Proclaiming the American Roots of Progressive Values

 Political Action Must be Based on Values

If I am politically active, I must work from a base of values. I engage politically because I believe that certain things are right and others are wrong, and those beliefs form the basis of what I do. Without such beliefs, political action would be pointless. For example, I oppose pollution of local water supplies by Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) because I believe that it is wrong for a company to profit from the misery of its neighbors. I believe that we should not allow a company to profit by imposing the cost of the pollution it creates on its neighbors. We can also see how values can motivate political action in this short speech by Emily Tseffos, who is running to represent the people of Wisconsin's 56th assembly district. 

All of us who are active politically feel deeply the righteousness of our values, but how can we say that our values ought to be imposed on others or embodied in public policies that bind all Americans? Some people answer that question by appealing to a religious tradition. They claim that their values come from divine revelation and are not to be questioned, but that approach does not work well in a society like ours that is religiously diverse and includes many people who deny the very possibility of divine revelation.

American Political Values

Fortunately, we Americans have a shared secular system of political values that we can draw on, and commitment to those values is a part of what it means to be American. As our Declaration of Independence says,

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men….

Our Constitution tells us that our government was established in order to:

…establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity ….

Value Statements Must Be Interpreted

Of course, these statements - like any value statements - must be interpreted, and decisions must be made on how to apply them to contemporary issues. Indeed, much of our history consists of conflicts over the interpretation of these basic statements. Does “all men are created equal” include women? Does it include black people? Does “promote the general welfare” include setting a minimum wage? Does it include a need for Social Security? Does it imply a governmental responsibility to protect our environment? Questions like these have been at the heart of American politics throughout our history.

Progressive Values Should Be Based in Our American Political Tradition

We progressives have a responsibility to show the basis for our values in the American, political tradition. We must demonstrate that our demands are rooted in a legitimate interpretation of basic, American political values. We must do so because our opponents routinely claim the opposite. They say that our proposals are foreign, that they are “socialist,” “communist” or "unchristian." Our opponents also often claim that in the United States, the freedom of individuals to do as they please should trump other considerations. In the early twentieth century, for example, labor unions were often said to infringe on an individual worker’s freedom to contract with an individual employer. In our own time, the public safety has been endangered by an excessively individualistic interpretation of the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

We Must Proclaim The American Roots of Progressive Values

We cannot allow such conservative claims to go unchallenged. We must counter them by showing how our values are rooted in the core American tradition. We cannot allow that tradition to be hijacked by our opponents. We must claim it as our own and by doing so, strengthen our case before the voters and before our elected officials. I have shown an example of one way to do that in an earlier post on this blog. Here is a another example. If we take the trouble to situate our values in the American political tradition, we can say more than that our demands are humane. We can say that they are American.