Water Over Gold asked: He started out as a “capitalism is evil” type of guy……..the endgame being a racial utopia. Then after a while he realized the capitalists were the ones with the money required to actually push the changes he wanted to achieve. So by the late 90s he had turned into an “eco-friendly capitalist” (kinda like Al Gore).
Interestingly enough the only way for an “eco-friendly capitalist” to make money is for the govt. to subsidize the green products to make them more affordable or heavily tax any competition to the green products.
Which brings us to Mr. Jones other statement:
“I’ll work with anybody, I’ll fight anybody if it will push our issues forward. … I’m willing to forgo the cheap satisfaction of the radical pose for the deep satisfaction of radical ends”
So do you think Obama appointees are former radicals who retain the same goals but have simply refined the means to achieve them??
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Jones
Jones started his career as a staunch critic of capitalism; his outrage over the Rodney King verdict radicalized him to the point where he declared himself a communist (he has since renounced these views) and actively began protesting police brutality.[18] He later got involved with Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), a collective which “dreamed of a multiracial socialist utopia”. According to former employer Eva Patterson, Jones later “jettisoned his youthful notions and moved on to seek more effective and attainable solutions.”[19] Frustrated keeping coalitions together to make positive social change, Jones “discarded the hostility and antagonism with which he had previously greeted the world, which he said was part of the ego-driven romance of being seen as a revolutionary.” “Before, we would fight anybody, any time,” Jones says of his transformation. “No concession was good enough; we never said ‘Thank you.’ Now, I put the issues and constituencies first. I’ll work with anybody, I’ll fight anybody if it will push our issues forward. … I’m willing to forgo the cheap satisfaction of the radical pose for the deep satisfaction of radical ends”.[18] Jones ended his involvement with STORM (and STORM officially dissolved in December 2002).[20]
By the late 1990s, Jones began promoting capitalism as he transformed into an environmentally friendly capitalist[citation needed]. He emerged as one of the foremost champions of green business, entrepreneurship and market-based solutions. In his 2008 best seller The Green Collar Economy, Jones contended that invention and investment will take us out of a pollution-based grey economy and into a healthy new green economy.[21] Jones wrote:
[W]e are entering an era during which our very survival will demand invention and innovation on a scale never before seen in the history of human civilization. Only the business community has the requisite skills, experience, and capital to meet that need. On that score, neither government nor the nonprofit and voluntary sectors can compete, not even remotely.
So in the end, our success and survival as a species are largely and directly tied to the new eco-entrepreneurs — and the success and survival of their enterprises. Since almost all of the needed eco-technologies are likely to come from the private sector, civic leaders and voters should do all that can be done to help green business leaders succeed. That means, in large part, electing leaders who will pass bills to aid them. We cannot realistically proceed without a strong alliance between the best of the business world —and everyone else.
ULYSSES
