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| Sign Petition: PBS Should Also Extend Airtime To Nader |
message #1:From: "Doug Hunt" <dhunt@neerucc.net>
Whether you support, loathe or are just concerned about the candidacy of Ralph Nader and other non-mainsteam candidates, I thought that you might agree that they at least deserve an opportunity to be heard.
so, since I have just read and signed the online petition:
PBS Should Also Extend Airtime To Nader
hosted on the web by PetitionOnline.com, the free online petition service, at: http://www.PetitionOnline.com/nader/ .I personally agree with what this petition says, and I thought you might agree, too. If you can spare a moment, please take a look, and consider signing yourself.
message #2:
GREENS A MAJOR PARTY NOW from Oct 26 of http://prorev.com/fastnews.htm#more
Helped by panic among the Gorey Democrats and the mandarin media, Ralph Nader and the Greens suddenly find themselves propelled from the fringes of this election to ground zero. Nader has the elites so frightened that Judy Woodruff virtually pleaded with him on CNN to withdraw from the race. And the New York Times Corporation went into high snit mode with an editorial that read like something written by Miss Marple:
Back in June, we criticized Ralph Nader's presidential bid as a self-indulgent crusade that could gull some voters into thinking that there were no clear policy choices between Al Gore and George Bush . . . We would regard Mr. Nader's willful prankishness as a disservice to the electorate no matter whose campaign he was hurting. The country deserves a clear up-or-down vote between Mr. Bush and Mr. Gore, who have waged a hard, substantive and clean campaign . . . [Nader] deludes his followers, brightens Mr. Bush's prospects and dims his own legacy as a reformer. He calls his wrecking-ball candidacy a matter of principle, but it looks from here like ego run amok.
This hysteria is a good indicator of how seriously the mandarins are taking Nader's challenge and it is one of the best arguments for Nader and his supporters to redouble their efforts. History is on the Green side. It would be better, to be sure, to have a system of proportional presentation, but absent that, the best route to third party success in America is to create enough of a uproar that the prevailing political and financial interests must bend. As has been said, the strong do what they will; the weak do what they must.
Repeatedly, major American ideas -- both good and bad -- have become part of our culture because of precisely the sort of politics Nader and the Greens are practicing today:
- Abolition of slavery (Free Soil Party)
- Prohibition (Prohibition Party)
- The income tax (Populist Party)
- Social welfare programs (Socialist Party)
- The New Deal coalition (Progressive Party)
- The Clinton Democrat (John Anderson's independent party)
- Balanced budgets (Reform Party)
Further, when a third party causes as much of furor as the Greens are doing, the overall politics of the country are usually pulled towards that third party. This is why the Republican and Democratic candidates are today debating which is best able to carry out the financial philosophy of Ross Perot.
As in any childbirth, there is pain and there is risk. But the idea that to avoid this pain and risk we give up our hopes for the future, for our democracy, and for the planet is the ultimate abortion. We are facing immense dangers that are concealed from us only because the two old parties and their media won't discuss them. Yet the silence doesn't retard the danger one whit and, in fact, makes it all that more inevitable.
We are told we must vote for Gore. But why? Because this man, who voted for Scalia and praised Thomas, will provide us with such fine Supreme Court justices? Because he, as the New York Times Corporation said of Mrs. Clinton, "is capable of growing beyond the ethical legacies" of his record? Because he will finally stop trying to deceive us? Because he will reverse the Clinton administration's record of unraveling 60 years of Democratic social welfare policy? Because he will stop saying one thing to blacks in church and another to their sons in the courthouse? Because he will no longer be part of the most criminally corrupt presidential administration in history? Because he will retrieve the civil liberties lost during the past eight years?
What the mandarins of Manhattan, Los Angeles, and Washington fail to appreciate is that Nader and the Greens are not engaged in an act of desperation but in an act of creation. Whether under Bush or Gore, this creation will continue because it must if we are to redeem ourselves as a people and a planet. And because more and more will come to realize that being fair and decent and walking softly upon the earth, is not only necessary but a happier and more beautiful way to live.
In the end, Gore and the New York Times Corporation will fail because they are trying to rescue Americans who have made a wonderful discovery, namely that there is something more to life than Gore and the Times would have us believe. They have discovered a future worth fighting for.
-- Jonathan Lundell