BERNIE SANDERS HAS ALREADY WON

A number of men have run for President of the United States and set forth a program or agenda of far reaching ideas.  Some like Jefferson, Jackson, Wilson, and FDR accomplished many of the items on their agenda during their terms in office with later successors picking up the banner of those items not immediately addressed, e.g. FDR accomplishing Wilson’s united Nations and Obama seeking to honor Truman’s national health care pledge.

Some of our Presidents have made their agendas the rallying cries of a generation.  Certainly the New Frontier of JFK and the Great Society of LBJ set the tone of the Democratic progressive movement for a decade and beyond.

Some men sought the Presidency offering the nation reform agendas and were not successful in seeking office.  But their agendas became the platform and programs of a political party and were in most cases ultimately implemented.  Henry Clay’s American System became the initial program of the Republican Party as it sought to link east and west and develop a business oriented government.   William Jennings Bryan’s multi-plank platform of social and political and economic reform became the basis of the reforms of the New Freedom and the New Deal. Much of the economic parts of Theodore Roosevelt’s New Nationalism of 1912 soon became the positions of both parties.

From 1896 for nearly one hundred years populist and progressive ideas were the near consensus in our political system. The Gingrich revolution of 1994 was a reaction to those years of social progress and began the politics of personal destruction and the intolerance of dissenting opinion that has led us to today with the GOP facing a probable choice between Donald J Trump (the Mussolini wannabe) and Ted Cruz the Simon Legree of politics.

Because it became the majority viewpoint Progressivism became a defense of the status quo.  And when the so-called New Democrats opened the party to a relationship with Wall Street Progressivism lost its way.

Now a decade and a half into the 21st century comes a public official from Vermont (last heard from when Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys took Fort Ticonderoga from the British in 1775) who sets forth a progressive platform for the new century.  One that encompasses all the unfinished business of 20th century progressivism, along with updated items, e.g. free public higher education, (at least to community college level where in the past the fight was for high school) and a strong dose of populism that would reign in the banks and Wall Street as Wilson and FDR tried to do.

Senator Bernard Sanders of Vermont has offered a vision of what a truly progressive America can look like. He has spoken for programs and ides that people can rally behind.  He has dared to go beyond the label liberal and accept the label democratic socialist which denotes the progressive programs for the 20th century though the Cold War made it politically impossible to label them as such.

And fighting against Sanders are all those New Democrats who, never having seen Mr. Smith Goes to Washington argue that the only ideas worth fighting for are those that can be adopted.  Tell that to former Congressman Abraham Lincoln who lost a Senate race arguing against an America half slave and half free and went on to make it all free.  Tell Woodrow Wilson that the League of Nations was a lost cause not worth fighting for as the UN enters its 71st year.  Tell Harry Truman not to jeopardize his reelection by fighting for civil rights for African Americans when he couldn’t pass the bill.  And, tell Adlai Stevenson that no one cares about nuclear testing in the atmosphere (outlawed now by international treaty). 

The Republican Party looks at the discontent of the populace in 2016 and offers a Man on a White Horse (or in a white limo).  Senator Bernard Sanders of Vermont  has offered to the young generations of Americans a future they can believe in.  He has offered a progressive/populist platform that millions can and will support. 

Bernie Sanders can and may win the Democratic Party nomination for President. He can and may win the Presidency in November 2016.  But he has already set the agenda for the next  twenty or thirty years of American governance. He has created the progressive bucket-list and the day will come when every item on that list will be checked off as completed. To borrow from the hero of my generation John Fitzgerald Kennedy “All this may not be achieved in the first 100 days...nor in the first 1000 days.. But let us begin.” 

                                                                                        

23 January 2016

HOW TO MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN - (WITHOUT TRUMP)

The Republican front-running candidate for President has as his campaign slogan Make America Great Again.  Few can disagree with that goal and if one feels that America is still great than one certainly can support making it greater.

But, that candidate, Donald Trump,  who combines the hucksterism of P T Barnum and the pseudo-populism of Huey P Long with the racism of George Wallace never actually explains neither what Make America Great Again means nor how one would achieve it.  For that we would need to look at history and what made America great.

In the last quarter of the 18th century the British colonists who began referring to themselves as Americans fought against the most powerful nation than on earth for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And when they wrote their constitution they added a Bill of Rights that expanded on Magna Charta both as to the rights and those entitled to them.  Most prominent among those rights were a freedom of speech and a toleration of dissent; a freedom of religious belief and a toleration of differences with a government neutral as to religious preferences; a right of assembly and the right to petition the government bodies elected directly or indirectly by the people for a redress of grievances. Other rights were added and the history of America in the 19th and 20th centuries has been an expansion of those rights and an extension of their applicability to all residents of the country. And, in the eyes of the world America became Great.  The French revolution and the revolutions in Latin America and later Europe used American slogans and symbols. George Washington the leader of the continental forces in our Revolution became an international iconic figure.

In the middle of the 19th century America engaged in a great Civil war. Unlike the civil wars of Europe ours was not based on religious differences or dynastic struggles but on a determination of the values of our people and nation. Six hundred thousand men lost their lives in a battle first over whether we would be one nation, a union of states, and then over whether that union would tolerate the abomination of slavery anywhere within its borders.  Union and Freedom won.  America was in the eyes of the world great. Abraham Lincoln became a worldwide household name denoting freedom for the masses.

In the second decade of the twentieth century a Great War broke out between the powers of Europe with allies in Asia and Africa. The war deadlocked and was the bloodiest yet seen.  With the fall of the Russian Tsar the Allied powers became all democracies while the Central powers were absolutist autocratic monarchies. And America entered that war at that time and turned the tide and helped win for the democracies over absolutism and monarchism. Woodrow Wilson became a household name with a picture known in the grottos of Italy and the mountains of Wallachia. America became the leader of the peoples of the world seeking peace, collective security and self-determination of ethnic groups. Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and other eastern European nations long held under the hammer of the autocratic foreign monarchs became nation states and gave credit for their freedom to America and Wilson.  America became Great.  That greatness waned as America broke the heart of the world when Senators for partisan political reasons rejected our world leadership and participation in the very world body we had created.  But America remained the great hope of mankind.  And as the lights went out in Europe in 1939 those who continued the fight waited for the New World to come to the rescue of the Old.

As the world went through a great depression in the 1930's America rose up and weathered that economic debacle without resorting to neither corporate statism nor political dictatorship.  Led by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, America showed that it still believed in the Lincoln mantra that government should help those who cannot help themselves. And so America extended income security to its elderly; created millions of jobs for its unemployed while building roads and government buildings and schools that the nation sorely needed. America in the eyes of the world became Great because it showed a compassion for its people and a resilience that could not be crushed. And, when Fascism, Nazism and militarism threatened to engulf the entire world America did come to the rescue of the world and America did spend its treasure; its men and boys , its resources - and led a crusade that defeated those “isms”.

After WWII America, using its economic resources, rebuilt the nations that it had defeated and they became economic giants and democratic societies. America led the world and admitting its mistake of 1919 joined in multiple world organizations to address political, economic and social problems and joined in military treaties based on mutual and collective security. 

America became Great again in the eyes of world because of its selflessness. And at home due to the new Deal and GI bill and conversion of the war production machinery into consumer production America built the largest and strongest middle class any nation had yet seen.  Not a nation of haves and have nots.  But a nation of those living in comfort in their own homes with a car and with a decent job and a lower class many of whom dreamed and were able to raise themselves out of poverty to middle class status. It became known as the American Dream and America in the eyes of the world became a Great economic boomtown.

For forty-five years America led those nations in the world that opposed international communism. Sacrificing our soldiers in Korea and Vietnam; spending our resources to win the race in Space; and using tough negotiation tactics to prevent nuclear war over the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, America became great in the eyes of the world.  President Johnson extended compassion in government with the War on Poverty and attempted to deal with the festering racial strife in our nation by passing legislation that ensured voting rights; civil rights and housing rights. And while Ronald Reagan faced down the Soviet Union he enacted the E.I. C.  an effort to help the working poor make ends meet. Communism imploded and there was a new birth of freedom throughout the world and often the symbol of the freedom was an American flag or the Liberty Bell or the Statue of Liberty.  America was seen as Great in the eyes of the world.

President Clinton used the status of America as the only great economic and military power in the last decade of the twentieth century to assist negotiators in ending the centuries of sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland and preventing the genocide of the  Bosnians and the Kosovars.  America's greatness was recognized when after the abominable terrorist attack on the Twin Towers, known as 9-11 the world united behind America and in support of our effort to root out Al Qaeda and its sponsor the Taliban.

It was with the Iraq War that America was led into by the lies and manipulation of the neo-cons, and the economic collapse caused by greed run rampant in the financial houses and on Wall Street that America tarnished its greatness.  The election of Barack Obama in 2008 was viewed by the rest of the world as America regaining its greatness as it rejected racism; restored compassion to government and pledged again to pursue peace and negotiation rather than war and violence.

If this Mussolini wannabe Trump wants to make America Great Again he and his Republican party could start by renewing the domestic programs of Dwight Eisenhower.  Instead of using rhetoric to divide and spread fear he could emulate Theodore Roosevelt and Wendell Willkie and use the bully pulpit to advocate for reform of government, curbing the power of big corporations,   and compassionate responses to social problems.  Instead of spreading lies and distorting the truth he could like Barry Goldwater run a campaign of honest adherence to his positions without demonizing his opponents.   And like Ronald Reagan he could show a compassion and concern for those less fortunate than himself. 

America will be Great Again - when it restores a strong middle class by reigning in the ultra rich and ending their control of our politics; when partisan politics ends at the water's edge as Vandenburg did with NATO and the Marshall Plan; when agreements whether to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons or to reduce the deleterious effects of climate change are judged on their merits and not on their messenger; and when men and women of good will together stand up and stop the new 21st century homegrown American version of fascism and commit themselves to helping the American government work again.

Abraham Lincoln said that we were the last best hope of mankind.  And that has been proven true time and again.  It will be true again when America rejects the anti-immigrant; xenophobic; racist and militaristic proposals of the radical right wing Republicans like Trump, Cruz, and Carson, and their neo-con and neo-fascist followers.

3 January 2016