22 – Eleanor Lives! is a Plan for Peace

Today is International Day for Peace. A worthy day and effort, but how do we achieve it? Eleanor said “It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.”

So what work do we do so that it is fruitful? Eleanor had an answer: we follow a plan. We work together to create a framework for peace through an International Bill of Rights.

There will always be despots. This is reflected in the phrase “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” There needs to be a system of justice, with independent judges, to thwart efforts to rise and exercise power over the rest of us. Someone will continually try to become emperor or President for life. We can see that both President Putin and President Xi have achieved this. President Trump has shown a similar tendency. Only through equally continual action can we prevent this.

It’s not enough to think that the millions of people and thousands of organizations working for peace will succeed through their individual efforts – a collective effort is needed.

David Brooks has written insightfully in “Second Mountain” that our hyper individualism is not serving us well. To be sure, individual efforts are to be applauded, organizations too. These individual acts have prepared us for this moment when we can do something collectively.

Specifically, we can focus together. As part of a movement for peace, please do a bit of work. Go to the Eleanor Lives! website and become a “light for rights” on the spinning globe. It’s a showing of support for rights for all people in all countries so that we can become an international community.

Eleanor’s plan for us to transition to an international community is re-emerging.

On this day of peace, the President of South Korea told the United Nations General Assembly that it is time for us “to become an international community.”

Let us continue our individual acts. Peace begins within each of us. But let’s also act collectively to create a social order, with independent judges to enforce it – that will give us the peace we desire.

May peace be with you.