<HTML> <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">You and who else, Brad? I mean, Polyanian social democracy or even Polyanian socialism is about as utopian an aspiration as one coulkd conceive today. The Dems don't support it. The Repugs would regard it as no better than Bolshevism. I could be enlisted, and you might be absle to round up a few more from thsi list. Maybe Doug himself. That would make about five of us. This makes you feel sane, as opposed to the nuts who advocate bloody red revolution? - --jks </BLOCKQUOTE> Well, Justin, when I read Yoshie's attacks on the Labor Party in favor of waiting for the Leninist Second Coming, I almost want to leap to the defense of the Labor Party, even though I feel that it is a still-born experiment, like all the Labor Parties that preceded it. As against "bloody red revolution" redux, it is something we could participate in good conscience. [I don't get too worried about the resurrection of "bloody red revolution," however, as working people have a whole lot better sense than that.] Now, social democracy or radical democracy may seem a little off in the distance in these days of Bush the Pretender, but in the Progressive Caucus, you have about two score of the House of Representatives who would happily join in it. That seems a lot more viable to me than most other left projects. I don't know if that makes me feel sane, but it does make me feel like I am pursuing an option that has some hope of fulfillment.   Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869) Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass -- </HTML>