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Required reading. - promoted by Rosi
Whatever else may be true of Conservatives, they understand the art of messaging at a gut level. It never mattered that the idiots "patrolling" the Mexican-American border were nothing like the historical Minutemen patriots of the late 1700s. It simply doesn't matter that the "Tea Party" folks have no clue on how far disconnected they are from the Sons of Liberty. What matters is that the names stuck, they stuck fast, they stuck hard, and no amount of reality will drive the American conscience away from it.
Just ask a Conservative what they stand for - small government, low taxes, strong families. Yeah, we all know that the truth is that none of that is true. But it is a line that is tried and true and perceived to be tied to a specific set of values that resonates with voters from coast to coast. When they vote against their self-interest, they are validating their standing as "an American" - with Mom, apple pie, and baseball up the wazoo.
And what happens when you ask a Progressive what they stand for? A sermon. At least, a lecture. It's a slender hair short of certainty that you'll end up with glazed eyes before you get to the end. And when you do...well, you're going to have a list of follow-up questions to get some clarification.
It's time we seriously worked to change that. A while back, I offered Alexander Hamilton's The Continentalist as a touchstone (part one, part two). I'll be pulling more from history, and some from my own heart and mind. |
| I think the first value of Progressivism has to be equality. It has to be. After all, the first words ever to be burned into the souls of the American people were, "We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal..."
It was the belief of equality that set a group of men against the most powerful monarch in the world. It was the belief in equality that motivated these men to sit down and hammer out compromise after compromise to create a government that - at times - is the envy of every freedom-loving person on earth. That was the belief that turned the world upside down...and the belief that continues to rattle the foundations of power in this earth.
It was equality that motivated good men and women to force the issue of slavery. It found a voice in Frederick Douglass when he claimed, "The destiny of the colored American...is the destiny of America." And again when he urged those still in slavery: "The chance is now given you to end in a day the bondage of centuries, and to rise in one bound from social degradation to the place of common equality with all other varieties of men."
Sojourner Truth turned that voice to equality for women, as well as blacks: "I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? I have heard much about the sexes being equal. I can carry as much as any man, and can eat as much too, if I can get it. I am as strong as any man that is now."
A history course could be written solely on the names of men and women who have risen to force this country to live up to its first enduring promise - that all men are created equal! Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Julia Ward Howe. John Quincy Adams, Henry Ward Beecher, and Elijah Lovejoy. Caesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and Lucy Gonzales Parsons. Mary Harris "Mother" Jones, Joseph Yablonski, and Samuel Gompers. Robert LaFollette, Teddy Roosevelt, and Louis Brandeis. John Dewey, Lester Ward, and William James. Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, and Upton Sinclair.
And we are not without those today who carry on that tradition - Bernie Sanders, Russ Feingold, and Al Franken. Cornel West, George Lakoff, and Howard Zinn. Barbara Eirenreich, Amy Goodman, and David Sirota. Barney Frank, Lynn Woolsey, and Eleanor Holmes Norton (honestly - isn't it time this woman's voice had the power of a vote?).
The names could go on for quite some time. But just as important in naming them is in realizing what "equality" really means. What Progressives fight for is what I'll call "equality of opportunity," rather than simple "equality of outcome" or "equality of process." It's an important distinction, because our political enemies will raise both as ways of throwing up stumbling-blocks.
"Equality of outcome" is what many blowhards use to paint our fight for equality in a negative light. They will say, for example, that we hate the rich and won't be happy until we tax all of their wealth away. Or they will say that equal opportunity programs exist only to ensure that minorities get a job no matter how unqualified they are - as if fair access to jobs and education were so much patronage handed out for minorities backing the "right" party.
Just as wrong-headed is the push for "equality of process." That is, so long as everyone follows the same process, then equality has been achieved. Everyone fills out the same application for college...so choices made based on that information must be serving the needs of equality. In court, both sides have to follow the same rules, so everyone is equal - as if the ability to hire dozens of lawyers doesn't give someone a better shot than another person relying on an overworked public defender.
Neither is the actual goal of Progressives. What Progressives want is - to steal a line from Bill Clinton - to give a hand up, not a hand out. We want to make sure that everyone has the same opportunity to get ahead in life, to access the legal system, to have a basic education, to work at a jobsite that is safe and secure, to see a doctor when necessary...the applications of equality are nearly endless.
Affirmative Action is still needed in higher education because there are still vast inequalities in the average educational facility between white students and minority students. Women still earn less than men in equal jobs. Racial minorities still have less access to medical care and, subsequently, rank higher than non-minorities on almost every index of health conditions.
Here in New Jersey, the primary battle for Progressives, I believe, is the battle against political elitism and the power of patronage. While not based on benign factors such as race or sex, it is a strike against the belief of equality - when it favors the "friends and family" of a politician for jobs, favorable service, or government contracting. Sure, corruption costs us extra tax dollars we could all put to better use in our own pockets - but what is truly outrageous about it is that it creates a class of privilege based on the pure manipulation of governmental agencies that are supposed to serve all equally.
Equality is not the end of all goals. But is the basis of all others. We simply cannot have anything that resembles a free and fair form of government if all people are not accepted as being equal. We cannot have anything that resembles a free and fair form of government if we are willing to accept that some, from the moment of their birth, are condemned to a meager existence with no hope of escape while others are granted a life of leisure with no conception of want. |
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