| Here Comes Our Local Socialist |
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Here Comes Our Local Socialist SPRING HILL -- If resumes were destiny, Brian Moore, the Spring Hill resident and Socialist Party candidate for president, would have a leg up on many, if not most, of the major party candidates. His experience in social work outstrips Hillary Clinton's. He's run more organizations than Mitt Romney. His hands-on work in foreign relations as a member of the Peace Corps gives him more credibility on international issues than Barack Obama. And his education and private sector work experience render him equal to Rudy Giuliani on the management front. He also retains a quality, at 64, that none of the major party candidates can touch: the ability to turn on a high-octane fastball. Forty-five years after he was named most valuable player for a St. Mary's (Moraga, Calif.) College baseball team that had a catcher who attracted the attention of Major League scouts, Moore -- a robust, meat-and-potatoes Irishman/first baseman -- hit substantially higher than his weight during the most recent season of the Nature Coast Adult Baseball League, populated by recent college players. More on Moore: He's as affable as Mike Huckabee, the cheerful ex-Baptist pastor, as wonky as New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and as deeply committed to doing what he believes is right as any combination of Duncan Hunter, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Tom Tancredo and John McCain. So what's a nice Nature Coast guy like this doing at the top of a party whose very name scares about 88 percent of American voters right down to their phalanges? "I know, I know," he says over a breakfast of scrambled eggs, pancakes and applesauce, in deference to a freshly installed cap. "Being a Socialist, I always looked at it as a negative, a nasty word. "But when I studied it, I got to understand that it wasn't always bad. Socialism got mixed up with McCarthy and Stalin and the Red Scare. ... Socialism isn't communism." What it is, an aggressively anti-war, anti-military, high-tax, equalize-the-wealth, it-takes-a-village system, appeals to the kid inside Moore who grew up over the hills from Berkeley, Calif., close enough to be influenced by the impassioned rants of "all those troublemakers" -- protest leaders Jack Weinberg, Mario Savio, Stokely Carmichael and others. At the same time, having emerged from high school in Sacramento as a three-sport star, captain of the football team and student body president, Moore completed his freshman year at St. Mary's as the ultimate establishment figure (he dreamed of a Major League Baseball career) thinking, "Is this all there is? I wanted something more out of my college experience." The second-oldest in a working-class Irish Catholic family of seven, Moore was drawn to a deeper understanding of his faith and duty. He found it at the Franciscan Theological Seminary, Mission San Miguel, in Santa Barbara. Moore confesses, "I emerged as a troublemaker." Stratospheric Odds Against Winning The rest has been a 40-year journey in search of social justice, equality and the alleviation of suffering, including two campaigns for the District 5 congressional seat that includes most of Pasco and frequent troops-home-now roadside protests around the county, all of it bringing him to this moment in the penumbra of the national spotlight. Certainly, he appreciates the steepness of his proposed climb. "I won't win," Moore says, "well, unless the system breaks down because there's a major war or a plague and people decide to turn to something they haven't tried before." So, barring an international catastrophe, what's in it for Brian Moore, wed for the first time in 2003, and the recently adoptive father of a 10-year-old? Never underestimate a troublemaker. "Someone must say what must be said: I think there's a growing disillusionment with the two major parties," he says. He decries their ties to corporate America, scolds their support for "free trade over fair trade," finds their policies regarding relations with the rest of the world indecipherable and indistinguishable -- which, he says, largely describes their domestic agendas, too. In that light, he says, perhaps the message can get through that Socialists "want to give power to the people, to the citizens. ... We have to embolden people not to feel embarrassed about their socialist tendencies." That assumes, of course, that when push comes to shove, Americans will put aside traditional notions of rugged individualism characterized by Moore as John Wayne-style cowboy posturing. But wait. Would we, instead, vote for a candidate who values "equality and egalitarianism" and would get us there by slashing the military by half, closing overseas bases, disbanding the nation's intelligence agencies and intervening only where America doesn't have a compelling interest (Darfur, for instance); limiting the pay of corporate executives to some modest multiple of the average employee; nationalizing health care with the idea of spreading coverage and limiting "unnecessary" tests, while still allowing physicians and hospitals to be flogged by the tort bar; and coercing businesses to put "human rights" and employee concerns ahead of profit and the concerns of investors? "Socialism is the only way for the people to regain their footing," he says. "It's the only way to have peace, a fair society, fewer social problems and a better quality of life." Equality, Not Profit When record numbers of houses go into receivership, pensions are threatened, whole divisions of jobs go overseas and oil continues to rule, pushing the anxiety quotient into the red, capitalism is doomed, he says. No more of this "pulling yourself up by the bootstraps" business. "We need a more human system based on equality," he says, "not based on profit." While author/philosopher Ayn Rand spins in her grave, Moore wonders earnestly, "Does that make me un-American?" Not at all. Despite its tender age, the United States is, at 231, nonetheless sufficiently mature to weather having its warts enumerated and detailed. But its inherent greatness -- its ability to offer opportunity, security and unprecedented liberty whether times are dismal, tumultuous or brilliant -- is abundant proof that you can be utterly patriotic and hopelessly wrong at precisely the same time. Reporter Tom Jackson can be reached at (813) 948-4219. This story can be found at www.tbo.com. |