Daniel Lubetzky

Richard Stengel summarized Nelson Mandela’s eight leadership lessons – Madiba’s Rules (Mandela’s clan name) in TIME Magazine: 

All of them are calibrated to cause the best kind of trouble: the trouble that forces us to ask how we can make the world a better place.

No. 1: Courage is not the absence of fear — it’s inspiring others to move beyond it

No. 2 Lead from the front — but don’t leave your base behind

No. 3 Lead from the back — and let others believe they are in front

No. 4 Know your enemy — and learn about his favorite sport

Mandela understood that blacks and Afrikaners had something fundamental in common: Afrikaners believed themselves to be Africans as deeply as blacks did. He knew, too, that Afrikaners had been the victims of prejudice themselves: the British government and the white English settlers looked down on them. Afrikaners suffered from a cultural inferiority complex almost as much as blacks did.

No. 5 Keep your friends close — and your rivals even closer

No. 6 Appearances matter — and remember to smile

No. 7 Nothing is black or white

No. 8 Quitting is leading too

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Every line in Cameron Crowe’s script for Jerry Maguire (one of my favorite movies) is at once witty and apt.  IMDB has a good compilation of some great lines. Besides the ones that have made it into every day life, like "Help me help you", "You had me at hello," and "Show me the money!", here are a couple examples:

Rod Tidwell, Jerry’s only remaining client: You are hanging on by a very thin thread and I dig that about you!

Jerry Maguire: I’m finished, I’m fucked. Twenty four hours ago, man, I was hot! Now… I’m a cautionary tale. You see this jacket I’m wearing, you like it? Because I don’t really need it. Because I’m cloaked in failure! I lost the number one draft picked the night before the draft! Why? Let’s recap: Because a hockey player’s kid made me feel like a superficial jerk. I ate two slices of bad pizza, went to bed and grew a conscience!

Avery Bishop, Jerry’s hard-core fiance: If you ever want me to be with another woman for you, I’d do it. It’s not something I’m interested in. Once, yeah, it seemed normal, but it was just a phase, a college thing, like torn Levi’s or law school for you. Would you like something from the kitchen? I’m gonna get some fruit.

Copy store clerk, after reading Jerry’s Mission/Manifesto: That’s how you become great, man. Hang your balls out there!

Ray, Dorothy’s munchkin son: D’you know that the human head weighs 8 pounds?
Jerry Maguire: Did you know that Troy Aikman, in only six years, has passed for 16,303 yards?
Ray: D’you know that bees and dogs can smell fear?
Jerry Maguire: Did you know that the career record for hits is 4,256 by Pete Rose who is NOT in the Hall of Fame?
Ray: D’you know that my next door neighbor has three rabbits?
Jerry Maguire: I… I can’t compete with that!

Avery Bishop: There is a sensitivity thing that some people have. I don’t have it. I don’t cry at movies, I don’t gush over babies, I don’t buy Christmas presents 5 months early, and I DON’T tell the guy who just ruined both our lives, "Oh, poor baby." But I do love you.

Dorothy: I just want to be inspired.

Dorothy: He’s coming over.
Laurel: Tonight?
Dorothy: He just lost his best client. I invited the guy over.
Laurel: Dorothy, this is not a guy. It’s a syndrome. Early mid-life. Hanging on to the bottom wrung. "Dear God, don’t let me be alone or I call my newly long suffering assistant without medical for company settlement."

Marcee Tidwell: [shouting, to Jerry] What do you stand for?
Dorothy: How about a little piece of integrity in this world that is so full of greed and a lack of honorability that I don’t know what to tell my son! Except, "Here. Have a look at a guy who isn’t yelling ‘Show me the money." Did you know he’s broke? He is broke and working for you for free! Broke. Broke, broke, broke. I’m sorry I’m just not as good at the insults as she is.
Marcee Tidwell: No, that was pretty good.

Dicky Fox, Jerry’s mentor earlier generation agent: Hey, I don’t have all the answers. In life, to be honest, I failed as much as I have succeeded. But I love my wife. I love my life. And I wish you my kind of success.

The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes, natives and immigrants, Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.

- SENATOR BARACK OBAMA, speaking in Berlin.

In OneVoice form, he also said:

This is the moment when we must defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it.  This threat is real and we cannot shrink from our responsibility to combat it.

If we could create NATO to face down the Soviet Union, we can join in a new and global partnership to dismantle the networks [of terror]

If we could win a battle of ideas against the communists, we can stand with the vast majority of Muslims who reject the extremism that leads to hate instead of hope.

If you feel the need to refer to mobile phones, computer games, or digital cameras, you’re probably a ‘digital immigrant.’ To the natives [including most of those born in the 90s], these are simply phones, games and cameras.

- Julian Baggini, paraphrasing Mark Prensky’s concept of ‘Digital
Natives’, in a Financial Times review of Susan Greenfield’s article
Id: The quest for identity in the 21st Century, about the
commodification of human identity or ‘Nobodies’ who are hypnotized by a steady stream of stimulating but undemanding electronic noises and images.

Sent from my iPhone – pardon typos

As poignant as when Senator Clinton spoke about how her own Mother was born before women had a right to vote, today when she endorsed Barack Obama with the same tenacity as she displayed during her campaign, she shared an anecdote that encapsulated the historical significance of her campaign:

To all those women in their 80s and their 90s, born before women could vote, who cast their votes for our campaign…

I’ve told you before about Florence Steen of South Dakota, who was 88 years old and insisted that her daughter bring an absentee ballot to her hospice bedside.

Her daughter and a friend put an American flag behind the bed and helped her fill out the ballot.  She passed away soon after and under State law her ballot didn’t count.

But her daughter later told a reporter, "my Dad is an ornery old cowboy and he didn’t like it when he heard Mom’s vote wouldn’t be counted.  I don’t think he’d voted in 20 years,  but he voted in place of my Mom.

Besides the historical progress referenced above, Clinton also spoke powerfully about human potential, underlining why so many women and men have rallied behind her and Senator Obama’s campaigns:

To the Moms and Dads who came to our events, who lifted their little girls and little boys on their shoulders and whispered in their ears, ‘see, you can be anything you want to be.’

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Following on the footsteps of Rudyard Kipling’s IF, and the message, Don’t Give Up, Senator Clinton spoke today with the same tenacity as she displayed during her campaign, yet somehow with more passion, sincerity and inspiration than any time before:

To those who are disappointed that we couldn’t go all the way, especially the young people who put so much into this campaign, it would break my heart if in falling short of my goal, I in any way discouraged any of you from pursuing yours.

Always aim high, work hard, and care deeply about what you believe in.

And when you stumble, keep faith.  And when you are knocked down, get right back up and never listen to anyone who says you can’t or shouldn’t go on.

-Senator Hillary Clinton, June 7 2008 Speech Endorsing Barack Obama and giving one of her best speeches ever.

It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.

-Herbert Clark HOOVER
31st President of the United States (1874-1964)

This, indeed, is one of the paramount challenges faced by democratic systems.  Democracy cannot exist without freedom of expression.  And yet how can it safeguard from demagogic populists who once in power may seek to dismantle democratic systems? Nowadays it is fashionable to criticize democratization efforts in the Middle East – after all, look at what Hamas is doing in Gaza, and what is going on in Lebanon with Hezbollah, and the rise of salafis and fatalists wherever any openness is shown. 

There are three keys to a successful democratic system:

• Security By A State Accountable to the People – so people can act on their beliefs without intimidation or coercion, and so militias cannot enforce their will and bully others – think of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine;
• Freedom of Expression and Thought – so all arguments can be truly exposed to scrutiny and thought
• Repeat Election Cycles – so if people make mistakes as they are apt to do, they can undo those who governed badly in the next election cycle – as they did to Hamas the sole time that the people saw them govern and had a chance to vote again; this is the big achilles heel to democracy in the Middle East, as Bernard Lewis commented that fundamentalists had used democracy as "one man, one vote, one time" – and once in power done away with future free elections; this is the problem in Iran, but also in places like Chavez’s Venezuela, and of course Gaza and Lebanon.

• and to be fair in the analysis, a variation of the problem also exists in the West Bank; on one side those in control of the PA

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"The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy".

- Montesquieu

It feels surreal to post this after my prior posting. 

"There is no way to Peace; Peace is the Way."

How does that apply to the situation in Lebanon?  How will we fix our world amidst all these very real power struggles and absolutist ideologies?

Wouldn’t it be great if ordinary citizens all joined together and said, "I have had enough – and I am going to do something about it!" and then pushed their Heads of State to once and for all deliver a two-state-agreement?!

They could draw inspiration from this:

"I am mad as hell, and I am not going to take this anymore!"

- From NETWORK, the movie (let’s just hope that the civic action wouldn’t be hijacked by corporate networks, though it could turn into something like this):

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