Martin Luther King Day, 2012

I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech

1964

I grew up in an America that had an abiding faith in itself and what America stood for. My grandparents—together with my infant mother—were those huddled masses yearning to be free. Like so many others, they emigrated to America to escape the Anti-Semitism of Eastern Europe. My father was the first in his family to go to college. He and my uncles fought for freedom, defeating the Germans in World War II. Theirs was the story of millions of immigrants who had come to this American nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Except, we hadn’t all come to America free and equal. Some of us had been brought here to be slaves, to be the chattel of other men, to be bought and sold like cattle, with no regard for husband or wife, mother or father, son or daughter.

I grew up in an America where legally-mandated segregation was reality. In America’s South, Blacks could not vote, could not drink from “White Only” water fountains, could not eat at “White Only” lunch counters, could not swim in “White Only” pools, and could not pray in “White Only” churches. Black children were educated in segregated schools, separate although far from equal. Black men felt the need to cross the street when a white man was coming, fearing for themselves and their families. In the 1920s, the decade of King’s birth, there were nearly 500 lynchings of Blacks by Whites in America.

It turns out that we the people didn’t mean ALL the people. It didn’t mean the slaves, nor did it mean their descendants. Nor did it mean the Native Americans whose lands we took as our own.

The Civil Rights Movement, the period when I came of political age, like the Civil War before it, exposed this fault-line in the American ideal, the lie in our creed that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. We weren’t all created equal, not at our founding, not in 1860, not in 1960. And we still aren’t created equal today.

In the 44 years since King’s assassination, we have become considerably less equal. While the details are open to interpretation, the overwhelming conclusion by just about any measure is that the rich have gotten considerably richer while the poor have gotten poorer.

It is not class warfare to acknowledge this. The children of the rich have greater opportunity than do the children of the poor; they are born more equal than poor children, with far greater opportunities for Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

It would be class warfare if one argued that we the people should confiscate the riches of the wealthy few and distribute them to the many poor. But this would not be just. Nor would it square with our creed of equality.

We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

But it’s not class warfare to point out that we the people are all in this together. It’s not class warfare when Warren Buffett argues that the rich have a responsibility to pay higher taxes noting that he pays a lower tax rate than his office staff. Nor is it class warfare when Elizabeth Warren, running for Senate in Massachusetts, says: “There is nobody in this country who got rich on their own. Nobody. You built a factory out there - good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory... Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea - God bless! Keep a hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

We are in the midst of the 2012 Presidential election cycle, one that already appears destined to be about our religious and economic values. To vote wisely we will have to reflect on how we the people can best allocate our scarce resources so all have opportunity, where all contribute, where none are left out. Class warfare isn’t the answer. Nor is pure laissez faire capitalism. We the people must give birth to a new way.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

When we believe in the dream, when we keep our faith that one day America will rise up and live out the true meaning of our creed, that’s when we are ready to step up and do our part to make it happen. Imagine if we the people committed to treating each other with respect, with understanding, with compassion and with that special feeling that we are part of a shared American community. Miracles occur in the strangest of places.

Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Our problems won’t vanish simply because we live America’s creed. There are no silver bullets in a world as complex as ours.

But as we live America’s creed, we unleash our imagination, our creativity, our ability to work hard, our sense of community, our readiness for shared-sacrifice, our entrepreneurial spirit; all those qualities that define what is exceptional in America.

Martin Luther King’s faith is our faith, we the people. It is a faith born out of our religious traditions, our shared experiences, our sacrifices and our successes. It is a faith that lives strong in our hearts — infused by our creed that all men are created equal and reflected in our responsibility, we the people, to form that more perfect union, to establish justice, to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. It is a faith that knows no color, a faith that knows no gender or sexual preference, a faith that resides in red states and blue, for King’s faith is the faith of America.

                                                                                                                

So on this day when we celebrate the anniversary of that glorious day when the universe brought Martin Luther King Jr. to us, let us commit ourselves anew to the sacred task that lies before us; to live out the true meaning of America’s creed, our creed, yours and mine, we the people.

Let freedom ring.

© Copyright 2012. Stan Stahl, PhD. All Rights Reserved.

Thanksgiving, 2011

These are the times that try men’s souls.

Thomas Paine

The skies remain dark this Thanksgiving. The greatest economic recession since the great depression is entering its fourth year. Sixteen percent of workers are either unemployed or have dropped out of the labor market. Our leaders in Congress are split into ideological camps, unable to agree on what needs to be done. We have stopped trusting each other. We have stopped listening to each other. We have closed our hearts to each other. Our wounds fester. We have become bitter towards one another. The Blessings of Liberty are in jeopardy, for ourselves and our posterity.

It is a time again to remember what we are thankful for.

Let’s start with my parent’s generation, that great generation of men and women, those children of the depression who defeated the enemies of freedom in World War II and created the vital alliances that kept us safe during the cold war and the dismantling of colonialism around the world. Their simple example of ordinary men and women working together, doing what needs to be done, sacrificing for us, their children and grandchildren, offers us much to be thankful for.

It is not just my parent’s generation but ordinary men and women throughout our history to whom we are thankful. It was these ordinary men and women, coming to the new world to escape religious intolerance in Europe, who brought us our first Thanksgiving, bringing with them their commitment to a civil body politick, perhaps the first requirement of self-government.

At a time when we, the people, are anything but a civil body politick, it’s important to be thankful to the founders, to reflect on the ideals of the Declaration they bequeathed to us, that all of us are created equal, endowed with inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We need to be thankful as well to the final words of the Declaration: we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor. We are all in this together, that is the sacred commitment we make to one another, from that deepest place in our heart. For this we are thankful.

Securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity requires that we bring our very best intellect to the challenges we face. There are no simple solutions to our challenges, no silver bullets. We are going to have to think our way through them and that requires at a minimum our ability to do critical thinking and problem-solving. That you and I can think as well as we do is reason to give thanks to the intellectual giants on whose shoulders we stand: Socrates and Plato, Galileo and Newton, Descartes and Locke, Franklin, Jefferson and Adams, Darwin and Einstein, along with every teacher we have ever had.

We give thanks to those who have brought us wisdom from the gods, from that place of the spirit where we are all one: Jesus, Hillel, Mohammed, Buddha, Lao Tzu. Confucius. Love they neighbor as thyself. That which is hateful to you, do not do to another. Not one of you is a believer until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself. Liberty and justice for all is not a zero-sum game of winners and losers but a moral conviction, a faith in the miracle of cooperation where we all win together.

America—at our best—speaks with this voice of the spirit, this voice of profound cooperation. During the cold winter of World War II, Judge Learned Hand reflected the Golden Rule in the spirit of liberty:

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the mind of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned but never quite forgotten; that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.

We are thankful this Thanksgiving for all those who have come before, each generation bequeathing us gifts: the gift of liberty and justice, of freedom and equality, of knowledge and wisdom, of love and compassion, of courage and shared sacrifice, of cooperation and sacred honor.

There is much to be done in America … and the world. It is not enough—in these trying times—that we spend a day in thanks with family and friends, only to return to our lives tomorrow, to the gridlock that is America, unchanged, as if nothing had happened.

This is not only the time to give thanks for our blessings—the blessings of liberty. It is a time to redouble our efforts to pass on these blessings to our posterity. This is our responsibility, our commitment to the founders, our sacred duty—and also our joy, for what beyond the laughter of a child is more joyful than seeing that child grow up free, imbued with the spirit of liberty, pursuing the happiness that lies in his or her heart.

America has an election in less than a year. The voices we hear are the voices of divisions. The voices we need to hear are the voices of unity. It is time once again to ask not what our country can do for us, but what we can do for our country. This is the only thanks that truly matters this Thanksgiving: that we do for others what others have done for us. Otherwise it’s just words.

In the darkest days of World War II, Winston Churchill wrote: Our qualities must burn and glow through the gloom … until they become the veritable beacon of [our] salvation.

History teaches us that times of crisis are not only times of danger but also times of great opportunity.  The stories of our past are like beacons, lighting our way through the dark night, shining their light on new opportunities. From them we gather the knowledge, the courage and the wisdom to do our part in passing on the Blessings of Liberty from our ancestors to our descendants.

As this year’s winter descends over America, it becomes more important than ever to hold fast to the spirit of liberty so that we may emerge from our time of crisis as earlier generations of Americans emerged from theirs, with a deeper sense of social justice, a clearer vision of human welfare and happiness, a renewed spirit of mutual helpfulness to translate vision into reality, and a strengthened commitment to work together intelligently and compassionately for the betterment of mankind.

As we give thanks this Thanksgiving, let us rededicate ourselves to the cause of freedom, to creating that shining city on the hill where all are created equal so that we may soon say “The winter of our discontent is over. Springtime has returned to America.”

Let freedom ring.

© Copyright 2011. Stan Stahl, Ph.D.. All Rights Reserved. Permission is given to reproduce and distribute this essay in its entirety.

Constitution Day, 2011

I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!

Howard Beale

Network

The options considered by the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention were broad. What kind of government were we to have? When the Convention ended, anxious citizens waiting outside Independence Hall wanted to know what had been produced behind those closed doors. The answer was provided immediately. A Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Without hesitation, Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Here we are, 224 years later, their posterity, inheritors of the greatest Blessings of Liberty the world has ever known … at a time of deep global, social, cultural, political and economic challenge … with a Congress having historically low approval ratings and a President whose approval ratings keep falling.

A republic, if we can keep it.

“We are in the very midst of revolution, the most complete, unexpected, and remarkable of any in the history of the world.”

John Adams

July, 1776

Thirteen years before the Constitutional Convention in 1776 we were mad as hell ... at the Monarchy and the British Parliament ...  and in our refusal to take it anymore our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

A hundred and fifty years ago, again mad as hell—but this time at each other—we engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. By the time our Civil War ended 4 years later, over 600,000 American soldiers lay dead. As Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes learned from his battle-field experiences in the Civil War, “certitude leads to violence.”

 And now it’s our turn to be mad as hell—mad at Congress, mad at the President, mad at the Supreme Court, mad at corporations who pay no taxes while shipping jobs overseas, mad at the insurance and drug companies, perhaps the only beneficiaries of Obamacare, mad at gays and lesbians and fundamentalists and atheists—mad at each other.

Just like 1776 and 1861, we are mad as hell and we aren’t taking it anymore. Through our fury, though, we must answer a fundamental question: “What are we going to do about it?” Do we go to war with each other, like we did in 1861? Or do we find an alternative?

If two people work for me and they agree all the time, one of them is worthless. If they disagree all the time, they’re both worthless.

Sam Goldwyn

Fundamental to American liberty are factions. As Madison taught us factions are as American as apple pie.  Different people think differently and have different interests. Those with similar attitudes and objectives often bond together, seeking to accomplish their agenda in the political marketplace. The result is faction. Liberty, as Madison so wisely understood, was the very cause of faction.

To eliminate factions is to destroy liberty, replacing it with tyranny; a remedy … worse than the disease, as Madison put it. Factions are evidence of the resiliency of liberty and it is through their growth and decay that the blessings of liberty evolve through history.

                                       

So factions we must have. Indeed we should glory in them, for they are the very expression of the liberties we hold so dear.

Except right now, our factions are mad as hell at each other. And we’ve got work to do. Difficult challenges to solve. A future to build. Right now, at this moment in our history, in the midst of all of our anger at each other, our factions are proving worthless.

America is 14 months away from our next election. Republican candidates are already lining up for the opportunity to take on Obama. The House and Senate are both in play. The media is ecstatic as interest is high. And we know from our long history that politicians play to their constituents.

It would be the height of naivety to expect there to be any lessening of factional anger before the election; indeed, factional anger will most likely rise as we get closer to the election.

But that doesn’t say that we the people have to stay mad as hell, that we have to buy into the institutional anger in our midst. Each one of us has the opportunity to personally get past his or her own set of angers, not to take it, but to work to prepare the ground for what we will need after November 2012.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field.

I'll meet you there.

 Rumi.

Out beyond our anger live the verities, those eternal truths that have shown up over the course of our sojourn on our home planet, truths about how we connect to each other, how we build trust, how we learn to cooperate.

The first of these great truths is the Golden Rule, a general principle found in all of mankind’s traditions: Treat others as you would be treated. Love others as you love yourself.

The Declaration—that we are all created equal, with equal rights—is but a political corollary of the Golden Rule. We all want liberty for ourselves. Therefore, there must be liberty for all. We are all created equal.

So today, the 224^th anniversary of the American republic, at the beginning of our mad dash to what Jon Stewart calls “Indecision 2012,”it’s time to slow down, take a deep breath and remember Lincoln’s words from his first Inaugural Address:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Let freedom ring.

© Copyright 2011. Stan Stahl, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved.