Brian’s Column: New Political Party

A realistic option for real people?

Botzi_Santa

Santa Botzi Boy

My column tonight is dedicated to my Rose’s ever so unique and adorable cat, simply named Botzi, or the Botz, who at nine years young, succumbed on Christmas Eve Day to various ailments. Here he is in a healthy, happy time spreading Yuletide cheer to all the good little kits and kids. I’ll miss you, little guy. Sigh.

How is the Botz connected to the need of American humans for a common sense, non-warlord political party? The Botz, bless his little heart, suffered from nervous system disorders that grew more stressful as the years passed—internal conflict causing one part of him to be in discord with another.

I see his condition as analogous to the Democrats and the Republicans fighting each other, when they’re both symptoms of the same fatal disease of the global state.

What we have in America and the rest of the developed countries of the West is a system of finance-capitalist feudalism running amok yet seeking to maintain its domination over free men by plunging ahead like a shark on a suicide feeding frenzy. I’ve done some recent thinking about moving toward at least a federal political party that runs on a platform of common sense, peace, civil liberties, and the Constitution. Here is one of my very early columns anticipating the same idea:

Coffee Coaster Column, December 08, 2006. After the midterms, in which the Dems pretty much dusted the Reps for control of Congress, a Yuppie-writer colleague of mine exclaimed:

“Nothing really changes, it’s the same old synthetic corporate-state bunch who do what they want. Instead of handouts for Wall Street it will be handouts for Easy Street.”

“Well, John,” I replied, “at least we get a two-year reprieve on the totalitarian aims of the Imperial Palace. That’s something.”

“But has anything really changed?  You think the Dems are going to impeach and convict those Republican war criminals, frog-step them in leg irons to Leavenworth?  I don’t think so.”  He concluded, “You need to get the Libertarians together with the Greens, peace people, Constitutionalists, secular humanists, Ross Perot holdouts, etc.”

“You mean a new political party, like a Real People Party?”

“Why not?”

Hmmm. I checked out the Committee for a Unified Independent Party (CUIP), aka Independentvoting.org. After a brief read of its mission statement and determining the stars of the organization, I see two issues right off the bat:

First, they’ve backed away from creating a political party. Instead, they want to grow a voting bloc they feel the entrenched party candidates will pay attention to on some issues.

Second, one of the founding stars is Dr. Lenora Fulani, a perennial third-party “flake” with black-nationalist ideological roots, who has supported figures as diverse as Ross Perot and Al Sharpton.

On the first point, how does it help to develop a voting block which, even though issue-oriented, is nonetheless constrained on the state/national political level to pick between synthetic-Democrat person A and synthetic-Republican person B?

Regarding point two, there’s the good Left and the bad Left (basically the good Left believes in civil liberties, private-property rights, and small government).  Dr. Fulani rightly or wrongly is associated with the latter.  Since she is featured on the CUIP site, so it will be difficult for a lot of real people, myself included, to bridge the Leftist hurtle.

Ideology is truly the hurtle.

The only way a real people’s party can get off the ground is if its ideology is explicitly “good Left,” i.e. explicitly libertarian (with an anti-corporate flavor). Principled libertarians must take the initiative, flood the social activist community with the nonaggression principle in one hand and wrenches of citizen empowerment in the other.

Or is that too symbolic?

More down to earth, if several of the mid-level national party folks in the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, the Constitution Party, and a handful of others from peace, reason, and spirituality movements were to convene to develop a majority party, I think they could pull it off.

The platform would have to be minimalist, lowest common denominator:  Bill of Rights, 10th Amendment, rational secular democracy, small government, repeal of corporate privilege, noninterventionist foreign policy, personal choice in all matters. By default, everything libertarians want.  (!)

Otherwise, the real people won’t ride with us.


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