Cultivating a Moral America
Imagine a moral America. Americans treat each other as they want to be treated and respect everyone’s equal value. If you live elsewhere, imagine the same for your country.
We love our country, live good, compassionate lives, care for others as we care for ourselves, avoid both selfishness and self-sacrifice, improve ourselves and the world, are politically engaged, live in harmony with Mother Nature, work to undo racism and all forms of oppressive domination, and nurture partnerships throughout society.
We make sure every working-age American can get a good living-wage job and good housing, good food, good health care, and good schooling. This foundation of economic security enables us to relax and enjoy life.
While controlling our borders, we value immigration, appreciate what immigrants have contributed to our nation, treat illegal immigrants humanely, provide a path to citizenship for many illegal immigrants who’ve worked here and paid taxes for many years, offer asylum to many people escaping oppression, and provide substantial technical and economic assistance to hard-hit countries so their citizens can live well in their own country, as most prefer.
We listen to each other, try to better understand each other, and do not demonize our opponents. We have a voice in matters that affect us, admit problems and work to correct them, aren’t corrupt, don’t cheat, and honor the source of life
“What’s in it for me” is no longer our primary question, though most of us still try to improve our economic situation. We know that what’s good for you is good for me. Strong healthy communities raise strong healthy individuals who nurture strong healthy communities.
Whether it’s based on our worldview, values, interests, religion, political party, nationality, oppressed status, or any other identity, we identify with our “in-group,” or community. At the same time, we respect others’ inherent humanity and only criticize them with compassion.
We don’t climb social ladders to look down on and dominate those below, and we don’t blindly submit to those above.
We reject exploitative domination but we endorse justified domination when it’s necessary to promote the general welfare or protect individuals under threat.
No one has all the answers. To determine the truth as best as we can, we think together, carefully, deliberately.
We maximize cooperation, collaborate to find solutions, accept others’ leadership when they have good ideas, and lead when they like ours.
We promote truth, justice, beauty, and joy.
No one gets everything they want. We know perfection and utopia are impossible. Humility is widespread. We realize “win-win” solutions usually benefit all parties.
We love our country and want to live up to its highest ideals, which have inspired many other countries. At the same time, we recognize other countries are better than America in some respects. We aren’t dead set on always being the best or always being the world’s leader. We respect other nations, maximize cooperation between nations, and seek solutions that work for all. While protecting our nation when directly threatened, we primarily lead by example, practicing at home what we proclaim abroad.
We appreciate that we owe a great deal to the values and traditions that preceded us. We know that our prosperity is due in part to the size of our country, its tremendous natural resources, not having fought two World Wars on our own soil, having exploited Native Americans and enslaved Africans, and having absorbed a continuous stream of immigrants that has made America the most diverse in the world.
We know that only through painful, persistent grassroots struggles have Blacks, other ethnic minorities, women, unions, LGBT communities, and others made progress toward greater, still unfulfilled, justice.
Compared to its past, America has the look and feel of a new country. This transition began gradually, grounded in reality, pragmatism, and careful reasoning, step by step, person by person, family by family, school by school, workplace by workplace, faith community by faith community, neighborhood by neighborhood, and community organization by community organization.
Then, one day, it all came together. Like heated water that becomes steam or a caterpillar that becomes a butterfly, America turned the corner and became a compassionate community. We were like a new country, rooted in holistic democracy and democratic equality, with new structures that more fruitfully organize how we live together.
As addressed in this website, the different elements of this new social system — cultural, social, personal, economic, environmental, and political — fit together and reinforce each other with overlapping, synergistic dynamics that combine to produce a result that’s greater than the sum of their parts.