Political Parties

I have read where the United States is, in reality, an Anarchistic State. That is, the people of the United States tend to believe in anarchy as a form of government. If people are given a choice, they will tend to select the anarchistic approach to solve problems rather than a democratic approach, or a libertarian approach. That is, rather than depend on government to solve problems, the tendency to attempt to solve problems without the intervention of any governmental force.

To an extent this is because of the reputation that the courts have is one of being more of a lottery than an agent of justice. Since the police and other government authority is getting the same reputation - the police arresting not the "guilty" party, but rather the party which would be most politically correct to arrest.

This is illustrated by many movies which depict people as solving their own problems, totally independently of the law, and law enforcement. Even, for example, Robin Hood is taken as a hero, an outlaw who "stole from the rich to give to the poor." This is a belief in anarchy. Similarly, someone steals a sum of money, or kidnaps a friend or relative, and the solution is not to inform the police, but rather to go after the criminal directly without the police.

One political party approaches this extreme. That political party is the Libertarian party. The Libertarian party is not anarchistic by any means, but rather the approach is that the government should be as small as possible. In general, the existence of the Federal Government is justified for common defense. That is, the Federal government is justified by the existence of the military.

Of course, the military that the Libertarian party envision is much different than the current military. That is, the view of the military is one set in a defensive mode only. The military is not justified except for the defense of the United States proper. That means that there is no justification for military being stationed outside of the territory of the United States proper.

The local government is viewed in a similar fashion. That is, the local government is there to enforce laws. That is, to prevent theft and murder, and other forms of mayham. In addition, it falls on the local government to enforce contracts, which is very important to the Libertarian mind.

Personally, I agree that this type of a government is better than the current governmental mess, which forces me to pay more than $10,000 per year (me and one deduction) to finance a huge empire that the United States insists on maintaining. However, I do not believe that the Libertarian party is the total answer to all the problems that beset the United States.

The Libertarian party tends to go too far. It is nice that the government does not interfer with my life, but the setting up of a government is an agreement between people. As indicated in the Declaration of Independence, the people agree to give up some of their rights (acknowledged by anarchy) in order to secure the rights for the majority. The rights that the people give up are a matter of choice. In this country the choice is written down in a document called the "United States Constitution," the State constitution, the city charter, or whatever. These, therefore, form the agreement between the peoples.

It should be the right of the people to accept any agreement that they want. This differs from the Libertarian view, and is at odds with it. It means, for example, that the people may choose to give the government any authority they want, and as long as the government does not exceed these parameters, it is reasonable.

That is, for example, if the people choose to set up an educational system to educate their youth, this is a legitimate use of governmental powers provided the people have agreed that it is. In Kansas, as an example, the agreement, called the State Constitution, has provisions for providing education to the youth of the state. Therefore, an educational system is a part of the legitimate services offered by the state to the people. This differs from Libertarian view in that the Libertarian view is that education is a private matter.

The Libertarian party has the mistaken view that all the limitation of the United States constitution also applies to the States. This is not the case, except insofar as the constituation specifically states that it is.

Since I recognized that the Libertarian party, although close to my view of things, also differs from mine. Therefore, I continued to look for a political party which has views closer to mine. I thought that the Green party did. Therefore, I have supported the Green party in recent years.

The truth is that the Green party has similarly problems. That is, the "10 key values" are reasonable, but there is a problem in that they tend to depend on government to solve problems a bit too much. That is, they tend to not go far enough.

The truth is, also, that the people who form the Green party quite often have a tendency to follow the ten key values anyway. That is, the people will have a basically progressive viewpoint, but will not submit to a test against the 10 Key values, which indicates that in reality their interest in the ten key values is more to attract people than to define what they believe.

That is, rather than taking a point of view, then justifying that point of view by the 10 key values, the tendency is to justify the view in the same way that the major parties do, then complain because the major parties don't see their point of view (especially the Democratic party), and to complain because the 10 key values don't justify this view.

One example is educational standards. Kansas has been embarrassed in recent years because of the creationism controversy. Therefore, a number of people suggest that we should have national standard for education. That is, rather than try to convince the people of Kansas that the standards should or should not include references to Creationism, the people the attempt was to try to take it out of the hands of the local (State) arena, and put it into the national arena.

Yet this is entirely a centralization of the educational system. One of the 10 key values is "Decentralization" which is in exact opposition to what was being proposed.

As a separate issue, there is a problem of working to win. A political party must, to be worthy of the name, be ready to attempt to win elections and run people for offices. Yet the Green party insist on having the word "feminism" in their ten key values. The problem is not the belief in the equality of the sexes, but rather the problem is that the word is a red flag to a lot of people.

Whereas the Green party just means equality of the sexes by the word feminism, to some people this is not the meaning. I have seen people who claim the title "feminist" want to say that it means any sex act between a man and a woman is rape, even if the woman consents and the man is her husband. I suspect 99? of the population does not agree with this, and most of the people who consider themselves feminist would also disagree.

Similarly, I have heard of feminist who use feminism as an excuse to expand the rights of woman, yet be at odds with a sex-blind application of those rights. For example, I have seen where a judge decided that the father of some children was a better parent than the mother in a devorce case (as I recall, the mother had been convicted of child abuse). Some feminist, therefore, picketed the judge as being onfit. The truth is that if sexual equality is desired, then a man must, if there is no evidence to the contrary, be considered just as good a parent for children as the mother (See the movie "Mrs. Doubtfire").

The point here is not to argue the pros and cons of feminism. Rather, the use of this word will keep many people who might otherwise agree with the Green party, even what the Green party means by "feminism", from looking further. Therefore, the party, if it were serious, would avoid this word, and would use other words to express the idea that this attempt to express.

However, the total of this paper is not to discuss my own political beliefs. Rather, these beliefs are being used to illustrate a problem with the idea of political parties of any stripe.

The main purpose of political parties is to oppose democracy. That is, the Republican party doesn't ask, "what do the people want?" when deciding issues, the decision is "What does the Republican party want?" Therefore, even if a minority of people prefer a position (as is the case with creationism in Kansas) by using a political party, and encouraging people to vote for a political party rather than a candidate, the Republican minority (in this case) can have their view presented as if it were a majority. That is, democracy can be thwarted.

Although I used the Republican party in the example above, the same can be said exactly of the Democratic party, and even minor parties. (Although in the latter case the fact that the party is not popular means that it really cannot pull it off. Many would like to, however,)

Therefore, I, personally, do not believe in political parties, and could see that the current system could easily be run without political parties at all. That is, without big major parties, as well as without minor parties.

This is illustrated by the many elections which are going to "non-partisan" elections. Why aren't all elections "non-partisan?" If it would work for a county commissioner, why can't it work for a presidential election?

This is the point I would make with this paper.