But what such a president should do with that recognition is to develop a public campaign against cynicism that speaks about its roots, and simultaneously a new program for education that seeks to develop in children some of the necessary defenses against the ways that their inclinations toward hurtfulness are fostered in school and in family life.
This is, of course, a hefty agenda. To some it will seem naïve and utopian. But in my view, what is utopian is to imagine that our world can survive the 21st century without this kind of political leadership. It is certain that the locus of global power will shift in the next twenty-thirty years to China and India. But this is the moment in which the West still has the power and influence to shape the development of a sustainable and morally coherent global culture. What America needs is for our next president to have the vision and the courage to engage with the spiritual vision I've hinted at in this article.
Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun Magazine (www.tikkun.org ), rabbi of Beyt Tikkun synagogue in San Francisco and Berkeley, and national chair of The Network of Spiritual Progressives, an interfaith organization for people who agree with the vision articulated above (and co-chaired by Cornel West and Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister). He is author of 11 books, including Healing Israel/Palestine, The Politics of Meaning, and most recently The Left Hand of God. He welcomes your responses: RabbiLerner@tikkun.org as well as submissions to Tikkun (send your finished article to him, but only after you've been reading Tikkun magazine regularly enough so that you have a sense of what we publish, the style, and acceptable lengths). He also invites you to become his ally by joining and working with him in The Network of Spiritual Progressives www.spiritualprogressives.org
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