Dear rn,
This is a difficult posting for me. I know some will misunderstand and
misinterperet no matter what, but I'll do my best. The message at the
bottom is from what we would call a 'right wing' list. Before I explain
why I'm bringing this to your attention, let me review a concept we call
'web weaving'...
This list is brought to you by "Citizens for a Democratic Renaissance"
(CDR). We've had exactly one face-face gathering which was in the summer
of '98 in Bear River, Nova Scotia. Besides myself and Jan, there were
Bruna Nota (current President of Womens International League for Peace and
Freedom), and about a half dozen others. One of the things we talked about
was the problem of divisiveness in the activist community, and how a
broad-based movement might be encouraged in the face of divisiveness. In
our "Invitation", which is a kind of manifesto located on our website, we
have the following language:
The opportunity offered by this crisis is for these various
resistance efforts to coalesce into a single grass-roots
global movement -- a movement aimed at bringing sanity to
economic arrangements and to international affairs, a
movement to lay claim to our democratic institutions and to
reassert sovereignty over giant corporations.
We discussed a 'web' as a model for movement development. The spokes of
the web are different 'causes' ('resistance efforts'), and the circular
strands of the web are bridges, or connections, that communicate between
individual causes. 'Web weaving' is the task of building these circular
strands - of building dialog and communication between different causes.
The mission of the rn-list is to facilitate 'web weaving', by providing a
forum in which people with differing focuses of concern can talk together.
Jan, I think, is to be commended for her web-weaving efforts.
For one reason or another, most of the people on this list seem to be from
a political region I would characterize as 'left-green-internationalist'.
We do have disagreement among ourselves, but for the most part we seem to
share a great many values and assumptions. We are all aware of excessive
corporate power, of environmental degradation, of unfairness to the third
world, of the drawbacks of free-trade treaties - and we all see these (and
some others) as being front-burner issues. At least that's the sense I get
from things that people send in to the list. With respect the UN, most of
us would agree that it has its problems, but most of us would say it's
basically a good thing - that it facilitates international communication
and collaboration.
What I would like to do is to introduce a question for us to consider.
That question is "What should our attitude be toward that political region
that can be characterized as 'right-nationalist'?" There are some
knee-jerk reactions that may occur to some of you. You might think 'they
are the enemy', and that our job, in terms of political correctness, is to
shout them down. Or you might think that 'they are deluded', and our job
is to convert them. Here are a couple short exchanges with Chris, the
fellow who inspired my little "Ode to Marxism" ditty. In the first
exchange, Chris said:
You have mentioned several times that it's unfortunate that
the left and right don't talk. What is there to talk about?
To think that any common ground could ever be reached
bewtween the two is to ignore the class content of the
politics reflected in the terms left and right. The
capitalist class will never see eye to eye with the working
class.
To this I responded:
I do not consider the capitalist class to be 'the right'.
The capitalist class is a very tiny minority, whereas 'the
right' is a large number of deluded people, though not any
more deluded than 'liberals' are... the 'right'opposes
abortion, while the 'left' supports abortion-rights. The
capitalist class cares nothing about abortion, but is
happy to exploit the social divisiveness that the abortion
issue leads to... Much of the 'working class' is today part
of 'the right'.
Chris then said:
I agree that many working people have accepted right-wing
ideology and that we on the left have to try to get them back.
I would _guess at this point that most of you would tend to agree with
Chris - that dialog with the right might be benficial, and that our
'message' to them should be to think like us. We are on to the correct
answers and they aren't; our job should be to help them see the light.
I would like to suggest a different attitude. The fact is that we _aren't
going to get people on the right to think like us; it just isn't going to
happen. I've talked to plenty of them, and they (at the risk of
over-generalizing) just see the world from a different perspective. It is
very easy to get into arguments - all you need to do is bring up one of the
many divisive issues, from Bible in schools, to police & crime, to the UN.
But I've found ways to talk to such people productively. It begins by
listening, and by asking them "why", and getting to the root of some of
their concerns. The next step is to look for values that are shared in
common, and to develop areas where agreement is possible. After developing
some modicum of rapport, it is possible to discuss issues productively
which would have been divisive earlier in the conversation. In the end, one
learns that they are real people, who care about many of the same things we
do.
Back in the sixties, I always felt the biggest failing of the New Left was
that it didn't link up effectively with the labor movement. That could
have led to some powerful politics. Similarly, back at the turn of the
century, the Agrarian Populists were limited by the failure to link up with
discontented urban populations. In both cases there was a cultural
assumption that the two groups couldn't be allies - but if you analyze the
primary issues of the day, an alliance would have made political sense.
Today I think the failure of the left and right to communicate is the
single greatest obstacle preventing the development of a substantial
movement for systemic change. We are both suffering from the degradation
of our physical and social environments, and it would serve our mutual
interest to collaborate together in doing something about it.
I subscribe to some right-wing lists, in order to keep in touch with the
kind of issues they talk about. What I find most interesting is that left
and right seem to be concerned with totally separate issues. It's less
that they argue two sides of the same issue than that they are focusing on
different things altogether. While we're concerned about the enviornment,
you might say, they're concerened about shadiness in Clinton's background.
Since we're always talking about different topics, the illusion is
maintained that we have nothing in common.
The posting below was from one of those lists, and it is concerned with the
following three issues:
1) privacy, including efforts to require Americans to have a national ID;
2) presidential executive orders and the erosion of the Constitution;
3) the United Nations and the erosion of national sovereignty.
Basically, this is an annoucement of an activist effort, around those
issues, describing a mechanism they've developed by which they hope to
achieve results. They are talking about a 'spoke' on a movement web, but
the question is whether that spoke could be part of our own web - whether
web-weaving would in this case be a desirable objective.
I'll join you again after you've looked at the posting itself...
rkm
============================================================================
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 02:31:17 -0700
From: APFN - American Patriots Freedom Network <•••@••.•••>
Organization: APFN http://www.insidetheweb.com/mbs.cgi/mb77532
To: APFN ONELIST <•••@••.•••>
Subject: Cyberwarfare is on.....THE IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY
Cyberwarfare is on.
FRIDAY OCTOBER 15 1999
THE IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY
Can Internet curb Clinton power?
'We're not surrendering, we're
fighting back,' congressman vows
By Sarah Foster
© 1999 WorldNetDaily.com
Inspired in part by the successful use of the Internet in derailing the
"Know Your Customer" regulation promulgated by the Federal Deposit
Insurance Agency, a group of 14 congressmen and eight constitutional
Attorneys plan to take the fight for American liberties and national
sovereignty to cyberspace.
The Liberty Study Committee, organized by Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas,
will focus on three interrelated issues: privacy, including efforts to
require Americans to have a national ID; presidential executive orders;
and the United Nations.
"I am sorry and dismayed that our liberty is indeed being taken," Paul
says, explaining the mission of the committee. "However, regret and
disappointment are not the same as surrender. We are not
surrendering, we are fighting back."
And they are doing so with determination. According to Kent Snyder,
the group's executive director, the Liberty Study Committee is not a
think tank or research foundation, but an "action-oriented organization"
that will enable Americans to make their voices heard in Congress.
"Everything we do is to advance the legislative remedy to a problem,"
Snyder told WorldNetDaily. "That's priority one for the Liberty Study
Committee. There are plenty of organizations that do research, and we
encourage that, but our primary focus is not education but the legislative
solution. Everything we do must advance the solution -- a specific piece
of legislation. And we will use the Internet to do it."
Although it's a new group, the Liberty Study Committee has already
made its presence felt on Capitol Hill. Earlier this year they set up a
website, NoNationalID.com. With a click of a mouse, people could write
what they thought about national IDs and e-mail the message directly to
their representative and the two senators from their state.
On Oct. 1, the House passed the Omnibus Transportation Bill, which
included a rider by Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., repealing a section of a
statute passed in 1996 requiring that, as of Oct. 1, 2000, Americans
would be forced to carry a national ID. Under provisions of the Illegal
Immigration Reform and Responsibility Act, without an ID no one would
be allowed to board a commercial flight, purchase a handgun, receive
federal benefits or take a new, private sector job.
Although the repeal language survived the House Appropriations
Committee, there was concern that it might be deleted on the floors of
the House and possibly the Senate.
That didn't happen. The repeal language was kept by both houses --
thanks in large part to public response flooding congressional offices
with e-mails, faxes and letters.
"This is a great moment for all Americans," said Paul, who led the fight
in the House. "We have succeeded in defeating a program that would
have deprived Americans of constitutional liberties, while imposing a
massive federal bureaucracy to monitor their every step from cradle to
grave."
Snyder detailed the victory to WorldNetDaily.
"We had a lot of people going to the site, a lot of people sending
messages at the very last minute," Snyder said. "Sources who were
involved in the process admitted that our presence was definitely felt."
Although elated, Snyder cautioned that "the issue isn't going to go
away."
"The committee must remain alert for any push for any form of a
national ID card," he said. "We know that the forces that want a national
ID will continue to work for it, and we'll continue to fight it."
With one victory to their credit, the Liberty Study Committee is turning
attention to other areas of concern.
"The 72-hour effort was a practice run for a much larger effort," said
Snyder.
"The effort to stop the national ID within a 72-hour period was a success
... so we are taking that success and using it as a first step towards a
similar effort on executive orders, the United Nations, and the other
issues related to a national ID. We have the model, we have activists
nationwide who have used it, we are becoming better known by liberty-
minded individuals throughout the country."
At present, the Committee is focusing on the president's practice of
issuing executive orders to expand presidential power and set policy
agendas, something Paul and his colleagues find particularly egregious.
"By using executive orders and declarations of emergency, President
Clinton is vastly increasing the power of the national government over
us," says Paul. "He is also concentrating more power in his hands
alone by taking the legislative power that rightfully belongs to the 535
men and women of the United States Congress. With each stroke of his
pen, he is effectively rewriting our Constitution."
Paul cites as examples: Presidential Decision Directive 25 enables the
U.S. military to be moved under U.N. command without congressional
Approval. Executive Order 12919 directs cabinet officials to take over all
aspects of the economy during a declared state of emergency. It
effectively puts the entire United States under the control of the Federal
Emergency Management Agency. Currently, the U.S. operates under
14 states of emergency. Executive Order 13133, titled "Working Group
on Unlawful Conduct on the Internet," was issued Aug. 7, 1999,
stipulating that a group of agency heads will define "unlawful conduct."
President Clinton has signed over 300 executive orders since assuming
office in January 1993. The number doesn't include the presidential
directives (which are kept secret), the various initiatives -- such as the
Clean Water Initiative -- that also provide a way for the administration to
make end runs around Congress and justify federal intervention in state
and local governments.
"We'd need a lifespan of 300 years to fight all the executive orders and
initiatives if we take them on one at a time," said Snyder. "If we attack
the orders in a piecemeal way, we'd be going round and round like
gerbils in a cage.
"The only solution is a comprehensive bill -- right now that's Rep. Paul's
HR 2655 -- the Separation of Powers Restoration Act."
Paul introduced HR 2655 this July, with co-author Jack Metcalf, R-
Wash. It builds on House Concurrent Resolution 30 which Metcalf
introduced in March, but which failed to get out of committee. HR 2655
is far broader than its predecessor.
If enacted, HR 2655 would: Repeal the War Powers Resolution and end
all states of national emergency. Require that treaties and executive
agreements purporting to assign powers not amongst those specifically
granted to the federal government by the Constitution would be non-
binding. Require that the president, in issuing executive orders, cite the
specific congressional enactment and the constitutional authority on
which it's based. Prohibit delegation of power to a foreign government or
international body when no such delegating authority exists under the
Constitution. Grant legal standing to individual members of Congress,
state officials and private citizens who believe a presidential executive
order is unconstitutional.
As it did to fight the national ID law, the Liberty Study Committee has
set up a special website, executiveorders.org with information about
executive orders -- what they are, how they work, what they do, as well
as a bibliography about executive orders and emergency powers for
people who want to explore the issue in depth.
"At this juncture, we want to make the public aware of the subject of
executive orders and the abuses," said Snyder. "There will be an
endless list of abuses -- examples of the usurpation by the president of
congressional powers. They represent the total breakdown of the
separation between the presidency and the Congress. Our first step is
to throw some light on this subject."
Asked what people should do about the problem, Snyder urged that
they use the website, just as they did to oppose the national ID.
"I'd advise them to go to our site to read about executive orders -- then
find out online if their representative is a co-sponsor of HR 2655. If they
are not, then send them a message urging them to become a co-
sponsor. Currently we have eight. There are a lot that have not signed
on. If they are co-sponsors, then send a message of thanks.
"We're involving the public step by step in the legislative process. It's
very simple: Here's the issue, here's the remedy. They must urge their
representatives to take a stand on the issue of presidential executive
orders by supporting HR 2655."
© 1999 WorldNetDaily.com, Inc.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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"NORFOLK, Va. - Defense Secretary William Cohen established a new
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Source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncsthu05.htm
============================================================================
rkm, cont...
There are many attitudes above which I don't go along with, such as their
characterization of the Clean Water Initiative as being, more or less, a
federal plot to subvert states' rights. More important, I don't share
their underlying attitude that the UN is a bad thing altogether. But on
their main three points I'm mostly in agreement. (1) Governemnts _are
intruding increasingly on privacy, and that _is a vitally important
civil-liberties issue. (2) Power in the US _is being dangerously
centralized in the federal executive, and the erosion of the Constitution
does move the US closer to what could be called an 'imperial' system. In
Canada you have a similar problem with power being shifted increasingly
from the provinces to Ottawa. And in the EU the same shift is happening
toward Brussels. (3) Transfer of national sovereignty to international
organizations, whether it be the UN or the WTO, _is a bad thing, even if we
would disagree over the reasons why. 'They' think its a 'liberal'
conspiracy, while I see it as corporate-elite conspiracy, but we can agree
that keeping sovereignty closer to home, closer to the electorate, gives us
more hope of exercising democratic control over our destinies.
A breakthrough occured some years back in Northern Ireland when some women
got together from the Catholic and Protestant communities. Their united
voice had a political weight to it that neither side could ignore. Their
efforts were a kind of web weaving, and they contributed significantly
toward the building of the momentum that led to the current peace process.
My intuition tells me that if there began to be grass-roots connections
between groups from left and right backgrounds, and if they began to
identify areas of consensus, that the result could be politically electric.
I hope some of you are still reading, and if so, I'd be interested in
seeing some discussion about this left-right divide, and the possibility of
productive web weaving.
solidarity,
rkm
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