I'll need to read further, but Michael Lerner claims that we are not a
democratic Republic. Rather, we are a Meritocracy.
Here's a bit on Michael Lerner from Wikipedia:
While at Berkeley, Lerner became a leader in the Berkeley student
movement and the
Free Speech Movement,
[5]
chair of the Free Student Union,
[6]
and chair from 1966 to 1968 of the Berkeley chapter of the
Students for a Democratic Society
(SDS).
[7]
After teaching
philosophy of law
at
San Francisco State University,
[8]
[9]
he took a job as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the
University of Washington
and taught
ethics,
social
and
political philosophy,
philosophy of literature and culture, and introduction to philosophy.
Distressed over the disintegration of SDS in 1969, Lerner sought to
re-organize New Left cadres formerly associated with SDS in a new
organization called
the
Seattle Liberation Front
(SLF) on January 19, 1970.
[10]
While SLF did not publicly endorse violence as a political tactic,
SLF members including
Roger Lippman,
Michael Justesen,
and
Susan Stern
were also members of the
Weather Underground,
which had bombing attacks as a central part of its political strategy.
After the "Day After" demonstration SLF had called on February 17,
1970 (to protest
the verdicts in the
Chicago Seven
trial) turned violent, Lerner and others were arrested and charged with
inciting a riot.
Lerner and his co-defendants became known as the "Seattle Seven".
During their trial,
FBI Director
J. Edgar Hoover
issued a public statement (repeated on radio and television) that
described Lerner as "one of the most dangerous criminals in America",
even though he
had never engaged in any act of violence. Federal agents testifying at
the trial later admitted to having played a major role instigating the
violence
and ensuing riot.
[11]
The trial culminated in a courtroom brawl (during which Lerner was the
only defendant to remain seated), and the presiding judge sent the
defendants to
jail on
contempt of court
charges.
[12]
[13]
Lerner was transported to
Terminal Island Federal Penitentiary
in
San Pedro, California,
where he served several months before the
9th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals
overturned his conviction for contempt of court and ordered him
released. The main charges relating to the riot were subsequently
dropped by the federal
government.
Meanwhile, the
Washington State Legislature
had passed a law, commonly referred to as the "Lerner Act", that
prohibited the University of Washington from hiring anyone "who might
engage in illegal
political activity", and Lerner's contract was not renewed. (The law
was later overturned by the
Washington Supreme Court).
During this period Lerner met several times with boxer
Muhammad Ali,
who was also active in the anti-war movement, at anti-war meetings
organized by Lerner.
[14]
Lerner recounts that Ali was the first practicing
Muslim
he had ever met.
[14]
The two never met or spoke again after this period though in 1995
Lerner received a letter from Ali expressing appreciation for the book
Lerner co-authored
with
Cornel West,
Jews and Blacks: Let the Healing Begin.
[14]
Muhammad Ali included an invitation to Lerner to speak at Ali's
memorial, to represent progressive Jewish faith, which took place in
2016.
[14]
Lerner also learned from Ali's lawyer that Ali had been a "big fan"
of the rabbi's work and that Ali was really sorry that he had not made
more contact
with Lerner over the past two decades. Ali and his wife had intended
to do so many times and just hadn't followed through.
[14]
Professorship and research[
edit
]
After completing his Ph.D. Lerner moved to
Hartford, Connecticut
where he served as professor of philosophy at
Trinity College
until 1975, when he moved back to Berkeley, joined the faculty at the
University of California in the Field Studies program and taught law
and economics
until 1976 when he accepted a position at
Sonoma State University
for one year in
sociology,
teaching courses in
social psychology.
[15]
Meanwhile, he completed a second Ph.D. in 1977, this one in
social/
clinical psychology
at the Wright Institute in
Berkeley.
[16]
In 1976 Lerner founded the Institute for Labor and Mental Health to
work with the labor movement and do research on the
psychodynamics
of American society.
[17]
In 1979 he received a grant from the
National Institute of Mental Health
to train
union shop stewards
as agents of prevention for mental health disorders, and he
simultaneously extended his previous study of the psychodynamics of
American society. With
a subsequent grant from the NIMH he studied American politics and
reported that "a spiritual crisis" was at the heart of the political
transformation of
American society as well as at the heart of much of the psychic pain
that was being treated in individual
therapy.
[18]
His writing reflects a transposition of this analysis to economics
too, viz. "This focus on money and power may do wonders in the
marketplace, but it creates
a tremendous crisis in our society. People who have spent all day
learning how to sell themselves and to manipulate others are in no
position to form lasting
friendships or intimate relationships... Many Americans hunger for a
different kind of society—one based on principles of caring, ethical
and spiritual
sensitivity, and communal solidarity. Their need for meaning is just
as intense as their need for economic security." :
[19]
Tikkun magazine[
edit
]
After serving for five years as dean of the graduate school of psychology at
New College of California
(now defunct) in
San Francisco,
[20]
Lerner and his then-wife Nan Fink created a general-interest
intellectual magazine called
Tikkun: A Bimonthly Jewish Critique of Politics, Culture and Society.
Tikkun was started with the intention of challenging
the Left
for its inability to understand the centrality of religious and
spiritual concerns in the lives of ordinary Americans.
With his associate editor
Peter Gabel,
Lerner developed a "politics of meaning": that Americans hunger not
only for material security but also for a life that is connected to
some higher meaning,
and that the failure of the liberal and progressive movements to win a
consistent majority support was based on their inability to understand
this hunger
and to address it by showing Americans and middle income working
people in other advanced industrial societies that it was the values
of the competitive
marketplace and its Bottom Line of money and power that is the
fundamental source undermining ethical and spiritual values in the
public sphere and then
undermining friendships and marriages when these values are brought
home into personal life.
[21]
This was intended to speak to the hunger for meaning that was
characteristic of the thousands of people that Lerner and his
colleagues were studying at
the Institute for Labor and Mental Health. Tikkun was formed to
educate the public about the findings of the Institute and to develop
some of the implications
of that work. However, because it also had an interest in being an
"alternative to the voices of
Jewish conservatism,"
Tikkun was criticized by some Jewish groups.
In 1993,
First Lady
Hillary Clinton
included the "politics of meaning" in her synthesis of political and
social philosophy she was forming.
[22]
[23]
In 2002, Lerner organized a group called the Tikkun Community among
readers of Tikkun magazine and those who share its editorial vision.
[24]
Rabbinical ordination[
edit
]
Lerner received
rabbinical ordination
in 1995 through a
beth din
(rabbinical court) composed of three rabbis, "each of whom had
received orthodox rabbinic ordination".
[1]
According to j. the Jewish news weekly, "mainstream rabbinical leaders of the
Reform,
Conservative
and
Orthodox
movements" have questioned private ordinations such as Lerner's,
arguing that non-seminary ordinations risk producing poorly educated
or fraudulent Rabbis.
[2]
Similarly, some rabbis have challenged Lerner's decision to not be
trained for the rabbinate in a classical Jewish seminary (although
Lerner did spend
three years as a student at Jewish Theological Seminary). Lerner has
been quoted in Jewish Weekly as saying that the non-seminary track is
one that "every
Chabad rabbi takes, & every ultra-Orthodox rabbi". Lerner pointed out
that none of the rabbis in Jewish history ever attended a "seminary"
until the middle
of the 19th century, and that most rabbis in Israel today did not
attend a seminary. They all got their ordination in the same way
Lerner did, through
a Beth din composed of three rabbis. When Lerner attacked seminaries
for being "more interested in producing organizational men for Jewish
life than spiritual
leaders connected to the deepest spiritual and social-justice minds",
Rabbi Alan Lew said "That is arrogant nonsense ... I spent six years
in extremely
rigorous, round-the-clock study in the classic texts of our tradition.
Authentic Jewish spirituality is in the texts, not in some fancy New
Age ideas or
watered-down kabbalah".
[2]
Lerner's synagogue 'Beyt Tikkun' became an embodiment of what he
described as "neo-Hasidism," passionately pursuing the spiritual
dimension of the prayers
rather than rushing through them. The goal, he insisted, is to connect
to God, not simply mouth every prayer in the prayerbook. His synagogue
grew, according
to members, not only because of Lerner's willingness to take the
social justice message of the prophets seriously, but also because the
actual experience
of being involved in prayer, meditation, singing and dancing in the
synagogue became an ecstatic experience of transcendence for many of
those who attended.
Lerner's 1994 book Jewish Renewal: A Path to Healing and
Transformation published by HarperCollins (and in paperback as a
Harper Perennial), became a national
best-seller and brought thousands of young people into the emerging
Jewish Renewal movement. After studying his background and
qualifications, the Northern
California Board of Rabbis accepted Lerner as a full member and he has
remained a member ever since. Lerner was the first Jewish Renewal
rabbi to achieve
membership in a local American Board of Rabbis, but since that time in
1997, many local Boards of Rabbis have accepted Jewish Renewal rabbis
into full
membership.
Lerner is the spiritual leader of Beyt Tikkun synagogue in Berkeley,
and a member of the Board of Rabbis of Northern California. He is also
a member of
Ohalah, the organization of
Jewish Renewal
Rabbis.
Network of Spiritual Progressives[
edit
]
In 2005 Lerner became chair of The
Network of Spiritual Progressives
whose mission was to "challenge the materialism and selfishness in
American society and to promote an ethos of love, generosity, and awe
and wonder at
the grandeur of the universe."
[25]
They have since sponsored national conferences on both the East and
West Coast. In 2007 Lerner launched a campaign for a "Global Marshall
Plan".
[26]
Cancer[
edit
]
In February 2009 Lerner publicly announced he had been diagnosed with
lung cancer, and mentioned this in many promotional mailings and
published pieces.
[27]
[28]
He was treated with surgery in March 2009 which was apparently successful.
