The Hudson Manifesto

In an age of Manifestos, it is only appropriate to name this Manifesto after the river first used by Europeans to penetrate into the American Continent more deeply than ever before, and around the banks of which two men who created the American conception of government as a means of seeding innovation, sustaining business, protecting individual liberty and advancing the cause of economic and social freedom, Alexander Hamilton and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, first forged their philosophies and their reputations.

For those of us who pledge our names to this Manifesto, government is the extension of the political will of the people who elect it; it is a means of creating the conditions for economic growth while protecting the liberties of men and women who would be crushed by the onslaught of an economic engine unfettered by any moral compass; it is the means by which men and women in a free society arbitrate their grievances, agree to rules of conduct in the marketplace and the public square, and alternately allocate and protect the resources we find on our land.

Because our nation has grown to more than 300 million inhabitants, from hundreds of cultures, for more than 200 years, it is natural and necessary that the government we have created be big and complex.

Our federal government in particular has had a role in fostering western expansion, the creation of a national transportation grid (first rails, then roads), a national electrical grid, and a national banking system.

Our federal government protects individuals from large corporations who would otherwise collude together to maintain high prices, pay low wages, pollute water and air, and produce unclean and unsafe goods and food with impunity.

Our federal government protects individuals from the tyranny of the majority, from discrimination on the basis of religious affiliation, color and gender.

Our federal government provides for, and should do more, to ensure that its citizens have access to minimum food and shelter, education and health care.

Our federal government cannot be scaled down to a size that ignores the consequences of more than 200 years of accumulation and distribution of wealth, most of it unequal. It cannot ignore the needs of children born into conditions from which they cannot reasonably be expected to rise without some help, nor the needs of those afflicted with natural disasters, nor fail to continue to act as a bulwark for individuals who, alone, cannot compete against the power and interests of corporations.

Our government must remain big and complex, and it must continue to grow, so that it can continue in the tradition of the agencies that supported the emancipation of African Americans and women, the harnessing of scientific research and the creation of common infrastructure necessary to the creation of individual wealth.