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Got Progressive?The Free Market Third Party You Might Really
Want in your Future
by Steve Stringer
Copyright 2010
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Table of Contents
1. THE BASIS FOR A MOVEMENT ..................................................................................3
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1. The Basis for a Movement
The ebb and flow of the populist urge to advance a third political Party is again gaining
momentum in America, so it is timely to explore the circumstance to see if this moment is any
different from the last time it showed any real strength eighteen years ago, in 1992. Whether
this newest movement reaches critical mass or not remains to be seen, but meanwhile it is
possible to outline what may be of lasting impact if it does, versus what may be just a passing
fad. Once we know what might make for genuine progressive change, then we can consider
whether the actors in the present drama show the intellectual depth and fortitude to build a truly
solid foundation for a differentiated alternative, or if they are just blowing another social
networking bubble.
The evidence of the rising tide of a new third party initiative is clear. In 2006 a new political party
of a Libertarian bent was founded, calling itself the Boston Tea Party. Subsequently, the sense
of defeat and disarray of the Republican Party in the 2008 elections has been the catalyst for
grassroots, populist Tea Parties. Avowedly non-partisan, passionate about conservative fiscal
principles, fiercely conversant with the Founders Intent, and hinting at semi anarchy and
revolutionary violence just beneath the surface, they purport to represent the voices of a folk
majority that allegedly neither Party pays more than lip service to.
Whether or not the Tea Party is the viral seedbed of a serious third party initiative, the energy of
the initiative itself is indeed smoldering within both Republican and Democratic Party ranks. The
odds of its success are long. The likelihood of simply splintering Republican Party voters is high.
James Fallows observes in the The Atlanticthat 150 years of failed attempts by formidable
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campaigners, ranging from Robert LaFollette (1924) to Ross Perot, suggest how unlikely a third
party is to succeed.
Nevertheless the Republican Party itself was at one time a third party relative to Democrats and
Whigs. It was founded in 1854 primarily as an anti-slavery platform. The circumstances of its
takeoff suggest factors that are relevant to note in this analysis of the prospects for a modern
third party.
First, a third party can best gain populist traction in response to deep moral malaise when it
succeeds in showing that the prevailing economic infrastructure is based upon something
immoral. Simply put, people love to hate unfair wealth.
Second, because wealth is at stake, in defense of that wealth and infrastructure individual
States may make their case against Federal hegemony, and may band together to do so. This
dynamic gave birth to the Confederacy. Today we see various states uniting to contest the
constitutionality of Obamacares pretentions to force all citizens not just to have health care, but
to pay for it out of their incomes. In truth, the states are more deeply concerned that the addition
of millions of new people to state Medicaid roles is a huge un-funded burden at a time when
budget deficits and services cutbacks are already looming.
Third, if the new third party succeeds, extinction is the likely fate of one or the other of the
current reigning parties, just as it was for the Whig Party.
Fourth, because the personal fortunes and liberties of those who are deeply invested in the
allegedly immoral economic infrastructure are at stake, a Civil War is in fact a possibility.
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Third party success evidently requires something with the sustaining moral caliber of anti-
slavery outrage for ignition and liftoff. In todays context this may occur in response to the
nationwide perception that business as usual in Washington i.e. executive and legislative
branches that primarily favor moneyed interests is not only immoral, but is dangerous to the
stability of society itself. Or perhaps it will be a response to the routine stupidity of fiscal
irresponsibility exemplified by imposing health care upon the nation, which among our many
other un-funded entitlements might threaten to subject the nation to street violence such as
happened in Greece when the government there faced the truth that entitlements would have to
be cut. Or perhaps it will be a combination of these, not building to a natural crescendo for
another decade or more, as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits begin to be
curtailed and rationed, and jobs are perennially scarce.
The smoldering embers and kindling of social disruption are there, certainly. There are those
who seek to stoke the embers into real fire, so that they may leverage crisis into grabs for
power, and unfortunately there are those who would splash us with gasoline in the process.
Signs of Life
Besides the noisy Tea Parties and the extremist commentaries in the media on both left and
right, the evidence for authentic momentum and an electoral surge that at least parallels the
interests of a third party came first in the November 2009 election results. In general these
showed a marked swing of Independents from Democrat to Republican choices. The elections
in Virginia and New Jersey were a clear-cut victory for Republicans, who benefitted both from
the miniscule turnout of the black minorities and under-30s that swept Democrats into power in
2008, as well as from Independents who were reacting against the Democrats year-long
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ideological tastes. This was conflicted by a growing sense that the Obama administration was
at best unlucky, and at worst actually incompetent, as demonstrated in its response to the Gulf
oil disaster. Meanwhile Republican vs. Tea Party results were more mixed, but still the Tea
Party made its mark in the Nevada primary.
Tapping a sense of moral outrage is the first of the factors identified above, that both
Republicans and third party activists are learning to exploit. Democrats and leftists have done
so for decades, feigning solidarity with the underprivileged but perpetuating their circumstances
unmercifully. Channeling outrage to an unfair economic infrastructure is the next step the third
party activists must take if they are to mimic a key condition of the Republican Partys success
over 150 years ago.
Five voter wedges
The Republican Party split in New York, and the Democrat Party split in Massachusetts and
then again in Arkansas, illustrate that there are differentiated sets of party-aligned voters who
are committed to core principles arising from their ideological roots, but who recoil from
extremist fringe elements who turn Tea Parties into rage rallies, or who warp needed social
reform into vote-buying, back room exercises of Congressional procedure and fiscal excess.
These are the first two of five electoral subsets that might find common cause within a
burgeoning third party: Moderate Democrats, and Moderate Republicans. Alternatively, they
might be harnessed to a Republican initiative if Party leadership were to think clearly about it.
The Independents who make manifest their growing alarm at the Democratic majoritys rush to
unprecedented levels of national debt comprise a third wedge of citizens who long for a sense
of fiscal accountability from whatever party it may come from.
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Against the background of these three fiscally and socially conscious voter blocs, contrast the
Under-30s who were conspicuously present at the polls in 2008 but who were just as
conspicuously absent in 2009. Their electoral dynamic resembles a web flash mob, in which
technologically-enabled masses use text messaging and Twitter to assemble for a momentary
pop expression, and then disperse. After having so naively thrown their support to an identity
candidate who is turning out to be much less than the hip and wise giant he was inflated to be,
the under-30s may now be balancing themselves on a tipping point towards more fiscally
cognizant voter preferences as they watch their job opportunities stagnate and their social
security surge towards insolvency. These are increasingly the ones who are feeling
economically underprivileged, and who are generationally susceptible to messages of moral
outrage.
A loosely definitive characteristic of these young voters is their demonization of all things
Republican. Their views will undoubtedly mellow with age, but for the next decade or so their
social self identities are probably locked up by the Democratic hope-and-change poses they
took so publicly in the 2008 election. For example, note that it took two decades for Boomers to
shift from Nixon-hating, peace-and-love activists to Reagan-loving, Dot.Com and Housing
Bubble mercantilists.
The Under-30s are probably too shell-shocked and emotionally indisposed to shift to
Republican support as soon as 2012. But their careers are kept on hold by a recession that Mr.
Obama and the Democrats lamely insist that they inherited, rather than turning to fix the
circumstance. Under-30s may simply stay away from the election in a self-absorbed sulk, and
justifiably so, unless something new energizes them.
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However, a brand new wardrobe of a third party may be just the right socio-political excuse for
tossing the old duds of both Democrat and Republican Parties, and re-engaging the Under-30
moral activist hormones. This becomes more likely if the third party sports the designer labels of
social idealism and job growth for all. Tea Partiers have a grasp on the fiscal lapels of such
garments, so the Under-30s may just try them on if and this is a big if the Tea Party morphs
into something more hip, and socially more progressive. Re-branding under a simple name
change might start that trick. But again, the Republican Party itself might capture this bloc if it
chooses to.
Finally, what may prove to be fifth column Democrats are the voter blocs traditionally identified
by race among them African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans. These have
historically shown themselves to be defined not only by identity politics to which the Under-30s
are so susceptible, but are defined by politics of class division as well. These voters are
characteristically exploited through their identity as victims. Yet to their everlasting credit they
have genuine and heartfelt concern for the plight of the underprivileged, besides firsthand
experience of being there themselves. Their inherent weakness is that their ideological
compasses point rigidly at the wealth of the allegedly exploitive few as the primary means to
address the unmet needs of the underprivileged many. Their politics are straight out of the
nineteenth century.
These race-denominated voter blocs are nevertheless just as prone to changing their minds in
response to the right emotional appeal as are the rest of the species. The Republican National
Committee is unlikely to re-brand itself with such appeals, though it would be well-advised to
make the attempt. The Democratic National Committee takes them for granted. But a third party
might find a way to present a message of fiscal responsibility and job growth in just the right mix
with religio-ethnic sensitivities to attract respectable percentages of minority voters. After all,
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while the political class yammers about an unemployment rate stuck at about 10%, African
American, Hispanic, and Native American communities endure unemployment at double that
level. Meanwhile, M.T. Suit and the Divided Dems keep singing their repertoire of health care
rock and roll. One has to assume that the racially denominated voter blocs are open to hope
satisfied, and change for real.
Picture This
For the sake of having an analytic discussion that is a step removed from pure partisan
mudslinging, these five identity groups Moderate Republicans, Moderate Democrats,
Independents, Under-30s, and Race Minorities can be placed upon a political continuum
invented for this article that helps to calibrate the maturity level of the leadership needed to
formalize the respective agendas. This continuum is the sort of tool to use to examine the
hypothesis made in this articles opening paragraph: To assess whether the leaders in the
present third party drama show the intellectual depth and fortitude to build a truly solid
foundation for a differentiated alternative, not just another social networking fad. With this chart
we can get into theirleadersheads, not the heads of the constituents.
This is an important distinction, because individuals within the voter blocks vary widely in their
personal psychology. They vary in response to context, topic, time of day, blood sugar level,
and any number of personal circumstances. Leaders, however, must demonstrate a degree of
consistency that resonates with their constituents. It is this overall consistency of leadership
style that we can use to explain and usefully categorize the observable behavioral phenomena.
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CLASS
Politics
P
Maximally Infantile
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Chart: The Political Leadership Continuum
To be sure, this continuum does not describe the politics themselves. Class politics are certainly
a function of ideology, yet the chart puts Class and Ideology at opposite ends of the Political
Leadership spectrum. This is no accident. It accurately reflects the reality that those in
leadership survive in it for power and money, not for the purity of their ideals. Truly ideological
leaders tend to get weeded out by truly existential leaders and nasty politics. Ask Lenin, Che,
Vince Foster and Colin Powell.
The chart does notshow a causal relationship between the political leadership elites and their
followers, nor does it show the character of the individuals within the voter blocs. Instead it
shows the leaders exploitation of tactical styles that energize their voter blocs, playing upon
their social identities and ranging within their demographics. What the chart uniquely
demonstrates is that at opposite ends of the spectrum there are infantile and senile leadership
cliques. In-between are sub-adults and adults. This is intuitively useful for discussion purposes,
or at least is endlessly entertaining:
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Class Politics lie at the extreme infantile end of the leadership continuum, exemplified
by leaders who assert needs and demands but who offer no progressive social bargain
in return, other than to go away for a while. Toddlers (the weak underclass) manipulate
adults this way, and adults (the powerful ruling class) give them things to appease them.
Its crude, but it works.
Identity Politics are played by a sub-adult leadership clique. Their hallmark is the
crafting of celebrity image for mass consumption. Only a loosely defined social bargain
is made in return, and grudgingly. The bargains delivery is relativistic (i.e. it is optional if
you are one of the in crowd, but is morally mandatory if you are not) and fraught with
celebrity access, social privilege, and being cool. You see these leadership dynamics
first blossom in 5th through 7th grade classrooms, only to give way to adult dynamics
when the brain is neurologically complete (about age 25) and rent has to be paid with
regularity.
Issue Politics lie with the adult phase of leadership, requiring the articulation and
observation of a social bargain that meets defined needs and reasonable demands at a
deliberate and sustainable level; calibrating and managing priorities between majority vs.
minority wants, and regulating wealthy class privileges vs. lower class rights. This is
where leaders who are cognizant of complex socio-economic processes understand that
there are general motivating principles that are useful for drawing closer to social ideals,
but there are no magic solutions that can be universally applied. Or afforded.
Ideology Politics lie at the extreme senile end of the leadership continuum. It is here
that far-Left, far-Right, ultra-conservative and ultra-liberal leadership makes its home.
These are the sorts who aspire to be unassailably expert in their particular ideological
niches. Because of their deep intellectual investment and unusually self-entitled moral
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senses, they and they alone (and their minions) can apply the necessary solutions. This
means they define what are Important Problems and what are Not-Problems; what
constitutes progress and what constitutes obstruction. Truth is what they say it is;
what obstructionists say are talking points. They contort the social bargain into one in
which heartless abstracts and the narrow elites who guard them personify the ultimate
social good. In These are the in-group, everyone else is out-group. In extremis,
commoner eggs may be broken to make the ideal omelet.
It is an interesting thought experiment (and a fun but bottomless pit of subjectivity) to consider
where ones own political leadership falls on this chart. For example, the Democratic and
Republican national parties are firmly entrenched in the sub-adult phase of the continuum,
obsessively monitoring popular opinion, relentlessly embellishing image and pose, trading
favors for privileges, and avoiding responsibility for mutually compounding failure. The reason
they are increasingly disconnected from their moderate bases is that the leadership is less
mature than their moderate members expectations. That leadership is, however, in tune with
the juvenile Boomer credo for wanting it all, coupled with the pathological expectation that
someone must lose.
In contrast, leaders of the Religious Right and ofMoveOn.orgtry to tug the sub-adult Party
leaders toward rigid ideological extremes, operating at the senile end of the leadership
continuum. They menacingly entrench themselves behind the barricades of inalienable rights
and elite-inspired solutions. Whether of a Left or a Right persuasion, they are by nature
conservative, exclusionary, and self-destructively blind to their own internal contradictions. Their
characteristic rationale is to attribute failure to others weaknesses or to opponents sabotage
and obstruction. They are hilariously incapable of self reflection.
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At the opposite infantile extreme, minority leaders whole power and appeal depend upon their
underprivileged or oppressed minority identity. They are chained to the politics of endlessly
organizing and re-organizing their communities to demand goodies from the privileged majority.
Meanwhile Tea Party and Libertarian leaders appear to aspire for an adult locus, but since they
lack an embedded value for the regulation of truly abusive excess (i.e. they espouse minimalist
constitutional republicanism on the one hand, and something approaching anarchy on the other)
they cannot convincingly separate themselves from senile leadership limitations.
These exemplary strategies are mapped to the chart, and an attempt has been made to
correspondingly map voter demographics underneath their leaders organizing principles i.e.
the nature of the emotional appeal they make to their respective blocs. The striking observation
that falls out from this visualization is that there are no organizationally distinct, politically adult
voices in the room with us. Such voices are either organizationally embedded in a Party and
compromised by its senile and infantile extremists, or else they are unaffiliated with any Party
and have limited organizational coherence.
Conclusion: There is an adult party leadership vacuum which a third party might fill.
There are many, many other electoral groups exploited throughout this leadership continuum,
most of which are not named here, but the five identified earlier (Independents, Moderate
Democrats, Moderate Republicans, Under-30s, and Race Minorities) are by moral inclination
(i.e. by their focus on jobs and sustainable social benefits) the likely cores for a third party
initiative. Plus they have numerical scale that makes their inclusion a necessity. Uniting them in
common cause is the political challenge. Managing them to adult ends would fill the leadership
vacuum.
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But an alert Republican Party might do fulfill this role, too.
Meta Analysis
Besides moral concern for fiscal solvency and an equivalence of societal and material
opportunity, what might unite these widely disparate blocs of voters? Put another way: What
keeps them apart? Might moving beyond two centuries of ideology-driven class warfare
between socialist and capitalist world views be a constructive possibility? Might common ground
be found among these voters to create a revolutionary blending of social progressives joining
with fiscal conservatives, partnering with one another in common cause rather than endlessly
smearing each other as mortal enemies? Might they together channel humanitys powerful
greed instinct into a platform of sustaining for all what the privileged routinely sustain for
themselves?
In other words, might a third party stand for fiscal solvency andmorally sound progressive
values housing, education, health care, job stability, secure retirement, and rational
environmental management without baiting and switching the underprivileged with absurdly
unsustainable, ultimately immoral, promises?
If it were not for considerations of ideological greed and political power, the two major parties
themselves might prefer to stop maligning progressives and conservatives as two alien and
antagonistic life forms. One or the other party might instead seize a transformative opportunity
to align the two major socio-ideological identities that have complementary skill sets both born
of fundamental human nature. The chance of either party remaking itself along these lines,
however, is remote. It might truly lie to a third party to offer a new vision that supplants the old.
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Third party rights to success
So far this article has noted that that there is socially-uniting, widespread moral outrage over
jobs and fiscal insanity sufficient to begin satisfying the historical pre-condition necessary to
spark a sustainable third party. Just as anti-slavery was the morally unifying spark for the GOP,
todays outrange has an economic dimension that makes its satisfaction an existential civil war
for survival, figuratively if not literally.
Secondly, this article observes that there is a genuine leadership vacuum just waiting to be filled
by an astute existing Party, but with more likelihood it will be filled by an astute third party.
Third, this article has suggested that a deeply ideological step sweeping aside the notion of
class warfare and replacing it with a principle of morally andfiscally sound progressive
achievement might be an actionable definition of the lasting impact that is the basis for a
progressive, free market third party that you really mightwant in your future.
But before saddling any prospective third party with the goal of having an adult leadership
perspective (let alone with the goal of making an ideological breakthrough), consider whether a
third party has a prayer of a voting chance, even if all it does is exploit the old divisions in a new
way. Does a third party have a mathematical right to succeed?
It turns out that a simple deconstruction of the voting record indicates that it might indeed.
Campaign veterans will scoff that attempts to corner double-digit percentages of voters is
ridiculously hard, but hard is a vast improvement over impossible. In the 2009 and 2010
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elections we have already seen double digit swings of independent voters. Clearly voter
restlessness is in the air. It breeds opportunity, but just how much opportunity is needed?
Note two salient facts; 1) the Democratic candidate for President won the 2008 election by 9.5
million votes, and 2) that votes for both the Democratic and Republican party candidates
combined were less than 50% of all those who are registered:
Obama 2008 69,456,8
McCain 2008 59,934,8
Total combined Dem and GOP voters 2008 129,391,7
Non-votin and "Other" estimate 2008 1423022
What is the third party math needed to win an election in this voter population?
Lets replay the 2008 election. If just 20% of those who voted Democrat and 20% of those who
voted Republican had instead voted for a third party candidate, then more than two times the
Democrats winning margin (25+ million vs. 9.5 million) would have been in play. Moreover,
since the incumbent parties failed to engage 52% of all registered voters in an election that was
the most symbolically momentous threshold crossed since the founding of the Republic, the
third party also has a ripe opportunity to excel where the old timers obviously did not. If 20% of
the estimated 142 million non-voting and Other voters were to become active supporters of the
third party, then these in addition to the Democratic and Republican switchovers would have
made for a near-tie between Democrats and the Third Party. The GOP would have slid into a
somewhat distant third place.
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20%of 2008 Dem voters 13,891,3
20%of 2008 GOP voters 11,986,9
20%of 2008 non-voting and "Other" voters 28,460,4
New Third Party voter potential in 20xx: 54,338,8
Dem votes in 2008 minus 20% 55,565,5
GOP votes in 2008 minus 20% 47,947,8
The simplistic key to winning would have been in gaining just marginally larger shares than 20%
in all three voter segments. For instance, 21% will do nicely. At this threshold the Democrats
would have lost the popular election by over 2 million votes:
21%of 2008 Dem voters 14,585,9
21%of 2008 GOP voters 12,586,3
21%of 2008 non-voting and "Other" voters 29,883,4
New Third Party voter potential in 20xx: 57,055,7
Dem votes in 2008 minus 21% 54,870,9
GOP votes in 2008 minus 21% 47,348,5
Depending upon the depth of the moral outrage that the third party can drill into, anything
exceeding 21% becomes an electoral runaway. We can leave it to third party campaign staff to
figure out how to slice and dice the Electoral College votes, since the results there can trump
the popular vote. Suffice it to say that there is at least a ridiculously hard scenario for third
party electoral success based on the popular vote, but not an impossible one.
The conclusion is that the third party has a mathematical right to succeed. To satisfy the math, a
fiscally conservative, socially progressive message might be the way to significant numbers of
adult hearts and minds in the five voter blocs identified above, if it is convincingly delivered.
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So now let us look at the condition of the delivery mechanism. Lets do an intellectual sonogram
of the fetal third party movement to determine if it has the requisite anatomy: A heart, and a
brain.
Getting out a message
At present the Tea Party movement organizes itself and refines its message with great gusto. It
routinely draws good-sized crowds, and they are growing in number and, as is evident with the
loss of Teddy Kennedys former Senate seat to Republicans, in internal structure as well. It has
its theoreticians, its fiery orators, and its exemplary path-breakers such as Mark Levin, Glen
Beck, and Newt Gingrich. It has its patron saint Ronald Regan and it is in the process of re-
habilitating John F. Kennedy, too. It however lacks a Face, the credible candidate and the
poster-ready image of someone who personalizes and epitomizes what the third party stands
for. Interestingly, Republicans dont have The Face either, the way Democrats have Obamas.
Not knowing what the future holds, one wonders if Sarah Palin is test-marketing speeches and
sitting for portraits right now, as she coyly re-shapes her image as an insightful analyst for Fox
News. Besides The Face, the movement lacks an apparent kingmaker or queen maker but
such personae oftentimes become most evident in retrospect anyway, and only if their cause is
successful. Potential kingmakers (T. Boone Pickens?) may wish to remain covert in any event
for the time being, so as not to alienate other long-held political affiliations unnecessarily and to
maintain plausible deniability. Theyre not called behind the scenes for nothing.
The aforementioned assembly of players, however, is not noted for being socially progressive. If
all The Face stands for is conservative principles without more than a nod to progressive ideals,
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the third party will not capture leadership in the infant and sub-adult phases of the political
continuum. The Under-30s and the Race Minority wedges will remain unaddressed.
Furthermore, while the moderate Republican and Democrat wedges may be drawn by the
gravity of fiscal conservatism, they will be oxygen-deprived and hence repelled by an
uncompassionate vacuum of progressive value.
But insofar as third party players go, third party fiscal conservatives are all that is in evidence at
the moment. The liberal versions of a candidate third party the numerous progressive splinter
parties are sidelined, having been effectively demobilized by their potential supporters mass
migration to the sub-adult AnybodyButBush echo chamber.
To ever become a force to be taken seriously by the fiscally astute, these legacy progressives
must overcome the championing of George W. Bush as the most powerful man on the planet.
Fully a year into their star pupils tenure of hope and change, they still invoke Mr. Bushs name
as their inspiration and excuse for fiscal anti-gravity. The Democratic leadership in general and
Mr. Obama personally behave co-dependently reactive and driven by He Who Must Be Named,
rather than behaving as mature, professional, and self-possessed adults. Such is the
consequence of identity politics in the sub-adult and infantile reaches of the leadership
spectrum. Moderate Democrats, the Under-30s, and the Race Minorities must all overcome that
liability.
Success against what odds?
Irrespective of whether the electoral initiative comes from the socially progressive or the fiscally
conservative, and thinking beyond the basic math of winning elections, how does a third party
define success? More importantly, how might We The People define success? If a third party
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rises and displaces either the Democrats or the GOP, do we then have a new, tri-polar political
world? Or does the loser party fade into obscurity (like the Whigs) and the third party that takes
its place become but the newest hack in the same old two-party order? In favor of the latter
expectation there is the historical record of the rise of the Republican Party and the collapse of
the Whig, plus there is the argument that the electoral system and the rules of representation
effectively dictate that two-party dominance will always persevere. If a third party accedes to
power only to become yet another One of Two, we ordinary citizens will be left wondering what
all the drama was for. The rock poets desperate exclamation of Meet the new boss; same as
the old boss will be writ real in but the most recent chapter of the American experiment.
The strategic intents of the authors of any new third party will be telling in this regard. Their
potential fate and impact depends on what problem they are setting out for themselves to
overcome. If they act simply to impose their own variety of power and control at the expense of
the current order, then nothing of substance will change. But if they attempt to articulate and
address a more fundamental problem of our age, then the nature and the fruits of success will
naturally change, too.
So this surfaces the question: What sociopolitical problem does our age face that a third party
might fix?
Defining the problem defines the movement
A powerful answer to this question was hinted at above. The leading problem candidate might
be a breaking of the class warfare gridlock between capitalism and socialism. You may have a
John Lennon Imagine moment once you grasp the potential significance for American society,
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and ultimately for global civilization, if you substitute an expectation of mutually respected social
bargains in place of endless class warfare.
Objectively, it is everywhere evident that unregulated socialism is equally if not more detrimental
to stable and peaceful society than is unregulated capitalism. Subjectively, the perennial
exploitation of economic jealousies has a wearying, graying effect upon intellectual rigor,
entrepreneurial spirit, and personal liberty, ignoring as it does the natural inclination of our
species to live within class social hierarchies. Just observe our primate cousins. Their societies
are stable and so are ours, so long as the upper classes act decently, and so long as the bottom
rungs are afforded dignity, decency, and access to necessities.
In society after society, unregulated socialisms use of the privileged class's money has the
downside of draining away the wealth that exists, of discouraging the entrepreneurial spirit
needed to create more of it, and of ultimately degrading the quality of life and limiting the human
rights of the very people that socialists claim to hold dear in their hearts. Their intents might be
pure, but their ends are immoral. The best analogy is to DDT, a once-widely used pesticide.
Like socialism, DDT has many desirable direct effects. It reduces insect populations and
increases crop yields. The fruits of these fields dont have as many blemishes, either, and so
they sell better in the market. However, DDT like socialism has many undesirable indirect
effects, too. In the case of the pesticide, the wild animals suffered from poisoning. Birds eggs
were produced with shells too thin to last to the hatch. Fish suffered from debilitating mutations.
In the case of socialism, the wild animals of the free market suffer as incentives for innovation
and risk taking are eliminated.
Yet in spite of these obvious shortcomings, socialism's most educated adherents in the US
these have their identity as Progressives have never put in place the intellectual framework for
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dynamically incorporating the manifest strengths of capitalism. They avoid discussion of the
demonstrated ability of capitalism to raise more people out of poverty than any other system in
the history of civilization, and to more ably sustain them into middle class status than any other
socioeconomic option on the face of the earth. The signature failure of socialist and Progressive
thought is the inability to recognize the fiscal and social benefit that emerges from rights to
private property, from encouraging wealth and fostering innovation, and to cultivating free
markets.
But there is more to this than just Karl Marx vs. Adam Smith.
The beating conservative heart of Progressive politics is surgically exposed by its manipulations
of the levers of political power. The little book ofRules for Radicals might be the smoking gun of
the consciously elitist intents of self-proclaimed progressive sophisticates, but in reality both
Democratic andRepublican parties are partial to winning elections by exploiting Progressive
themes and Saul Alinskys rules. In particularly heavy use are the tripartite tactics of winning
elections by 1) promising populist goodies to any electorate that votes for partisan candidates,
2) giving voters an ability to commit public funds to themselves by ballot initiative, and 3)
leveraging community and judicial activism to achieve social re-engineering goals in piecemeal
rather than by cementing progressive values into the supreme national contract the US
Constitution. The result is what we see:
- A hodgepodge of poorly managed Federal and State regulatory authorities;
- Political parties united in putting us on a path to fiscal insolvency; and
- A permanent and growing underclass with racial, economic, educational, and health care
disparities.
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Were it not for the actually enormous sociopolitical advances that former slaves and all women
have made in the US in the last century, one might conclude that Progressives are colossally
inept, not just fiscally challenged. Unfortunately for Democratic Party claims to be the heartland
of Progressive values, slavery was actually abolished by Republicans. And it was a Republican
Congress that enfranchised women over the objections of the majority of Democrats. And it took
a fully bipartisan Congress to overcome Southern Democrats to enact civil rights law.
This doesnt demonstrate that Democrats are bad. It just demonstrates that progressive poses
have their electoral utility, and that Republicans are as adept at seizing them for genuine lasting
impact as Democrats are for seizing them for genuine polling impact. The moral is that
progressive values are not genuinely served by party allegiance.
Ultimately, it is the self-acclaimed progressives conservative and reactionary obsession with
imposing economic moral imperatives and their sub-adult political leaders cynical
exploitation of democracy by trading progressive goodies for votes that is the leading
candidate for explaining the perpetuation of ritualized class warfare. After all, what party would
actually want to solve the fundamental problem when the benefits of keeping it alive are so
politically useful?
Whether or not replacing endless class warfare politics with fiscally sustainable progressive
economic rights is the right problem definition, the point is that the third party must solve a real
problem if it is to make a real difference. Not just the problem of getting itself elected into power.
If a third party could accomplish this, then everything of substance would change. What was
made thin air by Marxists will re-solidify in a more promising way. All that is dreamed of for
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capitalists ideological inheritance becomes less a differentiator to the poor, because it becomes
their inheritance, too.
Meet the new boss, now genuinely different from the old boss.
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2. The Basis for Moving
Overcoming Reason
There actually are multiple third parties in existence right now, and there have been for
decades. The urge to head ones own political party appears perennially attractive. At this
writing, Wikipedia lists thirty-eight parties besides Democrats and Republicans, ranging from
centrist to far right, to libertarian and even National Socialist (Nazi), then back the opposite way
to communist and on to even farther left, wherever that may be. So third party success isn't for a
lack of trying. The problem is that they all attract so few votes that they have only marginal
impact on policy debate. The first, best bet on the Tea Party newcomer is that it will become an
electoral spoiler to the Republicans, much like Ross Perot and the Reform Party were to George
H. W. Bush in 1992.
There are two structural problems that help explain the difficulties facing any third party, besides
their confusing numbers and agendas. One structural problem is systemic, the other is organic.
Third party aspirants must decisively overcome both problems in order to achieve existential
sustainability, let alone to try to enact a game-changing agenda like sustainable progressivism.
The systemic reason for third party failure is that the American electoral system beyond the
local level is composed such that two-party competition is the only viable outcome. The simple
reason a third party cannot rise and create a new three-party order is because only one
candidate can win in each State and Federal electoral district. The most evolutionarily
successful survival strategy in the face of this structure is to condense political competitors into
just two opposing teams, and to pick a team to be on to maximize the opportunity for any given
candidate to win.
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It simply doesn't make sense to field a third minority team in a championship match, where
second place is first loser.
Domestically and internationally, the antidote to systematized two-party entrenchment is where
multi-member districts are the norm. For example, it occurs anywhere the top two candidates
with the most votes each win the privilege to represent their district's citizens in legislature.
Something like this happens routinely in US town councils, to the extent that candidates
compete for two, three, or more seats at one time. The top vote-getters get the available seats.
In such systems more than two parties can realistically hope to gain traction, creating genuine
incentive to form third and even fourth and fifth parties, even if their best hope is to be a minority
voice. If they win only one seat, at least their constituents' inputs will be heardat the bargaining
table, and at least they will be atthe table instead of on the menu. In such a system a
reasonable third party presence (and sometimes even just one minority seat) can have a
powerful swing role when the winning vote margin is slim. The third party can throw its support
to one side or the other in a parliamentary proceeding in exchange for concessions that are
important to it. This is why local politics are so volatile and so responsive to voters actual
wishes.
The other, organic reason for failure is that third parties suffer from pirating and absorption of
their ideas. In the most recent example, the Reform Party candidacy led by Ross Perot ran a
platform for balancing the Federal budget and for reforming Federal government. Perot won
18.9% of the vote using those planks, but both the Democratic and Republican parties stole
the ideas after the 1992 election, siphoning off voters and support from the Reform Party before
the 1996 election. The Reform Partys share of the 1996 vote was virtually zero.
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At the time, the beneficial result of absorbing those fiscally-responsible, third party-inspired
values was that the years 1998 2001 were the first in decades that the United States actually
ran a budget surplus. But having effectively killed the Reform Party, principled and coherently
focused representation of balanced budgets and Federal reform was silenced as well. Following
the fiscal sanity of the Clinton/Gingrich interlude, the Republican and Democratic parties both
quickly resumed their custom of one-upping each others' fiscal irresponsibility, first with
Bush/Cheney, and now with Obama/Reid/Pelosi.
Overcoming organic weakness is made difficult by the simple fact that nobody has a lock on
good ideas or on good agendas. Good ideas and even bad ideas that happen to be popular
travel across party boundaries at Internet speed. They gain the support of campaign committees
when they demonstrate their ability to get media play and swing polls. Those committees know
that the ideas can be quickly jettisoned once the election is either won or lost, but meanwhile
their time-sensitive utility is in their magnetic power over voters.
Witness the sitting Presidents campaign promises to transact transparent, bi-partisan debate
on health care. And to strike earmarks from the budget. And to ban lobbyists from his Cabinet.
Just as infamously, George H. W. Bush invited listeners to read my lips as he vehemently
forbade tax increases in his campaign.
Politicians know: When it comes to winning votes, populist ideas are cheap dates.
The only way to mitigate organic theft by the opposition is to articulate the third partys idea in a
way so radioactive and so poisonous that the very act of adopting it is fatal to the pirating party.
The effectiveness of this tactic is especially evident in socio-political systems that forbid
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organized opposition. For example, communist parties adopted the radioactive idea that certain
individuals have greater societal privilege than others. Party leaders were given rights over
property and capital in a system that founded itself on a principle of there being no such thing as
private property. Political and bureaucratic elites highly visible individuals strutted around
with property-owning privileges that were otherwise denied to ordinary comrades. The elite were
more equal than the proletariat.
This practical expedience in the name of the collective was fundamentally at odds with Marxist
dogma. Being at such odds is ultimately fatal to any communist party since its core legitimizing
proposition is so blatantly compromised. But in reality, power and control of property are
instinctive and mutually-reinforcing incentives in our species, so we routinely see sociopolitical
train wrecks play out in slow motion that are at odds with this force of nature. This has
happened in every communist society, all traceable to Marx's fundamental failure to grasp what
any two-year old understands: Mine!
Third Party Strategy
Any third party that presumes to make a lasting impact must devise a viable strategy for
addressing both the systemic and the organic problems, and it must invent a poison pill strategy
as well, or else it will vainly struggle against the structural decks stacked against it.
In the same way that you can make bets on the future success of an entrepreneurial start-up
based on the strengths of its patents, you can make a bet on the future success of a third party
by looking at its intellectual property for facing down the systemic and organic challenges. For
instance, by constitution and intent it must devise a strategy for broadening the two-party
electoral system, complimented by a message that is poisonous to the two-party electoral
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system. An American third party must articulate a core value proposition that is sufficiently
disruptive of the existing two-party system long enough to buy sufficient time to gather and
sustain voter loyalties before its ideas can be stolen.
So what might such a core value proposition be? Well, if indeed the winner-take-all system
predetermines representative outcome, and if that outcome is not truly representative of the
citizens will, then the prescription for dealing with it is written into the Declaration of
Independence. In theory, revolution is a legitimate route by which citizens organizing
themselves into a third party might challenge the system when the system no longer sufficiently
secures citizens rights.
In other words, the constitutional legitimacy of the two-party system could be made a into
campaign issue.
The simple way down that path without necessarily invoking the nuclear option of violent
revolution is the clich question: Are we better off now than we were years ago? With a two-
party system today that is capable of leading the country into bouts with unemployment in
excess of 10%, of leaving 1 in 6 Americans in hunger, and yet finding reason to demand ever-
increasing shares of control and taxation because it promises to do better, there is indeed some
real reason to challenge the two-party systems fidelity to the Constitution. Progressive
economic rights are not being advanced with any degree of constitutional certainty.
Except progressives never bothered to put FDRs 1944 declaration of economic rights into the
Constitution. A call for reaction (let alone revolution) really isnt legitimately justified by that
route.
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Another version of the clich question is to ask, does anybody really desire a hyper-polarized
electorate? Do citizens really desire debate dominated by extremist voices? Do we really desire
gridlock?
Is it not diagnostic of dysfunction that under a two-party system, more than 50% of registered
voters did notvote in one of the most momentous candidacies in the history of the Republic
the penultimate breaking of the race barrier? Compounding this voter disengagement from the
two party system, the winners ignored the plight of the unemployed while they jousted divisively
over social engineering policy.
When explained to them in this way, perhaps Americans would prove very, very ripe for a
message about how the present system predetermines and distortstheir representation.
Perhaps they would feel that revolution is very, very justified in theory, since the nations first
document states clearly: whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends
[to unalienable rights], it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new
government.1If a third party can copyright the message of such systemic dysfunction, then
according to sociologists Prospect Theory they will succeed in magnifying the prospect of gains
as the surer reward of risk taking, relatively diminishing the prospect of losses that are all but
certain from staying the course and doing nothing. Once a widespread perception grows that
the faith we place in the current system is the losing bet, people will naturally be more
psychologically ready to risk trying something new in order to gain a better future. In a nutshell,
that was the Democrats argument for pushing health care legislation so self-destructively: They
asserted that the risk of failure from trying something new is no worse and is rationally less
damaging than the risk of doing nothing.
1 The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America, adopted by
Congress on July 4, 1776
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If this revolutionary dynamic can be exploited peacefully and successfully by a third party, then
even if either or both of the two dominant parties steals the agenda of systemic change and
begins its implementation, they weaken the ecosystem of their dominance and create an
opening for the third party anyway.
This poison pill creates an opening for real change, regardless of whether the third party
survives or not.
Dead set against their agenda will be those who will defend the present system because of their
vested ability to manipulate it and to remain at or near their present pinnacles of political power
the PACs, the lobbyists, the oligarchs, and the two incumbent Parties themselves. But they
will be arrayed against the greater numbers of individuals who have to live in the system with
only their voice, their vote, and their tax bill to show for it.
Connecting the dots between the systemic bias and personal struggles that the system only
makes worse is the tactical jump that a third party will have to make if it is to copyright a
message of dysfunction that it can offer a solution to. Put more succinctly, the presumptive third
party has to escalate the sense of voter frustration to a self-sustaining buzz not unlike that of the
anti-slavery movement.
Presuming this is the key enabling requirement we might be looking for, now we can calibrate
how serious a challenge any third party presents whenever and wherever it makes its
propositions known.
Mapping the Currents, the Shallows, the Rocks
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The problem with progressive politics as we know them is that they are ranged against a world
that has evolved a fair amount since the nineteenth century. Progressives basic proposition is
the 19th century misguided epiphany that unregulated capitalism is the root cause of all social
evils, when in fact it is the unregulated mercantilism of the preceding age that gave rise to
socially moral reaction. Thanks to Marxs fascination with capitalism Progressives cannot label
their nemesis correctly, but the progressive perspective has always had utility as a tool kit for
electoral campaigning and community organizing. It is hard to break old habits. So why be picky
about calling the enemy by its proper name? Its the same progressive mentality that labeled all
Native American tribes in the American west as Indian, with little regard for their human dignity
or for the actual geography of the planet.
Modern progressives proposed economy is in fact not as radical as Communism, though it is
reminiscent of nineteenth century Imperialism. For example, todays Progressives impose
centrally planned solutions based on elite theories, and they incrementally absorb Americas
means of capital production into government control. But at least they do not abolish private
property to the extent that womens bodies, too, become legalized common property as was
done in the Communist Manifesto2 Not yet, at least. Instead, they have at their core the
compelling vision for all Americans, Franklin Roosevelt's Economic Rights of Man, articulated
in his 1944 State of the Union:3
The right to a useful and remunerative job
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food, clothing, and recreation
2 The Communist Manifesto, Article II
3 The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More Than Ever,by
Cass Sunstein, 2004
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The right to raise and sell farm products at a return that will give a decent living
The right of to conduct business free from unfair competition and monopolies
The right of every family to a decent home
The right to adequate medical care and to achieve and enjoy good health
The right to protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and
unemployment
The right to a good education
Add to these a concern for the environment, and we have captured the universal tenets of the
single Great Progressive Idea that the two dominant parties exploit. These notions are also
encapsulated in the United Nations Declaration of Universal Human Rights, layered on top of
what is essentially a re-statement of the Bill of Rights from the US Constitution. These glorious
but presently un-ratified American citizens rights are the logical extreme of a conviction at a
nation state scale to love your neighbor as yourself the second half of the summary of the Law
and the Prophets as articulated by a Jewish carpenter two thousand years ago, and found
engrained in all the worlds religions as well.
No wonder it has such universal appeal.
Unfortunately, both Democrat and Republican parties in their zeal to be compassionate
consistently add to the national debt. Neither one has the intellectual or theoretical basis to
resist an essentially spiritual imperative for an increasingly comprehensive social safety net. The
morality of granting economic rights and social insurances in reaction to the excesses of
unregulated mercantilism does not have a corresponding morality for incorporating the
capitalists fiscal discipline of sustaining the economic basis for those rights and insurances
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through time. Marx didnt connect those dots. Neither did Teddy, or Franklin, or Mao, or
Mahatma, or Martin. Nor has Barack.
So we have three big problems:
1. Universal progressive values are fiscally unregulated;
2. They are moral juggernauts, hence they are exploitable for votes; and
3. They do not have a basis in the Constitution of the United States.
Progressive values are in campaign speeches and in ballot measures and in public schools and
in Sunday schools. They are legislated into practice, they are regulated into practice, and they
are adjudicated into practice. But never have they been amended into the Constitution.
So in the Federal, constitutional sense, they are not enumerated rights, and therefore they are
not truly lawful, or even legitimate.
Because they are not law, they can be given and they can be taken away at whim and without
recourse. Furthermore, as is amply demonstrated over and over, without singular ownership
there is no accountability for waste. There is no prudent stewardship. There is only unbridled
consumption as a reward for votes.
And so the two Progressive parties Republicans and Democrats wantonly squander the
wealth of the nation in their competition for electoral dominance.
So here we find ourselves with the good intentions of the human race faithfully reflected by the
two dominant Parties, but no adult voice in the room to be sure that the citizens don't vote
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themselves into financial oblivion. It is not that Progressives are devoid of discipline. It is that the
Great Idea of socialism was founded as a moral reaction to the Great Idea of mercantilism, and
the strengths of the Great Idea of capitalism were never incorporated by the ideologically
simplistic and vengeance-mad actors of socialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Instead, they were demonized. That is still true to this day, judging from the words and deeds of
capitalisms current and most virulent opponents. The net result is that Progressives lack an
expectation of tempering moral imperatives with fiscal realities. Instead, they expect the
economy to always deliver its largesse out of a collective sense of moral duty.
American Progressives Democrats and Republicans alike relentlessly subject the populace
to a spiritual and moral burden supported by taxes and ever-increasing debt. For all intents and
purposes, they serve a state pseudo-religion, one actually based on near-universal religious
values. It may be a soft tyranny in the twilight of everyday concerns, but it turns out that it
really is a de facto theocracy, once you stop and think about it.
Global stakes
A functional fusion of capitalism and socialism has not yet occurred within the global value
system, let alone within the United States. Progressive socialism is so embedded in thought and
in social identity that it is indistinguishable from religion, permeating the ideas and the battles of
the two parties. The parties operate within the norms of a past age, fighting the battles of the
previous centurys previous century, using ideological high explosives well beyond their use-by
expiration dates.
But the populace at large evidences a growing sense of unease at the two-party system's
inability to conclusively address society's big issues. Since Great Ideas are not constrained by
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national borders, this popular malaise is found in various forms around the world at large
regardless of two-party or multi-party construct. The problem is, people everywhere are using
outmoded assumptions about the right way to run our world, doing old things and expecting
new results. And getting increasingly frustrated.
This helps illuminate the prevailing sense of unease that the people on the planet experience
right now in the looming expectation of globalism. But coming back home within America's
borders, its meaning is that if American society's issues remain unresolved, and if both of the
parties become increasingly irrelevant and indistinguishable, they take the legitimacy of
representative democracy with them into eclipse by more numerically superior autocracies in
the world at large. The experiment in democracy that distinguishes America will possibly come
to an inglorious end.
Certainly and already in the global context, an inability to solve society's issues challenges the
legitimacy of Western-style democracy. Chinas command capitalist economy begins to look
like a viable alternative to free market capitalism, in the eyes of developing nations hungry to
grow like the Peoples Republic has. Of course there can be no such thing as command
capitalism, because it is indistinguishable from old fashioned mercantilism. Meanwhile the
electorates of Russia, Venezuela, and Iran qualify those nations as democracies the equal to
France, the US, and Australia in letter but not in fact. The simple math is that if the UN held a
World Governance Constitutional Convention today and each nation had one delegate, it is
doubtful that Western-style democracy would prevail. If delegates were weighted by population,
the outcome would be even more certainly against the West. It is simply mathematically out-
numbered by secular autocracies with barely a pretense of principled democratic opposition.
Among the nations of our world there is a supermajority of unabashed oligarchies, theocracies,
monarchies, and tribal warlords.
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Justified by the twin Progressive moral pillars of climate warming and a relativistic imperative to
redistribute wealth from rich to poor, in all likelihood we would see these despots concoct a
temporary global dictatorship to ensure the equitable re-engineering of global society. It
would probably be called a One World Democratic something-or-other with emergency
powers sufficient to crush any and all opposition. If the US were to bind itself to the outcome of
such a democratic gathering, American concepts of life, liberty, private property, the rule of
law, and the pursuit of happiness would be swept aside.
Thus would die the dream of a state of personal opportunity that is an unalienable right of all
mankind: America.
If these are the stakes, then what are we to do about the Great Ideas whose pending but
unresolved fusion unbalances our daily lives? First let us understand the populist appeal of the
ideas on which behalf the two parties conduct their pitched battles, then we can explore where a
third party figures in.
Surveying the Great Ideas
The progressive Great Idea is that unregulated capitalism is bad for peoples' economic rights,
especially for the middle class and the poor. A basic argument is that Economic rights are too
important to leave up to the invisible hand of free markets. Call this socialism in 16 words or
less. Karl Marx articulated a variant of this idea in the Communist Manifesto, actualized as the
abolition of private property ownership in favor of ownership by the collective.
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In America this has matured into a more compassionate orthodoxy of Progressive politics.
Teddy Roosevelt is the most well-known candidate for US President who actually ran as a
Progressive. Today, there are numerous registered political parties with the word Progressive
in their names. But brand-name Democrats and Republicans are both de facto Progressives,
knowingly or not, by virtue of their presumption that there is a moral imperative for government
to guarantee citizens' economic rights against a property-owning classs excesses, and to
regulate commerce against the boom-and-bust cycles of unregulated capitalism.
This has been articulated into the generally accepted doxology of the Economic Rights of Man
guarantees of basic rights to food, shelter, education, employment, health care, and stable
retirement. Without benefit of formal debate and Constitutional legitimization these have been
feathered into American life by court rulings and agency regulations. Note that these Economic
Rights are presumptive of and in addition to the historic Rights of Man, which the planets first
generation of capitalists codified in the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution.
The emerging Great Idea that has not yet infused Progressive dogma is that unregulated
socialism is bad for the fiscal sustainability of the Economic Rights of Man. Likewise a presently
unacknowledged paradox in Progressive dogma is that granting government broad control over
Economic Rights threatens to compromise unalienable Human Rights, because it makes
citizens dependent upon central governments benevolent interpretation of their exercise of their
economic rights.
To be sure, horrific examples of capitalist excess allegedly abound: European colonialism.
Cultural genocide. The slave trade. Child labor in coal mines and cotton mills, vividly
memorialized in Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist. The filthy working conditions and exploitation of
labor in the American meatpacking industry, chronicled in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. The
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experience of the Great Depression, and the seesaw of economic boom and recession in the
years since.
Note, however, that the little list of horrors is due to unregulated mercantilism, not so much to
capitalism. Mercantilism is a medieval concept of defensively hoarding ones economic activity
to oneself at the expense of any and all competition. Capitalism, in contrast, says that
competition is good in the long run, even if it is painful in the short term.
The practice of granting and breaking trade monopolies is the international dynamic of
mercantilism. It first bloomed in Italy, Amsterdam, and Portugal, and came to full flower in the
successive empires of Spain, France, and England. It was slavishly copied by Russia,
Germany, and Japan, and ultimately in America as well. Today, China is mercantilisms chief
practitioner.
But it hasnt been until the stunningly recent adoption of the universal language of finance that
capitalism has truly taken root. The ubiquitous use of electronic transfers is a singular
technological advance because it penetrates nation state borders and turns mercantile practices
from being effective survival strategies into going-out-of-business plans. Because wealth goes
where it is wanted, and stays where it is well-treated4, electronic capital is empowered to
respond more rapidly and more freely to regressive fiscal policy than ever before.
Progressive immorality
4 James Wilson, signatory to the Declaration of Independence, US Supreme Court Justice,
1789-1798
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Currently, the world is in the depths of a recession that is the deepest seen since the Great
Depression. One storyline about how we got into this mess is that it is an example of the perils
of unregulated capitalism.
However, a counter-story that reveals cracks in the Progressive Great Idea is that the current
recession is a result of an excess of Progressive idealism. Far from being under-regulated in
every instance (which only the financial derivatives market arguably was), ineptly enforced
government OVER-regulation replaced sound finance and lending principles in the name of
increasing the incidence of home ownership among the poor. Congress's voting record
demonstrates that multiple bills to rein in ideologically-driven regulatory practices imposed upon
the Federal government's mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac were struck down
in the years prior to the sub-prime mortgage meltdown.
Somehow, Progressives cannot fathom that giving home loans to millions of people who can
never repay them is fundamentally immoral. It is the same trick that the meatpacking magnates
played on the hapless characters in The Jungle. It is a dysfunctional Ponzi scheme that
commercial capitalists learned to avoid decades ago, a lesson now ignored by Progressive
enthusiasm for the appearance of rapid social advance rather than for its sustainability.
The dilemma that Progressives now face is that they are corporately and morally responsible for
turning millions of people out of their homes and destroying millions of jobs worldwide, violating
the very Economic Rights they claim they support. At present the two American political parties
are in convenient, co-dependent denial of that culpability, finding it more useful to rally the
base by pointing the finger of blame at one another.
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The fact is this is far more an outcome of unregulated Progressive socio-economics than it is of
capitalist hubris. But as the burgeoning third party movement demonstrates, there are great
numbers of deeper-thinking and emotionally adult individuals who recognize the self-entitled,
conservative elitism of the Progressive establishment for what it is. They are gravitating to the
message of government fiscal responsibility albeit mislabeled by Tea Partiers as small vs.
big government because they recognize either intuitively or self-consciously that without
competent stewardship of the nations economic foundation, the soaring towers of Progressive
idealism will topple into social ruin.
A new Great Idea?
The Economic Rights of Man must be as consciously wrought as were the original Rights of
Man. Perhaps they must even be written into the Constitution if they are to ever be competently
managed. They cannot be gradually slipped into practice by un-scrutinized educational dogmas,
by journalistic propagandizing, by judicial rulings and bureaucratic regulations. And certainly not
by promising them in exchange for votes.
The ultimate fusion of the socialist Great Idea with the capitalist Great Idea might be this: That
they each have a mutual responsibility for sustainable results; that the Economic Rights of Man
must be debated with the consideration due their formal incorporation into the Constitution of
the United States. Only with that level of legitimacy can the two camps the socialist and the
capitalist act on common moral principle
This could be the mission statement of a Constitutional Free Market Progressive third party. A
working demonstration to the world, born in the United States, becoming the gold standard that
the world adopts as it inches towards One World Government.
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The America Global Party.
The solutions to current dilemmas of mankind will someday seem obvious and inevitable in
historical retrospect. But for today we must make a conscious effort to reject the dysfunctional
notion that equitable society can ever be built upon the tyranny of we-win-you-lose-winner-
takes-all leadership endemic within our two-party system.
Unfortunately, today's Progressives are clearly just not all that intellectually gifted, judging by
their backward-looking adherence to nineteenth century class warfare perspectives. The
prospect of achieving anything like a sustainable Progressive society is being squandered by
increasingly cynical, corrupt, unprincipled and simple-minded cabals of people from both
Democrat and Republican parties, who win election campaigns more for the sake of self-
entitlement alone the present Obama Administration and Democrat Congress being but the
most extreme examples to date.
Knowing one when you see one
So now we have something of a conceptual model of what a socially progressive, fiscally
conservative third party might look like, what domestic and global problems it faces, and what
problems it needs to solve if it is to make a lasting difference. With this much subtly and
complexity in the recipe, how will we know a good political initiative when we see it?
Presume, for the sake of boiling things down to a checklist, that the preceding analysis has at
least conversational coherence and validity. If one is to successfully reject the usual Democratic
and Republican candidates pathological mode of getting votes by promising to bring home
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progressive earmarks for one voter bloc, and then promising another list of earmarks to another
voter bloc and so on, what list of ingredients should we see being mixed into this stew that we
want serve the entire nation with, not just targeted voter blocs?
Here are some suggestions. Using the ingredients list below you can make up a scoring system
that ranks the emerging third party superior if all of these policy planks are in the party
platform, high if most but not all are in it, and so forth down to rejected if only one or two or
zero are there. Or you can prioritize these into your own lists of mandatory and optional, and
reject any third party that at a minimum doesnt fulfill all the mandatory touch points, then
ratcheting up your enthusiasm for their initiative the more you see them include optional planks.
There is nothing wrong with setting a high bar and making the third party guys jump it before
youll give them your vote. Consider that their activism at the extreme has the potential of
unleashing a civil war, and at a minimum will trigger a whole bunch of unpleasantness with near
absolute certainty.
The new US political party needs to re-define both the existing, dominant parties as but
one Party with two untrustworthy wings (Dumb and Dumber), and then defeat them on
those terms. Leave it to the losers to determine who their surviving Party is.
The new Party's national strategic mission is to balance Economic Rights with Economic
Reality. The new Party is to reverse the damages wrought upon the United States by the
two wings since the illiberal notion arose that the Economic Rights of Man are exempt
from fiscal gravity.
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The new Party's internationalstrategic mission is to prepare America to face down and
to diminish the global predominance of archaic and illiberal powers. The transcendent
need for this Plan beyond this generation is to lay a foundation for a future that will
safeguard Human Rights, Economic Rights, and the values of Western liberal
democracy against the inevitable tide of tyrannical One World Government. If there ever
is to be such a Government, it is incrediblyimportant that the ideal of America be used to
establish its foundation.
To build a legitimizing foundation for progressive ideals, the new Party should enact
systemic changes through Constitutional amendment. Perhaps something as extreme as
a constitutional revolution is needed to reshape Federal government. If they are to be
legitimate Federal pursuits, economic rights must be enumerated to the same extent as
are basic human rights.
Also by Constitutional amendment and for the sake of fiscal sanity, all Federal laws and
regulations must be subject to a review of their actual results versus their intended
results within two to five years of enactment. Should actual results not reflect the results
that were promised at the time the legislation or regulation was enacted, then the
legislation or regulation must be rescinded. The legislators who submitted the original
bills must forfeit the legislative committee membership roles they hold if they cannot
pass this test of basic economic competency.
All regulations must demonstrate first that they do no harm. Second, they must
demonstrate that the cost of their reforms outweighs the damages they are intended to
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prevent, as well as the damages of the unintended consequences they spawn. Costs
should not outweigh benefit.
The time horizon for the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) economic impact analysis
can no longer be limited to sub-generation extent. Likewise, the event horizon of CBO
analysis can no longer be limited to Federal costs alone.
o The time horizon shall be on the order of three or four generations into the future;
i.e. for at least 150 years or more. If we think we can set global energy policy
based on climate models that forecast that far into the future, then there is no
credible argument against devising economic forecast models on a national
scale. Universities and National Laboratories have the means to address this
kind of infrastructure modeling. They have the science to back it up if
sufficiently fenced to function as honest brokers, not partisan shills.
o The event horizon shall include economic impacts upon all the States, to surface
a comprehensive fiscal accounting less subject to off-book gimmicks.
The practice of using Social Security funds for anything other than Social Security
payments and their requisite administration will be made subject to civil and criminal
prosecution. In fact, NO funding for ANY economic right shall EVER be used for
anything other than its intended purpose. Wouldnt it be wonderful if we ended up
creating self-endowed public trust funds, universal and in perpetuity?
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Campaign Finance Reform: A simple new rule is needed that limits the top-spending
candidate to no greater than 10% more than the lowest-spending candidates
expenditure when using private campaign financing rather than the public fund.
High Road Approach
Or is there a different approach that thinks outside the box of Executive, Legislative, and
Judicial branches?
All the scorekeeping above may be critiqued as a band-aid approach. It fills gaps within the
structure of the existing Constitution that human conniving opens in defiance of simply behaving
intelligently.
But these may not just be gaps. These may be more like a Grand Canyon opening in front of
our eyes.
Consider that we are talking about economic rights, and about sustaining them indefinitely using
the resources of the economy. How has the nation changed, economically speaking, in the 200-
plus years since the Constitution was first enacted?
For instance, it has evolved from a mostly agricultural economy to a mostly post-industrial,
information- and service-intensive economy. But at an equally fundamental level, capitalism has
itself evolved beyond any eighteenth century imagining. For that matter, beyond any nineteenth
century imagining, too (which would explain Marxs inability to imagine it). In fact, capitalism and
finance as we know it didnt emerge until the 1980s, when it became possible to leverage vast
sums of electronic capital on a global scale.
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A New Social Bargain
These several points could be a starting point for real change, instead of more of the hopey-
changie stuff that Sarah Palin mockingly refers to. For most citizens these planks serve as
actionable plays in the field sport of politics. Each one is a point on the scoreboard of agenda
achievement. But for those who watch the management of the entire franchise rather than just
the outcomes of games and players statistics, something more is desired. Something like an
indicator of transition from minor league to major league status.
For this we must define the ultimate social bargain that everyone can understand. As a
baseline, use the social bargain of taxes for the limited government that the Constitution of the
United States institutes: Businesses and individuals look to the federal government to provide
for the common defense, regulate interstate commerce, and ensure human rights among other
enumerated powers. Businesses and individuals agree to pay a portion of their incomes to gain
these benefits, because the result is economic growth and individual security. Likewise the
bargain extends to State and local jurisdictions, to provide police and fire protection, education,
real estate zoning, etc.
What might be a fair bargain for progressives to strike with free market capitalists in exchange
for securing economic rights for all?
Start with writing a Bill of Economic Rights into the Constitution, so that there is explicit
confirmation of national legitimacy. Then consider that the government could be required to
define an initial, base level of economic rights delivery that, in return, can be sustained by tax
policy that does not discourage economic growth and wealth creation. As desirable as it may be
to go beyond that initial level, government would be prohibited from doing so until fiscal
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conditions permitted. The government should above all be responsible for seeing that that the
burdens of taxation, regulation, and social insurances do not cause the rate of job creation to
drop below the rate of population growth.
Further, the government would be required define the desired end state of economic rights
delivery, to which of course there would be considerable public debate. In between would be
dozens of incremental, step-wise improvements towards the end goal as fiscal conditions
permitted.
Then there is one little catch: As part of the sustainable metric, the government would be
required to set aside a permanent endowment for the delivery of economic rights. The ultimate
goal would be to create an annuity from the endowment that would augment and reduce the
nations dependence on taxation and fees to raise the revenue needed to deliver economic
benefits to the people. Ultimately, Progressives might have such a large, permanent endowment
that they could dream of meeting every economic need of every citizen irrespective of economic
downturns and bubbles.
In a nutshell the social bargain is this: Capitalists will finance progressives desires in exchange
for the explicit definition of a sustainable funding model, with objective limits, that satisfy a
Constitutional mandate ensuring the economic rights of US citizens. To go further than this,
progressives should take the moral initiative to set aside a portion of their finances so that,
ultimately, they can grow up and leave home and no longer be an economic boat anchor upon
their capitalist parents.
Now, is this outcome within the realm of possibility? Possibly not. But by agreeing to work
towards such an ideal end together, like adults, capitalists and progressives might overcome the
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two-century old dead hand of socialist-inspired class division, and actually create a fully
compassionate American society. Maybe, some day, even a whole world society.
Imagine.
Inspiring ideals, grounding conclusion
The first step toward solving a problem is to admit that you have one.
The unfortunate truth is that the burgeoning third party movement today shows no signs of life
for pursuing this caliber of nationally and internationally strategic change. Instead, it simply
seems intent on instituting a version of electorate-based progressive band aids spun with
conservative sound bytes. Likewise there is little or no discernible participation from
Progressives, who are both too distracted by the disputes they have between themselves as the
stewards of a majority party, and are held prisoner by their too-extreme, too-hysterical
opposition to the Bush administration.
To use the terms of the Political Leadership Continuum chart, the Tea Partiers are too far
removed towards the maximally senile end of the spectrum to give objective confidence in
either their message or their prospects. They are successfully capturing the adult worry that
pervades the populace about the unsus
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