“Building Compassionate Populism” Generates Strong Response

My essay, “Building Compassionate Populism,” which OpEd News published Thursday, November 14, has received more comments from readers than any of the articles that were on their homepage Sunday morning. The site automatically places articles with the most page views on its homepage.

Even more encouraging, the comments have been overwhelming positive. You can help keep my piece on the OpEd News homepage if you click on this link. Since it’s a long article, you may want to read only the introduction and conclusion, and scan the rest, which substantiates my argument.

Ideally, I’d like for you to also register on the site and comment. But if you comment here instead, I may post your comment there.

This essay asks readers to briefly set aside some deeply embedded notions and consider a new perspective. The privileged elites who administer our crony capitalism have perverted true liberalism and true conservatism, fomenting a phony “left-right” ideological war that serves to divide and conquer. Rather than trying to defeat each other, those on the “left” and “right” should unite based on shared values to develop a compassionate populism: the 99% for the 100%.

My first comment on the site included:

Several years ago, I began noticing that there are so many different kinds of “conservatives” that it’s hard to place them all under the “conservative” umbrella. Then, as a life-long progressive, I realized that I agree with many of the principles of true conservatism. More recently, I concluded that what are presented as left/right differences don’t reflect genuine liberal and conservative principles, and hence aggravate divisions. Then two weeks ago, the Wikipedia entry on populism, which reports that some populists reject the left-right continuum, led me to Harry Boyte’s lecture on “Populism and John Dewey,” which illuminated the issue. I share this analysis here for the first time and urge you to reconsider some of your own long-held convictions. 

Because “Building Compassionate Populism” challenges readers to set aside certain deeply embedded notions about the “left-right” spectrum, I anticipated resistance to the perspective offered in that essay. So I am pleased that so far, the response has been favorable. Comments submitted include the following:

• In the end, it is only by combining the creative powers of inspired progressives and rational conservatives that transformative change for the common good can be made workable in the real world.
• Thanks. However, to add, now we need to get rid of "conservatives" so that conservatives can come to the rescue.
• Now that's good thinking, produced by a good attitude and point of view. It recognizes what is wrong, and yet also recognizes the wisdom of Gandhi and MLK, who realized that even though truth must prevail over falsehoods, it is only love that effectively overcomes hate, and two wrongs don't make a right. Negative, accusatory, condemning attitudes are counterproductive and only exacerbate the conflict and division. So I am in agreement with Wade about what he has written.
• This was a great article about things that pass through my mind.  Hope we can unite the true parts of both left and right into what they are about.  We have to get the abortion issue off the table, and let people mind their own business, as we also have to turn around Foreign Empire, so we can mind to our own business at home.
• Hmmm, I just thunk a glimmer of a New Left-Right Mythology. Both vital functioning wings of Our National Winged Creature Symbol (whatever that might be) Both becoming More and Better from positive interaction with each other. Perhaps the real power, or strength, lies in the central zone of this symbol...the chest and head...the well nurtured Heart. Where "Left" meets "Right" in collaboration, or co-operation, that reinforces stability and balance of the whole nation.... I guess what i am seeking here is a beginning to the melding of True and Good Morality of Conservatives and Progressives..."Left" and "Right"...that might become the higher morality for the balanced center of Our Culture...The Heart.

I’d like to know what you think about “Building Compassionate Populism”, so I can better decide how to proceed.