Sam Smith
This was written around 2010
1. Get an agenda: One of the
reasons that George Bush was able to define liberalism his way was because
liberals hadn't done it first. In recent years political progressives have made
no serious attempt to sit down and decide upon an agenda. If progressives can't
state clearly what they believe in, who can blame the public for being
confused? There is a need for a progressive platform, preferably one that can
be written on one side of a sheet of paper.
Since the sixties there has been a tremendous splintering of
progressives into groups specializing in a single issue or a cluster of single
issues. This has produced a high level of expertise on these issues, raised the
national consciousness on many of them, and provided a cadre capable of writing
and criticizing legislation. The bad side-effect has been that progressives
have forgotten how to work in coalition with one another and seem incapable of
providing a holistic vision of that for which they are striving. Like G. K.
Chesterton's description of liberals, they can't lead; they won't follow and
they refuse to cooperate.
An annual conference at which progressive organizations came
up with, say, a 12-item agenda would let someone other than the right define
what it is that we are about..
2. Don't be afraid of popular issues:
One of the striking differences between old-style liberals and
new-style progressives is that the former had a knack of finding popular
issues. With a few exceptions, such as environmental issues, contemporary
progressives feel almost guilty if they get involved in anything that will take
less than years of activism to win general support. This is not to say that
unpopular causes should be avoided, but simply to suggest that it is okay to
leaven the difficult and the controversial with things people want. If we had
done so over the past few years, we would be hearing today much more about
national health care and less about abortion, more about housing and less about
gun control, and more about leveraged buy-outs and less about furlough
programs. The game is not only to win the national debate but to determine what
the national debate is about.
3. Describe a future worth fighting
for: Optimism is deeply ingrained in American culture. Progressives
are in a tough spot in this regard, because they tend to bring America the bad
news.
And America, in the classic tradition, kills them for it. We
need a lot more skill in motivating people to correct what's wrong without
simultaneously casting a pall over their vision of the future.
Progressives should not surrender optimism to the
reactionaries. Thomas Jefferson said, "My theory has always been that if
we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter than the
gloom of despair." And it was the Democrats, after all, in the runaway
election year of 1936, who labelled Republicans as "disciples of
despair" floundering in a "fountain of fear." Roosevelt himself
got considerable mileage by the unsupported assertion that we had nothing to fear
but fear itself. More recently, one of the characteristics of the sixties was
its vibrant, if unrealistic, vision of the future. It wasn't just the
demonstrations that changed things; it was the dream of an Age of Aquarius.
4. Go for redemption before
recrimination: Andy Young went to South Africa back in
the seventies and was roundly criticized for it. In response, he recalled what
Martin Luther King had said about segregationists in the south: you had to work
on the assumption that one day you would be friends with the people against
whom you were fighting. The south is a much healthier place today because King
believed in redemption in politics as well as religion. Progressives have to
fight so hard to win that they sometimes forget that the antagonists are, in
the end just wrong, a universal, if disappointing, human trait. Thinking of
those opposed to us as potential converts rather than certain enemies may
increase the former and lessen the latter.
5.
Speak United States: This dictum was delivered by my high
school math teacher, Herman Breuniger, whenever we would offer a garbled or
jargon-ridden comment. I think of it often in Washington where so many, including progressives, speak
in the artificial tongues of governmentese, poligabble and media slang. The
people we are trying to convince speak United States; it helps to talk the same
language.
6.Think
symbolically: Progressives are too rational for
their own good. They are living in an age in which symbolism rules the world
and they keep spewing out data instead of dreams. Politics at its best has
always contained a healthy helping of theater, but many progressives seem
determined to leave show business to the reactionaries. No wonder so many
progressive acts close on opening night.
7.
Don't fight your own kind: The progressive movement is one
of the few organisms that feeds on its own parts. The left has a long tradition
of acting as though it believed a day without schisms was like a day without
sunshine. In fact, progressives have enough problems from reactionaries,
conservatives and extremist moderates without fighting amongst themselves as
well.
8.
Don't be too pure: It's okay to be a saint but don't
expect many others to follow you into self-deprivation, moral perfection,
supererogation or martyrdom. A handful of Ralph Naders and Mitch Snyders is all
the movement needs. Be happy if someone votes the right way, writes the letter
you want or shows up for the meeting. And if you find some anti-abortionists
who are against our policy in Central America, don't knock them; put them on a
committee.
Progressives need a constituency not disciples. Besides,
most people aren't as interested hi this stuff as you are. They're like Oscar
Wilde, who said he could never become a socialist because he liked to keep his
evenings free.
9.
Be frugal: Both liberals and conservatives spend too much money on the
wrong things -- when they are in office.
But the liberals get 99% of the rap. Here is another case of
the left stipulating a conservative definition. Frugality, at the moment, is an
untouched political field. Progressives need to shuck the assumption that
spending money in the name of something is the same as spending money for
something.
Billions are spent hi Washington in the name of good causes;
considerably less actually serves those causes. A number of states have dealt
with this problem as it applies to charities, placing a limit on the
bureaucratic overhead a non-profit can have and still claim tax-exemption.
Progressives should seek a similar standard for government.
It could cause a recession in Washington but would easily
mean more money for housing, health, farmers and so forth.
Few things would change the popular impression of
progressives more than if they would begin to concern themselves with the
efficient use of the taxpayers' dollars.
10.
Think small: The large federal government has done
wonderful things for America, but it doesn't follow that it gets better as it
gets bigger, or that there aren't other ways to do wonderful things.
Progressives need to shed their preoccupation with the federal government.
Progressives should encourage decentralization of the federal government,
should seek to empower neighborhoods, smaller towns and communities; and find
ways of bringing small business into the progressive fold. These are important
constituencies that neither Democrats nor Republicans have vigorously sought as
yet..
11.
Rescue patriotism:
Many of the most familiar symbols of patriotism have been seized by the right.
But the substance of patriotism, interestingly, is largely downplayed or
ignored. The republic, for example, comes in second to the flag in the pledge
of allegiance. The left prefers not to discuss the subject at all.
There are, however, ways of discussing and symbolizing love
of country without the hypocrisy and cant of an American right that practices the
cynical wisdom of Hermann Goering: "The people can always be brought to
the bidding of the leaders... Years ago, Woodrow Wilson, speaking to a group of
newly Americanized citizens, said that they were pledging allegiance not to a
particular set of laws, not to a flag, not to one administration or even to the
American government in general. They were pledging allegiance to a set of
ideals that are particularly American.
Progressives tend to ignore the wealth of American history
that could provide anecdotal, symbolic and substantive support for their
positions. In the warehouse of the American past lies a vast array of tools for
the contemporary activist, largely unused. This is, I suspect, in part due to a
rejection of history because of the wrongs that occurred during it.
Progressives can meet
the flag-wavers with their own symbolism. The progressive symbol of love of
country could be the land itself. We should use photographs and graphics that
suggest the physical magnificence of America and we could adopt such songs as America
the Beautiful and This Land Is Your Land as the patriotic songs of
the progressive movement.
Far more than the flag, the land itself is the primal symbol
of America and at a time when we need to save that land from rampant
destruction, using that symbol would remind people of that need, and by
extension, of a similar need throughout the world..
13. Be serious, not solemn: Russell Baker once
pointed out that Americans had forgotten the difference between being solemn
and being serious. Many progressives suffer from this confusion. Remember that
Emma Goldman, a serious radical, once said, "If I can't dance, I don't want
to be in your revolution."
