The Progressive Challenge

Recently at the American Constitution Society (ACS) Conference Congressman Barney Frank gave an address in which he discussed the fact that Republicans have it exactly backwards when wanting more government where it should not be and less government where it is needed. For example, he noted that in the Shiavo case, the majority of the public, he believed, was horrified at the intrusion of government into the personal private decisionmaking of the family when it came to the decision of whether to terminate life support. (Others would disagree obviously and note that the government failed to protect life here) On the other hand, the government under Republican rule now strips Congress of any budgetary abilities to address programs other than war so you are seeing now the gutting of many entitlement programs of which we were used to appreciating government's helping hand.
On the morality question, the Democratic hands off-my body my business- privacy approach and the Republican -I want to legislate all my morality on everyone, seems to be two extreme non-solutions to the problems facing the country. Republicans argue that legislating morality sets a tone and the bar of conduct on issues that we should all agree are things society as a whole should be concerned about and not left to individuals, who are both good and bad, self-interested and self-seeking as well as altruistic. Republicans view the complete hands off non-legislation of any signature morality issues as plainly anarchistic resulting in the moral decline of society or the "Slouching toward Gemmorrah." Democrats believe that there is, as Hilary Clinton noted, a fundamental basic "Right to be Left Alone" penumbrally embedded in the Constitution.
So while the two parties may be miles apart in terms of legislative authority approaches there is a vast gap in the middle it seems, where government can do things other than legislate to raise the moral bar and ensure a higher moral standard and compliance with ethical codes to challenge the country to be better to itself and the world.
Here is where I believe that the government of "We the People" can go back to itself, the People and engage them in ways in which the government in partnership with private citizens and private enterprise can do much more vigorously than anything that has taken place to date in order to do what legislation should not or can not effectively achieve. Government can, in parthership with private entities and citizens put out moral standards and norms through incentives, awards, tax credits, grants, and other venues and avenues for good behaviors to encourage them as opposed to prohibitive or penal schemes to punish them. This is not a coersive scheme- it just borrows off the Clinton enterprise zone concepts where we have moral enterprise zones and good choices are rightly rewarded. Then we obviously have to agree on what are good and bad morals or ethical norms. That requires as a first point that it is the government's business or mandate to be engaged in moral policymaking. In a sense all legislation embodies some moral policy or normative aspiration. Its just the more "personal" morality that becomes problematic in the public square.
Below is a suggestion of an approach, for example of how government can foster more choices against abortion to drastically change the culture of death where over 43 Million children have been lost, really much of a generation, to abortion. It is folly for the Democrats to ignore this fact. The fact is appauling and begs serious analysis. Democrats may not want to legislate the problem away and the effectiveness of any such legislation would always be suspect anyway, but if we are to get a head of the curve on the moral discussion and hope to influence better morality (if that is the government's job in the first instance) we have to start looking at these sorts of alternatives. We have a Peace Corps and an AmeriCorps, why not a "Life Corps" where the citizenry is mobilized toward helping pregnant people.
I believe we should have a Democratic Life Corps Conference, or a Democratic American Baby Conference to discuss the ways that the Democratic Party proposes, short of penal prohibiting legislation, to encourage the dramatic reversal of the American Holocaust. The American Holocaust is of statistical biblical proportion and is a cancer on our society and humanity. We are at a place, almost without noticing, in which we are metaphorically eating our young. The economic social structures of America are failing women and their needs (financial, physical and emotional) resulting in their destroying their hopes in their unborn children.
43 Million unborn destroyed children in a country with 300 Million people is a lot of voters and citizens lost. We are failing them and the 43 Million in the next 30 years if we don't do something dramatic. The Republicans and particularly religious voters believe that this is such a significant serious moral crying mandate that they will do anything to keep the people with the right rhetoric in power if they offer a better hope of doing something which up to that point has been only the Republicans. They will do anything, including rig and hack the vote.
The Democrats have to offer better solutions than the punitive schemes republicans intrusively propose. They have to offer positive life enhancing encouraging proposals that make us all once again proud to be Americans.