A friend drew my attention to this article in today’s Wall Street Journal (see below for the introductory paragraphs), which speaks about an unlikely alliance between “progressive liberals” and “conservative libertarians” over the thorny issue of defence spending. I consider myself neither right wing nor left wing, nor do I adhere to the label of either “progressive liberal” or “conservative libertarian”. Nonetheless, I am certainly in favour of a radical downsizing of the US military to take the United States forward into a post-imperialist future. I would therefore agree with the WSJ’s contention that the idea represents a convergence of disparate worldviews. I would add further that Bush’s neo-con imperialism was the reason that he lost the last election and therefore the reason we are shackled with Obama. It is surely time that the ghost of the Cold War was exorcised from political discourse. 

Here’s the article …

Where Left and Right Converge 

Anticorporatist views are becoming more and more common.

BY RALPH NADER 

Earlier this year, Barney Frank and Ron Paul convened the Sustainable Defense Task Force, consisting of experts “spanning the ideological spectrum.” They recommended a 10-year, $1 trillion reduction in Pentagon spending that disturbed some in the military-industrial complex.

Other members of Congress were surprised by this improbable combination of lawmakers taking on such a taboo subject. But the spiral of bloated, wasteful military expenditures documented by newspapers has reached the point where opposites on the political-ideological spectrum were willing to make common cause. 

A convergence of liberal-progressives with conservative-libertarians centering on the autocratic, corporate-dominated nature of our government may be …