Mark Satin Quotes

23 Sourced Quotes

Slowly at first, and now in growing numbers, from Maine to Alabama to California, from ghettos, suburbs and schools, young Americans are coming to Canada to resist the draft.

Mark Satin
Because of the consensus on full employment, certain observations rarely break in to the public political dialogue. These include:... that even if full employment were possible, it might not be desirable in the new kind of society we are entering; and that even today, most of the useful work we do is not structured into paying "jobs."

Mark Satin
The toughest problem a draft resister faces is not how to immigrate but whether he really wants to. And only you can answer that. For yourself. That's what Nuremberg was all about.

Mark Satin
The First American Experiment began in the mid-1700s, and by its own criteria, at least, has been a smashing "success":

Mark Satin
We need mandatory national service so we will all take part in performing the collective tasks we know are ours. We need mandatory national service because duty and honor are as necessary to us as oxygen and water. That's what I was trying to tell the Army in my application to the JAG corps at the age of 52. And that's what the radical middle needs to tell the American people.

Mark Satin
The participants in the Second American Experiment have differing views of the First Experiment. Some... think it was a noble and brilliant experiment that is no longer sustainable. Others... think it was ignoble and wrong-headed from the start.... But the larger point – and the point that concerns us in this book – is that all participants in the Second Experiment are convinced that the First Experiment is no longer wise. Here are some of the questions they've been asking:

Mark Satin
The politics we need in North America today will not and cannot come from liberalism or Marxism, or even from just muddling through. The situation we're in is so new – so unprecedented – that we need a whole new way of looking at the world. A whole new way of seeing things and thinking about things (especially political things).

Mark Satin
There is an emerging alternative to the big government-big business-big labor kind of "rebuilding" of America. Its basic strategy is to get investment capital out of the hands of the big banks... and into the hands of the communities. Its greatest champions are neither politicians nor oppositional political groups, but – remarkably – bankers; or, more specifically, those few bankers who describe themselves as "community development bankers."

Mark Satin
If Thomas Jefferson is the liberals' (and libertarians') Founding Father, and George Washington is the conservatives', and Tom Paine is the radicals', then Benjamin Franklin is the radical middle's. He was extremely practical.... At the same time, he was extraordinarily creative.... He was a man of principle.... Yet synthesis and healing were an art with him. He became our most ardent champion of religious tolerance. And better than anyone at the Constitutional Convention, he was able to get the warring factions and wounded egos to transcend their differences and come up with a Constitution for the ages.

Mark Satin
There is no draft in Canada. The last time they tried it was World War Two, when tens of thousands of Canadians refused to register. Faded "Oppose Conscription" signs can still be seen along the Toronto waterfront. The mayor of Montreal was jailed for urging Canadians to resist – and was re-elected from jail. No one expects a draft again. It's a different country, Canada.

Mark Satin
The radical middle movement is phenomenally diverse. But if you look at what everyone who might be called radical middle is saying and doing, you'll discover we share four goals. I like to call them our Four Key Values:

Mark Satin
At the root of our troubles is a cultural complex whose six main elements make up a "Six-Sided Prison" that traps us all. In Part I[,] I try to name and describe the six sides of the Prison: patriarchal attitudes, egocentricity, scientific single vision, the bureaucratic mentality, nationalism, and the big-city outlook. Capitalism and socialism are, I argue, both rooted in the Prison (which predates capitalism by hundreds of years) – though neither needs to be. (Racism, militarism, exploitation, ecocide, etc., are also rooted in the Prison.)

Mark Satin
Thoughtful conservatives are not unattracted to holistic providers' emphasis on self-care and personal responsibility. Thoughtful liberals and socialists are not unattracted to holistic providers' emphasis on environmental factors in disease. But neither left nor right has ever acknowledged that the holistic health movement carries within it the seeds of a whole new approach to a national health care program for this country, with its own coherent ideas about finance, delivery, research and education.

Mark Satin
We have not tried to sell you on Canada – our chapter on climate is chilling – but the truth is that Canada is a nice place to be. There is little discrimination by Canadians against draft resisters, and there is a surprising amount of sympathy. Most Americans lead the same lives in Canada they would have led in the U.S. Americans who immigrate are not just rejecting one society; they are adopting another. Is it really freer? Most draft resisters – and most Canadians – think so.

Mark Satin
There are two defining political choices that every society must make... and neither of them is covered by the old political categories "left" and "right". The first choice has to do with this. Do we want our society to encourage us to seek rich individual experience and to be if service to others – or do we want our society to encourage us to seek material riches in the form of possessions and status?... The second choice has to do with this. Do we want our society to extend state and institutional control over our lives (for whatever reason) – or do we want our society to encourage us to be self-reliant and self-determining?

Mark Satin
It can not be overstressed that draft resisters will probably never be able to return to the U.S. without risking arrest. This applies even to family emergencies. When a draft resister's father died last summer, two FBI agents showed up at the funeral.

Mark Satin
Put these values together and you can see how the radical middle draws holistically on our entire political tradition. Each value is a sort of updated version of an aspect of our 18th-century political heritage – liberty, equality, happiness, and fraternity, respectively.

Mark Satin
Not long after Miles and Eric hitch to St. Louis, Graham turns to me and says, "Let's hitch to Chicago!" "Right now?" I ask, peering up from my American government text. "Why not?" says Graham. "You've got to learn to do things when you want to; otherwise you'll be just like one of the plastic people, the dead people." So by one A.M. we are on the road....

Mark Satin
This new edition of New Age Politics – stripped-down and updated for the 21st century – has been launched to reassert, in thunder, that the movements of our time have generated a perspective or ideology of their own. It's as coherent an ideology as liberalism or Marxism – and far more relevant to our needs as life-loving human beings on a finite planet. In other words, New Age Politics gives us a common ground on which to stand.

Mark Satin
Few political authors employ the term New Age anymore; however,... many use equivalents or near-equivalents such as communitarian, evolutionary, green, holistic, integral, post-socialist, radical centrist, spiritual, transformational, and transpartisan, and that's OK. Perhaps the new generation, not being ego-attached to any of these, will finally come up with a term we can all say "Aha!" to.

Mark Satin
You can't say that New Age politics is "left wing" or "right wing". It is perfectly compatible with public or private ownership of the means of production, and it speaks equally much to rich and poor, young and old, white collar and blue.

Mark Satin
If done right, biotechnology can enhance the entire world's well-being. And that's why the radical middle is drawn to it. One of our key value commitments is maximizing human potential.... Although the biotech debate may seem hopelessly polarized, a third voice – nuanced, hopeful, adult – has begun to be heard. Call it the voice of cautious optimism. Call it the voice of the radical middle.

Mark Satin
How long, Lord, O how long will it be before I can f—k someone like the girl sitting at the SDS literature table?

Mark Satin