An Organizing Idea

Looking back over my posts so far, I've noticed a word that keeps coming up: the word is "community". Community is a very powerful idea, one that evokes something very deep and important; it speaks to one of those basic human drives (some have said the most basic), the urge to be connected.

But community is about more than connection; it also is about seperateness. The ideal of community presupposes distinct members who bring diverse contributions to the whole. It is the members' sharing of something with the whole that makes them a part of it; but it is their adding something to it that makes them valuable to it. Our communities are where we work out who we are in the world -- how we are connected to others, and how we are different. A strong community celebrates both the connection and the difference.

This idea of community seems to bring together my own ideas about politics -- it is the organizing principle that animates all the rest. And when leaders appeal to this principle, it brings out the best in us. That's why it's a principle worth understanding better. But that's for another post.

Katrina as Symbol

The Iraq war represents our sins of commission; Katrina represents our sins of omission. The shame of our response to Hurricane Katrina is that it is a failure of the fundamental obligation of a community -- the obligation to take care of its own. To me, our failure to respond appropriately to Katrina's devastation is a powerful symbol of our American community's broader failures: our failures to take care of the most vulnerable in our society.

Our country's severely mentally ill population walks the streets, recategorized as "homeless." Nearly 10 million children are uninsured. Schools serving our poorest children are poorly staffed and disintegrating. Decent housing is increasingly out of reach for a substantial portion of the population. In the neighborhoods where they can live, crime is rampant. And the list goes on.

I can't understand why our progressive Congressional and Presidential candidates have not latched onto the Katrina disaster as the powerful symbol that it is. Making the reconstruction effort a central issue is the right thing to do, because we have a moral obligation to help Americans whose communities have been destroyed rebuild. But it also is good politics, because it represents something much broader -- the idea of community itself.

Two Anniversaries

This September marks the fifth anniversary of the terrorist strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's strike on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

After five years of telling us that our invasion of Iraq was intimately linked to combating the 9/11 aggressors, President Bush is now trying to distract us from the war he began there. Practical progressives cannot allow themselves, however, to be distracted; this disastrous war is the most important issue facing our nation today and is inextricably linked to all of the other challenges we face as a national community.

All of the rationales offered for our involvement in Iraq have proven spurious. Before our invasion, Iraq was not a haven for terrorists, as we were urged to believe. Everyone now acknowledges this.

Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, as we were urged to believe. Everyone now acknowledges this, too.

We have not been "welcomed with open arms as liberators," as we were urged to expect. Everyone now acknowledges this.

Our invasion has not fostered and will not foster a new democratic order in the Middle East, as we were promised. Those who do not acknowledge this are deluding themselves.

The direct financial cost of the Iraq war to our national treasury now exceeds $330 billion, according to the National Priorities Project (see the link at the top of the page; for a motivator, make it your home page!) Of course, the human cost is incalculable, as is the cost in lost prestige, power, respect and goodwill abroad.

We must get out. Our ill-advised invasion and attempt at building a democratic Iraq is doomed to failure; the best we can hope for is to minimize our losses and leave the region with one or two islands of stability in a partitioned Iraq.

These two anniversaries -- 9/11 and Katrina -- are inextricably connected. If our disastrous, nonsensical, and ineffective response to 9/11 represents our national failure, our nation's non-response to Katrina represents our national disgrace. The immediate failures last September were a travesty, and the travesty continues. Hundreds of thousands of people remain displaced and helpless, cities remain devastated, communities destroyed or struggling.

Our own people need our help. An entire region of our nation is striving, alone, to recover from an epic natural disaster. Our resources, our national energy, and our attention pour into a bottomless abyss in Iraq.

The reconstruction of New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast, not a fool's errand in the Middle East, should be the grand project of our time.

Julie, Ryan, and Me

Another Political Blog

Like so many, I just can't keep quiet anymore. Things have been going the wrong way in American politics for six long years, and I have been waiting and hoping that Americans' steady good sense and decency ultimately would prevail. But, of course, waiting and hoping aren't enough, and so I have decided to speak and act as well.

I am a practical American progressive. I am progressive in the sense that I believe in a national community that works together toward solving the human problems that have troubled our society -- everything from inequality and poverty to crime and terrorism. I am practical in that I acknowledge there are limits to what government can accomplish; in that I recognize unpleasant realities; and in that I know that winning elections and persuading voters is essential to accomplishing anything at all. And I am American not only by birth and choice, but also because I believe fervently in the principles of American democracy and in the ideas and ideals of our great founders and framers.

What I hope for this journal is to begin to articulate, with others who wish to contribute, some ways to promote practical progressivism in American politics. I want to start by discussing what a practical progressive politics should look like -- what positions, principles and ideas should animate such a politics and how they all hang together. At the same time, I'm not looking for a sterile philosophical discussion but one that addresses the big issues of today -- the Iraq war and all our troubled relations with the rest of the world, the economic stagnation and slippage that most Americans face, the persistent problem of multigenerational poverty, America's poor elementary and secondary education system, access to health care, the balooning public debt, and, of course, our problematic relationship with our natural environment.

Why engage in this discussion? In part it is simply the satisfaction of understanding more and developing a coherent social and political worldview. But to be a little bit more ambitious: I want to push our progressive leaders to be more visionary -- to see all these challenges as connected and to learn to present them in a way that can generate the passion among our countrymen that is so necessary to addressing them. In short, I want to push our leaders to lead better.

It's a lot to talk about, so we may as well get started.