In a recent New York Times analysis of the recent and ongoing nuclear disaster in Japan, Norimitsu Onishi and Ken Belsen concluded that "a culture of complicity" made the Japanese nuclear energy complex at Fukushima "especially vulnerable to the natural disaster that struck the country on March 11."

Noting that "inconsistent, nonexistent or un-enforced regulations played a role in the accident," they charged that the "main players" were "more interested in protecting their interests than increasing safety."

What the reporters described as a culture dominated by "...nontransparent, collusive interests..." can, of course, be deadly.

It can also be unfair, unjust, disrespectful, costly, demoralizing, time-consuming, expensive and generally annoying, whether it becomes the norm in government, business, or private affairs.

Even with the best of rules and regulations, without oversight, society is truly at the mercy of the judgment, wisdom, courage and personal integrity of...whistleblowers.

"Culture of Complicity"

America and the world are today beset by seismic demographic, social, technological and economic changes. World population will reach 7 billion in October, 3.5 times that when the writer was a boy. The United Nations has just raised its forecast for 2050 from 9 billion to 10.1 billion, almost all in less-developed countries. Communications technology, widely applied, is moving the world from a series of national industrial and agrarian societies into a global Information Age. Worldwide, employment, money and political power are shifting in response to the fault lines established by these "tectonic" shifts.

Humans, especially those advantaged by the status quo, resist change, sometimes violently, as evidenced by the "Arab Spring" uprisings and repressions. Just 150 years ago the United States was itself ripped apart by resistance to change, stemming from the growth of the industrial age and an emerging middle class in the north at the expense of a patriarchal southern agrarian society. Cultural and social differences tracing back to the English civil war 200 years earlier aggravated our Civil War. Hopefully, as we re-live that conflict during its sesquicentennial, America will find ways to deal responsibly with the changes it needs to make.

It will not be easy, given the shifts taking place around the world. We face a series of inter-related domestic difficulties, among them unemployment, fiscal deficits and debt, environmental degradation, worn out infrastructure, demographic divides, and an imperfect educational system. Internationally we are involved in difficult wars, face threats from nuclear proliferation and the global population explosion, and have lost respect and leverage with large segments of the world's people. Recovery to once again become Ronald Reagan's "City on a Hill" starts by accepting these facts. Denial of them is irresponsible. Spending time on a partisan search for past villains is counter-productive. Blaming our distress on the fault lines of change is useless.

We have a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" that has usually served us well. It is OUR government. We are in the early stages of renewing that government – for Virginia this fall, and nationally in November, 2012. Candidates and campaigns are mobilizing now. The future Virginia and America, our state and nation, will become reflections of whom we elect.

Purple believes it is superficial, probably irresponsible, to look only for the letter "D" or "I" or "R" in selecting a candidate. It is time to look beyond party, slogans, bumper stickers, emotional social issues, and divisive campaign smears to find serious candidates who will bring us together, tell us where we must sacrifice, and what we should support, in order to pass on to our children a Nation as good as the one into which we were born. As Americans we have no greater civic responsibility. A troubled world needs us to be all that we can be.