America's Core Values... Today

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1

Our nation today is caught in a highly partisan welter of conflicting claims and opinions.  At the same time, we are witnessing what appears to be a significant conflict of basic values.  (NB,This may not be in fact true in the general public, but certain interests seem determined to create this impression.)

In such a time, we all need to remind ourselves of America's core values - peace, prosperity, equality (at least of opportunity), liberty, and justice... for all.

The first two of these fundamental values, peace and prosperity, we share with just about all people, of all cultures, in all times.  The remaining three ideals - equality, liberty, and justice - are distinctly American values, first articulated in the American Declaration of Independence.  For some time these three values were unique in the world, though nearly every day now, they are shared more and more, by more people and more nations around the world.

In this time in our own society of apparently competing goals and ideals, all of us - thinking for ourselves - should judge every significant action or policy proposed for America, and evaluate every leader, politician, or current affairs media personality, by reference primarily and predominantly to these core values: peace, prosperity, equality of opportunity, liberty (or freedom), and justice for all.

Every policy proposed or action taken is worthy of our support only to the degree that it advances us - all of us - toward greater attainment of our core ideals.  Every action taken and policy proposed that does not advance our country on that path is worthy of our opposition and active dissent.

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So how is America doing today, in terms of our core values?

Obviously, we do not live in peaceful, prosperous times.  On the contrary.  The United States is ensnared in two agonizing struggles thousands of miles away.  One of these is a war most Americans today believe we never should have started.  Iraq was reasonably "peaceful" in the year 2000, and was making reasonable progress toward some prosperity, although among ordinary Iraqis, there was limited opportunity for personal advancement, an unjust system of laws, and little individual freedom.

Since our invasion, there has been less peace in Iraq, less prosperity, along with about ,the same or even, for some, less equality of opportunity, justice, or freedom (despite our best efforts and our fervent hopes).  Also, we know now that there was no particular threat to our country posed by Iraq in the first place.  With a little historical perspective, we can now see that this action actually took us farther from our goal of peace, not toward it, and is worthy of our criticism.

Afghanistan, on the other hand, did pose an ongoing threat to our peace by supporting fanatical Islamic terrorists bent on our destruction.  But in that country too, the prospects for enduring peace today are hard to find, although the Taliban would be hard-pressed to reassert at the same level again its denial of equality, freedom, and justice to the Afghan people.  All in all, this part of our war-torn world is a dark enigma, when judged by our core values.  It just is not clear what to do.

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It is also obvious that we are less prosperous today than we have been and expect to be.  Even during the first seven or eight years of the Twenty-First Century, when the American economy was generating more and more wealth, the income and accumulated wealth of the American middle class did not grow, remaining stagnant, and the number of Americans living below the poverty line increased significantly.  The best we can say about America's economic growth since 2000 is that a few have prospered, while the great majority of the population has not.

Since 2008, of course, the whole world has also been reeling from The Great Recession, the deepest and longest-sustained period of economic hardship in seven decades.  Again, however, in America the very rich suffered the least and only for a short time, while many Americans have been placed in jeopardy of losing their life savings, their homes, their livelihood, and their confidence both in themselves and in America's economy.  Minority citizens and young people cannot find work, and older citizens cannot afford to retire as they had planned.  Many others have simply been laid off.

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We thus have to conclude that in terms of the two basic values widely shared around the world for many generations - peace and prosperity - we Americans (and many millions of others) are failing to march forward.  On the contrary. 

What of those other core values, those ideals that have tended to characterize America and Americans more than other nations and other peoples?  In 2000, America can fairly be described as having afforded to its citizens a reasonable degree of justice, freedom, and equality of opportunity.  But what of today?

a

In discussing equality in America at the present time, we must begin by recalling the broad principle that wealth is power.  In a democracy, each of us has two different kinds of wealth.  We have our own individual property and income, and we share the public wealth which, through taxes, we have invested in federal, state, county, and local governments.  The public wealth is ours in a real, if limited sense, since we have a say in how it is spent.  Together, our personal and public wealth is the source of our ability to do just about anything we can in fact do.  With little (or no) property or income of any kind, we can do little; our opportunities are severely limited.  With more wealth, property, and/or higher income, we can do a lot more.

The reason we traditionally say that our goal for all Americans is equal opportunity, rather than equality itself (as the Declaration implies), is that we recognize that even as an ideal, universal equality is not attainable and may not even be desirable, even pursuit of it having negative practical results.

On the other hand, there has proven to be also a practical limit to just how extreme the unequal distribution of wealth and income can be before our capitalist economy ceases to function efficiently.  At every time in our history when wealth and income have become concentrated in the hands of a very few to an extreme degree, we Americans have been subject to periods of financial insecurity, going from "boom" to "bust" abruptly, periods of stagnation among the middle class and suffering among the poor, of widespread and shameless corruption, and of rapacious mega-corporations' swallowing up competing smaller businesses.

This was true in the periods between about 1875 and 1895, between about 1915 and 1935, and between 2000 and 2002 (the "dot.com boom") and between 2008 and today (The Great Recession).  The extreme inequality in distribution of wealth and income in these periods has created inequality of opportunity in society generally.  Poor and mid-income Americans at such times cannot compete with the super-rich, not only for luxuries (as one would expect), but even for the basic necessities of food and shelter, health care, education, and political influence.

Since distribution of wealth and income in America today is more concentrated in the hands of the few than in any time in our nation's history, we are seeing extreme inequality of opportunity as well.

b

What of freedom for all?

A person with no property, weak education, little or no income, poor nutrition and no health insurance cannot be fairly described as "free."  Such a person is imprisoned in poor quality housing, low-paying jobs (if not unemployment), social discrimination, and ill health from an early age all the way to a perhaps premature death.  For some in this condition, crime may seem the only realistic option, which in many cases will mean that he or she will be literally imprisoned.

Compared to the poor, those with middle-level jobs and incomes do have opportunities beyond this desperate level, but middle-class opportunities are still far inferior to the untroubled confidence, the financial security, the luxuries, and the political power of the very rich.  Thus, extreme inequality in the distribution of wealth and income creates extreme inequality in both individual opportunity and individual liberty itself.

c

Finally, do most if not virtually all of us experience equal justice in America?  It seems clear that most of us would say we do not.

Take taxes, for example. 

The power of the mega-corporations and the very rich give them legal advantages over the rest of us and over small-business men and women.  We have all learned that many of the biggest traditionally American corporations pay little or even no income taxes.  They may have hundreds of tax accountants and attorneys each year filing thousands of pages to be submitted as their tax returns.  Super-rich executives of these corporations can also afford such sophisticated counsel in their own personal attempts to minimize their individual income tax obligations.

Compare that to the rest of us, who seek aid in filing our taxes - whether individual or business tax - from a software package or from a single individual who works briefly for us while also counseling dozens of others, or fill simply out our own returns.  We actually end up paying income taxes at a higher percentage of our wealth and income than the super-rich and the mega-corporations.  Surely, this cannot be considered fair or just, and it defeats the purpose of the graduated income tax.

Likewise, if we are accused of breaking the law, the legal support we can afford is far more limited than a wealthy person or wealthy firm can afford.  Today too, in the workplace the old adage "You can't fight City Hall" could be changed to "You can't fight the big corporation."  If one of us ordinary Americans has to file suit against either a much wealthier individual or a big corporation, the odds are stacked against us.  This situation is not just either.

Contrast the degree of accountability an individual worker feels toward the employer in doing her or his job, with the degree of accountability the large corporation feels toward its customers or to the general public.

And contrast too the degree to which a politician is likely to feel the influence of the average voter who makes a small donation to his or her campaign, to that expected by the billionaire or the well-heeled corporation who gives millions.  The number of small campaign donations required to match the size of a single one of the largest donations by the wealthy is inconceivable.  At a certain point, excesses in wealth outweigh the so-called "power in numbers."  In a democracy, even the common sensical assumption that the "majority rules" can be subverted by extreme concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few.

Isn't that true in our country today?  We are headed on the path away from "justice for all," not toward it.

5

We are regrettably forced to conclude that, when compared to where we were in 2000 (or even earlier), in our pursuit of America's core ideals - peace, prosperity, equality, freedom, and justice for all - our society today  seems clearly headed toward more and more inequality, in all areas, which undermines all that we hold or used to hold most dear.

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