Global

Gloomily aware that Al Gore is not setting the campaign trail on fire, Democrats are already invoking the specter of George W. Bush stocking the U.S. Supreme Court with right-wing fanatics. Take People For the American Way, a liberal pressure group. Last month, a report from this outfit quavered that the Court is "just one or two new justices away from curtailing or abolishing fundamental rights that millions of Americans take for granted."

We hear this sort of refrain every four years. This time around, the alarums are becoming especially shrill because the Democrats fear that with little of substance separating the two major candidates, many possible Gore voters will either stay at home or vote for Ralph Nader. What better way to drag these strays back into the fold than to tell them that by 2002, the Court could be stocked by Bush with two or three more justices like Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas, eager to drag the country into the Middle Ages, annul Roe v. Wade, and put the back-street abortionists back in business.

AUSTIN, Texas -- As Sherlock Holmes once explained to Watson, the dog that did NOT bark in the night is the key to the case. Our current presidential campaign is the sound of no dogs barking.

Here we sit, complacently listening to the finest minds of our generation (?) tell us that all we have to worry about is whether to include drugs in Medicare and how to fix Social Security, and that building this bonkers missile defense system is a dandy idea.

When the lights go out this summer -- now there's a dog barking in the night -- I suggest that you light a few candles and curl up with Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth Century World by J.R. McNeill (and you can skip the charts and graphs).

AUSTIN, Texas -- We're at an interesting point in our discussions of globalization, since we are just starting to think about how to think about it. And we're also at one of those rare points when you can see the conventional wisdom start to harden into something akin to an ideology. Or we could just think of this as The Tom Friedman Problem.

Thomas Friedman is the foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times and one of the smartest, best-informed and most persuasive people around. His columns are usually irresistibly sensible, and he is in the Golden Rolodex, making frequent appearances on television chat shows. He is also the author of The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization, a book I believe will be featured in the intellectual histories of our time.

Bad Ralph! Bad Ralph

From coast to coast, some big newspapers have been scolding Ralph Nader lately. Why? Because he's running for president, and a lot of people -- according to a recent national poll, 7 percent of the electorate -- intend to vote for him.

Yikes! The outspoken foe of corporate power is really making a nuisance of himself. So, certain media heavyweights are now flailing at him with tons of rolled-up newspapers.

"Ralph Nader's long history of public service championing the causes of consumers, the environment and economic justice automatically commands respect," the New York Times declared in its lead editorial on the last day of June. "But in running for president as the nominee of the Green Party, he is engaging in a self-indulgent exercise that will distract voters from the clear-cut choice represented by the major party candidates."

Many millions of Americans are repelled by this "clear-cut choice" between Al Gore and George W. Bush. But the Times proclaimed that "the public deserves to see the major party candidates compete on an uncluttered playing field." (What did we do to deserve this?)

There was an affecting moment, back in 1996, when Bill Clinton and Phil Knight of Nike clasped each other warmly in the Rose Garden, and hailed the birth of the Apparel Industry Partnership. At his best, as always when enjoying consummations, President Bill hailed the partnership as "an unprecedented coming together" of industry, labor, church and human rights groups, united in their resolve to confront the issue of labor exploitation in sweatshops overseas. Companies abiding by a code of conduct would be rewarded with a "No Sweat" label.

Two years rolled by, and the Apparel Industry Partnership gave birth to a lovely child, the Fair Labor Association. News stories did not dwell on the fact that the labor rep on the partnership, UNITE, and the largest church group, the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, had both quit, protesting the failure of the group to consider the explosive topics of wages and the right to organize.

George W. Bush wants black and brown Americans to know that he truly loves us, so very, very much.

In his acceptance speech at the Republican Party’s presidential nominating convention, Bush delivered a message, which sounded at times more like Robert F. Kennedy than Ronald Reagan. Greatness is not defined by “wealth,” but “is found when American character and American courage overcome American challenges,” Bush declared. “We heard it in the civil rights movement, when brave men and women did not say, ‘We shall cope,’ or ‘We shall see.’ They said, ‘We shall overcome’.”

Bush recognized that contemporary America was challenged with fundamental social problems. “When these problems aren’t confronted, it builds a wall within our nation. On one side are wealth and technology, education and ambition. On the other side of the wall are poverty and prison, addiction and despair. And, my fellow Americans,” Bush concluded, “We must tear down that wall.”

Bush noted that “racial progress has been steady, if still too slow… We will continue this progress, and we will not turn back.”

Several weeks ago, I had a lengthy conversation with Bill Fletcher, Jr., who serves as assistant to the president of the AFL-CIO. A well-respected African-American activist in the labor movement, Fletcher has long been an insightful observer of both national and international politics. That’s why I was struck when he suggested that most black activists who favor independent politics would nevertheless probably end up supporting Al Gore for the presidency over Green Party nominee Ralph Nader.

Although Nader has generated name recognition for his longtime work as a consumer rights advocate and, more recently, for his anti-corporate political activism, most black and Latino voters have little knowledge of where he stands on racial issues, like affirmative action. Moreover, Fletcher observed, there were several very real obstacles or factors that would influence how many African Americans would perceive their interests within the electoral arena.

As a career carnivore, I was up at my freezer locker in my local town taking an inventory of what I could use for the barbecue or spit or pit (I was planning for all three options) for July Fourth. Hauling out the goat frozen whole late last year, I started chatting with Bob, the proprietor of this small, wholesale meat establishment, about the sausage-maker in San Leandro, Calif., who'd just killed three government food inspectors, two of them federal employees from the USDA, and one from California's Department of Food and Agriculture.

On June 21, Stuart Alexander, proprietor of the Santos Linguisa Factory, murdered these unfortunate regulators while failing to dispatch a fourth, whom he'd vainly pursued down the road waving his pistol. He's now awaiting trial. I remarked to Bob that Mr. Alexander seemed to have had a rough passage with the food inspectors. At the time of the killings, he was operating his factory without a license, and outside of it was a defiant sign put up by Alexander complaining that he had been unreasonably hassled by the health police.

George Orwell's birthday passed without notice recently. Born on June 25, 1903, the great English writer has been dead for half a century, but Orwellian language lives on.

These days we have plenty of good reasons to echo poet W.H. Auden: "Oh, how I wish that Orwell were still alive, so that I could read his comments on contemporary events!"

Today, in the United States, media coverage of political discourse attests to Orwell's observation that language "becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts."

News media frequently make things worse. Instead of scrutinizing the blather, reporters are inclined to solemnly relay it -- while adding some of their own.

The standard jargon of U.S. politics is the type of facile rhetoric that appalled Orwell. This lexicon derives its power from unexamined repetition.

To carry on Orwell's efforts, we should question the media buzzwords that swarm all around us. For instance:

Here's a number that offers telling reasons for voting for Ralph Nader in the fall. Nine Democrats. Not even double digits. Last week, the U.S. Senate finally voted $934 million to wage war in Colombia. The House voted earlier this year to provide $1.7 billion in anti-narcotics aid for Colombia over a two-year period. The Senate bill only covers the first year.

So where does the "nine Democrats" number figure in this picture? The sum total of puissant legislators who voted for Sen. Paul Wellstone's amendment, which would have taken $225 million from the $934 million and spent it instead on domestic drug treatment programs, consisted of nine Democrats and two Republicans. Here they are: Boxer, D-Calif. (co-sponsor); Grams, R-Minn.; Murray, D-Wash.; Byrd, D-W.Va.; Harkin, D-Iowa; Specter, R-Pa.; Dorgan, D-N.D.; Leahy, D-Vt.; Wellstone, D-Minn.; Feingold, D-Wis.; Mikulski, D-Md.