Re: Nick Cohen on Thomas Frank

[andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen@xxxxxxxxx>]

Late reply:

The "democratic participation" stuff is too vague for
me to understand -- I don't know how you
operationalize that. I'm in favor of it too, I just
don't find it concretely helpful.

That leaves your idea of creating a third party. This
has worked once in US history, 160 years ago -- the
GOP, which was created by splitting the Whigs. Do you
think this is practicable? That it can be created by
people like us with experience in organizing protests
and conferences and marches, but lacking real pols? Do
you think that the lunatic left (including us) is
willing to make the necessary compromises in its
purist positions to get the 15-20 million people you
are optimistically talking about together?

Assuming (what I doubt) that it (us) has the ability?
And speaking hypothetically, because I think this goal
as about as likely as the establishment of European
social democracy here, supposing we could do it, does
that mean that you are willing to countenance the
indefinite rule of W-style Republics -- not Bush I or
Dole style paternalists with a semi-social conscience
some of the time, not even Reagan style Republicans
who (after all) in retrospect did not do that much
damage, but the current howling hoodlums with no
bottom to their greed or limit to their imperial
ambition?

These are genuine questions, not rhetorical ones. If I
though I knew the answers, I'd be telling instead of
asking.



> At 10:20 PM -0700 9/13/04, andie nachgeborenen
> wrote:. So what exactly do you
> think we should be
> >doing? Don't tell me what we shouldn't be doing,
> but what you think
> >we should.

--- Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx> wrote:

> It's worthwhile to get 10-20% of Americans who are
> opposed to any US
> war into the same political party -- maybe the Green
> Party or a new
> political party -- rather than voting for the
> Democrats or not voting
> at all.
>
> It makes sense to build up people's capacity for
> democratic
> participation, especially in the post-70s capitalist
> world where
> crumbs from the ruling class table are fewer and
> smaller.
> --
> Yoshie
>
> * Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/>
> * Bring Them Home Now!
> <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/>
> * Calendars of Events in Columbus:
> <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>,
> <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, &
> <http://www.cpanews.org/>
> * Student International Forum:
> <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/>
> * Committee for Justice in Palestine:
> <http://www.osudivest.org/>
> * Al-Awda-Ohio:
> <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio>
> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>
>


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