Scott
and I have been discussing (from a theoretical standpoint) the possibility of a
third party that focuses on privacy and personal freedom, and the difficulties
in gaining creedence for this third party, as opposed to the difficulties
associated with influencing existing major parties (either of them) to take a
stronger stance on these issues. Assuming that you could reconcile your
differences with either Democrats or Republicans in order to gain a strong
Washington D.C. presence on a few key issues, would that approach be easier than
creating a viable "third" party? What percentage of the voters do you think are
holding on to a very few key issues from their party of choice, and would be
willing to vote for another party that could give them equally strong
representation on those issues?
ok,
Rush
Carskadden
Hi Rush,
I mentioned the "third party",
inspired by my frustration with the two leading parties, and their apparent lack
of understanding about technology, and privacy issues.
Some thoughts
about the current parties:
Al Gore's populist rhetoric about drug
companies which completely overlooks the fact that we're on the eve of
incredible discoveries and it costs lots of money to research and bring new
drugs to market. Despite what Gore has indicated, big pharma spends about
4 times as much on research as they do on advertising.
George W. Bush's
hints at dropping the Microsoft suit (and the tobacco suit for that
matter.) The recent Republican (I think) proposals to link Social Security
information to IRS information.
Our government is (probably justifiably)
paranoid about attacks from external and internal terrorists. It is easier
for terrorists to cause problems than it is for the government to prevent
them. Each time an incident happens, people call for more preventative
measures, thus we have: Secret searches (and bugging) of homes, no-knock
entries, the Carnivore IP monitoring system, etc. Did you see the recent
HBO special about extremist groups and their use of the internet to encourage
action by "lone wolf" sociopaths? Nobody wants to appear soft on this kind
of crime.
Libertarians have some cool ideas (at least they sound cool),
but I can't imagine withdrawing all of our military force from the world and
limit ourselves to defending our borders. Our enemies would have a field
day. Further, while I'm pro-business, I'm all for them playing "in bounds"
and only a strong referee can keep some of them from dumping PCBs at the local
playground.
The Reform Party is basically an old-time circus freak show,
and I mean no disrespect to circus freaks.
A number of issues are no
longer "Right" or "Left".
So, back to your question:
The third
party route would probably be very difficult. It's not clear whether it
would actually dilute efforts to influence the major parties. I offer this
hypothesis: The way the system works now, with third parties being
excluded from debates, often excluded from matching funds, the electoral college
that makes for artificial "landslide" elections for the major candidates... all
of these things tend to squash the life out of any third party.
I believe
that people interested in the new issues are growing, and we might find allies
in unexpected places. For example, my southern baptist friends were not
very happy with the long census form.
I have used the following
techniques with some success:
Letter writing to congress still
works. I have written to other representatives in the state if they
happened to be the only one on a committee, or even representatives for other
states. www.smokefree.org is an excellent example of publicizing
issues and encouraging people to write letters.
I don't think phone calls
work quite as well, but I recall influencing an issue in this way. It was
a niche issue, and I got some attention with a careful explanation. (The
issue was: For a while, songwriters and authors were not able to deduct
business expenses unless they were able to relate directly to the song or work
that was produced with that expense.)
One of my favorite things to do is
write a short, punchy (often satirical) letter to the editor. Their paper
starts out blank every day, and I have yet to get one rejected doing it this
way. If it's a technology issue, you might be the only one writing in on
that topic, and thus more likely to get in print.
Give money, either to
candidates or groups like EFF or whatever.
There's some random thoughts
for you Rush, and you can repost any of them if you see fit. Thanks for
your questions! What do you think? What are the most important
issues in your mind?
Scott
http://schram.net
At 09:41 AM 10/25/00, you
wrote:
Scott,
Thank you for the link and the clarification
of my info. I agree about your assertion that a "third" party may better see
to our concerns, but do we think it would be easier to create a third party
and give it enough creedance to fill our needs, or do you think it would be
easier to influence existing party members to take a stronger stance? My
assumption has been that existing party members are not very concrete about
the technology issues. I don't think there is an old school party line in
regards to technology in and of itself on either side. Do you think that we
can sway them? Or are we forced to create a new party just to get an issue
addressed as we wish it could be? Possibly a harder question still is whether
we could live with either of the parties even if they did take a strong stance
on technological issues... Maybe a question for the entire list, but I didn't
want to stick your private reply up there without asking you. What do you
think, though?
ok,
Rush
Carskadden