Cady Stanton 

                                         Mohandas K. Gandhi 

                                                                    Nelson Mandela 

                           Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

I meet people regularly who will quietly, but firmly, tell me that writing a moral code for the whole human race, a code that will bring about a society that will work, and also that we can make stick in human minds so that people really do live by it -- that project is a daydream. It will never be a reality, they insist to me, and they smile wryly like they are telling a harsh truth, reluctantly, to a naive child. 

I've seen some hard times in life. I'm 65 years old, 65 years of acquiring experience in this world, and I was no fool to begin with. 

Yes, I believe we can keep our eyes fixed on the virtues of courage, wisdom, freedom, and love and use these stars to navigate through the "reefs of greed" and the "squalls of hate" (Leonard Cohen), and find our way to a world of peace, prosperity, and love. Our vague, confused, and contradictory moral codes are what stand in our way, and these can be rewritten. Only with a lot of work and some pain, I admit, but the barriers can be overcome and the dream realized. 

Think of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Cady Stanton, and Susan Anthony. How long they worked, how much they suffered, and how much they sacrificed to make real changes in society happen. It can be done. 

America is coming to the end of the second term of an African-American president, the first African-American to win that high office, and America is poised to elect her first woman president. Did Barack Obama live up to every hope that his supporters had for him back in 2008? No. But he has done a lot of good. I am convinced that he will be seen by history as a great man. Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln -- read and see how often they failed and how they were vilified in their own lifetimes. And Hilary, if she makes it (I think she will) will also be a great president. These realities would have been literally unthinkable just a few decades ago. 

We are becoming a kinder, wiser species. India became independent in 1947. The Civil Rights Act was passed in the U.S. in 1964. Apartheid ended in 1994. Even the USSR came to an end without a world war. People of my generation sometimes still can't believe it. 

I will not listen to those who smile cynically and shake their heads. They're the dreamers, not me. They seem to think we can cruise on the values and mores of the past, as we work at ignoring the wrongs in the world, and that all the problems will somehow take care of themselves. That really is puerile dreaming. 

History says otherwise. Those who shrug off their social responsibilities are nearly always the same ones who can hear you describe the horrors of tyrant states in the past and then say, "Yes, yes, but it can't happen here." Oh. Yes. It. Can. 

Democracy has always been hard work. Engage in the debate over a global moral code. That is what the prime value of freedom means. No code has any chance of being accepted by the children of the future unless the large majority of us now find consensus and commit to it, and we will only do that if we have a part in writing it. Freedom means responsibility. 

Keep thinking of John Peters Humphrey and the Universal Declaration On Human Rights.

And never give up. It is fascists who call on their citizens to sacrifice mightily in a crisis. Democracy asks that we work hard to see it realized, extended, and protected every day, and especially in the times when it would be easy for us to be smug and lazy. Those easy times contain the opportunities for progress that we must seize on and work with if we are to enhance the odds of our species' future coming to success and not disaster. 

"When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Always. Think of it."      (Gandhi) 

                                                  John Peters Humphrey