The politics of moral vision:

...I myself tried to do this after the Reagan victory of 1980...

...The need to change the public image of the labor and women's movements must be seen as part of a wider and deeper need to reframe all of liberal and progressive politics...

...New Leftists refused to listen to what people themselves said about their attachment to these values...

...Had New Leftists, and later the women's movement, been able to understand this concern, they might have picked up the banner of family, and created a pro-family movement of their own...

...This was not a call for opportunistically jumping on the family bandwagon...

...They were unable to defend the Vietnam policy, crumbling at their feet...

...We don't need talk of another government board or bureaucracy — but rather a vision of a different set of priorities...

...Imagine a movement helping people see how family problems are often the product of competitive and stress-producing tensions in the larger society...

...And it was this same moral arrogance that helped destroy the New Left as an effective political force...

...There is increasing appeal for corporations to lower their costs by leaving behind the U.S...

...Our approach called for a whole new way of articulating a progressive political vision...

...We called for a humanizing of the work 11 January 1985: 9 world, and for support groups for families, for a new definition of (he family which would recognize (he actual diversity of family forms, for an expansion of child-care, housing, employment, and for the full equality of power and respect for women both within the family and within the larger society...

...In the name of that goal, progressive forces can shape a pro-family program, an economic program, and a political program...

...To be fair, a few leading feminists responded enthusiastically to our approach — although they were never able to bring their organizations to take a lead in creating this coalition...

...As long as the liberals and progressives fail to adopt a more sophisticated psychological policy, and a deeper understanding of the needs that lead people to family, religion, and moral values, they condemn themselves to relative impotence and political suicide...

...Americans want the family to be strong not because they wish to oppress other people, or because males and adults long to tyrannize women or children, but because family is an ideal that represents their hopes for loving and caring relationships...

...They were as ruthless on themselves as they were on everyone else...

...moral values were used to induce guilt, to keep people from exploring their own directions for achieving pleasure and satisfaction in their lives, and to tie people to oppressive life situations...

...This arrogance was fostered by a political vision that called for instant transformation...

...In today's climate, the right will continue to grow...

...Hardly a person escaped without feeling guilty for not being non-elitist, non-sexist, non-competitive, nonmaterialistic enough...

...That compassion can start with compassion for our own failures in the past, but it must be extended equally to those on the right who choose paths we still think are mistaken...

...In addition, we realized that a family-oriented progressive politics would have much to learn from the religious world...

...But the genius of Reagan and the New Right was that they confronted the New Left on its own turf — on the very questions of values that the New Left had raised...

...But the move worked...

...It was precisely on this clash of values that the New Right was to win its greatest support, legitimating conservative politics as a majoritarian position, for the first time in fifty years...

...In some fundamental way they were right — even though this was an incredible manipulation to cover the way that the real elites of wealth and power were suddenly masking themselves as champions of the common citizen...

...They used the very categories of expectation that the Movement had created to justify their flight: the Movement had proved that politics does not work because, after all, people within the Movement turned out to be just as frail and wanting as everyone else...

...The constraints imposed by having to make a living in an oppressive work situation were largely unknown to the activists...

...We argued that family life was being undermined by contemporary society, and that fundamental structural changes would be necessary to strengthen family life...

...In this regard, the economic policies of liberals no longer make sense...

...In such a period, many people will increasingly give up on politics because they mistake the American public's rejection of the Democrats for a more general and deeper conservatism than really exists...

...If only the women's movement had been able to separate itself in the popular mind from the arrogance and elitism of those who made so many other women in America feel scorned, rather than liberated, by feminism...

...For that reason, we underestimated our incredible successes, and ignored how effective we had been in challenging the values upon which the system depends...

...This, then, is the political direction for a successful progressive politics: first, acknowledgment of past elitism, rejection of it, and a new attitude of compassion and understanding about the emotional needs of the American people...

...It was rather addressed to the deep feelings that so many people have about themselves: that they are not o.k., that their lives are a mess, that they have messed things up...

...We need a political offensive that speaks in broad terms about a loving society and its needs...

...Nixon ran TV ads showing a construction worker, far above the crowd, thinking out loud about how he resented the way these elites seemed to treat him with disrespect...

...But the Movement activists had no compassion for themselves...

...second...

...But I am also aware of the ways that people unfairly blame themselves for aspects of their personal life that are failing precisely because of an irrational and humanly destructive social environment...

...We will hear endless cries of woe, and be invited to attend endless conferences allegedly to rethink politics which end up being restatements of the same tired ideas and arenas for the next set of leaders to jockey for position so that they can give us reruns with more attractive faces in 1988...

...Instead, it will be much easier to explain the defeat Commonweal: 10 in 1984 once again as the other guy's fault: the irrationality or stupidity of the American public...

...Or imagine unions and liberal organizations sponsoring support groups in which people could learn skills to improve communication and trust within their families...

...As a therapist I am very aware of the ways that people contribute to and intensify their own unhappiness and powerlessness...

...Without in any way compromising our critique of the content of rightwing politics, we should approach the people who have moved to the political right in constant awareness of our shared humanity...

...This demand to make dramatic changes in the way we lived was a source of incredible moral power...

...In each case, the New Left had started from a valid critique: religion had been used as an opiate...

...We were saying, in effect, that we shared the same values that the right claimed to represent — and that made it appealing to millions of Americans who were not at heart sympathetic to conservative politics...

...Equally incensed was the left, represented most articulately by national leader of the Democratic Socialists of America Barbara Ehrenreich...

...The New Left had the view that the one way to guarantee against selling out was for every person to live in the present the values of the future society for which we were struggling...

...A first step only...

...The result was a Movement in which everyone was always criticizing oneself and each other as not living up to the goals...

...On the other hand, leadership of the labor movement saw it as too risky: quality of life issues, I was told in a meeting at Lane Kirkland's office in 1982, would be a can of worms, and "we can beat them just on the economic issues when Reaganomics collapses...

...The New Right tactic worked most powerfully when the right linked its charge of elitism to the way the left had made fun of religion, moral values, and family life...

...It is not because they are self-destructive that they vote for candidates who support the interests of the status quo...

...This is not some wishy-washy "investments" policy that gets the government involved in running those sectors of the economy that can't make it on their own...

...The New Right picked up on this...

...The Movement was suffused with surplus powerlessness — an intense but unconscious desire to lose, to fail, to prove the suspicion that most oppressed people hold — that they do not really deserve to have power...

...The struggles of the 1960s, however, are still being fought...

...It was in this context that Reagan and the conservatives made their counteroffensive...

...The new politics must commit itself to a single, easily understood goal: the desire to create a society in which love prevails and moral values are predominant, in which the economy and politics reject the me-firstism and self-centeredness of contemporary capitalism by putting in its place a society based on mutual caring, love, and cooperation...

...It was a message that speaks toa very deep need in the American people, to feel better about themselves...

...Liberals and progressives, both within the Democratic party and in the various independent projects and movements, must start with a repudiation of the moral arrogance of the past, and assert their recognition that the aspirations of most Americans are for quite decent goals and ends...

...Their desire for instant change was itself a reflection of America's belief in the right of everyone to immediate gratification of all desires...

...I fear that this is a very difficult step to ask of our leaders in the Democratic party, the labor movement, the women's movement...

...Nor did they have a theory of society to help them understand what forces might limit transcendence...

...families had indeed been oppressive to women...

...With no one to challenge them on these issues, and with no one to take up the powerful energies that the movements of the 1960s engaged but ultimately dissipated, Reagan's victory can only lead to a further consolidation of the right, and a further demoralizing of those who have struggled so long for peace and justice...

...imperial ambitions in Latin America...

...Had they listened, the New Leftists would have discovered that there were rational elements in the American public's ties to "traditional values...

...Or, alternatively — and the alternative is, I think, the only logical one — we must go the full distance, and project a politics that calls for democratic planning of investments and restrictions on capitalists and corporations to move money or resources abroad...

...The truth, of course, is that any such movement will inevitably have many of the same defects as the population as a whole...

...Because the American people are fundamentally racist, classist, sexist, and afraid of any new ideas, afraid of being free, so the New Left argument went, the New Right could win the values argument: it simply played directly to these irrational elements in the American psyche...

...How sad, as well, for millions of union members that their leadership is stuck in a style of articulating issues that excludes the human needs so deeply addressed by Christian revivalist and bom-again movements, albeit in distorted forms...

...Because we attempted to live the values of the future in the present, we could never be satisfied with what had already been achieved...

...All that progressives can do in such circumstances is to try to "educate" people as to why these "bad attitudes" are really not in their long-term interests...

...Imagine political ads that talked about why children so often adopt the values of the marketplace and reject those of the family...

...If capitalist managers retain all power to make investment decisions...

...New Left activists were quick to raise visions of a whole different way of living — a way that involved challenging the relentless competition, elitism, bureaucratic control, racism, and sexism that we saw pervading American society...

...It is that vision that propelled his most recent candidacy and made his campaign popular even among sections of the population who did not fare well materially under his presidency...

...The notion of the sacred makes possible a deeper framework for loving and committed relationships than any provided so far by the secular humanist world...

...The implicit assertion that long-term, committed loving relationships are something of ultimate value was to be a basis for our political programs...

...even today the legacy of anti-Vietnam sentiment amongst the electorate puts constraints on how dramatically they can move to defend U.S...

...11 January 1985: 11 development of a progressive pro-family perspective, acceptance of religious and ethical values, and reframing of our program in terms of those values...

...WE NEED to understand the fundamental rationality of people...

...Rather, it was assured because he knew what the struggle was really about, while Mondale showed no sign of understanding...

...It is because they understand that unless that power is fundamentally transformed, they had better play ball with those woo have it...

...If this is perceived as just another liberal tinkering with an established distribution of power and wealth that no one wants to challenge, it will fail...

...Not because its programs work or make sense (indeed, people will certainly express their upset at specific failures in the 1986 elections by voting for more Democrats in Congress), but because they tap the underlying deep issues the liberals and progressives continue to ignore...

...Many people fled from the experiment...

...We pointed to the stress that people experience in work, a direct result of their powerlessness to control any aspect of their production, and the way that stress was brought home into families where it erupted into family violence when not deflected by alcohol, drugs, or emotional withdrawal...

...The New Left account of this victory is self-serving and distorted...

...Capitalists will only invest their monies where they have the best chance of making a buck, and they are willing to abandon all of us if they don't receive adequate support and encouragement...

...They remain blind to the fact that these same members fill the churches and often vote for the political right — even when so voting runs against their economic interests...

...and third, a clear move towards democratization of the economy a.s the only economically serious response for America in the next two decades...

...While we laughed at the Nixon White House's overestimation of our power, and felt that their fear of revolution was "paranoia,'' we simultaneously refused to take seriously how incredibly deep we had struck at the system of domination...

...But it was also true that what people were aspiring to was basically decent and hardly to be dismissed out of hand...

...Helping to counteract the irrational self-blaming that people engage in would be a first step toward building the kind of consciousness and trust enabling people to consider other aspects of a program for serious social change...

...Ehrenreich went on to write that judging from the polls which then showed overwhelming support for the ERA and abortion rights, her own already mobilized constituency "is far larger than anything the profamily movement can muster...

...Basically, the New Leftists (particularly those who have remained loyal to their youthful commitments), argue Commonweal: 8 that the right has appealed to the most base motives in the population...

...IT IS THE GENIUS of Ronald Reagan and his advisors that they understood what was really at stake in 1984...

...A progressive movement that helped people understand this interaction would be a movement that could once again be respected and trusted by Americans...

...if they remain free to move their capital and productive operations at will to sections of the country or the world where workers can be paid less or more easily pushed around...

...The right was incensed that progressives would try to enter "their" turf and address one of their most important selling points...

...was the central message of the Reagan campaign's mass psychology...

...Instead of appreciating the moves many people were making away from support of the Vietnam war, the Movement made those outside feel they were not doing enough, that they were on a morally lower plane, and that Movement people could barely tolerate them...

...Agnew and Nixon nationally, and Reagan in California were successful in branding the Movement as "elitist...

...At their invitation, I debated New Right leader Paul Weyrich at the Moral Majority's annual convention in 1982...

...There was no recognition of the internal and external constraints that might put limits on how much transformation any one person could make in any short amount of time...

...if they can literally cause recession by their negative reactions or over-reactions to liberal moves to curb their worst excesses, then it really is irrational to make them angry...

...Rather, it is a clear-cut offensive against the right of a relatively small number of capitalists to make decisions that affect everyone without democratic participation in those decisions...

...The left cannot sit around bemoaning how stupid everyone is, alternating between moments of gloom in which it repeats the view that people are just fundamentally racist, sexist, or imperialist, and moments of hope in which it produces new fantasies to replace the "gender gap," "new registrants," the belief that "the poor will finally speak out," and faith that "middle-income workers know they are being hurt" — all those illusions of the 1984 season...

...THE MOST IMPORTANT issues involving "traditional values" centered around the family...

...The notion that people might have been sufficiently scarred from emotional deprivations in childhood to limit how quickly they could be expected to transcend their constituted emotional defenses was dismissed as bourgeois psychology...

...The implicit argument of the right wing goes something like this (though they don't use this particular language): "We are in a period where American capitalism is under pressure from rival capitalist systems...

...Mondale and the leadership of the AFL-CIO wanted the campaign to be about the New Deal — but the fact is that the Republicans have basically accepted the New Deal ever since Eisenhower, and that the alterations they wish to make in terms of cutbacks of expenditures represent an insensitive tinkering with the system, not a desire to throw it out...

...And yet, even today, those who oppose a progressive pro-family perspective are given credence as women's movement spokespeople...

...Yes, it was true that often the rational elements were contained within an irrational shell...

...It makes more sense to follow the conservatives in saying that we had better give them whatever it takes to make them feel happy...

...THE CENTRAL FEATURE of such a politics would be compassion — compassion for all of us, left and right, who have not been able to create as good a world as we want and need...

...Imagine political ads that talked about the way the "I'm-going-to-get-mine" mentality of contemporary Reaganism undermines our sense of loyalty in relationships...

...In the name of creating a more humane future, and of living the values of that future in the present, the Movement became very inhumane...

...People are too smart to take a few steps to the left...

...The underlying premises often reinforce the idea of each person as an isolated individual and cut against the widespread desire for "community.'' What gets lost is the essential truth that human beings are fundamentally in relationship, not isolated monads...

...From the Christian community we could learn the essential notion that we are all sinners — not as an excuse for future wrongdoing, but as an approach that starts with understanding that we are all one in this enterprise of trying to create a decent society...

...Writing in the March 13, 1982 edition of The Nation, Ehrenreich said (hat the impulses that propel people towards a pro-family perspective "are nasty ones: misogyny, racism, sexual repressiveness, and a punitive attitude toward young people.'' With such an attitude, both New Leftists and feminists were unwilling to accept the proposals of Friends of Families and saw them as a sell-out to patriarchy and oppression...

...To this, the liberals' policy of humanizing capitalism by restraining the worst offenses and trying to put bandages on the parts of society most severely hurt by the irrationalities of an unplanned competitive system seems worse than naive — it seems to miss the boat entirely...

...But our justification was quite different...

...However, it is this very approach which explains in part why the American people were never attracted to the New Left's positions...

...But it also led to constant self-denigration and internally destructive behavior...

...We argued for remaking societal institutions so that they would foster mutual caring, community, and equality of respect...

...Reagan came to prominence by standing up to the "Movement" of the sixties and articulating an alternative vision of values...

...Progressive economics makes less sense than Reaganomics — unless progressives are willing to raise a vision of a fundamentally different allocation of power...

...The 1984 election was the last round in the struggles begun in the 1960s — not those begun in the 1930s...

...work force and internationalizing their productive operations...

...The Democrats and left-of-center activists generally have refused to take seriously the issues of moral vision, quality of life, and values...

...The idea that unions should care about the spiritual, ethical, and emotional concerns of their membership, and that union meetings should be reconstructed to emphasize education, politics, and emotional solidarity, remains foreign and suspect to labor movement leaders who continually insist that all their members care about are the small wage hikes the union in any event can no longer deliver...

...Indeed, the use of massive military expenditures to spend us out of the recession of the early 1980s was Keynesian fine-tuning in the best Democratic party tradition, and relied on the same rhetoric that Jimmy Carter used his last years in office...

...It was not, as the progressives would like to pretend, merely an appeal to thoughtless patriotism (watch how carefully, for example, Reagan kept his belligerent intentions towards Central America out of the news until after he had won reelection...

...The current leaders of the Democrats remain, in an ironic way, vulgar Marxists — believing that economic issues are everything, and hoping that a combination of cutbacks and threats of economic chaos from the deficit would scare the American people into the liberal camp...

...Government must be seen as their ally, not as an antagonist restricting their profits, regulating their methods of operation, or constraining their ability to do what they think is in their own best interest...

...The myopia was astonishing...

...How hollow that sounds today...

...Not so the progressive forces of the 1960s...

...They either want to go far enough so that (hey can actually win — i.e...

...Together with an impressive assortment of progressive leaders, we created a coalition called Friends of Families...

...This lack of compassion, of course, judged the American public severely, as being morally deficient in general...

...Some of our specifics were already pan of the program of the liberal forces...

...Here, too, the moral and religious commitment must speak louder than any bureaucratic fumbling...

...We were not calling for "fairness" as the ultimate value...

...But in each case the New Left failed to understand the other side of the picture, the positive side of these traditional values...

...because if the liberals and progressives could ever get to the point where people would again be willing to listen, a point which I believe can only be reached when the anti-family, anti-values, and anti-religious perspectives are dumped in favor of the psychological approach I advocate above, then there still needs to be something substantive to say...

...not have to face high unemployment and inflation because the corporations are upset with us — or not go that route at all...

...The New Right immediately caught the importance of such a challenge...

...Mondale was the prisoner of labor bureaucrats who for years have thought they could keep union members in line by simply bringing them a larger supply of material goodies, primarily in terms of wages and retirement benefits, while leaving aside questions of personal dignity, daily occupational stress, and a sense of control over one's work as matters to be resolved in the private lives of workers...

...Everything was to be measured in terms of a Utopian future...

...The identification of liberals and progressives with a politics of "fairness" and "rights" has severe limitations...

...Eventually, many of them left politics to find psychological methods for creating the self-transformation that the Movement had failed to provide...

...The moral power of those critiques was vast...

...The validation that America is "o.k...