The Humanities and National Identity

 What is the Point of the Study of the Humanities?

The New York Times recently published an opinion piece entitled “I Teach the Humanities, and I Still Don ‘t Know What Their Value Is.” Many Americans share that ignorance, and we wonder why anyone should study subjects like literature or history. I think that the humanities have a key role in the education of the people of a nation.

The humanities are the means by which we create a national identity through a shared culture and history. A nation must be more than a collection of individuals who happen to reside within the borders of a territory. The people of a nation must have a shared identity that answers the question, "Who are we?" In a large territory, such an identity cannot emerge automatically. In every country, it is and has been a deliberate creation.

A National Identity Must Have Depth  

A shared, national identity should not be a shallow or a momentary thing. We Americans cannot be merely the people who eat hamburgers or the people who love the music of Taylor Swift. A national identity should have historical depth and cultural richness. When I was in school in France, I had to memorize poems written in the sixteenth century. I now understand that the point of that exercise was to impress on us that being French meant having a share in a literary tradition that went back for centuries. Memorizing those poems was part of learning what it meant to be French.

We can use works of American culture in the same way. We are the people who produced the literary works of Richard Wright and Emily Dickenson, the plays of Arthur Miller and August Wilson, the paintings of Jackson Pollock and Georgia O'Keefe, the music of Aaron Copeland and Scott Joplin. We are the people who have created a unified and distinctive culture from the contributions of an unimaginable variety of immigrant influences.

A National Identity Can Have Variants

A national identity does not have to erase regional or ethnic identities. We can have both. The American South has a distinctive culture, but southerners also share our American culture. American Blacks have a distinctive culture, too, but they remain Americans as they learn when they visit Africa. Spain has four official languages, but despite their protestations to the contrary, the people of Barcelona remain Spaniards.

A National Identity Can Change

A national identity is not static. It can change over time as people come to understand their society and their history from new perspectives. That is why the literary canon matters so much. When I was in college, the canon didn't include many female or nonwhite writers, and that had to change. We now study works by Black writers, by Hispanic writers and by women. We learn that their contributions have not diluted our culture. They have enriched it. We are a people with a rich culture that has many strands.

History and National Identity

The study of history also plays a role in our sense of who we are. When I was in school, I learned that we were the people whose ancestors arrived at Plymouth Rock, wrote the Declaration of Independence, fought the Civil War and crossed the prairies in covered wagons. We have since realized that the view that I learned is incomplete, and we have started to come to terms with the fact that we are also the people who exterminated the Native Americans, enslaved millions of Africans and imprisoned innocent Japanese in camps in WWII.

That dark view of who we are has been very hard for some people to accept, but it must in the end be incorporated into our sense of who we are. The solution cannot be that we stop studying history. It must be that we learn to tell our story in a new way. Perhaps, we will learn to accept that our history - like the history of every nation - is morally ambiguous. It contains both elements of heroism and elements of villainy.  

Perhaps the elements of villainy are the most important because we can learn from them. In a wonderful book about engineering failures called To Engineer is Human, the author explains that the study of failures is important because we can learn from them. Successes teach us nothing new. Perhaps the study of the villainous parts of our history will help us to build a more just society in the future. We can come to see ourselves as the people who created "Jim Crow" and also as the people who overcame it.

We Cannot Be a Nation Without the Humanities

The study of the humanities is the way that a national culture and a national identity are built. Without a shared culture and identity, patriotism becomes racism or shallow jingoism. We cannot be a nation if we learn only the things that benefit us directly as individuals. The study of accounting, computer science or chemistry does not help to create a shared identity. If we are to be a nation at all, we must learn to see ourselves as the inheritors of a shared culture and history. We can learn that only through the study of the humanities.

Why Our Broken Immigration System Stays Broken

This is my last post in January. I am going on vacation, and my next post will be on February.

Unscrupulous Employers Benefit  

If you want to know why we are unable to reform our broken immigration system, look no further. Our immigration system remains broken because thousands of unscrupulous employers profit from the broken system. This story tells about the extensive exploitation of undocumented immigrant children in the roofing business. The children do dangerous work. They are paid less than the minimum wage; they do not receive benefits like Social Security, unemployment insurance or health insurance. They die at six times the rate of children in other occupations. The children are vulnerable to this exploitation for fear of losing their jobs and for fear of being deported. The children's vulnerability forms the basis of the business model on which their employers operate. The model allows the employers to reduce their costs and thus, to offer lower prices than their competitors who follow the law.

This business model is not limited the roofing business, and it is not limited to children. All over the United States, businesses make huge profits by exploiting the vulnerability of undocumented, immigrant workers. The state of Wisconsin has documented widespread misclassification of workers as independent contractors rather than as employees, and a union official told me that immigrants are especially subject to this practice. A recent NY Times article detailed the extensive illegal use of immigrant child labor in factories and on industrial farms all over the United States. Practices like misclassification and the illegal use of child labor allow employers to pay their workers less than the minimum wage and to avoid the cost of Social Security, unemployment insurance and health insurance. The workers are unable to complain because they fear being deported.

A Pool of Vulnerable Workers

Our broken immigration system has thus created a huge pool of vulnerable workers. Their existence allows employers to make big profits illegally and also limits the growth of unions that could fight for the workers' rights.  If the immigration status of these workers were regularized, they would no longer be vulnerable. The businesses that hire them would lose their illegal profits and would have to compete on an equal basis with law-abiding business. Naturally, the businesses that profit from our broken system resist any changes that threaten their illegal business model. 

Our Broken Immigration System Helps to Elect Republican Politicians

The fact that undocumented immigrants may be paid less than American workers is used in propaganda to weaken unions and divide the working class. Workers are told that immigrants are taking American jobs and that workers should vote for Republican candidates who promise to limit immigration. The workers are not told that the root of the problem is not in the immigrants themselves but in the broken immigration system that keeps them in a position where they can be exploited. If they became citizens, they would not be so vulnerable to exploitation, and all workers would benefit. Unsurprisingly, the companies that exploit the undocumented workers do not want American voters to see that. 

Of course, the Republican candidates who promise to shut down immigration do not really do so because if they did, they would eliminate the pool of exploitable workers. However, the candidates do vote for low taxes and reduced environmental regulation, and that benefits our corporate oligarchs. Most businesses benefit from low taxes and reduced regulation even if they do not themselves exploit undocumented workers. So, most businesses benefit from our broken immigration system as long as it can be used to induce American workers to vote for Republicans. However, the issue can be used in that way only as long as the pool of undocumented immigrants remains large. So, our oligarchs have no interest in reforming our immigration system, and therefore, it remains broken. Our broken immigration system is a weapon in the war on America's workers.

We Need a Wealth Tax

Should You Carry a Heavier Tax Burden Than the Extremely Wealthy? 

Why should you pay a substantial tax on a big part of your wealth while the very wealthy do not? A wealth tax would make our system fairer.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has proposed a “wealth tax” of 2% that would be paid only by families with wealth of more than $50 million. The idea is that such a tax would raise a substantial amount of revenue and would help to limit our country’s large and growing inequality. The tax would be on all types of assets including stocks, bonds, and luxury goods like yachts or jewelry as well as real estate.

The inclusion of real estate shows that in reality, we already have a type of wealth tax, and it is the property tax that homeowners pay on their houses. This tax hits the middle class very heavily because a middle-class person’s home is usually a very large share of his/her wealth. Most middle-class people own relatively small amounts in stock, bonds or other financial assets. The very wealthy, in contrast, hold most of their wealth in forms like stocks and bonds. Such forms of wealth escape taxation today, and therefore, the wealthy pay a much smaller percentage of their wealth in taxes than middle class people do. Even the income from such assets is often taxed at the low rate applied to “long term capital gains.” Thus, the wealthy do not pay anything like their fair share.

A Wealth Tax Would Provide Needed Revenue

A wealth tax would provide a substantial amount of revenue that would allow us to reduce our dependence of government borrowing to pay for the government services that we need. Today, our government’s indebtedness increases regularly because the people who hold the bulk of our national wealth do not pay their fair share of the taxes. Our ever-increasing dependence on government debt endangers the stability of our government. In the 18th century, the French monarchy fell because the aristocrats, who held almost all of the country's wealth, refused to pay taxes. Do we want our democratic government to go the same way?

A Wealth Tax Would Limit the Concentration of Wealth and Power

As Robert Reich explains, we suffer from an ever-increasing concentration of wealth and income in the top 10% or even the top 1% of the population. Today, the top 1% of the population is estimated to own about 42% of our nation's wealth, and that share is increasing. Providing a counter to the increasing concentration of wealth is important because if wealth becomes too concentrated, the economic system fails to provide an acceptable standard of living to the bulk of the population, and as a result people feel that the “system” is rigged against them. In that case,they become susceptible to the appeals of demagogues, and democracy becomes unstable. If we allow the concentration of wealth to continue to grow, our democracy may well not survive.

Moreover, it has been recognized since the founding of our country that democracy is incompatible with the excessive concentration of wealth. With wealth comes political power, and a democracy with an excessive concentration of wealth is likely to become an oligarchy. Our Constitution gives to the federal government the responsibility to prevent this from happening.  Article 4, Section 4 of the Constitution says that the federal government shall "guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government," which means that the Constitution requires the federal government to prevent the emergence of an oligarchy that would subvert our democracy. Thus, a wealth tax or some similar means of preventing the emergence of an oligarchy is not merely permitted. It is actually required by our Constitution. This way of understanding our Constitution is not new. It has been used throughout our history to support efforts to maintain and extend our democracy.

We Should Not Be Deterred by the Problems That Will Occur

Of course, there will inevitably be problems with a wealth tax. Estimating the full extent of the wealth of a very wealthy person is difficult, and wealth may be hidden in offshore places and in trusts. These, however, are not new problems. Similar problems exist in the estimation of the incomes of the very wealthy. In addition, some wealth may flee the United States to avoid the tax, but this, too, is not a new problem. The fact that it will be difficult to design a perfect wealth tax should not deter us. We have never designed a perfect tax, and we should not expect a wealth tax to be different.

So, we should have a wealth tax that taxes all forms of wealth and not just real estate because when we tax only real estate, the middle class pays an unfair share of the total. A wealth tax would also reduce our dependence on borrowed money to provide the government services that we need. Finally, a wealth tax would help to prevent the erosion of our democracy through excessive concentration of wealth and power in a small oligarchy. 

Making Politically Effective Use of This Blog (and Others)

 Dear Readers,

I am very pleased that you enjoy my blog posts enough to continue to read them, and I am glad to see that my readership has grown over the last few months. Now, it is time for us to take the next step by using this blog to advance the cause of justice in our society.  In order to make our ideas effective, we have to spread them as widely as possible, and we have to make use of as many channels of communication and as many personal networks as possible. So, let's do that.

Here are a few things that we can do to increase the effectiveness abd reach of our ideas.

First, we can use the posts in this blog and others as bases for on-line discussions. If we comment on the posts, we will end up having discussions. We will not always agree with one another, and that is fine. In fact, it is the whole point. Lively discussions will help to spread our ideas and strengthen our cause not only because the discussions will be interesting but because when you comment on a post, your comment will be seen by your FB friends, and that will broaden the reach of our ideas.  If you are feeling energetic today, you can even go back and comment on previous posts.

Second, we can share the posts. Sharing is one of the keys to making effective use of social media. Sharing increases the number of people who see a post, and that allows us to spread our ideas. I post links to my posts on Facebook, and you can share those. You can also post your own links to blog posts that you particularly like. You don't have to agree with a post to share it. You can say that you think the post is terrible, is wrong, or fails to understand reality. You can even go back and share previous posts.

Third, we can use the blog posts as starting points for letters to the editor. If one of my posts gives you an idea that you would like to write about, please do so, and include a reference to the blog in the letter. If you would like editorial help with a letter, please send it to me at foxcitiesprogressive@gmail.com, and I will be glad to help with editing.

Finally, I invite you to write posts as guests of my blog. You can send them to me at foxcitiesprogressive@gmail.com. I may edit them, but I will not publish the edited versions without your permission. You can choose whether you want to be identified as the author of a post or not. If you don't want to be identified, I will say only that the post was contributed by "A Reader of the Blog."

These actions will help to spread our ideas and to make them politically effective. Local political candidates will pick up our ideas and use them in their campaigns. The ideas will become part of the broader political dialog in our state and our country, and that may lead to real, social change. That is really the point of doing this, isn’t it.

A Great American Invention is Endangered and We Must Protect It

 A Great Invention

The United States is the home of one of history’s greatest political inventions. We invented the idea of citizenship as a voluntary commitment. Anyone who comes to this country and accepts the responsibilities of citizenship can be a citizen, and we have no other legal or traditional definition of what it means to be American. This idea contrasts with the ideas of most other countries. Most countries have an ethnic or racial requirement for "real" membership. For example, I could move to the U.K. and become a British subject, but that would not make me an Englishman. The same would be true in Thailand or Mexico. I could become a Thai or a Mexican citizen, but I could not become a Thai or a Mexican. In the United States, a person who becomes a citizen does become an American.

The Invention Was Mostly Aspirational at First

At first, the invention was an aspiration more than a reality, even though it was clearly stated in George Washington's famous letter to the Jews of Newport Rhode Island:

It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

In spite of this clear statement, large groups were excluded. Native Americans were not accepted as citizens, and slaves were excluded. The Dred Scott decision said in 1857 that even free Black people could never be citizens. But the idea persisted, and it is fully expressed in the Fourteenth Amendment to our Constitution. Even after the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 said that the amendment did not apply to Chinese immigrants. The Act was not repealed until 1943.

Today, however, anyone can become an American citizen either by birth or through naturalization. No races or religions are excluded. Today, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are members of Congress. Today, James Baldwin and Maya Angelou are recognized as great American writers. When Fiona Hill said at a congressional hearing that she was an American by choice, we all understood what she meant, and we agreed that her statement made sense. Unfortunately, we still have people who oppose the idea that anyone who accepts the responsibilities of citizenship is an American. Those people want to say that only White Christians can really be Americans, but they are a minority, and their ideas have no legal standing. Nevertheless, they endanger one of our most important inventions.

The Invention is Basic to Our Identity

Our definition of what it means to be American is basic, and it applies to every American regardless of race, religion, gender or ethnic origin. That does not mean that we do not have racial, religious or gender-based oppression, prejudice or discrimination. We have all of those things, but most of us never say that Black Americans, Native Americans or women are not Americans. We know that they are.

The Invention is a Basis for Struggles for Equality

Our universal concept of American-ness has provided a basis for the struggles of oppressed groups for equal treatment in our society. Black people say, “We are Americans, and it is wrong for us to be oppressed in our own country.” Our society has tried not to hear their cry, but in the end, we have had no answer to it. They are right. They are entitled to the “equal protection” of our laws, and we should not oppress them. Women have made the same claim, and again, we have had no answer. They, too, are right.

The Invention Has Made Us Strong

We have become a powerful nation in part because we have welcomed people from all over the world. Their labor has built our economy. At various times, German immigrants, Irish immigrants, Jewish immigrants, Italian immigrants, Mexican immigrants, Chinese immigrants and Japanese immigrants have built our economy and defended us against foreign and domestic enemies. (In the Civil War, regiments from Wisconsin had to have German-speaking officers because so many of the men spoke no English. In the Second World War, Nisei units fought heroically to defend our country. ) Agricultural products harvested by Mexican immigrants are a very large part of the exports that keep our economy strong. Native Americans have made a major contribution in high steel construction. Gangs of Mohawk workers built the skyscrapers of New York. Navaho code talkers played a key role in winning WW II in the Pacific.

Black immigrants and their descendents have contributed far more than any other immigrant group. They are a special case because they were forced to come here and enslaved when they arrived, but their enormous contribution to the growth of the United States cannot be denied, and their struggle for equal treatment and economic opportunity has been and continues to be a basic element of our history. They are undeniably Americans, and slowly, they are coming to be treated as such.

The Invention Makes Our Culture Diverse and Powerful

Our idea of citizenship is independent of cultural identities. Mexicans who come here do not have to give up their cultural Mexican-ness when they become citizens, as we can see from the continued vitality of the celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe in this country. We do not even require prospective citizens to learn our language. We do not need such a requirement because every immigrant can see easily that a person who wants to get ahead here must learn English. Most immigrants work hard to learn our language, and they try not to pass their native languages on to their children. As a result, the grandchildren of immigrants to the United States are rarely able to speak the native languages of their grandparents.

Our willingness to separate citizenship from cultural identity has made our culture powerful because it has been able to absorb the cultural contributions of our immigrants. Our literature, our music and our food – which are imitated all over the world - are full of the influences of immigrant groups.  We listen to the blues, and we eat kung pao chicken; we love TV shows like Seinfeld that are saturated with Jewish humor, and we say "Adios" when we leave town. We know that all of these things are American.

The Invention is Threatened

Our definition of what it means to be American is threatened by White Christian Nationalists. They want to say that only White Christians are real Americans, and that other people can never be real Americans. One of the expressions of this idea is the so-called "replacement theory" expressed by Vivek Ramaswamy. The idea that only White Christians can be real Americans would destroy what has made our country great. It is un-American in the most basic sense.  It denies the genius of our ancestors who invented the idea of citizenship as a voluntary commitment, and it denies the most basic facts of our history. We must oppose White Christian Nationalism with all our strength if we wish to preserve the country that we love.

An Opportunity for Democrats: Promoting fair Treatment of Wisconsin’s Workers

Democrats Must Again Be the Party of American Workers 

The Democratic Party has lost its position as the party of American workers. The reasons for the loss are complex, but there is no doubt that a large part of the American working class now votes Republican. This is a tragedy for American workers because the Republican Party's claim to represent their interests is entirely fraudulent. The party represents the interests of rich people and big business just as it always has.

The workers' shift to the Republican Party is also a tragedy for the cause of social justice in our country. In a time of increasing inequality and increasing concentration of wealth, the party of the rich will never promote the cause of social justice. That party promotes only ever lower taxes and ever decreasing regulation of business. We can see an example of that attitude in Wisconsin's failure to protect workers from exploitation by the misclassification of workers as independent contractors rather than employees.

Misclassification is Illegal Exploitation of Workers and Taxpayers

Many employers in Wisconsin are inflating their profits and defrauding Wisconsin’s taxpayers by misclassifying their workers as independent contractors rather than as employees. This allows the employers to avoid paying their fair share of the cost of workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance, and Wisconsin’s workers and taxpayers suffer as a result. This situation presents Democrats with an opportunity to ally our party with the needs of Wisconsin’s workers. The widespread practice of misclassifying workers provides our party with an opportunity to work as allies in workers’ struggles for fair treatment.

Misclassification is a Serious Problem

Misclassification of workers as independent contractors is a serious problem in Wisconsin. According to Wisconsin’s Department of Workforce Development (DWD), workers who are misclassified as independent contractors instead of employees are denied benefits like workmen’s compensation and unemployment benefits. Misclassification also causes workers to lose wages and benefits. A worker classified as an independent contractor may be paid less than the minimum wage and will of course not be paid for overtime at overtime rates. The lower pay caused by misclassification undermines the whole economy by reducing workers’ purchasing power. 

In addition, contractors and other employers who misclassify workers avoid having to pay their share of the costs of programs like workers' compensation and social security and are therefore able to offer lower bids on contracts. They “out-compete” their competitors by breaking the law and exploiting their workers. Finally, the practice of misclassifying workers costs our state government millions of dollars in lost tax revenue because of underreporting of wages. That cost is passed on to all of Wisconsin’s taxpayers either in the form of higher taxes or in the form of lost services that cannot be provided because of lost revenues. In effect, contractors and other employers are increasing their profits by breaking the law, by exploiting their workers and by short-changing the majority of our state’s taxpayers. 

Contract workers are often paid in cash "under the table," and that allows some unscrupulous workers to cheat on their taxes and on their responsibilities to their children. A union official told me that when a contract worker at a large construction site in the Fox Cities was asked why he didn't work as an employee of the construction company, he answered, "Why should I work for the company? If I worked for the company, I would have to pay child support?" Thus, he gains a personal advantage by exploiting the taxpayers and the pain of other workers. 

How widespread is the problem of misclassification? A 2022 report by DWD’s Task Force on Payroll Fraud and Worker Misclassification, the Unemployment Insurance (UI) Division of DWD conducted 1,709 audits and identified 3,365 misclassified workers in 2021. Those findings generated $780,000 in UI taxes and interest. In addition, there is a cost to the Uninsured Employers Fund ((UEF). The fund pays worker's compensation benefits on claims filed by employees injured while working for illegally uninsured employers. Payments vary substantially from year to year depending on the severity of claims accepted. The annual average for the last 10 years is $2.5 million.

Support Our Workers' Fight Against Illegal Exploitation

These numbers show that there are many employers in Wisconsin who are willing to increase their profits by exploiting Wisconsin’s workers and defrauding our state’s taxpayers. We should not allow that. Our state should step up its enforcement efforts as Gov. Evers has recommended.

If we Democrats want to recapture our position as advocates for working Americans, we can begin here at home. We can take advantage of this opportunity to provide real support for working-class people of all races and genders. The difference between the real support that we offer and the fake support that Republicans offer will be obvious to everyone.

Let’s get to work! Contact your state legislators and tell them that you want to see our state increase the amount of money devoted to the proper enforcement of the laws against the illegal misclassification of workers. 

A Challenge and an Opportunity for Democrats

 The Challenge

The Republicans recently won all of the statewide electoral offices in Louisiana, and Charleston recently elected its first Republican mayor since the 19th century.  These victories show the consequences for Democrats of having become the party of the patrimonial middle class, and if we Democrats do not pay attention, we will lose in other places. 

To win back our place as the party of working Americans, we must regain our focus on inequities of class as well as those of race or gender. We must become again the party that created Social Security, Medicare and many other programs that redistribute wealth from the very wealthy to ordinary Americans of all races and genders.

The Opportunity

We can begin by becoming an ally in working-class struggles. Pres. Biden understands this as he showed recently in his support of the United Auto Workers' strike against the big three auto companies. Now, the UAW has begun a broader campaign to organize workers in non-union automobile plants, and that gives Democrats an opportunity to speak out publicly in support of the campaign. We should take advantage of that opportunity if we want to rebuild working-class support for Democrats. We should also use this as an opportunity to campaign against so-called "right-to-work" laws at the state level.

We Must Remember that the Status Anxiety of American Workers is Legitimate

American workers suffer legitimately from status anxiety due to their increasingly precarious financial situation.  Wealth and income are being concentrated more and more in the hands of a tiny minority, while ordinary, working people are finding themselves more and more insecure financially. Naturally, this leaves them feeling anxious. 

It has been claimed that workers are anxious not because they are financially insecure but because they feel threatened by the rise of Black people. That may be true for some, but far more suffer from status anxiety legitimately because their social position is endangered by their financial insecurity.  They are anxious because their incomes have stagnated in a time of rising prices of the things that they must buy: food, housing, clothing, transportation, health care.

We Have an Opportunity Now

In our increasingly unequal economy, people of all races are suffering. White people in the steel towns of Ohio or coal towns of West Virginia are suffering, and Black people in rust-belt cities like Detroit or Milwaukee are suffering, too. Working class women are suffering even more than the men. This has given us an opportunity to build a class-based coalition across the lines of race and gender, and now is the time to seize it.  We can begin by supporting the UAW's organizing drive.

We Can Offer Real Support Instead of the Republicans' Fake Support

The Republicans like to claim to be the party of working-class Americans, and our focus on the problems of middle-class women and minorities has made the claim seem credible. The Republican claim is of course completely fraudulent. The Republican Party’s policy positions continue to favor the interests of wealthy people and corporations, but at least the Republicans say that they care about working-class Americans, while we do not even appear to do that. Now, we can change that. We can follow Pres. Biden by offering public support to the UAW.

We Can Promote Redistributive Policies That Really Help Working Americans

We are surviving as a major party for the moment because the leader of the Republican Party is completely disgusting, because the Republican Party is in disarray and because millions of women have become activists to preserve the right of a pregnant woman to choose an abortion, but this situation will not last forever. The right of a woman to choose will gradually be preserved by action in most states, and Mr. Trump will be gone from the stage eventually. If we want to be a strong party in the future, we will have to regain our focus on redistributive policies that really help working-class Americans of all races and genders. We will have to be passionate about things like the wealth tax proposed by Elizabeth Warren; we will have to work for things like affordable child-care or Medicare for All; we will have to support a way of paying for higher education that does not leave young people with crushing debts; and we will have to support our labor unions. 

We will not be starting from scratch. As I said in an earlier post, "Our party does not lack for redistributive ideas. Democratic leaders like Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Bernie Sanders have made a number of redistributive proposals, but they have not generated the kind of grass-roots enthusiasm that would be needed to turn them into major planks in the Democratic platform."

We need to pick up our party's redistributive proposals and run with them. We need to return to our roots.