In yesterday's blog I explained why I love America and don’t have white guilt about Jim Crow. I did everything I could to remedy it. This blog deals with the other blotches that are believed to be on America’s soul: militarism, patriarchy, environmental damage and puritanism?
Militarism. I’ve travelled extensively. Consequently I see America as the protector of democracy and good people everywhere. I’ve been all over the third world, from Laos to India to West Africa. Most importantly I spent a year at age 19 in Israel, first on a kibbutz on the Syrian-Lebanon border then at a factory that build aircraft and repaired military planes on the border of the West bank; I worked with many Arab employees and Jews exiled from Arab lands.
I spent over 40 years visiting Japan for months at a time.
Only someone who hasn’t travelled or has travelled and is a blind idiot could fail to see that America has been the umbrella of peace, pro commerce and hope in the world. The American military is the greatest force for good in history. Viet Nam was necessary in the Cold War. The U.S. won it and the evil Democrat Party lost it.
Patriarchy has always been a shibboleth for me. The female members of my family have always been strong, productive and successful women. Men have never been a barrier to their triumphant lives. My paternal grandmother was an MD graduate of U.C. Berkeley and her sister was also an MD who spent her life doing research on leukemia. My maternal grandmother’s sister started the most successful private school in New York and a century old camp for girls in Maine (still thriving). My mother was a teacher, union leader and political power in Seattle.
The only barriers I’ve seen for women in my life have been self imposed barriers by women who believed they couldn’t do something because ‘women don’t do that’ or more recently ‘the patriarchy has kept me down’.
The issue of environmentalism arose quickly and was dealt with quickly. Air quality went from a Los Angeles that I never knew was surrounded by mountains in the 1960’s to very good air most days because of a few auto exhaust rules and early plant emission scrubbers. The environmental air control rules are now insanely irrelevant, ineffective and absurd. Water quality has improved even faster and was already excellent by the late 1970’s.
I personally was part of Point foundation that supported the founding and expansion of most of the major environmental organizations and I personally was an early and important force in creating the Trust for Public Land, the leading urban environmental organization. I also created the foundation out of a PG&E settlement that funded nearly every environmental group in Northern California. There are dozens of other environmental projects I started or worked on, too numerous to mention. But nothing I ever did supported the lunacy of global warming or any environmental scan associated with it.
Lastly, the issues of sex, gender, gays, trans and everything associated with that. This is a phenomenon much like education. We are just as Puritanical in 2015 as we were in 1955. There was a wonderful stretch of time from 1963 to 1983 when we overturned the oppression of puritanism and I gladly joined in actively supporting the National Sex Forum, helped put on the first Erotic ball, the first Erotic film festival, was the founding member of Maggie Rubenstein's Bisexual League and contributed to every element of the sexual revolution.
The reality of America is that we are a Puritan culture, from the Pilgrims landing until today. That hasn’t changed and won’t change. It is a core part of America and our greatness. It is the reason we, more than any other people, believe in ‘progress’ and work so hard to achieve it.