I Have A Newspaper Position

[JPSartre12]

I've had the privilege of being able to do a biweekly editorial column in my university's newspaper for quite a while now, but I've recently received a promotion and am now allowed to a weekly column. My word limit has grown from a limit of 800-900 words to a half of a page in the newspaper (closer to 1100 or so). I'm going to do my best to keep you all up to date on what I'm able to say and do on my university campus, and I would like your input on things which I can write about and how to best go about explaining and conveying them. The editorial section that I have control over is referred to as "From the Left", and there have been two of us doing it - myself, and a fellow student who is nothing more than a liberal Democrat (thus, capitalist, and I would argue that he is not "Left" in any way).

Rather than provide the link to my university newspaper's website, I'm going to place my articles here in quotes on Revleft, because I do not want my university to feel uneasy about information regarding it to be posted in a far-Left website and potentially use it as an excuse to remove me from the paper. I will do my best to post each week's article here in this thread so that you will be able to stay up-to-day on what I am discussing.

Some of my recent articles include: "The End of Reaganism", about how the rising level of social tolerance is gradually eliminating prejudice and bigotry; "Obamacare, and Other Evil 'Socialism'", how the Affordable Care Act is a conservative compromise, not socialized medicine; "American Foreign Policy Gone Wrong", about our atrocious policies in the Middle East and Latin America; "Romney is Not a Working-Class Hero", about how Romney has only the interests of the rich at heart; "President Obama is No Socialist", about how his entire résumé reeks of perpetuating capitalism; "Democracy Endangered", about the Supreme Court's Citizens United case; and the most recent, "Capitalism is Killing Our Humanity", about how capitalism is able to sustain itself by exploiting the Third World.

If there is any advice that you can give me, please do so. I do not hide the fact that I am a Marxist when I have fellow classmates, professors, etc ask me about my political views or my articles. If there is anything that you think that I can or say to spread the socialist message to my university, I would greatly appreciate your advice.

Note - the person who writes my university's "From the Right" column identifies as an anarcho-capitalist, and is a fanatical supporter of Ayn Rand.

Here is my article that came out earlier this morning:

If people judged capitalism by the same standards that they judged socialism with, they would have declared it a failure generations ago. The rampant intellectual dishonesty amongst the anti-Left crowd is astounding - the mere idea that anyone would vocally support a system that is able to sustain itself by the plundering of under-developing countries reeks of soullessness and an utter disregard for human welfare. The parasitic relationship between First World nations and their Third World subjugates serves only to treat those in developing countries as tools, as completely commodified machines whose only purpose is to continue their forced labor for the mass-production of super-cheap imports.

It is even more unbelievable that people continue to equate socialism - real, genuine, unfettered socialism - with the atrocities committed by Stalin and his Marxist-Leninist allies. Anyone who has taken the time to sit down and read legitimate socialist literature will most likely find a deeper hatred for centralized State bureaucracies like the former Soviet Union than for capitalist nations. It’s also incredibly amusing that the right-wing radicals that rail against President Obama’s alleged European-style “socialist” tendencies or the Soviets’ Marxist-Leninism are, in reality, woefully uneducated on the subject, and choose to regurgitate the racist nationalism of Fox News instead of deciding to pick up a book on proper socialist theory.

When the ruling class apologizes to the working class for: pre-emptive war, colonialism, the 14-hour work day, child labor, the Massacre of the Paris Commune, apartheid, international war, deforestation, Exxon Valdez, and the military suppression of democratic movements in Latin America and the replacement of their elected leaders with CIA-backed fascist dictators for the sake of economic interests, then - and only then - will I even consider apologizing for the errors committed in the name of “socialist” countries.

The capitalist mode of production does nothing to expand “liberty” or raise the standard of living for the people that live under it. In reality, a capitalist nation commodifies the workers, turning them into cogs in the profit-making machine without their awareness or consent of it. The “high standard of living” that the far-right often evokes is only sustained by the outrageously parasitic behavior that we continue to exhibit.

A system that disproportionately redistributes all wealth upwards while reducing aid for the working class is not sustainable. Capitalism is not something that can last indefinitely; it is a cancer that needs to stretch its malignant tendrils abroad in neocolonial, imperialist war in order to seize natural resources and exploit cheap labor. One day, when this cancer has no more resources to draw upon, it is going to collapse in upon itself, and the working class will be left to pick up the pieces of the world that the corporate aristocracy’s greed had destroyed, and will have to built a new one from the ashes of the old.

Although, to even talk about the possibility of having an economic system other than capitalism is heresy in the United States. Capitalism has been intricately tied to “liberty” and “freedom” by the right-wing nationalists, who throw the words around at every possible chance that they have, draining them of any real meaning and using “liberty” to justify unfettered corporatism.

The burden for the recession should not be placed on the backs of the workers, of the citizens who spent their entire life playing by the rules only to have the programs that they paid into their entire lives be slashed in order to continue the budget-busting tax cuts that we shower the ultra-wealthy with. Some rebuke this by saying that we have the highest corporate tax rate in the world; however, that 35% tax is so riddled with loopholes that the effective tax rate for hovers just below 9%. In reality, we have one of the most lax tax systems on the entire planet. The Bush-era tax cuts (which, thankfully, have been repealed for individuals making $400,000 or more, and for households making $450,000 or more a year) cost this nation a staggering $100.2 billion a year. In the past decade, that amounts to over a trillion dollars in hand-outs to the top 1%.

The idea that slashing the federal budget in the hopes that reduced aid for special education, the handicapped, and our seniors will somehow create limitless prosperity for all is not simply foolish - it is downright cruel. The proposed changes to Social Security would save approximately $10 billion a year (which is barely a drop in the bucket, in comparison to our over-16-trillion dollar deficit), and it would do so by tweaking the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, what is generally referred to as the CPI, so that the benefits that are based on inflation would be calculated differently. If put into practice, it would mean that Social Security benefits would become much less comprehensive - a senior citizen who lives on Social Security collects just under $15,000 a year in total pay, and the affect of the CPI “tweak” would cost them $650 a year. As inflation continues and the market fluctuates, the cumulative effects of the CPI change will result in American senior citizens being stripped of $1,000 or more.

The fact that we are allow such a system to exist is mind-boggling. The complete disregard that some people have for our fellow brothers and sisters in this world is heartbreaking; the absence of human solidarity is disheartening. I look forward to the day when our country enters cultural modernity and we decide to work together for a system that puts human well-being over short-term profit.

[B5C]

Congrats! Are you thinking of posting some of the articles here or linking to them. I would love to read your future work.

[Fourth Internationalist]

Great article!

[JPSartre12]

I've submitted another article to my editor, it is going to be released in the paper tomorrow morning. It's about how Jesus can be considered one of the primary fathers of socialist theory. I've pasted it below as a quote below for those of you that are interested.

Also - I'm currently considering what to do for next week's article. I've been recommended by one friend to do a critique of the feminist movement, and talk about how feminism is inherently sexist because it believes in the concept of "woman", and so on. I'm not sure about this and I'm still thinking. Do you have any ideas about what I could write about next?

Jesus can accurately be considered to be one of the fathers of socialism. The religious right-wing distorts an overwhelming majority of what Jesus says - abandoning material possessions, common ownership, universal solidarity, limitless compassion, and railing against the anti-progressive Pharisaic establishment of the time. He was outstandingly revolutionary. There is nothing “conservative” about Christianity, when you look at its actual teachings.

There is nothing in our Christian religion for justifies a system based on human exploitation. There is nothing holy about capitalism: it is a system that ignores the needs of the poor and homeless, rejects the foreign, forgets about the sick and hungry, and rewards the greedy over the compassionate. Capitalism is a cruel and inhumane system that places short-term profit and corporate interests over those of the working class; it is not something that Jesus Himself would be able to support. Catholic Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit acknowledged that “the system doesn’t seem to be providing for the well-being of all the people. It is almost, in its very nature, contrary to the Jesus who said ‘blessed are the poor, woe to the rich’.”

Father Dick Preston, a Michigan-based priest, agreed and even went on to say that “capitalism, in its present form, is an evil. It is contrary to all that is good ... Capitalism is precisely what the Holy Book reminds us is unjust and, in some form of fashion, God will come down and eradicate. It is wrong, and therefore needs to be eliminated.” So did Father Peter Dougherty, who went so say that “it is immoral, it is obscene, it is outrageous. It is really radically evil ... It’s radical evil.”

Gumbleton, Preston, and Dougherty are absolutely correct. Capitalism does need to be eliminated, but what should take its place?

On what grounds, then, can the bourgeois élite and corporate aristocracy argue that Jesus is on there side? Christ would not come to modern-day America to ring the daily bell at the New York Stock Exchange. Christ would not argue that obsessive deregulation will provide healthcare for everyone, and He would certainly not support any war, even those under the faux-guise of humanitarianism and democratization. Jesus would charge into Stock Exchange, denounce the moneylender for disregarding the well-being of the whole community, and stand in unwavering solidarity with the poor, sick, diseased, socially-outcast, and brokenhearted - the very people that capitalism refuses to help.

My Savior is one who stands with the working class and the needy, not one who rejects them.

The Jesus Christ that we, as Christians, worship is not the same Jesus that the rich and powerful have claimed for their own; our is a loving God, one of that heals the sick and houses the poor, not one that shakes His finger in righteous anger at them and tells them to work harder, for longer hours, for less pay. The bourgeois power structures that exist in our society - the banks, energy producers, pharmaceutical corporations, venture capitalists, and the lobbying industry - have a vested interest in wrapping naked greed up in Christian rhetoric, because as long as they do so they’ll have an illusion of legitimacy. The ultra-rich have claimed Jesus for their own in an attempt to make it look like their existence has meaning - even though their overly parasitic nature is becoming increasingly obvious as they continue to wage class warfare against the working class.

Religion holds a very important place in our society - it in intimately tied in with our federal government, prominent Church leaders hold political clout in the lobbying industry, and Church teachings dictate morality in our supposedly-secular culture. At what point are we going to stop lying to ourselves and pretending that we live in a modern, post-medieval society, when our entire economic system is modeled off of the unholy alliance of the Church and aristocracy that characterized our previous mode of production? At what point are we going to be honest to ourselves, and admit that the “religion” that capitalists adhere to has absolutely no correlation with the teachings of Jesus Christ - the same teachings that gave birth to numerous collectivist, agricultural communes between the first generations of Christians helped establish?

Or what about the oh-so-famous line that Christ said in Matthew 19:24: “Again, I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God”. Christianity is not a religion for the wealthy to justify their greed; it is a philosophy of hope for the working class, a form of inspiration to help them deal with the truly lethal climate that laissez-faire capitalism spawned. A position that I found to be especially interesting is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Of course, the literalists and fundamentalists are going to tell you that it and the over-used quote from Leviticus 18:22 (“Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind; it is an abomination”) justifies and inequality and homophobia, but will ignore the context in which it was said regarding negative population growth in the midst of waring country. One cannot argue with the people who are so dead-set and close-minded in their beliefs that they are unwilling to have an intellectually honest discussion.

It is time to stop lying to ourselves about what Jesus said and what He stands for, and realize that he championed the poor and denounced the rich, not the other way around. Jesus Christ is the hero of the working class and one of the principal fathers of socialism.

[Fourth Internationalist]

HA! I hope that article makes every conservative Christian's head explode!

I've been recommended by one friend to do a critique of the feminist movement, and talk about how feminism is inherently sexist because it believes in the concept of "woman", and so on. I'm not sure about this and I'm still thinking.

Do not even consider this. Feminism is a major part of socialism and leftism. The idea that feminists are sexist against men is b.s. from our patriarchal, capitalist society.

Do you have any ideas about what I could write about next?

Perhaps something about how the Soviet Union, North Korea, China, Cuba, Vietnam, etc. were not socialist? OR Maybe something about the growing socialist movement in Latin America (Venezuela)?

[Brutus]

Check out
Acatheunderground.wordpress.com
We are a leftist site who provide news and theory.
There's also 2 of us, like you.

[Questionable]

I know this thread is a bit old, but out of curiosity, what does the "From The Right" column look like? Do you and its author ever engage in polemics or anything like that?

[Jimmie Higgins]

Congratulations, I think this is a great way for radicals to intervine in more general discussions.

I also recommend checking out the book "Detroit I do mind Dying" because there's some early sections in there where white new-left radicals and black marxists took over the student paper at a community college in Detroit and used it as a radical voice for the whole community. I found a pdf online when it was still out of print, but when I searched just now I could only find the first two chapters and I think the newspaper is discussed in 3 or 4. Maybe a more thourgough search could find the right chapeter.

At any rate, keep doing what you're doing. My two cents is that ideological or abstract political discussions will only go so far and, when possible, I might try and relate my articles more towards immediate issues that concern students but have wider implications. Discuss your perspective on tuition increases or other things that are happening on campus or in the community that impact students (which would include almost any issue of austerity and attacks on workers since this is the labor situation many of the students are likely to find themselves in a year or two). From there you can discuss what people might do about it, which would distinguish your perspective from the liberal most likely) and make strong connections then to the ideological perspective. So something on austerity could go: students are being hit with X cuts... the big picture is that this is not "bad planning" or a mistake, the people who hold power in society want to make all education something for the elite, want to lower our expectations for a stable life in the workforce etc... it's connected to X larger issues in the community... as a Socialist I see this as X, Y, Z and it's up to us as students and workers to put a stop to these attacks, etc.

Maybe if your school is more calm and passive, presenting just an ideological argument is enough in itself. But I think that while we can score some political points and make some convincing arguments in this way with people who are interested in ideological debates, I think that there is a tendancy then to view the arguments as just a perspective rather than a useful and necissary guide to action for workers and the oppressed.

The articles are very well written, so I think they are great, like I said, this was just my 2 cents about an approach to the column. There was a comrade when I was in school from Socialist Alternative who had a column like that and an ISO comrade of mine had a similar column and they both took that sort of approach. Of course there are times where it seems that there is fuck-all going on at school politically or you are under deadline, so there's also nothing wrong with engaging in just interesting topics and questions alone.

[Orange Juche]

An anarcho-capitalist colleague there, huh? Almost as interesting as Marxism-Ayn Randism, and the libertarian fascists.

[Green Girl]

Thanks JPSartre12

Great articles!

[JPSartre12]

My latest article - it was printed earlier this week

"Let's Not Forget the 'T' in LGBT"

The “Transilience” film that Dr. Joelle Ruby Ryan of the Women’s Studies department presented to the public in the MUB last week is something that all UNH students should see. For those that missed it, it can be found online on Youtube. It is not a Transgender 101 film; it is not something that is meant to be an introduction towards the transgender community. It the third installment her film series that gives one the chance to see how she, as a gender outlaw and proud activist, has dealt with the challenges presented to her by a cis-supremacist society that does not value gender diversity. It is not meant to represent the trans community as a whole; no one person can speak for an entire movement, but Dr. Ryan does a fantastic job of highlighting how we, decades after the civil rights movement, still marginalize entire sections of the American populace.

There are numerous people here at the University that would do well to take a Women’s Studies class, and I encourage everyone to do so. It is a learning experience that some people are in desperate need of, as there continue to be to many people who are needlessly vicious to the department and take part in the oppression of trans minorities, while at the same time garbing themselves in the rhetoric of “liberty” and “freedom”. How can one proselytize about our enduring “liberty” when entire social groups are shunned by society and treated as deviant outcasts? One cannot.

The fight for gender equality - and even the fight against the compartmentalizing concept of “gender” itself - is the next great civil rights struggle of our time. Yes, the LGBT community is going to score a major victory this coming spring when the Supreme Court declares the constitutionality of same-sex marriage, but we should not focus the argument entirely on those of the same sex; we should not forget our transgender comrades who have had to deal with oppression in a way that the mainstream LGBT community cannot even think of. To have a non-heterosexual sexual orientation is certainly against the grain of America’s viciously patriarchal society, but to actually be transgender puts one on a whole different level. Name changes, gender-reassignment surgery, systemic legal oppression, economic classism - the transgender community has had to face persecution and brutality in a way that no other minority has ever had to. I cannot imagine the struggle that my trans friends have to go through, but the fact that they do - and that they persevere and come out stronger - makes me indescribably proud of them. They deserve the utmost respect and support.
 If there is one thing that the trans community can remind us of, it is that is how desperately important it is for us to live our own truths. There is a particular kind of joyful pride at being able to inhabit one’s own skin and readily accept one’s identity. Of course, being “different” will always be difficult, but those that do - and those of us that stand side-by-side with them in unwavering solidarity - are helping to pave the way for generations that will come after, and are changing the world by resolutely stating the truth,that all people are created equal, and that everyone should have the right to live their life in a way that brings them the most joy.

UNH has made excellent progress on trans issues, and I applaud them, but there are still issues that need to be faced. The Transgender Policy and Climate Committee (T-PACC) is a sub-committee of the President’s Commission on the Status of GLBT Issues, and is dedicated to monitoring the campus climate for trans students, faculty, and staff. It works to recommend and implement policy changes to promote an environment that reaffirms gender diversity. Thus far, it has worked with Health Services to explore resources available for trans students, and has approached the Registrar’s office in the hopes of initiating a system change to better serve the trans community on campus by potentially changing the “sex” categories on university applications and paperwork.

Unfortunately, there continues to be a faction of radical “radfem” feminists that are extraordinarily hostile to transgender and transsexual people, especially trans women. Radfems in Western society are viciously obsessed with the concept of “woman” and involve themselves with calling out, and working to abolish, male patriarchy in the name of female empowerment. In the process, though, they unfortunately alienate those that do not adhere to a strict male-or-female gender binary. The radfem faction of feminists, and their overtly black-and-white pro-women views, unfortunately caused them to be estranged from their fellow social revolutionaries. Why is it that this rampant sectarianism has to continue to plague the feminist community? Why do the radfems continue to marginalize their trans comrades in the name of women’s liberation, when, if united together in a feminist popular front, they could be a force to be reckoned with against the patriarchy?

Everything that people do counts, and no action is “too small”. Whether someone is heterosexual or homosexual, cis-gendered or transgendered, makes no difference; if there is systemic oppression and rampant inequality in our world, we should work to resolve the problem together. Us cis-gendered allies can be effective catalysts for change if we stand together and not just accept but actually fight for our transgendered brothers and sisters. Activism can be as simple and everyday as interrupting an offensive joke, or calling out rude comments in public. Start where you are, and remember that your actions will have a ripple effect. Trans rights are human rights, and we all benefit when we are all liberated by the ability to be able to live our lives without fear, shame, or judgement.

[JPSartre12]

My latest article, it was printed this past Thursday.

The Sequester: Another Attempt by the Corporate Élite to Crush Labour

The news has been up in arms recently about the economic sequester that is, as the Republican Party says, an attempt to offset the “reckless spending” of our leaderless and partisan President. Even though the sequester cuts only a mere 3% of federal spending - which, in the scope of the nation’s $15.1 trillion GDP and $16.72 trillion federal deficit - is only a drop in the bucket, it represents a particularly dangerous road for us to take if our goal is to balance the federal budget. Despite the fact that the working class’ discretionary income has stayed fairly consistent (and, in some regions and demographics, even dipped), inflation has reduced its economic purchasing power, leaving the middle class with increasingly little influence over the economy. As capitalist-style “tax reform” continues to redistribute wealth upwards, workers have less power to influence the state of the economy; the only other entities with enough purchasing power to impact the state of the economy are: first and foremost, the federal government, with its incredible collective bargaining power accounting for trillions of dollars and millions of participatory taxpayers; and secondly, to a lesser extent, private corporations, who currently sit on over $2.2 trillion unused and untapped assets and armies of lobbyists (nearly 5 per every 1 member of Congress).

If individual consumers no longer have the power to impact the economy through their elective expenses, then we need to have the second and third most powerful economic entities take responsibility and do something to defibrillate the American economy. Private corporations have no desire to do so - not only does the Dodge v. Ford Supreme Court case requires them to operate in the interests of profiteering shareholders rather than in the economic interests of the community, but they exist to generate profit regardless of their legal obligations. We cannot trust in the corporate aristocracy to work in the interests of the working class. I am not arguing that we should place our faith in federal institutions rather than corporate ones (indeed, I’m much more a fan of the abolition of the State), but we need to be intellectually honest with ourselves by acknowledging that the federal government has enormous power, and it has the potential to use that power to jump-start the economy.

At the risk of sounding like an angsty, deficit-spending-obsessed Keynesian, we need to use the government’s extraordinary budget to invest in the working class. Gutting the federal budget in such a delicate time is not something that will serve the direct interests of the American middle class.

The sequestration is not a good idea; we should not be pulling billions of dollars out of the economy when our recovery is still so fragile; we should be pumping money into it, be investing in the working class and small business, and enacting massive public works programs that hire hundreds of thousands of American citizens to repair, expand, and modernize our roads, bridges, ports, and infrastructure.

There is nothing about this “sequestration” that involves fiscal responsibility; the entire concept reeks of a overt attempt by the bourgeois class to initiate privatization at all levels under a fabricated illusion of financial collapse. Without these budget cuts, they cry, our debt with skyrocket to a point wherein our interest payments to China will consume our entire budget, and it, and other foreign powers, will effectively own the rights to our economy. Without this sequestration, the evil “socialist” president that we re-elected (by voter fraud, some right-wing maniacs argue) our debt will grow to consume our entire budget and a second Great Depression will be ushered in by our outrageously left-wing president.

The entire sequestration is the result of an illusion by the corporate aristocracy, who are so outrageously financially irresponsible that they are unwilling to claim responsibility for the Wall Street collapse of 2008 that they are willing to create an elaborate illusion of pending economic collapse in order to have the working class shoulder their burden, rather than accept responsibility. The sequestration is an attempt to shift the responsibility for our economic woes from the 1% to the 99%; it is a way for the élite to shift responsibility to the Average Joe through a series of intricate lies about the state of the economy.

No matter what Wall Street says - about the “bankruptcy” of Medicare in the coming years, the shrinking Social Security surplus, the atrocious tax-and-spend policy of our “far-left” President, or the budget-busting cost of our progressive Congress - we are not broke. The United States is not poor; we are not out of money. We have the funds to do anything that we want - the problem is merely that we have chosen to spend our tax-payer dollars in horribly irresponsible ways. Of course, why on Earth should we invest in modern, eco-friendly green energy when we can fund the construction of ten thousand more wartime missiles instead? Why should we spend our money on universal healthcare, comprehensive education, or the mass-repair of our national infrastructure when we can spend it on a bloated Pentagon bureaucracy and imperialist war?

If we want to be intellectually honest with ourselves, we need to realize that the host of economic reforms that President Obama has passed - from the Affordable Care Act to the Economic Recovery Act - have already begun to pay off and have started to defibrillate our economy. The reckless spending of the previous administrations has hit a critical point wherein its begun to compound at an exponential rate: Nixon’s two-trillion-and-counting “War on Drugs” and Bush’s $2.2 trillion “War on Terror” - when combined with the post-2001 tax cuts for the rich that constitute 48% of our entire federal debt - put Obama’s entire “socialist” agenda to shame. I am not defending the Democratic Party in any sense; the Party is riddled with internal corruption and financial waste, but, if we want to have an honest conversation about our federal deficit, we cannot blame the current administration. Our debt is the result of generations of tax-and-spend obsessed bureaucrats, not a single President.

It is time that the American people stop blaming President Obama for every economic woe that comes their way and start being honest with themselves about the government’s electoral history and start taking responsibility for themselves for electing those those petty bureaucrats into office. Now is not the time to play the blame-game in D.C.; now is the time to take responsibility and set aside partisanship to actually work towards an economy geared in the economic interests of the working class.

[Philosophos]

Very nice articles even though I have a headache from the words I couldn't understand

[Riveraxis]

I think you're a talented writer and I've enjoyed reading your articles.

I don't have much in the line of criticism/feedback, but I do hope you continue to post them, and continue to write them. I come across many socialist blogs that simply parrot the idea that capitalism is evil without providing background information as to the nature of the system. It gets very old very fast. People are not just going to accept that it is evil because the writer *sounds* intelligent. We are not all well-read, dedicated Marxists. There must be proof, at the very least reasoning, backing up the accusations. I'd say you've done a fine job.

One piece of advice I have is that you should alternate between the evils of capitalism and the potential of socialism. Don't make it all doom-and-gloom, even if it is actually all doom-and-gloom. People shut off from politics when it's nothing but bad news. Provide an alternative. Inspire people.

[JPSartre12]

My latest article, it came out in the paper earlier this morning.

The American Republic has become the American Empire

At what point did we allow our country to turn into a corporate police state? When was it that our great American Republic mutated into a nationalist Empire? Did it start when President Obama expanded the use of drone strikes in the Middle East, bombing women and children in the hopes of potentially eliminating a single al Qaeda agent, or when his Affordable Care Act restructured our healthcare system to reinforce, and even mandate, participation in a for-profit and anti-trust law exempt market? Was it then, when his healthcare and financial “reform” padded the pockets of the ultra-rich at the expense of the working class?

No - the situation that we have now is the result of more than a generation’s worth of political apathy, of allowing capitalist bureaucrats and Wall Street financiers to make our decisions for us. Being an angsty, anti-establishment government-basher has become fashionable; sitting around and pointing out the flaws of the nation, without making an effort to take a part and offer a practical solution, makes one “cool” and “edgy”.

The USA PATRIOT Act codified many of the wishes of statists into law. Whether we’re talking about the Act’s regulation of bank accounts, the broadening of the government’s authority to deport citizens, or the authorization of roving wiretaps and non-consenting business record searches, the Act is only the first brick in the construction of the modern police state. We have also had the unfortunately passage of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, which appropriates and divides up Defense and war spending, but contained a blatantly unconstitutional clause that gives the government the authority to indefinitely detain American citizens. And now - even after the intense political backlash against the NDAA 2012, our Congress has the gall to discretely slip another clause into the NDAA 2013 that repeals the World War II-era legislation that prevents the government from using State-approved propaganda, and would make Washington immune to any court cases challenging them. The entire NDAA 2013 sets the stage for an Orwellian thought police program, complete with the blessing of our elected representatives. The impacts of these laws - both constitutionally and as a matter of personal liberty - become even more frightening when we realize that they do not stand alone; hosts of other bills - from the surveillance-expanding USA Act of 2001 or the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act’s drastic expansion of state-approved execution, or even the protest-restricting Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act that was passed during the populist Occupy Wall Street uprising - are also on the books. One could fill an entire library with books full of these heinously unconstitutional laws that the élite class uses to secure its hegemony. When coupled with the push for prison “reform” vis-à-vis privatization, expanding TSA and Homeland Security powers, and the government’s recent mass purchasing of guns and ammunition, it seems that we are getting dangerously close to fascism.

All of the dozens of harsh, inhumane bills that were passed from the FDR era and on are nothing compared to the outrageous human rights violations that have been committed in the name of “liberty” and “democracy” since 9/11. We have allowed the bourgeois élite to take advantage of us by uniting us against the “terrorists” by appealing to a demagogic and emotionalist sense of nationalism and fear - by uniting us against a common “enemy”, they have expanded and centralized police power. Since that tragic day, the profiteering élite have created a false threat, a faux-strawman of pending immediate danger of the foreign terrorists who want nothing more than to end our entire way of life and kill all of us, for no other reason than our being “free” and “rich”, not in retaliation for the toppling of their democratically-elected leaders and incessant bombings.

The Middle Eastern neo-colonialism of the Bush-Cheney regime reeks of overt imperialism. Who are we to colonize and occupy foreign lands, topple governments that we do not like, and establish radical ones that serve our economic interests? How can we go about proselytizing incessantly about “freedom” and “liberty” while presiding over the systematic eradication and political disenfranchisement of millions of our fellow human beings?

It does not matter who the president or the current administration is, or what political party controls Congress or the governorships; every single politician that takes part in the government is guilty of the construction of the American Empire.

We should not be encouraging an expansion of State power; we should not crushing ever single liberty that our Founding Fathers fought for, especially amidst cheering and applause. We should be championing the abolition State authority in all spheres, not supporting it. If we continue to rely on the State to solve all of our problems, than we have no one else to blame for our country’s descent into fascism than ourselves.

[JPSartre12]

One piece of advice I have is that you should alternate between the evils of capitalism and the potential of socialism. Don't make it all doom-and-gloom, even if it is actually all doom-and-gloom. People shut off from politics when it's nothing but bad news. Provide an alternative. Inspire people.

Thank you, comrade. I value your advice. What do you think would be a good topic to write about for next week?

[JPSartre12]

My latest article from this week's paper.

"Proposed Immigration Reform Doesn't Go Far Enough"

The immigration reform that is being drafted in the U.S. Senate does not go far enough. Like President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, almost all progressive elements have been stripped from it in order to get the votes necessary for it to pass. Now is not the time to allow yet another watered-down centrist band-aid; our broken immigration system is in dire need of immediate repair and needs a complete overhaul. The entire system needs to be redesigned, and the proposals from the so-called “Gang of Eight” senators - four Democrats and four Republicans - does not come close enough to addressing the problem.

Immigration reform should be something that allows us to unite our immigrant brothers and sisters with their families back home, and create an atmosphere that invites hard workers to come and take part in the American Dream. The senators’ draft bill has several components that do not do this. Rather than try to create a peaceful bridge between the Untied States and other countries, the draft bill creates harsh barriers between us. It builds over 350 miles of new fencing along the U.S.-Mexican border, implements biometric scanners at airports and seaports near them, radically increases the number of border security agents, and installs a massive, border-wide camera-and-radar system to track movement across it. This is not a “progressive” reform in any way: it is a nationalist’s dream of radical isolationism mediated by a police state.

There are dozens of clauses in it that would create a harsh, anti-immigration environment that would dissuade many of the immigrants already here from coming out into the open, from a dramatic increase in fines for employers knowlingly hiring non-citizens, to cutting their access to public and social services, even if they are below the poverty line and need drastic medical care. Of course, there are several mildly acceptable pieces to the bill - mostly, streamlining and accelerating the naturalization process, and creating a 10-year program to allow undocumented individuals to become citizens - but the negatives far outweigh the positives.

What disturbs me the most is the rhetoric that’s being thrown around during the immigration debate. The labeling of people as “illegal aliens” strikes me as exceptionally dehumanizing and derogatory. No human being is “illegal” for the sake of their birth; simply because one is born on a different side of a bureaucratically drawn line does not mean that that person has less value, or that they are not entitled to the same liberties as every other human being. If we truly believe that all peoples are created equal, and that we have inalienable rights given to us by our Creator, then we have to realize that no human being should be treated differently than another, and we should embrace everyone – both legal and “illegal” – with open arms. Our “reform” should allow anyone and everyone that wants to take part in the American Dream to be able to; it should welcome every single person that’s willing to come and work hard.

What we need is an immediate, universal amnesty program to allow every undocumented individual in the country to be immediately recognized as an American citizen. The people who have spent years here, working strenuous hours, taking part in the community, raising a family and saluting our flag are already Americans in everything but name. It’s time that we recognize that these people are just as valuable as we are, and that we need to treat them as equals in every respect. The idea that we, just because we were born inside of those bureaucratic lines, are better than others drips with the toxic filth of nationalism, of an intolerant classism hidden behind the romanticized rhetoric of “exceptionalism”.

We need to drop this hyper-patriotic language and realize that every human being on this planet is equal in every way – no nationality, creed, language, culture, or religion makes anyone any better or worse than anyone else. Comprehensive immigration reform is not just something that is economically beneficial for our nation. It’s not just something that will enrich our culture and introduce millions of consumers and potential job creators. It’s more than just a social justice movement; it’s a matter of basic human rights and individual dignity.

Our immigration “reform” is an absolute joke, yet another shadow of a compromise, another failed attempt at a potentially transformative piece of legislation. We need to enact a universal amnesty program immediately, and every moment that we do not is a disservice to the millions of undocumented people here that are American in every single way other than on paper.

[JPSartre12]

Here is a copy of another article of mine. It is going to be published in this week's university newspaper.

Solidarity Can Overcome Any Problem

Noam Chomsky, a linguistic professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a fellow libertarian socialist, put it well when he said that “propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state”. What is it that we learn in our schools - history (taught from an imperial and nationalist perspective), literature (that reinforces a hegemonic ideology), social studies (that impose patriarchal heteronormativity), and science (geared toward capitalist production)? The school systems that we take part in have been so radically politicized that they have been turned into State tools of indoctrination, where we are told what to think and not how to think. Everything that we are taught is done to reinforce and perpetuate bourgeois philosophy.

Us students that are able to put ourselves through school by acquiring large debt are unlikely to think about radically changing the world. The debt that we accrue acts as a disciplinary technique that forces us to work for capitalist employers in order to make the ridiculous sums of money needed to pay our schools back. We come out of school freshly programmed by the State, and have also internalized the disciplinarian culture of a capitalist society. We are manufactured to be State-supporting automatons that are efficient components of a consumer economy.

It reminds me of the famous (and unfortunately anonymous) quote: “Go to work, send your kids to school, follow fashion, act normal, walk on the pavement, watch TV, save for your old age, obey the law .... and repeat after me: I am free”.

We have problems other than just education. The entire system does not work, and 18 million die each year from poverty-related causes. Global agriculture production can feed 118% the world’s population, despite the fact that the bureaucratic morass of the market allows 868 million to starve each year. There are more than 5 vacant homes for every homeless person, and 77.5% of the occupied ones are in debt; of them, 1 in 7 is being pursued by a debt collector. Nearly 50 million American citizens are without healthcare, and the unemployment rate stands at 14.3%, if one takes into consideration the unemployed who have given up looking for work, as well as those who work but do not make enough to regularly stay above the poverty line.

How do we go about fixing this problem? Is it through electing populist candidates that promise “reform” and “change”? No. It doesn’t matter whether we elect some pseudo-nationalist conservative or a partisan progressive. After all, the two are distressingly similar - two people that went to similar universities, have massive fortunes, are both financed by the same corporate institutions. At the Democratic Convention, President Obama said that “only in this country, only in America, could someone like me appear here”. Really? The fact that he had the gall to explicitly state this perturbs me. In other countries, people much poorer and much more disadvantaged have not only be keynote speakers at massive political conventions, but have even been elected president.

Take Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva, the former President of Brazil. He had a peasant background, was a union organizer and advocate for the poor, and never went to school. Despite this, he ended up becoming president of the second-largest country in that hemisphere. Or Salvador Allende, the first democratically-elected self-proclaimed Marxist, whose pro-poor economic reforms earned him a CIA-sponsored military coup d’état that put fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet in power?

“Only in America”? Yes, only in America can a genuine candidate of the people be suppressed by military and corporate interests, and only in America are they shunned so utterly from the political process. Only in America can someone who was elected president twice and committed heinous war crimes vis-à-vis the drone-strike bombing of Middle Eastern women and children (am I speaking of Bush or Obama - but then again, is there a difference?), and only in America can someone who exposes war crimes be locked in solitary confinement for two years and be called a terrorist (I mean Bradley Manning, of course).

We have numerous problems here in the Untied States - exploding poverty, indoctrinatory education, a patriarchal culture. The list goes on, as does the to-do list of policies that need to be immediately enacted to bring back both liberty and a growing economy. We need a massive public works program, single-payer healthcare, gender-neutral marriage, an unprecedentedly large investment in alternative energy, economic democracy in the workplace, and an end to corporate personhood.

There is nothing that we, as Americans, cannot accomplish when we stand together in unwavering solidarity and confront our problems side-by-side. We have already been through so much, from economic depressions to imperialist wars, and we have survived; we will continue to thrive, no despite how much the corporate oligarchy wishes to push us down, so long as we remember that the working class outnumbers them millions-to-one.

[JPSartre12]

Comrades, I'm going to be going to back to my university in the coming weeks, and I'm going to continue to do my "From the Left" section in the school newspaper.

Are there any topics that you think I should focus on or discuss? What do you think I should write about, and how do you think I can go about improving my articles? I'm considering doing my first piece on the education system, because it would be easy to tie in a greeting to the new first-year students.

Your advice is invaluable to me, comrades.

[Brutus]

What about an article explaining the inevitable collapse of capitlaism due to internal contradictions and the fact that it's either Socialism or barbarism?