Worthy to Govern
December 4, 2008
by Norla Antinoro
First you must feed the people. You cannot win their hearts and souls until you feed their hungry bellies and quiet their fears of hunger, cold, and destitution. How many times must humanity learn this lesson? How many times do our leaders have to be overthrown, replaced or redirected before this simple fact is accepted and understood once and for all?
Gilles Duceppe said it well today. A leader who puts his own personal ideology above the economy shows a serious lack of judgment and is unworthy of governing. Not because we are profit driven. Not because we are greedy and materialistic. But because without food on the table nothing else matters. Without clean water to drink, shelter from the elements, and a safe environment in which to live no products are of any value, no ideas have any significance.
The basic needs of the people must be met by the society in which they are gathered. That, above and before all else, is the purpose of government. If government does not tend to those needs well and first, it need not do anything else for it has already failed.
Canada has come late to this party but they have come strong. A deceleration of no confidence in Steven Harper’s Conservative government is a beginning.
Over the decades of my life, Canada has always been a symbol to me of a better place. A place where there is a branch of the military that is actually assigned to humanitarian actions full time. A place where peace is more important than profit. They were there when we stumbled in Vietnam, keeping the lines of diplomacy open when we could not do it directly ourselves. In my mind I have always thought of Canada as our Cousin [and we theirs] in the Cherokee way. Cousins are the brothers and sisters in the wider world. They are the six degrees of separation that shows our connectedness with all others.
Now in standing up and saying “Enough!” to Steven Harper’s Conservative government they once again show us another way to reach the same destination, another path that leads to the same end.
Too many of us think of The Great Depression as an American or North American event but it was not. It was a worldwide catastrophe of the human sphere. Hunger stalked the globe. The devastation and suffering hit everywhere. It shaped the mindset of a generation. Only by learning to help each other and work together were we able to stop the progression of that financial disaster. Until recently, when the people of the world began to take action, we were headed down that same road once more and for many of the same reasons.
It is only when we all sign on to do this difficult work that we stand a chance of stopping the slide into another Great Depression – a worldwide depression of unprecedented proportions. Europe has taken bold actions to stimulate the economy and help the working people. America has elected a new government, at all levels that, even before its inauguration at either the state or federal levels, has begun to work on stopping the catastrophic slide into economic chaos. Canada now joins us, with PM Harper kicking and screaming all the way. I wish her luck. She’s moving in the right direction and, as always, we need her by our side in this crisis. All of the nations of the world must work together or most assuredly we will all fall. A hungry people cannot eat ideas. A healthy people, well cared for and protected by their government, for that is the only purpose of government, can form their own ideas without having them handed down from above.
We have had enough of the Steven Harpers, George Bushes, Newt Gingrichs, Karl Roves, and Dick Cheneys of this world. The time of the World Wreckers is over. Together we must craft a New New Deal, not for America but for the world for, just as before, whatever happens here will also happen around the globe. We are none of us separate, none of us alone. We rise or fall together. The greedy, rigid, inflexible and intolerant autocrats have no seat at this table. This is work for the people. And this time we must not stand down. When the economic crisis has past, and it will pass, and times once again look bright we must not take another vacation from involvement in our governments.
Comments
2 Comments »
-
Bob's Bail Out Plan by bobl-tlm
-
How Do You Like Deregulation Now? graphic politics by Dicky Neely
While I’d like to believe it’s government’s job to care for her people, sadly, it never has been. History shows time and again that government’s job is to:
Keep the masses controlled
Promote the economic interests of the nation (and those who are at the top of the food chain)
Provide security against potential enemies
What the United States and subsequently Canada and the rest of the world are enduring is nothing new. If you look at Europe through the scope of history, again, the governments there are less in touch with the people, and become more about driving the economic engine (hence the EU).
Yes, the US has changed the chairs of government around, but it remains to be seen how this will effect the common peoples of the world. I’ll be happily surprised if it does- but won’t be surprised if in the end, the only ones who experience a happy conclusion to our worldwide crisis are the select few on the top.
Norla, that’s how I feel about Canada, Canadians — and Canadiens, too. In my experience with them and in my study of them I have always found myself wishing that Americans could be more like them. I recall wishing that i could wake up one day, knowing that the country that other people say is mine was NOT the one outspending every other country on military spending combined; NOT the one that at the time had more nukes aimed at more places than any other; NOT the one that thumbed its nose at the International Community on land mines, torture, bacteriological weapons; and so, ironically, and yet hypocritically, maintained a vested interest in NOT helping to birth a peace and NOT helping to stabilize it [because that would obviate the advantage that all those weapons bought the US, to the advantage of countries that had invested in less destructive, more benign sorts of things. For all those reasons and more, i thought long and hard about expatriating to Canada. But for all those same reasons, perhaps foolishly, I stayed here, because even though i disagreed with nearly every policy position this government has inflicted on the world over the years, i somehow felt responsible for at least trying to change what this government does. The Bush year's made me wish i had expatriated back when i was younger. But the country somehow elected Obama its President--and that makes me say and mean what Michelle Obama said and was then forced to say she did not mean: for the first time, i am proud of this country.
Which brings me to Larry's comment. Larry, i agree that most of the time, the things you listed are in fact what governments DO. But i can't agree that those items are "[what] the governments job description IS” [my emphasis]. I can agree with you that history has shown retrospectively that governments have acted AS IF some Grand Job Description Writer had somehow written a job description to the specifications you wrote, and then somehow had it “signed, sealed, and delivered” to the appropriate persons in government, at precisely the right time–kind of like Uncle Karl’s “Executive Committee of the Ruling Class”, which also gave too little attention in my opinion to the matter of human AGENCY.
Which brings me back to Obama. Sure, hell do a lot of things because he’ll find himself sarin down the barrel of the GNP. He’ll do a lot of things that none of the three of us would want him to do. But by the end of his time in office, i’ll bet you that he accomplishes a lot more of MY PERSONAL POLICY AGENDA than i would have, had i been elected president instead. For me to win that bet, though, we’re all going to have to keep organizing nd keep pressuring him. Heres how i put it the day after the election, in an email with the subject, “Now comes the even harder work”. Here’s the body of that email:
“An already energized bunch of organizers is a terrible thing to waste! So I say, celebrate and relax and restore for a few days, then back to what we worked so hard to get Obama elected for: so we could go about doing the even harder work of organizing to push and pressure Obama to do what he said he would. In my lifetime, we’ve never gotten this far before, and we dare not squander the opportunity we’ve won!”
bob