[p2p-research] Fwd: Obama's Non-ideological Pragmatism Will Backfire (Lerner in The Politico.com this morning)

[Michel Bauwens]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rabbi Michael Lerner <kay at tikkun.org>
Date: Wed, May 20, 2009 at 11:08 PM
Subject: Obama's Non-ideological Pragmatism Will Backfire (Lerner in The
Politico.com this morning)
To: michelsub2004 at gmail.com


   Tikkun<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=fCKv9Jso5sBOnF28g6EaOsxaYQ2DkSkt>
  to heal, repair and transform the world       *A note from Rabbi Michael
Lerner** * Join or Donate
Now!<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=8ocnD3%2BhpP7mgXSk2xce58xaYQ2DkSkt>

Dear Michel,

First, don't be shocked by my new picture. The beard was started when my
father died last November in accord with Jewish mourning practices. I'm
recovering from the cancer (more on that in my P.S. below). And yes, I look
older--because I am!

Second, I decided to send you an article of mine which appeared this morning
in *The Politico.com* website--because it presents a way of understanding
how it could be that the Right, defeated in the election of 2008, is still
shaping the contours of national debate, so that Obama and Congressional
Democrats keep on explaining their various compromises and abandonng of
principles by pointing to the need to be "realistic" in light of the
political debate in D.C. I'm putting this forward not to hurt Obama, but
rather the opposite: to help us understand why we need to mobilize a
counter-pressure on him and Congressional Democrats--a pressure from the
spiritual progressive consciousness articulated by Tikkun and our Network of
Spiritual Progressives.

If there had been more space in the Politico.com I would have told the story
that Hillary Clinton told me when I met with her in the White House: that
when FDR met with labor leaders in 1934, after four hours of meeting, he
said the following: "You've convinced me that you are right. Now, go out
there and FORCE ME TO DO IT." What he meant, Hillary explained to me, was
that the pressures on a President to stay with the status quo and the forces
of the economic and political elites of the country are enormous, so that
even when a President wishes to move in a different direction, he needs to
be able to point to forces from the progressive world that are equally
vociferous and pushing him in the direction he wished to go.

So, those who say, "Don't criticize Obama, because he is such a decent
person, so smart, and obviously wants the right things" are missing the
point: OBAMA NEEDS TO BE PUSHED FROM THE PROGRESSIVE WORLD IN ORDER TO BE
ABLE TO BE WHO HE WANTS TO BE. He needs our support in this way. That's why
we at the Network of Spiritual Progressives are moblizing a campaign to
support him by pushing him to Be the Obama We Voted For, Not the Obama of
Inside-the-Beltway and Wall Street design. Over the next few months I'll be
sending you more information about the details of this campaign, but first
point is: if you are not yet paying annual dues to the Network of Spiritual
Progressives, please do so now at www.spiritualprogressives.org--because we
are severely limited unless we can hire organizers to help us implement this
campaign. We need to raise a minimum of $300,000 to make this campaign real.
So, please make a donation to the NSP and/or Join as a dues-paying member,
or renew your membership if you haven't done so yet in 2009. You can do all
this at www.spiritualprogressives.org.<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=ZnOR0moehnOduB7UnHQuM8xaYQ2DkSkt>
Or by sending a check to Tikkun at 2342 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley, Ca. 94704.
Or call and make a donation through your credit card on the phone at 510 644
1200 (9--5 Pacific daylight time, M-F).  By the way, in case you are
wondering, I HATE to have to ask for money for our organizing efforts--but
on the other hand, as some people have said to me, it's a "mitzvah" or good
deed to provide others with an opportunity to do good in the world, and that
is definitely what we will be able to do if we get your support. Please also
feel free to send this letter and the article below to everyone on your
various email lists, or put it on your website, twitter connections,
facebook, or whatever.

And do let me know if you have ideas about how we can best mobilize our
Campaign to Support Obama to Be the Obama We Voted For--Not the Obama of the
Inside-the-Beltway non-ideological pragmatism that I describe below. Yes, we
are reaching out to other organizations and communities to work in
coalition, yes we are joining with those who are supporting the campaign to
reduce carbon, to support single-payer, to stop the wars in
Iraq/Afghanistan/Pakistan, to support Israel/Palestinian reconcilaition, to
support a shift from an Obama economics focused on helpng the banks and
insurance companies to helping the people thrown out of work or losing their
homes because of the economic meltdown, and of course, we are moving forward
with our Domestic and Global Marshall Plan. But what is* our unique
contribution is to link all these in a worldview* articulated in our "New
Bottom Line" and in our Core
Vision<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=2BKyqp3qC4%2BYzsW%2FA5GgC8xaYQ2DkSkt>at
www.tikkun.org, and in our Spiritual Covenant with
America<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=CwR%2FvMU0cTc7W4x%2FsTaqGMxaYQ2DkSkt>at
www.spiritualprogressives.org. So even if you don't have any money to
donate, you can be an effective ally by carefully reading and internalizing
the articulation of this worldview and then spreading it widely, talking
about it, getting others to read it and discuss the ideas, the vision, the
approach. And then by challenging the cynical realism that makes people feel
despair about politics, or at least too passive to join our campaign. The
truth is, you, your energy, your thinking--YOU ARE THE NETWORK, and together
we can make a real difference.

Love and blessings,

Michael

P.S. I'm on my way toward recovery from the cancer surgery. No chemo, no
raditation--the surgeon says that she removed all the cancerous parts of my
lung. Unfortunately, there is a 25-40% recurrence rate, and nothing to do to
prevent that but to reduce stress, pray, exercise, eat right, and pray some
more. I'll learn more about the pre-cancerous stuff in my duodenom and
esophogus next month. Meanwhile, I'm at about 80% of my normal energy level,
which isn't bad, and still have pain (slowly diminishing) from the surgery
itself. Now, please read the article below and support this campaign I've
just described in this letter. You can read it on line at www.tikkun.orgalso.

 *Barack Obama's Non-Ideological Pragmatism Will Backfire*

     by Rabbi Michael Lerner

President Barack Obama's very nonideological pragmatism, which has received
so much praise inside the Beltway and which has given him public support in
his few months in office, will ultimately be the downfall of his presidency.


This approach and the free pass it generates from the media may indeed allow
him to push through programs that here and there make significant advances
toward a more generous and caring society. But it guarantees that he will
not be able to gain mass support for a coherent worldview that can form the
basis for an alternative to "let the marketplace decide," which has been the
guiding principle for American domestic politics, and "let our power shape
the world," which has been our primary approach to foreign
policy<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=YFFAHQuxCRWE7GKsucAc%2FMxaYQ2DkSkt>.


The nonideological approach implicitly encourages us to believe in Obama
himself - he will be our savior, our refuge, our deliverer from the bad
times of the Bush
administration<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=LjmDASe5rHfMOIChofzdgMxaYQ2DkSkt>.


And indeed he may. I believe that we've never had a more brilliant, decent
and spiritually grounded president. Yet by failing to educate people on a
fundamentally different way of thinking, by eschewing articulation of the
spiritual and ethical principles that ought to guide us as a society and
showing how his programs flow from those principles, Obama is disempowering
those who will have to continue the fight when he is no longer president.

Contrast this with the political right, which has consistently articulated
its views that the capitalist market is the ultimate arbiter and stabilizer
of our society and that all good things will flow from empowering it to work
its magic; and that homeland security can best be achieved by dominating
other countries around the world and insisting that they follow our
leadership.

Even when their policies fail, or are repudiated by the public, they stay on
message, and hence have managed to persuade a solid 30 percent of the
country to follow irrational policies and to oppose any serious change.

While I despise the content of their politics, their ideological consistency
and willingness to educate the public to their worldview has given them a
great advantage over liberals who fear to put forward a coherent alternative
lest they be labeled "ideologues."  With that committed base that they've
fostered, they push the media in ways that make them far more powerful than
their numbers would justify. In fact, at this very moment, and despite the
outcome of the 2008 election, they are able to put the Obama Administration
and the Democrats in Congress on the defensive, because the Democrats are
unable to mobilize their own base around "pragmatism" and a non-ideological
"lets be realistic" politics.

I watched how the nonideological perspective of the Clinton White House
played out in winning short-term victories by embracing the pro-market and
pro-power ideologies of the right. Sure, the Clintons were "pragmatic" and
got lots of their
legislation<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=kLLQMv4yoISsNWhiAVv%2ByMxaYQ2DkSkt>passed.
But since they avoided a commitment to an alternative worldview,
they failed to build an American constituency that would reject the
retrograde policies of the Reagan-Bush I-Bush II years.

The result: Even at the moment of greatest economic success, in the year
2000, the Democrats could not hold onto the White House or win back control
of Congress, and soon all that had been legislated was dismantled.

Read more:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22707.html#ixzz0G3jKtzeb&B<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=L1zQWQALFHIIMGf3sWvryaPwG9IjVPe4>

The same will happen to the Obama
Democrats<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=oqddg9R6puwV3R8kUKRkz8xaYQ2DkSkt>,
unless they are capable of shaping a new worldview and showing how their
specific policies flow from that worldview.

In the politics of meaning that I first articulated to the Clinton White
House - much to the annoyance of Rahm Emanuel and others who were
religiously anti-ideological - I spoke about America's hunger for a new
ethos that would transcend the individualism and selfishness of the
competitive marketplace. America needs a new bottom line so that
corporations, government policies, social institutions and even personal
behavior are judged rational, productive or efficient not only to the extent
that they maximize money and power (the old bottom line) but also to the
extent that they maximize love and caring, kindness and generosity, ethical
and ecological sensitivity, as well as enhance our capacity to go beyond a
utilitarian approach to nature so that we can respond with awe, wonder and
radical amazement at the grandeur and mystery of the universe.

We need a foreign
policy<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=Xb4WcK7PW54sS7Pua23hbsxaYQ2DkSkt>based
on the recognition that in the 21st century, our well-being depends on
the well-being of everyone else on the planet, and hence that a strategy of
generosity should replace the strategy of domination (e.g., by launching a
Global Marshall Plan to once and for all eliminate global poverty,
homelessness, hunger, inadequate education and inadequate health care and to
repair the global environment). We need a national bank that can provide
interest-free loans to help individuals and small businesses, in accordance
with the biblical mandate.

Underlying all this is a worldview that gives priority to love, generosity
and caring as the central values that must shape domestic and foreign
policy. I know from my personal encounters with him that Obama actually
shares those values, but until he consistently articulates them as the basis
for a new politics and, equally important, uses those values as the criteria
by which he encourages others to judge his and all other social policies, he
will increasingly find himself falling back on the dominant paradigms of the
past.

The more that happens, the more the people who momentarily allowed
themselves to hope that something new was really going to happen in politics
will fall back into cynicism and despair, and as they do so, there will be
no force capable of resisting a right-wing backlash that will ultimately
undo all the good that Obama is trying to do.

Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun magazine and co-chairman of the
interfaith organization The Network of Spiritual Progressives.

Read more:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22707_Page2.html#ixzz0G3hAaMQe&B<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=H16ITMgZNjzDs0WwHHKKQ8xaYQ2DkSkt>


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