Ralph Nader Interview (page: 8 / 8) Consumer Crusader	Print Interview

Do you have room in your life for anything else?

Ralph Nader: I go to a few movies a year. I watch championship sports. I like to watch the World Series and the finals of the NBA. I watch some symphonies on TV and some plays. But I enjoy my work so much that I have to be pulled away from my work into leisure.

What are you looking forward to at this point in your career? What more do you want to achieve?

Ralph Nader: Ways to start more citizen organizations for all age groups. I'd like to start a children's citizens' organization, modeled after chapters for Boy Scouts, where children learn how to be effective citizens at their own pace, with the help of their teachers and people in the community.

The schools and the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts and the home and the family were all supposed to be taking care of these things. Where have we gone wrong?

Ralph Nader: First of all, children today spend less time with adults, including their parents, than any generation in American history. They are spending more and more of their time in front of television screens, video screens, and with their peer group, which often is a merchandising outlet for all the things that are huckstered to the children. Secondly, that many institutions in our country which we look at benignly as doing good, are avoiding controversy. When you avoid controversy, you are avoiding some pretty bad injustices and you become bland. You become goody two-shoes types. And it's important for the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts, for example, to go right into local pollution problems in their communities. Even if they offend some company whose executives may be associated with the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts. We really have to focus on this. The avoidance of confronting unjust power, the avoidance of controversy, has gotten into our language. There are people who sit around the table of some influence in the community, and they've got languages of avoidance, bureaucratic slogans, instead of saying, "Look, some people are going to have to back off, some people are going to have to give up some of their power, some of their wealth, some of their influence, if we are going to have a more just resolution of problems for the rest of the people in this community or society."

And there is a way to do it inside the system.

Ralph Nader: There is a lot of elbow room within the Constitutional system, but as the years pass and things get worse, the laws become themselves an instrument of injustice, because they are under the control of the abusers of power. We mustn't ever allow our country to fall into that low state of affairs.

I am also hearing you saying, don't be afraid. Don't be afraid of controversy. Don't be afraid to follow your own conscience or convictions. How important is that?

Ralph Nader: It's important to be able to stand tall, have the courage of your convictions and to have resilience if you are up against a disappointment or a temporary defeat. In fact, some of the same features on the athletic arena, basketball court, baseball field, football field, where you never give up, you keep bouncing back and you hold you head high when you walk off the field those are the kinds of characteristics young people should have in a much more important field called the citizen arena because that's what's going to affect the quality of their job, their standard of living, what their children are going to grow up in, and what's called the pursuit of happiness.
[ Video ] Low High    [ Audio ] Quicktime	[ Key to Success ] Courage

How do you stand up to critics? To people who attack you for what you are doing?

Ralph Nader: You can't have a thin skin. You've got to realize that you are going to have to take what you give out. Sometimes you are going to take a lot of unfair criticism, criticism designed to destabilize the credibility you have on a certain issue, but there is a certain robust pleasure in that. If you have the right attitude, you won't be so demoralized. You will expect it, you will know how to respond to it, you will know how to benefit from it if it's legitimate. You will know how to reject it if it isn't legitimate.

If you could talk to somebody you haven't met, dead or alive, who is it that you would like to sit across from and ask questions of? Is there somebody you would really like to have a conversation with?

Ralph Nader: Jesus Christ, who had a very strategic sense of getting people to accept his beliefs. And Voltaire, whose wit and insight were quite contributory toward a detached view of society, which is important; you can get so immersed that you lose your perspective. Confucius, who condensed a lot of wisdom into a very few words, something our politicians could benefit from these days. And Abraham Lincoln. Franklin D. Roosevelt, see how he responded in both economic crisis and war time crises. The great educators. John Dewey might want to know about what happened to some of his followers and doctrines, and schools. Especially in the athletic area, Lou Gehrig, who is my hero because he symbolized stamina under all conditions of pain and success by playing 2130 baseball games consecutively. I never lost the lesson of his performance, how important it was to overcome, be resilient, and to stay with it, stay the course.

Did you read Frank Graham's biography of Lou Gehrig?

Ralph Nader: Oh, yeah. There is a new one that has just come out, just about four months ago.

This was just wonderful. Thank you for your time.

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