My family legally immigrated to the United States in 1981 while fleeing a vengeful kleptocrat not much different from Vladimir Putin of today who had his sights on our property and family. Forbes Burnham, the ruler of our native Guyana from 1964-1985, used his political power to steal his country’s resources, threatening my father with co-option of his business at risk of our family.
Interestingly, at this time in the 1970’s the American CIA was at the peak of its anti-communist meddling abroad and was partly responsible for Burnham’s success over his political opponent in Guyanese politics, an opposing presidential candidate whom the CIA deemed more “socialist.” Little did they know that their chosen ruler’s ambition would still entangle his country with Russia and that his hypocritical greed would tyrannize his people as he would come to threaten my two oldest siblings with conscription into an abusive army if my father resisted his usurpations. Our parents nevertheless also believed in the traditional promise of America as a land of refuge and opportunity for immigrants, so we set soar on the jet plane for the Promised Land.
I was a boy of nine years in that year of 1981. I recalled my plane trip to America and a gorgeous stewardess who bent forward and warmly asked, “apple or orange juice?” Frankly, even at that age a beautiful woman threw my system into a whirl, so I sort of clammed up. But not missing a beat, she chose for me, and it was the first time I tasted apple juice while, interestingly, on my way to the Big Apple.
After my family fled to this country my younger sister and I, still minors, were promptly naturalized under my father’s tutelage. Today, I re-affirm the statement I made in my mid-life autobiography of 2012 that my father’s decision for me to become naturalized “could not have been better made by myself, so much have I come to identify with the historical and human significance of this country.”
I often dream that as my own family fled from the socialist hypocrisy of our native Guyana, America might benefit from the human wealth within my own character, just as this country benefitted from the Jewish refugees of Nazi Germany. These include the most famous Albert Einstein, Otto Loewi, and Max Bergmann. These thoughts occurred to me after an encounter of Petra Moser’s paper titled “German-Jewish Emigres and U.S. Invention” during my college years. Moser observes how these immigrants revolutionized U.S. science and technology, as I hope to do the same for my American society.
So in this essay I’m going to account for my choice of a higher education and in the process I will connect my testimony to a very important issue for our generation today, that of student borrowing and its larger implications about America itself. To do this I will attempt to explain why, despite its contemporary critics, I think America is still so special, my rationale for borrowing heavily for my education, and my gratitude for America’s benevolence despite the imperfection of the student loan program presently.
Now, to some history:
On the 15th of June in the year 1215 a historically miraculous thing happened, socially analogous to the first spark of life in the primordial ocean. The then King John of England was running amuck with his royal power, sapping the resources of his kingdom to serve his ambition for military conquest and bullying his subjects into submission with an arbitrary and oppressive administration. This unbearable situation resulted in the rebellion of his barons, forcing him to sign an agreement at Runnymede intended to put a check on the king’s abuses. With the penning of the document of the Magna Carta, the noblemen of England set the first popular precedent in our Western originated chain reaction of practical democracy.
Perhaps you might wonder at my choice of the Magna Carta in representing a pivotal moment in history, since the document was so immediately disregarded by King John after its signing and subsequently seemed rather minor in its historical influence. I choose the signing of the Magna Carta as the central historical event in the lineage of America’s soul, however, because its symbolic impact is critical. Why? Because the pattern holds that the then barons of King John, as against their king, are even today imaged by an American people, as against their “democratic” government or any other opposing body to the interests of the averaged folk. I put the word democratic in quotes because it should never be unthinkable that any form of government is immune to tyrannical evolution, as many citizens today will testify to the increasing corruption in our present democracy. Hint, hint: money politics and our resulting corporate tainted democracy, corporate tainted media, etc.
The revolutionary thirteenth century idea that subjects might have any conceivable right to assert their own claim to life, liberty and justice against an arbitrary and tyrannical government set the very distant course for your and my own inheritance as Americans today. While the fight for social justice still continues against all forms of social and political tyranny in our contemporary world, from the socialist hypocrisy of my original native experience to varieties of dictatorships and the very many present forms of corruption around our globe, America still symbolically stands as a beacon if not a perfectly effective role-model of shining liberty, the open boast of democracy, and general rule of law. So although our democracy is being slowly compromised by corporate influence, which is ultimately the instrument of a moneyed elite, We, The People still have the essential leverage to retake control. This is ultimately what makes America “great,” and this is why I consider myself so indebted to this nation.
But please bear with me in examining a bit more closely the circumstances surrounding the historical accomplishment of the Magna Carta and its defining America’s democratic and populist soul. The English barons who stood up to King John set the precedent for the original American colonists to stand up to King George III of England in July of 1776 through our Declaration of Independence, birthing a new nation specifically dedicated to all the greatest and hard-won ideals of Western civilization to date.
At this point let me insert a little thought which I feel is important, a useful tangent if you will. Although I am of an ethnically mixed, South American heritage, I do not buy into the idea that I need to trace great historical accomplishments to my own “people” in order to feel good about myself. I would like to suggest that identity politics does not produce empowerment so much as accentuate social dysfunction. For the honor of Western civilization, in my mind, is no less than its very aspect as a human civilization. The accomplishment of any one people properly serves the glory of all mankind, and the sooner we internalize this truth, the quicker we will move beyond the mire of identity-based dysfunction!
Returning to our historical account, such an authentic, populist spirit was imbued in the Magna Carta that the surf subjects of the English barons were themselves granted some rights by the very barons who just leveraged influence for themselves. I’m sure you can see the significance in this strangely noble action, since how common is it for any group gaining empowerment for themselves to turn to others that they have power over and ease up on them, as a matter of principle? Maybe this might happen if the newly empowered are trying to live up to, say, some religious example or something? This is why I suspect that the English Barons showing some mindfulness to their surf subjects very likely had as their influencing factor the Christian Church itself in England at the time.
This principled action on the Barons’ part of treating their own subjects slightly better was most likely initiated at the behest of such a moral exemplar in English society at the time as, say, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, who played a pivotal role in the negotiation of the Magna Carta. This act of fair play that Langton probably stressed, out of religious principle, was itself most likely a result of something called the Christian preference for the poor. This is a value long espoused by the Catholic Church and Christians generally, after the example of the most famous poor man who proved himself supremely valuable to the entire world, Jesus Christ.
Langton might himself have received inspiration from his famed predecessor, Thomas à Becket, whose example of speaking truth to the power of King Henry II was perhaps itself in emulation of Jesus’ original showdown with Caesar. I recommend reading the classical play titled “Murder in the Cathedral” to understand how the Church intermixed with political power in England during this general time frame. Although it’s a play written by T.S. Elliot during the rise of fascism in Europe and was perhaps written for just such effect of speaking truth to power, yet again, it still represents an authentic account, in my opinion, of how Christianity stood up to power in early Western formation and thereby left its imprint on the soul of America as the inheritor of the Western legacy. You might subsequently come to appreciate the classical Christian elements in Western culture, democracy, and even the evolution of liberalism itself—if you are open-minded.
Therefore, here is where, perhaps for the first time, the Christian heritage of the West mutated from the religious realm to liberation politics, giving birth to the greater hand of providence in Western history. Liberation politics refers to political movements which liberate or empower the people generally. Inspired again by the example of the poor but invaluable Jesus Christ, this Christian tendency to value the poor might have mutated to political change through the arbitration of Christian leaders such as Langton. Providence refers to the guiding hand of God in the world. So, the idea here is that if God guided the life, destiny and significance of Jesus Christ and changes the world through Christ, then the political leaders of our world who are moved through the influence of Christ are now part of the providential hand of God. This gets at the heart of the classical Christian origins of America, as traced through the Magna Carta and its resulting chain reaction of liberal and democratic, political precedents.
This essay is not primarily about history, however, so in the interest of abbreviating my own, historical speculations, and getting back to the story of the new world, let me surmise that America continued this historically noble precedent of liberation politics in freeing its own African slaves. Yet after all this, we common American folk still find ourselves in a continuing struggle against tyrannical forces bent on usurping our very life and liberty, now in corporate and hidden plutocratic guises, a government by a controlling class of the wealthy. This however brings me to the heart of my student loan story and to your and my good struggle: our calling as the next American generation to continue the good, historical fight.
I had to borrow heavily for my education because I had a hunger for the higher thoughts of humankind while my social inheritance was merely that of the tired and poor, of the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Due to America’s providentially inspired spirit of benevolence, discussed above, of believing in the value of the least of these, I discovered that while I had not the means to afford a higher education, our government nevertheless offered a pathway for even such idealists as me through its Federal Student Loan (FSL) program. I earned my Bachelors in the History of Modern Philosophy and my Masters of Arts in Liberal Studies almost entirely on student loans. Yet what might be considered worse than my heavily idealistic leanings, in the minds of some, is what I ended up doing with my education so earned on the wealth and treasure of others. I went on to lead a rambling lifestyle of no professional significance as a big-rig truck driver! I’m sure many young adults find themselves today in a similar situation of not exactly utilizing their education in a linear or obviously practical way, but does that mean their education was a waste? I do not mind becoming the poster child, as if were, for this issue, as I am confident in my significant destiny.
What did my education do for me? I assert that it made me a qualitatively better person in that spirit famously celebrated by the humanities. But if at this point some of you more “practical” folks should still entertain doubt about my redemption of my costly education, I ask you to consider how I am today utilizing my social loan.
Once an education is had and once a mind is opened, it continues on its higher trajectory. So I became a philosopher truck driver and an American social critic in imitation, of sorts, of our own Henry David Thoreau. The cab of my truck became my Walden Pond, a place to sit and endlessly contemplate with the tools of my higher education. Looking upon the state of my society as its middle class diminishes and as wealth polarizes to a growing few in a new globalization, while its humblest people earnestly strive for dignity, meaning and value in life, I was moved to write my book, The Socratic Trucker. To the end that, through my writing and contemplative adventure, I discovered the very next phase of our continuing American revolution—New American Spring!
Do you still suspect that my education was not utilized? Or that any education, once it opens a mind, might yet go to waste?
Hear me and hear me clearly: our New American Spring Social Program is destined to put the final capstone, as famously depicted on our American dollar, on the providential evolution of liberty, democracy, and general rule of law—against ALL tyranny before the people—even against that of our present-day, hidden plutocracy alluded to above. Our all-seeing eye shall here become the perpetually vigilant, We, The People, each blade of our grass-roots an individual eye looking toward justice, not only justice for ourselves, but justice within or among ourselves as we treat others equally and fairly–just like the barons of England were moved to protect their surfs in the spirit of their own won protections.
This is where the larger significance of America involves my student story and possibly yours. In illustration of our continuing evolution, our American peoples’ struggle against the tyranny of wealth inequality touches the student loan industry itself. According to the student loan justice advocacy organization at StudentLoanJustice.Org, student loans have become “predatory and inflationary” due to their exemption from bankruptcy laws.
Our founding fathers considered the general protection of bankruptcy important enough to codify in Article I, Section 8, Clause 4 of the Constitution. This constitutional mandate was designed to encourage the development of healthy commercialism in our republic through discouraging fiscal irresponsibility on the part of financial institutions, while at the same time protecting the people from tyranny through debt. Although I do not personally object to the requirement that students repay their loans (and I am indeed taking responsibility for my own in utilizing the public service student loan forgiveness program), I do see how the effect of making these loans immune from bankruptcy, in addition to offering usury incentives to lenders, can and does result in lenders’ abuses. Such abuses include irresponsible lending and even callousness towards students’ defaults, glaring injustices which only render greater profits to lenders while further ensnaring We, The People. Worse yet, while further enslaving We, the Next Generation! And worst still, the very best of us as the educated.
From a broader perspective, one could argue that a society burdened with student loan debt is less likely to engage in collective political action or challenge existing power structures. This is because individuals burdened by debt may prioritize individual financial stability over participating in activism or political movements. Consequently, the argument suggests that student loan debt can indirectly contribute to a complacent and politically disengaged population, benefiting those in power who may prefer a less active citizenry. Some argue that this was the very motivation for making colleges expensive and student loans exempt from bankruptcy laws, as American leaders in the 1960’s saw the threat of young, educated “radicals.”
In this way the economic underwriters of our nation, and to an ever-growing degree, the world, the top 1% who hold the greater part of our common treasure become our new slave-owners. At this thought I have to sadly admit that in appreciating America’s generosity in affording me a higher education, I never conceived of this darker taint!
The free enterprise objection that everyone can become investors and ultimate underwriters falls flat in the face of America’s stark inequality of wealth. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (The OECD’s) 2013 evaluation of America as the third most economically unequal nation in income distribution among its citizens, just below Mexico and Chile, amounts to the rudest slap in the face of the American experiment itself! Is this the inevitable fate of a nation specifically dedicated to a rule of, by and for the people? And will we passively absorb this injustice, distracted with our new smartphones and video games and worst yet, virtual reality, as our world slips away? Might our overlords actually plan on keeping us distracted with their newest gadgets as a way of keeping us politically mute and impotent while they codify their absolute control over our body, mind and life—over our very soul!
In 2012 I went on to earn my Masters Certificate in Nonprofit leadership in order to launch and lead my New American Spring, reparative social movement outlined in the “Social Program.” To the effect that, while America has (albeit somewhat cynically) tossed its dice for me in its wager on the least of these, I too am gambling on America in my hope that the true and special significance of our New American Spring vison will be acknowledged, funded and supported by my worthy, fellow citizens.
Therefore, with respect to my student loans, extended to me by the same providence inherited then handed down by America, I sincerely hope that I will not only someday pay off my obligation in good faith and gratitude, but that my educationally enriched life will prove a net gain for our great American experiment itself. History is beautiful and our future is bright, and we the educated can and must make good on our investment.
New American Spring!
Revolution of Vision, Evolution of World…
New American Spring 