American progressives, of course, have no such intention. They don't seek the elimination of the competitive free-enterprise system or any vengeful subjugation of the rich and powerful. What they do seek is economic fairness, based ultimately on the humanistic values of cooperation and the well-being of all. Their mindset differs from that of conservatives, because they generally do not find their sense of identity in any of the defining life circumstances in which conservatives find theirs. They find it instead, along with the creative drive to give it expression, in an inner moral consciousness that connects them fundamentally to other human beings and to all the natural creation.
Martin Luther King is, I think, an excellent historical example of the progressive prototype. He was born to be a prophet and speaker of inspirational words. He was also endowed with the passion to carry that talent into the world as leader of a movement dedicated to the ends of human dignity and social justice. In the pursuit of that vision, as we know, he ran into roadblocks imposed both by those who considered him not a liberator, but a threat to their way of life--and at first, also, by a timid national leadership that failed to give him needed support. In the end, however, King succeeded in securing new federal legislation that ended racial discrimination as a legal barrier both to voting and to open access to schools, public accommodations, and employment.
Driven by their own moral consciousness, progressives have no need to validate their sense of identity by winning out over others. Instead, they are driven to develop and apply their inborn creative talents in a way that helps build a society in which all of its members have the material security and opportunities needed to develop and apply their own. In the end, most people I've met who show progressive political leanings find far greater joy and value in their own or others' constructive application of inborn creative abilities--in any field, from the arts to engineering or finance--than they do in the achievement of even their own material or social "success." At the deepest level, their mission is to help make that experience available to as many people as possible.
Still, conservatives commonly brand the politics of progressives as "class warfare." Lacking the moral sense to appreciate the evidence of good faith in people motivated by values different from their own, they often view those differences in terms of "us against them." They therefore not only discount the idea of economic fairness as inconsistent logically with what they conceive to be a human instinct for personal gain and power, but suspect that those promoting it do so in fact as a way of "punishing the successful" and of dominating those they claim to want to help. Even most conservatives who are struggling economically see things this way. They believe that, no matter how dismal their own prospects, taking recourse in any programmatic remedy formulated by detached politicians and government bureaucrats would prove even worse. It would reduce them to the ranks of America's controllable "losers." And that would rob them of the freedom to pursue success on their own and the chance, however illusory in fact, to become the "winners" they believe American society calls on them to be.
Finding Guidance in Hallowed Texts, Not the Mind or Heart
There is still another impediment in the conservative mindset that makes it unresponsive to progressive political reforms aimed at advancing any forms of social justice, including economic fairness. Because American conservatives, both in private life and government, characteristically lack the empathy needed to perceive the good faith of people with ideas different from their own, they often regard and respond to them in terms of stereotypical judgments they find and believe validated in scripture--in particular, the Old Testament of the Bible. In reality, this hallowed traditional text is hardly a reliable guide. It reflects in large part not transcendent verities, but the triumphalist views of winners in secular struggles for power, some of which are probably in any case largely mythological. Nevertheless, because American conservatives tend to consider the Bible both providential and unimpeachable, their resort to it for ready answers to complex moral and ethical issues throws up high barriers to any counter-balance by humanistic progressive ideas.
For guidance in solving complex social and economic issues, conservatives often look to the U.S. Constitution, which they also consider, as they do the Bible, providential and unimpeachable. While progressives interpret Constitutional provisions broadly, in order to better relate them to the conditions and needs of a society that is today far more technologically advanced, urbanized, populous, and interlinked than was the society in which the Constitution was written, conservatives tend to read its provisions, now more than two centuries old, as quite literal prescriptions for the political management of the modern society in which they live. In so doing, they find continuing validation of a political order initially fitted to the nation's demographic and economic makeup at the time of the founders--one marked by an unchallenged predominance of property rights over human rights and by rapidly emerging disparities in wealth and living standards.
Finally, besides finding guidance in the Bible and the Constitution, conservatives look to a third providential and unimpeachable source to directly manage the economic order and relieve them entirely of any necessary governing role. That source is, of course, the "free market." Conservatives revere it as if it were God-driven and believe that efforts to regulate it in the broader interests of society as a whole, even with the greatest discretion, are self-deceiving, unrighteous, un-American, and wicked.
With their predilection to seek guidance from what they believe is revealed truth, rather than from a moral sense of human connectedness and the power of human reason, it would seem that, to the conservative mindset, deliberate choices are inherently suspect.
Apparently, only actions governed by sanctioned tradition or Adam Smith's "invisible hand" of economic providence can be trusted. Interestingly, this same point of view is expressed in the Biblical Eden myth, which fundamentalist Christians hold to be historical truth. In this familiar story, God forbids Adam and Eve--on penalty of death--the moral freedom to discriminate between good and evil. It is little wonder, then, that conservatives see as the greatest threat to their own security the economic programs, social reforms, and regulations promulgated by the secular federal government--most of which, as viewed from the progressive standpoints of morality and reason, plainly support what is good for the society or control or outlaw what is bad.
Distrust of Government
In his 19th-century travels through the U.S., Charles Dickens perceived that Americans characteristically distrusted the honesty of the leading businessmen of their day, though they also admired the "sharp dealings" by which they achieved their success. Today, struggling Americans of a conservative mindset have perhaps an even greater distrust of the federal government, whose officials they see as tempted not notably by greed, but by the far greater attraction of importance to the powerful. A compelling case for such distrust can in fact be drawn from recent American history.
The economic crash of 2008 deprived millions of Americans of jobs, livelihood, and savings. In its wake, it appeared to many, perhaps especially to working conservatives, that they had been abandoned by their government when they most needed its help. After all, in faithfully upholding their part in the American social contract by working hard and "doing the right thing," hadn't they obligated those presumptively charged with enforcing the contract to uphold their right to a livelihood? "Why?" they undoubtedly asked themselves, "does the government do nothing to help me get new work at a living wage so I can maintain an income for my family? Why doesn't it help me fight foreclosure on my house, when it's not my fault that I can't keep up with the mortgage payments? Why did it instead spend hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out Wall Street and the automotive companies--which, unlike me, are largely responsible for their own failures?"
For millions of Americans dealing with these issues, long-held historical dispositions to rugged individualism and distrust of government were now compounded by a profound sense of helplessness and unfairness. It was hardly surprising, then, that they viewed the government's bailout of the banks not--as it arguably was--a needed strategy to maintain a functioning economy, but, instead, an unforgivable misuse of their tax dollars, with themselves the powerless victims. They also saw the bailouts as unjust, since they appeared discriminatory against their own interests as ordinary people and blatantly in the interest of fellow members of America's ruling elite. That perception was made especially keen by the many reports in the news that top executives at rescued financial firms were making off with huge bonuses and, as the figure has it, "laughing all the way to the bank."
In the aftermath of the '08 crash, the anti-government attitudes of many working conservatives undoubtedly hardened. It now seemed clear to them that government was not a defender of the "social contract" they had believed in, but a nefarious machine programmed to pursue the single purpose of expanding its own dominance and power. Conservatives had long half-believed the canard that one way by which government sought to expand its dominance was to seduce the electoral loyalty of the masses through a continual expansion of the "safety net" for those unwilling to work, the disabled, and the elderly. Now, the '08 crash seemed to provide undeniable evidence of how it sought also to expand its power. It did so by partnering with corporations in a "crony capitalism." In exchange for expected campaign contributions with which government's human expeditors, its senators and congressmen, could continually buy back their offices, it backed policies favorable to corporations, thereby increasing the reliance of each partner on the other and augmenting the power of both. What was also apparent, however, was that the broader effect of the government/corporate alliance was to concentrate wealth in fewer and fewer hands. To balance its support of corporations, big government had to cut programs and investments supporting the middle class, thereby restraining job creation, lowering wages, reducing consumer spending, and decreasing opportunities for laid-off workers either to get a new job that paid a living wage or to start a business of their own.
It is understandable that victims of the structural inequality that now shapes the American economy very much fear losing the freedom to shape their own economic future and build a good life for themselves and their families. I think it is this prospect they have in mind when they talk about their determination to "take their country back." The now hardened anti-government sentiments of many struggling conservatives pose a challenge to progressives who might seek to gain a fair hearing from them for their own principles and policies, since they can of course only become effective through legislation and implementation by the federal government. But, as I hope to show, winning over struggling conservatives, as well as alienated non-voters, may not be an impossible dream.
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