The Power of Ideas Part 1 with Guest Dr. Ruth Backstrom

This week on #ForWhatitsWorhwithBlakeMelnick, Part 1 of my interview with Dr. #RuthBackstrom, author of the recently published book #IGNITINGABOLDNEWDEMOCRACY: Empowering Citizens Through Game-Changing Reforms.

In Part 1 of our interview, Dr. Backstrom discusses her background  and the motivation for wanting to write her book; The root causes of the dysfunctional state of Democracy in the U.S. and Canada; The disconnect between the political system and the needs of citizens and the power of ideas to ignite large scale change....For What it's Worth

The music for this episode, "How Come I Gotta" is written and performed by our current artist in residence, #DouglasCameron

You can find out more about Douglas by visiting our show blog and by listening to our episode, #TheOldGuitar

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Transcript

Power of Ideas - Part 1

[00:00:00] Blake Melnick: Well, welcome to this week's episode of For What it's Worth called The Power of Ideas. I'm your host, Blake Melnick, and this episode is the next installments in our Many Faces of Innovation series, and it focuses on the power of ideas to ignite large scale change. We are all acutely aware of the stark polarization in our world.

[00:00:52] We have begun to lose faith in our political, social, and economic systems. Our belief that our democracy can [00:01:00] provide adequately for all our citizens is fraying at the edges. We have lost the art of open-minded discourse, and it would seem that we no longer value perspectives different from our own cancel culture.

[00:01:14] Negative labelling, distortion of the truth has prevented all voices from being heard and has splintered our citizenry around political lines. What if instead of fighting and trying to prove the illegitimacy of each other's political opinions, diverse groups of citizens came together to envision and then create the kind of democratic system we all want?

[00:01:39] Is that even possible? My guest this week is Dr. Ruth Backstrom, author, speaker, and acclaimed educator who is an expert in facilitation methods that foster deeper conversations. Dr. Backstrom's recent book, igniting a Bold New Democracy, Empowering Citizens Through [00:02:00] Game-Changing Reforms, seeks to address this question using historical events, policy, and specific legislation to trace how we arrived at our current state.

[00:02:10] And then provide us with a way forward for what it's worth.

[00:02:17] Dr. Backstrom welcome to the show. I'm delighted to have you here. I love your new book. It was a game changer for me. And I think it's really important for us to have discussions about the current dysfunctional state of our democracies. And I really liked the way in your book that you provided historical context. 

[00:02:37] And referenced specific legislation that helps us understand how we got from the late fifties, early sixties, I guess, to our current state. It's such an important book. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed it. And I want to delve deeply into some of the key ideas that you raise. But before I do, I'd like to start with a little bit of background information about you. I usually do this [00:03:00] with all my guests on the show. 

[00:03:01] So tell me a little bit about your background and then what motivated you to want to write this book? Igniting a bold new democracy. 

[00:03:09] Ruth Backstrom: Let me start by saying thank you so much for having me on here too. I really appreciate it.

[00:03:15] So my background, actually, this story goes to, goes way back when I was a child, actually. I was driving through an inner city neighborhood with my parents. I was about seven at the time. And I looked at the neighborhood and it was very different than the neighborhood I grew up in. The houses were smaller, they were wood houses, there was laundry, 

[00:03:35] drying on the back porch. And so there wasn't a dryer. And I turned at my mother and said, how come they have so much less money and there's, the houses are so much smaller, it was a poor African-American neighborhood. And I was shocked by the discrepancy and I didn't really feel like I got a good answer from my mother.

[00:03:53] But then, five years later when I turned 13, I heard the voice of someone on the radio talking about these very [00:04:00] concerns and it was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Hmm. And that he was starting the civil rights movement. And I was really interested in the issues that he was talking about, particularly cuz I was going to a predominantly African American school at the time, which had twice the capacity for the actual school.

[00:04:18] So we had up staircases and down staircases to handle the flow, and then wagons in the back, like mobile units. So I knew the problems with these segregated schools. And my friend called me up and said, there's a march in downtown Chicago. And I said, I'm in. So we took the IC down and, joined the march.

[00:04:42] And as we got there, the organizers said, we called up the superintendent. He doesn't wanna meet with us. Big surprise. And so we said, all right, you're, we're all instructed to sit down and protest. And as I started to sit down, I looked out at the side of my eye and I saw that our organizer was being beaten up by the [00:05:00] cops with batons.

[00:05:02] And I was shocked. Cause I was, as a 13 year old, I'd never seen a scalp wound before. So it had a really powerful impact on. Mm-hmm. And I said to my friend, hold on tight. Let's sit down and. We did. And then this cop heard me and he came towards me and said, I'll get that one. And I had these visions that I was in that blood dripping down my head and I said, I am walking into the paddy wagon

[00:05:26] but that was my first encounter with social justice issues, it left a really powerful, feeling that I wanted to do something about these things, then later on, I got involved in sustainability issues, but there was always in the back of my mind these concerns with all these societal issues that had never been fully addressed.

[00:05:45] Like, the school systems are still not being addressed like I'd like to see, and so I thought I'd like to write a book about what happened, why these things didn't get taken care of, and some of the discoveries I made along the way, when I started working with groups, I realized one of the problems is that we're [00:06:00] not as functional with groups as we should be.

[00:06:02] So then the pandemic came and that was what I needed to write a book. A world of no distractions. Mm-hmm. 

[00:06:10] Blake Melnick: Well, I think the pandemic gave us all a momentary pause to reflect and think about things. Certainly that was the case for me. And that's how the podcast began. You know, it was a pivotal moment in history where the world came to a grinding stop altogether all at once. And it gave us a much needed time to reflect upon the paths we've been walking up to this point. And whether these are the paths we want to continue to tread. It's a bit of a scary world. Isn't it. I mean, when we turn on the news and we're bombarded with. The wicked challenges we are facing as a global society. Everything from climate change. 

[00:06:45] To socioeconomic inequality, to racial inequality, food and water scarcity. And as an average citizen, what do we do and how do we move forward to begin to address these challenges? Another thing I liked about your book [00:07:00] is not only did you outline the problems we're facing. And I think we're all aware of these problems to a certain degree, but you provided us with some strategies for moving forward. 

[00:07:09] So you had this experience when you were a child, you obviously became very concerned and aware of the social inequities that exist in the United States, particularly. So how did this awareness direct you? 

[00:07:22] Ruth Backstrom: Well actually that directed me towards education.

[00:07:25] I got really involved in education. Cause I thought, maybe this is something we could change people's minds about and we could inform them about. And I also got very involved in transcendental meditation too, which took me to this deeper level. And I thought there's this deeper level that we have to be functioning on, and groups.

[00:07:42] Can work on this deeper level too, through the sixties, we talked about the power of people working in the zone, but what I discovered is that groups could work in the zone too. They could be really effective. And that's I think the next challenge for our societies is to [00:08:00] start working more functionally together. I talk about, collective intelligence in my book, which is a really powerful thing that I discovered through the use of a technique called dynamic facilitation. It was the first time where I saw that all the diverse points of view actually served a function in taking you to deeper problem solving.

[00:08:22] If you could listen in a way where you changed from holding onto your ego and thinking your point of view was the only one to thinking like a group and looking for the best solution that would weave in the concerns of all the different people in the room. 

[00:08:36] Blake Melnick: I think you've hit the nail on the head there. Ruth. The issue seems to be that we're not listening to one another anymore. 

[00:08:43] At least that's what it feels like to me. I find having conversations these days very difficult. And part of it is because we've created this sort of moral divide. If you express ideas in a certain way. You're immediately judged as a person and [00:09:00] labeled it's almost an us versus them mentality. It feels very Orwellian. 

[00:09:05] It reminds me of brave new world, 1984, the Handmaid's tale. And I often find myself holding back. From expressing an idea because I wonder whether the very language, my choice of words. Will mean, my ideas are going to be dismissed off hand and that I'll be labeled or placed in a category. 

[00:09:22] growing up the opportunity to advance ideas. To engage in discussion or to hotly debate an issue was considered an attribute of an educated person. It's signified a desire to learn through the testing of one's own ideas. And listening to and incorporating the opinions, ideas, and perspectives of others. This is part of the learning process. 

[00:09:44] I feel like now we're all living in different bubbles.

[00:09:47] Ruth Backstrom: Oh, I think you're absolutely right. And we are, we don't often have to even come in contact with people who, are different than us.

[00:09:54] We live in bubbles, we talk in bubbles, and then it becomes really hard to work [00:10:00] together and the trick, I think, is we need to come together because what we're hearing now are the loudest, most extreme voices . There's a whole middle ground. In fact, that's one of the comments people all always made to me, is I wanna hear more from the middle and less from the extremes.

[00:10:16] Couldn't we find a middle ground where we can work together and compromise like we used to? These were things we used to be able to do. And I think the reason we're not doing them as well now is because we're afraid there's so much change. We're in this period of huge. Rapid change, right?

[00:10:32] Which I talk about a lot in my book, and I think the only way to do this is to do it together, that will actually experience comfort by coming together and addressing these things and getting ahead of them instead of being blindsided. 

[00:10:45] Blake Melnick: Well, that's a really interesting point. In your book, you talk a lot about fear. And it seems, at least in my mind, that's part of the problem. People are really afraid of the current world and their place within it. There's a lot of anxiety about the future and [00:11:00] people are concerned. I think they'll no longer be able to participate. The world has changed and continues to change at such a rate that they'll lose their voice. The world they grew up in is no longer the world as it exists right now. I've read a number of different articles from researchers and futurists. Who've written about this, usually under the banner of the great reset. 

[00:11:20] And they make the point that changes exponential. The world has fundamentally changed and will continue to do so at an accelerated rate, but the structures that govern us, our education system, our social systems, our legal and political systems have not changed. And you make a very astute comment in your book that democracy and the underlying systems are living things. 

[00:11:43] They're not static. When the founding fathers wrote the declaration of independence or the charter of rights and freedoms. They didn't write it with the intention that they would be static, that we would follow the key tenants devoid of any context. So was this part of the problem in the U S. 

[00:11:59] The [00:12:00] adherence to old values at all costs. Canadians are smug about this. We look south of the border and we say, look, what's going on down there. Thank God. We live in Canada. Well, good. That's a good 

[00:12:10] Ruth Backstrom: attitude down.

[00:12:11] Don't follow us. Whatever you do 

[00:12:14] .

[00:12:14] Blake Melnick: Well, but it is happening here too. It's just happening more slowly. Our population isn't as large. Our news media is less prolific, but it is happening here. So why does it seem like such a universal condition In all democratic countries?

[00:12:30] Ruth Backstrom: Yeah, I think the pace of change sped up so much that the people who got left behind felt really behind, and then the other group got way ahead. The income inequality is just huge now. And it used to not be as large, but income inequality is a destabilizing factor.

[00:12:51] In fact, research shows throughout history that if you get a certain level of income inequality, revolution becomes inevitable. Right. You [00:13:00] have to somehow change your system to create more equality. And the biggest divide that we see often and certainly in the United States and I suppose in Canada too, is the urban rural divide.

[00:13:11] And if we really need to address that and we get into these kind of conversations of either or, you know, either one group gets these resources or another group gets these resources. There's this tremendous sense of scarcity of resources at a time when we're growing by leaps and bounds, it's kind of this disconnect of how.

[00:13:31] We feel versus what's real out there. The problem isn't that we don't have enough resources, it's that they're so badly distributed. Right. And then people tell us there's not enough. But that's not the truth. The truth is they're badly distributed. We can't buy that. We don't have enough resources.

[00:13:48] Blake Melnick: It's beyond the pale for me to think that in a democratic nation, like the United States or Canada or great Britain that we have this socioeconomic disparity. That people are struggling to feed their families [00:14:00] are unable to access affordable housing, you know, with all the resources at our disposal. It just makes no sense that we have some citizens living in abject poverty and others whose income rivals out of some countries. GDP. 

[00:14:13] Ruth Backstrom: Well, and it's partly we've lost this sense of us. Once you lose a sense of us, every man, woman, and child is out for themselves. We have to restore this sense of us. The common good has to come back into our awareness, and we also have to realize that we're in this huge transition from a wage based society to some other form of sustenance.

[00:14:35] That's the way we have to go. You and I talked before about universal basic income, which really makes a lot of sense. That's one way we could start to stem the tide. 

[00:14:45] Blake Melnick: As you and our listeners know I'm a supporter of universal basic income. I have lots of conversations with people about it. Some are supportive, but a lot who tend to be more conservative say, no, absolutely not. I couldn't support that. And [00:15:00] when I ask them why they say, because I'm not going to have my tax dollars going to support people who just want to stay at home and do nothing and live on the Dole. 

[00:15:08] They see UBI as a disincentive to work. But the research and experimental studies around UBI does not support this view. Regardless of what social system is in place. There will always be people in society that aren't motivated to do something productive in their life, but the percentage is small. And I would argue that our current welfare system is for more of a disincentive to work. 

[00:15:30] Then universal, basic income. The research indicates pretty conclusively that people are simply looking for help. And if you provide people with the opportunity and the supports necessary to be productive and create value in their lives, they would prefer hard work over just sitting at home in a waiting for the checks to roll in. 

[00:15:48] And I think the thing is, people would really like to use their talents out there, a lot of people end up in these dead end jobs that are completely unsatisfying and not very well paid either, 

[00:15:59] so,[00:16:00] a much better alternative is at least to give people a bottom so they can then use the talents that they have. But it is a change in mindset, right? But there's a lot of changes in mindset that have to happen in this time because, we have to think about the earth in an entirely different way instead of thinking that our role is to exploit it, it's to govern it and take care of it.

[00:16:20] That's a huge shift. There's so many huge shifts, but the more we come together and talk about it, we can find the narratives that will persuade people, I think, to get on board. Right. And, and that's not just a theory. That's what they experienced when they brought a group of people from rural Minnesota together to talk about climate change.

[00:16:39] If you have the right information, you can change your mind. Which was really an interesting observation. And there is something about groups that you can switch from your sort of tribal mentality to another sort of bigger. Tribe, the citizen tribe, which you want to call it, that, you can have a different orientation.

[00:16:57] There's something very powerful about working in [00:17:00] effective groups for making these kinds of changes. 

[00:17:02] Let's talk a little bit about truth. There's an old African proverb that loosely translated means there are three truths. My truth, your truth and the truth. Right now, true. Seems to be more of the first two, perhaps driven by ignorance or media influence or more frightening, to push a revisionist political or social agenda. How do we go about addressing or resurrecting the value of truth and our democratic systems. Given our previous discussion about living in bubbles, how do we create a shared vision of truth? Because without it, I'm not sure it's possible to come together and March in the same direction. 

[00:17:40] Ruth Backstrom: Yeah. I think that example of the rural woman, it's like she has to be in a different situation outside of her tribes.

[00:17:46] We have to create new gatherings that give you permission to hear the truth. And I also think. We have to address the needs underneath, whatever people are saying. Mm-hmm. A lot of times people hold [00:18:00] onto these myths and things because they wanna be part of a tribe and to feel like you belong. And if you don't belong somewhere else, you can belong to the tribe that doesn't believe the truth, but that's the thing. We have to have a bigger sense of belonging so that everybody wants to join and be a citizen in the country that they're in, instead of an outlier who.

[00:18:21] Holds onto these strange beliefs that don't really serve them very well 

[00:18:24] Blake Melnick: And this is very complex because as you mentioned earlier, there is such a divided there that we're not benefiting from the original design of representative democracy. Immortalized in the Gettysburg address of the people by the people, for the people. 

[00:18:39] If you're not feeling that the system, which you're part of is at a basic level leading you to a better life. Then people. Out of a sense of desperation. Look for alternatives. 

[00:18:51] As we discussed in our pre-call, when I grew up varied opinions, different perspectives, discourse around politics, religion, really, anything [00:19:00] was welcomed at my dinner table. And in fact, it was encouraged. 

[00:19:03] And when I would come forward with some half-baked ideas that I'd heard from somebody and throw them out at the dinner table. It would lead to a conversation. With everybody weighing in on the perspective and saying things like Blake. Interesting idea. But have you ever considered this or what about that? 

[00:19:20] And always when I left these conversations, I left with a softened view from the one I came in with. We don't seem to be able to have that kind of open, deep discourse anymore. And what I loved again about your book is that a lot of the anger, frustration, fear. Is rooted in the fact that people aren't able to express how they feel long enough to get to the real root of their issue. 

[00:19:43] In other words, I've come up with a comment. Like I hate this or this really bugs me. And immediately. Their viewpoint is dismissed. People never engage with them long enough to go deeper, to find out exactly why they feel the way they do. 

[00:19:58] Ruth Backstrom: That's a great point. [00:20:00] That's a great point. And that's the value of dynamic facilitation, which I've used to get to these deeper conversations, these more authentic levels. So just to give you an example, so they've used this in in Austria, since 2005 actually.

[00:20:15] And it's been so successful at getting the voice of the people out there in a unified way that it's now institutionalized in their state, government. So they call a dynamic facilitation, citizens council every year. And one of them they called, was on the issue of immigration. And they brought citizens council all the information about how many immigrants were coming and what they were gonna do.

[00:20:37] And they were asking, what should we do with these people? And, how should we handle it? And they were shocked by , how large the numbers were. And they said, one thing is you have to be more transparent about this with us, and then they went on to say, we have to see the people behind the numbers, 

[00:20:53] and that stirred everyone's compassion. And that's the way groups are, that if somebody takes you to this level of [00:21:00] compassion, you can join them there. And then as they were talking, somebody said, well, I don't think we should give them jobs. He was kind of an outlier in his point of view.

[00:21:09] But in dynamic facilitation, you invite them in and , ask them to explain why they feel that way no matter what the comment is or how it lands. And he said, well, my niece has been looking for a job for three or four years now and she can't get a job. Why should these people who are just coming in get jobs?

[00:21:24] Which is the way a lot of people feel like, if we're neglecting our own citizens, why should we treat these people with, with any kind of special treatment, and it's a perfectly legitimate feeling, we should be taking care of both our citizens and the immigrants.

[00:21:38] And so then they say, well, why don't we open these job fairs off that they were talking about having to everyone. And then we could include not only the citizens, , but the immigrants as well, and handle both those problems simultaneously. And those are the kind of solutions we could be coming up with if we started to talk to each other.

[00:21:55] Blake Melnick: I couldn't agree with you more, once you put a face to a story or a [00:22:00] story to a face. It takes on a completely different meaning. It's humanizing as you referenced in your book, we're basically all the same. We have the same desires. We love our children. We love our families. We want to get along with our neighbors. We want purpose in our life and we want a good life. And as a species, we've demonstrated our capability for collaboration and community working together, protecting our community from threats, working with broader communities to address global issues like climate change, et cetera. So we know how to do this. We know how to go about addressing the problems with our democracies. 

[00:22:34] But for some reason, we're distancing ourselves from one another and we're not seizing the opportunities to work together to repair our collective community. 

[00:22:45] Immigration is a good example of the dehumanization we're experiencing. Where people's views about whether immigration is a good thing or a bad thing. Our proffered from a distance and based on numbers, we judge the merits of [00:23:00] immigration based on how we believe it will impact our lives. Rather than how it would impact the lives of immigrants. We don't seek to understand the personal stories of immigrants or their motivations for wanting to come to our country. 

[00:23:13] We forget we are all immigrants. If you reached far enough back, Right. Right. Absolutely

[00:23:19] Canadians and Americans are essentially the same people. My family on my mother's side, immigrated from Holland in the 16 hundreds to new Amsterdam or New York. During the war of independence, part of the family remained loyal to Britain. 

[00:23:32] And we're forced to immigrate to Canada. Well at other branch remained in the U S so we're essentially the same people. 

[00:23:41] , I want to shift gears a little bit here, Ruth. What I really liked about your book was how you traced key political events, policies, and legislations that have undermined the universality of the democratic system to the point now where leaders are not representing the view's best interest, or even looking after the basic needs of the [00:24:00] people who voted them into office with a mandate to do just that. 

[00:24:03] This is not to say that democracy was ever perfect in this regard. But what seems different now is the disconnect with the political system, the mechanism that was created to represent the will of the people. When I was a boy, the world seemed full of possibilities. And while we recognize there was inherent inequities and inequalities within our society. 

[00:24:21] It seemed, at least to me, we were working towards addressing these. And furthermore, it seemed that we had an obligation to share our wealth prosperity and democratic ideals with developing nations around the world. And then something changed. And we began to lose our collective commitment to make the world a better place. What happened? 

[00:24:41] Ruth Backstrom: Yeah, so a lot of people dated in the United States to what was called the Powell Amendment, 

[00:24:47] Blake Melnick: The Powell amendment was the brainstorm of New York Congressman Adam Clayton Powell. This amendment would withhold federal funds from any school district that refused to obey this Supreme court decision [00:25:00] prohibiting segregation in public schools. I'll argue that no federal money should be spent on segregated school programs. 

[00:25:08] Because such construction would invite Southern districts to circumvent the law. If federal funds are used to build segregated schools. Now, Paul suggested. These structures will be a logically situated when desegregation arrives. 

[00:25:23] Ruth Backstrom: And it was really a backlash from business. they Said, we can't make all these changes. I mean, Ralph Nader at the time, had engineered a lot of changes for people.

[00:25:33] And the business community felt like they were under threat. And so they decided they would come back and they became incredibly powerful so that corporations became, donors to all the candidates. And we set up this system that's so damaging now that it's sort of left the voice of the people out.

[00:25:51] It goes directly from corporate funding into the politicians' hands, and then the politicians have to do what the corporate funders want. And that's become, a [00:26:00] legalized bribery system. Really. So we've gotta break that up and. That's one of the big points I make in my book is that we need to have the voice of the citizens come back into democracy.

[00:26:12] There's two ways of going forward that we see it's more of the status quo. Often the liberal party is afraid to go too far or extreme because they're fighting with a more conservative stream. And so the liberals are saying, well, let's just keep going with the status quo.

[00:26:25] And the conservatives are going, we need more control, often going towards autocracy. But really I'm suggesting there's a third path, which is we need more democracy.. We actually need people back into the equation. 

[00:26:38] So how do we do that 

[00:26:40] we need to have things like citizens assemblies, basically, which bring the voice of the people back, whether they're citizens councils, which are smaller or large assemblies, which are usually 50 or a hundred people.

[00:26:52] And as I was writing all this in my book, this was actually happening all around the world, so there's been citizen [00:27:00] assemblies., Washington State did one which is really transparent on climate change, they had it all on YouTube so you could see what they did, and they came out with a very progressive, stance, and it was much more inclusive.

[00:27:11] They included the indigenous groups in designing it, and then you could go all the way to. Melbourne, Australia, where they said, we need help with our deficits. Which is not usually something that a city is willing to even admit. They have much less solicit help with, so that was a really interesting topic for them to take up and the citizens love that.

[00:27:31] And that was just a citizen council that was doing that. And the citizens got so engaged and delighted to be part of that, that there was one guy who canceled his vacation because he was so excited to get his voice , into the framework. We sort of think of ourselves as consumers instead of actively engaged citizens.

[00:27:49] And also, Engaged in a coherent way. Right now there's a lot of engagement, but it's kind of incoherent. Yes, it is. So we really need a partnership relationship with our legislators, where we're [00:28:00] seeing the problems from their vantage point and our vantage point. In fact, we need a partnership all the way across.

[00:28:06] We need a partnership between the left and the right, or the conservatives and the liberals, and we need a partnership between the citizens and our legislators. 

[00:28:16] Blake Melnick: How do we create greater representation through our political system and our political leaders? You talked about the power of special interest groups, lobby groups, and the money that business gives to all political parties to protect their specific business interests. 

[00:28:30] How do we stop this from happening or at the very least ensure that the interests of business are aligned with those of the average citizen? 

[00:28:38] 

[00:28:38] Ruth Backstrom: I think that citizens have to become more powerful and actually partner with business too. In the United States, businesses have had an interesting role sometimes, like they helped.

[00:28:48] Get rid of the Confederate flag. And businesses really are not in favor of autocracy. They're not gonna have a lot of control. So they actually could be a really powerful ally with citizen groups in [00:29:00] stemming this tide. That's actually a new thought that I've had.

[00:29:03] I didn't put that in the book. I talked a lot about the negative aspects, but there is this other aspect, which is they could be a really positive, and some of them are, a lot of them wanna be seen as a good company. And as John Perkins, who wrote the economic hitman, said, they're not like kings and queens.

[00:29:18] They actually have to respond to us. So there's a lot of power. And that's another point that I bring up in my book is that, We're not using our power. We have to take more power as citizens. We have to come together and use more of our power. I talk about Eric Lou, who's got a thing called Citizens University.

[00:29:36] And it's , done a great job of making us more aware of how to use power. You're more powerful than you think. And he has a university where he teaches people how to use their power to get the things that they want, 

[00:29:48] Blake Melnick: What are the concerns that we have in Canada, and I'm sure you have the same concern in the U S is the dearth of political leadership. Our politicians at least from the hundreds of conversations [00:30:00] I've had are not particularly popular. And Canadians tend to cast their vote for whichever candidate is the lesser of three evils. 

[00:30:09] It seems the type of people we want as political leaders have very little interest in entering the fray for a variety of different reasons. And certainly cost is one of them. It requires a significant financial commitment. Which for most requires that they seek funding from business and special interest groups in order to run. 

[00:30:28] Should we be doing something about this? Should we be limiting the financial contributions of corporations. Should we be equalizing and amongst candidates, should the government be giving a lot of money to all the candidates? To run their campaign so that we create a sense of equality . And so that it encourages a more diverse field of candidates with a greater commitment to the voters and their needs. 

[00:30:52] Ruth Backstrom: Yes. And those are what I call the game changing reforms that we need

[00:30:55] Blake Melnick: This concludes part one of the power of ideas [00:31:00] with my guest, Dr. Ruth Backstrom author of igniting a bold new democracy. Empowering citizens through game-changing reforms. Join us next week for part two of the interview where Dr. Backstrom and I discussed the impact of the Reagan years. Technology social media and the need to rethink education and the role of schools and universities. 

[00:31:23] For what it's worth. 

[00:31:30]