Enough commonality

Some of us are (or were) annoyed with Ralph Nader pulling enough votes in Florida in 2000 to prevent Al Gore from becoming president (though you can read about the spoiler controversy in his Wikipedia entry). That didn't stop me from buying Nader's book The Seventeen Solutions about ways to improve America. I haven't read it yet, partly from a feeling of futility -- what good are great solutions if the GOP won't allow any to be implemented?

There is now a glimmer of hope for that last point. And, yes, that comes from another book by Ralph Nader, Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State. From the Amazon description:

Large segments from the progressive, conservative, and libertarian political camps find themselves aligned in opposition to the destruction of civil liberties, the economically draining corporate welfare state, the relentless perpetuation of America’s wars, sovereignty-shredding trade agreements, and the unpunished crimes of Wall Street against Main Street. Nader shows how Left-Right coalitions can prevail over the corporate state and crony capitalism.

Alas, the user reviewers aren't helpful in explaining what the book is about. Even so, I'm delighted in the major point. There are many, on both the Left and Right who are annoyed with the corporate takeover of America. Though the two sides have differences in philosophy of what government should be and do, there is enough commonality of that important goal that we should and need to unite for that goal. If we do, we will be unstoppable.

An interview with Nader on NPR fills in some of the details missing from the Amazon reviews. One detail is how to go about forging Left-Right alliances. Sidestep the manipulative ideologies of both sides and look at details. Nader gives an example:

What I do is I go down where people live and work and say, look, you're a Republican. You don't like federal regulation. Right, I don't like federal regulation. You have a car? Yeah. Well, if the auto company discovers a serious dangerous defect in your car after you bought it and the auto company doesn't recall it, would you favor the government requiring General Motors or Ford or VW to recall it? Most of them say yes.