www.amconmag.com/2004_06_21/cover.html
June 21, 2004 issue Copyright 2004 The American Conservative Ralph Nader: Conservatively Speaking The long-time progressive makes a pitch for the disenfranchised Right. Ralph Nader recently accepted Pat Buchanans invitation to sit down with us and explain why his third-party presidential bid ought to appeal to c onservatives disaffected with George W Bush. We think readers will be i nterested in the reflections of a man who has been a major figure in Ame rican public life for 40 yearsand who now finds himself that rarest of birds, a conviction politician. Pat Buchanan: Let me start off with foreign policyIraq and the Middle Ea st. You have seen the polls indicating widespread contempt for the Unite d States abroad. Ralph Nader: First of all, we have been supporting despots, dictators, an d oligarchs in all those states for a variety of purposes. they see corporate culture as abandoning the restraints on pe rsonal behavior dictated by their religion and culture. Our corporate po rnography and anything-goes values are profoundly offensive to them. The other thing is that we are supporting the Israeli military regime wit h billions of dollars and ignoring both the Israeli peace movement, whic h is very substantial, and the Palestinian peace movement. They see a nu clear-armed Israel that could wipe out the Middle East in a weekend if i t wanted to. They think that we are on their backs, in their house, undermining their desire to overthrow their own tyrants. PB: Then you would say it is not only Bush who is at fault, but Clinton a nd Bush and Reagan, all the way back? RN: The subservience of our congressional and White House puppets to Isra eli military policy has been consistent. Until 91, any dictator who was anti-Communist was our ally. Did John Kerry show himsel f to be a congressional puppet when he voted to give the president a bla nk check to go to war? There are two sets: Congressional puppets and White House puppets. When the chief puppeteer comes to Washington, the puppets prance. PB: Why do both sets of puppets, support the Sharon/Likud policies in the Middle East rather than the peace movement candidates and leaders in Is rael? RN: That is a good question because the peace movement is broad indeed. They are composed o f former government ministers, existing and former members of the Knesse t, former generals, former combat veterans, former heads of internal sec urity, people from all backgrounds. The answer to your question is that instead of focusing on how to bring a peaceful settlement, both parties concede their independent judgment to the pro-Israeli lobbies in this country because they perceive them as d etermining the margin in some state elections and as sources of funding. They dont appear to agree with Tom Friedman, who wrote that memorable phrase, Ariel Sharon has Arafat under house arrest in Ramallah and Bush under house arrest in the Oval Office. Virtually no member of Congress can say that, and so we come to this para doxical conclusion that there is far more freedom in Israel to discuss t his than there is in the United States, which is providing billions of d ollars in economic and military assistance. You were opposed to the war, and it now appea rs that it has become sort of a bloody stalemate. You said you would bri ng troops out of Iraq within six months. What if the country collapses a nd becomes a haven for terrorists? RN: Under my proposal there would be an international peacekeeping force, and the withdrawal would be a smart withdrawal during which there are i nternationally supervised elections. We would have both military and cor porate withdrawal because the Iraqi people see the corporations are begi nning to take over their economy, including their oil resources. And we would continue humanitarian assistance until the Iraqi people get on the ir feet. We would bring to the forefront during the election autonomies for Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites. So this would not be like a withdrawal in Vietnam where we just barely got out with the helicopters. What is the theory behind this or wh at are the alternatives to corporate economic power? I presume you are n ot talking about state ownership or socialism, or perhaps you are RN: Well, that is what representative government is for, to counteract th e excesses of the monied interests, as Thomas Jefferson said. Because bi g business realizes that the main countervailing force against their exc esses and abuses is government, their goal has been to take over the gov ernment, and they do this with money and politics. They do it by putting their top officials at the Pentagon, Treasury, and Federal Reserve, and they do it by providing job opportunities to retiring members of Congre ss. They have law firms that draft legislation and think-tanks that prov ide ready-made speeches. The quickest way to bring a member of Congress to his or her knees is by shifting industries abroad. Concentrated corporate power violates many principles of capitalism. For example, under capitalism, owners control their property. Under multinat ional corporations, the shareholders dont control their corporation. Un der capitalism, if you cant make the market respond, you sink. U nder capitalism, there is supposed to be freedom of contract. When was t he last time you negotiated a contract with banks or auto dealers? The law of contracts has been wiped out fo r 99 percent of contracts that ordinary consumers sign on to. Corporations get away with co rporate crime, fraud, and abuse. And finally, capitalism is premised on a level playing field; Tell tha t to a small inventor or a small business up against McDonalds or a sof tware programmer up against Microsoft. Giant multinational corporations have no allegiance to any country or com munity other than to control them or abandon them. So what we have now i s the merger of big business and big government to further subsidize cos ts or eliminate risks or guarantee profits by our government. We stop 15 million illegal aliens on our borders each year. There are currently 8- 14 million illegal aliens in the United States. The president is mandate d under the Constitution to defend the States against foreign invasion, and this certainly seems to constitute that. RN: As long as our foreign policy supports dictators and oligarchs, you a re going to have desperate people moving north over the border. The flood of cheap corn into Mexico h as dispossessed over a million Mexican farmers, and, with their families , they either go to the slums or, in their desperation, head north. In addition, I dont think the United States should be in the business of brain-draining skilled talent, especially in the Third World, because w e are importing in the best engineers, scientists, software people, doct ors, entrepreneurs who should be in their countries, building their own countries. We are driving the talent to these shores PB: How do we defend these shores? RN: I dont believe in giving visas to software people from the Third Wor ld when we have got all kinds of unemployed software people here. This is the reason the Wall Street Jo urnal is for an open-borders policy: they want a cheap-wage policy. One is to raise the minimum wage to th e purchasing-power level of 1968$8 an hourand then, in another year, r aise it to $10 an hour because the economy since 1968 has doubled in pro duction per capita. Why wouldnt that cause not 15 million, but 3 million to head str aight north where they could be making 20 times what they can make minim um wage in Mexico? RN: Because 14 million Americans are unemployed or part-time employed who want full employment or have given up looking for jobs. The more the mi nimum wage goes up, the more they will do so-called work that Americans wont do. It is hard to blame d esperately poor people who want to feed their families and are willing t o work their heads off. You have to start with Washington and Wall Stree t PB: Should illegal aliens be entitled to social-welfare benefits, even th ough they are not citizens and broke into the country? RN: I think they should be given all the fair-labor standards and all the rights and benefits of...
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