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After several decades as one of America’s great public-interest
advocates, Ralph Nader has developed an extraordinary response when people
say they don’t think he should run for president in 2004.
During a Feb. 4 interview on NPR’s “All Things Considered” program,
Nader had this to say when asked about an editorial in The Nation urging
him not to run this year: “It’s a marvelous demonstration by liberals, if
you will, of censorship. Now mind you, running for political office is
every American’s right. Running for political office means free speech
exercise, it means exercising the right of petition, the right of
assembly. And so when they say ‘Do not run,’ they’re not just challenging
and rebutting; they’re crossing that line into censorship, which is
completely unacceptable.”
News anchor Melissa Block followed up: “Wouldn’t censorship, though,
be if anyone were physically preventing you from running? They’re not
saying that you can’t run; they’re asking you not to. They’re asking you
to make that decision for what they consider to be the greater good of the
country.”
Nader: “Well, I don’t ask them not to speak. Why are they asking me
not to speak?”
Block: “Well, I think what they would say is they’re saying, ‘Speak,
but in the forum of debate and not as a candidate.’”
Nader: “In other words, exercise my First Amendment rights outside
the electoral arena, not inside. No, they don’t have a leg to stand on
here. Now challenge, rebuttal, lack of support; they can do all that in
robust debate. But to say ‘Do not run’ to anybody is to say, ‘Do not
speak. Do not petition. Do not assemble. Remain silent.’ That’s just
unacceptable, especially coming from people like the editors of The
Nation.”
Of course Nader has a right to run for president. And others have no
less of a right to urge that he choose not to do so. It makes no sense to
claim that such urging amounts to “censorship.”
Rhetorical overdrive carries with it the danger of conflating
whatever one doesn’t want to hear into some kind of straw caricature. The
editorial in the Feb. 16 edition of The Nation -- titled “An Open Letter
to Ralph Nader” -- provided a set of arguments for why a Nader-in-2004
presidential race would be unwise for the public-interest agenda that he
has long championed. In no way did the editorial urge Nader to “remain
silent.”
Ralph Nader has cogently pointed out anti-democratic aspects of
corporate power and government operations for almost half a century. Now,
it’s far beneath this exemplary citizen to claim that those who ask him
not to run for president this year are seeking to interfere with his First
Amendment rights. Actually, they’re exercising their own rights -- in this
instance, to Nader’s displeasure -- without in any way seeking to infringe
on his.
While Nader is 100 percent correct that he has a right to run for
president, that’s not in dispute. The debate is over the wisdom of running
this year. Like many other people who voted for Nader in 2000, I agree
with The Nation’s editorial. But that’s not the point. Agree with it or
not, there’s no basis for Nader’s canard about “censorship.”
No amount of such red-herring charges will shore up the scant support
for a Nader-for-president campaign this year. When Nader resorts to them,
he seems to be putting up a smokescreen, as if his rationales for a
presidential run in 2004 can’t withstand scrutiny.
Valid political debate can include the assertion that any number of
legitimate actions such as electoral campaigns are not advisable --
whether due to narrowly tactical or broadly strategic reasons -- at a
particular time. Political advocates must be able to have such debates
about tactics and strategies without deferring to charges of “censorship”
along the lines of Nader’s claim during his NPR interview.
For a very long time, Ralph Nader has exemplified the spirit of a key
observation from George Orwell: “If liberty means anything at all, it
means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” Now, many
longtime allies are trying to tell Nader what he doesn’t want to hear
about his planned 2004 presidential race. Without trying to impinge on his
liberty, they are making good use of their own.
_______________________________
Norman Solomon is co-author of “Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn’t
Tell You.”
