Last week, it was reported that the Bush administration will send $1 billion to aid Georgia, the Eastern European nation that revolted against Russia. I couldn’t help but think of the other Georgia, the southeastern state and one of the original Thirteen Colonies that revolted against Great Britain.
What are the tradeoffs when we rush to aid Georgia, which recklessly provoked a war? Couldn’t that $1 billion be better spent on our own Georgia, by training teachers, building the infrastructure that the renewable-energy economy will require, and protecting the natural resources that our children’s children will need to survive?
I’m not against nation-building, so long as it’s aligned with our values, strategically smart, and done in full partnership with many of our allies. But it seems to me that right now, our foremost priority should be on “innovation building”—redoubling our efforts to create novel ways of unleashing positive economic, social, and environmental change.
Yesterday, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman argued that while our capacity for innovation is “our most important competitive advantage…it is not being supported and nurtured as needed in today’s supercompetitive world. Right now, we feel like a country in a very slow decline…”
For innovation to flourish, we need citizens with health care, a livable rather than a minimum wage, affordable and effective public transportation, regulation that prevents our financial institutions from preying on their customers, and public schools with the latest science equipment. We need to treat teachers as well as we treat bankers; we need to buy fewer bombs and more telescopes; we need to (better) subsidize college educations instead of oil companies. Freidman’s final thought: “Alas, though, the Republicans just had a convention where…’drill, baby, drill,’ was chanted instead of ‘innovate, baby, innovate.'” Such pablum insults everyone—conservatives and progressives—who try to think in nuanced ways about how to solve the complicated, real-world problems of ordinary Americans.