The Republicans are a party of values which guide their every decision. They have an agenda they never loose sight of and they constantly push to advance it. Their agenda is to push a perverted social darwinism which moves more and more wealth to those who already have it. Anything else they talk about or push towards is merely a means of gaining power to further that radical agenda.

The Democrats on the other hand, seem to have lost track of what they are trying to achieve, simply trying to dull the right wing dagger which is carving up America's heart, the working class, and serving it to the robber barons.

Without standing for something clear and meaningful we will be left trying to find our way out of these woods without a compass. We need to define what we stand for and then look at each issue and judge where we ought to stand on it based on our core values, whether or not we are siding with the majority on the particulars.

We need to start framing the individual issues based on our greater goals, for instance, we as Democrats believe that everyone has the right to life. We all have the right to live free from violence. We have the right to health care and to protection from those who would sacrifice our health and well being for personal gain. We have the duty to keep the planet livable. We have the duty to ensure that each person have a bright future. These are right of Americans and of citizens of the world and we will work to achieve these goals.

Like the Republicans, we don't need to get there suddenly but we need to make constant progress. When we speak about Social Security we must speak about it by reminding the American public that we must protect Social Security because it is integral to ensuring that ALL Americans have a bright future, not just those wealthy enough to save adequately.

When we discuss abortion we must also make moves towards providing assistance of other sorts so that abortion is used largely in cases where there is a significant health risk. We must make sure that birth control is widely available and assist in making choices that make abortion less common, while not restricting access to it. We must admit that an abortion should be a last resort but a last resort that is always available.

We should be fighting tooth and nail for a living wage and never passing up an oportunity to talk about issues like this, because these are the issues that set us apart from the far right. We must remind the public that a living wage is a right and being paid less than you need to survive hurts our society and take opportunities away from our youth as well.

We need to push to return to the era when public education was publicly funded. We must revolt against laws which take even what little financial aid is available from those with minor drug convictions. We must talk about the possibilities we are denying our youth when we deny them a good education.

We must push for universal health care and refute the idea that everything is better done by the private sector. When making a profit is the primary motivation, providing quality health care sometimes gets left behind. What's more, we need to make sure that every man, woman and child has the ability to live free from the fear that a fall on the ice or a sudden illness could cause complete ruin for their family.

We need an environmental policy that works first to ensure that we pass a healthy planet on to the next generation. We need to put our environment before profits because this planet makes all else possible.

We also need to operate in the realm of truth and we must stand up to falsehood. When a Republican presents us with phony studies on sexual abuse of children of same sex couples we must say, "That is a lie." and then we must prove it. When we find our position conflicting with objective truths we must re-examine our position.

We must stand for these values because they are American values and we must stand for the in instances where it isn't the popular thing to do and in instances where it is because we must show conviction to win elections and we must win elections to affect change.

Most importantly, when we do win elections we must make real change, slowly but surely because faith without works is dead.

We must have faith that we are doing the right thing and that Americans and citizens of this planet in general share our broad goals.