Tag: Left Wing Nuts

Betrayal Of Port Huron

About here most youngsters are asking just what am I talking about and what the Hell is Port Huron.

First of all this is a post on the coming election and Joe Biden.

As an aging radical from the 60s and 70s I believed in the direction a group, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) laid out in their Port Huron Statement….( and now the perfect time for a little history)….

Learn a bit about the SDS and in turn about the old professor…..http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3337

Now the statement they issued that outlined an agenda…..

The Students for a Democratic Society was a leftist student movement that came out of the early 60s in the midst of the New Left, and had chapters and wide participation throughout America in the 60s, most notably the anti-war and free speech movement. The New Left mainly referred to the student movement that came about in the 1960s that focused on social injustices throughout the United States. They were heavily concerned with the “establishment” of the country and wanted to change the government with (in the very least) a social revolution, though many groups were even more radical. The SDS could be considered the flagship organization of the New Left. They branched off of the Student League for Industrial Democracy or SLID because they believed the organization’s ideologies were too restricting. Hence the SDS was very vague in their principles, so to appeal to a wide group of students with varying ideologies. This can be seen in their most important document, which describes them as an organization and can lead to a better understanding of them as a group, “The Port Huron Statement.”

“The Port Huron Statement” was the manifesto of the Students for the Democratic Society. Tom Hayden, a leader of the original SDS, as well as a student at University of Michigan was the working force behind the document. Tom Hayden along with other founding members came together in Port Huron, Michigan, in the June of 1962 to lay out the ideologies and goals of their new organization, which heavily reflected that of the New Left. The first part of the document brings understanding to their viewpoint of society and American political and military actions, while the second half focuses on how America should “establish greater democracy in America” (46), and tactics their organization could use to help the United States achieve this. To give a clear understanding of the SDS ideology and goals “The Port Huron Statement” is an important document to study as it outlined their beliefs and goals.

https://digilab.libs.uga.edu/exhibits/exhibits/show/civil-rights-digital-history-p/students-for-a-democratic-soci

This is the original draft of the Port Huron Statement…..”A New Agenda For a Generation……https://www.sds-1960s.org/PortHuronStatement-draft.pdf

Please read the statement…..the values then are the values of today…..nothing has changed and that can be blamed on the desertions to mainstream for profit parties….

Yes I was a member and follower of the SDS…..I did not agree with some members turn to violence and I definitely did not agree when the leaders like Tom Hayden, Jerry Rubin made the turn Right and embraced the Democratic Party.

The SDS had a great agenda but lost the chance to implement by the desertions of the leadership to the “enemy”…..

That catches my reader up….and then the SDS old new left (the ones that made that turn) have issued a statement in support of Biden for 2020……

“An Open Letter to the New New Left From the Old New Left,” signed by more than sixty former leaders of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The aim of the letter is to pressure supporters of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders into voting for Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic Party presidential candidate.

Their letter in the Nation opens by applauding Senator Sanders’ long-anticipated decision to drop out of the presidential race and support Biden. However, the authors write that they are “gravely concerned that some of his supporters, including the leadership of Democratic Socialists of America, refuse to support Biden, whom they see as a representative of Wall Street capital.”

The letter is formally directed to the leadership of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which has officially stated that it will not be endorsing Biden. This is a political maneuver on the DSA’s part, as there are not in fact any principled political differences between it and the writers of the letter, of which we will say more below.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/04/25/sdsb-a25.html

These old leaders may have lost their way….but old radicals like me are still the same person with the same beliefs we held 50 years ago.

And because I have the same values that I held 50 years ago I have NO use for a candidate like Joe Biden….and if you have read the statement then you know why……

I Watch This Blog!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The American Left: Wrong About Everything?

Since my early days in politics I have been what some call a “Lefty”…..but that by NO means implies that I am a liberal……and since they are equating liberal with progressive then I am not one of them either.

I have had harping that the Left has done many things wrong in the last 50 years and the problem is they learn nothing by each of their failures.

I read a good article in the LA Progressive about this feeling of mine…..

For lots of people like me, the world has been turned on its head over the last few years. In fact, the whole damn century thus far has been pretty puzzling.

We started out by electing the village idiot as our leader, a rich man’s kid who had demonstrated little in the way of intelligence or competence in anything he’d ever done up to that point. Then we re-elected him despite the fact that he had, in his first term, invaded the wrong country in response to a big terror attack he’d neglected to prevent, having been on vacation the entire month preceding those assaults on New York and the Pentagon.

He bungled another more natural disaster in New Orleans and nearly oversaw the tanking of the global economy before he was sent on his way to retirement.

Then we elected a black guy, telling ourselves that we were, by so doing, turning ourselves into a “post-racial” society, at last. What happened instead, however, was that the ugly racist underbelly of the nation rolled over exposing that obscene white belly to the light of day.

Source: The American Left: Wrong About Everything? – LA Progressive

The Left needs to find a niche, there is one there, they just do not want to embrace it.

It is time for the US to have two distinct parties not two entities that are merely the different sides of the same coin.  We need a battle of ideas not a slap fight of slogans.

Both parties are a mess…..and yet we will elect another troll from within their ranks….weep for the country!

Reclaim the Identity of the Left

Back in my younger days I was a radical and worked to change the political system….I worked within the confines of the system to exact change….Reagan reinvigorated my resolve to make change…Bush1 was just an extension of my desire….and then the country threw us on the Left a mickey….the election of Bill Clinton, a conserv in Dem clothing……we tried to warn the country but few wanted to hear what we were saying…..and look what that brought.

Many on the Left are crying in their beers…..but that will not bring the change they so want….the Left needs to set about making the changes needed to start representing the working class….something they have NOT done in 25+ years…..if they truly want to win…then the ONLY concern should be that of the working class.

This election has been something that the American left had never dreamed of: The rise of a demagogue spouting fascist rhetoric against the roaring cheers of white America.

An authoritarian right will now rule over a Republican-held Congress, with the choosing of new Supreme Court justices on the agenda.

The anger fueling Trump’s rise was palpable because it wasn’t new. Economic stagnation has been happening for decades as deindustrialization, neoliberalism and union busting took its toll. The Rust Belt rusted over and small farms were forced into foreclosure. That anger had a narrative thrusted upon it, and it didn’t come from the left.

Source: Trump’s Victory Is an Opportunity to Reclaim the Identity of the Left

Good advice if you want to regain your standing with the American people….

For sake of argument…….. the National Review wades into the conversation…..

The Left is not going to learn any lessons from 2016, apparently. Democrats in the House just crushed an upstart challenge to Nancy Pelosi’s decade-long leadership, rejecting Tim Ryan, a 43-year-old congressman who represents a swath of post-industrial Ohio from Youngstown to Akron and co-chairs the Congressional Manufacturing Caucus, for the 76-year-old San Francisco congresswoman who has presided over the largest House losses in modern memory, and who famously said that the House had to pass the Affordable Care Act “so you can find out what is in it.” As for leadership outside the halls of Congress, the favorite to head the Democratic National Committee has been Keith Ellison, a Muslim congressman from Minnesota who has extensive ties to the Nation of Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood, and who has compared the September 11 attacks to the burning of the Reichstag.

Source: American Left, We Need You to Recover Your Sanity | National Review

I will agree that the Left, the true Left, needs to re-group and find a better way forward…..reverting back to the 1990’s is NOT the way forward.
Thoughts?  But please if you want to go on some socialism rant save it for your crazy uncle Bill over Christmas dinner.

What Became of the Left?

Ah sweet memories of youth.

Back in my younger days I was what one could call a radical….a child of the Left…..I was anti-war, anti-just about anything that wreaked of capitalism.

Now I am an old fart and way too old to do the things I did in my youth ….the protesting, the confrontations…..and since those days there is a nagging question that eats at me……where the Hell is the Left I knew?

In the years since my “retirement” from the movement this country has lost its will to attempt to make change…..the protests today have little to do with the war machine and its strangle hold on the government…

I read an article in the Unz Reader about this very thing…..(sometimes this site is a bit too Libertarian for me….but it makes good points at times)……

Acquaintances of my generation are puzzled by the disappearance of the American left. They remember when there was far less war, far less monopoly capitalist theft, a less rich and powerful elite, less police violence against civilians, less militarization, less privatization and deregulation, fewer attacks on the social safety net, less propaganda from the media, and yet, despite the milder state of affairs, the leftwing was present raising hell about it all.

For fifteen years, and more if we go back to the Clinton regime’s destruction of Yugoslavia, the US has been engaged in wars on populations in seven—eight counting Yugoslavia/Serbia—countries, causing millions of deaths, disabled, and dislocated peoples. A police state has been created, the US Constitution stripped of its protective features, and massive crimes committed under both US and international law by three administrations. These crimes include torture, transparant false flag events, naked aggression (a war crime), spying without warrants, and murder of US citizens. Yet, the leftwing’s voice is barely heard.

Source: What Became of the Left? – The Unz Review

The Left fell victim to the “charm” of the Clintons and it has lasted for a generation…..but thanx to the 2016 election there is a real possibility that the Left can be revived….wars are a way of life now and will become more so when the Clinton clan reoccupies the White House.

Time for a re-awakening of a movement for the Left and the antiwar movement.

Think Green as a beginning!

Is Everybody Is Running Scared Of Hilary?

The 2016 election is quickly approaching…….we have NO idea who will be the GOP candidates save one….it seems the Santorum has pretty much decide to amuse us again….but after that the field is obfuscated….

We know that the conservs are running scared of the the only Dem mentioned so far…Hilary.  They have a Super PAC dedicated to ruining her chances and most commentators are mentioning her at every opportunity……but who else is getting any attention on the lib side of the equation?  So far….NO one!

The Left, I mean the real Left not these darn centrists, are saying that there needs to be someone hit Hilary from the Left……but who would say that….and at this time?

Report from The Hill:

Ralph Nader tore into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s liberal bona fides on Monday and said a candidate should challenge her from the left if she runs for the 2016 Democratic nomination.

“Somebody must challenge from the left, because, I mean, Hillary Clinton, who started out as a progressive out of Yale Law School and Wellesley, she’s become almost the poster child for the military-industrial complex,” Nader said in an online interview with MSNBC’s Chuck Todd.

“She hugs Kissinger; she hobnobs with Bob Rubin and the Wall Street crowd — I mean it’s almost a caricature,” Nader added. “But you know on social issues, like pro-choice, children’s issues, you know she keeps that liberal sheen.”

The former Democratic presidential candidate, who has also run for president as an independent and for the Green Party, said Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), both of whom have been vocal proponents of Wall Street reform, would be solid challengers.

Oh great…the great and powerful media whore Nader has spoken!

While I may agree with Nader’s proposition that someone on the Left, the real Left, needs to jump in in opposition to Hilary…..I do not put much credence in Nader’s opinion……he is a media whore that likes to see his name in print……for me his days of relevancy has long past.

The Left needs a true spokesperson…….Nader ain’t it!

Why Not Change The Constitution?

There seems to be a general viewpoint that we should change the Constitution in one way or the other……change it to reflect the pro-life stand or maybe to make sure that sharia law does not take hold or maybe we should change it to truly reflect equality that was promised (we can debate that part at a later date)….why not change the constitution?  Why not crap on the ideals of the founders?

I know…I know…that was a bit too much….but is it really?  There is a wealth of people out there that would change it in a second……but now ask what would we gain?

But if we try to change the constitution too much we could have the authoritarian rule that some are searching for……take a look at what Hungary has done when they fundamentally changed their constitution……

The new constitution will give Hungary, which currently holds the presidency of the EU, a legal framework in which nationalist and religious factors are decisive. The constitution reeks of Christian fundamentalist and nationalist ideology, which Fidesz calls the “national creed”. Hungarian lawyers have warned against underestimating the scope of the changes.The right to utilise a referendum to oppose political decisions has been considerably restricted. Generally, a referendum can no longer be instigated by popular demand, but only through a majority in parliament. Referendums calling for constitutional changes or to amend election law are completely excluded.

The most far-reaching change is the curtailment of the powers of the Supreme Court. In future, all Hungarians will not have recourse to this court, and access to it is also closed to local authorities. Only the president, the government or a group of at least a quarter of parliamentarians can demand a review of legislation by the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court judges will no longer have any authority on matters of the state budget and taxes. The judges of Hungary’s highest court can now be re-elected following the end of their term of office, which was not possible before. This aims to ensure that the judicial system is permanently controlled by Fidesz, as is the case in the media and other bodies.

Europe is dealing with the rise of the nationalistic fervor…..and this success will crap all over the common person and give all the advantages to the rich and the corporations….wait!  Does that sound familiar?  Just as the authoritarian fervor rise in Europe, it is doing so here in the good old U. S. of A.  If the American people are not vigilant we will have to deal with this type of changes to our beloved constitution…..

There is an article I recent came across that covers this subject pretty good…..warning…it is a fairly lengthy article but an excellent read on the Constitution…….

http://bit.ly/mTu6BP

While we were asleep……we will lose a good portion of the rights and freedoms that our Founding Fathers want us to have…..can anyone say…..”tyranny of the minority”?