America’s Liberal Mainstream Values

by Jim Wilce -- Posted Dec. 23, 2004

It has become fashionable to claim that American liberals cannot be patriots, or that they hate America. I can’t speak for others, but just for myself as one liberal American who has traveled and lived abroad for my work, first as a Baptist missionary and later as an anthropologist, and who has just returned to his birthright of speaking up at home about what he cares about.

If the nation is like a big self—myself writ large—patriotism is like self-confidence. We all know by experience that some selves are too timid and others too confident, to the point of arrogance. Patriotism is the golden mean between distrust and worship of the national self. Self-confident people and countries recognize the needs of others to have self-respect and to govern themselves. They make friends because they believe in themselves and others. Their strength comes from their values, not their arms.

Every time I return home from abroad I feel relief, gratitude, and pride in country—unshaken by the increasingly bad treatment we receive when we get home and go through immigration and security checks upon re-entry, determined that we live up to our courageous commitments to freedom and justice.

Our parents taught us, "Treat others as you want to be treated," "Pick up after yourself," and "Be courageous" (as in "Don’t send others to do your fighting for you if you’re unwilling to do it yourself"). They said, "Be honest," and "Don’t be selfish—care for and respect others." These are liberal, mainstream American values—liberal because they are about civil liberties, because respect for other nations means affirming their liberty, and because Americans are liberal in their generosity, the manifestation of caring for others. (Look up "liberal" in any dictionary.)

Surely the mainstream value of honesty means that Dick Cheney and his company, Halliburton, fall short. Note that the sitting Vice President still has a huge stake in the company through stock shares held in his blind trust. On July 22, former employees of Halliburton told a Congressional panel about what company insiders call its "drug deals"—deals making a huge profit by appearing to sell the military 200 refrigerator trucks for several million dollars but in the end delivering only 50, and pocketing the difference. That’s an actual incident revealed by one woman who came out with the story, saying she didn’t care one way or another about Dick Cheney, but only about the troops her former company is still betraying. That’s why she had to uncover Halliburton’s dishonesty. The sad thing is that the Vice President is profiting from such "drug deals" through the large stake in Halliburton that he still holds.

It’s just solid mainstream values that undergird care for our environment ("pick up after yourselves," oh ye factory owners and vehicle drivers), a foreign policy that manifests care and respect for others, and a commitment to honesty.

Maybe it’s where we think these values apply that differentiates us. Here is where the rubber meets the road for me: One of the two presidential candidates had the courage to go to Vietnam to face the fight alongside Americans far poorer than his family was. The other may or may not have shown up for work at the Air National Guard. The latest records released by the Pentagon do NOT show him being paid in the crucial months in question.

One candidate stands for cleaning up after ourselves and the other has violated his campaign promise: On 9/29/00 in Saginaw Michigan Mr. Bush said "we will require all power plants to reduce emissions of CO2." But in a 3/13/01 letter to Republic Senators he wrote, "I do not believe... that the government should impose on power plants mandatory emissions reductions for carbon dioxide.")

One candidate stands for respectfully engaging our allies in the war on terror, while the other publicly humiliated them and then wondered why they no longer supported us.

My parents taught me to speak to others, and about others, with respect. This is a liberal mainstream value, certainly not one followed by much of talk radio. But it’s a value we need to follow. And it means name-calling is out. Can’t we agree to drop the word "far" or "extreme" from our descriptions of the other side? The extreme Right was responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing, and the extreme Left used to throw bombs in the 1960’s—but Republicans and Democrats disavow those extremes. So let’s disavow calling each other "far left" or "far right"—it doesn’t fit the facts, and it violates our liberal mainstream values of respectful discourse.

Patriotic values include all of the good lessons our moms and dads taught us. I am proud of our country, proud of what it stands for, and insistent that it live up to its liberal mainstream values—honesty, courage, respect, and cleaning up after ourselves. That’s why I’ll be voting for Sen. John Kerry as President.

Jim Wilce is a professor of Anthropology at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona. This essay was written for the Arizona Daily Sun, but never published in that newspaper.