(Ed. This is a long one, so please bear with me.)
A few days ago, Kos posted a series of diaries that attempted to encapsulate our "core values." While applauding Kos for this worthwhile exercise, I felt it shot wide of the mark as his analysis seemed not much more than developing three or four meta-slogans under which one could put the vast issues grab-bag that currently substitutes for a Democractic agenda.
I've diaried on this previously, feeling what we need is our own Contract With America, a concise, clear, and coherent agenda of specific policy action items that Democrats can run a co-ordinated campaign on. I plan on expanding on this concept of a unified agenda in the near future, but today I am in an expansive mood and would like to answer Kos question more directly. Namely, what do we represent, what are our "core values"?
My proposal: "In America, No One Stands Alone."
More on the hip-hop, flip-flop:
I hate to admit this, but the Republicans are the ones who gave me the idea. I was thinking, what do Republicans stand for? I'm not talking about the caricature that liberals like to paint of Republicans, which bears as much to true critical analysis as Michael Moore does to a real documentary.
At their core, by and large, Republicans stand for the individual. It is reflected in their tax policy - "It's my money, not the government.", their private property policy - "Its my land, I can do what I want.", their social welfare policy - "People should be responsible for themselves.", their education policy - "I'll raise my kids, you raise yours.", their foreign policy - "We'll do whatever is in our sole interest,", their retirement policy - "Everybody should take care of their own retirement."
You can see it in their very approach to politics, which treats the voter not as a citizen, but as a consumer. Their worship of the free market system is rooted in this as well, for the market divides us all up as atomized, discrete consuming individuals. Their archetypal hero is the architect character from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged - the self-reliant, self-possessed individual astride the world, making their own way as they see fit. It is a concept and a symbol that resonates in the American character.
Of course, there is another way to tell the GOP story - the Golden Calf. Much like what Moses found when he came down from the Mount with the Ten Commandments, today's GOP glories and revels in the sins of greed, of avarice, of gluttony, of the superficial and the emphemeral. As they turn the Ten Commandments into a fetish object and bow down before a Golden Calf, they fail to see that they worship a false god, a graven image.
What we offer is a communitarian vision, the idea that we should look out for one another, that the lives of my neighbors count for something as important as my own. That people across the country who I will never meet deserve the same chances and breaks that I do, that if they fall, we should help catch them. And for those who like a holy in their day, it is a vision which says that at the end of our days, when our judgment comes, the love we give a stranger shall be counted heavily. For if God does truly walk among us, then he is as likely to appear in tattered cloth as the finest silk.
However, the stories that we tell when we try to convince the voter to support our side falls short. It fails, I believe, because it treats us as passive recipients of community rather than as active heroes. It does not have to be that way.
Where our current crop of leaders have failed us, more than anything, is to explain what we support in the vision of an FDR or JFK, or in his better moments, LBJ. We need to declare that in America, No One Stands Alone.
No child desrves to go to bed hungry, for we shall feed him. No grandparent deserves to go homeless, for we shall house them. No mother deserves to work her fingers to the bone and still not have access to a doctor. No willing worker deserves to be told, there is no job for you. When we send our fathers, our sons and daughters to war, we will stand beside them and they shall not want for protection in battle or care at home.
For what we accomplish TOGETHER as Americans, as citizens, is our testament to the ages. What we BUILD together as Americans is our temple. And when a family in America finds itself afraid for their security, afraid for the future of their children, afraid for their health or their retirement, we will tell them, there is no reason to fear. Your fellow Americans are beside you.
Because in America, no one stands alone.