Introduction

Have you realized that both parties are equally responsible for the extreme and worsening economic polarization; and that both parties expect us to accept this as normal? Are you disgusted by the social pressures to politely accept the unacceptable?

Have you discovered that both parties prefer to support dictators and repress democracy worldwide? Have you understood that U.S. foreign policy is never about human rights, regardless of which party is in power? Have you come to the unpleasant truth that U.S foreign policy has nothing to do with freedom and is actually the cause of untold human rights abuses worldwide, for the financial interests of the wealty class. This is a painful reality to come to terms with. But the truth is undeniable and we are not here to argue this point, we are here to be a focal point for those who understand what is happening.

Did you ever wonder what a political group would look like that represents a set of uncompromising American Left values? If so, then perhaps this organization may be a breath of fresh air for you.

This is an experiment in truly calling the situation for what it is and for calling the culpable players out for their responsibilities. No punches pulled. Please visit the site and join us if you agree.

This organization is about full responsibility and about demanding exactly what makes sense to our good natures and our modern sensibilities in this morally evolving world. The powerful elite in this country want us to believe the country is the way it is because it is complicated. They want us to expend all of our political energies on things that ultimately do not matter and to give up hope on any real and meaningful change. They do not want us to understand the true nature of our problems, because they do not want us to see the obvious solutions. That is because the interests of the masses conflict severely with the interests of the wealthy.

The elite minority cannot maintain their fabulously wealthy lifestyles unless enough of the rest of us are willing to make enormous sacrifices. And since the wealthy have always been the ones with a voice in society, the corporate media keeps telling us this is the way things have to be. We hear it so often and so consistently that most of us have taken to heart things which promote only the interests of the wealthy elite and are actually in the worst interests of everybody else. If we are ever to really change this country, we are going to have to be painfully honest with ourselves about this.

It is imprtant to note that there need not be any conspiracy from on high that brought us to this situation. Things have just evolved, by natural and very comprehensible forces. Just as in Darwinian evolution (for those who believe in that), there does not need to be a conscious force to create complex structure in nature, nor does there need to be a conscious force to create complex structures in society - there just need to be forces. In the case of evolution of species the most influential force is natural selection. In the case of evolution of society, the most influential force has been greed. Everybody is greedy to some extent, but the greediest elements of society naturally tend to aquire the greatest amount of societal control.

However the world is changing and you no longer need to be rich to have your opinion heard. You no longer need to own a newspaper to get your message out there. So we are putting our foot down and we will no longer patronize the contentions of the rich. We are lucky enough to be living in a country where it is possible to do this without being shut down, if not imprisoned or killed. In most countries the government, acting on behalf of the elite, can shut down an organization like this, no questions asked. Throughout much of history we could be imprisoned and/or executed just for discussing ideas that are antagonistic to the elite class. If any country at any time in history could tackle these problems and create a society better than planet Earth has ever seen before, it is at the present in the United States. The unique freedoms we have in this country were hard fought for, and we honor our ancestors' efforts by taking advantage of them to create a better society for all, not just for an elite few. So if you are fed up and you have not been able to find any organization that represents your true values then please read on because this may be the place for you.

First and foremost, unless we lay the proper groundwork by replacing a critical number of Congressmen and Senators by True Left independents representing a True Left platform, it will be pointless to elect a True Left president. Therefore this has to be a long fight that must start at the local level.

This web site describes general and guiding principles, goals and aims - at length. If you agree with our principles as outlined in detail below and in the "Guiding Principles" section, then please join us. Our goals are based on tolerance, generosity, good will, understanding, caring for the less fortunate, and other positive aspects of the better parts of human nature. This is not about personalities, it is simply about principles - we have no other motives but the desire for a better world. If you agree with our principles then you are probably frustrated with the political choices you have been presented with in the past. You may not agree on every detail of every principle. But if there is to be hope for a better future we need to put enough of our differences aside to build a voting bloc powerful enough to effect real social change.

We realize that there are many legitimate Left leaning individuals (for example true communists) who may disagree with enough of our principles that they will not want to join. That is why we do not call ourselves "The True American Left". There is no "The" true left. We are simply a "True American Left" no "The".

In much of the world the word Left refers to communism. That is not what it means for us. That is why we qualify ourselves as American Left. We are proud of our country and we believe in many ways this is the best country on earth. We have freedoms that do not exist anywhere else. In particular the way freedom of speech, press and privacy are protected in principle and in practice. We believe in the U.S. constitution and we have no interest in modifying it.

Unfortunately, in spite of all of the advantages, it can be exceptionally difficult to live in and raise a family in the United States. In many ways the poor here are worse off than in many third world countries. We have lived for too long in a country where wealth is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. The beneficiaries of the current economic structure of the country want you to believe we are broke and cannot afford to take care of everybody. But we know this is not true. We have crunched the numbers and we know where the wealth is hiding. First off, a small demographic is wealthy beyond all reason. And secondly, the federal budget obscures a staggering conduit of wealth from the poor and middle classes to the upper classes by way of the absurdly bloated military budget. The money is there to solve all of our problems. Nobody needs to be hungry, or homeless, or uncared for when ill. We will not give any credibility to the lies claiming otherwise. We refuse to deny that which is too obvious to deny.

And to be clear, we do believe in free enterprise. If you want communism or any kind of society where all commerce is state controlled then this is not the place for you. Instead we simply want to implement proper and sane checks and balances on the rampant greed of the few that is destroying the lives of the many. Our fundamental belief is simply that it is wrong to relegate all aspects of society entirely to the profit motive - particularly the basic necessities of life such as health care, water, food, energy. Nowhere in the constitution does it say we must privatize such aspects of society. And we will not let anybody try to claim otherwise. We believe a society is not a free society when some people own the basic necessities of life and others are beholden to them. We believe true liberty depends critically on not having the control of the basic necessities of life depend on the profit motive of the private sector. To argue otherwise is a fundamentally right wing position. We have been intentionally taught to confuse "liberty for all" with "liberty for corporations and rich people". But we will not continue to allow the rich to define our terms for us. We will not continue to buy in to the doublespeak. When corporate politicians (currently all of them) and their corporate media spokespeople tell us these things with straight faces, we must respond with the appropriate ridicule. It is time we start calling a fig a fig and a trough a trough.

We believe most people are generally good and that most people want to do good things, even if it means some amount of personal sacrifice. The working poor of this country prove themselves to be some of the most good hearted and generous citizens of this country. And the success of True American Left depends on this.

We are a coalition of all creeds and peoples: Atheists, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, etc. In a country where we are committed to mutual respect and the separation of church and state, our differences of religion need be no barrier to agreement on social and economic issues. The more we allow ourselves to be separated by our faiths (or lack thereof), the less power we have to act in our mutual interests. As American Leftists we hope you will find that our differences are few and our mutual interests are many. We all want to have security for our family, a decent place to live, food on our table and quality time to enjoy our lives. We want our privacy and freedom to practice whatever religion we want. We do not want to work our lives away living paycheck to paycheck so that a privileged few can get fabulously wealthy while the rest barely get by.

Some of our beliefs may conflict with your religious beliefs. But all of our beliefs are based on good will and tolerance of others. Therefore, for example, we have to support homosexual rights even if some of our holy books say not to. This is because we are a pluralistic society, so nothing written in any particular holy book should override our general principles of tolerance.

We believe that most positions of the left are not represented in this country in national politics. What they call the "Left" on Capitol Hill consists almost entirely of the Democratic Party. We recognize the Democratic Party may represent a couple of True Left positions, for example abortion rights, and some other issues that do not affect the bottom line of corporations. However we understand that with regards to economic and foreign policy the Democratic Party and the Republican Party simply represent two factions of the far right. Any politician that would support the murder of women and children for the furtherance of U.S. business interests must be considered far right; or else we have completely lost our moral compass. We hold that to be self-evident. We realize that the Democrats and Republicans both fight such wars with regularity¹. We are not here to argue this point. We are here as a focal point for those who have already come around to these difficult truths.

We believe that the Democratic Party primarily represents the interests of the rich and powerful and at best they throw a few meager crumbs to the rest of us.

But this country does not belong to the corporate investor class. According to the constitution, this country belongs to all of us. Yet the wealthy class consists of a small minority who make sure the majority interests are subjugated to their own. And those are the interests of greed. Greed has shown it has no boundaries, it cannot police itself and it knows no limits. They have constructed a corporate welfare state and the military budget is a staggeringly huge part of that. We believe our focus on the military has made us and the entire world significantly less safe. We are controlled through fear and misinformation. But we no longer believe any of it and we are once and for all taking a stand for the truth.

We are not here to argue this point. The evidence is overwhelming and easily available - we understand that the only way to deny it is to want to deny it. For those who can no longer deny it, we are here to provide you with a voice. For those who have come to understand these difficult truths, we understand, and we are here, and we are not going away. This is for those who refuse to fall into the lesser-of-two-evils trap, which is better characterized as the evil-of-two-lessers.

So what can we really hope to do?

We can do a lot actually. We live in the freest country in the world. Do not let anybody tell you otherwise. No other country protects freedom of speech and press like we do. We can literally vote all of those people out and replace them with sane representatives with good values. Do not allow yourself to become cynical. Their best weapon against us is our lack of faith that progress is even possible. But it is harder for the authorities to control our actions in this country than any other. That is why they work so hard to limit the information available to us. They need to worry about what we think, becaue we the people hold the true reigns of power. The elite's greatest fear is that we become well informed and stop letting them dictate to us what to believe. That is why the propaganda system presents a far right party such as the Democratic Party as representing the left. That has served them well, as very effective propaganda. But we have the internet now and we can communicate and share ideas in ways that were never possible before. So they can no longer keep us down. We are going to be much harder to control in the future, and the future starts now with our absolute refusal to believe the lies any longer.

As a society we spend a considerable portion of our political energies focused on the presidential election, as if replacing the president with an independent would fix everything. But with nearly 100% of Congress and the Senate controlled by the Democrats and the Republicans, there is little an independent could do as president. If one tried to actually rock the boat from the presidency, he/she would certainly be hogtied and almost certainly would be removed from office because Capitol Hill can do that.

Therefore, we need to resign ourselves to the fact that things may get worse before they get better and that we need a long term strategy. This may be discouraging but a long term strategy is better than no strategy. And since we do not believe in violent revolution, the only long term strategy that makes sense is to work on replacing Congress and the Senate with members who represent true left values. Only with a major groundwork on Capitol Hill can we hope for any real progress. But we are in this for the long haul, because there is no other rational choice. We can simply vote all those guys out and vote in anybody we want. And that is truly remarkable. We owe a deep debt of gratitude for all who fought and died to win us those rights throughout history. And now we are finally going to try to use them to their full effect.

But at this moment the super-rich are winning. They have completely hijacked the government and the media. The politicians do only what is in the interest of those who have bought them. You have heard it all before, but it is true. We need to take our government back for the people. Though we will not say "take it back" because it is not clear the people ever had it. But the constitution guarantees us the right and gives us the legal means to make the government truly be by, of and for the people. And who will argue that it is not right for the people to expect the government to operate in their interests and not the interests of a small elite privileged few? Especially when that elite few are causing problems in the world that are so extreme. Rule by the rich is how democracy was originally conceived in ancient Greece as well as by our founding fathers in the 18th century. In the beginning only white male property owners could vote. But that is not what democracy is supposed to be about anymore. We have all agreed that it should be about everybody and that all men and women are created equally. So let us start to move in that direction because practice is lagging far behind principle.

It is hard for the average person to do the necessary research to find out the true positions of independent candidates. Therefore this organization provides a clear platform that local politicians can endorse and you will know what they stand for when you vote for them. And we will hold them to their promises.

If you feel up to the job and you believe in this platform, then you should consider running for elected office on this platform. We need people in every state for every election who will adhere to this platform. When the time is right, there will be a flood of victories, because it is hard to keep truth down that is so important to so many people. But we have to set the groundwork. We have to be in place or true left voters will have nothing to vote for. The true left has been beaten out of us in this country, but we want to stand up and say we are still here. As a candidate you will not have to do your own advertising or spend your own money, we just need candidates on this platform and the platform itself will do fundraising and the advertising. We will have to start on a shoestring budget, but as the organization grows the resources will grow accordingly. The common sense of these positions will allow this to take a life of its own.

1. Including such figures as Bernie Sanders, commonly touted as a representative of the far left.