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1a
The cardinal American values - as I have said before - are peace and prosperity, equality of opportunity, liberty, and justice for all. These values should be pursued, supported, and honored above all others. Actions that threaten or diminish them should be avoided or prohibited, vilified, or at least highly taxed. Public leaders praising these essential values should be supported; those whose decisions undermine them should be hounded out of their positions of influence.
As we approach our National Election Day in November, it would only make sense to keep these values that underlie our founding documents and our 200 years of corporate endeavor uppermost in our decision-making about for whom we will vote.
1b
A good, specific frame of reference would also be the U. S. Constitution, the supreme law of the land, which begins by saying that the legitimate purposes of government are -
a. to "establish Justice,
b. to "insure domestic Tranquility,"
c. to "provide for the common Defence,"
d. to "promote the General Welfare," and
e. to "secure the Blessings of Liberty."
In addition, these benefits are to be sought and secured by national government both "to ourselves and our posterity."
I would paraphrase the purposes for our national government thus:
- to establish justice,
- to keep peace within the nation,
- to provide adequately for the nation’s defense from outside forces,
- to promote the people's general well-being, and
- to guarantee freedom to all in America.
And our government should be headed in the direction of pursuing these good ends both to ourselves and our descendants, which is to say, both short-term and long-term. We mustn't forget to consider the long-term consequences of our actions today, but we mustn't ignore the needs of today, especially in hard times.
Keeping these national purposes and core American values clearly in mind as the national election approaches, we should say to ourselves that actions or policies tending to jeopardize any of our traditional values or our government's essential purposes are reprehensible and should be stopped and punished.
Laws and proposed laws that threaten any of these goals should be rejected or repealed. Leaders, media, and public figures who advocate or promote policies contrary to pursuit of these fundamental goals should be hotly criticized and discouraged from doing so, and should lose their positions of influence.
2
Peace and prosperity, equality of opportunity, liberty, and justice for all: the most persistent threat today to these essential values is the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few. Equality of opportunity is simply not possible when power – social, political, or economic power – is extremely concentrated, as it is today. Justice is undermined when some can afford more and more skillful legal counsel than the rest of us. Liberty is diminished when the wealthy work to guard wealth for themselves and to limit others' powers to get ahead. Peace too is endangered when power is highly concentrated, because one tried and true means of perpetuating the hold onto power by the few is to use propaganda to promote fear by demonizing so-called "enemies," and to stir up social conflict at home and war abroad. Prosperity depends on peace abroad and equality of opportunity at home.
In short – as the Founding Fathers clearly understood – extreme concentration of power threatens our pursuit and attainment of all that we value most highly.
If we fail to elect the candidates whose policies more credibly address the pervasive issue of the currently high concentration of power in the hands of the few, then our lives will be diminished in many ways. Ironically, even the lives of the most powerful themselves will be diminished, as well as the lives of the rest of us. At least long-term, our national experience - which since the 18th century has been no different in this regard from other national histories - shows that widely shared prosperity benefits all, including even the most prosperous among the rich.
"A rising tide" of widely shared peace and prosperity "raises all boats," as the saying goes. On the other hand, "a rising tide" of wealth and power for only a few "raises only the yachts of the luckiest among the very rich," as we might say based on our national economic history.
3a
We should bear in mind that the wealth-power gap of today does not separate the socio-economic class that we traditionally think of as "the rich" from the so-called middle and lower classes. The gap in the usual and usually healthy continuum from the richest on down toward the poor lies instead between, on the one side, the poor, the rich, and the middle-income and on the other side, only a few, the Super-Rich. It's not even the wealthiest 1%, but more like the wealthiest 0.1% who pose the real problem.
We should not think of concern about this gap as "class warfare" either, but as a problem comparable to democracy vs. plutocracy, rule over the people by a tiny, privileged few.
Also, we should keep in mind "the red herring" problem, the political gimmick of claiming that a particular matter is the central issue that should should decide the election, when in reality that matter is not central to problems currently facing our nation at all.
And finally, as always, we need to be skeptical of what candidates claim are their motivating values and look instead at the policies and the concrete measures they favor, and dispassionately consider what values they are actually pursuing.
And finally, as always, we need to be skeptical of what candidates claim are their motivating values and look instead at the policies and the concrete measures they favor, and dispassionately consider what values they are actually pursuing.
3b
So, as we approach the election, we should keep clear in our minds - not traditional loyalties, not political dogma, not bias or fear or even love. We should reason carefully with these factors before us:
- Keep our eyes on the central issue, not chasing after "red herrings,"
- Beware of false claims about values that are contradicted by candidates' specific proposals (and those of their primary supporters),
- The abnormal gap separating the have's (money and power) from the have-not's is undermining all that America stands for, and therefore,
- Reducing this toxic divide between the Super-Rich and all the rest of us is the central issue on which the current election should be decided.
4a
If a candidate today tells you that she or he will cut taxes, create jobs, and reduce the government debt by cutting spending, then we have to ask ourselves, Just how can this be done?
The details of such a plan are even more critical for us to know than they would be otherwise, as we weigh the most important issue - whether or not reducing taxes and spending while lowering the debt will shrink the abnormally wide gap separating the Super-Rich from all the rest of us - because doing all three of these things at the same time seems on the surface to be logically impossible.
The details of such a plan are even more critical for us to know than they would be otherwise, as we weigh the most important issue - whether or not reducing taxes and spending while lowering the debt will shrink the abnormally wide gap separating the Super-Rich from all the rest of us - because doing all three of these things at the same time seems on the surface to be logically impossible.
It seems obvious to anyone who thinks about it that cutting taxes would tend to increase the debt, not reduce it. Even if spending is reduced by the same percentage as the tax cut, or if taxes are cut at the same level as the spending reduction, the debt would not be reduced, merely kept the same. Before we can judge, we need to see the math: What taxes? How much lost revenue? What spending cuts (and at what social costs), and How much will be saved by making them? How would - in fact, how could - cutting our government's revenues reduce the debt?
Whoops! Now, wait just a cotton-picking minute there, partner! There we go, chasing the red herring.
Whoops! Now, wait just a cotton-picking minute there, partner! There we go, chasing the red herring.
4b
It's true that - at least on the surface - it would seem that the pursuit of reducing the debt by cutting taxes does not make sense. But even if proponents of this policy have some hidden magic up their sleeves that would solve this riddle, the main point is - IT DOES NOT MATTER.
The size of the debt is not a critical issue at this time, and besides, a time of deflation - in this case resulting from the Great Recession of 2008-2009 - is no time to be striving to reduce the national debt. The time for working on that rather routine and not-now extreme long-term problem is ideally a time of prosperity, when the economy is chugging along at top or near-top speed.
If an individual candidate or a particular political party claims that cutting government spending is the key issue in this election, we might be suspicious that their real values are not in fact among the cardinal American values: peace, justice, equality of opportunity, together with liberty and the pursuit of prosperity for all.
This suspicion seems particularly relevant when the claimed goal of reducing the debt is linked to a goal of cutting revenues.
What other issues do some seem to think are central to this campaign? and How do proposed policies and actions affect progress toward our country's traditional values?
Those questions... in Part Two.
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