Executive Summary

America is at a Moral Crossroads.

With echoes from Abraham Lincoln's warning on the fields of Gettysburg "...Our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal...Now we are engaged in...testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure." America is again being tested - not on actual battlefields, but in a battle over its foundational values and moral compass.

America Was Founded on Enlightenment Principles and Philosophy. Our nation was built on such principles as:

- Equality before the law

- government by consent of the governed

- Freedom of speech, religion, press, and assembly

- Separation of church and state

- Rule of law

- Celebration of Reason and Scientific inquiry

Although the country has often failed to live up to these ideals and the progress toward a more perfect union has moved far too slowly, our country has moved to extend important rights and protections to all Americans. Progress was real.

Modern Democratic Values Are Now Under Threat

We are witnessing anti-modern, authoritarian forces dismantling the ideals of our founders and the progress that has been made. 

These forces are working to: 

• Restrict voting rights

• Roll back women's and minority rights

• Undermine and then dismantle public education,

• Pass taxes favoring the wealthy at a time when the level of income inequality was already immoral

• End church/state separation

• Suppress scientific inquiry and artistic freedom

• Dismantle our government's system of checks and balances

• Openly promote a rejected vision of a 19th Century America.

And this is just a partial list...

The goal of Rekindling American Values is to help reset America's moral compass so as to ensure our nation's future as a democracy of, by and for the people. Rekindling American Values proposes a 'Declaration of Renewal' which affirms the rights articulated by our founder recognizing that these Rights shall apply to all, not just a privileged few.

The Declaration affirms in part:

• All human beings are of equal worth

• Individuals own their own bodies, have rights to their separateness and to bodily inviolability

• The First Amendment freedoms are essential for a democracy to thrive and therefore must be protected

• A strong wall of separation between church and state

• Voting rights which include access to voting are sacred. 

• Quality Public education is necessary for a functioning democracy

• Science and free inquiry must be protected

• A fair system of taxation must be accepted. Economic inequality is morally wrong.

• Environment responsibility is essential not only for our own benefit, but also for our children and all future generations.

We may take for granted the near astounding progress America has made as a nation. But it must be recognized that it could be transient. The future is not yet written, and we the people must stop being spectators in our own democracy, because democracy will not survive by itself. Guided by the values and principles that animated our Founders we must repair the damage to our institutions while recognizing that the future will not look like what came before. We cannot turn the national clock backward. Building our nation anew does not mean retreating to some mythic past. Meeting this moment in America requires creative thinking and bold choices. The work of repair is quieter than outrage and takes far longer than destruction. But it is how America will endure. And what is America if not a place always seeking "what ought to be?" Rekindling American Values is a call to anyone not satisfied with "what is" and wishes to join in the pursuit of what our Founders obliged of us: To seek what ought to be.