Survival at the “Hinge of History”

By Carl W. Hunt

In 1987, the Library of Congress and the Florida Center for the Book collaborated on the publication of an essay entitled “Reading for Survival” by my all-time favorite novelist, John D. MacDonald. I’ve read my collection of Travis McGee novels by JDM (as aficionados call him) at least four times and I’m even meandering through them once again, slowly and with great relish. Chuck has read them all at least three times.

Together, Chuck and I have quoted JDM and his near-mythical Florida beach bum-salvage consultant hero, Travis, dozens of times in papers and blogs and I even cited a Travis quote in my dissertation!

“Reading for Survival” was probably JDM’s last published work and was the culmination of a project first proposed by Jean Trebbi, Director of the Florida Center of the Book, in 1985. It took JDM a long time to create the timeless insights that all of us can now read in the 30 or so printed pages that compose the final product – he clearly thought long and hard about one of his “final” contributions to the future of America. Chuck and I have read the essay a number of times and still marvel at how much relevant history, philosophy and meaningful prognostication JDM packed into some 7000 words.

Chuck and I both re-read “Reading for Survival” this last weekend. In reading it again, I learned that sometimes you just don’t have enough knowledge and experience for sage words to mean what they can…you have to wait until you’ve read another piece of great insight or experience life just a little more before things clarify. That’s what I experienced this weekend.

I had recently read another essay, one from the United Nations Academic Impact site co-written by my good friend and dissertation co-director, Stuart Kauffman and several others, including another friend, Caryn Devins. The essay, “Searching for Transcendence at the Hinge of History”, is one of those pieces that set the stage for understanding and appreciating anew the brilliance of both John D. MacDonald and my friend, Stu Kauffman. But, I had to read both within close proximity to put the pieces together.

Stu and company’s essay reflects the best of what some call nonlinear thinking. This is important because life is not a linear phenomenon even though time seems to pass that way, one moment followed by another, day after day, year after year. Life really isn’t just “one damned thing after another” but rather lots of things happening all at the same time, spread across lots of people and places: life is full of nonlinearity and massive interactions, a major theme of this blog.

The “Hinge of History” essay, something of a spin-off of Thomas Cahill’s series of books of the same name, eloquently raises the possibility “that we are unleashing the largest extinction event since perhaps the Permian, thereby destroying the accumulated living wisdom of thousands of species with no thought that we almost surely cannot recreate what we are losing,” [1] but that simultaneously, humanity’s “hinge of history may be the most staggering opportunity the globe faces.” We’re the problem and the solution at the same time!

How we become the problem and solution simultaneously is both the gist of Stu, Caryn and their co-authors’ essay and it’s a marvelous example of nonlinear thinking. A meaningful way to think about the passage and flow of time then might be found in the UN essay as follows:

“…the past provides ‘actual situations’ that become ‘enabling constraints,’ which at once restrain and encourage the development of the future. In other words, the enabling constraints from the past ensure that we cannot mold the world from scratch, but that we can build on what exists to create novel possibilities.”

In this way, we’re able to think beyond the past and its apparent linear unfolding and create a future that guides rather than forces the next turn of events. This is nonlinear thinking!

Let’s examine one of JDM’s examples in “Reading for Survival” and compare it to the “Hinge” essay. In this passage, JDM is describing the nonlinear, but elegantly “organized” mind of Travis’ great and brilliant friend Meyer. Here’s how Travis thought Meyer’s mind might work:

“When you and I think, it is a fairly simple process. A lot of fuzzy notions bump about in our skulls like play toys in a roiled swimming pool. With brute force and exasperation we sort them into a row and reach a conclusion, the quicker the better. With Meyer it is quite a different process. He has a skull like a house I read about once, where an old lady kept building on rooms because she thought if she ever stopped building she would die. It became an architectural maze, hundreds of rooms stuck on every which way. Meyer knows his way around his rooms. He knows where the libraries are, and the little laboratories, the computer rooms, the print shop, the studios. When he thinks, he wanders from room to room, looking at a book here, a pamphlet there, a specimen across the hall. His ideas are compilations of the thought and wisdom he has accumulated up until now.”

It’s just possible that my friend Stu thinks the same way and that’s why he’s so capable of conceiving these kinds of solutions to global planning problems in such a marvelously nonlinear, bottom-up driven fashion. Who would have thought and proposed what he and his coauthors did: that we could leverage this “Hinge of History” at which point we seem to exist today and seek to solve many of our societal dysfunctions not with new plans and designs but with a “vision of global change through adaptive institutional change at all levels…first and foremost at the local level. It is not a vision of design or command and control or engineering and rational forecasts. It is a vision of enablement. We enable global change by enabling local governance.” I think Meyer would approve!

In the end, we have to ask “Why is this at all important to how we Reconnect to the American Promise?” Well, I’ll take a shot at that answer: we can’t effectively reconnect to something that we can’t rediscover our intent to connect to in the first place…we really have to intend and desire to reconnect.

In their essay, Stu and company borrowed from Alfred North Whitehead’s thoughts on how the “future exerts its influence on the present, in the form of intention.” At the same time, they admonish us to recognize “that our intentions, and the realities they enable, can often create a widely divergent pattern of becoming, much like the evolving biosphere, political systems, and the economy.”

In large part, failure to recognize these divergences, aggravated by the super-connectivity of Information Technology, brought about much of the disconnection we’ve experienced in America since World War II. IT has helped to obscure and diffuse our desires and intentions to cohesively remain connected to our Founders. In finally recognizing this condition and leveraging technology to connect rather than disconnect, we’ll find the seeds to Reconnecting to the American Promise. I think it will help in the quest Stu, Caryn and company seek to fulfill, too.

In the meantime, to reflect nonlinearly how we could think and reconnect to our Founders as Americans of the 21^st Century, consider JDM and “Reading for Survival.” You’ll be amazed at how timely Travis and Meyer’s chat of 28 years ago is to our current world and our current disconnections. Read it for America…please!

Originally posted 6/30/2015

NOTES:

[1] See for example: “Earth is on brink of a sixth mass extinction, scientists say, and it’s humans’ fault” for a recent mainstream media version of this report, by Sarah Kaplan, Washington Post, 6/22/2015.

An Air of Disloyal Opposition

When we started this blog over a year ago, we not only began posting our thoughts about the creation and sustainment of a New American Center, we also proposed a framework of Principles that might guide our analysis and writing about the events that shape our nation. Our intent was for these principles to fully embrace and support our American Constitution. Several of our early posts referred to using our electoral processes to ensure our leaders at the national level could appreciate the value of loyal opposition, regardless of disagreements; this was and always has been fundamental to our success as a nation.

Events of this month of March, 2015 have indicated that there is in fact a body politic that manifests an air of disloyal opposition. Both the GOP sponsorship of the appearance of the Israeli prime minister before a “joint session” of Congress and the recent letter to Iran by a partisan body of GOP senators reflect this semblance of disloyal opposition. It’s up to voters to decide if in fact the electoral process we described in the Principles is working to create a loyal opposition or not, but this month’s turn of events seems to indicate the electorate is looking the other way as we vote for our representatives.

About 5½ years ago, a New Zealand commentator named Paul Buchanan wrote a piece called Disloyal Opposition in the United States. [1] Buchanan proposed a definition of “disloyal opposition” that’s worth reading and reflecting about how things seem to be headed in the US today. Buchanan wrote:

Disloyal oppositions are, by definition, unprincipled. Not because they lack conviction in their beliefs (some do), but because of their disrespect for the rules of the democratic game. Their view of political rules and procedures is purely instrumental: if they suit the pursuit of ideological or policy objectives they can be used. If not, they can be circumvented. The goal is to bring down the government of the day regardless of cost or consequence. Hence disloyal oppositions hold little regard for established rules and institutional norms even if it suited them when in government or as a historical precedent…For disloyal oppositions, politics is war and the ends justify the means.

Interestingly, Buchanan wrote this piece about the imminent battle lines America’s Fox News and the recently inaugurated President Obama had apparently drawn. His commentary reflected thought and analysis that could have inspired our own thinking about the lengths partisanship activities have taken in this nation since 2009, even as revealed by an international perspective.

A relevant sense of perspective is now starting in our own nation, as well. No less a voice than the Washington Post’s Kathleen Parker, a self-described conservative, wrote about it in her 3/11/2015 column in the Post, “Tom Cotton’s Grandstand Play”. Parker noted in her assessment of the letter to Iran, “So what was the rush to tell Iran, essentially, ‘You’re wasting your time’? The 47 senators are like food critics who condemn a chef before he has finished preparing the entree. Their letter also signals to the world that they have zero respect for our president, or for the other world powers attempting to try diplomacy first.”

Parker also wrote that “there are other ways to accomplish our goals than profiling for political profit. The 47 may have felt like Zorro, inking their opposition with the bold felt tips of their swords, but they were acting like children at the school fair whose single purpose is to dunk the principal.” It was important for the President to make this effort so that America did in fact deliver “… a message to the world that, if and when we do take military action, it will be as a last resort.”

Another Washington Post conservative commentator, Michael Gerson, substantiated Parker’s perspectives. “This was a foreign policy maneuver, in the middle of a high-stakes negotiation, with all the gravity and deliberation of a blog posting. In timing, tone and substance, it raises questions about the Republican majority’s capacity to govern,” Gerson wrote. “Congress simply has no business conducting foreign policy with a foreign government, especially an adversarial one,” Gerson added, noting how important the negotiations might ultimately be in future attempts to isolate Iran.

Retired US Army Major General Paul Eaton characterized the 47 senators’ actions as “mutinous.” The Post reported that Eaton said “‘What Senator Cotton did is a gross breach of discipline, and especially as a veteran of the Army, he should know better…I have no issue with Senator Cotton, or others, voicing their opinion in opposition to any deal to halt Iran’s nuclear progress. Speaking out on these issues is clearly part of his job. But to directly engage a foreign entity, in this way, undermining the strategy and work of our diplomats and our Commander in Chief, strains the very discipline and structure that our foreign relations depend on, to succeed.”’

We are willing to assume that intellectual laziness, partisan “combat fatigue” or just sloppiness may account for some of the 46 other senators who signed the letter of their freshman colleague, but it is still a serious lapse in carrying out their Statesmen roles and responsibilities. Credit goes out to the GOP senators who refrained from this reckless behavior. We can only hope that they exercised their restraint in the interest of maintaining a loyal opposition. [2]

What the vast majority of the GOP senators did was to declare to the world that the concept of loyal opposition was not in their vocabulary. These elected leaders reflected what Buchanan wrote in his definition: “disloyal oppositions hold little regard for established rules and institutional norms even if it suited them when in government or as a historical precedent.”

These 47 senators certainly set precedence, but the voters in these senators’ states should next time look in the direction of loyal opposition as a foundational component of our success in America. We have no room for an air of disloyal opposition in this nation.

Posted by Carl Hunt and Chuck Hunt, 3/15/2015

[1] Unfortunately, the title to the piece was misspelled as “Disoyal (sic) Opposition in the United States,” but we took the liberty to correct this misspelling here.

[2] The Washington Post recorded that the list of GOP senators who declined to sign the letter included Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Bob Corker of Tennessee, Maine Senator Susan Collins, Arizona Senator Jeff Flake, Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander, Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, Indiana Senator Dan Coates and Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran.

Feeling Like an American

by Carl W. Hunt

The January-February, 2015 issue of the Atlantic Magazine recently published a cover piece titled “The Tragedy of the American Military” by James Fallows. I’ve known Jim since 2007 and consider him a friend. His article this month shows Jim to be a friend to America as well, as did the writings of the accompanying pieces “Gun Trouble” by Major General Robert H. Scales (US Army, ret.) and “How I learned to Love the Draft” by Joseph Epstein. All three were published in the magazine as a “block” of related stories.

These three articles stirred me to write a bit about my own experiences with our nation’s military, particularly my service, the United States Army, and how it is related to Reconnecting to the American Promise. [1]

In this post, I’ll talk about the military draft, its effects on my life, and introduce a couple of thoughts from Jim’s very fine piece on the state of the United States military and what he describes as the “Chickenhawk” nation that “supports” our military. Since mine are mostly personal experiences, they don’t always agree with the articles, but all three of these pieces are very important reading for the entire nation.

Yes, I was drafted. My start-and-stop (and start-and-stop, and start-and-stop) military career began September 18^th, 1972, a day I still “celebrate” every year…I celebrate it as a milestone date that set the course of my life. [2]

I reported to the draft station early that September morning in downtown Houston, was sworn in and on the bus to Fort Polk, Louisiana by mid-afternoon. On the bus with me were some 40 or so other young men, some of whom would become my new “Army buddies.”

To this cohort at the reception station at Fort Polk were added other young men from Dallas, New Orleans and many other towns in between. They represented a variety of vocations including carpenters, plumbers, an accountant and even a laid-off school teacher. All of the races in America were represented, although most in my basic combat training unit were white. I was drafted off of the Houston Police Department having received a deferment to complete my probationary period to become a fully qualified radio patrolman, so even though I was only 19, I may have had a slight advantage on the organizational side.

The variety of young men with whom I “matriculated” through basic training at Fort Polk far exceeded the diversity of any group I’d met in Houston…it was a true American “melting pot.” My new buddies “came from all social and economic classes” as Joseph Epstein noted in his Atlantic article. Even though I was familiar with self-discipline and unit cohesion from my training with the Houston Police Academy (at which probably half were Vietnam War vets), many of my fellow new soldiers were learning about it for the first time.

Those early Army experiences made almost all of us teammates and taught us about collaboration and cooperation. For those that did not learn those lessons well enough, the Army had ways to deal with them…it involved washing a lot dishes, scrubbing a lot of garbage cans and a whole lot of pushups. By the end of Basic and Advanced Individual Training, we all learned about service above self and understood more about what it meant to be an American. As Joseph Epstein wrote in his “Draft” article, “I have never felt more American than when I was in the Army.” Since the Vietnam War Armistice was signed during this time, I and many of my fellow draftees went to South Korea and learned to appreciate being an American even more.

My brother Chuck and I have written about service to our nation in other posts and there are surely many ways to serve America, including outside the military and law enforcement and a host of first responder organizations. What the draft did for me, and many others, however, was to focus our appreciation for being part of something bigger than ourselves even to the point of representing our great nation overseas. I appreciated Joseph Epstein’s perspectives and his story brought back some great memories. [3] (I’ve long since put most of the “bad” memories out of mind.)

I also truly appreciate those who choose to teach our nation’s children and adults who go on past high school: theirs is indeed a great service. I also respect those who chose not to serve through government as many of these Americans strengthen our economy and our culture and perhaps most importantly, can serve by strengthening the debate about how we use our military. That’s where Jim’s fine article comes in.

What Jim’s (and Joseph Epstein’s) article did for me was to remind me how distanced too many Americans have gotten from the principles of service for something bigger than themselves. I’ll close with a couple of important thoughts from the “Tragedy of the American Military” article and ask you to assess for yourself if these observations affect how Americans have been disconnected from our destiny as a great nation.

Jim claims our nation has become a “Chickenhawk Nation” for “the derisive term for those eager to go to war, as long as someone else is going.” If this is correct, and Jim presents strong evidence to make his case, it’s no wonder the disconnect from the American Promise has grown in the last decade or so of “The Long War.” Both our military and our population at large must have at some point questioned how our political leadership makes decisions about the use of the military and what outcomes it seeks. But these questions have still not really been addressed adequately, and it has greatly cost our nation in lives and treasure. I believe the disconnect surfaces because we don’t persistently and sufficiently challenge our leadership with those important questions, and our electoral process isn’t sufficiently challenging anymore either. Correcting these shortcomings is how all of us can better serve America.

The other significant point I’ll make in this post is related: Jim calls it the “Chickenhawk Economy.” He notes how the economic environment of America since the beginning of the “Long War” has increasingly been dominated by congressional budgeting decisions on modernizing weapons platforms based on job creation in their districts or political power aggregation rather than the true needs of the military. General Scales’ article supports this narrative, as well. This also speaks to the role that Congress and the Administration have had in further disconnecting Americans from their nation and what our Founders intended, the real theme behind this entire blog. [4]

If more of us want to experience “Feeling Like an American” it’s way past time to step up and serve our nation, both in and out of uniform, by challenging the Chickenhawk spiral we’re experiencing as this new year kicks off. It’s time for all of us to feel like an American and Reconnect to the American Promise.

Originally posted on 1/12/2015.

Notes

[1] The main article by Jim and the “Draft” article by Joseph Epstein spoke most intimately to me. General Scales’ piece was mostly about the troubles the military has had finding a reliable rifle for combat and how frequently the M-16 malfunctioned. It’s easily possible to generalize that narrative to the increasingly complex weapons systems we as a nation buy, as Jim Fallows does with his recounting of the F35 story in the article, but that’s beyond this current blog post.

[2] I left active duty after 3 ½ years, used the GI Bill to get an education, went back in on a direct commission, got out again (remaining in in the Reserves), and finally “permanently” went back on active duty to complete a total of 30 years of active and reserve service. I finally retired from the Army in 2006. It’s still tough deciding what it is I want to do when I grow up!

[3] My greatest memories were in meeting my wife and having our son grow up as the child of a member of the military. The role and support of family in the military is the absolute core strength of our nation.

[4] I strongly encourage our readers to review Jim’s article and make the comparisons for themselves.

The Paradox of “Political Leadership”

by Carl W. Hunt and Walter E. Natemeyer [1]

In the American version of the English language, we often string together two words to make a more descriptive term. Some of these eventually become targets for jokes, such as “military intelligence” a term those of us who served in the military often lampooned as an oxymoron. Other examples include “sweet sorrow” and “deafening silence.” Some used to call the early versions of “Microsoft Works” an oxymoron.

The two-word term we’re going to talk about in this post shouldn’t be an oxymoron. However, in this current age of what passes for governance in the halls of our Congress and our Executive branch, the term “political leadership” is probably more of an oxymoron than we’d like to think…it’s certainly become a paradox.

Today, political leadership has become focused on using power to achieve the goals of one’s political party, not working to do what is best for our country overall. At the federal level, leadership is about getting congressional members to align with their party leaders’ demands and cast their votes accordingly – the needs of the American people have become an afterthought.

In fact, an observer might think that our elected leaders no longer have any interest in being the leaders of the American people. Sadly, it appears our political leaders forgot how to apply leadership skills to inspire and motivate the people of our nation to achieve new heights, although they like to claim they speak for the American people. Perhaps it’s time to remind our nation’s “leaders” about true leadership.

The responsibilities and functions of leaders in a purer sense of the practice of leadership are numerous. It’s worthwhile, however, to highlight two very important characteristics of leadership. If our national, state and local leaders would just practice these concepts even a little more, the citizens of our nation could become more cohesive and once again start Reconnecting to the American Promise.

We want to focus on two leadership characteristics in this post: Creating a Shared Vision; and Creating the Environment for Achieving Common Agreement. These leadership principles are fundamental responsibilities for leaders of any type, whether in government, industry or academia. This is particularly true for the leaders of our nation today as we face increasing competition and threats from other nations and adversaries which would see the United States weaken or fall.

Our founding fathers recognized that open, honest debate and a willingness to cooperate were essential ingredients for democracy. Yet today we seem mired in political win-lose battles where our citizens are the big losers. Since when was American governance built upon “winner-take-all?” What can we do to break out of this destructive game? [2]

Let’s start with the idea of Creating a Shared Vision in America.

The first thing leaders can do to create shared vision is to break away from the traditional win-lose philosophy in politics today and start focusing on creating win-win scenarios based on collaboration, cooperation and yes, compromise. Beginning to think about win-win situations works great when leaders can create a sense of shared vision built on freedom and opportunity, backed by a framework for security and prosperity. The Framers turned out to be quite good at this as they created a foundational document of such a shared vision. This shared vision launched what became our United States of America.

It surely wasn’t easy, and it required a number of years before the Constitution was ratified by all the states. The Framers’ efforts eventually delivered a vision that was transparent and forward-looking, shared among almost everyone in the nation (even today). It also sought win-win situations for the most part that did not exist anywhere else in the world at the time. [3]

Next, Let’s Create an Environment for Achieving Common Agreement Across America.

The Constitution and the Convention in which it was developed also Created an Environment for Achieving Common Agreement. The Framers did this by moving from Win-Lose to Win-Win, applying the essence of an outline Walt has developed over his 40+ years of teaching leadership and management at all levels of government and business.

Walt’s list of steps for “Moving from Win-Lose to Win-Win” provides a framework for immediate application in all levels of our government as we seek to move towards Reconnecting to the American Promise. His steps include the following, and could (and should) be initiated by either political party towards the other:

• Take initiative to start progress toward cooperation
• Increase/improve communication
• Listen/strive to understand one another’s point of view
• Build trust by keeping trust
• Admit your mistakes
• Identify “common” goals and work together toward them
• Collaborate on behalf of the nation
• Be willing to compromise/take reasonable risks together
• Stay rational/avoid being emotional
• Never throw the first stone and resist the urge to retaliate
• Reiterate advantages of cooperation and dangers of excess competition
• Recognize/reward cooperative effort
• Remember: two winners are better than one

Leadership’s greatest challenge is in achieving success through marshaling the human resources they have on their teams. America elects its own leadership team to marshal those resources and to demonstrate effective leadership on behalf of the electorate. Congress and the Administration seem to have forgotten that one simple but important concept; and so leadership on behalf of our people has suffered.

“Political leadership” may have become an oxymoron but the representatives we elect to lead America can break out of that mold starting today and begin to be real leaders once again. We think it will be amazing what they can accomplish once they stop trying to be an American Paradox.

Originally posted on 12/11/2014.

NOTES:

[1]  Dr. Walter E. Natemeyer is the CEO of North American Training and Development, Inc., Houston, TX. He taught at the university graduate level for over ten years before devoting full-time effort to teaching basic and advanced leadership skills in business and government sectors, including teaching at the Johnson Space Center in Houston for over 40 years. Dr. Natemeyer is a leading authority on “Situational Leadership,” employee motivation, strategic planning and team building. He has authored numerous books, articles, and training instruments on these and other management topics.

[2]  We articulated several more of these important leadership qualities and potential outcomes of good leadership in The Principles of RAP, which have accompanied this website since its foundation in February, 2014.

[3]  As we’ve mentioned elsewhere, the Constitution did not resolve every issue of freedom in the late 18^th Century, but we must hope that America is making progress on that front as our history unfolds. Additionally, we have chosen not to address the recent US Senate report on US intelligence activities (released on 12/9/2014) as it is still too early to discuss its relationship to Reconnecting to the American Promise.

The American Promise and “World Order”

by Carl W. Hunt

This week, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reviewed another former Secretary of State’s latest book, expressing some insights common to those we publish in Reconnecting to the American Promise. Clinton published a thoughtful book review of Henry Kissinger’s book World Order, comparing the chaos of past and present world events. [1] 

This RAP post is not specifically a review of Kissinger’s book but more a review of Clinton’s review. While her appraisal of Kissinger’s book is enlightening, so are Clinton’s thoughts about how the America of today must meet our own obligations to our people while continuing to inspire a world in which enlightened leadership is so desperately needed. [2]

The contrasting and complementary reflections of a Secretary who served a Republican administration during the more global Cold War and a Secretary who served a Democratic administration during several regional hot wars are interesting. According to Clinton’s review, there are actually more complementary thoughts than contrasts. And, there are significant agreements between their perspectives that are worth noting in light of the theme of RAP.

Perhaps paradoxically, RAP has not sought to discuss a great deal about world events, preferring to address issues related to helping America focus more on equal access to opportunity and the political environment that we need to bring about that focus. That, along with restoring the voice of the American Center, comprises the key principals of RAP. It was gratifying to see that Hillary Clinton’s review emphasized that as well: “Sustaining America’s leadership in the world depends on renewing the American dream for all our people,” she wrote in her Washington Post book review this week.

We’ve created a distinction between the American Promise and the “American Dream” in this blog, primarily to emphasize the leadership responsibilities of our elected officials to both create and enforce access to opportunity. In other posts, we’ve commented on the failures of our politicians in that area, so no need to dwell further there.

The main point here and in Clinton’s review is that ensuring opportunity for Americans is central to our nation’s ability to inspire, lead and even motivate other nations in the world to embrace what both she and Kissinger called a “bipartisan commitment to protecting and expanding a community of nations devoted to freedom, market economies and cooperation” that worked successfully during the Cold War.

Thanks in large part to an America that has politically curtailed the concept of domestic cooperation in the last few years, it’s hard to know if we still actually maintain that kind of globally-focused bipartisan commitment Clinton discusses. After all, bipartisanship is a word rarely used to describe American political leadership any longer. In fact, it would appear we’ve forgotten as a nation not only our responsibilities globally but also nationally in terms of bipartisanship and cooperation in an increasingly chaotic world as described by both Clinton and Kissinger.

This is the sad point that we’ve not addressed in RAP: the danger in forgetting these responsibilities to act in a bipartisan way is not just to America (and its failure to fulfill the American Promise of access to opportunity), but it’s also to the rest of the world. The dangers we create in pulling away from the responsibilities we’ve met in past times of global chaos affect the world in significantly different ways today. Kissinger and Clinton both point this out with their insights about globally distributed social media and diverse and diffused political perspectives.

However, when it comes to ultimately recognizing and discharging global responsibilities, America in the past has indeed been the leader. There is just no other nation in the history of our world that can meet these responsibilities – as Clinton and Kissinger both point out, that’s just the way it is!

In this day and age, America is the only nation that can “relate ‘power to legitimacy’” Clinton writes, quoting Kissinger’s book. That’s an enormous responsibility, burdened by the pull of the chaos that exists in this world today. But, we are the only nation that can take on this responsibility and help ensure both our own national security and freedoms and help the world see the value in emulating some of our better nature.

Most importantly, we can only live up to these responsibilities on a framework of cooperative and collaborative bipartisanship here in American government (at all levels). That has been the enduring theme of Reconnecting to the American Promise. This time, however, we need to look at this theme through the lens of America at home and abroad…we certainly will in the future.

Originally posted by Carl W. Hunt, 9/7/2014.

Notes:

[1] World Order is scheduled to be released Tuesday, 9-9-2014, by Penguin Press.

[2] In my cursory examination of various other reviews of Kissinger’s book, I found a gamut of perspectives that included critiques that Kissinger was calling for America to form a new “world order.” As a graduate of the US Defense Department’s National War College in 2003, and recalling the readings of Kissinger at the time, I don’t think that’s what he’s saying…I’ll have to read the book to be certain, of course. But, by my review of Clinton’s piece in the Washington Post and a look at other online reviews, I think what Kissinger is pointing out is that a new “world order” is taking place whether America wants to be a part of it or not and that if we don’t figure out how to play a distinctly American role, as described by Clinton, this new “world order” will leave America increasingly irrelevant. In my view, failure to engage in any opportunity to shape an equitably beneficial “world order” should not be acceptable to any American.

* Image of World Order, courtesy of multiple book review sites, including Amazon.com, Google Books and Publishers Weekly.com.

Thomas Paine: IT Legend of the 70s (1770s, that is)

by Carl W. Hunt

In the 21^st Century, we “moderns” tend to view technology, and most specifically information technology, as both the harbinger and the facilitator of a revolution in life. Search companies help us find information immediately, hardware companies deliver incredibly fast processing and presentation capabilities and software companies find ways to make information easy to store, access and manipulate. The revolution in information technology has been astounding!

What hasn’t been so astounding or particularly revolutionary is what this information really says and how it touches us as Americans who are still part of a great revolutionary experiment started 238 years ago. Apart from the scientific insights that modern IT has packaged and presented to a more widespread audience, and the promise of revolutions in medicine, transportation and robotics, where are the great ideas about social change? And I don’t mean Facebook or Google+!

The ideas and concepts that have been pushed around through modern IT haven’t been nearly as revolutionary as those of one Englishman who did as much as any Founding Father to set America on an enduring and revolutionary course of its own. [i] Of course, this revolutionary master of IT in the days of the Founders is Thomas Paine. [ii]

Thomas Paine in his role as an early information technologist and yes, revolutionary, is a merger that we need today more than ever. America and its “revolution” in IT could use someone who could think about America’s future and articulate those ideas in ways that haven’t been before: that was a hallmark of Thomas Paine.

Common Sense: We Still Need It!

Source Data Below.

Perhaps where we’ve erred the most in recent years in establishing and maintaining good governance in America is by letting it get too complex, too big and too convoluted. In Common Sense, Paine wrote “I draw my idea of the form of government from a principle in nature which no art can overturn, viz. that the more simple any thing is, the less liable it is to be disordered, and the easier repaired when disordered.” If we revisited and even “rewrote” Common Sense today, that principle of simplicity would endure, even in a nation of over 318 million.

But, we would still have government lest anarchy prevail, a point that Paine also made. Government is more than a necessary evil, as Paine wrote about the British government (and government in general), and we would do well to follow his “common sense” advice about how we move forward with our own government today.

Paine originally wrote that representatives of the people to the government should be direct representatives, thereby giving the electorate more say in those that governed them. In a nation closing in on 320 million people, that won’t work as well today as it might have in 1776, but that’s where “common sense” IT could come into play.

Back in April, Chuck and I wrote about Harnessing the Tools of Collaboration. Our nation has made dramatic progress in pioneering and implementing collaborative IT tools that have started to change government for the better.

Unfortunately, these tools haven’t changed politics for the better. Government, as an abstract entity outside politics, is poised to harness the tools of collaboration. Politics harnesses the tools to seek gain for the party’s objectives and enhance reelection potential. In America, the government and politics coevolve and today, politics have been the dominant force. I think Thomas Paine would say that’s just not “common sense.”

It’s way past time to go back and reread Paine and the Founders to see how Common Sense guided the formation of our nation and made it possible to get through our very rough first century and endure through this century.

What’s Holding Common Sense Back Today?

Perhaps the single greatest inhibition to a return to “Common Sense” in government today is a stark lack of courage. Our laws in 2014 are a hodge-podge of patches that sometimes don’t even reflect the original problems they were meant to address: Tax, Transportation and Immigration laws being three of the worst collections of such “fixes”. Our elected leaders, mostly in Congress, refuse to address fundamental rewrites of these laws that reflect 2014 rather than 1914 (1814?) for fear of electoral backlash…gutless only begins to describe these “leaders” who somehow keep getting reelected! [iii] Add to that a tendency to bring more people into government to write, interpret and enforce these patchwork laws, and government gets even more complex. There’s no “common sense” here!

Another inhibition to a return to “common sense” approaches to government is a media that’s divided even more than our Congress, pandering to intellectual and geographic divides in an “arms race” to be more popular or sell more ads than their competitors. Okay, this is the American way, but without some level of “common sense” applied to the media, the American Way may disappear into islands of disconnectedness and lack of concern for a national entity that made the freedom of the press possible in the first place. Come on, media…get your act together and use some “common sense” to promote America rather than tear it down!

Source Data Below.

From a material standpoint, our systems of production and consumption have ceased to follow any recognizable pattern of “common sense” as well. Chuck and I already beat on this idea in past blog posts and the FAPITCA Platform, so there are only a couple of pointers in this post: here and here. But, Thomas Paine noted an interesting contrast about society and government that applies, writing that “Society is produced by our wants” (the essence of our production and consumption of both goods and ideas) with government serving as a constraint by “restraining our vices.” [iv] This indicates that government does in fact have some (at least a limited) role in moderating production and consumption so that the wants of society do not destroy all the resources that could be consumed in meeting those wants. That’s just “common sense” too!

If these appeals to look at America in the light of Thomas Paine as a revolutionary IT legend make sense, we’re way behind the power curve and we need to rebuild some “common sense” into American government now! To make these changes, and include a modernization of Common Sense, it’s worth going back and revisiting a blog post I wrote in April called A Narrative for our Nation and our Promise. The authors of the National Strategic Narrative provide some deep insights on how to move forward…these guys got it right and best of all, they used “Common Sense.” I think Thomas Paine would agree.

Originally posted by Carl W. Hunt, 8/22/2014.

[i] Chuck and I wrote a bit about Thomas Paine as an influential thinker of the American Revolution who appreciated the sacrifices and commitment of the Continental Congress in 1776, contrasting it to what he might think about today’s Congress. Unfortunately, Congress’s contributions to the American people have only been on the decline since we wrote that post in February.

[ii] Speaking of mastery of the IT of the time, Paine’s Common Sense sold over 500,000 copies in 1776, still the largest selling book in proportion to the population in American history, which was estimated at 2.5 million at the time. That’s some legendary IT there!

[iii] Obviously, President Obama did address Health Care in his first term, but neglected to embrace the input of the opposition party. This shortcoming has only been exacerbated by the political divide that makes it almost impossible to address the shortcomings in a sensible…”common sense”…fashion.

[iv] The actual quote from Common Sense, in context is: “Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.” Paine went on to write that “Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil” but it is necessary in any event. A key premise of FAPITCA has been that government is necessary, but it does need to be done right, and in recent years it has not been done right. Also, remember that Thomas Paine was a revolutionary who successfully raised the issues but did not accomplish much at all when he was placed in positions of authority to fix the problems he identified (including government positions in England, France and of course, America)! As America has often been able to do, we must find and leverage the strengths of our people, in the right ways at the right time.

Image Sources:

Common Sense: Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Commonsense.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Commonsense.jpg

Lewes, UK Tavern Sign: “White Hart Paine plaque” by Sussexonian. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons; http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:White_Hart_Paine_plaque.jpg#mediaviewer/File:White_Hart_Paine_plaque.jpg. This commemoration of Thomas Paine is particularly significant in that Paine lived and developed many of his original ideas while living in Lewes, Sussex Country, UK, working for the local government…Lewes, DE, named for its UK sibling, is the author’s home.

Platform Part V: Education, Science and Culture (Section B)

subtitle: Enough with the Boring Blog Post Titles, Eh?

Larry Kuznar’s post about the failings of higher education last week deserved a better title than we gave it. It was a brave and outstanding piece written by someone who knows how higher education works in the nation today. Larry’s post also opened the door to express more of our own perspectives.

Larry’s post was part of the series on a Platform for FAPITCA we “cleverly” called Building a Platform, Part I, in which we introduced an outline for five “Planks” that a more center-focused “political party” could use to inform how our nation moves away from fringe- and edge-driven politics. [1] Recent posts, while titled with boring but semi-descriptive phrases, are all part of this Platform; after today’s post, we’ll have only one plank left. [2]

Most importantly, we’re indebted to Larry for challenging us with his example to open up more and try to express our feelings about America with less equivocation. This means no longer blaming both sides of the political spectrum equally with softly uttered descriptions, although we will endeavor to maintain balance and represent the Center as an attractor to the disillusioned in the Edges. [3] America needs these people at the Edges to come back towards the Center, post-haste…please! [4]

First, here are a couple of thoughts about how Larry’s post fits into the Science, Culture and Education plank of the FAPITCA: America is greatest when we support the sciences (and the arts, hence culture). Education for our upcoming generations is the singular best way to build and strengthen our contributions to both our nation’s and the world’s science and arts. [5]

Each of the planks of the FAPITCA Platform is proposed as part of a whole. This whole benefits from linkages between the planks through rich interacting network connections that leverage the Connected Age in which we live. The planks can even compensate for each other when one is working less well than we might hope. [6]

As Larry noted, education and the resultant growth of science and culture (and arts) that ensues from education are deeply interacting pieces of the plank that deserve constant attention and investment to sustain our future as a nation. Education must evoke critical thinking and problem solving capabilities in order to grow America. They combine and even coevolve to provide the basis for our “national seed corn.”

It’s a mystery to us how our American system of education has not been more greatly valued and received more investment and encouragement. Instead, the various education factions line up against each other and rail about how the other side’s approach is so wrong. The various sides’ capacity, if it exists, to listen to each other and compromise with our nation’s interests in mind could surely produce a better working educational system if only they really wanted to and cared enough about America’s future.

It’s sad to note that too many in our political parties have forgotten whatever lessons they learned in school about compromise and collaboration. How much longer are the two parties and their supporting factions going to refuse to work together so we can stop eating our seed corn?

While both parties are at fault in the realm of agreement, the rise and influence of entities like the so-called “Tea Party” faction and its ilk have aggravated the failure of our national capacity to compromise and cooperate. These groups, even if well intended, must get down off their high-horses and start cooperating a bit more…with BOTH parties. They need to use the education they received in the American school system to help us move forward, not backwards! [7]

In the last few decades, America has been at the global forefront in scientific discovery and technological development (which leveraged those discoveries in science, by the way). We’ve also led in social and cultural activities that changed the world in many places and pushed forward the role of higher education across the nation and the world.

As Larry pointed out, education in America has experienced challenges to continuing that momentum of the past. We’ve lapsed in how many levels of education stack up with the rest of the world. But, this is America…we can fix that. If we don’t, science and culture will also lapse!

Our biggest challenge is that we have to collectively rediscover the will to succeed as a nation…we have to want to fix education. We have to embrace the need to invest in our ability to do good science. Americans must desire to collaborate and exploit our science into even better technologies, cleaner environment, enhanced infrastructures and other improvements in our way of life. Most importantly, we have to feel the love in doing all of this for our children and their children. We think Americans really do want to do these things…so let’s do it.

Now, if we can only find better titles for our blog posts! We want to and we will!

Originally posted by Carl and Chuck Hunt, 7/16/2014.

NOTES:

[1] While we have been disparaging in our blog posts of the “Edge” and “Fringe” (the edge of the edge, as we like to label them) segments of American political parties throughout our posts, we do appreciate the paradox that they also apparently represent a source of real “out of the box” thinking about politics in this nation. In that regard, the Edges and Fringes might have a leg up on imagining new ways to govern and the rejection of the traps of excessive government and financial policy into which we’ve fallen as a nation through traditional politics. We strongly recommend the edges and fringes read Joseph Stiglitz’s recent book The Price of Inequality (or at least the essay of the same name at AlterNet) to better understand the effective role of government (as the Founders intended), rather than reject government outright.

[2] After this post and the final Plank post, we’ll finally post that essay on Transforming Consumption in America that expands on the second plank, again “cleverly” titled “Transform Production and Consumption.”

[3] So, some admissions: We are both moderately progressive, reformed semi-conservative types…sorry we can’t make a meaningful acronym out of that; perhaps we were really “radical moderates” as Elliot Richardson coined it in a book of the same name). One friend called Carl “socially progressive and fiscally conservative”…maybe that also works! The bottom line is that we’re not particularly happy with where the Edges of the Republican Party have taken our nation in the last decade or two, making issues of inane subjects that really should not affect how our nation moves forward in Fulfilling the American Promise in the Connected Age. This is not to say that the Democratic Party is above the fray in promoting irrelevancy as well, but the Republican Party has not done well by America, perhaps even for the last 20 years. If only we could say the Democratic Party had done all that much better! As Adelson, Buffet and Gates wrote recently in Break the Immigration Impasse, “Americans deserve better than this” and “It’s time for 535 of America’s citizens to remember what they owe to the 318 million who employ them.”

[4] The bottom line here is that the Edges and Fringes (and apparently even the larger parties with which they are associated) could likely never come together sufficiently to champion opportunity for all Americans. At the rate we seem to be going, they probably could never be large enough to be a source of real change that enables maximum equal access to opportunity for all. Only the Center can act with enough mass and momentum to bring about that kind of change. A balanced Center that understands the importance of equal access to opportunity, and enforces it with their vote, will make the kind of difference America so desperately needs now.

[5] To ensure we can sustain such growth, we also commented on the need for protecting our environment and infrastructure…that one plank is tied to the success of all of the rest.

[6] The interacting principles of FAPITCA can also be viewed as a complex system that creates maximum resiliency and opportunity if used to inspire new thinking about governance in America.

[7] See footnote 1.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Platform – Part II: Ensuring Opportunity

A major premise of Fulfilling the American Promise in the Connected Age has been about opportunity in our nation. In fact, it’s the first point of definition of the American Promise in the Principles of FAPITCA: “our people have freedom of access to an equal opportunity to succeed (or to fail).” Freedom is at the root of this definition, and both success and failure are possible outcomes. America’s brand of capitalism has never been promoted as a guarantee for “success.”

Source: Wikipedia

To make capitalism work at maximum efficiency, however, government and commerce need to interact with each other to ensure equal access to opportunity. The roots of this are acknowledged in the Declaration of Independence, as Thomas Jefferson channeled the likes of John Locke and George Mason proclaiming in our Declaration our unalienable rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

 

VA Declaration of Rights Virginiamemory.com

Locke and Mason both wrote about “life, liberty and property” [1] or “…life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property…” [2] During the era of the authorship of these documents, Locke, Mason and Jefferson considered the pursuit of happiness to mean both personal “ownership” (freedom) and the property one could acquire.

We posited in our outline for the FAPITCA Platform that in effect our Declaration provides a foundation for equal access to “a baseline income that provides a foundation to support the ‘pursuit of happiness’ and that this baseline income should offset practical living expenses while making it possible to pay reasonable taxes and to loosen ties to government support.” Whether this is manifested in a higher minimum wage or a renewal of support for businesses and governments to work together to create more and better opportunities for our nation’s unemployed is a topic to be discussed in more depth than within this blog.

In any event, the creation and sustainment of access to opportunity to obtain ownership of property (personal and tangible) certainly appears to have been the intent of the Founding Fathers! [3]

A major issue we face in the political quagmire of Congress and all too many statehouses today is how to visualize ways to create opportunity and get our economy back on track…ways that don’t smack of “socialism” or “welfare state” politics. It is a tough problem, but it’s not as intractable as it seems.

America has been at these very challenging “inflection points” before and we found ways to overcome them. In fact, in Dead Men Ruling, C. Eugene Steuerle argues that America has faced at least two of these kinds of crises we face today: in the post-Revolution when America faced the choice of amending the Articles of Confederation and writing a new American Constitution; and “at the start of the Progressive Era, when the nation’s leaders began to add the governmental structures that proved necessary for an emerging world power.” [4]

In both instances, our elected leadership (granting that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 were in fact elected) found ways to compromise and push forward in the interests of the nation and the American people. They saw the future of America and worked together to address the challenges they knew they would face: they visualized and compromised. This ability to visualize and compromise has not been successfully applied in our politically-driven world lately, even though we have some of the best Connected Age technologies we could ever hope for! We have the tools that our forefathers could only dream of and yet our Congress won’t use them…very sad.

One of Steuerle’s key points is that our previous era’s leaders found ways to work together and considered the challenges we faced in the post-Revolution and the start of the Progressive era as opportunities for the nation rather than threats to their political careers. “Because elected officials who acted would often pay the ultimate political price at election time, they were often reluctant to act, and delays in achieving fundamental reform imposed additional burdens on the public. Not surprisingly, the current turning point requires much the same focus and presents the same political threats and theatre to the elected officials of our time,” Steuerle notes.

But our leaders in the past found the courage to compromise and act to set America up for success rather than the failure upon which our political leaders of today seem bound to engage. Disregarding Locke, Mason and Jefferson, our current crop of edge-driven representatives in both houses want to choke back opportunity for fear of looking too liberal, too progressive and too inclusive of the younger generations. They seem to be more concerned about reelection in spite of the opportunities this current situation offers – their courage and leadership are lacking. Their current approach fails to recognize the successes we found in opportunities like Steuerle cites.

All that said, there are a few straightforward proposals in which we could start using our Connected Age technologies to visualize and even predict how well we could move forward in this time of great opportunity. We could start using the technologies described in past FAPITCA blog posts to model and observe the interactions of people, tools and policies to project a future environment for success that matches the outcomes about which Steuerle writes. More importantly, if we are objective enough, we could use these technologies to create compelling, unemotional arguments for experimentation and possible adoption. Good ideas only go so far; we also need action and effective execution of ideas and plans. That’s another good use for visualization!

Below are several proposals that we might consider as part of our interaction experiment. Using the modeling technologies we’ve discussed elsewhere (here and here), we could build integrative models that visually demonstrate how one proposal interacts with another, or even all of them. By integrative models, we mean modeling in a fashion that highlights synergy between the elements of the models that shows dependencies in context, not attempts to cherry-pick pet projects – we have to see how all of these things work together to avoid the “unintended consequences” of one change here and another change there. We need to show holistic impacts.

We don’t claim that any of the following are original to us, and they certainly haven’t been “scored by the Congressional Budget Office,” but they are a viable starting point. We present these proposals as the basis for generating good hypotheses and experimentation; call them thought experiments at this point.

Some of the initial things to model include:

– A proposal that we lift the cap on Social Security contribution limits from its present limit of $117,000, while lowering the contribution rate from 7% to 5%. This will be a “tax increase” for people whose earnings are in excess of about $163,800, but a “tax cut” for all other workers. [5] Indirect compensation like corporate benefits and perks could also be subject to this 5% contribution on the personal income side. Self-employed would pay a flat 10% and all would continue to contribute 1.45% to Medicare. We call this first proposal sparing a nickel for Social Security.

– Increasing the minimum wage to a pay scale that rewards work more than not working. Whether $10 an hour or $15 an hour is appropriate, these rates of pay can be easily modeled in an integrated fashion as we’ve been discussing. The bottom line is that the level of income must be sufficient to empower living in a safe home that supports raising a family and pumps more money back into the economy. The scale of payback to the economy from many more folks who could then live fuller lives that achieve the American Promise will be much greater than the money a few wealthy Americans would “pump” into the economy. Scale is on our side here and we must use it.

The first two proposals could actually be combined in legislation as part of what we might call the 2014 “Rewarding Work in America Act.” Using the modeling techniques we referenced above and just applying basic economic principles, it should be straightforward to show that these first two proposals will put more money in the pockets of lower and middle income working people, boost the economy and address several of the income inequality issues that appear to be worsening. We must reward work, which means we must get people back to work so that they can earn a living wage and create their own positive impact for the economy!

– Eliminating tax breaks that ONLY benefit the wealthy, such as eliminating all mortgage interest and tax deductions for second homes. It no longer makes sense to provide these kinds of tax breaks to people wealthy enough to own second homes—or a boat because it happens to have plumbing aboard. The “return on investment” for these kinds of deductions is ineffective in an economy that’s changed as much as ours has in the Connected Age. If we must add deductions that stimulate the economy, let’s find deductions that benefit everyone.

– Making a meaningful contribution to our young people by:

   — Eliminating ALL interest on student loans if paid back in a finite period (say five-ten years)

   — Exerting downward pressure on tuition by providing a cap of no more than $50,000 as eligible for the “interest-free” provision

   — Encouraging state universities through a variety of means to embrace a “two-and-a half” rule which provides that no state university can charge more than two-and-a-half times the cost per student to that of the per-student costs of the state’s high schools. (The actual number would be subject to the modeling recommendations, but we hold that it should not cost states that much more to educate freshman and sophomores than seniors in high school.)

   — Offering more extensive and inclusive forms of public service such as AmeriCorps, Peace Corps and similar organizations that can both pay grant money for education and create invaluable work experience. We want to restore the value of public service to young people and our nation; these programs should be inspired by the contributions of the various forms of the GI-Bill that have positively impacted those who served in our nation’s military

   — Convening a national panel to explore what we can do to reengineer our colleges to stimulate lower tuition costs and deliver greater education value (it is inexcusable for the cost of a college education to exceed inflation costs so severely.)

– Reducing corporate taxes and at the same time encouraging and enforcing paying taxes on corporate income rather than “protecting” that income in foreign banks or holdings. American earnings belong in America as much as possible, to be invested into our own economy and infrastructure and most importantly, our people. Hiring Americans, paying taxes and supporting American research and development are some of the most patriotic things our businesses can support. America needs our businesses and companies to be part of the solution that saves and preserves our economy and environment—government cannot and should not do that alone.

Could these types of collaborative and interactive solutions serve to increase both opportunity and the tax base (without really increasing the rate of taxes paid)? That’s a sound and testable hypothesis anyway. These types of actions can provide win-win for both parties and it can be demonstrated through low-cost experimentation. In spite of this fact, neither party will talk seriously about these proposals, or if they do they talk about one, they exclude the others. All of these things, and probably others, are part of a system of success: the American Promise.

The refusal to compromise and do right for America is withholding equal access to opportunity. Far too many in America do not have access to Fulfilling the American Promise because too many of our leaders, and our electorate apparently, can’t see the opportunities and visualize how to achieve them. It seems they prefer to be frozen into stalemates and inactivity because of the challenges…that’s not the America most of us grew up to appreciate!

Increased access to opportunity presents us a remarkable path forward towards Fulfilling the American Promise – that’s why this is our first platform plank in FAPITCA. Unfortunately, how America (and most of the West) approaches production, consumption and marketing contribute to the cloudy visuals we suffer these days. We’ll talk about that next time.

Originally posted by Carl and Chuck Hunt, 5/29/2014.

NOTES:

[1] This was labeled as property in Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, although it also referred to the concept of “estate”. See also Beeman, R., Our Lives, Our Fortunes and our Sacred Honor, Basic Books, NY, 2013, pp. 394-398.

[2] As written by George Mason in the Virginia Declaration of Rights; this document was a significant source of inspiration to Jefferson and to many of the committee who drafted the Declaration of Independence.

[3] We do not address the national shame of slavery or dispossession of the American Indians from the lands on which they lived during this time, discussed very recently and in more detail in James Fallows’ blog post “The Civil War That Does Not End,” but the idea of “personal ownership” for all would surely have applied had America been founded in this day and age.

[4] Dead Men Ruling: How to Restore Fiscal Freedom and Rescue Our Future (Kindle Edition), The Century Foundation Press, Washington, DC, 2014.

[5] Employers would also save by paying a matching 5% instead of the current 7%, although their contribution could be phased out at some point, say $175,000 or $200,000, based on the findings of the models.

Chatting with a Small-Town Mayor

In the best of small-town politics, “Politics” really don’t even enter the picture all that much. In effective small-town government, elected leaders set their egos and personal ambitions aside and do what’s right for the community—solutions are for people and community first rather than for some political party. That’s the way it is in my hometown anyway…that’s the way it is in Lewes, Delaware.

To be sure, small-town governments are usually modest, on a scale with the population and needs of the residents. There actually is no need for a political party in this kind of government environment because elected officials know their community and the community usually knows their elected officials. Party politics would only add a barrier between the community and the elected leaders and add very little value, if any, to the community.

While there are small-town politics (small “p”) here in Lewes, they’re not the kind of Politics (big “P”) we find in Congress where people won’t even dare to cooperate with each other because of rigid political ideals. A lot of the success and freedom from party politics Lewes has enjoyed for the last decade, though, is because one man—the mayor—wouldn’t allow it. Fortunately, Lewes has also had a City Council that agrees with that perspective.

James L. Ford, III, known to most Lewes residents as Jim, served as the Mayor of Lewes 10 years before retiring this month. Prior to that, Jim served Lewes on the City Council for 12 years and five years on the Lewes Planning Commission. As is the case in many small towns, these positions are unpaid and offer opportunities to serve from the best of motivations: care and concern for one’s community. Jim stepped down at the “top of his game” as they say about sports figures, and judging from the turnout for “Mayor Jim Ford Appreciation Day” last weekend, almost everyone in Lewes will miss him.

Former Lewes Mayor Jim Ford (center) leads the “Zumba Break” with Kelly Serpico, Lewes Zumba and fitness guru (left) during “Mayor Jim Ford Appreciation Day, 5/18/2014, in Lewes, DE.

“Mayor Jim Ford Appreciation Day!” When’s the last time you’ve seen that kind of event in your hometown? Lewes is just that kind of community as most who visit here will confirm. Those who live here aren’t surprised in the least because that’s why they live here: that’s the sort of town Lewes is! That’s what good “little p” politics can achieve. “Little p” politics is about people, or as former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill used to quip “all politics is local.” Judging from the turnout at his “Appreciation Day,” Jim Ford got that right, along with most everything else a small town needs to thrive. Jim even showed he could lead a mass Zumba event!

Jim and I had lunch this week after his retirement and I asked him about a number of things that related to his experiences, but two important issues emerged that are relevant to Fulfilling the American Promise in the Connected Age: overcoming barriers between political parties, people and good government; and transforming production and consumption in America, the topic of an essay Chuck and I are writing for the FAPTICA website.

Speaking of barriers to good governance, Jim emphasized a thought that I discussed in an earlier blog post that quoted Delaware Senator Chris Coons. Jim said the “biggest barrier now seems to be the party structure that is composed of so many factions, and the influence of lobbyists,” a point also made by Senator Coons. In debates that took place in Lewes City Council meetings “we always asked ‘what’s right for Lewes’” before taking votes and setting ordinances or policy. Jim and the Lewes City Council worked hard to eliminate barriers.

That’s missing in Congress these days, Jim pointed out, as debates seem more about preserving party ties and influence than about asking what’s best for America first. It should be about the nation first and the state or local community next long before considering lobbies or contributors, Jim agreed. Lewes succeeds, Jim said, “because we always had a balanced call for action” and Council activities were open and inclusive of the entire community. Jim and I agreed that it might be difficult to scale from local governmental effectiveness to national leadership, but we really need to examine what must happen to make that work.

Jim also had an interesting insight about the essay Chuck and I are doing on America taking the lead in transforming production and consumption. We want to preserve the great spirit of innovation and discovery the United States promotes, Jim said, but we do need to lead in developing “values-based consumption that is based less on marketing and more on personal values.” The idea of better incorporating personal values in the marketplace rather than relying on the production and marketing components of American commerce is a concept worth pursuing. We’ll explore that in our coming essay.

It was personally satisfying to break bread with Jim Ford and be the beneficiary of his great insights about governance at the local level and how important it is to keep searching for ways to scale good “little p politics” to good “Big P Politics” at the national level. After all, that is a major part of how we can move forward in Fulfilling the American Promise in the Connected Age!”

Originally posted by Carl Hunt, 5/25/2014.

The Promise of the Millennials

When we debated our definition of the American Promise, “freedom of access to an equal opportunity to succeed (or to fail),” we discussed at length how we could consistently apply this characterization of the American Promise to young Americans. We wanted to speak to all Americans about how Fulfilling the American Promise in the Connected Age is so important in such a special way to our progeny, the group we call Millennials.

There are a lot of blogs by and for Millennials; there are too many to even begin listing here. Ease and freedom of expression of a wide variety of perspectives has been one of the hallmarks of the Connected Age for people of every generation, but particularly the Millennials. These Millennial perspectives can form a vast resource of insight and inspiration while setting the stage for what America becomes…if we start realizing it and nurturing this emerging body of work now.

In The Next America, Paul Taylor of The Pew Research Center reports that the Millennial Generation began in 1981 and that the cut-off year has not yet been determined. [i] Whatever the actual dates may be, the Millennials are graduating from school and taking their place in junior leadership positions (when they are available) or other employment opportunities (when they are available). By Taylor’s calculations, this means at least 34% of the American population can be considered part of the Millennial cohort, using 2012 US Census data.

This also means that 34% of the US population that will be responsible for the future of America and running for elected office across the country is now starting to take its place on the American scene.

Boomers and Generation X cohorts [ii] have been responsible to prepare America for this up and coming generation. In light of the American Promise theme, it’s worth doing an inventory of what we Boomers and Gen X’ers are accomplishing on behalf of the Millennials, and indeed on behalf of the future of America. What have our earlier generations done to set the tone for growth and development of our budding leaders?

In terms of leadership, we’ve shown the Millennials the “productivity” of a starkly, edge-driven Congress and other federal, state and locally elected officials. We’ve demonstrated to our young people how to use politics to rig election district boundaries, solicit enormous sums of politically-motivated monies, fight against protecting our environment and exploit an all-too-willing media to further divide our nation. Pretty impressive examples, the edges might claim.

The senior generations have also overseen the significant escalation of education and healthcare costs while enabling the rise of wealth for a select few who have little regard for the principles of the American Promise. We’ve shown how our young people can “benefit” more by being investment bankers and stock brokers than becoming scientists, civil servants and educators. Again, this is another impressive list of accomplishments that can serve as examples on which to build the America of the next generation and beyond…well, no, not really. What in the world are we thinking?

From time-to-time, we’ll visit a very fine piece of work accomplished by Captain Wayne Porter, USN and Colonel Mark (Puck) Mykleby, USMC (ret) called “A National Strategic Narrative.” We’ll look at this document in increasing detail as we unroll the relationship of the Millennials to the future of America. But for now we want to emphasize the Narrative’s points about the youth of America and what they can do for all of us if we empower them. In speaking about young Americans, Wayne and Puck wrote:

By investing energy, talent, and dollars now in the education and training of young Americans – the scientists, statesmen, industrialists, farmers, inventors, educators, clergy, artists, service members, and parents, of tomorrow – we are truly investing in our ability to successfully compete in, and influence, the strategic environment of the future. Our first investment priority, then, is intellectual capital and a sustainable infrastructure of education, health and social services to provide for the continuing development and growth of America’s youth. [iii]

This is more than parents doing the right thing and setting good examples for our children…this is about investing in the children of all Americans to build the future of our nation. As Wayne and Puck note, these investments build on the most important infrastructure component we could possibly construct: our young people and the intellectual capital they will need to keep America going.

By cooperating even as a politically-driven body, our senior generations now in power can set the tone and framework starting today. By recognizing and being accountable for what we’ve done to our future generations, the rest of us can start electing responsible people who care more about America and our young people than themselves…who care more about our future than measuring a campaign coffer. Through the electoral process and a responsible political system, we can “sand” the edges from divisive office-holders and start building a system that rewards “competitive cooperation” and collaboration rather than simply “win-at-all-costs” politics.

The Millennials we talk to and read about want to step up and take their place, just like we did when we were their age. They’re not lazy and they’re not unmotivated…they are Americans who love their country but have to overcome college debt, healthcare costs and meager job prospects. Worst of all, they have to overcome less access to opportunity than many of our older generations faced.

Let’s start fixing that now, Boomers and Gen Y’ers…let’s cooperate and try harder to create access to opportunity for our young people – they have great Promise. Let’s empower all Americans to Fulfill the American Promise in the Connected Age.

Originally posted by Carl and Chuck Hunt, 5/8/2014.

 

[i] A claim in dispute in some circles based on the beginning of the so-called “Generation Z” in the mid-2000s.

[ii] 1946-1964 and 1965-1980, respectively, according to Taylor in The Next America.

[iii] Quoted from the section “Our Three Investment Priorities” from A National Strategic Narrative.