Creating a Safer World for Our Children

There are many who think that the way to create a safer world for our children is to make sure that we have the strongest military force in the world, a strong police presence in our cities, and the right to carry a weapon in any setting.  In short, to make sure that we have the power to protect ourselves, whether offensively or defensively.

This point of view accepts as immutable fact that we live in a dangerous world.  There is nothing that can be done about it.  It is human nature. 

I would argue, however, that a world of danger is not an immutable fact; it is not an inherent aspect of human nature.  There is instead a different reason why the world is and has been filled with danger.  The sane way forward is not to arm ourselves to the teeth but to ask why there is so much danger lurking out there and what each of us as individuals, groups, and nations can do to make this truly a safer world for our children.

Man’s “inhumanity to man,” whether as physical violence or other forms of cruelty, is without question rife in our world at every level of human interaction … not just between nations or opposing groups, but within the family and in the workplace.  

Terrorist beheadings are a current example of what usually comes to mind when people think of man’s inhumanity.  The holocaust, Rwanda, various acts during wartime, slavery, and lynching are examples from the past often cited.  

But “inhumanity” goes beyond such horrific acts.  Actually more harmful, because more prevalent, are the insidious low level inhumanities that occur on a daily basis in every human setting.  

Lest the reader think I’m overstating the problem, note that inhumanity is generally defined as cruelty towards another.  And cruelty in turn is defined as: “behavior that causes physical or mental harm, pain, or suffering.”  Even an unkind remark can be cruel, regardless whether the intention was to inflict pain, although typically that is the case despite protests to the contrary.

Some may condone the idea of a just war between nations and the ensuing cruelties that inevitably result, but cruelty between members of a family, between individuals, or between members of different groups within a civilized nation should not be acceptable.  Why?  Besides the fact that it’s inhumane, such cruelty creates a world full of people with damaged psyches and, with regards to groups, also shreds the fabric of society.  This is unhealthy both for the society and the individual.

Why is cruelty so pervasive?  In two earlier posts, “The Root of All Abuse and Violence - Insecurity,”  and “Insecurity as the Cause of Social Conflict and International War,” I posited that the source of inhumanity lay with the insecurity that virtually all people suffer from, not as a fact of human nature but as a result of learned experience.  Working in concert with this insecurity is the perspective we are taught from an early age that the world is made up of us and them.  Whether the “us” is family, nationality, race, or whatever, we all are taught that this is a basic fact of life (see my post, “The Destructive Impact of Our Us v Them Perspective.”).

Clearly, there is ample evidence on the ground for people to develop an us v them perspective.  And there is ample reason to be insecure.  Indeed, these are both self-perpetuating states.  But if we continue to live according to these perspectives, we are condemned to living in a world of constant conflict and psychological suffering.

But how to stop this when almost everyone in the world is in the grip of these negative forces?  With regard to insecurity, in my book, Raising a Happy Child, I discuss how to stop the vicious cycle of insecure parents raising insecure children, who go on to become insecure parents …  It has to start in the home.  If parents are made aware of the issues and how these forces negatively impact both themselves and their children, I believe that many will choose to adopt the lessons set forth in the book in order to provide themselves and their children a better, happier life.

The same is true regarding the ubiquitous nature of the us v them perspective.  It is learned, just as insecurity is learned.  As the Rodgers and Hammerstein song from South Pacific goes, “You’ve got to be taught, before it’s too late, before you are six or seven or eight, to hate all the people your relatives hate, you’ve got to be carefully taught.”

It is up to us to stop teaching our children to view the world in this way.  In Raising a Happy Child, I posited that parents needed to step outside their insecure selves so that they could provide their children with the nurturing they needed in order to grow up feeling secure, regardless what they experienced in the larger world.  In the same way, parents need to step outside their own us v them perspective so that they can provide their children with a healthier perspective.

Because the us v them perspective has been fostered by virtually all authority forces in society, including and even especially the force of most organized religions, changing this paradigm of human behavior will be perhaps even more of a challenge than raising happy, secure children.  But we must try.  

And don’t say, “I’ll do it if they do it first.”  Because then we are doomed.  Each of you as parents and leaders must do what is right, regardless.  You must have the courage to take the first step.  It will bring you, your children, and your country no harm if you move forward, with eyes wide open.

Luckily, there is a different perspective at hand that would bring about a very different outcome from the conflict that we experience as endemic … that we are all one.  This is not some religious pablum or new age recreational-drug-induced nonsense.   This perspective is based on hard scientific fact.  Yes, it happens to be a major tenet of Buddhism, but I would note that Buddhist thought also foresaw the principles of quantum physics.

Let us begin with humans.  The most widely accepted theory of human evolution is that we all have a common ancestor in a single human in Africa roughly 60,000 - 200,000 years ago.  About 50,000 years ago, man began his migration out of Africa to the various parts of the planet, either replacing or interbreeding with other related species.  And the reset, as they say, is history.

We are thus in fact all one.   We may look different, speak different languages, have different customs, but we are all one in that we all descended from a common ancestor.

Another way of seeing the inherent oneness of us all is the immigration experience.  Not just individuals but waves of people from different cultures and races have moved to a new place, such as the United States.  Their children typically grow up to speak the language of their new home and adopt the culture of their new home.  They still look “different,” but are Americanized and become part of the fabric of our nation.  

If people were inherently different, this would not be possible.  If sometimes they don’t follow this pattern, it’s not because they are incapable of assimilating, it’s because they choose not to; they don’t want to become one. 

A famous quote from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice also makes the point of our oneness, “If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”  In all respects we are all one.

“Ah, but this is all irrelevant,” the reader may say.  “If someone is seeking to kill me or steal my possessions, it makes no difference if that person and I are biologically one.”   

True.  But the point is that if both you and that person were taught early on that you were both one and that there was nothing to fear from the other, and you treated each other with respect as equals, this person would most likely not be trying to kill you or steal your possessions.  We must start somewhere to change the historical dynamic.

Let me give a practical example, close to home, of the damage caused by the prevalent us v them perspective and the potential impact if we were taught that we are all one.  150 years after the Civil War, we are still a country deeply divided by race.  Despite all the laws on the books that guarantee equality, and despite the enormous progress made by many African-Americans especially over the last 50 years, there can be no question that we still live in a very unequal and divided society.  Whether one looks at education, housing, jobs, or income, the average black American is far below the average white American.  As a result, our country as a whole has suffered in many ways.

Why has this status continued?  While some responsibility must be taken by black Americans themselves, the overpowering factor is that white America does not view black Americans as one with them.  They may be American citizens, they may fight our wars, they may go to school with us, but they are felt to be different; they are not one with us; they are not equal.  And so the inhumanity of the treatment of black Americans at the hands of white America … collectively … continues.  

If, however, white and black Americans were taught that we are all one, backed up by real changes on the ground … and this is not accomplished simply by integration … this inequality would end within a generation.   Black Americans would then indeed have equal opportunity in education, housing, and  jobs and income equality would improve because both institutional and individual discrimination would end.

In looking at history and current events, as well as our personal experience, one sees that whenever a people/nation, a group, a person, or a member of a family feels that they are not shown respect or treated as an equal, they will in whatever manner they can usually rise up against those who they feel are treating them in this manner.  

Whether looking at the troubles in the Mideast, or the plethora of ethnic, racial, and sectarian conflicts around the world, both past and present, while they are typically viewed as being power struggles … which in one sense they obviously are … they are really about one side, or both, feeling that they have not been treated with respect or as equals.  Those are the real issues; if they had been treated with respect and as equals, there would be no power issues.  Power issues arise from inequality, whether on the part of the victim or those who seek to maintain the status quo.  

When one thinks of the conflict so often found within families, whether between spouses, between parents and children, or between siblings, the feeling of not being treated with respect or as an equal is again the core grievance.  One may talk about sibling rivalry or adolescent rebellion or whatever, but it all comes down to this rather straight-forward analysis.

So we have ample proof of what happens when we do not follow the lesson that we are all one, and instead see the world as us v them.  The benefits I claim for the opposite approach are I must admit only conjectural as the world has not seen a “we are all one” philosophy in place at any time.  But I have no doubt.  

But even if one agrees with my position, one cannot ignore the question of how one gets from where we are to where we want to be.  I noted above that the change needs to start in the home and spread outwards.  I don’t think such change could come top down from the political establishment because any political leader advocating such a policy now would never get elected, or if in office would find himself suddenly without support; the powers that be would be too threatened.  However, it is conceivable that an organization of the major religions united to end the us v them mentality could be formed … an outgrowth, for example, of the Global Freedom Network … which would make a real difference.

Such a change, except within the intimate setting of the family, would involve a transition period that would undoubtedly be tricky and full of obstacles, but if the intention was clear and honest and there was open communication, the world could be a very different place within a generation or less.  A reader might ask, “Doesn’t the failure of the United Nations prove that this type of approach doesn’t work?”  I would respond that the UN has failed, other than getting nations to talk, precisely because its creation did not challenge the underlying assumption of us v them.  There is almost nothing “united” about the United Nations. 

But Planet Earth is not solely the province of man.  Whether one believes in God or the natural force of evolution, Earth is home to a host of animals, plants, and inanimate objects to which the concept that we are all one also applies.  As does the importance of adopting that perspective regarding them in order to create a safer world for our children, for how we treat these other participants of the earth’s ecosystem has profound implications for the future.

Animals are sentient beings, just as man is.  Indeed, it is accepted scientific fact that humans evolved from the animal world, specifically apes.  Animals may not have the brain capacity of man, but they have the same senses as man has.  One could indeed apply the passage quoted above from Shakespeare to animals.  

But what has man done?  Man considers animals as lesser beings, put there by God for humans to eat, and so millions of animals are killed, and not just killed but severely abused in the raising process, to satisfy man’s desires.  Further untold numbers of animals are abused in ways that have nothing to do with the food chain.

"But how," the reader may well ask, "does this make the world less safe for our children?"  The most immediate and practical answer is that the raising of millions upon millions of animals for slaughter requires the diversion of huge amounts of vegetable nutrients to this process.  Since raising animals is a very inefficient use of these nutrients … the amount consumed v the amount produced … the world would have a greater food supply if all vegetable nutrients were available to man.  

As the earth’s population increases, this becomes an ever more pressing issue.  And ending this practice would not harm man in any way as studies show consistently that vegetarians are healthier than meat eaters.

As for plants, they may not be sentient beings, but they are highly-evolved living organisms.  In fact, they are in many ways more highly evolved than man.  Through the process of photosynthesis, they take the elements of sunlight and water and create the nutrients that man and animals need to survive.  And plants are at one with humans because we are all formed from the same basic atomic/molecular structure of matter.

“Are you going to argue now that inanimate objects … rocks, water, oil, air … are also one with man?” a reader may skeptically ask.  That answer is of course, yes.  Again, they are composed of the same basic atomic/molecular structure as man and are part of the evolutionary process that ultimately produced man.  The molecule, composed of atoms, is the common building block from which every thing on this Earth is composed.

As with animals, man has treated plants and inanimate objects as being put there by God for man’s use and benefit.  That is in part true, as everything has an important role to play in the ecosystem.  But how to make such use is the question.  While native cultures, such as Native Americans, killed animals and ate meat, they had a very different relationship to animals, plants, and inanimate objects than modern man.  To them, all were part of a spiritual world and that brought an attitude of respect towards all parts of the eco-system.  Things were used only as needed; nothing was abused.

The results of man’s abuse of the natural world, both plant and mineral, are becoming more abundantly clear with each passing decade.  We have polluted the very source of life … the air and water … and have put in motion a change in the atmosphere which is bringing about a change in climate that has the potential to devastate our way of life and the safe future of our children.

If there is a God, this would certainly be a time for him or her to make itself known to mankind in an unmistakable way and to warn us with all of its power that we must change our ways or be doomed.  Short of that, it depends on us mere mortals to right the wrongs of our abuse of each other and everything else on this Earth and start living by the maxim that we are all one.  We owe it to our children.

The Common Good Always Trumps Individual Rights

The current crop of Republicans, a radical, rabidly conservative group, take as their jumping off point a very unnuanced view of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.  To them, rights, if not specifically qualified in those documents, are absolute.  So whether it’s the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the Declaration, or whether it’s the right of free speech or the right to bear arms in the Constitution, no limitation on those rights is warranted (unless of course it limits the rights of opponents and so suits their purposes.)

And one must say, the words certainly sound absolute.  But let us consider their context.  First, the Declaration of Independence - the mother, if you will, of all our founding documents.  What does the Declaration say about rights?

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The context of this recitation of rights is that all men are created equal and that all have the unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Now, unless you believe that the Founding Fathers meant to set up a state of anarchy … with everyone exercising their liberty, doing whatever they wanted, without restraint … one can’t believe that they meant that no bounds could be placed on the exercise of these rights.  

Why?  Because when you have a community of people it is inevitable that at some point the free exercise of one person’s liberty and pursuit of happiness bumps up against another’s … either harming another or impinging that person’s exercise of his liberty.  Since the Declaration states that all men are created equal and all have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the system can only work if one says that each person has this liberty so long as it does not harm others or impinge on the rights of others.

This last proposition is in fact the basis for all government laws and regulation of any type.  Whether it’s criminal laws, traffic laws. zoning ordinances, building codes, the Clean Air Act, banking regulations, etc. … all of these derive their legal basis from the basic proposition that neither an individual nor a corporation can act as it will, if such action harms another or the public welfare.

Then there are the sacrosanct rights enumerated in the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights.  But even the most jealously protected right of them all … the right of free speech … is not absolute.   Not only can one not yell “fire” in a crowded theater, but the laws of libel and slander prohibit both written and spoken words that are defamatory, malicious, and false.  There are false advertising laws, which prevent corporations from misleading the public.  The list goes on and on.

As for the right to bear arms, even assuming for the moment that the Constitution indeed grants that right to an individual (until recently the courts had not so held), it would be ludicrous to argue that the government can place no limitations on a right which has not just the potential, but as we see almost daily causes others grievous injury and death. Yet to the NRA and its supporters, and the majority in Congress which is either beholden to the NRA or scared of its power, virtually any regulation whatsoever, no matter how reasonable and called for, is anathema.

As recently as a generation ago, conservative Republicans understood that while they had their ideologically preferred way of addressing issues, they shared common ground for the most part with Democrats in understanding what the great public issues were.  They understood that we lived in a country where citizens had both rights and responsibilities. Where we all played our part, each according to his abilities, in supporting the government in its role of securing the rights of all to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

As it says again in the Declaration of Independence:

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . .”

That is the purpose of government.  The mantra started by Ronald Reagan and taken up by the Tea Party Republicans that, “government is not the solution; government is the problem,” is at odds with not just our founding documents but our history.  

Indeed, it is at odds with the history of the Republican Party.  It was often Republicans that pushed for government action.  Whether it was the Republican President Lincoln pushing to end slavery or the Republican President Theodore Roosevelt breaking up the huge trusts of the day, such as Standard Oil, Republicans have a long and proud history of arguing for government action to protect those less powerful., to insure that all have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

When it comes to the rights we have, no one should shrink from vigorously protecting his or her own rights.  However, everyone must understand that with the exercise of rights comes a responsibility not to harm others or impinge on the exercise of their rights. When it does so, then the common good demands that such exercise of an individual right be regulated so as not to harm others.  The common good always trumps the exercise of an individual right.*

*A note of clarification.  In light of recent events around the world, and the comments of several readers, I need to clarify that if the exercise of one's right, such as free speech, offends another or the majority, those others are not harmed nor are their rights in any way impinged.  And so there is no justification for restraint in that situation.  When I speak of the common good, something far more concrete is meant ... like breathing clean air, drinking clean water, not having to fear violence, not being cheated.

New Name - Same Mission

I suddenly have become aware, duh!, that the name I originally created for this blog, Preserving American Greatness, is not really appropriate to its mission statement.  That’s pretty bad for a writer.  But better that realization later than never. 

One problem with the original name is its connotation.  It sounds like the blog is a proponent of American exceptionalism, which it certainly is not, or that it promotes a right wing “America right or wrong” perspective, which also clearly does not apply.  Beyond being misleading, this connotation would naturally be offensive to many people around the world for whom we have long ceased being regarded as “the beacon on the hill.”

The other problem is that although the seeds of greatness are in the American story, our country has unfortunately not fulfilled the promise shown in the Declaration of Independence.  We are certainly a powerful country, the biggest economy in the world, the strongest, or at least biggest, military force in the world.  We have made huge advancements in many different areas.

But on a human level, we have failed rather miserably.  The curse of slavery that was embedded in our founding documents remains with us despite the Civil War, despite all the laws that guarantee equality.  While women have had full rights (well, almost) now for a century, and they have advanced far in the work world, their position vis a vie men is still very unequal in fundamental ways.  People’s attitudes have changed, but only by degree, not fundamentally.  

We live in a most unequal and divided society … not just between black and white Americans, men and women, the rich and most everyone else, but in ways without end.  The promise of “success” (as defined by our culture) is tantalizingly held out to everyone by the marketing media, but for the majority in this country the Declaration’s guarantee of the unalienable right to the “pursuit of happiness” remains a cruel joke.

So just what are America’s values?  To me they are encapsulated in the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . .”

Greed, a consuming self-interest, and a lack of concern for others may be the values of our contemporary culture, but they are not the values that our Founding Fathers gave America at its birth.  While the words of the Declaration may seem on the surface to champion self-interest and the right to do whatever one wishes, they are tempered by the spiritual statement that we are all created equal and that we all were endowed by the Creator with unalienable rights.  Thus, if the exercise of one person’s right harms another or inhibits his right, then there needs to be a check.  The Declaration does not proclaim an unfettered right to anything.  That would be anarchy.

This is why I wrote the book, We Still Hold These Truths in 2004 (years before the conservative author Matthew Spaulding wrote his take on things under the same title, oddly fulfilling the statement I made on the book’s first page that “in [the Declaration’s] interpretation lies the core of both the Liberal and Conservative ideologies that have run through American political life and the tension between them).  This is why I started this blog several years ago.

This blog is a celebration of those profoundly liberal American values.  It is dedicated to insuring that the promise of the Declaration becomes a reality for all Americans and beyond that, that these values impact our dealings with other nations.  Let me repeat here the mission statement that was my first blog post:

Our nation stands under attack … not from without, but from within.  Both our politics and our culture have been corrupted.

Politics on both the right and left are ever more polarized.  We cannot be a great or strong country if the people and their politicians view fellow Americans who happen to have opposing points of view in an us v them mode, as the enemy; we can only progress if we are united, albeit with differing perspectives on how to go about things.  And our culture caters to the worst aspects of capitalism with ethics and concern for the common good falling to the demands of greed and competition.  The same issues are present throughout much of the world today.

One central aspect of the problem is that our country and much of the world is bereft of spiritual values.  Now right here we have a definitional problem.  I am not referring to the values hawked by born-again Christians in this country, or Islamists in Muslim countries, or the ultra-Orthodox in Israel.   Because interestingly, in almost all cases, the “spiritual” or “moral” positions taken by these self-righteous people go against core tenets of their own religion.  

On the other hand, you have the majority of people, at least in the United States, who claim to believe in God but are not spiritual in any meaningful sense; their lives are totally a creature of contemporary culture.  Their spiritual core is if not empty sorely depleted.

It will be the mission of this blog to look at current events, be they political or cultural, from a spiritual, not religious, perspective, with relevant support from our founding documents, the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.   Remember when it was popular for Christians to wear bracelets that said, “What would Jesus do?”  That’s basically the question that this blog asks, but from a larger spiritual perspective.

I will take as my perspective the common teachings that are at the core of the spiritual/moral constructs of all the world’s great religions … Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism:

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Greed is the root of all evil.

Put away lying; speak every man truth.

Only when these maxims are followed will we achieve “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” and realize the goals set forth in the Declaration of Independence, that “governments are instituted to secure” the equality of all men and their “right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

How the Koch Brothers Hijacked the Middle Class Revolt and How To Take It Back

I often have asked myself why, given the huge income inequality that exists in the US, the wage stagnation that has left most middle-class workers with a much lower standard of living than they had 40 years ago, the increased unemployment among middle-age, middle-class men since the recession, the foreclosure crisis, and a host of other economic-related problems … why hasn’t the American middle class risen up in revolt, either by taking their anger to the streets, to the ballot box, or through some other means.

Recently though I realized that they have revolted, just not in the direction I would have thought given their issues and problems.  Instead of rising up against the financial and big business interests that control our government and society, and that caused the recent recession, they have instead risen up against government and Democrats.

Why?  Because they have been convinced by slick Tea Party propaganda that the government is controlled by liberals (e.g. Democrats) and has no interest in their welfare.  That the government is spending too much money helping the poor rather than helping them.  And who has largely financed the Tea Party movement?  The Koch brothers.  

So the Koch Brothers, the ultimate conservative, corporate, environmental and economic aggressors, who represent almost everything that is wrong with American society and politics today, have convinced the victims of their actions and philosophy that the cause of the victims’ woe are the very forces that actually seek to protect the middle class at least to some extent, but which are the foe of the Koch brothers and which they seek to destroy.  If ever there was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, they are it.

I would agree in many ways that the force the middle class should protest against is government.  But not for the reasons put forth by the Tea Party.  The problem is not that the government is too liberal, the problem is that the government and the political parties, both Republican and Democratic, are controlled by the money and forces of industry and finance.  And so, most of what is done by government either directly benefits these forces rather than the average American, or limits the impact on these forces of measures meant to protect the average American and the public good.

The purpose of government, according to the Declaration of Independence, is to enable citizens to fulfill their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  It is not to make a privileged group rich.  Lincoln’s motto was “government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” not “government of the people, by industry, and for industry.”

President Eisenhower, a Republican, warned in his farewell speech that “ we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”  That proved to be a wise and unfortunately unheeded warning.  If he were to give that speech today, he would certainly add the financial sector to his list.

So what should the middle class do to improve their economic situation?  At a minimum, they should vote Democratic and not Republican.  While Democrats are also too beholden to the money of industry and finance, they at least push measures that help the middle class, the average American, and the public good.  

However, I would argue that the middle class should go further.  They should protest in the most visible way, en masse, the influence that the big business and finance sectors have on government, both in the legislative and executive branches.  

President Obama when he campaigned in 2008, said he would limit the power and access of corporate lobbyists.  That didn’t happen.  In staffing his economic team to deal with the recession and see that its causes were fixed, he brought in finance insiders who were present before and during the financial collapse and did nothing to prevent it.  He has pushed for authority to enter into more free trade area agreements of the type that have increased globalization and brought its negative impact squarely down on the shoulders of the middle class while benefitting primarily multinational corporate owners.  He has done nothing to push federal financing of campaigns.

This is not an area where one can seek a middle ground and expect to come out with anything meaningful.  Big business and finance interests should know without question that they are and will continue to be considered of vital importance to the health of the American economy and the welfare of the American people.   And government should support them as appropriate. 

But they must also know that in the future, those very two interests … what I would refer to as the public good … will always trump the narrow financial interests of the corporation and its shareholders.  Corporations are creations of the law and they should be allowed to exist primarily because of the benefit they provide to the greater good, not to their own interests.

Somehow, the Democrats need to find a way to get the middle class to understand that they are the party who has the interests of the middle class more at heart; that Republicans only protect the interests of  big business and the finance sector, both of which are major donors to their campaigns.

But beyond that, some leadership needs to rise up from within the middle class to arouse their compatriots to engage in a united, visible, powerful, and ongoing protest against the influence of the big business and financial sectors.

Guiding Children from Ghetto Poverty to Stable Adulthood

It does not, or certainly should not, need to be said that it is very difficult for any individual to lift themselves out of poverty, let alone lift themselves out of the often-degrading lifestyle of poverty in the ghetto.  Republicans are constantly saying that if you’re poor and unsuccessful it’s your fault.  As though we lived in a land of great and equal opportunity.  But that is not the case.

Nevertheless, examples do exist.  Life stories I have read show that it is possible and suggest what the conditions are for it to happen.  I will be referring to people’s lives documented in two books:  Rosa Lee and The Tragic Life of Robert Peace.

Rosa Lee was a woman of the ghetto with many of the dysfunctions often associated with the ghetto lifestyle … drugs, shoplifting, prostitution, etc.  She had eight children, most of whom followed in her footsteps.  However, two of the boys did not.  Indeed they never participated in drugs or other dysfunctional activity and became upstanding adults with steady jobs.

Why the difference in the two outcomes?  There were two major factors.  Even as young children, Eric and Alvin, the two boys who “made it,” were for different reasons extremely embarrassed and even repulsed by their mother’s lifestyle and swore that they would make a different life for themselves.  Alvin was struck by shame and humiliation about living on welfare.  Eric felt anger and disgust about his mother’s shoplifting.  Both reactions heightened by taunts, actual and feared, from other children.

The second factor was that because there was something different about them, both attracted the attention of an adult who became an important mentor, a teacher in one case, a social worker in the other.  These mentors showed the boys that they believed in them, and that a different life was open to them if they applied themselves.  Although both became teenage fathers and dropped out of school, they entered the military and afterwards held down solid, primarily government, jobs.

The other example is the life of Robert Peace.  Peace was also a child of the ghetto.  While his mother was a strong and positive influence in his life, which resulted in him achieving academic and career success, his father was a negative influence, teaching Robert the ways and lures of the ghetto drug culture, which Robert soaked up like a receptive sponge.

Robert’s hard work in school earned him a full scholarship to Yale, where he continued to excel.  After graduating he went home to teach at the high school he’d attended.  However, at the same time as he attained this success, he remained deeply enmeshed in the ghetto’s drug culture and became a dealer  He was murdered at age 30 in a drug-related shooting.

While these are only two examples, I think that they offer some important lessons for those trying to improve the lot of ghetto children.  First, if children, either because of the influence a parent or some other mentor or due to some experience of their own, apply themselves to their studies, their natural intelligence will be watered and they will succeed in their studies  and gain self-confidence.  

Having written the previous sentence, it sounds like a real “duh!” statement.  And yet it isn’t.  The vast majority of children living in poverty, not just the ghetto, don’t have either a positive parent influence, a positive teacher/mentor influence, or some life experience that makes them determined to get out of the ghetto though an education.

How sad!  But you can’t blame parents living in poverty because they are who they are.  They are a creation of the social circumstances in which they were born and grew up.  Without strong programs to bring parents into the education process … and there have been successes … this just isn’t going to happen.  

The successful programs prove though that with sufficient public/government will and the resulting funding, it is possible.  But such government programs almost always lack funding.  The money is there; it’s just a matter of priorities.  Personally, I think the nation would be better served if the cost of several new fighter jet for the military …$412M for a single F-22 or $100M for a single F-35 … were diverted instead to such programs.

We all know what a sad state most urban ghetto schools are in, not just physically but more importantly in the utter lack of motivation provided.  The vast majority either don’t know how, or just don’t try, to transform the raw material that comes through their doors from children who have no interest in education, to children who seek it out and thrive on it.  

Again, though, there are schools that have been successful in achieving this transformation.  So we know it is not the child’s intelligence or background that is the insurmountable barrier … although the ghetto background is certainly something to be overcome.  It is first and foremost the attitude of educators and teachers, and secondly their abilities, that are the real obstacles and that need to be transformed.  This has to be a priority of federal, state, and local government.  The nation’s future is its children.

But if we look at the contrasting examples of Rosa Lee’s two children, Eric and Alvin, and Robert Peace, we see that providing a child with a good education is not enough,  There is a saying that you can take the child out of the ghetto, but you can’t take the ghetto out of the child.  In the case of Robert Peace, that certainly proved to be the case.  But not with Eric and Alvin.

Robert Peace was addicted (not in the literal sense) to the ghetto drug culture.  Rosa Lee’s other children were literally addicted.  Eric and Alvin, on the other hand, were repulsed and embarrassed by all the various social dysfunctions they encountered growing up with Rosa Lee.  What does one do, what does a society do, with this lesson.?

I guess the first question is how atypical is the Robert Peace experience?  If one looks at others who have come out of the ghetto background and established successful careers, how many continue to be caught in the harmful elements of ghetto culture as Peace was?  I don’t know the answer.  But my guess is that for most it is not a problem.  It is probably the rare person who is both caught up in something like the drug trade and also has a parent influence who pushes the value of education.

But even assuming that his story is atypical and that most do not get pulled under by those forces, it would still make sense for the children and society if schools placed appropriate emphasis on taking the ghetto out of the child.  Show the child not just that education is exciting and that the child is capable, but that a change in lifestyle is also necessary to free themselves from the dysfunctional aspects of the ghetto, all the while remembering that it’s not all negative.  The point should be that they need to show themselves self-respect by removing the degrading elements of the lifestyle from their lives.  Operation Push tried to do this, I think.  I’m sure there have been other programs.  But it needs to be part of the school program.

The United Negro College Fund has as their motto, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”  How true.  Yet even in the 21st century, the vast majority of urban ghetto children’s minds are wasted, both to their detriment and the detriment of our nation.  Which is not to say that many other children’s minds aren’t wasted!  A top priority of government and our society has to be to end this waste.

Rescuing American Democracy

A healthy democracy depends on a large percentage of the electorate voting and on the voting outcome being the result of a debate on issues and policies.  Our democracy is far from healthy on both these fronts. (I know there are other problems, but those are not within the purview of this post.  See, for example, "The Value of Differing Opinions," 1/4/13.)

In the US, voter turnout is notoriously low even in presidential election years compared with other developed countries.  (The US rate was recently 62%, well below the average of 70% and the top country, Australia, with 95%.)  Certainly, some eligible citizens choose not to get registered and vote.  But much of the low voter turnout results not from choice but from obstacles to voting, which belie the principle of “one man, one vote” and dilutes the participatory nature of our democracy.

A major obstacle in the U.S. is the day selected for elections.  In most countries, election day is on a Sunday, making it easier for people to vote.  In those countries that vote on a weekday, many declare election day a national holiday in order to make it easier for people to vote.  

In the US, of course, voting is on a Tuesday; it is not a national holiday; and voter turnout is shamefully low.  There is thus a nascent movement afoot to have federal elections on the first weekend in November.  As stated in a New York Times op ed piece, “Our current system penalizes single parents, people working two jobs, and those who have to choose between getting a paycheck and casting a ballot. Two weekend days of voting means those working families would have a greater chance of making it to the polls.”

But short of making such a change, it has been generally accepted for several decades that voting should be encouraged by making it as easy as possible to both register and vote.  These efforts have recognized that many people need expanded hours and early voting to have effective access to the polls because of their jobs.  

Recent efforts by Republican-controlled state legislatures to restrict early voting and expanded hours thus attack the principle of “one man, one vote.”  The same is true of laws that require photo IDs.  Both of these efforts make voting more difficult, especially for the working poor.  Voting is an essential right of citizenship; no unnecessary obstacle should be placed on that right.  

The primary concept behind the Constitutional right of free speech and its importance to the functioning of our democracy is the concept of a “marketplace of ideas.”  For this marketplace to function properly, the consumer’s choices should be made based on the quality of the competing ideas not on the marketing effect caused by unequal funding of campaigns.

Since we have never had public financing of campaigns, the unequal impact of money on the marketing effect has always been problematic.  But in recent years, the Supreme Court has struck down even the meagre laws we had attempting to restrict the amount of money given to campaigns by an individual and the amount of money corporations can spend on campaign and issue ads on the basis that such laws are an unconstitutional abridgment of the right to free speech.  

These rulings have resulted in exactly what was feared … an avalanche of corporate and big donor (and thus primarily conservative) dollars in an attempt to influence the outcome of elections, not by virtue of the quality of their ideas but the overwhelming volume of marketing.  This makes the marketplace of ideas totally dysfunctional.

It also dilutes the concept of “one man, one vote.”  If one takes the concept seriously, it necessitates not just that no person’s actual vote counts more than another’s, it means that no person’s voice counts more than another’s …  at least not because of the amount of money a person has.  Because if it does, if money talks in elections, then a relatively small body of people and corporations have a much greater voice in the election and thus often the outcome of an election than the general voting populace.  Obviously, money doesn’t always ensure winning.  But it sure helps.  This is contrary to the egalitarian nature of our democratic principles.

For this reason, we should have public financing of elections with all candidates having the same amount of money to spend and with all outside advertising, whether on issues or candidates, prohibited within a certain time period of elections.

But the proper functioning of the marketplace of ideas requires more than equal time (a concept in broadcasting which unfortunately has been discarded).  It requires the absence of lies and deceit.  

I know the theory is that lies will be exposed in the give and take of the marketplace and so will not give the perpetrator an advantage.  However, in our viral instant communication age, the fact is that a falsehood once cleverly spoken attains so much currency that it is virtually impossible for the victim to recover, to effectively counter the lie and render it harmless.

What we therefore need is a “Truth in Political Advertising” law.  See my very first post, “Truth in Politics: De-Frauding American Politics,” 2/1/11.

There is nothing more important to the continued healthy functioning of our democracy than that we have an informed electorate, that a large percentage of the electorate votes, and that no one has a greater voice in the outcome of an election by virtue of the amount of money he (or a corporation) spends.  Laws need to be passed to protect and improve the process.