History has thrust upon our generation an indescribably important task–to complete the process of democratization which our nation has too long developed too slowly, but which is our most powerful weapon for world respect and emulation.  How we deal with is crucial situation will determine our moral health as individuals, our cultural health as a region, our political health as a nation and our prestige as a leader of the free world.   Martin Luther King, Nashville Tennesee 12/27/1962 in a speech before a church conference. 

This writer feels profound grief just to read the truth of these words spoken in the context of civil rights and integration in 1962. These words describe the aspirations of our nation’s history and the painful loses occurring in this time in the United States. MLK was a prophet as well as a nonviolent warrior. His words describe universal time and circumstance in the community of citizens.  

When the current presumed model of a great American public servant is obsessed with naming everything after himself and largely basing his decisions for the nation on his own individual needs and greeds we sadly see the ultimate form of being unAmerican and hyper individualistic. In a recent conversation that touched on hyper-individualism and the importance of individual rights linked to due process, I was reminded how difficult democracy was and how easy it is for authoritarians to abandon this ongoing mission called the United States as too much work.  This Good Decision Project tries to take this challenge of individual conscience and public rights to its roots.  Any good decision must begin at the individual level, but then must be filtered through that person’s conscience prior to the processing through the additional social/community filters. A good decision must take into account the good of community and nation. The idea that we are connected to each other and one another’s behaviors is not a theory of the presumed “woke”.  We as a species and a people survive out of bonding and cooperation.  The value of connection is not a discussion but a simple unavoidable fact as old as human kind. Hyper-individualism is a disease; a disease that right now riddles the failing fabric of our culture and we, the nation, must respond at the most basic levels of our behaviors.

A Modest Proposal for Good

Honor is conferred and not bought or kidnapped.  MLK was and is honored for greatness simply because he was great. The least great thing we can do is call ourselves great when we are not.  A democracy works through a governance that requires at once the communal compliance of the individual to public law and also the rights and rules protecting the individual inspiration to participate in the creation and crafting of that public law.  The atomization of the American culture is sinking this nation. Our absolutely essential connections necessary for communal connections are at grave risk.  Lets fix that with good decisions.  That would be a good start.  And that is what The Good Decision Project is all about.