The American Values Team
American values are under attack. Republicans in the White House and in Congress are pushing a dangerous agenda that undermines our freedoms and threatens to leave our nation less secure.
Fundamental to American values are the beliefs that:
- Every American should have equal opportunity to achieve economic independence and security. They should have the right to earn a living wage, the right to affordable health care, housing, and education.
- Our constitution freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights should be protected.
- Government must hold itself to high ethical standards, not abuse the public trust, and seek to achieve the common good, both nationally and internationally.
- Democrats must defend against the full-on Republican assult on programs, institutions, and principles at every opportunity.
We must oppose Republican efforts to:
- Privatize Social Security
- Erode our civil liberties
- Cut essential government services and shift the burden of taxation onto the backs of the poor and middle class, while providing tax cuts that primarily benefit the rich
- Lift environmental protections and open our national resources to the plunder of corporate raiders
- Adopt a go-it-alone foreign policy that undermines our nation’s place in the world community
Republicans will stop at nothing on their march to become our nation’s permanent majority party. They have used fear, intimidation and threats. They have created false crises, have misled the American people, and for those of us whose strong Democratic districts protect us from election challenges, they use the courts to file expensive and protracted lawsuits and a final weapon.
My own battle in the courts with what’s left of the Newt Gingrich operation has been going on for 8 years. My fight with them, which has gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and back again, has been about our First Amendment freedoms. It has been a long hard battle. It is expensive. And it is still going on. But our freedom of speech is an important principle, and it is worth fighting for.
I hope the American Values Team will become strong enough to go to the aid of other progressive Democrats who, like me, become Republican targets. Republicans need to know that when Democrats are under attack, we stand together and will fight for our values.
The inspiration to form the American Values Team came from a letter that was passed on to me by our State Democratic Chair. It was a letter signed by Mason County Democrat ant 23 of her friends. She wrote:
“…It would appear that the only ‘crime’ Mr. McDermott might be considered ‘guilty’ of would be the courage and honorable duty of shedding light upon mischief.
" . . . It occurred to me that perhaps Democrats en bloc could mobilize and come to the Congressman's assistance. We (in Mason County) are only a small area, but the Mason County Democrats are a great, enthusiastic bunch - and if I could get a few of our people to join me in this letter, perhaps this might motivate others to band together show the other Washington that our elected Representatives are not to be trifled with. For all they accomplish to benefit our State, the least we can do is reciprocate, i.e. back up and buck up the one needing our help."
I’m deeply grateful to the Mason County Democrats for their support. It means a lot to me, and inspires me to keep on fighting.
Let's all of us stand up and be counted. There is strength in numbers. If Democrats all over our state and our country take the kind of initiative that my friends in Mason County did, we will win this battle to defend American values.
Revision date: April 18, 2005
