FAQ

Answer: These principles are universal; they do not belong to any person or group, they belong to everybody. They were simply compiled and transcribed by a small group of progressive thinkers who prefer to remain anonymous right now because this organization is about ideas, not people - it is about principles, not personalities. But be assured the organizers have nothing to hide; we are professionals, university professors, community organizers and otherwise upstanding individuals who are simply fed up by the political choices out there.

Question: Why just a political organization and not a real political party?

Answer: A bonafide party is the goal. But to be a registered political party we first need approximately 1.5 million registered members. So we cannot be offically on the ballot anytime soon. But we have to start somewhere. And we can start supporting write-in candidates immediately.

Question: What about the Justice Party? Don't they share the same values as described here?

Answer: In principle their platform sounds good. But they have endorsed Bernie Sanders for president in 2016, proving they are willing to completely compromise their principles. It proves they do not really understand the problems of this country and have fallen prey to simple-minded thinking. It proves we cannot trust them moving forward. True American Left would never under any circumstances sell out our principles and support a member of the Democratic Party which is a terrorist organization and is a right wing Party no matter how you slice it. Among other things, it is the party that wages wars of conquest and supports death squad dictatorships and even genocide (e.g. Jimmy Carter and East Timor). We are not going to compromise on our values just because those facts about the Democratic Party are so shocking that most people would think they are impossible. The truth is there for anybody who cares to know, so we are not going to patronize the position that this is contentious when it is actually obvious. If you see us supporting such a political party, that means we have completely lost our minds and souls. That is exactly why we need an organization like True American Left, that will not throw in the towel and join the murderers and we cannot treat terrorists politely as if they deserve any platform at all. The Democratic Party leadership deserves long prison sentences, nothing more. And of course the Republican Party is no better. But the point is that the Democratic Party is also no better and (in some ways is even worse).

Question: Why don't you call yourself "radical left" like the others who seem to share similar values?

Answer: The short answer is because we do not believe our views are radical.

The long answer follows: From our perspective we are firmly in the logical center. Yes we may not be in the statistical center, but we must chalk that up to the triumph of propaganda in our society. We are however firmly in the logical center. We are neither egalitarian (the true radical left) nor libertarian (the true radical right). We do not believe that all people should be equally wealthy and we would tolerate quite a bit of latitude on the spectrum. Instead our demands are very reasonable. We believe American in this day and age can easily be, and therefore should be, guaranteed a certain minimal amount of stability and comfort. That means enough food to survive, enough water, shelter, energy, healthcare and transportation.

If anybody wants to be rich, then they will have to work harder. We can still allow people to make millions of dollars, even many millions. The U.S. is unique and we can perform unique experiments other countries cannot, like allowing a very wealthy class without undo sacrifice on the part of others. We simply cannot continue to allow the absolute unfettered concentration of wealth into a miniscule minority like we are witnessing today. The billionaires had a good run, but the party has to end because it is killing us.

The advantages of entrepreneurship are supposed be the stimulation of innovation that is supposed to be good for everybody. But the experiment has resulted in such a concentration of wealth and such a phenomenal amount of austerity and suffering on far too much of the population. And it has resulted in a class of people who can hijack both the government and the media to do their bidding, the cause of so much evil in the world today. People can divide themselves along social issues like gay rights, but on economic issues everybody has to get in line, and indeed everybody does. It's (finally) okay now to be gay - how many celebrities and even politicians have come out as gay? But it's not okay to be a socialist. Even Obama's right wing health care policy is called socialist as a smear. This is obviously the wrong way to structure society.

That does not mean we have to go whole hog in the other direction. We do need entrepreneurs. Plus entrepreneurship is fun, we should never want to take that away from the people. But we have to make some rules. We have to tax billionaires severely. And anybody who lives high on the hog off the productive efforts of others, i.e. stock market investors who do not add to productivity but merely gamble on the productivity of others. Instead we can structure society so that wealth is proportional to productivity. We understand the billionaires will insist that they are the cause of everything good in the world and they will tell us all kinds of horror stories about what would happen if we stopped allowing it. From their perspective it is all obvious. They live in an artificial world and we are not here to argue with this point of view, we are here to speak to those who do not live in that artificial world and to whom the harsh realities of the world cannot be denied. So we want to allow a wealthy class yes. We are for some degree of free markets and entrepreneurship- but not to the point where we have to tolerate a class of people living in abject poverty in order to support the fabulously wealthy. There can be a fair balance.

So now with that background we can get back to the original question about "radical" versus "central" Left. Those who want to subject every aspect of society to the profit motive and unrestricted market forces represent the radical right for us. Therefore the Libertarian party lies on the far radical right. Only in their social policy do they share any views with the Left, on their economic policies they are as right wing as they get. Meanwhile, the Democrat and Republican parties represent the center right. And on the other side of the spectrum, those who want total equality (egalitarians) represent the radical left - those who believe we should live in communes (e.g. communists) represent the radical left. Some countries may want to experiment with radical left societies. We are not telling anybody else how to live.

We do not intend to invade other countries to impose any so-called "American values" on anybody. This country has not undertaken any kind of humanitarian intervention in history and the world goes on. So if we continue to not undertake any humanitarian intervention then we believe the world will continue to go on. In fact we believe just putting an end to the imperialist interventions should be a huge benefit to the entire planet. Once we have a government that can be trusted to do truly humanitarian acts then we will discuss moving in that direction. We will not, however, violate international law or the sovereign integrity of any independent nations or peoples

In summary, we do not believe in total unfettered capitalism, nor do we believe in egalitarianism or communism. Therefore, we represent the true logical center of the political spectrum. We will not call ourselves radical left just because 97% of the country leans right, whether they know it or not.