[WB-Discuss] Re: [mrg-discuss] Meeting of Sunday, December 21, 2003

[BillCunningham]

Right on, Elie!

That's how I come out at the end of the sausage line also.  There are however two considerations that I hope are fully gone over before we all come out in a string together.  There is a sense of great danger in the air, and we could always be wrong, however  sure of ourselves.

The most immediate, given the story coming out today, is that Nader may run, but not seek the Green endorsement.  Of course we're not ready for that.  But who's ever really been ready for anything?  This may be the cold douche this party needs to get on the ball about defining exactly what we stand for.  Ralph Nader helped us a lot in 2000, banging heads together to fuse the two US parties mostly into a single whole and giving us a more working-class orienteed platform.  But for too many we are still thought of as like an old fashioned liberal type party "like the Democrats were before they lost their soul."  Without Nader we're going to have to grow up fast, and this makes it all the more important for us to run a strong presidential campaign.

The second consideration is about taking a fresh, hard look at the US two-party system.  When we look at the rise of classic fascism [references to Weimar are always about that], we look at countries with a very different constitutional setting than we have in the US. Here, something like fascism might use one of the major parties as the vehicle.  Because the Republican party today is far more coherent and disciplined than the Democrats, this could be what is happening beneath our eyes today -- the GOP transforming into something like a fascist party.  The fact that the Democratic party is an animal without backbone, but still quite a large animal, is   both the hope and the despair of those who want more than anything else to Stop Bush.  As we build the alternatives,  it will help if we are clear-headed about what is going on in the two major parties.

-- Bill

-----Original Message-----
From: Elie & Nona Yarden <yen.yarden at verizon.net>
Sent: Dec 23, 2003 5:27 PM
To: candidate-development at green-rainbow.org
Cc: amherst-discuss at green-rainbow.org, convention at green-rainbow.org, 
	easthamton-discuss at green-rainbow.org, 
	jpgreens-discuss at green-rainbow.org, mrg-discuss at green-rainbow.org, 
	lexington-greens-discuss at green-rainbow.org, 
	wb-discuss at green-rainbow.org, 
	northampton-greens-discuss at green-rainbow.org
Subject: [mrg-discuss] Meeting of Sunday, December 21, 2003

The premises of people who argue against the candidacy of Ralph Nader 
for the Presidency of the United States ? or any other serious and 
effective speaker for the American people who is not running within 
that existing party system that betrays whatever democracy we have or 
had ? are designed for the maintenance of the social status quo.

The times (of the PNAC & Rumsfeld) are not, we may agree, for using any 
argument that gets you what you want.  Political arguments that appeal 
to fear, envy and resentment have contributed enough to bringing us to 
the political pit from which we are trying to escape.  The only sure 
way of missing, of finding ourselves unready for, any future 
opportunity for social progress that is not yet apparent, is to desist 
from struggle.  Those who advocate reliance on the ability of any 
weakened member of the party out of power (at the  moment) to overcome 
the conditions of holding power in America today, have their heads in 
the sand.  The debt we incur for meeting any aspect of our needs, by 
leaving these in the hands of any leader who knows what is best for us, 
will turn out to be unpayable to an earth that is beyond repair.  Many, 
who have studied the ideology of economic growth and its effects, find 
this condition to be on the immediate horizon.

The presidency of George Bush, with a possible looming second term, is 
dangerous to the earth.  But not absolutely more so than every other 
government that pre-existed it.  The greater danger as in all such 
situations, is the failure of nerve.  The very intelligence that makes 
thinking possible also opens us to the fears that defeat its 
functioning.  The private concerns of candidates for local office, 
their utterly traditional weighing how the odds of their success are 
affected by a Nader candidacy, are unworthy of comment ? reminiscent of 
Weimar.

The most important reason to place the name of Ralph Nader as a 
presidential candidate on the ballot for the Green-Rainbow of 
Massachusetts Party was to overcome the freezing fear of those who 
cannot notice the opportunity to move ahead.  This fear if it prevail, 
as it will in the Democratic Party, will assure the reelection of 
George III, and leave us weakened and unready for the continuing 
struggle.

Elie Yarden

Bill Cunningham