Many excellent diaries have been posted this holiday weekend, so I'll take just a few lines to express some random thoughts. These random thoughts are loosely connected to this quote from Abraham Lincoln:
Freedom is the last, best hope of earth
It seems to me that our present generation is now called to engage in a titanic, historic struggle for the preservation of freedom and constitutional government, against the tyranny of economic royalism, facist ideology, corrupt corporatism and the false ideology that the only thing that matters is profit.
Lincoln once raised this same clarion call to the front lines of the struggle for freedom with these words:
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility.
While Lincoln spoke of freeing the slaves to preserve the union, we now must speak of freeing ourselves from the clutches of a brutal consumerist police state. Can we, as a people, lift the torch of freedom and cast back the dreary shadows of consumption for the sake of consumption; of the squandering of our national heritage and resources; of the rigid idolatry of the bottom line above all human virtues, even the virtues of honor and freedom?
...honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth.
First, we turn out the MBA's: I've pondered long and deeply the effect that people holding the famed Master of Business Administation degree have on business and society. I first encountered this in my first career, when working in non-profit organizations. My admittedly anecdotal evidence suggests that people with MBA degrees are trained in the art of preserving a business and fattening its bottom line to the exclusion of all other values.
I first thought, when coming out of the non-profit world, that I may be too idealistic to appreciate the brutal necessities of the business world. But once I launched my second career and started working directly with and in profit making enterprises, I found the same curious phenomena: that people with MBA degrees seldom led innovation or appreciated the intangible (and productive) values of an organization's culture, and more often sought to increase the profit of the organizaiton in the short term. Even when it contributed to the long term instability of the organization.
Not having been to business school myself, I find this somewhat puzzeling. Do business schools deliberately teach that the only thing that matters is the current quarter? Is there an unwritten rule somewhere that any profit less than 20% is insufficient, and that insufficient enterprises ought to be castrated, broken and sold off piece by piece, in order to meet the demands of the current quarter? I ask these questions because my observation of the behavior of people with MBA's in the real world seems to indicate this to be the case.
Don't even get me started on the MBA president, who thinks government exists to line the pockets of huge coporations, and gives not one whit about the health of the country's small business sector -- which produces almost all new jobs! Nor to mention the importance of workers, whose welfare he is constantly disparaging and degrading.
I just think we need to rid ourselves of the culture and attitudes that the current crop of business 'leaders' illustrate, and get back to good sound and civic virtues of thrift, honesty and value.
Second, we work within the system: It almost goes without saying that, if we are to save world from the demise of freedom, we need to fully participate in all avenues for doing so. One of those most readily to hand is for all freedom loving people to fully participate in the political process. Write, call, lobby your government. Exercise your right to vote. Get out and buttonhold the neighbors, the parents, the people you shop and work and live near. I'm sorry, but the time in which it was enough to simply cast your vote and show a bumper sticker is now past. Our constitution is on life support. The country hangs on the brink. Political activism is no longer a luxury. It is a necessity.
Third, Don't Shop Eliminate debt. Buy only what you must. Learn to make things again. Save. Only MBA's and financial sheisters talk about excess savings and say that carrying debt (beyond your car, education and home) is good. We will never get out of the bottomless pit of debt this president has cast us into until each individual, each family, gets their house in order. Let's do this now, so we can assist the next president in freeing us from indebted servitude to Communist China.
Fourth, Prepare for Civil Disobedience The day will soon come when you will be asked to obey, or to stand idly by while an unjust law is enforced. We must all prepare ourselves spiritually and physically, for the civil disobedience that will be required.
Finally, Strive For Independence We must each become independent, not only of debt, but of energy reliance on the establish oligopoly of oil, gas and utility corporations. There are several good ways to make ourselves energy independent, from saving energy to generating our own power. Look into these, develop a family plan and go for it.
Maybe I am an idealist, but I do still believe we can once again save this last, best hope of mankind from the depredations that greedy, unscrupulous and evil men plot. I do not believe we can shirk our responsiblity in doing so, for that would be to allow the flame of liberty to be extinguished, and give tyranny and brutality a free hand once again.
I don't think we want that. Do you?