Posted on 08/02/2004 2:08:52 PM PDT by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
On the first day of the Democratic national convention, Andrew Stern, the head of the 1.6 million-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU), dropped a bombshell in an interview with The Washington Post. He said that both organized labor and the Democratic Party might be better off in the long run if Sen. John Kerry lost the presidential election this fall. Stern´s remarks were quickly rebuked by AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, who pledged anew his support for Kerry. However, the SEIU is the largest and fastest growing union in the AFL-CIO and has banded together with other expanding factions of the labor movement to push for a more radical-left agenda than the Democratic Party is presenting this time around.
Stern sees a “deep crisis” on the left. The Kerry-Edwards ticket is trying to identify itself with the moderate-liberal legacy of the Clinton Administration, which Stern also criticized as having been harmful to “reform.” The SEIU had been an early supporter of Howard Dean, especially when he was the darling of the anti-war movement. Dean re-ignited the mythology of the New Left of the 1960s, but the Democratic establishment rallied around Kerry to head off another McGovernite debacle.
The SEIU´s involvement in the antiwar movement was independent of the Dean bubble. At its national convention this June in San Francisco, the SEIU adopted foreign policy resolutions which included calls for “An end to the U.S. Occupation of Iraq,” and “The redirecting of the nation's resources from inflated military spending to meeting the needs of working families for health care, education, a clean environment, housing and a decent standard of living.” And to put meaning into its claim as an “international union,” the SEIU platform repeated a statement made in the letter Stern sent to President Bush in January, 2003 opposing a war with Iraq. That statement claimed, “The goal of our foreign policy must be to promote a safer and more just world - promoting peaceful, multilateral solutions for disputes” and “must give high priority to improving the lives of people around the world.” The SEIU believes that forcefully removing Saddam Hussein from power violated these principles.
The Democratic platform takes a very different approach. It attacks the Bush administration for “badly exaggerat[ing] its case [for war], particularly with respect to weapons of mass destruction and the connection between Saddam's government and al-Qaeda.” However, now that the U.S. has overthrown the Saddam regime, it “cannot allow a failed state in Iraq that inevitably would become a haven for terrorists and a destabilizing force in the Middle East.”
The Democratic platform also calls for adding 40,000 troops to the U.S. military, and doubling the strength of special operations units, which are used in unconventional warfare and anti-terrorism actions. In his acceptance speech for the vice-presidential nomination, Sen. John Edwards cited the need to “strengthen and modernize our military” and said in regard to Iraq, “We'll win this war because of the strength and courage of our own people.”
The SEIU is a member of the New Unity Partnership, which also includes the Laborers' International Union of North America, the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union, and the United Brotherhood of Carpenters. The wing of the union movement representing the most unskilled and lowest paid workers has always been the most radical in its demands. Before their merger, the AFL, which represented skilled craft workers, and the CIO, which represented the unskilled, were often bitter political rivals.
During the rise of the United States to world economic leadership, the bulk of the “working class” in industry was elevated to middle class living standards. This was a great success story and a key reason why American politics have been more stable, moderate and realistic compared to what other countries have had to suffer with cycles of demagogues, suicidal policies, and mob violence. Workers who could afford to own homes and send their kids to college where not vulnerable to calls for a Marxist proletarian revolution.
Unfortunately, industrial decline has eliminated millions of middle-class blue collar jobs as America´s “labor aristocracy” has been undermined by cheaper foreign production.. The balance of power within the labor movement has shifted away from the “hard hats,” who wave the U.S. flag from their pickup trucks and send their kids into the military. They confronted the New Left in the streets in the 1960s and emerged as Reagan Democrats in the 1980s. The irony for Republicans is that by embracing the “free trade” policies pushed by corporate interests whose loyalty to the nation and its values is questionable at best, they have decimated the most patriotic and socially conservative segment of the labor movement.
As the number of workers in the shrinking industrial sector has declined, so has that sector´s influence in the labor movement. Service and government-sector unions have recruited members of growing sectors in the economy – service workers and government employees, whose interests and ideologies are much further to the left.
A key feature of the New Unity Partnership is the high percentage of immigrant workers they represent, including large numbers who are in the United States illegally. The SEIU claims to be the nation´s largest immigrant union and has stressed the need “to build a powerful, new immigrant electorate.” The SEIU strategy is to win a complete amnesty for illegal aliens to pave the way for their recruitment as left-wing voters. They have rejected President George W. Bush´s plan for an “earned” legal status through employment because it does not clear a path to full and immediate political rights. The SEIU urges its members to participate in politics even if they are not citizens or even legal residents. Its website states, “While we may not all be able to vote, we can all participate. If you can´t vote, you still have a voice. You can make phone calls, walk precincts, and pass out literature to ensure that everyone who is eligible to vote can.” The union itself has raised about $65 million for use in this year´s political campaigns.
The other unions in the New Unity Partnership coalition are also heavily involved in protecting massive illegal immigration, which has provided them with so many members. LIU resolutions call for “effective and far reaching reform legalizing undocumented workers and oppose current guest worker programs.” These sentiments are shared by all groups on the far left.
Those who want to radically transform the United States need to create a new proletariat which is as alienated from American society on class, ethnic, and cultural grounds as leftist intellectuals are alienated on ideological grounds. Drawing more illegal aliens into the country is the strategy for creating such a movement. In a evenly divided electorate, the influx of millions of foreign-born voters skewed towards one end of the political spectrum would be decisive. Thus behind the hiring of a few more janitors, kitchen helpers, and day laborers lurks the far more ambitious project of importing revolution.
Hispanics are going to save this country from anti Christian beliefs... you should be grateful; the roots of the pervesions that began in Europe will die in America because of the Hispanic belief in God...
Why do you insist on muddling and avoiding direct statements by saying "what is your point" and "what are you talking about?" I took debate and have seen this shtick before, its not new its just tiresome.
How about you think it over before you post?
BTW, what I meant by Zell Millerite is those conservatives who rather go out of their way to push and promote a Zell Miller rather than help their fellow conservatives.
I am asking you to clarify your statement.
ok I can play your word games too.
What is your point?
I asked you to clarify this statement:
Because unlike your brothers there is a possibility they might be open to "selling out" for the social conservatism increasely less represented by the increasingly radically socially left DNC.
"That makes no sense." (Your type of posting is fun!)
There is no helping Zel he has retired, and as a wedge into southern dems he is very useful in deprogramming them. I for one see no drawback in having him speak at the convention, and as for ideological purity-compared to (R)nold and McCain and Rudy, he's the most conservative. "So what is your point?"
I question why Zell Miller would be invited to speak and not someone like Alan Keyes. Keyes is more conservative than HE is.
Why can't they save Mexico or many other hispanic countries? Only ours? hmmmm....
Very true -- and it seems the Irish and hispanics are the worst when it comes to that.
In that case I see your point. (See how much better it is to explain rather than assert?)
Yes, Keyes is probably the most conservative candidate the GOP has had for years and they won't embrace him. I think it is the embittered, grudge carrying nature the RNC has against candidates that don't shut their mouths when the grand poohbahs say the race is over, like they did in CA to McClintock.
That or it is just that the RNC worries Keyes will be "too conservative" for primetime. Either way is bad for conservatism I agree.
Either him OR McClintock...I took a look at the speakers list and its a RINO parade. Somehow I don't see their speeches being a Buchanan redux.
Half the Anglo-Europeans can't even save your own religion without giving it away to liberal cause... how in the hell are are they going to stop the liberal socialist from steam rolling the rest of the culture..
Europe is of the past... it is a dying culture.
Sometimes it can be an annoying feature *LOL* Religion ought not to be just another checkoff point on one's ethnicity.
Forget about liberalizing religion, in Western Europe it's unchurched secularism and that's leaving a gate open for radical islamism. I disagree that European culture is dying though, but then I should ask for a bit of clarificaton first.
Just fishing ;)
They're paranoid about Patty J's speach from those years ago. I have to imagine that is the reason they have no conservatives speaking. But if we take ourselves out of the loop for a second (which I don't normally recommend because that's how you get marginalized) this strategy, assuming its ONLY a strategy and not a window into their souls, is quite clever when you talk about the reaching out we were talking about earlier. Rudy is wildly popular, so is the actor who called himself a Republican, and McCain has a following within the GOP's wing of self-hatred "independence" from the party. So there is a chance for some reaching out going on assuming the base is wrapped up...But the wild card is the base, who from all accounts including yours is feeling disenfranchised and suspicious...I'm one of them, but I'll put on my Optimistic Cap that I've been trying to tell everyone to take off at the end of the evening and hope that its only a fake to the left, not a sign of a "New" Republican Party.
Because the US has all the lawyers ready to help them :/
They've been dying since the brain drain from WWI. Then their kids sold their souls to the Reds breathing down their throats for "peace at any cost" and can't break free of their socialist policies today.
That being said your comment about Mexicans saving America is alittle, well, "loco" considering whites here have nothing in common with Europeans. (Except the Democrat French Party)
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