Clarity often requires some distance, some reflection. So it is for me with the Democratic National Convention. The contrast with what we saw in Tampa was so profound on so many levels: vision, truth-telling, analysis, character, energy. But as the event recedes there is one critical difference that stands out for me: emotion. There seemed to be exponentially more heart among Democrats. I will never forget when Elizabeth Warren said this:
No, Governor Romney, corporations are not people. People have hearts, they have kids, they get jobs, they get sick, they cry, they dance. They live, they love and they die. And that matters.
The thought itself was powerful, but what will stay with me is the emotional energy that flowed through Warren at that moment, especially on that word:
matters. For me, through that word, she seemed to be channeling a profound truth about the difference between Democrats and Republicans: how they value people.
Republicans tell themselves that their supposedly pro-growth, pro-business, pro-"job creator" policies will benefit everyone as all boats magically rise when they "double down on trickle down," as Clinton aptly summarized their platform. But inside they are willing to sacrifice the poor and weak and those who need help to become full participants in productive society. Republicans have a hard view of human nature, willing to throw some overboard to improve the lives of those left in the boat. In Iraq, to serve their bizarre combination of economic, geo-political and neocon policy goals, they were willing to sentence thousands and thousands of individuals to death and untold suffering. I am sure that someone will point to Obama's drone strikes as evidence that he is no better. But in their efficiency surgical drone strikes seem to recognize that even when fighting our most heinous enemies, we should preserve life where possible. Republicans seem to be different. I believe they more often see people as expendable in a just cause. They think of blunt military actions not only as being pragmatic, but also just, and simply part of American hegemony. Does anyone doubt that Bush would have blown up Osama's entire building just because it would have been less risky? In the Republican view, those who die or suffer grievously (as Rumsfeld once said, "stuff happens") must simply have been unworthy or less worthy than those others (i.e., the "job creators") whom the Lord deems worthy of prosperity. For all their talk about prosperity, at the heart of the Republican worldview is a lasting comfort with scarcity for some and inequality for all. In the game of life there will be winners and losers. The strong will survive and thrive while the weak suffer and perish. To Republicans that is justice and natural law.
The Republicans are too easily willing to give up real people in the pursuit of ideological causes.
Warren tapped into an entirely different vein in the human spirit. She quoted Jesus:
One of my favorite passages of scripture is: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." Matthew 25:40. The passage teaches about God in each of us, that we are bound to each other and called to act. Not to sit, not to wait, but to act—all of us together.
What is this about? Plainly and simply: empathy. It is the ability to see with the heart that our fortunes and fates are bound together, that as long as one of us suffers, we are all diminished. The experience transcends rationality, reaching toward an emotional truth in which we feel a deep sense of connection with others. It calls forth an effort to build a society based on mutual caring and concern. Let's be bold: it aspires to a society based on love. To the Republicans, the idea of community often seems to stop at the body politic. The Democrats are able to imagine the state itself as a caring community.
When the Republicans hear this aspiration, they think about dependency and they fear that what binds us together will enslave us to one another. They lack a certain moral courage required to extend the idea of caring to the nation as a whole. At this moment in American history it is a particularly hypocritical posture, because the truth is that the American community of the whole--the Federal government and the Federal Reserve--provided the financial bulwark that kept our overall economic system from utter collapse, thereby preserving the wealth of those in the system who had the most to lose. Now the Republicans want to forget this happened and pretend that those with most don't need anyone else, ever. They want to pretend that the wealthy "built it" and everyone else should grovel and give thanks for their greatness. They want to pretend that a community of caring is a luxury that American society writ large can't afford anymore. But Democrats know that America is better and stronger than that. Democrats know that the very community of the whole that the Republicans now reject is the one that saved them within recent history. Here's how Obama finished his speech:
America, I never said this journey would be easy, and I won't promise that now. Yes, our path is harder, but it leads to a better place. Yes, our road is longer, but we travel it together. We don't turn back. We leave no one behind. We pull each other up. We draw strength from our victories. And we learn from our mistakes. But we keep our eyes fixed on that distant horizon knowing that providence is with us and that we are surely blessed to be citizens of the greatest nation on earth.
This inspired me, mostly because I could hear these words in the context of what Warren had said about people along with the emotion she conveyed, simple but profound:
People have hearts, they have kids, they get jobs, they get sick, they cry, they dance. They live, they love, and they die. And that matters.