Choosing Values
The Washington Monthly has an interesting cluster of new pieces, which Kevin Drum describes thusly, "The point of this package of articles isn't to offer some sort of grand vision for liberals. Rather, it's to re-introduce a thread of progressivism that's been largely overlooked in recent years: namely that although using government agencies to protect people is both worthy and necessary, sometimes it's more effective to give ordinary people the means to protect themselves." That impulse is right on, and the small-bore ideas presented are mostly worth pursuing.
But there's an element of Paul Glastris' otherwise insightful overview to the package that offers misguided advice to progressives. After criticizing modern conservatism's "voucherization of government," Glastris writes, "Liberals are in a much better ideological position to actually deliver on the demand for more control and choice." The problem with Glastris' approach of trying to co-opt the language of the right by saying in essence, "We're the ones who REALLY support REAL choice and empowerment," is that the public won't be able to distinguish any meaningful difference between us and them. The actual differences, which we at long last should be able to get the public to understand after five years of failed rule by conservative ideologues, are about values and goals like economic security, health care for everyone, and trust in government rather than focus-groupese like choice, vouchers, tradeable permits, empowerment, etc.
Conservatives have nothing to say about the kinds of challenges being boisterously debated in the TPMcafe book club. They don't even talk about the impact on families of downsizing, whether it's attributable to globalization or technological change or a particular trade agreement. There is no conservative universal health care plan. Right-wing government won't even use existing housing vouchers, or sundry safety net programs, to help Katrina victims relocate and experience less hardship. Social Security privatization flopped not because of nuances about how the idea of "investment choice" was pitched but because the public overwhelmingly values and wants to sustain the protections the program provides to all Americans. In that case, the right fought on progressive turf and got killed.
There's a lot of good stuff in The Washington Monthly package, and I don't by any means want to create the opposite impression. But we should resist the urge to focus energy on co-opting language that the right owns and concentrate on highlighting the fundamental differences between our values and theirs. The goals of the right and the left are so different that there's no need to obsess about wonkish rhetoric.
My apologies to E.J. Dionne for stealing his quote and thanks to him for reminding me once again about the kind of leadership this party once had.
``The issue of government has always been whether individual men and women will have to serve some system of government of economics -- or whether a system of government and economics exists to serve individual men and women.''
--FDR
November 8, 2005 4:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
bluebell
Thanks for using that great quote. I think you and Greg are right on. What Democrats can offer is an empowerment of all individuals with government helping to ameliorate the failures of the market place and to bring to bear the values of Americans. We need not be Republican lite but recognize there is a role for government to help make us all more politically empowered with greater opportunities.
November 8, 2005 5:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Amen, sorta.
Democrats don't trust government. Only a fool trusts government.
However, Democrats recognize that there are problems that ONLY government can solve. It's our job as citizens to demand that government solve these problems, and force accoutability upon it. And Democrats are the party best able to use government to solve these problems because, fundamentally, they believe in using government to solve problems, and are willing to do the work to make government work for America.
We believe that government can solve problems, but we do not believe it is either easy or inevitable. That's the difference between us and them.
November 8, 2005 8:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wow, I haven't seen that many meaningless cliches since John Kerry's last campaign speech. Thanks for bringing back some great memories.
November 8, 2005 10:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
So the problem rhetorically seems to be that we're stuck in a "is government good or is decentralization good" etc etc debate. And that the question is how to present something that appeals to American voters without just saying "gut every social support," yet large swaths of voters don't trust government (and everything the Bushies do that looks horrible on them still supports their aim of delegitimizing government).
How how about we refuse the rhetorical, ideological, and conceptual set-up the right has created for us? Because it's set up so that we'll lose. Americans don't trust Big Things, for extremely good and understandable historcial reasons, and the right has been very clever and caputring, sublimating, and redirecting class anger at government.
So the conceptual choices they give us are big government or the market. And we're supposed to pick one, or a reduced form of the other, or push some mixed message.
Instead of all that, why not just hit values square on, and make sure the rhetoric matches it? Rightwing ideology is based on individualism, it is based on war of each against all, it is based on survival of the fittest, and most clearly it is based on self-interest, greed, and ignoring the needs of others. So why not focus far less on the arguments in favor of government intervention and focus far more on pointing out that their values are corrupt and equate to what most people think is sinful?
Values are important, but we should really start declaring that there are other values besides greed and self-interest, even better values, and that they aren't invented by government and liberals. They are invented in communities and churches and in the basic fellowship that arises between friends and neighbors.
They say we want to restrain the self-interest of individuals and firms. We must prove to America that progressive thought doesn't mean that primarily- the core of it lies in championing those values of fellowship and respect that exist everywhere among every cluster of people, and creating structures that give collective voice to those values.
The right tempts people to fear and neglect their neighbors, and encourages and lionizes the weakest, most bestial impulses in mankind. Impulses of greed, self-satisfaction and contempt, arrogance, and isolation. The left calls people to fellowship and the strength of fellowship.
Our real problem is that they have buried this layer, this real layer of brotherly love that must always be the fount of progressive sentiment and action, they have hidden it from political and economic expression and have tricked us into forgetting that it is there. They make us forget that the duty of an honest left (or liberals or progressives or what have you) is to cultivate and support that seed of brotherly virtue in the hearts and minds of citizens, so that people can retain it through the trials and tribulations of life, so that it isn't drowned in lakes of gold and selfish desires.
Those are our values, and the importance of government can only be shown when we prove to people that we use it only to defend the space for fellowship and community.
November 9, 2005 1:43 AM | Reply | Permalink