The death of these two
important Democratic party figures brought back some interesting recollections.
Before I proceed further, I should say that the following represents personal experiences and memories accompanied by some extremely candid assessments of their impact on my opinions of these two men. Some may find those assessments mean-spirited and perhaps quite inappropriate. A few of you therefore may wish to read no further.
My most vivid early political memory is the 1968 Democratic convention. I was a strong opponent of the Vietnam war, a strong supporter of Gene McCarthy, and a strong proponent of the Minority Plank, which called for a negotiatied withdrawal from Vietnam. I was strongly in support of the peace demonstrators which were being severely beaten by Mayor Richard Daley's storm troopers during that event, and felt then, as I do now, that the whole event was one of the greatest betrayals of the country ever perpetrated by my erstwhile party, the Democrats. I remember vividly crying and cheering as former Connecticut Senator Abe Ribicoff of Connecticut spoke truth to power, and said, while looking straight at Mayor Daley, that with Ribicoff's chosen presidential nominee, George McGovern (who had stepped in for Bobby Kennedy after Kennedy's assasination), "we wouldn't have to have gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago."
Throughout history, it seems our government is fated on repeated occasions to cooperate in actions which can be fairly termed almost criminal insofar as their effect on our people. For example, even today, a cynical and corrupt political establishment is in the process of killing off the desire of our people to be active and to participate in our so-called democratic process. In recent years, in election after election, the average turnout has been between forty and sixty percent, well below the average turnout of most industrialized Western democracies. In addition, our government is recklessly devouring our children's patrimony, and saddling them with a crushing debt which will depress their standard of living and cripple their hopes for the future. As another example, in the past our government has looked the other way while people were bought and sold as so much cattle. Another example: we placed Americans of Asian extraction in concentration camps due to racist paranoia during a war. And, perhaps most unforgivably, we fought an immoral war, with weapons that included flesh burning and environmentally polluting agents, on behalf of a military dictatorship which placed itself squarely against its own people's desire for independence and self-determination.
And former Senator Edmund Muskie, by supporting his party's prosecution of that war, by speaking out against the Minority Plank, and by functioning as the '68 Veep candidate for the war ticket and as a loyal foot soldier for that atrocity, was a willing accomplice to that crime. And for that I can never forgive him.
The late Commerce Secretary Ron Brown began his political career as a fighter for social tolerance and racial equality. By supporting Jesse Jackson in his attempts to capture the Democratic nomination, he allied himself clearly with that wing of the party which not only had opposed the Vietnam war in a previous political era, but which then went on to support a nuclear freeze, the Equal Rights Amendment, and national health insurance -- the progressive wing of the Order of the Donkey. But something happened to Ron Brown -- something which seems to happen to too many people in public life. He decided he was more interested in being on the winning side than the right side. So in '92 he not only helped to engineer the Democratic party into nominating a somewhat unprincipled opportunist for President. He also saw to it that any attempt to move the Democratic party in the direction of a minimum level of rectitude and openness was thoroughly squashed. I know. I was there. I was a supporter of Jerry Brown, and I remember how ready we were, how EAGER we were to endorse Bill Clinton if he would just agree to endorse a palty one or two planks in our political reform platform. I remember how ready we were to chuck universal health insurance, how ready we were to throw tax reform overboard, how ready we were to take a few crumbs in exchange for our support. But Ron Brown did not see the Democratic party as the engine of positive change or reform we wanted it to be so desperately. He saw it as the engine of preservation for the perks and priviledges of those who bankrolled it. Not one bone did we get, not one morsel. The only thing in front of us was a brick wall.
Afterwards, when Clinton won the election, Ron Brown went to work once again. He helped to pass NAFTA, a trade agreement so blatantly designed for the multinationals who prey on our economy, and so ruthlessly uncaring about the average American worker, that politicians from Jerry Brown to Ross Perot to Pat Buchanan opposed it. He also was critical to Bill Clinton's decision to betray the victims of mainland China's political brutality. During the campaign, William Jefferson had excoriated George Bush, and his henchman, Brent Scowcroft, for sharing wine and laughs with the Tienanmen butchers, and had vowed things would be different in a Clinton Presidency. But within a year of his taking the oath of office, Bill Clinton did what Ron and his friends wanted him to do: He turned his back on the suffering in China and the principles for which this country supposedly stands. He turned a blind eye to the outrages perpetrated by Beijing, with the result that now our relations with China are at their worst since Nixon opened up contacts there almost twenty-five years ago. I believe that if China had been confronted by a principled American leader who insisted on progress where political freedom and human rights were concerned, and had been told that absent such progress America would no longer be available to China as a place to sell its wares, Beijing would have thought twice before attempting to bully Taiwan in the manner we have just witnessed. So as someone who helped shape and direct that immoral policy, Ron Brown deserves our heartiest condemnation.
Strange how this week has made so clear to me the reasons why I left the Democratic party. And that arrogant, quasi-criminal political establishment, of which the Democratic party is such a crucial element, was given two major black eyes just today. Two establishment candidates from Texas, Democratic Congressman John Bryant, and Republican Congressman Greg Laughlin, were defeated in primary attempts at elective office by insurgent populist outsiders, whose only credentials, as far as I can see, were their lack of connection with that establishment. It is heartening to note that this anti-establishment revolution at the polls happened among registered voters of our country's two-party duopoly, and NOT among that increasing slice of our population like myself, who have chosen to walk away from that entity, and to register as independents. It is my fervent hope that those defeats presage a year where truth will be spoken to power, and where the corrupt and gleaming facade behind which Ed Muskie and Ron Brown worked to betray the ideals of our nation will finally start to crumble.
Whether you find the proceeding inspiring, outrageous, or merely boring, let me hear from you. You may reach me at