The emerging left-right alliance to dismantle the corporate state
by Ralph Nader

Maybe 10 years ago one of my techwriting coworkers suggested that a good idea would be to combine several of the third parties into one political entity… that would give common sense a half-decent chance of prevailing at election time. I thought he was on to something. And still do. Aside from the mechanical problems of getting all the decent alternative parties together—from the leadership on down, satisfying the intellectual idealists that the platforms can be somehow compromised and melded—you’re going to have to have candidates. Which basically kills the concept. No way the Greens, the Libertarians, the Constitutionalists, the Natural Law-ers, etc. are going to come together to pick a winner.

On the other hand, it’s not hard to conceive that alternative-party candidates, or even anti-establishment forces in the two ossified dinosaur parties, agree to a general statement of principles or political program that might look like the following:

Obey and uphold the Constitution.
Transition any decent unconstitutional program to the private sector humanely.

Funny, that’s about all you need to have in your political program. We’ve discovered some key liberating ideas that aren’t covered by mere adherence to the Constitution—such as the true nature of the federal ‘income’ tax code, per Hendrickson—but not many. Just get out a copy of the Constitution and read it. [By the way, at the time of its signing the Constitution was intended by the founders to be read by literally everyone.] Pay close attention to the 9th Amendment, which says “just because we didn’t specifically list your freedoms here doesn’t mean you don’t have them,” and the 10th Amendment, which says, “unless a federal government power is specifically enumerated here, the federal government does NOT have that power.” Period. Continue reading →