Moral Values

There's a telling article in the Washington Post today discussing Jim Wallis and Sojourners stunt to protest budget cuts for the poor. The writer does something so common sense that it's shocking how much it sticks out: he simply asks the major religious conservative organizations about their priorities:

Why in recent years have conservative Christians asserted their influence on efforts to relieve Third World debt, AIDS in Africa, strife in Sudan and international sex trafficking -- but remained on the sidelines while liberal Christians protest domestic spending cuts?

Conservative Christian groups such as Focus on the Family say it is a matter of priorities, and their priorities are abortion, same-sex marriage and seating judges who will back their position against those practices.

"It's not a question of the poor not being important or that meeting their needs is not important," said Paul Hetrick, a spokesman for Focus on the Family, Dobson's influential, Colorado-based Christian organization. "But whether or not a baby is killed in the seventh or eighth month of pregnancy, that is less important than help for the poor? We would respectfully disagree with that."

Jim Wallis, editor of the liberal Christian journal Sojourners and an organizer of today's protest, was not buying it. Such conservative religious leaders "have agreed to support cutting food stamps for poor people if Republicans support them on judicial nominees," he said. "They are trading the lives of poor people for their agenda. They're being, and this is the worst insult, unbiblical."

This is a very good debate to have and I hope that the rest of the media will pick up on this and take notice. I would argue that taking care of the sick, the poor, and the unfortunate is a bedrock moral value, and in the richest country on earth with the means to clothe, feed and shelter all our people, it's the moral choice to do so. People come first. Meanwhile, we're deep in the trenches of the "War on Christmas." Anybody else see how warped these priorities are?

I wish we could get through the politics of it and actually figure out what it means to be moral. A budget document is a moral document in that it can provide safeguards to life's unexpected hardships. Ask the people living in tents along the Gulf Coast whether or not domestic spending is a moral issue. Ask the millions of people who work every day and still cannot make ends meet because we haven't raised the minimum wage in this country in years. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer gave a press conference yesterday about how it's long past time we raise the minimum wage in this country. I'll bet you didn't hear about it. As Ezra Klein notes, these issues are important ones to mainline into the media megaphone, but a tough thing for progressives to actually accomplish:

The minimum wage can act as a powerful wedge issue -- a resonant policy argument that conservatives find themselves on the unpopular end of. But unless Democrats create a larger institutional apparatus for popularizing such issues, it's a bit useless. Wedge issues, after all, need to become issues before they become effective. Tomorrow's press event is nice, but it will, at best, lead to a couple of short AP articles buried in regional newspapers.

Meanwhile, the War on Christmas garnered a book, which got picked up by a popular talk-show demagogue, who's turned it into a cause celebre for powerful elements of the conservative coalition. That's how you create a wedge issue -- gather so many independent actors who can pump up so much artificial volume that the rest of the media has to at least pretend there's some sort of genuine outcry, and now your opponents have to participate in a debate they've already lost. It's first got to appear a popular issue to become a political one; you can't go the other way.

Progressives, sadly, have no structure capable of gathering, focusing, and sustaining attention on a particular topic. Hoyer may hold a press conference, but the nightly news will barely notice, and there'll be no one crying out for a minimum wage increase during interminable, nationally-aired daily monologues. That's not to say there aren't plenty of people routinely begging for wage increases; they're just not the sort of folks with television shows.

The Washington Post article at least shows that an independent media COULD raise the debate on issues like these were they willing to carry out their jobs. Nontraditional media like blogs can also have a lot to say about these kinds of things to raise awareness. This quote should be passed around the blogosphere with light speed:

Dobson also has praised what he calls "pro-family tax cuts." And Janice Crouse, a senior fellow at the Christian group Concerned Women for America, said religious conservatives "know that the government is not really capable of love."

"You look to the government for justice, and you look to the church and individuals for mercy. I think Hurricane Katrina is a good example of that. FEMA just failed, and the church and the Salvation Army and corporations stepped in and met the need," she said.

Basically the religious right is saying that governments are hopelessly cruel and there's nothing you can do about it, so toughen up. That's the Christian message this holiday season. It's a self-defeating message, since the current group of people in power have no interest in governing, no respect for governing, and when they fail, they can fall back on the message that "government is inherently bad." This is of course absurd, and the massive deficits we've managed to rack up are a testament to the fact that nobody currently in power wants anything to do with small government.

So let's get this moral values debate going, for real this time. Offer Americans the choice between (a) feeding and clothing and lifting up their neighbors, or (b) getting involved in their neighbor's personal and private decisions. And majority rules, 'kay? For too long conservatives have made a virtue of selfishness without being called on it. I'm glad that there are rumblings in the other direction.