Irregular Books

The 2008 presidential election season is upon us, and in just a little bit more than a month, Americans are going to start voting in their state primaries and caucuses in order to select their political parties’ presidential candidates.

To help them, they will have 2,008 reasons. That’s the project begun by Irregular Times two years ago: Compile 2,008 reasons to elect a progressive President by January 1, 2008.

The new political encyclopedia covers history, economics, war and peace, freedom, community, and education, as well as the follies of the Democratic and Republican parties. Here’s just one of the 2,008 reasons they’ve assembled for this book, to be published in January of the coming year:

Under the leadership of right wing politicians in the Republican and Democratic parties, the United States become more intolerant than South Africa, the nation which ended apartheid less than a generation ago. The nation of South Africa now embraces racial equality, but it doesn’t stop there. In November of 2006, South Africa’s Parliament voted in favor of a Civil Union law that gives same-sex couples the same marriage rights as heterosexual couples.

Here in the United States, our Congress has refused to grant equal marriage rights to same-sex couples. Even that refusal isn’t nasty enough for them, though. Right wingers are seeking an amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America that would override the right to equal protection under the law and make it a crime for same-sex couples to get married.

It used to be known that the United States of America was known around the world as a nation that valued equality for all people. The growing power of right wing Republicans and Democrats, however, has led us into moral decay. For the sake of America’s traditional progressive civic values, we need to elect a progressive President who will promote the restoration of the ethic of equality in American culture. (Source: Reuters, November 15, 2006)