Nader?

Fox News is reporting that Ralph Nader will announce his campaign this weekend.

I know this is an impolite question, but is it telling that Fox News, which loves Republicans and is, at best, lukewarm towards Democrats, has broken this story?

Of course it might turn out not to be entirely accurate.

Patriotism

"Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles. - George Jean Nathan

"My country, right or wrong," is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, "My mother, drunk or sober." - G. K. Chesterton

When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

. . . while Woody Guthrie was many things - even admirable things (he carvied an an indelible place for himself in American culture for example ) - the one thing he was not was a patriot. He was a patriot of the Soviet Union and the Communist dream. But a patriot as someone who loved and would defend the capitalist democracy he was born in he was not. - David Horowitz

David Horowitz wants an America where everbody accepts that the only true patriotic Americans are Conservatives, so it's not surprising that he doesn't like Woody Guthrie. Patriotism does not, however, necessarily mean a loyalty to the exact country you were born in. America changes every minute, and it shouldn't take September 11th to hammer that home.

Woody Guthrie as I read him, and I'm hardly an expert, wanted America to prosper for all it's citizens. He believed in democracy so much that it offended him to see the un-democratic tendancies of some of our wealthier citizens. He believed in Socialism, and with the benefit of hindsight, I believe that he was wrong. But I'm not sure I wouldn't have made a similar call in his place, particular with the misinformation being put out by Stalin.

More to the point, this is part of Horowitz's and other Neo-Conservatives efforts to define liberalism as unpatriotic. Thank goodness they haven't succeeded just yet.

I'm Pointing Over There

Good article by Echidne of the Snakes. Actually two. The first is a lamentation on an empty lot and the second is a discussion of the current state of feminism. Go check them out!

Songs of the Struggle

This has been a fun project and a first for "Make me a Commentator!!!" We have set up a selection of classic protest tracks for you to listen to and enjoy. Below is a link to Rhapsody which is a music service set up by Real and other people apparently. They now have quite a bit of music (as opposed to when these counter Napsters started when you basically had the $.99 bin of music to pick from). Anyway if you have Rhapsody you can click on the link below and listen to the set.

Protest Songs on Rhapsody

And here's the track listing.

Pulp - Common People “I said pretend you've got no money, / she just laughed and said, / "Oh you're so funny." / I said "yeah? / Well I can't see anyone else smiling in here.” – This is a song that I discovered fairly recently, though it came out back in 1995, I guess. But this is probably the best song on social class that I can think of (with the possible exception of John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero.”) Plus it’s damn fine tune and funny as hell. From Hits.

Jefferson Airplane - Volunteers “Look what's happening out in the streets!” I still don’t know if we are meant to take this seriously or not. It is, however, the classic acid rock revolution song. From Volunteers

U2 - Sunday Bloody Sunday “How long Must We Sing this Song?” This was one of the first political songs that really sunk in when I was back in high school. I didn’t pick up on the references to Ireland, but I did pick up on the angry despair in the line quoted above. From Under a Blood Red Sky.

Gil Scott-Heron - The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. “Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville / Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and / women will not care if Dick finally gets down with / Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people / will be in the street looking for a brighter day.” This is a classic revolution song that everybody sort of knows (at least the title, anyway). I first heard Gil Scott Heron on the Underworld “Back to Mine” album (the track was B-Movie) and was impressed; and then put one and one together and went looking for his other stuff. From Pieces of a Man.

The Clash - The Guns of Brixton, “His game is called surviving.” Continuing in the paranoid revolutionary vibe, here’s the Guns of Brixton by the angry Clash. It beat out “London Calling” (which I love, but decided was not direct enough) and “Know Your Rights” (which was the song that I loved as angry teenager, but hasn’t aged as well as “The Guns of Brixton.)" From London Calling.

A3 - Mao Tse Tung Said, “I will fight. Let them hear it in the night” The quotation that opens this song is, as you probably know, from the Reverend Jim Jones. Revolution doesn’t always work out the way you expect it to. The other one I might have used here was the Beatles “Revolution” but decided I liked this one better (and because I’m using Rhapsody “Revolution” wasn’t available). From Exiles on Coldharbour Lane.

Public Enemy - Night of the living Basheads. “And brothers try to get swift an' / Sell to their own, rob a home / While some shrivel to bone / Like comatose walkin' around” Really didn’t consider any other Public Enemy Song; this one still sounds as urgent as it did when it was penned. Largely, I suppose, because the issues haven’t really changed. From 20th Century Masters - Public Enemy

Rage Against the Machine - Guerilla Radio. “It has to start somewhere / It has to start sometime / What better place than here / What better time than now.” This was originally The Ghost of Tom Joad, which I really like as well. But decided that Guerilla Radio was more concise and direct. Rage Against the Machine is the most important political band of the 1990s. From the Guerilla Radio single.

Wyclef Jean (with Prodigy of Mobb Deep) - Rebel Music. “You get yours and I get mine and we’ll help each other through the bad times” – This song had a lot of competition. Obviously in doing this I wanted to hit certain artists and certain genres and certain time frames, and one of them was modern hip-hop. So I put a lot of songs in the hopper and this one and “Rock the Nation” by Spearhead kept popping out on top. I finally went with Rebel Music, but Rock the Nation is a very cool song as well. From The Preachers Son.

Joan Baez - We Shall Overcome. “Deep in my heart, I do believe” This is almost more of a prayer than it is a song. I find Joan Baez’s voice alternately annoying and beautiful, but on this one she comes down on the beautiful side. From Joan Baez in Concert.

Bob Dylan - The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll. “Got killed by a blow, lay slain by a cane / That sailed through the air and came down through the room, / Doomed and determined to destroy all the gentle. / And she never done nothing to William Zanzinger.” If this song doesn’t get you angry, you may not be human. It beats out it’s album mates “Masters of War” and “The Times They are A-Changin’” by virtue of it’s specificity and it’s implications. From Live 1975.

Billie Holiday - Strange Fruit. “Pastoral scene of the gallant south, / The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,” The earliest song on the list, and one that Lady Day was always passionate about. Not surprisingly it wasn’t as popular as her less political numbers. I particularly like the powerful trumpet on this version. From the Complete Billie Holiday . . . (Box Set).

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young - 49 Bye Byes/ America’s Children. “And I don’t know if I want white America to remember or forget / that Jesus was the first non-violent revolutionary.” This song was selected more for America’s Children than 49 Bye Bye’s, of course. It contains some great piano playing by Steven Stills and powerful lyrics about where the revolution is going. Or where it should have gone. From 4 Way Street.

Pearl Jam - Fortunate Son. “Some folks are born made to wave the flag, / yeah the red, white and blue.” Creedence Clearwater Revival is another band who doesn’t appear on Rhapsody, but this is a pretty credible version of Fortunate Son. From May 28 03 #38 Missoula.

Pete Seeger - Waist Deep in the Big Muddy. “I’m Not Going to point any moral, I’ll leave that to yourself.” My first exposure to this tune came from watching “Smothered” a movie about the censorship troubles of the Smothers Brothers TV shows. Among the many things censored on that show was a performance of this song by Pete Seeger. So when it came time to look at Seeger, an artist I am not as familiar with, but one who clearly is important in the history of protest music, I found this one, loved it and stuck with it. From Waist Deep in the Big Muddy and Other Love Songs.

Marvin Gaye - What’s Going on?. “You see, war is not the answer / For only love can conquer hate.” This one beat out “Exhuming McCarthy” by REM which was a song I have had more of a history with (R.E.M. remains on my top four or five bands ever). But at the end I had to give the nod to Marvin Gaye. From What's Going On?

The Byrds - Draft Morning. “Take my time this morning, no hurry to learn to kill” A deceptively beautiful song; the subject of some strong arguments between David Crosby and his former band mates. Still once you realize what’s going on, well, the song has some teeth. From The Notorious Byrd Brothers.

The Police - Driven to Tears. “Seems that when some innocent die all we can offer them is a page on some magazine.” – It’s hard to do an album of political songs without Sting, and he’s never cut harder or deeper than on this track. Truthfully most of his songs are so tightly and deeply produced, you usually miss the forest for the trees (the other exception being “Fragile”) From Zenyetta Mondetta.

Sinead O’Conner - The Lamb’s Book of Life. “Out of hopelessness we can come / If people just believe it can be done.” This is undoubtedly on of the tracks that will have most of you scratching your heads. I don’t know if you can sum up what rebellion, revolution or protest means with one song or with one sentence. The truth is that revolutions often don’t work or bring around a set of conditions a lot like the ones that just left. If there is going to be a revolution (of any sort), what will make this one any different than the ones before? Perhaps the only real revolutions are the ones we make as individuals. From Faith and Courage.

Bob Marley - Redemption Songs “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery / None but ourselves can free our minds” – I considered both No Woman No Cry and Get up Stand up but ended up with this track as the ideal closer. There’s a line from an old Love and Rockets song (actually the title of the song as well) called“Be the Revolution There it is. From Legend.

Other songs that almost made the cut include "Working Class Hero" by John Lennon, "Talking About a Revolution" by Tracy Chapman (both unavilable on Rhapsody, unfortnately), "War" by Edwin Starr (which is ultimately a bit annoying, which is why they usually use 30 seconds of it), "Exhuming McCarthy" by REM, "Rock the Nation" by Spearhead (both mentioned above), and "One by One" by Chumbawumba (a nice pro labor song but a bit obscure I decided. Anyway enjoy the list; be back later with some commentating.

Candidate Selection

I did want to take a moment to comment that I've been writing a lot about Senator Kerry lately. One might conclude that I have made up my mind for the election; but that would be incorrect. Due to the format of this site (mostly responding to articles in the right wing press), I have to write about what the Conservatives are writing about. A couple of weeks ago that was Dean; this week and presumably for the rest of the year it will be Kerry.

I like Kerry, but I like all the Democratic Candidates pretty well. Moreover I am pretty solidly in the "Anyone but Bush" camp.

Anyway just wanted to clear that up.

Vietnam

Great article by Robert Poe over at Salon. It is about the significance of many Vietnam veterans willingness to support the Kerry Campaign, and what that means to President Bush's campaign strategy. Well worth reading in its entirety, but this section near the end seemed particularly relevant.

"Vietnam veterans have the authority to argue that by trying to sell Americans such a simplified, divisive worldview, the administration is doing the nation a huge disservice. It is not helping us get over the Vietnam era, as it claims to be, but rather dragging us back into the Nixonian heart of it, by reviving the polarized thinking that tore America apart during that war. Back then, one was either pro-war or antiwar, pro-communist or anti-communist, courageous or cowardly, moral or immoral, pro-America or anti-America. It was all black and white, you were either one or the other, and the pairs of opposites were all rigidly connected.

Perhaps only those whose lives floated serenely above the turmoil of Vietnam -- such as the Bush conservatives -- can utterly fail to understand, or care, how damaging and fundamentally incorrect such a simplified, divisive worldview is. That is, perhaps only such people can utterly fail to grasp the lessons of Vietnam.

Vietnam veterans understand those lessons best. They suffered the most damage -- to their bodies in Vietnam, and to their souls after they returned -- without ever painting themselves as victims. And they witnessed, more intimately than any others, the fundamental defects of the politics of oversimplification.

More credibly than anyone else, veterans can testify that fighting in a war doesn't automatically mean supporting it, that supporting it doesn't automatically equal heroism, that opposing it doesn't automatically equal cowardice, and that fighting a global enemy doesn't automatically require taking every global opportunity to go to war.

More authoritatively than anyone else, they can argue that an oversimplified view of war and foreign policy wasn't right during Vietnam, when the global enemy was easy to identify, and had the weapons to annihilate all Americans hundreds of times over, and it's not right now, when the enemy is far harder to pin down, and the mix of political and cultural conflicts is even more complex than during the Cold War."

Novak after Dark, Episode 34, Ghosts of the Fred

It was five o'clock on a Friday afternoon. I had just killed a bottle of scotch and was trying to add punctuation to my report on the Plame Case. Reports always go better with punctuation.

There was a knock at the door, and my favorite client popped in, Mr. Rove. Rove wasn't much to look at, but he had a fat wallet and an inside line on many of my cases. He sat down, and said, "Look Novak, we've got someone we need you to do some background work on." He slid a picture across the desk.

It was Hanoi Jane at a rally, and there, three rows back, circled, was the Kerry. "This guy giving you trouble, chief?"

Rove spat. "You could say that. Just get to work on him."

I did some research and found "A 34-year-old flier [that] lists speakers for an anti-Vietnam War rally at Valley Forge State Park, Pa., Sept. 7, 1970. Included were two of that era's most notorious leftist agitators, the Rev. James Bevel and Mark Lane, plus actress Jane Fonda, a symbol of extreme opposition to the war. Leading off the list was a less familiar name: John Kerry."

"A-ha" I thought to myself, "this proves that John Kerry knew and approved of Hanoi Janes trip to Vietnam in 1972. No, wait a second, that only works if Kerry has precognition." I took a drag on my cigarette. "But it does prove that Kerry opposed the Vietnam war." I pounded my fist into the desk and said "I've got him. I'll bet nobody knows that Kerry protested against the Vietnam war."

Excited with this fruitful line of investigation I quickly started combing through the records of an organization entitled Vietnam Veterans against war that Senator Kerry had some connection to. I found some minutes to a meeting Kerry attended where they ominously planned to coordinate their schedules with Jane Fonda. Perhaps this proved that he had traveled to Vietnam with her, if their schedules were "coordinated?" No, unfortunately. By 1972 he was running for office and had little to do with Ms. Fonda.

I found minutes to another meeting where they decided not to hang an American flag in their offices, but it's unclear whether Kerry attended that meeting. Still by placing the two together in my report I can imply that the Kerry approved of not hanging the flag.

Then I got a call from Rove. "Look Novak, you gotta make Kerry look worse than my . . . interests." I slammed the phone down, but I wasn't angry. It's just that slamming the phone down makes for good television. I reviewed Rove's man's record, and it turned out there was some flap about him being a national guardsman while Kerry was off in Vietnam and then protesting. It looked to me like the matter was cleared up, but some of my less responsible colleague's were still sniffing around.

The fools didn't know who was calling the shots; always better to work for the big dogs, even if they leave you out to dry on occasion.

Taken from Robert Novaks column today.

Dean's withdrawal

Prince Geoffrey: You fool. As if it matters how a man falls.
Prince Richard: When the fall is all that's left, it matters.
- From The Lion in Winter (1968)

Saw Dean's withdrawal speech at good old Hardees. Thought it was pretty good. I have to salute his campaign for invigorating the Democratic Party. Even if he didn't win, the liberal wing is awake and they are not going to put up with crap for much longer. I hope Senator Kerry (assuming he wins the nomination) realizes that.

Also heard Rush Limbaugh coming to terms with his feelings. Apparently up until recently, Rush has felt that feelings were for others (and one assumes, pansy girly men). But now he has to come to terms with feelings of being deceived. You see he's been pretending like the Democratic race matters; when in fact it doesn't. So he's angry because he's been wasting his time and energy pretending like Democrats matter. Poor guy. I guess when Operation Crush Liberals is approved by Attorney General John Ashcroft he'll be able to sleep better.

Danger! Low Posting!

I'm sorry but it turns out we've got a Vortigon Wormcruncher in the Bi-Poler Plot Discontinuity device, and I'm having to spend the morning working on it. So if you see something that doesn't really fit your definition of reality (say, a guy walking down the street in a full suit of armor (and don't say it can't happen, cause it happened to me (I still am annoyed with myself for not saying anything to him, although I suppose wearing a suit of armor is a pretty good sign that you don't want to be bothered (come to think of it, how do I know it was a him? He had the mask down. Maybe it was a her? This requires more thought (Actually it probably doesn't, what's really worrying me is making sure I put in all the close parantheses (particularly since, now that I brought it up, you'll probably count them.)))))), don't worry, trained webloggists are working on it.

Ben Shapiro, Boy Prognosticator

Yep Ben is back with another breaking column. And Ben has decided to try a new stylistic technique, making references to pop culture in a political article. In this case, he's decided to compare John Kerry to the long running Budwieser Frogs. How timely! Can't be too hard on young Ben though, since he lifted the line from Gov. William Weld, who ran against Kerry in 1996.

Touching to that he called the "French looking" John Kerry a "frog." He also reports the slur that John Kerry has taken more money from special interests than any other candidate. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Kerry ranks 92 out of 100 senators for taking special interest money. However, both Kerry and his opponents are quoting the same body so I need to examine this issue in greater detail, and will later on. I hope.

A Musical Question from Rush Limbaugh

Took on one Limbaugh this morning, and now another this afternoon. Listening to Rush as I drove around and he asked these three questions about a possible Vice President slot for Senator Hillary Clinton. Paraphrasing the questions are as follows.

1. Do you think that if Hillary is the Vice Presidential Candidate she'll let Kerry be President?

2. Do you think that if Hillary is the Vice President and Kerry the President they'll win?

3. Do you think that if Kerry and Hillary win the White House that Kerry will complete his term?

Well for those curious the answers are as follows.

1. Probably she won't have much choice since he is the front runner and she is a junor senator. But I doubt that this scenario will play out.

2. I don't know, but I'd like to think so.

3. Are you frickin' nuts? You mean to suggest that Hillary Clinton would have Kerry either rubbed out, mafioso style, or provoke a scandal that drives him from office, don't you? Well, I think that Hillary Clinton, while prey to the same moral problems that plague all politicians, is far from being that demonic.

Another helpful service

The latest David Limbaugh column, "Several Questions for you, Senator," is out. To save time here's a condensed version of it.

I'm continuing to pretend that the Democratic Candidates, particularly Senator Kerry, have only criticisms for President Bush and no ideas of their own. I can't be bothered to look at Senator Kerry's speeches or his website to see what he's proposed, and frankly it plays better if I describe Senator Kerry as being strictly negative. But now i've got some question for Mr. Kerry.

Given that President Bush has trashed the economy how do you plan to play for some generic health care plan I got in my head after listining to you and the other Democratic Candidates?

We're all aware of the efforts President Bush has made to get along with Democrats, even going so far as to appear in photo ops with Democratic Congresspeople. And yet you people don't seem to completely support our wise and wonderful president; what makes you think you'll get on any better with other nations?

Conservative economists have worked hard to make the Bush Tax Cuts look like they aren't a windfall to the rich ; why then don't you just accept our analysis and ignore the evidence of your own eyes?

How are you going to balance the budget when we know for a fact that raising Taxes will slow the jobless recovery that's bringing happiness and chartered jets to Wall Street and little to nothing to the rest of America?

Probably there were some other questions too--something about Education and about how Kerry's a flip-flopping hypocrite. My guess is that Senator Kerry go up to David Limbaugh, slam him against a wall, yell the answers to his questions into his face, and tomorrow Limbaugh would be complaining about how Kerry has no positive program but just attacks on President Bush.

I mean, why say anything else?

More on the New Red Scare

Actually read this last week, but didn't end up linking to it (to the best of my memory. Now it seems more relevent.

Michelle Goldberg there at Salon wrote a pair of articles on the harassment of protesters that seems to be on the rise. One bit in the second part struck me then, and came back to me today.

""In the 1950s and '60s, police departments all over the country had 'red squads,'" says Chris Pyle, a politics professor at Mount Holyoke College and one of the country's foremost experts on domestic surveillance. "Although their work was never as well documented as that of the FBI and the military, it was far more extensive. There was considerable swapping, and it tended to go from the locals to the nationals."

Pyle saw it firsthand at the national level. A former captain of Army intelligence, Pyle exposed the military's domestic spying operations and went on to work for Sen. Frank Church during the congressional investigation of COINTELPRO. Today's domestic spying, he says, isn't nearly as extensive as it was at the height of the movement against the Vietnam War, largely because there aren't as many protests. Yet the surveillance we're seeing now, he says, is likely to increase if the antiwar and anti-Bush movements grow, and it may imperil civil liberties more than J. Edgar Hoover ever could.

"What we're seeing is something much larger in scale and danger than anything that occurred in the 1950s and 1960s," he says. "That's because of computers. Now, instead of having these agencies working in semi-isolation or occasional cooperation, there's the equivalent of the great Alaska pipeline running between them, and the information flows in both directions. In addition, in the 1950s or '60s, it took weeks of pavement pounding and doorknobbing for the FBI or police or military to collect personal information about people, the kind of information you need to put them under surveillance. Today that kind of information can be obtained by a few computer keystrokes. The harassment potential is much greater."

Meanwhile, information that's put into the system tends to spread. "Today, you have at least a dozen American agencies contributing information to each other's computer, and scores of foreign intelligence agencies contributing information," says Pyle."

Something to keep in mind. A lot of you might be saying, well that's not very likely. I'll agree, that I don't believe that we are looking at a full on red scare (directed at liberals) in the short term. But saying it can't happen here is not very reasonable because it has happened here. And some in our society are laying the ground work for their version of the red scare.

History in the Repeating Part Two

Finally found an example of the old Spider Web Chart. See if this doesn't look familiar (I got it from here).



Someone needs to e-mail Horowitz the following letter.

"Mr. Horowitz

I've recently become aware of your plan to track known liberals. I would like to know if such data will be available for employment purposes. I run a local hardware store and I would much rather hire good upstanding law-abiding people for my job. Liberals, in my experience, are trouble. Are there any plans to make your data base available for employee verification purposes?"

Still, maybe he'd see through it.

History in the Repeating

"Ben Johnson's lead feature on today's frontpagemag.com was made possible as the result of a new project we have been working on for almost a year and which will be ready for launch later this spring. The project is a massive database on the left to be called followthenetwork.org. The research that went into Ben's article was the work of many hands engaged in putting together this database, but in the immediate case Mike Bauer's more than others. - David Horowitz from Front Page Magazine.

Got this from a guy at Democratic Underground who got it from Rocky Mountain Progressive Network.

It's a website entitled "Follow the Network." Apparently it's not done yet, but the idea is pretty straightforward. It's to keep track of Communists, er, liberals. And the connections between the groups. I love the graphic on the first page relating back, as it does, to the red scare of the 1920s (the one we don't remember as much). In those days they had complicated Spider webs showing the connections of individuals to organizations to show the creeping red menace.

It's also helpful to remember that, in both Red Scares, the private sector did more than it's share of the "witch hunting." There were organizations set up to both clear people and provide lists of known communists and communist organizations. So if this data base gets set up in earnest, well, your local employer can, anonymously, punch a name into a computer and find out if an individual has been a member of a liberal group. Of course such a network wouldn't be used for wrong purposes; but do you really want that Green Party member working in a bank?

Of course, they might just focus on intimidating big name liberals. I'm not sure that's much better. I mean if they can get the big name liberals to back down, well, what hope do grass roots liberals have? None, which is presumably the point.

I'll have more to say on this subject in a bit, I'd imagine.

Over Simplification

There's a new article from Ms. Suzanne Fields entitled, "It's the Context, Stupid." For the most part it's an article about how the Democrats running against President Bush don't understand that we are at war and are therefore traitorous monsters.

She does take a much more intellectual approach than others who have made the argument, but it falls to the same problem; she equates the entire anti war position as "the war in Iraq was bad because liberals don't like President Bush."

I'm not going to deny that President Bush is a polarizing figure on the left; but there's a bit more to the position of those who opposed the Iraq War and those who, today, think the president made the wrong call. It's hard to know what Kerry (or Gore) would have done differently as President, but it seems sure that he would not have pushed to invade Iraq on the same timetable as President Bush. It strikes me as probable that he would have continued the containment strategy, that at this moment seems to have been successful.

The oversimplification is the excluded middle. Suzanne Fields suggests that the two proposals are to either fight the war on terror in exactly the same way as President Bush or to do nothing. Unfortunately for Ms. Fields and President Bush, I suspect that most Americans are able to see that there are ways to fight terrorism without turning our allies against us (to take one example).

New Quote

New quote (in honor of our new comments feature) and a new Quotes Page.