Article: The Green Party's Rush Limbaugh

Calling myself the "Green Rush Limbaugh" makes no sense unless I believe that the Green Party has something to say to Limbaugh's listeners. Talk radio kings and queens are almost all corporatists parading as conservatives. The few who aren't, are almost all corporatists parading as liberals. Limbaugh's addiction to Oxycontin hasn't wakened him to the crime of putting pot smokers in jail. Al Franken continues to push the Democratic Party as a common sense alternative to Republican corruption and doesn't say squat about the obvious absence of new ideas coming from the Dems.

If I believe that the "Green Rush Limbaugh" has something to offer Rush's listeners, just what would that be?

First we have to agree on terms a bit. Conservative does not automatically equal anti-environment. Environmentalist does not automatically mean anti-profit. Green doesn't mean left. Green doesn't mean right. Green means different. It means out in front.

The Green Party is based on ten key values. Most Greens came to the party because we were disgusted with politics-as-usual. These key values, like nonviolence, community-based economics and decentralization, were what many Greens needed to get back into politics. When we looked at corrupt Republican and Democratic policies, these ten key values were salve for a weary soul.

I believe that Rush's listeners believe in America, and so do I. I believe that America should lead globally. Every nation on the globe should want to be like us. Not the us we are now, but the us we can be. As the poet Langston Hughes wrote in his anthem

"Let America be America Again"
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

This is the essential lesson of the Green Party. America. The America that believes in love, not in torture. The America that believes women hold up half the sky. The America that makes your throat swell even when its President lets you down...again. The America that we are proud of. Not the America of Coke vs Pepsi, but the America of the powerful defending the weak. Not the America of "Do you want fries with that?" but the America of real promise. Promises as yet not fully delivered.

So, how can we export what we don't have ourselves?

What we can and should export are ideas and ideals. Ben Franklin shows us part of the way. He didn't believe in patents because he felt that humanity as a whole should benefit from any person's creative mind. While this example may not be a perfect one, it does show that Americans are able to think in very new and different ways. The time has come for America to think new again. It's time for the Green Party.

And who knows, the "Green Rush Limbaugh" just might prosper right along side the party. Self-promotion that goes along with promoting others is the sort of self-promotion that wins friends and hopefully influences people. Yelling louder than the other guy, like Bill O'Reilly does so often, is not my style. Like Limbaugh, I am firm in my thinking, and not interested in half-way efforts. Winning is what is needed if Green objectives are to be reached.

Part of my plan is to use the internet to bring ideas from people who are much brighter than I am directly to you, the reader. People like Pat La Marche.

La Marche is running for Governor of Maine. She has run for office in Maine before, and was the Green Party's standard bearer for Vice President in 2004. The Maine Green Independent Party has run candidates for Governor in the past, and Maine's system of citizen-owned elections means that La Marche will have enough money to have a legitimate shot at winning the election. Angus King won the seat as an Independent in the 1990s, and there is every reason to believe that the people of Maine are looking for the sort of alternatives La Marche and the Greens represent.

So, get on your walking shoes if you are a Green in Maine. The La Marche campaign will be looking to you for victory in November 2006, and I will be looking to all of you in future columns.