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by Paul Kashmann
Bob Kinsey is tired of the color scheme in American politics. Pundits from coast to coast routinely display maps defining each of our 50 states and the District of Columbia as either red or blue, indicating a leaning toward voting Republican or Democrat in party-specific races.
Though neither an interior decorator nor a fine artist skilled in the
intricacies of the painter’s palette, the ex-Marine and retired educator
and minister would like to see the political landscape show a bit of
green to balance things out.
Kinsey is running for the U.S.
Senate on the Green Party ticket. He came up short in a 2004 bid to
unseat Marilyn Musgrave for the House of Representatives seat from
District 4, and garnered a noteworthy 50,004 votes (2.1 percent of the
votes cast) in the 2008 Senate race that sent Mark Udall to the Capitol.
Having taught high
school history and social studies for 25 years, Kinsey says, “We need
more voices in the political arena so we can address the issues
rationally, instead of simply demonizing the other side.” He believes
the two major parties are so hamstrung by obligation to their financial
contributors that they are unable to function in the best interests of
their constituents.
Kinsey’s major party opponents are expected
to spend millions of dollars in attempting to win the Senate race. “I
spent $4,500 when I ran against Udall and Schaeffer,” said the
candidate. “That was money raised from individual donations. I’ve never
had a corporate contribution. Money and banking is a huge issue. Banks
should be highly regulated. We can’t let people gamble with their
pension funds. Unfortunately, you get the same basic monetary policies
that lead to disaster whether it’s a Republican or Democrat
administration.”
Kinsey is not afraid of regulation. As a matter
of fact, he sees it as a responsibility of government. “Regulation and
accountability have got to occur,” he said. “It’s my opinion that there
is no accountability at present except to the marketplace. And the
marketplace doesn’t always act in the public interest. An economy exists
to produce the goods and services that people need – not to make some
people rich. In some circles, if you think government regulation is
important you’re branded as some sort of socialist or communist.” Not
afraid of that particular moniker, Kinsey declared, “I probably do tend
toward being some sort of socialist.”
Having served three years
of active duty with the Marine Corps toward the end of the Korean War,
Kinsey is far from the caricature G.I. Joe-style warrior. “The Green
Party is anti-war,” he said. “If you’re being attacked by an invading
army, then you may have to respond aggressively. But Al Qaeda’s not an
army, or a state. Pre-emptive war is illegal according to the tenets of
international law, and we’re a signatory of the treaty that formed the
United Nations, so presumably we back international law. You simply
can’t cause more harm by waging war than you’re trying to prevent. The
collateral damage we accept from war is ridiculous.”
Kinsey’s
anti-war leanings were developed at an early age. “When I was 10 years
old, I picked up Life magazine and there was a picture of Hiroshima and a
quote by Einstein, that said, ‘It is my conviction that killing under
the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.’ It scared the hell
out of me where we had arrived at technologically: the ability to
destroy cities with the push of a single button. The nuclear attack on
Japan was essentially civilian damage. There have been more civilian
casualties than military in every war since World War I.”
A
longtime, devoted and active member of Veterans For Peace, Kinsey
declares that, “My major activist work my whole life has been against
the proliferation of nuclear weapons. War is organized insanity. When
you devote huge amounts of resources to create instruments of war that
can annihilate cities, you’ve gone beyond any notion of a just war.”
Kinsey is equally interested in reversing the effects of the war he
sees being waged against the planet Earth. “The Green Party has an
organic view of life on the planet. In order for life to prosper it has
to function in balance with other aspects of life on the planet.
Unregulated growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. The idea that the
marketplace serves all problems leaves out so many other systems. The
manatee didn’t have a vote about the risks inherent with deep water
drilling.
“When I was born, there were 1.75 billion people. When
(Kenneth) Boulding wrote The Meaning of the 20th Century he was writing
about a planet with 4.5 billion people. Now we’ve got 7 billion. I
don’t think the planet can sustain us as the industrialized society
we’re living in now. We need to base our society on renewable energies
and work seriously about reducing the population of the planet. We must
seek out a rational, humane way of encouraging people to reverse this
trend.”
Internationally, Kinsey sees the Middle East as a powder
keg that must be defused, and points to Israel as the spark that is most
likely to ignite a firestorm. “If we don’t get serious with Israel and
insist they conform with international law, it’s only a matter of time.
They’ve got to make room for a two- state system that’s fair to the
Palestinians. Iraq agreed to disarm in the context of a Middle East
peace, but we’re not addressing Israel for having 80-200 nuclear weapons
depending on whose numbers you use.”
“We live in one world,” the
candidate concludes. “You can’t go any place anymore. There is no place
to go. We have to love the whole planet and see all other peoples as
equally deserving of the same human rights and benefits we would ask for
our own time on Earth. We need to not be so quick to make someone our
‘enemy’.”
Kinsey counts a relatively obscure frontier soldier, Silas Soule, as
his hero. “Soule came from Maine to Colorado in the early 1860s to seek
his fortune. He enlisted with the 1st Colorado Volunteers, and was with
his regiment at Sand Creek, when Col. John Chivington ordered the
cavalry to attack a Cheyenne encampment populated mainly by elders,
women and children. When he heard Chivington gave the order to attack,
he refused, and later testified against Chivington in a formal inquiry.”
Soule was soon thereafter murdered by Chivington loyalists. “Silas got
assassinated on the streets of Denver and no one spent an ounce of
energy to see who did it. He was an honorable soldier who wouldn’t just
take any order.”
For more information about Bob Kinsey, visitwww.kinseyforsenate.org or call 303-825-0660, or 303-949-4073. Visitwww.coloradogreenparty.org for Green Party details.
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