Pax Americana

Originally published in Cebu Gold Star Daily, Vol. 1, No. 107, p. 6 (January 26, 2009, Monday)


Last night, I reviewed the Obama-Biden inauguration and I could not help but feel genuinely moved by the whole event. Never in modern history has there been this much emotional investment and support for a politician. 


A peerless speechwriter and a serious student of history, law and world events, Barack Obama was an easy choice for America and a welcome breath of fresh air for the world. I was never one to care much about politics, but this special person just draws you in by his words and his stories. He carries that optimism and idealism many of us tend to abandon, as we grow older. His attitude is very much like that of a child’s, believing that determined people can make real and lasting changes in the world. In a jaded world starved for hope, Barack has come to take his place in history at the most opportune time.


Indeed, words can be cheap. Even pretty ones. President Obama has the monumental task of backing up his entire body of promises and dreams with the difficult decisions he will have to make in the next four years. Nevertheless, words are cheap only if they come from nowhere. In Obama’s case, his life story is as penetrating and impressive as his words. He studied well, traveled well and lived well. 


Barack comes from a very odd mix of circumstances. His father was from Kenya, his mother, a white American from Kansas and his stepfather was Indonesian. This taught him early in life about discrimination and how it was like to be ‘a little bit of everything’. As a consequence of these circumstances, he traveled much and experienced much at a very young age. At different points in his life, he lived in Indonesia, Hawaii and the U.S. mainland. Later in life, he would travel extensively to Asia, Europe and Africa, broadening his understanding of the world. 


He has solid experience with organizing small communities through NGO’s and church groups. In law school, he became the very first black president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review. He worked as a civil rights lawyer in a Chicago firm and later taught Constitutional Law in the University of Chicago. From these facts alone, we can see that his personal philosophy and his life are profoundly embedded with the ideals of freedom, peace and equality. Even his later work as a state senator, and later a U.S. senator, consistently displays his commitment to these same ideals.


Looking further back, strange comfort can be found in the fact that Barack isn’t perfect and that he is honest enough to confront his failures publicly. In his book Dreams from My Father, he admitted using drugs and alcohol as escapes from his troubled teenage years, and deeply regrets this as greatest failure. Such honesty is practically unheard of in the political arena, especially during a campaign period. Such admission of weakness and regret are very clear indicators of the kind of strength we all look for in a leader – and with this, we have now have the flawed hero we can sympathize for and look up to.


So why all the fanfare and excitement about a foreign president? Because the United States is in the very best position to take the reins once more and lead the world into a better place. Humanity is inevitably affected by the decisions of the top dogs of the U.S. They have been part of practically every war in the past century and it follows that, if backed up with the proper political will, they have the capacity for genuine peace-building. Many of the jobs and opportunities all over the world emanate from or are coordinated by American business leaders. Their decisions and their leadership will always have a major impact on our islands. Their peace is our peace. Their environmental policy is our policy. Their freedom is our freedom. What they do, what they decide to do and what they accomplish are very much our business too. 


From his own life, President Obama has learned that the United States cannot function in isolation. That there are more levels of consequences for his actions than just America. It would be wise to take a page from his book and realize that we are truly becoming one world – and with this, we share one hope: the fulfillment of what he declared as “the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.”


I might sound like a naive optimist and romantic idealist, but as the late Mr. Lennon would say, “I’m not the only one.” Godspeed to the new generation of leaders. May they be instrumental in transforming our collective dreams into reality. The time has come for Pax Americana.

Enter 2009

Originally published in Cebu Gold Star Daily, Vol. 1, No. 99, p. 6 (January 16, 2009, Friday)


I begin my duties here at Gold Star by explaining what my column is all about. The French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre once taught, “We have no choice but to be free”. It might sound like an oxymoron at first look, but it actually makes good sense. Freedom is not a choice but condition that is placed upon us as rational beings. We are not free to choose or reject our freedom. It is this freedom that capacitates us to navigate through the vast ocean of goods, evils and debatable gray areas in life. To the human person, freedom appears to be like a purely desirable gift, but it is also a tremendous responsibility that we need to guard against our own weaknesses. Free choices range from miniscule events like choosing which coffee beans to grab from the grocery store to colossal steps like whether or not to send young soldiers to fight in a foreign land.


In this short life, we spend most of our time trying to acquire wealth and power. In the right hands, these can be genuine instruments of freedom. Wealth can be used to create industries that provide quality goods and services to the people. This, in turn, creates jobs and livelihood for people who would otherwise have nothing. Power can be used to effect proper change and influence the movers in society to follow a desired path. It can be used to fight for a cleaner environment, better living conditions, greater productivity and a great many goods that can be brought about by a single nudge of power.


On the duller side, power and wealth can be used for purely selfish reasons -- reasons that ignore the human condition and rot the soul. This spiritual cancer is one we see too often in today’s world. Relationships become equated with material gifts and quality of life is mistaken for one’s bank statement. I don’t pretend to imply that enjoying the fine things in life is an evil. I enjoy a good cup of gourmet coffee as much as the next guy. But our patterns of behavior and consumption must be a means to better living rather than an end to itself. We ought to strive for quality over quantity – satisfaction over accumulation.


In a place and time where wealth and opportunities are scarce, we always need to come to terms on a daily basis with the choice of either fending for ourselves or to aiding those in dire situations. We are faced with the challenge of overcoming our baser instincts of survival to live in a higher plane of existence as rational and compassionate human beings. This is the cost of our freedom -- responsibility over our own circles of influence, never cowering from these difficult but necessary decisions. We are free and we have no choice but to be free -- no other choice but to face the chain of consequences that our actions bear. We can choose to add to the suffering or to supply reprieve. 


This is our challenge. And it is only right that we grab a chance to review our lives and what we’ve done with our gifts, our wealth and our power. When we use them the way they ought to be used, we create meaning. We transform work into love and power into inspiration. We become people worth imitating – people that others can be proud of.


So this brand new year can be our opportunity to look into the recent past and see how many lives we’ve improved including our own. Did we act as animals or as human being free from our own destructive tendencies? Every day is a chance to be better than who you were yesterday. And that is all we really need to do to be truly free.


Cheers to a wonderful 2009.