We
believe in the core democratic party
principles of individual freedom in the framework of a just society and
political freedom in the framework of meaningful participation by all
citizens.
- Freedom is different from license. The
latter is the notion that we may do as we please without regard for the
consequences of our actions, and without the prior awareness of the
historical context in which we make decisions. Freedom comes with the
responsibility to realize both the context and the consequence of our
actions. Consider the following example.
- The 1930's were hard times. It
wasn't just the great depression, it was also the time of the Dust Bowl
over the great plains of our country's heartland. In a plan for
intervention to help struggling family farms, New Deal-era politicians
instituted massive agricultural subsidies to keep farms from going
under. Seventy years later, seventy-three percent of agricultural
subsidies are paid to the largest ten percent of farms, and sixty-seven
percent of farmers receive no subsidies. Consequently these
agricultural subsidies are now hurting small family farmers, by allowing
large corporate farms to over-produce and take up market shares. That
does not sound like a just society, to us.
We
believe in the value of
high-functioning, well-respected federal government as an expression of
our patriotic duty to hold each other accountable as fellow citizens.
- Local and state governments are the
foundation of our system of governance. These institutions know
their citizens best, they are closest to their citizens. In the
theatre of our world, however, there are an increasing number of
actors who threaten the sovereignty of state and local governance.
Typically these actors work through lobbyists, in order to buy out
government officials and advance their own special interests ahead
of the public interest.
- In this context, we believe in wrenching
federal government from the hands of special interests and bringing
it back to representing the needs and views of the public. Our
federal government must be active and engaged in checking the power
of special interests and maintaining a balance of power among all
members of society. We believe this role to be inherent to the
federal government, as the means by which the public holds its
leaders accountable through a system of checks and balances -
between branches of government and branches of society.
We
trust in the virtue of an educated
public to demand an open government that will act honorably on behalf
of, and actively in the interests of its people.
- The status quo is such that our government
is neither open, nor honorable to any significant degree. This is
not cause for despair. We understand our government is this way
because the people no longer demand anything open and honorable, and
they do not demand such things because our society does not instill
in the public a desire for such governance.
- The attitude that government is the problem
reflects a true poverty of belief in the power of government to
perform its constitutional duty to provide for the general welfare
of the people. We do not believe the federal government can function
properly with that attitude in its midst, and we seek to
institutionalize instead a belief in federal government and we
continually seek new and innovative ways to educate the public
and sustain their trust in democracy.
- For almost three decades now, the
democratic party has stood as the only party that truly believes in
federal government and wishes to help build a society that demands
excellence, in addition to loyalty from its leaders.
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*The Democratic Party is the oldest continuous political party in the
United States, tracing its roots to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison,
and including Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry S Truman,
John F. Kennedy and William J. Clinton. *Despite the typical
tax-and-spend label, in the last half-century the only time the federal
budget experienced a surplus has been under the guidance of a democratic
White House.
*The donkey has never been officially designated as party mascot, and
the origins of its use are not entirely clear.
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