We picture the political spectrum as a line running from Left to Right, liberal to conservative, Democrat to Republican. For much of our history, the middle was inhabited by conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans. By forging a compromise with centrists, one party or the other could muster enough support to legislate and govern. Achieving a political compromise was often slow and frustrating, but, until recently, it was not impossible.

Now, for a variety of reasons, the middle of the spectrum is depopulated. Compromise is seen as a betrayal of ideological principle.

Instead of searching in vain for policies that include some liberal elements (to mollify Democrats), and some conservative elements (to appease Republicans), we could look for a new synthesis of Right and Left that is fundamental enough to generate policies that satisfy deeper concerns they share.

Upon what human value could we build a synthesis of liberal and conservative principles? A brief detour into the history of the Left-Right dichotomy provides a clue as to what’s wrong and how to fix it.

Even as the French Revolution unfolded, there were signs that its rousing slogan “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” was a flawed formula for change. Initially in France, and subsequently in a variety of settings, reforms achieved under this banner have often come at the price of misery, mayhem, and murder.

“Equality” has been the watchword for many Leftist political movements, but egalitarian values have also provided ideological cover for oppressive regimes. Though the ideal of Liberty has served as a midwife to democracy, it has also served Rightists intent on pursuing predatory forms of capitalism.

Political reformers who make either Liberty or Equality preeminent have usually been disappointed by the dividends for justice or chastened by blood spilled in what at the outset seemed a noble cause.

Given the dysfunctional state of American politics, the need for a path that Right and Left can travel together is urgent. If conservatives and liberals cannot subordinate their partisan agendas to the common good, world leadership will pass to nations that do manage to transcend this obsolete ideological dichotomy.

I shall suggest here that if a political party were built on the notion of Dignity, instead of on Liberty or Equality, we could forge a synthesis of libertarian and egalitarian politics that incorporates the truths that sustain each of these traditional ideologies.

There is broad consensus that dignity is a fundamental human right. I will suggest here that Dignity trumps Liberty and Equality.

What Is Dignity?

As with liberty, dignity is most readily defined in reverse. We know at once when we’ve been ”indignified.” To suffer an indignity carries the threat of being deprived of social and material resources essential to well-being, even to life itself. The need for dignity is more than a desire for courtesy or respect. To be “nobodied” is an attack on one’s status in the tribe, and carries an implicit threat of exclusion that, not long ago, amounted to a death sentence.

In proclaiming a right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the Founding Fathers came tantalizingly close to recognizing dignity as a fundamental right. By liberty they meant freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control. Thus, the right to liberty affords a large measure of protection to our dignity. Likewise, the right to pursue happiness is undermined by the indignities of second-class citizenship. It’s not much of a stretch to find in the Founders’ intentions an implicit right to dignity.

More than anything except life itself, people want dignity. They will compromise both their liberty and equality to get it. By identifying actions that insult our dignity, we can, step by step, protect and extend both liberty and equality. A vast edifice of law has evolved to protect human liberty by proscribing behaviors that limit it. Building a dignitarian society will require a comparable, generational effort to develop a body of law that, by setting limits to indignities, protects dignity.

Since indignity is caused not by differences in rank per se but rather by abuses of rank differences—what elsewhere I have called rankism—the task of building a dignitarian society can be understood in terms of disallowing rankism (much as the task of building a multicultural society is one of disallowing racism).

Once you have a name for it, you see rankism everywhere, and it’s revealed as the source of much of the dysfunction now plaguing American democracy. But this is no cause for despair. Time and again, we’ve proven that once we take aim at an ignoble ism (e.g., racism, sexism, ageism, ableism, heterosexualism, or homophobia), we are capable of delegitimizing it.

What Would a Dignity Party Stand For

All abstract political ideals, pushed to extremes, can be dangerous, and Dignity is surely no exception. The Founding Fathers were too shrewd to entrust “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” to good intentions. They realized that reliable governance must be grounded in the assumption that power-holders will inevitably be tempted to interpret any ambiguities in their writ to their own advantage. Accordingly, they drew up interlocking constitutional procedures to protect liberty by making political leaders accountable to each other and the citizenry.

Only as the powers inherent in rank are spelled out and circumscribed are abstractions like liberty, equality, and dignity rendered benign. Absent detailed procedures that come into play when things go wrong—which they invariably do—slogans, no matter how grandiloquent, are empty promises or worse—Orwellian doublespeak.

How would a society in which dignity is preeminent differ from ones shaped by ideologies in which the organizing principle is liberty or equality?

In contrast to a libertarian society, a dignitarian society is one in which economic power is not allowed to confer educational or political advantages on those who have it. For example, you wouldn’t have to be rich to go to college or command a fortune to stand for office.

Much as church and state are separated in modern democracies, economic and political power will be separated in a dignitarian society. This means that publicly funded elections would replace the current practice of corporate and union campaign financing.

In a dignitarian society, loss of social mobility, let alone division into impermeable classes, is unacceptable. If you apply yourself and work hard, institutional obstacles must not be insuperable. Thus, in a dignitarian society everyone has access to decent healthcare and is paid enough to work themselves out of poverty in a generation. The American Dream is a beacon lighting the way to a dignitarian society.

Rank itself may be unequal in a dignitarian society, reflecting undeniable differences in our talents, skills, experience, and levels of authority, but equal dignity is accorded everyone, regardless of role or rank, both interpersonally and institutionally.

Historically, conservatives are defenders of the rights of rank. They have fought to see that rank-holders are not hamstrung, that individual initiative and enterprise are not discouraged, that entrepreneurial activity is not stifled, and that, as a society, we keep our competitive edge.

In contrast, liberals see themselves as watchdogs against abuses of rank, the ill-effects of which fall primarily on the weak. We’ll know we’re living in a dignitarian society when conservatives condemn the corruption of power and liberals are willing to entrust rank-holders with the authority needed to lead.

In a dignitarian society, rank may change, but you’re assured of having a place. If you break the law, that place may be a prison. But it is a prison in which your dignity is secure. (Recent experiments show that the best way to reduce recidivism is to treat inmates with dignity while they are paying the penalty for their crimes.)

The politics of dignity spans the conservative-liberal divide. Martin Luther King, Jr. has a place of honor in a dignitarian society—for giving us his dream of dignity for all. So does Patrick Henry—for his immortal “Give me liberty or give me death.” In the economic realm, no institution does more to curtail abuses of power than the free market. On those occasions when the market does appear to have betrayed us, we invariably discover that human beings have interfered with its freedom by rigging it to their advantage.

As a synthesis of libertarian and egalitarian politics, dignitarian politics offers the prospect of closing the ideological fissure that has paralyzed American democracy. Conflicts over liberty and equality do not disappear, but they are reframed and subjected to a higher standard: how do they impact dignity?

Our political history can be read as see-sawing between the ideological poles of Liberty and Equality. So long as the ideological spectrum had a middle, compromise was possible. But absent centrists, ideological polarization leads either to stagnation and decline or to unstable oscillations between the two ideological extremes.

Building a dignitarian society is not a utopian vision, but a natural evolutionary step for an America that can go nowhere so long as liberals and conservative are at loggerheads.

The answer to the impotence and irrelevance of the old parties is a new party—the Dignity Party.

The Dignity Party would draw support from all segments of the Left-Right spectrum. It would attract those who, while insisting upon dignity for themselves, are willing, in return, to grant it to others.

There is good reason to believe that a majority of Americans are ready to sign up for that deal. In any case, running against dignity doesn’t look like a winning ticket. Standing up for both liberty and equality—insofar as each extends dignity—could well be.

Rankism is an assertion of superiority. It typically takes the form of putting others down. It’s what “Somebodies” do to “nobodies.” Or, more precisely, it is what people who think they’re Somebodies do to people they take for nobodies.

It turns out that rankism is the source of most man-made suffering. So, if we could get rid of it, we would be a lot happier. Let me explain.

Before you conclude that rankism is human nature—that we’re like the apes, and they do it, so we have no choice—and dismiss the possibility of overcoming it, consider this list of specific kinds of “put downs” that, not long ago, were deemed cool, but have become a sure way to embarrass yourself:

1. Racism—whites putting and keeping non-whites down
2. Sexism—males limiting and disadvantaging females
3. Ageism—patronizing the young, condescending to the elderly
4. Anti-Semitism—discriminating against Jews
5. Classism—putting down people on the basis of differences in class (more prevalent in former aristocracies like Britain than in America, but also known here)
6. Homophobia—heterosexuals demeaning gays and lesbians
7. Ableism—humiliating people with disabilities
8. Colonialism—subordinating and exploiting another society or nation
9. Workplace and schoolyard bullying; sexual harassment, child abuse, and domestic violence; corporate, bureaucratic, and political corruption
10. …

The list goes on. Once you have a word for it, you see rankism everywhere.

Although all of these familiar isms persist, none of them has the force it did fifty years ago. Most of them are now regarded as distinctly uncool, even grounds for dismissal. The burden of proof, which formerly fell on nobodies, now falls on Somebodies. That’s historical change, and that’s why it is not utopian to think that we might be able to give up putting people down, not just people bearing a targeted trait (such as color, gender, age, class, religion, sexual orientation, disability), but give up putting people down period. For any reason. Period.

You’re probably thinking, What if they deserve to be put down? What if they have screwed up?

Even then, being put down is not what’s needed, nor is it justified. Correction, maybe; put downs, never. Indignity and humiliation have no place in human relations. That is where the above sequence—of no-longer legitimate putdowns—is tending. That is how humans are evolving behaviorally.

Some will think of this direction as long-prophesized. Isn’t this just the Golden Rule? they will say. Well, yes, it is the Golden Rule. But with a difference, a very significant operational difference. This Golden Rule has teeth. In this framework, “Do unto others …” becomes operative. Why? Because many behaviors that violate the Golden Rule can be understood as rankism. The perpetrators of these behaviors are rankists. Once you put a label on ignoble behavior, it is much harder to get away with.

In the same way that sexism and sexists rapidly lost legitimacy once they were named, so, too, will rankists find themselves in untenable positions once a label can be pinned on them. Not overnight. It has taken decades to delegitimize sexism and the other isms, but once the process of de-legitimizing indignifying behaviors begins there is no stopping it until we reach an equilibrium characterized by equal dignity for all.

The title to this piece promised an explanation of WHY we practice rankism. If we look at the kind of “reasons” used to justify the familiar isms, we see that they are now all regarded as specious. Not one of the “reasons” that people trotted out fifty years ago flies today.

So, there must be some hidden reason, something other than the traditional ones, that causes humans to behave in ways prejudicial and inimical to others. Why do we demean, marginalize, and disenfranchise others? Why do we subject others to indignity? Why do we do to others what we would not want them to do to us?

In short, why do we put others down? Or, in this language, why do we tolerate rankism? You’ve probably sensed where this line of questions is going: Why do we sometimes engage in rankism ourselves?

Rankism is a residue of predation. Our species, Homo sapiens, has a long history of predation. We’re not only good at it, we’re the top of the food chain. Of course, we do more than prey on animals and on each other. We also cooperate with each other, we love each other, we have shown ourselves to be capable of living in peace and harmony.

But through recorded history, we have preyed on other tribes, other states, religions, classes, races, etc. Everyone alive today has predatory ancestors and, what’s equally important, ancestors who managed to avoid becoming the prey of other human predators.

The twentieth century may go down as the bloodiest of all centuries, but it will also go down as the century in which many millions of human beings threw off centuries of colonial exploitation by a handful of relatively small nation states. And what is colonialism but one group putting another group down for purposes of exploitation.

Colonialism was long justified (as we once justified racism) in terms of a “superior” people ruling an “inferior” people. Colonialism was an example of people who regarded themselves as “Somebodies” putting down people they took for “nobodies.” And once one group has got another down, it can exploit it until its victims—the nobodies—organize and marshal a commensurate, if not surpassing, power.

We “do” rankism to institutionalize and normalize predation. THAT is why we “do” all the subspecies of rankism (racism, sexism, etc.). We practice rankism to put ourselves in a position to prey on others without exposing ourselves to risk. Predators all target the weak, and humans are no exception.

The reasons we’ve given to justify the familiar isms are bogus. They’re actually not reasons at all, they are excuses. They are excuses for putting people down and keeping them down so we can more safely exploit them in future. Or, so they will not compete with us. Or, simply to feel superior.

When I was a student at Oberlin College in the 1950s, the student body was one percent black and there were virtually no women majoring in math or physics. I’d not have made the basketball team if the college had accepted African-Americans in numbers anywhere near their national percentage. The competition for places in graduate school would have been stiffer if women had been encouraged to pursue careers in science. I was the unwitting beneficiary of a number of rankist practices.

Discrimination disadvantages targets by denying them equal opportunity, and it advantages those not targeted. THAT is why we do it—to give ourselves an advantage. THAT is the real reason. We’ve kept it a secret because it diminishes our achievement to admit the game was rigged in our favor.

Fixing the game is the real reason for rankism. If we can handicap or eliminate the competition, we improve our chances of coming away with the spoils.

But isn’t that just what any animal has to do to survive? Isn’t rankism just “survival of the fittest” at work? In short, isn’t rankism nature’s way?

Yes, rankism is what we’ve done through recorded history—one person to another, one group to another, one tribe to another, one nation to another. Until recently, the gains were judged to exceed the costs. But rankism has now become counterproductive. Instead of giving groups or individuals an advantage, rankism backfires in the same way that racism, sexism, and homophobia do. It undermines group solidarity and hampers cooperation. Rankism stifles creativity, inhibits learning, and taxes productivity. Rankism causes unhappiness and illness. Rankism corrodes organizations and societies that condone it.

This is not just another moment in history. We stand on the threshold of an epochal change. Humans are on the verge of giving up intra-species predation. Not just because preying on other people is bad and causes suffering. No. We are giving it up, wherever we can identify it, for a more compelling reason. Rankism is no longer working. Wars aren’t being won anymore. Trade wars hurt more than they help. Slavery is universally condemned. Wage slavery will not for long outlast its brutal antecedent. Nations that disallow rankism will outperform and out produce those that do not, and lead the world in the 21st century.

As we target rankism, we create a world of dignity for all, not just for some at the expense of others. As we disallow rankism, we build a dignitarian world, a world in which, regardless of rank, everyone experiences equal dignity.

Rankism wins, wins, wins, and then one day it loses. In the end, it loses because organizations and societies grounded in dignity for all trump those driven by the threat of indignity.

Dignity is our destiny. Why not embrace it?