Whose idea of freedom will shape America’s future?
By George Lakoff, an editorial from the Boston Globe, Tuesday, July 4, 2006.Not since the Civil War has America been more divided politically. The Civil War was fought over the question of what freedom in America was to be. The issue was in the open for all to see: human slavery, the bluntest effrontery to the idea of freedom.
The Culture War today is once more about the question of what freedom is to be in America. But it is subtler. No slaves, but … “detainees” in Guantanamo in chains held for years without due process; more than a million young African Americans imprisoned — and brutalized there — years after year, often for nonviolent or victimless crimes; torture in Abu Ghraib and at secret destinations in Egypt and Syria; government spying on ordinary citizens. No slaves. But illegal immigrants who want to come here to do backbreaking work for very low pay and few rights, soon to be “temporary workers,” virtually indentured to their employers and without voting rights or other rights of self-determination. Remarkably, all of this is in the name of “freedom.” It is a right-wing conservative conception of freedom and it flies in the face of the freedoms declared by the Founding Fathers and expanded upon since.
Over more than two centuries Americans demanded successive expansions of freedom — progressive freedom. Expansions of voting rights, civil rights, education, public health, scientific knowledge, and protections from fear and want; these all made us freer to follow our dreams. These were the ideals of freedom that I grew up with. They are now all under threat, not by guns or bombs, but an under-the-radar redefinition of freedom and liberty to suit right wing ideology. And it is taking place under our noses, with the complicity of the media, where there has been little noticeable questioning of the President’s use of “freedom” and “liberty.” The media has not made an issue of it.
The mechanism of redefinition is cognitive. It is in our brains. We can’t see it. Freedom is what cognitive scientists call an essentially contested concept, which means there will always distinct and disputed versions of freedom that are inconsistent with each other. There is no single, universal , and objectively “correct” meaning of freedom. There is a single, uncontested, but very limited, core meaning of freedom that we all agree on. But that is the limit of consensus. Progressives and conservatives have utterly different value systems that extend the uncontested core in opposite directions.
Progressives: There should be a freedom to marry. The government should not be able to decide who can marry whom.
Conservatives: “Freely elected” government officials should determine who can marry who. That’s what a “free country” means.Progressives: Social security, the minimum wage, universal health care, college for all are ways to guarantee freedom from want.
Conservatives: Giving people things they haven’t earned creates dependency and robs people of their freedom.Progressives: The 45 million working people who can’t afford health care cannot all pull themselves up by their bootstraps. An economy that drives down wages to increase investor profits creates a cheap labor trap. The trap works against freedom from want.
Conservatives: Economic liberty comes through the free market ; government gets in the way: government works against economic liberty in four ways: regulation, workers’ rights, taxes, and class action lawsuits.Progressives: Freedom of religion includes freedom from having a religion imposed on you.
Conservatives: Freedom to practice religion for fundamentalist evangelicals means spreading the good news of the truth of the gospel, which implies school prayer, “under God” in the Pledge, the Ten Commandments in courthouses, and the teaching of Intelligent Design.Progressives: The President’s spying on citizens without a warrant is a violation of freedom.
Conservatives: The President is just doing his duty to preserve our freedom.What is scary is how consistent the differences are, how closely they stick to the progressive-conservative differences in moral worldview. The differences in the meaning of freedom reflect the major political differences of our time.
President Bush, in his second inaugural address, used “freedom,” “free,” and “liberty” 49 times in 20 minutes. “Liberty” has become the watchword of the radical right. The right has taken over the use of these words as part of their appropriation of patriotism.
Progressives must reclaim not merely the words “freedom” and “liberty,” but the ideas that made this a free country. To lose freedom is awful; to lose the idea of freedom would be worse.
Whose idea of freedom will shape America’s future?
September 25, 2006 by Steve Wilmarth · No Comments · Books worth reading..., Citizen action, National Politics
Keith Olberman in defense of dissent in a free society…
September 2, 2006 by Steve Wilmarth · No Comments · Citizen action, National Politics, People worth listening to...
You know it when you hear it. I wasn’t really paying attention to the TV. The “news” was serving as “background noise” to a conversation I was having with my wife. But it was one of those commentaries that somewhere along the way, the words started resonating and with the perception of an altoghether humanistic sixth sense, I began to be drawn to the television screen.
This was a news commentary… indeed, an editorial commentary for the ages. As the words made their way to my brain through the background, my eyes and ears were inexorably drawn to the screen. Keith Olberman was doing something I hadn’t seen or heard on a syndicated, national news program in over 4 decades.
He was talking straight from that inner place that goes well beyond any mere intellectual response to the news of a day earlier… Donald Rumsfeld’s speech to the American Legion Convention. If you haven’t heard the Keith Olberman commentary, you should. If you have, it’s worth listening to again.
Yes, follow his artfully crafted words, but look into his eyes. You know immediately that his sentiments are urgent, a clarion call to not be afraid to express dissent, because it is morally unambiguous and right to raise our voices if indeed we disagree. In spite of the condescending rehtoric of government technocrats, we are not a stupid population. We are not unable to understand. We will fight for our freedom and a better world for our families. We do not need Donald Rumsfeld to act on our behalf as a moral compass or to pretend to be a self-appointed arbiter of justice and righteousness in our society or in the societies of others. We’ve defended that right to do and be those things for ourselves. Here’s Keith Olberman’s eloquent commentary, a comentary for everyman and for all time:
An Inconvenient Truth…
August 25, 2006 by Steve Wilmarth · No Comments · Sustainable economics
Curtesy of friends and truly passionate custodians of God’s creation, Jane & Newell Curtis, the following item was included in the most recent UCC (United Church of Christ) newsletter:
Interfaith Power and Light presents An Inconvenient Truth. Join us during the week of October 1 through 8, as congregations around the country screen what has been called the most important film to be shown in America this year. It engages viewers intellectually and moves them to a place of action. The Interfaith Power and Light campaign is religious response to global warming and people of faith have a moral obligation to do their best to save the Creation that we love. Please join us!
The truth is, our obligations as custodians of this small “blue planet” are non-partisan and non-denominational. Thanks, Jane and Newell, for your passion and purpose…
The Undeclared War on America’s Middle-Class…
August 21, 2006 by Steve Wilmarth · No Comments · Citizen journalism, National Politics
So, how does he keep finding the time to author terrific books, with fascinating insights?
I don’t know, but I’m sure thankful that Thom is drinking his V-8 Juice, because “Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class” is another impassioned, enlightened look at American society, this time focusing on the shrinking middle class.
While the radical GOP extremists have been diverting the attention of America’s middle class with demagogic, divisive emotional “values” issues, the Republican Party has been picking our pockets, reducing our opportunies, and dismantling our support systems.
As the book illustrates, the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the middle calss is getting screwed.
Hartmann always grounds his contemporary analysis in the context of the origins of our nation, our Constitution, and revolutionary history.
Do people or profits come first in our society?
Are we a nation that is interested in advancing the public good and interest of the many? Or are we an oligarchy, in which the many must sacrifice their futures for the benefit of a privileged few?
The latter sounds a lot like a monarchy, doesn’t it?
And wasn’t the American Revolution a result of the rule of an unjust, tyrannical monarchy?
From the Publisher:
“The American middle class is on its deathbed. Ordinary folks who put in a solid day’s work can no longer afford to buy a house, send their kids to college, or even get sick. If you’re not a CEO, you’re probably screwed.
America wasn’t meant to be like this. Air America Radio host Thom Hartmann shows that our Founding Fathers worked hard to ensure that a small group of wealthy people would never dominate this country–they’d had enough of aristocracy. They put policies in place to ensure a thriving middle class. When the middle class took a hit, beginning in the post-Civil War Gilded Age and culminating in the Great Depression, democracy-loving leaders like Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower revitalized it through initiatives like antitrust regulations, fair labor laws, the minimum wage, Social Security, and Medicare.
So what happened? In the last twenty-five years, we’ve witnessed an undeclared war against the middle class. The so-called conservatives waging this war are only interested in conserving–and steadily increasing–their own wealth and power. Hartmann shows how, under the guise of “freeing” the market, they’ve systematically dismantled the programs set up by Republicans and Democrats to protect the middle class and have installed policies that favor the superrich and corporations.
But it’s not too late to return to the America our Founders envisioned. Hartmann outlines a series of commonsense proposals that will ensure that our public institutions are not turned into private fiefdoms and that people’s basic needs–education, health care, a living wage–are met in a way that allows the middle class to expand, not shrink.
America will be stronger with a growing, prospering middle class–rule by the rich will only make it weaker. Democracy requires a fair playing field, and it will survive only if We the People stand up, speak out, and reclaim our democratic birthright.”
On the road with Samantha and Bianca…
August 9, 2006 by Steve Wilmarth · Comments Off · Connecticut Politics, Education Issues, Student performances
Samantha and Bianca have had quite a summer. These two Crosby HS honors students demonstrate what self-determined learning is all about. They’ve managed to avoid the “couch potato” mode that many students find themselves in during summer breaks.
In June, they ended up at a “new media” conference at UMass, and met students from Vermont and Amman… That’s Amman… as in Jordan! Wow, these two get around, and everywhere they go, they’ve got ideas and information and culture that others want a piece of.
Samantha and Bianca put their best efforts behind Ned Lamont. Working the phones at Lamont Headquarters in Meriden, they know they made a difference… and ended up partying with Al Sharpton at Lamont’s primary election central!
Benkler’s “The Wealth of Networks”
August 8, 2006 by Steve Wilmarth · Comments Off · Education Issues
Yale professor and author Yochai Benkler has written an impressive book titled The Wealth of Networks. The book is available as a “wiki,” which means it can be read and discussed online. Click here to go to the Wikipedia site for The Wealth of Networks.
I believe this book is an important piece in laying the foundation for a transformation to a whole new economic and social order. Benkler’s work sets out a case that at a critical juncture in human evolution, we have the possibility of shedding an unsustainable growth model for a completely sustainable model.
The principles articutlated in The Wealth of Networks can enable human development to continue beyond the finite limits of resources available to us in our agrarian and industrial phases. I plan to begin a running commentary of the book, and will link this commentary to a “wiki” for the purpose of creating a broader community participation in the discussion.
The future of public media?
July 11, 2006 by Steve Wilmarth · Comments Off · Citizen action
The following blog post by Jake Shapireo was picked up from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School:
As citizen journalism and user-generated content burn up the blogosphere and incite waves of entrepreneurial venture-backed energy and big media interest from Fox to the BBC, your friendly neighborhood public broadcasters are paying close attention and are starting to get their digital act together. Over the last 10 months NPR has partnered with local stations and networks to offer hundreds of podcasts, generating over 25 million downloads to date.American Public Media/Minnesota Public Radio recently made a major investment in Gather.com – a new social network startup with a “My Space for grownups” feel. Open Source with Christopher Lydon continues to blaze a trail as a hybrid Internet and radio presence. And local stations across the country are beginning to dip their toes into blogging and podcasting, if not yet loosening the reins on who is behind the microphone on air and online.
In a way, public media should be better suited to adapt to the social web than other broadcasters: the public service mission emphasizes open access, civic engagement, diversity of voices, education values that resonate with the citizen, and participatory media movement.The increasingly valuable role of trusted filter is already one of its signature traits. And the system structure of stations and networks and independent producers mirrors the “small pieces loosely joined” (thanks to Dave Weinberger) nature of the Internet itself. But big questions loom:
* Can public media remain relevant in a digital world where there is no “left of the dial” and oceans of commercial, noncommercial and user-generated content intermingle?
* What’s the role for local stations when producers can reach audiences anywhere anytime?
* Are we stuck with repurposing existing programming for digital distribution or can we broaden the sources and voices now that “shelf space/bandwidth” is no longer the limit?There’s been a flurry of activity this year, from the BBC’s “Creative Future” to NPR’s “New Realities.” The Ford Foundation launched a $50M initiative to support public media, and the Berkman Center hosted “Beyond Broadcast: Reinventing Public Media in a Participatory Culture.”
The answers aren’t all there but the trend is clear: public media is evolving into a significant digital service (just Google “evolution” and PBS comes up first), and it can continue to play an essential role as a trusted convener of conversation around news, information, arts, and culture, and help build a backbone of noncommercial media in a networked society.
This is a fairly concise indicator of where “public” media is headed. Think of the power of this communication medium on the local level.
President John F. Kennedy on being a liberal…
July 5, 2006 by Steve Wilmarth · Comments Off · Connecticut Politics, National Politics, Westbrook Politics
“I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith. For liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man’s ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deservesI believe also in the United States of America, in the promise that it contains and has contained throughout our history of producing a society so abundant and creative and so free and responsible that it cannot only fulfill the aspirations of its citizens, but serve equally well as a beacon for all mankind. I do not believe in a superstate. I see no magic in tax dollars which are sent to Washington and then returned. I abhor the waste and incompetence of large-scale federal bureaucracies in this administration as well as in others. I do not favor state compulsion when voluntary individual effort can do the job and do it well. But I believe in a government which acts, which exercises its full powers and full responsibilities. Government is an art and a precious obligation; and when it has a job to do, I believe it should do it. And this requires not only great ends but that we propose concrete means of achieving them.
Our responsibility is not discharged by announcement of virtuous ends. Our responsibility is to achieve these objectives with social invention, with political skill, and executive vigor. I believe for these reasons that liberalism is our best and only hope in the world today. For the liberal society is a free society, and it is at the same time and for that reason a strong society. Its strength is drawn from the will of free people committed to great ends and peacefully striving to meet them. Only liberalism, in short, can repair our national power, restore our national purpose, and liberate our national energies.
Photos from this year’s student exposition of work…
July 3, 2006 by Steve Wilmarth · Comments Off · Education Issues
From the 2006 Connectictut Innovation Exposition … celebrate the work of our students!
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