The North Coast times-eagle., July 01, 2001, Page 4, Image 4

PAGE 4
FROM MANAS*
"It is far easier to look back than forward a hundred
years. Yet obtaining instruction from history is easier said
than done What, we might ask, have we failed to learn
from the past hundred years? What passions which were
so genuinely aroused during those years are now dead
and forgotten? Is there any theme, besides getting and
pending — which has been a continuous expression of
human purpose? Are we entirely made by the events of
the hour or are there goals which seem independent of
human vicissitudes?
-MANAS, January 8, 1986
The dreams of the Utopians, when applied to the affairs
of imperfect human beings, fail continuously, yet are constantly
reborn, with new definitions of what must be done.The dreamers
are accused by "practical men" of ignoring the facts of life, yet
the practical men. the dreamers reply, close their minds to the
underlying reality of human possibilities and the capacities of
men and women to learn from experience. It is certainly the
case that some institutions of a given society function as
confinements which stand in the way of constructive change,
and need to have their hold loosened, if not destroyed, while
other institutions may serve as natural platforms for progress.
History is, or ought to be, the study of human thinking about
these matters and its consequences in the sequence of events.
The documents to be studied in order to understand what ought
to be done, and what should be avoided, form the curriculum.
For example anyone who wants to understand American
history ought to begin with, say, a reading of the Federalist
Papers and Thomas Paine's Common Sense, both of which deal
with the political and cultural institutions of the late 18th century.
Paine set out more or less successfully, to destroy the alliance
and loyalty of the colonists to the King of England, using for
leverage the self-reliance and sense of freedom of the settlers
in America. The Federalist writers (James Madison, Alexander
Hamilton and John Jay) used hard reasoning as a means of
showing the need for a strong central government for the United
States. We are likely to be persuaded that they were right, yet
MARTIN AVILLEZ
AN OUTGROWN INSTITUTION
today, two centuries after they made their arguments, we are
likely to find that William Appleman Williams' case for the
decentralist government of the Articles of Confederation applies
very much to our time, when the national state has become a
very different affair from the sensible vehicle of order it was for
Hamilton, Madison and Jay. It is the regionalists v4io today
speak to our condition, not the nationalists. In key with what
the bioregionists are now saying is the historical perspective
provided by Hannah Arendt in On Revolution. In a chapter on
'The Revolutionary Tradition," she points out that only Thomas
Jefferson among the Founding Fathers realized that, after the
War for Independence, the excitement and visionary fervor of
the Declaration of Independence would be lost to the American
people in the days of constitution making, which required
lability and no longer revolt:
"...he knew, however dimly, that the Revolution, while it
had given freedom to the people, had failed to provide a space
where this freedom could be exercised Only the representatives
of the people, not the people themselves, had an opportunity
to engage in those activities of "expressing, discussing and
deciding" which in a positive sense are the activities of freedom
And since the state and federal governments, the proudest
results of revolution, through sheer weight of their proper
business were bound to overshadow in political importance the
townships and their meeting halls — until what Emerson still
considered to be "the unit of the Republic" and "the school of the
people" in political matters had withered away — one might even
come to the conclusion that there was less opportunity for the
exercise of public freedom and the enjoyment of public happen­
ings in the republic of the United States than there existed in the
colonies of British America Lewis Mumford has pointed out how
the political importance of the township was never grasped by
the founders, and that the failure to incorporate it into either the
federal or state constitutions was "one of the tragic oversights of
post-revolutionary political development " Only Jefferson among
the founders had a clear premonition of this tragedy, for his
greatest fear was indeed lest "the abstract political system of
democracy lacked concrete organs "
Today, far more than in Jefferson's time, we are begin­
ning to realize the practical effect on our lives of a "democracy"
that lacks "concrete organs." The threat of and preparations
for nuclear war, over vtfiich "the people" have virtually no control
is but one among several practical considerations. The virtual
bankruptcy of the nation is another The ills of both agriculture
and industry, the sickness of our system of education, the
pollution of water, air, land and sea are others. It must be
admitted, however, that only a comparatively small minority
of people are exercised about these matters, while the majority,
A lliance
for
in Neil Postman's apt phrase, is "amusing itself to death." Only
when people begin to lose their jobs and their homes is public
opinion really aroused, and then it is far too late for any immedi­
ate remedy.
Jefferson's dream has certainly not become true for
our generation He thought we would be all right as a country
as long as most of us were farmers and small landowners, but
today the nation is farmed by big machines and about 4% of the
population, and many of the small and medium sized farmers
are in trouble. It is notable that the most articulate and intelligent
reformers of the present are calling, not just for better methods
of farming, but for the return to a vital small community life. This
is still a dream, but it may be the one most likely to come true
as the only alternative to both economic and cultural collapse.
Pessimists think that the collapse will come first, while optimists
hope it can be mitigated by common sense. But very nearly all
agree that the kind of change we need can only be bom from
trouble, probably a lot of trouble.
A quarter of a century ago, a scholar in one of our
California colleges remarked sardonically that "the purpose of
the American nation/state today is to become obsolete." In
explanation, he added:
A modern nation is a large group of people who have
forgotten the purpose of life Insofar as these people can
share in a 'national' purpose, it is nefarious, involving massive
retaliation and public hatred and tribal religion. National leaders
behave like juvenile delinquents.
If we go back much further in our history, to 1798, we
find a Philadelphian, Samuel H Smith, in an essay on education,
declaring that, with the right sort of education Americans would
develop virtues that would cause them to view "the whole world
as a single family," without thinking of other peoples as connect­
ed with "any particular time, person or place," and wuld lift
"the mind to an elevation infinitely superior to the sensation of
individual regard, superior to the ardent feelings of patriotism."
Smith said this in his proposal of a national system of education
for the United States. In it he looked beyond the limitations of
all creeds and sects, and approval of the plan by the American
Philosophical Society may be taken as evidence of the liberal
spirit of its members and the serious thinkers of the time. Smith
was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, the editor of a
magazine called New World, and he later founded The National
Intelligencer. His opinions, according to Allen O. Hansen, author
of Liberalism & American Education in the 18th Century (1926),
and his theme were "not bom of one mind thinking in isolation,
but of the minds of the leading statesmen and scholars compre­
hended in the American Philosophical Society." It seems worth
while to note in particular that in a sense he looked beyond the
nation to the development of a world community, and regarded
D emocracy
he Alliance for Democracy is a new movement
that seeks to end the domination of our economy,
our government, our culture, our media and the
environment by large corporations.
T
We have united to examine the ways in which various eco­
nomic interests either enhance or harm the health of de­
mocracy and we focus on creating basic change.
End
corporate
rule;
revive
democracy.
Piecemeal reform has been rendered ineffective. We seek
deep systemic alterations to establish economic and politi-
cal democracy.___________________________________
681 Mairi Street, Waltham, MA 02451 • Tele: (781 ) 894-1 1 79 • Fax:(781)894-0279
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the nations as an instrument that would serve in bringing about
that ideal.
In these days of fierce and hideously militarized nation­
alism, it seems well to remember that there have been moments
in our history when such vision was clearly and widely expressed
and was sometimes even embodied in law, as in the treaties
concluded by George Washington as President
Henry David Thoreau's "patriotism" hardly extended
beyond the domain of Walden. He could regard as his "country"
only the region he lived in, loved, and understood. He regarded
the nation's government as something of an annoyance, with
which one had to be patient much of the time and on occasion
rebel against. He was, you could say, a whole-hearted bioregion-
alist more than a century before a substantial number of his
country-men/women saw the essential point of this outlook. He
said in Civil Disobedience:
If one were to tell me that this was a bad government
because it taxed certain foreign commodities brought to its ports,
it is most probable that I should not make an ado about it, for
I can do without them. All machines have their friction; and
possibly this does enough good to counterbalance the evil to
make a stir about it. But when the friction comes to have its
machine, and oppression and robbery are organized, I say, let
us not have such a machine any longer. In other words, when a
sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be
the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly
overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to
military law, I think it is not too soon for honest men to rebel
and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the
fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the
invading army. ..
If injustice is a part of the necessary friction of the
machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear
smooth — certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has
a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself,
then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be
worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires
you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say. break the
law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine. What
I have to do is see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the
wrong I condemn.
As for adopting the ways which the state has provided
for remedying the evil, I know not of such ways. They take too
much time, and a man's life will be gone I have other affairs to
attend to.
Here, fully conscious and developed is what present-day
scholars call the post-national consciousness, which seems to
be possible, as one commentator has said, only for "an amateur
and a person of no importance." It seems clear that those who
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