In America: The National Catholic Weekly, Michael Sean Winters challenges the “conventional wisdom about the 2008 election,” arguing that “The economy did not displace moral issues: The economy is a moral issue”:
In 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt faced similar socio-economic challenges and he responded with the New Deal, a phrase he unveiled in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. “What do the people of America want more than anything else?” FDR asked in that same speech. “To my mind, they want two things: work, with all the moral and spiritual values that go with it; and with work, a reasonable measure of security–security for themselves and for their wives and children. Work and security–these are more than words. They are more than facts. They are the spiritual values.”
Abortion, gay marriage, immigration policy, our militaristic foreign policy and a host of other moral issues still matter to Americans. To some they are still decisive. But, for most Americans, their more primordial moral concern for home and hearth has come to the fore. Like FDR, Obama must find the political opportunity in the current crisis, and that opportunity is deeper than flipping Virginia and Ohio from red state to blue. It is time to re-draw the social contract to reflect values greater than acquisitiveness. It is time to create a tax structure and a regulatory scheme that rewards work other than the creation of “financial instruments” that bear a remarkable resemblance to a ponzi scheme. It is time to promote social solidarity through universal health insurance and better worker-retraining programs for those displaced by global competition. Obama must articulate this moral vision that animates his economic program, a moral vision that speaks to and for those in middle America who have been struggling for a long time.
Read the full article here.