The Unity Progress Manifesto

How anyone who is not a right winger can remain in the same party as Rahm Emanuel, the Blue Dogs, and even Steny Hoyer is beyond me.

Americans MUST form a party similar to the NDP-Canada party or they will continue to decline into poverty and homelessness due to lower incomes and lack of enough jobs. And the health situation of many, many Americans will continue to deteriorate due to a combination of lack of health care, and in some cases due to the wrong health care due to overly financial incentives in the current health system.

BOTH mainstream US parties are right-wing parties. Repeat that to yourself at least twice a day so you don't forget it. If you are not a right winger and yet you give money or time to the Democratic Party in the US, you are actually working against your own interests. This is worse than being totally apolitical and reserving all of your time and money for things other than politics.

All existing non-right wing parties in the US have to be be unified. Even the NDP-Canada party, as relatively successful as it is, suffers from lack of unity with the Greens in Canada. For example, the NDP (and the Greens for that matter) would be in charge in British Columbia right now were it not for the Greens siphoning off a substantial number of what would otherwise be NDP votes.

The NDP and the Greens in both the USA and Canada, assuming they can't unify into one party, (and assuming the US ever has a NDP) should at least sign a promise that they will join forces to form governments whenever that is possible.

Existing American politicians who are not right wingers have no business being in the Democratic Party. At the very least, they are living in the past. For two brief periods of time, from roughly 1935 until about 1950, and then from roughly 1961 to 1975, the Democrats were to some degree a non-right wing party. In other words, they were mostly a centrist party or a very small ways to the left. From 1975-1980, the Democrats under Carter were mostly but not 100% somewhat right of center.

But that is all history, and as of 2009, it has become obvious that the Democrats are not going to be returning to their centrist roots for at least several decades, assuming they ever do so at all. The country could easily be a military or fascist dictatorship by the time the Democrats (might have) returned to being centrist.

"Oh well, Nancy and Barrack, you had your chance, and you insisted on staying way out there in right field while the country went to hell. Now, be good and it's off to the camps with you." Laugh out loud.

The bottom line is simple yet not very well known: The Democrats have been a right wing party, and a fairly hard one at that, for just about 30 years now. And they will remain so for at least 30 years more! They have clearly signed on to a second generation of being right wing. So if my math is correct, it will be at least 2040 before the Democrats might possibly become a centrist party again.

The problem with waiting around until the Democrats become non-right wing again, assuming they ever do which, as I said, is a dubious assumption, is that the US is literally disintegrating due in part to the total absence of the non right-wing viewpoint in the operation of society. People are getting sick and dying for lack of health care, and due to unemployment and homelessness and so forth. Waiting around is simply a luxury that can no longer be afforded.

Dennis Kucinich, Bernie Sanders, and so on and so forth must stop waiting and start doing, by forming a new party. They can and should use NDP-Canada as a prototype. Bernie Sanders is a nice guy, but ultimately, being "a man without a party" is kind of lame, at least until parties are completely history.

In the USA, progressives face a dual challenge. First, they have to get a viable non-right wing party established in the first place. And second, they have to unify non-progressives into that newly formulated party.

A new party, as opposed to going forward with one of the current, obscure non right-wing parties, is needed due to the current atomization caused by the existence of numerous parties that are completely disunified, due to the staleness and long histories of futility of the current, obscure parties, and due to negative caricatures that have been cemented in consciousness over many years.

Terminology demonized by propaganda has to be avoided with the new party. Specifically for example, the new US party should avoid self-defeating terminology such as use of the word "socialist".

The Green party is stigmatized in both the US and Canada as a one issue party that is not generally qualified to govern. US Greens should agree to fold themselves into NDP-US, which will in turn espouse very strong pro-environment policies.

Americans, if they were smart, could simply formulate a NDP-US Party, which would be a fresh start for non-right wing interests in the country. Although NDP-Canada might not officially or formally help in the establishment of NDP-USA, it certainly would not stand in the way when individual members of and supporters of NDP-Canada assisted in the formation of NDP-USA.

Eventually, there would be a synergistic feedback loop going both ways between the NDP-Canada Party and the NDP-USA party. Each party would be strengthened by the other one.

[The above was in response to this article.]