APOLITICSOF LOVE

A HANDBOOK FOR A NEW AMERICAN REVOLUTIONMARIANNE
WILLIAMSONPoliticsOfLove_7p.indd 3

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A REVOLUTION OF LOVEREVIEWING THE PLOT

You can’t pick up a novel in the middle of the book and have
any idea what’s going on. You don’t know the characters andyou don’t know the plot.You need to read it from the beginningto know how the story unfolds.
The same is true with the story of a nation. We can’t really understand what’s going on in this country without understanding where we’ve come from. We can’t recognize forces forwhat they represent historically when all we can see is how they
relate to us now. With almost every issue, what happens now
is part of a continuing narrative that began over two hundredyears ago. Issues erupting dramatically today have been developing for years, often underneath the surface, as generation
after generation writes its chapter in our ongoing history.
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Whether you’re learning the history of your family or thehistory of your ethnic group or religion, knowing where youcome from gives you a clue into who you are. It’s difficult tounderstand what it means to be an American today without
understanding what America means, period.
Yet what America means is open to interpretation. To somepeople, America means a bright spot of freedom and liberty
whose shadows and mistakes are secondary to the exceptionalism of our first principles. To them, our country is so good thatit hardly matters what we’ve done wrong. To others, it seems
America’s historical errors justify perpetual condemnation. To
them, at times we’ve been so bad that it hardly matters what
we’ve ever done right. We won’t be led through the storm of
this moment, either by those who love this country blindly orby those who condemn her blindly. For the blind cannot see.
The guiding light of America’s destiny is neither blind to
our problems nor blind to our potential. We will be led throughour current storm by the inner light of a more sophisticated,compassionate understanding that America is a continuing
narrative. Like any of us, it isn’t a finished product yet. Nor
will it ever be. A nation is continuously moving through time,
like a novel whose ending can’t be foreseen. What we need
now is a deeper understanding of what came before, and a
deeper commitment among us to write well the chapter thatis ours.
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Today, we seem tethered neither to where we came fromnor to where we wish to be going. We’ve lost the plot of ourdemocracy—­we’re not connecting the dots, and we’re not connecting the dots because we’re not connecting the facts. We’renot connecting the facts because the facts have been scrambled.
Our founders sought safeguards against such scrambling,
but the safeguards have been weakened. Thomas Jefferson
wanted free public education because only people whose critical thought processes had been honed could be entrustedwith the power of self-­governance. And he wanted a free press
to make sure all citizens had the information we would needin order to make wise decisions. If you’re entrusted with thepower to direct a country—­which, in a representative democracy, we the people are—­then you need to be educated in orderto know how to think, and informed by a free press in order toknow what to think. On both fronts, however, our power has
been diminished.
Someone knew exactly what they were doing when American civics and history lessons started disappearing from many
public school curricula. In eleven states, there is no required
civics or American history education at all. In more than halfof them, no more than half a year learning those subjects isrequired. But if someone didn’t learn about the Bill of Rights
when they were a child, how would they know to be appalled
as an adult when they see it under assault?
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Knowledge is power, and withholding knowledge is a toolof all oppressive systems. Underresourcing education, particularly among children, and corporate consolidation of the news
media have been powerful tools in the dumbing down of theAmerican mind. Without an informed and passionate citizenry,democracy is not a problem for its enemies at all.
Giving people a lot of consumer products but not giving
them information is like giving people lots of candy but withholding basic nourishment. Perhaps if you give people a way tomake more money, they won’t notice that you’ve taken awaysomething even more precious. If you legitimize their self-­
centeredness, they’ll be more likely to forget about their ancestors, their fellow citizens, or their descendants.
One of the most powerful things an American citizen can
do today is read up on American history, a lot of which mostof us don’t remember from school and many of us never evenlearned. There are enough “American History for ­Dummies”–
type books out there that no one really has much of an excuse
for not brushing up on our nation’s history. We gain a deeper
understanding of the present when we have a context that includes the past, and a deeper understanding of who we arewhen we know who came before.
The more we understand the larger narrative of our history
and the chapters that were written by other generations, themore empowered we are in writing our own. We learn, among
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other things, that many of the forces we’re dealing with now are
simply the latest iterations of challenges that have been with us
from the beginning. The current crisis in our country is the continuation of a narrative that began over two hundred years ago.
The first historical through-­line is our foundational democratic principles, the values on which we purport to stand.
Inscribed in our Declaration of Independence in 1776, thesefirst principles are the light that guides us through every travail:that all men are created equal; that God gave all men unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; andthat governments are instituted to secure those rights. Alongwith those unalienable rights go freedom of speech, freedom of
the press, the right to bear arms, freedom of peaceful assembly, freedom to protest, and several more meant to ensure ourability to remain a free people. Another fundamental American
principle was articulated by Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address: that “government of the people, by the people,
and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”Those ideas are not just abstract concepts. They are living,breathing forces for which hundreds of thousands of people
have struggled, lived, and died. Every one of them represents afreedom in the absence of which every American would live avery different life.
But a second through-­line has also been with us from the
beginning, and that is a fierce resistance to those first princi39

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ples on the part of those who see them as threatening to theirinterests. Usually, though not always, such forces represent
the economic interests of the few pitted against the interestsof the many.
So on one hand, we’re a nation “conceived in liberty”; on
the other hand, our entire Southern economy was based on theslave trade and it took the Civil War to end it. On the one hand,
we believe in the “unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”; on the other hand, we perpetrated the genocide, forced migration, and cultural annihilation on the Native
peoples of this continent. On the one hand, we believe that “allmen are created equal”; on the other hand, institutionalized
white supremacy and segregation raged throughout the Southfor a hundred years even after the end of the Civil War. Thatdichotomy represents a dramatic, often tragic pattern that has
been with us from the beginning: we were founded on enlightened principles, have in many ways ourselves been the mostviolent perpetrators against them, and then u­ ltimately—­at least
most of the time—­have reclaimed them.
Slavery was met with abolition, suppression of women was
met with the suffragette movement, segregation was met withthe civil rights movement, and so forth. Every generation ofAmericans has included both enemies of democracy and heroes of democracy. Our generation is even now in the midst of
deciding which one, in our time, will prevail.
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Political manifestations, both good and bad, are but outerreflections of internal realities. They emerge from realms beyond what the eye can see. Love and lovelessness are constantly
duking it out, in our hearts and in our world. Slavery, oppression, racism, and so forth are more than mere political wrongs;
they represent spiritual malfunctions. Until we deal with our
problems on the level from which they emerge, then no matter
what we do to solve them, they will simply morph into otherforms. Whether it is a health problem or a money problem ora relationship problem or a political problem, both the sourceof any problem and the source of its solution lie within ourconsciousness.
That is why a new American revolution is a revolution of
consciousness, and a new American politics is a politics of love.
If the choice to love remains merely a private decision, then it
will have only private effects. Only when love is applied to public issues will it then have public effects.
An overly secularized, rationalistic politics is an inadequate
response to the challenges of our time. A politics of love is atwenty-­first-­century, whole-­person politics that speaks to both
external and internal issues.
External activism fosters a different way of doing things,
which is important. But internal activism fosters a different
way of thinking about those things as well. Both are impor­tant, because everything we do is infused with the conscious41

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ness with which we do it. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi,“The end is inherent in the means.” Enlightenment is a shift inworldview, and only a more enlightened thinking can deliver us
to an enlightened world.
America’s founders were products of the eighteenth-­
century Enlightenment, or Age of Reason, during which Western civilization overthrew the mystification of early church
dogma in favor of rational thought and individual freedom.
Today, we are entering a new Era of Enlightenment, in which
we are overthrowing the limits of overly rationalistic thinking
that doesn’t recognize the powers of the soul. We are evolving
beyond a twentieth-­century worldview that posited the world
as one big machine, and realizing that in fact it is more likeone big thought. Consciousness is no longer deemed irrelevant to human affairs, but rather the driver of human affairs. Things in the outer world are merely effects created bythoughts we think. The role of consciousness in transforming events is the essential realization of a twenty-­first-­century
worldview. Only if we rethink the world will we be able to re-­create it. Only in transforming our hearts will we be able totransform the world.
A political mind-­set mired in twentieth-­century thinking isincapable of solving our most pressing problems, because its
focus on externalities too often leaves their causes unaddressed.
It waters the leaves but not the roots of our democracy. Not ev42

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ery force that is driving our world is visible to the physical eye.
A politics that gives little credence to the inner life, considering
it outside the purview of its analysis, is inadequate to the taskof navigating these difficult times.
That is why the spiritual seeker is important to the transformation of our politics, and of our country. Spiritual seekers have always been the harbingers of political change in
America—­the abolitionist movement was started by the early
Evangelicals and Quakers, and the civil rights movement was
led by a Baptist preacher. Jews and Catholics have been central
to the unfoldment of every social justice movement throughout
our history.
In the words of Plato, “To philosophize and do politics are
one and the same thing.” Not only does enlightened politics
require spiritual understanding, but enlightened spirituality
requires attention to politics. No serious religious path gives
anyone a pass on addressing the suffering of other sentient
beings. The idea that we can leave politics out of our conceptualization of our spiritual journey is an outdated concept, because politics is simply the journey we take together. We can’ttransform our country without transforming our politics, andthat we can do only by participating. Standing on the sidelines is not an option for a conscious seeker, or for a conscious
citizen. Too much blood and too much suffering result froman unconscious politics for those of us who claim to be on
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A POLITICS OF LOVEthe journey of higher consciousness to ignore. We must takea fundamental step forward in re-creating the world from theinside out.
“Love each other” is not just a prescription for personal
salvation; it is a prescription for political renewal as well.
When tens of millions of people trapped in economic shackles with little dignity, few prospects, and little hope are thentold by a political candidate that the system is rigged againstthem and only he can fix it, you can’t just blame the candidate for taking advantage of all that hopelessness. The larger
responsibility lies with a political establishment that allowed
such mass despair to develop in the first place—­and with thoseof us who allowed it to.
Economic despair is not a statistic in the lives of people
who are living with it; it is a real, devastating human experience. It is a festering wound from which other symptoms emanate, such as domestic violence, opioid addiction, sickness,
bad health from lack of access to care, depression, suicide, anda general breakdown of community and culture.
In a country dominated by a political system that has been
dedicated more to its campaign donors than to its people, andmore to the financial gain of the wealthy .01 percent of its population than to the actual practice of democracy, the crisis we
now have on our hands was almost inevitable. A massive cryof economic despair was going to make itself heard—­whether
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A Revolution of Lovein support of a progressive populist such as Bernie Sanders, oran authoritarian populist such as Donald Trump. It’s not thateither of them necessarily had better plans for dealing with allthat suffering than did Hillary Clinton; it’s just that they’re theonly two candidates who acknowledged all that suffering. And
that made all the difference.
Having substituted obeisance to the dictates of market
forces for obeisance to the dictates of democratic and humanitarian concerns, the political establishment is reaping now
what it has sowed. Climate change has reached extreme anddangerous levels because the US government has done more to
advocate for the short-term maximization of profits to the fossil
fuel and chemical companies than to advocate for the well-­being of our citizens and our planet; our tax policies do more
to fill the coffers of the 1 percent than to address the economic
struggles of the 99 percent; and our efforts to protect national
security center on increased preparedness for war yet diminished efforts at waging long-­term peace. All of those factors
represent more than a political challenge; they represent direthreats, over the long run, to our democracy and quite possibly
to the very existence of our species.
Such problems represent something deeper and more fundamental than a system dedicated to externalities has any idea
how to fix. They are reflections of the fact that, in the words ofGandhi, “humanity is not in its right mind.”
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A POLITICS OF LOVEA lack of love is the level of the problem, and a lack of loveis the level of the solution. Only when we realign our politics
with our deep universal values will the forces arrayed against
us fade away. In the words of Albert Einstein, “The problemsof the world will not be solved on the level of thinking we wereat when we created them.”
Political issues are moral issues. War and peace are moral issues. Economic injustice is a moral issue. Mass incarceration is a
moral issue. Unfair tax laws are a moral issue. Racial inequality
is a moral issue. Breaking treaties with Native tribes is a moral
issue. The neglect of America’s children is a moral issue. Global
poverty is a moral issue. A self-­perpetuating war machine is a
moral issue. Putting immigrants in cages is a moral issue.
The question is not simply what we should do about suchproblems. The larger question is, Who are we that such problems even exist among us? And who do we have to become inorder to solve them?
Whether for an individual or for a nation, every crisis comeswith two things: a reflection of who we have been, and an invitation to become who we need to become. And that is where
America is now. We need to reach for higher ground than thaton which we’ve been standing over the last few decades. Nothing less will heal our country.
Separating politics from the deeper questions of our humanity leaves us dangerously fractured as a civilization. Amer46

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ica needs to atone for some mistakes of our past and makeserious amends. We need to be willing to do things differently
moving forward. And we need to take a brutally honest look at
how certain concepts left over from the late twentieth century
do more to corrode than to advance our democracy. A new
kind of American—­a new kind of thinker and a new kind of
citizen—­needs to arise now.
And quickly.

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We the People, We the Problem

F

or too many decades, Americans have been chronically distracted by less important things, not bothering to engage
in serious self-­examination. Material progress has become

our false god.
While private morality might have thrived among individuals, issues of public morality began to wither. Economic values have taken precedence over ethical values, and now we’re
having to face the consequences of this moral corrosion. An
amoral economic system, in which a corporate bottom line
is given precedence by our government over considerationsof who or what gets hurt, has corroded our nation’s politics.
And the symptoms are everywhere. Wealth inequality, racialand criminal injustice, the undue influence of money on ourgovernment, the desecration of our environment, the destruction of nonindustrial farming, compromised food and watersupplies, opioid addiction, lack of educational and economic
opportunity for the many while a tiny few are made richer every day—­all were wounds given a chance to fester while too
many of us weren’t looking, weren’t even complaining about
the problem if it didn’t apply to us.
Politicians who tried to warn us of what was happening weretypically viewed as “too negative,” and journalists whose job is48

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to inform us about what’s happening were too often owned by
the very forces that drove this systematic selling-­off of our collective good. Once a few corporate conglomerates were allowed
to own the majority of our news outlets (i.e., the term corporate
media), stories that once might have earned someone a Pulitzer
for good investigative journalism began just as likely to get thejournalist fired.
The main organizing principle of American society today is
not democracy; it is short-term profit maximization of multi-­
national corporations. Our government does not now function
to protect its citizens from overreach by corporations, so muchas it works to protect corporations from all those pesky citizens
who keep demanding that their rights be respected.
Democracy is not the enemy of an amoral economic system; it’s simply inconvenient to an amoral economic system. The
thieves who stole the treasures of our democracy—­a thriving
middle class, accessible health care, a robust educational system, and proper environmental stewardship—­didn’t use brute
force to knock down the door. No, they used the soft, insidious
power of political propaganda that no seriously thinking person
should have fallen for. Yet too many of us were not serious. Toomany of us were not thinking. The American people have been
played for fools.
As early as the 1980s, the causes of many of our deepest
problems were sold as good economic policy. Plans were laid
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A POLITICS OF LOVEfor an economic reversion to what is basically an aristocraticsystem; “trickle-down economics” hailed as our economic salvation when in fact it created all manner of entitlement for the
few and all manner of misery for the many. It did not uplift
our middle class; quite to the contrary, it destroyed our middle class: from workers losing their jobs when corporations got
tax breaks for moving their factories overseas to farmers being
pushed off their land so agribusiness could take over to mental
health care facilities being closed all over the country to attacks
on unions, stealing from the middle class in order to give moreto the rich was actually sold as good economic policy. Overand over we’ve elected those whose policies exalt the profits ofcorporations over the well-­being of our citizens. Just enough of
the serfs were allowed to get rich themselves, you see. What aclever sleight of hand prevailed.
The wealth inequality in America today has led to what isessentially a new class of aristocrats and a new class of serfs.
In the richest nation on earth, roughly 40 percent of our citizens now have a hard time covering their basic costs, fromfood and health care to transportation and rent. Sixty-­two
percent of Americans cannot be deemed members of the middle class. Millions of Americans have to work at two or threelow-­wage jobs just to make ends meet. And in issues ranging
from justice to education to health care to environmental protection, the underlying cancer of unbridled corporate influ50

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ence on political campaigns is poisoning the very roots of ourdemocracy.
In the words of the late Supreme Court justice Louis
Brandeis, “We may have democracy, or we may have wealthconcentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”
The “few” in this context are made up mainly of large corporate interests, for whom government now, for all intents andpurposes, primarily functions. Their flood of undue financial
influence—­especially since the Supreme Court Citizens United
decision removed restrictions on their donations to campaign
coffers—­is now so great as to chronically and systematicallyoverride the will of the American people. Author Jane Mayer
refers to this nefarious phenomenon as “dark money.”
Like addicts coming out of denial, no longer thinking thatthey can control their drinking or drugging, Americans needto get out of our denial regarding the depth of corruption thatprevails within our political establishment. Such a moment ofclarity can be frightening at first, but it’s also a moment when
breakthroughs occur. It opens the mind to the possibility that
there might be another way. And there is another way. That way
is not to disparage our democracy, but to reclaim it, rebuild
it, and return it to its deepest principles. It is ultimately ouremotional connection to democracy, and our devotion to thepossibilities it creates for the human race, that will empower us
to save it.
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Democracy is important because it is a conduit for the will
and the wisdom of the people ourselves. If we lose sight of thatinternal value, then we lose the light that guides us. And thatlight is not mere symbol; it is the power of enlightened thought.
“Through the night with the light from above” from the song
“God Bless America” is not just a lyrical phrase. America is
experiencing a dark night of the soul now, and we need ourlight—­our wisdom, and our love—­to guide us. For in the wordsof Abraham Lincoln, “We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, thelast best hope of earth.”

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Reclaiming Our Revolutionary SpiritT

he United States was born of the courage and commitment to start something new. We’re always starting newthings, whether it’s new projects, new businesses, or new

versions of ourselves. That is an upside to who we are.
The very founding of our country established a new possibility for humanity, repudiating an aristocratic system andstarting over on an entirely new philosophical foundation. To
Europeans at the time, we were called “the New World.”
The Old World was based on social inequality, and the New
World, at least in theory, was to be based on social equality. Thevery idea of such a radical departure from the past was revolutionary. In the words of Thomas Paine in 1776, “We have it inour power to begin the world over again.”According to an ancient monarchical system, a king, aqueen, and their cronies, the aristocracy, had been deemed
entitled to land, education, wealth, wealth-­creation, and allother means necessary to actualize their dreams. No one else
was so entitled. No one else could own land, get an education,or create wealth for themselves. An aristocratic system gave
power to those at the top—­and only those at the top—­to beshared with those below only at their will. According to “thedivine right of kings,” God shared His power only with a king,53

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who could then use the power to lord over people at will.
With the founding of the United States, God wasn’t seen tohave given power to a king with which to rule over us; He wasseen to have given power to the people with which to govern
ourselves. Governments were established to secure our rights,
and we were given constitutional authority to redress our government if it failed to do so.
That’s why the very notion that all men are created equalwas—­and remains—­so radical. An entirely new political possibility emerged from the idea of equality. The American Dream
has never been a fully actualized reality; forty-­one signers of the
Declaration of Independence themselves owned slaves. But thepower of the American Dream lies in the power of a possibility,
a possibility never yet fully embodied on the material plane, but
one that has lived on in the imagination, hopes, and aspirationsof generation after generation.
When the behavior of our government is out of sync withthe rights of the American people, then it’s in the finest American tradition to protest our government and seek redress.
American citizens aren’t here to be good boys and girls, to do
as we’re told, to just go along to get along. We were born of an
audacious spirit, and that audacity runs in our veins even now.
We were founded by revolution, and have been sustainedby minirevolutions ever since. And now it is time for anotherone. It is our responsibility, to ourselves and to our children,
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to cast off any chains of an economic tyranny. An economic
system that is predicated on the notion that giving more to therich somehow helps the poor (contrary to all evidence, by theway) is as tyrannous as the aristocracies of old. The fact thatthe new aristocrats wear pin-­striped suits and are often highly
educated doesn’t make the system less tyrannous; it just makes
it more familiar. In the words of Thomas Paine, “A long habitof not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance
of being right.” But it isn’t right. It is wrong.
For decades, we have made the short-­term financial gain of
corporations—­slowly and incrementally at first and ultimately ina huge cascade of democracy-­demolishing economic tsunamis—­
the false god of our day, the idol of our imagination, and themaster of our destiny. That is the issue underlying almost every
other issue, from endless wars to environmental desecration toeconomic hardship to a lack of health care and inadequate childcare. There is no one to blame so much as something to take responsibility for, a fact to realize, a dream from which to awaken,
and actions to take while there is still time.
Whether it’s a king lording over us or a corporate donor
class exerting undue influence on our government—­the economic equivalent of lording over us—­the right and responsibility of every generation of Americans is to cast off any chainsthat bind us.
The moral mission of the United States is to create a so55

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ciety in which, to the best of our ability, all material shackles
are removed that keep any person from becoming who he or
she was created to be. It is every generation’s task to claim thatmission, and to further it. The power of our first principles, ourdemocratic values, is that they speak to something higher thanpolitics. They speak to the human condition.
America’s higher purpose is not just to allow you to havewhat you want, or to allow me to have what I want. Our higher
purpose is to give everyone a fair shot at making their dreams
come true. Anything that stands in the way of that will ultimately deprive all of us of the opportunities we hold most dear.
For America doesn’t belong to any one of us; America belongs
to all of us.
That kind of thinking was radical in 1776, and it’s radical
today.
It’s radical to declare that God created all men equal.
It’s radical to declare that God gave all of us unalienable
rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It’s radical to insist that governments are instituted to secure and protect those rights.
And it’s radical to insist that our government should be agovernment “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
Such philosophical radicalism is our heritage, but it cannot
be guaranteed. Once a democracy is established, it cannot betaken for granted. Just as a relationship must be tended to, and56

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our bodies must be tended to, and our careers must be tended
to in order to thrive, so our democracy must be tended to. Its
survival isn’t guaranteed. At what point in a flight, once a plane
is in the air, can the pilots then afford to ignore the panels in
the cockpit? Every citizen is a pilot of our democracy, and if we
do not think of ourselves that way, and act that way, then theplane of our democracy goes down.
Devotion to the ideal of democracy is a living force; it needs
to be kept alive in our hearts and fostered by our political engagement. Democracy does not drive itself.
As Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison in 1787: “Ihold it that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, andas necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.”We rebelled against the tyrannies of slavery, female oppression,and segregation. We rebelled against monopolies and purveyors of child labor. We rebelled against union busters and dangerous work environments. We don’t need to summon up somenew revolutionary spirit now so much as claim the one that has
always been part of us.
Americans remain a rebellious people, but too often ourrebellion is misplaced. We expend our spirit of rebellion on relatively minor matters, like a cable company denying us the premium package, rather than on confronting the unholy allianceof government and corporate tyranny. This has got to change,
or we will lose something very precious.
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Neither the exceptionalism of our principles nor liberty
itself can be automatically bequeathed from parents to children. They must be won and rewon with every generation. No
amount of money, political strategizing, or algorithms can substitute for the emotional power expressed by enough people
who really care. And that is what the new revolution of consciousness signifies: millions of Americans are now realizing—­
many for the first time—­that when it comes to what happens toour democracy, we really do care.
There has been a stirring of democratic fervor in the UnitedStates over the past few years, making it clear that we do: theTea Party, the Women’s Marches, activism led by students after
the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, uproar over the separation of families at our southern border, and the resistancemovement” since the 2016 election. We indeed are heirs to revolutionary forefathers, and at last we are beginning to act thatway. Now, at arguably the eleventh hour, a generation that had
been on the verge of amusing itself to death has awakened to
the fact that there is nothing amusing at all about the death ofour democracy.

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spiritual awakening is necessary to redeem our country,
but a spiritual awakening takes courage. And a spiritual
awakening takes love.

Some Americans have a hard time loving this country to-

day because they’re ambivalent about things that occurred in
the past—­and even some things occurring in the present that
we haven’t taken responsibility for. Without a willingness as anation to become more self-­aware, we will not be spirituallyawakened. And we will not be able to summon up the emotional and psychological strength to take us to a better place.
It’s important that we recognize America’s historical errors,
not as a reason for national self-­hatred, but as a foundation forcorrecting them. It’s true that this country has committed atrocities, from slavery to the genocide of Native Americans to theoppression of women to institutionalized white supremacy to violently enforced segregation to the cruelty of separating parents
from their children at our Southern border. But we have also
seen the rise—­and the success—­of the abolitionist movement,
the women’s suffrage movement, the civil rights movement, themarriage equality movement, and so forth. We should identify
our problems, but identify with the problem-­solvers. We have always embodied a characterological struggle between the most
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A POLITICS OF LOVEillumined principles and the basest human instincts; that is nothing new. But our historical narrative has been one of ultimately
improving things. And cynicism is just an excuse for not helping.
We’re both a brilliant country and a country that has madesome terrible mistakes. But our pattern has been one in which
enough Americans rise up in their time, with power and love forthe possibilities they know in their hearts are real, to right thosewrongs. The problem-­solvers of our past didn’t act like victims—­
they proclaimed victory and saw it through. And so can we. They
didn’t just sit around and make cynical comments, or complain
about their exhaustion, or simply yell at those who disagreed
with them. Transformational love requires personal maturity. It isconvicted and fierce, and so should be our politics. We’re not thefirst generation to be compelled to push back against antidemocratic forces. Let’s just make sure we’re not the first one to fail.
But we will fail if we keep having the same conversation
we’ve been having for the last forty years—­and doing the samethings we’ve been doing for forty years—­but pretend things
will turn out differently. We must move into a higher level ofawareness in order to interrupt the patterns of crisis, for thelaws of consciousness are set and unalterable. Merely tinkeringwith the external effects of our problems will not be enoughto solve them. Fear destroys and love creates. An amoral economic system cannot not produce chaos, and love cannot not
produce miracles.
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A Revolution of Love

The choice is between chaos and miracles. And the choice
is ours.
Again the words of Jefferson:
I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws andconstitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand inhand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes
more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are
made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions
change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must
advance also to keep pace with the times.We might as wellrequire a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a
boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of
their barbarous ancestors.*
Now, in the twenty-­first century, we must once again keep
pace with the times. We need to align ourselves politically with“the progress of the human mind” that marks the realizations of
the times in which we live. With a more whole-­person approachto everything from health to relationships, we have become moredeveloped and we have become more enlightened. The biggest
problem we have collectively is that our politics lag behind.

* The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, edited by J. Jefferson Looney, Retirement Series(Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 2004), 9:151.

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A POLITICS OF LOVEOur political establishment, too often at the behest of its
corporate overlords, cannot but deliver the spawn of its malfeasance. Yet we continue to expect that those who knew how
to do things before are somehow the ones who know how to
do things now—even when things that they did before were
spectacular failures.
Someone who led you into a ditch isn’t usually the one who
knows how to lead you out of it. So why do we keep looking
backwards? “Seasoned politicians” led us into wars in Vietnam
and Iraq; “seasoned politicians” created the biggest wealth inequality since 1929; “seasoned politicians” brought us to thebrink of environmental catastrophe. Clearly, we need a newkind of seasoning.
Our politics, and our political establishment, remain in
the coat that Jefferson referred to as fitting him “when a boy.”
They continue to act as though money, not love, is the factor
that will save us; as though economics, not humanitarian values, is the principle that should guide us; and as though shortterm corporate profits, not the people of the United States,
should be the primary beneficiary of their largess.
Such thinking is not the light that guides us; it is the darkness that blinds us.
In fact, in order to survive and thrive in the twenty-­first
century, we must make our love for one another the central
factor in all political decision-making. In the words of Martin
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A Revolution of Love

Luther King Jr., “We must all learn to live together as brothers
or we will all perish together as fools. . . . We are tied together inthe single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable networkof mutuality.” We heard those words in the twentieth century,
but we need to hear them now in a whole new way. We canno longer afford to think of them as mere metaphor. They are
directives that speak to the realities of our time. We need to recognize what they mean—­not deny what they mean and simply
hope that things work out.
We need to recognize that climate change poses an existential threat to our survival.
We need to recognize that the physical resources of theplanet are not unlimited, and that in abusing them we are endangering ourselves and our children’s children.
We need to recognize that the endless application of brute
force will not bring peace to the world, and that only the soulforce of justice, meaningful human relationships, forgiveness,and compassion can end the scourge of violence on our streets
and throughout the world.
We need to recognize that to fail our children is to destroy
our future.
A politics that fails to honor the knowing of the heart isa politics that fails the quintessential task of paving the way
to a survivable future. Love, not money, should be our new
bottom line.
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The Power Within Us

Today we are not in the middle of a covert corporate takeover of our democracy; we’re in the middle of an overt
corporate takeover of our democracy. An establishmentthat thinks traditional political strategizing alone can override
this threat is not as sophisticated as it thinks it is. In fact, it isnaive.
The forces of unbridled corporate power are hugely
funded, politically savvy, and active on local, state, and federal levels. They don’t care if we defeat their candidates in aparticular election, because behind that candidate they haveseveral more. They’ve shown they’re not above suppressing
votes, hacking machines (or conspiring with those who do),or spreading lies to the American people. Only a massive
wave of conscious citizenship, alert to what is happening at
every level of our government, can override their nefarious
influence.
The conscious citizen is working on more cylinders than
the traditional political activist. Not just the power of the intellect, but also the powers of imagination and love, are necessary
to overcome the influence of the new aristocracy.
With our imagination, we give birth to new realities. We canenvision the world we want and then work back from there. We
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A Revolution of Lovecan imagine a world at peace, a planet healed, and all sentient
beings happy. We can visualize those things and commit ourselves to their manifestation.
When we do, we are confronted by the gap between what
we are imagining and what we are currently creating. Is America’s foreign policy a prescription for world peace? Are our environmental policies a prescription for a healed planet? Are our
education and economic policies a prescription for economic
growth for any but a few? No wonder so many people on thespiritual path avoid politics altogether. It’s hard to meditatein the morning, then read the newspaper and see how billion-­dollar American arms sales and technical support to Saudi
Arabia are contributing to the starvation of tens of thousandsin Yemen. It’s even harder to see when our own leaders confound all efforts to stop the evil. It’s hard to watch a beautiful
sunset on a gorgeous beach and consider that millions of children in some other part of the country go to school each day
in schools that don’t even have needed supplies. The cognitive
dissonance is painful.
Yet being with that dissonance is important; it is our soulwork. The purpose of our lives is to close the gap between what
could be and what too often is. Goodness must be willed; itdoesn’t necessarily happen of itself. It’s not enough to not intend to do harm; our moral responsibility is to intend to do
good. And then do it.
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A POLITICS OF LOVE

That is why it’s our responsibility to protest when our nation, with our tax dollars and in our name, does wrong. If
we’re morally responsible for monitoring our own souls, thenwe’re morally responsible, as well, for monitoring the soul of
our nation.
It’s not as though the majority of our citizens don’t want apeaceful world; of course we do. The problem is that our political and economic systems are not currently placed at theservice of that vision. If one’s main goal is the attainment of
power or the creation of short-term profit, then what is truly
peace-­creating, loving, behavior is often dropped by the wayside or given short shrift.
The things that in fact do the most to improve our democracy and create peace among us are not the things thatmake immediate money for our economic overlords. Do wetruly want world peace? Then expanding economic opportunities for women and educational opportunities for children, notjust profits for military manufacturers, should be at the core of
our national security agenda. Do we really want a healthy environment? Then we must stop using the Environmental Protection Agency to shore up profits for fossil fuel companies at theexpense of their effect on climate change. Do we really want along-­term healthy economy? Then we should massively realignour investments in the direction of support for health, education, and culture among America’s children.
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A Revolution of Love

Old systems do not die willingly, particularly when they
control gargantuan amounts of wealth and power. From thedismantling of environmental protections to economic policies
that increase the gaps between rich and poor to the destructionof indigenous wisdom and peoples in the name of economic“progress” to the often unthinking extension of our militaryprowess, we have been moving away from, not toward, the realization of humanity’s highest hopes for life on earth.
Yet we would do well to remember the laws of evolution.
Any species behaving in maladaptive ways will either evolve or
become extinct. A world in which we habitually and powerfully
attack not only each other but even our own habitat, is a world
the laws of evolution will not support.
Our species will either evolve to a more heart-­centered consciousness, choosing a greater reverence for planet and people,
or we will go extinct due to collective behavior that is maladaptive for our survival. No change in government will fundamentally save us unless we are willing to evolve as a species
from one with prodigious intellect and technological power but
disconnected from its heart to one that puts reverence and devotion and love before all else. As with any other species, ouropportunity for survival lies in the presence of an evolutionary
alternative, or mutation. For the human species, that mutation
is a mutation of consciousness. It is represented by the great
spiritual masters who have lived among us, teaching the mes67

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A POLITICS OF LOVEsage of compassion and love. Only a spiritual leap forward willsave us from the evils of the world.
The weight of history is on our shoulders now. This year—­not next year or the year after that—­we are called upon to put
aside unimportant things and get to the work of correcting our
evolutionary course.

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