Is Ralph Nader an Unreasonable Man? (AlterNet)

[marmar]

Is Ralph Nader an Unreasonable Man?

By Chuleenan Svetvilas, AlterNet. Posted March 9, 2007.



A new documentary directed by Steve Skrovan and Henriette Mantel asks viewers to decide whether Nader was a man of principle or a man who fell behind the times.

What Is Ralph Nader's Legacy? An Unreasonable Man tries to answer this question as it chronicles Ralph Nader's life and career as a public interest attorney, consumer advocate, and presidential candidate. The two-hour documentary opens with a George Bernard Shaw quote: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." This is the theme the film is intent on proving -- that Nader is a man of uncompromising principles and it is those principles that have guided his decisions throughout his career.

The first scene shows Nader announcing his 2004 presidential candidacy followed by James Carville's response, claiming that there was no other person on the face of the earth for whom he had greater contempt than Nader. Nation magazine columnist Eric Alterman proceeds to thank Nader for the Iraq war, the tax cuts, the destruction of the environment and the destruction of the Constitution. Alterman and journalism professor Todd Gitlin later describe Nader as a "megalomaniac" and "intellectually dishonest," among other things. Ouch.

Clearly, many people blame Nader as the reason Al Gore lost the election in 2000, and they were even angrier when he decided to run again in 2004. Directors Steve Skrovan and Henriette Mantel, who formerly worked for Nader in the late '70s, set out to remind us of his career as an unparalleled advocate for consumer protection and to examine whether Nader deserves to be the Democrats' scapegoat.

Over the years, Nader has crafted a stunning track record on behalf of consumers, including the establishment of government agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the passage of landmark legislation, including automobile safety laws, the Freedom of Information Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act, as well as the founding of numerous public interest organizations. He and his various public interest organizations have been responsible for numerous consumer protections, such as making air bags and seatbelts standard car features and product labeling de rigueur. ....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/story/48983/

[herbbrown]

1. Thank Ralph Nader

next time you hear about you, your family, or anyone who got in a car accident and came out alive. Ralph Nader is an American Hero, this is something the Clinton republican lite crowd can never take away!

[rainy]

2. Nader is a good man.

Al Gore won. Nader had nothing to do with Bush winning. The crime family would have had to steal more votes that's all.

[mrgorth]

3. A great man indeed

but he's a charicature now. Hey, how about running for senate, or congress, or fucking mayor of timbucktoo first?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

4. If Nader had not run in 2000, the war in Iraq would not have happened.

He is undoubtedly a man of strong and admirable moral principles. I just wish he weren't such a goddamn fool.

[rainy]

5. You don't think they would have stolen the election anyway.

I'm sure they had all the numbers worked out as to just how much to steal.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

7. No, I don't, and I doubt that deep down you believe that either.

If you really did believe that the apparatus of state was as thoroughly controlled by the Republicans as that, and that the democratic process was pointless, I don't think you'd bother posting on a website like this one.

[enough already]

12. If our own party would actually adopt Nader's principles, which you say you admire....

.....then he wouldn't have to run. If you want to get pissed at someone, get pissed at our own sell-out party.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

16. If the Democrats (not my party, by the way) adopted Nader's principles, the Republicans would win.

FWIW, I'm not a Democrat, never have been and never will be; for reasons that my profile should make obvious. I generally vote Labour.

If you want to accuse the Democrats of "selling out", fair enough, but the fee they get paid - electability - makes it well worth while. The accusation that todays Democrats are less liberal than their predecessors is also one worth questioning.

[Botany]

6. Ralph is dead to me now.

"There is no difference between Al Gore and George W Bush." Nader 2000

And to say the 90,000 votes he got in FL in 2000 did not effect that state
is laughable. BTW Ralph ran T.V. spots that were paid for by republicans.

[AshevilleGuy]

9. Thank you. There is NO WAY that

anyone who was informed about any issue could have honestly said that there was no difference between Gore and the incubus in 2000. He had to have known better; it was just an excuse for him to run and to feed his hugely narcissistic ego - he simply didn't care. How could anyone have ignored how dangerous electing bush would be?? I simply can't fathom it.

The ability of the repukes to steal FLA depended upon bush getting a certain threshhold number of votes there. Obviously at *some* point Gore would have gotten so many that there would not have been a way for bush to steal it - had he gotten most of the 90,000, it would certianly have been enough to prevent what did happen.

[zulchzulu]

8. I'll post a video I shot of Nader in 2004 this weekend...

If you actually listen to what he says, he is absolutely correct on nearly every point. The tragedy is that we are a duopoly party system that doesn't allow for third or fourth party candidates to be viable, due mostly to the MSM and lack of REAL campaign finance reform.

Nader is a very smart man. It's easy to demonize him because he snips away some votes in the elections...people want choices.

[libodem]

10. I blame Ralph for all the current pollution in the world

and all the dead in Iraq. I hate him! He accepts Republican money and knows where it came from. He should have stayed out of the races.

[ProudDad]

13. Kerry took 100 times as much

"republican" money as Ralph did...

Ralph is more responsible for the DIMUNITION of pollution in the world than any other single person...

bush invaded Iraq.



Get a grip... :shrug:

[ProudDad]

11. For all you Nader haters

In Ralph's own words: "Well-intentioned cowards," he called his critics, whom he finds unforgivably tolerant of a poisoned system in which both major candidates dance on strings controlled by corporate villains. "They're otherwise good people. They just don't have the courage of their forebears."

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,87827,00.html

Well-intentioned cowards -- I like that...



And from another source:

"It is no good challenging Bush without challenging the system that produced him - a system in which big money, not ideas, selects the candidates and then backs both sides to make sure it picks the winner. Since Gore and the Democrats were not only complicit in that system but abused it to their own ends while in office, they were incapable of taking on that task even if they had wanted to. It took an outsider. Nader alone provided a meaningful choice in what is rapidly becoming a multimillion-dollar, corporate-sponsored charade, masquerading as democracy.

Nader was right not because there was no difference between the two main parties but because there was insufficient difference. The Democrats' pitch to potential Nader supporters was: "At least we're not Republicans." The 2.7m people who voted for Nader felt they wanted more from democracy than that. "

http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0416-01.htm



That pretty much says it for me...

we want a hell of a lot more from democracy than more of the same corporate bullshit...

-----------------------------------------

Just one example - the bankruptcy bill

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0312-03.htm

18 Dems voted for -- 25 Against -- that's not good enough...

[wyldwolf]

14. no one denies the contributions Nader made before 2000

[AtomicKitten]

15. *