The way forward? A.k.a. "Project 2038"

Could this be a liberal vision for America that's right for our time and can win elections? I honestly don't know. But here's where I take a shot at integrating what I've learned from recent reading.

Five authors¹ I've recently read argue that the left needs to organize around a politics beyond identity to defeat fascism and make progress. Mark Lilla specifically calls for "an imaginative, hopeful vision of what we share as Americans and what we might accomplish together."

This post is my experiment in creating such a vision based on liberal and leftist values. I'm not claiming this approach is superior to one that would be shaped by identity politics—I simply want to explore what this kind of vision might look like and how it feels to engage with it.

What I’ve done is take the Mark Lilla quote above and use it as a guide. This is my effort at:

• an imaginative, hopeful vision that expresses

• what we share as Americans and

• what we might accomplish together.

Your thoughtful comments on this vision are welcome. Does it appeal to you? Would it appeal to others? Does it have too much or too little of something?

This is what I'm calling Project 2038:

The Soul of America.

When you boil it down, what we share as Americans is a commitment to being a diverse nation based on three big ideas: freedom, fairness and duty.

Freedom

It’s our mission to be the freest country on earth. That’s what our Constitution and Bill of Rights are all about.

Being free means loving our diversity. It means having the right to worship however you want, or not to worship at all — it’s your business. It means being able to marry the person you love. It means having the same rights as your neighbor no matter what you look like or where you come from. It means having the right to make deeply personal decisions about your identity and your body — decisions that other people don’t have to understand but that are nonetheless yours to make.

But there's still more to true freedom.

Freedom can’t happen if you can’t eat. Or if you can’t make rent. Or if you can’t afford to see the doctor when you’re sick. Or if you can’t get where you need to go to work or study. That’s why we need to make it our mission to build an America where we are all truly free.

Fairness

This country was built on the idea that everyone deserves fair treatment before the law and a fair chance to pursue happiness. But today, things are deeply unfair. Too much power is in too few hands. The richest Americans and biggest corporations aren’t even close to paying their fair share, while the rest of us work harder yet fall further behind.

Here’s the deal: anyone working, studying, raising kids, caregiving, or unable to work due to disability should have food, housing, healthcare, education, and transportation. That’s basic fairness. That’s the American way.

We know that throughout our history we haven't always lived up to our values of fairness. We still have quite a ways to go today. Racism and its ongoing injustices are unfair. Unequal opportunities and the demonization of vulnerable groups are unfair. Prejudging people—including those in the majority—is unfair. There’s a lot of work to be done to get where we want to go.

We have made progress before and that proves that we have what it takes to overcome injustices again. Our deep sense of fairness gave us the courage to end slavery, secure women’s voting rights, pass civil rights laws, and achieve marriage equality.That same commitment should guide us today.

We need to work on issues of fairness together, without rigid dogmas demanding that we solve our problems in only one way. We need to give each other the benefit of the doubt in our conversations. We need to care about making a society that is free and fair for everyone.

Duty

A free and fair country depends on our responsibilities to each other, our Constitution, and our core values. Americans have a strong sense of duty—we show up, work hard, and make sacrifices in our families, professions, and communities. But our shared duty to our country and fellow citizens has been damaged.

Social media and partisan news have disrupted our instinct to trust our neighbors. Outrage-driven algorithms erode the social glue that binds us, making us see each other as enemies and leaving us miserable.

Thankfully, many of us suspect this media machine is dishonest and doesn’t serve our interests. When we tune out the noise, we feel the deeper truth—we long to show up for each other. We are drawn to our nation’s motto: out of many, one. We can rebuild trust, following our instincts to believe in the basic decency of fellow Americans.

It's our duty to ensure our neighbors have food, shelter, and dignity. Our duty to defend each other’s freedoms. Our duty to steward our environment for future generations.

When disaster strikes, we don’t ask about politics—we show up, ready to help, give, and serve. We want to be one nation, united by duty. Today, we need more ways to do that. And we can make it happen—together.

The America we can be.

A Flourishing Nation

We can build the America we want. We can achieve five goals that will restore our sense of unity and renew our pride. This is what we can create together:

An America in which all our citizens have enough to eat, have a decent place to live, have healthcare, have access to education and job training, and have access to good transportation. We can do it as good stewards of our planet, honoring our duty to leave a livable environment to future generations of Americans — to our grandkids and beyond.

We’ll set five goals for the next decade:

Food: No one should go hungry in a country with more than enough food. We’ll build a system that ensures emergency food access is simple, reliable, and dignified.

Housing: Too many people live on the streets. Rents are too high, and buying a home is out of reach. By working together, we’ll build millions of homes and apartments, using every tool—government, business, tech, religious groups, and nonprofits—to end homelessness and make housing affordable. We’ll hire 100,000 workers with good jobs and benefits to get it done.

Healthcare: Affordable healthcare means freedom—to start a business, go to school, or change jobs. We’ll make Medicare for All the law, cutting bureaucratic costs tied to private insurers. To help fund it, mega-corporations and the super-rich will finally pay their fair share.

Education and job training: Too many public schools are understaffed and crumbling. College tuition is outrageous. High property taxes squeeze families, and underfunded districts can’t pay teachers fairly. We’ll take action now. We’ll establish two years of universal national service for young adults and generate a youth workforce to repair our schools and mentor our kids after school. We’ll create a national resource bank for public school teachers so that if they don’t have the supplies they need all they have to do is ask and get them quickly. We’ll lower tuition costs and push private universities to do more to serve the general public. In ten years, we’ll be well on our way to an affordable, world-class education system with equal opportunity for all.

Transportation: We must fix what’s broken and improve our major transit systems. Americans deserve safe, clean, and affordable public transportation—whether in rural areas, suburbs, or cities. We’ll create tens of thousands of jobs repairing roads and bridges and building smart, sustainable mass transit that increases freedom and opportunity.

This is Project 2038: a vision that is ambitious but doable. In five years, we can make huge progress; in ten, we can transform the nation. It starts with believing we can build the America we want—by believing in ourselves and each other.

How we’re going to do it:

Everyone will be needed to build the America we want. We’ll need:

• government to provide vision and leadership, pass laws, provide funding and coordinate large-scale projects;

• businesses to take on contracts, innovate solutions and make good profits by doing good for the nation;

• tech innovators and researchers to develop new cost-effective and sustainable methods to get things done;

• workers of all kinds to build new infrastructure and repair existing facilities;

• senior citizens to volunteer or take on paid work, leveraging their tremendous knowledge and experience; and

• young adults to do national service, working as teammates with their fellow Americans from different walks of life.

We’ll maintain a live national scorecard that charts our progress

We’ll create an online national scorecard to track our accomplishments. If we pledge to repair 5,000 public schools, you’ll see how many are done and which ones. If we commit to building 1,000 self-sustaining food pantries, you can check progress and find out how to help. Filling a million potholes? Installing solar panels on 25,000 rooftops? Log in and see the updates. If we’re falling behind and need more hands, you’ll know where to pitch in.

We’ll work together in ways that help us get to know one another better

Just as one example:

An invitation to picture your part in this vision

Imagine the roles you could play in bringing this vision to life. What skills would you offer as a volunteer? What jobs fit your skills, or what would you train to do? If you're a senior, how could you apply your experience? If you're younger, what could you contribute during two years of national service? Where would you hope to serve? Who will you meet? What work would you do?

Picture how it will feel to help fix schools, mentor youth, repair bridges, build light rail, or start community gardens. Imagine ten years from now—the anxieties about food, rent, or medical care are gone. If you never had to worry, then imagine how it will feel to know you helped others who are now less worried about survival and more free to focus on family, work, and dreams.

Imagine a country that truly works for all of us, providing a secure, decent life for those working, raising kids, or doing their best. Picture cleaner air, renewable energy, and more affordable training programs leading to good jobs. Envision new bus, subway, and rail lines everywhere. And imagine a nation where trust and shared accomplishment bind us more than our differences.

Imagine what we can do together as Americans, and how good it will feel to succeed.

1. Yascha Mounk, Francis Fukuyama, Mark Lilla, Kwame Anthony Appiah and Susan Neiman.