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Terry Patten
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Like most other Integralists, I admire President Obama tremendously. Even so, I've been unenthusiastic about the compromised process that has produced most major legislation this year, especially the health care reform bills (which reform only certain aspects of a dysfunctional disease-care system, deferring more fundamental reform into the future). I mobilized to elect him, but it's been hard for me to get excited about his recent agenda. So, like many others, I've become less outwardly engaged in politics. But last week's news calls all passivity into question.

An Evolutionary Civic Duty.

The issue raised by this ruling is unambiguous, fundamental, and impossible to overlook. It compromises the ability of our society to make important choices intelligently. Democratic rule has serious problems, but the problems of a corporate plutocracy are of a whole different--and frightening--order.

This is a blow to what's left of our system's very ability to correct course and purify itself of corruption.

May this ruling prove to be the "swing to excess" that produces a backlash. May it mobilize a broad coalition of patriotic citizens who can't bear to see American government being effectively for sale via a marketplace controlled by moneyed special interests.

This may be a meta-systemic issue that large numbers of people can understand. If so, it may harness people's widespread anger over our broken system and motivate a movement more righteous and benign than that of the recent tea-parties.

Conscious, responsible citizens will need to respond forcefully and effectively to this disturbing development. That includes President Obama, the fragmented and disappointing Democratic Party, you, and me.

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Terry Patten is a philosopher, teacher, activist, consultant, social entrepreneur, and author. Over the last fifteen years he has devoted his efforts to the evolution of consciousness by facing, examining, and healing our global crisis through (more...)
 

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