Re: Gary Trudeau, Iraq and Nader

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Marvin gandall:
> to "blur class lines". Why do you get so worked up about the Green Party,
> for heaven's sake? If you were promoting a party with a socialist program,
> I'd still question your political judgment, but at least I would better
> understand your fervour.

I am not the one getting worked up. It is the DP that is subverting the
electoral process. This is not about putting forward a "socialist" program.
It is about challenging the most high-stakes imperialist adventure since
Vietnam. Your idea of socialism reminds me of Mayday banquets.

> The NDP, the Bloc Quebecois, and Liberals are all parties who share liberal
> positions on most of  the issues I described in my post which differentiate
> them from the eponymous Conservative party. They are thus programatically
> aligned with the Democratic party and Green party in the US, and with the
> social democratic and Green parties on the continent against their
> respective conservative parties.

This is totally ahistorical. The FSLN in Nicaragua was affiliated with the
Second International as well. The 2000 Nader campaign was viewed by the
ruling class as *impermissible*. I favor pushing the envelope while you
seem mesmerized by the electoral campaigns of the party of Andy Jackson's
genocide against the Cherokee, chattel slavery, WWI, WWII, Vietnam ad
nauseum. When the NDP drops a-bombs on the Japanese, then I'll happily go
along with your one big happy family schema.

> note, we've covered this ground before, without much progress. And, trust
> me, the great majority of NDP'ers identify strongly with the Democrats - not
> only this election - and are as agitated as their American fellow activists
> about Nader running again.

That's fine. I still can detect the difference between the staid little NDP
and party that fought against the abolition of slavery, imposed Jim Crow in
the South, risked nuclear annihilation over the Cuban revolution and other
horrors too numerous too mention.