Sunday, November 18, 2012

#322 / Do We Even Need A President?


http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/30/opinion/kayyem-obama-sandy/index.html
The Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College held a conference earlier this year, pre-election, to ask the question: "Does The President Matter?"

The Santa Cruz Good Times, a weekly newspaper published in my home town, is asking pretty much the same question, post-election: "Do we even need a President?" Click the link to get what the locals think. The consensus seems to be that we need a "leader."

I tend to think that Gandhi was right, and that "when the people lead, the leaders will follow."

It looks to me like even President Obama agrees:

The role of citizens in our democracy does not end with your vote. America's never been about what can be done for us; it's about what can be done by us together, through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self- government.

No "leader" does that. We do.

1 comment:

  1. There is a difference between a "leader" and a "ruler."

    Leaders come from anywhere: our families, our communities, our businesses our social groups. Leading takes place from the bottom as well as from the top.

    Rulers can only rule from above, backed by a monopoly on violence, organized in a centralized bureaucratic structure.

    We don't need rulers.

    We are leaders.

    ReplyDelete

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