About the Project
Mission
DemocraticPromise.org is dedicated to renewing the promise of democracy in America by building on the strength of America's founding principles to promote a true democracy of shared authority, mutual accountability, and respect for individual initiative, in American government and throughout American life.
The chief instrument for accomplishing the mission is the Promise, a statement of progressive principles inspired by founding American documents such as the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and The Federalist, and by the visions of many of today's progressive thinkers.
Why a Statement of Principles?
To strengthen our vision, individually and together. Many of us who call ourselves progressives have picked up a hodgepodge of pop-culture ideas, some progressive, some strongly conservative, which don't make sense together and which weaken our vision. It's the man who says we need to regain our freedoms (progressive idea) and then explains that all we need is one strong leader (conservative idea) to fix everything. Or the woman who says we need to protect voting rights (progressive idea) and then complains that most people are too stupid to vote (conservative idea).
Why do liberals say these things? To fill a silence, to bridge a gap in conversation. We're casting about for words, for a familiar saying that will make people smile and nod. But we don't need conservative filler for that. If we are as smart as we think we are, we ought to have a few lines of our own. We need to think about our words and the principles behind them. Our vision becomes stronger when we consciously choose the principles we express, when we recognize the reinforcing power of interconnected progressive ideas.
To anyone who might ask if the Promise is supposed to be some kind of new Declaration of Independence or Bill of Rights, I would have to say no. Indebted to great thinkers of yesterday and today, the Promise attempts to gather many diverse streams of progressive thought into a single statement—a project which, by it's nature, is fallible and incomplete. Still it is my hope that the Promise might help us find the wellsprings and the great flow of our beliefs and allow us to speak with a more profound coherence and confidence.
How It All Began
The presidential campaign of Howard Dean, with its references to Thomas Paine and the American Revolution, crystallized an idea: Today's liberals and progressives are the heirs of America's founders. We are the protectors of America's founding values of democracy, freedom, and opportunity. With this flash of inspiration, liberals have begun a critical cultural turn: to become promoters of a way of life rather than just resisters or protesters, to become revivalists of the promise of democracy in America.
Progressives across the nation have come to recognize that it is not enough to fight against what is wrong, we must promote what we believe is right. In 1990, Republican political analyst Kevin Phillips wrote in The Politics of Rich and Poor of the historical tendency of liberals to let conservatives set the national agenda rather than setting it ourselves. For forty years the active agenda of movement conservatives has beaten the reactive, sometimes defensive, sometimes accomodating politics of liberals. Moreover, their activity and our reactivity has created an image of movement conservatives as people who believe in something and have a plan, and liberals as people who believe nothing and have no plan other than to "Stop" things.
What We Can Do
Now we are going to start something. It is time to speak, live, and govern by our own principles, to initiate our own agenda. Our progressive principles are the founding principles of the nation, and our agenda is to promote, through our daily way of life and through our political choices, democracy, freedom, and opportunity for all Americans. The statement of principles called the Promise is one example of how we, as progressives, can express our principles and help shape our nation's future.
A New Era, Built on a Strong Foundation
In the real world, principles flow from a wellspring of historical events: moments in history which test us, awaken our spirits, give birth to a new horizon of hopes and ideals, and redefine us as a people. Such beginnings are sacred to persons of all cultures and become anchor points for a society's deepest beliefs. America's founding was just such a sacred beginning.
DemocraticPromise.org contends that America's founders gravitated to governing principles of freedom, opportunity, shared authority, mutual accountability, and respect for individual initiative because these principles alone could bind together the new nation and give it the strength to succeed. Today's progressives gravitate to the principles of America's founders because we share these same ideals and recognize in them the same strengths. This is our foundation.
The era of liberal leaders who abandon their principles and drift to the right in search of votes is over. And the era of voters who call themselves liberal but support center-right candidates, just to be on the safe side, is over. It's time to speak about our beliefs, live by them, and govern by them. If we lose an election, we don't lose our values and start looking for more popular ones. Principles are for the long term. The heritage and the infrastructure of our American democracy are extensive and invaluable. We can reclaim and rebuild them together.
Read the Promise.