The trouble with bringing the "spiritual" into it...

Please note: I write the following with the deepest respect for Rabbi Michael Lerner. I just want to suggest that his argument might be extended.

As an avid Air America listener, member of Greenpeace and a thoroughly lapsed and re-lapsed Reconstructionist Jew, I think I am qualified to provide a credible knee jerk response to Michael Lerner's article, "Bringing God Into It" in the April 24, 2006 edition of "The Nation." Lerner's thesis is that the left should appeal to the "spiritual" in the American public--and to present their agenda as a utopian vision. He claims that progressives have become disciples of "scientism" and that we reduce all "ethical and aesthetic judgments to little more than reflections of class interests." Of course, it can be argued that Bush and his conservative base have used the "spiritual" to justify a dystopia which does the very same thing. As has become patently obvious, in their view, the wealthy, straight married couple with two and a children are in the upper-class because they deserve to be there. It is because of this, that, much as the young Hebrew school student in me would like to agree with Lerner, that I find that I cannot. It is impossible for me to ignore the eventuality that whatever "spiritual" vision used to justify, say national health care, the success of the item justified will be judged largely by its ability to enhance mobility between the classes. Since Lerner is not suggesting that we create an American religion (indeed he goes to great pains to distinguish between the religious and the "spiritual") he cannot expect that those who follow the progressivism he suggests will, like Job, ultimately accept his loss of station without question because it is god's will.

But, maybe Lerner is simply not going far enough. Maybe there does need to be a kind of "American Religion." I say this because in countries where there is national healthcare I suspect there exists a feeling that "no self-respecting citizen of (fill in the country)" should have to go without medical care. This is not an act based in the spirit, so much as practicality and pride. It is especially ironic, therefore, that as Americans we have become so stingy with necessities as our founding ideals are actually, at least as tangible as they are ineffable. What are "life" and "liberty" without the ability to fight off serious illness? That is why, perhaps, the progressives should continue to ground their ideals in very immediate exigencies and perhaps link these to the simplest, yet most irrefutable definitions of our country's values. Otherwise, what kinds of Americans are we, when we cannot pursue life and liberty, let alone happiness?