This is an article written by a guy in the
Texas Progressive Populist Caucus of which I am a member
From: John Kelley <greatblueheron777@...>
Date: Thu Apr 7, 2005 10:33 am
Subject: An Open Letter to Al From and Bruce Reed and others in the DLC
In response to the Article by Donald Lambro in the April 4, 2005 issue of the Washington Times, "Centrist Democrats Warn Liberals" and Al From and Bruce Reed's writings in Blueprint Magazine at
http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=132&subid=193&contentid=253218An Open Letter to Al From and Bruce Reed and others in the DLC
As a bonerfied working stiff out here in the heartland let me explain to you guys in D.C. what the heartland wants, and it ain’t any of that hose job you sent up as a trial balloon to challenge the left to a duel for the party.
1. We want security all right; we want the security of not having
multinational corporations control foreign policy for their benefit and using our government to sacrifice our children for higher corporate profits or the imperialist dreams of a bunch of megalomaniacs. We want a foreign policy that says we won’t trade with you or invest capital wealth generated on the backs of working Americans if it is to be used to exploit some poor working stiff in
another land, poison our environment here or there and generally piss off the rest of the world at us.
2. We want a foreign policy with projects like the peace corps that help people around the world improve their basic quality of life and teach Americans not to look through the narrow looking glass of 6% of the world’s population, which in case you have forgotten is what we are. I’m not sure what you mean by the internationalism of Roosevelt (the adventurism of Teddy or the reluctant entry of Franklin), Truman (who brought us Korea and a nuclear arms race) or Kennedy (the forcing of Cuba into Russian arms or his planned withdrawal from
Viet Nam). Maybe a multilateral approach that didn’t consider the rest of the world our piggy bank or toilet might be a good start.
3. You want to get out of Iraq and make peace and democracy. LEAVE, Tell the Iraqi government that instead of using the 87 billion dollars we are going to spend bombing their country into the stone age we will allocate it as restitution and use it to fund infrastructure programs they decide on, as soon as they form their own government or governments as they see fit. You believe in
free markets, divide the money up, it comes out to $4,142 for every man women and child in Iraq. Tell the Iraqis that and you probably will have peace tomorrow. If they want to be three countries, let them if your interest is really democracy and freedom. You guys would probably get the Nobel Peace prize, save a lot of American and Iraqi lives and it would be cheaper in the long run. What do we care what form their democracy takes, unless of course it really is
about corporate profits and oil.
4. We want the security of knowing our children can get a quality education, that means elementary and middle schools with reasonable numbers of children in a classroom, well paid professional teachers, in safe clean buildings, high schools that prepare students vocationally or for college which ever they have the aptitude for and colleges and vocational schools that can help them be productive, educated and useful citizens of the world. We don’t want under
funded, crowded schools, with underpaid teachers, worthless testing, religious training or having our children risk death or injury in the military to get a higher education.
<snip>
To see the rest of the article got to
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/houstonnorml/message/4061 Originally posted at
http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/texasppc but this Yahoogroup requires membership to read messages.
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