CDR: Re: Parties

Declan McCullagh declan at well.com
Sun Oct 29 15:17:06 PST 2000


Rush is clearly someone with too much time on his hands and too little
(demonstrated) ability to think things through. I apologize for being
uncharacteristically blunt, but the essay below is terribly
naive. You might as well try to draft C.J Parker for president.

First, political parties are not single-issue parties, at least not
right now. Education and taxes and health care will likely continue to
be more important in most people's lives than technology policy for
the foreseeable future.

Second, privacy is an amorphous issue. It's used by leftists to
regulate the private sector and outlaw transactions between consenting
adults. Liberals use it to talk about abortion. Conservatives link it
to everything from the FBI files under Clinton to Carnivore. What do
*you* mean? And why do you think everyone else is going to agree?

Third, there already is (as others have suggested) a party that's
concerned about personal freedom: the LP. If you mirror their
positions -- or even a substantial subset -- you will be similarly
marginalized. If not, don't look for support -- I humbly suggest --
on the cpunx list.

Fourth, nowadays it seems that political parties can be formed (Ross
Perot, Ralph Nader) or popularized only by a strong and well-known
personality. It will help if they're a billionaire. May I suggest a
recruiting trip to the Redmond suburbs?

Fifth, and perhaps most importantly, technology issues are an
outgrowth of a canadidates' general stand on regulation. If they don't
like taxes, you can bet they'll be against Internet taxes. If they're
a national security hawk, they'll probably like encryption and
supercomputer export regs. Etc.

Sixth, you don't seem to need a political party but a thinktank or
similar creature. Why not try that instead? I was thinking of starting
a nonproit group devoted to a subset of cypherpunkly topics; perhaps I
still will.

-Declan













On Fri, Oct 27, 2000 at 11:09:40AM -0500, Carskadden, Rush wrote:
> 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 
> 
> 





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