As Democrats begin to finally come together after the disaster of Hurricane Katrina, we need to find leadership and most importantly a message that resonates with American society.
I believe Barack Obama was extremely accurate in his Commencement Address at Knox College that the issues we face now are due to one fundamental issue:
Social Darwinism
I want to start with a quote from Mr Obama's speech:
Like so much of the American story, once again, we face a choice. Once again, there are those who believe that there isn't much we can do about this as a nation. That the best idea is to give everyone one big refund on their government--divvy it up by individual portions, in the form of tax breaks, hand it out, and encourage everyone to use their share to go buy their own health care, their own retirement plan, their own child care, their own education, and so on.
In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society. But in our past there has been another term for it--Social Darwinism--every man or woman for him or herself. It's a tempting idea, because it doesn't require much thought or ingenuity. It allows us to say that those whose health care or tuition may rise faster than they can afford--tough luck. It allows us to say to the Maytag workers who have lost their job--life isn't fair. It let's us say to the child who was born into poverty--pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And it is especially tempting because each of us believes we will always be the winner in life's lottery, that we're the one who will be the next Donald Trump, or at least we won't be the chump who Donald Trump says: "You're fired!"
But there is a problem. It won't work. It ignores our history. It ignores the fact that it's been government research and investment that made the railways possible and the internet possible. It's been the creation of a massive middle class, through decent wages and benefits and public schools that allowed us all to prosper. Our economic dependence depended on individual initiative. It depended on a belief in the free market; but it has also depended on our sense of mutual regard for each other, the idea that everybody has a stake in the country, that we're all in it together and everybody's got a shot at opportunity. That's what's produced our unrivaled political stability.
This is the message that the Democrats need to grab onto with both hands and get across to the nation. Right now. Make sure people understand what today's "conservative" values actually are. What they really mean by "Ownership Society". Barack Obama is the perfect person to get this message out. He can relate to African Americans in a way very few politicians could. He understands the plight of not just African American's, but American's as a whole. He speaks clearly and his message resonates.
Lets go a little further into the term "Social Darwinism" as listed at Wikipedia:
Social Darwinism is a social theory which holds that Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is not only a model for the development of biological traits in a population, but can also be applied to human social institutions. While social darwinism does apply the concept of evolution and natural selection to human cultural systems, none of the political and quasi-theological ideologies related to it are a part of Charles Darwin's biological theory of evolution. Later proponents of social darwinism have drawn on some concepts from Darwin's biological theory of evolution, although only the theory of sociobiology, developed in the 1970s, tries to synthesize both biology and sociology in a scientific fashion.
But here is the crux:
Proponents of Social Darwinism often use the theory, directly or obliquely, to justify laissez-faire capitalism and social inequality, while some extreme theories manifest racism, imperialism, eugenics. However, the theory itself does not necessarily engender a political position: some Social Darwinists argue for the inevitability of progress, while others emphasize the potential for the degeneration of humanity, and some attempt to enrol Social Darwinism in reformist politics.
Once again, from the senator of Illinois:
So let's dream. Instead of doing nothing or simply defending 20th century solutions, let's imagine together what we could do to give every American a fighting chance in the 21st century.
What if we prepared every child in America with the education and skills they need to compete in the new economy? If we made sure that college was affordable for everyone who wanted to go? If we walked up to those Maytag workers and we said "Your old job is not coming back, but a new job will be there because we're going to seriously retrain you and there's life-long education that's waiting for you--the sorts of opportunities that Knox has created with the Strong Futures scholarship program.
What if no matter where you worked or how many times you switched jobs, you had health care and a pension that stayed with you always, so you all had the flexibility to move to a better job or start a new business? What if instead of cutting budgets for research and development and science, we fueled the genius and the innovation that will lead to the new jobs and new industries of the future?
You can't get a better message than that right now. With Barack helping lead the charge, you have the talking point that will take the Democrats into office in 06, 08 and the foreseeable future.
Please don't squander this opportunity.
Lead and give Americans all across the country a reason to be proud again of this land they call home.