Another socialist blog

I’m no liberal, I’m a Socialist. Liberals accept the basic logic of capitalism, but they want to make it less brutal, more humane. Socialists agree with liberals on many issues, but we see capitalism as the fundamental problem, not something that can be reformed.

But bless ‘em for coming up with an antidote to right-wing talk radio. Air America Radio turns one year old today. It was a difficult first year, and not just because of widespread conservative media bias.

Terri Schiavo died today, and right-wingers who never met her are making a great show of mourning her passing. George W. Bush noted that “The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak,” which is a bit ironic given his proposed Medicaid cuts and support for bankruptcy restrictions, to name just a couple of recent examples of his preference for the strong. The President, who has twice started wars of aggression, further called on Americans to “build a culture of life.”

This article from my friend David McReynolds, was posted on the SocialistsUnmoderated mailing list.

Protest demonstrations against the US/British actions in Iraq took place around the world on March 19th. Here in New York City, I joined a group which carried cardboard coffins draped with US flags and with black flags, symbolizing Americans and Iraqis killed in this illegal war. There were about three hundred of us who gathered near the United Nations, to walk across town to the military recruiting station, in the middle of Times Square.

At the recruiting station two dozen of us sat or lay down and were arrested. One of those walking with us, but not planning to join the arrests, said she admired my courage. I said it didn’t take any courage to get arrested - the real credit goes to those who organized the demonstration, since events such as this require lots of work, including negotiations with the police over the line of march.

The arrests went smoothly. The only part of an arrest which I don’t like is the moment when the cops put your hands behind your back and bind them with plastic handcuffs. Even when the handcuffs are not too tight, it makes you feel helpless to have your hands cuffed behind you. If you tend to panic, or just want to scratch your nose, you are stuck. Some years ago at a similar arrest in Washington DC I found myself close to a panic attack, bouncing along in the back of a police van with my hands too tightly cuffed behind me. Since then, to avoid the risk of a panic attack, I always carry a Valium tablet with me and swallow it shortly before the arrest. (Ironically, this time the handcuffs were loose enough I could have slipped my hands out - but it is foolish to play games with the cops when you are under arrest. They have a tendency in such circumstances to tighten the cuffs).

The point of this article is not to rummage through the events of that day to find something significant in what happened to me. These arrests are, in a sense, choreographed, you spend a few hours in jail, you have to appear in court a month or so later - usually for a small fine. No one is going to be beaten up. Particularly if you are a 75 year old white male the cops go easy.

No, it is not anything that happened to us as we sat in jail, but rather the chance to reflect on those not so lucky as to go through such a formalized protest and arrest. I think of the hundreds of Muslims in the US who were picked up immediately after 9.11, held in jail without their families being informed, held without charges, under conditions where the handcuffs were too tight, where lawyers were not called, where the very reason for the arrests were never clear.

I think of those held in Guantanamo, or in Abu Ghraib, where, at best, they could hope - eventually, by some accident - that the International Red Cross might visit and report the horror of the conditions. I remember the photographs of the first men carried into Guantanamo, blindfolded, handcuffed. Always the Americans first blindfold or “hood” the captives. I sat in my cell without fear - no one was going to strip me, put a hood over my head, brutalize me. But the Iraqis who have been arrested - the majority of whom were later released without charges - suffered fear, pain, and in too many cases, death by torture.

The torture in which the United States and Britain have engaged has been documented beyond question, not by “left wing” sources, but by US military inspectors, by the international Red Cross, by Amnesty International. The evidence is there, it is overwhelming, and as one sits safely in a jail cell in Lower Manhattan, it is worth remembering the terror that has been inflicted on so many. What is most disturbing is that so far no charges have been brought against those at the top - such as Donald Rumsfeld. The men who made the torture possible are at the highest level, yet thus far all the legal actions have fallen on military men and women far far below them in the chain of command. As the saying goes, when a fish is bad, it stinks from the head. The US needs to do more than get out of Iraq, it needs to begin legal proceedings against those at the highest level of the US government who authorized such torture. (If the US fails to initiate such action, member states of the UN should press for UN action). The US needs to do more than close down the prisons at Guantanamo - it needs to return Guantanamo to the Cubans, as the first step in cutting back on the US military bases that now span the globe.

David McReynolds lives on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He is the former Chair of the War Resisters International and was twice the Socialist Party’s candidate for President, in 1980 and 2000.

With the Terri Schiavo case, Republicans have outdone themselves. Anyone who thinks that the right wing hasn’t shed its last scruple should carefully consider how this poor woman has been used for short term political gain.

Conservatives have made political careers demanding that government get off the backs of the people. That phrase, get government off our backs, was made popular by Ronald Reagan, and has been echoed by his many political allies and offspring, including Dick Cheney, Tom Delay, Kenneth Starr, Arlen Specter, and I’m sure others who don’t come up on a quick Google search. These are the people who took over the government by convincing voters that the government was the enemy. Now, without any apparent hesitation or sense of irony, they have thrust themselves into the personal medical decisions of a single family.

For her own good.

Or so they say: a Republican staff memo circulated last week called the Schiavo case “a great political issue.” By which they mean, not a weighty political question, but a brilliant political opportunity to be grabbed. The religious right loves this stuff, and if Jeb Bush ignores the law, and a specific court order, to simply kidnap Terri Schiavo from her hospice, they will cheer.

Fortunately for Congressional panderers, if you can get elected to Congress, you automatically qualify as a neurologist. House Speaker Dennis Hastert asserts that Schiavo “is aware of her surroundings and is responsive to them”, which is not true of someone in a persistent vegetative state. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who actually has the benefit of a medical education, is able to diagnose at a distance with more accuracy than Schiavo’s own team of doctors, and says he doesn’t think she is in a vegetative state. This is the kind of blissful rejection of the facts that one would expect in this Brave W World we have constructed, but it’s still shocking, and it still should be shocking.

The next time conservatives talk about smaller government, about how government shouldn’t meddle in the lives of individuals, be sure to laugh bitterly. All that stuff about rights is for rich folks who want the right to pollute your air and sell cigarettes to your children, not for you.