Freedom Force: A historic backgrounder

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( Last of three parts )

Why can’t or why won’t Filipinos wake up? The evidence is all around us that we have petrified and even shrunk as a nation. We hold on to a democracy that – within the Philippine context – has lost all meaning, all relevance. We are now a pariah among the many nations of Asia that decided to modernize 30 years ago or more and now lord it over us. We are a country whose Senate, whose political system reeks with rot and pollution as much as its garbage. If we feel abashed and ashamed by our rockbottom poverty, we don’t’ show it. Or we just shrug it off.

Is it our religion, which Bishop Socrates Villegas preaches with unctuous piety must love the poor and necessarily must love poverty? And so the impoverished must be resigned to their fate since they will get their rewards in heaven? Is it our culture, breezy and fun-loving, balmy as the tropical sun? Is it our leadership, which pursues power for power’s sake and its collateral of riches and the good life? Is it our ignorant and unlettered masses? And H.G. Wells was right when he said, "Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe"?

"If only we had an inspiring leader whom we can follow." This is the comment we hear more and more often nowadays.

And so because there is none on the horizon, the disaster that we had feared is now happening. By the hundreds, highly-educated and well-employed Filipinos and their families today migrate abroad. They seek to escape what they feel is a hopeless existence here – a dark tunnel without any light at the end. What then is missing? Why can’t we move forward? What is it that pins us to a quagmire? What immobilizes us? Why do we as a people and as a nation lack the will to enforce change. These days, I cannot see a politician in the eye without surmising he is a first-class scoundrel.

Those who are looking for a leader, seven feet tall with thunderbolts in hand, won’t find any.

The only one who could have made a great difference because his was a colossal mind, utterly fearless and heroic in mold, was Ninoy Aquino. He was our last true patriot. He is the patron saint of Freedom Force. His kind doesn’t exist anymore. Not today. Not in the immediate years to come. Certainly not before 2004. Napoleon was right. Great men are the result of the encounter between great minds and great opportunities. We have no great minds. It is as if in this field, we have died as a nation.

This is a good time as any to go further afield.

Every great moment in history – for weal or for woe – started with an idea. These ideas were born in the minds of gifted individuals either in the stirring spiritual mold of Mahatma Gandhi, the fearless vision of Winston Churchill, the twisted, ugly genius of Adolph Hitler. In the realm of political, economic and social (all three intertwined) progress, it was individuals too who lit that single spark that brought a country to greatness. Let’s start with Margaret Thatcher, now known far and wide for the "Thatcherite revolution". She said: "Yes, it started with ideas, with beliefs. Yes, that’s it. You must start with beliefs. Yes, always with beliefs." These beliefs, which almost all of postwar England seemed opposed to in the beginning, eventually destroyed a closet, cloistered economy – Britain’s postwar welfare state (cradle to the grave). Thatcherism opened the nation to the outside world. She liberated trade, technology and the market from the gallows. Britain prospered. The grocer’s daughter won her bet.

"It matters not whether a cat is black or white so long as it can catch the mice." So said Deng Xiaoping before China’s cultural revolution in the mid-60s. For this the diminutive Deng (at 4-11 as tall as our GMA) was almost exterminated by the communist leadership led by Mao Zedong. He was pitilessly hounded by the Red Guards, his son manhandled and almost killed. Deng was exiled, sentenced to hard labor in the sticks for three years. And yet he never wavered. Eventually, Deng struggled to the top. He opened China to capitalism and a free enterprise economy. He reduced Marxism-Maoism to a scrap heap, ("It is glorious to be rich," he said), admitted he never read Das Kapital. He linked China to the world’s markets. The result? China is the fastest growing economy in the world, may overtake the United States in 25-30 years.

One man in South Korea came to the fore after the disastrous presidency of Syngman Rhee in the late 50s. His name was Park Chung Hee, a military general with an obsession – modernize South Korea at any cost. His vision was to set up Korea, Inc. after the terrible devastation of the Korean war. He brought together the "brightest and the best," ruled with an iron hand, modeled his country’s economy after Japan. South Korea was dirt poor, with a per capita income of $100 before 1963. From 1962 until 1979, Park almost single-handedly ruled South Korea, brought to being the industrial giants called chaebols. He knew every detail, ruthlessly fired ministers who could not achieve 80 percent of what they pledged each year. Park was obsessed with high, sustained, spectacular economic growth. He got it. Today, South Korea is an industrial giant.

We can go on and on to Ludwig Erhard of Germany to Jean Monnet of France. In their minds first bristled the great political and economic ideas that transformed Germany and France after WWII. Those ideas took a life of their own, captured the imagination of politicians, entrepreneurs and their peoples, and brought astounding progress and prosperity to their countries. so everything starts with ideas and singular minds with the ferocity of a pack of tigers to carry them out. The so-called masses are largely clay riding the backs of great individuals with great ideas. But masses nonetheless that can be liberated and educated to enjoy the values of a progressing and highly civilized nation. And that is how poverty disappears.

This three-column piece on Freedom Force actually addresses itself to its main audience – the middle class, civil society, also called the Middle Forces.

In my view, they must be emancipated from old, stereotyped clichés. Among these are so-called democracy and freedom enshrined in our constitution. We have had more than 50 years of actual experience and they have dismally failed us. Other nations in Asia and elsewhere built their future on courage, perseverance and hard work, buttressed by technology, education, hard, relentless striving and ever-increasing productivity. In Singapore, math and science are drilled into the very young. Singaporean mothers are at the forefront infusing math and science into their kids.

We must adopt the Asian formula for economic tigerhood.

This three-tiered formula has on top the guiding, dynamic hand of government with an elite of talented bureaucrats who promote and advance technology, and oversee (example, Japan’s MITI) and straighten out the myriad problems blocking growth. Who know and can navigate the market. The second term is education going into full stride with industrialization, modern manufacturing methods. Our nation must be committed to this kind of quality education. Or all is lost. Human knowledge is the most valuable capital there is today. The third tier, which was crucial to the success of Asia Inc., is a balance of government authority, market forces, and a driving even sometimes punishing work ethic.

Here the line must be drawn between responsibility and freedom. Our democracy has all the freedom but shirks or abdicates the responsibility. And this is where we are committing suicide as a nation. The overarching issue facing the Philippines today is survival. Either we change or we die. Either we educate our citizenry or we die. Either we make our economy competitive or we die. Either we export or we die. Either our Middle Forces surge to the fore or we die. As economists Daniel Yerkin and Joseph Stanislaw who thoroughly studied the Asian Formula put it, "Most of the Asian success stories involved at some point dictatorship, authoritarianism or at the least regulate politics and a de facto one-party system."

Whatever the correct formula may be for the Philippines, it will be the Middle Forces that will have to decide.

If they don’t, the communist left will endeavor to by scorching the nation with revolution and class war. If they don’t, the military establishment will take over and we’ll have the likes of Pervez Musharraf or Fidel Castro. How do we thread this needle? This is the purpose of Freedom Force, engage the Middle Forces and everybody else who loves this country in purposeful, deep and searching debate and discussion. They are the one who will build the bridges to the future. And they are highly qualified for this task because they constitute the core of the nation’s values and morality. More than anybody else they have intellectual baggage to cope with the problems of a Philippines in deep crisis.

They are our youth and our students, our professionals, our civic organizations, our NGOs, our businessmen, our priests and our nuns who disdain Bishop Villegas’ preachments ennobling poverty, our women, our Filipinos overseas, politicians who are willing to reform. This is a crusade the pursuit of which is truth. Truth must not sit upon the lips of dying men as Matthew Arnold would have it. If truth is a child of time, then we must rub nature’s sticks and seek its flame today. Or like hidden gold, we must bring it out of the mine. The essential things is for the middle citizenry to come alive, to bear torches – not arms, their hearts and minds – not the baton or the bayonet, but the force of nobility and courage.

I know, we know those in power today do not want this truth to emerge. They dread change. So they will heap abuse on Freedom Force, on this author as they have already done so. Let them. If they persist, all they will reap is the whirlwind.

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