By enacting this legislation to make ALL parking spots equal and putting an end to this ridiculous luxury acquired through wild-eyed judges and legislators we will in effect be enacting the law of God right here on earth.
And is that not our very birthright as God's children?

Join us next week when we hear from our friend Dr. Thomas Johnson author of "Separate Water Fountains: Why We should Subsidize Bottled Water for Recent Immigrants"