There have been many questions raised since the election. How can we better market the Democratic Party? Do we have to move more to the right? Do we have to run national candidates from the south?
All worthy questions, but for me, I want to start with a basic question. Why are we here: as a nation, as progressives, as people? One answer to that question is: "We're here to pursue the American Dream."
I think that that dream is a progressive dream. I think we've forgotten that as a nation. I think we've forgotten that as a party. I think we've even forgotten that as progressives.
People often like to talk about the American Dream in lofty terms. We like to quote passages from our Civic Canon, like
The Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That isn't quite it, though. The American Dream is both something simpler than that and something more amorphous. It is the mutant child of two impulses. The universal hope that the next generation will have a better life than the current one, combined with the idea that a person can become anything she wants with hard work.
So how can I assert that this is a fundamentally progressive idea? Well, it starts with that document quoted above, and the revolution that it launched. A revolution based in the ideas of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment grew from the belief that men could, through reason, science, art and culture, better themselves and the world around them. That society could progress.
It wasn't a perfect start. This possibility was only open at first to white men, but throughout the history of this country, progressives fought to broaden access to the American Dream. They may not have called themselves progressives or liberals, but they are our ancestors.
The Abolitionist movement started early in the 18th Century. Notably, it was a Massachusett's court decision in 1783 that first freed the slaves in that state, based on the Declaration of Rights in the Massachusetts Constitution. The Labor Movement, Women's Suffrage Movement and Teddy Roosevelt's Progressive Party: all our spiritual forebearers. Thanks to those people, more people have access to a better future for themselves, their children, their grandchildren and their grandchildren's grandchildren.
That proud history has progressed in fits and starts. The American Dream has been built on the bones of the patriot, the unionist, the suffragette, and the abolitionist. It's also been built with blood shed by the slave and the conquered.
It is in just that part of our history that we must learn the lesson that we must pursue growth and change and opportunity with care. Yet we also find the root of our dream in some of the words of those very same people:
Treat all men alike.... give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who is born a free man should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases. We only ask an even chance to live as other men live. We ask to be recognized as men. Let me be a free man...free to travel... free to stop...free to work...free to choose my own teachers...free to follow the religion of my Fathers...free to think and talk and act for myself." -- Chief Joseph
In spite of the hard work of progressive activists, much of the broadening of the opportunity to live the American Dream has been fought every step of the way by the greedy, the racist, and mostly by people who were frightened of change. There are many people who believe that life is a zero sum game: in order to give them more opportunity, you must take something from us. They cling to their voting advantages, their economic advantages, their hatreds and their traditions.
For the last several decades, many on the left have given up on the idea of spreading the American Dream, or even that there is an American Dream. As Hunter S. Thompson put it in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the dream died after the '60s fell apart, after the deaths of JFK, RFK & MLK:
And that, I think, was the handle - -that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting - -on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - -the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
Tradition prevailed, and the left retreated into warring little tribes of "special interests." No more coalitions joined to broaden access to the Dream, but desperately fought rearguard actions in the Courts, and government bureaucracy, to protect the gains of the past.
In this last election, we can take hope in signs that the left can move past that. You know the lists of new organizations that worked together over the last couple of years. It is important that we start from a fresh understanding of the soil from which progressive movement grows, from a belief that we must act together to insure that ALL Americans, including those newly arrived, have a chance to become more than they are now, to follow their hopes and dreams, to provide that same opportunity for their children, their childrens' children, and on for generations beyond those. It may feel a little obvious, but it is important not only to fight, but to remember what we fight for. As one of our fallen leaders, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., put it:
I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream -- a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality.
Cross posted from Liberal Street Fight