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USA Edition | Today Is Sunday, March 21, 2010 |
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USA Edition | Today Is Sunday, March 21, 2010 |
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Who Among Us Shall Rise To Speak For The Aspirations Of The American Nation And Its Peoples?
The theory was that great nations start out tough-minded and energetic. Toughness and energy lead to wealth and power. Wealth and power lead to affluence and luxury. Affluence and luxury lead to decadence, corruption and decline.
David Brooks
New York Times
Who has the right and obligation to speak up for right, honesty and integrity? Clearly, in our pluralistic society, the answer is everyone. Yet the silence is deafening. How can that be? Isn’t it the job of journalists to speak truth to power, to say what others wish unsaid, to light the shadows that obscure wrongdoers, miscreants, liars, cheats and politicians?
Yes, of course.
Amicus Curiae
Definitions:
- A Latin term meaning “friend of the court”.
- The name for a brief filed with the court by someone who is not a party to the case.
- Someone who speaks for society on issues of importance, substance, or ethics.
But few seem willing to take up the cudgel of serving as America’s Amicus Curiae — someone willing to publically speak up for the needs and aspirations of society — each of us and all of us. There have been such men and women. Where have they gone?
The problem, we’re told is that there’s no money in it. So, being responsible, or accountable, or an informed citizen, is widely perceived as being someone else’s job. “That’s what journalists are paid to do,” some argue.
Yes, that’s true — or at least it used to be true.
What’s changed in our nation in the last few decades are our expectations. We expect others to do what’s needed, to go to war no matter the consequence to their families or themselves, to be honest, reliable and reasonable. We don’t want to do any of these things for ourselves — they’re just not profitable.
So, what needs to be said goes unsaid, unreported, left to others who largely feel the same way.
The results are now becoming clear. While millions of honest and hard working Americans lose their homes, their jobs and their tiny slice of our nation’s immense economic pie, Wall Street traders sill rake in hundreds of millions even as incompetent bankers remain in place.
Hold it! Stop guys, this isn’t right.
If our journalists, pundits and commentators don’t speak about the things that matter most to our survival as a nation, I want to know why. Is it all the fault of journalists, or big media, or are we responsible as individuals as well?
We know only part of the story. For example nearly all of us are aware that failures of journalism in North America imperil our freedoms and threaten our political stability. We’re not planning to do anything about it — we’re just aware of it — well sort of.
And we’re not alone in our indwelling ambivalence.
Now that Tony Koorlander has revealed how badly journalism and civility have slipped in the United Kingdom, and that even the BBC is considering tinkering with its legendary mission, one must ask: to what purpose?
In a recent dispatch from England, Koorlander spoke on mounting pressures on BBC financing and policies.
“America’s perception is dulled into boredom by the inaccurate – dumbed down, and politically correct portrayal of a reality that is untenable. This is a cloud cuckoo land that found no place to hide here in the UK thanks to our genuine broadcasting. The BBC have news right – the rest – well they’re losing the plot.
Entertainment and Arts and Documentaries are now under the economic knife, at a time when the opposite should be happening. The whole idea of a public broadcasting service – is to provide excellence.
To start a slide towards commercialism and broadcast competitive media at a competitive price is absurd. The funding intent was to allow independence from restrictions and to set a landmark in broadcast quality. To limit the budget based on profitability and viewing figures is to toll the death bell for the prior glory of a brilliantly innovate concept.
NEWS is being reported still at the BBC – the dark clouds of infomercialism sit held at a distance by the winds of sanity that blow through the seats of power there.”
On issues of far less consequence, our courts try to address the manifold issues that arise in a complex and active society. On some issues, where the parties at bar seek outcomes that may not be in the best interests of society, national interest, public policy, or civil tranquility, other responsible parties may petition the court to address those issues.
It is through such outside arguments ( Amicus Curiae Briefs ) that courts are informed, or reminded of interests beyond the dispute at hand. Such arguments usually speak to issues beyond the interests of the litigants. While some Amicus Curiae arguments favor special interests, or seek to protect existing organizations or activities, their overall impact is enlightenment. Ideas and concerns that go unstated, go unconsidered.
For many Americans, speaking to important issues is regarded the job of historians, scholars, clergy, politicians and prominent citizens. It’s not something done by ordinary Americans, or is it?
Such views run counter, however, to those of our founding fathers — men like Jefferson who assured his fellow countrymen, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free it expects what never was and never will be.”
Or John Adams who wrote to Jefferson, “Human nature, in no form of it, could ever bear prosperity.”
Were such ideas merely the musings of rich old men? Or are they our nation’s first Amicus Curiae arguments — utterances by people who cared more about nation than self?
Many ordinary Americans have risen to success, prominence and even high office. Even as ordinary citizens they spoke out about things that mattered to nation, freedom and democracy. Some became famous for what they said as ordinary citizens, and some became famous for what they said in times of immense difficulty, not unlike what we’re facing today. One of them was Abraham Lincoln, a brooding and troubled man when his nation’s survival fell squarely into his hands.
When he spoke of the war he was no longer an ordinary citizen but it befell him to speak to his nation both as commander in chief to his deeply wounded military as well as Amicus Curiae to his nation.
If you’ve not read President Lincoln’s eloquent words, spoken on a raw November day at Gettysburg, at a moment when the survival of his nation lay undecided, take a moment to read it again. What survives of Lincoln’s Amicus Curiae statement to his countrymen still has the ring of truth today. When President Lincoln arose to speak on those embattled grounds, he spoke not about the needs of the few, or the wealthy, or political ideology — he spoke about issues of national interest, survival, and a war unwanted, but made necessary for the preservation of the nation itself.
As you read you might ask yourself, who shall speak for America’s survival today? Who dare make of himself America’s Amicus Curiae?
Might it be you?
Abraham Lincoln
Gettysburg Address
November 19th, 1863Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
