Paul Waldman: Liberalism means believing we're all in it together

Welcome to the new readers from DFA's Training Academy over the weekend! At the training I mentioned the book Being Right Is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn from Conservative Success by Paul Waldman. Here are some goodies to encourage you to read Waldman's book:

• Elections aren't about issues (they're about identity)
• Conservatism is a failed ideology
• The progressive identity complex
• Interview with Paul Waldman at Buzzflash

What do you think the essence of your political beliefs are? What does it all come down to for you? I got a lot of different answers, but most of them contained some version of the idea of common responsibility, and the fact that our fates are tied together. The way that I decided to articulate that is to say that "we're all in it together."

One of the important elements of that is that it implies its opposite. Conservatives have always been very good at building contrasts, and that's another thing that progressives have to start doing. We need to say that we're all in it together — that's what progressives believe. And what do conservatives believe? Well, they believe that we're all on our own, and we're all out for ourselves.

Then I take this fundamental idea and I say, okay — where do we go from this basic idea that we're all in it together? I build out five fundamental principles — government that works for everyone, opportunity, security, individual freedom, and progress. From those five ideas that grow out of the idea that we're all in it together, you can go on to discuss almost any policy issue. Why do we believe in Social Security? Well, it's because we believe in security. Why do progressives support education? Because they believe in opportunity. This whole pyramid that I construct is not going to be a bumper sticker, but it provides a way of thinking and talking about progressive ideas that people can use and repeat, and use to contrast. That's critically important.