Rachel Maddow is my favorite journalist, because she weaves many distinct parts of a news story together in a way that they all make sense. Fortunately we also have a politician who does the same thing with a policy plan that Rachel does with news. Elizabeth Warren addressed students at American University on Thursday for 35 minutes.
Americans who seek an enlightened alternative to the crudely nationalist and frequently antidemocratic ideology of Trumpism, and to a broader misdirection of US foreign policy that began long before the current president took office, got it this week from Elizabeth Warren.
She delivered a striking rebuke to the president and his policies in a speech that many saw as framing the outlines of a 2020 Democratic challenge to Trump. But the speech was about more than political positioning. What Warren said challenged not just the awful turn that Republicans have taken under Trump but the failures of her own Democratic Party.
“Our country is in a moment of crisis decades in the making, a moment in which America’s middle class has been hollowed out, working people have been betrayed, and democracy itself is under threat,” Warren told an audience at American University on Thursday. “While it is easy to blame President Trump for our problems, the truth is that our challenges began long before him. And without serious reforms, they are just as likely to outlast him.”
To counter the drift of the United States and its best ideals, Warren is proposing to break the grip of billionaire campaign donors and corporate interests on American policy-making. “We need to refocus our international economic policies so that they benefit all Americans, not just wealthy elites,” the senator argued. “At the same time, we must refocus our security policies by reining in unsustainable and ill-advised military commitments and adapt our strategies overseas for the new challenges we’ll face in this coming century. And we need to end the fiction that our domestic and foreign policies are somehow separate, and recognize that policies that undermine working families in this country, also erode America’s strength in the world.”
“In other words,” she concluded, “it’s time to create a foreign policy that works for all Americans, not just the rich and powerful. Authoritarianism is on the move around the world, there is no time to waste.”… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <The Nation>
Here is the speech in its entirety.
I still think we need this woman in the White House!
RESIST!!
13 Responses to “Progressive Foreign Policy”
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If it hasn’t been clear before this regime took over, it certainly should be crystal clear now: there are more ways of being “in the White House” than just being behind the desk in the Oval Office (and not all of those ways even have names.) I totally concur she is needed there. I will be happy with any position that gets her there. And the same applies to a number of others.
I also feel (a) it is too early to settle on any one person for any particular role, and (b) it is never a good idea to pressure people to run for a position they don’t want. I believe the expression is that it’s necessary to have “fire in the belly.”
Ms. Warren bring it on! She has a lot of experience, and is a person who isn’t afraid to speak her mind, and stands up for the issues today, & also to look at for guidance in the state of affairs we’re at now.
We have some good folks that are doing what’s right,….and that is refreshing!
She is at the top of my list for presidential nominees, alongside Bernie. But the claim that i;m sure will come from the idiot right, regarding Bernie, that he is a communist, will have even less apparent stickiness with Liz. She is so good at explaining, describing a reality that resonates with evidence, rather than delusion!
The idiot right has no idea what a communist is! Bernie is a democratic socialist. Communists are/were authoritarians, at least how it played out in Soviet Russia and elsewhere. For example, Canada is a social democracy however some very ignorant people from the US have referred to Canada as a communist country because of our socialised medical system. It is one of the things that really ticks me off. It kept coming up on Care2 so often that I almost gave up on Care2.
George H. W. Bush’s recent passing reminds us that he was probably underrated as a President. The way Republicans have drifted since his time, he now looks like a Democrat.
I do hope it wasn’t Bill who told him the magician joke.
WTG Senator Elizabeth Warren!!!
Thanx TC
Excellent speech.
I agree with everyone else that Senator Warren is one that is truly needed in our White House. I have high respect for her.
She’s always been one to spoke truth and fought back at tRump’s garbage.
Hope she does run for President.
If not maybe will consider running with Bernie Sanders?
Excellent speech, Senator Warren. Worthy of an American president.
But I would live up to my credentials as PP’s foreign (and lecturing) correspondent if I didn’t remark on one aspect. I need to be careful not to tread on too many American toes when I say that Warren is absolutely right in noting “that policies that undermine working families in this country, also erode America’s strength in the world,” but that she also thinks of this strength as being the number one power in the world, leading the way on every possible front, like many Americans do.
Time has changed things on that front too, however, and that change also set in long before Drumpf came on the scene. New powers have arisen and old ones are regaining strength because they recognise this and change with it in the right direction. Americans will have to learn to share power with others if this world is to survive, and Senator Warren should take care to incorporate those new settings in her foreign policy to make them truly progressive.
News here on the closing of the G20 meeting was that Drumpf opposed every agreement made there and after long nights of discussion among diplomats forced the other 19 countries to end with half-hearted, empty statements on trade.
The G19 will now continue their talks on climate change and the ways they will fill in their part of the Paris agreement next week in Poland. Without America. Drumpf’s Nationalism is isolating the US and diminishing its strength on the world stage. It is not unlikely the other 19 countries will refuse to play this game at their next summit. Warren’s progressive foreign policy better be prepared for a whole new playing field.
Agree.
“In other words,” she concluded, “it’s time to create a foreign policy that works for all Americans, not just the rich and powerful. Authoritarianism is on the move around the world, there is no time to waste.”
I like Senator Warren and think she would make an excellent POTUS. However, I found myself a bit taken aback at her comment “create a foreign policy that works for all Americans” because foreign policy is the basis for relationships with other nations. There has to be some give and take. It cannot be in absolutes. Maybe I am hearing something that is not there, I do not know.
The first thing on the trip forward is to get rid of Diaper Don and Republicans.
Trade agreements with other nations are only one part of foreign policy, but they can seriously make a difference in the lives of average Americans. They probably were in her radar.
Thanks and exhausted hugs.