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Americans suffering from rising prices and the highest inflation in 40 years need to demand the results Presidents Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump gave them. They need to reject the policy failures of Presidents Jimmy Carter and Joe Biden.

The difference in economic outcomes is not theory or an ideological or political position. The difference in everyday pocketbook results is purely historic fact.

Big Government Socialists (as I outline in my new book, "Defeating Big Government Socialism") have to be reality deniers. As Theodores White warned back in 1972, liberal ideology has become a liberal theology. Ideologies can evolve. Theologies must be obeyed.

FIVE LESSONS FOR JOE BIDEN FROM JIMMY CARTER'S ONE-TERM PRESIDENCY

Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell recently gave us a perfect example of leftwing reality denial when she wrote, "Republicans demagogue about President Bidens supposed war on fossil fuels and socialism. Neither party has a serious plan for dealing with inflation overall or gas prices specifically."

Given the history of the Reagan and Trump administrations, it is hard to believe that a columnist at a major newspaper could be so misinformed about the real world.

Consider the facts of inflation first.

When President Carter was in office, the inflation rate grew out of control. In fact, the inflation rate grew so high U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker had to raise interest rates to high levels. President Carters destructive energy policies combined with a weak foreign policy led to so much inflation the Fed funds rate reached a peak of 20 percent in June 1981 (with the commercial prime rate reaching 21.5 percent). Compare this with the 1.75 percent Fed funds rate and 4.75 percent prime rate today.

WHITE HOUSE WORRIED ABOUT JIMMY CARTER PARALLELS TO BIDEN PRESIDENCY AS APPROVAL RATING REMAINS LOW: REPORT

Of course, the big difference in interest rates is that Chairman Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve are well behind the curve in trying to slow down or stop inflation. Because President Carter let things get so out of control, the unemployment rate grew to over 10 percent in the 1980-1982 recession.

President Reagan backed Chairman Volckers anti-inflation policies but combined them with a tax cut and regulatory reform policy which increased the incentives to create American jobs and mop up the surplus money with new goods and services.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, UNITED STATES - APRIL 1988: President Ronald Reagan (L) with son Michael Reagan in doorway of Marine One, departing for CA. (Photo by Diana Walker/Getty Images) ((Photo by Diana Walker/Getty Images))

In effect, President Reagan had endorsed the supply side economics of Jack Kemp, Art Laffer, Jude Wanniski, and Larry Kudlow. (I was a junior member of this band of revolutionary enthusiasts who believed you could beat inflation by mopping up the money supply with more goods and services.) Kudlow a generation later would carry this doctrine into the Trump White House to profound effect.

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The result of the Reagan supply side policy was a dramatic decline in inflation and unemployment. Consider the facts of the historic record. Under President Carter inflation shot up from 6.3 percent in 1977 to a peak of 12.4 percent in 1980 (then Reagan defeated Carter by the largest electoral college margin against an incumbent President in modern history).

With Reagans leadership, the inflation rate dropped to 10.4 percent in 1981 and then averaged 4.4 percent for the rest of his two terms. Unemployment followed the inflation rate down, and by 1988 was about half of what Reagan had inherited. The economy grew year after year, and Reagan ran for re-election in 1984 on the theme of "Morning in America."

President Trump inherited a healthier economy from President Obama than Reagan got from Carter, but Trump promptly improved on Obamas record. Inflation rates were 1.8 percent in 2017, 2.1 percent in 2018, 2.2. percent in 2019, and 1.7 percent in 2020.

The sound, pro-economic growth, supply side policies were reinforced by an American energy independence drive which dramatically increased American oil and gas production and brought the price of gasoline down to $2.11 a gallon the week of the 2020 election.

President Biden came in and promptly gave up on all the policies which had worked. Big Government Socialism is anti-energy, anti-sound money, anti-small business, anti-investment, and anti-job creation. The Lefts words sound good, but the results of their policies are terrible.

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Given the history of the Reagan and Trump years, Republicans can campaign with confidence this fall that they know how to bring down the cost of gasoline and diesel fuel, how to bring inflation under control, and how to encourage job creators in both big and small businesses to invest, invent, and flourish.

Sorry Rampell, your fantasy version of history is just wrong. Your promise that Republicans will be as dumb and destructive as Democrats is just historically inaccurate. A brief course on the economic and political history of the last 50 years might help you understand why Democrats fail on inflation and fuel prices and Republicans can campaign with confidence this fall.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM NEWT GINGRICH

Former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich is the host of the "Newts World" podcast and author of the New York Timesbestseller"Trumpand the American Future."More of his commentary can be found at http://www.Gingrich360.com

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Biden is following in the footsteps of Jimmy Carter - Fox News

The Scottish independence movement has waited for years for a serious announcement about a second referendum. The 2014 poll ended in defeat for Yes, but the moral victory was theirs.

The movement grew to become a mass opposition to the decaying status quo of British capitalism; an outlet for the burning class anger felt by millions of workers and young people.

This marked the beginning of a series of back-to-back traumatic shocks and political earthquakes for the ruling class in Britain, resulting from the dead-end of the capitalist system.

But the question has not gone away since, sustaining the SNPs supremacy in Scottish politics and its leadership over the independence movement.

The support for independence is not just a passing mood, but a reflection of a deeper malaise within society; and of a deeper crisis for British capitalism and the Union.

For many, whether or not there will be another independence referendum is a question of when, not if. But there is also the key question of how?.

This is what Nicola Sturgeon finally sought to address with her two announcements this month.

Since the last referendum, the SNP leaders have attempted to keep the movement in what some of their aides call a holding pattern: trying to maintain support and enthusiasm for independence in a high state, but without making any bold moves towards it.

This was the supposed plan behind the multiple false starts to the IndyRef2 campaign.

The SNP were buoyant after smashing Labour and taking all but three Scottish seats at Westminster in the 2015 general election. A year later, they won the Holyrood elections claiming a mandate for independence.

In the wake of the Brexit referendum in June 2016, when Scotlands Remain vote was trumped by the Leave votes of England and Wales, Sturgeon said there must be a new referendum.

Instead, we got the SNPs national survey to supposedly measure support for independence and prepare for the campaign. A year later, this plan was practically forgotten, and Sturgeon was telling campaigners to wait until Brexit was done and dusted.

When the time came in spring 2019, Sturgeon again called for a second vote in 2021. The SNP leader relaunched the Yes campaign, but in the end this was not much more than a website. This too was quietly abandoned.

The SNP won elections in 2016, 2019, and 2021, each time asserting their mandate for an independence referendum. But nothing the party has done so far has actually made it any more likely.

Polling indicates that support for independence consistently sits at a historic high of around 50%, fluctuating upwards with each new episode in British capitalisms terminal crisis.

Formally, then, the SNP are in a strong position. But they are seemingly unable to achieve what they promise.

Whenever the crisis has reached fever pitch, such as in the wake of the Brexit vote, or at the time of the autumn 2020 COVID lockdown, the SNP leaders have deliberately wasted the opportunity to seize on the discontent and anger in society.

Instead, they have been intent on playing the adults in the room, and have moved even more cautiously. They are constantly getting peoples hopes up and then disappointing them.

This has tested the patience of independence movement supporters. It was the grassroots Yes movement and not the SNP that brought about the sea-change in opinion in 2014. And independence activists have maintained constant campaigning ever since.

In more recent years, however, the mass marches and enthusiasm have somewhat declined: attendance is down; there are noticeably fewer young people; and splits over certain personalities have created deep divisions.

Sturgeon and the SNP tops have always kept this grassroots movement at arms length. Yet they are unable to fully control it.

In place of mass mobilisation, the SNP leaders have consistently based themselves on issuing expertly drafted reports and papers about the viability of Scottish independence all on a thoroughly conservative capitalist basis.

This is thin gruel to the movement, however, who are not just uninspired by such a strategy, but who actively reject it.

The 2018 report by the Sustainable Growth Commission another SNP distraction was a clear case in point: advocating an extreme post-independence deficit-cutting austerity programme; and suggesting that monetary policy should be left in the hands of the Bank of England for decades.

As such, this report was even opposed by much of the SNP rank-and-file. Yet Sturgeon is going to try and feed more of this to us.

Consequently, the SNP leaders 14 June announcement passed by without much interest. Within this speech, however, she hinted at a more serious proposal for a second independence referendum next year. That announcement came yesterday.

Up until this point, the question of an IndyRef2 has been at an impasse. The SNP are clear that they want a new referendum on the same basis as the last one in 2014 with agreement and consent from the UK government, signified by a so-called Section 30 order.

But as is known to everyone, Boris Johnson and every other Tory in Westminster refuse to grant this consent.

The SNP leaders have decisively ruled out doing anything that could be construed as illegal such as just going ahead and holding a referendum anyway, as happened in Catalonia in 2017.

As bourgeois nationalists, they are unwilling to push beyond the boundaries of bourgeois legality, or the vague conventions of the British constitution. They are thus forced to try and contrive some kind of lawful argument or legal justification for holding a referendum without Section 30.

In her latest announcement yesterday, Nicola Sturgeon made it perfectly clear that the Scottish government was not pursuing a so-called wildcat referendum.

Instead, Holyrood leaders will be seeking an answer to this point of law: whether the Scottish Parliament has the right to call a referendum without Westminsters consent. This has been referred to the UK Supreme Court, where Sturgeon sincerely hopes to get a positive answer.

We have been here before. In 2019, it was the SNP who led the legal challenge to Boris Johnsons prorogation of the UK Parliament, pinning their hopes for democratic checks-and-balances on the whims of a handful of judges. In that case, a light was shone on the dark and foreboding edifice of judicial supremacy.

The legal arguments had an almost Orwellian character, as advocates argued over whether Boris Johnson had lied to the Queen when she rubber-stamped his illegal request to have Parliament dissolved.

The fact that no checks-and-balances actually exist, that the rule of law is a sham, and that the ruling class wields political power as it needs to was revealed to everyone. Nobody in the Tory government faced any consequences for this ex-post-facto abuse of power.

Sturgeon has no choice now but to pass the SNPs independence referendum bill in Holyrood, with the chosen date of 19 October 2023.

The legal question cannot be answered before this, as the Supreme Court already refused to rule on it when petitioned by the independence campaigner Martin Keatings in 2021, dismissing it then as hypothetical.

The Tory government would anyways have launched their own legal challenge upon the bills passing. But Sturgeon has chosen to beat the Tories to it, and refer the matter to the court herself.

Once this bill is passed, Sturgeon has left it entirely in the hands of the judges to decide whether Scotlands democratic right to self-determination will be respected, or whether the Scottish Parliament will have violated the constitution.

We cannot say for certain what these judges will decide. But it seems highly unlikely that the British establishment and its apparatus in the state and the courts would allow a vote to go ahead that would put the Union at risk.

The Scottish government is attempting to keep the legal advice it has received secret not unusual in itself; but with such a high-stakes case, it leaves one wondering what they have to hide.

Sturgeon and the SNP leaders may themselves be uncertain of the outcome, or even expect the bill to be struck down. If so, then it becomes clear that legislating for a vote in 2023 is just another attempt by the SNP to kick the can of independence down the road.

In reality, the proposal for an October 2023 referendum may not be the actual target for Sturgeon and the SNP.

As part of her announcement to the Scottish Parliament, the First Minister stated that if this 2023 referendum request is rejected, then her party will fight the next UK general election due to take place by January 2025, at the latest as a de-facto referendum on independence.

Exactly what this means is open to question. Are they talking about making a so-called UDI (Unilateral Declaration of Independence) that is, forming a provisional independent government and state?

Such an act would require a radical break with the UK constitution; with the rule of law, as decided by British judges: precisely the kind of action that the SNP have spent years distancing themselves from.

This would take the bourgeois SNP leaders completely outside the realm of legal arguments and moral force, and mean a direct confrontation with the armed bodies of men that make up the state.

As the events of the 2017 Catalan referendum showed, such a struggle could only be pursued on a revolutionary basis, involving the mobilisation of the masses.

But Sturgeon and her bourgeois clique at the top of the SNP and Scottish government have made it abundantly clear that they are not at all prepared to go down this path.

Neither were the Catalan bourgeois nationalists, however. Having stoked this fire, and excited the hopes of the masses, the situation developed according to its own logic, outside the control of the bourgeois leaders.

And the same dynamic would no doubt occur if Scotland was set on a collision course with Westminster and the British establishment.

Sturgeon is right to say that the refusal of the Tories and the Supreme Court would only make people more angry, and more convinced of the need for independence.

This has the potential to rouse the working class, which is already beginning to awaken in Scotland and across Britain.

The class struggle is sharpening everywhere. In the process, these class battles are drawing out the reactionary wing of Scottish nationalism with the SNP leaders attacks against striking train drivers and other workers and the need to link the fight for independence to the fight for socialism.

The national question and the class question are not separated off from each other by a wall, but feed into and off each other.

Taken together, this spells doom for the ruling class. Globally, the capitalist system is facing a catastrophic collapse. In Britain, there is a complete crisis of the regime itself. Every pillar of the establishment is being eroded and undermined. The Tories are in turmoil. And the Union is being torn apart by centrifugal forces.

All of these splits and crises are a harbinger of revolutionary explosions across these isles. We must build the forces of Marxism in preparation for these titanic events.

More:
Scotland: Sturgeon lights the fuse on IndyRef2 - Socialist Appeal

Nick Pandelidis| York Daily Record

For most persons of my generation and older disparaging America as racist and inequitable or condemning our free market system as unfair and greedy capitalism has been an inconceivable and shocking development. We grew up believing in and knowing our country's greatness and goodness.

We are a nation born of the 1776 Declaration that all persons are created equal, endowed by God with inalienable rights of life, liberty, and property of which no legitimate government can deprive them. We are under no illusion that America has always lived up to this ideal, but even imperfectly implemented, America has been the most free, most prosperous, and most just society the world has known. America, as the foremost destination of the world's poor and oppressed, all seeking the opportunities of freedom, bears this statement's truth.

The far-left progressives revolutionaries reject this history. They instead assert our country was founded on the institution of slavery and that our country is systematically racist and unequal. They aim to rewrite American history and rehabilitate America on this fabricated declaration.

The American is Great vision honors and protects the sovereignty of the individual. The revolutionaries disregard the individual's God-given uniqueness and complexity, instead creating collective identity classes according to skin color, sexual preference, or self-conceived gender perception. The revolutionaries see these identity groups as oppressed and needful of societal redress, except for "white" men and, to a lesser extent, "white" women, whom they deem privileged and the cause of the other classes' troubles and needful of repentance. Assigning diverse and multifaceted individuals to a collective group based on a singular superficial characteristic is the very definition of racism and the foundation of totalitarianism.

The America is Great vision places the nuclear family at the keystone of American community and society. Father and mother, sovereigns of their home and family, living their lives and taking responsibility for providing for and raising their children as they see fit. The revolutionaries say traditional family is a social construct of less enlightened times, as are traditional views of gender and marriage, not recognizing these are realities of our created nature.

The America is Great vision understands that individual freedom requires personal virtue for a just and happy society: honesty, industriousness, courage, and duty to self, family, community, country, and God. Virtue in the America is Great vision begins and ends with the individual. That vision understands betterment of society begins and ends with self. That vision knows society cannot make moral decisions or do virtuous acts. Only the individual can do so. For the revolutionaries, virtue is finding fault and blame in others. There is no virtue, only politically correct virtue signaling.

More:Abandonment of Judeo-Christian values is destroying US culture: school choice is the answer

The America is Great vision celebrates the free market economy. It honors the hard-working and innovative entrepreneurs who have so improved our lives. The America is Great vision recognizes free markets have driven and continue to drive the economic growth that is vanquishing poverty, cleaning the environment, spreading educational opportunity, and extending life throughout the world. Yet, the revolutionaries disparage the entrepreneurs, as if the ever-improving technology, goods, and services enriching our lives just happens or, even more fantastic, the government could do it. They disregard the record of economic freedom, but instead embrace socialism, an economic system where the more extensively it has been implemented, the worse has been the economic outcome. Venezuela, or more correctly, the Venezuelan people, are socialism's latest victim.

The America is Great vision is democracy established on the moral principle that every person has God-given inalienable rights of life, liberty, and property. The revolutionaries have no regard for the individual or individual rights but instead want to expand the government's power to rehabilitate America and impose their collectivist, egalitarian utopian vision. And they call this "democracy." But democracy disregarding the individual's rights is nothing more than mob rule and totalitarianism. Have we so soon forgotten those communist governments compelling the "collective good," resulting in hundreds of millions of deaths just a few decades ago?

America can be great again. However, pursuing progressive policies of identity politics, critical race theory, moral relativism, and socialism will only further our societal division, acrimony, and our material and spiritual distress. At the same time, making America Great is much more than Trumpian nationalism. Instead, we must return to our country's foundational values and vision.

Firstly, we must love, respect, protect, and celebrate the bestowed uniqueness and sovereignty of every individual. We must understand that healing our society's divisions and despair begins with rebuilding families and communities of families. Bettering society must and can only start with self. As individuals, we must take responsibility and we must do the good and right we can. We must also recognize and be thankful for the material abundance created by free markets. Government economic intervention only enriches politicians, bureaucrats, and their cronies, and inevitably results in unintended economic consequences, harming consumers and the poor most of all.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men (persons) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

Nick Pandelidis is a retired physician living in Shrewsbury.

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July 4th thoughts: the 'American is Great vision' vs. the 'revolutionary' vision | opinion - York Daily Record

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Socialism or barbarism? What is the alternative to capitalism? - Socialist Worker

The escalation of the US-NATO war against Russia and the massive attack on democratic rightsepitomized in the US Supreme Court decision abolishing the right to an abortionare two sides of the same process.

In his seminal 1916 work Imperialism and the Split in Socialism, Vladimir Lenin defined imperialism as reaction all down the line. In both war and domestic policy, he explained, finance capital strives for domination, not freedom. Lenin wrote, The difference between the democratic-republican and the reactionary-monarchist imperialist bourgeoisie is obliterated precisely because they are both rotting alive.

Lenins words aptly characterize the present crisis of the world capitalist system.

At this weekends G7 summit, the leaders of the major imperialist powers met in the Bavarian Alps to plan the next stage of the war. Behind the backs of the population, with no public discussion and no formal declaration, the conflict has developed into a de facto war against Russia in Ukraine.

The extent of NATO involvement was revealed in a New York Times article published Saturday titled Commando network coordinates flow of weapons in Ukraine, officials say. The article explains that the US and NATO have organized a stealthy network of commandos and spies who are rushing to provide weapons, intelligence and training.

The article cites US and European officials who confirmed that the NATO powers have deployed advisers within Ukraine to train Ukrainian soldiers, while the US military directly trains soldiers at bases in Germany. This is the product of a years-long plan, dating back to the 2014 Ukrainian elections and the Maidan putsch, to transform Ukraine into a staging ground for a war against Russia. The Times article states, From 2015 to early this year, American Special Forces and National Guard instructors trained more than 27,000 Ukrainian soldiers at theYavoriv Combat Training Center in western Ukraine near the city of Lviv, Pentagon officials said.

In both their choice of planning location as well as in their war aims, the leaders of the worlds self-proclaimed democracies emulated Hitler, the last capitalist politician who attempted the colonization of Russia through military means. The very castle where the G7 leaders met in the Bavarian town of Schloss Elmau had been a Nazi military vacation camp during World War Two.

A communiqu issued by the G7 group after the meeting in Schloss Elmau states that it is prepared to carry on the war as long as it takes. This means there is no limit to the number of lives the governments are willing to sacrifice to accomplish their geostrategic goals.

The first point on the agenda at the G7 summiton the cost-of-living and food crisismakes clear that the ruling class is aware the war is paving the way for a colossal confrontation with the working class.

Under these conditions, the ruling class of each imperialist power views the most basic democratic rights as obstacles in the pursuit of its war aims. Even as the war propagandists in the corporate media justify war on the grounds that Putin is a fascist, the logic of the development of the war in the imperialist countries necessitates reaction all down the line.

The decision by six unelected judges on the Supreme Court to strip hundreds of millions of Americans of the right to abortion must be seen in this context.

In issuing its decision, the court announced that it was launching an assault on all basic democratic rights. While Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas explicitly referenced contraceptives and same-sex marriage as the next targets, he made clear that all cases involving substantive due process must now be revisited. This includes fundamental rights related to searches and seizures, free speech and assembly, labor regulations and other civil rights.

The Democratic Party and Biden administration have facilitated the Supreme Courts attack on democratic rights with constant efforts to appeal to and appease the far right. When Biden speaks of his Republican friends, he is appealing for bipartisan unity in the pursuit of imperialist war aims against Russia. This bipartisanship only legitimizes the extreme right and strengthens the increasingly fascist Republican Party, which attempted to prevent Biden from taking office less than two years ago.

The intensification of the war and the abortion ban are inextricably related and underscore the basic truth that democracy is incompatible with imperialism. In his 1948 book The American Political Tradition, the historian Richard Hofstadter references publisher Frank Cobbs recollection of a discussion with then-President Woodrow Wilson on the eve of Wilsons 1917 decision to enter World War One.

According to Cobb, Wilson said when a war got going it was just war and there werent two things about it. It required illiberalism at home to reinforce the men at the front. We couldnt fight Germany and maintain the ideals of Government that all thinking men shared. Cobb quoted Wilson as saying, To fight you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fiber of our national life, infecting Congress, the courts, the policeman on the beat

This is the case in every imperialist center, where three decades of nonstop imperialist war have asphyxiated democracy and nourished the forces of extreme political reaction. In Britain, Boris Johnson is perhaps the most hated prime minister in history for his naked corruption and slovenly subservience to the London banks. The Johnson government is attempting to deport asylum seekers from countries devastated by imperialist war to Rwanda in a move that even the European Court of Human Rights ruled is blatantly illegal.

In France, where Emmanuel Macron is reviled as the president of the rich, the fascist far right won more votes than in any previous presidential election. An unelected administrative court just banned Muslim women from wearing bathing suits that comport with their religious beliefs in a blatant act of cruel discrimination against the countrys large immigrant population.

The war will be conducted on the basis of a massive assault on the economic and social rights of the working class in every country. Government after government is pouring billions of dollars into arming Ukraine without ever asking the public. Calls are growing for balancing budgets to pave the way for further military spending. To pay for war, health and welfare programs will be gutted, even as the pandemic spreads and as governments enact fiscal policies aimed at increasing unemployment and lowering wages.

The war has exacerbated a cost-of-living crisis that is forcing billions of workers to confront unprecedented levels of economic hardship. The imperialist governments are sacrificing the lives of millions in Asia and Africa who face varying degrees of starvation in an attempt to weaken the Russian governments ties to the global economy. In Europe and North America, the cost of food, gas, energy, rent and basic services is skyrocketing because of the war, while the corporatist trade union bureaucracies suppress wages.

Conditions are emerging for a revolutionary explosion throughout the world. Protests against the rising cost of living are suppressed with deadly brutality in countries like Peru, Sri Lanka, Ecuador, and elsewhere.

In Europe, strikes are growing across the transport industries, including among British rail workers, dockworkers in Germany and Greece, airport workers in France, Denmark and the Netherlands, and pilots and flight attendants across the continent at Easy Jet, Ryanair, British Airways and SAS. A series of powerful strikes has taken place in heavy industry in the United States, where strikes are threatened by tens of thousands of dock and rail workers.

The ruling class has responded by banning strikes and blaming workers for undermining the war effort. In Britain, the Tories are denouncing striking rail workers as Putins agents while the courts in the US have barred rail workers from striking on national security grounds. This is the modern version of Hitlers stab-in-the-back narrative, which blamed German workers and the revolution of 1918 for German imperialisms defeat in World War One. In Spain, the democratic government of the PSOE and Podemos banned airport workers from joining a European-wide strike for similar reasons.

The International Committee of the Fourth International and its national sections, the Socialist Equality Parties, call for the development of a powerful movement of the international working class against imperialist war. The fight against war must be connected to the defense of democratic rights, rooted in the growing struggles of workers throughout the world and based on a socialist program in opposition to the capitalist profit system.

The World Socialist Web Site is the voice of the working class and the leadership of the international socialist movement. We rely entirely on the support of our readers. Please donate today!

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Imperialist war and the attack on democratic rights - WSWS