The perspective from the left is one of justice, not charity. Note how the direction is reversed. Charity is centrifugal: it proceeds from us toward the outer fringes of society. Justice is centripetal: it starts at the periphery and pulls back toward us. Society must care for the disadvantaged not because they are the Other but precisely because they are not. Charity is virtuous but ethically dodgy because of a double asymmetry: giving out of pity (or even compassion) humiliates the recipient, who cannot reciprocate, while enhancing the giver's self-esteem.⁽²⁵⁾  Donating old clothes to the Salvation Army proceeds on the assumption that a garment no longer good enough for me surely is good enough for somebody else. This is both right and repugnant. Welfare can be degrading, too. But, as Avishai Margalit has argued, entitled assistance is structurally less humiliating than benevolence.⁽²⁵⁾  In the spirit of his “decent society,” no state institution may cause loss of self-respect. In that regard, one must single out the American penal system, with its exposed face in Abu Ghraib, as the most egregious violator of that obligation in this country—no serious progressive agenda can omit prison reform.

The right to freedom from destitution may not be made contingent on good conduct. In other words, social citizenship must be unconditional. The disgrace of Clinton's welfare reform was to make it discretionary. As Tony Judt noted, it “return[ed] us to the spirit of England's New Poor Law of 1834,” by which assistance had to be earned.⁽²⁾  Responsibility is a civic virtue that society should promote (Wall Street being a good place to start) but never require, especially of its most vulnerable members.

The creed hinders the autonomy of economic forces by placing their regulation in the hands of the polity: liberty trumps efficacy. Surely this is the sort of “luxury” that rich societies can afford—fixating on economic growth is easier to justify in poor countries where the stakes are malaria vaccines rather than plasma screen TVs. Poverty in America has many causes: insufficient national wealth is not one of them.

I summarize below the main features of a progressive creed.⁽²⁶⁾  It must articulate a purpose (what world to wish for) and a perspective (how to look at the world):

• The purpose is a society that, first, preserve equal liberties; second, attends preferentially to the needs of the disadvantaged. All citizens are granted an unconditional claim upon the collectivity to be accorded the minimum resources necessary for a life of dignity and a genuine sense of belonging. Freedom from humiliation is never to be made contingent on any norm of conduct (such as law abidance). Equality of opportunity is sought as the fairest means of redistributing access to fundamental liberties.

• The perspective affirms faith in the power of human agency to mediate between liberty and social justice. It posits the primacy of the political and the necessity of a wide public sphere. It favors public investments in shared goods (eg, health, education, infrastructure, and the environment). It asserts the regulatory function of the state and its role as ultimate guarantor of social provision. It regards economic growth as a means to an end and labor as an end in itself, not merely input into production. It views the concept of economic class as an indispensable measure of social stratification in policymaking. It is tolerant of economic distortions to the extent that they serve social justice or promote citizenship.

A philosophical digression. The creed's preferential clause can apply either directly (eg, welfare) or indirectly (eg, public schools, medical research), and the conditions of the disadvantaged may be economic (poverty), social (discrimination), functional (handicaps), etc. In an echo of Rawls's “difference principle,” the clause posits that, second only to preserving equal liberties, society must mitigate the misfortunes of its least well-off members. A just society favors the disadvantaged because that would be our most likely preference, regardless of ideology, were we to join that society with no prior knowledge of our social status. In other words, behind a “veil of ignorance,” we would choose an allocation of resources that would make the worst possible outcome for us the least disadvantageous. Targeting the worst outcome and not, say, the best (as in playing the lottery) serves an obvious egalitarian purpose. Up to a point. The preferential clause is not inconsistent with the view that rising tides lift all boats. In fact, it may accommodate arbitrarily large inequalities as long as the poor do not get poorer. This may have the adverse effect of undermining social cohesion while increasing overall wealth. In that regard, equality of opportunity serves as a necessary corrective—though social harmony is not its primary justification: fair access to liberties is.

A different take on the preferential clause holds that prioritizing according to need delivers the biggest bang for the public buck: one dollar spent on feeding a poor child has higher utility than one dollar spent on polishing the deck of a yacht. Progressive taxation can be similarly justified by the lower marginal costs of wealth acquisition for the rich. This utilitarian interpretation strips the clause of its preferentiality component and makes its application vastly more restrictive than a deontological approach does. Of course, one can do away with Kant, Mill, and Rawls altogether, and simply declare the creed fine because it feels fine. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, I intend to flesh out that very intuition below. End of philosophical digression.

A debate has been raging lately regarding the merits of the common good as the basis for a new liberal creed.⁽²⁷⁾  Not only is the notion central to any serious progressive perspective, but its rhetorical power is undeniable. It must be handled with care, however. First, left to its own devices, the common good is merely a regulative concept, like zoning, and not a goal in itself. Once bound to particulars, it can mean public infrastructure—a priority that should be high on any progressive agenda—but also wiretapping, torture, and the draft. Which war hasn't been fought for the “common good”? Second, there is nothing distinctively progressive about it: from Hoover to Reagan to GWB, it has long been a conservative mantra.

Third, the common good's attendant doctrine of civic republicanism often carries a heroic undertone of shared sacrifice and self-abnegation that is both a little quaint and a little weird. Progressives cannot claim that a 3-trillion dollar war in Iraq is no sacrifice but a war on poverty would be—hint: $3,000,000,000,000 would go a long way toward rebuilding our inner cities. Sadly for hero worshippers, none of the objectives of a progressive creed requires heroism (tough choices, yes; sacrifice, no). One should also be careful not to allow the kindness of strangers to substitute for the obligations of the state. The thousands of volunteers who filled in for “Heckuva job Brownie” proved that American society is both generous and broken.

Fourth, there is the putative liberal sin that common-good evangelists seek to redress: the rise of interest-group politics. Granted, single-issue advocacy has long demonstrated a suspicious fondness for circular firing squads: what did those anti-frankenfood crusaders on stilts think they were doing at antiwar demos in 2003? Again, that unfailing inability to prioritize. It is, however, more than a little churlish to put the blame on minority politics when it is the other kind of “minorities,” ie, the insurers, trial lawyers, doctors, and gun owners, whose lobbies keep a stranglehold on Congress. The grievances of victimized groups have no need for legitimation on common-good grounds. It is not incumbent upon a rape victim to explain why assisting her is of benefit to society. Social justice is, de jure, universal but, de facto, minoritarian. It favors the invisible. The failure of the left is not that it countenanced interest-group pluralism: it's that it left it up to each group to explain why redressing their grievances serves the common good, when it was the left's own responsibility to do so. The argumentation rests on a rewriting of a conservative canon, patriotic citizenship. This may explain the left's reluctance to make the case. So, while you watch me rush in where angels fear to tread, please keep an open mind.