Do we believe in anything aside from power?
Many of us were brought here to dKos, like the survivors in Stephen King's The Stand were drawn to Boulder, CO, drawn by a vague sense that this is the place to begin the organizing effort to retake our country and stand against the forces of hatred, darkness, evil.
Most of us are liberal - fiscally and socially. We came here not just because Democrats were losing elections, but because we were losing the argument on the issues we truly care about, from women's rights to the environment to war. And we were realizing that, increasingly, Democrats weren't even interested in making the argument for our side any longer.
And so we began working to reclaim power in this country. But we all believe that power must come with principles. Morals, values, and principles matter, they matter a lot. More below.
There have been several diaries today about liberals and religion. Too often, these diarists buy into Republican frames that suggest there's some fundamental opposition between liberals and religion - most of us of course know better, but the perception that we dislike religion unfortunately remains.
The fact is, we dislike a certain form of religion - one that is fundamentalist, autocratic, lacking in respect for our democratic and civic traditions. We dislike religion that preaches hate and exclusion. We very much like religion that preaches love and inclusion (which, as you'll note, was Jesus' message anyway).
In other words, our disagreement with the religious right is not about religion per se, but instead it is about the morals, the values, and the principles of the religious right. It's not that they attend a church that angers us, it's what they believe at that church about society, it's what they do and how they vote that angers us.
If we were clearer on this point - if we discussed religion in those terms, emphasizing the common morals and values held by secular liberals and by religious liberals, we'd be doing a much better job in finding our way forward than by setting up liberalism as opposite of religion.
We'd be doing better because we'd be returning the discussion to that of our own core principles and values. One reason that the liberal vs. religion lie has been allowed to fester is that in the aftermath of 1980, we too often chose to abandon our morals in the pursuit of power. We preferred to de-emphasize our values, and by the 1990s even stopped defending many of these values, so that we could win elections. And although we did have some high-profile victories, the fact remains that in the 1980s, the 1990s, and the 2000s, our losses far outweighed our victories, in both number and in lasting impact.
Why did we lose elections? We lost them because we had stopped making our point to the American people in a clear, concise, and principled manner. It's not that liberal social values aren't shared by Americans - polls continue to indicate that they are. It's not that we can't convert public opinion on issues we care about - we did succeed in by and large eliminating overt expressions of racism. We succeeded in bringing a wide acceptance of interracial marriage to a society that had long been hostile to it, for example.
We did that because we bore moral witness on these issues. We made them moral issues. America is a moral society. Voters like to vote for people who have strong principles and who aren't shy in defending those principles. It's not that Americans define morals and principles as conservative - it's that if the conservatives are the only ones making any definitions at all, they win by forfeit.
I raise this because on the front page, a discussion is raging about whether or not Kerry was right to throw gays overboard in his own pursuit of power. On that thread, a number of folks said Kerry was right, that winning elections was more important than equal rights.
These folks are the "Vichy Democrats" some of us have talked about. They are interested in taking power, but have no principles about what they'll do once they get that power. If they can take power by stepping over innocent people, then that's fine to them.
Some might defend their stance by saying that until Democrats win elections, we cannot institute positive change in society. But they don't recognize the fallacy in their strategy - if you take power without principles, you will not govern with principles either. How can you institute positive change when you have derided those very changes as a candidate? When you have said that the rights of some people aren't important?
We fundamentally believe that power must be exercised according to our principles, our morals, our values. That is why we disagree with Bush. Not because we hated him from the start, not because we never liked him. It was because he governed against our principles - and often, he governs without any discernible principles at all.
The fact is, power without principle is power not worth having. It is power that we will not hold for very long, and power that can only be used for ugly, nefarious ends.
Some of you might say I'm being unrealistic. I'm not. I'm in fact more practical than are you.
- Democrats have not fared well when they strayed from their principles.
- Americans want politicians to have principles. This allows the voters to trust their politicians. If they feel their politicians lack principle, they feel that the politician would be more prone to corruption and to ignore the will of the voters.
- We will not win elections by throwing people overboard. It breeds anger, resentment, and ensures that those you have told that their rights don't matter will either stay home or vote for someone else.
- We will not govern effectively, or get our policy goals through, if we don't have principles to back those policies and that governance. In the end, we want power not for its own sake, but to block the radicals frm destroying our country and in turn in order to advance our own vision of a just society.
I keep wondering where and when this madness will stop. If it's OK for us to tell immigrants, gays, and women that their rights aren't as important as our winning elections, what else are we going to jettison? If we keep this up, we might win, but it would be an empty victory. We'd take power, but we'd lack any principles by which to govern. Our time in power would be nasty, brutish, and short.
Instead we need to embrace our values, not flee from them. Americans distrusted Kerry because he did not seem to stick to his values. We will win if we embrace those values, make the arguments for them, defend them, and sell them. That is how we will handle the question of religion, the question of rights, the questions of winning elections.
Let these then be our watchwords:
Power without principles is power not worth having.
We do not get involved for politics for its own sake - we get involved because we want to see positive social change.
We do not want to win elections for its own sake - we want to win elections so we can change the world for the better.
If we become like our enemies in order to win elections, we are no better than they are.
Americans want a moral politics. They want principled politicians. Until we give them what they expect, we can expect them to give us more defeats.
I say this not to convert the Vichy Democrats, although it'd be nice if they saw the error of their ways. I say this to stiffen the resolve of the majority of Kossacks, of Democrats, of liberals and progressive, who understand what I am saying, who understand that we are a movement and a party of principles. I say to you: resist the siren song of surrender. Protect those whose rights need protecting. It will be worth it in the end, for our victory will be large, decisive, and total.