We believe that everyone should have a just and equitable chance. We believe that this starts with the law, which should be applied equally and fairly – regardless of race, religion, creed, gender, or sexual orientation. All of us are equal in God’s eyes (no matter how we choose to approach our Creator). To be measured with any less equity by man is to fall short of the self evident truth that “all men are created equal.”

Yet we cannot limit our goals to the law. Justice is not maintained by laws and paper – it is maintained by those who are willing to put the ideals codified in law into practice in our daily lives as well as our civic lives. The demands of justice require us to strive for a day when we are all judged solely on our individual worth.

We see several encouraging signs that this is beginning to occur. Our Republican colleagues have begun to embrace diversity. Yet there is still much to do.

We are Democrats because we believe in the traditional values of the Democratic Party.

Whether we and our families came into the party as a part of the Old South, as part of the Civil Rights movement, or as part of any of the movements that helped build our party, we believe in the core values of the Democratic Party.

We are the party of the New Deal, which brought our nation out of the Great Depression and established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to ensure the public’s trust in the banks and the Social Security Administration to ensure that the least of us would be protected from the worst of times.
We are the party that the nation continued to believe in during the struggle against Fascism.
We are the party that established the Great Society, which established programs like Medicare and Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) to protect those who most needed protecting.
We were the party that moved Civil Rights forward – whether under Truman, who desegregated the military, or Kennedy and Johnson, who shepherded important legislation through the Congress.

These are more than just laurels. They show the real character of the Democratic Party. We are a party based on ideals, hope, and optimism – the belief that tomorrow can be better than today if we are willing to work towards a better future.

We do not, however, believe that we must redistribute the wealth of our nation to accomplish this. Wealth, in and of itself, is not bad. Wealth gathered and amassed for its own sake, however, is. Our nation has a great tradition of men who have believed that wealth must serve a purpose, starting with the Founding Fathers, who believed that personal wealth brought social responsibility. Indeed, this belief was most forcefully expressed by one of our nation’s greatest capitalists: Dale Carnegie in his essay “Wealth.” These higher goals are what drive our fiscal policy.

We are Democrats because we believe in individual Liberty.

The idea of Liberty is not an empty slogan to Democrats. We believe in the rights and responsibilities that our Liberties give to us. They are precious and need protecting because the temptation is always there to exchange our hard won Liberties for security and safety – whether the safety sought literal physical safety or the safety of having our own cherished, personal beliefs challenged.

This is one of the key reasons we believe that the right of a woman to a medically safe abortion is necessary. Although many of us believe that abortion is morally wrong, we also believe that the choice must be left a private choice between those involved and their God. Likewise, we know that, were abortion once more be made illegal, it would cost lives – as medical records from the era when abortion was illegal clearly and irrefutably show.

As such, we believe that the only way to responsibly approach this and any other social issue is to do so responsibly and practically. While abstinence education is clearly an important component of reducing the need for abortion, as studies clearly indicate, so is frank and age appropriate sex education which includes information on contraception important, as many of the same studies indicate.

The greatest threat to our nation’s ability to be responsible is the push from a theocratic elite towards a one party, one faith state. Whether such a push is intentional or accidental, such a vision of the future is antithetical to American values. Our nation has always valued Liberty of Conscience and we, as Democrats, believe we must protect that value.

We are Democrats because we believe in the Power of Education

An educated electorate is the foundation of our democracy – without it, we will fail. Ignorance is the greatest enemy to our democratic republic.

We believe that educational measurements must be measured more than by standardized tests, which are convenient for statisticians but not the sole measure of a student’s knowledge and worth. We further believe that we require more than math and science, for our nation’s greatest accomplishments – the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, and the Emancipation Proclamation – have been in the humanities.

We believe that all of us must be educated about our history – the good as well as the bad. We must know the ideals we have set for ourselves and, when we have not reached them, why we failed. The goal must be to give a sufficient sense of wonder at how far we have come in order to make us ready to struggle the distance we still have left to go.

In the end, we Democrats hold that we need not just a Republic but, in the sage words of one of our members, a passionate Democracy. These core beliefs are what give us our passion.

Matthew M. DeForrest

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05/08/2008