Power often employs language to obfuscate their agendas. The thinking is, if you can control the language of the discourse, then you can better control the discourse surrounding your agendas."Compassionate Conservatism" is the term used by Republicans to position themselves as the "people friendly" party of big business. G.W. Bush is a Compassionate Conservative, he likes Latino Americans and speaks Spanish fluently. "New Democrat" is the term used by the Democrats to position themselves as the "big business friendly" party of the people. William Jefferson Clinton was the first New Democrat. Al Gore is one too. They both supported the Permanent Normal Trade Relations Treaty with China. Not to mention the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and North American Free Trade Agreement treaties (NAFTA) too.

Candidates from both parties, the Democrats on the left, and the Republicans on the right, position themselves politically as "centrists" during election campaigns. This is done to gain broader appeal among the voting populace. Upon election, the candidates tend to gravitate back towards their respective ideological poles in relation to certain hot-button issues such as: abortion, tax cuts, defense spending and domestic social programs, to name a few.

Unfortunately, since Bill Clinton has been president, the New Democrats keep forgetting to gravitate back towards the left. It seems that being the "big business friendly" party is more rewarding than being the party of the people. As a result, financial contributions from major corporations and political action committees to the Democratic National Committee have more than quadrupled since 1992. Consequently, the interests of the center: big business, establishment government and the upwardly mobile middle class, are well represented by the current centrist status quo. Meanwhile, those whose interests do not fall within those very narrow lifestyle definitions are pushed outside of any meaningful political debate in what is supposed to be a representative democracy style of government.

It makes little or no difference which party gains control of the White House -regardless, it will be (big) business as usual. Before the planned protests of the Democratic and Republican conventions this past summer, it was asked, if it were wise to protest the Democratic convention. The answer? A resounding "yes". The Democrats deserved to be protested even more than the Republican party. Malcom X once said that he preferred dealing with southern whites as opposed to liberal northeastern whites because the southerners were upfront with their racism; he felt that he at least knew where he, as a black man, stood with them. Likewise, the Republicans are only behaving like we expect Republicans to behave. They have always been upfront about their support for big business and moneyed interests. We've known for a long time where they stood in regard to the interests of the average American—on the other side of the fence. The Democrats, however, are attempting to straddle the fence between the interests of their traditional voting base, and those of their corporate sponsors who are funding their campaigns. Clinton and company have taken what were once worker-friendly, women-friendly, minority-friendly Democratic values and repackaged them into a new brand of corporate-friendly political product called a New Democrat. But a close read of the ingredients on the back of this package will reveal that this product is nothing but "Republican Lite".

"Neoliberalism" or "liberal democracy" are terms used to describe the theoretical and political justification for corporate globalization, a policy that both Compassionate Conservatives and New Democrats firmly embrace. One of the tenets of neoliberalism is that social justice can be achieved through laissez-faire, free market economic policies. If this all sounds vaguely familiar, in the 1980's this "liberal" policy was called Reaganomics.

According to the cannons of neoliberalism our needs as freethinking individuals are supposed to be met via the socioeconomic uplift provided by a free market economic system which asserts that if business is allowed to thrive, then we will all thrive. What if the job provided by that "uplift " doesn't pay a living wage and you can't afford to live the lifestyle presented by the consumer product ads on television? What if your idea of happiness can't be obtained through the purchase of goods and services provided by multinational corporations and global media entertainment outlets? What if those very same laissez-faire economic policies are in fact restricting our constitutional rights to privacy, freedom of speech, freedom to peaceably assemble, our access to our own government and our pursuit of happiness?