SENTIENT TIMES December 2002/January 2003

Don’t Let the Lights Go Out

By Rabbi Michael Lerner

This year Chanukah and Christmas will have a particular urgency for the many liberals and progressives who are wallowing in post-election depression as they contemplate an American Right that perceives itself as having a mandate for war, repression of dissent, narrowing of civil liberties, dismantling of environmental and worker protections, and economic policies which will further enrich the wealthy and upper middle class at the expense of the poor and middle classes. Chanukah and Christmas are both holidays rooted in the ancient tradition of affirming light at the darkest moments. Yet before more of these people despair of politics and withdraw their attention into pursuing a purely personal agenda, lets note that there could be more to sustain liberals and progressives than (the rather transitory) holiday (and too often booze-induced) cheer and bliss.

It’s not enough, though, to acknowledge that the president received less votes than his Democratic opponent, that the Congress has a slim mandate, because the Repub-licans won a majority of votes among the less than 45% of the public who were motivated to vote, or that the actual number of people voting Republican vs. Democratic is very slight. The reality is that they have the power at least for the next two years, and the ever-obsequious media will give them the mandate that voters did not.

Nor is it enough to base our hopes on the fact that some Democrats have at last gotten the point that you can’t fight something with nothing—that at the very least they need to have some kind of vision. New Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who was a speaker last week at the Beyt Tikkun synagogue memorial service for Paul Wellstone, understands the need for a new vision. But for many of her colleagues, all that means is that they have to assemble their various unrelated ideas and more efficiently serve up the array of uninspiring Democratic liberalism that has always been one-dimensional.

There’s much to learn from what the Republicans did over the course of the past 40 years from the time they suffered a stunning defeat in 1964. There were those among them who sought to reconstitute the old line moderate Republicanism, imagining that the defeat of Goldwater showed that they had to be more like Democrats in order to get elected. But a significant group of them turned instead to create a “New Right” which aligned conservative politics with the spiritual focus of Christian evangelicals. Though it was certain that this new direction would not produce immediate reversals of liberal strength in the electoral arena, these leaders had the wisdom to look beyond immediate victories and to fashion a whole new ideological foundation, and then to do the painstaking work of being in the minority and staying there while convincing people about the validity of their new way of thinking. They recognized that ideas matter, and they built think tanks, national organizations that advanced right wing ideals, fought for their ideas in professional associations and in media that they sometimes had to create for themselves, and went through the painful work of building caucuses in churches and on university campuses. Eventually, they built the foundations for Right wing presidencies (Reagan/Bush/Bush) and now for a Right-wing Congress.

That’s exactly what liberals and progressives need to do. And then they need to put forward an equivalent to the “Contract for America” that won the Republicans control of the House of Representatives in 1994, which they’ve held ever since.

They spoke plain and clear, and they spoke with a willingness to challenge the dominant values. Clinton and his folk did not respond in kind, nor have they ever. They tried to equivocate and pretend that they shared the same values (“we’ll dismantle welfare in a humane way” said Clinton, and then because he was clearly so much more charming and humane than his 1996 opponent, and there was no strong ideological difference, he could get reelected, but without a mandate to do anything fundamentally progressive). But when the Democrats don’t have such charmers, and there is no ideological alternative vision that they are propounding, then people tend to move toward the most articulate and loyal members of the dominant worldview, and since that worldview comes from the Right, why not vote for the real thing? So what the forces for peace, justice and ecological sanity need is a whole new kind of voice and worldview.

Here are some of the elements that could be central to A New Light for America:

A New Bottom Line. Instead of our excessive focus on money and power, lets have our social policies, economic and political institutions be judged efficient, productive and rational not only to the extent that they maximize wealth, but also to the extent that they tend to produce loving and caring human beings, ethical and ecological consciousness, and a capacity to respond to the universe with awe and wonder at the grandeur of creation. Use that as your New Bottom Line and you’ll quickly see how badly we need a New Light for America—because so few of our institutions are efficient or productive by this criterion.

Generosity and Open-heartedness as the Path to Security. No amount of wars with Iraq or Korea or whoever else Bush designates as our next enemy will be able to protect us from the anger against American selfishness that provides the foundation for recruits to terror. The U.S. is a country with 5% of the world’s population, but owns 25% of the world’s wealth. Meanwhile, 2 billion people live on less than $750 a year, and 1 billion live on less than $375 a year. Does it surprise you to know that every day over ten thousand children die of diseases related to malnutrition? The only way to change this picture is for the U.S. to have a new foreign policy whose central goal is to make the world the primary force seeking to end world hunger and homelessness, create a global system of health care accessible and affordable by everyone, and participate in a worldwide crusade to save and enhance the natural environment (rather than, as now, participate in its destruction). It is as the force of kindness and generosity, not the force with the most effective military (which we would be anyway), that Americans can create a world in which we are truly safe. A New Light for America must be a light of peace and hope—challenging the fantasies of those self-described “realists” who imagine that they can beat terror with power (look at how dramatically that strategy has failed to produce safety or security for Israel). Lets start this by taking the 1.5 trillion dollars the Bush taxcut plans to give to the rich and upper middle class and use that instead to fund the building of the infrastructure for ending global poverty and illness, homelessness and hunger.

Education for Caring, Gratitude and Awe. Instead of rewarding students solely for how many traditional skills they can accumulate, we need to teach three central values in schools: an attitude of caring for others, an ability to feel and express gratitude for the many blessings we have received from past generations, from parents, from social movements that struggled for social justice, and from the goodness of the Universe, and a sense of awe and wonder at the grandeur of creation (to replace a merely utilitarian attitude being taught today). And these can be taught, as Waldorf schools, religious schools, and many private schools have learned—and it is that, not merely racism or class privilege, that inclines many people to put their children into these kinds of schools rather than in public schools which have been previously constrained from seeking to inculcate these values.

Nature is too precious to be sold. Our task is to honor it, preserve it, restore it. And stand in awe of it. This is a spiritual attitude toward the universe—and it stands in sharp contrast to those who primarily want to sell nature for private profit. We are opposed to the efforts to privatize all parts of nature (for example the recent efforts to sell rivers and other drinking sources to private corpor-ations) and we want to repair the damage done by over-commercialization and the narrow utilitarian attitude toward nature. This is partly about ecology, and partly about a sense of reverence for all that is—and a sense of responsibility based on our role as stewards for all of creation.

This is the tip of the iceberg of a politics of meaning or an Emancipatory Spirituality that could become the source of a New Light for America. But it is enough to give the idea of where things need to go in politics.

Could the Democrats do this? No—not unless they stopped trying to talk the policy nonsense that no one cares about, and instead spoke from their hearts. Because the truth of the matter is that many Democrats, like many Republicans, would in fact respond to this kind of vision, because they actually do want a world based on love and caring, ethical and ecological sensitivity. Only, they think it’s not “realistic,” so instead they keep on talking as though they have lost contact with their own humanity, and then wonder why they don’t inspire confidence.

But they won’t even give these ideas the time of day, because they have bought the notion that these ideas are “unrealistic” given the current mode of politics. So liberal Democrats who position themselves as “savvy” imagine that they can instead buy the assumptions of the Republican party and show that they will be more “moderate” in pursuing the same aims. So, when Democrats followed the lead of Al Gore, they called for a reduction of the $1.5 trillion tax cut to $1.1 trillion—but there seemed to be no principled difference. More recently, they’ve called for UN involvement in the war on Iraq, but they have not objected to Bush bullying the UN into voting for a resolution that will give him free hand to pursue a war should he so choose. What’s the principled difference? Only that the Democrats seem more moderate in pursuing the same end.
Even the Greens, though far more principled than the Democrats, at times seem to be little more than a fuller version of traditional social democratic politics, seeking greater inclusion of everyone in the well-being of America, but never questioning the fundamental bottom line of what really counts (they seem to be saying; if everyone had the wealth of Americans, the world would be fine), whereas a New Light for America will require a new vision of what are the underlying values. While I unequivocally reject any discussion of values which does not also include the elimination of material need, I believe that a New Light must move beyond the materialism that permeates both the Left and the Right, and seek to build a world based on love, generosity and kindness.

Perhaps the best advice we could give to the leaders of liberal and left movements is this: STOP. What you have been trying is not working. Recognize that the Republicans didn’t win this past election, but the Democrats lost it. And they’ll continue to lose it, because they are so out of touch with their humanity that they are unable to talk in heartful language about the underlying values and spiritual vision of a good world that they actually often do hold.

Perhaps what we should advise them is this: “Stop what you are doing and start to develop an inner spiritual practice. Get in touch with your own mortality, the fragility of your own lives, and the absurdity of ego-tripping. Get in touch with your own heart. Ask yourself if you had not gotten into politics whether you think you’d really be moved by the kinds of things liberal or progressive politicians talk about, or whether you too might not want to just retreat into personal life. Dare to be honest with yourself. Listen to your own heart. Clear out the clutter of the voices telling you to accomplish something, and instead just listen to the deepest voices within you and ask them to tell you how close you are to the highest God energy within you, or what you need to do to get closer to that.” I know that Democrats and progressives don’t think this way—but I’m looking for some way to get them to stop thinking in the old way, and to start to recognize that when somebody says that an idea is “utopian,” that’s a high recommendation. The world that the practical politicians have given us isn’t working—it’s leading to war, inequality, ecological destructiveness. It’s time to go in a different direction. And that’s what a politics of meaning or what I call an Emancipatory Spirituality is about. So go back to those four points above and ask yourself, “Why wouldn’t you want to be involved in a social movement if it was really about those points? Why not fight for a New Light to shine on this world” Take those values seriously, build a politics that recognizes the human need for a world based on love and mutual recognition and on an ability to transcend the selfishness and me-firstism of the competitive marketplace and replace that with transcendent meaning and purpose for our lives, and we will have a strategy that could actually renew hope in the dark days that lie ahead. Don’t let the Lights go out.

Rabbi Michael Lerner is the author of Jewish Renewal: A Path to Healing and Transformation and Spirit Matters, The Politics of Meaning and the editor of Tikkun Magazine, which gets its name from the Hebrew word, “tikkun,” which means “to transform, heal and repair.” This concept was developed in the Zohar, a central text of the Kabbalah, to refer to the kind of healing and transformation of the world, “tikkun olam,” in which each of us can participate. For information on the new Tikkun Community write to 2107 Van Ness Ave., Suite 302, San Francisco, CA 94109 or magazine@tikkun.org; (415) 575-1200; www.tikkun.org.

Vote No War

The promoters of war would like you to believe that last November’s election was a mandate for war. Bush rapidly seized on Republican gains in the House and Senate to claim increased authority for his military campaign. Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle stated, “I think it means that the president has an opportunity here [from the election] to enact and proceed with the plan [on Iraq] as he has articulated it.” Daschle said on NBC, “I think the American people appear now to give him the benefit of the doubt.”

We challenge Bush and Daschle’s assertion that the administration now has a mandate to commit mass murder in an illegal war.

The election could have been a de facto referendum on the war issue but that possibility was eliminated when the majority in Congress spinelessly rubber stamped Bush’s war plans in early October hoping to remove the issue of war from the political discourse. Following on Congress’ abdication of its responsibility to the people, Senator Daschle’s comments are an announcement of not only a wholesale capitulation, but an embrace of Bush’s global war drive.

It is no wonder that voters had an extremely difficult time differentiating between the pro-war program of the Republicans and that articulated by the Democratic Party leadership. Two thirds of registered voters stayed home on election day. To describe the turnout as mere voter apathy misses the main point. In fact the people of this country have been keenly attuned to politics especially in the last year. Low voter turnout reflects many discouraged voters’ view that the U.S. Congress does not represent the will of the people but instead serves the interests of other constituents: Big Oil, multinational corporations, the Military-Industrial complex, and a relatively few wealthy elite.

The President and the Congress must feel the heat from the people. “Formal” democracy has been hijacked by the war-makers. But we are fighting back. People are justifiably angry and disgusted. Thousands of organizers around the country are energetically building a mass movement from the grass roots up. Congress didn’t stop the Vietnam war, the people stopped it. We know that the majority sentiment in the U.S. opposes a new war against Iraq. On a global scale the antiwar sentiment is nearly a universal consensus. If the White House and Congress rejected the will of the people, if the member states of the UN bow to U.S. pressure rather than listening to their own people—if governmental leaders shred international law—then the people must act themselves. This has always been the path to genuine change.

By early January 2003 a massive number of people will have voted in the People’s Anti-War Referendum (www.VoteNoWar.org). Local Vote No War committees in cities, towns, campuses, and high schools will be going door to door to collect anti-war votes. The results of the referendum will be a pillar of the mass organizing campaign timed to coincide with the return of the new U.S. Congress. On January 18 & 19 there will be massive street protests in Washington, D.C. at the same time as the convening of a grassroots Peace Congress. By acting now we can make a difference.

We encourage everyone to let your friends, family members, neighbors and co-workers know they should also participate in a People’s Anti-War Referendum Vote by going to VoteNoWar.org or by signing paper referendums which are downloadable from the VoteNoWar.org web site.

Let your friends, family members, neighbors and co-workers see the true face of the anti-war movement—yours—by encouraging people to vote in the referendum. You will give confidence to many who have quietly and personally opposed this war drive, and who may have been given the false impression by the media, the Administration and the Congress that the country supports the violent aggression of Bush’s potentially nuclear “preemptive” war policy.

The People’s Peace Congress, representing tens of millions of people in this country and around the world, will convene in Washington, D.C. on January 19 (at the same time that the U.S. Congress reconvenes) as part of a continuing mobilization against the war. The results of the People’s Anti-War Referendum will be released to the world through an international public relations campaign and will be also brought to the People’s Peace Congress in January.

Register your vote by signing the referendum at www.votenowar.org/referendum.html; download the VoteNoWar referendum from www.votenowar.org/referendum.pdf and collect votes in your area. Or call (202) 332-5757 to receive a packet in the mail. Reproduce the referendum, ask your friends, co-workers, neighbors and family to Vote No to War. Send emails to others with information about the People’s Anti-War Referendum. For more info visit www.VoteNoWar.org or call (415) 821-6545.

SENTIENT TIMES
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