Weinfeld: Will The Real Left Please Stand Up?

For many decades, and more noticeably in the aftermath of 9/11 and the launching of the "war on terror," there has been a vacuum on the political spectrum. It has been harder for the so-called democratic or non-communist left, (or American Democrats in the Kennedy, Humphrey and Johnson tradition) to find an intellectual and political home.

People who sought to combine a progressive domestic agenda -- strong support for the liberal welfare state, free trade unions, gender and racial equality, free speech, fair trade -- with a robust, proactive and pro-democratic foreign agenda, had nowhere to turn. One or the other would have to be sacrificed.

That's Morton Weinfeld, in today's Ottawa Citizen, setting out a Canadian perspective on the Euston Manifesto.

The manifesto will not persuade doctrinaire ideologues of the Canadian left; its aim is a core of moderate progressives, traditional liberals and red Tories. Several Canadians have signed the manifesto, and have begun communicating with each other to see if there might be support in Canada for an effort to create a Canadian chapter.

Nicely done, Morton.