The discipline of desire is
the background of character.
– John Locke
the background of character.
– John Locke
FEAR, rage and grief consumed me when two hijacked airplanes slashed into the World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001. Standing dumbstruck before my television screen at home in Denver, I watched the live news feed from New York at 9:03 AM as United Flight 175 banked gracefully into the south tower and burst into a ball of flame. When the twin towers collapsed that morning, the debris cascading down looked like two inverted mushroom clouds.
As the day wore on, TV news began to echo the drumbeat of war emanating from the White House. Because I’ve worked for years as a journalist reporting on media and politics, because I’ve studied and taught the tools of public relations and propaganda, I saw an ominous trend. With Americans feeling terrified, the president was pledging an “endless war on terrorism” while implying the air attack justified a crackdown on U.S. society—for our own safety, of course.
I picked up my phone and called my representatives in Congress. I left messages urging them not to sacrifice our civil liberties on the alter of homeland security. They did not call back.
In the weeks that followed, I began drafting an essay on the future of democracy in America and the world. I wrote that most of us are ripe for plucking by tyrants because we feel afraid and insecure. As I wrote, I confronted my own dark shame and pain, the hidden shadow of self doubt that for years has kept me small and weak.
In late September, I recalled using Thomas Paine’s Common Sense in 1997 as the framework for an essay at my new website on the need for democratic governance of the Internet. In a flash of insight, I saw that Paine’s classic work was a perfect vehicle for talking about how global thinking empowers us for freedom. Inspired by Paine as if he was leaning over my shoulder, whispering in my ear, I started writing the book, Global Sense, voicing my soul while praying to touch your heart.
AFTER the 9/11 Al Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC, President George W. Bush declared an “endless war on terrorism.” Congress hastily passed a barely debated resolution against terrorism. (The bill was eerily akin to the barely debated 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that unofficially declared war on Southeast Asia, starting in Vietnam.)
On that dreadful day of carnage, the president declared a state of national emergency that’s still in effect. What if America suffers more terrorist attacks, if we endure more natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina, if the economy fails or race riots erupt? As Commander in Chief, could the president declare martial law? Impossible? Nothing is impossible. Improbable? Mary Wollstonecraft warned us, “Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil.”
For a scary cautionary tale, read the 1935 novel by Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here. A populist fascist (akin to Huey Long) wins the 1936 presidential election. He declares a state of emergency to fight the Depression, censors the press, suspends elections, and turns sports stadiums into prison camps for dissenters. Could such a disaster ever befall America? Voltaire warned us, “It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.”
Far worse would be if America continues its path of forcing regime changes in countries that are unfriendly to U.S. commercial interests. Stephen Kinzer’s Overthrow reports 14 times since 1898 the U.S. has dislodged governments with invasions or coups, each time planting the seeds of future conflict.
Overturning Iran’s elected government in 1953 and installing the Shah to serve U.S. and British oil interests, for instance, not only erased actual democracy in the region, it provoked distrust and resentment that erupted in Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution. The West itself incited those fundamentalist forces today preventing world peace. My worst case scenario is that our selfish, myopic actions will keep fueling endless war on earth.
To understand why Common Sense made sense at the dawn of the United States, and why it still applies to us today, put yourself in the place of those reading Thomas Paine’s essay in 1776.
The colonists’ rights as citizens under the English Constitution had been revoked by “mad” King George III, who probably suffered from variegate porphyria.* Parliament only made matters worse with the Stamp Act, Tea Act, and other “intolerable acts.” As Thom Hartmann chronicled in Unequal Protection, Americans hurt by tyranny united behind the protest, “No taxation without representation.” The people wanted a fair say in making the laws governing their lives.
Massachusetts rebelled in early 1775, so English ships blockaded Boston Harbor. When British soldiers killed American colonists at nearby Lexington on April 19, this “massacre” confused and terrified Americans in all of the colonies. They likely felt much like modern Americans felt in 2001 after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Most colonial Americans expected to reconcile with England and stay under the crown, but a faction wanted to break away. Members of secret “committees of correspondence” wrote letters advocating independency for the continent. They were like the writers on Internet blogs and listservs today urging democracy and world peace. Then as now, the friends of liberty struggled to make their case.
Just as Americans learned that King George III had declared all the colonies in rebellion, out of nowhere on January 10, 1776, appeared a pamphlet entitled, Common Sense. The public impact was electric. Historians affirm this was the right message at the right time.
Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense, "Now is the seed time of continental [or global] union, faith and honor. The least fracture now will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound will enlarge "By referring the matter from argument to arms, a new area for politics is struck; a new method of thinking hath arisen. All plans, proposals... prior to the nineteenth of April [1775], i.e., to the commencement of hostilities [the attacks in Massachusetts], are like the almanacs of last year; which, though proper then, are superseded and useless now. "
We can say the same thing about our lives since the eleventh of September, 2001, the start of today’s hostilities. Our world is not as it was before. Our world will never be as it was before.
Paine continued" No [person] was a warmer wisher for reconciliation than myself, before the fatal nineteenth of April, 1775 (Massacre at Lexington), but the moment the event of that day was made known, I rejected the hardened, sullen tempered Pharaoh of England for ever."
We can say the same about the fatal eleventh of September, 2001. Since that day, many of us reject forever our addiction to authority. We renounce the insanity of war, empire and world conquest.
“Naturally the common people don’t want war,” said Nazi leader Hermann Goring. “But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along.... All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for [their] lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
If it’s true that nationalism can cloak itself as patriotism to fool the people, a question arises: How can any leader claiming to represent us unfeelingly drag us into war and then revoke our civil rights on the grounds they do not trust us to act responsibly?
Do our leaders know us? Do they know whether we’ve evolved a global sense of unity with all life that renders violence unthinkable? No, they do not know us, but they presume to decide for us. Their faith lay in Theory X and the cynicism of Hobbes. We are presumed guilty of original sin, collective guilt or widespread stupidity. Thus, our leaders fail to give us any vote before revoking our right to vote. Our governments rule in our name but without our consent.
# # #
Excerpted and edited from GLOBAL SENSE: Awakening Your Personal Power for Democracy and World Peace (an update of Common Sense) by Judah Freed. (c) 2006 by Judah Freed.
As the day wore on, TV news began to echo the drumbeat of war emanating from the White House. Because I’ve worked for years as a journalist reporting on media and politics, because I’ve studied and taught the tools of public relations and propaganda, I saw an ominous trend. With Americans feeling terrified, the president was pledging an “endless war on terrorism” while implying the air attack justified a crackdown on U.S. society—for our own safety, of course.
I picked up my phone and called my representatives in Congress. I left messages urging them not to sacrifice our civil liberties on the alter of homeland security. They did not call back.
In the weeks that followed, I began drafting an essay on the future of democracy in America and the world. I wrote that most of us are ripe for plucking by tyrants because we feel afraid and insecure. As I wrote, I confronted my own dark shame and pain, the hidden shadow of self doubt that for years has kept me small and weak.
In late September, I recalled using Thomas Paine’s Common Sense in 1997 as the framework for an essay at my new website on the need for democratic governance of the Internet. In a flash of insight, I saw that Paine’s classic work was a perfect vehicle for talking about how global thinking empowers us for freedom. Inspired by Paine as if he was leaning over my shoulder, whispering in my ear, I started writing the book, Global Sense, voicing my soul while praying to touch your heart.
AFTER the 9/11 Al Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC, President George W. Bush declared an “endless war on terrorism.” Congress hastily passed a barely debated resolution against terrorism. (The bill was eerily akin to the barely debated 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that unofficially declared war on Southeast Asia, starting in Vietnam.)
On that dreadful day of carnage, the president declared a state of national emergency that’s still in effect. What if America suffers more terrorist attacks, if we endure more natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina, if the economy fails or race riots erupt? As Commander in Chief, could the president declare martial law? Impossible? Nothing is impossible. Improbable? Mary Wollstonecraft warned us, “Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil.”
For a scary cautionary tale, read the 1935 novel by Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here. A populist fascist (akin to Huey Long) wins the 1936 presidential election. He declares a state of emergency to fight the Depression, censors the press, suspends elections, and turns sports stadiums into prison camps for dissenters. Could such a disaster ever befall America? Voltaire warned us, “It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.”
Far worse would be if America continues its path of forcing regime changes in countries that are unfriendly to U.S. commercial interests. Stephen Kinzer’s Overthrow reports 14 times since 1898 the U.S. has dislodged governments with invasions or coups, each time planting the seeds of future conflict.
Overturning Iran’s elected government in 1953 and installing the Shah to serve U.S. and British oil interests, for instance, not only erased actual democracy in the region, it provoked distrust and resentment that erupted in Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution. The West itself incited those fundamentalist forces today preventing world peace. My worst case scenario is that our selfish, myopic actions will keep fueling endless war on earth.
To understand why Common Sense made sense at the dawn of the United States, and why it still applies to us today, put yourself in the place of those reading Thomas Paine’s essay in 1776.
The colonists’ rights as citizens under the English Constitution had been revoked by “mad” King George III, who probably suffered from variegate porphyria.* Parliament only made matters worse with the Stamp Act, Tea Act, and other “intolerable acts.” As Thom Hartmann chronicled in Unequal Protection, Americans hurt by tyranny united behind the protest, “No taxation without representation.” The people wanted a fair say in making the laws governing their lives.
Massachusetts rebelled in early 1775, so English ships blockaded Boston Harbor. When British soldiers killed American colonists at nearby Lexington on April 19, this “massacre” confused and terrified Americans in all of the colonies. They likely felt much like modern Americans felt in 2001 after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Most colonial Americans expected to reconcile with England and stay under the crown, but a faction wanted to break away. Members of secret “committees of correspondence” wrote letters advocating independency for the continent. They were like the writers on Internet blogs and listservs today urging democracy and world peace. Then as now, the friends of liberty struggled to make their case.
Just as Americans learned that King George III had declared all the colonies in rebellion, out of nowhere on January 10, 1776, appeared a pamphlet entitled, Common Sense. The public impact was electric. Historians affirm this was the right message at the right time.
Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense, "Now is the seed time of continental [or global] union, faith and honor. The least fracture now will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound will enlarge "By referring the matter from argument to arms, a new area for politics is struck; a new method of thinking hath arisen. All plans, proposals... prior to the nineteenth of April [1775], i.e., to the commencement of hostilities [the attacks in Massachusetts], are like the almanacs of last year; which, though proper then, are superseded and useless now. "
We can say the same thing about our lives since the eleventh of September, 2001, the start of today’s hostilities. Our world is not as it was before. Our world will never be as it was before.
Paine continued" No [person] was a warmer wisher for reconciliation than myself, before the fatal nineteenth of April, 1775 (Massacre at Lexington), but the moment the event of that day was made known, I rejected the hardened, sullen tempered Pharaoh of England for ever."
We can say the same about the fatal eleventh of September, 2001. Since that day, many of us reject forever our addiction to authority. We renounce the insanity of war, empire and world conquest.
“Naturally the common people don’t want war,” said Nazi leader Hermann Goring. “But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along.... All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for [their] lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
If it’s true that nationalism can cloak itself as patriotism to fool the people, a question arises: How can any leader claiming to represent us unfeelingly drag us into war and then revoke our civil rights on the grounds they do not trust us to act responsibly?
Do our leaders know us? Do they know whether we’ve evolved a global sense of unity with all life that renders violence unthinkable? No, they do not know us, but they presume to decide for us. Their faith lay in Theory X and the cynicism of Hobbes. We are presumed guilty of original sin, collective guilt or widespread stupidity. Thus, our leaders fail to give us any vote before revoking our right to vote. Our governments rule in our name but without our consent.
Excerpted and edited from GLOBAL SENSE: Awakening Your Personal Power for Democracy and World Peace (an update of Common Sense) by Judah Freed. (c) 2006 by Judah Freed.
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