Candidate for
Trustee; San Jose Unified School District; Trustee Area 1

TOWARD A MODERN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY By Timothy Fitzgerald

My political outlook has changed little over the last 30 or 40 years, the 'winds of doctrine' being the only significant change in our social discourse. Like 18th century philosopher Jean J. Rousseau I believe mankind is basically good + being corrupted more by his institutions than any infirmary of the mind or soul. Despite those predilections, I side with the Founders in most issues regarding the direction and management of the Nation/ state as conceived over the last 200 years. And like most Americans, I do not agree with the present administration of our political affairs in many if not most cases today.

That does not mean to imply I do not think a Revolution in political thought has not risen to a 'sea change' of differences in the last decade + both for good and ill. We have progressed as a society and civilization a long way in thought and action since times of Christopher Columbus, Michelangelo, and the Renaissance of N. Machiavelli. Much that was held true is now discarded for a much higher form of Enlightenment. And as a result, much like John Dewey, the American Pragmatist, speaking early in the last century, "All life educates, and formal education is only a small part of the learning of the individual." (And a democracy can never stop learning or it may lose its grip on the helm of the ship of state, and dissolve + much as some political systems have done in the past).

When democracy as it did in Socrates' Athens, or Edmund Burke's Empire of England, or the America of Post World War II; emerged as the undisputed leader of the entire civilization, it must not loose sight of their goals, objectives and opportunities + responding to dissent of contrary opinion and views, with dispatch and intelligence. That is the duty and responsibility of the Nation/state, its leadership, and the intelligence of those learned, knowing, and concerned contemporaries and peers.

I am an Instructor with four degrees in disciplines touching on these matters. I will not be dissuaded that life is other than I have outlined + even so briefly + herein. The responsibility for the gift lies with the giver. And 'The price of Liberty is eternal vigilance,'as Jefferson made clear when he formed the Democrat6ic Party in this country. For much of my life I subscribed to his party's values, ethos, and goals.

But by the time President Ronald Reagan led the nation, for me the intellectual well 'went dry.' The growing advent of globalization, a single global community, and world based economy caused me to re-consider the ethnocentric politics of Jefferson and Jackson. And I spent the next 15 years labouring with the Green Party in an effort to birth a new vision that western civilization may persevere and not perish from the world stage with the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the massing of youth at Tienemman Square. In those times, much was uncertain and misunderstood for almost a decade. I served on two boards overseeing the lot of the disabled and disadvantaged in my communities. Traveling to the Green National Convention in 2000 to nominate Ralph Nader as an alternative to the politics of routine and retreat.

But the political winds of change have moved swiftly since the election of 2000, and I have returned to the party of my youth, in hopes the experience and leadership demonstrated during President Clinton's two terms may be put to good use once again in my neighborhood and home town. I think eventually, this country may well accept the presence of a third party sharing their impact and influence. We are as a nation having to face the possibility there are, after all, many of our own national traditions that may have outlived their utility and resourcefulness.

Never the less, we have yet to abandon the creed, all are created equal. That was the founding principle that established the union of the 13 colonies, and it must be the standard by which our nation stands or falls in the light of history. All races and cultures are, after all, one under the cloth. If 'America's business is business,' as Calvin College said prior to the Great Depression, my green dollar should have just as much purchase power as any one else's green dollar.

And so, I have come to believe no business anywhere, has 'the right to refuse service to anyone.' And that in point of fact, the shoe is really on the other foot. That this attitude has stemmed from a feeling of monopoly competition, not a 'free market' economy, and denies the efforts of human and civil rights founded in my life time with the leadership of Rev. Martin Luther King, jr, Bobbie Kennedy, and Caesar Chavez.

Never the less it will be conceeded, the laws of the economy do not function as they should, the major corporate Capitalism having dominated the world community to the point of reducing the significance and authority of Nation/states themselves, and the freedom and liberty that man strove to attain by bloodshed and struggle in the last two centuries. And perhaps, as the song goes, 'Freedom isn't anything but nothing left to lose. And Freedom isn't nothing if it aint free.'

I identify strongly with such lyrical poetry, and suffered considerably under the yoke of hardship and brutality in the interests of freedom for all my companions and contemporaries, and I will not surrender my hard won perspective for any one. The world has now beaten a path to our doorstep and we must make our visitors welcome and comfortable. The planet in the next decade will decide whether to bond with us, or pass us by.

Other cultures and state organizations have stood at this threshold unprepared for the giant leap of an Alexander, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, and maybe the visionary effort of a Woodrow Wilson or Franklin Roosevelt. Taming the spirit of mankind -- and bringing the ego under the service of opportunity and choice.

The City of San Jose, and the Cult of Silicon Valley now peer into the myth of possibility, with the hope and faith to generate a 'new day in Babylon.' But besides a community at the leading edge of Industrial Power, we are a collection of individuals -- carrying our individual hopes and dreams, our skill and industry that place us at the vortex of the "American Dream Reborn'.

Carved from a new generation of immigrants and refugees, feeling much as Thomas Paine did in the depths of the American Revolution over 225 years ago: "These are times that try men's souls, when the summer soldier and sunshine patriot shrink from the service of their country." The world totters on the brink of international uncertainty, brought on by the extravaganza of untentitable policies of old leadership and an old path. And so, recalling the words of Ben Franklin at the signing of the Declaration that chartered this nation's passage: "Now we must all hang together, or surely we will all hang separately."