From the Left
/Politics
Israel, the Hermit Kingdom
"The world is kind of deserting Israel right now," Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) remarked after meeting with members of the pro-Israel lobby American Israel Public Affairs Committee. "So they're worried about that."
Their concern is warranted. Less than six months after Hamas attacked on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people with brutality that sparked ...Read more
What's Left 7: Health Care Is a Human Right
Liberals believe a compromise that gets us closer to a goal is better than no progress at all. But compromise can lead to the dead end of dilution and a false sense of resolution.
The early 20th-century progressive and presidential candidate Robert "Fighting Bob" La Follette argued that politics played into different a psychological dynamic. "...Read more
What's Left 6: Abolish Homelessness Now
Homelessness is the single most powerful indictment of capitalism, the embodiment of human disposability, the ultimate expression of callous cruelty. In this nation where one out of 16 rental homes is vacant at any given time, one in 600 Americans (550,000) sleeps outside. An additional 3.7 million people, the so-called hidden homeless -- one ...Read more
What's Left 5: Let's Declare War On Economic Insecurity
Wages high enough to cover basic expenses are only the beginning of the Left's struggle to eliminate economic insecurity.
We must also fight for workers' rights on the job, as well as a robust and sturdy social safety net to protect people when they find themselves out of work. Americans suffer the worst worker benefits of major developed ...Read more
What's Left 4: We Need a Real Minimum Wage
When Gallup pollsters ask Americans what causes them the most stress and worry, personal economic concerns -- the cost of living, lack of money, the gap between rich and poor, difficulty finding a job or, if they're employed, low wages -- consistently come in first, so much so that they can't imagine saving for the future. General economic ...Read more
What's Left 3: What if We Had $4.5 Trillion a Year To Spend on Ordinary People?
The $1.6 trillion we waste each year on the Pentagon is an irresistible target for leftists looking for funds to appropriate to the human wants and needs that are currently going un- and under-addressed. Let's redirect those funds to something more worthwhile than slaughtering innocent people around the planet -- i.e., anything else. But why ...Read more
What's Left 2: We're a Rich Country. Let's Act Like It.
Lyndon Johnson, cautioned that his support of the Civil Rights Act was too bold and politically risky, famously responded: "What else is the presidency for?"
The United States of America is one of the richest, if not the richest, nation-states in the history of the world. It also is the most unequal. So its people live in misery and ...Read more
What's Left
We Americans are repeatedly told that the United States is a conservative country in which the 50-yard line of ideology is situated significantly to the right of the Western European representative democracies from which our political culture derives and to which we are most often compared. But there is a gaping chasm between the policy ...Read more
Official Lies Aren't What They Used to Be
The government's services keep getting worse. Even their lies.
The Bushies told us we had to invade Afghanistan to catch Osama bin Laden and then to go into Iraq because Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. As the Pentagon knew, bin Laden was already in Pakistan; as Hans Blix and Scott Ritter told us, there was no evidence Saddam had...Read more
Death to the Credentialocracy
The summer after junior year, my college expelled me. Six years later, I returned and graduated with honors. During the interregnum, I worked. But finding a decent job was tough.
No matter how easy or rote the gig, every prospective employer listed a bachelor's degree as a prerequisite to apply. I drifted from temp work to short-term project,...Read more
When the Constitution Threatens Democracy
The Supreme Court faces a quandary: It must choose between democracy and the Constitution.
Compared to Trump v. Anderson, the notorious case of Bush v. Gore was a straightforward affair: It should not have been heard. Because elections are administered by the states, the Florida Supreme Court's 2000 ruling ought to have been the last word. The ...Read more
Ceasefire in Gaza, an Offer Israel Can't Refuse -- Yet It Is
The Left is doing something right.
And it's something that I initially disagreed with, even though I didn't comment in a public space.
When Israel overreacted to Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on western Israel with a brutal saturation bombing campaign against the Palestinian civilian population of the Gaza Strip, defenders of human rights, antiwar ...Read more
Victimhood or Vengeance? Israel Wants Both
Victimhood or vengeance: choose one.
You can't have both.
Israel is about to learn that. Supporters of Israel's government (as opposed to Israel writ large, which includes millions of Israelis who distrust their government) ask: Why are so few people still talking about Oct. 7? "It is striking and in some ways shocking that the brutality of ...Read more