Nader 2000 Supporters Unite to Support Fascism

NADER 2000 LEADERS UNITED TO SUPPORT BUSHISM

A few days ago some of the most misled latte liberals in America joined
forces to support the Bushism of John Kerry. Have Howard Zinn, Noam
Chomsky, Jim Hightower and David Korten completely lost their minds? Why are they telling us that it is all right for John Kerry to continue
slaughtering Iraqis, Afghanis and Palestinians over the next four years
but it is not all right for George Bush to do so? It seems that all you
have to do in order to get latte liberals to vote for Mussolini is to
tell them that he is running against Hitler.


These were the same folks who ignored the resistance movement in France during the occupation, became collaborators and supporters of the Vichy government. They did not realize that it was critical to oppose Nazism whether the Nazis spoke French or German. Today they do not realize
that it is important fight Fascism whether the fascist calls himself
George Bush or John Kerry. These were the same people, collectively named
Judas Iscariot, 2,000 years ago who betrayed Jesus Christ. Just as
they were unable to understand the Christian message 2,000 years ago they
are unable of understanding the Nader message today.


In the embarrassingly childish preamble to their signatures they
proclaim that they "strongly disagree with John Kerry's policies on Iraq and
other issues". But they are urging voters to ignore their conscience --
always an unwise move -- and vote for someone who:


· Approves of the assassination of political leaders.

· Believes that Palestinian refugees should not have the right
to return to their homes.

· Is prepared to appoint antiabortion Judges.

· Wants to make same-sex marriage a state's rights issue just as
the Democrats made slavery a state's rights issue in 1860.

· Proposes to cut corporate taxes and call it a job's plan.

· Promises to remove our troops from Iraq by the end of his
first term just as Richard Nixon promised in 1968. In the meantime he he'll
increase the number of troops by 40,000.

· Will strengthen the Patriot Act instead of canceling it.

· Has always supported President Bush and John Ashcroft and
thinks highly Mr. Ashcroft's proposed Patriot Act II.

· Will form a "new Army of Patriots" so our children will know
what it means to be good citizens and to cooperate with the police in
reporting terrorist activities which may include peace demonstrations.

· Will emphasize deficit reduction. Instead of emphasizing
initiatives such as jobs creation, energy assistance, small-business
programs, AIDS prevention programs and housing.

· Instead of providing a free college education to our children
like every other industrialized nation, will require two years of
service in the military.

· Instead of providing free health-care to the citizens of the
United States like the governments of every other industrialized
nations, he will keep healthcare captive to the insurance corporations.
(After all they contributed $531,251 to his campaign.)

· Will have a foreign policy centering around a "bold
progressive internationalism that focuses not just on the immediate and imminent,
but insidious dangers that can mount over the next years and decade,
dangers that spanned the spectrum from the denial of democracy to
destructive weapons." (This means he will have our government go around the
world and fix all the countries that are not democracies and confront the
nations that have "destructive weapons" (as opposed to the other kind
of weapons).


No, it's not exactly their minds that they have lost. Our latte liberal
friends have simply lost sight of what the Nader campaign is all about.
They have also mistakenly identified the problem in America as an
individual and not as a policy. They believe that if George Bush remains
president the sky will fall, the oceans will overflow and we will all
awake in the morning with a severe case of diaper rash. While it is clear
that our latte liberal signatories have already developed a severe case
of prickly heat, it is equally clear that they are all speaking as if
they had a mouthful of DependsT and not a clue in their brains about
what is going on in America today.


Even a cursory comparison of the Bush administration with the Clinton
administration shows George Bush to be bush league in comparison. Using
the "atrocity calculus" alone, George Bush has killed 10,000 innocent
Iraqis and another 3,000 Afghanis along with an untold number of
Palestinians. Bill Clinton on the other hand murdered between five hundred
thousand and one million Iraqi children with his sanctions. Nothing that
George Bush has done domestically has equaled the atrocity of Clinton's
gutting of the federal social welfare program which threw thousands of
single mothers onto the streets and forced others into Wal-Mart style
slave labor positions where they cannot support their families. It was
Clinton not Bush who destroyed American jobs with NAFTA and rewarded
the corporations with GATT. It was Clinton who bombed Yugoslavia and
nearly got us into a war with Russia over Kosovo. It was John Kerry and
the Democratic Congress who supported all of these atrocities.


The acceptance of the "Anybody but Bush" position by these former
liberals is sure to be influential but the argument they offer represents
wishful thinking rather than clearheaded political analysis.

There is no question that the Bush administration's policies are cruel
and savage, but John Kerry (along with the majority of Democrats in the
Senate) supported most of them, including the war on Afghanistan, the
Patriot Act, the war on Iraq, the "No Child Left Behind" education act
and most recently the US coup in Haiti. As Marjorie Williams pointed out
in the Washington Post recently, "Kerry voted for so many of Bush's
major initiatives that in order to disown them now he can only argue that
they were wrongly or dishonestly 'implemented.' This amounts to a
confession that his opponent made a chump of him for the past three years.
In fact, one might argue that Kerry is a poster boy for all the ways in
which congressional Democrats have allowed themselves to be rolled by
the Bush administration."


The Bush administration has pushed US politics sharply to the right,
but this represents not a qualitative break with what came before but an
extension and continuation of "cruel and savage" policies implemented
by other administrations over the past 25 years, Democratic as well as
Republican.


In terms of foreign policy, the differences are even smaller. Kerry's
criticisms of Bush are purely tactical, as was abundantly clear in a
recent interview in Time magazine:


"Look, I'm prepared to take any action necessary to protect the
country, and I'm prepared to act unilaterally if we have to," Kerry insists,
noting that he backed the use of force in Grenada, Panama, Kosovo and
Afghanistan. "But there is a way to do it that strengthens the hand of
the United States. George Bush has weakened the hand of the United
States."


In fact, Kerry wants to send an additional 40,000 troops to Iraq,
advocates a "muscular internationalism" in the tradition of 20th-century
Democratic presidents (whose foreign policy record was far bloodier than
their Republican counterparts) and even refuses to rule out "preventive"
wars. Kerry, for instance, may be in a better position than Bush to
push through the reintroduction of the draft, just as it took a Democrat
to implement welfare "reform".


Making decisions about the presidential election on the basis of the
minute differences between the two major party candidates is ultimately a
mug's game. Whoever wins in November, we'll need the biggest and most
militant social movements on the ground to fight their policies, but
when activists get sucked into support for the Democrats, the movements
are weakened and sometimes destroyed.


If we choose Kerry over Bush, we make it more difficult to do the only
thing that ever makes a difference for our side--building real activism
on the ground. We know what must be done and, unlike the latte
liberals who have just signed away their birthright, we won't let our fear and
hatred of Bush blind us to that reality.


The problem our latte liberal friends have with Nader is simple: he's
articulating and implementing every one of their proclaimed values, and
has been doing so for 40 years. Nader makes them look bad. There is
something, comical, or at least gratifying to see these onetime liberals
reveal their true colors in their attempt to restrict democracy. At
least now we know with whom we are dealing. Given Kerry's stand on the
issues we might finally want to ask our onetime friends; "what part of
Republican don't you understand?"


If we are so afraid that voting for the candidate that best represents
our values will put the greater of two evils in office, then we have
already lost the right to be free and many will be ashamed to call us
their fellow countrymen.


Vive la Résistance,

John A. Murphy: SPOILER

"These are times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the
sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their
country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and
woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered. Yet we have this
consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the
triumph." -Tom Paine: Spoiler 1777