I believe we can seize this future together because we are not as divided as our politics suggests. We’re not as cynical as the pundits believe. We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions, and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are and forever will be the United States of America.
President
Barack Obama, Victory Speech, 7 November 2012
Is Obama right?
I’m convinced that he is and have supported his position many times and in many
ways with respect to my focus on global competitiveness and how best to
accelerate and to improve the American innovation ecosystem. But such
activities to enhance our competitive advantage do not take place in a vacuum
and are inextricably a part of the warp and woof of the overall American
experience and the polarized political climate that we are now experiencing.
Neglecting that condition is not a prescription for success.
So how divided
are we? Is there no room to clarify and to redefine in more suitable language a
contextual framework for compromise based on principles that most of us agree
upon across the political spectrum? And just what are those principles?
It’s not rocket
science to find the principles by our founding fathers! I begin with the
Declaration of Independence.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
The Declaration
further proclaims the need to create government and a system to secure these
rights, or stated in more modern terms, government has a responsible role to
play in our lives. That need led eventually to the adoption of the Constitution
of the United States whose famous preamble clearly states why we have a United
States of America.
We, the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
That sounds like
six straightforward principles to me. But then, how is it that our Supreme
Court determined that a company is a person? And exactly when does “personhood”
begin for a human being? Should society condone equality in marriage as well as
equal pay? And when and for whom does taxation become a burden?
These are just a
few of the troubling questions facing modern society and therein lies the rub
with the principles of our founding fathers. Each of us views the world through
a different set of filters and each of us approaches and interprets these
principles in a different manner. It’s the individualism that characterizes the
best of America.
But I’m an
optimist! Americans have always had the ability to come together as a community
in common cause for the greater good.
And even in the face of a presumably divided electorate, I believe that
it is possible to set forth a collection of practical principles that most
Americans can accept – principles that we can use to govern ourselves. Here is
my attempt to establish some working principles.
Fiscal policy,
budgets, and the tax code must be responsible, fair, and balanced with respect
to revenue and spending. Obstructionism in Congress must be replaced by flexibility
and compromise in order to avoid a fiscal cliff and to reduce the deficit. We
must all understand that “cutting spending and waste” are just code words for
the right wing social agenda and the Tea Party trap of no government through
austerity, even though cutting unnecessary spending and eliminating waste are
good things to do on the whole.
Social policy
should focus on providing a caring safety net whether for the poor, the
elderly, the unemployed, or any other disadvantaged American. Religious beliefs, no matter how
strongly held, are not a basis for public policy nor a reason to restrict
access to needed services. The culture war must end. Old-fashioned
libertarianism, which focuses on individual freedom, should be the rule until
the public weal, as clearly laid out by the principles in the preamble to the
Constitution, kicks in. Modern civilization requires that we have a functioning
and protected middle class free to live as they please within the broadly set
limits of the Constitution. Without a middle class, there will not be a vibrant
economy or consumers ready to snatch up the latest innovative gadget.
Effective,
efficient, and responsible regulation of business, commerce, insurance, banking
and finance, the environment, and healthcare is essential to protecting our
individual rights as well as the common good. Public policy
and actions must be based on testable facts and known truths. Disinformation to
distort those truths or denial of proven facts must be exposed for the fraud
that they are. Evolution and human-driven global climate change are real. And
yes, there really are verifiable economic facts. Reducing taxes for the top one
percent doesn’t produce jobs.
The new
reality – which actually is an old reality – is that America is a
multi-cultural, plural society rapidly becoming a so-called majority-minority
community and we must govern accordingly. Or as Bill O’Reilly put it, we no longer have the
traditional America. Or as others have said, “it’s not Reagan’s America
anymore.” What they really mean is that the good ole white boys don’t rule the
roost anymore. Folks, it’s time to stop the extreme right wing war on [fill in
the blank with women, gays, blacks, latinos, intellectuals, teachers, the 47%,
unions, the middle class, …]. Hate and toxic language must be
marginalized and ignored. We are not a nation of communists and sluts as some
would have us believe. Instead, we are a nation of value-added immigrants to
the New World and their descendants who have built the United States of
America! And yes, we need for the Republican Party to revitalize itself as the
voice of true conservatism, not the voice of a discredited “too old, too white,
too male, and too wrong.”
Nation
building here in America must be the gold standard, not overseas military
adventurism. America
faces many internal challenges in the Twenty-first century including energy
independence through alternative and clean energy sources, a revitalization of
our decaying civil infrastructure, and insourcing of jobs. Solving these
challenges requires investment, not austerity. It requires innovation,
technology commercialization, entreprenuership, and all the many activities
that I’ve long supported and advocated for. But most especially, it requires a
new commitment to invest in our nation’s educational system.
Is America ready
to seize the future? The re-election of Barack Obama as President is a step in
that direction and a rejection and repudiation of the truly nutty stuff we’ve
been subjected to over the past few years. But as I listen to Mitch McConnell
and John Boehner following the election, it’s clear to me that they still just
don’t get it. The age of the “good ole white boys” that I grew up with in North
Carolina really isn’t over yet.
[Photo source: Spencer
Platt/Getty Images North America]
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