The Feld-Blog

I will be posting irregularly until i get back to school in September. Sorry for the frequency of these blogging stutters

Progressives and Conservatives view the world in different ways. If there's one thing I have learned working in politics, this is it. Both want to "do good" for the country, but because the framework through which they view the world, their policy choices remain profoundly divergent.

Ok, that was a lot of big words, but I'll break it down for you. Progressives view immigrants, both legal and illegal, as people first - people who are just looking for a brighter future, people who have rights as citizens of the world regardless of their status as citizens of this country. Conservatives, on the other hand, view immigration through the lens of regulation, taxes and rules. Conservatives fear big government and they fear that illegal immigration will put an undue strain on American social services such as welfare, social security and Medicare that were intended for American citizens only. I think the primary impasse is that Progressives view the situation in terms of the individuals involved and Conservatives view the situation in terms of regulations and the effect on government agencies and services.

As you probably can guess, I prefer the Progressive lens. It is unethical to decide that the individuals don't matter, or don't matter as much as the increased strain on government services. The logic extreme of this is Rep. Kings new idea to build an electrified fence along the border. He even brought a model of the wall he designed onto the house floor. Here is the video.

This is what scares me. American government must be and has always been "for the people, of the people, and by the people." It must focus on the people - how government can help or protect people within its borders. It cannot afford to get bogged down focusing on the sanctity of existing laws. If every currently existing law was sacrosanct there would be no possibility for reform and really very little reason for congress or state legislatures to meet ever.

This is why I am a Progressive. This is why I think you should be too. Government exists to serve the people, not its own rules and regulations. Given the choice, government should bear the burden of hardships, not citizens. This is the Progressive framework. I think it is valuable and I think it is right. But choose for yourself.

In a HUGE step for this administration, the Pentagon recently announced that it will abide my the minimum human requirements outlined by the Geneva convention (of which the US is a signatory). Thank God. Guantanamo has been a scourge on the face of this nation for years now, undercutting our efforts to promote the rule of law and stoking the fires of anti-American animosity burning so brightly in so many places in the world. If this country wants to remain the "light unto other nations" that it has been for so long, we can't afford to become jaded and cynical. We need to continue to rule based our ideologies of freedom and democracy - of inalienable rights and civil liberties.
In the past few years, under the Bush Administration, we have had a foreign policy of "F*&CK OFF, other countries... we'll do whatever we want" and a domestic policy of restricting human freedoms and civil rights for political gain, acquiescing to the ever-present demands of the top 1% from their tax responsibilities while taxing working-class citizens into the ground. Thankfully, the pressures of approval rates in the low 30s and high 20s, a fracturing majority party and the discovery of deeply entrenched corruption, Bush has decided to give in to the demands of the Democrats, who have only ever asked Bush to be a reasonable human being. Score one for the Democrats. Score one for the Progressives. I can only hope that this is a movement towards a more reasonable government and less hypocrisy. We grandstand and scream at the Chinese and Russian governments for their human rights abuses. Finally, we've started to move towards eliminating our own.... now lets see if we can elect a government willing to enfranchise all our citizens.

Wow. Just wow. Big Bad North Korea, one third of Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil,’ wants to scare America. Yet Kim Jung Il’s supposedly transcontinental ballistic missile fizzled out in the sea of Japan – just next door. Ok. They failed. Good. But we can’t be lulled into a sense of complacency. Simply the audacity for a tiny autocratic regime – at least in relation to the US – to threaten a world power with missile tests and nuclear programs should be of great concern to all of us sitting in our comfortable living rooms. Failed or not, when you see a little David standing up to a Goliath, often times, the little guy knows something the big guy doesn’t.

With our American President spouting off such inflammatory rhetoric as “we’ll fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here” America has all but begged the anti-western, autocratic regimes to grandstand. Bush has declared, for just about the first time in modern history, moral superiority for ‘attack first and ask questions later.’ If this isn’t an invitation for North Korea to plan transcontinental missile tests and for Iran to grandstand its nuclear program, I am not sure what is.

And what happens when a bully provokes a little kid for his lunch money day after day after day? Eventually that little kid will fight back – maybe with friends and maybe alone, and the overwhelming odds are that the little kid will lose, but the fact remains that at some point he will fight back. Now if the manifestation of this fight is just a few scratches on the bully’s face, that’s all well and good. But when the kid is North Korea and the Bully is America, a few scratches translate into a few hundred or a few thousand American lives lost. Right now North Korea is telling its friends on the playground what it plans to do to the bully and without much effect. But when a little skirmish means losing American lives, our government has a responsibility to shut up and make nice to prevent those scratches.

This is not a cost-benefit analysis. Our Government has a responsibility to protect American lives. Any foreign policy that risks civilian American lives is irresponsible. Some in the administration want to paint these failures of our enemies as victories for us. Progressives have a responsibility to tell the world what it really means: an increased audacity in nations that may not be able to wipe us off the planet, but who can inflict some serious harm. This is not a victory. This is simply evidence of growing tension around the world – a growing coalition of anti-American forces. We can’t afford it and our foreign policy needs a progressive overhaul to really protect this country.

When have you ever heard of a Republican Politician running to the center to get elected? Last I checked, Hillary Clinton has taken flak for it, Joe Liberman has too, and of course Jon Kerry. But what all these elected officials seem to have in common is that they are Democrats (not progressives, I would say, but Democrats). Yet somehow without running to the center, Republicans have dominated the political landscape for the last few decades. It's not becuase the nation is conservative - far from it. By any metric, the large majority of voters are in the center - not center-left and not center-right, but simply the center. So why have Progressive politiicans castrated their own chances of survival by putting forth a weak, vascilating value structure? Progressives need to stick to their values and explain to the American people why those values are important. Democrats need to hold their ground and fight it out, not simply give in.

This is not a “flip-flopping” issue. If situations change, and you stick to your values, you may have to change your vote. Opponents lambasted Jon Kerry because he changes his vote revealiign and underlying change in values. George Bush, by contrast, will stick violently by his decisions, even as situations change and this necessitates a change in policy.

What? But Bush claims that his is a strong leader who stands by his values. Well…. that’s not really true. What Progressives need to show the American people is that changing positions underlie changing evidence not changing values. Progressives believe in fairness, equity, freedom, strength and a government’s responsibility to help people, not punish them. As the situation in America changes, the public policy solutions may have to change, but Progressives must unite behind these immutable values.

Stop running to the center. It is important to stick by our Progressive values. Running to the center as Kerry, Lieberman, and Clinton have done only shows weakness. Strength is in standing by our values. Strength is in doing what we know is best for the country not just what is politically expedient.

Would you be ok with someone throwing the original Mona Lisa in the trash can?
What about throwing away a poster-print of the Mona Lisa?
Would you be appalled if someone got the original copy of the US constitution wet and let it disintegrate?
But would you be angry if I put my pants in the washing machine with a pocket-copy of the constitution still in them?

So why do politicians raise such a fuss over people’s choice to make a statement by burning a $25 replica of the American Flag? We must make a fundamental distinction between destroying a priceless, antique symbol, such as the original constitution or the original American Flag, and destroying cheap copies of that symbol.

Democrats and Progressives have made the conscious decision to value all of the first amendment rights this country affords to its citizens. This is not as simple a decision as it might appear. It’s not easy for Progressives to accept that some people will print giant pictures of aborted fetuses to protest a woman’s right to choose. It is not easy for Conservatives to accept that some people will protest against a currently occurring war. And It’s not easy for almost anyone to accept that some people, such as the Westboro Baptist Church, have begun to protest American soldiers’ funerals. But as much as these actions turn our stomachs, our nation was founded on citizens’ rights to say whatever they want about our government.

The American Flag is a symbol of these freedoms that Progressives value so highly. Why on earth would we take away a citizen’s right to use this symbol of free speech in an act of free speech itself? It just doesn’t make any sense to me. Amending the constitution – the same invaluable, idealistic document that protects free speech – to restrict citizen’s right to use a symbol of American freedom in their speech is an affront to American values and citizens’ rights. Our truly progressive leaders have taken a stand against this hypocrisy. But these reasonable, value-driven, and consistent politicians are losing ground. I hope you will join them and help restore sanity and values to our government.