CDR: Parties

[Carskadden, Rush]

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
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Schram [mailto:scott at schram.net] 
Sent: Thursday, October 26, 2000 4:14 PM
To: Carskadden, Rush
Subject: RE: Bachus


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
<http://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 <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 


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/html
Size: 7357 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks-legacy/attachments/20001027/94109e9b/attachment.txt>