Chapter 1 Background

Background

For over 200 years America has been the democracy torchbearer for the world: setting the example for all others to strive toward. However, in the past few years our torch has flickered and at times threatens to go out completely. We seem to have lost our way. The lofty ideals that America has stood for over the past two centuries are in the process of being derailed. While we give lip service to democracy at home, we often act more like a fascist dictatorship than a democracy. Our leaders prefer to make decisions behind closed doors rather than seek input from the American public. And worse, the public doesn’t seem to mind that decisions are made in secret. Today leaders tend to use the public only to support a decision or direction they have already decided on.

In our interactions with other countries, as a government, we seem to promote democracy abroad only when it is convenient for us to do so and then only when it is in our own image or, more correctly, in the image of those in power in Washington. At the same time we support some of the most despicable dictators in the developed world when it appears to suit our interests or suit the interests of our large corporations. We tend to ignore tyrants and the problems they create in Third World countries because they either support our interests or they are perceived to have no value to us. We need to reexamine our role and responsibilities at home and in this world and start over again.

It is not always the politicians that are to blame however. For the most part, the American public seems to turn a deaf ear to what goes on in Washington. We appear to be more interested in the latest “reality” TV show or the latest scandal in Hollywood than what is happening within the beltway! And when we do pay attention, our opinions are split 50-50 on nearly every issue – foreign and domestic, big and small, important and unimportant. On the right of the political spectrum, approximately 23% are, in John Dean’s words, “authoritarian ideologues” and on the left there are approximately 11% who are determined ideologues in their own right. Neither group is interested in debating or compromising. Both only seem interested in being “right”! The remaining middle, while probably willing to debate and compromise on the issues, are apathetic to the point of not caring¹ and as a result opt out of the political debate altogether.

We are a government and nation in crisis. The challenge for mainstream Republicans and Democrats alike is to get the middle engaged and active so the extremes, especially the large extreme on the right, can be nullified. We are stalemated as a great nation. We have always been a pluralistic society and that has served us well and in the process made us great. As a nation we have always thrived on diversity and differences. Yes, we have been slow at times to accept differences and assimilate those differences into the mainstream of society, but for the most part we have always striven to do so. Even with the most divisive issue of the past 200 years—equal rights and racial relationships--we have made, and continue to make, strides to bring all races into the mainstream of the American fabric.

As a pluralistic society and nation we always knew that we must come together and work out solutions that were neither perfect nor totally what any particular group wanted in order to move this country forward. We perfected the art of compromise. That is, until recently! We now seem to have lost it. Many of our leaders are mean-spirited and look only for total victory. Instead of fostering a win-win situation they look forward to a zero sum game: Total winners and total losers! The result, more often than not is stalemate.

Today powerful forces, albeit a minority, are trying to turn us into a monolithic society-- the anathema of what we have always stood for. It is not just the Bush administration that brought us to this point although his administration has expedited the process and polarized the nation more than any other President in modern history² (Perhaps a level of polarization that that we have not seen since the Civil War 160 years ago.); it is something that has been building for nearly 50 years – sometimes more aggressively than at other times, but none-the-less building. We have lost sight of our “mission” at home and around the world. We have lost sight of what made us great. We need to get back on track-- supporting and fostering those ideals that everyone looked up to. We need to learn all over again that civility is prudent and compromise is necessary. Come back America, …….come back.

1 Conservatives WITHOUT Conscience, by John W. Dean

2 John Dean notes in his latest book, Conservatives WITHOUT Conscience that: “Contemporary Conservatives have become extremely contentious, confrontational, and aggressive in nearly every area of politics and governing.” During the administration of Daddy Bush, there was a “presumption of civility”—not so under son Bush and his administration. Dean quotes Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute: “we lost it under Clinton,” when he notes that conservatives relentlessly attacked Clinton’s presidency and the present Bush “…deliberately chose a strategy of being a divider, rather than a uniter.” Dean goes on to say more troubling is the deliberate and open defiance of international treaties and blatant violations of domestic law by the Bush-Chaney presidency and the fact that they continue to push the limits of presidential power “beyond the parameters of the Constitution.”