'via Blog this'
Above you can read why our system is broken but when all is said and done our system actually does work because it runs on freedom.
Not perfect freedom. And in many cases not actual freedom. But on the freedom which is indeed the most powerful of all, the capacity to choose the values which guide us. There are only four ontological values - that is to say values which, by your choice of them, puts you in the ranks of those who move history forward, values I attribute to the Jesus who emerges most saliently in the Gospel of Mark.
When you choose non-idolatry, helpfulness, tolerance and democracy, you are part of the solution, even if you are ranged on opposite sides of an issue. When you choose the lesser values of self-aggrandizement and hoarding, you become part of the problem. When you kill remotely or actually you are the problem.
Our government is a huge apparatus of doing that is rarely thought of as government. The government we see deals with a tiny slice, a few minutes on the clock. We get exercised over gnats. We think heaven or hell rides on the shoulders of actors who actually derive such power as they have from their ability to embody dramatic forces in stories whose importance varies immensely. Thus Santorum the Tom Sawyer of nativistic bombast.
We have an enduring governance because we have so little real capacity to alter it in its basics. The basics run on currents too strong to be more than nudged. When we do some nudging, we are exercising our freedom to choose values. Sometimes, when all other things are equal, we get a break in the direction of greater fairness and greater helpfulness and greater democracy and less intolerance. And a brake on greed. That little window is the one through which a better future is sometimes visible.
Even weekly magazines need to become the intellectual flavor of the day. Be prepared to hear why our governance is broken.
