Respect is the core and the center of liberal morality. If I do not respect the inherent worth and dignity of other people, then I have no right to ask for it in return. I think that allowing others to live in peace and dignity is not just a moral issue, but utterly pragmatic. If I allow my neighbor to live in peace then I live in a peaceful place. If I allow my neighbors to live their lives as they wish, then I live in a free society.
Arianna Huffington wrote shortly after the November election:
“The progressive vision must be a direct challenge to fundamentalism in all of its forms: political, religious and economic. It must match fundamentalism's power without replicating its authoritarianism. It must appeal to the values of liberty, equality, community, justice, unconditional love, shared prosperity, and ecological restoration, among many others.”
Obviously I agree. I believe that the vast majority of Americans have a genuine morality founded in those values. It is these values upon which we must focus. The right wing has had everything their own way in the last few years. They won political power on almost every level. I consider their agenda immoral. I think the immorality of that agenda needs to be highlighted, but that's not enough. We must say what we believe, not what we don't believe. We must talk about the things we value. Liberty. Equality. Community. Shared prosperity. Respect.
Respect for the inherent worth and dignity of every person. All other values flow from that one. We care for our neighbors without controlling them. We feel that the poorest and weakest among us share equal dignity and therefore deserve our help. Income reallocation, a phrase that causes libertarians and economic conservatives to twitch, is something that we need to face directly into. I'm not advocating stripping wealth away from the rich. Rich people generally work hard for that money and they have a right to keep the vast majority of it. But reallocating some money allows the most vulnerable among us to share in the vast abundance of the world. It sounds idealistic, and my personal morality requires it, but it's also imminently practical. The poor do not lock up their money in off-shore bank accounts. They spend it. Income reallocation therefore pumps money into the economy. It takes money-capital if you will-from where it would be locked away and puts it back into the economy. Capital is the blood of capitalism and it must circulate for a healthy society to work.
Mother Teresa's nuns would at one time--or perhaps they still do--go out early very morning in Calcutta and collect the dead bodies in the streets. A few would have died of violence but most would have died of malnutrition, exposure or diseases that we Americans would consider trivial.
I don't want to live in that world. I'm going to do everything I can to make sure I never do. My morality requires that the society I live in cares for the weakest and most vulnerable among us. If the conservatives were smart, they would require that also, because it's not just the morally right thing to do, but it serves our own personal self-interests.
When I was 9 years old the poverty rate in the US ranged from 20 to 25 percent. My oldest granddaughter was 9 this year, and in her lifetime the poverty rate has ranged from 11 to 13 percent. You will note that is half what it was when I was 9. When I was 9 what poverty meant was you watched your children die of curable illnesses for want of health care. You and your children suffered from malnutrition and malnutrition-related diseases. My granddaughter is 9 this year. Poverty means you don't have health care but your children have Medicaid. Neither you nor your children will ever know malnutrition because of WIC and food stamps (which are no longer stamps.) We have come a long way. I want to go further because everyone should have access to health care. Everyone should have a place to live and enough to eat. True morality requires it and that's the world I want to live in.
True morality requires a living wage be paid to workers. The great advantage of capitalism, when it is working correctly, is that it is a win-win situation. The employer can produce goods, I can pay my bills. Everyone goes home happy. If the employer is not paying enough, though, for the employee to meet the basic needs of life, then nobody is winning. The employer has short term gain in larger profits, but must live in a world where someone can work full time and still not afford food and shelter. The poisonous philosophy of scarcity frightens people into thinking that they can win at the expense of others. But in reality they are equally losers.
