Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. It is by this criterion that we consistently measure our values.
This message can not be overstated. It is a measure that Republican legislation and foreign policy falls short of time after time.
I was inspired to put down my version of what I believe are the "liberal" values by the article in yesterday's USA today by James Carville and Paul Begala in which they spell out a litany of specific position points that have their foundation in Democratic values. It is a set of principals that is also in response to the diary by Rimjob from ealier today.
(cont'd)
Every year, the
money income that is generated by the United States economy is distributed among the people by the people. Any good capitalist knows that it is only correct that it be apportioned unequally -- proportionately according to the amount of contribution that each person has in the generation of that wealth.
This is true with one caveat: that we not let the least among us suffer unusually in relation to the station of those whose capacities have led them to receive a larger share. It is true that in many cases, those on the bottom of the distribution curve possess a lazy work ethic. In a lot cases, they are misfortunate. In many cases, they possess a below average intelligence. In some cases, they are physically disabled. But in no case should this sentence them to live lives saddled by the discomforts of poverty in a country as rich as ours.
There is an index of wealth distribution called the Gini Index. It measures from zero to one. If it is at 0.0, it means that all of the people get an equal amount of the wealth. If it is at 1.0, it means that one person gets all of the wealth and the rest get nothing at all. The measure stood, as of 2004, at 0.4. It would measure the same if all of the wealth were earned by just 60% of the population, leaving the other 40% with absolutely nothing. In actuality, 5% of the population earns 22.4% percent of the wealth, which results in the same ratio by the equation.
Do these elite 5% really contribute to the creation of our wealth so disproportionately that this distribution is fair and just? Democratic values say "no". Once you know that those below the poverty level ($9,000 per year for an individual) number 12,250,000 households, or 32 million men, women, and children, how can you disagree? Surely those 32 million people are contributing proportionately more than $9,000 each that to the wealth of the nation each year.
Our values understand that in any free market system that is as powerful and complex as ours, the powers of the invisible hand of natural market regulation and of individual human philanthropy are not enough to compete against the powers of human greed and deception.
In a world as large and as self oriented as our own, it is beholden of the social contract to accommodate the infrequent nature of contact between individuals that have and those that do not have. It befalls government to ensure the social largess and altruism that may not exist in a natural anarchic state. Just because the human mind may have evolved to be deceptive and ruthless when it comes to the acquisition of material assets, this does not mean that government should pattern itself on our weakness, but instead seek to transcend the inherent flaws in human nature.
Democrats believe, therefore, that it is the duty of the United States Federal Government to oversee the compassionate distribution of wealth through market regulation, progressive taxation, and infrastructural reinvestment, so as to ensure that each citizen be equally bestowed the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Some of our thoughts on these three fundamental principals are as follows:
Life =
- Access to health care, preventative and emergency, that is affordable to the poorest and underemployed of our people. The nature of medicine is not one that avails itself to the economic laws of a free market. It is a "trust" service, as its provision is not voluntary should one become afflicted with illness. It therefore should not be operated as a privatized industry and should be properly provided for under the Social Contract.
- The freedom to end your own life with dignity as you so choose.
- The freedom to choose, safely and early, whether or not to be the vessel of a new life, if a woman deems herself unprepared to do so for whatever reason.
Liberty =
- The ability to question the legitimacy of our nation's foreign policy without slanderous reprisal (Joe Wilson, Scott Ritter) or stigmata of treason (John Kerry).
- The ability to speak out as loudly as we like in whatever fashion that does not infringe on the rights of others. This includes burning the flag. The flag is a symbol, just as a word is a symbol.
- Respect of individuals' private practices that do not infringe on the Golden Rule.
Pursuit of Happiness =
- Freedom to choose with whom you would care to share your life.
- Freedom to practice any or no religion without seeing reference to the dominant religion of those in political power appearing on government funded anything.
- Agnosticism is not akin to social relativism. Those who evangelize or proselytize claim to be certain of absolute truth. We believe that as long as the golden rule is not broken by what I do in relation to your rights, it is breaking the golden rule for you to codify your version of absolutism when it might infringe on my rights. To legislate morality that does not strengthen the fundamental principal of the golden rule is, by its very nature, disparaging of it.
Democratic values are the soul of human compassion. We are only as good as the least among us. We recognize that the direction economic policy has been going is not working. Nothing is "trickling down". Wealth disparity is getting greater and greater. Society as a whole can only benefit if this trend is reversed. There are those with more personal wealth than is morally justified in a culture where children are dying every day due to a lack of simple medical attention or adequate support systems.
In short, we would like to repair the social contract. We think it has been neglected and that this neglect is the true genesis of many of our social ills.
Please add to our list of values, or correct me if you think I've got it wrong.