Time for change

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Mon Dec-31-07 11:38 PM
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My Vote for Decency

Edited on Tue Jan-01-08 12:35 AM by Time for change

Some call it “moral values”. Some call it character. I call it decency. The general principle was enshrined in our Declaration of Independence more than two and a quarter centuries ago:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Those principles were expanded upon more than a decade later with the creation of our Constitution, especially its first ten amendments. Those amendments gave us freedom of speech, assembly and religion, freedom against unreasonable searches and seizures, freedom against arbitrary imprisonment, freedom against cruel and unusual punishment by our government and more.

The same principle is proclaimed by most or all of the world’s major religions in what is commonly known as “The Golden Rule”, which roughly translates to “Treat others as you want to be treated.”

In this post I will explain the reasons why decency (as evidenced by the totality of a candidate’s actions and words in demonstrating adherence to the above noted principles) is the most important attribute that I look for in determining my vote for the Presidency. Then I’ll discuss what this has to do with the Presidency of Jimmy Carter. And lastly I’ll explain why Dennis Kucinich and John Edwards are my two preferred candidates (which is not to imply that the other Democratic candidates aren’t decent people).

A brief overview of the deficient record of decency in the history of the United States

If this was just a matter of history, without direct relevance to our present times, it wouldn’t be so important to me. But that is sadly not the case:

Domestic history
Despite the great ideals laid forth in our Declaration of Independence and their basis in law set forth in our Constitution, it was clear from the birth of our nation that in reality those ideals were not meant to apply to large segments of our population, including women and people who didn’t own property. Most egregious of all were hundreds of thousands of former Africans who were born or sold into slavery, stripped of all rights whatsoever, and who often had to endure a lifetime of brutality at the hands of their white masters.

Though slavery was officially ended in 1865 with the passage of our 13th Amendment, and though our government sought for ten years to transform the freedoms granted our former slaves in theory into reality, that effort was abandoned with the end of Reconstruction in 1876. Then followed more than a half century of repression and terror in the South, aimed at preventing black Americans from attaining any kind of social, political, or economic equality with white Americans.

Though some major steps were taken in the 1950s and 1960s to bring the lives of African-Americans (and others who are discriminated against) closer to the ideals expressed in our Declaration and our Constitution, we still have a long way to go. Today 24% of African-Americans live in poverty, more than a quarter million are in prison for drug offenses alone (though only about 15% of drug users are black, blacks constitute about half of those imprisoned for drug offenses), and hundreds of thousands are disenfranchised from voting through a variety of dirty and illegal tricks.

Foreign history
In the foreign policy arena, our record isn’t any better. The continental expansion of our nation involved more than a century of wars against the then current inhabitants of our continent, leading to their near extermination and a war of aggression against Mexico (1846-8).

Then beginning in 1893, we overthrew, helped to overthrow, or went to war against the legitimate governments of dozens of nations, including Hawaii (1893), Cuba (1898), Puerto Rico (1898), the Philippines (1899-1902), Nicaragua (1909), Honduras (1912), Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Indonesia (1965), Vietnam (1961-73), Chile (1973), Panama (1989), and Iraq (2003-???).

As an example of what these interventions entailed, William Blum writes in “A Concise History of US Global Interventions, 1945 to the Present”, about United States intervention in 11 different Latin American countries during the Cold War. The main purpose of these interventions was to facilitate changes to regimes that were friendlier to the United States. For this purpose, we developed the School of the Americas, which was used to train native personnel in the techniques and ideology of insurgency and counter-insurgency, including torture. This placed the U.S. in opposition to any who sought free speech to discuss problems, alternative means to solve problems, or democratic means to change governments. More specifically, the enemy was identified as the poor, those who assist the poor, such as church workers, educators, and unions, and those who held certain ideologies such as “socialism” or “liberation theology”.

The Jimmy Carter Presidency

Why write about the Carter Presidency now that we’re just about to start the Presidential primary season that will result in a newly elected President in less than a year?

Jimmy Carter is perhaps the most decent U.S. President of my lifetime, and also the most unfairly maligned. I don’t claim that Carter didn’t make his share of mistakes. But sandwiched in between a good many U.S. presidents who did more than their share of contributing to the shameful U.S. foreign policy history described above, Jimmy Carter valiantly tried to turn our country in a different direction. His efforts to move his country away from imperialism and towards peaceful coexistence with the other nations of the world challenged certain powerful entrenched interests in our country. In my opinion, that is the primary reason why he is so maligned today – not the mistakes he made or the bad luck that befell him.

This is not water under the bridge. In my opinion Carter’s presidency should serve as a model for us in many respects. But as long as Carter’s Presidency continues to be maligned, as right wing ideologues have so long conspired to effect, future U.S. Presidential candidates and Presidents will tend to feel pressure against embracing what he stood for. That would be very bad for our country.

Carter on racial discrimination
As a Georgia politician in the days when racial prejudice was the accepted norm in the U.S. South, there must have been a good deal of political pressure on Jimmy Carter to go the road of most Southern politicians. But Carter never succumbed to that temptation. In both his political campaigns and in his official actions he showed that he was above that:

As Governor of Georgia, Carter worked hard to heal the state's racial divisions, announcing in his inaugural address that "the time for racial discrimination is over." It was an unprecedented statement for a southern governor, but Carter made good on his words. He increased the number of African American state employees by 40 percent and hung portraits of Martin Luther King Jr. and other notable black Georgians in the state capitol. He equalized the funding of schools in rich and poor districts of the state…

Carter’s efforts to stem the tide of U.S. imperialism
On the campaign trail in 1976, Carter was an outspoken critic of U.S. imperialism:

We’re ashamed of what our government is as we deal with other nations around the world… What we seek is … a foreign policy that reflects the decency and generosity and common sense of our own people.

Morris Berman, in his book “Dark Ages America – The Final Phases of Empire”, discusses Carter’s commitment to human rights as President:

Carter never stopped talking about the subject… He cut out aid to Argentina, Ethiopia, Uruguay, Chile, Nicaragua, Rhodesia, and Uganda because of human rights abuses

Berman discusses the hopes engendered by Carter’s 1976 election to the Presidency and how the American people turned out not to be ready for that kind of change:

For a brief moment in American postwar history, the position of sanity found an echo… We would work for a more humane world order in our international relations, not seek merely to defeat an adversary; military solution would not come first; efforts would be made to reduce the sale of arms to developing countries…

But… the Carter morality was, within two years, heavily out of step with the return to the usual public demand for a more muscular and military foreign policy… Out-of-office cold warriors closed ranks, forming organizations such as the Committee on the Present Danger… Their goal – to revive the Cold War – was ultimately successful; Ronald Reagan and CIA-assisted torture in Central America were the inevitable results. And in the course of all this, a picture was formed of Jimmy Carter as weak, bungling, inept… That Carter would be perceived as weak, and presidents such as Reagan and Bush Jr. as strong, says a lot about who we are as a people…

And Berman explains why our country was not ready for a President like Jimmy Carter:

Americans as a people don’t really like to look inward… When Carter asked us to look at our wasteful energy policy, our self-contradictory foreign policy, and our questionable political morality, he was asking us to reflect on ourselves, on who we were… And this would have inevitably led to looking at ourselves from the outside, seeing ourselves as others saw us.

Why character is so important to me in determining my vote for president

To me, the character of the candidates is even more important than their stated positions on issues. To explain why I feel that way, consider the Iraq War for example. All current Democratic candidates say that they intend to end our involvement in that war. Yes, their plans differ in details as to how they would end our involvement and how long they think it might take. And that is all important.

But what is more important is what they will actually do once elected. Saying that they intend to end our involvement in the war does not necessarily mean that they will actually do so or even that they really want to. I’m not certain that all of our Democratic candidates actually intend to end the war if that means terminating U.S. presence in the region. I feel that I have to judge their character – their decency – in order to attempt to ascertain what they will actually do as President.

It is not decent for a nation to repeatedly overthrow the democratically elected governments of other nations or to go to war against them in order to serve its own self-interest.

It is not decent for a nation to run up huge debts that will greatly burden future generations.

It is not decent for the most powerful nation in the world to refuse to work with other nations to preserve our environment for future generations – especially when that nation is itself responsible for about highly disproportionate extent of the problem.

It is not decent to imprison people indefinitely without trial or charges.

It is not decent to torture people.

It is not decent that in the wealthiest nation in the world, 37 million people, constituting almost 13% of the nation’s population, live in poverty.

It is not decent that 47 million Americans are without health insurance.

The most important factor in deciding my vote for President of the United States will be which candidate most shares my views about decency, as iterated above.

Why I intend to vote for Kucinich or Edwards

Dennis Kucinich is my favorite candidate. I intend to vote for him unless his candidacy does not appear to be viable by the time of the Maryland primaries – in which case I will vote for John Edwards. To explain how I’ve come to this decision I’ll end this post by saying a few words about Kucinich, Edwards, and the two Democratic front runners:

Clinton
Though Hillary Clinton has a very good voting record, not including her votes on the Iraq War Resolution and the Kyle-Lieberman Amendment, the great amount of money she’s accepted from corporate lobbyists is worrisome. She has said that taking money from lobbyists does not cause her “to be influenced by a lobbyist or a particular interest group”. That statement in itself is worrisome, since it appears to imply that the mixing of money and politics is not a serious threat to our democracy. An excerpt from a recent article in The Nation sums up what I agree has been an extremely cautious campaign:

Hillary Clinton has proven herself a dedicated centrist, and when the center moves left, she has shown she can move too. When it comes to trade and globalization, she has shifted from being an ardent supporter of NAFTA to calling for a "timeout" on all such deals

Obama
There are many good things that can be said about Barack Obama. A major problem that I have with him, however, is his substantial efforts to position himself towards the center. These are his own words from his book, “The Audacity of Hope”:

We Democrats are just, well, confused. There are those who still champion the old-time religion, defending every New Deal and Great Society program from Republican encroachment, achieving ratings of 100 percent from the liberal interest groups …

Mainly, though, the Democratic Party has become the party of reaction. In reaction to a war that is ill conceived, we appear suspicious of all military action. In reaction to those who proclaim the market can cure all ills, we resist efforts to use market principles to tackle pressing problems… We lose elections and hope for the courts to foil Republican plans. We lose the courts and wait for a White House scandal. And increasingly we feel the need to match the Republican right in stridency and hardball tactics…

There are many legitimate criticisms that one could level at the Democratic Party. But to criticize it as being too liberal is not something that I look for in a candidate for President. And to say that Democrats are too “suspicious of all military action” is a deal breaker as far as I’m concerned. What the hell military action is he talking about that Democrats have been suspicious of but shouldn’t have been suspicious of?

Edwards
The main thing that very much excites me about Edwards’ candidacy is his dedication to eradicating poverty. In a previous post I’ve discussed the fact that his plans to address this issue are far superior to any of the other candidates, with Kucinich being the only one close to him.

Poverty has not been a popular issue in American politics. In fact, it’s almost been a taboo subject. Edwards’ campaigns have given it new life as an issue. He has been very consistent in emphasizing it as a centerpiece of his campaigns – in both 2004 and 2008. The claims of his “sudden transformation” into a populist candidate are difficult for me to fathom. I agree with what The Nation has to say about him:

Edwards has displayed a smart, necessary partisanship – denouncing corporate power and its crippling influence on government. He has argued with conviction that government does best when it does more for its citizens. His campaign has met some roadblocks… Perhaps some have been turned off by the media's relentless fixation on the "three H's" – haircuts, hedge funds and houses--symbols of the gap between his populist rhetoric and his lifestyle. Nonetheless, he has been at his best when taking on spiraling economic inequality. In a series of bold initiatives, he has called for an end to poverty in thirty years, universal healthcare, a hike in the minimum wage to $9.50 by 2012 and an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 – accomplished in part by the creation of a green-collar jobs corps. His policy proposals are not always perfect, but they are uncommonly detailed and crafted in conjunction with progressive organizations. Most important, his programs were announced first, and they clearly pushed Clinton and Obama in a progressive direction.

His 2002 vote for the Iraq War resolution does worry me, and is one important reason why I prefer Kucinich. People will just have to decide for themselves whether or not he is sincere in his admission that that vote was a mistake. I believe he is.

Kucinich
I agree with Kucinich on just about everything. A President Kucinich would unquestionably make every effort to lead a government that seeks a foreign policy that is decent and generous, as Jimmy Carter did. Most important he is the only candidate with the courage to tell the American people what the real reason for the Iraq War was and is, and he is the only candidate to call for impeachment of the most lawless President and Vice President our country has ever known. That takes a lot of courage. This is what The Nation had to say about him:

In his stands on the issues, Dennis Kucinich comes closest to embodying the ideals of this magazine. He has been a forceful critic of the Bush Administration, opposing the Patriot Act and spearheading the motion to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney. He is the only candidate to have voted against the Iraq War in 2003 and has voted against funding it ever since. Of all the serious candidates, only he and Governor Bill Richardson propose a full and immediate withdrawal from Iraq. And only Kucinich's plan sets aside funds for reparations. Moreover, Kucinich has used his presidential campaigns to champion issues like cutting the military budget and abolishing nuclear weapons; universal, single-payer healthcare; campaign finance reform; same-sex marriage and an end to the death penalty and the war on drugs. A vote for him would be a principled one.

But for reasons that have to do with the corrupting influence of money and media on national elections as well as with his campaign's shortcomings – such as its failure to organize a grassroots base of donors and web activists – a democratic mass movement has not coalesced around Kucinich's run for President. The progressive vision is there, but the strategy necessary to win and then govern is lacking.

Well, we’ll see about that. If he manages to find a strategy capable of winning, I don’t doubt that he’ll likely find one capable of governing as well. Anyhow, despite his poor showing in the polls thus far, I don’t think that it’s right to count him out before the first vote has been cast.

As I’ve said before, I will vote for whoever is the Democratic nominee, for the simple reason that I believe all eight of them to be far better choices than anyone who has any chance of winning the Republican nomination.

I believe that a U.S. President who will make a concerted effort to reverse the tide of U.S. imperialism or to end poverty in our country or both will go a long way towards making us a more decent society. As far as I can see, Dennis Kucinich and John Edwards have shown the greatest promise of doing those things.

My Vote for Decency

Wake up America!:kick:

Wake up America!:kick: