A Lesson from Abraham Lincoln

I am reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Leadership in Turbulent Times, in which she explores how four American presidents—Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson—developed their personal leadership qualities.  She describes how a young Lincoln, still in his twenties, became concerned about leaders, in Goodwin’s words, “in whom ambition is divorced from the people’s best interests” and who had the potential to become despots.  I was fascinated by the story and searched out Lincoln’s original speech, which I found on Abraham Lincoln Online. 

            It was 1838—26 years after the start of the War of 1812 and 27 years before the Civil War.  Lincoln was an Illinois State Representative.  As his future law partner, William Herndon described it,  “. . . the speech was brought out by the burning in St. Louis a few weeks before, by a mob, of a negro. Lincoln took this incident as a sort of text for his remarks ...”  Lincoln noted that his audience had benefited greatly from a now-past generation that saw the nation through its revolution and initial expansion, just as, in our times, the younger generation is now feeling the passing of the “Greatest Generation” that saw the nation through the Depression and World War II and into an era of civil rights.  As Lincoln said:

“We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us. We, when mounting the stage of existence, found ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings. We toiled not in the acquirement or establishment of them--they are a legacy bequeathed us, by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race of ancestors.”

The challenge to this generation, he told his young audience, will not be from foreign invaders, but from within.  Danger, he warned, “if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.  As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”  Lincoln cited the recent mob-based killing in St. Louis.  “Accounts of outrages committed by mobs, form the every-day news of the times. They have pervaded the country, from New England to Louisiana . . . Whatever, then, their cause may be, it is common to the whole country.”  The larger lesson of mob rule, Lincoln tells his young listeners, is the death of democracy:

“When men take it in their heads today to hang gamblers, or burn murderers, they should recollect, that, in the confusion usually attending such transactions, they will be as likely to hang or burn some one who is neither a gambler nor a murderer as one who is; and that, acting upon the example they set, the mob of to-morrow, may, and probably will, hang or burn some of them by the very same mistake. . . and thus it goes on, step by step, till all the walls erected for the defense of the persons and property of individuals, are trodden down, and disregarded. . . . Thus, then, by the operation of this mobocractic spirit, which all must admit, is now abroad in the land, the strongest bulwark of any Government, and particularly of those constituted like ours, may effectually be broken down and destroyed--I mean the attachment of the People.”

The key to avoiding this outcome, Lincoln maintained, was education:

“Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap--let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs;--let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation . . .”

Lincoln went on to emphasize that this does not mean that citizens should not work to end bad laws, but that “There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.”  The long-term success of democracy, he argued, “. . . will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.”  He concluded:

“Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence.--Let those materials be moulded into general intelligence, sound morality, and in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws: and, that we improved to the last; that we remained free to the last . . .”

Here we are today, at a time when technological and social change have empowered individuals while endangering our understanding of community.  Two days ago, one home-grown terrorist killed eleven Jewish worshipers in a Pittsburgh synagogue—the single largest act of terror against Jews in American history, but just another in a growing list of mass killings in schools, churches, and other settings across America.  It is time to take Lincoln’s advice to heart.  We need to instill in all citizens—from grade school through high school and on to vocational and professional education—a sense of their responsibility as citizens and members of a democratic society.  There is, of course, much more we need to do, from a serious commitment to gun control to providing social, psychological, and medical services to all Americans in need.  But first, we need to understand better and more deeply the nature of our country and of our roles as citizens.  

A Thought on Nominating Supreme Court Judges

The current furor over the approval of President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court got me thinking. . .

            The Constitution requires that all federal judges—including the Supreme Court—are nominated by the President, approved by the Senate, and get what are, in effect, lifetime appointments.  The concern today and at other times over the years has been to ensure that judges are not appointed based on short-term political considerations but for their legal wisdom and judgment.  Today, we are seeing that, in a time when our politics are polarized, avoiding political considerations is harder than ever.

            I would argue that we might want to reconsider the Constitutional requirements for nomination and approval.  When the Constitution was written, there were very few federal judges.  Today, however, there 870 federal judges, including 673 district judges, 179 appeals judges, 9 international trade judges and, of course, 9 Supreme Course judges.  All of these judges have been nominated by a President and approved by the U.S. Senate and serve lifelong appointments.

            One way to minimize the politicization of the courts would be to change the selection process for new judges.  Here’s an option:  When a Supreme Court vacancy opens, the current roster of federal judges would recommend to the President a list of five nominees.  The President would then select one of the recommended candidates to forward to the Senate and another two to be considered if the first candidate withdraws or is not approved.  The Senate would then either confirm the candidate or send the nomination back to the President.

            Obviously, this does not totally eliminate political considerations, since all judges will have already gone through the process of presidential nomination themselves and since the President would continue to be the nominator.  However, it would perhaps provide a buffer against pure politics as a determiner of nomination decisions. 

            Thoughts??

A Lesson from Joe Biden

I am reading Promise Me, Dad, Joe Biden’s memoir of a year when he struggled to lead the U.S. response to international issues in Latin America, Ukraine, Iraq and elsewhere and decide whether or not to run for the Presidency in 2016, all the while suffering the pain of his son Beau’s fight against terminal brain cancer.  It is an amazing book by an amazing, if often under-appreciated leader.

At one point, Biden gives us a look at his own political philosophy:

My old friend Tip O’Neill, the twentieth century’s most colorful and successful Speaker of the House, famously said, ‘All politics is local.’  I’ve been around long enough to improve on that statement.  I believe all politics is personal, because at the bottom, politics depends on trust, and unless you can establish a personal relationship, it’s awfully hard to build trust.  This is especially true in foreign policy, because people from different countries often know little about one another, and have little shared history and experience.  I have spent countless hours trying to build trust across those divides, and I have always followed my father’s advice:  Never tell a man what his interests are.  Be straight and open with him about your own interests.  And try to put yourself in his shoes.  Try to understand his hopes and his limitations, and never insist that he do something you know he cannot.  It’s really just about making the effort to make a personal connection.

It is a perspective on leadership in a democracy that we need to keep in mind as the mid-term election approaches.   

Net Neutrality

I wrote to my Senators and Congressional Representative recently to encourage them to support “net neutrality” of the Internet.  I argued that the Internet is the Information Age equivalent to the national road system in the Industrial Age: a public service that must be equally available to all citizens.

            One Pennsylvania Senator responded, in part, “Like many Americans, I support an Internet free from government control. While I understand the concerns expressed by those who support net neutrality regulations, I believe that such federal mandates would unduly inhibit this industry's investment in new technology and job creation.”

            His response raised some questions for me.  One is the definition of the parties involved. The Senator talked about “government control.”  I see government as an agency of the citizenry.  In that sense, “government control” is “citizen control”—it means that U.S. citizens, through the agency of our elected representatives, should control public resources like the Internet, just as we control our interstate highway system.  It is worth noting that the Internet emerged from projects—ARPANET, for example—that were funded by U.S. tax dollars through the Department of Defense and other agencies, including some in the United Kingdom, France, and Switzerland.  Much of the research was conducted at public universities.  The first web browser was developed at the University of Illinois, for instance.  Over time, the system was made increasingly available to for-profit companies.

            While I am not entirely sure what the Senator includes in the phrase “this industry,” my own sense is that the Internet itself is not an industry.  Instead, it is an infrastructure sort of like an online town square or agora—a meeting space where both social and business transactions of many kinds can be conducted.  That—rather than the Internet itself—is where “industry” comes in.  Some of the industry actors in this arena are major corporations and commercial retailers who are not responsible to citizens but to their investors. Their decisions are made on the basis of what will better enrich their stockholders and leadership.  As a result, it is important that we protect citizen rights and interests in the process of making the Internet attractive to businesses.  The policy goal is to balance citizen rights with citizen access to services.

            Commercial exploitation of the Internet may lead to “investment in new technology,” but that will not necessarily lead to jobs for Americans.  The Internet makes make location irrelevant.  While commercial use of the Internet is sure to create jobs, there is no reason to assume that those jobs will be in the United States.  Our concern should not be simply the potential for the Internet to create jobs by creating commerce.  It should be to ensure that all citizens have equal access to services—for-profit and otherwise—that may be available online.

            While it makes good sense for the public, through our government, to encourage use of the Internet for a variety of business concerns, the underlying public interest issue—the issue that our Federal government must address as it encourages commercial applications—should be to ensure that any commercial use of the Internet treats all citizens fairly and equally.  Our goal must be to ensure that the Internet remains openly accessible to all citizens and, at the same time, that it provides effective and secure access for groups that may want to deliver products/services to people.  This requires that we make a distinction between these products/services and the basic information highway structure itself. 

            In this light, it is appropriate for citizens, through our government representatives, to set some rules for how the Internet is maintained and made available to all citizens and, in the process, to create an environment that ensures that the Internet can be used appropriately for profit-making purposes while, at the same time, protecting general access for all and ensuring that it is used for the public good.  It is a bit amazing that, this long into the Information Revolution, public officials cannot see the value of public access to the new communication environment.  There is room for both public access and profit in this environment.  The incredible success of both Apple and Amazon.com—both trillion-dollar corporations now—is evidence that we can use the technology for both service and profit without hurting either.  Policy makers need to find the new middle ground and not get caught up in “tribal” oppositions.  We need to work together to find the common ground on which future innovations will be built.

New eBooks from the Blog

I've gathered some of my earlier "Here We Are" posts into two free ebooks.   "Notes on the Online Learning Revolution" collects posts related to the growth of online learning in higher education.  "Lessons Learned" collects responses to readings far and wide.  Visit this link to read or download them. 

Another Lesson from Tom Friedman

In 2000, Thomas Friedman published an expanded paperback edition of his 1998 book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, which looked at the ways in which globalization was replacing the Cold War as the dominant organizing principal of international politics, economics, and culture.   Writing almost two decades ago, Friedman described a new world order.  “Globalization,” he wrote, “is not just some economic fad, and it is not just a passing trend.  It is an international system—the dominant international system that replaced the Cold War system after the fall of the Berlin Wall” (p. 7).  Friedman defined “globalization” this way: 

“. . . it is the inexorable integration of markets, nation-states and technologies to a degree never witnessed before—in a way that is enabling individuals, corporations and nation-states to reach around the world farther, faster, deeper and cheaper than ever before, and in a way that is enabling the world to reach into individuals, corporations and nation-states farther, faster, deeper, cheaper than ever before” (p. 9).

            Globalization is different from the old Cold War era in several ways. Friedman notes that, while the most frequent question in the Cold War era was “Whose side are you on?” the most frequently asked question in the global world is, “To what extent are you connected to everyone?” (p. 10)  Innovation replaces tradition.  The present/future replace the past. 
Nothing matters so much as what will come next, and what will come next can only arrive if what is here now gets overturned” (p. 11). 

            Notably, Friedman paraphrases German political theorist Carl Schmitt, noting that “the Cold War was a war of ‘friends’ and ‘enemies.’ The globalization world, by contrast tends to turn all friends and enemies into ‘competitors’” (p. 12).

            This last bit attracted my attention.  Two decades ago, Tom Friedman had noted this idea—that national enemies would be replaced by global competitors.  Now, we are hearing the same language being used by Donald Trump to describe why he turned away from our NATO allies and turned toward Russia.  In essence, he is saying that we have no allies, only competitors.  It is what Trump means when he says “America first.”

            However, what Trump and his collaborators don’t take into consideration is that we are also living now in a globalized economy (and, more importantly, a global society).  In the Cold War, influence and security were based on the power of the nation state.   In this new age, however, the power of nation states has been replaced by the power of association.  Friedman argues that the new society is powered by three “balances.”  They are:

·      The traditional balance of power between nation states.

·      The balance between nation states and global markets.

·      The balance between individuals and nation states.

As Friedman notes, the last of these balances is key:

“Because globalization has brought down many of the walls that limited the movement and reach of people, and because it has simultaneously wired the world into networks, it gives more power to individuals to influence both markets and nation-states than at any time in history” (p. 14).

 

In the two decades since Friedman wrote these words, that vision has become the new reality for many of us.  This new environment is a special challenge to industrial workers whose efforts drove the Industrial Revolution and who responded to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.  The Industrial Revolution stimulated several generations of urbanization and European immigration—Germans, Irish, Italians, and others—to provide the manpower that drove the United States to become the world’s greatest industrial power.  They have been the backbone of America’s industry for well over a century.  Today, however, they are feeling forgotten as industry responds to the new balances of globalization.  Today’s manufacturing companies—many of them international in scope these days—must balance the prospect of global markets with the cost benefits of international supply chains.   The public policy goal must be to ensure that our workers—regardless of when and how their families came here—are able to contribute the new global balance and benefit from it.

Trump and his Republican collaborators use immigration as a rallying cry.  However, the problem is not that workers are losing jobs to new immigrants.  It is that they are losing jobs to international supply chains.  The real policy challenge is to strengthen the ability of U.S. companies and their workers to participate in this new environment by encouraging international collaborations that open new markets for American-made goods and to invest in innovations that give American companies and workers a competitive advantage in an ever-changing market driven by technological innovation.

In an earlier posting about Friedman’s most recent book, Thank You for Being Late, I noted Friedman assertion that the situation called for a national commitment to lifelong education.  That is just one of several national initiatives that are needed to bring us into a new balance as Americans.  We also need a political and social commitment to community redevelopment, support for start-up companies, and encouragement of innovation—all elements of revitalization of work—and new opportunity for the workforce—in this new environment.  I write this on the first anniversary of the neo-nazi, white supremacist attacks in Charlottesville, VA.  I hope that, in the coming months, we will hear more about positive steps we can take together across political and social divides to build viable opportunities for American workers and communities.  We cannot re-live the past.  We need to work together to create the future.

Reference:

Friedman, Thomas.  The Lexus and the Olive Tree.  New York: Anchor Books, 2000.

A Lesson from Thomas Merton

            In New Seeds of Contemplation, Thomas Merton wrote about solitude and community in a way that seems especially relevant given our current political climate:

“There is actually no more dangerous solitude than that of the man who is lost in a crowd, who does not know he is alone and who does not function as a person in a community. . . Where men live huddled together without true communication, there seems to be greater sharing, and a more genuine communication.  But this is not communication, only immersion in the general meaninglessness of countless slogans and cliches repeated over and over again so that in the end one listens without hearing and responds without thinking. The constant din of empty words and machine noises, the endless booming of loudspeakers end by making true communication and true communion almost impossible.  Each individual in the mass is insulated by thick layers of insensibility.  He doesn’t care, he doesn’t hear, he doesn’t think.”

            We need to awaken from our “dangerous solitude” of party loyalty and nationalism and  rediscover our sense of community—to rediscover what it means to be a citizen in a diverse democracy and what it means to be a democratic nation in a world beset by the storm of global change.  The time is now.