The suggestion of empowerment in the progressive freedom pledge is precisely the right approach to motivate struggling, but individualistic, conservatives to give it fair consideration. In addition, the very wording of the pledge helps diffuse any resistance conservatives might feel to a serious appraisal of any idea put forward by a political movement many Americans would characterize as "left-leaning" and therefore vaguely radical and unAmerican. By promising to protect the freedom of workers to control and shape their own economic future, the pledge invokes the traditional American principles of individual initiative, self-reliance, and personal responsibility. All of these overtones resonate with a wide cross-section of the population, including alienated non-voters and struggling conservatives. At the same time, the pledge is an honest reflection of specific policies progressives would actually try to enact. All would be designed to put Americans in real--not just theoretical--control of their lives by allowing them to take the initiative in securing livelihoods that afford them both a decent standard of living and a chance to pursue their own kind of happiness.
Let me conclude here with the following observations:
Today, just 0.1-percent of Americans own more wealth than the bottom ninety percent. Yet, if a progressive president with the support of progressives in Congress were to enact reforms to even modestly shrink that obscene measure of inequality, it would provoke the outrage of many of America's one-percent and their political representatives. If that were to happen, progressives should respond from the same moral foundation that is the source of the policies they pursue. They should declare with their own kind of outrage that, at a time when many Americans, through no fault of their own, are falling into deeper and deeper states of penury and insecurity, the sense of fair play--said to be a characteristic American trait--must surely at long last come into play. What can moral decency possibly mean if it doesn't require that those with untold wealth give up a portion they will never miss to enable those who have nothing to restore a decent life for themselves and their families?
Progressives should also emphasize another point that is too seldom made. It is not only talented politicians of a progressive mindset that seek to serve the common good. The government of the United States itself properly represents all of the people as a single community, not only a small elite representing corporate interests. If any American government were to actually operate on this principle, it would itself be obliged to look first after the common good, a shift in perspective that would enable millions of ordinary Americans to lead more secure and rewarding lives.
Such a shift would also have a powerful spiritual effect. Today, millions of Americans fear, resent, or ignore their government as an "Other" that wastes their tax dollars and inflates its power at the expense of their own freedom to shape their economic future. A government that seeks instead to empower its citizens to control their future, while also building up a "commons" that can enrich the lives of all, could well transform that fear and resentment to hope and respect, and foster for all of its citizens a joyous sense of community with other Americans.
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