Unity08. A people's movement to take our country back.

The Washington Post reports:

"The House last night voted to boost the minimum wage for the first time in nearly a decade while also permanently slashing the estate tax, a coupling that GOP leaders calculated might garner enough Senate support to become law."

I suppose it's human nature to want to belong, to identify with a group of like-minded individuals, but I fear we will never reach a national consensus as long we insist on defining our political activism in ideological terms. While the existence of extremists on either end of the political spectrum cannot be denied, the majority of the electorate cannot be easily or usefully classified. Though most of us tend to self identify as being of a particular political bent, if we assess our values and priorities dispassionately, we find we don't belong in any one category.

Sometimes I say to my kids, when they're complaining, "It must be so hard to be you, dear." Nasty, I know. But I promise, I say it with the best motherly “I love you now stop complaining” smile you can imagine. And that's usually followed by making hot cocoa from scratch and throwing some marshmallows into the cup.

But lately, I've been thinking about how hard it can be to be a Jew. And I'm wondering, do Catholics or Protestants, Episcopalians, Methodists, Baptists, Unitarians, Congregationalists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Agnostics, Atheists, Gnostics, Buddhists, Muslims - does anyone who is a member of one of these categories ever feel, It's so hard to be (fill in the blank of the denomination or nationality)?

This summer, the summer after my sophomore year of college, I am traveling from Quito, Ecuador, to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Last month, I was in Peru for its presidential elections. The candidates were the radical Ollanta vs. the blah ex-president Alan García. Everyone in Peru is required to vote, so maybe I shouldn't have been surprised at the enormous amounts of propaganda. It was everywhere - posted in storefronts, spray-painted on walls, carved into hillsides, painted on boulders along the highway, blaring out of loud speakers on top of cars.

What better place or time to ask Americans what they think of politics today than Washington, DC on the 4th of July? Watch the video to see what people had to say to our Unity08 roving reporters. Then, let us know what you have to say by commenting in the blog, posting your opinion in the Shoutbox or sending us your own video or audio clip. Or, better yet, post it to YouTube and we'll link to it.

A lot of other bloggers here have expounded on what it means to be a moderate, and on the evils of partisanship, and what's wrong with the current way of doing things.

Me, I want to talk about the practicalities.

This is a convert talking.

I was once a big booster of that disputed decade. I even wrote a whole book in its mildly qualified praise. Sure, it spiraled out of control, its embarrassing excesses were to be repudiated, but its heart, I thought, was all good. It was visionary. It was transforming. It was ecstatic. It was spiritual. It was -- Youth.

This was the week of “high concept” audio and visual clips from the G8 conference. And what memorable imagery...

First, there was President George Bush’s blunt, no PC use of a four letter word beginning with “s” in referring to Hezbollah’s provocative Middle East actions (The word wasn’t “sore.”) in a moment when he didn’t know his mike was on.

Jack Abramoff’s friend Ralph Reed went down to defeat yesterday in Georgia. Some would say ‘the holier they are, the harder they fall.’ But it also seems timely to re-open our discussion of term limits and other Washington reform proposals.

Gather round moderates, centrists, what-have-yous. There's a little story I know and I'd like to share. I heard it back when I was going to the University of Missouri-Columbia. Don't know if it's true or not, and I may get some details mixed up along the way, but it goes a little something like this...

Many people have been asking what they can do to get involved. Here are 10 of our ideas of how you can help. Pick one or make up your own.

Michael Silverstein is a Senior Fellow at the Silverwood Institute.

To bring about greater unity among Americans in these most divisive of times, two approaches immediately come to mind. Civility is one. If people addressed issues in a more civil manner and with greater respect to opposing views, we would gradually become more unified.

Yesterday, at a kickoff for political pundits Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein’s new book “The Broken Branch,” former Speakers of the House Thomas Foley and Newt Gingrich spoke on the dreadful state of Congress. Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank wrote “The Ex-Speakers Speak With One Voice on the Sorry State of Congress,” about the event.

“They need a government of national unity… Leaders must agree to a decision-making process that gives political minorities confidence that that the majority will share power and take their legitimate concerns into account… Leaders need to govern from the center, not the ideological extremes.”

This post is adapted from one I wrote on my blog, Charging Rino, on April 19, 2024, in commemoration of Patriots' Day. I called then for a Revolution of Reason, to bring our government back from the brink of the partisan abyss to the stable ground of centrism and unity. As this fall's elections and then the 2024 presidential contest draw ever closer, I think it's worth reiterating the point once more.

It was a debate watched all over the country. Political partisans from the state (and visiting the state) watched their man take on the hated incumbent with a bated breath so strong that Sea World’s Shamu drooled.

They were taking on the hated enemy, a man often called by some of them a “liar,” a man who stood in the way of their party’s agenda.

Come Monday, we will deliver your Declaration of Independence to the leaders of Congress just as they are returning from their 10-day Fourth of July vacation. (You got one of those too, didn’t you?)

Watch Doug Bailey, Unity08 Founders Council member, mix it up with Glenn Beck on CNN Headline Prime about how a Unity Ticket could transform politics.

I'm involved with Unity08 because America is in trouble. Partisanship has bred inauthentic rhetoric in Washington, causing Americans to tune out; this "tune-out" has created an environment where the extremists on either side have much louder voices than most Americans, who are centrists. This insincerity, posturing, and group-think has become endemic to Washington politics. What is needed is a renaissance in leadership that sets party aside and focuses on advancing the core ideals of our nation. Unity08 accomplishing its goal of a unity ticket would be a big step in that direction, and I look forward to helping it succeed.

It wasn’t the happiest, this 230th birthday of ours. Here in New York, the fireworks defied the rain. Americans gamely oohed and ahhed at the starbursts, waved tiny flags and sparklers, and ate corn on the cob and ice cream. But the whole time we had this sick feeling in the pit of our stomachs, like children in a family where divorce is in the air.

We’re well on the way to becoming the Divided States of America.

The last poll done by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think-tank that specializes in mapping black public opinion in America, shows that 40% of all black Americans identify as moderate. Thirty-three percent of black Americans identify as liberal and 27% as conservative. If a plural majority identifies as moderate - and is thus arguably the ‘black political consensus’ - then why are black moderates not a major force on the Internet and in politics, with people debating the merits of our views and strategies? Indeed, it appears as though moderates are a silent plural majority in Black America.

One of the underlying characteristics that binds us as Americans is our willingness to take risks.

Can one think of any greater risks than those assumed by the signers of the Declaration of Independence, whose courage we mark on the July 4th holiday?

The 56 signers of the Declaration shoved all their chips onto the table:

And for the support of this Declaration with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

If you signed the Declaration of Independence , thank you. Your Congress may not thank you, but your country does.

But if we put our heads together we can make this Declaration even louder. How can we make sure that the Declaration of Independence gets sent around the country thousands more times- and signed by everyone who reads it?

Make the Declaration be heard around the country (and especially in Washington DC). Post your thoughts here! Be inventive. Be funny. Be brazen. Be bold.

In “Call for Lobbying Changes Is a Fading Cry, Lawmakers Say,” Washington Post reporters Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and Jim VandeHei depict another example of political maneuvering at the expense of the American people. The article validates the notion that a new political movement is needed to change the way politics is played – a movement like Unity08. Read the article here.