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.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Monday, July 16, 2007
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.
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.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
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.
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.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
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.
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.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
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.
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.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
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.
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.
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.
Sunday, July 01, 2007
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.
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.
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