hoopi4432 This film explores this fundamental question about democracy; do you vote with your conscious and the future in mind (big picture), or do you vote for the change right now because things are so messed up? My view, and I think the view of the film, is if we vote to change the right now we will only continue the flawed system and it's preconditions that will ensure we never really solve the major problems....just temporarily fix them.What the story of Ralph Nader gives us is an example of how you can fight the system and win. How when you act on what you believe in and look at the world without discrimination you can affect great positive change.Everyone told Ralph he couldn't do this, he couldn't do that. Ralph looked them right in the eye and said F-off I'm doing it because it's the right thing do. And then he would either win the argument or have his predictions proved true.This is the most inspirational film I have watched thus far in my life. If you like justice and fairness, try An Unreasonable Man. You will feel sooooo empowered after watching it.**This comment has been made safer by Ralph Nader**

Chris Knipp A paradox: here is one of the most significant and controversial men of recent American history, and yet the media rarely mention him. Once a hero, he has become a pariah. This new documentary is a good record of the achievement and the controversy. While it's friendly to the man, it also lets some of his most vitriolic political opponents (Gitlin, Alterman) speak out loud and clear. It's hard to leave the theater without entering into a debate over the final issue the film raises: Was Nader right or wrong to run as a third party candidate against George W. Bush? Did his campaign really cause Al Gore to lose? Is Nader responsible for the Iraq war? The huge deficit? The post-Katrina debacle? The film takes us back to Nader's origins: he was one of four siblings born into a Lebanese Christian immigrant family in Winstead, Connecticut, whose town meetings he came to consider an example of true direct democracy. His mother was a political activist and his father a restaurant owner who encouraged, if not required, political debate with customers and at home at the dinner table. "What did you learn at school today"? his father would ask young Ralph: "Did you learn to think, or did you learn to believe?" Clearly the man, his brother, and his two sisters, learned leadership from these origins. Each became outstanding in their own field. Nader went to Princeton and Harvard Law, then after a brief stint in the Army and time as a lawyer and teacher of government, he went to Washington, and the rest is history.What is it about Ralph Nader? Surely there is no one like him in public life. The crusader, the Knight in Shining Armor. One thinks of the lean face, the uniform of dark suit and plain tie, the calm, piercing, often ironic voice. One thinks of the man's dedication, his frugality. He has never married, a conscious choice: work comes first; there's no room for family. It's been written in Current Biography that before leaving his six-month stint in the Army in 1959 Nader acquired four dozen cheap, sturdy military socks from the PX that by the mid-Eighties he still hadn't worn out. Thoreau would have liked that. The man hears a different drummer indeed. In his glory days of major accomplishments as a consumer advocate -- a legacy so pervasive we're barely aware of it, though it has saved many lives -- Nader worked stolidly through the system right at the time -- the Sixties -- when the Counterculture was at its peak The Crusader, the Idealist, Nader is a stubborn man whose stands have won battles and infuriated many. His rigidity, his nerdiness: rising to prominence in the Sixties and Seventies, he never adopted the looser, more florid style of the time but always kept to the monastic suit and tie and short hair.Spurred by a good friend's becoming handicapped after a car accident, Nader first came to national and international prominence by fighting Detroit for safer cars, the Chevrolet Corvair being a famous target. This was to be an epic battle in which the auto manufacturers tried to dig up dirt against him and bait him with prostitutes; he fought back with lawsuits and won. Nader has tackled government agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Federal Aviation Administration. In his battles to keep the air and water clean, provide safe food and decent nursing homes, protect forests and many other things, Nader has founded literally dozens of non-profit organizations. The list is so long the film can't quite keep up; it's best on the early period of advocacy for auto safety. "Nader's Raiders" -- the popular name for the hundreds of young activists who came to Washington to work with Nader in suited, hard-working teams -- provide some of the many talking heads who reminisce, besides the angry opponents. (Largely missing: corporate critics.) Jimmy Carter's presidency was a turning point. Nader felt betrayed by Carter, who seemed so friendly at first, and by some of his former associates who went to work in government agencies. Nader will not compromise. People in government have to. For Nader, that was unacceptable.Some other points: Nader is a "consumer advocate," but that doesn't mean he's pro-consumption (remember the socks). Perhaps Nader's attitude toward the democrats goes back to his issues with Carter. It's not difficult to point out the many ways that Clinton as president was pro-business, anti-welfare; that he did not keep the promise of a national health service. With a different façade, Nader points out, Clinton continued many of the pro-corporate, neo-liberal policies of Reagan and George H.W. Bush.Nader's defies the two-party system. Nader holds, as the film shows, that any independent candidate who knuckles under when the final push to election time begins and throws in his support to the democratic candidate is telling the Republicans and Democrats that they can do whatever they want. It's essential to have a third party that's a real threat. And the reason why this is so is that there is not a big difference between the two parties. Still: George W. Bush no worse than Al Gore? One critic says Nader is a Leninist: he implicitly wants things to get worse to force a change. Not quite true -- he's just fed up with the principle of the "least worst" -- but few of us who live in these United States can be so uncompromising, so maddeningly self-righteous and rigid -- and often so surprisingly right despite everyone else saying otherwise. In short, few of us are like Ralph Nader. If those who voted for him in 2000 had foreseen the disaster that is the current administration have done so? But would the world not be measurably worse without him? That's what this fascinating film challenges us to consider. Don't we need more, not fewer, such people?

dbborroughs This is a warts and all look at Nader's career from when he was pushing for auto safety through his Presidential runs. This is an interesting look at the man and his passion to do what he felt was right. He changed the country and the world for the better and made things much more safer for all of us. An uncompromising fellow, Nader my way or the highway stances lost him friends when some of his "raiders" went into politics in the Carter Administration and didn't do what he felt was right. More recently Democrats who needed a scapegoat. blame him for the election and re-election of George W Bush (Which is probably true on some level). Big Business of course hates his guts. Watching the film I still find that I admire the man, however I don't necessarily like him, his pit bull mentality seems to have created the sort of fellow you'd want to punch in the face occasionally just because its probably the only way to make him listen.For those who want to see who the last four decades of "consumer" issues have played out this is must see TV, for anyone else who simply wants to spend time with a real character are also encouraged to take a look see.

marina_wood I saw this film at a pre-screening in West LA and absolutely loved it. I have researched Nader extensively and there is a plethora of information and accomplishments out there in regards to his life. This movie managed to pack in plenty, though there is never enough to show what Ralph Nader has really meant to the American people. The film was important in that it showed both Nader's critics and followers, along with his betrayers and friends. It was very interesting to learn about his childhood a little since it was the only personal thing I have ever heard about him. Nader simply appears to have had no social life other than that of social reform, which is most likely how he managed to change the country so drastically. The film carries you through the hero he was once portrayed as, to the embarrassment he became and makes you wonder what he really did to deserve the smearing he obtained. Hopefully after watching this movie, he will not be viewed so much as a spoiler. Regardless, even he said, he does not care about his "legacy", he really just cares about the people's interests. We are very lucky to have someone so dedicated to us!