O U R C O M M O N
P U R P O S E
If we decide there are no public things to which we are willing to P L E D G E some of our time and some effort—not to mention ‘our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor’—then we will have quietly abandoned our nation’s experiment in liberty rooted in M U T U A L A S S I S T A N C E
A N D D E M O C R A T I C A S P I R A T I O N.
BROOKINGS INSTITUTION
a 2003 study on national service
Our Common Purpose
America's collective act of revolutionizing public education will create our nation's vital common purpose. Revolutionizing our public education system is this generation's best effort to dedicate ourselves to the proposition that "all are created equal" while we also "mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor."
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America's exceptional need
America does not have the luxury of being held together by any ethnic glue like most other nations. Our diverse, continent-sized nation requires a common purpose to keep us from fracturing apart.
A unifying cause
America has always relied on war and economic growth for its unity. National support for public education offers a less destructive and sustainable solution to America's problem of cohesion.
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Revolutionizing America's public education system produces innumerable benefits, agreeable to all (both Republicans and Demcorats), while being this generation's best restatement of our founding principles.
produces innumerable benefits that acheives many end goals of both Republicans and Democracts. equally split across our political divide.
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A call to arms
Like the attack on Pearl Harbor and the events of September 11th, America must treat the inadequate and unequal education of our citizens like the existential threat that it is--and mobilize accordingly.
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America's exceptional need
America is exceptional. Our nation is constituted, not by a similar ethnic past like most other nations, but by an idea. The idea, famously distilled by Thomas Jefferson, that we are a nation where "all are created equal."
With no requirement of blood, language, or religion to make one American, it implies a refreshing idea--anyone can be American. And for nearly 250 years, America has filled itself with individuals of virtually every ethnicity and religion on earth. Today, America's exceptional diversity is the source of our exceptional strength. Our differences provide the unprecedented richness in our economy, culture, and public discourse while building America into the embodiment of the collective human spirit.
LIST OF ALL TYPES OF AMERICAN - ethnic origin, religion, race, sexual orientation
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Paradoxically, however, our diversity, our greatest strength, is also our greatest weakness. America's lack of commonality makes us vulnerable to division. If Americans do not have a unifying common purpose, we are only a nation of differences. The often self-inflating discussion surrounding "American exceptionalism" misses a key point. Yes, America is exceptional--exceptionally fragile, with an exceptional need for a common purpose to keep us from fracturing apart.
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Is America a naïve dream?
So today, one is right to ask, “Can America work together? Is it even possible?” It seems our nation is too big, too diverse, too populated with differing values, customs, cultures and languages to get along. Even those who built this nation were highly skeptical of the success of the American design:
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Patrick Henry, said that a continent-wide republic, “contradicts all the experience of the world.” ​
Richard Henry Lee, signatory of the Declaration of Independence said, “a free elective government cannot be extended over large territories.” ​
Later, J. Robert Oppenheimer, in a letter to Albert Einstein said—“The history of this nation up through the Civil War shows how difficult the establishment of a federal authority can be when there are profound differences in the values of the societies it attempts to integrate.” ​
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Is America a naïve dream? America's unity surrounding our founding principle has always eluded us. Instead, throughout our history, America has always leaned on the crutches of war and economic growth to mask the fact that this country is not unified, is apathetic, and in fact, is largely in staunch opposition towards the idea that “all are created equal." Without war to unify and the prospect of becoming rich to pacify us--is it possible for America to be unified by Jefferson’s proposition alone?
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No we can not live by our founding principle alone. We need help. oday we have a better understanding of what makes us unified. We need to instead of asking for unsustanable displays of virtue, we need to work within our limitations as humans to unite. Even as agreeable as the casue of education may seem, it is not enought to acts a a unifier.
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Althought his is the most worthy cause, it is not enough to unite America. We need to play along with our plaeolithic emotions.
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Growth
Mistake Comfort for civilization - What is the state of our public discourse? What are our values (actual, not stated)?
A nation of stuff or substance?
The disillusion that buying and growing makes us "richer"
New definition of prosperity
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America will always be in disagreement. However, it is imperative that we all agree on one thing--that we adhere to, maintain, and advance America's first, founding principle that we "all are created equal." The nation's best effort to adhere to that principle is to combat the civil rights issue of our time--to eliminate the gross inadequacies and inequalities in America's public education system.
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It requires its citizens to exude a supernatural amount of virtue for it to persist and succeed.
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It requirement for a common unifier has always eluded America. Instead, throughout our history, America has always leaned on the crutches of war and economic growth to mask the fact that this country is not unified, is apathetic, and in fact, is often in staunch opposition towards the idea that “all are created equal.” Without war to unify and the prospect of becoming rich to pacify us--is it possible for America to exist on Jefferson’s proposition alone?
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Is it the foolish design of some 18th century Boston merchants and Virginian landowners disguising their own ambitions of wealth and power as virtue? Today, America about to rip apart
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Today, we see an America ripping apart along the seams of its differences. becasue of its focus on its differences. apart by our differences
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Is it possible that Americans be united solely on the principle that "all are created equal?"
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The often self-inflating discussion surrounding "American exceptionalism" misses a key point. America is exceptional, yes--exceptionally fragile with an exceptional need for a common purpose.
Citizens in nations like France, Japan, and Egypt have a baseline level of societal cooperation in the fact they mostly share the same ethnicity, culture, language, religion, etc.
America does not have this luxury of baseline cooperation.
A unifying cause
A human right is inherent. Meaning, we have it merely because we are human. Human rights can be denied, but they can never be taken away. We always have them.
In short--no. America is able to be forever guided by its founding principles, but it is unable to be unified by our founding priniciples alone.
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America can be unified solely by the proposition "all are created equal." However, it requires two things: First, America needs to find a contemporary cause that best exemplifies "all are created equal." Education is that cause. the best way for our generation to restate the Jefferson's proposition. Education is so central to what defines America
Agreeable to all
Its benefits are innumerable and are shared equally across America's red and blue divide. Both Republicans and Democrats can use a federal right to education to achieve many of their desired policy goals. It is a nonpartisan issue in which all Americans can support and find common ground, even when all are working towards their more narrow self-interests.
Education is freedom
Education is synonymous with freedom. It is inextricably linked with the American Idea. An informed citizenry is required to maintain a democracy and preserve, protect, and defend individual rights and liberties.
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Agreeable to all
The benefits that come from revolutionizing America's public education system are too numerous to count. They benefit all. They benefit red state and blue state alike. They
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"If ever there was a cause, if ever there can be a cause, worthy to be upheld by all of toil or sacrifice that the human heart can endure, it is the cause of Education."
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Education is America
Education is synonymous with America. It defines America's society, culture and identity. It has been central in every chapter of American histroy in forming plays a fundamental role in
America could not be what i.
The next chapter, just like all that preceded it, will require education to uplifting greater numbers of Americasn towards teh light of enlightenment.
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America is founded on democratic ideals--the idea that government derives its power from the consent of the governed allowing for the establishment and expansion of individual rights and liberties. Two of the most prized rights of Americans citizens are the right to free speech and the right to vote. Without an education, it is impossible for American citizens to effectively utilize those rights. The result of a citizen unable to utilize their basic rights is no different than if a dictator prohibited them. Without education, an individual does not have freedom, and without individual freedoms, there is no America. Education is the prerequisite to democracy, human rights, and the American Idea.
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Education has been the underlying force driving America forward through every chapter of its history. pushing forward hman rights and the quality of life in every chapter of Amerian history.
If all of America can be unified in its support of democracy, freedoms, rights, and liberties--then we must unify in support of education, the prerequisite for all of them.
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Enlightenment
Lynn Hunt, author of the book, Inventing Human Rights, says that it was the growing education and literacy of populations that allowed humans to conceive the idea of human rights.
“To have human rights, people had to be perceived as separate individuals who were capable of exercising independent moral judgment.”
Before the invention of the printing press and the wide availability of books and newspapers, people were viewed, understandably, as a homogenous, uneducated mass. Afterwards, the literate and educated could be seen as having individual autonomy: the ability to reason and decide for oneself. It was education that allowed the enlightened thinkers to claim that humans possessed "self-evident" rights and liberties. Just as the invention of the lightbulb required electricity, the invention of human rights required populations to be largely educated.
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America, as an idea, could not have been conceived before populations were largely educated. I can be said that America Idea was made possible the moment Gutenberg wrenched on his invention for the first time.
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American Revolution
Education was instrumental in the American fight for independence and ensuring the viability of a young nation. The British Crown, much like all other colonizing empires, knew of the danger of having well-informed subjects. Sir William Berkeley, the British Governor of Virginia, said in 1671,
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“I thank God, there are no free schools nor printing [in Virginia]; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy ... and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both."
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After independence was won, John Adams knew of the vital importance of an educated citizenry in democracy. America was unlike any other nation is history, and it would require a citizenry unlike any other.
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"The Whole People must take upon themselves the Education of the Whole People and must be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one Mile square without a school in it, not founded by a Charitable individual but maintained at the expense of the People themselves."
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Abolition
Frederick Douglass
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"Mr. Auld found out what was going on, and at once forbade Mrs. Auld to instruct me further, telling her...that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read. 'Learning would spoil the best
[expletive] in the world.' ...said he, 'if you teach that [expletive] how to read, there would be no keeping
him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave.' ...These words sank deep into my heart...It was a new and special revelation... From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom."
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Later in life, Douglass would distill his thoughts,
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"Education means emancipation. It means light and liberty. It means the uplifting of the soul of man into the glorious light of truth, the light by which men can only be made free."
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It took men like DOuglass to reverse the
Douglass was the most photographed man and famous men in America. He was instrumental in showing Americasn that the potential of a black man. He showed them that black man was not savage, but rahter whites were savage for keeping him in such a undeveloped state.
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Women's suffrage
Much like blacks, women attained their rights becasue they
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Immigration
Assimilation
Schools made immigrants American
150 million americans can trace their ancestors to the time of immigration from 18xx to 19xx
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* a lesson that can be used today at our souther border.
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Post WWII
G.I Bill. Space Race
Built the glowing idea of the American Dream
Giving an entire generation access to higher education, debt-free. THey can do anyhting. THey literally landed on the moon.
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picture of moon landing - A debt-free, educated genderation can do fucking anyhthing
The American attitude that it can do anyhting can out of
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To keep people from education and allowing them to optimize their potential is antithetical tot the American idea. An attack or denial of an American's education is an attack or denial of an American's freedom.
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It should be no surprise that the human spirit is the American spirit.
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America can exist solely on the proposition that "all are created equal." It requires the introspection must find a cause in which
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the ends of revolutioninzign America's public education system are pure, but the means to do so, a fedeal right to education, is as pure as they come.
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CONCLUSION
If America has never been held together by virtue alone, what makes you think education is possible?
Even as central to America as education is, it is still naive to think that it will be a cause that will unify America.
THe casue alone is not enough to unify. Education is the most worth casue. But it is not enough to unify. We need to work within our limittions, and has humans, we have many.
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OUr founders were suspect. THey had an inkling of what we know now wit the help of science. Humans are unable to sustain virtue and unify around worth causes.
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The short answer to the question whether Americans can be united solely on the proposition that "all are created equal is--yes. But, we need a lot of help. The long answer will always be in disagreement. However, it is imperative that we all agree on one thing--that we adhere to, maintain, and advance America's first, founding principle that we "all are created equal."
First we need a cause that advacnes our founding principle that "all are created equal" while agreeable to all Americans--even the staunchest opponets in America's political divide.
The nation's best effort to adhere to that principle is to combat the civil rights issue of our time--to eliminate the gross inadequacies and inequalities in America's public education system.
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The secret to improving public education is that it is how America bests adheres itself to our founding proposition that "all are created equal." If the ideals of the America Revolutoin are advnaced--we all benefit. And we al live and pass on a more perfect union.
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Ronald Reagan
“How can we love our country if we do not love our countrymen? And loving them, reach out a hand when they fall, heal them when they’re sick, and provide opportunities the make them self-sufficient so they will be equal in fact and not just in theory.”
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Lincoln
At Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln spoke of the "great task" still before us. He limited his "few appropriate remarks" to just 10 sentences, but in those few words he brought the Revolution from the 1770s to the present day, and breathed new life into America at the moment it was closest to death. Writer Gary Wills said that those gathered in attendance,
"Walked off from those curving graves on the hilllside, under a changed sky, into a different America. Lincoln had revolutionized the Revolution, giving people a new past to live with that would change their future indefinitely."
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King
Almost exactly a century later, Martin Luther King would remake America with his "dream." 12 minutes into his prepared remarks, King pushed aside his manuscript--he grabbed both sides of the lectern, lifted his chin, and looked out over the quarter of a million people assembled on America's front lawn. A man seated near King on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, saw this, turned to the person next to him and said,
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"These people don’t know it, but they are about to go to church."
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In the next six minutes King created a new America in the same manner as Lincoln--giving new meaning to America's founding principles. Economist Fredrich Hayek notes the importance of keeping a society's maxims fresh and alive:
"If old truths are to retain their hold on men's minds, they must be restated in the language and concepts of successive generations. What at one time are their most effective expressions gradually become so worn with use that they cease to carry a definite meaning."
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That is what Lincoln and King did--as well as Anthony, Stanton, Douglass and countless others throughout American history--they restated our founding principles by fighting for equality in their time and place, and in doing so, gave America "a new birth of freedom."
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Today, then,"it is for us the living to be dedicated here to the unfinished work." We have inherited the American Idea. We are tasked with breathing new life into those old, dusty truths by seeking out the inequalities and injustices of today. And in 21st century America, there are no greater inequalities and injustices than those that surround our public education system.
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Public education
Revolutionizing public education is the means by which 21st century America can be reinvented and reborn. There is no issue more vital to health and success of an individual and our democracy, while being plagued with more inadequacy and inequality. Education has been classified by recent presidential administrations of both parties as the civil rights issue of our time. Education is primed for revolution.
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A federal right to education is a restatement of America's founding principles in the language and concepts of today. It is how we best look towards, labor for, and approximate American equality in the 21st century. It is likely that the next address or dream to reshape America will be an emphatic statement supporting the equal and abundant cultivation of the American mind. It awaits to be crafted and "submitted to a candid world."
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A Call to Arms
“If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”
"A Nation at Risk" a 1983 report
UNITED STATES NATIONAL COMMISSION ON EXCELLENCE AND EDUCATION
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America can If Russia or China were to carpet bomb our cities, leveling whole neighborhoods and the potential of lives and economic prosperity--we would be incensed by the attack and the loss inflicted. Declarations of war would be ratified and signed, billions of dollars reappropriated, factories refitted, and the public would be stirred into a war-mongering fever.
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That level of destruction is occurring today in America, particularly in our inner-cities. Much like carpet bombing campaigns, our inadequate and unequal public schools flatten whole neighborhoods and cities of hope, pummeling them into desperation and despair. It is diabolical, self-inflicted destruction.
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Gain the unity that comes in war through the peaceful elimination of America's greatest inequality.
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A Manhattan Project, A Marshall Plan, A Moonshot
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A Manhattan Project
A Moonshot
A naiton needs to show the public where its priorites lie.
Visible, audacious goals
Neil Degrassse tyson - Senate committee hearing
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PICTURE OF DRESDEN
ALthough American city neighboorhods have not been destryoed like in FDresden, they have been destryoyed economically, socially, and culturally.
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Total War - concept of the whole nation, on homefront as well as on the front line be active in the war effort.
It must be the case with education. Education must not be for the teachers. but in every economy, it must be the end goal. to win the war. to forever in perpetutiy push off uninformed chaos.
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Instead of putting false hope in the benevolence of people, the Enlightenment Amendment looks at actually how humans behave and constructing solutions that fall within our limitaions and capabilities. Instead of foolish believing that we will behave outside of to form bonds of strong coopertaion, we should look to see what is required to form those bonds
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Non partisan solution. An army of educators recruited, trained, equipped, and deployed to combat the greatest threat to our American democracy--the inadequacy and inequality of our citizenry's education. An hour of self-affirmation.
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A new definition of prosperity.
Peter Turchin
"Our apparently miraculous powers of cooperation were forged in the fires of war. Only conflict, escalating in scale and severity, can explain the extraordinary shifts in human society."
“If now −− and this is my idea −− there were, instead of military conscription, a conscription of the whole youthful population to form for a certain number of years a part of the army enlisted against Nature.”
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“Such a conscription…would preserve in the midst of a pacific civilization the manly virtues which the military party is so afraid of seeing disappear in peace. We should get toughness without callousness, authority with as little criminal cruelty as possible, and painful work done cheerily because the duty is temporary, and threatens not, as now, to degrade the whole remainder of.”
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“The martial type of character can be bred without war.”
Why don't we have it?
It is hard to believe that the United States, a nation founded on the distilled ideals of the Enlightenment, does not grant its citizens the right to become enlightened.
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This common unifier has always eluded America. Instead, throughout our history, America has always leaned on the crutches of war and economic growth to mask the fact that this country is not unified, is apathetic, and in fact, is often in staunch opposition towards the idea that “all are created equal.” Without war to unify and the prospect of becoming rich to pacify us--is it possible for America to exist on Jefferson’s proposition alone?
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A Moral Equivalent to War
Writer William James took on this question in his 1905 essay "A Moral Equivalent to War". In it, he asked one of the "classic problems of politics: how to sustain political unity and civic virtue in the absence of war or a credible threat." The question weighed on the mind of 17th century philosopher, Montesquieu:
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“A democratic republic is fragile because political virtue is difficult to sustain, it is best supported by fear of an external enemy, as the greeks feared the Persians, a republic must dread something.”
But war is morally repugnant, costly and destructive. It fuels our paleolithic emotions and holds back the human species from a more benevolent future. It should be avoided at all costs. Neville Chamberlain, British Prime Minister, said:
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In war, whichever side may call itself the victor, there are no winners, but all are losers.
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Though war is an incredible unifier, perhaps the best. it comes at the cost of others, and in a mor
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Pined over by He assumed then, which has been confirmed by modern science, that humans live in Us/Them dichotomies.
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“Our ancestors have bred pugnacity into our bone and marrow, and thousands of years of peace won't breed it out of us.”
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Montesquieu
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In his book, Behave, Stanford neurobiologist, Robert Sapolsky, explains how humans view ourselves through the lens of “us vs. them” dichotomies. Prosocial behavior is based on group identification. Do we have the same dress, language, religion, skin color, taste in music, or hobbies that will allow us to get along? If so, we are an “us.” If not, you are a “them.”
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War gives stark clarity to who is an "us" and "them."
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His conclusions about the need for external threat to form a cohesive group is backed by today's science of human behavior.
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A Moral Equivalent to Growth
Are we a nation defined by our consumption or our principles?
Are we a nation of stuff or substance?
Hour of self-affirmation.
Who are we?
Redefine "prosperity."
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Basic principle of biology--with more abundance comes less competition over scarce resources.
RFK - "kansas"
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We need a common purpose that does not rely on our primal urge to wage war or consume at unsustainable rates. If we are to be a nation
