The coincidence of the Bear Stearns collapse and the Iraq War's 5th anniversary is breathtaking.  Both involved the best thinking of our elites on the left and right.  How many conservative and liberal Ivy League grads and professors ran or lionized Bear Stearns or opined in favor of the War in the best journals or on blogs such as this one?  It's stunning how the culture of our elites stifles dissent during these catastrophic run-ups--whether it be their ludicrous investment in "Big Shitpile" or their very serious support the greatest foreign policy disaster in American history.  

I believe in a vibrant intellectual life for our country.  I believe in vigorous discussion and the right to dissent on all matters whether they be scientific, philosophical, artistic, or political.  My revulsion at our elites has nothing to do with a latent or patent anti-intellectualism.  I am simply amazed at how the self-annointed best and brightest have so utterly failed to create an economy and an idea of America in the broader world that has any substance whatsoever.
 
It is sobering to think, therefore, what President Obama will do when it comes to fixing the economic and foreign policy messes we are in.  That he must choose from the same elites who have been so wrong about economic policy--who would have marveled at the wizardry and sophistication of Enron and Bear Stearns before they imploded--and so totally wrong about the Iraq war is sobering.  Amitai Etzioni suggested today Obama make Hillary (so calculating; so wrong on the War) his Secretary of State.  What genius on Wall Street will be suggested for Treasury Secretary?

Obama got it right on the War before it started.  But is there anyone like him who is acceptable to his or her elite peers in the media and Congress who can run the Defense Department or State?  Or Treasury or the Fed?  When and how can we break from the vacuous notions of American power found at the intersection of collateralized debt obligations and preemptive war?       

Many are arguing that the Dems have to call for a U.S. pull out of Iraq.  This is woefully misguided.  It confuses our argument against the war with our political response to the war's failure.  We need to be relentless and vociferous critics of the nascent Islamist constitution, the erosion of women's rights, the Iran client state, and the creation of the ultimate Al Qaeda traing camp (cf. 1980s Afghanistan to 2000s Iraq).

A modest proposal:  Dem Senator #1 should take on the Islamist constitution.  Dem Senator #2 should take on the erosion of women's rights.  Dem Senator #3 should take on the Iran client state.  And a politico or the DNC should take on the overall failure to curb Al Qaeda.  They all should be reasonably coordinated in their message (I realize they are ultimately running against each other) and they should train relentless fire on Bush complete miserable failure in Iraq.  The netroots can be the echo chamber for this assault.

The Dems should then offer a hugely substantive plan to kick the crap out of Al Qaeda using the military, FBI, diplomacy . . . .  This plan makes Bush pay for his mistakes and lets the Dems propose a real war on terrorism.

1.  What is the individual citizen responsible for in her life?

2.  What is the government responsible for in the life of the nation?

3.  How do we define our national interests on the world stage?

4.  When and to what extent do we commit our military in defense of our national interests?

5.  What is the role of religion in the nation's life?
 
6.  What does America look like in 50 years?

If you've got others, list 'em.  If you've got answers, state 'em.

3.  The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

4.  The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

5.  The right of every family to a decent home;

6.  The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

7.  The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

8.  The right to a good education.  

One of Sunstein's points is that the New Deal fundamentally expanded federal power in the Constitution without formally amending it.  FDR's program, and the Supreme Court's jurisprudence affirming it, recognized that wealth and property are not things that exist in isolation.  They exist because the government creates courts and laws that allow wealth and property to propagate.  There is no natural law of property.  

The law protects private property only because doing so advances the cause of the Republic.  When the rights of private property owners, therefore, begin to impinge on the general welfare of society as they did in the Great Depression, then the government has the concomitant right to regulate the conduct of private property holders to promote that general welfare.

FDR's Second Bill of Rights, therefore, is a concept of the Constitution that seeks to reform our notions of the Republic in an industrial age in which the language of capitalism and business is more common than the language of citizenship.  Government, as the guarantor of the privileges of capital and industry, has got to demand more in return.    
 
       

Kos has focused his remarks on the Democratic Party and I like what he has said about the Democrats being a party that stands for the principle of privacy instead of the interest of reproductive choice or gay marriage, etc.  We certainly should advocate for the latter, but the former should be our center; the place from where our ideas and policies flow.  

There has also been serious discussion about the future of liberal politics and the health of labor movement.  Josh has called labor the sine qua non of progressive politics and I agree with that.  Of course the question for us all--for the AFL-CIO and for Change to Win--is why is the labor movement failing?

It is true that many people would join a union if they could and the corporations have made it extremely difficult to create or join one.  There are obvious legislative measures that need to be taken; hence Sweeney's belief that we need to elect employee friendly politicians.  But the legal and practical hurdles aren't the only problem it seems to me.  

Here's my idea:  There is a vast reservoir of "employees" out there with very little control over their work lives who want more.  These people, however, do not identify themselves as "workers" in the labor movement sense.  My sense is the average $35-40K American employee working in banking or financial services or technology senses the obvious disconnect between their lives as free citizens and their lives as employees. 

I'm wondering if a movement expressly for workplace democracy among office employees without the traditional rhetoric of workers and solidarity and locals, blah, blah, blah isn't what we need.   

A memorial to the Ludlow miners and their families was erected in 1917 by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) and dedicated by then union president John Lewis.  The memorial was severely vandalized in May 2003, but was restored by the UMWA and rededicated this morning (6/5/05) by now union president Cecil Roberts.
I attended the rededication at Ludlow (about 200 miles south of Denver at the base of Sangre de Christo mountains) along with about 500 other union members and their supporters.  I took along my nephew.  This was a deeply moving thing to go to.  Not only because Cecil Roberts is a moving orator, and not only because Ludlow signifies the contemporary struggles of western miners trying to organize the Co-op Mines near Price, Utah. 
It was moving for me because I saw so many people from my childhood there.  Not literally; I'm from Oklahoma.  But figuratively.  I grew up in a place where people shot guns and talked about God.  When I went to college, I really came to question that entire culture.  But I'm telling you, that culture is good.  And its not anathema to what everyone at this blog is all about. 
Yesterday, a Navajo miner lead the group in the Our Father.  We sang along to a taped version of the Star Spangled Banner.  We covered our hearts and took off our hats to the flag as it was raised.  Then Cecil Roberts led the crowd in a rousing call for single payer health care, a recommitment to a defined benefit Social Security system, and he reminded us that the middle class we know today was created in the 1930s by labor unions consolidating the gains the followed on the Ludlow Massacre.  I loved it.  The flag, a prayer, and YES an occasional pistol retort belong to me too.  Along with a liberal agenda for 21 century America.     
We need people like Cecil Roberts making our case and we need to stop being afraid that he's going to embarass us.  That is snobbish and we're guilty of it.  In my view, a moderately progressive candidate who openly embraces such passion and patriotism by publicly campaigning with people of like Cecil Roberts will be serving us well.

Test

That list shows that organized labor won the political war in the 20th Century.  It created the middle class.  Ironically, however, a growing middle class has meant less interest in organized labor and its goals.  So what does that mean?  I think it means the clamor for the next wave of progressivism must come from the middle class, not from the coal fields, factories, or shipyards.  We must build on the foundation created by those good people.   

My sense is that there are a lot of people today making $40,000 a year in financial services, law, and technology who work long hours without much voice about what their work is, or how it gets done, or whether they will have a job in 6 months.  Those people are pretty well-educated, pretty smart, but they're deeply frightened of their boss and their boss's boss.  My hunch is that these quiet people take health care, pensions, and paid family leave to the next level.  And if put to them right, I think they'd join a union.   

That was the 1970s and Father Cartwright was the priest at the little church.  On Sunday mornings, he traveled from Tulsa and rode a parish circuit saying Mass at other small Catholic churches in Eastern Oklahoma.  The Webbers Falls church was one of his stops.  He looked like a young Rob Reiner from "All in the Family."  Dad told me he was assigned to the circuit because he spoke out against Viet Nam and for civil rights.  The Archbishop in Oklahoma City had exiled him for it.

From time to time, I wonder what has happened to Father Cartwright.  He's probably long gone from the Church.  In many ways, I am too.  But perhaps we have something in common.  I am a Liberal who attends Mass from time to time, feeling like a spy when I do it.  I know the priest up there wouldn't like me taking Communion and I know my Liberal and Socialist friends would think going to Mass was not very clear-headed.  So I am quiet about it.    

I believe in abortion rights, gay rights, ordination of women, stem cell research, the right to die with dignity, and am generally against wars that are not fought in clear self-defense.  I believe we should have a Medicare program for everybody and throw out Taft-Hartley and revitalize the right of American workers to organize and create workplace democracy.  But I also believe in the Sacraments (mostly), the Sermon on the Mount, and the Mass. 

I have little idea how to reconcile contemporary Liberalism with Catholicism.  Perhaps E.J Dionne is on to something when he quotes Michael Walzer who says, "[t]raditions are sites for arguments," and Jaroslav Pelikan who said that "[t]radition is the living faith of the dead," and "[t]raditionalism is the dead faith of the living."