[Peace-discuss] Truths And Falsehoods About Ralph Nader's New Book
Karen Aram via Peace-discuss
peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
Fri Aug 15 12:25:43 EDT 2014
David
Informative examination of Nader's new book.
I admit to having seen other comments/reviews about it, as well as an interview with him by Bill Maher and came away confused and unclear, thinking that Nader appeared to be "naïve", which I know he is not.
This review clarifies what Nader means by "convergence".
Thank you.
Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 07:06:56 -0500
To:
Subject: [Peace-discuss] Truths And Falsehoods About Ralph Nader's New Book
From: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
Truths And Falsehoods About Ralph Nader's New Book
Strategize!
Corporatism, Politics, Ralph Nader
By Bruce E. Levine, www.truth-out.org
August 14th, 2014
Powered
by Translate
6
Have progressives made a mistake of lumping all
conservatives together and fueling their political energies
into hating them? Or are there what Ralph Nader calls
“anti-corporatist conservatives,” who loathe undeclared,
endless wars as much as progressives? And should
progressives seek alliances with these anti-corporatist
conservatives to oppose unnecessary wars, corporate welfare,
NSA violations of our privacy, and many other issues where
there is what Nader calls “convergence?”
Earlier this year, AlterNet published a C.J. Werleman review of Ralph Nader’s
new book Unstoppable:
The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the
Corporate State (Nation Books, 2014), that
paints Nader as having lost either his mind or soul and
become a dull-witted lackey for the Koch brothers. Yet,
Nader’s book is endorsed by Robert Reich, Cornell West, and
other critical-thinkers on the left (along with
conservatives opposing corporate cronyism). Whom should we
trust?
Before Werleman begins his condemnation of Unstoppable,
he assures us, “I like Ralph Nader. I like his politics and
I like the causes he has championed,” and he lists some of
Nader’s accomplishments, including auto and highway safety
laws, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the creation
of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational
Safety and Health Administration.
Then Werleman launches his attack: “But Ralph Nader
wants liberals to back libertarian Republican Sen. Rand Paul
(R-Kentucky)”. . . . But does Nader seriously believe
liberals are prepared to sacrifice the other 90 percent of
their ideals to rally behind a neo-confederate, Koch
brother-shill like Rand Paul?”
In fact, Nader never says this or anything close to
this. The index in Nader’s Unstoppable reveals
three mentions of Rand Paul on pages 43, 92 and 109:
p. 43: “In 2013, Senator Wyden [D-Oregon] teamed up
with Republican senator Rand Paul to introduce legislation
that would legalize industrial hemp grown in the United
States.”
p. 92: “In fact, in 2013, a debate over the military
and domestic use of drones broke out, sparked by Senator
Rand Paul’s twelve-hour filibuster, which brought together
mainstream conservative and liberal think tanks, Republican
and Democratic lawmakers, and citizen activists of both
Right and Left.”
p. 109: “In March 2013, Senator Patrick Leahy
[D-Vermont], chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the
new senator Rand Paul introduced the Justice Safety Valve
Act of 2013, allowing judges to impose sentences below
mandatory minimums.”
Nowhere in Unstoppable does Nader ask
liberals to sacrifice any part of their ideals to rally
behind Paul. In fact, Nader tells liberals just the
opposite, telling them to be uncompromising in their
principles, “To create a convergence that will work and
endure, at the onset those from the Left should have a
take-us-or-leave-us stance, indicating they are not ready to
compromise their principles but will work with any
good-faith conservative who shares this one goal.”
After Werleman fabricates the premise that Nader is
asking liberals to sacrifice their principles to back Rand
Paul, he portrays Nader as naïve to libertarian goals such
as deregulation and tax policies, and thus naïve to how
horrible it would be to have them in power. Nader is not
naïve at all, and that is why he is not talking
about forming a political party with libertarians, but
forming coalitions and alliances on specific issues where
there is convergence.
Such Coalitions Have Worked to Increase
Democracy
The fact is that such convergences have already been
successful, and this empowerment has been contagious – most
obviously with victories legalizing marijuana for
recreational use in Colorado and Washington, as well as
victories in marijuana decriminalization and medical use in
many more states.
There are other areas that Nader’s coalitions have
had successes, and Nader begins Unstoppable with
one such forgotten successful convergence that resulted in
the stoppage of a proposed nuclear power plant in the early
1980s.
The Clinch River Breeder Nuclear Reactor in Tennessee
was estimated to cost $400 million in 1970; but by the early
1980s, $1.3 billion had been spent on it even before a tree
was cleared from the 92-acre site, and the General
Accounting Office reported that the project would ultimately
cost taxpayers $8.8 billion. The Breeder Reactor was
supported by the nuclear industry, and corporatist
politicians in both the Democrat and Republican parties,
especially Tennessee Senator Howard Baker (R).
The Breeder Reactor was initially opposed only by
environmentalists, consumer groups and progressives.
However, eventually libertarians and anti-corporatist
conservatives began to oppose it on the grounds of
protecting taxpayers from government waste. Working
together, they formed an umbrella group called Taxpayers
Coalition Against Clinch River. This umbrella group included
the Friends of the Earth, the National Taxpayers Union,
Public Citizen’s Congress Watch, the Council for a
Competitive Economy, the International Association of
Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the National Audubon
Society, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Natural
Resources Defense Council. Conservatives and libertarians
successfully reached their fiscally conservative friends in
Congress, while liberal/environmental/consumerist groups
were similarly successful with their friends in Congress. On
October 26, 1983, this coalition was victorious, as the US
Senate vote 56-40 against any further funding of the Breeder
Reactor. Nader points out that single-issue groups, such as
opponents of nuclear power, can more easily converge with
conservative organizations that oppose government
boondoggles.
Another example of convergence that I have personally
been involved with is the battle against the
psychiatric-pharmaceutical-industrial complex and its
expansionist diseasing/medicating of our humanity.
Noteworthy figures in the history of this human
rights/consumer rights movement include both Erich Fromm,
the leftist psychoanalyst, along with Thomas Szasz, the
libertarian psychiatrist, both passionate antiauthoritarians
who confronted mental health professionals for coercing and
controlling people (e.g., psychopathologizing homosexuality
in the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM until the
early 1970s, and “treating” it).
Obstacles to Coalitions and Convergence
Nader is not naïve to obstacles to convergence, and
he devotes a chapter to this issue.
One obstacle to convergence is that many would-be
convergence advocates, across the political spectrum, have
good reason to fear social and political ostracism. Nader
offers the example of what the Republican Congressional
leadership did to antiwar Republicans following President
Obama’s attack on Libya in 2011 (an attack for which he
disregarded the War Powers Resolution Act). Obama’s actions
created an alliance of antiwar Democrat and Republican
members of Congress who wanted to vote on a resolution by
Democrat congressman Denis Kucinich requiring the president
to withdraw from Libya within 15 days. Pro-war Republicans,
with the support of pro-war Democrats, moved to squelch this
resistance. Ultimately, a Republican leader of the rebellion
against these pro-war forces, Republican congressman Walter
Jones, had his seat on the House Armed Services Committee
taken away by House Republican leaders.
Nader discusses why liberals often shy away from
convergence. Often, he believes, it has to do with concerns
over funding and peer pressure against certain associations.
Nader points out that many liberal organizations receive
funding from foundations with corporate-connected boards of
directors who may, for instance, like environmental causes,
but who do not oppose tax loopholes, corporate subsidies, or
other areas beneficial to corporations. And Nader points
out, “Moreover, there are liberal writers who may agree with
some convergence, but reject it overall as a strategy
because they do not want to give any credibility whatsoever
to the ad hoc convergent partners from the right.”
Pragmatically, there are times when alliances with
certain individuals or groups can discredit a movement: for
example, when human rights/consumer movement organizations
are not well known to the general public and another
well-known group or individual with highly negative baggage
joins this struggle. An example that I’m personally familiar
with is Scientology’s efforts at allying with organizations
battling the psychiatric-pharmaceutical-industrial complex.
Scientology’s reputation is so negative (with its
pseudoscientific/financially exploitative auditing
treatments, extraterrestrial creation myth, and Time and Rolling
Stone reports of it as a secretive, litigious,
malevolent cult/racket) that, as investigative journalist
Robert Whitaker points out, it would have actually been
smart for drug companies to secretly fund this religion, so
as to make it the face of opposition to Big Pharma’s
corruption of psychiatry.
However, movements such as opposing unnecessary wars
and corporate welfare – that are already supported by the
majority of Americans and already include well-known
credible people – are not vulnerable to this kind of
discrediting. When in 2010, Ron Paul joined with Barney
Frank and others to try to reduce the military budget, did
any progressive really believe Ron Paul’s involvement
discredited this movement? And when in 2013, Senator Wyden
(D-OR) teamed up with Rand Paul to introduce legislation
that would legalize industrial hemp grown in the United
States, did any progressive believe that Rand Paul hurt this
movement’s credibility?
Perhaps the major obstacle to convergence is funding.
Today, convergence has no infrastructure and no institutions
to support it, and Nader believes that this is necessary for
effective activism. With several decades of activism and
political experience behind him, Nader argues that it is
difficult to accomplish anything politically without serious
money. And so Nader ends Unstoppable with a “Dear
Billionaire” letter, hoping that some Warren Buffett type
will have enough genuine public interest to fund the
institutions required for convergence. It is painful to
those of us who care about democracy that big money is so
necessary to gain power, painful that Nader and ordinary
people can’t come up with it, and painful that the only
option that veteran anti-corporatist quarterback Nader sees
is this “Dear Billionaire” Hail Mary pass. Nader funded his
earlier activism with the $425,000 that he scored in 1970
from a General Motors harassment lawsuit. However, it is sad
but perhaps true that corporate authoritarian rule has
become so omnipotent that it renders Nader’s once cooler
ways of gaining activism seed money impossible.
Among the Left, libertarians, and the American people
in general, there is widespread opposition to: senseless,
endless, wasteful, undeclared wars; corporate welfare,
cronyism, handouts and bailouts; an insane drug war; the NSA
and other violations of our privacy; NAFTA and other
job/sovereignty destroying treaties – and many other issues.
However, corporatists - a term used pejoratively by both Ralph Nader and
Ron Paul – have effectively been able to divide and
conquer American anticorporatists who agree on these issues.
And liberal writers such as Werleman, perhaps unwittingly,
are aiding and abetting this corporatist strategy.
No tyranny, including the current corporatocracy,
wants diverse groups to recognize what they have in common
and to work together. Tyrants and other control-freaks know
full well that achieving even small victories can transform
people from a psychology of helplessness, hopelessness and
defeatism to a psychology of empowerment. Coalitions and
alliances that result in victories can inspire people to
seek even greater power and demand true democracy.
Bruce E. Levine,
a practicing clinical psychologist, writes and speaks about
how society, culture, politics and psychology intersect. His
latest book is Get
Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated,
and Battling the Corporate Elite.
_______________________________________________
Peace-discuss mailing list
Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20140815/99430260/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: ralph-nader-2.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 36344 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20140815/99430260/attachment-0001.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: google_logo_41.png
Type: image/png
Size: 2357 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20140815/99430260/attachment-0001.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: pf-button.gif
Type: image/gif
Size: 1848 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20140815/99430260/attachment-0001.gif>
More information about the Peace-discuss
mailing list