Call for a New Left

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 interpretation 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 maiming 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

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