From the Left
/Politics
Age. Race. Sexual Orientation. Should Political Expression Be a Protected Class, Too?
Your boss can't fire you because of the color of your skin. He can't get rid of you because he doesn't like your religion. Federal law protects you against employment discrimination based on your sex, race, pregnancy status, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, genetic information or (if you are over 40) age.
Should...Read more
Criticize Hamas. Criticize Israel 30 Times More.
It is a truism bordering on a cliche that the Israeli state and Palestinian resistance organizations have inflicted violence upon each other, claiming the lives of thousands of innocent people on both sides. Media coverage of the carnage has been anything but evenhanded, however.
Since the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, Western media ...Read more
Pro-Palestiners Should Fight Back Against Right-Wing Bullies
There are more Democrats than Republicans, more liberals than conservatives, more progressives than MAGAs. But you'd never know that from looking at our politics. From abortion to the minimum wage to war, the Right wins the important arguments.
How do they do it? Verbal abuse. Right-wing bullies name-call, they hector, they doxx, they blacklist...Read more
This Is a Golden Age of Censorship
It's too bad we can't monetize censorship, because we truly live in a golden age of speech suppression. In this deeply polarized society, the one thing we can all agree upon is that people we disagree with need to shut up.
Officially, freedom of speech is a key commandment in our national civic religion. We love free speech -- in the abstract. ...Read more
What's Left 10: Police Who Help People
It may come as a surprise, especially to conservatives, that the Left believes in law and order. Of course we do. Without it, you can't have much else.
In November 2001, I went to Afghanistan as a reporter. It felt like the 14th century, if the late Middle Ages took place in an Islamist dystopia and everyone carried an AK-47. To call it a ...Read more
Biden's Secret Border Agenda: Migrants Fill Our Baby Gap
I didn't question the incoming Biden administration when they rolled back the Trump era's stricter border control policies in 2021. There's nothing unusual about reversing a previous president's approach, especially when he belongs to the other party and the policy in question is roundly criticized.
You didn't have to be a proponent of open ...Read more
What's Left 9: Foreign Policy Under the Left
Every country needs a coherent foreign policy. And it's impossible to overstate the importance of the United States' military and diplomatic posture.
The U.S. has the world's second-largest and most sophisticated nuclear arsenal, exclusive, comprehensive command over the oceans, perfect strategic geography, nearly a thousand military bases ...Read more
What's Left 8: Health Care Is a Human Right
Learning is a societal and individual good. American businesses, however, have weaponized higher education into an overcredentialization racket that coerces millions of young people to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars in tuition, room and board, often to study subjects in which they have little interest, for the chance to be hired for a ...Read more
Israel, the Hermit Kingdom
"The world is kind of deserting Israel right now," Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) remarked after meeting with members of the pro-Israel lobby American Israel Public Affairs Committee. "So they're worried about that."
Their concern is warranted. Less than six months after Hamas attacked on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people with brutality that sparked ...Read more
What's Left 7: Health Care Is a Human Right
Liberals believe a compromise that gets us closer to a goal is better than no progress at all. But compromise can lead to the dead end of dilution and a false sense of resolution.
The early 20th-century progressive and presidential candidate Robert "Fighting Bob" La Follette argued that politics played into different a psychological dynamic. "...Read more
What's Left 6: Abolish Homelessness Now
Homelessness is the single most powerful indictment of capitalism, the embodiment of human disposability, the ultimate expression of callous cruelty. In this nation where one out of 16 rental homes is vacant at any given time, one in 600 Americans (550,000) sleeps outside. An additional 3.7 million people, the so-called hidden homeless -- one ...Read more
What's Left 5: Let's Declare War On Economic Insecurity
Wages high enough to cover basic expenses are only the beginning of the Left's struggle to eliminate economic insecurity.
We must also fight for workers' rights on the job, as well as a robust and sturdy social safety net to protect people when they find themselves out of work. Americans suffer the worst worker benefits of major developed ...Read more
What's Left 4: We Need a Real Minimum Wage
When Gallup pollsters ask Americans what causes them the most stress and worry, personal economic concerns -- the cost of living, lack of money, the gap between rich and poor, difficulty finding a job or, if they're employed, low wages -- consistently come in first, so much so that they can't imagine saving for the future. General economic ...Read more