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 Atlantic that 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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obsession with fiscal excess and brute force social engineering, as well as being curiously

indisposed to meaningfully address rampant unemployment.

Meanwhile the election in New York in 2009 showed how a third party, the Conservatives,

could confound the Republican and Independent tides and throw results back to the benefit of

Democrats. It also showed the presence of the split between avowedly conservative

Republicans and so-called RINOs Republicans in name only, more graciously known as

moderates. This election cost the New York Republicans a long-held seat in Congress when the

vituperations of their conservatives led the official party candidate to withdraw her name in

protest and throw her support to the Democrat candidate. Given the unknowns of the

Conservative third party and given the Republicans spontaneous combustion, the voters made

the only adult choice in favor of the Democrat.

This was a classic case of the third party as the spoiler, which is the probable role of a

nationwide third party in the 2010 and 2012 elections and beyond, unless a more fundamentally

resonant chord is sounded.

Then, a political earthquake happened in the January 2010 special election in Massachusetts,

which put a conservative Republican in the US Senate seat long held by quintessentially liberal

Teddy Kennedy. While Massachusetts is traditionally viewed as strongly Democrat, in fact its

registered Independents make up 51% of the electorate. It was they who sent a message of

moral outrage against Washington business-as-usual, coupled with moderate Democrats who

are feeling increasingly at odds with a too-far Leftist tinge within their Party.

Democrat angst struck again in June 2010, as Blanche Lincoln held onto her ability to run for

Senate against a union-funded Democrat opponent who attacked her for being too moderate for
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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 their leaders heads, not the heads of the constituents.

Politic
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

CLASS
style that we can use to explain and usefully categorize the observable behavioral phenomena.
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Politics
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Maximally Infantile
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 not show 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 of MoveOn.org try 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 and morally 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 and fiscally 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 might want 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:

Obama2008 69,456,897
McCain 2008 59,934,814
Total combined Demand GOP voters 2008 129,391,711

Non-votingand "Other" estimate 2008 142,302,289

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 2008Demvoters 13,891,379
20%of 2008GOP voters 11,986,963
20%of 2008non-votingand "Other" voters 28,460,458
New Third Party voter potential in 20xx: 54,338,800

Demvotes in 2008minus 20% 55,565,518

GOP votes in 2008minus 20% 47,947,851
New Third Party voter potential in 20xx: 54,338,800

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 2008Demvoters 14,585,948

21%of 2008GOP voters 12,586,311
21%of 2008non-votingand "Other" voters 29,883,481
New Third Party voter potential in 20xx: 57,055,740

Demvotes in 2008minus 21% 54,870,949

GOP votes in 2008minus 21% 47,348,503
New Third Party voter potential in 20xx: 57,055,740

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 of Rules for Radicals might be the smoking gun of

the consciously elitist intents of self-proclaimed progressive sophisticates, but in reality both

Democratic and Republican 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.

23
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

24
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.

25
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.
26
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 heard at the bargaining

table, and at least they will be at the 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.
27
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
28
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

29
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.

30
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 not vote 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 distorts their 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
1
government. If 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
31
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
33
 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

34
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

35
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
36
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.

37
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.

38
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
39
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
40
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.

41
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.

42
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
43
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 international strategic 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 incredibly important 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 unsustainable deficit, and they are linking that to the

existential fear and anger over this recessions lack of jobs to get the most mileage out of it. This

tactic brings them a lot of energy. But they have not broadened this tactic to incorporate

genuinely populist, genuinely compassionate social values. Nor do they seem to have the

theoretical basis to do so with any more foresight than offering social goodies to win votes.

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Meanwhile, Progressives are split between senility and sub-adult spectra, and generally refuse

to engage the Tea Parties on anything like an intellectual level. It is a shame that Progressives

view their Democratic majority as their best chance to enact meaningful social legislation,

because it is evident that their Democratic leadership is too crude and inept, and their Party too

riven with left-leaning ideological dissent. Rather than circling their wagons and drawing close to

Progressive friends, Progressives should draw their Tea Party enemies even closer.

Progressives should consider that it is a goal of civil war, not of social progress, to see ones

opponent crushed. They should ask themselves, is it war they want, or progress?

In the coming years, perhaps as soon as the November 2010 elections but certainly by 2012,

the rising third party movement will most likely act as an electoral spoiler, especially at the

expense of the Republicans. Perhaps its leaders will achieve temporary concessions for their

platform planks in exchange for Party endorsements from one side or the other, and perhaps

even actionable legislation. But their probable fate is to be sucked into a Party black hole as

their agenda is pirated, and their ideas reduced to incidentals.

But a journey of a thousand steps begins with the first one. Perhaps beginning a national

conversation about a list of reforms such as the ones above might be such a step.

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