While a number of leaders on the American Left are beginning to look at strategies aimed at courting outspoken evangelicals, perhaps the secular left should cultivate a new relationship of its own: Wall Street and business. Most states charge very little for individuals to start their own businesses. And frankly it takes very little to create a business nowadays.
Just selling a few odds and ends around your house on eBay could be the beginning of your business. It doesn’t have to make you millions or even pay the rent. And that is the point. Creating a business for the advancement of progressivism is about being a loss leader. It means investing heavily in yourself and your business. It means turning every aspect of your life, every purchase you make, into an integral part of your business.
Don’t want to pay for the war in Iraq? Buy a new computer for your business and write it off. Don’t want to subsidize Halliburton’s profiteering in war zones? Take that night class you have always been talking about and deduct it. Don’t want the government to transfer the administration of social programs to non-secular entities? Buy a house or a condominium and start deducting your home loan interest.
It really is that easy.
So come on American Left: Let’s be loss leaders for the future of progressivism!
