Rants & Reasons

With the historic election of Barack Obama as President, and both houses of Congress now under Democratic control for the first time in over a decade, liberals have high expectations. The Obama win symbolizes a nation desperate for values that can replace the divisiveness, dishonesty, and confrontation of the Bush administration with an inclusive climate of concern for all citizens.

But the liberalism of the late 20^th century failed to unite the country under a powerful and compelling set of values. That failure set the stage for conservatives to effectively and forcefully promote their moral agenda for the past 40 years-an agenda that has been thoroughly discredited by recent events. Will contemporary liberals of the 21^st Century offer a new and more compelling vision?

It is crucial that liberals and progressives develop a comprehensive moral identity that can win the debates about culture, values, and character and that demonstrates how we can prosper in a culture of care that is welcoming to all and that encourages the extraordinary level of cooperation needed to solve global problems. Rootstock Liberalism is an attempt to articulate that new vision. It seeks to rest liberalism on a more robust moral foundation than the liberalisms of the past.

A rootstock is the underground part of a root used for plant propagation. I use the term is a metaphor for the caring relationships-the rootstock-that generate and sustain culture. “Rootstock liberalism” is a cultural liberalism that develops the moral basis of society from the ground up, propagating relationships of social trust that provide the moral foundation of society. All intact human relationships depend on an ethical commitment that commands us to be responsible. Rootstock liberalism names a politics that seeks to build institutions and practices that strengthen that ethical commitment.

The liberalism of the 20^th century emphasized government policy, impartial procedures, and technocratic solutions that failed to engage people at a personal level. Although rootstock liberalism endorses the essential role of government in human flourishing, it views that role from the perspective of the health of relationships. It is a movement of grassroots and netroots, of boardrooms and bedrooms, of union halls and the halls of Congress.