The presence of the Socialist from Vermont in the present U. S. senate is a very good benchmark for the measure of where "left", "center", and "right" really are in this country at this time. For example, we had no such benchmark in the government when the Democratic Party brought the Vietnam War upon us. Many of us were followed by FBI agents, had our phones tapped and arrested by "Anti-Subversive Squads" like the one that was part of the Police Force in Buffalo, NY. In those days democrats were distinguished from republicans by their not going so far as to advocate "Nuking Hanoi". Today we have a Senator who is one of us so we on the left can feel like some progress has been made. Meanwhile, his message is not carried by the Democratic leadership and the press is very apt to ignore him. Now comes a question. Do you support this? Are his ideas wrong because of who he is and what he believes in? If we are to open the discussion to all then we should deal with ideas and not the messenger delivering them. The health care issue is but one of many places where Senator Sanders makes a great deal of sense. Often, in my mind, he makes far more sense than President Obama. Read on below the break and we can investigate this further.
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