Political Ideas

We Should Be More Viking

A birth lottery winner, or a chooser behind a Rawlsian veil of ignorance, today would likely end up not as a U.S. billionaire’s child (much less a random U.S. child), but as a child in Scandinavia. That is, whether you’re looking for higher happiness, life-expectancy, health, education, safety, and quality of life, or you’re looking for environmental sustainability, social justice, and relations of peace and generosity with the rest of the world, the model today is the land of read more

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Lessons for Peace from Back in the USSR

In the early 1980s almost nobody from the United States traveled to the Soviet Union or vice versa. The Soviets wouldn’t let anybody out, and good Americans were disinclined to visit the Evil Empire. But a woman in California named Sharon Tennison took the threat of nuclear war with the seriousness it deserved and still deserves. She got a group of friends together and asked the Russian consulate for permission to visit Russia, make friends, and learn.

Russia said fine. The U.S. government, read more

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Democratic Party Ignored Its 2012 Platform

By David Swanson, American Herald Tribune

Bernie Sanders’ accomplishment, whether he wins the most actual delegates, despite the rigged system, or not, and whether that garners him the nomination or not, has not been to persuade Hillary Clinton to pretend to support progressive policies. And it has not been to persuade the DNC to let progressive people have some say in drafting its 2016 platform. Sanders’ accomplishment has been persuading millions of people to vote for whom they choose read more

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What if Revolution Were More Than a Campaign Slogan?

Learning From Egyptian Revolution

By David Swanson

What if people in the United States came to understand “revolution” as something more than a campaign slogan in a presidential election campaign?

Ahmed Salah’s new book, You Are Under Arrest for Master Minding the Egyptian Revolution (a Memoir), early on characterizes its own title as an exaggeration, but over the course of the book works to substantiate it. Salah was indeed as involved as anyone in building public momentum read more

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Hey Kids! Try Collateral Damage at Home

One day a couple of weeks ago I was reading Saint Augustine while driving to the local convenience store, and I accidentally drove right through the front glass wall of the store, smashing up some shelves of junk food. After I’d made my purchases, a police officer stopped me and asked if I’d intended to drive into the store. “Oh, not at all,” I replied. “I intended to get here as quickly as possible while also educating myself as quickly as possible. I knew I might read more

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Let's Back All Moderates in Syria and the World

I’ve come around in favor of backing all moderates. The question appeared to me for a long time as a difficult one. Should one give anti-aircraft weaponry, for example, to al Qaeda fighters in Syria in order to better combat ISIS (which could some day develop the airplane)?

The answer is yes, if, and only if, those fighters are moderates.

Now, who’s a moderate? Some people get confused on this part, but it’s not really that difficult to get straight. Fighters who want to blow up read more

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The Best and Least Known Killing Spree

This week we lost one of the best lawyers and activists the United States has known, Michael Ratner, on the same day on which Bob Marley had died years before. It was Michael Ratner who told us who killed Che Guevara. This led me to make this little list:

1955 John Wayne

1960 Ernest Hemingway

1961 Paul Robeson

1963 John Kennedy

1965 Malcolm X

1967 Che Guevara

1968 Martin Luther King Jr.

1968 Robert Kennedy

1976 Bob Marley

(Never give up?) Fidel Castro

2015 Beau Biden

What does this list have in common? These read more

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How to Oppose the Draft for Women and Not Be Sexist

For the majority of people in the United States who have no idea, yes, draft registration still exists, but only for males. However, the U.S. House of Representatives is interested in adding young women to the rolls. In fact the House Armed “Services” Committee passed such a measure in April, and it is now part of the National “Defense” Authorization Act pending review, amendment, debate, and passage.

An amendment proposed by Congressman Pete Sessions would undo this “progressive” read more

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Bush-Obama Powers Will Pass to Next President

Remember when coups and assassinations were secretive, when presidents were obliged to go to Congress and tell lies and ask permission for wars, when torture, spying, and lawless imprisonment were illicit, when re-writing laws with signing statements and shutting down legal cases by yelling “state secrets!” was abusive, and when the idea of a president going through a list of men, women, and children on Tuesdays to pick whom to have murdered would have been deemed an outrage?

All such read more

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