Nathan Newman:
> ...
> A failure to promote a positive program to get justice for the victims of
> Sept 11 as an alternative to war and violence is a fundamental moral and
> strategic failure of the Left. ...
-But this would be another purity test -- leftists fighting -over just what constitutes justice and how to carry it -out, in a world already full to bursting of programs to -create justice.
It is not purity if we dont act as if each measure is mutually exclusive. The question is whether the Left pragmatically reaches out to those demanding justice or turns their backs on them in favor of a narrow, ineffective coalition against war in the abstract.
Coalition does not mean disagreement-- in fact, it is the lowest common denominator "points of unity" approach that ends of backing the Left into ineffective "no" strategies that sound nice in the short-term, but end up leaving all long-term initiative on policy to the militarists. If the Left does not promote a positive program for global justice, we will just lurch from crisis to crisis, leaving infinite justification for the military-industrial complex to maintain itself.
-- Nathan Newman