Reply #55: The core Democratic value is optimism about the future [View All]

[More Than A Feeling]

"The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself." -FDR

Democrats have always believed that human beings and societies have the power to make the future better than the past. That people who are given fresh opportunities can rise above their birth status, or their unsavory past. This has manifested itself in Democratic support for equal access to public education as a means of raising the impoverished into the working class, and the working class into the middle class. It also appears in the liberal foreign policy belief that America can help pull developing countries out of poverty, and that closer relationships among rival countries can prevent war. Finally, it leads to working on longterm projects like equal rights for all, because we believe that in the future, there will be enough for all, if we are given the power to bring our ideas to life. Therefore, new rights for others does not inflame insecurity within us.

To be a Democrat means that no matter how bad things look now, or how much the Republicans have screwed everything up, Democrats can make it better in the future, and that gives us hope. None of us would be here if we thought the problems of America had no solution.