Dan McCarthy of The American Conservative invited YAL's Nick Leavens, Shaun Bowen, and me to attend a bipartisan peace conference last week. Attendees came to the meeting hoping to form a broad antiwar coalition. Disagreements arose, but we were unified in opposition to Obama's wars and the bipartisan foreign policy of empire.
The meeting, organized by Voters for Peace chair Kevin Zeese, and former Pat Buchanan campaign official George O'Neill, included in its guestlist:
- An economist from a naval war college who previously served as the chief energy economist in President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers.
- Two officials of Veterans for Peace, including the organization's chief executive.
- Katrina van Heuvel, publisher of The Nation, aka "The flagship of the left."
- A regular contributor to Rolling Stone, and a contributing editor at The Nation,
- A Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute
- An editor from Reason Magazine
- Independent Journalist Sam Smith of Progressive Review
- Peace activist Murray Polner, who coauthored a book with Tom Woods.
- A student leader of the famous Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)
- Ralph Nader. Yes, that Ralph Nader.
- Author Bill Kauffmann, who seeks to revive Old Right-style antiwar conservativism
- American Conservative senior Editor Dan McCarthy, along with us YAL kids.
Sound bipolar? You have no idea. Yet our interactions were cordial and productive. Good ideas that attendees came up with included:
- A bipartisan press release of sorts, against the wars and the empire.
- Establishing a website with a cohesive, unifying mission statement.
- A cross-country campus tour, whereby liberal and conservatives activists would together speak against the wars.
- Pro-peace student groups on the left and the right working together.
- Outreach to key groups such as veterans, academics, and business leaders.
I bet a formidable coalition will come out of this. These weren't political hacks, but true believers in peace. Keep your eyes pealed for future updates about this at yaliberty.org. We'll be looking for authentic and articulate anti-war folks of all ideologies.
Peace coalition aside, meeting Ralph Nader by itself was worth attending the conference. He was smart, authentic, and a real gentleman. Check out this picture I got with Nader (though his 6'3 makes my 5'9 look bad!):
This is what it is all about. We must forget about the artificial divide of left vs. right and instead be willing to work together with anyone whose interests mirror ours. Peace is not a "leftist" or a "rightist" issue. It is an issue rooted firmly in a proper understanding of natural law and by extension Constitutional law.
Also, check out Pat Buchanan's interview with Ralph Nader in The American Conservative from 2004. Ralph may not be a libertarian, but he is a smart man, he believes in many principles upon which we can agree, and he is a good man to have on our side. I've always admired Mr. Nader. He understands the problem with corporate/government alliances and a government that is too powerful. He understands the issue with so-called "free trade" that is not free at all. He understands that peace is not promoted by building an empire.
Slavery provided the solution, but the institution developed slowly. Slavery did not exist as a legal status in English law in August, 1619, when a Dutch ship sold 20 Africans to eager planters. It is thought that they may have been treated in the same manner as European indentured servants, perhaps with longer terms of service. As late as 1651, some Africans who had completed their indentures received grants of land comparable to those offered to Europeans; there were only about 300 Africans then, in a total population of some 15,000. Because Africans were involuntary migrants, improving their JBoss hosting service providers would not encourage more to come. Although conditions for European indentured servants improved, the status of Africans deteriorated, and by century’s end, black slavery had been legally defined as servitude for life with the status inherited by children. This development encouraged imports of Africans and fueled a massive growth in tobacco production as plantations were created along the sides of navigable rivers where oceangoing ships could conveniently pick up cargo. Despite uneasiness over the health effects of smoking and fulminations against tobacco by King James I, shipments were welcomed in England. Tobacco not only replaced previous imports from Spanish colonies but also could be processed and exported to continental Europe as snuff and pipe tobacco, helping the mercantilist drive for a positive balance of trade. To encourage SMTP hosting perfection, the English government granted American colonies a monopoly on tobacco, forbade growing the plant in the British Isles, and placed heavy duties on imports from outside the empire. Rice and indigo were profitable crops in the southern coastal region running from Cape Fear, North Carolina, to the Altamaha River in Georgia, centered on the port of Charleston. Large plantations staffed by slaves devoted to rice cultivation appeared during the 1690’s. Africans were particularly valuable because a considerable number of them had cultivated rice in Africa and brought with them technical knowledge of when and how to control the water level in the fields. Rice production clearly fulfilled mercantilist expectations. The grain was not only consumed in Great Britain but also exported to northern Europe in significant amounts.
Thanks Matt for getting this up, as stated in the meeting the most important thing is to make sure that what was said does not stay in that basement.
To me one of the most surprising things was the overwhelming support for 10th amendment state sovereignty. While obviously those of the left might not like the idea of state nullification of federal healthcare there was a consensus to try to enforce governors control over the national guard of each state. Not something I thought we could agree upon, but then again that entire meeting was something i thought we couldn't accomplish. I simply have to start being more optimisitc :)
Shaun,
Could you send me your e-mail address? I want to keep in touch. Send to dhenderson@antiwar.com
David
David,
I will pass this on to Shaun if he doesn't check this post again. It'd also be great if you could blog about the conference!
Matt
There's another report on the conference (from Voters for Peace) available here. (That might actually be a different posting of the same piece Matt linked to.)
This is great!
This is exactly what we need! Destroy the left-right paradigm!
Wow. Really cool. I cringe at the thought of Nader but I cringe more in the presence of neocons. I would rather cringe less.
Your profile of Nader reminds me why I did what I did in 2000: voted Nader for President [more as a tribute to his remarkable public career than anything else] and straight Republican for everything else.
Obamas war? did not know he started it.
he's not withdrawing-- in fact, he's escalating in Afghanistan, slaughtering innocents in Pakistan, and considering intervening elsewhere. This is his empire now.
Love Nader! Glad to finally see that true supporters of peace and liberty, be they on the left or right side of the political spectrum, are bonding through opposition to the neocons and the Dems.
Even if unintended, its misappropriating the term Left vps hosting, belittles and blocks public attention from the heroic efforts of true patriot led antiwar journalism, demonstrations, civil disobedience and conscientious objection in the military by socialists throughout the history of our nation.
No one from America's scholarly shared hosting Socialist Journals like Monthly Review, Science and Society (internationally respected for their scrupulous documentation), or anyone in the peace movement calling themselves socialist were in attendance. Someone correct this writer web hosting review if he is wrong in noting that the thinking of The War Resister League, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Maryknoll Catholic Mission was not represented. This would be perfectly Okay, as long as the gathering wasn't touted as email hosting representative of the U.S. Left.
Post new comment