This weekend I’m attending the LaborTech conference in San Francisco. I’ve been excited about this all week. The goal of this conference is to put social media, video, web, and cellphone training into the hands of the people who most need it: the workers who are trying to contest the “key messages” put out by corporations and the mainstream media.

I can’t believe how much I’ve learned in just a few hours. LaborTech is an International conference, so there are workers and organizers from all over the world.

One of the things I learned about was how Samsung, the most powerful corporation in South Korea (and prominent on a world scale as well), has been spying on its workers and using unbelievable union-busting tactics. For instance, Samsung management used the “Friend-Finding” GPS service to track workers and pinpoint  where worker’s gathered to attempt to unionize. One of the first things I’m going to do when I get home this evening is write Engadget and other gadger review blogs to let them know how Samsung treats its workers: anyone who wants to put their consumer behavior behind upholding human rights should avoid buying anything from Samsung. I’m going to try to get a clip of the Samsung labor movement video to put on YouTube.

This conference is really focusing on video. There was an excellent video by Vivian Price on female construction workers in Japan. There was also a video on the months of labor revolution in Oaxaca, which includes the worker takeover of local radio and TV stations. There was a great sign that showed the LAW radio station being renamed LAW OF THE PEOPLE.

Mark Libkuman, an open source development planner who is speaking as I type this, lost a good friend in Oaxaca.

Here’s a pic of Steve Zeltzer, the Bay Area labor leader who was kind enough to invite me to LaborTech:

I have more pictures here.   In the ongoing adventure in irony that is my life, my camera batteries just died. :-p Hopefully I can pick up some batteries over lunch and there will be more pictures tonight.

There’s no question that labor is where the netroots will be happening next simply because of the sheer failure of the media to report their perspective or the facts they have to contest corporate propaganda.

Update: Nancy Bupp, a labor educator, reviewed the current state of employer surveillance technology. SCARY!!!

This post refers to a tragic situation that occurred on Daily Kos - I’m not going to rehash it or add juicy links because I’m worried that the person used her real name, and I don’t want to add to her problems by feeding the Google monster. The first thing I saw when I revved up Daily Kos the next morning was another moving plea for help in the rec box, this time by a fairly high profile diarist. I truly empathized with his frustration at having to advocate for himself. His situation sounded horrific: I hope he will find the help he needs, and I’m grateful he’s using his writing gifts to illustrate the impact of a widespread problem on relatively helpless individuals.

The reason I wrote this follow up is I’m concerned that people have to be “amplified” to be heard, or otherwise they are allowed to fall through the cracks. Many people just on Daily Kos are living on the edge. I’ve been mostly unemployed (a little under-the-table work) for three years. I won’t go into my litany of problems (but feel free to read through my diaries if your curious) - the point is that I read diaries and comments from people in similar extreme situations every day. They, too, have been going without help they need for a while. They, too, have gotten to the point where they are going on the web and shouting their problems, hoping that someone, anyone will start listening. All the cries for help create a lot of noise, so people who could help just tune out.

It’s not just a matter of whether you are articulate enough to communicate your problems. I would say most people who participate in the blogosphere have above-average communication skills: they already have a major advantage over the significant portion of the population that can barely read, who can’t advocate for themselves or interest anyone in advocating for them, and are therefore invisible. At this point, though, you have to scream to be heard. You have to have a following as a writer (a “rec box regular”), media contacts, or access to mailing lists that will get the word out. You have to be willing to do shocking things, use profanity, wave huge multi-colored flags. If you want to hold on to your dignity as the one thing you have left, you’re out of luck. The message the world is sending is give us all a good show, or you aren’t working hard enough to deserve our help.

This state of affairs depresses the hell out of me. I mentioned in a comment before that I was wavering about voting for the Democratic candidate in my state (though the Republican in office is beyond awful), because he gave me the impression that keeping people from falling through the cracks wasn’t part of his platform. Good policy is important, and in theory progressive policy helps more people in the aggregate, but I want political representatives who are also willing to address the flaws in their policy. Instead of worrying that people might “come out of the woodwork” to take advantage of programs, a good political representative should be wondering what is going on with people while they’re still in the woodwork and being ignored. The implication is that the system is okay as long as people suffer and die quietly.

It’s up to us, the voters, to let our political representatives know that there are no “acceptable numbers” of people falling through the cracks. It’s up to us to tell our political representatives that we will vote for the one wants to help real people and seal the cracks instead of just orating about policy.

AllisonInSeattle made an important comment that this is one of the strengths of the Red State outlook. People in the largely red rural areas use small churches and civic organizations to try to cover the cracks, even though they often have meager resources as a community. In urban “Blue” areas, people are often isolated, and while they vote for the party that’s promising to do the right thing, that promise is often empty as far as individual lives are concerned.

In sum, I hope the efforts that Kossacks made that today to help people in dire straits will spark a larger discussion about how to reach out to the people who have no voice at all.

It was a tragedy that I couldn’t attend BlogHer. The conference took place a 40 minute drive away (San Jose), and I knew some people who were going. Unfortunately, I don’t drive, and I just can’t afford the transportation and hotel costs right now. I had thus reconciled myself to the fact BlogHer was out of my reach, and I planned to spend the weekend twiddling with Breakingranks.net and catching up on Jamal Dajani’s Middle East Intelligence Report.

At the very last minute, Mary Hodder, the braininess behind Dabble offered me a ride to the BlogHer reception. While I wasn’t actually registered for the conference, I got to check out this small part of it.

Just the ride to San Jose was an education. I shared a ride Sylvia Paull, who runs the Berkeley CyberSalon. I’ve lived in Berkeley since 1992, and I’ve been working and playing in “cyberspace” for almost as long,   but I’d never actually hooked into Berkeley’s vast community of bloggers, web developers, and tech entrepreneurs. I guess I’m too much of a geek to even go out and meet other geeks. Anyway, Sylvia made a special effort to invite me to all her Happenings. She’s at the top of the list of Thank You Notes I have to write today.

The BlogHer reception was a lot of fun. At first I was worried, because I didn’t see anyone I knew, but I didn’t want to hang all over Mary, either. Fortunately, I literally bumped right into Susan Getgood, an energetic marketing blogger. Since the flipside of my rage against the corporate machine is engagement with a lot of PR and marketing folk, I actually knew Susan. And since Susan is naturally gregarious, she introduced me to a few new people, most notably tsunami-blogger Evelyn Rodriguez.

I also admit to snitching some of the free wine. Hopefully BlogHer’s lawyer’s won’t come after me.

Mary was staying for the conference, so I got a ride home with one of the new forces behind Our Media, Lisa Padilla. I at least knew Mary through participating in her Dabble beta and soliciting her opinions on rankism in the blogosphere. I’d never met Lisa at all, but she was extremely warm and friendly, and we found a lot to talk about.

The last kindness of the night had nothing to do with BlogHer or blogging. Lisa dropped me off at the Millbrae BART (train) station, which was closest to her house. There I discovered, thanks to my apparent inability to read a train schedule, the last train had already left for the night.

Thus, I found myself in Millbrae at 1am. I had no cellphone, and no one to call even if I had one (nope - didn’t even get Lisa’s card before she dropped me off). I had six dollars and my pocket. I also had a credit card, but taking a cab back to Berkeley would have cost me more than spending the weekend at BlogHer. I had exactly six dollars in my pocket.

The BART station agent was then kind enough to point out that there was a popular 24-hour restaurant, Peter’s Cafe, right beside the BART station. While I questioned whether I still had the ability to pull an all-nighter at my age, I decided to give it a shot.

Apparently the staff at Peter’s Cafe has seen this situation before, because they were all very sweet and gave me a whole pot of coffee. I just settled in with the book I had luckily brought with me to read on the train (a translation of The Peony Pavilion, if anyone is interested).

I ordered something called a “Baby Pancake”, which was really the equivalent of a whole apple pie. I was only able to eat a quarter of it the entire five hours I spent there. I recommend it as a special treat if anyone else finds themselves trapped in Millbrae.

I ultimately made it home during the wee hours of Saturday morning. I then slept most of the day, and I wasn’t really functioning on all cylinders on Sunday, either. Now I’m back  in gear, though, and ready to follow up with all the cool people I met at the BlogHer reception.

All of these people were previously strangers to me. I was able to go to the BlogHer reception not through the kindness of one person, but the kindness of many. That sort of thing really renews my faith in the human spirit.

The strangest thing happened while I was on BART (the San Francisco commuter train) on Friday. The girl standing next to me, who had been complaining loudly about the over-crowded train, spit at the people standing on the platform right before the door closed. Her friends immediately started doing a victory dance, singing “Boo-boo-be-doo - we spit on you!”

The fact that all these kids immediately knew how to celebrate the spitting on random commuters made me wonder if this is part of an evolving subculture. It’s probably not that far a leap from spitting to the pyrotechnic subculture. Random violence seems to be bubbling up from the ground. Yet because it’s happening in a familiar setting, we’re striving for labels other than “terrorism”. Our children aren’t terrorists. They’re just confused by hormones. Only “other people” are terrorists.

The irony was that I was returning from watching a live filming of Link TV’s Mosaic (there are streaming episodes here if anyone is interested). The most moving part was a woman who expained the ambivalence that the Lebonese people have about Hezbollah. To the Lebonese, Hezbollah is not necessarily a terrorist organization. Many see Hezbollah as an organization of “freedom fighters” and Israel as a terrorist state that has killed over a hundred people and levelled whole neighborhoods to do their “Boo-boo-be-doo - we spit on you!” victory dance.

My landlord just got back from Mumbai, where almost 200 people were killed and 700 injured in train bombings on July 11. While the U.S. has been too distracted by Lebanon to give Mumbai a second thought, I wonder whether 7/11 will provoke the same sort of reaction in India that 9/11 did here - with “kill the terrorist” flash games circulating by email in a matter of hours and general patriotic warmongering? Where will the anger of the people turn?

Mumbai trains are famous for their hot, over-crowded conditions - and this again takes me back to the spitting girl on the BART train. While the commuters on the platform probably wouldn’t regard themselves as having anything to do with her problems, I don’t think her actions were irrational. It seems to me that in an era where a lot of things that oppressive forces are systemic or anonymous, it’s hard for people to figure out where to pursue their fight for justice. These kids were angry at everybody. An anonymous stranger symbolizes everyody.

I’m thinking that it’s time to get rid of the word “terrorist”. First it’s far too easy for politicians to label anyone they dislike a “terrorist supporter” (or possibly a “terrorist” for wearing the wrong t-shirt or hugging a tree in a logging zone). Second, too many mental acrobatics have to occur to separate the “terrorists” out there from other sorts of violence from spouse-beating to “pyrotechnic subcultures”. In the end we should be looking for the source of the anger and repeatedly asking ourselves whether we’ve shut down the alternatives to spitting and basement bombs.

*********

On an entirely unrelated note - a friend of mine just launched a web site called Dabble for organizing and sharing online videos. Could be very useful for people who want to put together “video albums” for their particular cause.

Both political parties know that a unifying core value expressed in a pithy slogan translates into votes. FDR’s Democrats had “The New Deal”; LBJ’s party advanced “The Great Society.” Republicans rally to “lower taxes,” “smaller government,” “strong defense,” and “family values.”

What core value, what slogan, could move us beyond the toxic standoff that paralyzes American politics today?

The answer lies in a single word—Dignity.

This core value takes wings on the inclusive slogan: “Dignity For All.” The bumper sticker reads “Dignity4All,” and it will soon begin appearing on cars across America.

The idea of a universal right to dignity may at first seem too simple to pull together the disparate elements of this divided nation, but it’s not. Dignity is what people want, on the left, on the right, and most importantly, in the vast, non-ideological middle.

Dignity is not negotiable. People will stand up for their dignity, and once they’re on their feet, it’s usually not long before they’re marching for justice.

Two hundred years of bloody world history have shown that there is no direct path from Liberty to Justice. But if we interpose a steppingstone, we can build a bridge to justice. The name of that stone is not “Equality,” it’s “Dignity.” By establishing the right to dignity, and then enacting legislation that protects everyone’s dignity equally, we can give concrete meaning to Thomas Jefferson’s evocative claim that “All men are created equal.”

A “dignitarian society” pulls together what’s best from the three broad strands of civic culture dominating politics since the French Revolution—Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. The polarizing stranglehold these ideals exert on the contemporary imagination, when any one is prioritized over the others, is a major source of the incivility that infects our politics today.

Conservatives see themselves as Liberty’s defenders; progressives pride themselves as the champions of equality. Both parties promise Fraternity, but neither delivers it.

Dignity is more encompassing than Liberty, Equality, or Fraternity. It’s the missing link that when restored will yield an electoral mandate to make good on America’s founding promise of “liberty and justice for all.”

The politics of dignity puts the “We” back in “We the People.” It spans the conservative-liberal divide. It closes the ideological fissures that separate libertarian, egalitarian, and fraternitarian ideologies and breaks the stalemate that has stalled the advance of justice since the 1960s.

A dignitarian society does not tolerate indignity—towards anyone. When this principle is translated into policy, it rules out acceptance of a permanent underclass. It disallows prejudice and discrimination toward all the groups that have rallied around the various flags of identity politics. It transforms the stalemate over abortion and gay marriage into a civil discussion of whose rights to dignity are being abridged. It proclaims everyone’s right to a sustainable environment.

Like liberty and justice, dignity is most easily defined in the negative. As a precursor to banishment or enslavement, we’re all attuned to pick up on the slightest hint of indignity.

What causes people to experience indignity? The precise and universal cause of indignity is the abuse of power. Make a list of the most distressing issues of recent years: corporate corruption, the Katrina catastrophe, sexual abuse by clergy, Abu Ghraib, domestic spying, etc. Every one of them can be traced to an abuse of power by individuals of high rank. Often the abuses had the blessing of people of even higher rank.

To effectively oppose the full range of abuses of power vested in rank, we need a word that identifies them collectively. Abuse and discrimination based on color and gender are called “racism” and “sexism,” respectively. By analogy, abuse and discrimination based on the power inherent in rank is “rankism.” This coinage provides a vitalizing link between the methods of identity politics and the moral values of democratic governance. Having a generic name for abuses of power makes them much easier to target, and targeting them is precisely what’s called for if democracy is to resume its evolution.

However principled the cause, no party can present itself as a champion of dignity so long as its members reserve the right to indulge in rankism. This includes treating political opponents with indignity. Humiliation and condescension—toward domestic opponents or foreign enemies—are inherently rankist postures, and as such they have no place in a dignitarian politics.

How would a society that makes dignity its linchpin differ from ones shaped by ideologies that accentuate liberty, equality, or fraternity? The difference is one of nuance, not opposition, for a dignitarian society combines the strengths of all three traditions.

A dignitarian society promotes individual freedom, while at the same time tempering the uninhibited free market with institutions of social responsibility that insure that economic power does not confer unwarranted educational or political advantages. For example, you shouldn’t have to be rich to attend good schools, or command a fortune to stand for office.

A dignitarian society provides genuine equality of opportunity. In a dignitarian society, loss of social mobility, let alone division into master and servant classes, is unacceptable. There’s a way out of poverty in a dignitarian society. Everyone earns a living wage and has access to quality health care.

The politics of dignity sees democracy as a work in progress. Democracy’s next step—one that will enlarge liberty, deliver justice, and foster fraternity—is to overcome rankism and build a dignitarian society.

Dignity is an idea whose time has come. The party that takes dignity as its core value can mobilize the energy not merely to win at the polls, but to win with a mandate to fulfill our nation’s implicit promise of “Dignity For All.”

*This article was a featured column on Huffington Post on June 15, 2006.

Over the last year there has been a torrent of media articles intended to discipline (or terrorize) people into using what the power elite considers to be “good judgment” in the presentation of your online self. This reminds me of the early Puritans scurrying across the wilderness with a mission to scold and rebuke all those who weren’t toeing the line for the theocratic Millenium.

CNet struck the gusher of contemporary fear, loathing, and perpetual irony when Elinor Mills googled Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. Ever since then, the mainstream media has been obsessed with “digital dirt”, preaching to the reprobate bloggers and warning parents that their children will be damned to unemployment for their injudicious use of MySpace, Facebook, and other social sites (nope, I’m not going to clue the snooping Puritans in).

This week the New York Times hit with the old one-two punch. First sticking your neck out in the public space is a threat to your livelihood. Second, the Internet is a playground for stalkers. All that was missing from the set was the ever-popular screed against the Internet as a moral hazard that facilitates goofing off in the workplace, therefore undermining the Puritan work ethic.

Despite widespread interest in privacy and defending the few individual rights we have left, public response to this elite reformism has been muffled at best. I think some of the confusion stems from the idea the Internet is a public space: of course your employer, an army of marketers, random stalkers, and men in black are as free to seek you out as anyone. Sure your presence is amplified and perma-recorded in that public space, which leads to the reasonable conclusion that the glitterati have always known: you can’t get the benefits of visibility without being prepared to fend off the dangers.

Most people, of course, don’t command the social influence, legal resources, or public relations personnel that celebrities wield to cope with attacks on their reputation in public space. The Puritan Reformers of this age as well as the 17th century are concerned above all with everyone else’s reputation. In the previous Puritan heyday of 17th-century England, it was common to go to court for just being called a rude name in the street. Today this is rarely a feasible option, and frankly I don’t think using the MSM megaphone to shout “Repent, Sinners!” is going to rollback the Information Age, either.

I’d like to propose another way to look at our online over-exposure. It’s not only “public space” - it’s a form of civic “third space” - i.e., a place for socializing and discussion that is apart from family and apart from the workplace. The third space used to happen in the market, at church, and in the local pub. Now it happens on the Internet, too.

The third space is publicly accessible, but it is not a standing invitation to be attacked or abused. When the people who have power over you seek you out for the purposes of threatening your livelihood or putting pressure on your political opinions, that’s abuse.

While I’m sure there are a stampede of lawsuits just around the corner that will ultimately persuade the beancounters in risk management to discourage corporate HR from stalking hapless personnel, I would rather see the monied elite rethink the New Puritanism, and, instead, make a move in the direction of progressive leadership. For instance, at the next Business Ethics Summit, the big decision-makers could pledge to establish corporate policies to forbid snooping into the private lives of either potential or existing employees. They could instead declare themselves to be in favor of free public discourse and support the emerging third space. The sort of heavy-handed discipline imposed in the workplace is often counter-productive and stressful during working hours: it’s certainly inappropriate, if not inhuman, to extend the New Puritanism into the “third space”, too.

Robert Fuller just called to update me on all the goings-on at YearlyKos. He attended the Political Journalism panel, where representatives of the main stream media incuding Atrios, Matt Bai, Jay Rosen, Christy Hardin Smith, and Paul Waldman engaged with the increasing influence of bloggers in the national conversation. Fuller was particularly impressed with blogger Marcy Wheeler (”emptywheel” on Daily Kos and The Next Hurrah).

Fuller also spoke highly of the New Politics Begins panel, led by New Democratic Network President Simon Rosenberg and New Politics Institute Director Peter Leyden. This panel examined specific social and political factors (such as immigration) that the Democrats would have to take into account in order to win the presidency in 2008.

Fuller also met Dr. Joel Rogers (Professor of Law, Political Science, and Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of Center On Wisconsin Strategy) at a panel on Labor and Power.

This post is a follow up to a conversation initiated by Doc Searls.

When it comes to politics, new language and new thinking are different things. Whatever new language progressives used in 2004 failed to change the electoral outcome, and at most it’ll help them eke out a few victories in the coming years. New language is like changing the window treatment, not the window, not the view, not the perspective.

What’s required for social change, and it could come from either party, is the kind of political realignment we get once every 50 years. Such realignment pulls a sizeable majority from the vast non-ideological, sensible middle of the political spectrum, and creates a real mandate for fundamental social change. Like those that FDR and LBJ presided over. Like the universal health care and campaign finance reform that we need now.

America may well be approaching another such tipping point. To actually tip, we need a core unifying idea to rally around, and equally we need a name for the situation we’ll no longer put up with. For the unifying idea I suggest the slogan “Dignity For All.” (The bumper sticker goes ‘Dignity4All’ and they’re being created by a woman in Kansas.) The constellation of behaviors and practices “up with which we will not put” all fall under the heading of rankism.

Rankism is defined as abuse of the power inherent in rank. It’s the culprit. It’s the cause of indignity. It’s the source of the most vexing political problems troubling Americans, from Katrina to Abu Ghraib to corporate corruption to bought politicians and elections. But most disturbingly, it is the cause of the emergence of an entrenched class locked in permanent poverty. America without the American Dream is not America … and the Dream is fast becoming a mirage. This trend must be reversed, and it’s going to take once-a-generation political realignment to do it.

The goal then is to build a dignity movement that provides grassroots support for democracy to make its next evolutionary step. In the sixties the step we needed was to overcome racism; in the seventies we trained our sights on sexism; now the challenge is to target rankism—in all its guises. And they are many: bully bosses, sexually abusive clerics, professors who “borrow” research results from graduate students or exploit them as assistants, politicians who threaten privacy and liberty, condescending doctors, arrogant bureaucrats, coaches who humiliate players. Wherever there is a hierarchy, it’s susceptible to abuse by power-holders of high rank.

But neither rank nor hierarchy are inherently, necessarily abusive. Actually, we admire, even love, people who earn high rank and handle it with grace and respect for those they outrank. What we cannot abide, what causes indignity, is abuse of rank. In a word, rankism. And we do need a word. It wasn’t until the women’s movement had the word “sexism” at its disposal that it made the gains it’s now known for: equal pay for equal work; the right to choose; Title IX, etc.

To bring about social change, it’s not enough to know what you’re for; you also have to know what you’re against. The dignity movement is for a dignitarian (not an egalitarian) society and it is against rankism.

That’s it in a nutshell. Like any far-reaching analysis of social justice, the full story is a longer, more complex one. This web site is a primer on the dignity movement. There’s a 1 minute video for those in a hurry. The full treatment (interpersonal and institutional rankism and how to confront them) can be found in my book All Rise.

The goal is to make rankism as defendable as racism has become, which is to say, not very. It didn’t used to affect your career advancement to be identified as racist or sexist, but now it stops you in your tracks. As the dignity movement gains momentum, it will be equally disadvantageous to be known as rankist. If you’re interested in joining the movement to help us bring that day closer, please let us know.

In the U.S. Alaa Ahmed Seif Al Islam would be a celebrated public intellectual, and would probably be a highly paid consultant. He’s an award-winning journalist-blogger, open source developer, and a human rights activist. On May 7, 2006, Alaa was beaten and jailed for participating in a protest to support a free, independent judiciary in Egypt.

The blogosphere has been abuzz with the hope that the combined efforts of online activists might be able to free Alaa. Journalactivist Jon Garfunkel has done some excellent in-depth analysis of the various strategies attempted by online activists, including his own foray into purchasing Google AdWords. Garfunkel makes an important observation: while online activists may get swept up in the crowd cause of the moment, their attention span is notoriously short. They don’t follow up on whether their effort actually worked. Alaa is still in jail.

Democrats acknowledge the need to clarify their core values. Crashing the Gate by Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulistas Zuniga calls for a conceptual breakthrough, but the grassroots/netroots process it describes falls short of providing the unifying idea that Democrats seek.

What basic, compelling idea can do for Democrats today what “The New Deal” did for FDR; what “The Great Society” did for LBJ? Can progressives create a slogan to match the conservatives: “lower taxes”, “less government”, “strong defense”, “family values”?

They can do so with a word. That word is “Dignity.”

From that word comes a unifying slogan: “Dignity For All.”

The idea of a universal right to dignity seems too simple to pull together the disparate elements of this divided nation, but it’s not. Dignity is what people want, on the left, on the right, and most importantly, in the vast, non-ideological middle.

Dignity is not negotiable. People will stand up for their dignity and once they’re on their feet, they’ll insist on justice.

Two hundred years of blood-soaked history have shown that there is no direct path from Liberty to Justice. But if we interpose a steppingstone, we can build a bridge to justice. The name of that stone is “Dignity.” By establishing the right to dignity, and then enacting legislation that protects everyone’s dignity on equal terms, we can deliver on this country’s founding promise of “liberty and justice for all.”

A dignitarian society pulls what’s best from the three broad strands of civic culture that have dominated politics since the French Revolution—Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. The stranglehold that these ideals exert on the contemporary imagination is a major source of the incivility that infects our politics today.

Conservatives see themselves as Liberty’s defenders; progressives pride themselves as the champions of Equality. Both parties promise Fraternity, but neither delivers.

Dignity is more encompassing than Liberty, Equality, or Fraternity. It’s the missing link that restored will yield an electoral mandate that heralds an historic extension of “liberty and justice for all.”

The politics of dignity puts the “We” back in “We the People.” It spans the conservative-liberal divide. It closes the ideological fissures that separate libertarian, egalitarian, and communitarian philosophies, breaking the stalemate that has stalled the advance of justice since the 1960s.

A dignitarian society does not tolerate indignity—towards anyone. When this principle is translated into policy, it rules out acceptance of a permanent underclass. It disallows prejudice and discrimination toward all the groups that have rallied around the various flags of identity politics. It makes a woman’s right to choose and gays’ right to marry self-evident. It proclaims everyone’s right to a sustainable environment.

The disparate interest groups that make up the Democratic Party will not be able to unite until they have identified their common foe. That foe is not conservatives or conservatism. It is indignity.

What is the source of indignity? The precise and universal cause of indignity is the abuse of power. Make a list of the most distressing issues of recent years: corporate corruption, the Katrina catastrophe, sexual abuse by clergy, Abu Ghraib, domestic spying, persistent poverty, etc. Every one of them can be traced to an abuse of power by individuals entrusted with high rank.

However principled their cause, progressives can’t present themselves as the party of dignity so long as they reserve the right to treat their opposite numbers with indignity. Treating political opponents in a condescending manner is counterproductive and self-sabotaging. A great many of those who’ve been voting Republican feel that political elites, intellectuals, liberals, and the media look down on them. It’s a charge that sticks because there’s truth in it.

Crashing the Gate notes that progressive interest groups can and do pay employees less than conservative groups because they compensate with a moral premium. But when the coin of the progressive realm is moral superiority, the result is disdain for the very people progressives seek to represent, and this undercuts their message.

How would a society that prioritizes dignity differ from ones shaped by ideologies that accentuate liberty, equality, or fraternity? The difference is one of nuance, not opposition, for a dignitarian society combines the strengths of all three traditions.

A dignitarian society promotes individual freedom, but it tempers the uninhibited free market with institutions of social responsibility that insure that economic power does not confer unwarranted educational or political advantages. For example, you shouldn’t have to be rich to attend good schools, or command a fortune to stand for office.

A dignitarian society provides real equality of opportunity. In a dignitarian society, loss of social mobility, let alone division into master and servant classes, is unacceptable. There’s a way out of poverty in a dignitarian society. Everyone earns a living wage and has access to quality health care.

The politics of dignity sees democracy as a work in progress. Democracy’s next step - one that will enlarge liberty, deliver justice, and foster fraternity - is building a dignitarian society.

Dignity is an idea whose time has come. Under its flag, we can mobilize the energy not merely to win at the polls, but to win with a mandate to fulfill our nation’s promise - “Dignity For All.”