For the new generation of democratic party candidates seeking to part the waters and seize the House in next November's Midterms their first trial, if elected, will be finding food and water in a political wilderness. All the issues the politics of governments around the world have been either too slow-footed to address or have considered not their responsibility will comprise the mission impossible new Congressional incumbents will face.
The context appears immediately overwhelming and includes from day one the globalized economy of familiar giants--the US and Europe--plus the emerging giant powers India and China; not to mention the banditry of kleptocracies in Russia, the Western Pacific basin, parts of Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.
Here at home, all the familiar local bullying and blackmail will be operational, that includes self-interested faith groups, a technology driven economy and rising patriotic fervor. Any spirit of one worldism will be a still small voice.
That's why the interfaith movement has a huge role to play in blocking religious nationalism. It's been a hundred years since the leading liberal Christian theologian in Germany wrote Kaiser Wilhelm II's declaration of war speech for him, but the spirit of Adolph von Harnack lives on in today's Christian evangelicalism, Jewish Zionism and the extreme Muslim movements.
The reform political movement reflected in rising young candidates such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez needs a god for all peoples. It also needs to know and remember a hard era in 1948 when a woman, Eleanor Roosevelt, would throw her weight behind the great Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN in 1948.
"Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.... Now, therefore, The General Assembly Proclaims....a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations...to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance."
This secular statement needs fresh iteration in problem statements that define the real task facing political reformers. Political analyst John Lanchester puts it boldly this way:
"What if the governments of the developed world turned to their electorates and explicitly said this is the deal....we're living in a competitive global system, there are billions of desperately poor people in the world, and in order for their standards of living to improve, ours will have to decline in relative terms....we should accept that on moral grounds we've been rich enough for long enough to be able to share some of the proceeds of prosperity with our brothers and sisters....or we can just let divides [of inequality] widen until societies fall apart." [London Review of Books, July 5, 2018]
We're getting close to such a civilizational demise because denominations and sects are still calcified in illusions of their righteous patriotism. This is food for the power politics President Trump is practicing at NATO this week. But it's not just Trump. The spirit of von Harnack flows ecumenically in American veins. Flags fly even as blood flows from hundreds of innocent people perishing under U. S. made weaponry in Yemen, courtesy of our non-democratic ally Saudi Arabia.
Which is why a stern critical acuemen requires taking several big public policy reforms after the November elections. Analyst Lanchester puts the agenda for the Ocasio-Cortezes this way:
- Hidden wealth must be uncovered--economist Gabriel Zuchman, reports that the assets of the super rich hidden off-shore to avoid taxation amount to $8.7 trillion, "a significant fraction of all planetary wealth." This practice must be blocked by international agreement with the US and Europe leading the way but to the benefit of the public needs of every nation.
- The wealth of the global top ten percent of the population must be redistributed in the form of various public subsidies to enable all other peoples to have a life. Branko Milanović, author of Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalisation calls for government policies focused on education, lifelong training, and redistribution through the tax and benefits system. The absurdity of high-tech workers earning six figure incomes but unable to buy a home must be heavily re-compensated.
The task of the new younger political leadership is to teach why enacting these reforms means a more stable life for the entire human community. The task of the interfaith community as well as the older denominations is to make it plain that this is God's work.
