[Sosfbay-discuss] Al Gore as Green Party Candidate?

[eric meece]

Greens are progressives IMO, and liberals. As for Humanist,
I agree that this term implies a rejection of the
transcendent or supernatural that would not apply to many
Greens (including me of course). In fact, if anything,
Green leans spiritual, rejecting the materialist
reductionism that reduces life and consciousness to
mechanical terms. That leads to a mindset that treats the
earth and its living, conscious beings as things to be
manipulated and used as commodities. In this it also
differs from many kinds of Marxism. Many Greens understand
that an inner revolution is going on alongside the outwards
ones; that they are mutually-supporting, interdependent,
and arose out of the '60s movements. The longer versions of
the 10 Key Values states this explicitly.

Greens also support earlier movements as well that are
progressive, and support the separation of church and state
and other schemes to impose a religion on the people.
Humanism can in some versions be as fundamentalist as some
Christians and Moslems.

I agree with the 2-dimensional, circular or diamond-shaped
charts of political positions, and I think you'll find the
Greens end up as the most-typical liberals, in spite of us
being different from the old and conventional left. On the
libertarian party's chart, Greens will end up near the
extreme left or maybe slightly above. On the European
version which has the same elements, things are switched
around. The Libertarian Party naturally puts their
philosophy on the top of the chart, and the
anarchist/totalitarian-statist axis runs up and down. On
the European version, this axis would run from lower right
(libertarian) to upper left (statist). The typical European
"left" is Marxist or socialist and is placed at the left.
The opposite is laissez-faire capitalist at the extreme
right. Greens fall deep in, or in the middle of, the
lower-left quadrant of this chart, and are called
libertarian left; but are still 90 degrees from the
positions of the libertarian party at the lower right,
which that party puts at the top of their own chart. But
for Americans, the lower-left of the European chart equals
"liberal" par excellance in America. That's us! We're the
real thing.

Any Greens can verify this by taking the Libertarian
Party's test at Tapestry Festival, or see similar such
tests online.

Eric the Green/Eric Meece