I was pleased to see your story about the U.S. congressional race in the 24th District featured in the March 16 edition of the Sun.
I was not so pleased, however, to see that my platform was summarized as “student debt and college tuition reform, health care and insurance, and environmental issues.” As I repeatedly emphasized in my interview, the main purpose of my candidacy, by far, is to oppose U.S. wars and military interventionism. It wasn’t until the second-to-last paragraph that readers were given only a vague hint of this.
To be clear: I am running for Congress to give people a chance to vote against U.S. wars and our government’s long-standing policy of overt and covert regime change in foreign countries. Insofar as I’m recognized as an expressedly anti-war candidate, it means votes for me will be interpreted as a protest against the continuing pattern of the U.S. militarism that has not only devastated foreign nations (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Ukraine, and Yugoslavia, to name a few), but is morally and economically destroying our own. This changes, in my opinion, the election from a meaningless choice between status quo Democrats and Republicans, to a meaningful opportunity to vote against war.
Also, I somewhat winced to see I was characterized as a “self-described philosopher,” a phrase often applied to mere posers. In fact, I do quite a bit of scholarly work in the area of philosophy and have, for example, written widely read commentaries on Plato’s Republic and other dialogues, and about just-war theory.
Readers are invited to learn more about my anti-war candidacy by visiting my campaign website, john-uebersax.com/2016.
This article appears in Mar 24-31, 2016.
