The Seventeen Traditions, by Ralph Nader

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12. The Tradition of Charity



Every major religion, and many minor ones, level charitable injunctions on their followers. For centuries, the concepts of tithing and good works have been central to Christianity. Beyond charitable giving, the scriptures are filled with homilies, exemplary narratives, and other stories enshrine the duty to act generously and compassionately toward one's fellow human beings. Though we did attend Sunday School at the local Methodist church, our real education in the meaning of charity came from the largely secular tradition of our parents and grandparents -- one that dated back at least as far as my maternal grandmother, a leading doer of good works in Zahle, whose prompting had led to the construction of a hospital in the town.

This tradition crossed the ocean and took two distinct pathways. One can be called "point of need" charity, in the form of things like the free food and hot coffee my father gave readily to the poor when they came to the restaurant. Especially during the Great Depression, hungry people would go door-to-door begging for food. When they knocked on our door, Mother happily directed them to our restaurant, with the assurance that a hot meal would await them. The expression of gratitude on their faces made a deep impression on our conscience.

Father considered it his responsibility as a businessman to extend such help to those in need, which is why we children always treasured the following exchange he had in the late 1940s with a local doctor, a friend he bantered with often at the lunch counter:

DOCTOR. Why are the auto workers' wages so high?

FATHER. So they can afford to pay your bills! Why do you charge so much?

DOCTOR. Because we often treat poor people free.

FATHER (Smiling) Well, in that case, since we give free coffee to poor people, your coffee [then 10 cents] today is $1.00. Thank you.

Dad did not think of his charitable activities as something to be pawned off onto the backs of his other customers.

Another example of his charitable impulse occurred during World War II. His office tenant above the restaurant, Dr. Henry Garbus, a dentist, was called to military service. Dad held his office free of charge, pending his return, and refused to rent it to someone else -- even in what was then a high-demand market. He told Dr. Garbus that when he came back to his family after the war, he would find his dental office just as he left it. All he would have to ask for were the keys before restarting his practice. Nearly three years later, that is what Dr. Garbus did. When it came to the war effort, Dad believed he had to do his part again and again on the home front for those who were in the armed forces.

The second path had to do with systemic charity -- in the form of building or expanding facilities and institutions that benefited the community. For example, in the mid-1950s, although the restaurant business was not doing all that well, my parents gave what was for them a major donation to a charitable fund being raised to build a large new wing to the local hospital. Mother took a special interest in the project, joining other Winsted donors to go and watch the new construction. She also talked up the fund-raising drive in the community, going door to door, as she did often for the Red Cross. Later I heard her comment in passing that "we built the hospital," and there was quiet pride in her voice. "You should care" was a mantra in our household, a conviction that found expression in myriad ways. Once, when an elderly neighbor fell on the ice and broke her arm, Mother sent my sister Laura, who was about eleven years old, to help her dress. She cried and didn't want to go but she went anyway. Sometimes you have to do things in life whether you want to or not.

Even with their obligations at home, my parents still found a way to extend their charitable giving back to their homeland. When my father's home village in Lebanon needed a new sewer system built, he sent his own money for the project, and collected donations from other Lebanese immigrants in the area. He followed up that project by helping to persuade Winsted town officials to build a modern sewage treatment system that would help the town kick the habit of dumping the sewage in the Mad River, which ran through the center of town!

One bright summer afternoon, Dad took me for a ride around town. I suspected there was a purpose to this trip beyond catching the breezes by the lake or watching the teenagers playing sandlot baseball near the high school, and I was right.

First, we drove past the Beardsley and Memorial Library. Ellen Rockwell Beardsley had started this institution in 1901, he told me, with a donation of ten thousand dollars -- a princely sum at that time. He then drove up Spencer Street until we got to the Litchfield County Hospital -- the first such institution in the county in 1902, when it was built, and also a product of private charity. Down a few more roads to the other end of town, and we were at the Gilbert School, a high school that for years was regarded as among the best in the nation. The Gilbert School was launched by a local industrialist, William Gilbert, who built the world-renowned Gilbert Clock Company in Winsted. His original gift established Gilbert as a private secondary school, the Gilbert School, but it gradually became more public over the years as more tax dollars were used to supplement a declining endowment.

Turning left, my father drove up a hill to Highland Lake. Nearby there was a small inviting park with some seats and tables for having outdoor lunches -- a park established by another local philanthropist. Then we made a 180-degree turn and drove down toward the long Main Street -- passing the Winchester Historical Society, founded and nurtured with charitable contributions. He drove past some other charities, including the imposing Gilbert Home for orphans and other needy children, and arrived at the beautiful Soldiers' Monument, so central to my childhood imagination. The town had paid a dear price in casualties during the Civil War, and after the war ended a volunteer veteran and local philanthropist promoted the idea of such a memorial; it was finally dedicated in 1890. With several donated acres of hilltop land, the structure and its grounds soon became a haven for the townspeople, who still conduct summer theater there, and whose children frolic on its grounds or run around the perimeter.

When we'd finished our tour of the area, my father pulled up to our house and turned the ignition off. "See all those fine establishments in out little town?" he said to me. "Think about how important they are to our community. Then ask yourself this question: Since 1900, there were and are at least a hundred townspeople as wealthy as those philanthropists were. What kind of town would this be if those people put some of their wealth back into the community the same way?" We sat there together in silence, a light wind breezing through the open windows. While I've since traveled many miles to many places, I've never forgotten the lesson I learned on that one trip.

On another, much later trip, I remember hearing a speaker quote Jean Monnet, a post-World War II advocate for the European Union. "Without people, nothing is possible," Monnet had said. "Without institutions, nothing is lasting."

Today, even though community-building philanthropy is tax-deductible, there are relatively fewer large-scale donations to create new institutions such as libraries, performance halls, museums, health care centers, and recreational facilities. Reliance on the government as the first source of funding for these kinds of projects, it seems to me, weakens the expectation that wealthy people will extend the legacies of their enlightened forebears, which so enriched people's lives. Our communities are diminished as a result.

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13. The Tradition of Work



We learned about work at an early age. Every one of the children was expected to pitch in and contribute daily to the smooth functioning of the household. The boys mostly worked around the house, shoveling snow, cutting the grass, raking the leaves, taking care of the chickens in and about their coop, and collecting the eggs. The girls worked mostly inside, cleaning rooms, ironing clothing, washing the dishes, and performing weekly chores such as polishing the dining room set. Girls and boys alike helped their parents with the vegetable garden, weeding, watering, and harvesting. When we became teenagers, our responsibilities grew: Shaf began working part time in Dad's restaurant after school, and I had a paper route for a while. Claire and Laura augmented their household work with serious piano lessons ($1.50 a lesson) from a wonderful piano teacher, Miss Ann Breshnan, who lived two blocks away on Main Street.

The task of ensuring quality control fell to our mother, who monitored our efforts for what she called "the finishing touch." Mother's efforts sometimes produced mirth, sometimes grumbling, as she sent us back to do the job all over again, or at least finish what we'd started -- as with cutting the grass and raking it thoroughly together for compost. She viewed these tasks as strong fibers within the daily fabric of our family, something we came to understand when a heavy rainstorm or a blizzard came along to pose us a challenge. There's nothing like nature to bring about a swing-to-the-emergency camaraderie, even among easily distracted youngsters.

We were never given an allowance, for our chores or for any other reason. Our parents saw allowances as inducing divisiveness, inviting nagging (for increases), and likely to produce reckless spending. It was far better, they believed, to preserve the household as a place of shared responsibility, instead of making it a place of monetary transactions and having them pay for our work. And they believed that giving routine allowances would dull us to the meaning of money. Instead, we were obliged to ask our parents to buy things that caught our eye, forcing us to make a good argument as to why they should say yes -- something an allowance would have circumvented.

They did, also, want us to learn how to save. So when we earned some money outside the home, or were given money by relatives for birthdays or Christmas, they arranged for a savings account -- at first in a symbolic piggy bank, later in the local savings bank -- where we could deposit the proceeds. The little bank book in our name was a source of pride, for us and the other local children who were encouraged to save. The head of the Winsted Savings Bank even walked the kindergarten class to the bank to deposit their dimes and quarters.

Now, I'm not saying we always did our chores cheerily, or punctually. I know I sometimes grumbled when the call came to get going on cutting the grass or some other task. I would have preferred to keep reading or keep listening to the Yankees and their marvelous announcer, Mel Allen, on New York's WINS. So after the first call I would temporize. The second and third calls became more audible and insistent. Only when I heard my mother's footsteps heading into the living room did I suddenly decide I could skip the next inning or put a marker in my book. It always amazed me how fast the grass grew, the leaves fell, the chickens had bowel movements. But down deep I knew we all had to pull our weight for the greater good of the family, and that thought got me past these faltering moments. We children didn't know it at the time, but this was our education in the work ethic: Our parents were giving us far more than they themselves had back in the old country, but they were just as determined not to spoil us in the process. We had to earn it, to taste some of the exertion required for that better life.

Of course, not all the work was unpleasant. An afternoon spent baking in the kitchen was hardly a chore. My sisters were more attracted to learning the baking arts from my prolific mother than I was, and as a result they not only learned to make celestial Arabic pastries and bread, but also absorbed all the lore surrounding the celebratory baking events that preceded religious days and festivals in old Lebanon. They also got first dibs on every new item that emerged fresh from the oven. (I did manage to bake twenty-one bran muffins for my sister Claire's twenty-first birthday, which my parents delivered to her at Smith College, where she was a student.) And of course Shaf knew how to do everything, in and out of the kitchen.

For me, it was watching my Dad work his long hours in the restaurant -- solving every kind of problem you can imagine, from a failing boiler to a no-show cook to a sudden surge of impatient customers -- that showed me what hard work was like, and the patience and ingenuity it takes to run a small business.

I was astonished at how many things there are to worry about when you're running a restaurant/bar. Supplies coming on time, the food kept fresh, equipment kept in good running order, all kinds of services kept up -- my father carried these and other concerns on his back. He was on his feet so much every day and night that, over the years, his tired legs bulged with varicose veins, the painfully visible evidence of his intense commitment to support his family and save for his children's college and graduate school education. But the workplace was also a joy because he could engage his customers from far and wide in talk about community and public affairs.

When it came time for me to start working, I knew I wasn't cut out for the restaurant business. Thankfully, my mother and father agreed. It was while I was working my paper route for the Winsted Evening Citizen that I got my first feeling for the obligations of daily work -- and a taste of the excitement of small-town journalism. The papers were still warm as I piled them into my large satchel. Then it was off on my door-to-door delivery rounds, warding off dogs, braving inclement weather, chatting with family members eagerly coming to the door for their paper, collecting the weekly billings and getting glimpses of how people were making it through the day, sometimes pleasant and sometimes unpleasant. How could anyone not develop an ease with people under such circumstances! When it came to meeting regular people, it was the next best thing to being a postman.

Nothing speaks to my parents' view of work better than a story my sister Claire recalled. One day, when she was quite young, she was walking home with Dad when they passed a street cleaner. ''I'm glad I'll never have to do such dirty work," she cried out. Dad stopped and looked at his little girl. "Then you should always respect street cleaners," he said, "if only because they're doing work that you don't want to do, but that you very much want to have done. This is the same reason they should be paid well. Claire, as you grow up, you'll see all kinds of work being done. Don't look down on people for the work they do -- and don't be in awe of anyone, either." Laura had similar conversations with Dad.

Though it would be years before my sisters shared these stories with me, I'd long since absorbed those lessons. Without the labor of millions of low-paid, unrecognized workers, I realized, the economy -- along with the activities of the wealthy -- would come to a halt.

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14. The Tradition of Business



On August 19, 1955, after several days of steady rains, the cumulative effect of Hurricane Diane struck Winsted, pouring water into the Mad River. True to its name, the river swelled up quickly, overflowing its banks and destroying the businesses along Main Street. The nearby Still River joined in, rushing over its banks and severely damaging the North Main Street part of town.

Most of the damage occurred in a terrifying twenty-minute surge of raging waters. Cars were tossed around like ten pins. Several people lost their lives. Along the mile-long west side of Main Street, the stores, apartment buildings, and factories were either washed away or crumbled from the force of the rushing waters. On the east side, which included my parents' restaurant, there was serious damage: the first floors of the buildings collapsed, and the carefully designed window displays and interior spaces were swamped by six feet of mud.

The next day the sun came out. The merchants up and down the street viewed the devastation in stunned silence. Years of their labors and millions of dollars of their investment had gone down a river that turned into a Moloch.

At the time I was in California, having finished a summer job in Yosemite National Park right after graduation from Princeton University. I was about to head home when I walked into a store in Bakersfield, California, looked at the front page of the newspaper-- and saw a large picture of my father's ravaged Highland Arms Restaurant, done in by Hurricane Diane. I made it home in time to help dig the mass of mud out of the premises.

Shaf and Laura, who were there at the time of this Great Flood, told me later how my father had reacted to the devastation. Coming down the hill that morning, after just barely escaping the flood water the evening before, he surveyed the flood damage. He turned to Laura and quietly said, "It is a good thing I put my money in the children's education." Then, speaking with a few other forlorn retailers he'd known for years, he said, "Well, we'd better get to work. There is much cleanup and rebuilding to do. We can use the opportunity to beautify Main Street."

Think of it: At age sixty-two, having already endured one giant flood in his lifetime -- the storm of 1938, which destroyed his restaurant -- my father hardly wasted a moment looking back. He just looked ahead, to a future that was unknown or at least uncertain. He did his part to get the storekeepers in a heads-up frame of mind.

There was no flood insurance in 1955. Only the Small Business Administration came in to help with low-interest loans. By then, my siblings and I were all in our twenties. But the way our father reacted in those desolate days after the flood taught us much about reacting to adversity. He was cool, practical, and immediately focused on recovery.

Growing up in a small-business family was a significant factor in our daily lives. The Highland Arms was far more than a simple restaurant. It offered three dining areas, counter service, a cocktail lounge/bar, a delicatessen, and a bakery. Over the years, tens of thousands of customers dropped by to assuage their hunger and slake their thirst -- many of them from around the country and around the world, but the majority from within the community. Suppliers came by regularly to deliver the raw materials for the kitchen and bakery. Plumbers, electricians, and carpenters came to keep the place in repair. Jurors from the county courthouse down the street were brought there on their lunch break. Factory whistles at noon brought workers there for a sandwich and coffee. Lawyers, doctors, policemen, accountants, insurance agents, bankers, teachers and school principals, summer camp managers and their campers, children and parents, poor tenants on Main Street, storekeepers -- they all coursed through the Highland Arms.

The Highland Arms could fit two hundred patrons comfortably, which is quite large for a town of ten thousand. The premises became a community gathering place, in part because it was spacious enough that no one felt rushed to give up their tables for new customers. Moreover, Nathra Nader was the embodiment of vigorous free speech, and in the atmosphere he created there, free speech was contagious, combined with a wry sense of humor. Want to express your opinions without getting a cold stare in return? Go to Nader's. And they did, from 1925 to 1969, when Dad retired and closed the business.

When you grow up in a family business that is open seven days a week, you can bet it becomes a tradition in your life -- especially when the business is so inherently personal, so constantly conversational, so insistently pressurized with daily deadlines. We grew up with long-time employees who became part of our education, wittingly or unwittingly. Our customers loved them, and for us they were a kind of extended family. There was Benny Barton, the chef who was forever talking about returning to his home in Damariscotta, Maine. It took him more than twenty-five years to do so, and in the meantime he gave his customers quality food with great reliability. There was Paul Randazzo, funny and a little flamboyant, who cooked away in the kitchen except when he suddenly disappeared for one of his unexplained absences. And so many others: Homer, the superb dining room waiter, collecting dime tips faster than a slot machine could spit them out while he shared stories about his French Canadian days; Jake Stankiewicz, the nighttime baker, who was so steady, kind, and proud of his daily creations.

Though I never longed to take over the restaurant, I did try my hand at the many skills involved, from dishwashing to short-order cooking to waiting tables. I soon grew comfortable behind the counter, talking, arguing, and joshing back and forth with all kinds of people from all kinds of backgrounds in every kind of mood. I developed an ability to read people, catching their expressions, learning about their troubles, and sharing in their spirits. I wish I knew how each of these countless interactions contributed to shaping my personality, but I'm certain that, in one way or another, most of them did. I do know that the experience helped me enormously in my career as an advocate, teaching me to communicate with sources in our investigations, as well as with the political and media people we had to deal with regularly. Those random exchanges with friends, neighbors, and strangers in the restaurant made the work of my adult life far easier to handle. I couldn't help feeling bad for my friends and classmates, who were missing out on this vital part of their education -- on this immersion course in the thoughts and feelings of working people from all over the mosaic of America.

Watching my father in business also gave me an education in the meaning of character. He had the most wonderful relationships with his longtime builder-carpenter, Bob Morgan; his longtime plumber, Ed Hutton; and others he called on for help in maintaining his restaurant and repairing it after the floods, fires, and other periodic damage. These were relationships built on trust, and an easygoing mutual respect. (Mr. Hutton even enrolled McNader into his Scottish clan!) Nothing was ever set down in writing. Their word was their bond.

The floods and fires often left Dad with business debts that took years to pay off, and his meticulous drive to do so -- assisted by his Ben Franklin-worthy frugality -- became a minor legend in town. Even so, his frugality never conflicted with his charitable giving. Rather, it only gave him more leeway for charity. Less waste, more giving.

As the owner of a nearby shoe store once said, at Nader's a nickel bought you a cup of coffee and ten minutes of political talk. Lots of social issues were tossed around, catching the attention of the customers and helping the local residents get both informed and stirred up. That was one contribution Dad's business made to our small town -- along with many others, including a community college that was inspired by Shaf's wide-ranging conversations at the Highland Arms. To my father, the business and the community were one and the same.

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15. The Tradition of Patriotism



Father was an incessant critic of power -- business and governmental, local and national -- and one who was never afraid to propose a solution. He spoke his mind daily at the restaurant. "Nathra, how do you expect to make a profit if you keep speaking out that way?" his longtime customers and friends sometimes cautioned him.

"When I sailed past the Statue of Liberty, I took it seriously," he replied.

My parents prized the freedoms they found in America, and were always alert to anyone who might try to degrade them. My father used to say, "If you do not use your rights, you will lose your rights." And use their rights they did -- by speaking up at lively town meetings, by visiting town hall officials and newspaper editors to promote their opinions, by exhorting people to be informed and to vote. Their subjects of concern were mostly local, covering the gamut of typical municipal issues: services that were needed or wasteful, schools and hospitals that needed upgrading, roads and parking facilities that needed improvement, flood-control measures that needed updating, factory dumping that needed to be policed -- everything you might expect, from unleashed dogs to unreasonable budgets.

As Americans by choice, my parents never let the haughtier descendants of earlier immigrants make them feel defensive. They treasured the ideals of democracy, but they never felt compelled to accept its imperfections in practice, or to genuflect before anthems or flags. They saw right through politicians who tried to cover their sins with the Star-Spangled Banner. They cared only about how their elected officials fulfilled their duties, whether they actually engaged with the citizens or just shook hands with them in passing. As Dad often reminded the flag-wavers, our flag stands for the principles embodied in the last words of the Pledge of Allegiance -- "with liberty and justice for all."

Instead, our parents found allies in the town's more active older citizens, whose experience they eagerly absorbed. These neighbors helped acquaint them with the steps of small-town governance, explaining how long each step in the process was likely to take. Their common sense of injustice quickly overcame any prevailing ethnic or class differences. These were the people who knew that democracy and its benefits take work.

Father relished having a voice and being heard, especially when he believed that his opinions could be the basis for legal changes. For example, he once filed suit in federal court to change the Connecticut primary system so that all voters could participate in any primary -- not just party members, who were members of what he considered private organizations. So long as these party primaries were being paid for by our tax dollars, he reasoned, all voters should be able to vote in any primary. The judge who heard his case found no constitutional right being violated and decided against him, though other states have such crossover primary laws.

On another occasion, knowing that consumers could buy into group life and auto insurance, my father fought an anticompetitive state law, lobbied by the insurance industry, that prohibited group homeowners insurance. He wrote the Connecticut Insurance Department asking them to urge the legislature to repeal the law, which had been pushed by the insurance companies, and pave the way for neighbors to pool their resources and save on premiums by purchasing as a group. The Insurance Department rejected his request.

Did losing faze him? No, it merely made him more steadfast against any restrictions of rights or corruptions of government. It is as if he was saying, "You are not going to take away what I came to this country to breathe."

On occasion, his nonconformist viewpoints led even his regular lunch-counter customers to question his patriotism. "Love it or leave it," they would say -- but such taunts were his cup of delicious tea. He loved turning the tables on his challengers.

"Do you love your country?" he would ask with a quizzical smile.

"You're damn right I do."

"Well, why don't you spend time improving it?" he would respond.

Mother put us children through a similar drill "Ralph, do you love your country?" she asked me when I was about eight.

"Yes, mother," I said, wondering where she was going with this.

"Well, I hope when you grow up, you'll work hard to make it more lovable."

This, in our eyes, was the real definition of patriotism -- as expressed by the people themselves, not by their manipulative rulers and plutocrats. When you come from an authoritarian country or worse, you tend to be much more sensitive to symbols of la patria being used to repress people and their participation in power. You measure your new country according to its own self-professed high standards.

A nation, our parents believed, should be judged in much the same way as an individual: by deeds, not words. Politicians and the government show their regard for our society, our community, and our fellow human beings by what they do -- by their efforts to stop trouble before it starts, and to restore order or repair damage when it's over. Mother and Dad were aware that songs, symbols, and pledges, however sincerely meant, were often used as shortcuts, as substitutes for the hard work of democracy, the sweat it takes to pursue justice. And they would not be intimidated from pointing this evasion out again and again, in part because they knew that inaction plays into the hands of the barons of power and money. They intuited what Marcus Cicero said over two thousand years ago in ancient Rome: "Freedom is participation in power."

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16. The Tradition of Solitude



For a time, my father worked from ten o' clock in the morning to two in the afternoon. Then, after an afternoon nap, he would return to the restaurant at five o'clock in the evening, and work until one in the morning. During those naps, we children had to find ways to amuse ourselves without making much noise. And yet we never had any trouble finding things to do. We were used to being left alone, to read or play quietly with our toys, to build projects or knit things, to climb trees, to walk in the nearby woods, or just to daydream. Compared with today's overscheduled children, we were used to a certain amount of solitude. And we enjoyed it.

The diversions we had in our hours alone were simple and rewarding. There were always new books to read, of course. There were chores to do, tasks that became more time-consuming as we grew older. And there was the radio -- one radio -- on which we listened occasionally to Jack Benny, The Lone Ranger, The Shadow, Fibber McGee and Molly, Lowell Thomas and Edward R. Murrow for the news, and on Sunday evening One Man's Family. We also had time to play outside, and time to think and muse. The philosopher James Harvey Robinson pointed out that the minds of children can reap lots of future benefits when they are permitted time for reverie. As I noted earlier, Shaf urged me to read Robinson's book when I was only thirteen, and the author's words about reverie made me feel good; until then I'd been convinced I was merely wasting time.

One reason that my parents put such emphasis on solitude was they valued their own solitude, their own time spent by themselves or with other adults. Their love for us was immense, their caring demonstrable, but they thought it was wise not to become totally absorbed by their children. As a result, we never threatened to dominate the proceedings when my parents entertained at home. We were accustomed to spending time by ourselves, and we felt little need to show off, for their sake or for ours. After a dinner with guests, we excused ourselves and went off to play with the guests' children or on our own.

Needless to say, things have changed. Some years ago, we invited a family with two small children over for Thanksgiving dinner. The four-year-old boy spent the whole day running wild, jumping off the table, knocking over glasses of water, screeching at the top of his lungs, and generally making every effort possible to ruin the conversation and the meal. Today, most parents might ask: Was he suffering from attention deficit disorder? No, the parents were suffering -- from an unwillingness to control their son's unprovoked behavior and lay down some markers. It's a symptom of today's sprawled economy that many children spend less time with adults, including their parents, than any previous generation in history. When they do have a few precious moments with adults, they often act out as if they're desperately trying to make up for the prolonged inattention.

"I believe that children should have some time to themselves," my mother once said. "This is what I intended when I told my daughter Claire she could not sing in the choir, with a group, until she first learned how to sing alone. I wanted the children to be able to exercise their minds and understand the importance of solitude, to be self-reliant, to think independently. The children were encouraged to be themselves, to know how to define themselves." Ralph Waldo Emerson would have approved.

Of course, our ideas of solitude today can be deeply flawed. Many parents plant their children in front of TV, video games, the Internet, or other electronic child-seducers for hours and hours every week. Solitude originally meant "a state of being alone," not a state of passive symbiosis with these frenetic and often lurid temptations. True solitude can involve an infinite variety of experience: being alone with one's imagination, one's thoughts, dreams, one's puzzles and books, one's knitting or hobbies, from carving wood blocks, to building little radios or model airplanes or collecting colorful stamps from all over the world. Being alone can mean following the flight of a butterfly or a hummingbird or an industrious pollinating bee. It can mean gazing at the nighttime sky, full of those familiar constellations, and trying to identify them all.

Being alone was easier in those days. The telephone didn't ring incessantly; compared with today, it hardly rang at all. We certainly weren't besieged by salespeople calling to interrupt at dinner time. Silence was common, a phenomenon that might have flummoxed many of today's fidgeting, electronically conditioned children. Children today suffer from shortened attention spans and reduced person-to-person interactions, and the results are wreaking havoc with their ability to think, converse, conduct themselves in family life, and educate themselves. Some of these youngsters are beginning to recognize such deficits in their lives. Maybe they are looking for what Alice Walker has called "quiet space."

Contemplating what "quiet space" did for me is an educated guess, another source of wonder. Yet I know that even in childhood I treasured and relished my solitude, not as an escape or expression of alienation, but as a time for exploration and self-reflection, a time to get to know myself better. Solitude was my engine of renewal, the steward for my self- reliance and the clarifier of my thoughts. And, perhaps most important, time alone allowed me to commune with my favorite authors -- the American muckrakers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who demonstrated the importance of challenging powerful interests, and the authors of adventure fiction, who inspired me to explore uncharted terrain and expand my vocabulary of words and ideas. Although I can't say I thought in these terms as a child, it's clear to me now that my mind was always led back to things that involved making a better life for the community. I was fascinated by people who broke new ground, and wanted to do the same.

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17. The Tradition of Civics



My parents' philosophy was rooted in what might be described as the "civic golden rule" -- that neighbors should treat neighbors as they themselves would like to be treated. A deep personal sense of civic duty isn't usually the result of enduring didactic lectures, much less of studying bloodless civics books. True civic awareness is a flowing river with many sources -- some as small as rivulets and brooks, some as large as tributaries. In our case, the flow began at a young age, as we accompanied Mother and Father to the local town meetings where the community made its decisions.

At these meetings, our parents -- and anyone else who lived In the town and cared to participate -- had the chance to talk with the town's elected "selectmen," as the local representatives were called. A holdover from early New England history, the town meeting was a more pristine form of local democracy that has had no equal to this day. The public business of the town was put on display, and those townspeople who showed up regularly had few inhibitions about airing their opinions. When there was disagreement, nothing was sacred. An interested party would hardly think twice before calling out his opponent in purely personal terms: "Your father, Greg, would turn over in his grave if he could see what you're doing here."

Even as a boy, I noticed that these gatherings were often dominated by the same few voters, who took to the floor meeting after meeting and always seemed unusually well prepared for the occasion. By the time I was a teenager, helping out in the restaurant, I realized that these leading citizen activists were widely viewed as mavericks, and that some considered them oddballs or even deviants. The day after a tumultuous town meeting, people would point out Mr. Franz, a particularly motivated older resident, walking down Main Street. It was as if he were one of a trio -- the town drunk, the town fool, and the town citizen. Who is more foolish, I wondered -- the core group of committed voters and taxpayers who engage in the process, or the much larger number who habitually abstain from town affairs, leaving their interests to be decided by others? Later I was delighted, and not a little vindicated, when I discovered that the ancient Greek word "idiot" referred to civic apathy, not intelligence.

On the other side of the ethical tradition was the Golden Rule, and a host of similar pronouncements in the Bible that enhanced that simple call to help and get along with one another. For Dad, that was enough as a frame of reference. In the daily soapbox that was his restaurant, he was happy to discuss anything under the sun with his patrons, whether local or out-of-town. From local tradespeople to campaigning politicians, few survived a visit to the Highland Arms without having a vibrant conversation with my father. Those politicians were his special target; his counter, with its long row of seats, was an irresistibly efficient way to shake hands with a captive audience of voters. Dad always lay in wait down by the end of the counter, near the large coffee urns. And when his and the politician's hands clasped, he wouldn't let go until he had his say and got some response.

There's little doubt that, in the nearly fifty years he ran the restaurant, my father educated, motivated, and inspired tens of thousands of people to think more deeply about the issues that affected them as citizens -- right there in Winsted, and around the country and the world. To this day, I still meet people from near and far who recall their conversations with him. He covered much ground in these encounters -- from colonialism and the suppression of self-determination to government waste, from the shortcomings of the press to the improper relationships between government agencies and big business that favored them over small businesses, from the constant problem of inadequate parking on Main Street to the unnecessary demolition of buildings such as the classic railroad terminal at Winsted. He was constantly struck by the human capacity for greed. Dad was frequently dismayed by the performance of our presidents, the cowardly behavior of the major political parties, the willingness of Congress to vote itself large pay raises, and the exclusion of independent voters like himself from parts of the electoral process. He had a special reserve of contempt for chain stores and their migrant managers, who always came with excuses from central headquarters in New York or Chicago concerning why they couldn't contribute to local charities. The list goes on and on.

Father's zest for public debate was equaled only by his appetite for problem solving. He was a demanding citizen. In his daily round of civic conversations, he did more than just toss around the questions of the day. He helped orient and mobilize many local residents into taking action, whether through voting or protesting excesses such as Congress's large, ill-timed pay raises for itself. In 1978, at the age of eighty-six, his protest march attracted national media attention. When critical town services were being proposed, such as building a new hospital wing or a modern sewage system, he got into the debate on the ground floor, and stayed involved through completion.

He also made people think about aspects of civic engagement to which they might otherwise have given little consideration. He was fond of reexamining the conventional meaning of words -- pressing his customers to think of "wealth," for example, in terms of not just money or possessions, but also charity, health, happiness, and justice in a community. He felt sorry for the very rich (even as he trounced them), pointing out that they lived in what he called a "gold cage." He never prejudged any customer to be beyond his interest, or beyond the reach of his arguments. The firmer they appeared to be in their views, the better he liked it. He was not into convincing the convinced.

My mother's civic life covered a very broad range of involvements, from the usual charities like the Red Cross to the larger subjects that are faced by every community -- issues involving health, children, public works, and the like. From the time she moved to Winsted, she was struck by how insular people could be, especially when it came to international affairs. So she joined the local Women's Club, and helped to start an international committee that brought well-known speakers to address the club and its guests. When my older brother was stationed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, during World War II, Mother attended Spanish classes. And she became the first volunteer teacher of Arabic in the state's adult education program, which earned her a statewide television interview before any of her children had achieved any public attention.

As my mother well knew, the ethical fiber of a community is nourished by every small instance in which its citizens stand up for what is right. She encouraged her neighbors to write letters to the editor of the local newspaper, the Winsted Evening Citizen, but never hesitated to bypass that process and call the editor herself if she thought it would get quicker action. Mother really knew how to work the phones, in conversations that were short and to the point. Once, when the librarians at the Beardsley and Memorial Library were having trouble getting young people to return books, the local McDonald's offered to give a free hamburger to children who returned their borrowed books. Mother thought this was wrongheaded: Children should be taught to return books to the library on time because it was their responsibility, not because of some commercial (and caloric) incentive. She complained, and she prevailed.

When the monstrous Hurricane Diane demolished much of Winsted's Main Street in August 1955, she sprang into action. The storm forced the local theater to shut down for repairs, and when Mother realized that the young people of the community would need another recreational outlet, she promptly organized social programs for young people at the YMCA. But she also had her eye on a larger necessity -- preventing this kind of disaster from happening again. Given the Mad River's history of overflowing its banks, Mother realized that only a dry dam could protect the town from reliving the devastation with each future storm. So she pressed for a dam to be built a little north of Winsted, to tame the river.

For help, Mother decided to call on an acquaintance who had a connection to Prescott Bush, the state's Republican senator. Would the senator press for a dry dam? Alas, came the report, Bush responded with no more than a smile.

But my mother wasn't discouraged. One day, their mutual friend invited Senator Bush, the father and grandfather of presidents, to speak in the area. Mr. and Mrs. Nader went to hear him. After his speech, my mother went over and introduced herself. As she was shaking hands with him, she said, "Senator Bush, Winsted needs your support in getting the Army Corps of Engineers to build a dry dam to prevent future flooding."

Bush smiled, but said nothing.

Mother always loved recalling what happened next. "I wouldn't let go of his hand," she said, "until he promised to help." She had a tremendous grip.

And that, as it happened, made the difference. With the senator's help -- and no doubt that of others -- the Army Corps of Engineers did build that dry dam. There hasn't been a flood since.

"If you want to get a politician to stop smiling and start promising," she always said, "just don't let go of his hand." In other words, be persistent.

As children growing up in such a civically conscious atmosphere, we could have rebelled against our parents, as some children do. Instead, we were inspired to follow in their footsteps. Why? Perhaps because they led more by example than by didactic direction. They never took us by the shoulder and told us to be active citizens. We were simply immersed in the process from childhood, and we saw the results. What's more, we saw how much my parents enjoyed their involvement, no matter how controversial it got. The process had its ups and downs, of course, but their even tempers and sense of perspective always carried them through in good spirits.

From my parents, I learned the essential qualities that define the civic personality -- a blend of constant curiosity, inventive thinking, resilience in the face of obstacles, and a willingness to share credit with one's deserving colleagues. Of course, there are also countless skills that can, and should, be learned -- everything from how to interpret and disseminate a legislator's voting record, to how to use the Freedom of Information laws, to how to put on a good news conference. But in my years of public life I've found that it's those other, intangible qualities of human personality that usually make the difference -- and that are so often the legacy of one's family upbringing. No well-padded war chest, Ivy League education, or cutting-edge technology can take the place of such a personality, of such commitment.

Of course, there's no deliberate family recipe, or lesson plan, that can produce these traits. Some children will always want to rebel, and perhaps for the good; many more will simply go on with their daily lives, trusting that others will carry the weight of activism and engagement. But I feel sure that raising civically responsible children is most likely to happen in the kind of atmosphere my parents created: one of indirection and delights, strong examples and certain boundaries, solitude and conversation, witness and respect, and, above all, the strength of parental love and sacrifice. All of this cannot help but nourish a sense of dedication to help one's fellow human beings achieve a better life. And once this dedication takes root, it is likely to evolve into a self-starring maturity, into a personality that seeks out struggles for fairness and gets involved.

As I look back on our society's history, on our high points of civic courage and justice, it's clear to me that many of our greatest civic leaders must have been raised to engage with the world around them in just this way. Such values are what drive ordinary people to achieve extraordinary results. And, despite my concerns about the future, I am convinced that these "natural" leaders are still all around us, in each new generation, inspired by their sense of justice and eager to bring about change. These are our public citizens -- the architects, movers, and sentinels of a functioning, successful democratic society.

When I meet these confident, steady, refreshing figures, I like to ask them how they became the people they are -- how they developed such drive, such motivation and purpose. Quite often, they hesitate, then smile, and respond:

Well, when I was young, my parents ...
my mother ...
my father ...
my teacher ...
my neighbor ...
told me ...
took me ...
showed me ...
inspired me ...

For democracy cannot flourish without putting an arm around the shoulders of the young.

[admin]

AFTERWORD

If you have read this far, you may be wondering, what kind of children did all these traditions produce? I may not be the right one to ask; such questions require subjective answers, and mine would be biased in a way I find unbecoming. What I can do is describe the paths taken by my two sisters and brother.

My brother Shaf, who passed away in 1986, was a student of anthropology and then of law. He was a practitioner of community economic development, the spark plug for an industrial park, and a lifelong proponent of local democracy. He did not believe that the way to effect real change was to start at the national level; much of what happens there, he believed, only served to concentrate power in ways that infrequently benefited the people. Change, he believed, must start at the local level. For this reason he was a champion of community colleges, which took their relations with the community seriously. He was the principal founder of the Northwestern Connecticut Community College, in Winsted, Connecticut, which celebrated its fortieth anniversary in 2005, and he went on to work in the community college movement nationally.

Claire received her Ph.D. in public law and government from Columbia University. Her thesis was a front-running work on the relationship between science and government, and she followed this with early research on energy conservation with a group at a national laboratory. She co-edited and coauthored an early book on science and technology and development in Third World countries, and also wrote scholarly articles concerning health and safety regulation for science and technology. She started a number of citizen groups and projects dedicated to fostering systemic change and democracy at the community level, and works with them to this day. For many years Claire chaired the Council for Responsible Genetics, founded by MIT and Harvard scientists who wanted to develop ethical and legal frameworks for the momentous technology of genetic engineering. After the closing of our local hospital, she was instrumental in mobilizing the citizenry to restore health care services in Winsted, Connecticut, under a creative arrangement based on community control. Thus the Winsted Health Center Foundation was born.

Laura received her Ph.D. in anthropology from Harvard University and went on to become a professor of anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley. Her annual course on "controlling processes" has been a magnet for thousands of students. Through her fieldwork, writing, and teaching, she has been a leading scholar in the field of law and anthropology and of the hierarchies of power and control in industrialized cultures. She has served on commissions to develop more enlightened policies for all our children, and on several energy policy commissions that led the way in advocating sane energy policies. Her eldest daughter is a lawyer who defended children in court and then turned her interest to family, home schooling, and community. Her son has a doctorate in ecology and does hands-on fieldwork toward the biological and cultural preservation of tropical forests. Her youngest daughter, also raising a family, has a Ph.D. in infectious diseases, and is currently a working laboratory scientist in the area of cell destruction and cancer.

Laura's children maintain a keen sense of civic interest and responsibility, something they share easily with their friends, fellow citizens, and their own children. Like their older family members, they believe in talking about matters that matter, about events that affect or afflict the human condition. They use words like "just" and "unjust." They ground their arguments in fact, and display an abiding passion for liberty with responsibility and for freedom with fairness. They believe that deeds legitimize words, and that there can be no authentic pursuit of happiness without the pursuit of justice.

I shared their youthful enthusiasm. When I was a high school student, I remember reading a quotation that was like a path of light for me. It was Senator Daniel Webster's description of justice as "the great work of man on Earth." Webster understood that no society could be improved without effort. Embarking on the journey I found it hard work, to be sure, but sublime gratification as well. There is great joy in pursuing justice -- and that joy should be available to everyone.

Children develop their notions of fairness at a very early age. In their innocence, they are often able to imagine a world without poverty, war, or pollution far more easily than their elders. They have no axe to grind, which gives them a wonderful clarity and optimism. Through their words, deeds, and traditions, my family gave me the gift of believing in such ideals. Their strengths were my metabolism. They propelled me to try to reach as many people as I could, and to try to show them that most of our problems had solutions, if only people would give themselves enough time to stand up and be counted, and if only some of us would stand tall and lead.

For the people do have that power -- but only if they recognize it, and then take the time to apply it. That is the biggest "if" in politics, isn't it? But that is the best reason for trying to make the flowers of democracy bloom.

There is an ancient Chinese proverb whose words I carry with me everywhere I go, one that captures the spirit of my parents' legacy: "To know and not to do is not to know."

Mother and Father viewed our activities during adulthood with a modest equanimity. When I emerged onto the national public scene, and started making regular appearances in the national media, their reaction could be summed up this way: "Okay, Ralph, if there's anything harder than becoming famous, it's learning how to endure it and keep on track without letting it swell your head." David Halberstam's mother and mine were friends, and he tells a story along similar lines: The first time I appeared on the cover of a major national magazine, Mrs. Halberstam called my mother early Monday morning to congratulate her.

"Really?" my mother replied. "I think I'll go out and get a copy."

David could only chuckle. "What modesty," he mused. "If I was on the cover of Time magazine, our family would have emptied out every newsstand in Litchfield County."

Perhaps it was my father who best captured their attitude. Once, when I told him that I'd done my best at something, he leaned over quietly and looked at me. "Son, never say you did your best, because then you'll never try to do better."

Our parents always intended to place us on productive, stimulating pathways, to guide us along until we began to pick up the pace ourselves, and then let us go when they felt their work was complete. Mother used to tell other young mothers in the community that if a child's parents haven't done a proper job by the time their child reaches six or seven years of age, their challenges will only be compounded. "The earlier, the easier," she would say -- and not just when it comes to learning languages, she added with a smile.

There are millions of healthy two-parent and single-parent families who are still guided by traditions as rich as my parents' were. Of course, there are also millions of families who struggle daily under social, economic, or cultural pressures that are urgent enough to crowd out all other concerns. Today, more and more families are farming out their responsibilities -- feeding their children and entertaining them, educating and counseling them, providing day care and advice -- to commercial service providers. The "family industry" is swiftly becoming a real factor in our economy. And this comes with a price, as more parents lose confidence in their own judgments, in their ability to make decisions without the help of the "experts." As corporations deliberately encroach on the parenting of our children, and children spend less personal time with their parents, those all-important traditions are falling by the wayside.

Still, just as young people continue to attend Shakespeare's plays and to perform them, for many the verities and the frailties of family life are still instinctive, as they have been since time immemorial. In these pages, I hope more parents will find reasons to start rebuilding their connections with their children -- by reaching back through the generations, drawing on their family heritage, and passing along the lessons they themselves learned as children. What better way to provide the climate for nurturing what Thomas Jefferson called "an aristocracy of virtue and talent"? If today's parents are to fulfill their acknowledged desire to leave each generation stronger and healthier than its predecessor, cultivating these transcendent family traditions is a good place to begin.

[admin]

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For a volume of recollections and reflections about our family traditions, acknowledgments rest deeply on my parents, sisters, and brother, to whom this book is dedicated. More immediately, my gratitude extends to my sister Claire Nader for her on-point contributions, and my sister Laura Nader's anthropological insights. My nephew Tarek Milleron made precise suggestions in his review of the manuscript.

Special thanks to my colleague John Richard and to my editor, Calvert Morgan, whose skill as an editor is rendered finite only by his limitations of time.

Jacket Cover

My boyhood in a small town in Connecticut was shaped by my family, my friends, our neighbors, my chores and hobbies, the town's culture and environment, its schools, libraries, factories, and businesses, their workers, and by storms that came from nowhere to disrupt everything.... Yet childhood in any family is a mysterious experience.... What shapes the mind, the personality, the character?

So begins this unexpected and extraordinary book by Ralph Nader. Known for his lifetime of selfless activism, Nader now looks back to the earliest days of his own life, to his serene and enriching childhood in bucolic Winsted, Connecticut. From listening to learning, from patriotism to argument, from work to simple enjoyment, Nader revisits seventeen key traditions he absorbed from his parents, his siblings, and the people in his community, and draws from them inspiring lessons for today's society. Warmly human, rich with sensory memories and lasting wisdom, it offers a kind of modern-day parable of how we grow from children into responsible adults -- a reminder of a time when nature and community were central to the way we all learned and lived.



RALPH NADER was recently named by the Atlantic as one of the 100 most influential figures in American history, one of only four living people to be so honored. The son of immigrants from Lebanon, he has launched two major presidential campaigns and founded or organized more than one hundred civic organizations. His groups have made an impact on tax reform, atomic power regulation, the tobacco industry, clean air and water, food safety, access to health care, civil rights, congressional ethics, and much more.

For more information on Ralph Nader or the documentary An Unreasonable Man, visit http://www.anunreasonableman.com.

Jacket design by Matthew Cacciola
Jacket illustration by David Wolf
Author photograph courtesy of American Program Bureau

***

Back Cover

I am often asked what forces shaped me. Rather than trying to give a full answer, I often reply simply, "I had a lucky choice of parents." Among other things, my parents were responsible for passing down the traditions they had learned from the generations before them -- traditions they refined and adapted to the unfamiliar country and culture to which they had emigrated early in the twentieth century. Such family traditions challenge the notion that the fads, technologies, and addictions of modern life have somehow replaced the time-tested wisdom fashioned in the crucibles of earlier generations.

The garb may change after all but the wearer does not.