Entry #616416, added on 10-08-11 @ 12:21 am EDT
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| (Ulteriorly, article 5) A Leap Across A Chasm | Entry #616416 |
I never liked the politics of David Lloyd George, the PM of England during WWI, but he left us one very astute piece of advice: "Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated; you can't cross a chasm in two small jumps."
You may recall I mentioned the election as being your one chance to communicate with the world, and especially to get in contact with others who are dismayed by the current state of politics in America. That may not have made much sense to you, but it's the number one most important reason you are not 'Wasting your vote' when you vote for a 'Third Party'.
What makes the LP or any other competing party 'Third' anyway? Isn't it a little presumptuous to implicitly declare the Dems and Reps 'First' or 'Second'? They aren't, historically. The first two national parties to become significant in the Federal government under the Constitution were the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans. Neither are with us today, at least in their original incarnations. Today's Democratic Party did evolve out of one faction of the Democratic-Republicans, but they were, from the start, a decidedly different party The Republicans sometimes try to also claim the D-Rs in their ancestry, but ultimately, neither is the party of Jefferson.
So if the Two Camps weren't the first and second big parties to come along, which would make the next big one 'Third', then the term must mean something other than order of creation.
The only other choice I can see is that the term 'Third Party' comes from an assumption. People use the term because they think of the Two Camps as a permanent institution, fundamental to our nation, and therefore any other competition is automatically no more than a distant third place.
Nobody got together and agreed to this practice. It's just a habit, born out of conventional wisdom and built into our national psyche. Still, the constant reinforcement is as effective as brainwashing, preventing voters across the country from straying out of party lines.
What does it say to people, when we talk about a 'Third Party'? If a party is 'Third', it suggests that it won't be able to do anything. It won't seat any representatives, it won't get mentioned on the news, it will be just so much wasted effort. It's the hapless bronze medal standing on the lowest platform, listening as someone else's anthem plays. The second place winner made the winner sweat, nearly won, got his attention. The third place was never in mind.
Absolute, total nonsense. At the founding of the Republican Party, it did not instantly step into second place. The Two Camps by that time were the Whigs and the Democratic Party. The Republicans were a 'Third Party' up until the decade before the Civil War, when they stepped up to fill a void left by the Whigs who were disintegrating over the slavery issue. Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth president of the US, was the first Republican to hold the office. Only five of the previous fifteen were from the Democratic party.
Remember my David Lloyd George quote? For me to quote the man, I must have had a really good reason, because I seriously don't like what he stood for. And I do have a good reason:
The Libertarian Party and other competing parties look risky to the average voter, a choice far less comfortable than the Reps and Dems. Many people out there admit that neither party represents what they would like to have for a government, but they settle for whichever party moves them a little closer to their vision of the right way.
That is their first of two small jumps. That's their quick way to the bottom of the canyon. By voting for someone who does not accurately or even closely resemble their beliefs, they effectively tell the world they want the US to do things in a way they do not in reality approve of. They appear to the world as someone who agrees with everything the candidate represents.
If you have a vision of your ideal US, you should vote for the candidate who most closely represents that vision, no matter how slight his or her chances of winning. That's the big step that gets your vision on record. The more who do so, the bigger the 'Third' party vote becomes, and the less claim the Two Camps have to being 'First' and 'Second' .
Voting for a 'First' or 'Second' who don't represent your beliefs causes you to drop out of sight into the abyss.
So who do you vote for, if you want the Federal Government to stop growing, stop soaking up tax money while simultaneously building debt? Right now, people who think it's important vote for the party that gives it more lip service, the Republicans.
But, ever since Nixon began the process of building the deficit and piling on to the National Debt, it has grown under every Republican president, and it grew more under these than under the Democratic administrations. Not saying the Dems don't share responsibility; they were in control of Congress through most of this time. But a Republican president has signed most of these budgets into law, and Democrats have not enjoyed a filibuster-proof Senate during any Republican administration in this period. Worse, when the Republicans did have control of congress, they only controlled themselves by grid-locking with a Democratic president. They were trying everything they could do to cut the tax rates instead of paying down the debt, an absolutely irrational position for any
politician supporting fiscal responsibility.
Personally, I suspect the last Republican president who actually believed in a small government was Herbert Hoover, although Eisenhower was getting there toward the end of his administration. Considering them according to their actions rather than their words, I cannot see Nixon, Reagan or either Bush as having done any more than paying lip-service to Fiscal Conservatism. The concept simply doesn't match up with their record. Ford never really had a chance to show his colors, presiding over a crippled economy and a crippled government, so I just leave him out of the discussion.
What's that? You think Lyndon Johnson is at fault for our broken borrow-and-spend system? Maybe he bears responsibility for some of the 'and-spend' part, but he left Nixon with a balanced budget. Nixon's the one that kept Johnson's programs and war alive but didn't collect sufficient taxes to pay for them. If he'd been a real fiscal conservative, he would have found a way to slow down the spending or push Congress to raise taxes to pay for their precious programs. Borrowing for any purpose other than investing the money in a profit-making enterprise is never, ever fiscal responsibility.
Frankly, I don't see the current Republican candidate showing any chance of bucking the trend and going back to true Fiscal Conservatism. I might have believed it before this campaign, but when he abandoned the middle and courted the same quasi-right voters courted by every Republican from Reagan onward, that told me that he is ready to play the same old power games rather than do the right thing.
If a politician talks about all sorts of programs that are going fix the world for you, and then tells you he's going to cut taxes too, then he is not under any rational definition of the word a Fiscal Conservative. A bona-fide Fiscal Conservative is first and foremost concerned with eliminating the deficit, preferably by eliminating spending, and then with applying the resulting surplus to paying down the debt.
Once the debt is gone, he should be concerned with abolishing it via a balanced budget amendment.
Do either of the candidates speak of this in their platforms? No. They speak of being fiscally conservative, but don't dwell on it, or even offer a definition of what they mean. And as Bill Clinton taught us all, words are very tricky things to define.
Good luck to all of us on Tuesday. Make sure to come back here and begin planning with me for 2012. We need to get work on it right now if we hope to effect a change we really do need.
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