It's no secret that I am no fan of Manic Jack Layton. As a national political leader I find him wanting. He's too churlish, too petulant, and his contrived outrage wears a little thin at times. Everything he says seems to be calculated. To be geared to creating a media stunt. He's just too damn slick by half and, sadly, often running on empty.
Yet, as a voter I pine for a day when the NDP will abandon its absurd machinations, preening pretensions, and ill-advised ranting outrage at media ops and finally say what it means, what it believes, and what it stands for and let the chips fall where they may.
This is a good start:
“One of the things that's irked me about this silly talk about changing the name of the party is we're not a democratic party, we're a social democratic party, the core value of which is equality.”
Too bad Jack will probably shy away from this sound advice from his elder. But Ed Broadbent is right. Its time this party stopped pussyfooting around, looked in the mirror and called a spade a spade: The NDP must become a true Social Democratic Party that stands for equality - for if it not that- then it is doomed to remain a perpetual nothing.
Showing posts with label NDP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NDP. Show all posts
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Socialism Now? Hardly.
"Obama wants to establish a very powerful socialist, authoritarian government... what Obama is doing is cruel. What the Democrat Party has done is cruel, cruelty in the guise of compassion." -Rush Limbaugh
Contrary to what sweaty, verbose, twisted, bombastic Neo-con windbags such as Rush Limbaugh sputter - "socialism" in America is dead. The bogeyman Limbaugh and company keep trying to inflate to frighten Joe & Jane America is an illusion of Potemkin proportions. Only true idiot villagers see it as a "threat." In fact, the only air in the sails of "socialism" today actually comes from the gaseous emissions the far-right is constantly trying to blow up its long dead ass. And no matter how hard they try to resurrect "Socialism" as a whipping-boy of convenience, it will not float.
Long ago, during the nadir of the Great Depression, America's socialists traded their dogma in for the pragmatic promise of progress. At the periphery of the political process ever since, today's socialists pose no threat to American capitalism: capitalists do. As the Washington Post's Harold Meyerson has aptly observed, US socialists were lured by FDR into trading in their fundamental guiding principles for a chance at partaking in the promise of the New Deal. According to Meyerson, the shift conformed perfectly to the theories of German socialist Eduard Bernstien "who argued that the immediate struggle to humanize capitalism through the instruments of democratic government was everything, and that the goal of supplanting capitalism altogether was meaningless".
Meyerson pegs the US Socialist Party's 1936 decision to endorse FDR's New Deal as the moment when American Socialism abandoned its core beliefs. Since then, in the perverse dance known as US politics, socialists have become little more than the acne riddled policy geeks who can't get the elitist Belle of the Ball to dance with them. Out of tune and out of step with the electorate, they operate solely on the political fringe. The GOP's fear mongering notwithstanding: Today's US Democrats are to socialism, as George W. Bush was to deep thought: both unfamiliar and unacquainted.
In Canada, our 'socialists' long ago found themselves morphing into watered down 'new democrats'. Content to rest on their ancestral laurels and the myths associated with the fight for Medicare; today's NDP is lost. More interested in high profile shenanigans than in presenting voters with a truly alternative political vision; the NDP vainly continues to try and make deals with a status-quo devil their ideological forefathers would have rejected out-of-hand. Opportunists in the true Bernstien-ian sense, Canada's NDP Party perfectly exemplifies Meyerson's point - in North America, socialism is dead.
Socialism is sooo yesterday because its proponents are afraid to speak plainly and take the steps necessary to advocate for the ideology's true principles: nationalization of major industries; and the abolition of the usury speculative fiscal marketplace that props up an economic elite that preys on the poor. In Canada, this has led to the NDP becoming a weirdly-wired and sadly predictable political party destined to remain inconsequential to the debate over true reform. Here, as in the US, voices in support of true socialist ideals are rare, muted and marginalized. Fated to remain largely absent from the coming debate over how we restructure capitalism in the wake of the present crisis. That is a pity.
Better Canada's NDP admit now that they will never win federal power. Better, instead, that it commit itself to a radical new take-no-prisoners political action plan. One designed to exert as much pressure as possible on the sitting government to bring forth real and meaningful social and economic reform. One that pushes the boundaries of acceptable political discourse in this country. One that fervently lobbies for the kind of economic reforms needed to protect us from the very same political status-quo the NDP are constantly trying to appease. Otherwise, nothing will change. Usury capitalism will secure new concessions from the state that see it re-emerge unrepentant and unbowed; and at the end of the day... still in control.
Contrary to what sweaty, verbose, twisted, bombastic Neo-con windbags such as Rush Limbaugh sputter - "socialism" in America is dead. The bogeyman Limbaugh and company keep trying to inflate to frighten Joe & Jane America is an illusion of Potemkin proportions. Only true idiot villagers see it as a "threat." In fact, the only air in the sails of "socialism" today actually comes from the gaseous emissions the far-right is constantly trying to blow up its long dead ass. And no matter how hard they try to resurrect "Socialism" as a whipping-boy of convenience, it will not float.
Long ago, during the nadir of the Great Depression, America's socialists traded their dogma in for the pragmatic promise of progress. At the periphery of the political process ever since, today's socialists pose no threat to American capitalism: capitalists do. As the Washington Post's Harold Meyerson has aptly observed, US socialists were lured by FDR into trading in their fundamental guiding principles for a chance at partaking in the promise of the New Deal. According to Meyerson, the shift conformed perfectly to the theories of German socialist Eduard Bernstien "who argued that the immediate struggle to humanize capitalism through the instruments of democratic government was everything, and that the goal of supplanting capitalism altogether was meaningless".
Meyerson pegs the US Socialist Party's 1936 decision to endorse FDR's New Deal as the moment when American Socialism abandoned its core beliefs. Since then, in the perverse dance known as US politics, socialists have become little more than the acne riddled policy geeks who can't get the elitist Belle of the Ball to dance with them. Out of tune and out of step with the electorate, they operate solely on the political fringe. The GOP's fear mongering notwithstanding: Today's US Democrats are to socialism, as George W. Bush was to deep thought: both unfamiliar and unacquainted.
In Canada, our 'socialists' long ago found themselves morphing into watered down 'new democrats'. Content to rest on their ancestral laurels and the myths associated with the fight for Medicare; today's NDP is lost. More interested in high profile shenanigans than in presenting voters with a truly alternative political vision; the NDP vainly continues to try and make deals with a status-quo devil their ideological forefathers would have rejected out-of-hand. Opportunists in the true Bernstien-ian sense, Canada's NDP Party perfectly exemplifies Meyerson's point - in North America, socialism is dead.
Socialism is sooo yesterday because its proponents are afraid to speak plainly and take the steps necessary to advocate for the ideology's true principles: nationalization of major industries; and the abolition of the usury speculative fiscal marketplace that props up an economic elite that preys on the poor. In Canada, this has led to the NDP becoming a weirdly-wired and sadly predictable political party destined to remain inconsequential to the debate over true reform. Here, as in the US, voices in support of true socialist ideals are rare, muted and marginalized. Fated to remain largely absent from the coming debate over how we restructure capitalism in the wake of the present crisis. That is a pity.
Better Canada's NDP admit now that they will never win federal power. Better, instead, that it commit itself to a radical new take-no-prisoners political action plan. One designed to exert as much pressure as possible on the sitting government to bring forth real and meaningful social and economic reform. One that pushes the boundaries of acceptable political discourse in this country. One that fervently lobbies for the kind of economic reforms needed to protect us from the very same political status-quo the NDP are constantly trying to appease. Otherwise, nothing will change. Usury capitalism will secure new concessions from the state that see it re-emerge unrepentant and unbowed; and at the end of the day... still in control.
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