By Donella Meadows
–January 4, 2001 —
The Democrats are always the ones who fight among themselves; it’s a truism of American politics. Conservatives, no matter how they may range across the spectrum of conservatism, understand both power and discipline better than free-thinking liberals. There’s something about liberalism that spurns the very idea of a party line.
Thus left-leaning movements have torn themselves apart for a century and more, spending most of their energy getting mad at each other for being insufficiently left. Thus the Democrats have turned their fury at losing an election they probably didn’t really lose onto Ralph Nader and the Greens.
They are really, really mad. Some of my Democrat friends still turn purple in the face when they see me, though they know I voted for Nader in the safe state of Vermont that went predictably for Gore. They blame me, yes me, only me and my two columns on this subject, for the narrow loss of New Hampshire, which, if it had tipped slightly the other way, would have made Florida’s dimpled chads irrelevant.
“I’m a Realo; she’s a Fundi.”
Copyright 2001 Sustainability Institute
