Are We Losing Our Minds? We Need a Government By ALL the People for ALL the People

The great 21^st century “Brain War” is raging.  It’s a war for our mind, our thoughts and our convictions.  It’s being waged with explosive propaganda delivered through the high tech missiles of 24-hour media.  The Brain War is being waged to make us stupid, rob us of our logic, deny our own experience, and handicap our children’s future.  The war is being fought by both the political Right and Left.  They are bent on squashing independent thought and sacrificing the opportunities of citizens to live decent lives for their own political power.  Consider this.

Propaganda is the systemic use of stories,
labels and metaphors to convince us to
support policies that disadvantage us.

It labels victims as perpetrators and calls evil good.  Propagandists often use respected historical figures as icons for their cause even though the ideals of those heroes are far different than the propagandists.  Propaganda thrives on denying facts, repeatedly making outrageous false assertions and driving fear to the point of hysteria.  Propaganda is potent.  It literally takes over our thinking because it links powerful fear-based emotions with unexamined assumptions and assertions that serve the propagandist.

I just gave a business seminar on how our brain forms opinions and guides our choices.  Stories that include metaphors and labels are the most powerful opinion-shapers because they circumvent our logical defenses.  Stories activate our “right brain” and our emotional limbic center.  We process stories holistically, without debating individual facts or unsupported statements.  Most importantly when stories are stored in our long-term memories we forget they were stories at all.  We can’t differentiate between a fable, fairy tale or actual history.  In fact we don’t even remember the source of our “knowledge.”  That’s why public commentators can make outrageous unsupported claims and over time gain believers.  Repeated emotional assertions become unexamined assumptions and emotionally hardened opinions.

Propaganda is what enabled slavery to
become an institution in the U.S.
When lies are repeated they are believed.

Recently, I was in beautiful Beaufort, South Carolina where I went on a horse-drawn tour of the palatial town homes built by wealthy plantation owners of the late 1700 and early 1800’s.  The guide cheerfully pointed out the slaves’ quarters that were shared with the livestock behind the homes.  All the while she injected her commentary with the great Southern myth that the slaves had it good.  She told us they had regular medical care and good food and in many cases taught to read and write because they were plantation “assets”.  This, she assured us, was far better than their stone-age life in Africa.

I know.  It’s 2010.  But the Southern myth is alive and thriving in many parts of the South.  The “story” of the noble slaves nurtured by their kind masters persists because the thought of the real brutality of slavery and the barbaric belief that one kind of human can own another human is too repulsive to accept.  I also read the writings of a Southern “think tank” of the 1850’s which had Southern college professors write papers concluding that Negroes were a “tropical race” incapable of self-discipline and attaining “European levels of intelligence” who were far better off as productive slaves.

Why am I telling you this story? Because today propaganda is creating a national story of the false choice of a bankrupt future caused by a bloated government versus one controlled by special interests hiding behind political claims of personal freedom, low taxes and eviscerated regulation.  We cannot choose either of these futures.  And these are clearly not our only choices.  What the Tea Party Right doesn’t seem to understand is that what the most corrupt and powerful who are bankrolling their events have always done is stir up masses to weaken government so they can control it.  They wave a flag of freedom to rob us of our liberty.  This is exactly what the bankers and the bureaucrats of the last administration did.  It’s also what they did in the 1980’s to create a Christian Right by convincing them that Christ was a Capitalist who liked guns.  The manipulators don’t care about Christians or Tea Parties.  They only care about their wealth, their power, and their own families.

So the propagandists on the radical Right have taken over the national narrative to create the illusion that unless we allow the new aristocracy of lobbyists to rig our system so they can continue to create economic monopolies and wage non-strategic wars, we will somehow lose our freedom.  They are telling us what’s good for them is good for us.  This lie is not new.

Historically the two opposing philosophies
that have driven our county’s debates have
not been Republicans and Democrats
as much as it’s been
monied-aristocracy versus citizen opportunity.

Thomas Jefferson was the father of the Democrat-Republican Party.  He idealized the citizen farmer and dignity that comes from self-reliance.  He recognized the greatest threat to upward mobility where a poor family’s children could become middle class through education and initiative was the re-establishment of the aristocratic systems of Europe that didn’t allow the free ownership of land unless you were a noble.  We actually passed a law called the Land Ordinance of 1785 that allowed a common citizen to own land.  Guess who opposed it.  Of course, the large land owners who were descendants of the English land grants that established the colonies.  They claimed that common people wouldn’t be good farmers.  Alexander Hamilton was a Federalist who wanted to re-establish the elitist system of English banking and trade so that “educated” people could rule America.  The battle between aristocracy and its concentration of wealth and power versus a democracy promotes true competition, a level playing field, universal education and a national infrastructure that lifts all citizens has been going on for over 200 years.

These forces have used political parties as vehicles for their agendas, but over the decades the parties have shifted all over the place.  Today’s Republicans would undoubtedly call Lincoln, our first Republican President, a “Nazi” and a socialist because he freed the slaves which was the largest confiscation of private wealth by the U.S. government in history.  That’s what the propagandists of the 1860’s cried.  He also established free college education through federal land grant colleges and paid for federal road building to open up the West to small farmers.  This was also seen as a colossal waste of government money by the rich.  Lincoln also promoted the Homestead Act that was a major give-away of federal lands to western pioneers and established of all things the Internal Revenue Service.  I wonder what Rush Limbaugh would say about what most historians consider our greatest president.

Republican presidents also established the Civil Service Commission, supported women’s right to vote, established national parks and fought business cartels through anti-trust laws.  Today’s Republican Party would have had a hard time supporting Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower, or George H.W. Bush.  Of course they are using Ronald Reagan as their icon, but this is the same president who ran huge federal deficits to restart our stalled 1970’s economy.  In fact it’s hard to imagine Reagan not supporting the Bush/Obama federal bailout and government spending programs because that’s exactly what he did by radically expanding military spending in the 1980’s.

My point is simply this:

Political parties are storytellers.
They try to label policies and people
to scare us into doing what they want.

But the real battle for our future is the same one Jefferson fought with Hamilton.  It’s equality versus aristocracy.  Our freedom of choice is limited by our range of practical options.  A person with a 21^st century education has much more freedom than a semi-literate one.  An economy that offers ample access to capital, level regulations and fair taxation will create the most opportunity.

We need to stop listening to multi-millionaire TV demagogues and decide what kind of society we want.  The dimwitted voices of rage radio and cable craziness always argue the same thing—what the mouthpieces of money and special interests have always said.  We can’t afford to end slavery, child labor, universal education, decent health care, unemployment insurance, or civil rights.  Basically we can’t afford to be moral, compassionate or even wise.  What is wise is not the re-distribution of wealth but the fair distribution of opportunity. We don’t need a bigger government to solve our problems.  We just need the tools to keep the most powerful from rigging the system so it only works for their children.

Contrary to the popular stories:

• American’s, overall, pay the lowest taxes in the developed world.
• Americans have the greatest concentration of wealth in the top five percent.
• America has the most corrupt system of lobbyists of mature democracies.
  
• Only 75 percent of America’s children graduate from high school.
  
• America has a media full of propagandists trying to steal our minds with issues that don’t solve any of our real problems.

I believe the healthiest society would
be the 21^st century version of the
one envisioned by Jefferson.

A nation of self-resilient entrepreneurs innovating solutions to our future’s greatest challenges.  That requires a smart government free from the grip of embedded interests who streamline choking bureaucracy but protects us from the greed and power of those consumed with their self-interest. Ours should neither be a “Tea Party” future of selfish chaos or European Social Democracy.

Instead we need to be a “government
by ALL the people and for ALL the people.”

That’s a future I am willing to invest in.

This has been a pretty long, passionate rant. And, I don’t pretend to be right about everything. But ONE thing that is clear to me is that this is NOT THE BEST WE CAN DO! It’s time for clear, independent thinking! Hold on to your mind.

Dear George…It’s No Time to Be Stupid

It’s No Time To Be Stupid

A lot is being written about how radical Conservatives are pushing out center-minded Republicans from the party.  This couldn’t come at a worse time.  Recently I read an alarming editorial by a conservative columnist, George Will, whom I usually respect for being thoughtful rather than extreme.  His column, If VAT, Ditch the Income Tax, however, was a decidedly right-wing rant accusing liberals of everything bad and offering nothing except business-as-usual as an alternative.  As an Independent, it upset me.  We need more from Conservatives than table-banging.  It seems like they have lost their ability to reason, and that’s a huge loss.  So this is the email I sent off to George Will.

Dear George,

George, what is going on?  I’ve always considered you a common sense Conservative, yet your recent column was an angry screed accusing President Obama of “creating the financial crisis” so he can make government bigger.  Finally you propose that “all taxation diminishes freedom.”  Are you sure?  It seems to me that some taxes assure freedom.  The taxes that pay for national defense, the courts and the police assure me that I have the freedom to own and enjoy my property.  Taxes that pay for roads and airports contribute to my freedom to travel and engage in commerce.  And instead of taxes being as you claim them to be, “the confiscation of our time,” maybe they are our investment in the common good.  At least they can be.

Your edgy, divisive tone is the opposite of what is needed by Conservative voices today.  The unholy trinity of Limbaugh, Palin and Beck arouse desperate passions that are little more than the propaganda of the rich telling the financially stagnating middle class that what’s good for the rich is good for the non-rich.  But clearly it isn’t.  The financial life of the middle-class has gotten steadily worse since 1980 even as the extreme wealth of the top 5 percent has ballooned.  The rich don’t need health care reform, access to quality public education, credit card regulation or a living wage.  That’s what single mothers need.  Conservative’s manipulation of people’s emotions is rampant today because the repeated assertions broadcast by multiple voices that say every attempt to broaden the opportunity for a decent life is an assault on our individual freedom.

But George, we don’t ride the range with a six-gun on our hips the way my great-grandfather did.  We have a very large-scale society with at least 330 million diverse people who all want a chance at a decent life.  Our government has been corrupted by special interests who get tax breaks, subsidies and sweetheart contracts while the rest of us make our living the old fashioned way.  Our country was founded to break away from the control of an aristocracy that united the English nobles with corrupt capitalists.  James Madison, as well as Thomas Jefferson, wrote and spoke frequently of the evils of the concentration of wealth and land in the hands of a new aristocracy.  Surely Conservatives must have more to offer than rebooting a long political history fighting any bank regulation, antitrust laws, workplace safety regulations or more outlandish the end of slavery, child labor, or racial segregation.  On the political tension between human rights and property rights, Conservatives should move to higher ground.  Conservations need to be more than the voice of the status quo saying, “I’ve got mine and I want more.”  More critically it cannot allow itself to be the advocate of the rising tide of armed groups posing as state militias or white supremacists.  But when a prominent conservative sums up her platform as “give us our constitution, our guns and our religion” as Palin does, Conservatives seem content to build a brand without real solutions only friends and enemies.

What we need is a thoughtful, common sense voice that has real ideas on how smaller government can create a better society.  We know, for instance, that at least 1/3 of the federal budget is wasted, but how can we strategically reduce the waste?  We know that federal employees are now paid more than their private sector counterparts.  That can’t be wise.  What I believe most Americans want is not a redistribution of income but a fair re-distribution of opportunity.  That requires high quality universal education, ample access to capital, a robust infrastructure, and smart ways to insure safety of products and services that can harm us.  That requires public policy innovation, not just the tired sound of table-banging “no.”

The famous economist John Nash won a Nobel Prize using Game Theory to prove that healthy human systems thrive when people maximize their own interests by ensuring everyone else’s interests are also maximized.  This is the mathematical proof that enlightened self-interest is more than selfishness.  Conservatives need new thought leaders.  And they need established ones like you to lead them upward rather than backward.  We are still waiting for the 21^st century alternative to big government to show up.

If you have any new ideas, I’d love to hear them.  The last time conservatives ran the country the government wildly expanded, we spent nearly a trillion dollars on a war that hasn’t stopped terrorism, and we borrowed ourselves collectively into a bankrupting recession.  If the Mad Hatters who guide the very strange Tea Party represent  your best ideas, our country will be left with only the left because most all of the people who want to join the Tea Party already have.  Surely someone over there has both a brain and a heart.  It’s time to start using them.

Gutless Leadership and Health Care Suicide

One of my close friends is a hospice volunteer. Lately he is supporting a vibrant, full-of-life 80-year-old woman who’s got a bad heart and who’s chosen to die as fast as possible. She’s in an independent care facility that costs a lot so she’s decided to voluntarily starve herself to shut off expenses so she can leave some money to her full-grown children. I know. He’s tried to talk her out of it, but she’s determined. She wants to die because she can’t afford to live. Welcome to America.

Meanwhile our leaders do anything but lead. The Democrats are sissies. The Republicans are bullies. I think most of us are sick of toxic, dysfunctional, ego-bloated politicians pretending to lead our nation.

As I have stated months ago, as well as many great comments from the rest of you, (see Outraged at the Politics of Health Care and Will Marre’s Radical Solution to Health Care) the fundamental problem with a financially unsustainable health care system is that the profit motive is its key driver. This creates a crazy maze of confusion, waste, cost, and suffering. Today’s price of health care is driven by cartels and rich interest groups who compete like Gladiators for a piece of yours and my pie.

1. Thanks to the near elimination of antitrust safeguards, 7 big private insurers control over 80% of health insurance in our nation. These companies are designed to take in as much money as possible from you and pay out as little as possible. They make the insurance claims process confusing and time consuming for patients and doctors, which increases costs and time. This also discourages many people and even physicians from making totally legitimate claims, which increases profits by tens of millions annually. Of course we also know that insurance company claims representations are rewarded for denying claims or finding unethical loopholes to deny payments for treatments to insured persons for trivial reasons causing systematic suffering and in some cases avoidable deaths. Lately insurance companies have been raising premiums in huge chunks to make as much as they can before they are regulated. The obvious conflict between investor interests and our nation’s health care is so great it is breaking our economy.
2. Drug companies have created a closed, unfree market in the U.S., which allows them to charge many times, often 10 times, more for a drug than it costs in other western countries. The idea that Merck drugs in Canada may not be as safe as the same drug in Minnesota is an insult to all of us. The argument that American consumers need to pay higher prices to support U.S. drug companies’ research is simply wrong. U.S. drug companies spend much more on consumer advertising than all of their drug research combined. If business believes in free markets and globalism, then let’s have it. Free trade and a common world price for all drugs.
3. The medical profession has too many incompetent doctors doing procedures they shouldn’t be doing simply because these procedures pay well. It has long been known that the most expensive and difficult procedures are done at the lowest total cost and have the best results when they are done in well-equipped hospitals that specialize in those treatments by doctors who do hundreds of those procedures per year. If you need a heart bypass, go somewhere where they do hundreds of them. These “Centers of Excellence” save money and lives. The medical profession also needs to do a much better job of getting rid of incompetent doctors that cause the majority of malpractice claims. It would also be wise to establish special health courts to curb the abuses of trial-lawyers who game the system to win big awards on the basis of emotion rather than science and responsibility.

I could go on, but who would listen?

The core solution I believe is a universal insurance exchange that is set up as a national non-profit co-op “owned” by all American citizens run by competent executives and properly rewarded employees who have one goal—make sure that the most people have access to the best health care. This can be done with excellence and efficiency. Employees should be rewarded for quality and keeping people healthy not for denying sick people coverage.

We need something more than the best we get from compromising with the huge health care industry that has spent $425 million lobbying against us in the past 4 months. There is a role for private insurance companies, but we must level the playing field by creating a force of citizen power to create realistic and sustainable economics for health care. (The rest of my proposals are in previous blogs.)

Today our health care strategy is a mess because we are trying to turn a rusting ocean liner into a rocket ship. No matter what modifications we make to the rapidly sinking boat, it will never fly.

We must have a whole new system. One that gives people choice and confidence. One that rewards people for healthy lifestyles. One that is uniquely American. Not run by the government but by well-informed citizens who can blend the best of our fierce independence, distrust of bureaucracy and our collective heart for our common good.

I do not claim to have all the answers. But I am disgusted with Democrats who turned what should have been a health care revolution into a poison stew of who-knows compromises. The “brand” of the Democrats is whiny, victim, poor me thinking. They are also ready to compromise because they have no visible backbone and few ideas they are ready to fight for. The Republicans sicken me. Their “brand” is arrogant know-it-alls who only want to lower taxes, fight wars, remove regulations and promote a new aristocracy. Their “I’ve-got-mine and no-one’s-going-to-tell-me-what-to-do” mind set is a cowboy philosophy completely at odds with the higher purpose of society.

As far as health care goes, I am most impressed with Jesus’ advice. When the Samaritan came upon an enemy who was left for dead by the side of the road, he didn’t say, “Well, he probably deserved it.” Instead he took him in and got him medical attention and paid his bills. It seems clear to me that moral maturity demands we seek to reduce all avoidable suffering. If that were our motive and we didn’t compromise with the moneychangers, we just might come up with something simple, practical and affordable.

I, for one, don’t want the status quo. I don’t want some two-bit, best-I-can-get superficial leftovers approved of by the special interests. I am sick of hearing what’s possible.

What I want is a radically new way of looking at this challenge and the leadership courage to make our country a better place to raise our children.

How about you?

–Will Marre

Why the Left and Right Wings Make Me Sick

I think I’ve finally identified the difference between the right wing and the left wing and why both these wings make me sick. On the right wing best represented by Fox Television we have people like Sean Hanity, who for the last 8 years as far as I can tell has supported virtually every policy and decision the right wing republicans have supported. For instance, I never saw him criticize George Bush in a significant way on any decision he made. It’s just not possible that any person can be right about anything. To construct your public life in such a way that you are always supporting a particular ideology or a particular group requires incredible mental compromise. Nevertheless, the absolute assertion that one set of ideas is always the right set of ideas is very powerful for those of us who are too busy to look deeper.

On the left, characterized by MSNBC we now have people who severely wack President Obama and desperately debate the policies of the left. The presented choice of the media is between mental Hillbillies and insecure whiners; people who are so self-assured that they combine arrogance and ignorance in a way that is lethal, and people that are so unsure that all they can do is create a world in which we share scarcity instead of create sustainable abundance.

These people are simply not who we are. We are seeking for a higher center and for wiser solutions, ones that both reward self-reliance and discourage selfishness. One that promotes a sustainable future without demanding that we live tiny little lives in one-room shelters. This world exists. It is being invented. We all need to be part of it. There needs to be a voice that represents this third way of practical idealism–of hope based in reality, instead of business as usual.

Republicans and Democrats to the Extreme

If you think wisdom, integrity, and new ideas are missing in our government leaders, you are not alone. Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post said,

“When it comes to leadership, this week proved we are living in a moment of mediocrities — a long moment. Sarah Palin, wearing her ignorance like a beauty pageant tiara, was “annoyed” that she was asked actual questions by Katie Couric. George Bush looked the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression square in the eye…and threw up his hands. Congress stepped into the leadership void and promptly created another one. And the less said about Alberto Gonzales’ week, the better. Desperate times cry out for exceptional leaders. It’s not a matter of stratospheric SAT scores or Mensa-level IQs. What we need is the one thing in short supply: wisdom. It’s in our DNA to fear the evil genius. But we still have to be trained to recognize the dangers of the clueless mediocrity.”

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Taken from Will Marre’s,
The 4th American Revolution: What We Can Do Together

DOWNLOAD PDF: America...How We Lost Our Vision

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The presidential and vice presidential candidates don’t seem to be any better. Confidence in national leadership is at a low point. That’s because both major political parties, Republican and Democrats, have lost their understanding of the four values America is centered on: freedom and responsibility, opportunity and equality.

America’s promise has always been that you can determine the quality of your own life. Where you start in life does not determine where you finish. This is very different from the lives people led in eighteenth century Europe, or in many poor nations today. In “old world” conditions children endlessly relived the lives of their parents. There was no social mobility. There was little access to education and almost no access to real assets. Power and corruption kept it that way. America has always stood for something different. We strive to be a society that promotes the key conditions to help us optimize our quality of life no matter what our circumstances. Doing that isn’t easy. It requires constantly balancing four distinct priorities: freedom and responsibility, opportunity and equality. If any one of these values are lost or even de-emphasized, our system is thrown out of balance. People lose confidence and our national mood sours. Today, lots of us are in a sour mood.

Maybe we’re nauseated because we’ve lost our balance. When leaders govern from the center, they do it from a balance point that gives all of us the best chance for life, liberty and happiness. That’s why, most of the time, leaders who advocate policies that respect all four values simultaneously make the most sense to the most of us.

But recently we have been out of whack. Way out. Politicians say the right things, but they don’t do them. More and more, it’s the people on the fringe who determine the debate and push the agenda because they either deliver the cash or the votes.

These days, the loudest voices shout from the lower Right or the lower Left. On the lower Right, the Right wing of the Republican Party, all we hear are the values of opportunity and freedom. Our ideals are reduced to the single notion that everyone should press their self-interest and leverage their advantages to the max. That’s America!

The extreme Republican mantra insists only on low taxes and few regulations. Their ideal nation would have no capital gains taxes, would have open borders and would keep us neck-deep in maids, nannies and day laborers. Their prophetess is economic philosopher, Ayn Rand, who actually wrote a book entitled, The Virtue of Selfishness. Their high priest is Milton Friedman, who claimed,

“The social responsibility of business is to make a profit.”

In their perfect world, economic and social Darwinism creates the best society. The strong, the smart, and the clever win. The lazy and stupid suffer through their own lack of effort. That’s the natural laws of cosmically ordained economics working. The market rules. The market is perfect. If you aren’t rich, well educated, healthy and well-connected, you are to blame. Period. If you want it to be different—get off your butt.

Lower Right Republican thinking is how the wealthy justify their neglect of everyone else.

The lower Right also manipulates the millions of Americans with traditional religious values even as they privately ridicule them as intellectual hillbillies. These corrupt politicians, many with sordid personal lives and vulgar private opinions, tout their “religiously correct” views to radicalize their followers and pick their pockets with no intention of changing anything.

On the lower Left, the left wing of the Democratic party, we hear the weak voices of recycled liberalism. This whiny crowd focuses on protecting the weak instead of educating, empowering, and holding them responsible. It promotes freedom as the excuse to choose continuing irresponsibility as a viable way of life. Higher taxes, cumbersome regulations and more bureaucracy always seem to result from the ideas of the lower Left. This line of thinking leads to everyone waiting in line, sharing equally in scarcity.

Meanwhile, the extreme Left Democrats twist the idea of Liberty into social chaos. An MTV world. Anything anybody wants to do is okay. It’s all just an expression of personal choice. We must respect and honor every lifestyle choice, every form of “artistic” expression. Everything is normal. This belief is so pervasive, you might actually mistake it for liberty. But is it?

Are there really victimless crimes if we live in a society where individual human beings matter? We don’t live in a vacuum; we live in a connected human community. Are there perhaps decisions we make, behaviors we engage in that we think is only our own business that spews out psychological “second hand smoke” that is extremely toxic to our children, our family and friends, or to society as a whole?

Are we not all diminished by the failure of another’s life? Should we stand by with our arms folded if people voluntarily engage in behavior that degrades, exploits, or attacks the fundamental dignity of other human beings even if they “consent” to it? Do we even know what human dignity is? Are we so afraid of irrational fundamentalists who insist their version of morality is the only one that we give up all standards? Would we rather have no moral boundaries at all? Is that really our concept of liberty? The lower Left morality seems vacant of real substance. When tolerance is your only value, anything goes.

The challenge this presidential election season is for a candidate to find the balance of freedom and responsibility, opportunity and equality, the balance of the Republican and Democratic parties. Unfortunately it seems that we’re still waiting. Once again is talk just talk?

What’s the Greatest Thing You Can Do?
Question #4: How can we get our voices heard? What can we do during this last month of the election to spark a 4th American Revolution?  We need your ideas.