Mike Hersh of After Downing Street on Honesty in Politics

With the Host of the Spiritual Politician
Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

Friday, July 7, 2006 4pm PDT

This Week's Show
Our Guest: Michael Hersh

This week the Spiritual Politician will delve into the means that could be used to inject honesty and accountability into American politics. Mike Hersh, one of the founders of After Downing Street, has been involved with this issue and working for coalition and he and those working with him believe that there is an answer to the problem America faces today.

Mr. Hersh is a long time proponent of coalition but has also served as: Chairperson of the Montgomery County Progressive Alliance; the Maryland Coordinator and Assistant Field Director for Progressive Democrats of America (PDA); Board Member and Associate Editor of the After Downing Street Coalition; and Maryland State Liaison, Democracy for America (DFA). He has expertise recruiting and organizing Volunteers, leading face-to-face and on-line activism efforts, public and on-air speaking, media relations, writing, editing, and fundraising, as well as proficiency with several software and web-design applications. Mike holds a J.D. from the Washington College of Law and an A.B. in Government from the Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences where he served on the University Assembly and graduated on the Dean's List.

What the Show is about and being a Spiritual Politician

Bringing government into alignment with the Lessons of Jesus:

The focus of our show is how to bring government into alignment with truth of our spiritual nature. So

America started with the idea we are all, inherently free. We are free to choose, free to live, to breath, and to live our lives as we see fit. Government does not own us; government is just a contractor, providing service.

That framework is in alignment with the spiritual truth that each of us connects to God directly, needing no agency as an intermediary. To be free is to be free in the spirit ans so in the flesh that temporarily holds the spirit.

When Thomas Jefferson said we were all possessed of inherent rights, existing before government he was extending a spiritual truth into a civic form. It is that Mission Statement from the Declaration of Independence we need to keep in mind.

Because we are free and reject, as did Christ, the use of deceit, manipulation or violence we need to be conscious about our relationships with others and find ways to grow into the sense of connection and community that makes us One in Him.

This is especially true for Christians but it is true for everyone else as well.

Nearly every major spiritual viewpoint enunciates the idea that we are connected to each other and should be good to each other. Christians just have an even more exacting mission. Christians are to love every one, treating them as they would Jesus.

Jesus was very clear about how we were to treat others. He did not say that it was alright to be abusive, deceitful, and violent if we used government as our tool and agent. There was no exception, He wanted all of our hearts, minds and souls. Christ did not lay out any plan of government, but left it to the conscience of the individual, the same way He connects to each of us.


We are Americans but we are also members of a human family that connects us to something truly wonderful and immense.

So our job here at the Spiritual Politician is to look at Government as a human tool we use every day. We need to consider if government is working in a way that speaks that common understanding about our connections to each other and, if it is not, we need to change it.

Americans have had many successes over the last 231 years since our founding and, learning from both mistakes and successes we can consider that question. So here at the Spiritual Politician we look at the truth behind of rhetoric.

Given what is going on today in Government what we may decide to do is reboot the whole system.