It has been often rightly said that the far right has done a superior job of messaging, of distilling their agenda into pithy slogans that appeal to the existing frames and narratives defining many minds. The left is accused of being overly cerebral, overly verbose, unable to put their message on a bumper sticker. Some argue that we should not sacrifice that depth and complexity that characterizes progressive thought for the platitude-laden sloganeering of the far right. I agree: We must find ways to integrate the two demands. We must frame thoughtful discourse in accessible ways, working with our minds as they are, to keep moving them in the direction of what they can and should be.
I've recently written two essays on Colorado Confluence describing in more detail what this means:
The Foundational Progressive Agenda and
The Politics of Anger
Part of what it means to pursue the progressive agenda is to look farther than the exigencies of the moment, and to reach deeper into the systems which comprise and encompass us than the roiling surface of that sea called "politics". But that does not mean that there are no simple, fundamental principles to grasp hold of, and communicate clearly and concisely. Rather, more important than the superficial platitudes that guide most on the right and too many on the left are some very fundamental procedural virtues: Reason, goodwill, and humility.
Few would explicitly contest that any of these are not desirable, though too few desire them enough to emphasize their importance, much less employ them themselves. Perhaps the most important of the three, but the least mentioned, and least identified, is humility, for without it we each think we already know, and shout our false certainties past one another, while with it we recognize that we are very limited beings confronting the challenges of a complex and subtle world, and so become more open to considering possibilities we had refused to consider before.
I advocate a social movement within the progressive movement, one which consistently, enthusiastically, and sincerely emphasizes these three fundamental virtues. Two great quotes highlight the value of doing so:
John Maynard Keynes said, "[People] will do the rational thing, but only after exploring all other alternatives," and Martin Luther King (paraphrasing an earlier cleric) said "The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice." In other words, reason and goodwill prevail in the long run, even while they seem to consistently languish in the short run. It is a function of our efforts, of our commitment to these underlying values, how sharply that arc of history bends toward justice, and how many blind alleys of irrational alternatives we are forced to suffer before discovering "the rational thing".