Book Reviews: The Four Agreements and The Mastery of Love

I will blog more about the Two Party System and the need for election modernization tomorrow, but today I would like to do a brief review of a couple books I have read recently. The books are familiar to many people; they are called
The Four Agreements, and
The Mastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz. The books have a relatively simple premise,
that is, in life, through socialization or "domestication" as Ruiz terms it, we make many agreements with ourselves, even a countless number of them based on our need to feel liked, loved, and accepted, and based on the many inputs we receive from other people. Through these agreements, according to Ruiz, we become part of "The Dream," which is where the vast majority of human beings live for their entire life. "The Dream" is Hell on Earth; it is the pain and misery that humans seem addicted to, and as a result, subject themselves to, each and every day.

He uses an ancient Toltec term "mitote" (pronounced MI-TOH-TAY), which he describes as a sort of "fog" that prevents us from seeing the way things really are, that is, the way things would be if we woke up from "The Dream." Ruiz puts it this way:

"When you are aware that everyone around you has emotional wounds with emotional poison, you can easily understand the relationship of humans in what the Toltecs call the dream of hell. From the Toltec perspective, everything we believe about ourselves, and everything we know about our world, is a dream. If you look at any religious description of hell, it is the same as human society, the way we dream. Hell is a place of suffering, a place of fear, a place of war and violence, a place of judgment and no justice, a place of punishment that never ends. There are humans versus humans in a jungle of predators; humans full of judgment, full of blame, full of guilt, full of emotional poison--envy, anger, hate, sadness, suffering. We create all these little demons in our mind because we have learned to dream hell into our own life."

It reminds me of a Bob Marley song that Johnny Cash remade on his posthumously released album "Unearthed," called "Redemption Song." The pertinent line says "Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our minds." The analog to Ruiz's point of course is that our dream of hell, which is where we live everyday, is "mental slavery." We are enslaved to all of the poison of the world.

To put this theory into the context of the Christian tradition, "The Dream" is really what Christians would call "Original Sin." It is what orients us against our neighbor and consequently against God, since Sin is the opposite of Love. For a long period of time in my life, I was a Calvinist, and did not believe in Free Will, because I saw so many elements of compulsive Sin in the world, the horrors and violence that have taken place throughout history, and the atrocities committed each day, man against fellow man, whether it is genocide in the Sudan or forced abortions in China. The dim, deterministic vision of Calvinism, however, caused me to spiral into a deep spiritual depression, and I ultimately was forced to abandon it for the sake of my own mental and emotional well-being. However, after reflecting on Ruiz's descriptions of Hell and "The Dream," I have come to a deep understanding of the certain level of truth in the Calvinistic understanding, but also where the Calvinists miss the point.

"I have said that we never chose to have the Parasite, which is the Judge, the Victim and the Belief System. If we know we didn't have a choice, and we have the awareness that it's nothing but a dream, we recover something very important that we lost--something that religions call "free will." Religions say that when humans were created, God gave us free will. This is true, but the Dream took it away from us and kept it, because the Dream controls the will of most humans." (from The Mastery of Love)

Here we can see the Christian concept of "The Fall from Grace." If we think of Genesis Chapter 2 as a metaphor for the lives of every human being, I think it becomes all the more clear. We, as children, are naturally inclined toward happiness and a carefree attitude toward life. Children, as a rule, do not worry about paychecks, meals, bills, or any of those things. They would continue in such a state unless they learned different behavior. Without the knowledge of "Good" and "Evil" children would continue to play and run and laugh, but as soon as an adult says "If you do X or Y, then you are a bad boy," then suddenly children have been fed the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil by the Serpent, which is the adult who himself has already fallen from Grace. It is actually quite remarkable how tightly the metaphor fits.

In The Four Agreements, Ruiz says that in order to get out of the Dream, in order to get out of Hell on Earth, we must break all of the old agreements we made with ourselves, and to make new agreements. To extend the Christian metaphor as a grid through which the Western mind can perhaps more easily grasp the metaphysical points Ruiz is making, the breaking of the old agreements is symbolized in the Christian sacrament of Baptism (I must note here that my Episcopalianism fails me here, as I do not think this metaphor works when applied to Paedobaptism). In Baptism, the Sinner is symbolically buried, and then resurrected, as an imitation of the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ. The Baptists use the phrase "Raised to walk in the newness of life." What a beautiful phrase.

This is what Salvation is; Salvation from Hell, from "The Dream," and it was accomplished by The Wounded Healer (to borrow a phrase from Henri Nouwen), who through love and exposing his own wounds, healed the wounds of the world by returning us to the state we were in before we fell into the Dream, before we ate of the Poisoned Fruit. It is no wonder that Christ admonished his disciples to "become like children" in order to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. Reflect on that reality; it is quite a powerful thought.

For anybody who doubts or rejects the interpretations I am rendering, one needs look no further than the extraordinarily metaphysical Gospel According to St. John. "In the beginning was the Word (that is, the Logos), and the Word was with God and the Word was God, and the same was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it...The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God."

Indeed, we are then able to break our old agreements, those agreements that cause envy, jealously, hatred, strife, backbiting, and all the things that are poison, and instead allow us to make new agreements. These new agreements are described as follows by Ruiz:

1. Be Impeccable with your Words.
2. Don't Take Things Personally
3. Don't Make Assumptions
4. Always Do Your Best

These agreements are embodied by what Paul calls "The Fruit of the Spirit," in his Epistle to the Galatians Church, enumerated as "Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control." The Fruit of the Spirit are what flow from ending the old agreements with "Sin" and making these new agreements.

I would strongly recommend both The Four Agreements and The Mastery of Love to people, of whatever faith background or tradition, as I think they are metaphysical truths that transcend the human experience.

If we all would engage in deep self examination at the metaphysical level, I believe we can all wake up from The Dream, from the collective Hell that we have created here on Earth, and begin living in peace and community with our fellow man.

Modernizing Elections in the Age of Information, Part I

My apologies for a week's break from my series on the Two Party system and an emergent Third Party movement. Today, however, I will resume my discussions of this subject, focusing on electoral reform as an essential part of making government more representative and responsive. There are two aspects of substantive electoral reform that I will address: Methods and Means. By "methods," I specifically refer to issues of "form," by which our political value system is imposed into the election process. For example, we elect the President of the United States using "method" of the Electoral College. By "means," I am referring to issues of mechanics, that is, we use punch cards or optical scan ballots and we vote on Tuesdays in November.

One of the reasons that the state of American politics is in such disarray is that we are utilizing an electoral system that is not congruent with the society and technology of today. People frequently talk about the timelessness of the Constitution or even more scarily, of its Divine Inspiration (I wonder if they think that includes the parts concerning slavery...), but we ought to never forget that the U.S. Constitution was borne out of particular political crisis that ensued from the looseness of the Articles of Confederation, and was forged in Philadelphia as a political compromise over issues that are now at least a century out of date. This hardly diminishes what the men who founded what we now know as "America" accomplished in 1787, but at the same time, let us not forget that the framers of the Constitution were pragmatists, not idealists (as many people popularly believe, especially in the so-called "Christian Right").

First, the Constitution was written in a day when communication and travel were lengthy and laborious processes, sometimes taking several weeks of a journey to travel to the New York, which at the time was the U.S. capital. The country had just emerged from a confederate form of government, and retained many of the aspects of a confederacy with extraordinarily decentralized power until World War I. It was not until the advent of Radio, and especially Television, that the "dialects" of American English began to disappear and the country started to become more culturally homogeneous. The lack of integration near the turn of the end of the 18th Century presented a number of political problems that were addressed in the Constitution of 1787. The Electoral College, the election of U.S. Senators by the state legislatures, and the direct election of the House of Representatives (with the number of Representatives being set by the population, with no cap) were the features implemented to achieve some level of populist influence over government without giving the uninformed and disjointed masses too much power.

In 1787, few people traveled outside of their home town, much less out of the state, and their only exposure to current events in other states was likely a weekly newspaper and letters from family members who lived in other states. This kind of disconnectedness is quite divergent from today's instant information and global connections. I was text messaging with somebody in Argentina yesterday and received a call from my friend who was traveling in Paris. My blackberry now has Google Talk installed on it, and I can instant message, not even using the SMS network, with anybody who has a Gmail account and an internet connection. I receive news alerts instantly through email that pushes to my blackberry, or I can pull up the Drudge Report at any hour of the day to hear about the Earthquakes in Japan or read an editorial about the disintegration of the McCain campaign.

In the past three weeks I have flown from my home base here in Dallas to Little Rock, Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas, and Salt Lake City and am flying to Las Vegas this week for a conference, only to come back to Dallas and hop a flight back to Salt Lake City. All of this would have been unfathomable to James Madison or Benjamin Franklin.

Furthermore, the digital revolution and the Interstate highway system have radically altered the way the economy works, from the way we get our milk to the way we trade stocks and do our personal banking. I can make a stock trade, and use the profits to bet against the Dollar by buying Euros in the forex markets in as much time as it takes for me to click through a half dozen screens on my web browser while sitting in Starbucks sipping a latte and Instant Messaging on my Macbook Pro. Considering that our electoral systems, both methods and means, have remained relatively unchanged for more than two centuries in the wake of massive changes in every other aspect of society, is somewhat mysterious. Is there really something sacred about "going to the polls" on a Tuesday in November? Surely people who worry about the corruption of online voting don't actually believe that the current voting system lacks massive corruption.

Tomorrow I will continue this discussion with Part II of "Modernizing Elections in the Age of Information," examining how our methods can be improved, and how that fits into the advocacy of an emergent Third Party.

The Possibilities of Life

"Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters." -Genesis 1:2

At the beginning of every endeavor, and at the beginning of every new stage of life, or even in periods of limbo and reflection, we should recognize the Spirit of God hovering over the waters of our lives. The Spirit of God, referred to elsewhere in Scripture as the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost, and which has countless names in other faith traditions and in other literary contexts (the Spirit of the World, in the Alchemist), is the energy that sustains all of life. The Spirit of God is what quickens the flesh, and separates the living from the dead. He is called, in the New Testament, the "Comforter."

Life has countless possibilities. I have always been the kind of person to think in terms of possibilities, rather than actualities. I have a healthy sense of realism, in my own way, though it is frequently misunderstood. That is because although I recognize constraints and challenges, I do not actually recognize the existence of absolute barriers. The old cliche "where there's a will, there's a way," is not quite complete though. Any old will is not adequate to over come all barriers. Sometimes it takes extraordinary will, and determination, and sweat, and all too often, tears, to accomplish something. But the potential for such accomplishment is reason enough to make the attempt.

When Sir Edmund Hillary was asked why he climbed Mount Everest, he replied "because it was there." There are so many Everests to climb in life, and the energy of the Spirit of God empowers us to see the possibilities, and we can therein be motivated to action. Yet, the Spirit of God is a positive energy only. Light and Darkness literal opposites. They cannot occupy the same space at the same time. They are wholly incompatible. Consequently, if the Spirit of God is who/what grants us the positive life energy to see the possibilities and opportunities for fulfillment, then it is Darkness and Negative Energy that obscure that view.

The Spirit of God is a force of Imagination, and it is Imagination that have driven the human spirit to pursue and accomplish those things that changed the world. It is the dreamers who ultimately change the world. It is those people who see the possibility that things could be other than they are who leave their mark on history, for good or for bad. But those who focus only on barriers to the achievement of the dreamed for ends, they will always be the victims of circumstance, the subject of their own small worlds. It is the people who are able to expand their scope of vision beyond what is actual at the moment who are the ones able to take the possible and turn it into the actual. All change in history is the subject of people who have done this very thing.

For the last year and a half, I have signed all of my business emails with this quote:

"What the future-predictors, the change-analysts, and trend-tenders say in effect is that with the aid of institute resources, computers, linear programming, etc. they will deal with the kinds of change that are not the consequence of the Random Event, the Genius, the Maniac, and the Prophet. To which I can only say: there really aren’t any; not any worth looking at anyhow." --Robert Nisbet

The three agents of change mentioned in Nisbet's quote who are human are able to change the world because of a particular orientation of their mental state that differentiates them from the vast majority of the rest of the world. The Genius looks upon the obstacles of the world and devotes his intellect to overcoming them, whether through science or military force or through the pen. The Maniac is able to overcome the obstacles to changing the world merely because he likely doesn't recognize their existence. The Prophet, on the other hand, sees the problems, and knows he cannot fix them, and so he just shouts loudly, under severe persecution and ridicule, about the problem that few but he recognize, and he just keeps shouting until he does, or until there is change. Usually it is the former. But then, after his death, is usually when the change occurs. The Prophet, unlike the Genius and the Maniac, is usually a martyr, and whose goal is not often achieved in his own lifetime.

But uniting all three of these figures is a dogged determination that things be other than they are. They live in the world of possibilities, for if they did not believe that their desired End was achievable, they would never attempt its pursuit. This is the concept of Hope.

The Jewish writer of the Book of Hebrews says "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." In the Anglican tradition, the Eucharistic Prayer (Rite II) says, after the Holy Communion, "Almighty and everliving God, we most heartily thank thee for that thou dost feed us, in these holy mysteries, with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ; and dost assure us thereby of thy favor and goodness towards us; and that we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, the blessed company of all faithful people; and are also heirs, through hope, of thy everlasting kingdom."

The world of possibilities, of the Everlasting Kingdom of God, of changing this world, of the fantastic, the science fiction, all of these things are the province if Hope and Faith. Without hope, the mortal existence of man is nothing more than a march toward the grave fatalistically consumed by militant determinism.

The Spirit of God hovers over the waters of our own lives, which at all times possess a lack of form and a darkness of potential energy whose beauty can be manifested through hope and faith. We have an ethical obligation to ourselves, our fellow man, and to God to keep faith, and to, as Theodore Roosevelt put it, "spend our life in a worthy cause." Such worthy causes exist only in the world of possibilities, and it is our duty to turn them into actualities.

Temporary Blogging Hiatus

I have been extremely tied up the last few days, and unable to continue my series on the need for an emergent Third Party movement. My plan is to take the weekend to clear my head, and to resume on Monday. Until then, I thought I would share a favorite poem of mine, just because.

The Aristocrat
G.K. Chesterton

The Devil is a gentleman, and asks you down to stay
At his little place at What’sitsname (it isn’t far away).
They say the sport is splendid; there is always something new,
And fairy scenes, and fearful feats that none but he can do;
He can shoot the feathered cherubs if they fly on the estate,
Or fish for Father Neptune with the mermaids for a bait;
He scaled amid the staggering stars that precipice, the sky,
And blew his trumpet above heaven, and got by mastery
The starry crown of God Himself, and shoved it on the shelf;
But the Devil is a gentleman, and doesn’t brag himself.

O blind your eyes and break your heart and hack your hand away,
And lose your love and shave your head; but do not go to stay
At the little place in What’sitsname where folks are rich and clever;
The golden and the goodly house, where things grow worse for ever;
There are things you need not know of, though you live and die in vain,
There are souls more sick of pleasure than you are sick of pain;
There is a game of April Fool that’s played behind its door,
Where the fool remains for ever and the April comes no more,
Where the splendour of the daylight grows drearier than the dark,
And life droops like a vulture that once was such a lark:
And that is the Blue Devil that once was the Blue Bird;
For the Devil is a gentleman, and doesn’t keep his word.

Making Political Power More Fluid

On this national holiday, I know that thousands of conservative bloggers will be extolling the virtues of the Declaration of Independence, and Independence Day itself, waxing cliche about Red, White, and Blue, Apple Pie, Mother, and the American Dream. They will talk about America's status as the greatest nation in the world, and oh, if only the Founders were here to tell today's government to follow the Constitution. On the other side of the aisle, the Left wing of the blogosphere will be abuzz with re-written Declarations of Independence, calling President Bush "King George" and talking about his "repeated injuries and usurpations," and labeling him a brutal tyrant.

For most Americans, I do not think this hollow, partisan rhetorical propaganda will ring terribly true. Most Americans are just glad to have the day off, and to celebrate their freedom with little fanfare: BBQ with friends and family, drinking some beer, watching fireworks, maybe doing a little work on the lawn or finish painting the guest bedroom. Most Americans are quite content with their lives; they aren't particularly concerned with world affairs. That is because, for most Americans, life is pretty good. It has its hardships and difficulties, but things aren't bad enough for people to care about politics, or else they have just given up.

As I continue my series on the potential for an Emergent Third Party in American politics, I would like for the reader to consider why voter turnout is so low in the United States. As I just alluded to, I think that there are two primary reasons people do not vote: things aren't *that* bad, and they have given up on being able to make any sort of difference by voting. Now, give us 10% unemployment or 15% inflation and I think people will be showing up to the polls en masse, most likely to elect somebody whose economic policy will even further devastate the country. I pray things don't get that bad.

Our new Third Party can help remedy Americans' belief that voting doesn't matter and that nothing will change. I am reminded of two animal characters in literature who perhaps represent most Americans' attitudes toward the political process: Eeyore, the pessimistic stuffed donkey from Winnie the Pooh who eats thistles, and Benjamin, the cynical donkey from George Orwell's Animal Farm, who was skeptical of the revolution and believed from the beginning that the pigs would be no different than the human masters. Thus are Americans similarly oriented toward the Democrats and the Republicans, with most people seeing little difference between the two parties, and certainly not expecting change in the event of a transfer of power. If anybody needed confirmation of this, 2006 should have been just that. The Left-wing base of the Democratic Party expected Nancy Pelosi & Co. to get the United States out of the Iraq War. Think again.

One of the reasons for our seeming inability to extract ourselves from the status quo is that the dominance of the Two Party System has created, especially in Congress, a Fox-Watching-the-Hen-House sort of scenario. Sure, the Democrats and Republicans hate each other. But that doesn't mean they don't scratch each other's backs when it comes to doling out the pork barrel spending, or voting for Cost of Living Adjustments for themselves, etc. Indeed, one of the essential elements of an Emergent Third Party movement is a system by which power is much more fluid, and where incumbents do not have so much authority and control over the process simply because of the power of incumbency.

Here are some ways this can be accomplished.

1. General party membership at-large should be empowered to elect the leadership in Congress, including the floor leaders, committee leaders, etc. The same would be true going down to the state legislatures as well. This would eliminate the seniority system in Congress, and would allow the public to be much more heavily involved in selecting the people with the most power in government. Party membership would also be able, at any time, to recall members of the leadership with a No-Confidence vote.

2. Candidates themselves, in order to run on this new Third Party's ticket, would have to bind themselves to recall as well, meaning that they will commit themselves to resigning and running in a special election if the party membership in their district goes through the process of a No Confidence vote in them.

These two conditions alone would require officeholders to pay particular attention to their constituencies, and to making good policy. Failing to do so will result in immediate action, unlike in the current system where politicians benefit from the very brief memory of the voting public.

3. Candidates for office would be nominated by the party's general membership, and the party (not the government) would enforce a strict spending cap for primary elections. Candidates would be encouraged and virtually required to court the party's membership through electronic means, meaning name recognition cannot be bought in the primary.

4. The New Party would utilize the Condorcet Method in order to give all candidates an equal and fair shot at getting elected, without the arbitrary nature of run-off elections or first-past-the-post elections.

Democratizing the candidate nomination and selection systems, and by instituting policies that help combat incumbency and entrenchment are essential elements to a successful Third Party movement. They are also essential to the advancement and preservation of our Republic.

Next time we will look at the importance of electoral reform on a broader scale and its place in the future of an emergent Third Party, and the success of our democratic system.

Water and Light

A friend of mine sent me this picture yesterday. I have reason to believe it is from the play "White Darkness." Nevertheless, it inspired me to write a poem from the perspective of the person in the picture. I'd prefer not to provide any further analysis, except the picture and the poem. I'll let the reader make any additional conclusions.



Water and Light
by Skinner G. Layne

I stand amidst the darkness, I stand without my sight,
But two forces now can save me: the Water and the Light.
I hang my head in silence, then the silence gives way to song,
And I bellow out a melody of sorrow and hope and wrong:

“Time has been so brutal, and life has brought me harm,
I long for life’s new purpose, to regain its wayward charm.
Oh God, and Angels above me, or Devils down below,
Someone please restore me, melt life’s wintry snow.
I have tangled with the torrent, of storms of bitter rain,
And lost, and found the struggle both meaningless and vain.”

My song, it echoes loudly, in the darkness and the night,
But ever louder in the background, roar the Water and the Light.
Though I feel the anguish, and though I feel depraved,
The Light relieves my misery, the Water my bleeding waived.
Rushing, almost deafening, the Waterfall resounds,
And the Sunlight pours behind it, breaking me from my bounds.

Though you cannot see my face, as it rises from my grief,
And what is happening inside of me, as I shatter all disbelief,
As I resolve to guide my own destiny, my future ever seize,
You will not see me falter, or fall upon my knees.
My earnest fixed intention, though wet and trodden down,
Is to plunge into the Water and my Defeated Notions drown.

For I’ve emerged from Death and Destitution,
From Hopelessness and Fright.
I have found my Restitution—
In the Water and the Light.

Realpolitik and a Return to Global Pragmatism: The Foreign Policy of an Emergent Third Party

Yesterday got away from me, and I didn't get to blog. I actually had my blogger window open and the title already written, and then all of my time was snatched from me somehow. But I hope to make up for lost time.

After we have already looked at what a Third Party's domestic policy and economic platform would contain, it only makes sense that we now examine the type of foreign policy that would best serve the country and reach out to the niche in the political system that would be most amenable to a Third Party movement. I am, and have always been, of the firm belief that Foreign Policy is always a direct function of domestic politics, especially in democratic nations like the United States. One of the reasons for this is that most people do not cast their votes based upon foreign policy-related matters, and if they do, it is based on ideology (problem #1), and when they are casting their vote based on domestic ideology, they tend to vote for politicians who are unsophisticated in the complexities of foreign policy, and so the elected officials tend to possess ideological views toward foreign matters (problem #2).

Ideological foreign policy has been one of the most disastrous components of the George W. Bush administration in the last 7 years, and was equally disastrous on the Left-hand side of the political spectrum during the Carter administration. There were certain elements of ideological foreign policy during the Clinton administration, though I think there was mostly just a lack of foreign policy. Foreign relations were good, but foreign policy was non-existent.

I do not believe a responsible steward of America's interests can approach the world negligently (Clinton) or recklessly (Bush II).

The United States cannot maintain its global hegemony without careful, meticulous attention to foreign policy and geopolitics from both a strategic and tactical standpoint. Foreign policymakers, starting with the President himself, must have a long-term view (in both directions...historic and future) of America's place in the world. This cannot be accomplished by a dogmatic adherence to some arbitrary view of foreign affairs. The following should be hallmarks of a Neo-Realpolitik foreign policy.

1. America must utilize and harness one of its historically most powerful foreign policy influences: soft power & cultural influence. American culture has been the aspiration of much of the world since World War II, and this cannot be discounted as one of the reasons we have been able to achieve so much. When the man on the street in Brazil wants to wear American clothes and watch American film, we have a powerful hold on global affairs. As soon as we lose that, our decline is imminent. The pervasiveness of "Americanism" itself must be shepherded, guided, and prospered, and most certainly not countered by formal national policy. During the Bush II administration, national policy has gone to great lengths to erode America's soft power in the world, and it is imperative that this immediately cease, and that the government instead promote our soft power interests.

2. The United States must immediately end all support of Israel. There is absolutely nothing useful, practical, or even ideologically sound about supporting a bully state in a region where its practices inflame 1.3 Billion Muslims worldwide against it, and whoever supports it. Both George Bush and Bill Clinton further made the mistake of trying to make the Middle East peace process part of their "legacy." This has proven not only be ineffective, but potentially hurtful. American intervention in the peace process has been a failure. We should stop trying. It only draws attention to our prominent influence in the region (and military presence), and that does not help us with the so-called "Muslim street." I am not at all advocating a policy of appeasing the Muslim world, but we can at least stop actively and purposefully antagonizing it. Additionally, the U.S. cannot afford to be aligned with Israel when it finally decides that it is going to use tactical nuclear weapons against Iran's nuclear facilities.

3. American hegemony exists, and ought to exist, to promote its prosperity, as well as global prosperity. This cannot happen without global free markets, and in fact, without global free markets, American hegemony will a) be irrelevant and b) automatically cease to exist. The best kind of "Dollar Diplomacy" is not in foreign aid, but rather in Trade. When nations can prosper with each other, they will not fight each other. Wars are unpopular, expensive, and inhumane. Few people will disagree with that. Military personnel will agree most with it. This doesn't mean that we should not fight wars when they are necessary.

I am in fact reminded of what John Stuart Mill once said about men with nothing left to fight for (and I think the same applies to Nations): "A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

This is not a license to warmongering, but it is also a reminder of the irresponsibility of dogmatic Dovishness. Yet, if war can be avoided through Economic prosperity, I can think of few more mutually beneficial diplomatic methods. The practical implications of this are unpopular, domestically in many cases. The United States must make unilateral strides towards the elimination of all import tariffs, especially on manufactured goods, and a total elimination of corporate welfare and subsidies, particularly in Agriculture and Aviation. This will lead to a re-alignment of American economic interests, greater domestic efficiency, global efficiency, macroeconomic prosperity, and simultaneously achieve foreign policy goals that can hardly be accomplished any other way.

4. The United States must make substantial efforts toward rethinking its approach to Military affairs and their relation to geopolitics and geopolitical diplomacy. The economic rise of China means that the age of technological superiority in military affairs for the United States is at an end. Where our comparative advantage was always in technology (and never in numbers), we would at least be equal with a new superpower if they achieved only technological equality (like the Cold War with the Soviet Union), but since China already possesses a comparative advantage in sheer numbers, the United States must recognize that it cannot be alone in the world from a military standpoint. It would be prudent for America to take a page out of the British Empire's play book: make up for ground strength with alliances. For Britain, it was India. India isn't a bad choice for America, either. India is the only other single country in the world with a population that rivals (and will soon exceed) that of China. Unfortunately, China is wooing India very effectively right now, potentially neutralizing our ability to form a strong military and diplomatic alliance. It does not mean we shouldn't try, however. I will not go into more hypotheticals or details here on this subject, but will attempt to do so in future discussions.

5. America must radically revamp its Space Policy. Space is the new ocean and the new sky. While Naval and Air superiority is essential to maintaining global hegemony, it is something that given China's rise, can be rivaled. Therefore, we must turn our eyes up towards the heavens (pardon my tongue-in-cheek religious reference). Militarizing space is not the answer, though. If we militarize space, then we will give license to China to do the same. We will find ourselves in a nasty Cold War in the stars. China is already beginning the process of militarizing space. The United States should take diplomatic leadership and garner support in Europe, Japan, South Korea to actively undermine any attempts by China to flex military might against global interests in space. The United States should invest increasing amounts of money (preferably through the private sector) to pursue economic interests in space, and make space a trade route, rather than a battleground. This will help diffuse Chinese attempts at extraterrestrial hegemony.

6. Peacekeeping Missions and Diplomatic Intervention. The Chinese government has become very adept at taking the "undefended hill." They are now the major diplomatic influence in a number of "lesser countries," though many of them, like the countries of Central Asia, are incredibly important from a geopolitical standpoint. The United States desperately needs to changes its approach in this respect. Whether it is by aiding the people of the Sudan in their existing humanitarian crisis, or building lasting diplomatic and national friendships with Kazakhstan to ensure overland trade routes and oil pipelines along the Old Silk Road remain open to American interests, the United States needs to take a more proactive role in courting Emerging Nations and developed countries alike.

7. Good Neighbor Policy. No place in the world is more important for the United States to develop friendships and economic ties than its own back yard: Central and South America. The increasing friendship between Iran and Venezuela is an unacceptable development, and Hugo Chavez's growing influence over his neighbors in Latin America is even more unacceptable. The U.S. has so much more to offer to Central and South America than the bankrupt socialist ideology of Mr. Chavez does.

Ultimately all of the items I have discussed are elements of a realistic, strong defense, strong diplomacy foreign policy that is rational, non-ideological, and would distinctly separate an Emergent Third Party from the ideological disaster of both the Conservative and Liberal wings of the two major parties.

Tomorrow we will pick back up our discussion of political process, and look at some of the more pragmatic concerns of breaking through the two party system.

Ideological Balance: Third Parties and the New Third Way

This morning I am going to resume my series on the potential for a Third Party to successfully make its way into American politics. Today's post is going to be about the ideology of a successful Third Party, and depending on how long-winded I get, this topic might bleed into a future post. My apologies in advance if that happens. One other prefatory note: today will only be about domestic policy. Foreign policy warrants its own post.

The hallmarks of a successful Third Party domestic policy platform would be a dedication to social progress with responsible, pro-growth free market economics. It is my contention that most people in the United States believe in equal rights and equal protection. I would simultaneously contend that most people believe that free markets and reasonably low taxes are good for the economy, and that the country benefits when the economy succeeds. Now having said all of this, I also think that on specific issues, people buy into hideous lies, especially on economic policy. Some people, otherwise rational, are vehemently opposed to global free trade. Still others, again otherwise rational, think that taxing corporations with almost punitive rates is good for the "average person. Despite these and other myths, I still think a Third Party, through education, can enter the fray and advocate sound economic policy and fair social policy. The following would be a summation of this concept.

Economic Policy

1. Rigorous Adherence to Balanced Budgets.

2. Tax Reduction and Tax Code Simplification.

3. Tort Reform and Judicial Reform.

4. Regulatory Reduction and Streamlined Government.

5. Unification of Business Regulation, Eliminating State Involvement.

6. Reform of Federal Labor Law.

Social Policy

1. Conservationist Environmental Policy (but rejecting economically devastating proposals like Kyoto).

2. Equal Rights & Equal Protection.

3. An Individualist Stance on Abortion (Something not as radical or venomous as National Right to Life OR NARAL, but a more reasonable and centrist stance, perhaps favoring states rights in many respects).

4. Belief in a 100% Overhaul of America's Primary and Secondary Educational Systems.

5. Moderate, realistic view on Immigration (something in between Amnesty and "Shoot 'em when they cross the border.")

Hybrid Issues

1. Health Care. The emergent Third Party must take a radical stand on health care reform, that wholly rejects the status quo, but that has some better solution than low-quality and horrendously expensive socialized medicine. More on the details of this to come.

2. Reform of the American entitlement system. With the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds holding future liabilities in excess of $60 Trillion, a Third Party serious about helping America remain the world's superpower and stave off imminent decline will tackle this issue with bravery and boldness, and I believe the American electorate will reward the effort.

In a future series, I will go into more extensive detail about what all of these policies would actually look like, but I wanted to lay out a framework for that discussion here. I look forward to reading people's comments about what I have written today, and I hope everybody will check back soon for a discussion of what an Emergent Third Party's foreign policy platform would look like.

Pursuing One's Personal Legend

For those of you who have read The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo, you will recognize the reference to the title of this blog. The main character in this wonderful work of literature is found reading attempting to read a book when he is interrupted by an old man. The old man thumbs through the pages of the boy's book and provides this analysis:

"This is an important book, but it is really irritating. It is a book that says the same thing that almost all other books in the world say...It describes people's inability to choose their own Personal Legends. And it ends up saying that everyone believes the world's biggest lie." The boy inquires, of course, about what the world's biggest lie is, and the old man responds thusly: It's this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That's the world's greatest lie."

It is an easy lie to believe. Whether it is things we do, or circumstances completely exigent to our own doings, events occur in life that might lead us to put our faith into this great myth and distortion. The Calvinists read Genesis 3 and determine that man's fate is not his own, and that he is doomed to evil or pre-ordiained for good, but it is beyond his control. As a recovering Calvinist, it is easy to revert back to this, because it is easy. It is always easy to say that our situation is beyond our control. In fact, it is perhaps the most convenient way to eschew our responsibility for our own circumstances. There are many secular determinists who take similar positions concerning life. Fatalists, even more extreme, believe that life is not only beyond our control, but that its consequences are the province of Chaos, and not even some sort of order.

This week, in hindsight, has been a tremendous lesson for me in how this lie seems to make its way back into our lives even when we have actively renounced it. External forces, in the span of only a few days, brought to bear some of the most wretched blows that life has thus far ever dealt me.

(Below is a further quotation from The Alchemist)

"The boy didn't know what a person's 'Personal Legend' was. 'It's what you have always wanted to accomplish. Everyone, when they are young, knows what their Personal Legend is. At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible. They are not afraid to dream, and to yearn for everything they would like to see happen to them in their lives. But, as time passes, a mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible for them to realize their Personal Legend...It's a force that appears to be negative, but actually shows you how to realize your Personal Legend. It prepares your spirit and your will, because there is one great truth on this planet: whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it's because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It's your mission on earth...The Soul of the World is nourished by people's happiness. And also by unhappiness, envy, and jealousy. To realize one's Personal Legend is a person's only real obligation. All things are one. And when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it."

One's Personal Legend isn't just a vocational question; it isn't just a personal question; it's the singular matter that encompasses a person's entire life. And it seemed to me this week that the forces of the world were conspiring against me, not for me, but that is part of the world's greatest lie, and perhaps that is how the world's greatest lie infiltrates our outlook on the world. It begins by telling us that everything and everybody are against us. Once we believe that, it's not much more of a step to believe that if everything and everybody are against us, that we have lost control of what is going on and that we are bound now by the dictates of fate.

As soon as we believe that, our dreams of achieving our Personal Legend soon become only wishes, and wishes aren't as tangible as dreams. The wishes then become memories, and the memories eventually become faint recollections. That is how the World's Greatest Lie robs us of our Personal Legend: it erodes our vision of it slowly over time.

I also think that the World's Greatest Lie can get us by coming at us from a different direction. The World's Greatest Lie can divert our focus from achieving our Personal Legend toward exacting revenge on those forces or people who we think stole our Personal Legend, or else stood in our way of achieving it. I have heard it said somewhere that "You can't get ahead while you're getting even." I think this concept is understood more fully in the context of the Apostle Paul's comments in his first letter to the church at Corinth, where he says that "Love is patient and kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude or self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs." And if we, as we are commanded, "Love one another," meaning all of mankind, then that is our proper M.O. concerning all human persons. I believe that absent this, we are easily and quickly distracted from pursuing our Personal Legends.

The litigious nature of American culture is perhaps a perfect example of this. Billions of dollars are spent every year on attorneys and court costs to exact revenge against people for wrongs they have committed, even if nothing will really be recovered except perhaps extracting "a pound of flesh." This is vanity.

I know that I am not alone, though, in feeling like I have been distracted from my Personal Legend by the World's Greatest Lie. I have friends who are in still in college and graduate school. I hear from them all time about the nervousness and apprehension that characterizes their grades after the semester is completed. They lament that their entire future rests upon these grades, and that once those grades are entered into the University's database, it is the ultimate determination of their success and achievement in life.

Others, perhaps, have pursued some sort of position or political office. I have seen people in pursuit of such things buy into the World's Greatest Lie: they feel like a defeat is the final quashing of their goals and dreams. Yet others are undeterred; they are resolute and strong, and assured that lessons are learned and some other purpose awaits then. These are the people who understand how to maintain their focus on achieving their Personal Legend. These are the people who understand Kipling's reference in his poem "If," where he says "If you can see the things you gave your life to, broken, and stoop and build 'em up with worn out tools."

Others still might feel that because their intimate relationships, whether with spouse, significant other, mother, father, brother, sister, or best friend, aren't exactly what they had envisioned or wanted at a certain point in their life, they feel like things have spiraled out of their control. After all, the trouble exists in the other person, not in themselves. This is yet another manifestation of the World's Greatest Lie.

I could continue with examples, but I think the point is the universality of the Personal Legend and the World's Greatest Lie. We truly are in control of our own destiny. We truly have power to transcend all of the external factors that seem to be roadblocks to achieving what we want most in life. The roadblocks are not genuine barriers to our achievement, but rather I believe they are mile-markers that tell us where we are on the map and point us in the direction we should go. There are not barriers to achieving our Personal Legend, except of course the World's Greatest Lie. Even things that have a negative connotation in our view have a purpose. I think this is why King Solomon penned the following words in Ecclesiastes:

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven:
A time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace."

One of the lessons from The Alchemist, though, is that one's Personal Legend is never achieved by merely wishing it. It takes unceasing effort, tireless dedication, and it necessitates that one never stop dreaming. Longfellow understood this, I think. The following is a poem he wrote entitled "A Psalm of Life."

TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream ! —
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real ! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal ;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way ;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle !
Be a hero in the strife !

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant !
Let the dead Past bury its dead !
Act,— act in the living Present !
Heart within, and God o'erhead !

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time ;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate ;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

Learning to labor and wait is what pursuing our Personal Legend is all about. Kipling put it in a slightly different way, "If you can wait, and not be tired by waiting" and "If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run."

Anything less than our Personal Legend is inadequate. Everything that takes us away from its achievement should be shunned. I believe that a laser focus on the pursuit and achievement of our Personal Legend will result in happiness, since the pursuit of that which we want most is a path that is in and of itself rewarding and fulfilling. If we ever find ourselves pursuing something else, the path will be winding and wearisome, and if we ever find ourselves pursuing nothing at all, then our lives will cease to lose their meaning. But when we are on that fulfilling path that leads to our Personal Legend, then the Universe is conspiring in our favor, and we cannot be deterred, delayed, or distracted. All of those around us will see our glow, our purpose, and will find meaning in merely be in our presence.

Can you imagine what life would be like if we were all pursuing our Personal Legends?

Real Dialogue, Less Fundraising

For those readers who are just now joining us, I would encourage you to read the posts from the last several days, as today's blog is a continuation of a series I am writing about how an emergent Third Party can be successful in America's two party-dominant system. We have already looked at how technology must be harnessed to help level the playing field for the new Third Party, and how the new Third Party can only truly succeed if it is fully transparent in all of its finances, operations, and elections. Today, building on the understanding we have already achieved, I want to look at how a Third Party can (paradoxically) de-emphasize fund raising, focus purely on substantive dialogue, and end up with sufficient financial resources and even more exposure.

Having spent quite a bit of time on the campaign trail, I continue to be amazed at how much time candidates spend raising money. I would say that successful candidates end up spending about half of their time doing it. Let's really break this down, though, into what that means to the system.

The purpose of having campaign funds, in our current context, is essentially to run very expensive television and radio advertising campaigns. In fact, races are often handicapped by political observers based upon the amount of cash-on-hand a candidate has leading up to the election, since that has a direct relationship upon the candidate's ability to have a pervasive "air campaign," as they are called. Candidates will be seen at $5,000 a plate dinners, where everybody is dressed in black ties or evening gowns, and the candidate speaks about whatever pet issues appeal to the group of wealthy individuals sitting in the room. And, whatever the candidate actually says creates a social contract with his audience that he will do those things when he once he gets in to office.

One might say that candidates have plenty of room to successfully appease their donors while spending most of their time and energy representing the mass of their constituents. This might be true if candidates had only a couple of donors, or a couple of groups of donors of similar ideological bent or policy preferences, but because the astronomical cost of campaigns requires candidates to raise money from whomever will write them a check, they quickly become beholden to far too many people.

Borrowing from my post a few days ago, a candidate who harnesses technology can achieve the "real dialogue" goal. For example, if a candidate posts a video blog every day, and the content of that video blog is picked up by the mainstream press, then the candidate can still get air time on television, without massive expenditures to purchase slickly produced advertisements. The policy proposals or ideological positions expressed in the video blog will then require a legitimate response from the candidate's opponent(s), meaning that an actual debate will occur on the campaign trail, one of substance even.

An emergent Third Party movement that takes on the political discourse in this manner and on a wide-scale will quickly differentiate itself from the two existing major parties. It is imperative that our hypothetical party be as contrasting as possible, since that will make it clear to the voters that they truly have a rational choice to change the state of politics by voting for a new party. It will also help to allay the traditional fear that I think prohibits most people from voting for Third Parties (or is at least a contributory factor) that is characterized by the saying "stick to the devil you know."

Because there are hundreds of political consultants, political hacks, and others who have spent their lives in politics, there will be tremendous pressure on the people in the emergent Third Party to revert back to the "conventional wisdom" of traditional American politics. The Third Party's leadership must have a consistent dedication to the disciplines I have described above, and rigorously enforce these principles on their candidates, or else they will quickly get sucked into the old way of doing things, and will be choked off because of their inability to raise enough money to compete on that hackneyed old battleground of the 30 second TV commercial.

Now that we have looked a lot of tactics, I would like everybody to keep these things in mind and think about them as we lead into a lengthy, potentially multi-day discussion of how a Third Party's ideological and policy platform should be crafted in order to be successful in today's political environment, and to begin displacing the dominance of the two party system.

Transparency of Process: Why Honesty Makes the Best Policy

As a continuation of my series on the characteristics of a successful emergent party in American politics, I would like to dedicate today on the notion of transparency. As I touched on yesterday with a discussion of applying technology to the political process in a post-modern cultural context, I noted that authenticity was an essential element in achieving that end. I am going to explore that concept in more depth today, since transparency is a necessary precondition to authenticity. It is impossible to be authentic if there is anything that is manifestly hidden. Hidden things breed hypocrisy, almost necessarily. Consequently, a transparent third party would possess the following characteristics: 1) Openness of process; 2) (little "D") democratic election procedures for party officials and the selection of candidates; 3) Public and fully audited books and records; 4) Plain-spoken policy platform without "political rhetoric."

Openness of Process: Eliminating Smoke-Filled Rooms
Party politics have traditionally been associated with Party Bosses and back room deals. Whether it is those shady alliances between the Democrats and Big Labor or between Republicans and the "Christian" Right, the unholy bargaining that binds the two major parties is what ultimately makes the process tainted and closed. The average voter really has nothing of value to the two major parties; rather they are loyal pawns to be used and abused every election cycle and convinced that a particular candidate will best serve their interests once elected. The special interest groups who elected officials actually serve spend millions of dollars every year to persuade the electorate to vote for their guy, usually without much disclosure, and generally by campaigning against "the other guy."

Similarly, most party operations are conducted behind closed doors, or at least doors that are only slightly open. Far from believing that the government should regulate parties, it is my firm opinion that the people of this country should vote with their feet, by consummating a mass exodus from the two major parties for their improprieties in this area. James Dobson and Jesse Jackson are not truly representative members of the Republican and Democratic Parties, respectively, and as a result, they should not be allowed to dictate the direction of the major parties. Of course I use them as merely metaphors for all of the other nefarious power brokers that help shape and control the partisan process, far apart from the will of the majority of Americans, and most of the time, even without their knowledge.

Building on yesterday's comments, it would be important to note that a successful, and truly representative third party movement would harness Internet technology to achieve genuinely open processes by publishing all relevant information concerning the party online, conduct online feedback gathering, as well as potentially even conducting much of party business online. The Internet is the most easily and universally accessible medium in the country. Unlike television or radio, one does not have to be present at the time of broadcast to receive the information, and unlike newspapers and other physical publications, there is a ready archive of all past information that can be filtered and searched by even the less sophisticated user. Anybody with access to a public library (which is far and away most people in the United States) can therefore access and process information provided by our third party via the Internet.

Little "D" Democracy and Party Elections
Having previously served on the State Committee of the Arkansas Republican Party, I have seen the kind of dealings that occur to elect State Party Chairmen, National Committeemen/women, etc. A couple hundred party hacks from across the state gather twice a year to make decisions that ultimately affect the lives of millions. These party hacks are not elected by the public; they are not accountable to the public; they are not even really accountable to the rank-and-file members of their own parties, but rather to the County Committees (read: Local Party hacks) that elect them. These party organizations go on to set the platforms of the parties, disperse the millions of dollars collected from the average party member's hard earned funds, and decide which candidates are worthy of their support in general elections. In such a way, they create a system where good candidates who might disagree with a particular area of policy are financially blacklisted by the party in a general election. For example, there were a couple of Republican candidates in Arkansas who didn't receive any help in the general election because they backed the wrong candidate for State Party Chairman, or because they didn't have an extreme enough of a view on abortion. Putting such power in the hands of these sorts of people is irresponsible, and is part of the reason the two party system no longer serves the mainstream of America, regardless of ideology.

Registered party members ought to be able to vote, by mail or electronic ballot, not just on the leadership of the party, but also on the adoption of the platform (after providing all of the input on its content first), the nomination of candidates (there are much better systems for choosing candidates than currently exist. I will write more about these issues in a later series), and in other important party matters. Because of the real-time nature of 21st Century technology, parties can interact on an almost hourly basis with their members, so that "party" and "party member" are no longer distinctions, but rather the organization functions organically as a representation of its constituent members.

No Financial Chicanery
This section won't take much time. An emergent third party will open its finances up to the world. Genuine transparency necessitates it. All contributions and expenditures must be disclosed to the public on a quarterly basis, just like a public company. Such a party will have no trouble raising money, and will be respected by all for its honesty. (Open books also REQUIRE honesty. That's the beauty of it.)

Dumping the Rhetoric from Party Platforms
Our hypothetical third party movement should develop platforms that are straightforward and not political in nature. Such platforms should also be remarkably fluid, and change in a real-time fashion along with the will and opinions of the party as a whole. This is one of the best ways to ensure that the third party truly represents the interests and concerns of its constituents and members. Such platforms will tackle actual policy, rather than ideology. Rather than talking about a theory of government and taxation, it will talk about what we do about our phone book-length tax code and oppressively enormous Internal Revenue Bureaucracy. Rather than discussing the ethics of the death penalty, it will talk about how we actually intend to reduce crime in our communities. Rather than extolling the virtues of public education, it would discuss what to do with our corrupt educational bureaucracies and failing schools. I could continue...

Tomorrow we'll look at how a third party can, and should, shift to genuine dialogue on policy and away from "sound bites," in order to effect meaningful change in our political system.

Politics and Technology: Leveling the Playing Field and Making Democracy (Little "D") democratic

I'd first like to thank those who have begun commenting on my posts concerning the need for an emergent Third Party movement. I think JD's perspective from Argentina is extremely useful to the debate. The reality is that the multi-party system, as he described, opens up opportunities for many people who would otherwise be disenfranchised. When there are only two parties, there emerges a "check and balance" system that turns a blind eye to some of the more egregious practices in government, such as pork barrel spending ("earmarking"). While the parties will call each other out on the issues that are necessary to motivate their respective political bases, they will not do so on much of the substantive policy that passes without much dissent every day in Congress.

The primary subject of today's post is to examine in greater depth the first point of yesterday's post, which was concerning the pragmatics of a Third Party movement, what it would do in order to break through the Two Party Juggernaut, etc. I will start with my first point from yesterday. A successful Third Party will possess an understanding of technology and how to use it in a post-modern political context.

Before I delve too deeply into the specific political applications of technology, I'd like to make a couple of introductory remarks about where the world is with respect to technology. The world is a vastly different place than it was even 10 years ago. Today, unlike any other period in human history, the masses in the industrialized world (and increasingly in emerging nations) have access, at nominal cost, to the tools of publication. Any high school or college student with access to $800 bucks can get an Apple MacBook with his student discount and immediately have the capability of publishing to the world their thoughts and opinions in the form of a Blog, or on YouTube as a Video Blog while sitting at a local coffee shop with free WiFi. He can syndicate his blog to his Facebook "Notes" or copy it to his MySpace profile, and through all of these mechanisms reach most of his personal social network. The power of this is truly incalculable, and this brings me to a logical segue into the meat of today's post.

Political parties are organized in order to bring together people of similar ideas to act in concert with one another to achieve certain political ends. Prior to the digital revolution, the traditional two party system was essentially the only way for people to collectively pursue common political goals. They joined up with whichever party most closely fit their political philosophy and then started "paying dues" to move up the ranks and eventually run for political office. This is a terribly inefficient way of figuring out who is best qualified to hold public office. The kinds of lackeys, sycophants, and otherwise smarmy individuals who occupy "party politics" would make used car salesmen feel like clean, upstanding individuals (I wanted to use "insurance salesmen" as my example, but considering that one of my best friends sells insurance as part of his "financial planning" practice, I figured I ought to refrain).

The two party system prior to the advent of technology also required that one be able to raise a lot of money in order to run effective media campaigns. Candidates can win without television advertising (I've worked on some of those campaigns), but few candidates are capable of raising up the kind of volunteer support needed to run an effective ground campaign. Technology is changing all of that. Grassroots politics no longer requires door-to-door campaigning, but can now harness and leverage the openness and vastness of the web to achieve the same sort of results. It also costs virtually nothing, and doesn't require nearly as many "foot soldiers."

An emergent Third Party (or, preferably, SEVERAL "third" parties) would harness this nascent technology to communicate its message to people in their online communities and social networks. Blogging and video blogging are essential strategies to making this work. Creating a presence in online communities like Facebook and MySpace would help to drive traffic to such blogs, create a relationship with citizens who identify with the message of the party, and so on. They would use online communities to help them get the signatures they need to gain ballot access, they would use online communities to push direct democracy legislation (initiative and referenda) consistent with their platforms in order to advance such agendas without needing governing majorities in legislatures. This will help increase their credibility with the voters, and lend a level of trust that presently causes risk averse citizens from casting their vote for "fringe" third party candidates.

A successful Third Party candidate would understand that people's disenfranchisement with the political process in post-modern culture stems from the lack of authenticity from the politicians themselves. Consequently, in their use of blogs and video blogs, social networking presences, etc., they will have a distinctive motivation to just be themselves and to build genuine relationships with voters and constituents. They will not have polished speechwriters prepping their video blogs; they will not have ghost writers penning their blog content. That is the part of my original statement that the technology must be applied in a post-modern cultural context.

It is insufficient to merely take the tools of the Web and become successful. That must be accompanied by an adoption of the cultureand philosophy of the Web as well. This means reaching people where they are in an authentic and, if possible, slightly entertaining way.

Candidates who embrace technology fully will be the only ones who are able to maintain their authenticity, since their fund raising requirements will be substantially less, and their "Beholden" quotient will be so much lower.

The country is waiting for people who are willing to make this leap and to lead the way into a new democracy. The Web is the fastest, easiest, and cheapest way to make this happen, if done properly (read: authentically).

Tomorrow: The necessity of COMPLETE transparency in a successful Third Party movement.

Breaking Through the Two Party System

The Republican and Democratic Parties are vestiges of an older Era of American culture, of back-room negotiations, quid pro quo agreements, and a business-as-usual mentality. The two major parties have, in fact, become so entrenched that it is now almost impossible to tell which one is in power, when looking purely at how Congress operates, the legislation it passes, etc. This is hardly representative of the nation at-large. The people of America deserve to have more choices. Here are some of the characteristics that a successful Third Party movement might have in this country:

1. An understanding of technology and how to use it in a post-modern political context.

2. Complete and radical transparency.

3. A focus on genuine dialogue, not on fund raising and media campaigns.

4. Socially Progressive & Fiscally Conservative ideology, with a dedication to markets and economic growth, balanced with personal responsibility to ensure environmental protection and social justice.

5. Pragmatic foreign policy based on diplomacy and cooperation, liberalizing international trading markets, and peacekeeping rather than on dogmatic hawkishness or naive dovishness.

6. There would be a much more Little "D" democratic approach to recruiting and nominating candidates for public office, and power would be much more fluid, rejecting entrenched incumbents for fresh and new ideas.

7. Commitment to substantive electoral reform at both the national and state levels to ensure that government is both representative and responsive.

8. Commitment to substantive reform of both federal and state bureaucracies and regulatory regimes, including: reform of the IRS and the tax code, massive reform of the educational system, and meaningful health care reform that does not wreak havoc on the nation's macro-economy.

9. Self-imposed checks to ensure that the party never becomes just like everybody else inside the beltway.

10. A preference for town halls over TV cameras.

Over the next several days, I intend to detail each of these points. The first step to causing upheaval in the political process is to define what it should look like, and that is what I will be doing in subsequent posts.

Doha's Collapse a Dangerous Sign for Global Economic Openness

The Doha round of WTO trade negotiations collapsed over an impasse between developed countries and the developing world, primarily concerning disagreements about agricultural and manufacturing policy. This, coupled with the Nicolas Sarkozy's victory at the European Union treaty negotiations removing the phrase "free and undistorted competition" from the document that was rejected by French and Dutch voters in referenda in the last few years, indicates a troubling trend emerging in the global economic scene. I fear we are entering an Economic Cold War that will ultimately threaten the stability of the international system that has kept the globe free of extensive military conflict since the end of World War II.

The Pax Americana is rapidly coming to an end, and unless the United States takes aggressive action to reverse the present trend, the world is likely to be thrust into another great conflict that will threaten the very system that has created the most prosperous Era in human history. Harvard Professor and Hoover Institute Scholar Niall Ferguson wrote a poignant article concerning this very issue back in 2005 in Foreign Affairs. If you want to know the ultimate consequences of economic closure, I highly recommend reading
Sinking Globalization.

The collapse of the Doha Round proves one thing: global trade liberalization requires unilateral leadership as a necessary precondition to substantive movement from the rest of the world on what have traditionally been sticking point issues. The United States must provide that unilateral leadership. If America is dedicated to preserving the current state of prosperity, both for itself, and for the millions of people who are for the first time in centuries emerging from utter poverty, then it must act immediately to illustrate that it is, and can be, the leader in world economic affairs. This means that the next Farm Bill should be a dramatic and rapid phase out of all agricultural subsidies. By 2015, the U.S. Federal Government should completely have eliminated all of the subsidization of agriculture. In tandem with that, the government must also unilaterally eliminate tariffs on imported manufacturing goods.

In spite of the temporary effects such policies would have on certain segments of the U.S. economy, the action would bolster the economy as a whole, even if none of the rest of the world follows suit. What will occur is that Americans will pay less for imported manufacturing goods, and agricultural prices will more or less remain stable, since the subsidies merely push prices down to a level that is in line with global equilibrium. Some American farming capacity will be diminished to match such an equilibrium at market prices, but this is a small price to pay for the overall effect of better spending the money the government currently spends on agricultural subsidies (perhaps to put toward deficit reduction). The net effect on the economy will be reduced "crowding out," which means a more efficient allocation of resources in the macroeconomy. Perhaps temporarily, those funds could be spent on workforce education programs to help transition displaced workers into a more modernized part of the U.S. economy, fund small business loans for such workers, and aid in more innovative business enterprises.

The future of the American economy, and therefore, American hegemony, is dependent upon our ability, as a country, to remain at the forefront of technological innovation. Attempting to spend scarce resources in order to maintain vestiges of an old economy will ultimately decimate our competitiveness on the world scene, while simultaneously pushing the world closer and closer to major conflict.

Unilateral action on these important trade matters is a precursor to more openness. As the world's largest economy, we are the example. Other countries know that if the laws of the U.S. prevent liberalized trade, then they cannot compete without imposing the same sorts of restrictions. As economic interdependence declines, we (and more importantly, other countries) have fewer motivations to rely on diplomacy to resolve geopolitical disputes. China is highly unlikely to invade Taiwan right now because of the economic repercussions of military intervention by the United States in the Taiwan Straight. Similarly, in spite of the massive political differences the U.S. has with Saudi Arabia, war with that country is a virtual impossibility because of the codependent nature of the trading relationship between us. If we were connected to Iran in a such a fashion, I highly doubt there would be so much posturing on both sides with respect to armed (or worse, nuclear) conflict.

The next President and the next Congress must rid themselves of any provincial motivations to erect trade barriers, or even fail to reduce existing ones, and instead embrace free trade and liberalized international economic policy if we are to prevent the precipitation of a major war with the emerging economic powers of the world, especially in Asia. We cannot wait for Europe or Japan to take the lead. Our credibility as the hegemon rests on our ability to lead on the most important issues to global security, and they all start with economics.

Reclaiming "The People's House"

"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress." -Mark Twain

With Congress's approval rating at now an all time low (since the beginning of polling on such a question), it is obvious to me, and I would hope it would be equally obvious to the vast majority of American that something has to be done about it, and that the "it" is throwing out virtually all of the 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. And that is what I would call a good start.

The trouble is that doing such a thing would not be effective if we just traded all of the Democrats for new Democrats and all of the Republican for new Republicans, or just flipped all of the Democrat seats into Republican seats and vice versa. No, that would most likely just take a bunch of people who have wanted to be in the current system and put them there, rather than electing people who have no use for the current system, or the current values of our national political scene.

As I have commented, the current Two Party system is broken. One of the most substantial (and ever-growing) ideological groups, the Fiscally Conservative & Socially Liberal/Moderate, is without a unified political movement in the United States. Now, many people discount the viability of Third Party movements, primarily because they have, in the lifetimes of everybody alive today, been the province if racist groups (George Wallace), or other extremist groups (the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, the Constitution Party), and has not focused on carving out a particular niche in the mainstream, but that is heavily underrepresented in the current system.

Another reason people often discount the viability of third party and independent candidates is the believe that they have to win a majority of the votes in order to get elected. Except in Louisiana, this is not true. The United States House is elected by Single Member District Pluralities, meaning that it is a "first past the post" system wherein the person who gets the most votes wins. Let's look at what that means in practical terms.

In 2004, in the 32nd Congressional District of Texas, two incumbents faced off after the Texas re-districting plan took effect. Pete Sessions and Martin Frost engaged in one of the most heated House races in the '04 cycle, and with high turnout, in a Presidential election year, just over 202,000 votes were cast in that election. Considering that each Congressman represents about 750,000 constituents, 202,000 votes is not a terribly high threshold. Now let's imagine a viable, strong third party candidate is in the race. Assuming that the race is roughly even, a third party candidate could win with as few as 67,334 votes. More people watch some of the most obscure and ridiculous videos on YouTube every day than that. Assuming four candidates in a race, that number decreases to just 50,501 votes.

Americans are a strange bunch, and they hate voting for losers, which is why front-runners generally end up winning, and polling ends up having an impact on the outcomes of races. Slight leads often develop into larger leads simply because the lead existed at all. If American voters would develop just a slight sense of discipline when it comes to not supporting front runners and incumbents, and would be willing to throw their votes away from time to time, the status quo can in fact be changed.

In theory, assuming a minimum threshold scenario applied across the board, it would take only about 14.7 Million votes to create a Congressional Majority for a Third Party. That's fewer people than live in the New York City-Newark Metropolitan Area.

It is possible, and it's about time.

Socially Moderate/Liberal, Fiscally Conservative

Any reader of this blog will know of my general fondness for political subjects, and it should consequently come as no surprise that I frequently engage in conversation on such topics in my everyday interactions. And it seems that barely a day passes that I don't run into somebody who, when asked what their political affiliation is, will respond with something along the lines of "Well, I'm a social liberal (or moderate) and a fiscal conservative, but I generally vote [It's 50-50 Republican & Democrat]." Or I will have people tell me, "I'm really a libertarian, but I could never vote for the Libertarian Party."

These people describe to me their frustration with the political process (and with political officeholders), noting that they really do not have anybody to vote "for" and that they generally end up voting against somebody. The lesser of two evils, as the saying goes. My question is: why are we limited to only two evils? Couldn't we have two or three more? It would at least allow us to walk away feeling both good about our vote and our ability to be grammatically correct when saying "This year, I voted for the least evil of the candidates."

There are so many shades of ideology, almost as many as there are people, and the current two-party dichotomy is just not working out, especially since, as a matter of practical policy, life is little different under a Democratic Congress than it was under a Republican Congress. They all want to spend us into oblivion; they all want to demagogue the issues that rouse their base, and they rarely seem interested in good policy or good government. Oh, and did I mention that they are mostly crooks? Whether it is Dan Rostenkowski, the corrupt Democrat who epitomized the abject criminality of the Democrats' 40 year reign, or Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay, who showed that like in George Orwell's ANIMAL FARM, the pigs quickly learned how to walk on two legs, There is something about being in the majority that brings about a total degradation of ethical standards for elected officeholders.

If there were multiple parties in Congress, say Democrats, Republicans, Greens, [Some replacement for the Libertarians], and then some minor, potentially single issue parties, and it were difficult (perhaps even impossible) for a single party to gain an outright majority, and as a result Congress had to operate on the basis of coalitions, then the plurality party would always have to be keeping its own accountable, and practicing the art of diplomacy in order to maintain the integrity of their coalitions.

There needs to be Constitutional reform to fully realize this sort of potential, but it is possible, in fact, to accomplish these ends under our present system. More on that later this afternoon.

Global Cooling and the Return of All Those Pretty Glaciers...

I have to pass these gems along when I find them. For all the squawking the far Left does about Global Warming, I'm not so sure they realize how much the Ice Age likely sucked. For everybody's reading pleasure, here is a nice little article about the danger of the decline in sunspot activity from the perspective of a Canadian scientist. To whet your appetite, here is the best quote from the article:

"Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada. As a country at the northern limit to agriculture in the world, it would take very little cooling to destroy much of our food crops, while a warming would only require that we adopt farming techniques practiced to the south of us."

Who isn't for more parties?

This has been an interesting week in politics. Everything points to massive discord in the American public with respect to the direction of the country. People are (rightly) upset.

Bloomberg Switches Parties, Again

Yesterday, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg filed paperwork with the Board of Elections changing his party affiliation from Republican to no affiliation, saying "The politics of partisanship and the resulting inaction and excuses have paralysed decision-making, primarily at the federal level, and the big issues of the day are not being addressed, leaving our future in jeopardy." This is very old rhetoric; I do wish he could come up with a more inventive line.

(Remember he switched from being a Democrat to being a Republican when he ran for Mayor initially). The media is now abuzz with speculation that this means he is running for President. As much as I would like to see a Bloomberg candidacy, I think the odds are that he will not be in the race. Here's why: All of the reports are saying that according to his intimates, he will only run if he thinks he could actually win. What billionaire wants to be a spoiler, after all?

But it gets worse. Bloomberg apparently thinks he can win only if the Republicans nominate a Right-winger and the Democrats nominate a Left-winger. The latter is almost assured to happen(though the Left wing of the Democrat party is, as I will discuss momentarily, a bit disgusted with Mrs. Clinton), but none of the top four GOP candidates could come close to being classified as far Right (Giuliani, McCain, Romney, Thompson). Thompson, the most conservative of the bunch (and the increasingly likely GOP nominee), was considered a moderate when he was in the Senate, and has as little in common with the Tom DeLays of the world as Mahmoud Abbas has with Benjamin Netanyahu. If the Democrats nominate Hillary, and the Republicans nominate Thompson, is there really enough room in the middle for a Bloomberg candidacy? I suppose some of his billions will be spent trying to figure out the answer to that very question.

Hillary Gets Booed
Apparently the Left-Wing of the Democratic Party, or to use Howard Dean's phrase, the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party, is not so happy with Hillary, especially when it comes to the War in Iraq. At the Take Back (Read: Hijack) America Conference, her initially warm reception switched into a fever pitch of anger when she began talking about Iraq, likely because of her initial support of the War, and continued moderate stance (until she formally announced for the Presidency. Talk about win at all costs.). The issue of the War is why Barrack Obama has not already been completely annihilated by the Hillary juggernaut. We'll see how the campaign develops, but it appears that Hillary's coming to Buddha on the War is easing her poll distresses as of this week.

America is Unhappy
Two Gallup polls this week indicate that the mass majority of America is unhappy about the state of affairs in this country. The first poll, released yesterday, found that only 23% of Americans think the U.S. economy is getting better, down from 28% just a month ago. 7 in 10 say it is actually getting worse. Health care costs and high fuel prices comprised more than a quarter of the respondents' reasons for their discontent, proving that in politics, perception (even when wrong) is still reality.

The second poll, numerically a carbon copy of the first, shows that 71% of Americans disapprove of the job Congress is doing, with only 24% approving. Gallup observes that Congress's approval rating has only been this low at three times since they started this poll four decades ago: during the energy crisis (1979), the period leading up to the Republican takeover of Congress (1994), and last year. This is not good news for the Democrats who swept into office thinking they had another 40 years ahead of them. But I'm not so sure it's good news for Congressional Republicans, either.

What this poll proves is that the American people, massively dissatisfied with the Republican majority in 2006, is no more happy with the Democratic majority in 2007. This leads me to the crux of today's comments.

People are Pissed Off--So Let's Clean House, Literally

Independent candidates can get elected; but there is no such thing as an "Independent movement." It is simply impracticable. People naturally divide themselves into groups, and in politics, that usually means groups who identify with them ideologically, or at least on pertinent points of policy. The United States has had a relatively stable two party system since Abraham Lincoln's election in the 1860s. It made some sense, especially in the wake of reconstruction, that the North would cleave along certain ideological lines, and the South along others. The system was, until Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy (and excepting FDR's tenure) a Northern Party vs. a Southern Party. After Nixon, the dynamic was upturned. Ronald Reagan then came along and we became familiar with the term "Reagan Democrats" who, by 1994, were calling themselves Republicans and sweeping Newt Gingrich into power in the second Republican Revolution.

In 2000, the South was once again Solid, but for a Republican, not for a Democrat, and that phenomenon was repeated in 2004. But it's just not working. Air conditioning enabled millions of Northerners to migrate to the warmer states, and modern transportation and communication has made this country more homogeneous than it ever has been before, with respect to the kinds of lifestyles most people lead. There is a greater dichotomy between urban and rural life than there is between East coast and West coast, or between North and South. It seems like we can finally stop fighting the Civil War.

This opens the door to the prospect of a more multi-party system, and what better time for it to start than today, at the Congressional level, cleaning out most of the 435 pork barreling politicos that call themselves "The People's House." More to come on the subject in the coming days.

Speaking of Inside-the-Beltway...

Barely 5 minutes after I posted to my blog this morning about Fred Thompson, I received an email from the DNC Executive Director with the subject line "The inside-outsider." I am not sure how I got on the DNC's emailing list, but I am glad that I am. It is interesting to see what is being sent to the activists in both political parties. My take on this particular email is that the Democrats are clearly scared of Thompson, and they wan to do everything they can to detract from his current perception as not one of the tired old hacks like the rest of the GOP top contenders.

For everybody's convenience, here is the email, as I received it, from the DNC. I'll let you make your own judgments.