By Alan Maki
January 30, 2010 - 1:07pm GMT
First, you have ignored a very important development. John Birchers Ron and Rand Paul are involved in a movement that is really scary which brings together some Green Party people and even some misguided leftists who don't look beneath the surface to see what is going on and the connections these people have with outfits like the viciously racist and anti-Semitic John Birch Society whose influence is growing again across the country. This "movement," while still small, seems to be growing quite rapidly--- often working in league with the Tea Party movement.
Second, you people with the Campaign for America's Future are afraid to look for an alternative to the Democratic Party that works. The socialist Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party of Governors Floyd B. Olson, Elmer Benson and U.S. Congressman John Bernard was the most powerful and effective challenge, to date, to this two-party trap... and it worked in the interests of the common people--- workers, farmers, professionals and small business people.
The only way to fight the right-wing when they start attacking everything as socialist is to provide a truthful and honest explanation of what socialism is and what a socialist agenda and program really are.
We should begin by putting socialized healthcare on the table which would create tens of thousands of jobs while creating as many public healthcare centers as there are public libraries which would create for the American people a world-class healthcare system second to none along the lines of VA, the Indian Health Service and the National Public Health Service...
- No-fees/no premiums.
- Comprehensive.
- All-inclusive.
- Pre-natal to grave.
- Universal.
- A fully public healthcare system.
- Publicly financed.
- Publicly administered.
- Publicly delivered.
All financed by transfering funding from militarism and wars toward serving the public good.
This would require ending Obama's wars.
We need public healthcare centers spread out across our country instead of over 800 U.S. military bases on foreign soil dotting the globe protecting Wall Street's profits and interests.
We cannot talk in vague and simplistic terms about a "progressive populism;" we need to get specific. This is the only way to counter the growing rightwing movement that gets scarier and scarier as it moves to the "center" of the political spectrum... it is a progressive, anti-capitalist, pro-socialist progressive politics that needs to become the "center" of American politics if we are going to move forward--- away from war and militarism and towards an economy based on improving the livelihoods of everyone.
What we need is a "declaration of independence" from the Democratic and Republican parties which are both Wall Street parties; parties of war, racism and corruption.
For our country to go "green" it has to go "red" which requires the building of some kind of "people's front" on a much larger scale than what existed in the 1930's.
Alan L. Maki
Minnesota
Suggestion: A very good book to read, "The People's Front" by Earl Browder... available through your local public library.
