Subject: Re: Needed: Three Obama Speeches for the People
Ralph Nader, a great American. I hope he is not seriously sitting
around waiting for president Obama to respond to this letter.
But for the rest of us, it's well worth reading and thinking about.
Carl Jarvis
----- Original Message -----
From: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@optonline.net>
To: "'Blind Democracy Discussion List'" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Saturday, January 18, 2014 6:21 PM
Subject: Needed: Three Obama Speeches for the People
Nader writes: "As has been said, democracy is not a spectator sport. It
requires a motivated citizenry, along with rights, remedies, and mechanisms
that facilitate people banding together as candidates, voters, workers,
taxpayers, consumers and communities."
President Obama delivers a campaign speech. (photo: Scott Olson/Getty
Images)
Needed: Three Obama Speeches for the People
By Ralph Nader, The Nader Page
18 January 14
Dear President Obama:
All the daily decisions and crises you have to confront must not preclude
occasional addresses to the country that rise to the level of statesmanship,
transcending the hurly-burly of politics and executive branch
administration.
There are three areas where the people need the views and vision of their
President.
1. A major address on the resources and preconditions necessary for the
government to wage peace as a continual policy of statecraft and not just
sporadic initiatives between waging war or engaging in other violent
conflicts. Consider the enormous disparity of time, power and money
allocated to preparing for or waging military assaults with what is devoted
to prevention of conflict and other fundamentals of securing the conditions
for peace. The tiny U.S. budgets for nuclear, chemical and biological arms
control with the Soviet Union and other nations over the years have
certainly produced positive returns of incalculable magnitude and
importance.
We have military academies but no peace academies. Vast sums are allocated
for research and teaching about war and military tactics, but very little
for peace studies at our schools and universities. You may wish to meet with
former Washington Post columnist, Colman McCarthy, who teaches peace in the
Washington D.C. area schools and has written pioneering books and articles
that include his compelling arguments for having peace studies adopted in
high schools and colleges around the country (see
http://www.salsa.net/peace/conv/ for more information).
2. Earlier in 2009 and again in 2011 I wrote to urge you to address a large
gathering, in a convenient Washington venue, for the leaders of nonprofit
civic organizations with tens of millions of members throughout the United
States. Not receiving a reply, I sent my request to the First Lady, Michelle
Obama, whose assistant replied saying you were too busy.
You were, however, not too busy to address many business groups and also to
walk over to the oppositional U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Well, it is the
second term and such a civic gathering could be scheduled at your
convenience. You could use this occasion to make a major speech on the
importance and means of advancing the quality and quantity of civic groups
and their chapters which, taken together, are major employers. Your advisers
could even justify the effort as stimulating a jobs program by urging larger
charitable contributions from the trillions of dollars of inert money in the
hands of the upper economic classes.
3. Strengthening democratic processes and expanding democratic institutions
and participation by the people are cardinal functions of the presidency.
Indeed, Harvard Law Professor, Richard Parker in his little, seminal book:
Here the People Rule (Harvard University Press, 1998) argues that the
constitution authorizes the President "to facilitate the political and civic
energies of the people."
A major address on this topic should be right up your experiential alley
from both your early experience in Chicago of observing and confronting the
power structures' many forms of exclusion and mistreatment of the populace
and your more recent accommodation to that power structure and its influence
over Congress.
As has been said, democracy is not a spectator sport. It requires a
motivated citizenry, along with rights, remedies, and mechanisms that
facilitate people banding together as candidates, voters, workers,
taxpayers, consumers and communities. Concentration of power and wealth in
the hands of the few who decide for the many is the great destroyer of any
society's democratic functions. It was Justice Louis Brandeis who,
memorably, stated that, "We can either have democracy in this country or we
can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have
both." And another well-regarded jurist, Judge Learned Hand declared, "If we
are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: thou shalt not
ration justice."
As "politics" is seen by more people as a dirty word and as the people move
from cynicism about political institutions to greater withdrawal from them,
including public meetings, primaries, elections and referenda, they need a
president who addresses these disabling symptoms of a weakening democratic
society from the local to the state to the national levels of our political
economy.
Such an address will have positive reverberations beyond the general public.
Depending on your scope, recommendations and announcements, it will reach
the youth of our country, our high schools, universities, workplaces and
professional schools. Why it may even affect the moribund, technical
routines of the Harvard Law Review (where you were president in 1990) as
well as other law schools, bar associations and lawyers who aspire to higher
estimates of their own professional significance (see my remarks "The
Majesty of the Law Needs Magisterial Lawyers" before the Connecticut Bar
Association June 17, 2013). If law means justice, as it should, then the
rule of law needs presidential refurbishing to strengthen the fiber of our
democracy.
I hope you will see the merit of these three suggestions. A copy of this
letter is being sent to the First Lady, Michelle Obama, whose staff may be
responsive in a different manner.
I look forward to your reaction.
Sincerely yours,
Ralph Nader
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
President Obama delivers a campaign speech. (photo: Scott Olson/Getty
Images)
http://nader.org/2014/01/16/needed-three-obama-speeches-people/http://nader.
org/2014/01/16/needed-three-obama-speeches-people/
Needed: Three Obama Speeches for the People
By Ralph Nader, The Nader Page
18 January 14
ear President Obama:
All the daily decisions and crises you have to confront must not preclude
occasional addresses to the country that rise to the level of statesmanship,
transcending the hurly-burly of politics and executive branch
administration.
There are three areas where the people need the views and vision of their
President.
1. A major address on the resources and preconditions necessary for the
government to wage peace as a continual policy of statecraft and not just
sporadic initiatives between waging war or engaging in other violent
conflicts. Consider the enormous disparity of time, power and money
allocated to preparing for or waging military assaults with what is devoted
to prevention of conflict and other fundamentals of securing the conditions
for peace. The tiny U.S. budgets for nuclear, chemical and biological arms
control with the Soviet Union and other nations over the years have
certainly produced positive returns of incalculable magnitude and
importance.
We have military academies but no peace academies. Vast sums are allocated
for research and teaching about war and military tactics, but very little
for peace studies at our schools and universities. You may wish to meet with
former Washington Post columnist, Colman McCarthy, who teaches peace in the
Washington D.C. area schools and has written pioneering books and articles
that include his compelling arguments for having peace studies adopted in
high schools and colleges around the country (see
http://www.salsa.net/peace/conv/ for more information).
2. Earlier in 2009 and again in 2011 I wrote to urge you to address a large
gathering, in a convenient Washington venue, for the leaders of nonprofit
civic organizations with tens of millions of members throughout the United
States. Not receiving a reply, I sent my request to the First Lady, Michelle
Obama, whose assistant replied saying you were too busy.
You were, however, not too busy to address many business groups and also to
walk over to the oppositional U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Well, it is the
second term and such a civic gathering could be scheduled at your
convenience. You could use this occasion to make a major speech on the
importance and means of advancing the quality and quantity of civic groups
and their chapters which, taken together, are major employers. Your advisers
could even justify the effort as stimulating a jobs program by urging larger
charitable contributions from the trillions of dollars of inert money in the
hands of the upper economic classes.
3. Strengthening democratic processes and expanding democratic institutions
and participation by the people are cardinal functions of the presidency.
Indeed, Harvard Law Professor, Richard Parker in his little, seminal book:
Here the People Rule (Harvard University Press, 1998) argues that the
constitution authorizes the President "to facilitate the political and civic
energies of the people."
A major address on this topic should be right up your experiential alley
from both your early experience in Chicago of observing and confronting the
power structures' many forms of exclusion and mistreatment of the populace
and your more recent accommodation to that power structure and its influence
over Congress.
As has been said, democracy is not a spectator sport. It requires a
motivated citizenry, along with rights, remedies, and mechanisms that
facilitate people banding together as candidates, voters, workers,
taxpayers, consumers and communities. Concentration of power and wealth in
the hands of the few who decide for the many is the great destroyer of any
society's democratic functions. It was Justice Louis Brandeis who,
memorably, stated that, "We can either have democracy in this country or we
can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have
both." And another well-regarded jurist, Judge Learned Hand declared, "If we
are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: thou shalt not
ration justice."
As "politics" is seen by more people as a dirty word and as the people move
from cynicism about political institutions to greater withdrawal from them,
including public meetings, primaries, elections and referenda, they need a
president who addresses these disabling symptoms of a weakening democratic
society from the local to the state to the national levels of our political
economy.
Such an address will have positive reverberations beyond the general public.
Depending on your scope, recommendations and announcements, it will reach
the youth of our country, our high schools, universities, workplaces and
professional schools. Why it may even affect the moribund, technical
routines of the Harvard Law Review (where you were president in 1990) as
well as other law schools, bar associations and lawyers who aspire to higher
estimates of their own professional significance (see my remarks "The
Majesty of the Law Needs Magisterial Lawyers" before the Connecticut Bar
Association June 17, 2013). If law means justice, as it should, then the
rule of law needs presidential refurbishing to strengthen the fiber of our
democracy.
I hope you will see the merit of these three suggestions. A copy of this
letter is being sent to the First Lady, Michelle Obama, whose staff may be
responsive in a different manner.
I look forward to your reaction.
Sincerely yours,
Ralph Nader
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