General thoughts

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

General thoughts
by Michael Perelman
26 November 2001

-clip-.

Charles and Ali ask if we should not be trying to craft a radical analysis of
the economy, especially now that it is not doing as well.  I agree
wholeheartedly.

Jim says that that is what he does.  Many of us feel the same way, but we often
do so in isolation.  If we could somehow develop a dialogue about the economy
-- I mean a real dialogue, not just saying the same things we have been saying
for years -- I suspect that we could come up with something much better.

I look at the energy that was so enthusiastically expended here about Doug.  If
we could muster the same energy toward a positive agenda, I suspect we could
really accomplished something.

(((((((((

Toward revival of a affirmative economic agenda : Freedom from want

******


Reflections On 'Wartime'

By Barbara Kingsolver

November 23, 2001; Washington Post

Lately I've been saying this quiet word,
"wartime." It brings a taste to the root of my tongue, and to my
ear the earnest tone of my parents recalling their teenage
years. The word speaks of things I've never known: an era of
sacrifice undertaken by rich and poor alike, of gardens planted
and warm socks knitted in drab colors, people conquering fear by
giving up comforts so everyone on earth might eventually have
better days. I went looking to see if I was imagining something
that never happened. I found a speech made by Franklin D.
Roosevelt on Jan. 6, 1941, that made me wonder where we have
mislaid our sense of global honor. "At no previous time has
American security been as seriously threatened from without as
it is today," he said, as he could have said this day. But
instead of invoking fear of outsiders he embraced their needs as
our own and called for defending, not just at home but on all
the earth, what he called the four freedoms: freedom of speech
and expression, freedom of religion, freedom from fear, freedom
from want. "Translated into world terms," he said, the latter
meant "economic understandings which will secure to every nation
a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants." He warned that it
was immature and untrue "to brag that America, single-handed and
with one hand tied behind its back, can hold off the whole
world" and that any such "dictator's peace" could not be capable
of international generosity or returning the world to any true
independence. "Such a peace would bring no security for us or
for our neighbors. Those who would give up essential liberty to
purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety."

We seem to be contriving a TV-set imitation -- the look with no
character inside -- in our new wartime of flags flapping above
shopping malls and car sales lots, these exhortations to
purchase, to put down a foot and give not an inch. There's a
rush on to squash the essential liberties of others and purchase
some temporary safety for ourselves. The four freedoms are not
much in evidence. Faith and speech have taken hard blows, as
countless U.S. citizens suffer daily intimidation because their
appearance or modes of belief place them outside the mainstream
of an angry nation at war. Any spoken suggestions about
alternatives to violent retaliation are likely to be called an
affront against our country. I struggle to find some logical
path that could lead to this conclusion, that free speech is un-
American, and find as its only source our president's statement:
"Either you're with us, or you are with the terrorists." He was
addressing nations of the world, but that "us" keeps getting
narrower. If FDR's words were published anonymously today,
especially those about force leading only to a "dictator's
peace," FDR would get hate mail.

Gone is the inclusive vision of an earlier president. Freedom
from fear, freedom from want -- these clearly aren't meant just
now for the millions of Afghan civilians placed at risk of
starvation because of the war. Our campaigns proudly place our
safety and material prosperity ahead of any concern for the
majority of world citizens who are starving and frightened -- or
for that matter, the hungry here at home.

Just 13 months after Roosevelt's eloquent call to conscience,
the War Department persuaded him to order the internment of
Japanese Americans. (The War Department, it's now known,
manufactured threats of resident treachery to stir public fear
and uphold the concentration camps). I'm sad to see how far
things fell from that January day when the lives of civilians on
other soil were proclaimed as precious as our own. I would have
planted a victory garden and accepted leaner rations to further
that vision of a kinder world, in which all hungers mattered.

After the famous speech, Norman Rockwell painted the four
freedoms; his "Freedom from Fear" shows two parents in a
darkened attic bedroom tucking two little boys into bed. To look
at that image now brings my thoughts to two other children, one
nearby and one very distant. As our war drives a population into
refugee status, immense waves of new recruits are entering
schools in Pakistan and other places where young men train to a
lifelong vow of vengeance against America. One, somewhere, is
just a boy, the age of my youngest child. Today these two enter
new lifetimes of hater and hated, and that door locks behind us
all. The pacts begun today will long outlive the men in
Washington and the momentary popularity of this war. Do they
really believe we have bombs enough to destroy every storefront
or cement shell in the world that could serve as a school for
hatred, when hearts are so turned? If those men can't tap into a
vein of compassion right now, I ask that they search out
prudence. I am the parent tonight in that darkened bedroom, with
my knuckle to my mouth as I look at these children. I raise my
voice now to echo Roosevelt's plea for a worldwide reduction of
armaments "in such a thorough fashion," he said boldly -- yes,
in wartime -- that no nation "will be in a position to commit an
act of physical aggression against any neighbor, anywhere in the
world."

My parents undertook wartime as a submission to sadness, not an
indulgence in glory. They were led through it by a man who spoke
with a heart full of intelligent remorse, rather than an eye on
the polls of his popularity. I wonder what's happened to leaders
who saw enduring peace as a house built on right, not might, and
knew the world can't be right until all its people live free
from hunger, censorship and the dread of bombs. I wonder where
they are now, all the teenagers and adults of that great
generation who threw their hearts into an era of living simply,
that others might simply live.

There's a hollow ring to this loud new wartime motto, "We'll
show our enemies we're more powerful than they are." Our enemies
know that already, they've known it all their lives as they
trained to the careful, hateful mastery of tools the weak may
use against the mighty. They can plainly see we are richer,
stronger, in every way more capable of destruction. I would like
us to show them, instead, that we are better.

Barbara Kingsolver is the author of nine books and was a
recipient of the National Humanities Medal in 2000.

© 2001 The Washington Post Company