Throughout its history, the United States has evolved in fits and starts towards the “more perfect Union” that the Preamble to the Constitution gives as its first raison d’etre. This evolution comprises the journey towards universal suffrage, the recognition of full personhood irrespective of various accidents of birth, and the steady identification, promulgation and expansion of personal, human rights.
Indeed, throughout its dual history as a handbook for governance and a statement of what it means to be fully human in America, the Constitution has only once taken away a right in the name of a dubious righteousness, and that was in the Eighteenth Amendment: Prohibition. Recognition that this was a fool’s errand and not consonant with the purposes of the document led rightfully to repeal in the Twenty-First Amendment, the only such in our history.
The people pushing these forward changes have been called “liberal” or “progressive” or “radicals” or “reformers.” People resistant to change are known as “conservatives” or “reactionaries.” The Party labels for these factions have changed and reversed over time: Radical Republicans were violently and virulently against slavery, for example, while Conservative Democrats favored its expansion into the Territories and new States.
The arc of political history in America has always been like a pendulum’s, directed as times dictated, between the two extremes. We now find ourselves at the beginning of a long sweep away from a reactionary Republican conservatism that began in opposition to the New Deal and Great Society programs, and then swept America rightward during the Reagan years: Right politically, Right socially, Right religiously, Right economically, Right diplomatically and wrong in each and every case.
Fortunately, this retrograde march away from progress faced a countervailing popular culture that advanced the cause of acceptance in the face of a sullenly stubborn recidivism. Unfortunately, this only served to confirm the Rightistas in their righteous indignation, that America was an unrecognizable mutt offspring of too much acceptance of The Other bred to an over-permissive society. To do that, they invented their own shadow popular culture on talk radio, on cable TV and, laughably, within various entertainment genres.
However, now on the cusp of a long left-ward swing, the Progressive movement‘s pendulum is a broom poised to sweep all of that away, establishing a new center to the Left, and setting the stage for the next great expansion of American society towards justice, domestic tranquility, and general welfare; that is, towards that more perfect Union.
The Presidential election of 2016 is all the proof of this watershed moment we need. The Republican electorate, a fragmented pastiche of oft-competing conservative priorities, has been held together with bubble gum and baling wire almost since its inception, and has remained united only through its hatred of all things “liberal.” Use, however, had accustomed many of them to previously “liberal” concepts, as even the angriest of the Tea Party embraces the cognitive dissonance of “keep your government hands off my Medicare.”
That coalition is exploding, as the number of GOP candidates was well into double digits at the start of the election cycle, while the Democratic side only fielded a few, two of which were former Republicans. That alone illustrates the sea-change we are undergoing, but even more telling is the presence – and the success – of an avowed Socialist in the race.
It is clear now that the remaining viable candidates on the Republican side – Trump and Cruz – are unacceptable to the electorate in general and that at least one third of the Republican electorate will stay home or vote Democratic if either of them is the candidate. Given such an opportunity, the Democrats have taken it to move their platform to the Left, thanks again to the avowed Socialist, Bernie Sanders. Although he will probably not be nominated, it will be his platform that drives the rest of this race.
And that’s Progress. But that’s only a good start. In order to ensure that this progress continues, we must grow beyond the bounds of the 2016 election, and fundamentally remake the political underpinnings throughout the country, so that the last vestiges of the husky, brusque, Know-Nothing proto-fascism of today’s GOP can be swept out of public life at every level of government.
There were inklings of this during the 2008 election. Democrats regained control of both houses of Congress as well as the White House with an exciting grass roots campaign – Obama for America – that failed to carry its enthusiasm past electing Barack Obama, twice. Since then, heroic obstructionism on the part of Rightistas fighting a rearguard action has only exacerbated the problems that many thought we had overcome in that first flush of 2009 success.
Eight years wiser, and with an entire new crop of excited, motivated activists clamoring for the reins, we must not repeat the mistakes of the early Obama years, when the OFA momentum (now rechristened as Organizing for America) was squandered in a futile attempt to affect an unaffected and ineffectual Congress, especially during the Cap and Trade debate.
Instead, the Progressive movement must remain on the hustings, organizing on a state and local level, in order to take back the school boards, and the city councils, and the county boards, and the state assemblies, and the executive offices at all those levels, in order to undo the positive harm that has been done to real people in the name of Rectitude, but to the sole benefit of the rich and/or political.
The Progressive movement must become more than a movement, and actively take over the machinery of the Democratic Party, if possible, at the precinct, ward, township, county and state levels. If it is not possible to take over the organization, then we must fight from within it to nominate progressive candidates and build progressive platforms. And then we must take over government at each of those levels. We must build a governing coalition of Left-thinking individuals.
The Progressive movement must think in the long term, and act in the near term, every day.
The Progressive movement must not succumb to the mistakes made on the Right, and devise pledges or purity tests or other exclusionary criteria. The whole essence of the Progressive movement is that we embrace pluralism, we recognize competing priorities and contradictory ideas, and we compromise where necessary that PROGRESS be made.
Where we do NOT compromise is in the ultimate goals: that suffrage truly be universal; that respect for all lives and acceptance of all lifestyles truly be upheld; that stewardship of Earth is vital to all species, including us; that basic human needs are themselves rights; and that the Four Freedoms be truly practiced and protected: that religion be tolerated, but intolerance is not religious; that speech be protected, but money is not speech; that poverty is sinful, but the poor are not the sinners; that fearful is no way to live, and certainly no way to vote.
That respect for basic human dignity be freely given to all, demanded of all and defended by all.
Then we will have truly made Progress towards that more perfect Union, and secured the blessings of liberty for ourselves, and our posterity.
A Tennessee lawmaker is effectively being quarantined from lawmakers, lobbyists and interns after the state’s attorney general determined that he could pose a risk to “unsuspecting women” at the state Capitol complex.
We do not cotton to people having sex toys in Texas. In 2003, a mother was arrested by undercover agents for hosting a “passion party” where devices of a sexual nature were being sold to women in the privacy of their homes, kinda like Tupperware. The State of Texas considers lady parties to be obscene.