Battle of Seattle creates new coalitions:
There were all sorts of people clogging the streets of downtown Seattle, telling the WTO to go home: not only trade unionists, hippies, and people dressed as sea turtles, but also a contingent of Young Republicans, believe it or not, and a vocal and very visible group of Reform Party activists whooping it up for Pat Buchanan, the only presidential candidate to stake out a claim on this turf. Someone gussied up to look like a giant sunflower stopped Madeleine Albright's limousine dead in its tracks. It was that kind of a crowd: heterogeneous, determined, overwhelmingly peaceful ? except for a few bad apples ? and, as it turned out, very much unwelcomed by the bigwigs who convened to decide the economic fate of the world.
Commentators were puzzled: what, after all, could such a disparate group have in common? But the real question is: why shouldn't the left and the right, labor and environmentalists, blue-haired hippies in turtle suits and preppy Young Republicans in plaid and pennyloafers all stand united against a threat to America's national sovereignty? For that is precisely what is at stake in the Battle of Seattle.
The premise behind the Seattle protests is simple and unambiguous: the WTO, with its "trade tribunals" that meet in secret, is a cabal of unelected bureaucrats that has no legitimate authority to regulate the commerce of the world. As such, it is a criminal conspiracy ? and must be politely but firmly shut down. Just as the minions of King George III were surprised and routed by the rebels of the Boston Tea Party, so the would-be global economic planners were caught unawares and embarrassed by their own inability to even make it out of their hotel rooms.
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