Posts under ‘Politics’

My opposition to the Afghanistan war has been documented elsewhere on this blog. I served in the Vietnam War and I see far too many parallels with that war now. In the interest of increasing the exposure of Matthew Hoh’s ideas, I am taking the liberty of posting his letter. I found it on the [...]

Last Spring, I flamed out in anger after encountering the incredible short-sightedness of those who thought Tea Parties were the answer. I resolved to take some time off and I did, only coming back when Glenn Beck forced Van Jones to resign from the Obama administration. I felt then that I had to speak out, [...]

Chet Bowers writes that the Republican Party is not conservative. Rather, it is better characterized as promoting market liberalism. Liberalism, too, promotes the same thing. Is it any wonder that many progressives vote, usually Democratic, with a sigh of resignation, for the lesser of two evils? I’ve taken a list of characteristics of market liberals [...]

When I first read Chet Bowers’ work, I was a little bit puzzled by his definitions of the words ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’. Instead of falling into the swamp of the contemporary partisan divide, he goes back in history to retrieve the correct definitions of a conservative and a liberal. The following essay is long, but [...]

I’ve been following the controversy surrounding the Nobel Committee’s award of the Peace prize to Barack Obama since last Friday. Frankly, I was puzzled over the decision, but when I went to the site where all of the winners of the Peace prize are listed, I saw that some winners were not, in my opinion, [...]

Back in February, I posted a piece in which I objected to Obama’s escalation in Afghanistan. I have not changed my mind in any way. Andrew Bacevich, whom I admire greatly, wrote the following essay for The Boston Globe. Andrew is a thinking military man, almost an oxymoron. If Obama really is going to give [...]

It is beyond dispute that there are a substantial number of very upset people in this country these days. Between partisan politics and Tea Parties, there are a whole lot of ticked off people voicing their opinions. Most don’t know how they got into their present predicament, but they don’t really care and latch onto [...]

David Michael Green, not known for his optimism, has written an interesting article in which he cleverly substitutes the word “Russians” for “corporations”. Will Americans ever wake up to the enemy in our midst? Or will we continue to fall for the antics of the right-wing populists and the corporate media feeding us non-stop entertainment [...]

I’m intrigued with the possibilities of working to change the anti-fusion laws on the books of more than 40 states – laws that enforce the existing political duopoly and disenfranchise millions of Americans who have no way, other than attending Tea Party rallies, of making their voices heard. Recently, David Sirota wrote about the Working [...]

In Changing the Powers That Be: How the Left Can Stop Losing and Win, G. William Domhoff argues that any third party is doomed before it is started because of the way the way the American electoral system is structured. He advocates working within the Democratic Party as “egalitarian Democrats who believe in planning through [...]