“The ‘real problems’ we Americans face owe their intensity — and often their origin — to issues of income and wealth distribution our society refuses to address . . . In any age, the more wealth concentrates, the more political power concentrates in the hands of the wealthy.”
John Cavanagh, The Nation, June 30, 2008
September 1, 2008
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While international trade has occurred for centuries, the rise of the multinational corporate
“free trade” globalization agenda, coupled with the industrialization of China, India and other nations, adding massive numbers in cheap labor, has heralded a “New World Order,” as President Bush Sr. phrased it. Any contemporary discussion of concentration of power due to wealth must address the power of multinational corporations to control governments to adopt policies that favor their concentation of power and wealth, which can contradict the best interests of a nation. This issue has united some on the “left” and “right” wing in opposition to some of the trends in multinational corporate globalization, a complex and fascinating devlopment in modern politics:
http://www.counterpunch.org/taylor01022008.html
Not only does Ron Paul represent Jeffersonian values usually termed “conservative” or “libertarian” today (fidelity to the Constitution, frugal government, states’ rights, Second Amendment, national sovereignty), but he is also a leading example of support for Jeffersonian positions nowadays described as “liberal” or “leftist” (e.g. opposition not only to the Iraq War but to war in general, anti-imperialism, ending the federal war on drugs, hostility to the Patriot Act and other violations of civil liberties). This accounts for the wide appeal of the Paul campaign. It’s precisely the sort of trans-ideological, cross-generational populist-libertarian-moralist coalition that I was hoping to see with a Feingold presidential campaign.
Jeff Taylor
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Ted Moffett
Comment by Ted Moffett — September 4, 2008 @ 7:00 pm