Tonight, with the permeation of the Ron Paul defenders and others who would want us to desert our movement and go a different direction, we need to be able to explain what we believe and why we believe it. As I have written about recently, the Republican Party is melting down and imploding. People like Jerome Corsi, who is running for president on the Constitution Party, have the potential to do a lot of damage to the GOP.
Therefore, this makes it our election to lose. And how well we do and how well we perform is directly related to how well we answer the question -- what we believe and why we believe it. The purpose of this diary is to help Democrats and non-Democrats alike with what we believe and why we believe it.
It used to be that we could bring a lot of people into the fold with our common dislike of Bush. George Bush was one of the most polarizing presidents ever, with people who hated him and others who would believe it if he had said that this country was about to be attacked by zombies. But our common dislike of Bush is no longer enough to keep us together as a viable political movement. A fair question to ask is, well, you hate Bush, but what do you believe in? That is a fair question, so this is my latest effort to answer the question.
We are a reality-based community that is founded on fact and which bases our opinions on one thing alone -- reality. And reality is that under Democrats, we have had an unparalleled record of peace and prosperity in this country. We lifted the country out of the Great Depression, we won the Second World War, and then we were able to enjoy 25 years of record growth as a country. And when Bill Clinton came into power, in the middle of record deficits and a huge recession, he was able to create 22 million new jobs and give us eight years of growth and prosperity.
Democrats have always been the candidates who have had the vision to inspire the country. We were the ones who were able to give people hope again after four years of record depression. We were the ones who foresaw a world based on the advancement of freedom during World War II. We were the ones who, in the face of despair at having lost the space race to the Russians, had the vision to inspire this country to go to the moon in 10 years. We were the ones who set out the goal of ending poverty in this country in the 1960's through the Great Society. And we were the ones who were able to give people hope again after a painful recession and make this country more safe and secure as well.
When you compare the proven track record of success that the Democrats have and the proven failures of the Republicans over the last 85 years -- Boom and Bust, the Great Depression, isolationism, being on the wrong side of history on World War II, McCarthy, Watergate, record deficits under Reagan and Bush, Iran-Contra, the Iraq quagmire, Katrina, and the most corrupt administration in this country's history, the choice is clear -- we need a Democrat for our next president of the United States. The fact of the matter is that any Democrat would be better than any Republican when it comes to electing the next President of the United States.
First and foremost, our party is a party of the people against the powerful. Our forefathers were the radicals, socialists, and anarchists who fought on the front lines for us, went to jail, and even gave up their lives from the 1880's to the 1920's so that their children and grandchildren could live in a world with labor unions, Social Security, a minimum wage, Medicare, and a high standard of living. Franklin Roosevelt won his elections by combining practical socialism with the populism of William Jennings Bryan, the golden-tongued orator who captured the imagination of the country at the turn of the 20th century. However much we may disagree with the radicals of former times who fought for our values and whose idea of a minimum wage was considered to be far too radical for their times, we still owe them a debt of gratitude.
Secondly of all, we are a party which believes in the equality of all people. We feel that all people who have been exploited and discriminated against have basic human rights. Once again, we pay tribute to the people who went before us, such as the Jews and the Blacks and the people in the Civil Rights Movement as well as the women who demanded and got the right to vote. The GLBT community, the Latinos, and the Muslims, people whom it is acceptable to hate in this country in many quarters, are the people whose basic rights we must fight for now like our forefathers did then. We cannot stop until every last person has an equal spot at the table.
Thirdly of all, we are a party which believes that the government has no business being in the bedrooms and the living rooms of our people. It is none of the government's business what personal medical decisions we make, what personal choices we make, who we live with and love, what god we worship, or what dreams we choose to follow. These are decisions that are between the individual and the people who love them.
But as much as we distrust the government to regulate our personal choices, we distrust corporate abuse of power even more. That is why we must develop fair and equitable rules to create a check against corporate abuse of power so that large corporations do not suppress wages by bringing in illegal immigrants, send our jobs overseas, ruin the quality of life for people, fire people in the name of downsizing, fire people for exercising their freedom of assembly by organizing unions, or sell us products that are not safe or reliable to use.
Fourthly of all, we are a party that believes in creating opportunity for all our people. That means that if one person in this country is not doing well, there is a reason for it, and it is the job of everyone around that person to figure out a collective solution so that person can be helped. We must create an ethic of mutual responsibility -- the more we have, the more we should be responsible to help those who are less fortunate than we are. Just like a sports team is no better than its weakest player, we are no better than our poorest people. And no matter who is the nominee, we should applaud the winner's willingness to give back to this country in return for what this country has given to them. All our candidates have been fortunate in life and they are to be commended for their willingness to give back to this country, as are the people who have gone before us.
Fifthly of all, we should not support any law unless it is called for by the Constitution of this country. The Constitution, from the time of its founding, has envisioned a continuous process of giving more and more rights and freedoms to the people. We have seen this in the war to end slavery, the fight of our workers to unionize, the civil rights struggles, the 1960's, the gay rights movement, and the women's rights movement. We must do all we can to safeguard the rights of the people and protect them against the propensity of corporations to take away those rights. We must be also to show that there is a compelling governmental interest anytime we restrict the rights of people. And we should fight for the rights of people whether they are White, Black, Hispanic, Muslim, Jew, or any other race or creed or gender or sexual orientation. The first question that we should ask ourselves over any law is, is it Constitutional? And not only that, we should pick judges who uphold and apply the law, not judges who legislate their own personal morality or their own personal preferences from the bench like five men did when they ignored the will of the people in 2000 in choosing George Bush as president.
And the corallary to that is that we must be a nation of laws. If we are not a nation of laws, then how are we going to maintain a stable society? If we decide to follow this law and not that law, then we would be guilty of selective interpretation. There is a place for civil disobedience, especially when the law or the policy being protested is unjust. But there is no place for the selective interpretation of the Constitution and our ignoring of its values whenever it is convenient. If we do that, the the Constitution will have no meaning at all, and we will be on the process of becoming a failed state like Iraq or Afghanistan.
Sixthly of all, because we believe in the equality of all people, not just all Americans, we believe in the system of international alliances that was created after the Second World War to solve the world's problems. We must consult with other nations as partners and allies at all times, not when we merely find it expedient. Our decisions must be made as a collective will, backed by the power of Congress and the American people. We must work together to solve the problems of global warming, Iran, Africa, Darfur, Somalia, and other hot spots around the world. And because we have influenced the world for the last 200 years on human rights, we must set an example like the people who have gone before us when they overthrew the British rule and uphold human rights in our own backyard.
We will always have our disagreements about policy or about candidates. But these are values that we have to have in order to be considered a Democrat. If you are one of the most articulate voices against Iraq, and you are a vile bigot guilty of racism and homophobia, then you are not a Democrat. If you believe in going it alone and supporting the President's policy of perpetual warfare in Iraq, then you are not a Democrat. If you think that people in the South are no good because most of them voted for Republicans, then you are not a Democrat. The absurdity of voting merely based on one issue can be illustrated by the fact that Lyndon LaRouche opposed Iraq from Day One and is one of the biggest voices calling for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney. We have to vote based on values that we have as a party and pick candidates who have done the most to uphold these values.