Leadership: Rep. Barbara J. Lee

Leadership: Rep. Barbara J. Lee

True Leadership: Representative Barbara J. Lee

If you asked an average group of Americans to describe what a leader is, chances are that most of them would describe a person who is able to motivate other people to take action and get them to cooperate with each other, that is, get them to work together to complete an important task. Although these characteristics are valuable in a person and definitely make for a good administrator, they are not the characteristics of a leader. A true leader is someone who is willing to take a moral stand on an issue and be the only one who does, no matter how unpopular such a stand may make him or her. In order to take a principled, but unpopular, moral stand, an ethical system must be in place that leads to moral decisions. There are many fine administrators but only a few real leaders. Historically, leaders such as Jesus of Nazareth, Mahatma Ghandi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. have been persecuted for their stands; however, despite persecution they persisted with what they believed was right and true and made a great impact on society.

A more recent example of such a person is Senator Barbara J. Lee. Shortly after the 9/11 attack on the Word Trade Center, Congress approved the President's right to "use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks" (Rhetoric of 9/11 web site). The vote was nearly unanimous. Only one congressional representative objected. That was California democrat Barbara J. Lee who explained afterwards her conviction that the safety of our country does not lie with the military. In her speech to Congress she implied that her decision was of an ethical and moral nature. Speaking of the 9/11 attack, she said: "This unspeakable act upon the United States has really forced me...to rely on my moral compass, my conscience, and my God for direction" (Rhetoric of 9/11 web site). Congress gave overwhelming support for going to war. The media did not dissent. And flags flew all over the country.

An emotional fervor of nationalism had swept across the nation.

Those few people who did dissent against the invasion of Iraq were silenced in various ways. Everybody knows what he or she is supposed to say and what he or she should not say when the country is about to go to war, and woe to the person who doesn't stay with the script. People get intoxicated with nationalism, national pride, and the excitement of a war about to start. They forget about their daily problems and feel transformed. By the time the war is over, the myth of a noble cause worth dying for will seem to have dissolved, but in the beginning dissent amounts to political suicide.

Barbara J. Lee, instead of going along with the crowd and mouthing the popular view, chose to demand that we question and examine our society and ourselves. She apparently recognizes that when we stop doing that, our moral fabric is eroded and replaced by a warped version of reality. Ms. Lee refused to accept the warped version. She was willing to be the only representative to speak out against making a "preemptive strike," that is, invading a small country that did nothing to us. Thus, she risked being labeled "unpatriotic" which could lose her an election.

Artists, musicians, and poets are usually the socially conscious dissenters in society, but during wartime, art gets pushed out and replaced with waving flags, patriotic songs, sentimental dedications, and all the platitudes of patriotism.