On Monday, May 11 and Tuesday, May 12, we’ll gather with the TRANSFORM paid subscribers to explore the ideas in Healing the Soul of America. I think they will resonate with what we’re witnessing in the country today.
My goal in writing the book was to explore founding principles and historical facts that as Americans we too often forget. Too many of us have lost our psychological connection to America’s larger story, and we must reclaim it in order to heal.
While the book was first published in 1998, it certainly seems relevant to America today. Here’s an example….
While we politically broke free of serfdom over two hundred years ago, perhaps we have not yet achieved the psychological and spiritual and emotional conditions necessary to sustain our freedoms. The needs of our business institutions are consistently placed before the needs of our people, and the trend is getting worse instead of better. Corporations have become a new aristocracy, while the average American is a new brand of serf. The difference now is that it is possible to buy one’s way into the aristocracy; that, however, is a far cry from removing the institution.
We have exported democracy around the world, yet here at home we are in need of a democratic renewal. From thinly disguised efforts at voter suppression, to industrial agricultural giants practically forcing genetically engineered food into our food supply and trying to outlaw efforts by anyone to let us know, there is a specter of Big Brother in the air that’s growing uglier every day. What happened to Americans that we have become so easy to seduce with a tax cut here or distract with a sex scandal there? What happened that we are willing to place the good of corporations before the good of our children, that we have been willing countenance the corruption of our political system by the dominance of corporate wealth? What happened to the “spirit of rebellion” without which, according to Thomas Jefferson, democracy cannot survive? We gave us our power as we too often give up our principles. As short term economic gain became so solidly our bottom line, we failed to question to moral damage this was doing to America’s soul. The corruption did not step there, howeer. Now it aims for our democracy.
Some things haven’t changed, huh? And look where it’s gotten us! If you’re interested, please join me for the book club. Read it before the class if you can, so we can go as deep into the material as possible.
DATES: Monday, May 11 and Tuesday, May 12
TIME: 2pm PT / 5pm ET
LINK: Below the paywall