Who are your political inspirations?

[MrScorpio]

Here's a list of people that I want to thank for helping me open my eyes about the nature of things. I've read and listened to these great people long before I discovered DU, and without them I would not hold the beliefs that I do today.

The thing that they have in common is an unflinching search for the truth.

The list is all over the place, but there but for the grace of God go I.

Jack Kirby
Stan Lee
Noam Chomsky
Howard Zinn
Don McGregor
Martin Luther King
Rod Serling
Malcolm X
Helen Caldicott
Mark Zepezauer
Stanley Kubrick
Alfred Hitchcock
Gary Trudeau
Ward Churchill
Jim Vander Wall
John Stockwell
Phillip Agee
Ramsey Clark
So many of my Teachers and Professors

My favorite media sources

Pacifica Radio
The Nation
Z Magazine
PBS
NPR

[Smarmie Doofus]

1. Lots of good folks here; I read Malcolm X's autobiography in...

around the eigth grade; I understood a lot of things that I didn't before.

Howard Zinn around the same time: The Logic of Withdrawal ( i.e. from VN). Another eye-opener.

Pacifica Radio in the period from 69-72. Since then it's horrific: shrill, balkanized, relentlssly angry and *incredibly* dull.

[hickman1937]

2. I'll tell you what I'd love if I had some wishes.

One would be to be at a relaxed dinner with Malcom X, Jimmy Carter, Dr. Martin Luther King, and Bill Clinton. Although with my luck they'd spend the whole time talking about golf.

[ghostsofgiants]

3. Chomsky, Zinn and Gandhi come to mind

I'm sure there'sa huge list but I'm still half asleep right now.

[nuxvomica]

4. Interesting thread. Makes me think.

Here's my off-the-cuff list in alphabetical order:

William Jennings Bryan
Smedley Butler
Rachel Carson
James Earl Carter
Mario Cuomo
Charles Goodell
Samuel Hahnemann
Thomas Jefferson
Robert F. Kennedy
Abraham Lincoln
Martin Luther King
Dennis Kucinich
Paul Limbert
Eleanor Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Henry David Thoreau
Mark Twain

edit: added Thoreau.

[Smarmie Doofus]

6. Charles Goodell !! I'm amazed anyone else remembers him.

Appointed NYS US Senator for two years to fill in for RFK. A republican!

Defeated by Buckley in '70

I should add Lincoln to my list.

[nuxvomica]

11. Let me explain about Goodell

A fairly conservative Congressman, he took a more liberal stance on the Vietnam War after taking RFK's Senate seat because he felt the people of New York had elected a liberal and deserved that kind of representation. For this he was attacked by Spiro Agnew as "the Christine Jorgensen of the Republican Party." National Republicans and NY Conservatives joined forces to help Buckley defeat him.
I found this rather inspirational when I was in high school and this was going on. It struck me that politicians could sometimes do the right thing, even if it meant political suicide.

[Liberal_Andy]

5. The Big Dog, John Edwards, Joe Conason, James Carville, Paul Wellstone,

Al Franken, Al Gore, Molly Ivins, Paul Krugman, MLK Jr. Jesse Jackson.

[Lannes]

7. Theodore Roosevelt and John Kennedy

[RandomKoolzip]

8. Frank Zappa, Valerie Solanis, Joe Carducci, Emma Goldman...

Chuck D
Abbie Hoffman
Berke Breathed
Paul Krugman
bell hooks
Corin Tucker
Boots Riley
Huey Newton
D. Boon


And my father above all.

[VelmaD]

9. A full list would be really long and...

I'd leave innumerable people off. So I'm going to stay short and talk about two who were important when I was first starting to really care as a child. Barbara Jordan and Jimmy Carter. The earliest political memory I have is of Jimmy Carter walking the entire route of his inaugural parade. It made me feel something when I was little. I couldn't have put it into words at the time though I know now it had to do with his connection to ordinary people...that he didn't think he was better than or above anyone else. I remember him during the oil crisis encouraging people to turn the heater down and put on a sweater. He seemed so ordinary and sensible. And I remember how pained he looked during the hostage crisis...like people really mattered to him and it hurt him that we all couldn't get along. I felt safe with him in charge when I was little...like the person running my country was a decent, sane, compassionate human being who wasn't about to let us blow the world up for no good reason. People talk about growing up during the cold war feeling scared...I didn't have that feeling and it was due in no small part to Jimmy Carter (and to my mother who refused to feed us the cold war hysteria).

And of course, it's impossible to grow up liberal in Texas when I did without idolizing Barbara Jordan. Possibly the most articulate speaker to ever come out of this state. She was stately and regal and had more class than any human being I've ever seen. She was everything I wanted to be when I grew up. She had integrity of a sort that doesn't have to call attention to itself. She was brilliant during Watergate...I've heard her famous speech about her faith in the Constitution being whole and complete a million times and if I hear it a million times more it'll never get old. One of the great regrets of my life is that she passed on before I had a chance to take a class from her while I was a student at the LBJ School of Public Affairs.

[Lauri16]

10. My Mom

Seriously. She worked for the County Board of Elections for as long as I can remember. She always told us that no matter what party we went with, to always make sure that we knew all aspects of the issues. (of course I think if one us kids ever came home and told her that we were republican, she'd have keeled over!)

Other than her, i'd say...don't laugh...Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Gorbachev & Jimmy Carter. Probably more, but that's all that really pop into my brain right at the moment.

One more - Ann Richards

[Rhiannon12866]

13. Great list. Obviously, I approve of Jimmy Carter.

And the others should probably also be on mine, except for my mother, of course, who is a Freeper, and says my Dad would be ashamed of me, for my beliefs. And Gorbachev was president, when I visited Russia, just before the USSR fell. He is an excellent choice, and should be on my list, as well. He instituted glasnost and perestroika, but got opposition from the Russian hard-liners, because Reagan refused to cooperate with disarmament.:-(

[Rhiannon12866]

12. Jimmy Carter, Dennis Kucinich, Bill Clinton, FDR, Jefferson, Lincoln

John Edwards, John Kerry, John Conyers, Al Sharpton, Paul Limbert, nuxvomica, JohnKleeb, leftistrebel1569, jeni-b, Cooley Hurd, Will Pitt, Al Franken, Jon Stewart and Bill Maher. I'm sure I'm neglecting a few, but this is my core list.:shrug:

[BlueIris]

14. In descending order of influence: my beloved JK,

my beloved Joseph Cannon, Michael Moore, Sarah D. Bunting, Jon Stewart, Joan Didion, Jean Hegland, Gloria Steinem, Jesse Jackson, Bill Clinton, Betty Freidan and the memory I have of my father before he snapped in the mid-'90s and started voting Republican.

[Spider Jerusalem]

15. Mine:

Also all over the map, leaning heavily towards anarchist/left libertarian thought, with a few exceptions (and some of these are going to seem kind of strange, because they aren't leftists):

Chomsky
Emma Goldman
Mihkhail Bakunin
Robert LaFollette
Eugene V. Debs
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Friedrich Nietzsche
H.L. Mencken
Malcolm X

and more I can't think of at the moment...

[jukes]

16. che guevara

wrote the most succinct & comprehensive nuts & bolts guerilla manual i've ever read.

[Hugin]

17. All of the above...

Plus, I'd like to mention Dr. Eric Alterman.

A couple of years ago when I was in my deepest pit
of despair I started reading his blog. He and his
contributors helped me regain my optimism and fighting
spirit.

Although, I don't always agree with them... Those words helped
me keep an open mind.

[Joe Chi Minh]

18. I'd have a long list, but

apart from the heroes of world-wide socialism/communism (with the exception of Pol Pot - the indulgence shown to him by our own dear bad-ass Western powers we know and love so well, dispels any possibility of a lingering doubt as to the truth of his genocidal record or his character), and the New Deal giants, including such as Kerry Edwards and Kuchinich..., my top heroes, Oscar Romero ("When I give to the poor... they call me a saint; when I ask why they are poor, the call me a Communist") and Martin Luther King... the greatest of all, an Austrian farm labourer called Franz Jaegerstetter.

He put the pope of the day and the RC church leadership to shame, by speaking out boldly against Hitler, while being accused of pride by his bishop! He was guillotined. He had a wife ad two young daughters at the time. I'm not aware of the Church having done an awful lot to honour him.

Whereas I should like to see every pope make a pilgrimage to his tomb - assuming he has one - or at least his home town. I wonder how different Western politics, particularly in the UK and the USA, might have been today - not to speak of South and Central America!!!

[Joe Chi Minh]

19. As for the truly Christian spiritual underpinning

of political ideology, I should, of course, have cited Jesus, first, and possibly next, the prophet Amos, James, John and the other apostles.

The "preferential option for the poor" of Liberation Theology is not, in fact, an option, but an absolute requirement, a "sine qua non". The members of the monied and/or academically-educated middle and upper classes of society are not the paragons of Man that even the Church has tacitly accepted them to be, at all. The socio-economic status of the Holy Family and the Apostles accord far more closely with what scripture states to be the most blessed. The heart, not the head is the seat of wisdom, true intelligence - something our grotesque, "brightest and best", secularist popinjays would find very hard to take on board.