RALPH NADER AND PROGRESSIVE CIVICS

I heard Ralph Nader speak recently and if he hasn't become more of a leftist over the years he certainly sounds like it. Perhaps he always quoted folks like socialist Eugene Debs as he did at his recent campaign/funraising rally in Lawrence, Kansas, but I had never noticed it before. Nader remains remarkably restrained and rational in his comments, but this time he talked about how you need a fire in your belly to participate in progressive civics. He seems to be making an effort to sound fired up, something he has either avoided or is simply not in his character.

He doesn't use the term "progressive civics", that is my term, but he does talk a lot about civics. He quoted Cicero and noted that civics courses have been eliminated from our educational system.

Civics is all about being a citizen participating in ruling a nation, a state or a city. Actually being a citizen has lost almost all of its currency in terms of our educational system or cultural expectations. Anyone who does anything in the political sphere and who is not a multi millionaire or billionaire is looked upon with some suspicion and labeled an ahem, "activist" or worse (as if activism was not essentially the same as being an active citizen). Americans have been led to think of themselves as very private people in the sense that they really are not involved in politics. That is left to a political elite and those very strange activists who have not yet understood that they are neither investors nor consumers, not as much as they are citizens and workers.

Of course this is all about the idea that bourgeois elections can somehow express the will of the people and thus lead the nation to serving the interests of the broad majority of people rather than an entrenched political, economic and military elites. It seems that Nader is scratching his head as Eugene Debs did, wondering why Americans are so against their own best interests as workers. He quoted Debs saying something about how under the Constitution that the American workers or was it people could have anything they wanted, but that Debs was apparently disappointed because average Americans seemed to want so little.

Perhaps the answer, now at least, is that Americans have often been quite privileged vis-a-vis past generations and vis-a-vis many other nations. That is changing and more rank and file Americans will experience some of the suffering that American and world capitalism have traditionally imposed on foreign lands and the backs of foreign workers.

Maybe when Americans realize that they are something other than mere investors and ditsy consumers, something much more human and humane, something much more social and political then we will see Americans accept the role and responsibilities of being citizens and overthrow their exploiters and the two marionette parties of our ruling elites.

Anyway, this is definitely one framework of liberation, progressive or revolutionary citizenship. And Nader is one the outstanding examples of someone trying to implement a vision of this framework today.

Of course, Nader supports many progressive changes that Obama crucially does not. An expansion of Medicare to the entire population is Nader's health care proposal. Obama, like McCain wants to keep the entire health care system as it is with few real modifications. Also Nader is an anti-imperialist whereas Obama tries to out imperialist his Republican opponent in his rhetoric about invading Pakistan and winning a war in Afghanistan.

Nader does share one thing with Obama. He hardly ever refers to race or white supremacy.