It’s time for a new force in American politics. We don’t need another party – not yet, anyway – but we need a responsibility movement to challenge both parties and reach beyond them. We’ll call it Element R and launch it today, right here in Colorado.
Nationally this summer, things are out of joint. Low enthusiasm for the presidential contenders in both parties may lure Fred Thompson, Al Gore and Michael Bloomberg into the race. Polls register widespread disapproval with Pelosi, Reid and the Democratic Congress, as well as with Bush and the Republican administration. Voters by a big margin say we’re on the wrong track.
Element R needn’t run candidates, draft a platform, or hold marches to start making a difference in this sour climate. All it will take is citizens, one by one, re-dedicating ourselves to the original American ideal of responsible people and responsible communities. The responsibility deficit in high places (and low) can’t persist if an awakened silent majority says, “Enough.”
Don’t misunderstand; this born conservative and battle-scarred Republican isn’t about to change jerseys. I spurn the daydream that foresees some new entity swallowing the GOP as we once absorbed the Whigs. I reject the pundits who tag my party a sure loser for the White House and Congress next year. We’ll be back.
But in the simplistic polarization between Republicans and Democrats, I believe something is missing – the noble virtue called responsibility. We have a party of the right that prioritizes freedom and the individual viewpoint, competing against a party of the left that prioritizes equality and the communal viewpoint. Seldom asked amid the struggle is the question, “Why? Equality or freedom for what?”
America’s democratic conversation occurs in a moral vacuum as to the ultimate ends of human life, even when the air is thick with moral and spiritual rhetoric. Victory may seesaw between the two parties, yet duty steadily loses ground to selfishness, faith to skepticism, prudence to expediency, temperance to excess, higher to lower. The responsibility deficit worsens among us, no matter which side wins.
To be responsible, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is to be “morally accountable for one’s actions, capable of rational conduct.” This is heavy stuff in the Age of iPhone. When today’s spirit of autonomy and affluence combusts with the ancient fire of virtue, responsibility talk can become fighting words. Yet this is who we are and must be. This is what our founders encoded in America’s operating system, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. We’re either a nation of responsible persons and responsible communities, or we’re nothing.
My July 1 fantasy column, satirizing Hillary Clinton and the relativist caucus in 1776 moving to purge all absolutes from Jefferson’s Declaration, was just another approach to this same issue: responsibility. Lots of my fellow Republicans could be imagined in the same anti-responsible role.
But going into 2008, let’s hope the responsibility movement attracts many good Americans from all parties. It was responsibility, even more than freedom and equality, that saw our republic through all the troubles of two centuries.
A duty to do, a trust to keep, a moral standard to meet – for all of us, red or blue, rich or poor, pigmented or pale – that’s the Element R vision. Join us?
John Andrews (andrewsjk@aol.com) is a fellow with the Claremont Institute and a past president of the Colorado Senate. He hosts “Backbone Radio” on Sundays at 5 p.m. on 710-KNUS.
