Painting ourselves into a partisan corner
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Add comment January 31st, 2010
Archive for January, 2010
Me, me, me
Putting aside for a moment the debate about whether those charged with terrorism should be tried in a civil or military court, whether they should kept at Guantanamo or in an American prison, Gail Collins makes a strong case in today’s New York Times that the “cult of me” took the steering wheel in the decision making:
Last November, the Justice Department announced that the terror trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed would be held in Manhattan. Almost everyone in New York rallied around. This was seen as standing up to terrorism. “It is fitting that 9/11 suspects face justice near the World Trade Center, where so many New Yorkers were murdered,” said Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Now everything’s flipped. The politicians are running for the hills, and the issue has been repackaged as standing up to traffic jams. “There are places that would be less expensive for the taxpayers and less disruptive,” said Bloomberg.
And the Justice Department is backing down. The trial will happen somewhere else. People in Lower Manhattan will breathe a sigh of relief.
But this feels very wrong.
The Bloomberg rebellion fits right into the sour, us-first mood that’s settled over the country. It’s part of the same impulse that caused Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska to decree that a historic overhaul of the country’s messed-up health care system was not going to happen unless his home state got a special exemption from sharing the costs.
Or the Not-in-My-Backyard uprising that followed President Obama’s attempt to move the Guantánamo prisoners into American maximum-security lockups. No matter how remote the prison, local politicians said that the danger was too great to bear. Both of Montana’s Democratic senators immediately decreed that their entire state was a no-go zone. Rudy Giuliani, who watched “in awe of our system” when terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui was convicted in a civilian court in Virginia, instantly attacked the plans for the Manhattan trial…
It’s all part of a cult of selfishness that decrees it’s fine to throw your body in front of any initiative, no matter how important, if resistance looks more profitable.
Isn’t the America we value one where we are willing to work hard and sacrifice something for a higher purpose than ourselves?
Are we still that country?
Add comment January 30th, 2010
We the People: Name a Wiki?
An exciting part of our project We the People will be building a cutting edge community Wiki, a tool to take good citizenship online to solve problems rather than e-scream at each other. We’ll take this model to new communities, so you’ll be the start of breaking new ground on the internet nationally. Confused about a local issue or clueless about a state vote? Look it up on the Wiki for a basic primer built by fellow citizens in constructive partnership. Your part? As simple as adding what you know to the mix. You can sign up to test drive the contraption (currently busy building it) when you sign up for our newsletter HERE. Good behavior is mandatory, so if you want to hurl putrid names at the people you disagree with, you’ll have to go to the whole rest of the internet.
Post on this thread if you’ve got a better idea as to what to call our Wiki. Working name is “We the Wiki” in a hat tip to our founding fathers and the whole “We the People” notion. Then when everyone in America uses it, we’ll affectionately call it “The Weki.” If you think this is a train wreck and want to save us from ourselves, please help us innovate. We’ll probably come up with a prize for the winning name.
Add comment January 28th, 2010
We the People: Tallahassee Brainstorm
Help us think through how we’ll implement We the People. (If you want your idea to see the light of day, make it civil.)
Add comment January 28th, 2010
Village Square moments in last night’s State of the Union
Pigs fly moment #1:
Now, I am not naïve. I never thought the mere fact of my election would usher in peace, harmony, and some post-partisan era. I knew that both parties have fed divisions that are deeply entrenched. And on some issues, there are simply philosophical differences that will always cause us to part ways. These disagreements, about the role of government in our lives, about our national priorities and our national security, have been taking place for over 200 years. They are the very essence of our democracy.
But what frustrates the American people is a Washington where every day is Election Day. We cannot wage a perpetual campaign where the only goal is to see who can get the most embarrassing headlines about their opponent — a belief that if you lose, I win.
Pigs fly moment #2:
They are tired of the partisanship and the shouting and the pettiness. They know we can’t afford it. Not now.
So we face big and difficult challenges. What the American people hope — what they deserve — is for all of us, Democrats and Republicans, to work through our differences; to overcome the numbing weight of our politics. For while the people who sent us here have different backgrounds, different stories and different beliefs, the anxieties they face are the same. The aspirations they hold are shared. A job that pays the bills. A chance to get ahead. Most of all, the ability to give their children a better life.
Add comment January 28th, 2010
Village Square wins highly competitive national Knight Community Information Challenge Grant
Read entire press release HERE.
Tallahassee, Fla., – The Community Foundation of North Florida, in partnership with The Village Square, recently received a $72,000 challenge grant to revitalize the dialogue among the city’s diverse residents around community issues. The project entitled “We the People” will create a 21st Century virtual and face-to-face public square by offering unique town hall forums, in addition to constructive online engagement through a community problem-solving Wiki. The project’s goal is to renew Tallahassee’s marketplace of ideas where good solutions rise from an informed citizenship, and where abundant information can be channeled into constructive results.
The grant was awarded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation as a part of the Knight Community Information Challenge. The challenge is a five-year, $24 million initiative to help community and place-based foundations find creative ways to use new media and technology to keep residents informed and engaged. The Community Foundation of North Florida is one of 24 community and place-based foundations recently selected to receive a grant in this highly competitive national grant contest.
“Access to information is essential for the quality of life in our community and for providing resources to help increase access for all citizens,” said Joy Watkins, President of the Community Foundation of North Florida. “Through this grant contest, Knight is challenging communities across the country to respond to the changing media landscape and ensure that residents have access to information. We are pleased to be able to support Knight’s work in our area, strengthen The Village Square’s endeavors, and increase access to information for citizens in our community.”
“Information is as important to a thriving democracy as clean air, jobs and schools. As leaders, local foundations are taking the initiative to meet those information needs,” said Trabian Shorters, Knight Foundation’s vice president for communities, who leads the challenge. “This project and others like it help ensure that everyone has the information necessary to make decisions about their governments and their lives.”
Allan Katz co-founded The Village Square in 2006 with Tallahassee Community College President Dr. Bill Law. “Rapid changes in the way we communicate with each other and the hyper-partisan environment nationally have left communities less able to deal with local and state issues constructively,” said Katz, a former Tallahassee city commissioner who has been nominated by President Obama to become U.S. Ambassador to Portugal. “The best ideas in a democracy come from engaged and informed citizenship,” said Law. “This project will bring more light and less heat to problems ahead of us.”
“The social glue of communities has changed substantially over the last 40 years,” said Joyner. “Civic clubs and service organizations used to knit us together to form a geographical community whose bond was greater than political difference. But ideology-based groups are on the rise and, as a result, our unique made-in-America social fabric is fraying.”
“We the People” will expand The Village Square programming on local and state issues through varying formats like “Dinner at the Square,” “Take-out Tuesday,” “Politics, Partisans & A Pint” and “Sunday Night Supper Club,” intentionally reviving community between people with diverse perspectives.
To compliment these face-to-face forums, the project will have an online component: A Wiki-based online problem-solving tool, where neighbors can collaborate to assemble relevant facts and resources for addressing local, state and national issues. “We hope to create an online community that defies the trend toward angry likeminded groups; where people will treat each other with the same respect as they do when they see neighbors at the grocery store or at their mailbox,” said Joyner.
Learn more about the project HERE.
Learn how you can get involved HERE.
Add comment January 26th, 2010
Real leaders consider how to minimize the coarser aspects of human nature to lead; Opportunists want to grow the coarser aspects of human nature to gain power.
George Washington was a real leader:
“One of the expedients of party to acquire influence, within particular districts, is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heart-burnings, which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other those, who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection.”–George Washington’s farewell address
These days we elect a lot of opportunists.
Add comment January 25th, 2010
According to Luke: A steady eye on the real issue
I’m sure many on the left side of the aisle were watching the election results from the Massachusetts special election Tuesday to replace Senator Ted Kennedy in dismay. For 40 years, Kennedy stood and fought for the people of Massachusetts as their senator. Before that his brother John, the other Kennedy, held the seat.
Most TV pundits and political experts are calling the election a referendum on President Obama. Many more are wondering how a seemingly decent and likable woman made such a bad candidate, and late night talk show personalities find it hilarious that the Democrats just lost to a man who modeled nude for Cosmopolitan magazine in the 1980’s. No doubt Republicans are happy that Democrats no longer have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and can no longer get their healthcare overhaul through on numbers alone.
Majorities, like victories, come and go. The Democrats dominated early 20th century politics for nearly 50 years. The “Solid South” earned its name because of it propensity to consistently vote for Democratic candidates. Our state of Florida used to be under solid Democratic control. The fact that the Republicans finally won a Senate seat in Massachusetts isn’t appalling, just unexpected. It’s part of the natural ebb and flow of American politics.
The thing I found more upsetting about the results Tuesday is the current state of our political system. What’s so bad about having one Republican and one Democratic senator? I’m positive not everyone in the state of Massachusetts is a Democrat. It should really be the same way in Washington. Nowadays whenever one party gets a majority, they use it to shove their agenda down the throats of the opposing party. Equal representation has turned into a race to the majority. The losers are the American people.
It’s a shame that Democrats can’t pass comprehensive healthcare reform without 60 votes to stop a filibuster. As backroom deals are cut and egos are massaged, 46 million Americans still don’t have healthcare. It’s a bigger shame that something as helpful and needed as healthcare reform is slowed down with the threat of a filibuster anyway.
I’m not ranking sins. Both parties are guilty.
Americans are now more deeply divided than ever. Elections are held for the purpose of getting more people than the other guy, and then the winners use that majority to put forth whatever agenda they want. Supporters of one group or party paint their opponents as unqualified at the very best and often as unmentionable vulgarities.
For all Ted Kennedy did for the American people, he did just as much for Republican fundraising. Republican’s have bragged about their fundraising under current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. After Joe Wilson shouted “You Lie” to President Obama he recorded massive fundraising gains, as did his opponent.
After the 1856 Presidential election, in which Democrat James Buchanan beat Whig John Charles Freemont, Abraham Lincoln said of his party’s defeat:
In the late contest we were divided between Freemont and Buchanan. Can we not come together in the future? Let bygones be bygones; let past differences be as nothing; and with steady eye on the real issue, let us re-inaugurate the good old ‘central ideas’ of the republic. We can do it. The human heart is with us; God is with us.”
People don’t talk – or act – like that anymore.
-Luke Inhen
(Photo credit.)
Add comment January 23rd, 2010
My Purple Post: Meeting a gentleman at the knife edge of democracy
Visit our friends at Purple State of Mind if you’d like to read up there…
According to the National Endowment for the Humanities Chairman Jim Leach: “Citizenship is hard. It takes a commitment to listen, watch, read, and think in ways that allow the imagination to put one person in the shoes of another.”
While he’d be too polite to agree with me, by his own measure Jim Leach is the quintessential citizen.
We had the distinct pleasure to spend a day last week learning a thing or two about citizenship from this man who’s had a lot of practice at it, 30 years in Congress and all. Taking a page from Paul Revere – although with a gentlemanly preference toward intentionally less fanfare in the ride, possibly more of a William Dawes (who I admittedly would know nothing about were it not for Lea Marshall and Malcolm Gladwell.… bless them both…) – Leach is setting out to visit every single one of these United States to tell us a thing or two about the high bar that citizenship demands.
While he will be characteristically gentle in the telling, it just could be that a test of citizenship is coming, a test of citizenship is coming.
Leach served at a time when tense work week Congressional fights were followed by weekend signs of friendship across the aisle and probably a bipartisan backyard bar-b-que or two and then, in turn as a democracy demands, another round of philosophical fighting. He served when relationships among legislators were what Bill Bishop, author of The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-minded Americans is Tearing Us Apart, refers to as “cross-cutting.” These public servants could be on one “side” here and another “side” there as they went about the business of building a country (which they understood to be their job)… leaving noticeably less room for the evil “they” that seems to have so effectively eclipsed the common “we” just about everywhere these days.
Except we isn’t common at all when it’s part of “We the People,” it is something we should treat with reverence and care. According to Leach, “[c]ertain frameworks of thought define rival ideas. Other frameworks describe enemies.”
It isn’t just anybody who can commit to our historical tradition of complex cross-cutting relationships to serve a greater end. It isn’t just any country that builds itself on such a challenging principle.
There are those who are bonded to our founders because our founders were angry, chafing at authoritarian British rule for freedom.
They were.
But the big audacious and nearly-insane-had-it-not-been-so-wildly-successful essence of our founders was so much more than angry. These were men of profound ideas who believed that, despite all of human history before them, “we, the (plain old average) people” could be the boss.
They were willing to sit uncomfortably at the crossroads of ideas, where the comfort of convictions stood regularly challenged and the luxury of entirely dismissing rival ideas probably edged you a wee bit closer to being hung by the king. They had to sit at a knife’s edge, weighing one idea against another in constant struggle for excellence and results. These men had to bring their “A” game to their revolution, and indeed they did. And by challenging ideas as they stayed connected to each other, they made something magnificent.
They made America the City on the Hill in the world no matter what anyone says (thank you very much).
And it is public servants like Jim Leach who carry on their tradition. Please listen to his speech. What is 20 minutes when a country you love may depend on it?
The bad news is that “We the People” cannot be the boss if we’re unwilling to do the hard work of citizenship. The good news is that we come by it naturally.
Like riding a bicycle I hope.
Add comment January 22nd, 2010
