With Rosabeth M. Kanter, Harvard Business School professor and author of the acclaimed America the Principled: 6 Opportunities for Becoming a Can-Do Nation Once Again, Mary Ann Gould took us onto a rocket ship high enough to reveal our present-day reality. The short list is that change is needed, badly.

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With Rosabeth M. Kanter, Harvard Business School professor and author of the acclaimed America the Principled: 6 Opportunities for Becoming a Can-Do Nation Once Again, Mary Ann Gould took us onto a rocket ship high enough to reveal our present-day reality. The short list is that change is needed, badly. In more detail:

1. We have lost the exuberance and prosperity of the 1990s. There is a recession.

2. Our elected officials are no longer the public servants they were meant to be.

3. We have therefore lost faith in them.

4. Our democracy is, as a result, severely threatened.

     Called by the London Times one of the most powerful women in the world, Kanter, like Gould, is a strategist. She is able to portray great complexities in language a sixth grader can understand. The principles she summarized this evening apply to many of our democratic institutions, our right to vote one of them and the most fundamental.

     With the beginning of the twenty-first century, along with a recession, came 9/11 and with it fear. Less-developed nations suddenly rose along with a chronic paranoia that our enemies were out to get us. Our allies largely did not support the Iraq invasion. While the stock market soars, no attention is devoted to the peace economy. The people�s needs are being sacrificed to deadly wars.

     The assumption that less government is better was proved by Clinton, said Kanter, who shrunk the government and improved its services. Now government is larger than before. We need to restore the people�s faith in it.

     We started out as the greatest country in the world, a nation of immigrants defined by territory rather than ethnicity�an open society, open to new ideas and the entrepreneurial spirit. We still have the world�s largest economy.

     Other countries have now surpassed us in the areas of science and math. Because of the government�s closed-mindedness, states are taking over the research the federal government should be conducting.

     We must seek people with vision; remember how JFK inspired a whole generation by flying an astronaut to the moon? The inspiration sports fans derive from their teams� victories should apply elsewhere. We must believe in a positive future no matter who is in the White House. We need dreams as well as reality, and the first step is action to realize a vision.

     Kanter referred as an example to No Child Left Behind, which addressed the problems of public education in cities as well as suburbs. But we cannot measure results because the program was never adequately funded.

     Another opportunity was missed after 9/11; people were ready to serve but the only call to action was military and lethal. Community service is one opportunity to pull ourselves out of this morass. At this point Mary Ann quoted Marcel Proust to the effect that the point is not to find new things but to see through new eyes. Principles and volunteerism must become national priorities. Our leaders must support us in these efforts.

     We must stop living in fear and fight our disempowerment; there should be more people on the streets; communication would make us safer. 9/11 was such a disaster because, among other things, various government agencies failed to communicate properly with each other.

     We must organize neighborhood patrols to organize us in the event of catastrophes There is nothing more empowering than giving of yourself, said Kanter.

     She referred to the easy fellowship among villagers in the town squares of old New England, reminiscent of the comradery we experience on public beaches, where all of a sudden defenses break down and people trust each other more.

     Families must matter. To be American is not to be somebody but to believe in something.

     Change is a journey, not a destination. We must believe in it; the elements of it are often already present. Even in business, faith is necessary at the onset of any undertaking. Change means making more of what�s already here, not giving up all we have.

     Regarding the accusation that Americans are too addicted to instant gratification, Kanter said that it was nothing new. High technology does provide some of this and does shorten our attention spans, but there is nothing wrong with instant gratification as long as it leads us to longer goals. People must think faster and act faster.

     �We need principles from which all things derive,� said Mary Ann.

     Money and politics are a large problem. We must constantly remind our politicians of principles that transcend them.

     And why is voting a better emblem of citizenship than volunteerism? Because we must have the right people in office.

--at this point I had to leave the computer for a few minutes to answer the phone�

When I returned, I discovered that Kanter had been disconnected and Steve Freeman, the author and advocate of election protection, was on reviewing the threats to our rights posed by the present administration.

     Mary Ann asked why public officials have not reacted to this crisis in the history of election protection.

     The media have failed us as guardians of democracy, he answered. This show is an exception.� He has been interviewed repeatedly by major media portals but no script has been aired. People are nonetheless waking up. Forty percent of Americans believe that election 2004 was stolen.

     Regarding 2008, in agreement with Greg Palast, Freeman warned that the battle was already lost because of the way we will vote and because of the structure of the system, which calls ideas radical even though a majority of people believe in them. The Democrats won�t challenge the Republicans. Two thirds of Americans oppose the Iraq war. No expert denies that an election can easily be stolen.

     With ten minutes of the program remaining, attorney and election activist Paul Lehto came on to share his reactions to Kanter�s presentation.

     �We must be inspired to do things by passion, which makes the world go round,� he said. �We need inspiration and a goal.�

     What inspiration is greater than the Declaration of Independence? Mary Ann asked. The entire purpose of this country is to have people�s will respected, said Lehto. It is important to read and reread this document, which states in its second paragraph that the purpose of the government is to secure and guarantee our rights.

     The government must be our servant. What�s happened? A revolution. We had divided up King George III�s crown into a million pieces, each of which endowed one of us with rights. Now the crown seems to have snapped back together.

     Kanter was quoted to the effect that we need that key vision, to go back to our basic rights. Then Mary Ann went on to reiterate her belief in small successes as means to empower greater numbers of people, �to be packaged and waved around like flags.�

     She reiterated to listeners to list their successes, be they as simple as a letter to the editor published in a small-town tabloid, and to send them to www.voiceofthevoters.org.

     We have a very, very big challenge in 2008. We�re in a crisis. We must educate the public.�

Authors Website: http://www.wordsunltd.com

Authors Bio:

Marta Steele is an author/editor/blogger who has been writing for Opednews.com since 2006. She is also author of the 2012 book "Grassroots, Geeks, Pros, and Pols: The Election Integrity Movement's Nonstop Battle to Win Back the People's Vote, 2000-2008" (Columbus, Free Press) and a member of the Election Integrity movement since 2001. Her original website, WordsUnLtd.com, first entered the blogosphere in 2003. She recently became a senior editor for Opednews.com. She has in the past taught college and worked as a full-time as well as freelance reporter. She has been a peace and election integrity activist since 1999. Her undergraduate and graduate educational background are in Spanish, classical philology, and historical and comparative linguistics. Her biography is most recently listed in "Who's Who in America" 2019 and in 2018 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Who's Who.