America’s forgotten agenda goes under many name. Some call it freedom, some liberty. Sometimes it is referred to as “civil liberties” and other times as our “God given rights.” But however one chooses to label the ideals upon which this country was founded, and the slow, irregular progress we as a nation have made to fashion those ideals into a concrete reality, the best name for this national obsession with equality and liberty for all is, in my opinion, the term “human rights.” For it is ultimately human beings who decide what liberties and what rights individuals in society may exercise or possess, and what limitations on those liberties government may impose.
Yesterday, in Part 1 of this essay, I concentrated on the history of human rights in America, from the Declaration of Independence with its grand assertions of equal rights for all men to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” to the high watermark of the civil rights era, which I contend was reached at or about the time of the dual assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. I charted the slow and uneven, but always persistent progress toward the expansion of human rights in this country from the founding of the republic through the cataclysm of civil war that eliminated slavery to the 19th amendment to the Constitution which granted women the right to vote, and then from the era of the New Deal (in which the agenda for human rights expanded to include economic rights as well as political rights) to the post war period following WWII in which the civil rights movement finally achieved full legal recognition of the rights granted to African Americans by the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments.
However that victory, and the rise of other groups promoting their own personalized agendas for for an expanded definition of human rights (i.e., the feminist movement, the gay rights movement, etc.) led to a backlash from the right, that in the last 40 years has seen the slow and steady erosion of legal protections for individual rights, even as the country as a whole has become more receptive to progressive ideas regarding those individual liberties.
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Backlash: The Conservative Movement
That backlash started in response to the success of the civil rights movement, and the policies of integration and affirmative action that the federal government employed to rectify past societal injustices. It was also, initially, a reaction to the extension of the full protection of the Bill of Rights to criminal defendants which the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Warren had required in a series of landmark legal decisions.
In many respects it began as a racist backlash, as both opposition to “affirmative action” and the call for more “law and order” were code intended to convey the message that the politician who used them would “put the blacks back in their place.” In time, however, this backlash against the expansion of human rights was also fueled by four other rallying points for movement conservatives:
1. The right to an abortion specified in the Supreme Court’s decision, Roe v. Wade;
2. The Feminist movement (a/k/a women’s liberation) and the drive for an Equal Rights Amendment;
3. The Gay Rights movement (which movement conservatives have exploited with their rabid opposition to gay marriage); and
4. Anti-immigration sentiments (essentially a re-invention of the Nativist Movement of the 19th century).
I don’t need to tell you how expertly the Radical Right, and the Republican party in particular, has manipulated public opinion, emphasizing fear of the other, and spreading divisiveness among groups who often share common cause against corporate interests which exploit them for their labor, overcharge them for poor health insurance, and outsource their jobs overseas, creating an ever growing income inequality between the rich and everyone else. It started with the election of Ronald Reagan (he of the “amusing” anecdotes regarding welfare queens and their Cadillacs), and his administration’s vehement opposition to affirmative action, busing and the Equal Rights Amendment.
It continued through the 80’s as the Republican Party’s Southern strategy (first employed by Nixon’s re-election team) began to pay dividends, turning the South into a solidly Republican stronghold, and gradually making inroads in the Midwest and Western states as well). Supported by a vast network of behind the scenes financiers and movement strategists (for example, the secretive Council for National Policy), public relations and election gurus (e.g., Michael Deaver, Lee Atwater, and Karl Rove to name but a few) and the rise of right wing talk radio (upon the termination of the Fairness Doctrine) it went from a fringe movement in the mid-1960’s to the dominant force in American politics upon the election of our 43rd President, George W. Bush.
Behind this political victory lies an ideology which is authoritarian in nature, Manichean in its view of the universe and morality, and fundamentally opposed to expanding human liberty to all people. Indeed, like the fascist ideology of the Nazis, it is based on preserving power for an elite group which seeks to remake the country into its own fabricated image of a mythical Christian nation, one where women and gays are stripped of their rights.
A nation where Christian men (with the implication that most, if not all of these will be white Christian men) will regain the status and power that these radical fundamentalists believe they are due, and which they believe has been lost through the promotion of “diversity” and “multiculturalism” and “political correctness” by “godless liberals” and “secular humanists” in academia and the media. It is essentially, at its core, an ideology of hatred: hatred for all those who do not accept the tenets of its religious theology (based on millenarianism and biblical literalism), and for all those who will not accept the limitations on their individual liberties that this theological vision of the world would impose. Whether you call them Christian Dominionists or Reconstructionists matters little. The end result of their ascension to full power would be the same, regardless.
This movement seeks to purify and re-sanctify the nation, and is more than willing to use violence if necessary to achieve its goals. To date it has not had to do so, for the most part, because of its infiltration of, and dominance over, the Republican party, which it has made into its tool to roll back the social advances we have made over the last 100 years. It should have come as no surprise to anyone, that the Bush administration has seeded the government with hundreds of these radical Christian fundamentalists, determined to overturn by executive fiat any law which they find offensive, which promotes values and ideals they oppose, or which grants “special rights” (a perfect euphemism in its way) to any person or group to whom they refuse to grant full legal recognition or moral equivalence with themselves. These are the movement’s front line troops in its war against secular humanism; and make no mistake, they perceive it as a war, a war between good and evil, God and the Devil. You are either with them, or you are their enemy. There is no middle ground.
Thus, despite the best efforts of progressive politicians and organizations, the movement to expand human rights to all Americans, and to expand the definition of human rights (as proposed and promoted by Franklin Delano Roosevelt), has been stymied. Those who preach the gospel of hate have not exactly won a final victory, but they have certainly gained the “high ground” in their self-proclaimed culture war. They have gained control over much of the media, either through ownership or intimidation. This same media has enabled the “mainstreaming” of their radical message of hate and exclusion, bigotry and discrimination through the domination of radio and television broadcasts by pundits, propagandists and others who promote the opinions and views of Movement Conservatism.
Today, thousands of radio stations broadcast this radical fringe agenda into millions of homes and cars across the nation. Their pundits, no matter how toxic or rancid (e.g., Ann Coulter) always seem to receive airtime whenever they have a book to sell, one which invariably promotes their anti-liberal, anti-humanist screeds, and fosters political division in this nation. Progressive voices, with rare exceptions, are systematically excluded from this public discourse. Even within the Democratic party, that so-called bastion of liberalism, conservative voices often hold sway.
Indeed, the two main Democratic candidates for the Presidential nomination, Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama consistently avoid the taint of any progressive message when they speak to the public. They both employ the same cautious rhetorical strategy that lost John Kerry the last Presidential election. I can only presume that a far sighted progressive agenda, one which emphasizes the advancement of human rights for women, gays, immigrants and other minorities, will not be a priority in any Clinton or Obama administration, obsessed as they are with appearing centrist and uncontroversial. Nor do I believe that they will advance the causes of labor unions, workers and the millions of Americans who suffer under the onerous burden of our archaic and fundamentally unfair health care system. These are candidates that promote “globalization” and “free trade zones” and who, at least in the case of Hillary Clinton, are backed by some of the largest and most conservative multinational corporations.
And Democrats in Congress have been no better, what with the recent reports that progressives have been shut down (in the case of proposed impeachment hearings) and shut out (in the case of significant legislation) of the major decisions made by Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid. Their focus on election strategies for 2008 has all but eliminated the advancement of any progressive agenda.
It is only on the internet that progressive voices dominate, because that was the only venue which was outside the control of conservatives, one which they deliberately ignored as either of trivial importance, or as an unlikely source of political power. Yet, with the end of net neutrality in sight, how much longer can we expect the internet to be a sanctuary for our opinions and our agenda?
Nonetheless, though I paint a dark picture regarding our current situation, I truly believe we have the means to turn this situation around, and achieve a politics in which human rights, social justice and progressive ideals once again dominate the political landscape. I believe the American public is desperate for such a message, and it is the only the failure of our putative political leaders to recognize that fact which has prevented the rise of a truly progressive politics dedicated to the cause of advancing individual human freedom and economic security. In Part 3 of this essay, I will spell out what I propose we do to reinvigorate the progressive movement, and promote our agenda, an agenda that puts ordinary human beings first, that emphasizes social justice and equality, and that seeks to realize the forgotten agenda of America’s founders.
