Newsletter #34 / September, 10 2023

We are standing at a true moment in American history, a fork in the road that will decide our future as a nation. This fork isn’t about Donald Trump, and it isn’t about the next election. It’s about something much, much deeper. For the first time ever as a nation, we are actually facing up to the fundamental principal American democracy: are all people created equal? Do all of us .. everywhere .. have the same right to equal Freedom, equal Justice, and equal Opportunity? That is what’s really going on.

We have nibbled at the concept of equality for nearly 250 years. Back in 1776, of course, we had virtually none. Wealthy white males didn’t just dominate society, it was considered normal. Women didn’t count at all. Blacks and Native Americans were considered subhuman. Being born gay was considered an aberration worthy of either prison or death, and Catholics were considered spawn of the Devil. 

Despite all that, we came up with the Declaration of Independence. Those opening words have inspired Americans ever since, and they started something. That something was the Common Thread, the Golden Rule at work. And we nibbled at it slowly, for a long time. It took eight decades of massive struggle and more than 600,000 dead, but we finally ended slavery. Another fifty-five years went by before, after a lot of painful effort, women got the vote. Forty-five more years went by, and after decades of church burnings and fire hoses, we passed the Voting Rights Act.

But now, “nibbling” no longer applies. Suddenly things are just happening, fast. Here are just a few items:

• A woman winning the Silver Star for heroism in combat (Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester, June 16, 2005)

• A black President (2008) 

• Obamacare (2010)

• Gay marriage legal across the country (2013)

• The end of Confederate flags flying over state capitols (2015), and the renaming of military bases. 

These events aren’t accidents. A vast social, cultural, and economic revolution is underway in this country. Things are being turned upside down and it’s sweeping us all forward, faster and faster, towards an end none of us can see. But it’s about much more than simple events. 

National myths are being stripped away. Things so many of us have believed in all our lives, things we never questioned, they’re just disappearing:

• That the Confederacy was a noble cause

• That racial massacres like Tulsa never happened

• That somehow gay people didn’t really exist, let alone have equal rights

• That “family” meant a man and a woman

• That Native Americans were either savages or Tonto, and somehow just “ended up” on reservations.

• That women are natural victims, the weaker sex, somehow responsible for rape and everything else done to them.

It’s a long list, and it strikes at the very core of our sense of identity. That is why it’s one of the bitterest pills to swallow for a lot of people, that their cherished vision of the past isn’t true, that it’s being ripped away. 

Now we’re being asked to look at “the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” and it can be disturbing. But that truth .. accepting it, reckoning with it and moving on .. is the path towards an American society where all people are created equal. 

This is the moment we face, as Democrats and as Americans. For the fork in the road has not yet been taken. Vast, well-financed forces are loose. They come in many forms, but they have one goal: the other path. We have sat back and watched them take the initiative for decades, long before Trump. As Democrats, we have stood by as they have turned everything into a giant game of us versus them, the donkey vs the elephant, two competing forces struggling back and forth for control of government. 

Taking back the initiative, sending this country down the right fork, is up to us. It’s up to Democrats, quite simply because there’s no one else. But if we’re going to take back the initiative, we need to understand that this isn’t about policy, or politics, or the next election.

This is about identity. It’s about the deeper truth of defining who we are as Americans. Are we all really created equal? Do we all merit equal Freedom, Justice, and Opportunity? What do those things actually mean? Where are the basic principals that will guide us through the massive changes we are being swept into?

That is the reason the Democratic Creed exists, to establish a basic set of core values that can endure the hype and spin of politics, basic principles that can endure the onslaught of coming events and everything else that threatens to confuse and disturb us. The Democratic Creed exists to stand unchanging, a light we can trust to light the way ahead, twenty years from now as surely as today. 

But without you, the Democratic Creed is just an idea. Only you can make these values real, in your community, in your state, in our country. The first step is adopting. Make the Democratic Creed the official statement of values for your organization. Put it up proudly, and join the growing army of counties across the country who have done the same. Then reach out, because the Creed is much more than a statement, it’s a path forward, a way to change. We have action plans, visions of how to make that change happen, plans from counties where it has worked. Reach out, and we will respond.