Jon Meacham Goldman lecture at the Cullman Center
Begin at 5:13.
Sit with Yourself Before You Vote
Before you vote, sit with yourself in quietude – if possible. Think about which candidate represents your values. Which candidate has earned the right to lead a representative democracy based on consent of the governed, the rule of law, and the belief that no one is above the law?
Who shows the character and knowledge (experience) to represent us at home and abroad? Who is consistent in the values that govern their public life?
Who lifts people up? Who presents a positive vision of who we are and where our nation can go together? Who brings us together without putting people down? Finally, who would you bring home to meet your mother?
Actions speak louder than words. As President John Adams once famously wrote from the newly built White House: “I Pray Heaven To Bestow The Best Of Blessings On This House And All that shall hereafter Inhabit it. May none but Honest and Wise Men ever rule under This Roof.”
Our world is changing. Don’t miss the chance to be a part of assuring our nation continues on its long and hopeful path as the flagship of democracy.
STOP, WAIT, CONSIDER.
Where Climate and Politics Meet
If the last year has been about a phase change in our planet’s climate, the next year has to be about a phase change in our planet’s politics. ~ Bill McKibben on Substack, August 22, 2023
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are the only candidates who are engaged at the national and state levels to manage climate adaptation and the clean energy transition – both of which lead to reduction of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide that are drivers of heating the atmosphere and thus the oceans.
Oceans have been a sink for heat in the atmosphere throughout the Earth’s history. The ice sheets at the polar caps also reflect incoming sunlight, another of Earth’s modifying functions. Both of these processes have managed to keep the Earth’s temperature at a temperature that supports life. It had been so for 4.3 million years. Humans have long benefitted from the planet’s incredible renewing forces that have made life so abundant and predictable.
Then came the industrial age and with it the burning of fossil fuels. Hundreds of years of wanton deforestation has also removed another natural carbon dioxide “sink” that once kept the Earth cool. The Earth’s temperature has been rising since the industrialization of farming and later industries that burn coal, gas, and other fuels put too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
We have been made aware of this for a century. (Actually, Alexander Humbolt, in the 1799, warned people that the Earth was heating up from human induced causes.) But, I’ve learned something about humans. We are short term thinkers on the whole. When it shows up at our door, we might act but that is not even a guarantee. The problem with that kind of thinking is that once the heat is in the oceans and the atmosphere, it stays there for centuries.
I watch as so much of our heartland is being destroyed by floods and fires, and hurricanes with massive flooding events. Iconic cities and natural areas are disappearing before our eyes. And with them, our livlihoods and lives.
With the other party denying climate change, heads in the sand, while extolling how brilliant they are, please vote for the team already leading on climate mitigation and solutions for our children and all the children to come.
For two centuries the USA has been the biggest emitter and so we have contributed most to the warming of the atmosphere and oceans. Cry babies, some who hold Congressional offices, cry out that China is the biggest emitter today, ignoring our much longer contributions. We have to become adults!
Its about our generation standing up for future generations. Our Children’s Trust recently put it very succintly.
Vote for Harris and Walz as if your life depends on it, because it does.
The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.
Photo by Susan Feathers. Pensacola Beach on Santa Rosa Island, Florida
How We Miss the Mark in This Election
The 2024 Election is a struggle between democracy and not democracy. It is not an election between political parties of a free people living in a Republic.
“One of the great ironies of how democracies die is that the very defense of democracy is often used as a pretext for its subversion. Would-be autocrats often use economic crises, natural disasters, and especially security threats—wars, armed insurgencies, or terrorist attacks—to justify antidemocratic measures.”
― Steven Levitsky, How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future
As if we have no creative gene, our major media outlets are giving autocrats, known as MAGAS, equal air time and legitimizjng them in an illusion of discussing policies and issues. Policies of authoritarinism are presented as a legitimate party platform and discussed on national television as the choice American voters must decide between.
Presenting the American public with the appearance that the “issues” are about the economy and the border is insanity. I expect our media to be free enough to educate the public by telling the truth and nothing but the truth.
Tonight is a debate between Tim Walz and a so-called VP candidate. This is normalization of evil.
What will become of us when we cannot discern the truth of this moment?
Updated on October 4, 2024 – We the People Podcast from the National Constitution Center discusssion with Anne Applebaum: Autocratic Threats Around the World. https://constitutioncenter.org/news-debate/podcasts/anne-applebaum-on-autocratic-threats-around-the-world
Other Resources
Timothy Snyder on Substack Thinking about…
Heather Cox Richardson on Substack Letters from An American
Stop to Remember
On a short walk in Virginia Beach city.
Renascence of a Republic
“Remember the ladies… Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could.” ~ Abigail Adams
One of the treasures of the early American Republic is Abigail Adams, First Lady with President John Adams. She wrote a trove of letters to her husband John during the colonies’ break with Britain and the subsequent American Revolution. She endured President Adam’s long absences as he worked to finance the revolution and then later to construct a binding set of prinicples and laws that would help a new democracy sustain itself and grow. It was a formative time in our nation’s hsitory without the pomp and circumstance we modern Americans expect. The White House was but a dirty shell without furniture or amenities. Building continued during Adams’s Presidency, accomplished by enslaved people in sight of the symbols of freedom and equality.
Now consider that Abraham Lincoln held that the central principle of a democracy is consent of the governed. Consent he said derived from this: If I would not be a slave, so I must not enslave any person. Lincoln called this the “sheet anchor” of the Republic. This is realized through each person’s morality, that we consent to not impose any rule on another person without their consent. This creates high expectations on all Americans to live up to the principals outlined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. If I want my freedom of speech protected, I must protect every other person’s right to free speech.
The keystone of our American Democracy lay with the virtues or mores that each citizen must possess to fully engage in a democratic form of governance.
Without these guidewires, democracies risk the rise of despots who would misuse the words of freedom to their own selfish ends. This was the caution Abigail gave to John Adams. Women are providing strong leadership today. Kamala Harris is such a woman. She has a keen sense of humor and eagle eye for connivers and crooks and possesses the clarity and will to stand up for the truth without fear. We witnessed this in the only debate with Trump.
Such women are changemakers.
In the American body politic people’s common sense is kicking in as we are daily shocked by the ravages and rantings of what has become a diminished Republican Party and home to authoritarians.
Over time we have allowed people and parties and other countries to chip away at our democratic norms, twisting their meaning, denigrating their importance.
Republicans of the grand old party are joining Kamala and Tim to prevent men and women who have lost their moral compass and whose behavior is outside the boundaries (democratic norms) that leaders of a democracy must possess.
As more and more citizens join The Party of Opportunity, a new consensus is forming that is center of left and center of right. At least each shares a belief in the principles inherent in democracy and the Constitution – the expected norms by which we operate, legislate, and govern ourselves.
If we can take this yearning for truth and decency, to form a body politic that works together on behalf of all of us, then we may rise again as the most vibrant hope for a democratic way of life on Earth.
It’s possible we might even rescue civil discourse.
Sunrise on the Gulf of Mexico. Photo by Susan Feathers
The Rule of Law Discussed by Legal Scholar Robert H. Jerry II
Republished with permission from the author. September 17, 2024
Please Share Widely On Your Networks
John O’Donohue and the Inner Landscape of Beauty
Return to our Earthwalk
“John O’Donohue was born in 1956, into a native Gaelic speaking family, on the farm inhabited by previous generations in the Burren Region of County Clare, Ireland. As the oldest of four children, he learned to work alongside his parents and uncle, developing a close kinship with the wild landscape, framed by an ethereal view of a limestone valley and the beckoning waters of Galway Bay. This valley was the shell of John’s soul, forging a deep and powerful connection with the elements shaping him. He was educated at the local primary school, alternating his studies with the farm chores of tending livestock, raising crops and carving peat for fuel, in his youth. John later described the profound influence of his childhood home as, “A huge wild invitation to extend your imagination…an ancient conversation between the land and sea.”
John O’Donohue Website
At Vanderbilt University … a model for civil discourse
David Axelrod Interviewed by Nicole Hemmer, Director, Rogers Center for the American Presidency
In a related video, listen to a brief video by youth in Utah who have heard their case for their rights to a liveable climate and future. Youth leaders are making headway in bringing our country to recognize the watershed moment when there are many things we can do now to secure the health and wellbeing of all life on Earth.
Kamala Harris: On Climate and the Environment
Living on Earth Podcast featured a program last week reviewing Harris’s record on Climate and the Environment. Marianne Lavelle from Inside Climate News is interviewed by hosts Steve Curwood and Aynsley O’Neill.
I found this illuminating. There is much that Harris has accomplished during her service as Attorney General in California and as Vice President with the Biden Administration.
Check out Inside Climate News, a nonpartisn climate media nonprofit, for the latest on how voters view Kamala Harris’ environmental record on climate related issues.
See Trend with Youth Voters from the Environmental Voter Project Survey:
Check out the latest on climate change from NOAA. Use the table below to stay safe during the next week of record high temps. Its all about the humidity.
Susan Feathers 