The left right now, in this moment, in this country, is scattered, immature,
undeveloped, and spends more time on polemic bickering than actually getting
anything done, and herein lies our greatest detriment, for the right in this
country has Jesus to rally around, and their supreme faith in their twisted
interperetation of Christianity keeps them strong, focused, and organized -
they have common ideal, and the collective guts to unabashedly campaign for
their ideals, often by any means necessary, with little regard for truth or
fairness - just look at Ann Coulter. The right, too, has the ears of many
in the Republican party, and even the moderates in that Big Party are
willing to stand up and bring about change - just take a glance at their
platform. We on the left, however, are brought up to be ashamed of our
beliefs - the party that is purportedly “ours” is ashamed of our “liberal”
and even “commie” views, and we should be too. How dare we offend those
brave businessmen who sit in their offices and make billions from scamming
pension plans and underpaying their employees! It takes courage to pursue
greed over the common good, courage that we who fight for basic human rights
and liberties obviously know nothing about. It also takes courage, I
suppose, to value corporate contributions enough to sit back and hand the
election to the other party, especially in a year when that party is the
furthest right, and the most blatantly dishonest, of any in recent memory -
it’s just not polite to remind the public that Bush lied, and that his lies
have resulted in the deaths and maimings of tens of thousands, and the
large-scale destruction of a nation completely unrelated to his “war on
terror.” Indeed, the invasion of Iraq has quite probably bred more
anti-American sentiment, and more terror, than a complete lack of action
after September 11 could possibly have. But even that now-ubiquitous term -
the “War on Terror” - has become something unquestioned, something of
reverence, something even Capitalized. The media have made it a proper
noun! Our very language has been altered to suit the every whim of this
administration, and only we, the virtually - and I’m sure hopefully -
disenfranchised left have anything more than mumbling agreements to say
about it. The Democrats are, and always have been, nothing but a front for
the Republicans, or perhaps more accurately, a front for the whims of big
business - they absorb, stifle, and castrate every movement for change,
starting with the revolutionary labor movements, and continuing with all the
various civil rights movements - every threat to capitalism or the standing
social order, once brought into the Democratic party, has abruptly ceased.
And now, the Democrats are sitting back, ignoring our very real and very
urgent protestations, and allowing this nation to be stolen by the great
hypocrisy that is political christianity. We of the left need a unifying
point, and Ralph Nader is the beginning of the coalescence of that point -
our own political party, a party of truth, reason, justice, and freedom, a
party dedicated to opposing tyranny in all its forms, and to the pursuit and
preservation of the true American ideals - freedom and equality for all
people, not just all CEOs. But none of the existing parties can stand for
the whole left - we need a new party, or at least a coalition, to raise a
flag in the name of justice, a flag that shows the two parties and the world
that we won’t sit by and let our nation and our ideals be stolen, or ushered
quietly into the dark. We will not go away, we will not be silenced, and
only together, in one party, and not bickering in fifty, can this be done.

-Charles E McConnell, September 12,
2004, in West Hartford, CT