"Well, guess what happened," said a wonderfully animated Bernie. "Philip Morris was very upset. They make money by poisoning children and people and creating cancer for those people. And Philip Morris was very upset that their profits were being impacted because they could no longer cause cancer to the people of Uruguay." Long story short, they are now in one of NAFTA's dispute tribunals seeking a financial settlement from the country "because the government of Uruguay tried to protect their children."
With his passion and straight talk, the grumpy old Democratic Socialist from Brooklyn, the University of Chicago, and Vermont has brought back to life an idealism that has not been on the national agenda since the early 1960s. Not since Michael Harrington wrote The Other America and the New Left Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) worked to create "an interracial movement of the poor." America's war in Southeast Asia -- and the spectacular growth of the anti-war movement -- overwhelmed our domestic agenda while LBJ's War on Poverty became an argument that Cold War liberals used to support neo-colonial intervention.
This history should make us wary about the danger of trying to ignore foreign policy the way Our Revolution is now trying to do. An endless war in the Greater Middle East will only strengthen the hand of Big Oil as it stands in the way of seriously combatting global climate change. An endless "war on terror" will further empower the military-industrial complex as it diverts resources needed for social reform. And a morally obtuse silence on murderous no-win wars will corrupt the idealism we need to build a decent world.
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