Notes of a Traveling Agitator

In lieu of a column

by , November 10, 2010

By the time you read this, I’ll be somewhere between Danbury, Connecticut, and Boston, probably on an Amtrak train wondering if I’ve missed my stop. I’m not a good traveler, as you might imagine: like all writers, I much prefer being in my study, researching my next project, or perhaps hanging out in my garden in relatively sunny California, rather than braving the icy New England winds.

It’s the Antiwar.com Autumn Winter Tour, and I’m on the road, so this isn’t really a column, but then again – it is. Because the subject is just as important as the topics I normally cover in this space: the survival of this web site.

Yes, I know, we’ve been through this before: it’s another fundraising campaign, right? Wrong. It’s not just another fundraising campaign – it’s the first one since we lost a big chunk of our budget, as explained in the Special Splash Page. I don’t think I’ve ever been this panicked about the future of Antiwar.com – and, frankly, I’ll be really surprised if we make it this time.

Then again, I’m surprised each time we make it. I’m always surprised by the generosity of our readers and supporters, and I’m humbled by it. We can’t run this web site without support from you, our readers. I’m always pessimistic in the short term, but optimistic in the long term, that the battle for a more peaceful world can be won. My chief concern, at the moment, however, is that I hope Antiwar.com can survive in the short term.

Well, I’m out on the road, taking the non-interventionist message from one end of the continent to the other: this is just the beginning, I hope, of a new activist orientation here at Antiwar.com, which I hope I can elaborate on in future columns. Suffice to say here that there is, in the background, a lot of activity going on, with new plans for a broad left-right antiwar coalition, a national conference of both left and right antiwar groups, and a new national anti-interventionist organization, and Antiwar.com will be a big part of it – if we make it that far.

Without Antiwar.com, the hopes for an effective, broad, non-ideological coalition against our foreign policy of perpetual war are greatly reduced. So please, give as much as you can as soon as you can. Your contribution is 100 percent tax-deductible – and what more do I need to say? If you must part with your tax dollars, why not give them to a cause you believe in, a cause that is literally a matter of life and death?

Contribute today!

Read more by Justin Raimondo