FRONTIER SCIENCE/SOCIAL CHANGE

by Paul Von Ward

"Challenges Beyond the Election"

Regardless of which candidates win their elections on Tuesday, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse threaten America over the next decade. Perhaps four mystical images (war, pestilence, famine, and death) from religious texts can now help focus the electorate's attention on self-inflicted wounds to the body politic that may end life in the United States as we know it.

With diversions of self-serving sound bites and attack ads behind us, citizen activists and office holders of both major parties have a brief opportunity to put partisan slogans behind them and deal with reality. Whether they make the effort will determine the survival of our noble American experiments with democracy and free enterprise.

Horseman of War: Flair-up of flames in the Middle East. The immediate challenge is to find a way out of the maelstrom in Iraq that feeds the black hole of civil war and its breeding of new terrorists. The US must redirect its waning military influence to promote a reconciliation of the regions politicized and armed sectarian conflicts.

Only then can we effectively engage in a civil struggle against terrorism in concert with other nations. Unless we try to ameliorate the fallout of a misguided war, the US will not regain its moral authority against fanaticism.

Horseman of Pestilence: Cataclysmic climate change. We must shift into overdrive to make up for lost time in an international effort to mitigate the growing danger of global warming. Before it is too late, we must face the consequences of a life-threatening energy and resource lifestyle. Everyone must help reduce pollution of air, soil, and water, and destruction of plant and animal species.

If we cannot lower the planet's fever and slow its skin cancers, patient Earth may have an auto immune breakdown of its life support systems. Such a threat to survival would render our best ideals and values naught.

Horseman of Famine: Implosion of US economy. We must find a way to pay off the mortgage held on our children and grandchildren's future by creditors of the federal government's $8.5 trillion debt. At our current rate of deficit spending, in 10 years we will owe other nations and private parties five times that much.

If we don't put a tourniquet on our credit-spending binge, its hemorrhaging will sap the nation's economy and subject our society's security to policies of other nations. They can call in the note any time it is in their interest.

Horseman of Death: End of America's founding vision. Even if we were to escape religious fratricide, global warming, and economic failure, but lose our most cherished principles in the process, we still end up bankrupt: A society without the freedoms and rights we claim to have defended in times of earlier wars.

Some, including this writer, believe a resuscitation of our founding social and political principles is required to deal effectively with the first three horsemen. As we enter the post-campaign era new life must be breathed into the Constitution's checks and balances among the three branches of government. An explicit reinvigoration of the Bill of Rights is called for. And we citizens must accept responsibility for having given up our own powers.

The integrity of a transparent and representative system of government has to be re-established. The spotlights of the newly Internet-expanded Fourth Estate need to illuminate the hidden agendas of lobbyists and special interests. Then voters must hold legislators accountable for going to sleep at the wheel.

This means unconstitutional laws passed in the heat of campaign sloganeering (as in the Military Commissions Act and others) must be revisited with a clear and public debate. Resolutions and laws already adopted that undermine the power and responsibilities of Congress to control the purse strings and declare war must be re-debated and amended. Honesty about the intentions of complex laws must be reintroduced, with time for the public to review meanings of language and comment.

Nothing would be more healing to the body politic than for everyone, from the President and Congress on down to the states and individual citizens, to take a time to admit mistakes (and we all make them) and initiate corrective action. It is time to forgive the past and save the future together. Let's not end this year without making a serious start. The nation's survival, and perhaps that of the world, depends on it.

Copyright 2006
Paul Von Ward
All Rights Reserved