Nader has burned the candle at both ends for too long with me and has finally run out of wax. Accepting ads from the Republicans without a whimper of protest was bad but this is too much. He owns the Fidelity Magellan fund, a collection of the worst bunch of corporate rapists in the world. He told Pacifica : "I don't believe in not participating in the market". Fidelity is the financier of Occidental petroleum corporations explorations in U'wa lands in Columbia. Nader says he will "go to a future share holders meeting". Why did he wait years to do so? It must be nice to make a profit while claiming to do so as a portest.

Nader is a capitalist, without a doubt, on many levels. Nonetheless voting for him messes with capitalism and trends toward rising greed.

His candidacy is not just the least of three evils, but a statement that questions various aspects of capitalism (without any actual opposition to this inane and tragically hurtful way of handling resources).

Many of the people supporting him have no intention of adopting a reformed version of capitalism. He will either live up to the better things he is saying, or other people will emerge to run for president next time. Or the Green Party will splinter and lose some votes.

Jim Shackelford

If the Greens get 5% we will be stuck with them as the new alledged "voice" of the left. They suck they are predominantly upper class white kids who have not solicited the leadership of the people who are actually in a struggle.

We need to wait for a real rev.

Whatever you think of Ralph Nader, this post repeats a common fallacy that people need to understand. With rare exceptions, such as when stock offerings are made specifically to raise capital, people buying stocks are *not* investing in a company, anymore than someone buying a used car is putting money into the manufacturers pocket. The money paid for a stock purchased in the stock market is paid to the previous owner. You are, essentially, doing nothing more than betting on the future performance of a company. (Holding a large enough chunk to give you potential influence is another matter.) Doug Henwood does a good job of explaining this (along with a whole lot else) in his book, *Wall Street: How It Works and for Whom*.

There's a lot of emotionalism on all sides in this election, and it's always quite comforting to think that you alone have taken a pure moral position. But this kind of thinking usually comes at the price of turning off your mind, either in whole or in part. For my money, this is pretty small beer compared to everything that Ralph Nader has done over the decades. Tens of thousands of people are alive today, just because of auto safety features that he brought about.

Whether that means you should vote for him for President is another matter entirely. But it does seem that this post exhibits two unfortunate characteristics. First, it's based on a fallacy that equates stock ownership with investing. Second, it fails to put the alleged offense into any sort of sensible relationship with the rest of the candidate's record. I would argue that whatever conclusions you come to it's important to avoid fallacies and to put things into persepctive, giving more weight to that which is more important. This is why I try to add stuff to this site that brings a range of different information and arguments together, so that people can think these things through for themselves.

I sense in this post a desire to have Nader be a superhuman pillar of virtue, a desire which has been frustrated by the information that the poster refers to. But this desire, however understandable, is utterly unrealistic. No one and no thing is utterly perfect. We're all imperfect in some respect or other. Some anarchists are infected with a similar unrealistic expectation of perfection. For them, the act of voting would sully their perfection, it's an unclean act.

I think it's very important for all of us to learn ways to preserve the passion and commitment of our moral vision without making ourselves prisoners of unrealistic expectations. Perfection is a direction, it's not anyone's property. It never can be. We experience perfection in the moment, but the minute we try to possess it, that very attempt destroys it. This is not an excuse for tolerating evil. It's advice about avoiding unintentionally doing evil in the name of pure good.

I've become mighty sick of the high moral ground taken by would-be far Leftists attacking Ralph Nader and the Green Party. I suspect that these people cling so devoutly to their utopian "vision" at the price of unwillingness to stomach even the least uncomfortable of political coalitions, simply because they enjoy their holier-than-thou position more than they are willing to face its consequences. In a society that places such a high premium on individuality, it is no wonder that there are those whose greatest pleasure is to be excluded by others. I do not wish to critize the intentions of these political philosophers who dare call themselves revolutionaries. I just wish they would study the countless examples in history wherein a leadership has attempted to force its vision on its people. I can think of two major genocides this has resulted in (the Nazi Holocaust and Pol Pot's Cambodia). Do not buy that the hard Left is trying to put power into the hands of the people. The best we can hope for in society is a stalemate of power, in which corporations are accountable and yet people are allowed to interact with one another without Power and its spurious claims to moral superiority breathing down their necks.

I'm voting for Nader because he is making an appeal not to Power's violence but its conscience, which is its only weakness.

It is possible to find fault with anyone. I just ask that the poster of the original message to consider how similar puritanism in any form is to Fascism. Only a capitalist of beliefs would seek to purge the world of capitalism.