[lbo-talk] Re: Gore Vidal: Hero of the Right?

[Brad Mayer]

Not surprising, as all the leading lights of the US left - Chomsky,
Nader and of course Vidal, are "Old Republicans": The want to restore
the US to the virtues of the Old Republic, corrupted by the National
Security State, etc.  Hence the preeminence of moral politics and the
rhetoric of moral outrage at the "betrayal of republican virtue", rathen
than that of a realpolitik of power (and how to get power) and a
rhetoric directed at working people.

Outraged Old Republicanism has simply filled the vacumn left by the
absence of a socialist left since Eugene Debs' time, a vacumn gratis the
old CPUSA.  It will be quite inadequate to the tasks we face now.

-Brad Mayer

Message: 4
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 09:38:04 -0700 (PDT)
From: mike larkin <mike_larkin2001 at yahoo.com>
To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
Subject: [lbo-talk]
Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/Chronicles/June2003/0603Kauffman.html

"So what are the policy prescriptions of this
dangerous radical? Eliminate the income tax and
devolve the taxing power to states and municipalities.
Call off the ruinous drug war. Decentralize political
power along the lines of the Swiss cantonal system.
Bring home our troops. Slash the “atrocious taxes that
subsidize this permanent war machine.” Decimate the
budget of the War Department (coyly renamed the
“Department of Defense” by the amusingly surnamed
President True-Man). Fine ideas all, and within the
Jeffersonian tradition. Gore Vidal ought to be a
revered elder of the libertarian side of the American
right. "

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Brad Mayer