Puget Sound Liberals

In his book Don't Think of an Elephant, George Lakoff says that while Conservatives have clearly and simply expressed the values that they share, Liberals have not. We Liberals must first define our basic moral values and then present our policies and programs as means to fulfill these values. The following is a clear and simple expression of our Liberal values and how they differ from Conservative values. In recruiting members of our Lake Hills Liberals, we have presented each one with these values and each agreed. Our values are the basis for everything we do.

We believe that:

• All members of our American community should have the same freedoms and opportunities.
• We each have the responsibility to protect the freedoms and opportunities of all other Americans.
• We and our government should be competent and compassionate, helping those who have fewer freedoms and opportunities than the rest of us.
• Our United States should be a cooperative member of our world's community of nations.

We believe in freedom, opportunity, rights, equality, equity, justice, fairness, community, responsibility, competence, compassion and cooperation. More simply, we believe in freedom, opportunity and responsibility in our all-inclusive community. We believe that our rights (freedoms and opportunities) are only limited by the rights of others. We liberals believe in community, freedom and responsibility. Conservatives limit their definition of all three.

We may disagree on the details: For example, who are members of our American community? Are fetuses considered to have the same rights as people? When should children have the rights held by adults? Should fathers have the same rights as mothers, even before the birth of their child? Do we include only citizens, or also legal immigrants, or also illegal immigrants?

How do we provide limits on some of our freedoms and opportunities when they adversely affect the freedoms and opportunities of others? How much should our freedom of expression be limited when it offends others? How much should threats to our security allow us to limit our rights?

Our liberal values have a long 300 year history. They originated as part of the enlightenment of the 17th century. They were expressed by John Lock in his Treatise on Government, published in 1690. Tom Paine, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison. Adam Smith (known as the founder of economics), John Mill and John Stuart Mill expressed these values, as have many others to this day.

Liberal values appear in our Decoration of Independence in such statements as "All men are created equal." and "With due respect for the opinions of mankind …" But 'all men' did not in practice include men without property, nor women, nor slaves of African ancestry. Our American expression of liberal values as 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' emphasizes community less that the French expression of 'liberty, equality and fraternity'.

For 300 years, our liberal values have remained the same, focused upon enhancing liberty (freedoms and opportunities) and upon equality among members of our community in possessing this liberty. Over time, we have also enlarged our understanding of who is included in our community. As circumstances have changed, we have led struggles against different challenges to freedom and opportunity.

Liberals have won many struggles to extend and enhance our freedoms and opportunities, against opposition from conservatives.

• 1690's - John Lock struggled to place parliamentary limits upon the English King and this occurred.
• 1770's - Our liberal colonists led the struggle against the English and their Tory supporters (who were the conservatives of that time) to free us from colonial rule.
• 1800's - Due to liberals, the right to vote was gradually expanded to include men without property and our national legislators came to be elected directly by voters instead of by state legislators.
• 1830's - 1860's - Opposed by southern conservatives, liberals supported abolition of slavery. Through our devastating Civil War, slavery was abolished.
• 1890's - Liberals called populists opposed exploitation of farmers and others by giant corporations. Robert La Follett fought monopolistic pricing by railroads. Theodore Roosevelt obtained trust-busting legislation to dismantle large monopolies.
• 1890's - Muck-raking journalists exposed many abuses of consumers and workers which led to liberals passing regulatory legislation and agencies consumer protections.
• 1890's - 1920's - Liberals supported legalizing property, voting and other rights for women. Conservatives opposed them. Women obtained these rights.
• 1930's - Responding to the great depression, liberal FDR and his New Dealers won the struggle against conservatives to regulate markets, provide a safety net (including social security) and ensure the rights of labor to organize. After World War II, macro-economic Keynesian fiscal policies were adopted to counter business cycles.
• 1940's - As occurred during and immediately after previous wars, liberties were threatened in the name of security. Japanese Americans were interned in concentration camps. But President Truman began racial integration of the military. As the cold war mounted, conservatives increased their attacks upon liberals, but McCarthyism has become a bad word.
• 1960's - Liberals mounted a civil rights movement to eliminate legal supports for racial segregation. President Johnson managed the passage of civil rights legislation
• 1960's - As poverty amid affluence was noted, liberals led by President Johnson initiated the 'War on Poverty'. Poverty was much reduced; to increase again under conservative Reagan, reduce under liberal Clinton and increase again under Bush.
• 1960's - Against corporate opposition, liberals won the passage of much environmental legislation, including the endangered species, clean air and clean water acts.
• 1960's and 1970's - Liberals led the struggle to end the Vietnam War.
• 1990's - 2000's - Liberals struggled against Christian conservatives to grant equal freedoms and opportunities to gays and lesbians. Gays and lesbians are gaining more rights. More than 60% of younger Americans now support equal rights for gays and lesbians.
• 2000's - The newest group to have its freedoms and opportunities opposed by conservatives are our immigrants. Beginning in the 1820's, conservatives placed restrictions for the first time on immigration to America. In the absence of sufficient legal ways for immigrants to come and work as needed labor, immigrants are coming anyway and with the tacit support of employers are working. Conservatives oppose legalization and are currently threatening the impossible task of deporting or jailing millions of immigrants. Just as we couldn't enforce prohibition of alcohol, we can't enforce prohibition of immigration in response to work opportunities. Conservatives have only hurt themselves by losing the votes of our fast growing immigrant population. Liberals now support legalizing immigrants who come, take needed jobs, and will help support our social security.

Liberals have always won, often only after long and costly struggles and sometimes setbacks, as are occurring now with our increasing poverty rates. We can wish that liberals had undertaken some of these struggles earlier and won more quickly, but history can't be redone.

Our task now is to struggle strongly to enhance freedoms and opportunities for not just all Americans, but for all humans. We have many unfinished tasks, including removal of dictators, peaceful settling of disputes between and within countries, enforcement of human rights internationally, provision of adequate safety nets, protection of our environment and. reduction of corporate oppression.

Our liberal values can be easily used as a basis for our liberal positions concerning: tax policy, balanced budgets, social investments, social services, protection of civil rights, equal gender rights, women's pregnancy choices, same-sex marriage, environmental protection, regulation of corporate and other responsibilities, regulation of campaign contributions and lobbying, and most if not all other positions shared by most liberals. By extending our community to include all of our world's people, we base our foreign policy upon the same values.

Americans identify their party affiliation as 33% Democrats, 33% Independents and 33% Republicans. Virtually all Democrats are liberals, that is, they hold liberal values. Two thirds of Independents (22% of all Americans) lean toward liberal values. One third of Independents (11% of all Americans) lean toward conservative values. Virtually all Republicans lean toward conservative values.

About 60% of liberals identify themselves as Democrats and 40% identify themselves as Independents. The 40% of liberals who identify themselves as Independents instead of Democrats may do so because they dislike the lack of ideological purity that must occur in a successful political party, the failure of the Democrats to clearly express their values, and/or their disorganization. As Will Rogers said, "I don't belong to an organized party. I'm a Democrat."

Since more than half of Americans are liberals, who seem almost always support Democrats, why have Republicans so often won recent elections. The superior Republican message clarity and political infrastructure is partly responsible. In addition, Republicans reward campaign contributors and thus raise many more funds than Democrats to get their message across and stimulate their supporters to vote.

War is the most extreme intrusion into the freedom of those it victimizes, both combatants and non-combatants. Hawks allow defense and war a higher value than many rights and compassion, while Doves are unwilling to allow defense and war to infringe upon our rights and compassion as much. There are more hawks than doves in America.

Both Democrats and Republicans split between doves and hawks, but the Democrats have a higher proportion of doves and the Republicans have a higher proportion of hawks. Fear of foreign threats may override liberal values. Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Scoop Jackson were hawks and so are many current Democratic candidates and officials.

Using the 'cold war' and the so-called 'war on terrorism' as threats, the Republicans have been able to attract some of the votes of the Hawkish liberals. They have thus won some elections even though there are fewer conservatives than there are liberals. The failure of the Vietnam War convinced people to convert from hawks to doves. The failure of the current Iraqi War may also convince people to convert to doves.

Most Americans are liberals, who hold the liberal values expressed above. But many liberals now identify themselves as progressives. Perhaps they have been scared to use the term 'liberal', due to its demonization by conservatives. If not, what is the definition of progressive that differs from our definition of liberal? What do progressives believe that liberals don't? Who historically has been progressive, but not liberal?

One question is whether our compassion should focus upon helping specific disadvantaged groups, or whether it should focus upon changing our institutions. But this is generally a false dichotomy. We have to administer first aid to those who need help now. We also have to find what is causing their injuries and prevent it. Being competent requires both short and long term solutions.

Liberals have provided both. Conservatives have generally opposed both. For example, they opposed giving poverty program money to the poor (because it motivates them to stay poor) and opposed hiring counselors and others to help the poor become more self sufficient because the money didn't go directly to the poor.

Teachers, local, state and federal employees and other providers of social services are liberals, whether or not they have applied the term to themselves. Any provider of social services is inconsistent if they also support uncompassionate conservatives, who continually seek to reduce funding for social services.

Instead of defending their own values and policies, conservatives often prefer to attack liberals. They use such epitaphs as extremist, elitist, representing special interests, socialistic, and weak in defending our nation from violence. We should not respond defensively as whinny victims. We should respond aggressively as proud mainstream liberals.

We liberals are mainstream. We represent the best of our American traditions expressed by our declaration of independence; constitution; and victorious struggles to abolish slavery, protect farmers and other workers from railroad and other trusts, protect consumers from unsafe products, guarantee the rights of women to vote and own property, provide safety nets to protect people from economic cycles and other misfortunes, eliminate legal discrimination against blacks and other minorities, provide opportunities for our poor, provide equal freedoms and opportunities for all people of whatever sexual orientation, and provide legal pathways for immigrants to obtain work in our United States. Public opinion polls show that a majority of Americans agree with our liberal values of liberty, equality, responsibility and community.

We are not elitist. Just compare the composition of the delegates to the 2004 Democratic and Republican Conventions. We are inclusive, including all of the various groups cited above, whom the conservatives have attempted exclude from rights (freedoms and opportunities) enjoyed by the rest of us.

As liberals, we support the public interest which consists in enhancing freedoms and opportunities for all, and especially people who have fewer freedoms and opportunities for the rest of us. The conservatives are the ones who support special interests by corruptly granting huge benefits to the powerful and wealthy. Unfortunately some liberal supporters do have special interests which they demand our liberal politicians cater to in return for their support.

Some examples are labor union protection of their health care benefits has been a major obstacle to securing universal health coverage; automobile workers have joined their employers in resisting raising vehicle mileage standards; teachers and other public employees have sometimes placed a high priority on job security at the expense of competence; senior citizens have resisting taxation of social security benefits even for wealthy seniors. Legislators whether liberal or conservative vote themselves benefits far beyond those they provide to their constituents and exempt themselves from laws that apply to others. Catering to these demands is not liberal and should be strongly resisted. Loyalty to our friends and supporters should not extend to allowing them to take advantage of others.

We support competence by people and by government. We believe that within their capabilities, people should be self-supporting and supportive of others. We want to provide help to people who are attempting to help themselves. We find it difficult to help people who irresponsibly refuse to do their share. With limited resources, we want to help others where our help will make a difference. In so far as our institutions reward those who help themselves, we don't want to help others who don't need our help. Nor to we want to waste our resources trying to help those who refuse to be helped. We recognize that it is often difficult to distinguish who belongs in which triage category.

We have always supported free private and public enterprise, only resisting the capitalist premise that the only bottom line is that top decisions should be made by and returns from production mostly accrue to the providers of capital. We believe that where necessary to stop external costs imposed by unfair, unsafe and polluting practices upon workers, consumers, suppliers and others, effective regulations should be imposed. We also believe that powerful businesses should be stopped from corrupting legislators through lobbying and campaign donations to obtain benefits at the expense of our public.

We believe that our present Bush administration and Republican-controlled congress is deceptive, incompetent and corrupt, beliefs now shared by 2/3rds of Americans. We strongly favor open transparency in government, competence for both our people and our government and honesty.

We believe in strongly defending our country against violence, including finding cures for diseases, protection from drunk drivers, reducing the availability of guns primarily used for crime, effective responses to natural disasters, and attacks by domestic and foreign terrorists. We believe that such treats should be countered legally through research and police action, with military force only rarely necessary and then conducted through international auspices. We believe that these threats should not be used as an excuse for extra-legal or legal extreme government secrecy, invasion of personal privacy, unnecessary military procurement of weapons suited only to conducting wars against non-existing technologically advanced militarily powerful enemies, or for partisan attacks on the loyalty of opposition politicians. We strongly believe in strengthening our police and other first responder resources.

Following George Lakoff's suggestions, we should not accept conservative framing of discussions, including their using such terms as moral majority (when conservatives represent neither), liberal media bias (which is demonstratively not true), socialized medicine, death tax (which is really a tax upon inherited unearned large wealth, much of which escapes taxation anyway through using original values without capital gains), reform (which often means lowering taxes and increasing benefits for the powerful and wealthy), and numerous other terms.

Instead, we should continually refer to our mainstream liberal values, inclusiveness, our general welfare, competence and compassion, cost-controlled Medicare for all, birth tax (which is the amount of per capita federal tax faced by every newborn) and similar terms which accurately portray our values. We should aggressively promote our beliefs while disclosing the deceptive attacks and frequent hypocrisy of our opponents. Let them be whinny losers.

The primary difference between Liberals and Conservatives is that liberals believe that all Americans should have the same Freedoms and Opportunities. Conservatives all believe that some of us should not have equal freedoms and opportunities. Historically, these have included slaves, women, employees, consumers, women, poor people, ethnic minorities, non-Conservative Christians, gays and immigrants.

They deny many freedoms to many people, but would grant freedoms to corporations. They deny responsibility by people, corporations and government to not infringe upon the freedom of people different than themselves. They would abolish regulations, which protect workers, consumers and community members from corporate irresponsibility.

We liberals believe in community, freedom and responsibility. Conservatives limit their definition of all three. A society based upon our liberal values would be stable, free and prosperous. A society based upon conservative values would be the opposite. This is demonstrated by the changes in our society since the conservatives took control in 2000.

People, who disagree with our liberal values, often do so by reducing the number of people whom they consider to be members of our American Community, by being non-compassionate and by trying to impose their religious values on everyone, thus reducing our religious freedom.

Three types of conservatives - Traditional conservatives, Christian Conservatives and Libertarians - differ in who they believe should be excluded from various freedoms and opportunities:

Traditional Conservatives

Most traditional Conservatives (who could be called Red State Conservatives) live in rural areas, small towns and homogeneous suburbs, with little ethnic diversity. Gays and poor people are likely to be in the closet or to have left for more accepting urban areas with more opportunities.

They limit their belief in freedom, opportunity and compassion to people like members of their homogeneous communities. Their understanding of our American Community excludes many who differ from themselves. They don't understand the need for programs which address urban challenges which result from large dense heterogeneous populations, including poor and other people who have fled from their communities. They regard compassionate programs as wasteful handouts to the unworthy, driven by vote-seeking liberals. They oppose immigration of people different from themselves. Even though our senatorial system produces more federal expenditures in Red States than these states pay in federal revenues, they support less government, less taxes and less regulation. They doubt that governments can be competent and believe that compassionate social services should be provided only by local governments or better yet, privately supported.

Traditional Conservatives trust unregulated markets and support balanced federal budgets. Originally isolationists, Traditional Conservatives parted from Libertarians to become Cold War supporters who supported military competition with the Soviet Union, resistance to any liberalizing influences in less developed counties and suppression of domestic Liberals. They became political supporters of our military-industrial complex.

Michael Lerner's The Left Hand of God and Thomas Frank's, What's the Matter with Kansas? describes the Culture of Resentment which led so-called Reagan Democrats to become supporters of the Republican Party. This occurred even though the Republican Party promotes deregulation which has allows big businesses to exploit their employees, causing their resentments. Instead of focusing their resentments upon their employers, they are directing them against secular liberals.

Christian Conservatives

After Barry Goldwater carried only Arizona and 4 southern states in 1964 and Lyndon Johnson passed a civil rights bill, the Republicans adopted a southern strategy, based on race, sex and God. From the 1970s, Christian Conservatives were mobilized by Falwell (Moral Majority), Robertson (Christian Coalition), Dobson (Focus on the Family) and others. Reagan created and Bush solidified an alliance of religious and political conservatives. Now, 25% of all voters are Christian Conservatives, who are now over half of all Conservatives and two thirds of those who still support Bush and the Republican Congress.

Christian Conservatives (particularly prevalent in southern states) want to restrict freedoms and opportunities for everyone to only those sanctioned by their religious doctrines. Holding Old Testament and Pauline based doctrines, they want to restrict the freedoms of secular people, Christians, liberals, women, gays, etc.

Influenced by the Culture of Discontent promoted by hate radio and television and by Christian Conservative ministers, many Christian Conservatives have expressed their discontent concerning secularism, bigness in government and private organizations and globalization as conspiracy theories concerning intellectuals (so-called cultural elites), communists (defined broadly enough to include all liberals), Jews and others who are presumably responsible for the trends they oppose.

Libertarians

Libertarians include many secular White men who view themselves as successful. Not recognizing the contributions that their parents, teachers and others have made to their success, they imagine themselves as self-made. They don't believe in community nor in compassion.

They view life as a competition in which everyone should make their own success or suffer the consequences. They don't believe they should pay FICA or other taxes to support others. They support freedoms for themselves with limited government, no safety net and low taxes. However, they may support programs from which they benefit (such as veterans' benefits or Social Security, arguing that they have earned them through their military service or employment. Libertarians believe in civil rights, especially freedom from government regulation and intrusion into their lives. They also tend to be isolationists, not wanting government to get involved internationally.

Disgruntled Conservatives

Many Traditional Conservatives and libertarians are now disgruntled with the deception, incompetence and corruption of the neo-con Bush administration, including the federal deficits, growth of government, the Medicare drug legislation, FEMA incompetence, our vigilante Iraq War, and invasions of privacy.

Some Christian Conservatives are disgruntled because Bush gives lip service to their causes just prior to elections, but does little to enact the legislation that they want. The 30% of the voters who still support Bush may include 15% Christian Conservatives, 10% Traditional Conservatives and 5% Libertarians.

To convert conservatives, we must convince them to hold our values. This requires continually expressing our liberal values: a community of diverse equals, freedom, opportunity and responsibility. We need to expand Traditional Conservatives' understanding of our American community.

Liberals must encourage libertarians to recognize that they could not have been so successful without being members of our American community. Others have enabled their success. Through compassion, others can obtain the freedoms and opportunities that they have had and become successful. Government action can often be the most competent way to provide compassion. Compassionate government actions may include providing incentives for compassionate action, regulations which ban infringements upon people's rights, or providing monetary support and sometimes services (either contracted or in-house).

Religious Conservatives need to be encouraged to understand that their scriptures express support for freedom, opportunity and compassion, including for people who do not share their religious beliefs.

Christian Liberals have played an important role in all Liberal American movements, such as the abolition, women's and Negro rights movements. They are now awakening to the need to counter the current Neo-Conservative policies. They must win the moral values debate. They can win the moral values debate because their liberal values are (1) more in tune with the values of the American people, (2) more in tune with American tradition and (3) more in tune with Christian Scriptures than are conservative values.

Some examples are: (1) giving tax cuts to our rich, (2) wrecking our safety net, (3) excluding our gays and more recently our immigrants from American freedoms and (4) pre-emptive war. One can not imagine Jesus doing any of these, they would not have happened during most periods of American history and present Americans do not agree with them. Many traditional and Christian Conservatives are now disgruntled with these and other issues such as the Republican leadership's lack of integrity, its corruption and its incompetence.

To win the moral debate, Christian Liberals will have to join with Secular Liberals to form a coalition based upon those values upon which they agree. They will need to quit debating details and footnotes and act strongly to assert their values. They will need to carry the arguments to the Conservatives that Liberal values are most compatible with our American history, Christianity and as a basis for addressing current issues of work, family and security.

Most liberals were disgusted by the outcome of the 2000 presidential election. Instead of running on the Peace and Prosperity produced by the Clinton-Gore administration, Gore offered numerous small programs to benefit specific voting audiences. As a result, Bush was able to run against Gore's big government programs instead of having to present his own programs. With more money, better organization and more committed religious conservatives, Bush was able to win enough states that chicanery in Florida and a partisan supreme court gave him the presidency.

We liberals were even more shocked in 2004 to see Bush win not only the electoral, but also the popular vote. How could this occur when polls show that a majority of voters prefer Democratic Party positions on the issues? How could so many voters vote against their own interests? Many analyses have occurred, suggesting the following.

Democrats have not clearly expressed their values from which they derive their political policies and actions. They have not clearly identified their differences from conservatives. Nor have they attacked conservative values, beliefs and actions. Instead of finding and expressing the broad themes on which they agree, they have endlessly debated over details. They have let single issue groups influence them to take extreme stands over details that alienate voters.

Without a proudly assertive inclusive liberal coalition with shared well-expressed value-based messages, we may suffer Conservative dominance for some time to come. What we must do is clear.