#381: The Week That Killed the ‘60s

Last week saw three remarkable events within 24 hours: the second inauguration of Barack Obama, the nation’s observance of Martin Luther King Day, and the 40-year anniversary of Roe v Wade.  That made for quite a week, but for me it recalled an even more remarkable week at the very beginning of those 40 years.

For in this very same week in January 1973, we witnessed four even more remarkable events that marked the end of “The 60s” and ushered in the difficult era we still live in today.  In hindsight, that single week—exactly 40 years ago--was the great turning point of the last 60 years.

On Saturday, January 20, 1973, Richard Nixon was inaugurated for his second term--a term that ended in disgrace and resignation.  I was living and working (my first year in parish work) in Washington, DC, and joined thousands of protesters on the Washington Mall during the inauguration itself.  

Leonard Bernstein conducts a “Concert of Peace” at the Washington National Cathedral

The night before, my wife-to-be and I attended an “Anti-Inaugural” concert at the National Cathedral: Leonard Bernstein conducting Haydn’s “Mass in Time of War” following Senator Eugene McCarthy’s remarks that our protests had reached the point of going beyond words to the kind of anguished cry that only music could provide.

Two days later, on Monday, January 22, I was in the shower preparing for an evening parish meeting when the radio news announced the Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade.  The decision shocked me, for I had long believed the Court would uphold the rights of the unborn, and I believe to this day the decision was not only wrong but badly crafted and badly reasoned—bad law in every way. But nonetheless, it became the law of the land, which every elected federal official must vow to uphold.

That same day, the news also announced that former President Lyndon B. Johnson had died.

Five days later, January 27, the movie I was watching (in a cinema less than a mile from the White House) suddenly stopped, and the house lights went up.  The manager appeared at the front to announce that, after five years of the Paris Peace Talks, a ceasefire had finally been signed, officially ending the U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam.  He asked for a moment of silence before the movie resumed.

This all happened mere months after the Watergate break-in, only several weeks after the famous “Saturday Night Massacre” that was the beginning of the end for the Nixon administration, and only weeks before the Congressional Watergate hearings that eventually led to Nixon’s resignation. 

This was less than five years since the infamous 1968 election that followed the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the “police riot” at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, the Soviet invasion of Prague, and the U.S. bombing of Hanoi--events that made 1968 the peak of that turbulent era we call “the 60s.”

It had been quite a period, the years leading to 1968. By 1973, it was still only 7 years since the end of Vatican II, 7 years since the beginning of the Vietnam War, 7 years since the Voting Rights Act, 8 years since the Civil Rights Act, 9 years since the “I Have a Dream” March on Washington, and 10 years since the assassination of John Kennedy.

Yet despite all these events, that week in January ‘73 stands out in my memory. In many ways, the hope and idealism that permeated the ’60s was replaced, in that short week, by the things that define American Life still today.

LBJ signs voting rights bill as MLK looks on

Lyndon Johnson was the southerner who finally cemented the political triumph of the civil rights movement by signing the Civil Rights Act (1964) and Voting Rights Act (1965).  But in the process, he turned the South “red.”  Prior to 1965, the southern states were solidly Democratic: conservative “Dixiecrats” dominated the region, and were a key component of FDR’s “New Deal” coalition that had allowed Democrats to control the White House for all but 8 of the 36 years between 1932 and 1968.  When LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act, he supposedly whispered: “There goes the South!”--and he was right.  The southern states, burnt by this southerner’s “betrayal,” abandoned the Democratic Party and guaranteed that Republicans would control the White House (with the exception of Jimmy Carter’s four years) from 1968 to 1992.  LBJ’s death marked the death of “New Deal” liberalism as the dominant political movement in America.

Roe v Wade, meanwhile, did more than make abortion legal.  It divided American culture and the American people deeply and permanently, tearing the fabric of American national unity and leaving us, even today, a nation less united and more conflicted than at any time since the Civil War itself.

The official end of Vietnam brought great relief but also a troubled legacy.  Americans reacted in two opposite ways.  Many Americans believed we should not have been in Vietnam in the first place; for them, Vietnam’s lesson was to avoid such military ventures in the future.  These Americans saw the invasion of Iraq, for example, as a clear failure to learn that lesson.

But many other Americans felt we should have won in Vietnam, and believed we could do better in future wars.  Getting rid of the draft, for example, reduced the political resistance caused by parents upset about children forced into military service.  Embedding correspondents in combat units biased their reports toward more war-friendly interpretations of events.  And blocking media coverage of returning dead soldiers prevented the popular rage that the visible body counts from Vietnam had triggered.

In short, Vietnam split Americans between those convinced we should move away from a foreign policy rooted in and dependent upon perennial war, and those convinced that Vietnam taught nothing other than the necessity of prosecuting future wars with more politically correct methods.

The reelection of Richard Nixon eventually led to impeachment, to resignation, and to widespread popular cynicism about government in general, fueled by the advent of investigative reporting that exposed the underbelly of Washington politics; this led to disastrously low approval ratings (especially for Congress), shattered the ‘60s-era belief in the value of public service, and ultimately led to the gridlock we witness today.

In a word, that one week in January 1973--exactly 40 years ago last week--was a kind of seismic moment, splitting open the faults that have caused every major fissure in American politics and culture today.

For American Catholics, that seismic moment has proven equally momentous.

Roe v Wade had the effect of interrupting the momentum of the renewal movement from Vatican Council II (1962-1965) by focusing the Church’s energy on the legal prohibition of abortion.  This in turn linked the Catholic Church to the conservatives in the Republican Party, so that Catholicism abandoned its traditional working class alliance with the Democrats and spawned the “Reagan Democrats” who, along with the evangelical Moral Majority, were precursors of today’s Tea Party.

This in turn shifted the public profile of the Roman Catholic Church in general.  Since 1973, the Catholic Church has become widely perceived as a conservative, even reactionary organization--in spite of the progressive thrust of most of its social doctrine.  Thus many children of Baby Boomers grew up thinking that, if they believed in “progressive” causes (peace, environmentalism, labor, serving the poor, racial justice), then there was no place for them in the Roman Catholic Church.  By 2000, as the next generation of Millennials arrived, the Catholic Church had become irrelevant to millions of young Catholics.  This was the unintended but real side effect of Roe v Wade.

More than 10% of Americans today call themselves “former Catholics”—and thus even our parishes, struggling with falling numbers in aging congregations, suffered deep losses triggered in that awful week in January 1973.

The week that killed the ‘60s left us with a war we wanted to forget (thus guaranteeing we would repeat its mistakes in Iraq), a political rift so strong it led to gridlock, and a cultural divide that has infected the Catholic Church, weakened its social-justice impact, and even sapped the vitality of its daily parish life.

The 40 years since that week in January 1973 have not been kind to America or to American Catholics.  We can all only hope we will reach a new seismic moment soon that will set us on a better course.

 © Bernard F. Swain PhD 2013

#163: Finding Common Ground on Abortion

After yesterday's protests against Roe v. Wade in  Washington, DC, I am replaying this piece, written 7 years ago but sadly still up-to-date. 

    Last week marked 33 years since the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe V. Wade decision on abortion. And every year about this time, I get to thinking about our complex path on abortion over the last 40 years.

Over the years, I have always considered myself pro-life, but I have discovered that I do not always share the views of other “pro life” advocates.  Most public discussion of abortion quickly reduces itself to an ugly conflict between people who have no interest in understanding one another, in finding a common ground, or in working together to solve the challenge that abortion poses.

That is why my best memory concerns the conversation group I belong to.

For 11 years we’ve been gathering monthly to discuss a single topic for entire evening, but we did not choose “abortion” for nearly five years.

It turned out that we had been avoiding the issue, both as individuals and as a group. Some of us assumed there was no point in such a discussion, since most of us were Catholics and would all agree anyway. Others assumed just the opposite: that entrenched differences would surface immediately, so there would be no basis for dialogue. One way or another, we were all assuming that we would suffer the same kind of paralyzing stalemate we saw in the public forum.

But we were happily surprised by what actually happened. In fact, when the evening was over, we all agreed on two things: First, we had avoided the issue needlessly and for too long. Second, we had just engaged in the best discussion of abortion any of us had ever heard.

What surprised us most about the discussion, I think, was that though we had differences, none were so far apart that we could not even communicate.  In fact, we quickly found that we had a great deal of common ground bridging our differences.

First, we acknowledged torn feelings.  For all of us, the era of legal abortion has raised difficult challenges, manifested many tragic stories, and left us feeling helpless to resolve a conflict that has divided our country for 30 years.

Second, we shared a common frustration with both sides of the abortion debate. We agreed that most pro life advocates let self righteousness impede real communication and progress—but we also agreed us that most “pro choice” advocates let their militancy stop communication too. The result was that, no matter what our opinions about abortion itself, we did not feel comfortable allying with such people.

Third, we discovered that we shared a common negative attitude toward abortion itself. None of us thought of abortion as something good—though some of us believed it should remain legal. We all wished there were less need for it, less recourse to it. For all of us, in fact, the ideal seemed to be a world in which no one would seek an abortion, even if they had the legal right to do so.

Fourth, we agreed that resolving the conflict in our country would probably NOT come from the victory of one side over the other. Instead, we guessed there would be no peace on the abortion issue until both sides uncovered some common ground upon which to build a consensus.

Fifth, we identified a key question: how does one change the behavior of an entire nation? In other words, how does real social change occur when values are in conflict?

We found ourselves using the example of a behavior where dramatic change has occurred within the last generation: cigarette smoking. We all knew that the percentage of American smokers has been shrinking for more than 30 years. We wondered how this had been accomplished, and whether the secret to that success could offer some clues as to what to do about abortion.

What seemed obvious to us, on reflection, was that over the years smoking has gone from something that people took for granted (in their homes, in public places, in advertising, in the movies) to something that can only be qualified as “socially unacceptable behavior.”

We all remembered smoke-filled parties, Marlboro ads on TV, white clouds of cigarette smoke hanging over every hockey game, the regular ritual of emptying ashtrays as part of housecleaning or car-cleaning. Now the main image is different: smokers huddled shivering like refugees in the doorways of office buildings catching a quick cold smoke during wintertime coffee breaks. And we all knew that any sign of smoking among us would bring swift scolding from our own children, who had been raised (if not brainwashed) to see our smoking as dangerous for them.

We all agreed that this was a dramatic and positive shift in public values and behavior. We wondered how it happened, and whether the same thing could happen on abortion.

At the time, the Massachusetts state government was sponsoring anti-smoking ads on television using the slogan “Let’s Make Smoking History!” As we discussed the success of that PR campaign, we came to two conclusions.

The first was: those of us who wanted abortion to be illegal admitted that, as a matter of history, legal prohibition has not proved an effective way to change people’s behavior. The obvious example to contrast with cigarette smoking was the example of alcohol: the Prohibition Era had not ended drinking in America but had only driven it underground and into the hands of criminals. The unhappy truth is, the same was largely true of the history of the legal prohibition of abortion. We admitted that no law has ever eliminated abortion, but has only driven it underground.

The second conclusion was: it is possible to reduce or even eliminate unwanted behavior once it becomes generally regarded as “socially unacceptable behavior.” Once the social norm shifts, people feel pressured to find alternatives to such socially unacceptable behavior--even if it remains legal.

We found ourselves wondering why no one had ever tried a campaign to “Make Abortion History!” It seemed to us that here was real potential for common ground. Many people who consider themselves “pro choice” will insist that they are not pro abortion, and would support efforts to reduce or eliminate abortion as long as “choice” remained legal. In fact, many of us believed that large numbers of “pro choice” Americans would embrace any social movement that would relieve them of the unwelcome dilemma of defending abortion itself.

For this point of view, the main obstacle to dialogue appeared to be the insistence on arguing over legal prohibition vs. protection as the key element in debating the abortion question. We had found that discussing abortion itself (why we did not like it and how our society could end it) produced a much more constructive dialogue and a lot more common ground upon which to build a consensus for action.

For Catholics, this raises a crucial point. While Catholics are obliged to oppose abortion and seek its elimination, nothing in our faith tradition requires us to believe that legal prohibition is the only tool that can accomplish this goal—or it even to believe that it is an effective tool. Prohibition’s effectiveness is not a matter of faith or morals; it is simply a matter of historical fact.

One can hold that prohibition failed in the past, and would fail again in the future, and still be a good Catholic who believes we should find better ways to protect the unborn and build a culture of life.

For our little, private conversation group, the sad thing was that this: we had found common ground among ourselves, and we even felt the clear opportunity for further constructive dialogue—but as we adjourned for the evening we knew the progress we had made among ourselves still seemed totally absent in the public forum.

Thirty-three years after Roe V. Wade, I am afraid that is still the truth.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2006

America’s Moral Crossroads

On this Martin Luther King Day, during which the Inauguration festivities repeatedly linked freedom and war, I offer this reminder (written on King Day 2005):

In the years since King’s death, people who insist on reducing him to a “champion for racial justice,” period, have tamed his legacy. This dulls the true prophetic edge of a man who saw his own nation at odds with God’s will both at home and abroad.

        For many Americans, Martin Luther King Day gets lost as one of those minor, even token observances like Labor Day and Veterans Day. Yet there are three important reasons to pay serious attention to this holiday.

(1) Since slavery was America’s "original sin,” and since we still struggle with its consequences, it makes sense to take this occasion to stop and reflect on our Christian responsibilities in promoting a racially just society.

(2) The second reason is somewhat broader: Dr. King was not a public official, nor even a professional politician. He was an ordained Christian minister, a preacher, a trained theologian. By the time of his assassination in April 1968, he had become widely regarded as the moral leader of America. Today he is the only American singled out for his own holiday. He has become the closest thing were have to a national patron saint. Today, when many are concerned about “moral values” (some even expect their President to be their moral leader), King offers a timely example of what moral leadership really looks like.

(3) The third reason may be even timelier: Peace. We’ve just come through the Holy Day of “Peace on Earth” we call Christmas, as well as the World Day of Peace we now celebrate on January 1. Now, two weeks later, we honor the man who finished his career by moving beyond the civil rights movement to become a champion for peace.

Of course, King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 because of his commitment to a non-violent campaign for racial justice. But in his acceptance speech, he spoke of a commitment to non-violence that went beyond race-relations:

“This awards represents a profound recognition that non-violence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time—the need for men to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression.”

King knew, of course, that such recognition had not yet worked its way into US public policy. Indeed, 40 years later we still try to overcome oppression and violence by resorting to violence and oppression.

The Nobel Prize did not alter King’s character, but it did transform his agenda. While he still fought for black people’s rights, he began to sense the movement had an even higher   calling: to work for all people of good will. “Maybe our mission,” he said, “is to save the soul of America.”

For years King had promoted non-violence as the chief “weapon” in the civil rights struggle. Even as innocent children died in that struggle, he had long preached that the solution was not “getting our ammunition and going out shooting physical weapons.” Instead, he said, “We must know that we have something much more powerful. Just take up the ammunition of love.”

This was nothing but straight Gospel talk, of course, but King was coming to see non-violence as more than just a tool—in fact, as a value in itself—and he began to address himself to “Americans of good will who are committed to the struggle for brotherhood and the crusade for world peace.”

By then the US was not just struggling with civil rights; it was also a nation at war. Many within the movement urged King not to overstep his role, not to risk bogging down in the growing national turmoil over war in Vietnam. But finally King’s conscience dictated that he break his silence on the war, even if it meant breaking ranks with his allies in the movement.

The decisive moment came in April 1967, with his sermon at Riverside Church in New York City, the speech now known as the “Silence of the Night” speech, the speech many historians regard as King’s greatest—and the speech that redefined his place in American life.

He admitted that many supporters lamented his move, asking, “Why are you joining the voices of dissent?” and arguing “Peace and civil rights don’t mix.” His response: “My conscience leaves me no other choice. ” For he had come to see a darkness closing around America, and he believed someone had to break “the silence of the night.”

What was that darkness? It was the victory of violence in the world—not only violence by those oppressing racial minorities, but especially by “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government.” He even worried that the war could make America a nation whose soul was “totally poisoned.”

He knew this would shock many, but he challenged them to see the logic of his outlook, appealing to his vocation as a minister of Jesus Christ:

 To me, the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war... Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them?

For King, as for Pope John Paul II, being a Christian means being above all a citizen of the world, and he shared the world’s view that US war-making was “disgraceful” and “perverse.” He urged all draft-aged people to seek conscientious objector status, and called on clergy to mobilize war resistance.

But King was not done.

“The war in Vietnam,” he said, “is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit.” The world, he said, is going through a major historical revolution, and our nation is “on the wrong side.” Without  “a significant and profound change in American life and policy,” he feared we would be mired in violence and turmoil for generations to come. Believing this, he proposed a radical shift in American values:

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies…A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth…A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." …America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war.

This marked a major turn in King’s ministry. Until now he had always argued that the civil rights movement was needed to fulfill the “core American values” this nation was founded upon. Now, in a new and radical way, he was arguing those values needed to change if America was to meet its responsibilities to the world and to the Gospels.

In the years since King’s death, people who insist on reducing him to a “champion for racial justice,” period, have tamed his legacy. This dulls the true prophetic edge of a man who saw his own nation at odds with God’s will both at home and abroad.

Taming King’s message does disservice to both him and to our people, for today our nation still continues its warlike ways, yet Americans cry out for truer values. We cannot pretend to fulfill his dream by making peace with African-Americans if we also continue to be “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

King concluded his Riverside talk by depicting America at a moral crossroads, faced with a historic choice. Would we choose the shameful legacy of nations who possess “power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight”? Or would we instead choose to end the night by learning to make peace our way in the world?

 If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

 America failed to heed him then, and 38 years later we find ourselves still stuck in the vicious cycle of violence. Is it our dark dead end, or have we simply circled back to the same old moral crossroads? If so, perhaps we have another chance to make the right choice, if only we will want the bright dream he dreamed. 

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2005

#380: Dying Before Our Time?

Americans are likelier than people in other wealthy nations to think they are in good health. But they would be wrong…

In recent years, I have asserted that both scandal and mismanagement by the Catholic hierarchy have led to the loss of influence for Catholic Social Teaching. Thus one of the great sources of public wisdom in our culture ends up getting ignored or even dismissed. But no matter how badly the custodians of this tradition perform their duties, we American Catholics ignore that wisdom at our peril.

Now comes evidence that ignoring the lessons of Catholic Social Teaching is costing people their lives. A recently released study by the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine (U.S. Health in International Perspectives: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health ) attempts to determine why the U.S. ranks last in life expectancy among all wealthy nations. (see http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=13497&page=1)

The Gospel of John makes it clear that Christian faith and a full life are closely linked, when Jesus says, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

Catholic Social Teaching includes “Health Care” (one key to a full life) on its list of human rights. As one commentator explained: “Human fulfillment requires health, work, education, access, leisure, resources, security and many other things, which we define as human rights.”

But this massive study expands the reality behind these principles. Part 1 begins with this basic fact:

The United States ranks at or near the bottom on multiple measures of mortality and morbidity, in all age groups up to age 75, in males and females alike, and in virtually all other subgroups of the population. 
                                          
Then Part 2 it asks why. And Part 3 explores ideas for changing our course.

Last week’s wide media coverage of the report focused on its account of firearms deaths--the most newsworthy item, of course, in the wake of the Newtown tragedy.

But this 424-page study is bigger than that. It is a landmark that offers for the first time a comprehensive answer to why Americans suffer a health disadvantage. For Catholics who believe good public health is a human right, this analysis touches not only on social justice, but on life and death.

The evidence shows that the U.S. health disadvantage is pervasive across people’s lifespan, gender, class, and even race: “Americans face shorter lives and greater illness at all ages.” In a word, we are sicker and we die sooner--even if we don’t know it.

The breadth of our health inferiority is stunning:

When compared with the average for other high-income countries, the United States fares worse in nine health domains: adverse birth outcomes; injuries, accidents, and homicides; adolescent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections; HIV and AIDS; drug-related mortality; obesity and diabetes; heart disease; chronic lung disease; and disability.

Think a good medical care system is enough to guarantee “healthcare”? Think again! This pervasive disadvantage is determined by far more than our Medical Care System. The study outlines four more key areas that affect our health:

Life-styles and behaviors, social and economic circumstances, environmental influences, and public policies can also play key roles in shaping individual and community health. And a number of these factors may be critical to understanding why some high income countries experience significantly better health outcomes than the United States.

When all five are added up, the tally is bleak. This raises the question of whether our “American way of life” is killing us.

It is true that “ObamaCare” should expand the number of insured Americans, but its broad impact is to be determined.

As for personal behaviors, the study finds that 40% of all U.S. deaths are linked to tobacco, diet, inactivity, or drinking. I wonder: why are these behaviors more dangerous in the U.S. than elsewhere?

Certain important unhealthy or injurious behaviors are more common in the United States than peer countries, including high-caloric intake, drug misuse, unsafe driving practices, high-risk sex, and the use of firearms. Poverty, unemployment, and income inequality are more prevalent than in comparable countries, education has not kept pace with other countries, and social mobility is more limited.

On firearms, the data is appalling.

There is little evidence, the study says, that violent acts a more frequent here than elsewhere. Yet they cause more deaths. 48% of violent U.S. deaths (homicide, accidents, suicide) involve firearms. US citizens own 35 to 50% of all the civilian owned firearms in the world--four times as many semiautomatic and automatic weapons as the U.S. Army! Globally, 80% of the firearms deaths occur in the U.S. The U.S. homicide rate is 20 times higher than our peer countries, and 43 times higher for people aged 15-24. (Note: that’s not 20 % and 43% higher, it’s 2000% and 4300% higher).

The U.S. firearms suicide rate is 5.8 times higher than elsewhere and unintentional firearm deaths are 5.2 times higher. All these grim numbers produce a chilling conclusion:

The prevalence of firearms in the United States looms large as an explanation for higher death rates from violence, suicidal impulses, and accidental shootings.

As for social factors in the U.S. health inferiority, the study collected data on income and wealth, on education, on the occupation, and on racial and ethnic identity. Observing that, relative to other wealthy countries, the U.S. possesses a “weak social safety net,” the study finds that our decline in health and life expectancy since 1975 coincides with a 40-year decline in social conditions, and concludes we need to explain the connection:

Life expectancy and other health outcomes…in the United States began to lose pace with other high-income countries in the late 1970s, a trend that has continued to the present. During this same time…there has been a potentially important co-occurrence of worsening social conditions in the United States, notably a rise in income inequality, poverty, child poverty, single-parent households, divorce, and incarceration--all more pronounced than other rich nations.

These unsettling trends present a potentially important explanation for the U.S. Health disadvantage… An examination of these underlying causes can shed light on why the United States appears to be losing ground.

On policy, the study reviewed the nine key health factors from Part One and concluded that each factor has policy implications:

Policy is also relevant to the unfavorable social, economic, an environmental conditions identified of this report as potential contributors to the U.S. Health disadvantage. A variety of policies can contribute to high poverty rates, unemployment call-up, inadequate educational achievement, lost social mobility, and the absence of safety net programs to protect children and families from the consequences of these problems. However, identifying and implementing policy solutions is a formidable challenge.

This means that policy reform is key to longer life for Americans. Not just government policy, but also the policies of corporations and communities and nonprofit agencies and even churches. Those peer countries are ahead of us for a reason: they have instituted social systems aimed at the common good--aimed at a longer, healthier life for all their people. And they are succeeding:

In countries with the most favorable health outcomes, resource investments and infrastructure often reflect a strong societal commitment to the health and welfare of the entire population…Choices about political governance structures, and the social and economic conditions they reflect and shape, matter to overall levels of health.

The sad truth is that our health inferiority does not mean we have failed to achieve what they have achieved. Rather, the truth is this: we have not even tried! The study is clear about the consequences of doing nothing:

The consequences of not attending to the growing U.S. health disadvantage and reversing current trends are predictable: the United States will probably continue to fall further behind comparable countries on health outcomes and mortality. In addition to the personal toll this will take, the drain on life and health may ultimately affect the economy and the prosperity of the United States as other countries reap the benefits of healthier populations and more productive workforces. With so much at stake, especially for America’s youth, the United States cannot afford to ignore its growing health disadvantage. 

We Catholics claim to serve life. We inherit a moral tradition that requires an option to promote the common good. We belong to an institution that believes we all have a human right to the best health and fullest life possible.

From this viewpoint, too many of us have allowed this basic right of ours to be violated by inaction at all levels. Worse than that: we haven’t even noticed it happening. As if we were victims of mass anesthesia, we have slept through the decline in our health and our lifespan, dreaming that all was well. This study sounds a loud alarm that offers no snoozing. It is time we wake up and face the nation that is allowing its people to die before their time--before our time.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2013