The One Great Idea
Jonathan Bayliss
2005
Not for seventy-five years have the consequences of Republican political philosophy been so plain for all the world to see. This philosophy of personal and collective selfishness is not necessarily the philosophy of all who register or vote as Republicans, but by deception and sheer political power it has been imposed upon us as our government’s, as representing our democracy in the estimation of the world.
In the name of individualism and free-market economy we have been led to corruption, unnecessary war, social injustice, financial folly, and perpetual crimes against Mother Earth and all her live posterity. With piteous cries against all taxes, boasts of their own competence, claims of moral virtue, promises of fiscal magic, drum rolls of single-issue patriotism, trumpeting of military force, and (perhaps above all) demands for “smaller government”, they have delivered us to the edge of an almost irreversible decline in American civilization.
But it is not enough for us as Democrats to clarify what we are fighting against. Nor is it enough to list our immediate positions in resistance or initiative intended to restore an open and rationally progressive government with ultimate consideration of what we pass on to future generations of all races and classes. Of course we should always fight for the particular measures required to get a liberal recovery underway.
What we do need most to do, right now, before the next round of campaigns, is replace the Republican political philosophy with our own philosophy in the consciousness of Americans.
To start with, let’s draw everyone’s attention to the Preamble of the Constitution, which emphasizes the “General Welfare” (also known as the Common Good). Then we must get people to realize what that phrase means as the one great idea that underlies everything we stand for. The common good is not just “the greatest good for the greatest number”. It’s the best possible good –all things considered - as vital parts of a single body politic. Some of the parts must moderate their own wishes; others deserve a larger share of benefit: it’s the health of the whole body that should be, as the Founding Fathers meant, our political criterion – whether government is large or small, depending upon what is found by pragmatic consensus to be most expedient under present andfuture conditions.
With this approach to debates we can beat the Republicans, hands down, in the battle of ideas, which they themselves have been calling for in the mistaken belief that their notion of “conservatism” has been forever implanted in the hearts and minds of America.
