INCREASE CIVIC SELF-RESPECT AND BE HAPPIER

By Ralph Nader
June 9, 2025

A good way to understand CIVIC SELF-RESPECT – the title of my timely new book – is to recall a slice of American history from the late nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies. Those were the years when Congress and a Republican President, Richard Nixon, produced many laws strongly opposed by corporate lobbyists that protected the health, safety, and economic well-being of the American people. That was a miraculous time when Big Business lost again and again to the interests of the People. How did this happen?

People with civic self-respect generated a focused and significant RUMBLE felt all the way to Congress and the White House. By my estimate, this civic outpouring was produced by less than one percent of the voters representing a growing majority public opinion and backed by D.C.-based full-time citizen advocates, who knew what they were talking about, and successfully pushed corporate accountability legislation. The mass media had enough civic self-respect to cover this important work.

In 1966 the motor-vehicle and highway safety bills – never given a chance a year earlier – passed almost unanimously and were signed with a flourish by President Lyndon Johnson, advised by his special assistant Joe Califano.

Then in the succeeding eight years, Congress passed the Flammable Fabrics, Gas Pipeline and Product Safety Laws. They broke through industry opposition to enact the fundamental air and water pollution laws, create the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and the Safe Drinking Water and Freedom of Information Acts.

Such was the rumble from the people, as on Earth Day 1970, with millions of Americans turned out to specifically demand passage of life-saving measures amidst choking air pollution and rivers that would catch on fire!

Letters and telephone calls would pour into congressional offices. In one battle to block a Congressional Pay Hike, talk radio generated literally millions of calls to block this greedy amendment. Listener communications to members of Congress were more serious than the short emails of today.

National television shows would feature leading citizen advocates making their case before many millions of viewers. Today the Sunday morning interview shows like NBC’s Meet the Press and Face the Nation rarely feature citizen advocates.

Fast forward to today. Most of the daily talk radio shows have disappeared and the surviving ones are hosted by grossly right-wing ideologues blaring forth, as the late Rush Limbaugh did with his daily soliloquies.

There are no more Phil Donahue-like Shows (10 million viewers) to showcase oncoming major movements of dissent for a more just America. Such shows are needed now more than ever because of the way Trump has soiled the White House.

The nightly TV news hosts interviewed citizen leaders. Not today. Even PBS and NPR hardly open their public airwaves to such doers.

What all this comes down to is that the civic self-respect at the top has diminished greatly allowing commercialism to run rampant. People striving to better their communities and country are virtually shut out from the public airwaves and cable programs and are polluted by often sleazy, deceptive ads taking up more air time than ever.

The major print media is not much better. Groups like Public Citizen, Common Cause, People for the American Way, Center for Auto Safety, and Center for Science in the Public Interest are of little interest to the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. All three of these major original print publications once had enough civic self-respect to make Congress pay attention to the reports, testimonies, and lobbying by these and other civic institutions.

Which brings me to my book that argues the critical reservoir of any democracy capable of resisting insatiable corporate power requires civic self-respect. The foundation for this essential element of our democracy starts with “the ordinary” or “regular American.”

Several ordinary people prompted me to write this book – both because of their extraordinary successes. Another motivation was the majority of people who have given up on themselves, thinking they don’t matter or count in the public arenas of decision-making. Some would even refer to themselves as “I’m a Nobody.”

NOBODY IS A NOBODY!

Dropping out of democracy by people whose qualities and numbers can make decided differences in the livelihoods of the many has always sparked my curiosity. Too many people don’t know that it rarely takes more than one percent of the people getting active on behalf of the majority of their fellow Americans to break through. (See, Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State, Nation Books, 2014; and Breaking Through Power: It’s Easier Than We Think, City Lights Books, 2016).

The decline in the teaching of civics in elementary and high school has also taken a toll on our society. Civic role models are barely mentioned, as the curriculum becomes more commercially computerized and standardized.

I made this book very personal so that readers can identify their own potential for wrapping civic awareness and activity around their daily roles. Thus, the chapter titles – I, the Citizen; I, the Worker; I, the Consumer-Shopper; I, the Taxpayer; I, the Voter; I, the Parent; I, the Veteran; I, the Philanthropist.

It is surprisingly easy to improve how you exercise these roles for yourself when you develop a modest civic framework. For example: you’re a parent. Your offspring will benefit when you join with other parents to reinstate physical education and practical civic education in your school’s curriculum.

You’re a consumer/shopper, you save money and purchase better products by connecting with Consumer Reports and reading their ratings and recommendations or by learning more about nutrition to enhance the health and vigor of your family and close friends.

You’re a voter. How about becoming a more demanding, smart voter – not a voter vulnerable to phony political ads, but a voter who questions a candidate’s record and paymasters, and insists on your lawmakers respecting your sovereign power by appearing personally at town meetings of your creation. As Cicero once said, “Freedom is participation in power.” Freedom is also happiness. It’s also more fun than feeling you don’t matter.

With your moral authority galvanized, you can challenge those having power or celebrity status to show more of their civic self-respect. Professional athletes, entertainers, and their owner corporate executives rake in big money with their gouging ticket prices. Take them on!

Trump is pressing to destroy the work of our former presidents – George W. Bush (his AIDS medicine program abroad); Bill Clinton; Barack Obama (Obamacare); and Joe Biden (his public works and renewable energy outlays). Why aren’t they speaking out forcefully to their legions of supporters and launching more civic organizations to block Tyrant Trump and pushing members of Congress to stop Dangerous Donald?

In short, discouraged people should get a civic life as a promising way for the “Pursuit of Happiness,” in the words of our Founders.

If you would like an autographed copy of “Civic Self-Respect,” visit nader.org.