Lubbock Left

If you missed the President’s Tuesday tonight speech, here’s the gist of it:

Now is the time to act boldly and wisely – to not only revive this economy, but to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity. Now is the time to jumpstart job creation, re-start lending, and invest in areas like energy, health care, and education that will grow our economy, even as we make hard choices to bring our deficit down.

(video and transcription are available at Whitehouse.gov)

Obama’s approval rating should go up over the next few days as Americans watch and discuss the speech. He was clear, hopeful, and reached out to the Left and the Right. I’m proud that President Obama is keeping his campaign promise to change the tone in Washington.

And that brings me to what I find myself thinking about tonight.

As an entrepreneur, I find myself reading a lot of business books, many of which can safely be called “business motivation” books. Normally they’re corny as hell, and I have to put them down pretty quickly. Occasionally, though, one sticks with me for a while. Right now How Full Is Your Bucket? by Tom Rath and the brilliant Don Clifton is sticking with me due to its harrowing summary of Korean POW camps.

According to Rath/Clifton, the POW camps in the Korean war were not cruel in a physical sense. There was no physical torture, and the soldiers had food, clothing, and shelter. However, the North Korean camps had the highest fatality rate among U.S. POWs of any war, due to a cruel sort of reverse psychotherapy practiced by the North Korean captors. Soldiers were brought together in groups of a dozen or so and forced to reveal good things they didn’t do (but could have done), negative things about their fellow soldiers, and their own perceived failings. At the same time, good news in the mail from home was withheld, but bad news, bill collection notices, and so forth were delivered promptly to the POWs. These soldiers would often end up feeling totally disconnected from their fellow soldiers and countrymen — sometimes quietly dying in their huts, sometimes not even bothering to contact loved ones after surviving the war.

I find myself considering the story of Korean War POWs alongside the documentary I saw tonight, “Pete Seeger: The Power of Song.” The movie, as with Pete Seeger’s life (he is still alive and even performed at the Lincoln Memorial pre-inauguration concert) is all about bringing people together through song for common cause. His constant touring, education, and performance of folk music helped to expose the hypocrisy of the House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC), grow the civil rights movement, and force the cleanup of the Hudson River just to name a few. His banjo is famous for having these words written around it: “This machine surrounds hate / and forces it to surrender.” Pete Seeger is a living, singing embodiment of finding the good things we have in common and encouraging their growth based on a shared positive activity.

As we go through these turbulent times, watch to see who is positive and uniting, and who is negative and dividing. It’s not all one-side-or-the-other. However, right now Obama and the Democrats are leading in a big way when it comes to being positive, united, and forward-looking. Meanwhile, those on the far right will continue to attempt to shift the focus of our public discourse to those wedge issues that divide us.

We have more in common than we have in opposition. We are stronger together than we are individually. We live longer, happier, and more productive lives when we build each other up rather than tear each other down.

The way to beat this current economic crisis is to join together and move forward on those core public issues where we have both a strong consensus and a strong need to improve. Energy, health care, and education — as indicated by President Obama — comprise an excellent focus for our efforts. Investment in these areas will help our economy to recover, and, once we have weathered this storm, we will be a better nation for it.