8 RAD Ideas

Eight Radical Ideas to Make America Great Again

by Bob De Dea

As I approach my 50^th birthday, I’m reminiscent. There are certain things I miss, and ways of living that seem to be gone forever. Principles and priorities have been cast aside for more expedient ends (namely profits). And people appear resigned to accept that “the way the world is” means that “things will never change,” when, in fact, change is the one thing that is assured.

The question is: Do we Americans want to direct that change by our public voice or relegate it to those who think they know what’s best for us, who are interested in the exchange and accumulation of money more than in the values upon which America was founded?

I vote for the direct effect.

I’ve been ruminating about these things for a time. I expect that others have come to similar conclusions on their own; I certainly don’t claim to be the only one who has thought about these subjects. And I don’t for a minute believe this list of ideas to be comprehensive. But I thought I’d put something down on paper and share it with friends for feedback, and get a conversation started about what we as citizens can do to participate in this Great Experiment.

So, in no particular order, I offer these proposals to bring America back to a land of justice for all, a meritocracy where the elite do not hold the upper hand, and a place where equal opportunity is guaranteed.

(1) BRING BACK THE DRAFT!

I knew that would get your attention. Now before you go off the deep end (or think I have) let me explain this a bit. Most developed countries require their youth to serve in the military for two or three years. In the U.S.A. we have a volunteer army with a G.I. plan that rewards enlistees with a college education when they’re done serving their time. It used to provide for a full four-year university education, but at present, if I’m not mistaken, the government only pays for three years.

The first part of the deal would be to reinstitute the four-year tuition plan in the G.I. bill. [1]

Then give our youth another option: Offer them the same tuition deal if they spend two or three years (make the time commitment the same as the military) working in an organization like AmeriCorps or the Peace Corps. It would give more people the opportunity to get a college education, and at the same time go a long way in making our country and the world a better place. Here are some of the advantages of such a program:

(a) First of all, it expands the young adult’s world view by getting them out of the local community and letting them work side by side with people from different cultures and backgrounds and races. I had the good fortune to visit Europe and the Middle East when I was in college. It changed my world. Exposure to differing ideologies can increase tolerance and understanding, whether at home or abroad.

(b) Such a program can go a long way to further charity for people in need in our own country, whether it’s by helping Habitat for Humanity build houses or providing companionship for terminal patients. Participants can also help fight poverty, work to rebuild America’s infrastructure, and keep national parks clean and accessible, through groups like AmeriCorps.

(c) If they choose an international option like the Peace Corps, participants could go a long way to renew America’s good standing with the rest of the world by providing a highly visible effort to collaborate in community and business development, healthcare, and education, among other arenas.

Now I know that there’s no way the draft will be reinstated. I’m down with that. BUT let’s provide the option anyway. Let’s give our youth a choice to serve their country more than just militarily. Surely, if we can afford the cost of war, we can afford the cost of our youth’s betterment and a full college education for everyone who gives the nation a few years of service. [2]

(2) Make the schools public again.

Guess where we’re headed in education. What would you say if I told you that our future includes the corporate ownership of formerly public schools? Don’t believe me? Google “Education Management Organizations” and be prepared to settle down to a few hours of reading. Provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act make it easier to get there, by forcing schools to resort to third-party providers if they fail to meet federal test score standards and by assigning failing schools to a “governance” organization.[3] Must I point out that this is a ridiculous and dangerous notion?

Somewhere along the way we lost sight of the fact that a good public school education was something promised to each and every child born in America. It should not be an option for some; it should be a right for all.

Somewhere along the way, we mistook good test scores for a good education. This is a grave error! A good well-rounded liberal arts education is what a young person needs to explore his or her own potential. Meeting a statewide criterion for testing does not make a school or its teachers or its students excellent. (I understand this. Here in Washington state we have the Washington Assessment of Student Learning which has teachers I personally know pulling their hair out.)

Somewhere along the way, we tied school budgets to the communities in which we live. The cost for educating our children is paid for out of property taxes. This is great if you live in a community where values are increasing. But if not, you’re SOL. If people weren’t forced to move from one place to another just to get their kids into a decent school, we’d have people living within their means – less debt and more savings. With the quality of education more or less tied to a geographic location (i.e. proportionate to the taxes levied in a particular community or township), we’ve effectively privatized the school districts and made them beholden to the local budget.

I say: Let’s get back to a statewide public school system, where the quality of our children’s education is not dependent on where they live; where a teacher’s salary is not based on the location of the school where they teach, but on their own performance in the classroom; where the depth of learning is more important than the number of football or basketball games won; where performance tests do not drive the curriculum but rather where a broad-based education prepares our kids for the real world.

(3) Reduce the military budget to reflect realistic expenditures.

The percentage of the annual budget spent on the military in the U.S. is by far and away the largest of any country in the world. This is foolishness. Unless, perhaps, you think it is America’s job to be the world’s policeman, a function rejected out of hand by most conservatives I know (who are more interested in preserving our way of life than in insuring that the whole world is stable – except, of course, when it comes to spreading democracy or protecting oil-producing land).

Perhaps I would feel differently if the wars we decided to fight were more just. Intervention in a war like, say, in Sudan. Or using our force to keep Mugabe in check in Zimbabwe. But, then again, Africa was never much of a priority for the U.S. except when it came to extracting slaves.

And it’s not just that. Ike was right. It’s worth taking a moment to look at his words again[4]:

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

The last three paragraphs still send chills up my spine. It’s also sobering to think that in his draft, the General had originally referred to “the military-industrial-congressional complex.” The thing to remember here is that “industrial” is the equivalent of “corporate.” He was warning against undue influence by big business. He would probably blanch to hear that today, Big Pharma has more lobbyists in D.C. than there are members of Congress.[5]

So let’s reduce our military budget. I’m not saying we should do away with it altogether. I believe in a strong defense, especially since we’re so big and so isolated. So let’s just keep the amount to, say, twice the percentage of the highest military spender in the rest of the world. Let’s look at what that would mean.

First off, U.S. military spending accounts for 48 percent of the world’s total military spending. Next, U.S. military spending is more than the next 46 highest spending countries in the world combined – 5.8 times more than China, 10.2 times more than Russia, and 98.6 times more than Iran.

If we look at the six “rogue” states (Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria), we spend almost 55 times as much as their $13 billion on defense.[6]

So, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the U.S. had a budget of $540 billion for defense in 2007. [7] The next highest country was the U.K. with a little over $58 billion.

Isn’t it reasonable to think that we could get by with a budget of $120 billion a year? If, heaven forbid, we go to war, we can always come up with more funding. (This is what happened with the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; see footnote 5 below.)

Now it seems to me that we must be wasting loads of money by dumping so much into the military. But maybe that’s just me.

Which brings me to my next point.

(4) Do away with any and all arms and weapons sales to foreign governments.

I know this is out there. We make way too much income from selling weaponry, both on a national level and through state contracts. But if we truly stand for peace and democracy and a better way of life for everyone on the globe (Do we? Don’t we?), let’s not exacerbate the issue by manufacturing weapons or with wrong-headed arms sales. And with the secondary black market, it’s an unconscionable side effect that American soldiers can be wounded and killed by weapons made by our contractors and/or sold to our allies. Besides, today’s ally may be tomorrow’s enemy, as we’ve seen twice in the last generation with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

If a nation wants weapons, is it too much to ask them to make their own?

(5) Bring back the day of rest!

Retailers will tongue-lash me and consumers may very well offer to heat me in their microwaves, but why not close up everything for one day a week and give people a reason to do nothing, to spend time with family, to rediscover the natural world, to play video games ad nauseum -- to do whatever the hell they want except shop?

“Do you mean no travel on Sunday?!?” you ask. Well, yes and no. It would take an adjustment in planning trips – we’d all have to make sure the tank was full and bring a cooler of food and drink along with us if we ventured out on the first day. But it wouldn’t take long to adjust. The human being is immensely adaptable. (How many times I’ve left something in my way so that I would have to deal with it, only to find that I’ve time and again maneuvered around it for weeks at a time, avoiding it and inconveniencing myself. Soon having a day to do nothing would be second nature and we’d wonder how we ever lived without it.)

Americans take fewer days of vacation than any industrialized nation. Italians have an average of 42 days of vacation a year; the British, 37; Germans, 35; and Canadians, 26. We average 13, but few of us take it all at once.[8]

Is the GDP (or the Market or whatever else you may feel is the most affected statistic of our rampant consumerism) really that important that we will sacrifice the family and our mental and physical health on its altar? I’m not talking about making the day more (or less) of a religious occasion. I just think we deserve and, more importantly, need to take a time-out once a week to help us to keep perspective on life, on what’s important.

I can see it now. Suddenly Sunday becomes prime time for the networks; cell phone towers become overloaded; and our children (gasp) go outside and play!

We’ve come to think that the capitalist machine is something that must be constantly fed, carried on at all times. This is simply not true. It can afford a rest of one day a week. The economy won’t collapse, the world will still go on, and we could all surely use the break from the endless American pursuit of the almighty dollar.

(6) Teach critical thinking.

There was a point to those logic exercises in algebra. It made us think how things were connected. If it only rains on Thursday and I find it raining, then it must be Thursday. Likewise, I can say that if it’s not Thursday then it’s not raining. I cannot say, however, that if it is Thursday, it’s raining. Simple, right?[9] Yet we make errors of logic in the way we think about everything from coin tosses to stocks. We often underestimate the odds of something happening twice in the same day (or at the same time in two different places) and overestimate the uniqueness of events (that is, we think that something happening to us is somehow “special” whereas it may happen to hundreds or thousands of people each minute, each hour, or each day).

In a similar way, we tend to take credit for our successes and blame circumstances for our failures. It is a difficult thing to face the fact that the events of our lives are more arbitrary than we’d like to think, dependent as they are on being in the right place at the right time, or knowing the people we know, or being born in a particular country – often our lives are determined by forces beyond anyone’s control. The way we think about these things, and our need to make sense of the events of our lives, provides a fascinating study. For example, it is comforting to have a belief system which orders such unpredictable elements and connects them; but sometimes our explanations for things fall short of the simple truth.[10]

On the other hand, obtaining wisdom can be an arduous and complex undertaking.

We can “research” almost any topic online these days. It’s very easy to navigate to the blogger or news source or zine that reiterates and supports our ideas, opinions and prejudices. Such an approach may make us feel as if we are expanding our knowledge, but is in fact limiting it. We must learn not to mistake our impressions and opinions for facts. We must learn to submit the data we find to scrutiny (for example, Where do the statistics come from? What is the source of the story?) and avoid, as much as possible, bias when evaluating it. If we could start with “what is” instead of “what we wish it would be” – if we could avoid reading into the facts whatever we would like to be true -- it would help to ensure that our conclusions are accurate and meaningful.

It’s too easy to adopt someone else’s ideas and opinions, whether they’re coming from a radio talk show host or a dedicated blogger. It’s much harder to seek out the truth and to put it in perspective – it takes effort, and discipline. If you don’t want to make the effort, that’s perfectly fine. But don’t purport to know what you’re talking about and expect to be respected for your opinion.

It’s time that we begin again to think for ourselves.

(7) Grow the right crops.

Almost one third of Egyptians live on less than one dollar a day and depend on subsidized bread to survive.[11] Meanwhile we’re paying our farmers to grow inedible corn for three purposes: (1) to feed our cattle (whose stomachs, by the way, are not equipped to digest corn, having been bred for grasses); (2) to provide a low-cost substitute for sugar in the form of the ubiquitous high-fructose corn syrup (Pardon me, but last time I checked, don’t we also subsidize sugar at the tune of twice the going rate worldwide? Why not just eliminate that subsidy and make sugar cheap again and do away with HFCS? Just asking.)[12]; and (3) to use in the manufacture of ethanol – one of the biggest cons perpetrated upon the American public since Ronald Reagan removed Jimmy Carter’s solar panels from the White House and turned the heat back up to 72. Okay, much worse than that.

The truth is that it takes seven barrels of oil to make eight barrels of corn ethanol – this from the so-conservative-that-it-only-owns-gold Cato Institute.[13] Not only that: Our beloved government (and I mean that, since we are the government and it’s our money) gives ethanol producers (read “corn-growers”) a 51-cent-per-gallon subsidy for each gallon of ethanol blended with gasoline.[14]

Assuming that U.S. ethanol production continues to expand, the Energy Department expects by 2012 that about 30 percent of the corn crop will be needed for the fuel supply. This, according to the Government Accountability Office.[15]

Far more efficient sources of ethanol production include cane sugar (used in Europe), prairie grass, and hemp. Why not subsidize their production and return the cornfields back to the edible variety?

Or to other crops, like jatropha. (I'll let you research this one on your own.[16] J)

(8) Cut off the next generation.

This one won’t be popular, but here goes.

Just as I think there ought to be a cap on the salaries of CEOs[17] and a cap on the salaries of sports pros, so too, say I, should we cap inheritances. Our founding fathers knew too well the risks of an aristocratic society where the few have more influence than the many, both in terms of capital and in powerful associations.

What child, I ask you, needs more than, say, $5 million to begin and live their life? (The amount could be adjusted annually for inflation.) In this country, a supposed meritocracy, where every human being is expected to make his or her own way and is thereby accounted responsible for his or her own success, why should unearned wealth be propagated through the family?

I very much admire the Buffetts and the Gateses of this world, who realize that inherited wealth is, in fact, anti-American. In their generous disposal of their accumulated fortunes, they are working to make a better America for all of us.

You see, one of the reasons the Constitution was put into place is to protect the underrepresented.[18] It was also meant to prevent the tyranny of either the minority or the majority. Power without responsibility in the hands of the few OR the hands of the many will lead to oppression. The founders understood the temptation of self-interest and set out to temper its siren call through consensus and deliberation. To quote Lane and Oreskes in The Genius of America, the Constitution presents “a system that grants extensive liberty in exchange for a willingness to compromise and tolerate differences” (emphasis added). Its means is by way of incremental changes wrought through conflict.

Pure majority rule was rejected by our founding fathers, but in order for government by, of, and for the people to work, an involved electorate is requisite.

So, citizens, if you are not involved in the political process, if you do not exercise your right to effect change with your ballot, you do not have a legitimate right to complain. Don’t take anybody’s word for anything (even mine). Do the research yourself and form your own opinions. But be sure to include impartial sources that have no agenda of their own. And now and again, tune in to a different radio station, one that has views opposing your own; read an article by someone you think you can’t stand; talk to someone from a differing political persuasion than your own. You might be surprised.

And so, legislators, overcome the fear of being punished for making hard but necessary decisions, and avoid acting for the sake of political expediency. Stand once again for the common good, instead of special interests that fill your coffers.

I truly believe that, in order for America to rise to its former glory, the good of the many must again outweigh the good of the few.

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[1] Since this article was begun, a new G.I. Bill has been signed into law for post-911 veterans, covering the cost of 36 months of education, or four academic years. For more, see: http://gibill2008.org/news/.

[2] I recently found out (via a column in the Boston Globe) that Congress is considering the reverse of this idea, a “service for debt” program, which would allow grads to trade their debt for time in community service.

[3] See Jonathan Kozol’s Letters to a Young Teacher, especially “The Big Enchilada”.

[4]From the farewell address of President and General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

[5] http://www.citizen.org/congress/campaign/special_interest/articles.cfm?ID=6537

[6] Statistics taken from http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/ArmsTrade/Spending.asp. Remember too that current budget figures do not include the cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, since they are funded by supplementary spending bills.

[7] Referenced here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures.

[8] From The Week magazine, http://theweekdaily.com/article/index/40634/3/3/Workplace

[9] Of course, assumptions (or presuppositions) are everything. In the given syllogism, for example, the first statement is, in fact, erroneous (that is, it doesn’t only rain on Thursday). If I say. “If there is a God, then miracles are possible,” there’s a lot riding on the first assumption – that God exists.

[10] For an entertaining account of randomness in everyday life, see Leonard Mlodinow’s The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives.

[11] The ironic thing about this is that in the face of the current food shortages, democratic reform is stifled since the need for open supply chains is so great that there is little room for leverage when it comes to justice or change.

[12] Given the unknown long-term effects of this processed sweetener, I for one prefer raw sugar. But then again, I never made the switch from butter to margarine either.

[13] http://www.coopamerica.org/pubs/caq/articles/Summer2007cornethanol.cfm

[14] http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=219881

[15] The GAO projects 11.2 billion gallons by that year: http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/42541/story.htm

[16] http://www.nowpublic.com/environment/viable-alternatives-fossil-fuels-and-corn-ethanol

[17] Why should one make 287 times the average pay of non-management employees, upon whose shoulders the success of the company truly depends? (This is a real-life example of my salary compared to the CEOs when I was working at a major Savings and Loan.) Go here to find your company and see how your salary compares: http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/ceou/database.cfm

[18] Some of what is presented is adapted from The Genius of America: How the Constitution Saved Our Country and Why It Can Again by Eric Lane and Michael Oreskes.