Happy Birthday, Hillary. You were destined to great things. And you knew it.
***
I am astounded. I graduated in political science from the University of Naples, the university of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Giambattista Vico, and Benedetto Croce, in something like the 750th graduating class; I have tried to keep up with the field as much as I could, even though I have preferred to concentrate on economics and political economy.
I have always gotten along with the assumption that politics is "the art of the possible."
But, let us give a good look at it. What is in this formula, if not a put down; a downgrading, so downgrading, characterization of this noble science? No wonder politics has become the art of bickering; the art of discord; the art of grasping at reefs, while we are drowning in perilous waters.
No wonder, politics in the United States and much around the world has become polarized between two factions that fight for supremacy to the death. Not the death of the political class, but to the psychological and physical death of millions of people--in this country, the richest of the countries, the last best hope for mankind. Let alone the millions overseas.
No wonder both the right and the left are focused on this set of policies: "Deny them their rights; take their dignity away; give them a warm soup in a cold winter night; and go to sleep in peace." What to say of this debasement of charity? What to say of this debasement of high morality? What to say of this debasement of politics?
And there I was the other night, hearing and seeing the following words written on the screen of CNN, in their documentary on Hillary Clinton:
"Politics is not the art of the possible" politics is the art of making the impossible" possible."
These are the words, not of Hillary of today or yesterday. These are the words of a young woman who breaks with tradition at the stodgy prestigious Wellesley College and becomes the first valedictorian in the history of that college. This is Hillary who is called to lead her class, not via invitation by academicians or administrators at Wellesley, but by her classmates who recognized the force of her leadership.
This is Hillary Rodham, later to become Clinton, who throws away her prepared speech and delivers her oration extemporaneously: "Politics is not the art of the possible" politics is the art of making the impossible" possible."
This is Hillary who is immediately recognized in the national press as a force of nature: woman's nature.
This is a woman who could have been researching and writing and talking about political science for a lifetime.
This is a woman who could have climbed the rungs of academia with grace and ease.
Instead"
She preferred to practice what she had discovered at such a young age. She rolled up her sleeves and went to work to make it possible for children to have a better life than the one to which they were clearly doomed by a society in thrall of control and scarcity and fear.
She went, not to Cambridge, but to New Bedford, a forgotten fishing community in Massachusetts. Not to grab social acclaim. Not to satisfy some weird psychological need of her own. But to practice her newly discovered political science theory.
I am not sure whether she has had the time to consider that her practice of political science is not rooted in the debased formula, "Politics is the art of the possible."
I am not sure whether she has ever had the luxury to consider that the root of her practice of politics lies in one single force: Love. Love as expressed in one harmonically organized community, the polis.
What became clear to all who had the privilege of really knowing her, is that she practiced love almost as the expression of an irresistible force of nature, a woman's relational nature.
Kids--and women, and men--everywhere from New Bedford to Arkansas to many countries in the world have benefited from the expression of Hillary's irresistible force of love.
Who benefited most was Bill Clinton.
And her mother and her father and Chelsea.
Unfortunately, thanks to Adam Smith and the Enlightenment, love is considered a sentiment. A fickle, transient feeling. A woman's feeling.
Therefore, I am afraid, Hillary Rodham Clinton cannot publicly elaborate on her youthful discovery that "politics is the art of making the impossible" possible."
It is Love in the end that makes the impossible possible.
Love is not a sentiment. Love is a virtue. The highest of the theological virtues.
And to practice one virtue one needs to rely on the assistance of all other virtues. Thus, the classical set: prudence, justice, temperance, and courage (or fortitude); and the three theological virtues, faith , hope , and charity (or love). To which, today, one must add the three intellectual virtues, wisdom, science, and understanding.
The truth is that we cannot practice any of the virtues all by ourselves. Secretary Clinton is well-known for her adoption of the African saying that "It takes a village to raise a child." If we individually proclaim the virtues, in today's cultural atmosphere, we expose ourselves to overwhelming ridicule. And she has suffered from a good share of that.
To free Hillary Rodham Clinton from the forces of ridicule--and even envy and hate--that have pursued her throughout her life, we need a public, widely expressed acknowledgement that Love is an irreducible human force.
Love cannot be left to the preserve of literati and psychologists.
My studies have made me realize that love is a virtue that ought to be of great interest to political scientists and (even) economists--because lack of love leads, not only to personal depression, but, more frighteningly, to economic depression.
The roots of economic depression lie in lack of economic justice. As pointed out in my current work published at Mother Pelican and Econintersect, It requires love to give and to receive economic justice.
Some economists are listening: Econintersect is one the Top 100 Sites for Enlightened Economists.
My work in concentrating on building FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE FOR EVERYONE (FIE), through
1. Local currencies;
2. Local Interdependence Funds (LIFs) , such as Gloucester Interdependence Fund; and a program to
3. Mend the Fed --not End the Fed.
4. PLUS ONE: Systematically destroy zeroes from national and international accounts every seven years (Jubilee Years).
A Couple of Notes
-- If you End the Fed, you have to recreate it the day after:
-- In my work, I urge the reader to remember that the American Revolution was fought. not so much to gain "No Taxation Without Representation," as to preserve the right acquired by our Colonial Governments to COIN THEIR OWN MONEY. We won the war, thus we preserved this right; but the day after we lost it--when Hamilton, perhaps unaware, patterned the Bank of America after the Bank of England:
-- That's where we stand today: As William Jennings Bryan warned us, we either regain our right to coin our own money (and to distribute it fairly), or we only make the rich richer, until they collapse.
Anton Meyer Rothschild famously said, "Allow me to control the currency of a nation and I care not who makes its laws." Provided he respects three rules of Concordian monetary policy: create money only to create new real wealth; create money at cost; create money to benefit everyone--provided he respects these rules, he too can have access to national credit.
And here is the difference. Rights are for everyone; rights are good for everyone. Privileges offer only temporary and illusory benefits to the few. As the Russians say, "Greed is not good for the greedy."
***
To obtain these transformations, we need to foster a culture of love. We need the intervention of all the major bastions of our culture: the media; the religious organizations, and ultimately, the business organizations to reject hate, and racism, and misogyny, and bullying, and child molestation, and pornography, and the use of money to control other people's lives.
We are on the cusp of a new age, the Age of Love. We either give it a gentle push over the fence, or we will perish into the hell of hate.
America is poised to act on the side of love. America is called to be good. We must love ourselves, our neighbor, and our God. Hillary is ready to help.
Carmine Gorga is president of The Somist Institute,
