We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, September 26, 2011

A Voice of Reason Amid the Madness

Click here to access article by Heather Digby Parton from Al Jazeera.
...Warren's message is a potent one, expressing progressive values in terms that are almost intoxicating to the base of the Democratic Party, hungry as they are for someone to take up the cause of the American middle class, workers and families who are being unbearably squeezed and yet asked to give even more - even as the wealthy fatuously declare themselves to be "job creators" and therefore absolved of any duty to pay their fair share.
Elizabeth Warren does, indeed, speak reason to madness, but nonetheless, her voice will continue to be marginalized within the Democratic party. Why? Because the ruling class has abandoned the middle class and all of America except for the industrial-financial-military complex which serves the Empire as enforcer and a huge profit center. Her policies are only progressive in the sense of a national capitalist orientation. But, national capitalism has grown up into global capitalism and the elites who control this new system, and profit from it, view national boundaries as barriers to their profit extracting enterprises. 
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