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.

Some Old Fashion Law and Order

Fred Thompson edged out Rudy in today's Rasmussen poll, 28%-27%, with McCain and Romney each garnering 10% in a national poll of likely Republican primary voters. There is a lot of speculation about why Thompson has risen so quickly in the polls with relatively little name recognition going into this race. Many people say he is garnering the support of conservatives disaffected with the perceived "moderate" candidates at the front of the GOP pack, Giuliani, McCain, and Romney. That might account for part of it, if Thompson were even that conservative; but he isn't. If being a hardcore conservative were the primary motivating factor, then Newt Gingrich's 9 months of trial ballooning would have landed him at the top of the polls in spite of not having announced his candidacy.

Clearly it is something else. My thinking, and I tend to like Fred Thompson actually, is that Thompson is just a sigh of relief from the last four years. Even though he is a former Senator and has been in politics, we just aren't tired of him (yet). That is why Barrack Obama is doing as well as he is, too. John McCain has been running for President since 1999. Giuliani has been in the public spotlight, for better and for worse since 1993 when he first ran for Mayor of New York. He is now on his third marriage, after a rather public divorce this last time around, and unfortunately for him, the magic that surrounded him in the aftermath of September 11th has faded into a distant memory. Mitt Romney, a fresh face on the national scene, has other baggage, namely his Mormonism and his classic John Kerry-esque ability to flip flop on an almost hourly basis depending on the direction of the political winds. The other "outsider" candidates in the race are plagued by having been in it so long already that they have been confined to the single digits, which is a death knell for fundraising.

Thompson, on the other hand, has a bit of star power, some mildly accurate comparisons to the Gipper, and was out of the spotlight enough not to already be a tired figure on the national scene. The trick for Thompson will be to prevent the voters of fatiguing of him too. If he can manage to do that over the next 7 months, then he has a fighting chance of grabbing the nomination. If he can manage to accomplish the feat of remaining a fresh face through November of 2008, he could defeat Hillary's bid to recapture the White House for the Clinton Clan. Absent a Bloomberg candidacy materializing at some point (and he vowed in a speech yesterday at Google that he had "done the government thing" and would be going back to philanthropy, intimating that he would not in fact be a candidate for the White House), then my bets are on Thompson, at least for the time being.

[As an aside...rumor has it in Republican circles that Thompson's campaign staff is a predominantly outside of the beltway crowd of young technorati who understand the Web and its importance to the future of campaigns and politics.]

You Can't Be Serious...

I'm naturally pretty skeptical of the United Nations and UN Diplomats. They generally come from more Leftist backgrounds and rarely understand markets and economics. But I think I will forever be a complete cynic regarding such diplomats after reading an AFP article this morning headlined "Climate Change Behind Darfur killing: UN's Ban." Ban of course is the successor to Kofi Annan, and hails from South Korea. According to Ban, "The Darfur crisis began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change." He claims that drought conditions that plague the Sudan began as a result of a shift in monsoon seasons over the last twenty years. I literally laughed out loud when I saw this.

The hysteria that now surrounds all discussions about climate change completely eliminates the possibility of rational discussion between opposing sides. Global Warming is now being blamed for everything from the ethnic conflict in the Sudan to Hurricane Katrina. It challenges credulity in every sense. Ban and scores of other UN folks have a single focus in mind: unifying political power in international governance bodies. The issue of Climate Change, in their view, is the way to scare people into supporting economically disastrous treaties like the Kyoto Protocol that would not only cripple economic growth in developed countries (while unfairly subsidizing pollution in nations like China and others in the developing world), but would also hand over substantive portions of U.S. sovereignty to the omnipotent moral busybodies (My thanks to C.S. Lewis for that phrase) of the United Nations.

There are really three camps when it comes to the issue of climate change. There are the demagogues who have some nefarious political or economic agenda and who are using climate change as a vehicle to advance those ends (people like Ban, Al Gore, European Politicians, scientists applying for grant money, etc.), there are the dupes who have subscribed to this new religion (Leonardo DiCaprio, the rest of Hollywood, and Rank-and-File Democrat activists), and of course the rest of us who are "agnostic" with respect to Man-caused Global Warming. [An interesting aside. Notice the rhetoric of the Climate Change Crowd. A normally very Politically Correct bunch, they always use the phrase "man-caused" or "man-made" Global Warming, never "human-caused." I guess that's because the evil Male gender is singularly responsible for Global Warming; women have had nothing to do with it.]

This issue is beginning to reach fever pitch. We are on the precipice of making some really horrible decisions for future generations of Americans if we hand over our sovereignty to people like Ban and the UN while completely eliminating our ability to compete in the global economy. Global Warming cannot be viewed as a scapegoat for every ill that plagues humanity.

I'm pretty certain ethnic conflict has been around for a few years (read: centuries). So have hurricanes. So have droughts. So have famines. The earth has been through four major ice ages in its history. By definition, emergence from an ice age necessitates "global warming." In addition to global ice ages, there have been countless periods of glaciation and de-glaciation, and of inter-glacial periods. The geologic record is replete with evidence that these differences in global climate over the course of the earth's 2+ Billion year history have been caused by things such as solar activity, vulcanism, plate tectonic shifts, the position of the continents, the advent of certain mountain ranges (especially the recent emergence of the Himalayas), and so on.

The Left has really figured it out, though. In spite of all of the countervailing scientific evidence, alternate causes, etc., they have realized something that Social Conservatives have understood for centuries: when facts and reason aren't on your side, revert to a dogma and pound your fist while screaming. Through the promise of millions in grant money, Leftist politicians have made the scientists who agree with them into a new Priesthood, an omniscient group of people known as The Scientific Community and issuing Edicts called "The consensus in the Scientific Community." If you dare argue with them, you are ignorant and unintelligent or else in the back pockets of Big Oil. Let me give you a parallel. If you support equal rights for homosexuals, then you are either ignorant of what the Bible teaches or else you are an evil agent of Satan. The same kind of fervor that characterizes dogmatically conservative religious people (who try to impose their values on the rest of us by demagoguing political issues) is now mirrored by the Leftists who similarly want to impose their divinely-inspired policies on everybody else "for our own good." Perhaps tomorrow I will further develop the comparison between the Religious Right and the Neo-Religious Left.

As a conservationist who really enjoys clean air and clean water, I happen to be quite in favor of measures to reduce emissions from motor vehicles, power plants, and other human activities that make our air and water toxic. But I favor approaching this problem through market-oriented means and the development of new technology, not through top-down politically-imposed (and worse, internationally-imposed) policies that do not account for the complex reverberations of massive and immediate interventions in the multi-trillion dollar global economy due to a staged frenzy instigated by a cast of base political opportunists.

I plead with all reasonable people: be environmentally friendly, but don't buy into to this hallucination.

The Immigration Madness

I have been a bit busy lately and my blogging frequency has suffered. It is my hope to remedy that posthaste. I have yet to publicly write about the immigration issue, and so that is what today's post will be about.

Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-MS) complained this week that "Talk Radio is running America," in reference to the public uproar against the immigration reform bill that was proceeding through Congress. I'm not sure that Lott helped himself by bashing the people who control the hearts and minds of the so-called "conservative base," but he has something of a point. Last week when accused of being in favor of amnesty,

John McCain quipped something to the effect of "if by amnesty you mean anything short of departing 20 Million people from this country, then yes I am for amnesty." Therein lies the trouble with the more hardcore conservative position on the subject of immigration: it's simply impracticable. The racist xenophobes that are fomenting hatred of immigrants are now the driving political force in this country. It seems that even the venom that engulfed the Left over the Iraq War has been eclipsed by the anti-immigrant feelings of the Right.

This issue has been simmering for the better part of the Post-9/11 Era, but has reached a boiling point. It is a virtual impossibility that the Right's fever will be alleviated. There is almost no conceivable way that this country could deport 10-20 Million people who are here illegally. The pure logistics of actually deporting tens of millions of people ignores whether this is even a desirable method for handling the problem. The shock to the U.S. Economy, which has already assimilated these immigrants, is almost incalculable. There are certain statistics, that if I had more time I could source, that estimate that deportation would result in a doubling of labor costs in U.S. Agriculture, pushing the already heavily subsidized industry over the brink, massively increasing Americans' cost for food, and worse, increasing our reliance on foreign agriculture, which exacerbates our thirst for already-expensive oil to transport such goods to the North American continent.

The inflationary impact alone is staggering, not to mention that there will likely be an outright shortage of labor in the service industries. For two hundred years, immigrants have dutifully filled the entry level jobs in order to begin the process of building a new life for their descendants. Irish immigrants filled the factories of the Northeast, helping fuel the Second Industrial Revolution. German immigrants filled the fields of the Great Plains, keeping our supermarkets full of victuals throughout two World Wars. Chinese immigrants built the railroads that connected the Atlantic to the Pacific, making possible the economic wonder that is the state of California. The Hispanic population that comprises most of today's immigrants ensures that the economy can continue to thrive by occupying the service industry and the agricultural labor pool.

With America's birthrate hovering around 2.1 children per couple, which is precisely the "rate of replacement" or "break even point" with respect to population growth, and with the growing imbalance between working and retired persons in this country (a problem that is on the verge of becoming crisis in 2011 when the baby boomers begin to retire), immigrants, if properly assimilated into the formal economy, will at least buy the country a little more time to deal with the impending balance of payments crisis that lurks amongst the shadows of the mammoth Medicare and Social Security accounts. This is why legalizing the immigrant population, and making them pay the same taxes all other Americans pay is an essential part of immigration reform.

All of these realities do not necessitate that we have a "free immigration" policy moving forward. Instead, we should actively work to enforce certain regulations that constrain people intending to relocate to America. One way of doing this is to grant automatic citizenship to anybody who serves in the uniformed services of the U.S. military for five years. If one of the major complaints from the Right about immigration is that they do not assimilate into American culture, and do not speak English, few things could substitute for engendering patriotic affection and a knowledge of the language than service in the U.S. military.

There should obviously be other avenues available for immigration into the United States, and we should harness technology to match employers who would be willing to hire immigrants with those people in other countries who are looking to move to the U.S. Ultimately, by assimilating those who are already here, and creating a more efficient mechanism for people to come here legally, we can solve the current immigration crisis as we did all of the ones that have come before. What we cannot do is revert to isolationist and xenophobic tendencies that further degrade America's credibility as the global hegemon, and damage our image abroad. Moreover, we cannot afford to decimate the U.S. economy by depriving it of an important source of human capital that is necessary to sustain longterm economic growth. While the bill currently before Congress is not a final answer to the problem, it is at least a first step toward reconciling the circumstances that are so unpalatable to millions of Americans, and millions of immigrants.