In a few days, President Obama will deliver his State of the Union Address. Right now, Martin Luther King Day is upon us. Both events suggest that it is a particularly appropriate moment for every American to stop and think about our society.

As a nation, have we made progress in realizing the vision articulated by Dr. King? Are we closer or further from living the virtues he described? In 1980, Ronald Reagan famously asked “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” What percentage of Americans would answer that question affirmatively right now?

America today is characterized by excess, anger, mistrust, polarization, increasing pessimism, self-interest, and a lack of accountability. Of even greater concern, we are becoming a nation that is accepting the unacceptable.

In October 2008 when unemployment hovered between 6% and 7%, Barack Obama declared that we were in the middle of “an economic emergency:”

We face an immediate economic emergency that requires urgent action. We can’t wait to help workers and families and communities who are struggling right now – who don’t know if their job or their retirement will be there tomorrow; who don’t know if next week’s paycheck will cover this month’s bills.

With an unemployment rate now in double digits and at least 50% higher than the level in October 2008, President Obama says “there is only so much government can do.” Meanwhile, millions of people are suffering in a crisis of our own making. A crisis that is the result of what Paul Krugman recently called “the dysfunctional nature of our own financial system.” Yes, the President has proposed additional spending to create jobs, but few authorities expect that it will have a significant impact on our actual level of employment. But, few believe this program will have a meaningful impact. Robert Reich writes, “the chances of unemployment being 10 percent next November are overwhelmingly high.”

At the same time, the Administration’s housing program is a complete failure, and the nation faces massive foreclosures. As joblessness continues, one in eight mortgages is in default or foreclosure, and half of all mortgages may be underwater within a year. There do not appear to be any serious proposals to keep people in their homes as owners, so an even greater housing crisis may occur later this year or in 2011. It’s the elephant in the room that no one wants to discuss.

In the era of the New Deal, American ingenuity led to a series of job creation programs, social security, the FDIC (which eliminated the scourge of bank-runs), ultimately the GI Bill (perhaps the greatest investment in human capital the nation has ever made). The Roosevelt Administration was also committed to keeping people in their homes as owners, and the precursor to the modern-day 30 year mortgage was one of the central innovations of the era.

How does our response to the Great Recession compare to the age of FDR? To date, the most innovative response to the financial crisis, and the ensuing national misery, has been….TARP?

I refuse to believe that our current situation is the best that America can accomplish. I refuse to believe that we have truly harnessed the legendary ingenuity and resourcefulness of the American nation. I also believe there is a way to move forward and dramatically revitalize our suffering nation.

The president must recognize that more of the same is not good enough. He must stop accepting the idea that our nation is limited in what it can accomplish. He must also realize that difficult moments require strong leadership, not moderation or a search for consensus. Great leaders articulate an unwavering vision that causes people to believe they can accomplish more than they thought possible, and creates a sense that each of us has a responsibility that transcends our own well-being.

What if President Obama were to step up to the podium at his State of the Union message and challenge the nation to achieve 3% unemployment within 2 years? What if he committed the future of his Presidency to realizing this goal? What if he said that America is only America when we have jobs for people that want to work and opportunities for the generation of young Americans that is now threatened with a paucity of prospects? He could create a new sense of possibilities, and awaken a hunger inside almost everyone to ensure we remain a great nation.

Today, it’s easy to oppose any job creation efforts. There is no clear goal, and no stated vision. We are increasingly accepting a two-tier society: those with jobs and those who are forgotten. There is also no clear sense that creating private sector jobs is an act of patriotism. The president has the opportunity to shift these dynamics. By articulating a vision of a better nation, he can stimulate action and bring out the best in our society.

FDR brought hope to a miserable country when he promised, and delivered, “action and action now.” Roosevelt had no clear plan of how he would accomplish his agenda; but he was determined to relentlessly experiment until he succeeded.

Winston Churchill rejuvenated the British nation when he declared, “We shall never surrender,” despite what seemed like impossible odds. It’s worth noting the absolute resolve and determination in Chruchill’s words, which propelled the British people forward:

…we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender…

In a later era, John Kennedy did not know how America would land a man on the moon and return him safely “Before this decade is out” when he challenged the nation to accomplish this seemingly impossible task. But, in his speech before Congress, Kennedy did say:

I believe we possess all the resources and talents necessary. But the facts of the matter are that we have never made the national decisions or marshaled the national resources required for such leadership. We have never specified long-range goals on an urgent time schedule, or managed our resources and our time so as to insure their fulfillment.

We often forget that at the time of Kennedy’s speech, America was a nation shaken badly by Soviet advances in space. JFK responded with strength and determination to restore confidence. By stating a clear goal, President Kennedy created action and momentum.

Moreover, I believe that Kennedy’s description of our innate resources and talent applies, as well, to the nation today. We need Barak Obama to offer this same commitment to America, and to support his words with swift actions and righteous anger.

A few weeks ago I was a guest on WNYC’s Leonard Lopate show. At the end of the interview, I was asked why no political movement had grown up around reinventing our nation – if I believed it was so critical. I paused, leaned back in my chair, and said it had: America voted for change we can all believe in.

In October 2008, candidate Obama said:

This country and the dream it represents are being tested in a way that we haven’t seen in nearly a century. And future generations will judge ours by how we respond to this test. Will they say that this was a time when America lost its way and its purpose? …

Or will they say that this was another one of those moments when America overcame? When we battled back from adversity by recognizing that common stake that we have in each other’s success?

I have not forgotten these powerful words or what our nation sought on election day in 2008. After one year in office, I hope that President Obama remembers as well.

In It Could Happen Here, I explore how extreme  (and growing) economic inequality in the United States  can ultimately lead to political instability. We are currently at the highest levels of economic inequality in the recorded history of the Republic (with the top 10% of families receiving about 50% of all income).   As economic inequality increases, the levels of anger, mistrust, and political polarization within nations grow.  At some point extreme economic inequality can lead to political paralysis and even political instability.

It Could Happen Here includes a section titled, Lessons from the Soviet Collapse, which is an analysis of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This analysis was developed for two reasons: To show that, in the modern era, (1) super-powers can collapse suddenly and seemingly without warning and (2) super-powers can als0 collapse without violence.  It’s hard to imagine that the governing system of a nation can disappear quickly and without  substantial violence, but that is exactly what happened in the Soviet Union.

The final sentence in the section  analyzing the collapse of the Soviet Union as a governing entity reads:

The United States is not the Soviet Union. Our economy is not as terrible. Our government is not as despised. But nobody thought the U.S.S.R. could collapse. Could everyone be wrong again?

The Ominous S Word article associates this quote with the possibility of secession by blue and red states in our nation who then form separate nations.  The article gives the impression that my work supports the idea of this possibility: It does not.

In fact, my analysis does not address whether nations can collapse because of differences in values or political ideas. I am inclined to believe that they cannot. But, what is most important it that I have not studied this question, and the quote from my book should not be associated with this idea.

I regret the need to make this correction, and I do want to note that I am a strong advocate of discussion of ideas of all sorts–whether I agree or disagree with the views expressed.  At the same time, I hope my own views will be reported accurately, and my words will not be used out of context to imply a meaning that was not intended.

On Tuesday, Feb 24 I appeared on the Thom Hartmann show, which is both syndicated nationally as a radio show and streams as video on the Web. It Could Happen Here is Hartmann’s “Independent Thinker of the Month” book. In our ninge minute discussion, Thom demonstrated a tremendous grasp of the implications of the issues discussed in the book. If your time is limited, the final two minutes of the video are, from my perspective, the most interesting:

Here’s the video of our discussion:

I was honored to learn that Thom Hartmann, the thoughtful progressive author, columnist and syndicated radio and Web television host selected It Could Happen Here as his “Independent thinker of the Month” book review. An excerpt from his extensive review follows:

The United States “is not immune from history,” Judson says, and lays out the factors that he believes could well lead us to a collapse/revolution that would permanently alter the landscape of this nation. The most important of these factors, he suggests, is that revolutions are likely to happen not when people experience the most privation (which is what conventional wisdom suggests) but, instead, when people’s expectations for the quality of their lives are dashed quickly, unfairly, and without recourse.

The American Dream is, for most Americans, no longer viable, as Judson documents in frightening detail in this book. It’s been replaced by underwater home values, massive credit card debt, the most rigid economic/social order in the industrialized world (for the first time in two centuries, in America today the most reliable predictor of a child’s economic future is his parents’ economic status), and a growing certainty that the political game has been rigged by big wealthy interests at the expense of average working people.

From my perspective, this reflects a growing public interest in the ideas discussed in the book, and how they are applicable to what is happening in our nation today.

From the WNYC home page on January 4, 2010:

Over the next week, I will distill, in writing, some of the meaningful discussion that took place. You can click the picture to hear the interview:

It’s fascinating to see the different receptions the ideas in the book receive from interviews with different beliefs about how our society could, and should function. No surprise. But, fascinating nonetheles. You can click the picture to hear a podcast of the interview:

The Huffington Post featured this “New Agenda For America” on its front page and posted a giant graphic on the front page of the Business Section.

I was honored to be included in this list of distinguished Progressive thinkers, and a copy of my article, which originally appeared on the New Deal 2.0 Web site, appears below:

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Today, we have the highest level of income inequality in our nation’s recorded history. We must address the structural flaws in our economy that created, and continue to widen, this divide. History teaches that extreme inequality leads to political instability. We cannot assume that we are immune.

In President Obama’s words, the middle class is experiencing “the American Dream in reverse.” Rising long-term joblessness and the possibility of 13 million foreclosures (more than one in every four American mortgages) create the potential for the former middle class to move from frustration to anger — an anger sparked by reduced circumstances and the belief that they have been treated unfairly.

With each job loss or foreclosure, another family — now on a down-ward spiral — potentially loses its faith in our basic economic system and our basic system of governance. America’s ongoing vitality requires that people trust that these systems work, and that our democracy is self-correcting. With rising income inequality, this trust is now at risk.

America has never been a nation of haves and have nots. If the gulf widens, it’s hard to imagine that our future will be marked either by a healthy economy or a healthy democracy.

The only other time in our nation’s recorded history that income inequality approached current levels was 1928, just before the Great Crash. The New Deal eliminated the excesses of an unsustainable system. It was not easy then, and it will not be easy now. But, it is essential.

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The transcript below raises an increasingly important issue: All of the discussion of economic inequality essentially presumes that people continue to view the existing economic system as legitimate. As foreclosures rise, jobs disappear, and the divide between the have’s and have not’s increases, our ability to take this for granted becomes far less certain.

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Last week, It Could Happen Here was the subject of a 45-minute segment of Tom Asbrook’s OnPoint, which airs nationally on NPR. To demonstrate, how inequality can divide a nation, It Could Happen Here, which is a nonfiction book, opens with a fictional scenario involving American terrorists who threaten the nation with dirty bombs demanding an end to foreclosures by “vulture banks,” and free access to healthcare and higher education for all. Tom Ashbrook asked hard questions about this scenario. I said to him think of a laid off engineer who works with radioactivity to create medical devices…

Here’s the transcript of the discussion:

BRUCE JUDSON: First off, here’s a flash point for you. In the scenario, in the fictional scenario, I talk about…It is very easy to imagine that an engineer, or someone else with the necessary knowledge who works on, let’s say, medical devices and has used radioactivity to create a better world…. to save lives, is laid off. You can imagine that he suddenly is facing foreclosure. He’s an educated person unable to put his kids through college.

A few minutes later the show took calls. The show received a chilling call from an out of work nuclear engineer–who had helped to build 13 nuclear power plants but had not worked in two years. You can read the transcript of his call below, or click to listen to his call here.

Click player below to listen to out of work Nuclear Engineer:

TOM ASHBROOK: Certainly inequality’s a big issue. Let me get a call right here from New London, Connecticut. And

Don. Hi, Don. You’re on the air.

CALLER: Hi.

TOM ASHBROOK: Hi.

CALLER: I think you should be listening to this guy, Judson. I’m an unemployed nuclear engineer. I’ve worked on 13 nuclear power plants. Making a dirty bomb is not a big deal. I’m not going to go out and tell everybody now to do it, but I’m just saying things like that can happen. And it sounds like you’re just being dismissive of all his ideas and what he’s saying. Because there’s a lot of anger out here, and there are a lot of people who feel that the American Dream is slipping away from them, they don’t have a chance. And the only entrepreneurial opportunity for them is to sell drugs and to be an outlaw. It’s happening.

TOM ASHBROOK: [OVERLAPPING] I hear you, [PH] Don. We’ve got Bruce on for an hour. So, I can’t say we’re not listening to him. But let me ask you, you’ve got a lot of expertise in your field, nuclear engineering. But does that mean you’re unhappy if you’re unemployed? Do you really feel like the country’s ready to revolt?

CALLER: I’m not an expert in revolution, and I don’t really know how they happen. All I know is I’m 60 years old. There’s not a lot of people who want to hire a nuclear engineer who’s 60 years old. And there are a lot of people out there like me who are out there who, you know, once you have so much gray hair, you’re out of here. And there’s just a lot of people that are just not happy with the way that the country’s going right now.
And I don’t know…where it’s going to take it, or what’s going to be its spark, or what’s going to be the event. But people feel like there’s just no way to climb out of the hole. Like there’s just nothing that’s going to get them out. This attitude, that I’ve seen, over 60 years, I’ve never seen anything like it. It scares me.

TOM ASHBROOK: Up against it. And with an education, a particular education. Don, thank you for your call.

You can listen to the full OnPoint segment by clicking the player below:

In It Could Happen Here the terrorists, the American for Economic Equality, communicate with the nation, and educate America about economic inequality through a Website, located at www.A-E-E.org. This fictional Web site actually exists, as described in the book. Through the lens of the fictional terrorist group, it links to serious articles and videos on issues associated with economic inequality.  It also provides the back-story for the formation of the terrorist group (which does not appear in the book). An engineer who creates medical devices using nuclear materials is laid-off, unable to find work, faces foreclosure, can’t afford to send his children to college, and snaps.  While the URL for the site is on the book, the site was not publicly available at the time of the OnPoint interview.

In today’s New York Times column Safety Nets for the Rich, Bob Herbert, details our emerging have and have not society, where two-thirds of  the entire income gains of the nation between 2002 and 2007 went to the top 1% of Americans. Herbert writes:

And we still don’t seem to have learned the proper lessons. We’ve allowed so many people to fall into the terrible abyss of unemployment that no one — not the Obama administration, not the labor unions and most certainly no one in the Republican Party — has a clue about how to put them back to work.

Meanwhile, Wall Street is living it up. I’m amazed at how passive the population has remained in the face of this sustained outrage.

Unfortunately if we do not change course, Herbert’s amazement may end in circumstances that we do not want to contemplate.  We are witnessing the unfolding of a chain of dangerous events associated with our collapsing middle class and increasingly two-tier economy. Sadly, the dynamics outlined in It Could Happen Here that lead to political instability are occurring  with increasing ferocity. More on this in my next post..