Column #24 WHAT ABOUT THE GREENS & RALPH NADER?

(Week 4 - Saturday Aug. 23)

Some people have asked me, "What about the Greens and Ralph Nader?" As America's "third-party" alternative, many have looked to the Greens as a pivotal movement around which a force for fundamental change could possibly gather. In my view, there has been some basis for this hope.

The Greens have for the most part not been involved in the movement for monetary transformation on the Federal level. They have attracted a fair number of activists for local currencies, barter networks, land trusts, and the like, but they have largely stayed clear of taking on the issue of national currency reform.

I was for a time a member of the Green Party, and found the people there to be a fine and dedicated group of souls who talked a great deal about economic issues, but the conversation rarely extended to the nature of money. My Green friends would tell me that this obscure "banking issue" I seemed to be so obsessed with was all very interesting, but right now we have starving people to feed, wars to stop, and a planet to save, so it would just have to wait. I was never able to get them as a group to consider that perhaps this "banking issue" was in fact the very engine that was driving all those problems, and to leave it unaddressed would only insure our ultimate inability to effect transformative change.

The Greens would do well to reclaim the historical roots of their own party. They have an antecedent namesake in the Greenback Party, which was, in fact, a key player in the anti-bank-money populist movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There is an evolution that has proceeded from the populist parties, through the farmer/labor movements, to the progressive/liberal/grassroots politics of more recent times, of which the Green Party is a prime beneficiary. They have a genuine heritage on the monetary issue, if they will awaken to and embrace it. It represents their authentic vehicle to break out of the perceived disgruntled-left-wing-of-the-Democratic-Party ghetto.

The Greens at this point are sometimes deemed to be a radical left-wing import, and not fully American. By re-invoking the true issues of the American Revolution, as opposed to the conventional jingoistic mythology, it could move to the very highest and most patriotic ground. From that pinnacle there is no major constituency it could not speak to. There is no argument from the "major parties" it could not trump. This is a historic opportunity.

The groundwork that has already been laid down by Ralph Nader should be taken a critical step further. He is in the eyes of many the most famous, expert and eloquent (though sometimes a bit demagogic) spokesman on the predations of corporate practice, yet I have never heard him say a word about the ruler of them all, the corporation (Federal Reserve) which has been unconstitutionally granted the charter for money creation. I can't be sure he has never done so, but clearly it has not been the centerpiece of his efforts. Without making it so, the rest of his heroic labors may find limited success on particular issues, but are doomed to overall futility, as it will leave corporate money power still "enthroned" (as Lincoln had warned about).

If Nader and the Green Party had truly picked up on the monetary issue, they would have had the formula for a truly revolutionary program that could transcend all regions of the political and ideological spectrum. The money-creation franchise is the linchpin of the entire globalist corporate order, and it would all come undone if it were removed.

With Ralph Nader as its presidential candidate, the Greens emerged briefly as a force to be reckoned with in American politics in the late '90s. Since then the party has declined, and Nader has moved on to independent runs for the presidency in 2004 and 2008. It would appear that whatever opportunity the Greens and Nader had to be that political force for monetary redemption in America has been largely dissipated. Still, for the sake of the country, one can only hope that it could return?

Richard Kotlarz
richkotlarz@gmail.com

The complete set of columns from this series is posted at the following websites.
http://economictree.blogspot.com/
http://www.concordresolution.org/column.htm