Those who (like me) want Senator Obama to become president take note: his election will mean nothing unless a lot of Americans learn how to work together, our mutual hatreds notwithstanding. This can happen. Kathy Roth Douquet and I have written the book on how to get there. Kathy and I represent the sworn enemies on both sides of the cultural and identity politics divide that has torn the social and political fabric of our country apart.
We didn't hate each other but we certainly came to our subject from opposite ends of the political and ideological spectrum. I was a lifelong Republican (now reregistered as an Independent) and Kathy is a progressive lifelong Democrat. Kathy is a secular Jew. My dad was a famous evangelical leader and founder of the religious right. Kathy was a President Clinton appointee. I worked to get Reagan, Ford and Bush I elected. In 2000 I even worked for John McCain in the primaries.
Our book's title is: How Free People Move Mountains, but the subtitle -- A Male Christian Conservative and A Female Jewish Liberal On A Quest For Common Purpose and Meaning -- describes our unusual partnership best. http://www.amazon.com/How-Free-People-Move-Mountains/dp/0061233528/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1217883276&sr=8-1
Our book is more than a description of the changes we need in America. It is also a demonstration of how the national conversation should (we think) be conducted. If Kathy and I can agree to disagree, yet team up to help change our country for the better anyone can. If Kathy and I can both wind up supporting Obama for President, then anyone can.
Fundamentalist anti-abortion crusaders, pro-choice progressives, right wing and left wing Americans, blacks, whites, gays, heterosexuals, evangelicals, atheists, Muslims and Hindus... you name it... we must all step out of our subcultures and work together to save our country, ourselves and our earth. We can do this if we come to agree on what our new national common purpose is.
If we don't find a common purpose Senator Obama's election will be meaningless; worse, it will be a step backward. If Obama fails to move some very huge mountains -- a new energy policy, reforming our horribly failing schools, calling on all Americans to serve our country, restoring our healthcare system, ending a misbegotten war, paying down our debt, restoring respect for our country, fixing our economy -- then our country will fail. Worse yet; we will have tried and failed to bring the changes we need and a new cynicism will replace the hope for change Obama has sparked in a whole generation.
Kathy and I have written a book making the case for the Obama presidency. Our book lays out the case for everything Obama stands for. We never mention him by name because we are talking about root ideas, not one man. But it happens that one man -- Obama -- embodies our ideas.
What is the essential Obama message that is reflected in our book?
1) The world is not our enemy, so we need not live in perpetual fear of the "other".
2) We Americans are destroying ourselves by losing our moral character and replacing it with consumerism.
3) Change is no longer a word, it is a necessity because we need to find new ways to address our environmental, energy, political and foreign policy crisis.
4) We all need to to serve our country, not just ourselves.
For many of us the strongest impetus for change is the imperative to act to save the earth from climate change. For many others we look at the social disintegration that has come as our educational system has slipped from being the best in the world to virtual third world conditions. Some of us, such as Kathy and I, have another very personal stake; we want to see an end to a misguided war. I have a son who was a Marine and who fought in Bush's wars and Kathy's husband is a Marine officer. Unlike Bush who sent our loved ones to war while his military-aged children were safe at home, Kathy and I actually have "skin in the game." So Kathy and I are both excruciatingly aware of the impact of the presidency on the lives of those we love most. (Our first book, AWOL-The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes From Military Service and How It Hurts Our Country, laid out the case for fairer participation in the military.)
In our new book Kathy and I call for all of us to participate in changing our country from the consumer model to one of service and active participation, even sacrifice, for a better future: the future that Senator Obama is calling us to. We also call for all sides in the culture wars to embrace a common cause without having to first agree with each other on anything else. We call on people to act in the same way that survivors in a lifeboat work together when in ordinary life they might have been enemies. Our earth and our country are "lifeboats" now. We are adrift and we are in trouble.
Obama's call to embrace change and hope are no mere slogans. Without inspiration we are literally lost. But we can't change unless we first face the fact that we've created a consumer society that specializes in trivializing the human condition. If life in America remains about consuming, about "I WANT," we're lost.
Character matters. Who we train ourselves to be matters. This is one reason that what Senator Obama is calling for: a renewed civics curriculum, and commitment to the arts in all grades is so important. It fosters a cultural identity we can share. But as Kathy and I point out in our book, we seem to be working hard to strip character-the moral fortitude to do hard things-out of our souls. This is why Senator Obama's call for service and sacrifice by all Americans whether in the military, the Peace Corps or Teach For America matters. Bush has been asking us to do no more than to go shopping while a few go to war. Someone needs to jog us awake. Obama is that "something."
Laugh, snicker, bury our head in the sand but the truth is: bad people, unprepared people, uneducated people, aren't going to do good things for our earth, for our country or, ultimately, for themselves. So when Obama talks about hope rather than politics-as-usual it is the very language of the spirit we need.
We need a secular version of conversion that both religious and secular people can sign on to. Rejuvenation of family, education, participation, social ecology, earthly ecology, human ecology-these are the priorities.
That purpose proposed by Obama and outlined in our book is renewing what it means to be Americans.
What will being American in Obama's America mean? It will NOT be some new form of jingoistic nationalism. It will NOT be a state-sponsored replacement for a moral or religious vision of life. Rather being American in the Obama vision is about our planet, and our common obligations to one another. And secular and religious people can agree on this, even if they approach it in different ways.
Being American must be about freeing ourselves from the myths, lies and false metaphors --"consume!" "choose!" "spend!"-- that are eating away at our ability to function as a society in every area of life. It must be about rediscovering life understood as a transcendent experience, where altruism makes sense again, because doing individual and collective acts of service (mitzvah) turns us into better people. It must be about recognizing that we have a common bond with everyone we meet on this earth because even America is not an island, but is another human community on our island-sized shrinking planet.
We need to act. We need a shock to the system that only could happen if an outsider were to crash the old system. Obama is that outsider. His candidacy is a wonderful fluke, a once-in-a-lifetime gift.
The fact that Obama has not been in the system for too long (as has the ever-diminishing dirty-tricks McCain) means that Obama's voice, spirit and priorities are still his own. But the theater of politics matters. And having the first black president, making a clean break with our racist past, electing the literal opposite of W. Bush, turning to a man who speaks the language of ethics, these are all reasons why the Obama presidency has a real chance to change the disastrous course America is on.
We NEED Obama. And it will be a fight to the finish. The filthy tricks crew -- that gave us 8 years of W. Bush, a war without end, a crashing economy and a do-nothing energy policy that has ramped up our oil dependency as it crushes the life out of our nation and our earth-is back at it lying about Obama and trying to get McCain elected. So the first step to saving this country is to send the habitual liars who have taken over the Republican Party packing.
We have to defeat McCain. Whatever he once was he now represents the intolerance and division that has come close to destroying us. McCain has become the face of an ugly and failed past. He is now using the dirty tricks crew that destroyed him in 2000 to try and destroy Oabama in 2008. McCain must not succeed.
The second step is to elect the man who will fight for the new America we must become. That man is Senator Obama. It is Kathy's and my hope that our new book will do a small part in laying the groundwork to build the coalition Obama will need to support his presidency. We are all in this together.
Frank Schaeffer is coauthor of HOW FREE PEOPLE MOVE MOUNTAINS-A Male Christian Conservative and a Female Jewish Liberal On A Quest For Common Purpose and Meaning. He is also author of CRAZY FOR GOD-How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back