"Obama’s supporters believe that his life story and the angle of vision it affords him hold out the possibility of curing the harm they would say we have done to ourselves through our indifference to the views of others and through the insularity of a president who seems so incurious about the world. There is thus an emblematic force to Obama’s candidacy. A President Obama, says Joseph Nye, the Harvard professor who popularized the term “soft power” to describe the capacity to gain support through attraction rather than force, “would do more for America’s soft power around the world than anything else we could do.” ~from an article this morning about Barack Obama in the NYTimes.

I think we are going to see a Clinton/Obama ticket for the upcoming election and I'm glad. I think they'll win too. I hope so. But that quote grabs me for the idea of soft power. I haven't heard that term before and I like it. It makes me think of homeschool. It makes me think of good parenting. It makes me think about looking at the world, and our understanding of reality, in fresh ways.

Its a scary time, right now. Global warming. A world economy based on diminishing resources. And, for those of us in the United States, living under the umbrella of a brutal, greedy, and mongering political regime. This makes it difficult to feel hopeful and calm and happy about the children's future. We don't discuss these issues much, here at home. Our children are still little. And having grown up with Ronald Regan and the threat of nuclear destruction, I have an impulse to shelter the kids from that kind of oppressive fear for as long as is responsible.

But beyond sheltering the children, a new feeling is percolating in me. One not based on fear, but on hope. I think the US is on a path to become more like France. That could never be a bad thing, in my opinion. If you believe even just the trend of the statistics in essays such as "Shift Happens" you could feel panic. The United States won't be a super power much longer? Oh Gee, will we suddenly all be forced to live and work in sweatshop like conditions, such as we have selfishly milked and nursed at since the beginning of the industrial age? That might be poetic justice. But I don't think so. I think we will become a nation interested in feeding ourselves, in providing humane heath care for ourselves, in sustaining our own infrastructure, and in chilling out. Already, vineyards are popping up all over the country. And art is becoming a higher, and more lucrative, calling. See? We are becoming more like France. LONG LIVE THE FRENCH FRY!

French Fries are the quintessential kid food. I like the reality and the metaphor here. All the news, the doom and the gloom? Well, either it is too late and the planet is hopelessly toxic and our great grandchildren will suffer on a barely lifeless planet, for a while, before life here on earth is over. OR, this bad news about the environment and world hatred are a song of change. A sad scary, yet hopeful, song of change. Imagine if we really did switch to renewable and sustainable non polluting sources of energy on this planet? Can you even take it in? Imagine a drop in asthma rates for children. Imagine that every day was a safe day to play outside. Imagine no such thing as a "code red" day for ozone. Imagine life without guilt for every time you just want to take a drive to a lovely spot for a hike. Imagine a safe place to raise happy children who are fed healthy organic food.

Imagine homebirth as the perfectly and sublimely NORMAL event that it actually is.

And imagine schooling the children to live in a society where we are not in a constant battle for economic and military supremacy - like France. Imagine teaching the children to think deeply, appreciate philosophy, art, history, and all the happy life skills so that they might, simply, expect to live and support their own children and, oh I don't know, make art and milk the cow and grow blueberries.

Imagining Soft Power, I feel hopeful.