WHAT NOW?

By Denny Harnish

Like other progressives I was shocked and saddened by the 2004 election that increased Republican control of the Senate and the House and retained their control of the White House. In January I started to write an article suggesting ways for us to fight back, but I didn’t really know what to say. Fortunately, no one pays me to scribble my thoughts on paper, and so I had no deadline to meet. Therefore, I had more time to consider the matter. This is the result.

First, we should not think that the country has taken a strong turn to the right or that most states are now red states in which Democrats cannot be elected. Most Americans strongly resist ideologies other than the American bred philosophy of pragmatism. This is the silent majority that is fought over by the right and the left. From the 1930s through the 1970s, the Democrats won the hearts, or at least the votes, of the silent majority. Since then, the Republicans have shown greater appeal.

Although this great middle of the electorate is not very sophisticated in terms of economic, legal, or political niceties and can be misled into supporting programs such as tax cuts for the rich or wars of aggression that are against its interests, these folks have a deep understanding of human nature. Further, they examine the claims of the parties in view of what they know about the way the world works. As the conservative columnist David Brooks recently said, people join movements “because they think that movement’s views about human nature and society are true.”

For a long time, going back perhaps to the days of Ronald Regan, the right has held and expressed a consistent position that the chief motivator of human conduct is enlightened self-interest (read “greed”). The right insists that communism fell because it failed to account for this powerful motivator. Domestically, they oppose any and all governmental programs that might interfere with the free market and damper competition because they believe that competition is the true nature of society. On the world stage this philosophy suggests that the United States should ruthlessly pursue its national interests and only join with other nations when that would promote America’s interest.

The right also seems to think that human beings need strong threats in order to behave well, whether it be the death penalty as a deterrent to crime, a vast nuclear arsenal as the foundation of a robust foreign policy, or the threat of hell to induce moral behavior. Of course, there is some truth in these views, and the voters know it, but I think that they also know that human nature is far more complex and better than these views would suggest. At a gut level, people know that unbridled capitalism has no heart and that it produces at least as many losers as winners. That’s why we all love to see Scrooge squirm during A Christmas Carol and to see CEOs dragged off to prison in handcuffs. Also, we know that America’s best days occur when it is generous, kind, and inclusive. That’s why Americans still take pride in the Marshall Plan but not in how Japanese Americans were treated during WWII. In short, the people know that the Republican’s view of human nature is at best not complete. Thus, there is an opportunity for Democrats to take back the high ground in the human nature debate, particularly because most Americans already agree with core Democratic views.

We Democrats should affirm at every opportunity our belief that each human life is precious—not just at conception but always—and that this value is completely divorced from the value of the person as an economic unit. This belief leads naturally to our support for programs that provide quality affordable health care, education, and occupational opportunities to all our people and that protect the most vulnerable members of society. We also need to reiterate our belief that cooperation is as fundamental to human nature as competition and that people are capable of cooperative conduct even if they do not face the threat of the electric chair, hell, or nuclear war. This belief leads naturally to our abhorrence of the death penalty and of war as a means of diplomacy as well as our willingness to join with other countries to fight international threats such as global warming and the depletion of the world’s fisheries.

We need to remind people that capitalism, like fire, is useful so long as we keep it in its place; that wise people do not build fires on their living room floors; and that wise societies adopt and enforce appropriate health safety and environmental regulations and require a fair distribution of wealth. We need to remind the people of our philosophy at every chance and to tie it into our discussions of policy.

The Democrats’ views on cooperation and inclusiveness are increasingly supported by scientific research into primate behavior. Even more importantly, the virtue of cooperation and inclusiveness has been understood by the average guy at a gut level for thousands of years. Author Thomas Cahill pointed out in a recent New York Times editorial that the early Christian church, a church that flowered in a ruthless, capitalistic, superpower that suppressed woman and most of the rest of its population (sound familiar?), called itself by the Greek word “ekklesia,” the word used by the Athenians for their wide open assembly, the world’s first participatory democracy. In using this word, Mr. Cahill opined, the early Christians meant to emphasize that all were equal children of God. He quoted St. Paul as repeatedly saying, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, for all are one in Christ Jesus.” Based upon similar views of human nature, Christians, and all other thinking and loving people, should be the deep allies of progressives. Let us remind them of “the better angels of their nature” to use Lincoln’s phrase. Let us convince them that we Democrats care about humans not just in the abstract but as individuals and not just when they are born but throughout their lives. Let our party be an “ekklesia.” If we do, then the elections will take care of themselves.

 

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