Some Readers Doubt Conservatives Have Good Ideas for America Some people had difficulty with the blog I wrote on March 2, 2009 about the name calling going on between liberals and conservatives in this country that occurred after  President Obama’s speech to Congress about the fiscal crisis and the country’s future. It appears that I have far more faith in the capacity of all Americans to come up with creative ideas for the country than do many other citizens. Some readers have expressed their doubts to me that Republicans and conservatives lack the ability to come up with any viable ideas for dealing with the financial meltdown or our future. Faith in Conservatives to Serve Comes from Dynamic Facilitation Why do I have such faith in the capacity of conservatives to eventually come up with good ideas that will serve the country, even if we haven’t heard many of these ideas yet? Does it come from my basic stand in like not to make or keep enemies? Perhaps.

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Name Calling Frenzy After President’s Speech to Congress In the middle of the worst financial crisis in memory, President Obama gave a powerful and masterful speech to Congress and the American people last week. The speech received rave reviews from American citizens. Yet since the speech Republican leaders and media figures have been ranting and issuing calls for revolution and calling the President every name in the book. The rhetoric verges on hysteria. Name Calling From Both Republicans and Democrats–Why? What is going on here?

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Stop Trying to Fix the Economic System:  Re-invent It The world’s economic system is in free fall.  President Obama and his team are hastily applying fixes, hoping they will work, as are world leaders, but no one really knows how to put humpty-dumpty together again.  This started in the U.S. with a mortgage crisis. The first reaction of the Bush administration was to bail-out Wall Street.  It has only occurred to a few that a complete re-invention of our whole economic system is needed. Now is the moment to create a system that works for everyone. David Korten’s New Book is a Must-Read David Korten  has written a new book called Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth (Berrett-Koehler Publishers: San Francisco, CA, 2009), a must read for those of us studying current fiscal events.  This book is particularly important for those starting to see the relationship of money to violence and wondering how to create a sustainable planet, one where people are free to love each other, where everyone can grow into a ripe old age. Wall Street Creates Phantom Wealth–Let it Go With advanced degrees in business from Stanford, and years of experience in business strategy and economics, Korten knows what he is talking about.  The central piece of his thinking is that Wall Street creates phantom wealth.  The wealth the financial industry creates is hollow; it is not based on anything real in the world.  A giant house of cards, built up over the past thirty to forty years has suddenly collapsed.  While large numbers of people in that industry enriched themselves and lived like kings, middle and lower class Americans, and others like us around the world paid dearly for those luxurious lifestyles.

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Need for Enemies Keeps War in Place Why do we love war so much? I have struggled to understand war most of my life.  If something  was so horrific you would think human beings would stop doing it, but we keep going back for more. I keep returning to the issue of enemy for without an enemy wars would not take place at all. What is it about us that we have to have an enemy? Does this start with monsters under the bed in childhood? As we grow up  we divide the world into good guys and bad guys, the ones who are with us and against us.

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“We Are Not Your Enemy” President Obama offered friendship to the Islamic world in a televised interview on Al-Arabiya this week saying, “We are not your enemy.” This came on the heels of two other important actions by President Obama: using his middle name “Hussein” when he took the oath of office, and calling for a “new way forward” directly to the Muslim world in his inaugural speech.Is there any such thing as the Muslim world? Probably not. There are however, a billion or more people who practice the Islamic faith in the world, and the fact that the western world lumps them together and blames them for terrorism is a huge problem. Developing a New Relationship with the Islamic World Actions like the President’s interview,  even when accompanied by critical steps like the closing of Guantanamo and the renunciation of torture by the U.S., still will not win the hearts  of the Islamic world over to the U.S. These acts are but a drop in the bucket where it really counts: ending the scourge of terrorism. What needs to happen here is not a reconciliation with the Muslim world but a new kind of relationship that has never existed before—a partnership based upon respect.

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