Awakening to Unpleasant Facts - Leadership Is about More than Achieving Office, Citizenship Is about More than Getting Rights

© 2010 Peter Free

 

19 May 2010

 

Quality of leadership reflects quality of citizenship

 

Most of us blame our leaders for the economic and war messes the nation is in.  But we, as a public, share equal responsibility.

 

Teddy Roosevelt on facing facts

 

Former President Theodore Roosevelt once said, “I am interested in awakening my fellow countrymen to the need of facing unpleasant facts.” [1]

 

The overall badness is plutocracy’s bear in the bedroom

 

One unpleasant fact that’s bigger than all the others is plutocracy’s capture of our democratic republic.

 

This nastiness was achieved with able assistance from: (a) government leaders whom the plutocrats have effectively bought and (b) an apathetic, uninsightful American public.

 

The root cause of our difficulties is a citizenry that seems to revel in emotional sparring.  Fighting occurs over politically insoluble, ridiculously over-simplified controversies.

 

Perpetual back and forth nastiness effectively excludes us from reaching pragmatic agreements regarding more pressing realities.  Things we could actually do something about.

 

A guiding principle regarding leadership might help

 

A guiding principle might help.  One like, “It is a leader’s duty to see, prepare for, and mold the future.”

 

(Not much of that happening that I can see, from either political party.  Nor from our presidents looking a long way back.)

 

“With my head in the sand, I don’t need no stinking future!”

 

American leadership (political and economic) has been content to achieve office and to combat trivia’s daily problems.  This leaves the future (and our children’s children) to take care of itself (and themselves).

 

(Not exactly a good model for political emulation, parenting, or national survival.)

 

Teddy Roosevelt would not be proud

 

Teddy Roosevelt had something to say about this mess:

 

The questions which I am most interested in our internal affairs are the questions of industrial and social reform.  I feel these questions can never be put in the way of solution . . . until we get into public life men devoted with all their hearts and souls and minds to the proper way of dealing with them, who are yet men of such wisdom, sympathy and judgment that we can be sure that what they do will help the cause and not hurt it by inducing a violent reaction against it. [2]

 

His statement represents the opposite of American politics today.  We thrive on deliberately heated air and accomplishing nothing of practical value.  Much like our financial system.

 

Might there be an indicator of something amiss in the co-incidence of those two phenomena?  Hot political air and thievery-based banking steal our minds, money, and future survival.

 

TR would not be proud.

 

Putting achievable principle above self-interest matters ─ for leaders and the public

 

Without intelligent and achievable principles, our behavior wanders.  It subjects itself to whims of chance.

 

Roosevelt’s Secretary of War, Elihu Root (1912 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize), wrote:

 

To refer conduct to principles is the part of large minds, and it is the single path of safety for nations as for individuals. . . . The one fatal thing is to have none, and to guide the life of a man or of a democracy only by the demands of . . . the impulse and attraction of the moment. [3]

 

In politics, as in life, our neighbors are us

 

Roosevelt believed that protecting one’s neighbors’ interests was politically important:

 

One of the chief things I have tried to preach to the American politician, and the American businessman, is not to grasp at money, place, power, or enjoyment in any form, simply because he can probably get it, without regard to considerations of morality and national interest ─ which means the interest of the neighbor, for the nation is simply all of our neighbors combined. [4]

 

The coming test of American democracy

 

Given plutocratic excesses, a test of our democracy has arrived.  To the extent that our public does not care, American democracy will soon be extinct.

 

Roosevelt warned us that, to the degree the average man and woman exercise responsible citizenship, so goes the nation.

 

We have founded our Republic upon the theory that the average man will as a rule do the right thing, that in the long run the majority will decide for what is sane and wholesome.  If our fathers were mistaken in that theory . . . then this Republic can not stand. . . .

 

Back of the laws, back of the administration, back of the system of government lies the man, lies the average manhood of our people, and in the long run we are going to go up or down accordingly as the average standard of our citizenship does or does not wax in growth and grace. [5]

 

Putting duty back in democracy

 

Elihu Root’s admonitory message about democracy in 1914 is poignant.

 

Democracy always asserts its rights before realizing its duties.  Yet the two are indissolubly united. . . . There can be no right which does not impose a duty not merely upon others but upon the very person who possesses the right.  And there can be no duty which does not vest a right in the very person who owes the duty.

 

No exercise of political function by any member of a democracy can rightly be a mere matter of personal whim or pleasure.  The exercise of the right to vote for a public officer carries the duty to help select an officer who will exercise the powers of his office without oppression and without corruption.

 

The exercise of the right to legislate carries the duty to make laws which will not violate the principles of justice in their operation upon any one in the community.

 

The right to say what course one’s government shall follow in an international affair carries the duty to help maintain the peace of the world and justice among nations.

 

These duties are owed by each individual active agent in a democracy and by all of them put together, towards each other individual and all other individuals. [6]

 

Roosevelt reinforced the sentiment:

 

In our government the question of the rights of the people is not nearly as important as the question of the duties of the people. [7]

 

It’s difficult to do citizenly duty when ignorant

 

Americans know appallingly little about history or the world.  The relative importance of the ignorance problem has grown as the United States has become more assertive in world affairs.

 

Even conservative, non-interventionist Senator Robert A. Taft complained about this more than half a century ago.

 

The American people seem to be doing less and less thinking for themselves and they seem to have less and less knowledge of history and basic principle of the American Republic. [8]

 

If Senator Taft was concerned that Americans who stayed at home needed to know more about history and foreign affairs, what are we to think of our ignoramus-based performance today, when we have made perpetual war our national mantra?

 

What we owe

 

As citizens, we owe the duty to educate ourselves regarding facts, historical backgrounds, and issues.

 

We also need to know our personal limits, so that we can defer to those more knowledgeable, thoughtful, courageous, and wiser than we are.  Those to whom we defer owe us the duty of doing what is right, rather than what is easy or self-profitable.

 

We must insist that our leaders represent the best in us, rather than the worst.  We can do that only by finding and building on what is best in ourselves.

 

It’s always work.