Dear Dr Shriver

Happy Thanksgiving Day to you and yours!

Soja John Thaikattil
Sydney, Australia

We can't cure the nations ills until we accept totally that what happens world wide is our responsibility. Our tax dollars support the demoralization of people in many lands. We allow their land to be taken from them, we remove all hope. Then we wonder where terrorists come from. Remember the ugly duckling does not come back as a swan but as a hawk determined to kill his oppressors. Political writers should spend more time as anonymous volunteers in places like East Jerusalem and Gaza. Perhaps then there voices would have validity. I watched a video recently of Israeli soldiers caring for stray puppies and then turning their attention to throwing rocks at Palestinian children. These stories show the total roots of terrorism.

With respect to changing hearts, one thing Obama and his people can do right now is advocate for individuals and media organizations turning away from porn and violence. Along with financial markets, our media culture is toxic for everyone. The difficult days ahead will be less difficult if people choose not to be monsters. Given the messages in our culture, one can't assume that will be the case.

Stephen B. Wise
New York, NY

As America's Founder, Thomas Jefferson, informed us in his letter to Samuel Kerchival, Rome is "the real Anti-Christ." Until all true Americans recognize his prophetic wisdom and Rome's Fifth Column's various and sundry treasons against the People and the Constitution...from the assassinations of our leaders from Meriwether Lewis and Abraham Lincoln to John Kennedy and Dr. King...to their adherents', on the Supreme Court, cheating into office Hitler's banker's homosexual draft-dodging grandson to commit 9/11, the chaos, confusion and spiralling concentration of wealth by fascist plutocracy will continue to degrade life in America and around the world.

Obama is but a start in the right direction: Bush and Cheney must hang for 9/11 (Viz. "The New Pearl Harbor," PhD Griffin), Rome's false aristocracy, Bush's admitted "base," fully expropriated and banished, and the People's sovereign New Secular Order restored.

Dr. Shriver: Thank you for calling us once again to the greatness for which the Kennedy family has worked for so many decades, and in so many ways.

IAMERICAN: Please call your doctor immediately and tell him something is terrible wrong with you.

How about fixing the rank injustice and foolishness that is alcohol supremacism over marijuana? Pushing people to use alcohol instead of cannabis is effectively the same thing as pushing violence. Check Centers for Disease Control statistics for alcohol vs cannabis if you think I'm crazy. And that's separate from the horrifying violence created by a black market. Not only does the drug war create far more problems than it solves, it spends a fortune doing so. Money, in case anyone hasn't noticed, that we don't have. It costs a fortune, and deprives the government of the tax revenues from legalization that should be available to fund harm reduction approaches to drug use. Legalize and regulate cannabis and tax commercial sale, and do some experiments with making hard drugs available to hardcore users at non-black market prices, and see how they behave. You might find out that most of the problems you associate with hard drug use, especially those affecting the community, have more to do with prohibition than they do with the drugs themselves.

Gag me.

"Will we find ourselves believing in saving the planet and willing to change our lives to do it?"

NO!!

"Will we find ourselves believing in giving our children an economic future and willing to change our lifestyles to create it?"

LOL. Economic growth changes lifestyles, not the other way round. Our children's economic future depends on unfettered free enterprise, not gaseous liberal piety.

Obama is an amoral empty-headed clown.

Those of us now in our 50s and 60s grew up in an era when our parents and grandparents suffered enormously during a Depression and made sacrifices for a global war in the 1940s. As such, we came to expect this as some kind of norm for American behavior. But in looking back over our entire history, we are more of a group of greedy selfish SOBs than we are self-sacrificing; just ask native Americans or African Americans. I think the best that we can hope for from Obama is to slow the rate of decline and hold the country together. We can't reverse in 8 years forces which have been at work for 30 years. Volcker is praised for ending inflation, but he is also pretty much single-handedly responsible for the deindustrialization of the rust-belt. No one since Jimmy Carter and James Baker have seriously tried to negotiate a peace treaty with the Arabs in good faith, or apply any significant pressure on Israel to do so, and I see no evidence that Hillary Clinton would be such a person. This is not an administration which I see as changing very much, except maybe they will keep out highway system intact, get health insurance for a few more million people, and keep our banks solvent. If they can do that much, it will be an accomplishment given how much neglect has occurred up to this point.

We must be the change we seek, but I doubt that most of us understand the implications. We must learn to share Earth's resources, so that ALL people have the basic necessities of life: nourishing food, safe shelter, adequate healthcare and all the education needed. These are human rights. Donating to countries, or the poor in the US has not changed the crisis one bit. When Jesus said "The poor will always be with you", He did not mean that God creates poor people, He meant that humans tend to be greedy and competitive, and will keep for themselves what they want. Now the poor of the world will keep silent no longer. They are in the streets demanding their human rights.
The World Teacher, whose stature is that of the Christ, the Buddha, the Imam Mahdi, Sri Krishna, depending on your tradition, has come into the everyday world of men and women to teach us how to save ourselves. When He is about to begin His public mission, a bright star in the heavens will be seen by everyone, and we should watch our tv interview programs to see and hear Maitreya. He won't say who he is, but you will know him by the quality of his ideas, his call for justice, freedom, love and sharing. It is the only way, since all else has failed to create a world in which people may live their lives in peace.
http://www.share-international.org

Though I am a religious person and believe in helping people, Shriver's wildly unrealistic viewpoint harms a faith-inspired outlook. Have you read the discussion between William Easterly and Jeffrey Sachs in, of all places, the Washington Post? As Easterly shows, change must come essentially from within poor societies, in part by changing their moral outlook. We can't impose it by some ridiculous new US cabinet department that only makes us feel good.

Several more points about what permits development. As Lawrence Harrison showed many years ago in his discussion of Latin America, it is not a matter of exploitation by the rich countries. Instead the problem lies in the culture, values, and institutions of the poor countries.
China and India have not developed because of aid from do-gooders in the advanced world. Instead, they have decided they have had enough of poverty, and started internally to make the major changes which permit growth.
The richer countries can make mild minor contributions such as those Shriver mentions in his text, or some UN efforts. But the countries themselves have to decide to make major internal changes before any sustained growth occurs. It is not the idea that "we can do it" which removes world poverty. The poor countries have to decide that "they can do it" and start making the necessary internal changes which will eventually reduce world poverty.

I commend heartfelt efforts to do good in the world, however, after living in Indonesia for a year I now know how incapable most of us are at understanding the world beyond our borders. We think we know what is good for everyone. In reality, we don't know what we are talking about.

Other people have fundamentally different views of death and what it means to experience the world as a human being. If we understood this, we would do a lot more listening and be a lot more critical of our ideas and quick actions. We wouldn't be so obsessed with "developing", and we wouldn't be quite so sure about what we are doing.

We see poverty and sadness where others see stable family lives, dependable friendships, and trust. Where we see death, others see alternate forms of life. Where we see dire emergency, others see another day on planet Earth.

The new pathological need to "help" the "underdeveloped" world beyond our borders is a result of the nihilism, guilt, boredom, and loneliness that is unique to the West. These feelings must be addressed before we continue forth with international affairs and involve ourselves in the lives of people we know nothing about. We must begin a conversation about this.

Before Americans begin leaving the country to "help others," I propose we turn our hearts to the issues plaguing America and help ourselves. Our children are raised on cheetos and XBox, and our people are dangerously bored and lonely. We coldly deny healthcare to most, ignore the homeless, and shun those without beauty or money. We think SUVs can take us on the adventures which only sustained intellectual effort can achieve. We believe happiness is found in pills. We are still eating at McDonald's. We cannot tolerate life without constant entertainment. In short, we are walking off a cliff.

We desperately need renewed fascination with life and most of all, love. When we become more satisfied with our own lives, we will become less obsessed with the so-called sorrow of the outside world, and with buying things and overeating. We will become less hollow. We will then begin to better understand and shape a more appropriate, less condescending role in international affairs.

If we are to consider a new place for America in the world, let us shape it by first repairing the souls of our own people.

This is a very interesting article, and I agree with earlier comments that Africa needs help. But not as it is being proposed. Africa needs one thing only - HELP AFRICA GET RID OF DISEASE! Especialy MALARIA and I bet you African society will change forever. Africa has become the fertile ground for Western pharmaceutical industries who have strong hold on Western governments that it is difficult for govts to help rid Africa of diseases. As African, this is my challenge to the Western World!

weatherlisa:

I like what you said and agree with yours assessment of Americans, for the most part. I do not think it is nearly that bad for all, and I do think that there are many satisfied and fulfilled americans that are out there, doing good at least for themselves and their families. But we do live in illusion land, fixated on externals instead of fed by internals. We do have some very naive perceptions of the world that are false, and naive perceptions of ourselves, and delusions, that deny accurate self-examination.

But what is the process of healing that you refer to? How do we do that?
One excellent way is to focus on the needs of others instead of seeking to fulfill the desires of the self. Spending one's time and energy on others instead of the self is one of the fastest paths to opening up the mind to a greater world, serving the greater world, unfettering the ego from self fixation, and finding humility and a grateful heart. In short, bettering the self is more easily done by bettering others.

Even if we are delusional about what the world is and what it may "need", there is no doubt that by action, getting away from out XBox and a daily round of golf or gin and giving to a better cause we will better ourselves here.

Helping underdeveloped countries is great but not neccessary. The world 'out there' can be just around the block. There is no need to go to Algeria to do good and serve another cause. Good causes are next door or just across town.

Tim,

Another great idea. Has your plan been outlined and presented to the President elect? Your words remind me of your father and his forward thinking ideas about world change.

Most of us complain about the state of the world, some of us offer suggestions about how others could, and should, change things, and few of us (you, for example) actually put pen to paper and attempt improvements. The masses of humans soothe our troubled consciences by justifying our lack of action with an explanation as to why said action would fail. We many times do this as a result of our fear of failure. Failure is a positive - it just redirects us toward success.

I've always told those working under my supervision, "If you make no mistakes, you're not working."

T

This article it music to my ears. I am a current graduate student in an Environmental Management masters program currently frustrated with the limited scope with which "International Development" is approached under the current federal agencies. Let's hope that when I graduate in a year, Tim's vision will be a reality and there will be real opportunities for young professionals, like myself, willing to serve.

Timothy Shriver's motivation is excellent! Such a cabinet post has already been proposed by Rep. Dennis Kucinich as the Dept. of Peace:
http://www.afdop.org/

It is also important to keep in mind, as some have commented above, that the US does not have all the answers for the world's problems. That would be arrogant for us to think so. As mentioned we have a great deal of work to do domestically as well, however the US clearly does need to change how it interacts with the world and change the conduct of US businesses abroad, of which many exploit the people of these very countries which are suffering.

The movement of "fair-trade" businesses working out arrangements wherein the producers and workers and fairly compensated is a model that needs to be adopted by US corporations.

We must work with the people of the world as equal citizens to eradicate poverty and disease. We must stand together and support each other. We also need to clean up our own house.

Thank you for your work Dr. Shriver,
-John, Seattle, WA