Don't Let Hillary Housebreak the New New Left

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/19837-dont-let-hillary-housebreak-the-new-new-left

But, as Beinart barely begins to grasp, Cold War liberals incurred a huge price that we all have to keep paying. They helped create the CIA, the garrison state, and the permanent war economy with its military-industrial complex. Through groups like the CIA's American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), which Beinart cites as one of Reuther's great contributions, they helped organize anti-communist coups all over the globe. Under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, they helped spread new, more efficient forms of torture. They fed the rightwing red-baiting they condemned. And, in the cruelest cut of all, they ended up undermining the labor unions and civil rights struggles they sincerely meant to support.

The original New Left understood most of this 50 years ago, which is why many of us refused to take sides in their Cold War and why we went out of our way not to exclude Communists or anyone else from our free speech, civil rights, and anti-war struggles. Beinart still wants to pick a fight over our anti-anti-communism, and has absolutely no clue how much it contributed to whatever success we had.

Today, with the new New Left, we have a chance to do far better, but not if we embrace Beinart's liberal mythology and unending foreign intervention. Nor should we accept Ron Paul's old-fashioned isolationism or any knee-jerk reaction to side uncritically with every Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, and Hussan Rouhani who comes along. With or without Hillary Clinton, but preferably without, the way forward requires less dogmatic international cooperation, as we might finally be seeing in Syria and Iran. We should also learn the real lesson of the Cold War, which Beinart completely misses. Both sides shared the blame for an Orwellian conflict that served selfish and systemic interests, and both sides played their part in bringing us to the very brink of nuclear annihilation.

[LuvNewcastle]

1. After what we've gone through in an all-out war with the Republicans,

it would be a crying shame to turn around and put one in the White House in a few years.

[Teamster Jeff]

2. If we were really in an all out war with Republicans

it would have been pretty much over in 2008.

[DonCoquixote]

3. I know some will hate this message

But we know the Fake "Center" will probably sell Hillary to a desperate Right wing that is scared the country will be pissed off to elect a real prgressive. They were in 2008, just Obama was a centist in Progressive clothing (though still to the left of Hillary.) How much you want to bet that if Hillary loses the dem Nomination, Joe Lie-berman offers her a chance with that "no Label" group?

[LWolf]

4. No hate here.

You've got a point, although I don't believe that Obama is to the left of HRC, and I never did.

[socialist_n_TN]

5. If the "new New Left" is co-opted by HRC ..........

then it's the nNL's own fault. The problem with the New Left in the 60s/70s was that they WERE co-opted by capitalism. Now admittedly the alternative system (Stalinism) left a lot to be desired, but even then there WAS an alternative, i.e., Trotskyism which was the Marxist road not taken. But the appeal of capitalism turned them into Yuppies instead of revolutionary socialists and led to the election of Reagan and the resurgence of capitalism.

ANY Left coalition, at any time, worthy of the capitalized "L" has to take into account the attractions of a "reformed" capitalist system and realize that "reforming" capitalism WILL NEVER WORK! This time we MUST try something new. What we've done the last few times capitalism has run amok has NOT worked. The system will NEVER be reformed into working for the vast majority of the people.

[MisterP]

6. first "Cold War liberals" 1947-89, then "moderation" 1989-2008, then "veal-penning" 2009-16

and now this