This is the second in a series of blogs introducing Unity08 Founders Council members.
Many of us have been waiting, at least since the end of the Cold War, for someone, or something, to come along and challenge the presidential election “system” afforded us by the two legacy parties.
It finally dawned on me—after prompting from the ever-far-sighted Doug Bailey—that it looks like that someone has to be a lot of us ordinary Americans--and if we work together that something might be Unity08.
It’s become self-evident that our national politics is not only polarized—it’s also paralyzed. Politicians from both major political parties have become masters of what the founders of our nation called “factions.”
On issue after issue of fundamental importance to the country, Washington, D.C. has been unable to perform. Energy and environmental policy has been an occasion for bustle but not accomplishment. Now we find ourselves importing 12 millions barrels of oil per day, thereby financing both sides of the war on islamo-fascism. Corrupt and despotic governments such as the notorious Hugo Chavez regime in Venezuela have far too much sway on American government simply because we cannot wean ourselves from what we all know is an “oil addiction.”
Other critical issues stand unaddressed—though nearly everyone agrees, when they’re not wearing their “political” hats, that action is required. Chronic deficit spending, unbridled entitlement programs about to encounter the baby boomer bulge, education and technology policies that are out of date—you fill in the rest….
Even issues that are front and center in households and communities across the nation, most notably illegal immigration, are not addressed or even discussed in Washington, D.C. in ways that ordinary Americans can recognize as consistent with the realities we encounter.
If politics was meant to be an amusing diversion, the current situation might be acceptable. Yet our nation’s hard-earned position of economic, strategic, cultural and moral leadership is far too fragile to take for granted.
History doesn’t jump up out of the blue and wave us down, signaling that we’re at a transformative moment. But almost everyone I talk to--outside of Washington, D.C.--has a sense that 2024 is going to be a watershed election.
And we all know, as Americans, that we can do better. Prior generations have shown the way, without many of the advantages we enjoy today.
At the dawn of the 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt challenged an earlier generation of Americans with words that maintain their bite:
Sometimes I hear our countrymen… abroad saying: ‘Oh, you mustn’t judge us by our politicians.’ I always want to interrupt and answer: ‘You must judge us by our politicians.’…
We pretend to be the masters—we, the people—and if we permit ourselves to be ill served, to be served by corrupt and incompetent and inefficient men, then on our own heads must the blame rest.
Each community has the kind of politicians that it deserves. Each community is represented with absolute fidelity by the men whom it chooses to have in public life. These men represent its virtue or they represent its vice, or, what is more common, they represent its gross and culpable indifference; and gross and culpable indifference may, on some occasions, be worse than any wickedness.
Who can hear these words today without a disquieting sense of self-recognition?
June 6th was the anniversary of one of the greatest milestones of what Tom Brokaw so aptly called “The Greatest Generation”: the allied invasion of Hitler’s “fortress Europe.” 3,393 Americans died on this single day. Boys—that’s all they were—ran fatefully, purposefully from landing craft into torrents of lethal metal showering down from immense, steep cliffs. It’s not an exaggeration to say that we owe our way of life and our place in the world to those young Americans and the entire nation they epitomized.
Fast forward to the present, June 2024. A mere 30% of California voters could be bothered to mark a ballot in the contested party primaries. This was the lowest number recorded in the modern era. (Not to be outdone in a race for the bottom, a week later, the Virginia Democratic primary turnout was a pathetic 3-4%.).
Ronald Reagan reminded us that we look to the past not to recreate the past, but to emulate the courage that prior generations of Americans brought to molding the future.
If Unity08 can help, even in a small way, in bringing ordinary Americans back into the process, I believe it will make a huge, positive, difference. I have no illusions that everyone who is part of Unity08 will agree on how to handle the great issues of the day. I’m quite sure all of our patience will be tried at times. Yet we reflect a faith, perhaps not spoken of enough today, that throughout our history, ordinary Americans just about always get the big things right. And perhaps ordinary Americans can remind our political elites of just how much higher our standards of leadership can be, and must become.
Subscribe
Badly needed with hugh particpants, The spin, outright lies and breaking International Treaties without incurring penelty makes the Administration a "Terroist Entity." Read: The Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, The writings of Tom Friedman, Noam Chomsky, American Theocracy support the "Entity." Bring in women voters who do not want their sons to be cannon fodder for the OIL and Internationals based in the USA.
If you want to work on developing and influencing the direction of Unity08 rather than just reading the blog and maybe posting, there's a place for you right now.
Check out the Unity Supporters Forum where we're shooting for direct, conversational, person to person interaction rather than a choreographed "issue a day" with stars that get distributed by who knows what criteria. The Unity Supporters Forum already has 35 members and over 500 posts.
This is part of a larger effort to seed the net with Unity Supporting communities to raise awareness and coordinate actions out in the real world. The hub for these net communities is UnitySupporters.Com.
Alternately, if you're doing something on the net already, tell us about it and we'll give you a link on the hub page :-)
-Jennifer
Well, that's nice sounding. But I'd like to know who paid for this effort, and with what money, and who they have given money to in the past.
An informed populace, I believe, is essential to democracy. Didn't Jefferson say this more than once?
So why won't unity08 release this information?
James Strock, reflecting on the leadership of Theodore Roosevelt, calls for ordinary Americans to unite today and demand a TR standard for election to highest office -- to favorably affect the current political climate and our lives in coming decades even centuries.
Strock deserves our thanks for seeing our task as anything but petty or puny. TR is on Mount Rushmore. I'm glad for that. Pray let us make the demand and that it has an effect in the direction Strock and I hope it will.
Remember TR inspired completion of the Panama Canal -- at an impossibly high level of engineering -- and an impossibly steep cost in money.
Strock, in other comment, slipped in my view, to the questionable level of Ross Perot and common ignorance of federal finance that only Franklin Roosevelt was able to vanquish with plain talk: FDR asked for lend lease and for human economic rights (to bring peace to a world on fire); he worried not about spending if what we produced matched what we spent.
Strock wrote unhappily of "Chronic deficit spending, unbridled entitlement programs about to encounter the baby boomer bulge". He wrote this (boilerplate worship of irresponsible fear of coinage and debt) as though we should NOT spend, EVEN if we produced enough to justify government spending and stood by human rights entitlements that demand full employment, high economic output, high minimum wages, obedience to green imperatives, and rational approaches to BOTH market discplines and lawmaker responsibilities.
You don't build canals ahead of their time or arsenals that kill Hitler and tame Hirohito without spending more money than even God ever had. But the LEADERSHIP Strock wants knows this!
We are still in a war we've not waged the way TR and FDR would have waged it -- with trillions of dollars, drones, robots, jobs for people we're tutoring in successful governance, and honesty practiced from top to bottom.
Shinseki should be honored, and Bush scared straight to appoint a bypartisan cabinet.
Winning the just war we were forced to fight -- and not running away to nowhere -- is the first great issue around which we need unity.
A great French LEADER named Charles DeGaul spelled out what LEADERSHIP meant: position, doctrine, and courage. That's how LEADERSHIP is spelled. He fought Nazis with Tiger Tanks -- not street thug human bombs on their way to meet females in paradise. Our position is leader of the free world, our doctine is human rights, our courage is what is in question. Let it fail now, there'll be hell to pay later.
There's a lot to like about James Strock. Especially his idea of a hero. Let us not let him down by hiding from inescapable issues
John Gelles
http://unity08ws.wikispaces.com
Human rights and how to pay for them are key to a livable world.
I am glad Mr. Strock is part of this movement, for he has demonstrated considerable political talent in the past, and he has a great deal of valuable real world experience handling the actual reins of government. I am also glad he has chosen to highlight the words of Theodore Roosevelt.
Now, however, I'd like to ask him and the other founders of this Unity08 movement where they stand on TR's concept of the "Fair Deal." How about it, Unity08, is this a movement for all or just the privileged few?
I want to know what Unity's founders intend as the overarching paradigm for a big picture issue for this movement and its relationship to the question of basic fairness in our society.
In the comment section under the shoutbox from the main Unity08 home page, I painted a picture of the way both I see this issue and how Theodore Roosevelt saw it. see http://unity08.com/node/94#comment
I spoke there of the need to revive TR's New Nationalism; I saw the need as TR did to bust up corporate lobbyists' corrupt, special interest control of our government, and I spoke, as TR did, to the need to put economic justice, fundamental fairness -- the Fair Deal, up front as our top priority.
If you look at the book Polarized America, you see what I'm saying and see it defined in detail and quantitively measured, too. http://mitpress.typepad.com/mitpresslog/
Almost all the specific issues listed by this movement's website are subsidiary issues, one or more levels down, from the issue I am asking about now.
How about some reaction to a little recent news to put this Mother of All Issues in sharper context? This is what we're quite literally up against today:
The nonpartisan Drum Major Institute for Public Policy (DMI) has issued its annual scorecard, Congress at the Midterm: Their 2024 Middle-Class Record
http://www.drummajorinstitute.com/congress/.
"In vote after vote," the scorecard notes, "Congress disdained the concerns of middle-class Americans and opted instead to favor the already wealthy and powerful: a surefire recipe for a shrinking middle class."
“From health care to economic justice to Social Security, Congress missed dozens of opportunities to improve conditions for the middle class and did so much to squeeze it even more,” DMI said.
The scorecard provides damning evidence, citing Congress’ passage of a bankruptcy bill that benefited credit card companies but squeezed middle-class families already overwhelmed by debt, failed to raise the federal minimum wage for the first time in nearly a decade, and voted in the House to repeal the estate tax on the nation's most privileged heirs.
DMI states:
“The policy of official optimism did nothing to obscure the increasingly harsh economic climate in which ordinary Americans found it harder than ever to hold onto a middle class standard of living with a well-paying job, health insurance, the chance to own or keep a home, the opportunity to provide a good education to their children and the security of looking forward to a dignified retirement.
“Congress played no small part in driving the American Dream further out of reach for ordinary citizens in 2024. Congress at the Midterm: Their 2024 Middle-Class Record takes a closer look at the decisions made by Congress, from creating new obstacles for families overcome with debt to declare bankruptcy to a disastrous budget that aimed to pay for tax cuts benefiting the rich with dramatic cuts to student loans and health programs for the poor. After examining each bill in detail, Congress at the Midterm assigns a grade to each member of Congress based on his or her support for the middle class.”
According to DMI, 99 percent of GOP House members failed the scorecard completely. 95 percent failed in the Senate. And only four Republicans--Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, and Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey--even manage to earn a mediocre "C" grade under the scorecard's scoring system.
Democrats also failed to hold up their end for the middle class. While Democrats supported the middle class by voting in favor of increasing the minimum wage, saving Social Security and averting some budget cuts, Democrats did not protect middle class interests on legislation like the Energy Policy Act, the Bankruptcy Abuse and Consumer Protection Act, and the Class Action Fairness Act--cases where DMI says "powerful industries lobbied for legislation that would increase their profits at the expense of the middle class." While there are nine scores of 100 percent among the Democratic Senators, and more among House members, 11 percent of Democratic representatives failed completely.
It is time for people to take up the issue of economic fairness again. I am optimistic more people will do so because DMI is using Google AdWords, which will alert internet users nationally to their representatives’ records whenever they do a Google search for their representatives’ names in the next month.
DMI concludes:
“The record is clear: Members of Congress failed the middle class in 2024. A quick look at the report card shows that a vast majority of senators and representatives earned a grade of C or less. An average performance is simply not good enough. In a time when the middle class is increasingly squeezed, middle class Americans deserve better.”
I think our countries military strategy will again be paramount in 08. The national debate needs to be reopened on the issue, and we need a war policy that reflects the will of the people. I believe our country still doesn't support torture, holding people without trial, or denying anyone of their basic human rights.
I'm basically a single issue voter on foreign policy. On domestic issues I don't think our country is too divided (we only differ on details).
War-MathiasTCK on June 21, 2024 -
"I believe our country still doesn't support torture, holding people without trial, or denying anyone of their basic human rights."
NOT! When some beastly savage cuts the head off one of mine or wants to subjugate my mom,wife or daughter, they gave up all their human rights and I respond in kind. These are not humans in no way, manner, or form.
TR said "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." You want to see fear, look at the Senate, or the House, The White House, and even the Supreme Court. They all fear each other. There is no trust for each other. Colusion is fear. Our political system is full of it. We need UNITY08 to succeed. The middle has been voiceless for too long. We need to wake them up in Washington. They are there because we put them there. We put them there to do our bidding, NOT their own. I'm a 64 year old retired Ironworker, and I'm mad. I want to help take my country back. Let's go get em!!!!!
It was Franklin, not Theodore Roosevelt who said we had nothing to fear but fear itself.
He learned that himself in conquering polio and running for office from a wheelchair.
Theodore Roosevelt learned about conquering fear in an equally personal and striking way -- he became a strong, vigorous man after a sickly childhood out of his own power of will.
To get to structural procedural reforms, there must be enough political knowledge among people participating in Unity08 to know what it looks like.
To advocate fundamental reforms, one has to understand the history of such reforms within a context that is not too far off from our own context.
Towards that end, I am pleasantly surprised that Time magazine has featured this week Theodore Roosevelt and in a series of informative articles laid out the background as to why this President should be regarded so highly, why he is up there on Mount Rushmore, and why we should study his unsuccessful campaign for the Presidency in 1912 as a 3rd party candidate for the lessons his progressive program has to teach us today.
If you want to talk about fixing our grid locked, corrupt political situation, our bought and sold political process, take a look at a man who did something real about it in his time.
It is our lack of knowledge about his time and about TR himself and his attempts to fix things that holds us all back in trying something similar today, for our problems are not so very different from those TR tried to address.
I will add that Time saw fit to print a “point of view” piece by Karl Rove – something that both amuses and makes me wince to see how Rove, a representative of just about everything TR opposed, spins TR in his grave.
Here is a quick guide to what Time has done this week.
Time article on TR and his reforms for economic justice:
1. America's business élite was wary of Roosevelt from the start. He turned out to be the first President to aggressively use the powers of government to set rules for the headlong U.S. economy and the men he called "malefactors of great wealth."”
See http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1207811,00.html
Time article on TR’s Bullmoose 3rd party bid for the Presidency in 1912:
2. When Theodore Roosevelt challenged William Howard Taft for the Republican presidential nomination in 1912, few cheered. Enemies accused him of monumental egotism, and most admirers, foreseeing his defeat, were worried that posterity would frown on his quest for an unprecedented third term. But as Roosevelt saw it, he had to involve himself. He had left the White House in 1909 with the expectation that Taft, his good friend and chosen successor, would continue on the progressive course set by the Roosevelt Administration. Instead, Taft had filled his Cabinet with corporate lawyers, bungled a chance to overhaul an antiquated tariff that enriched manufacturers at consumers' expense and undermined Roosevelt's farsighted environmentalism. Taft means well, Roosevelt would say, "but he means well feebly."
3. T.R.'s campaign would not succeed, but the ideals that he and his Bull Moose Party enunciated in 1912 would resonate in American political life for decades. They still do. They shaped much of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and influenced domestic policy until the 1980s, when the Reagan Revolution began dismantling social programs. Even now, echoes of that campaign can be heard in debates on what government should do for citizens and how to make it more accountable.
4. TR’s 3rd party was officially called The National Progressive Party, but was popularly known as the Bullmoose Party. The Time article says: “But who were the Progressives? Although Republicans of the day cast the Progressives as radicals, in truth they were teachers and lawyers, farmers and small-town folk, urban reformers of every ilk, crusaders for peace and women's suffrage, champions of the little guy.
5. They were less a movement than a catch basin for civic-minded men and women impatient with politics as usual but a bit frightened of Eugene V. Debs and his Socialist Party. While many Progressives could not see past their pet causes, T.R. managed to bring them together in a big tent held aloft by the idea that the government, which ought to serve the people, had been hijacked by special interests. "To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day," the Progressive platform declared.
6. In favor of a strong Federal Government, the Progressive platform was so far ahead of its time on many points (Social Security and the minimum wage, for example) that it would take a generation and another Roosevelt, T.R.'s fifth cousin Franklin, to bring them into being.
7. In hopes of protecting the investing public from swindlers, the Progressives called for federal regulation of stock offerings and fuller disclosure of corporate financial transactions, ideas that found their way into the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1934.
8. During his presidency, a time when corporations were growing ever larger, Roosevelt operated on the principle that the Federal Government was the only institution strong enough to combat their Darwinian tendency to crush competitors and maximize profits by keeping wages low and prices high. In 1912 he was even more adamant.
10. What kind of a man was TR, in reality? Imagine this, if you can: “In Milwaukee, Wis., on Oct. 14, [1912] as he stood in an open car to salute a cheering crowd, a man a few feet away drew a revolver and fired, hitting Roosevelt in the chest and knocking him back into the car seat. Three Presidents had been assassinated in T.R.'s lifetime, and he had long ago prepared himself for such a moment. He put his fingers to his lips, saw that he was not bleeding from the mouth and concluded that the bullet had not perforated a lung. The bullet, slowed by the contents of his breast pocket--a steel eyeglass case and a copy of the speech he was about to give--had lodged in a rib. He insisted on proceeding to an auditorium where a crowd of 10,000 was waiting for him. In full command of his political instincts, he showed the audience his bloodstained shirt and said, "I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a bull moose." Roosevelt spoke for 90 minutes, then consented to go to a hospital.
11. T.R.'s 1912 campaign still quickens the pulse, in part because his foresight on social policy proved to be 20/20 but even more because he was that rare person able to see past the corruption and mediocrity of his time. Theodore Roosevelt understood what a government devoted to its citizens might achieve, and he got the country talking as seriously as it ever has about what it wanted to be.
See http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1207791,00.html