Notice how the right mobilizes successfully around wedge causes like anti-abortion and anti-homosexuality and
they beat us every time?
Adam Hochschild, writing in the LA Times today, points out that one of the most effective political mobilizations of all time was the slavery abolition movement.
Now, that's what we need: a cause everyone who doesn't have horns and a forked tail can rally around.
What's the progessive's equivalent of slavery, today?
Read more, and take the poll...
Hochschild writes that when the cause of abolition was first taken up by English Quakers in 1787 slavery was as well entrenched as multinational corporations are in the world today, and it seemed hopelessly idealistic to oppose it. Yet the abolition movement spread so quickly in Britain that within a decade the slavers lobby was in fear for its life. People of all walks of life lobbied against the trade, even when it was against their own economic interests. It became politically impossible to support it.
Why should a marginal debate like the one over when does a fetus become a person siphon off all that passion, when there are bigger injustices that cut only one way?
There's just one reason the right's wedge issues trump us: they are simple, and to at least some people, they constitute a morally unambiguous crusade against evil. For their supporters, they are the high ground. People will die for the high ground -- or at least, fight cheerfully and hard.
There's a reason Bush talks about the "axis of evil" and "freedom" so much. A crusade against evil is an easier rallying point than any other. Oppression is universally seen as evil. It may be entirely lies as it comes from him, but those who miss the lie identify with the values it lays claim to. It kinda works for him, among the ignorant (his largest constituency).
Why can't we do that? With educated and ignorant alike? Because we don't have a cause like the abolition of slavery, that's why. We have a huge laundry list of real injustices and evils and enemies, but not one unambiguous evil nearly anyone would agree to fight. Our pitch isn't simple. Our cause is not on fire because it's not a cause, it's causes, ad infinitum.
So where do we go to find an unstoppable cause today? It isn't health care, folks. Or any kind of entitlement, worthy as those fights are, short of another great depression. FDR found his cause in the right to work and a decent life, but miserable as life is for many, it doesn't rise to the requisite level of universally unacceptable evil just yet.
Abortion and homosexuality are loathsome to some, but they are freakish side-shows compared to the kind of passion that the slavery abolition movement and the anti-apartheid movements harnessed. For one thing, they are equally balanced these days by opposition forces that also feel they have the moral high ground. So they are truly just wedges between two groups. We could use some good wedge issues that would split the Republican base, by the way, but that isn't what this post is about.
When Clinton went after the tobacco companies he had the right instincts: unite people against evil. That it was politically motivated doesn't obscure it's intelligence. When he went after health care, he bombed.
The last time we had really universal agreement about a real axis of evil was during World War II. And only after we were attacked, and only until we won. Then we had forty years of fearmongering over the new communist states, a political gambit to try to unify people against a bogeyman enemy.
But we came close to righteous unity again during the civil rights years. I've been reading Parting the Waters, America During the King Years., the first volume of Taylor Branch's two-volume history. Not everyone supported civil rights initially, but a majority wanted to. A brave minority showed them how to do it, and the government followed suit.
And when Ted Kennedy mobilized outrage over apartheid during the Reagan years, he got surprising results for an out-of-power party: the sanctions he proposed got passed, and they did the job in the end. Nelson Mandela got out of jail and became President -- perhaps the most inspiring victory for justice since Ghandi led India to independence.
I don't think the Viet Nam war protest counts as the same kind of unifying cause. It remains divisive to this day. And no one can say we put an end to wars like that one; it ended, eventually, but we're in another much like it right now. No way did we make peace everywhere, from now on a popular cause. No way did we eradicate war like slavery or smallpox, or even frame the cause in those terms. Maybe if King had lived, if RFK had been president... who knows. King did frame that struggle in just those terms, which made him the most pivotal leader since Ghandi. While he lived.
Could that be our cause, now? War abstinence? It's tempting. It's certainly big enough, and idealistic enough. But is it a universally understood today that war is an unmitigated evil? That no nation should ever start one? That doing so is prima facia evidence that you are the bad guy? Apparently not. A couple of planes fly into a building in New York and Congress rolls over and allows the President to start any useless war he wants. Sure, people fought it. At least as many supported it. Ask random people right now if the war in Iraq is an evil perpetrated by the U.S., and you'll get maybe 1 in 10 who will agree to that. Most will see shades of gray. If you want to make war abolition your cause, you have a long row to hoe. It's not a ripe cause, as the abolition of slavery apparently was in 1787. It's not a slam-dunk cause nearly everyone will want to see triumph.
So what is? Clinton flirts with the AIDS crisis -- and it's hard to argue with its importance. But it's also hard to avoid the parallels to LBJ's "war on cancer". You can't make scientific breakthroughs using a political mind-set, much less a military one. Most people will say the AIDS crisis may be cured by science tomorrow, or next century -- but it's not up to them. They'll say it has nothing to do with them, frankly. Is an act of God evil, or just unfortunate? It's like the tsunami -- people will give sympathize briefly, but it won't hold their passionate interest. No way will it become the next abolition movement, adopted passionately by the majority. (Unless a similar plague spreads to the general population. And in that nightmare scenario, who knows what the reaction would be.)
What was wonderful about abolition was that people were not scared. They were fired up over ideals and moral values. They acted en masse to bring about the end of a great evil, even when it did not affect them personally, and even when it cost them economically.
Any cause where the motivation is fear is likely to be manipulated all too easily. Hence the usefulness of the war on terrorism to the present administration. Sure, terrorism is an evil. But it has subtle causes, no obvious cure, and triggers revenge instincts. Hence such a "war" is not a cause anyone in his right mind would promote, except for its manipulative advantage.
When things go that way, we progressives lose. Only in the cheerful confidence that we can do something great together can we harness a passionate majority. Ghandi did it. FDR did it. MLK did it. In smaller ways by lesser men it's done all the time. The trick is the right cause, the ripe cause, the common ground under our feet. The great fight against a terrible evil that most of us condemn in our hearts. Why can't we see it? It must be right around here somewhere.
Help me out, someone.