On Tuesday of this week Tony Blair announced that May 5, 2005
would be the date of the British General Election. As a liberal
Englishman and a traditional Labour voter, this puts me in
something of a quandary.
The Labour Party has mutated over the past four years into
nothing more than an embarrassing and pathetic puppy dog of the
Bush administration. We should be proud of the “special
relationship” and the cordial history between the United
States and Britain, and I always think that Britain should support
the United States and vice versa ““ when we’re both
doing good.
But Blair and his team of yes-men have been unflinching in their
support for the invasion of Iraq, the subsequent incarceration of
uncharged men in Guantanamo Bay and a host of other wholly
illiberal actions, both domestic and international.
It is a tragedy for all British progressives. The Labour Party
has a proud history of siding with working people and pursuing
peace and internationalism. I even voted for Blair in 2001 before
his so-called “war on terror.”
But who do I vote for now? Like the United States, Britain has a
two-party system, which means that if I don’t go for Blair,
my only meaningful vote could be cast for the Conservative Party,
which is a repugnant idea.
But the fact that the Labour Party and the Conservative Party
have grown so depressingly close to each other is not a purely
British phenomenon.
The homogenization of the political sphere is something that has
engulfed the whole of the West since the end of the Cold War. When
the Soviet Union fell, we were told that we lived in a
“post-ideological age.”
Since then the mainstream left has lacked the “big
ideas.” We have grudgingly accepted rampant and increasingly
untrammeled capitalism without a fight, and we have accepted the
slander of those on the right who have tried ““ quite
successfully ““ to couple the murderous tyranny of the Soviet
Union with any moderately collectivist beliefs.
As a result the Democratic Party in the United States, the
Labour Party in Britain and the Social Democratic parties in
France, Germany and Spain have all become tired and uninspiring
pragmatists.
There are a few contemporary visionaries, but they’re not
who you might think. The true idealists of our time are the
neo-conservatives.
In my opinion, their beliefs are perverse, but they are being
framed in the context of a “grand democratizing vision”
by some genuine “dreamers” like Paul Wolfowitz. Anyone
who listens to one of Bush’s speeches is immediately struck
not only by his inability to speak the English language, but also
by how the messianic speech-writer gushes about pursuing “the
expansion of freedom in all the world.”
It’s all, on the whole, crude propaganda, but it’s
the conservatives who are the people talking about creating a
better world when it should be us on the left. It’s not hard
to expose their transparent idealism; everyone just needs to do a
little homework.
If a Republican tells you that they are on an moral quest to
free the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein, just ask them why Ronald
Reagan and Donald Rumsfeld plied him with weapons all through
Hussein’s worst atrocities ““ including the hideous
gassing of his own people.
When a Republican says that the oppositionist left is siding
with the Islamic fundamentalists (a blatant absurdity), ask them
who was president when the CIA was training Bin Laden and his army
of Jihadists in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
I think the United States is by far the greatest country in the
world, and there was some hope that this noble and generous
republic could be pushed in the right direction on Sunday when
Ralph Nader came to campus to stretch political debate in an
optimistic direction.
But whether you agree with his ideas, his outspokenness and
capacity to dream of a better world make him a refreshing antidote
to the nauseous John Kerry. Just look at Nader’s flier on
campus ““ it said in big letters, “Troops out of
Iraq.”
Why didn’t Kerry come with big ideas like that? Where were
the promises of health care for all Americans? Surely that would
have inspired people and gotten them out to vote in larger
numbers.
It is only because the Republicans have a handle on the
political agenda that these reasonable proposals are deemed too
outlandish and dangerous to mention in an electoral campaign.
The left across the world must fight on their own turf against
the forces of reaction. That turf is far from embarrassing. In
fact, it embodies all that should be valued about our species
““ equality, empathy, tolerance, peace and solidarity.
Bush’s Republican Party, conversely, openly represent a
socially destructive greed (tax cuts for the rich) and an extremely
dangerous “perpetual war” (Iran, anyone?).
I know which side I’d rather be on.
Kennard is a third-year history student. E-mail him at
mkennard@media.ucla.edu.