At 07:09 PM 12/2/97 -0600, you wrote:
>Not all of the Reform Party positions are compatible with
>progressive populism. But progressive populists ought to work with the
>Reformers on common issues such as opening the ballot to alternative
>parties, campaign finance reform, fair trade laws and encouraging small
>farmers, small businesses and American manufacturing.
Excuse me, but if the "progressive populist" movement has not enough
moral imagination to oppose free trade agreements and the MAI because
of the destitution these policies/laws/institutions wreak upon workers
and peasants in "developing countries," and instead gets all up in arms
embattled textile firms in the Piedmonts and gracious U.S. "sovereingty,"
then I don't see much difference between "progressive populism" and
Buchanan's crypto-fascism, or other crypto-fascisms in Europe. Politics
makes stranger bedfellows than people I'd want to sleep with. It reminds
me of the dominant wing of the U.S. anti-Gulf Slaughter movement, bandying
about the slogan, "Bring Our Boys Home," when the techno-savagery unleashed
upon the Iraqi citizenry registered a body count ratio of about 2000:1 (not
to mention all of the subsequent deaths of malnourished and diseased children
from the imperialist embargo, under the guise of the "sanctity of international
law"). These sentiments do not spring from the elitism of the left
professoriat. They spring from a senstitivity to basic human decency, in the
context of
a "New World Order" which still indistiputably has a imperialist dimension.
(Not that vast segments of the American working class aren't being swindled
to defend and extend empire, but let's call the spade of U.S. imperialist
domination of this hemisphere, at least, a spade).
John Gulick
Ph. D. Candidate
Sociology Graduate Program
University of California-Santa Cruz
(415) 643-8568
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
