Ron Radosh is an Adjunct Fellow at the Hudson Institute, an American conservative non-profit think tank based in Washington, D.C.. It was founded in 1961 in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, by futurist, military strategist, and systems theorist Herman Kahn and his colleagues at the RAND Corporation.
The Capital Research Center, a conservative group that seeks to rank non-profits and documents their funding, allocates Hudson as a 7 on its ideological spectrum with 8 being "Free Market Right" and 1 "Radical Left".
Radosh styles himself a conservative watchdog. His page says he is "exposing the ideas and attitudes of the influential American Left Wing."
Now, the article I clicked on in my morning news-surfing is organized around Mr. Radosh's criticism of the New York Times and of President Obama calling for restraint from Israel in Gaza. (Obama went to the length of writing and op-ed in Haaretz). Restraint in assymetrical warfare by the vastly superior side seems like a good thing to me. Calling for it, if in good faith, seems to be prudent, moderate policy.
One of Mr. Radosh's readers commented that he hoped "the 75% of the American Jewish community who helped elect and re-elect Obama are doing some serious soul-searching."
To that gentleman, and to Ron, I had to respond.
Roscoe, no matter how loyally Jewish they might be, they have brains, and the idea of voting for John McCain, a 40-plus-year case of untreated PTSD from Vietnam, and SARAH PALIN, was out of the question for most Americans of good will, Jewish or not.
Then from 2008 through 2012 Obama proceeded to give away the liberal farm, becoming more and more a neocon to the point that for his second term he has hired the non-diplomat John Kerry as his chief diplomat.
But vote in 2012 for a known financial predator, an heir to fortune whose wife drives "a couple of Cadillacs"? Americans just COULDN'T do that. I voted for a Jew in that election, Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party.
I am a lifetime leftist, an original Vietnam Veteran Against the War. But I am utterly disenfranchised. There is no Left Wing in the United States as Europeans understand it.
There never has been. There has never been any significant Leftwing influence WITHIN the American political system comparable to that in a Germany, or Italy, or England (before Tony Blair gutted Old Labour). American government is a center-right/hard-right affair, no matter which Party is in power.
The Green Party is a factor in Europe and other places. Not in America. There are zero socialists of any kind having the remotest influence upon American foreign or domestic policy.
And American mainstream media is rightist. The most-watched TV network and the most listened-to talk show hosts are all rightists.
I am not sure how Mr. Radosh comes by calling the American Left Wing "influential." It barely qualifies as vestigial!
Americans, more than citizens of all other countries, particularly Western countries, have been behaviorally modified to have a knee-jerk reaction against any idea, or meme, to say nothing of actual political action, that might SUGGEST (gasp!) communism or socialism. Even for those who are ground under the weight and fall through the cracks of our tottering post-industrial tertiary-service economy, capitalism must be maintained because otherwise the country might "go communist."
Oh, and (bleep) the environment under Democrats OR Republicans. Obama has been a failed incrementalist on global environmental action, and if the KXL Pipeline becomes operational from the Tar Sands of Alberta, he will have committed an environmental catastrophe.
And he will have done it in conjunction with one of the most right-wing prime ministers in the Western world, Stephen Harper. I don't know how Canadians, who are by and large culturally and socially liberal folks, keep electing him!
With Fukushima looming (I mean, the world is just waiting for the next 7-point earthquake in Japan that splits that damaged facility open like a rotten egg), Obama could be a leader and call unequivocally for massive international response to it.
But no, he's content to play whatever deep geopolitical game he and Kerry think they're playing, which ends up with grotesque realities like ISIS as our ally against Assad and our enemy in Iraq! Incompetence AND cynicism, though I can't remotely see what Obama's self-interest is in it beyond his well-documented general enjoyment of the playing of games, it doesn't make HIS children any safer.
The Influential American Left Wing? Goodness me, Ron Radosh, what America are you looking at, sir?
