Before we slip into old habits of letting obsolete partisan arguments take hold, think about this. You need not choose between free-market processes and government actions. You need not choose between swollen bureaucracies and efficient profit-making free enterprises. You need not favor "no taxes" nor even "low taxes" if you favor "less government." Some redistribution of wealth is now well accepted, both as charitable giving and through government taxation. Think about what we have learned over the past six decades, say, since 1948, when George Orwell reversed those last two digits to write his book "1984" to warn us about excessive top-down power. In 1998, I escaped the overly partisan bickering over impeaching a president for whom I had not voted. I joined the Peace Corps in Ukraine. I now live in Minnesota, where an independent became governor when we moved here in 1990.
Ukraine RPCV Chandler Harrison Stevens writes: Partisan bickering limits solutions
Partisan bickering limits solutions
4/15/2009 11:10:02 AM
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By Chandler Harrison Stevens
Before we slip into old habits of letting obsolete partisan arguments take hold, think about this. You need not choose between free-market processes and government actions. You need not choose between swollen bureaucracies and efficient profit-making free enterprises. You need not favor "no taxes" nor even "low taxes" if you favor "less government."
Some redistribution of wealth is now well accepted, both as charitable giving and through government taxation. Think about what we have learned over the past six decades, say, since 1948, when George Orwell reversed those last two digits to write his book "1984" to warn us about excessive top-down power.
In 1948, we had a president who won a surprise re-election and who had unleashed the ultimate weapon of mass destruction when we dropped atomic bombs on Japan to help end World War II.
That president, when he left office in 1953, drove himself and his wife back to Missouri to live -- at first without even a pension for having served as president -- and with no expensive Secret Service protection.
In 1958 the next president, though an Army general, came to realize that the biggest threat to our country was the military industrial complex (MIC), which he warned us about in 1961, as he was leaving office.
MIC had come into being during World War II and dominated the U.S., the USSR, and other superpowers by fostering among themselves a "cold war" that fed into hot wars in Vietnam in the '60s and Afghanistan in the '80s that the superpowers could not "win."
In 1968, the two leading candidates for president were actually closer to each other on the traditional left-right horizontal axis of politics than a right-wing Southern governor and a left-wing Minnesota senator who were initially running that year for president.
When that senator dropped out and another anti-war candidate was assassinated, some of their supporters surprisingly then favored the right-wing Southern governor rather than back either the Democratic vice president, also from Minnesota, or the ultimate winner (who later resigned the presidency).
Why? Perhaps because the Republican was seen as a captive of big business and the Democrat was seen as a captive of big labor, with both of them seeming to be more captive of big government and of the MIC -- as a combination of big government, big business and big labor.
In other words, a vertical axis had taken form and placed such far right- and left-wingers closer together in their both favoring bottom-up policies. Politics became at least two-dimensional.
In 1978, we had another Southern governor as president. He was closer to being a bottom-up populist than we have had ever since. In that pre-Internet era, the mass media was still top-down, and it treated that president as a failure. His emphasis on human rights is the ultimate bottom-up need.
In 1988, the Massachusetts governor who ran for president could not shake off his left-wing image; he lost decisively after being far ahead in the polls a few months before the election. But yet he knew from his state legislative service in the '60s that there was a new way of combining the anti-bureaucratic attitude of old-line conservatives with the humanitarian commitment of old-line liberals.
He had led reform efforts of a nearly equal number of Republicans and Democrats along with one lone independent, me (having been elected as the first in 50 years to win a Massachusetts legislative seat without a party label).
In 1998, I escaped the overly partisan bickering over impeaching a president for whom I had not voted. I joined the Peace Corps in Ukraine. I now live in Minnesota, where an independent became governor when we moved here in 1990.
Independents seem to favor bottom-up policies. After more than half a century of being a small-i independent, I believe we independents are finally gaining momentum to achieve real change.
In 2008, we elected a president who says, "change comes from the bottom up." Notice I mention no presidential names above. If you think you know all six presidents plus five candidates mentioned above, please send me those 11 names as emailto:chstevens@smig.net.
But it's not about them from the top down. It's about us, from the bottom up. Partisan bickering increases as the 100-days presidential honeymoon comes to an end. But this time we are determined to stick to issues, take personal responsibility for helping resolve those issues from the bottom up - and, if necessary, ignore the beltway bandits and the partisan minorities in DC, in St. Paul, or wherever.
We are all to blame for economic and energy excesses. We need to become part of the solution rather than continue to be part of the problem.
Chandler Harrison Stevens of Austin is a retired college professor, political activist and former Peace Corps worker who writes frequently for the Austin Post-Bulletin's editorial page.
