Democrats and Values
Introduction
The Republicans seem to think that they have a monopoly on values. They forget that we all have values, but certainly not the same ones.
On this page, we will collect articles from members and other sources that discuss Democratic values.
The Constitution and Poverty
Merrill Ring's letter was published in the Claremont Courier on December 21. The issue was how the US Constitution is to be read with respect to social equity. The Grannis letter referred to is a fine expression of economic libertarianism: and to think such a view is to be found here in Claremont!
Scott Grannis (Courier, 12/17) notes that “nowhere in the Constitution does it say that the role of government is to provide charity to the poor”. It somehow slipped his mind that the Constitution also nowhere says that government aid to the poor is prohibited. Those silences mean that we must interpret the Constitution to see whether such government activity is permitted, prohibited or required by the detailed provisions of the document.
There is no part of the Constitution which prohibits such policy. The best way to understand the matter is to realize that it has various features which demand that government undertake to provide a satisfactory level of well-being to all citizens. There is for instance the requirement that the Constitution and the government established under it “provide for the General Welfare”, a phrase used twice (Preamble, Article I). The issue of what providing for the general welfare amounts to in the world we live in is not to be settled by what providing for that welfare meant in 1787: the social, economic, technological and moral climate has changed too drastically.
The best reading of the Constitution in light of the facts of today’s world is that it requires us, and our government, to do what Grannis misleadingly refers to as “providing charity for the poor”.
It is not just a matter of the facts, however. For along with them, to work out what the Constitution requires, there must also be a moral view of what we ought to do, given that the social and economic facts are as they are. I must say that the moral view behind Grannis’ reading of the Constitution is that of Scrooge before his epiphany: narrow, grasping, unable to recognize humanity. One could at least see the poor as Lincoln did: God must have loved them since he made so many. Or even better, one can see that justice requires us to treat them as fellow citizens and to offer them, not as a matter of charity but as a matter of right, the opportunity to make the most of themselves.
Capital Punishment: Execution of Stanley Williams
Ivan Light's letter was published in the Claremont Courier. This is a slightly revised version.
The execution of Stanley Williams offers a virtual textbook case of what is wrong with capital punishment. Suppose a wicked fellow were convicted of murder, then shifted to the side of the angels while in prison, becoming a human resource for our troubled region. Given capital punishment, we'd have to execute him anyway, wouldn't we? despite lack of certainty about his guilt and despite his substantial community service, which would, but for his execution, have continued into the future.
Wouldn't execution be a wretched and counter-productive option for California? We would in such a case have diminished respect for the law and diminished our society's already tattered fabric of social cohesion out of the slavish necessity to enforce an unwise statute. Yet, isn't that exactly what happened in the case of Stanley Williams?
The Governor said Williams had not repented because he had not expressed remorse for his crime, but possibly Williams did not commit the murders for which he was condemned. He denied it right up to the end. In that case, one can hardly be surprised that he expressed no repentance. Stuck with the death penalty on the statute book, the Governor then enforced a penalty that should never have been there in the first place. If the voters of California will only think through the implications of this Williams case, they will surely see that the State of California would have been better off on the morning of December 11, 2005 if it did not have the death penalty on the statute book.
Let us repeal the death penalty before it does any more damage to our state!
The Question of Torture
The following is a letter from the President of the JVCDC concerning the practice of torture sanctioned by the Bush administration. It was sent to the Claremont Courier, The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. It has been published in the Courier and the Daily Bulletin.
Dear Editor:
President Bush says ‘We do not torture’. That has echoes of President Nixon saying ‘I am not a crook.’ The evidence is overwhelming that in the aftermath of 9/11 the United States, as a matter of policy under the Bush Administration, has engaged in torture. From Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay to Saddam’s old chambers at Abu Ghraib, we have inflicted physical and psychological pain on our prisoners. We have outsourced torture, sending prisoners to countries which we know will torture them. The CIA has set up extra-legal camps in, at least, Eastern Europe where interrogation methods can escape the scrutiny possible here at home. This is not the work of a few renegade soldiers; it is Bush administration policy.
It will not do to say it isn’t torture, that the techniques employed fall short of that. President Clinton was ridiculed for saying that what he did with Monica Lewinsky fell short of having sex. In the much more important question of torture, ridicule is not appropriate – condemnation is.
Engaging in the interrogation practices which have been documented is a moral stain on this country, that is on each of us. We have forfeited the moral high road. That is why it is necessary for the entire country to speak out and demand that the policies and actions approved by the Bush administration be stopped and repudiated immediately. The U.S. Senate has spoken by voting overwhelmingly for an anti-torture measure, although George W. Bush opposes it and the Republican leadership will try to bury it. When will the House of Representatives speak out?
Bob Gerecke
President
Jerry Voorhis Claremont Democratic ClubTheologian Says Conservative Christians Struck a Devil's Bargain with Neo-Cons
By Ivan Light
Claremont Sept. 9, 2005 - - - - - When conservative Christians were ready to start voting around 1999, their leaders handed them to the neo-con wing of the Republican Party, which thus obtained the mass base they never could otherwise have acquired. Speaking in Claremont, The Rev. Charles Bayer indicated that voting was not something conservative Christians always had done. Historically, most conservative Christians abstained from political action, while significant numbers of liberal Christians were politically active. Those days are over. Rev. Pat Robertson and Rev. Jerry Falwell politicized the previously quiescent and apolitical mass base of conservative Christians, and Karl Rove realized that the Republican Party could have these voters in exchange for resolute opposition to homosexual marriage and legal abortions. The long dominant "realist" wing of the Republican Party did not have any reason to oppose either, and would not have done so, and George W. Bush was willing to embrace these views in exchange for the votes of the conservative Christians. Bush also converted from a majoritarian Republican of the realist camp to the minority neo-con position under the tutelage of Karl Rove and in the expectation that the conservative Christian voters could propel him to power. Candidate Bush appealed to conservative Christians who recognized him as one of them because of his overtly pious demeanor, his stand on abortion and homosexual marriage and his folksy ways.
That said, Bayer indicated that conservative Christians were seduced by the neo-cons, and incautiously embraced many positions that are actually repugnant to their views and certainly have nothing to do with Christianity. These include the prompt appeal to force in international relations through preemptive wars, failure to plan an exit strategy in Iraq, the rejection of environmental treaties, the weakening of the United Nations, capital punishment, guns in everybody's hands, the reduction of taxes on the rich, lax oversight of corporations resulting in Enron and World Com bankruptcies, tightening the screws on low-income debtors, and incompetent management of the Hurricane Katrina emergency.
Now many conservative Christians are waking up to the devil's bargain that their leaders made with the neo-cons. They are increasingly uncomfortable with much of the neo-con program. The Democratic Party can initiate a dialogue with them, Bayer said. There is common ground on abortion because the Democratic Party wants to minimize abortion without criminalizing it. Once this is realized, said Bayer, some conservative Christians can back Democratic candidates and programs, acquiring therewith a way out of the discomfort many already feel with the neo-con and neo-pagan political program of the Bush administration. Homosexual marriage is a tougher issue, Bayer thought, but even here there is room for compromise with at least those conservative Christians who are willing to tolerate civil unions that convey all the legal rights of marriage. Bayer thought that it is urgent for Democrats to open a real and meaningful dialogue with conservative Christians; the time for shouting at one another from opposite street corners is over.
Rev. Charles Bayer is the author of several books including, Hope for the Mainline Church, and Building a Biblical Faith: A Guide to Christian Theology. He spoke at a luncheon meeting of the Jerry Voorhis Claremont Democratic Club.
The Terri Schiavo Case
By Merrill Ring
There were commentators writing about the Schiavo situation who claimed that liberals and progressives had no involvement in the issues of value arising there from: that they had only talked about laws and rules and legal judgments. As promulgators of that line I have in mind especially Ronald Brownstein of the LA Times and David Brooks of the NY Times. The background thesis is that the Republicans have a lock on values; the Democrats are clueless about such matters.
Those claims are simply not true and could easily have been shown to be wrong had the writers in question had any interest in checking around rather than writing out of a stereotype of the current political situation, a stereotype which they helped create and are helping to perpetuate.
In consequence, I intend here to say more or less starkly what Democrats, at least the democratic wing of the party, thought about the moral issues involved in the case. Read the entire article.
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