Libertarian Social Democrat

A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor

This recent political cartoon is a nutshell description of how and why I find myself drawn towards two conflicting approaches to government and governance these days. The Democratic and Republican parties are corrupt, cynical, and out of touch in equal measure, and it seems increasingly clear to me that this pathetic gridlock is unlikely to change for the better in the 2010 or even 2012 elections. The parties are too entrenched, the politicians too self-serving, and problems too vast. Here, then, are my two opposing perspectives on what must be done.

“Option A”: I call this approach the “Double-down on Obama, and embrace the hardcore, European-style Social Democrat approach of which the president’s critics are so afraid.” To anyone willing to listen, I am happy complain about the impact of current tax law on my household finances—not to mention the lack of affordable health insurance, the challenge of finding good public (i.e., free) schools in New York City, or the likelihood that Social Security will not be solvent should I ever need it. Nonetheless, I cannot help but wonder whether our society would be better off if we imposed the type of pervasive, all-encompassing “Nordic model” tax regime common in places like Denmark or Sweden. There, national income tax rates are upwards of 32% across the board, and there is a significant Value Added Tax on most purchases, a tax that typically rises for luxury goods. This hefty source of government revenue makes possible a generous network of social services, while also providing a slight leveling-out of wealth: the super-rich are slightly less so, while the poor can lead more stable lives with better government support where needed.

It isn't that I have a great need for more taxes, but the neither-here-nor-there nature of the current US tax plan is not working. The US Treasury, along with state government taxes, brings in enough revenue to sustain programs like Medicare and Social Security in the very near term—while much else has to be paid for with debt that will come due later. This tax revenue will diminish as Baby Boomers retire and government expenditures go up, making our future choices about programs and services even more complicated, and the population available to pay for them more diminished. As much as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are a drain on our resources, this situation—the demographic shift and its associated costs—existed before we went to war.

It is this absurd scenario that leads me to ponder the possibilities of giving the government 20% more money, in order to get better services out to a wider portion of the population while investing in and stabilizing some of the long-term programs that might otherwise run out of funding. Hell, witness Glenn Beck extolling the virtues of his local (taxpayer-subsidized) public library, and you can see all over again what could be accomplished with even more resources for these and other programs.

Not to mention that the more I have to listen to the self-serving, completely absurd Republican rationales for why national health care is effectively subsidizing the sick at the cost of the healthy, the more I think the “Nordic model”—heck, even the British model—is appealing. After all, this cross-subsidizing of resources and needs is one of the foundation stones of modern, Western civilization: taxpayers pay for police and fire services, even if most people never have their homes burgled or catch fire. Taxpayers pay for roads throughout their community, city, or state, even if the roads they drive on 90% of the time are the same 25 miles from home to school to work and back again. It takes a lunatic (like Glenn Beck) to think that eliminating (let’s say) the federal government, or even just federal income tax, would change this dynamic for the better. It would not diminish our needs, only the resources to address them.

And yet... there is my “Option B”: This one is summarized as “Learn from the Tea Baggers and the Libertarians—not to mention the founders of our nation, who revolted against an oppressive, self-serving regime.” Putting the terrorism-endorsing elements of the Tea Baggers, faux-Tea Baggers, and their GOP friends aside, it seems fairly clear that our governments actually are failing. From New York in the east to California in the west, the mixture of budget deficits, political gridlock, corruption, and pre-determined spending needs are making effective representative government harder and harder to find. (I know: Indiana is in great shape. Sorta.)

The thing is that the federal, state, and even New York City taxes I pay take a significant portion of my income—while the scope and quality of the services I receive in return continue to diminish, and the additional costs grow, too. At the same time, the sectors in which the federal government has been extremely focused for the last two years—such as banking and global finance—have become even more adept at taking advantage of a taxpayer-funded opportunity to soak the poor and middle-classes in favor of the already rich. Locally, one starts to wonder why Mayor Bloomberg’s city government can find the wherewithal to condemn private property in favor of billionaire developers when there are more basic needs left undone and while so many of the goals outlined in Bloomberg's PlaNYC remain unaccomplished. And meanwhile the optimistic, principled, values-driven “Yes, we can” president we elected seems to be either overwhelmed by actually having to govern or overwhelmed by the scope of the problems left him by the corrupt, sadistic, and politically twisted administration of Bush and Cheney. Heck, you know things are in bad shape when the ACLU is offering up a comparison between Obama and Bush!

No matter how noble the intentions or potentially good the outcomes of any new government initiative, skepticism and cynicism are easy to come by. Just look, for instance, at the convoluted health care bills that have passed both chambers of Congress: it’s easy to say that not every plan for reform is a good one—based on the impact of these two proposals in terms of taxes, costs, and access to medical care. Perhaps more government involvement in health care is not the benefit for which many of us were hoping, relative to a desire for lowered insurance premiums. Yet simple initiatives like the one proposed by Representative Alan Grayson, to allow people to buy into Medicare directly, probably have little hope of success.

Power corrupts, and government offices seem to fuel this even more than the power that comes from wealth and prestige. Given that, it seems like the the best way to tackle our present problems is not through greater and more vigorous government engagement. Instead, we need vigorous government disengagement—a winnowing and pulling back, especially at the Federal level—combined with a steep reduction in our Federal tax burden.

Ultimately, this should be combined with a series of national “conversations” about some of the key issues we face as a nation and state by state. From guns to, well, health care, we don’t know what we want. Our politicians, and the parties that support them, are too scared to help—too scared to move away from the ease of lobbyist-driven corruption, lest they make an unpopular move and wind up out of office and out of power. The platform of domestic policy goals I outlined in August 2007 remains as relevant now as it was then. The question is: who is going to help us get there—or when and how will we help ourselves?

Healthy Guns

A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor

In September, a Federal court in New Mexico ruled that the police search of a man carrying an unconcealed (holstered) gun into a movie theater was illegal, a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights under the Constitution. The police search was apparently predicated on a call by the owner of the theater, after seeing the man enter; the police searched and then released him, though they made him leave his gun in his car.

I heard about this case through a posting on Reason’s blog (here), which also quoted a news item in the Wisconsin Gun Rights Examiner (here) that said: “The court also found that merely being armed does not automatically make a person armed and dangerous, which would be necessary to justify a limited protective search (Terry stop) that justify officers disarming an individual.”

A few weeks after I saw that item, there was a big story in the New York Times (here) about a young boy—a first-grader—who was suing to overturn his suspension from school for having brought his Boy Scout-approved camping utensil (combination fork, spoon, and knife) to school. The boy violated a school district rule that prohibits dangerous weapons, for which the knife portion of the tool apparently qualifies.

In the latter case, the school administrator in the case had been steadfast in saying he is only applying the rules, equally and without discrimination. In the former case, the man in New Mexico was free to carry his gun because there is no state law prohibiting the carrying of an unconcealed firearm nor, it seems, did this particular theater have its own sign prohibiting guns.

Then there are the people who brought guns to various events with President Barack Obama over the summer, from handguns to assault weapons. Also armed but presumed not dangerous, despite the fact that their very appearance at Obama’s rallies was anger-induced. Of course, what might be anger-inducing here is the heavy irony of the Obama administration permitting gun-toting protesters … following eight years of a Bush administration that sought to squash and make invisible all protesting. Never mind the inconceivability of the Bush-era Secret Service ever having allowed gun-toting citizens within a mile of a rally for the president or his vice president!

And here is where it once again all converges for me: as a nation and a society we have completely failed to sort through and address what you might call “first principles” on the issue of whether anyone can be legally “armed,” and if so, with what weapons and for what purpose.

Yes, we have the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, adopted in 1789, and which proposes to give citizens the rights to “bear arms.” Even accepting the traditional, NRA-style interpretation of that Amendment, we must acknowledge that it dates to 1789. And we must therefore remind ourselves of the many other elements of the Constitution that have changed or been reinterpreted in the two centuries since, to adapt to new situations and understandings, as the world has changed. The idea that the Second Amendment is sacrosanct, untouchable, and not open to (re)interpretation is absurd.

While people are (in some states) allowed to bring their guns wherever they go, without significant oversight, weapons training, or lessons in good citizenship … other states, and often the same ones, have absurdist rules religiously obeyed that would suspend a kid from school for an “offense” that is itself so offensive as to be lacking in logic. He’s a 6 year old: why not have the teacher take the pen knife away for a day and give it back to him when he goes home? Heck, it is probably a lot easier to disarm a 6 year old than it is an adult with a strong psycho-emotional attachment to his hip-holstered Glock.

All of these things just remind me of the grander failure of our political and legal structures in the face of broad societal changes. At every level, our politicians—our new, Messianic president included—are too much in the thrall of people whose bought-and-paid-for views take precedence over a more fundamental understanding of the value of their citizenship, or the needs and rights of the rest of us, as individuals and members of different communities.

Back in March, I wrote about another tragic gun violence situation as representative of the degree to which our society’s approach to this and related problems is out of whack. The premise, and the problem, remains the same: our police and other law enforcement officers can only address the symptoms of such illnesses. They do not have the right to address the underlying causes. That responsibility belongs to us, the citizenry.

What we need is, in effect, another Constitutional convention. We need an opportunity to evaluate and address some of the broad thematic changes in our society over the last few centuries, and then develop a new set of principles—carefully evolved from our current Constitution—that help shape the direction of this country for another 220 years. From guns to nationwide healthcare to “net neutrality,” our communities and our country look radically different than they did several centuries ago. Attempting to “fix” many of our problems without first agreeing to the principles that should guide us will, instead, only lead us further astray. Don’t believe me? Just ask yourself whether you think a “public option” in health insurance is a good idea or not, then check with your neighbor, and then read the news.

We are boxed in, trapped, for a cage match we didn’t anticipate or ask for—and a good portion of the population will be coming to this fight armed and, quite possibly, dangerous. Be sure to bring your combination camping utensil.

Preventing Obama

A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor

If I was in the message management business (and I am), and I had a client with terrible, horrible news to release to the world or a potentially disastrous idea to float, well heck: the days before a long, holiday weekend might be perfect. Few people are paying attention to the news as it is; even fewer when focused on sunny weather and beach blanket bingo in the days ahead.

However, I do not know whether I would be clever enough (or Machiavellian enough) to coordinate the release of this terrible, horrible news with a speech timed as a counter-point to a speech given by one of my client's biggest critics. Seriously, it's hard to get one’s critics to cooperate! It takes tremendous resources and planning, and a stealthy streak worthy of a come-from-behind presidential candidate.

Therefore, it should be no surprise to anyone reading this that the person who released the terrible, horrible news was President Barack Obama, and the clever (or Machiavellian) maneuver was to share the information alongside a critical speech given by former Vice President Dick Cheney.

And the news that was released?

That President Obama favors a program of "preventive detention," sort of like what repressive, authoritarian, mock-democratic regimes (c.f., China, Egypt, Iran) use to reign in people and perspectives they don't like. Rather than worry about having to try suspects after they have committed a crime, Obama’s proposal would allow for indefinite detention without a trial where evidence is presented that suggests someone was planning a crime. The New York Times ran two articles about this, the first on 21 May (“Obama Is Said to Consider Preventive Detention Plan”), the second on 23 May (“President’s Detention Plan Tests American Legal Tradition”). There are plenty of others, too.

Thankfully, I am not alone when I say—loudly and unambiguously—this is bullshit. I will dispense with reciting chapter and verse on why such a “preventive detention” plan is unconstitutional. Senator Russ Feingold has done this eloquently enough for anyone interested, while underscoring that Congress (or at least one Senator) is watching and intends to stand guard on this issue. Senator Feingold: thank you!

What I will say is: this entire episode represents a huge political and philosophical disappointment. First, the point/counter-point construct of the speeches was both an obvious and unnecessary distraction. As president, Obama has his choice of speaking moments; he can only have agreed to this because he believed that the media’s (and public’s) focus on the “Thrilla Near the Hilla” (as Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank dubbed it) would distract from the substance of the issues and his articulation of an unsatisfactory policy plan. Otherwise, he would have given his policy address when he knew (as with many others) that it, and he, would be the sole focus of attention.

Second, it is disappointing because a politician as smart as Obama, in an environment as politically charged as this one, should know that it is hard to embrace the ideas of one’s opponent without losing credibility—unless you do so (as Bill Clinton did with policy issues like welfare reform and debt reduction) by embracing the political substance, the underlying logic, and even the fallout. President Obama has not done that; he has not suddenly started talking like Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. Indeed, quite the opposite.

Which leads to the third disappointment: the lingering suspicion that President Obama wants to have it both ways. He seems to want to be respected for charting a course that is not that of the Bush/Cheney years—e.g., one that places diplomacy, not force, at the center of our global leadership—while at the same time being given permission to pursue the same nasty, off-the-books habits, tactics, and policies, but in a manner that is more effectively off-book.

The world is a nasty place, and President Obama’s original, campaign-era formulation that faux-righteous might will not protect us remains as true now as it was then. Hidden righteousness, in the form of “preventive detention,” is unlikely to protect us, either. It only degrades our democracy, our society, and the quality of both our government and our moral judgment. On this issue, President Obama should be stopped.

UPDATE: In his 31 May column for the New York Times, Frank Rich dissects Dick Cheney's speech and the way it was reported in the news - and, very helpfully, points to an article by Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel, writing for McClatchy, that points out 10 "inconvenient truths" that Cheney overlooked. That article is worth reading.

Regressive New York?

A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor

Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, and even Iowa all now permit “opposite marriage,” while “liberal” New York (and California, too) lag behind. An excellent article in tomorrow’s New York Times notes that as a new bill makes its way through the legislature, some New York politicians seemingly remain closed-minded. For example, Jeremy Peter’s article has a great story about a State Senator, as in this snippet:

Proponents of same-sex marriage who visited Mr. Onorato in his office in Long Island City acknowledge they have not made much progress.

“He said right off the bat that marriage is between a man and a woman, and that this is a religious issue,” said Jeremiah Frei-Pearson, 31, a child advocacy lawyer who went to the senator’s office two weeks ago accompanied by a gay man and a straight official from one of the state’s most powerful labor unions.

“I explained to him that I go to church every week and that religion teaches us not to discriminate,” Mr. Frei-Pearson said, “and that ultimately your faith should be kept separate from this decision-making process.”

He said he also tried to appeal to Mr. Onorato by explaining that he was engaged to a black woman, and that an interracial relationship like his (Mr. Frei-Pearson is white) would have been frowned upon years ago, just as many gay relationships are today.

“None of that seemed to resonate,” Mr. Frei-Pearson said.

To which I can only say: wow! Great reporting, great quotes … backwards politician!

The many perspectives (and resistance) to gay marriage in New York might be a reflection of a quality of our state that is, in an odd way, less at issue in places like Vermont, Maine, and Iowa: diversity. The same can be said of California, a similarly large and divided state. Logically, one might expect homogenous societies to enforce orthodoxy and resist (seemingly) heterodox notions like acceptance of gay marriage, let alone gays themselves—while diverse communities should be the opposite. The logic, though, may overlook the much more complicated set of connections between people’s sense security and (emotional) safety. In a funny way, places like New York may be more challenging political and social environments precisely because they toss many, many different people and perspectives together.

Not buying it? Me either, necessarily, because it starts to sound like another excuse. The truth is that this is a classic case of groundless discrimination, for which too many bad excuses have already been offered.

With the new bill in the state legislature, New York’s politicians have an opportunity to show that such discrimination has no place in a society like ours. Whether you live downstate in New York City, or upstate in Buffalo, our state needs people who want to live here, make their lives and livelihoods here, pay taxes here, raise families here, and contribute to our society—regardless of whether they love someone of the same sex. Preventing gay marriage discourages people from making their homes here, and that’s no good for anyone.

Citizens of New York: contact your State Assembly member and State Senator and make your voice heard.

Shotgun Wedding

A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the terrible problem of gun violence in the United States (“Where’s My Gun”), and the failure of our country and our culture to address the subject rationally—never mind actually come to any practical conclusions. In the days since, two other very public shooting “rampages” have occurred, one in Binghamton, New York and the other in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In both cases, there is evidence to suggest that shooters Jiverly Wong and Richard Poplawski acquired guns under questionable circumstances. Those are presumably the circumstances to which the National Rifle Association (NRA) refers when it says our government should be enforcing the gun laws that already exist, even as it continues to foment fear of “liberals” taking away the guns of good Americans.

Meanwhile, last week the Iowa state Supreme Court ruled that “gay” marriage is legal, under an equal protection clause that prohibits discrimination without a meaningful government interest in a specific outcome. Days later, the Vermont state legislature overrode Governor Jim Douglas’ veto of a bill that legalized gay marriage, making Vermont the first state to pursue this course of action through its legislature.

These subjects are connected, because they reflect important underlying, unresolved tensions in our society, around a set of problems and failures by people on every side of both issues. Even if married homosexual couples have no express or explicit interest in firearms—or gun owners have no homosexual attractions, let alone the desire for marriage—both groups should be united around a common set of legal principles that would permit them to act responsibly around their own interests. There are two Constitutional principles at stake here, and neither involve the Second Amendment. At issue are the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, which read, respectively:

“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

The Constitution says nothing at all about gay marriage. One can imagine this is because such marriages were not even a consideration at the time the document was authored, which might very well be true. But a careful reading of the Constitution will remind any reader that many things go unmentioned; indeed, it says nothing about marriage of any kind. The purpose of the Ninth Amendment was in part to ensure that the exclusion of a particular point from the text of the Constitution should not be taken to imply a prohibition on that issue. Accepting the NRA’s particular interpretation of the Second Amendment might be seen to offer gun owners an official leg-up—but the mention of bearing arms does not implicitly receive greater legal resilience just because it is explicitly stated. The power of the Ninth Amendment should be respected, as should the subsequently enumerated right for the states to make decisions about issues not mentioned in the Constitution.

Theoretically, a rejectionist response to gay marriage could point not to the Constitution, but to the Bible—except that as presently constructed in the United States, this is not a religious issue but a legal one. While religion may have informed the creation of the Constitution of these United States, religion is also explicitly not the framework under which legal decisions are made. The Constitution respects the right of the people to practice their religion, and also distinguishes between religious practice and state-held legal authority. (Never mind that the Bible does not say anything about a range of issues mentioned in the Constitution, including a specific right to own guns, as well as those of copyrighting and patent-holding.)

Supporting the fullest and widest interpretation of both Constitutional amendments should unify these seemingly-disparate groups, and remind us that we do not have to like or approve of every decision made by our neighbors or fellow citizens—but we do need to respect them. If supporters of gun rights also argued for the preservation of other fundamental, Constitutional rights, and if (conversely) gay rights advocates supported the right to bear arms as part of a similar interpretation of the Constitution, we might have more than just a new political coalition. We might have a more vibrant Constitutional democracy.

***

Asides of one kind or another:

• Mark Guarino, correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor, had a thoughtful article from 6 April about how Iowans are reacting to their state Supreme Court’s decision regarding gay marriage.

• National Public Radio’s Michele Norris had an amazing interview with gun store owner Johnny Dury a few days ago; NPR’s web site has an abbreviated text version of the story posted, but the full audio version (linked from that page) is worth a listen, no matter where you are in the United States or what you believe about this situation.

• Back in 2004, I wrote a piece about gay marriage (“Union vs. Confederacy?”) arguing that “marriage” should be left to religious institutions, while the state should be responsible for civil unions. This would ease the tension over “gay marriage” by allowing for appropriate discrimination based on religious beliefs, while reinforcing equal protection under the law. In an opinion piece from The New York Times, “A Reconciliation on Gay Marriage,” by David Blankenhorn and Jonathan Rauch, published 22 February 2009, a similar approach is articulated.

E Pluribus Omnibus

A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor

Out of many, one piece of legislation.

One bill to slay all problems. One bill to stimulate all unstimulated areas of our economy. One bill, to tickle the fancy of those yearning for the good ol' days of the New Deal (most of whom, actuarially speaking, were not around to live through the original New Deal itself). As The Economist put it, one bill “larded with spending determined more by Democrat lawmakers’ pet projects than by the efficiency with which the economy will be boosted.”

One bill because multiple pieces of legislation—developed systematically, to address specific aspects of our economy that need help, and with all necessary due diligence and deliberation for each—would, obviously, be terrible. Genuine debate and analysis, obviously, would be a time-consuming abrogation of legislative responsibility, which would do nothing but slow down the momentum of the executive branch of government. Such an effort would be akin to voting to approve a war concocted (by the executive branch) under false pretenses. Or something like that.

***

One bill that has been passed by Congress, and which President Barack Obama again defended in his address to a joint session of Congress this past week as the first of many new measures.

I started writing this column two weeks ago. The idea came to me as my 20 month old daughter played with her little wallet and the dollar in it, and I had a chance to look again at the dollar itself in some detail. She has been folding it, wrinkling it, putting it in and taking it out of her wallet, and I thought that it was perhaps odd that we had given her an actual dollar as a toy. What does that say about its value? And what would she learn from playing with a real dollar that (at 20 months) she couldn’t get from a fake one?

At his inaugural address, President Barack Obama said "Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age." I loved that line. It was concise and eloquent, but also accurate and honest. It was representative of the person I wanted Obama to be as president.

That Obama is a person and a president whom we as a nation have not yet seen. Doling out federal dollars—as any Republican can tell you, after eight years of practice in Congress and the White House—is more or less the opposite of making hard choices. It's easy because, much like playing Monopoly, it doesn't feel like real money. Real money is what poor and middle class people lose when the GOP-led process of bank deregulation allows financial institutions to spiral out of control. Real money is what a father gives his daughter, not because it is a toy, but because—as an alert young person, learning about the world around her—she should know what it is, how to handle it, to hang on to it, and over time, understand its value. She will have to make hard choices with what to do with that dollar, so learning what it means, what kind of attachment to have to it and what its existence represents, is itself meaningful.

***

Congress and the Executive branch, as everyone knows, do not handle real money. They handle theoretical money that may (or may not) exist in the future, and that someone other than themselves will have to earn years later. If our government understood real dollars, then it would (for one thing) have started closing the absurd gap that our Social Security and Medicare systems will have, between the money coming in and the money going out. The President and Congress might have acknowledged that if it's OK to have government-managed health care programs for the elderly (and the poor), it's not really such a leap to consider creating a government-run system for the rest of us. Government might start moving more actively to draw down our troops in Iraq, and begin saving money on some of these absurd foreign adventures. Heck, an intellectually honest government would recognize the pointlessness of the so-called “War on Drugs,” and move to start taxing drug use instead of trying fruitlessly to eradicate it.

Or Congress and the Executive branch could wake up to the reality that investing billions of dollars to help people who cheerfully and greedily screwed up—while making essentially meaningless gestures in the direction of the hard working people who did not over-extend themselves as a result of greed—is unlikely either to solve many economic problems or to win over long-term voters.

Any of those things, just from that very small list, represent hard choices. They might also have served as economic stimulus components in their own right, by focusing on our long-term health and alleviating future debt or averting future disaster. But those are just a few of the hard choices that need to be made, and our nation has made none of them so far. No hard choices, on virtually any subject.

President Obama, in his address to Congress this week, again laid out a picture of the damage that has been done, and the hard choices we face. He was as elegant and as eloquent as usual when he said “Now, if we're honest with ourselves, we'll admit that for too long we have not always met these responsibilities, as a government or as a people. I say this not to lay blame or to look backwards, but because it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we'll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament.” But at some point, the continued acknowledgment of the problem needs to shift into an actual moment of making hard choices. Granted, he has been in office for only 39 days. There are many more to go. I just wish that the stimulus bill—if it is representative of Obama’s approach—was representative of more clarity and restraint, and was a leading indicator of how problems will be tackled beyond throwing money at them.

Sadly, this was not really an omnibus stimulus bill that our Congress passed and our President signed. Instead, it was more like the world's biggest birthday cake: a cake created by 535 bakers and their assistants, for themselves, by raiding everyone else's kitchen for the necessary ingredients, and on which those same bakers and their helpers subsequently gorged themselves.

If we, as a nation, are to continue on the path that E Pluribus Unum implies—if we are to continue to be a united, strong one rising from the contributions of many—then the many need to see The One start confronting that "collective failure to make hard choices." Obama needs to start living up to his words, and fast.