Despite the clamour over in the DarkSyde threads, the whole debate about personal philosophy and religion intersects in an interesting way with a progressive site like DailyKos. Core values, ethical passion, and faith are key issues in today's political dynamic. One Democratic leader who seems to epitomize a grasp of these issues is Howard Dean. His ethics-charged position on Iraq was compelling, and his passion convincing.
This diary is an invitation to debate on the connections between progressives, core values, and the policies we fight for. We are an inclusive party, containing within us a great diversity of religious beliefs, as well as those of us who do not espouse a religion. But we are passionate about certain core values.
So two questions: 1) Why do you fight for the progressive values you do? and 2) How can we as progressive Democrats express to voters the line that runs through our basic beliefs, our moral convictions, and the public policies we fight for--preferably in the form of a brief sentence.
One of our colective goals here seems to be to hash out new approaches to dealing with our common priorities. The establishment folks in Washington have a hard time adjusting to new realities; we may be able to come up with new rhetoric, more in line with the pulse of the nation, faster.
In this vein, one problem that seems to be uncovered is a percieved lack of core ethical conviction on the Democratic side. People don't just find our technocratic-ness boring, they find it uninspiring; and without the deep roots that faith-based convictions evince, they wonder if our convictions will last, or if we'll flip-flop when the opportunity is ripe. In this sense, most of us saw the same difference that the rest of the American people are concerned about, exemplified best by Kerry on the one hand and Howard Dean on the other.
As we Democrats contemplate how to frame new messages going into 2006 elections--ones that are broad enough to allow for a compelling, coherent front, but yet flexible enough to allow individual congressmen to compete locally--what connection do we want to posit between faith and policy?
To put it in another way, we democrats feel passionately about certain values, and we stand ready to fight for them. But we are a party composed, in a much broader sense than are the Republicans, of Christians, believers of other faiths, atheists, and people like me who will admit to being uncertain about the whole metaphysics/religion thing. So is there a way to coherently define the reasons we Democrats are passionate about these values? To say, "No, we are a party about policy ends and not core beliefs," is, I think, to lose the argument. Of course, an underlying value on the liberal side will always be that of individual freedom, including above all the freedom to believe what one will. The logical extension of this is that Democratic politicians and voters will be motivated differently. But how do we express to voters a situation in which we all feel passionately about our core values, being inherently ethical, fair-minded people, and yet the convictions on which our policy-opinions are based differ from person to person?
One way to start along this path of summing up our expression of core moral convictions is to explain why each of us individually is passionate about the set of core policies we Democrats fight for. Why are you a progressive and a Democrat? About what do you feel strongly? What are you ready to fight for? And Why? What line runs between your basic beliefs, moral convictions, and policy positions?
For now, we can probably get away with simply attacking the hypocrisy of Republicans, their ethical failings, and the obvious disconnect between their (budget, taxation, social security) values and those of most Americans. But maybe what we need to do in order to truly capitalize on Republican failures is to offer a contrast in moral passion--social values vs. individual sins (drinking, premarital sex, etc.), an indiscriminate love for individuals as they are vs. intolerance, a commitment to community vs. a commitment to the individual; along with a basic explanation of why we hold such beliefs. And what will we say once we are once again in control of government and must govern rather than attack?
So to close up and put the question again: Why, in terms of core convictions, do we Democratic public servants and activists fight for the values and policies we fight for? Why do you?