Happy New Year! And May the New Year Bring A Renewal of Democracy.

I was listening to the Diane Rehms show this morning and once again it inspired me. The show was on whether Liberal Democracy is now a stable form of government, and the movements in Europe and the US that are threats to democracy. I recommend this program and, if you’re a secondary school teacher, suggest you share it with your students. Many people think this threat is exemplified by the election of Donald Trump, and that his election represents a failure of democracy. Certainly, I think it represents a failure of our institutions and parties as they are now constituted, but I don’t think it represents a failure of democracy. I think it represents a failure of people to understand their personal role in a democracy, and a failure to understand just how far some people will go for power.

The speakers on the Diane Rehms Show (Moises Naim, Alina Polyakova, Yascha Mounk) discussed how many Americans have begun to take democracy for granted. Yascha Mounk said that, when asked how important it is to live in a democracy, more than two thirds of Americans born in the 1930s said it was of top importance, ten on a one-to-ten scale. Fewer than one third of Millennials (born since 1980), in the US, think it important to live in a democracy. They probably do not understand what most alternatives to democracy might be like— what it would be like to live under a dictatorship or an oligarchy, where the “people,” the majority of citizens of a nation, you and I, have no recognized or institutionalized source of power. They never fought a Fascist government, for example. They do not understand that democracy in a large, diverse nation, means compromise, and are focused only on the negative side of modern US democracy. They do not understand that once the institutions of a democracy are undermined, it is extremely difficult to build them back.

What is happening in the US and elsewhere has been building for years. I have written about how corporate interests have been undermining public education, and the whole idea that a public institution can often work more consciously and efficiently for the common good than a private one. Many Republicans have been working for years to undermine the idea of the Commons (resources and institutions reserved for the common good), voting rights, Congress and the value of the Federal government. In the last election, they took it further. They didn’t aim just to win votes. They aimed to end democracy. North Carolina illustrated this just a few days ago as the Republican state legislature passed bills to take away much of the power of the newly elected Democratic governor.

Imagine what politicians would do if there were no checks on their power. If the opinions of the mass of people were no longer considered relevant. If political and social freedoms, and human rights, ceased to exist. Many of us thought that was the state of affairs before Trump. Well, I think we have realized we weren’t thinking clearly enough. Trump’s cabinet choices give us a better idea of what the end of American democracy might be like.

It is not democracy, not the concept that the people of a nation have to take part in ruling themselves that is not viable. It is that the world is complex and not everyone wants to face that. It is too easy to favor security, favor material stability over the mental, emotional, and spiritual development that a true democracy requires. I know I would sometimes prefer to have nothing much to do other than eat, play, sleep, be with friends and family. But then I wake up and want to act, to notice and create beauty in the world, to do something meaningful for others, or learn something I’ve never known before.

To be a citizen in a democracy requires a commitment to taking responsibility for knowing not just who or what to vote for, but when to take more action. It requires knowing and feeling that one’s life and well-being can never be separated from the well-being of other people and the world around us.

It requires a commitment to an education that is not only about how to learn and think critically, but how to be informed, engaged citizens. We need schools that engage students in being democratic, not just studying democracy. Only then can we have a democracy.

**If you’re a secondary school teacher, this program by Diane Rehms, or segments of the program, can stimulate wonderful discussions in your social studies classes on government, American culture, or an English class on contemporary literature, for example, or a class on how humans relate to each other. So many essential questions wait there for you and your students to uncover. You could ask them to sit, maybe close their eyes, focus on their breath for a second. Then let the word ‘democracy’ come to mind. What thoughts, images come to mind? Or let them free write on the subject. Then share and discuss their responses.

**What does ‘democracy’ mean to you? How did the speakers define democracy—and do you agree with their definition? What is a ‘liberal democracy’? Do you think democracy is threatened today? If so, by what? Do you take democracy for granted? Your friends? Why would Millennials possibly value democracy less than those who were born before World War II? What are other forms of government besides democracy? Does our government work well for you? For most Americans? For the rest of the world? What, if anything, is valuable about democracy that should be preserved at all costs? What is needed for democracy to work? Do the speakers imply that there are no forms of government that are possibly better, for the majority of citizens, than democracy? Do you agree?

A few good quotes for the New Year:

“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
― Elie Wiesel

“We did not hesitate to call our movement an army. But it was a special army, with no supplies but its sincerity, no uniform but its determination, no arsenal except its faith, no currency but its conscience.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can’t Wait

“We’ve got to make change our national pastime and hold protests more regularly than weekend parties.”
― Rivera Sun, Steam Drills, Treadmills and Shooting Stars – a story of our times –

“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.

The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.

Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

–Arundhati Roy, War Talk

“But I suppose the most revolutionary act one can engage in is… to tell the truth.”
― Howard Zinn, Marx in Soho: A Play on History

“The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.”
― G.K. Chesterton

Do You Agree “There Are No Such Things As Facts?”

A week ago, on the NPR Diane Rehms Show, I heard a beautiful example of a self-refuting statement spoken live on the radio. I didn’t realize what I was hearing right away, although the quote certainly caught my attention. The show was a panel discussion answering the question, “How are journalists rethinking their role under a Trump presidency?” The guests included 5 professional news editors, columnists, and reporters including James Fallows (The Atlantic), and Scottie Nell Hughes (RightAlerts.com & former D. Trump surrogate).

During the program, James Fallows said a lie was when you knew the truth, yet repeated a falsehood for a personal motive. He said there was clear evidence the apparent President-elect lied on several occasions. Scottie Nell Hughes, a Trump “booster,” was asked for her response to this. Her reply was “There are no such things as facts.” She used Mr. Trump’s claim that millions of people voted illegally in the last election to explain her viewpoint. She says, [I edited the text to make it more comprehensible] “And so Mr. Trump’s tweet [about illegal voters, was taken] … [by] a certain crowd, a large part of the population, …[as the] truth. When he says that millions of people illegally voted, …his supporters, … believe they have facts to back that up. Those that do not like Mr. Trump, they say [his statements] are lies, and there’s no facts to back …up his claims.”

Think about this statement. And ask everyone you know, your students and friends, to think about this statement. Discuss it in your classroom or place of work. What could she possibly mean by this? It is of immense importance. Is she saying that because a large part of the population believes what Mr. Trump says and supports him, therefore his statements are true? And, therefore, there are no lies for him to be called to account for?

I think it is true those who believe in Mr. Trump take his words as truth. But is a truth or a fact decided by a popularity contest or vote count? Certainly popularity will influence whether or how well a truth will be perceived, and there is a social dimension to any truth. But how does her way of speaking of ‘facts’ make any sense—and how would a fact differ from an opinion? Or is everything somehow an opinion?

Mr. Fallows’ point that a truth is opposite a lie provides one way to answer these questions. If Scottie Hughes thinks there are no facts, she must think there are no truths and no lies. How do you know what’s a lie if there is no truth? A fact is by definition something known to be true, something based on evidence that you could demonstrate repeatedly. Likewise, ‘truth’ is from a root meaning ‘faithfulness’ (treowth), as in faithful to reality. It is real. If there are no truths, there are also no accurate or faithful definitions of words. You would never know if the sound you heard in your mind or uttered by another person is a word, nor what it meant. Nor would you know what you wanted to say. Therefore, you could never speak. When you opened your mouth, just noise would emerge.

To say “there are no facts” is equivalent to saying, “it is a fact that there are no facts.” By speaking these words you nullify the “fact” that you spoke. Therefore, can anything you say be other than meaningless gibberish? Or is Scottie Nell Hughes really saying that only what is in opposition to her statements is meaningless gibberish?

*P. S. Scottie Hughes’ viewpoint did not arise out of a vacuum and is not entirely new, only new in the blatant way it has been applied to the electoral process. It is part of a battle over the nature of the human mind, or what it means to be human, that has been waged for over a hundred years and maybe forever. A few years ago, students in one of my classes argued, “there is no such thing as truth.” When asked what they meant by truth, they responded with: “A truth is permanent, unchanging, absolute, like ‘God’s truth.’“ And: “Since I can know truth only through my own experience, and we all have different experiences, how can there be one truth?” This and other discussions on the topic showed me how important it is to discuss with students the meanings of words like truth, fact, and opinion, not just to voice diverse viewpoints but to analyze and question them.

It is easy for people to think that truth should exist in isolation from the minds of all those who perceive and understand it, like they might think the objects of the world exist in isolation from other objects. But isn’t a truth, like a fact, like a word, interdependent with the situation, context and mind—with the universe in which the perceiver of truth appears? To borrow an example from the philosopher Ken Wilber, the word ‘bark’ depends on the the context of the sentence and the ability of the speaker and listener to speak the language. (“The dog barks every morning,” versus “the bark of the tree.”) Physicist and author Jeremy Hayward calls perception itself a “creative dance.” “[A]s we move through the world, we… experience a mutual creation between what is there and the ideas and emotions that seem fitting at the time.” He thinks the world you see is inextricably tied to who you are. You and your world are not two, and never separate. If he is correct, meaning his reasoning is logical, comprehensive, and based on demonstrably accurate information, then each mind influences the way a world is perceived, yet there are still truthful and not truthful statements, and facts.

**Terry Gross recorded a Fresh Air episode relevant to this topic on 12/7, interviewing Dean Baquet, executive editor of the NY Times. You might find it interesting.