Leadership Quote by Barney Frank

Barney Frank’s line is a deceptively tidy pitch for multilateralism, framed in the plainspoken language of a domestic policy brawler. “Community action” is a phrase with municipal heft: neighborhood associations, civil rights coalitions, union halls, the idea that problems too big for one person get solved when people pool leverage. By insisting it’s “as valuable” internationally, Frank is trying to smuggle that common-sense civic ethic across borders, treating nations less like lone cowboys and more like interdependent residents of the same building.

The specific intent is pragmatic: to argue that coordination isn’t sentimental idealism, it’s governance. In Frank’s political universe, markets fail, institutions matter, and rules are only as strong as the collective will to enforce them. Read in its likely post-Cold War, pre/post-9/11, and certainly globalization-era echo, the quote pushes back against the American reflex toward unilateral action and exceptionalism. It’s also a rebuke to the idea that international cooperation is a luxury item - something you indulge in during calm years and abandon when stakes rise.

The subtext is accountability. “Community” implies shared norms and consequences: you can’t free-ride, you can’t ignore the mess in the hallway, you can’t pretend your choices don’t spill into other people’s lives. Frank is arguing that the international level isn’t a lawless frontier; it’s a crowded domestic space with higher rent and worse plumbing, where collective action is not just morally nice but strategically unavoidable.