(Originally posted by Pat on 3/20/10)
Today I happened upon a Michigan Peace Works
rally. It was literal serendipity. I may return to this rally later to
show my support, but I had just gotten up and really did need to get
something to eat. (Microeconomics trumps social justice? Biology
overrides philosophy?) Before I left however I made sure to pick up a
copy of their independent youth magazine Armistice.
I cannot recommend Armistice emphatically
enough. Read it, share it, support it in any way you can. From an
editorial team composed primarily of high-school students (with a few
undergrads as well) comes one of the best works of journalism I have
ever read. Their editorials could teach the New York Times a
few things about clarity, honesty, and reasonableness. Even their
cartoons are not merely silly diversions or else partisan slanders, but
really biting commentaries on the places American politics is going.
(Given our massive unemployment rate, huge fraction of homeless, and
enormous national debt, Uncle Sam as a homeless beggar is frighteningly
accurate.)
I
had expected a radical leftist polemic (which, honestly, would have
been fine; though invariably over-the-top, such things often do have
some interesting insights), but Armistice is much more than this. Its authors are not Communists or anarchists or utopian radicals; they are democrats, true
(lowercase) democrats who believe in the dignity, equality, and
authority of citizens. They would surely vote on the Left, but only
because where we stand the Right is not really conservative but some
sort of reactionary crypto-fascism. Systematic torture, people being
kidnapped and held without trial (“rendition”), unprecedented mass
surveillance, increases in executive power, aggressive wars, distortions
of history and science in the name of ideology, the highest
incarceration rate in the developed world—these are not radical
fantasies but undeniable facts. The writers of Armistice are
particularly skilled at making these facts clear: we vote Left not
because we like Marx but because we like Locke; our model is not Lenin
but Jefferson. We believe in democracy, and we see our democracy being
torn apart piece-by-piece by the forces that call themselves the Right.
If the Right party in the US really were conservative in
the sense of preserving the values upon which America was
founded—liberty, equality, justice, peace, freedom of speech and
conscience, secularism—then we would support it. We are the
conservatives; you are something else. To steal a line from our fiercest
opponent: We love America, and we fear for it.
I don't agree point-for-point with every author of Armistice, but
nor do they agree with each other on every detail. Rather, we are all
united by our common liberal democratic values, and where we disagree
the disagreements are minor, reasonable, and at least in principle
resolvable. Always the writing is clear, the facts are accurate, and the
arguments are cogent.
If this is the face of our nation's youth, then perhaps there is hope after all.
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