Progressive Values Stories: Peter Harvey on Community versus Intolerance

Written by: Edwin Rutsch on Apr 25, 2008 1:23 AM

Linked to groups: Take Back Red California

Community cannot for long feed on itself; it can only flourish with the coming of others from beyond, their unknown and undiscovered brothers. 
Howard Thurman

I interviewed Peter Harvey at a Oakland, California Democracy for America meeting.  Peter  passionately talked about the progressive value of community and shared an early memory of the community reaching out to him.  However, he thinks that conservatives have completely missed the mark of religious teachings by going off into intolerance 
 

Progressive Values Stories: Peter Harvey on Community versus Intolerance

I’m Peter Harvey from Piedmont, California.  My job is program manager for NASA projects, and I think progressives see government as a way of combining all of us and making us all part of each other.  We are a community, and that sense of community should not be just with the nation, but with the world.  We have a global climate crisis, that we need to come together.

I think progressives see that immediately, because we are part of each other and for us all to succeed we all have to pitch in.

I’ve been very interested in being part of the community, partly sharing my family, starting with the family values I became a scoutmaster in the local troop, before that a baseball and soccer coach.  And these are things that are partly inspired by my son and my daughter playing soccer, my son playing baseball.  But then within the community values that scouting has, it respects the community and says that scouts should be developing, part of the community, give service to the community. 

This is true of adults as well.  It is part of who I am, and I am just part of progressive values.  I see it an attachment between all of those things.  The situation I see is adults in my young life helped me out, and they did it out of the goodness of their hearts and sense of community.

Edwin:  Would you actually like to tell the story?

Answer:  For example, when I was a young boy scout, in fact starting out in boy scouts, my parents had actually had enough with boy scouts, because my older brothers had already gone through it.  I went to learn how to be a boy scout, and the scoutmaster taught me, and he became my surrogate father.  If all of us became that in the community and watched out for them, every community would be terrific. 

Well, I can recall when I was at the code of honor, at the very beginning court of honor when you become a scout, every boy had his parents there to be behind him, and so forth.  And my parents didn't show up.  And a parent, Mr. Harold, showed up behind me to give me the scout medal.  And this was the first instance in which I can remember where a community member just stepped forward and said "This is a community of boys who need support.”

"A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess."  
A. Philip Randolph

Community at Wikipedia
In human communities, intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, risks and a number of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness. Traditionally in sociology, a "community" has been defined as a group of interacting people living in a common location. However, the definition of the word "community" has evolved to mean individuals who share characteristics, regardless of their location or degree of interaction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community

Peter Harvey on Conservative Intolerance

Intolerance betrays want of faith in one's cause.  Mahatma Gandhi

Edwin:  How do you see that conservatives have characterized the values of progressives?

Answer:   I think that conservatives have completely missed the mark.  They’ve gone off on various tangents, explaining themselves as being rooted in the bible, and so forth, but in fact, their very message is intolerant.  While Jesus would say tolerance is such a vital portion and love is such a vital  portion of what people should be and should do.  So conservatives have completely missed the mark when they attack other countries and hate people. 

This is not right, and is not Christian.  Whereas progressives adopt a policy of tolerance for one another.  This is what is right.  This is what Jesus would have wanted.  I can’t imagine how anyone could be a conservative Christian and support attacking and killing.

I think they would say progressive values have adopted evil, if you will, that they see us supporting gay marriage and abortion, and these are things they can’t understand, and they can’t get by the idea that those who need abortion should have them, that a woman has the right, that a couple who love each other are a good thing and should be understood that way.

I would say that conservatives violate their own ideals of loving people when they hate those who get married, like gays, and woman who get abortions.  They do not support these people.  They do not love these people.  And this is where they are missing the mark entirely.

Intolerance of ambiguity is the mark of an authoritarian personality.
 Theodor W. Adorno,  German philosopher

Intolerance At Wikipedia
Intolerance is the lack of ability or willingness to tolerate something.
In pressed through angry argumentation, looking down at people because of their characteristics or viewpoints, negatively portraying something due the contrast with one's own beliefs, etc. On a more extreme level, it can lead to violence - in its most severe form, genocide.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intolerance

More Progressive Values Stories:

Edwin Rutsch
What Are Progressive Values? Documentary Project
http://ProgressiveSpirit.com 
and Study Group

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