The presidential election has been over for a week. I'm talking now about 2006 and beyond.
We Democrats need to redefine the "moral values" debate. Moral values was the largest issue on voters minds, and 80 percent of those voters when for Bush. Yet these "values" have largely amounted to abortion and homosexual rights. The "values" vote can be swung to Democrats, however, if we change the conversation to incorporate additional widely shared values. When I say "Republicans" in this column, I refer to their leaders, because I believe many Bush voters hold values beyond those mentioned above and are disappointed that he does not share them. If we show that we do, we can win.
For too long, Democrats have advocated positions, proposals and policies without relating them to the fundamental values from which they are derived. This needs to end; Democrats need to start talking hearts, not minds. Many of these values are Christian values, but are widely held outside of religion.
Consider humility, or fairness. Humility is not 2.6 million full-time workers and their families living in poverty while CEOs make 419 times as much. Increasing Social Security taxes for wage earners, and then cutting taxes to disproportionately benefit the rich while bankrupting the Social Security need by those wage earners, is not fairness.
Another winning value for Democrats is "love thy neighbor," or simply the idea of helping the needy and downtrodden. George Bush talks of compassionate conservatism, but he cut housing aid for the urban poor. He redefined 6 million workers out of their qualification for overtime pay. He refuses to extend unemployment benefits to those who have recently lost their jobs.
If Republican leaders bring up values, liberals must bring up how they refuse to help the needy. They haven't learned to share.
What about cleaning up after yourself? Republicans seem to think it's okay to inhabit this earth and not leave it cleaner than you found it for the next generation. Do we not, when we are a guest at someone else's house, try to leave it cleaner than we found it? Why, then, do Republicans write our energy bills behind locked doors, with special interests? Why have they cut Superfund cleanups? Why do they make upgrading pollution filters on coal plants a voluntary act?
Along those same lines, do we give our kids a bill for food, shelter and clothing once they turn 18? Do we make loans to them for college and then charge interest on them? We should not be bankrupting the next generation so that we can live beyond our means. We cannot be so selfish.
And even on abortion, Republican leaders don't walk the walk. If someone truly, deeply wants to prevent abortion, for example, he or she would work to provide alternatives. Republicans refuse to fund safe-sex education. Abstinence-only education doesn't work; Bush instituted it while governor of Texas, and Texas now has the fifth-highest teenage pregnancy rate.
Republicans profess valuing a "culture of life" but do not seem concerned about the quality of that life, as they continually ignore the needs of those who have abortions because they cannot afford a child or do not want to raise one in the environment they live in. Look at what has happened in other nations: Making abortion illegal doesn't end it but only makes it unsafe and undocumented. If we want to prevent abortion, we must focus on education, raising people's incomes and rebuilding our inner cities and rural areas so that potential parents have hope for their potential children.
The point is that the left has forgotten to talk about a whole slew of values, not positions or policies, that are dear to it. Many of my friends at Brown and I share values, but not religion, and thus rarely does it come up. But I am a Christian, and I will not sit quietly as my religion is exploited and misrepresented by Republican leaders. If you share my values but are uncomfortable with my associating them with religion, that's unfortunate; remember, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. framed the Civil Rights Movement with religion, while not excluding people without it. We need to work together.
Because my faith is private, you may have never heard me mention religion before in three years at Brown. But religion has the power to create movements in the blink of an eye, and if the forces opposing us invoke it, we should as well.
Rob Sand '05.5 just put it on the line.
