"The Most Dangerous Crisis We Have Ever Faced in our Civilization"

To think that if this man were president, like he should be, despite the rightwing which stole the election in 2000, we might have a sustainable system by now. I always thought Al Gore was too conservative, and also too concerned with "civil liberties" (negative rights) instead of civil rights (protecting the people through democratic empowerment) but he has been my champion, and the Earth's champion, on this issue, perhaps the most important issue ever to confront humans:

Al Gore, the 45th vice president of the United States, was the 15th lecturer in the Sacerdote Great Names Series at Hamilton College on Thursday, April 26, in the Margaret Bundy Scott Field House. Mr. Gore’s lecture on the threat of global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth,” was accompanied by the multi-media presentation on which his best-selling book and Academy Award-winning film of the same name are based. Gore asked those in attendance to take on global warming, calling it “the most dangerous crisis we have ever faced in our civilization.”

Yes, that's actually a former presidential candidate saying such bold words. I am impressed that a somewhat establishment figure would come out and speak the truth, despite how bad it must be for his career and his playing the games of politics. I am also impressed the establishment is letting him get away with it! Could it be that the powers that be see that if they don't stop ruining the Earth, they will have to pay one day? It happened in the first Progressive Era, when businessmen finally realized some of the democratic reforms were for the whole good of society, not just the poor and needy. Maybe we're seeing a shift.


I won't hold my breath, though. As great of a rogue hero that Al Gore can be, in 2008 the contest will likely be between a Republican and a Republican-lite, unless the Democrats appoint Hillary or Obama, but I don't see that as all too likely, despite the rightwing fear of it. I think the corporations that pull the strings of the Democrats would rather die than let them speak the truth about how their practices will kill us all, including them, and all too soon.

Tired Answers

Why do the rude capitalists always think they can pull one over on us?

There's a libertarian blog, "lowercase liberty," out there, run by a guy who calls himself "BK Marcus" (I'm guessing after some capitalist economist or other libertarian hero.) that I found while searching around the World Wide Net for resources on anarchism, which has many progressive values, including eco-sustainability and concerns about the poor and the climate. But somehow I ended up at this capitalist blog when any anarchist will tell you that it is a leftist, democratic, progressive movement, not a rightwing agenda only concerned with letting CEOs have as much money as possible.

"BK Marcus's" blog has a hilarious post about the newest effort to sell us citizens inequality in the guise of "freedom" and take away our democracy with nothing to offer us n return. Some of his capitalist "sock puppets" will have none of it, but I posted a scathing attack on these people that I thought would be worth sharing to my readers.

The problem with Bob Murphy and all who agree with him in this extreme apologism for corporate America is the lack of undertanding how powerful big business is and how a "free market" of survival of the fittest is a dream. We are not all atomistic individuals. If you worship money, you lose sight of love and the need to be a good person.
What about the Great Depression? Laissez faire sure didn't stop the Stock Market Crash. What about that dirty little capitalist secret: Slavery. You never hear libertarians address that paradox.
In a free market, the homeless would have no homes. Without minimum wage, we'd all be working for a penny an hour while the CEOS pocketed the rest. We'd be priced out of the market for food and medicine, as the rich people bought everything up at prices only they could afford.
You guys talk about free trade, but for many poor people, free trade means the IMF foreclosing on their lives. It means being owned by U.S. multinational corporate power. How can you support this and call it "free"?
America used to have a free market. There was slavery and dirty meat and snake oil being sold as medicine. Then we had the New Deal and the War on Poverty (which Reagan ended), just a little common-sense government to round out the rough edges of capitalism.
The real irony is, for how much you libertarians want to protect the interests of the rich capitalist class, I bet they prefer having some economic stability provided by the democratic government, too.

Distracted by the War

For the last four years, the progressive left has been overwhelmingly distracted, by the Iraq war.

There are some good lessons to be learned from Iraq, like the inability of the Bush administration to devote adequete resources to get the job done. The mess over there could only be due to incompetence, not enough personnel and equipment, and government-phobia, despite what the rightwing says, about how hard it is to turn the country into a democratic country.

But there are other issues, important ones, for American progressives to consider. We have the largest gap between rich and poor that anyone in the world has ever seen. We have easy access to guns and not enough mental health screening programs in the schools. We have inadequete funding in the schools. Distracted by the slow progress in Iraq, the issue of climate change has just gone by unnoticed much by many progressives. We still don't have a health care system that puts people above profit!!!

Yes, we need to do better in Iraq, and a better president will surely do better there. But there are more pressing issues.

The rightwing has distracted progressives with this war and even made some doubt that the government could promote democracy abroad. It almost makes me miss the greatest "Republican" of our time, Bill Clinton, because although he snuck in free trade and welfare reform, at least he was good enough when he fought against human rights abuses in other nations to bring some sembance of democratic justice to the world and made America look good in the eyes of those around the world looking to America for an example of progress and social justice.

However, what about promoting some democracy here? The sad tragedy of this war is that the rightwing will pump hundreds of billions of dollars of government money into another country, with limited success, and still be afraid to "nation build" OUR OWN NATION!

Bring home the troops one day, when it's safe and Iraq has the democracy we promised them. However, also, we need the government's attention to our roads, our schools, our crime problems, and our infrastructure, despite the laissez faire rightwing. We new progressives know that Americans will cheer on the troops if they come to our towns across America with a plan and strategy to rebuild America, just as they have their plan to rebuild Iraq, they should try to rebuild America while they're at it.