by Ralph Nader
We have to promote changes and policies that build health opportunities into everyday life: walkable streets, nutritious school lunches, health education and fitness programs for all students, smoking-cessation programs and easy access to parks and gyms.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is in full support of a rapidly expanding movement to help America become the “healthiest nation.”
I’ve never heard Rep. Ron Paul call for the abolition of the Centers for Disease Control, a government agency. Its mission cannot be controversial except for those bent on not being deterred from masochism or suicide. Whenever those flu viruses come from overseas—so far, primarily from the Chinese mainland to America—all eyes are on these Centers. Their scientists and public health experts have no axe to grind, and focus on saving lives and heading off diseases and injuries.
Now why does this red, white, and blue, all-American desire for good health need to be considered an endeavor for convergence? Don’t people work together every day in hometown USA, regardless of their political partisanship, to help people either as paid specialists or as volunteers? Look at all the YMCAs, volunteer fire departments, social programs at churches, Big Brother/Big Sister programs, service clubs, and organized exercise events.
Well, it might also be asked: Why is convergence needed to overcome when there is no opposition? Who in these fifty states is opposed to better health practices? Ah, it is the intangibles and the impersonals.
First, contrary to Dr. Gerberding’s hopes and those of the First Lady Michelle Obama, we do not see a “rapidly expanding movement” to improve health. True, there is some positive news (more backyard gardens), and there is some negative news (high levels of obesity, malnutrition, and diseases like diabetes). But overall, much more needs to be done everywhere and every day to increase engagement with the issue. Such a personal, people-intensive change of lifestyles, opting for a healthier way of existing, may be brought about by ads or urgings from on high. But there is nothing like the support of your friends, neighbors, and extended relatives, and having community facilities where you live, work, and play as a way to provide the regular camaraderie and intensity millions of Americans need to overcome seductive TV ads that lead to bad health. School administrators who don’t understand the need to restore physical education class, as well as the culture of sedentary living, junk food/drink, and the addictive things so many consume or inhale, need this ground-level consistent rejection.
Because the desire for health is shared among everyone, it is something that can be used to break down the artificial social divisions that separate those of different political convictions. Let’s face it, even though millions of LC people are cordial to one another in many settings daily, there is a remarkable self-segregation socially and civically. People just like to spend time with people who have similar likes and dislikes. Differing views or experiences on guns, abortion, school prayer, smoking, school busing (more in the past), foreign wars, home schooling, local political party differences, affirmative action, the poor, and issues subject to local voting, as well as the questions of volunteerism and taxes, tend to stratify whom people choose to spend time with year in and year out. At the extremes, animosities may erupt, which permanently etch the so-called red/blue demarcation.
If such people come together, the ones who are usually confronting each other, in order to advance the cause of promoting healthier lives for adults and their children, new energy will emerge to fortify these transformations. It is worth making a big deal when local residents, known for being adversarial, are converging. Certainly bureaucrats, who are accustomed to their set patterns, when they see such bipartisan convergence, will realize that doing little or nothing is not acceptable to the whole spectrum of their service area. Bureaucratic inertia loses its easy excuse when it is no longer faced by a divided community.
To facilitate convergence, there are very fine and interesting videos, pamphlets, posters, contests, authority figures (e.g., athletes), and how-to’s for marathons, all free, available at your fingertips on the Internet. A profusion of recent apps—some also free—facilitate micro-monitoring of one’s progress, though none will be better than what the locals can think up for themselves.
Imagine a poster with pictures of two polarized community leaders with the caption, “We’re together on this drive for quality health and longer life, because our teams want to keep fighting each other for many more years.” Such collaboration doesn’t preclude contests, a favorite way to motivate as urged by famed anthropologist Margaret Mead. Think of a contest on this question: Can conservative families lose weight more safely than liberal families? Many permutations on this theme can be envisioned. They may be funny, corny, hilarious—so what, if they motivate?
There is an additional collateral benefit. The two opposites meet and work together. They experience “the other.” They discover broader and deeper dimensions to their humanity. They discover that the other possesses skills and activities not stereotypically associated with a holder of such political attitudes. From there, they start proposing other community projects they wish to see accomplished. Pretty soon they start questioning or resisting the self-serving authority figures above them at the state and national level in politics and through the media whose careers rely on manipulating by simplification, distortion, and sometimes dissembling. All in all, productive serendipities come over the horizon. There is less looking at screens night and day. Fulfillment of other human possibilities beckon!
The last point is in a category all by itself.
25. Diffuse convergence.
Speaking of grand visions, after a few successful convergent missions, careful consideration should be given to finding donors to establish an Institute for the Advancement of Convergence, whose mission would be the diffusing of convergence itself. As one of the architects of the European Common Market, Jean Monnet, wrote, “Nothing is possible without men but without institutions nothing is lasting.”44 After the charitable jobs projects, convergers will have made contact with many wealthy people and foundations. Surely a few of them would have become excited enough over these collaborations to fund such an institute that jump-starts and accelerates this huge, untapped potential for individual and societal betterment.
6
Obstacles to Convergence and How to Overcome Them
Ten Obstacles to Conservatives Working for Convergence
Time for crossover empathy. First let’s look into the mind of a conservative leader, opinion maker, or other paid careerist who upholds the faith. You would like to work openly with your liberal/progressive counterparts on any number of contemporary outrages, abuses, power plays, and affronts to conservative principles. The foregoing pages provided numerous examples from this menu. What mental checklist would you have to consult before deciding whether to make a serious public entry into an arena where you would join with those of a different ideological perspective?
There are ten to contemplate, at the very least.
First, ask: Would you jeopardize your funding by joining forces to take on a deplorable corporate practice or position? Whether you work at a think tank, a university, a corporate law firm, a public relations firm, or as an independent consultant, you would have to think twice. Money from businesses, their foundations, and their executives flow daily into these institutions’ coffers. If they are not overtly contractual, the implied quid pro quo in exchange for this largesse is that the donor will get a polemical or scholarly defense to trumpet to third parties. When the big box chains want to block minimum wage increases, even those that just keep up with inflation, they draw on their scholarly apologists to “demonstrate conclusively” that such raises will cost lower-paid workers their jobs. Walmart, McDonald’s, and Pizza Hut spokespeople are not as convincing on these topics as “Professor Deliver” or the Cato Institute or the Hoover Institution.
The late Paul Weyrich, a founder of resurgent political conservatism with populist features in Washington, DC, recei
ved corporate grants for his groups from “Amoco, General Motors, Chase Manhattan Bank, and right-wing foundations like Olin and Bradley,” according to William Greider. Typically, Mr. Weyrich was forthright, telling Greider: “We have to co-exist with these people [the Republican fundraisers] because if they put out the word that you’re not reliable, your contributors will go away.”1
Second, you may find your plate is full, and you’re behind on all kinds of publishing deadlines, preparation for testimonies, expert witnessing, litigation loads, conferences to be attended, and faraway lectures to be given. You may find you just don’t have any time to take on a new experience in which you will be receiving unaccustomed denunciations and rebuttals to which you are obliged to spend time responding.
Third, you find that there is no infrastructure supporting your bold ventures. What work you do has always been within your existing infrastructure, which has long-standing, defined expectations for you.
Your servicers, colleagues, superiors, and interns are part of your workplace, with its common thinking and settled assessments of each other. It is uncomfortable to go off the chart. When I interviewed former Judge Andrew Napolitano on C-SPAN in 2011 about his new book It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong, he forcefully declared that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney should be criminally prosecuted by Attorney General Eric Holder for their war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. “What are you waiting for, Attorney General Holder?” he exclaimed. Earlier on the program, he said that Bush and Cheney should have been impeached by Congress for multiple violations of the Constitution, starting with their flouting of the Congress’s war-declaring authority. Mr. Napolitano then returned to his employer Fox News, where he had made regular television appearances and received some cold stares and mutterings of disapproval. Freedom of speech was still a tolerated virtue, so Napolitano survived, especially since he had written numerous books that demonstrated his knowledge and sincerity on constitutionalism. But what if he had gone the next step and bunkered with advocates of his position so as to take speech toward action, as did Fox’s Glenn Beck with his passions? It is doubtful that the judge would just be getting stares in retaliation for his position.
Fourth, your social life might shut down. Invitations to homes and restaurants for dinner start to decline. You’re not on the guest list anymore. Outings with your customary friends and their families become rarer. Your deviation from the norm is seen as apostasy or blasphemy. A few tough-skinned conservatives may shrug this off. Most are hurt and cannot easily abide ostracism.
Fifth, if you’re anticipating job mobility, forget it when you show you really mean to stand tall against corporate power. Once you act on your convictions, you’re not seen as reliable enough to be given offers of high-paying jobs and well-paid lectures in the corporate sector or to receive moonlighting consultancies to amplify your regular income, which you believe doesn’t match your versatile talents. What’s more, certain angry companies with aggressive CEOs will affirmatively try to make you and your organization personae non gratae.
The lives of conservative corporate employees whose consciences turned them into whistle-blowers and who joined the opposition to the tobacco, nuclear, drug, and other industries have been difficult, to put it mildly. Would-be convergers take due notice of what happens to these conscientious people. Being “blacklisted” is terrifying, in particular to long-time corporate employees used to no other livelihood. This is especially the case if they are specialized and cannot draw on other commensurate skills for their livelihood.
Sixth, you might ask yourself: Why not satisfy yourself by making a studious gesture that implies it will go no further? Kind of having your cake and eating it too, but not really.
One of my favorite illustrations of this type of “thinking twice” happened in 2001, when public reports condemning corporate welfare and subsidies of various kinds were put out by the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute.2 On hearing this good news, I looked forward to the think tanks’ next steps and admired their courage in the face of who was funding them. After all, Heritage, for one, has never been squeamish about sending staffers up to Capitol Hill, where they work to produce public hearings and transform the agendas of their legislative allies in a business-friendly direction. No one can forget how much they did in this regard the moment Ronald Reagan became president in 1981.
Well, very little followed the scathing reports against corporate welfare. The two conservative think tanks did not retract their views and continued occasionally to repeat their displeasure. They just did not extend this to more forceful advocacy levels. They managed, however, to achieve public credibility for taking positions contrary to much of the corporate world, which is on welfare of one sort or another. (This includes Silicon Valley.) This reputation, in turn, redounded to the advantage of the outside corporate lobbyists, who daily cloak their over-the-edge profiteering with “legitimizing” reports and studies by these well-endowed institutions.
Seventh, a popular rationalization for thinking twice was brought to my attention by Fred Smith, the long-standing libertarian head of the Center for a Competitive Enterprise. “Ralph,” he said, “it isn’t that we don’t agree on the goals—health, safety, economic well-being and so on. It is that we disagree on the means of getting there.” He said this in the context of our conversation as to why more convergence does not happen between LC groups in Washington, DC. Fred may be correct as far as he goes. But he may be thinking twice, since he is ignoring partial opportunities that cannot be so easily dismissed by referring to the means-ends conflict. So there is disagreement about means to ends. Well, what about, as a start, agreeing on procedures, such as insisting on due process; disclosure of government information; ending the Fast Track, no-amendment procedure for ramming trade agreements through Congress; or ending the frequent e-mail–sufficient notice for filibustering in the Senate? Senator Mitch McConnell sends an email to Senate Majority Leader Democrat Harry Reid indicating there may be “extended debate.” To Reid, that means if he doesn’t have sixty votes, McConnell blocks any bill going to the Senate floor for a vote.
As for the means/ends problem, what are we to make of this counterintuitive recognition by Arthur Brooks, president of the right-wing, neocon, corporatist American Enterprise Institute (AEI), writing in the Washington Post in 2011? Following a predictable screed about limited government and the “fairness” nonsense, he delivered these concise words:
There is certainly a role for government in this system. Private markets can fail due to monopolies (which eliminate competition), externalities (such as pollution), the need for public goods (such as education, which is indispensable in an opportunity society), corruption and crime. Furthermore, most economists agree that some social safety net is appropriate in a civilized society. When the government focuses on these things, it assists the free enterprise system.3
No doubt on his last point, but Mr. Brooks does leave open the possibility of disagreement over what government means are best to work toward the goals he espouses for a “civilized society.” However, as for thinking twice, neither he nor the AEI—a large organization—has backed government antitrusters, environmental enforcers, crackdowns on corporate crimes, or the public Social Security and Medicare safety nets, which he seems to allude to in his article. Overwhelmingly, his active sensibilities have reflected piles of AEI reports demanding deregulation, the privatizing of government safety nets, and going along with big military budgets as well as tolerating endemic business fraud in Medicare, Medicaid, and other areas.
Thinking twice may also explain the actions of William Bennett, author of the big best seller The Book of Virtues, for a time the very definer and popular exponent of conservative values. In the nineties he was regaled by all in conservative circles, paid handsomely for lectures by many, and challenged for his orthodoxy by none. The man wrote the book on American cultural virtues: history, homestead, business, and religious foundations. I called him one day, having made
his acquaintance earlier through his famous Washington corporate lawyer brother, Bob, who once jokingly accused me of sending him so many defendants that he paid his childrens’ college tuition with the fees he collected. “Bill,” I asked, “would you agree that corporate power is on a collision course with conservative principles?” Without hesitation, he replied, “Yes.”
Since that exchange years ago, I kept wondering why he did not take the next steps. Why has he not led the way, defending his revered life philosophy and those who share it from damage, diminishment, and contamination by the omnipresent forces of commercialism and immoral manipulative marketing to adults and their children? A few sporadic appearances against commercial exploitation of children are not enough, given his stature and media recognition. There are reasons for thinking twice that are unfathomable. The Bill Bennett puzzle is one of them. I’ll leave it at that!
Eighth, some conservative leaders think twice because of a larger disagreement with the other side that spills over into a reluctance to converge where they do agree unequivocally. In an e-mail to me, Ed Crane, the head of the Cato Institute, said it crisply:
I’m anti-corporatist but anti-statist first. You have it the other way around. Almost all the dishonesty and damage put forward by corporations is facilitated, indeed made possible, by the state. . . .
The Great Recession is primarily the fault of national planners who wanted to make every American a homeowner. The Community Reinvestment Act, Freddie, Fannie, HUD, easy Fed money and trillions of dollars of mal-investment caused by the government created this mess, Ralph. It’s not the corporations, it’s the government.
