I recently wrote on the Green Metaphor as it serves as an identity for a reinvented Democratic party under Obama on my Blog, "The Color of Politics" and thought I would share it:

"Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altru-ism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness."

Martin Luther King, Jr.

In previous, entries to this blog, I have sketched out the Green Metaphor of the Democrats under Obama. A president who can weed the causes of poverty and seed community jobs. A garden which takes exercise, nutrition, and healthcare seriously. Including lessons in responsibility for the kids in cutting the grass and walking the dog. Also, I might add a garden which has the color of diversity in its fruit, vegetables, and flowers-- similar to the diversity of socio-cultural and emotional perspectives in society that aid in Democratic Decision-Making.

A Green Metaphor for Democrats also looks further afield from the trees and gardens close to home, to the importance of Forest Management in the greater society, in promoting competence, justice, and inclusion.

Van Jones in his book The Green Collar Economy calls for “All Hands on Deck” to right our ship of state from cook to captain in order to face the inter-related crises of economic decline and global warming. In this it is important to remember Emerson's central insight in his essay History where he points out, that “the creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.” In contrast, ideological monomania is like valuing the acorn over the thousands of forests that developed out of the acorn -- this is living life through an ideological rear view mirror.

Rather than a living forest governed by prudent forest management this reactionary view is one of a petrified forest-- one based on fear and a desire to return to the womb of a national security state. The process of forest management, is that it views a living forest as an evolving stage for the development of human capacity, rather than “this stage of fools.” It is the managing and cultivation of the forest for a balanced and abundant flourishing of the talents of all in the country that makes the difference in whether a country is "a garden spot" or a petrified forest.

Managing populist fire storms, for example, over AIG bonuses, through controlled burning to channel that citizen anger against future abuses-- from this perspective is merely prudent forest management. In contrast to the dark destructiveness, as with Bush's tendency toward monomania, the light of altruism that we seek is in the non-conformity of each individual citizen as an expression, in Emerson's conception, of the "sculpture in the memory."

If there is common ground between the religious and the agnostic, it is Emerson's observation in Self-Reliance: “We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace.” Given our current economic and ecological challenges-- we can ill afford as a society to be cowards anymore. It is time to tap into the “light of creative altruism” that Martin Luther King, Jr. exhorted us to.

http://jeff-for-progress.blogspot.com/

Harpo, All it takes is a word meant in a different context to set off your bigotry. What's your hang up?