The Seventeen Traditions

by Ralph Nader

  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-starting 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.

  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 coedited 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.

  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.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  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 www.anunreasonableman.com.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  ALSO BY RALPH NADER

  Civic Arousal

  The Good Fight

  In Pursuit of Justice

  Crashing the Party: Taking on the

  Corporate Government in an Age of Surrender

  No Contest: Corporate Lawyers and the

  Perversion of Justice in America

  (WITH WESLEY J. SMITH)

  Unsafe at Any Speed

  CREDITS

  Illustrations by David Wolf

  Cover design by Matthew Cacciola

  Cover illustration by David Wolf

  COPYRIGHT

  THE SEVENTEEN TRADITIONS. Copyright © 2007 by Ralph Nader. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  ePub edition January 2007 ISBN 9780061736759

  Version 073014

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  Australia

&
nbsp; HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

  Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street

  Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

  www.harpercollins.com.au

  Canada

  HarperCollins Canada

  2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor

  Toronto, ON M4W 1A8, Canada

  www.harpercollins.ca

  New Zealand

  HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand

  Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive

  Rosedale 0632

  Auckland, New Zealand

  www.harpercollins.co.nz

  United Kingdom

  HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

  77-85 Fulham Palace Road

  London W6 8JB, UK

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  United States

  HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

  195 Broadway

  New York, NY 10007

  www.harpercollins.com