Two Saturdays ago Robert McCormick, along with the rest of Vienna Town Council, spent the day in a budget work session at Town Hall.
The group examined the figures, looking for places where the town might cut expenditures. They interviewed the heads of each town department, asking which projects absolutely needed funding and which projects were not so pressing.
McCormick didn’t want to be there.
McCormick, who will be leaving the Town Council at the end of June, would have rather been on the mall, in Washington, D.C. That was the site of a march for peace and global justice, hosted by several world peace advocacy organizations. McCormick has recently become involved with one of those organizations, the World Federalist Association, and he wanted to march with the group. After McCormick leaves the Town Council he plans to focus more on working with the World Federalists. The group advocates a world police force and an international criminal court. These bodies would have more power than the United Nations and would intercede in places where the national government is powerless, or unwilling, to stop injustice. McCormick compared the earth to the human body, which has a central nervous system that relays physical trauma to the brain. He said the earth has a central nervous system, in the form of the internet, but no governing body that, like the brain, can process and respond to trauma.
"We have nowhere to report it, no brain," McCormick said. "That’s why we need a United Nations with some teeth."
EVEN THOUGH McCormick agrees with the World Federalists’ mission, he does not completely agree with all the group’s policies. McCormick’s main complaint about the World Federalists is that they spend too much time talking about the problems, instead of taking action.
"They’re debating how it should be done while people are killing each other," McCormick said. "I had never heard of them until just recently, and they’ve been around 50 years. They need to do a PR campaign."
In addition to his involvement with the World Federalists, McCormick plans to write on world peace issues, and will pursue "whatever opportunities present themselves."
After five years McCormick is leaving the Town Council, in part because he hasn’t felt particularly effective. He ran for council after leading an effort to get a pedestrian bridge built over Maple Avenue, at the intersection with the Washington and Old Dominion Trail. In joining the Town Council, he was hoping to "change things" around town.
"We’ve had a lot of important votes, where it has been six votes to one, with my vote the only one against," McCormick said. "I find my arguments are not working, so I'd just assume take my arguments somewhere else."
He said he was the only member who was voted onto the Town Council. All the other current members have been appointed.
"If someone dies, or drops off the council, the existing council appoints someone to take the place," McCormick said. "And obviously they appoint someone they like, who they get along with. With only 10 percent of residents voting, it’s easy for incumbents to keep getting re-elected."
BUT FRUSTRATION with town politics is not McCormick’s main reason for leaving the council. After Sept. 11, McCormick started thinking seriously about the state of the world.
"A lot of people got very angry," he said. "I didn’t have that. I got sad. Well, that’s not the right word. I was devastated. It just struck home how out of control things have gotten. In Palestine parents take pride in strapping their children with bombs to kill themselves and others. This is not a whole lot different than sending children to war, which is justified in our culture."
He started reading the works of some of his favorite thinkers, like Albert Einstein and Krishna Murti. And he started writing to clarify his thoughts. He has only told a few people about his ideas. One of the people he has talked to is John Brunow, owner of Bikes@Vienna.
"I’ve always admired the fact that Bob is someone who picks a goal and sticks to it," Brunow said.
"Most people in town know me as the Town Council member, the mural guy," McCormick said, referring to his support of a mural the town recently commissioned along the W and OD trail. "They don’t know me as a peace activist."
McCormick doesn’t think of himself as an idealist, because he believes idealism connotes a detachment from reality. But he calls himself a realist and believes world peace is realistically possible.
"If you talk to people, and ask them if they believe mankind can ever get along, most people say it can never be," McCormick said. "If you accept it can never be, it won’t be. But if you say it can be done, and if the whole world agrees, we can take the money that would be used for defense and put it into education, or feeding people."