DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLES

Government provides the foundation for our individual rights.  We wouldn’t have any rights without government.

• The first responsibility of government is to protect and empower its citizens. FDR said, "In our personal ambitions, we are individualists. But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up, or else we all go down, as one people." In short, the common good is necessary for individual well-being.

• To protect the common good, we must preserve the common wealth which secures the common good: police, military, firefighters, banking and court systems. NO ONE IN OUR COUNTRY CAN LEGALLY MAKE A DIME WITHOUT GOVERNMENT SUPPORT.

• Opportunities created by the common wealth allow the accumulation of personal wealth. Money is kept in the common wealth to be used for the common good. As a matter of fairness, everyone has a responsibility to repay the common wealth proportional to the benefits he/she has received from it. It is unfair to take economic resources from the commons and transfer them to wealthy individuals who don’t need them.

• Deregulation and privatization do not eliminate government, they only make it unaccountable. The act of governing is merely shifted from the public sector, where there’s an ethic of protection and public accountability, to the private sector, where profit is put before citizens.