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Related Links The Hyde Park Declaration: A Statement of Principles and a Policy Agenda for the 21st Century



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Key Documents

DLC | Key Document | January 1, 2001
The New Democrat Credo

In keeping with our party's grand tradition, we reaffirm Jefferson's belief in individual liberty and capacity for self-government. We endorse Jackson's credo of equal opportunity for all, special privileges for none. We embrace Roosevelt's thirst for innovation and Kennedy's summons to civic duty. And we intend to carry on Clinton's insistence upon new means to achieve progressive ideals.

We believe that the promise of America is equal opportunity for all and special privilege for none. We believe that economic growth generated in the private sector is the prerequisite for opportunity, and that government's role is to promote growth and to equip Americans with the tools they need to prosper in the New Economy.

We believe that government programs should be grounded in the values most Americans share: work, family, personal responsibility, individual liberty, faith, tolerance, and inclusion.

We believe in community; that we can achieve our individual destinies only if we share a commitment to our national destiny. We believe in an ethic of mutual responsibility in which government has an obligation to create opportunity for citizens, but citizens have an obligation to give something back to the commonwealth.

We believe America has a responsibility to lead the world toward greater political and economic freedom.

We believe that as advocates of activist government, we need to reinvent government so that it is both more responsive and more accountable to those it serves and to the taxpayers who pay for it.


A New Agenda for the New Decade: The Hyde Park Declaration