Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Global Well-Being through Statesmanship

Statesmanship is a rare combination of wisdom and courage. Statesmanship requires the wisdom to envision a world as it can be, and the courage to make it happen. Statesmanship is what we must expect from all of our elected officials.

We must engage in political discourse based on intelligent, fact-based dialogue on the most important issues. A focus on statesmanship can lead to our increasing trust of elected officials, increased confidence in government organizations, increased bi-partisan cooperation, along with creative solutions for mutual gain, transcending conflict, reduced government waste, and reduced corruption.

We need to expect fair, simplified, and easily understood legislation that increases the well-being of all citizens.

A political environment based on statesmanship will allow us to address the grand challenges and focus on what matters. Working together we can achieve a world we might only dare to dream of. Statesmanship can move us toward global well-being.

Imagine a world where no one goes hungry and poverty and homeless is rapidly disappearing.
We all enjoy Improved health and fitness outcomes, including:  reduced alcoholism, reduced drug abuse, reduced addictions, reduced obesity and malnutrition, reduced occurrence of preventable diseases and poor health conditions, increased physical fitness. We enjoy increased prevention and treatment of mental illness, including: chronic stress, depression, and risk of suicide along with many other forms of mental illness. We all have access to a simplified, effective, and efficient universal healthcare system.

Statesmanship can deliver the wisdom and courage we need to increase employment opportunity, decrease national debt and personal debt, create and adopt a fair, simplified, and easily understood tax code, allow us to tax more of what we want less of, and attain increased income equality.
Shifting resources from the Department of Defense to a newly created Department of Peace can enable us to adopt a foreign policy based primarily on human rights. This can lead to reduced global conflict and reduced suffering worldwide as the entire world’s people gain access to clean-safe drinking water, proper nutrition, sanitation, medical care, and other human rights.

Enlightened foreign policy can lead to increased cooperation among nations and reduced terrorist threats, peaceful borders, and increased homeland security. Eventually democracy prevails over theocracy and totalitarianism, at home and abroad. This allows for decreasing arsenals of both conventional and nuclear weapons worldwide.
An energy policy moving rapidly toward sustainability allows us to reverse global warming trends and increase attention to environmental issues. Pollution is reduced, and we are able to increase conservation and preservation of natural resources, wilderness areas, forests, fisheries, biodiversity, and ecosystem services.

Stronger families lead to fewer divorces, reduced child abuse, reduced domestic violence, reduced sexual abuse. We recognize that contraception prevents abortion. Social Capital increases.
Improved education opportunities and outcomes lead to reduced illiteracy and innumeracy and increased graduation rates for High Schools, Colleges, Universities, and specialty training programs. People have better employment opportunities and more fulfilling lives as a result.

This improved social and political fabric leads to reduced gun violence, reduced gang violence, reduced organized crime, overall reduced crime and decreased need for incarceration. Legal justice aligns increasingly with moral justice.
Perhaps statesmanship can grant us the wisdom to envision our world as it can be and the courage to make it happen.