Before we can evaluate current Presidential candidates, we might calibrate our minds by asking and attempting to answer the question, “From a Hippie-American perspective, what would an ideal candidate look like?”

First that candidate would adopt ethnic-hippies theory. That doesn’t mean the candidate would agree exactly with every idea expressed on this site; it means she or he would see hippies/”the counterculture” as an ethnicity and then draw the appropriate lessons from that: encouraging ethnic prejudice is bad for America and particularly corrosive to democracy; encouraging social equality and respect among various types of Americans is the sane, humane and democratic path forward. The War on Drugs is designed to be a war on American ethnic and racial minorities; the war on marijuana, in particular, is designed to be a war on Hippie-America. Marijuana needs to be legalized for civil-rights reasons; as a nation, we need to stop scapegoating “the counterculture”; hippie hating and hippie baiting have been to blame for much of the nation’s slide towards the repressive right over the last forty years.

Currently (late 2007) the neoconservative Bush Administration is trying to extradite five legalization activists from western Canada; they are known as the BC5 (British Columbia Five). (See “Blog Four: A Hippie 'Martyr'?”). Incidentally, Bush Administration people admit this is a political prosecution, that their motive is to punish these activists for their contributions to the legalization movement internationally. So, after the 2008 election, most likely a “new” Justice Department will have to deal with this case. An ideal candidate would promise to drop this prosecution/persecution, recognizing it for what it is: an official hate crime in the making, an act of ethnocide.

Legalizing marijuana, dropping the BC5 charges--these are good, but Hippie-America needs more. We need a candidate who not only refrains from hippie-baiting but aggressively goes after those who do hippie bait. Want to see the Newt Gingrichs of the world flinch? Call them the bigots and demagogues they are, and make it stick: show the public how they’re appealing to bigotry. Make them pay a political price for their scapegoating and prejudice. Republicans have been largely responsible for the institutionalization of hippie baiting in American politics. Too many Democrats and others, however, have no idea how to respond when they or their parties are hippie baited; it’s like they stand there stunned, mumbling, “Oh, god, please don’t call me/us hippie, please!” That is not a way to win an election.

And there are things Hippie-Americans need that all Americans need: A candidate who takes Global Warming deadly seriously and is deadly serious about protecting our planet and its natural environment. A candidate who isn’t bought and sold, one whose campaign isn’t paid for by big corporations. A candidate who understands that US foreign policy is more about empire than it’s about national self-defense, that Iraq isn’t refried WW II and that the best way to stop future 9/11s is to stop creating a master-servant relationship with the Third World, particularly Arab and Muslim nations. A candidate who will not pull us further into debt to finance imperial wars or other perks for what President Bush calls “my constituency,” the privileged, super-wealthy elite--a candidate who’s capable of representing the rest of us.

And we need a candidate who’ll be both electable and after elected, honor campaign promises and have a progressive, successful Presidency. God Bless America. Lord knows, we need it.