I
was driving through a neighboring county and saw a political
poster for a right-wing candidate. I had noticed his sloganeering
over the past few months and knew that he was some sort
of Tea Party-aligned individual. The slogan on his poster
read: “Faith, Family, Freedom.” To be honest,
I had a Pavlovian experience. In looking at those three
words placed together all I could do was grunt. I knew
exactly what this character was advocating.
My wife had a very different reaction. She asked me, why
would we on the left side of the aisle permit the political
Right to seize those words and define them? I had no response
because I understood her basic point.
There is nothing intrinsic about “faith,” “family,” or “freedom,”
together or separately, that should automatically convey
a right-wing vibe. Yet, the reality is that we on the Left
have largely allowed the political Right to do just that.
In fact, we not only have allowed them to do so, but we
have, at various points, turned our backs on these (and
similar) words as if the ground had already been lost to
the political Right.
So, my wife—and I need to credit her with this—offered a
different strategic argument: why not have left and
progressive forces take those words and offer our own interpretation?
In fact, why not parade around with those words as central
to our own agenda and hammer away at the Right? I know,
I know…other people have made similar points, but we don’t
seem to change our practice.
Let’s consider what we could argue:
- Faith: Left and progressives believe that
individuals should have a protected right to worship as
they see fit without fear of intolerance. Not only that,
many progressives believe that faith in a Creator or Supreme
Being is central to the moral statement that we must advance.
How, in other words, could one imagine a Creator of all
things who was/is an advocate of the free and barbaric
market? Of unjust wars? Of the destruction of nature?
Not only this, but progressives advance the notion of
the importance of having faith in humanity and the immeasurable
possibilities of humans to outgrow the greed and self-destructive
impulses that arise in class-based societies.
- Family: Left and progressives believe that
it is impossible to discuss family if individuals cannot
exist outside of poverty and economic stress. We believe
that families need to be secure and that means a right
to a job or income (if someone cannot work). But for
Left and progressives, family also means a loving relationship
rather than a tyrannical, often patriarchal institution,
in which two human beings make a commitment to each other
and their children (if there are any) and collectively
pledge to positively contribute to humanity.
- Freedom: Left and progressives certainly
believe in freedom. We believe in freedom from tyranny,
including the tyranny of unemployment. We believe that
countries and peoples should be free of fear of interventions
by foreign powers, not to mention, to be free of weapons
of mass destruction. We believe that people should be
free of want but also free of all oppression and intolerance
that often drives minorities underground, or in some cases,
to the brink of extermination.
 In
other words, there is nothing about these words, together
or separately, that should have caused me to react the way
that I did when I saw them. Knowing that this right-wing
candidate wishes to bring to mind certain values should
not dissuade me and others from contesting this turf. Instead,
we need to use terminology as a battleground which we do
not abandon.
In another setting, it is called flipping the script.
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Bill Fletcher, Jr., is a Senior Scholar with
the Institute for Policy Studies, the immediate past president ofTransAfrica Forum and co-author of, Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path
toward Social Justice (University of California Press), which examines the crisis of organized
labor in the USA. Click here to contact Mr. Fletcher. |
Sep 2, 2010 - Issue 391
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