Justice. Compassion. Community.

Yesterday over at Hullabaloo, Dday had a piece about how in the wake of the election Congressional GOPpers are becoming convinced their problem is that they're not being reactionary enough and how they intend to scream and screech even more than they have. As part of that, he brought up how everything - including the financial bailout - became a basis for calling for tax cuts.

That lead to his making an observation which I thought required response, which I'm cross-posting here:

I don't think anyone has invalidated that "let the people have their own money" approach.

That's because they keep accepting the underlying premise of "private (unrestricted free-market capitalism) good, public (government) bad" instead of trying to construct an alternative narrative - or, if you prefer, frame. They persist in fighting on the right's turf, in the right's terms.

Leaving aside for the moment the fact that this very failure may be quite revealing of how the Dems as a group really think, I dug up and mixed together some stuff of mine from years ago to suggest some possible elements of an alternative narrative based around the underlying concepts of "justice" and "community."

We see government as the vehicle through which a people can act on their ideals. Our heritage as Americans includes a great many idealistic values - but conservatives are appealing to the worst in our heritage: to selfishness, to suspicion, to "what's-in-it-for-me."

In their bankruptcy of spirit they have sought to arouse a meanness of manner and selfishness of soul among the American people. They've tried to divide us against ourselves, empty us of compassion, and make what the British call "I'm all right Jack" our national motto. They want you to think of just yourselves in isolation: You're working, you're not hungry, your mortgage hasn't been foreclosed, so the hell with everybody else.

They've favored the rich, pampered Big Business, and sought to conceal the pain they've caused under a stream of claims, anecdotes, and figure-mongering that ranges from the merely clever to outright lies.

They are not political leaders, they're cult leaders, true believers in the classic sense of the term: They believe themselves to be in possession of certain ultimate truths that are not subject to rational argument and they isolate themselves from the contamination of non-believers. And, like all cults, it has its glorious vision eternally threatened by its ultimate demons.

That's why they speak of the personal but never of the public; of self but never others; of us and them but never we; of family but never of community. In fact, they're afraid to talk of community, because that means to talk of social obligations, of moral commitments to others, commitments which their selfish, circumscribed view can't comprehend, indeed rejects as, almost literally, heresy.

We think we as a people are better than they give us credit for, and it's time we had government that called us to the highest of our ideals instead of the lowest of our fears.

Because compassion is not a cliche; it's a requirement of our humanity. Decency isn't for case-by-case convenience but must be a basic social tenet. And justice is not a prerogative of the powerful but a basic human right and it must be protected as such.

What we ultimately reject is the right of so few to have so much when so many have so little. What we ultimately resist is the power of so few to control so much when so many control so little. What we ultimately affirm is the right of every human being to a decent life free of hunger, fear, and oppression. What we ultimately demand from our society is the effort to guarantee that right. We've no desire to place a ceiling over anyone's aspirations, but we do want to put a floor under everyone's needs.

That's the dream, a dream that reaches to the depths of the human dream. We don't dream of perfection, of idealized utopias, but of simple human justice. Justice in its truest sense: economic, social, and political. A justice that rejects the ascendancy of bombs over bread, of private greed over public good, or profits over people. A justice that centers on the preciousness of life and will fight to maintain and even expand that preciousness.

That dream is there for us, and if we can but have the courage to hold to that dream, to take risks for it, to look to the future, together we can do it. It won't be easy. It won't be cheap. And it won't be convenient. But it is possible - and, after all is said and done, it simply is the only right thing to do.

Just have to keep hammering it: Justice. Compassion. Community. Justice. Compassion. Community. Justice....

Yes, I realize that the body of that sounds more like a manifesto than a counter-narrative, which is why I included the coda. Those words should be part of, underlie, everything we say, every program we advocate. The real genius of the right, contrary to what some may say, does not truly lie in their ability to create a simple message but in their sheer stubbornness in advocating it, their determination to express their underlying notions at every opportunity until they become so ingrained, so suffused through our social and political discourse, that they no longer come to consciousness and so no longer get argued.

Which is why "invalidating" the "'let the people have their own money' approach" is completely the wrong way to fight. It can't be invalidated because in a basic philosophical sense, it is "their own money." The unspoken part, the part that underlies it and gives it its potency, the part that has penetrated the culture, is "keep your own money because no one cares about you so you don't have to care about anyone else." Without that unspoken call to isolation-driven selfishness, argument loses almost all its emotional power. Without that unspoken call to isolation-driven selfishness, people realize just who it is that is keeping what.

The counterweight, then, is not a challenge to the surface part, is not some version of "it's not really your money" (which I have seen argued) or, worse, acquiescing in the wingers' claim that we're saying "the government knows how to spend it better than you do." The counterweight is more along the lines of "as a member of a community, you have a responsibility to the other members of that community, as they do to you - and the more you have (and we're looking at you, rich people), the greater the responsibility." (The religiously-inclined can refer to Luke 12:48: "For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required.") The idea is to change the issue of taxes from the wingers version of "your own money" to one of community responsibility, to the justice of everyone paying their fair share.

The point is not the exact words or even the particular issue. The point is to keep referring to those basic principles insistently, repeatedly, stubbornly, unflinchingly, unashamedly, unhesitatingly, even in-your-facedly.

Oh my, how many times have I said this in some form or another: Stop trying to fight the wingers on their terms! The idea is not to see what we can wrangle within their rules, it's to change the rules! There is a counter-narrative to the wingers' paeans to selfishness. But - and this is where we so often fail - we have to be prepared to be every bit as stubborn as they are.

It remains to be seen if we're up to it.

Justice. Compassion. Community. Justice. Compassion. Community. Justice. Compassion....