The 4th American Revolution

Posted on July 2nd, 2008 by Will Marre.
Categories: Leadership, Community, ADP Diary.

revdownload.jpgToday we seem almost numb to the steady stream of leadership failures, scandals, and lies. National polls tell us we are losing faith in our primary institutions of government, education, religion, and business to provide leadership. According to social research from DYG, over 85% of the American Public feel uncertain about our future quality of life, of having a robust, growing economy, adequate personal or national security, or maintaining the quality of our environment.

The time of change is indeed upon us. It seems that every 70 years or so, roughly the time of an average person’s life, our system needs to face a moment of truth, a revolution, a re-thinking about what matters most. This has already happened three times in American history. In each case, the revolution was first led by a thoughtful and passionate group of extraordinary citizens.

The first American Revolution started as a result of England’s corrupt “special interests” turning Americans into second-class citizens. The greed of King George and his cronies made taxes, tariffs, and the treatment of colonists unbearable. Men of great courage and intellect decided it was time to stand for something. American Revolutionaries were driven to create a world that was fairer and filled with more opportunity, more dignity, and more compassion. A world where people’s character was more important than their class. Where merit meant more than pedigree.

The second American Revolution extended the ideals of the Declaration to all Americans. It took a Civil War. The Great Depression ignited the third American Revolution creating public policy to promote honesty in our financial markets and access to opportunity that spawned the greatest middle-class in world history.

Today, we are in a full-blown historical crisis. All of us. If we were a basketball team, we’d be starting the fourth quarter losing by 30 points. And yes, I have great hope that we can still pull out a victory. But we must first be realistic. Our game plan is not working. In fact, it’s a disaster. What we are witnessing is a fundamental change in the viability of our economy. Still, politicians, business leaders, and economic experts insist that our current bleeding of foreclosures, tight credit, raging inflation and our disappearing dollar is only a flesh wound. But it’s not. And most of us have a knot in our stomach because we sense something big and bad may be happening. And well we should. For 50 years we’ve frittered away our greatest achievements and most wonderful advantages. Imagine this. In the 1960’s we rebuilt our schools and rose up a generation of engineers and scientists that first got us to the moon and then gave us the computer age. Then we forgot education was a priority. So today 30% of Americans in high school won’t graduate. We have so few engineers we have to rent them b y the planeload. Among developed nations we’ve gone from first to worst in K-12 education in 30 years.

In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and America proved to the world that our system was the winner. We won the World War. Unthinkable. Amazing. So today, Russia is reasserting its ominous power financed by its massive oil and gas reserves. The western world is held hostage by over-rich oil lords, mad terrorists and raging ambitions of nobody-is-going-to-tell-me-what-to-do communist China. So much for America’s Golden Age of world peace. Meanwhile failed leadership has bankrupted us. We have $13 trillion economy with over $10 trillion of that coming from our own consumption. The only thing we make that the world wants is our weapon systems and big budget action movies. Basically our biggest export is violence.

In five years the percent of our national debt owed to foreign interests has more than doubled from 20% to over 50%. More than ever foreign governments influence our economic policy. We are so financially overdrawn our infrastructure is collapsing. We’ve spent over $700 billion on a war that will not end while our road, bridges, airports, dams, sewer systems and water supplies decay form decades of neglect. But the biggest failure of leadership is promoting a consumer economy driven by easy money and universal debt. The American consumer has no more assets to borrow against and doesn’t earn enough to pay off what’s owed.

All that must change. For decades they’ve promoted the false idea that rising wages is the core cause of inflation. Now we see inflation is primarily caused by economic and social policy that jacks up housing bubbles, medical costs, food prices, and gasoline. I could go on but that’s not really the point. The real point is, are going to do something about it?

It’s time for a new model of leadership. A model that embraces our joint responsibility for the general welfare of all citizens. This leadership is not yet clearly offered in substance by either presidential candidate. We don’t need refried Democratic liberalism because government bureaucracy is a poor and wasteful provider of actual services. We also cannot endure Republican policies that only concentrates more wealth and power that makes corruption inevitable. What’s needed is a revolutionary view of leadership that is consistent with our nation’s first aspirations. It seeks to neither provide handouts and freebies to the poor or subsidies and tax breaks and favor for the rich. What we need are government and business leaders that have the moral vision to pursue policies that elevate and radically improve education for all from preschool through the many phases of adult life. We need to re-enthrone honest competition and end corporate welfare. We must criminalize what has become brazen, if-legal, corruption of our national government by special interests.

Today our government’s own accounting office estimates one third of our $3 trillion national budget is wasted. We don’t need higher taxes. We need smarter spending. We need ethics and honesty. We all know this. Now we must demand it. All we are asking is for a government of leaders seeking the public interest instead of their self-interest. And what’s in the public interest is universal quality education and an uncorrupt playing field. Americans have the ingenuity to create a new future. We just need a government who will provide the conditions for our talent to bloom. This is called Civic Social Responsibility. It’s nothing new. It’s what our country was founded on. Government by the people, for the people.

YOU MAY ALSO BE INTERESTED IN OUR ATTEMPT TO GIVE AMERICANS A VOICE:
AMERICA’S NEW AGENDA

To visit American Dream Project’s homepage, click here.

8 comments.

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KB
Comment on July 3rd, 2008.

Sign me up for the next Boston Tea Party and call me a liberal … I’ve been called worse :O)

Richard
Comment on July 3rd, 2008.

Our government is our method of democratically serving the public. Every time we privatize a service that is supposed to be for the public interest, we split it into two interests; that of the public, and that of the company operating for profit. Then enter more interested parties- the lobbyists and politicians colluding to increase opportunity and profit from the government system. The profiteers want us to believe that government is not competent, and that for-profit companies can do it better. I’ve seen the government put an agency into situations where it cannot perform well with intention. And when the agency fails, they say “you see, they couldn’t do it, and we need to privatize it.”

In the case of the military, it becomes extremely convenient to privatize. The mercenaries don’t count in many of our statistics, and we avoid a draft. If Americans were afraid that the war would spend the lives of their children, they would be doing a lot more than simply giving the President a low rating. Just remember, that the privatization is here on our soil too. Someday, if you choose to protest against our government, you will likely be met by a foreign paid mercenary performing “crowd control” instead of a fellow citizen. How comfortable are you with that?

I bet that if public schools were privatized, they would do better- simply because then there’d be a lobby for spending money on schools, and it would happen. Currently, the lobbyists for our children are busy working overtime to pay for their children’s fading American standard of living. We don’t need more privatization and lobbyists. We need to return the government to serving the public directly. We should pay competitively for the best and brightest to serve in a government the people could and would respect.

Blutodog
Comment on July 3rd, 2008.

Interesting. Yes, we’re in the dumpster but I think we all have to stop trying place blame. The truth is we’re all to blame. We let the worst among us dominate and when a nation allows this it eventually pays the piper. The world has had enough of our lousy leader and his corrupt polices. Over the course of the last 50+ yrs. we have had one bad egg after another in the WH and this hasn’t been lost on the rest of humanity. Nevertheless, its WE who have elected or selected or allowed these guys to rise to power and when in power we have done precious little to stop them.

Richard E. Bull
Comment on July 4th, 2008.

The emphasis on education is essential. Unfortunately our education system is as broken as our politics. Political Correctness trumps rationality, objectivity and a focus on Reality and Truth (truth itself has become outmoded.) In my teaching of college students, i am often amzed at the amount if mis-information they have been fed, reinforced by the watered-down, when not completely inaccurate text books. The emphasis seems to be on entertaining the students rather than educating them. Enough said for now.
Richard

Robert
Comment on July 7th, 2008.

Few Americans know the names their local elected leaders. Few know the names of their elected Congressman and Senators. Everyone knows their President. Has the President become the King? Are we asking him to solve all our problems, local, national, and international? The people have power, but they need to understand their civic duty to be informed, be engaged, and make their voice and their vote count. Repeal the War Powers Act that allows the President to effectively declare war despite the fact that our constitution says only congress can do that. Pass laws to limit how long any person can serve as an elected leader, and remove the temptation to become corrupt. Stop allowing spending bills to contain riders that spend money on unrelated things (the just passed supplemental war spending bill contained over $3BILLION on international drug trafficking and domestic disaster relief). IRT Blutodog: There’s plenty of blame to go around…but the blame is all on us! Get involved…get everyone involved. The process is the problem and it can be changed. The apathy of the TV generation of the American people is the reason it has gone on this long. Last thought: I can pull into any fast food restaurant drive thru and have six value meals to choose from. I can go to any store and choose between 10 kinds of toothpaste. Why do I only have two choices for President, and maybe three for my elected representative if I’m lucky?

Cheryl
Comment on August 25th, 2008.

This country has so many problems they are too numerous to count. But the economic resolution lies in the heart of mankind. We have been so conditioned to think about self first and to judge one another based upon economic status, political and religious affiliation and let’s not leave out race and gender,rather than accept the commonality that exist between us. We are AMERICANS living in a society that allows us freedom of choice.
United we can stand, divided we will fall. Change begins when one can admit it’s faults. Pointing the finger only feeds denial. Let’s admit we’ve made some mistakes and move toward a brighter future through the acceptance of responsibility for our failures. We can’t just blame the politicians, because guess what? We put them in office. Let’s move toward tomorrow because yesterday can’t be fixed.

We need to hold Corporate America accountable by refusing to patronize those companies that treat their employess like dirt, or take advantage of consumers because they have the money and power to do so. Even the corporate moguls who have shifted their plants overseas for cheaper labor force.

Corporate America has bleed this country dry and we have stood by and financed the efforts, with our out of control spending. Well the boycotts of the 60″s brought about tremendous change. Maybe it’s time for Americans to stand together exercising abstinence and send a corporate wake up call.

There is power in numbers!

America is at a crossroad and the test is before us. Will we let our biases and the media continue to distort our sound judgement or will we exercise our right to simply be a voice and action for ” Change”. We may not know what that change will look like or even feel like, but if we are too scared to dare to be different and venture into untreaded waters how can we expect anything to be different?
Let’s stop talking about the problems and realize we have the power to bring about change. Corporate America has bleed this country dry and we have stood by and financed the efforts, with our out of control spending.
Well the boycotts of the 60″s brought about tremendous change. Maybe it’s time for Americans to stand together exercising abstinence and send a corporate wake up call.
There is power in numbers!

The 4th American Revolution | ThoughtRocket Blog
Pingback on October 5th, 2008.

[…] A shortened version of this post was previously published on the American Dream Project blog with the same title, The 4th American Revolution. […]

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