Third Party & Independents: Archives

The whole reason for joining a political party is to become more powerful in getting your objectives achieved. It is a choice of pragmatism. By their very nature, parties contain points of view that vary from person to person, faction to faction. So, logically, joining a party will almost always entail some compromise: It’s almost impossible to find a party whose policies match your own policies exactly. You have to swallow some stuff you may not agree with (in my case, for example, I feel obliged to defend Clinton’s philandering because in almost every other respect I think he was a great President).

When it comes down to the wire, it is your party versus the other party (or parties). It is important enough to me that the Democrats beat the Republicans that I will probably defend a Democrat for reasons other than total agreement with their policies. In other words, all told, I think it’s better for my party to be in control, warts and all, than for the other party to be in control.

In my opinion, one should not vote with total disregard for party affiliation because you can be damn sure that those whose policies you find abhorrent aren’t going to return the favor.

Party loyalty can sound like “faith”, and for many people their party affiliation is kind of like a religion. But for me and many other people in the two major parties, our party and our defense of our party’s policies is not a matter of faith, but rather a matter of pragmatism. It’s better to vocally support an imperfect-but-generally-okay candidate with all your heart than to allow a destructive candidate to win through your inaction or silence.

It’s interesting that an editor of the third-party column would fail to see that we who belong to major parties consistently back our parties for mostly logical reasons, not out of blind faith at all. This may be because third-party voters almost by definition do not cast their votes or their political capital based on purely pragmatic motivations.

Let me rant a little bit about what it’s like for a Democrat like me to reflect upon the policies of individual Republicans with an open mind. First of all, let me say that I can think of very few Republicans whose policies I find the least bit tolerable at all. Most of them espouse policies I am likely 80% or more in direct opposition to. There are a few, however (Michael Bloomberg, John McCain, Dick Lugar, even Rudy Giuliani), whose personal policies sometimes differ so radically from the platform espoused by the national GOP and the Bush Administration that I cannot dismiss them out of hand as I do with their GOP colleagues (the rest of the Republican party, can go screw themselves as far as I am concerned). In fact, I think Mayor Bloomberg is doing a pretty good job as mayor of New York City, but if supporting him means that it’ll help Bush get re-elected, then I am certainly not going to lift a finger to help.

My lack of support for Bloomberg is in large part due to my loyalty to the Democratic party. But beneath my party loyalty is a pragmatic motivation to save our country from the clutches of the destructive political organization Mr. Bloomberg has chosen to affiliate himself with. I’d vote for him in a second if he were a Democrat - and, up until a year before his election, he was a Democrat. Same guy, same policies, wrong party = Sorry, Mike.

-Cf

Bob, interesting article with a very philosophical underpinning. On a minor note, logic is absolutely no dissuader. Logic combined with undeniable facts about the real world has a chance, but, as all propounders of faith know, logic can be used to argue any side of an argument equally, provided factual representation of the real world is not brought into the discussion. Called sophistry in philosophical circles.

The Socratic Dialectic is something you allude to in your discussion whereby step by methodical step one pries a finger at at time away from an unsubstantiated belief, until you can bring a person full circle back to their stated belief and ask, “In light of all of the misconceptions and indefensible premises of your belief, how is it possible to retain the belief? ” The test of a persons character comes when they decide to either retain their belief regardless, or change their mind.

Congnitive dissonance as a defense mechanism predicts a great number of folks will defend their ego and cling to their false belief - discounting the dissuader on appearance, manner, or affiliation, or any other reason having nothing to do with the arguments or discussion. This for many believers, ultimately there is no changing their mind or bringing their minds into concert with facts, evidence and truth based on those.

A precondition to a person altering their beliefs is a capacity to recognize and acknowledge empirical evidence in conjunction with a willingness to abide by the rules of logic and accepted definitions of words. Often, even here at WatchBlog, comments are made which redefine words from dictionary definitions in order to defend a belief. Since altering the mind depends upon the use of language, anyone unwilling or inable to effectively and appropriately use language cannot be persuaded or dissuaded.

Christopher, if one has an open mind, I wonder what that open mind would respond with to the following proposition.

Political Parties are a shorthand and shortcut for the energy and work that would otherwise be needed to evaluate each and every proposal put forth by any and every politician, think tank, lobby group, or individual with an idea as to how to make society better. Thus affiliation with a political party is really little more than loyalty to a group one trusts to do the thinking, research, and idea development for oneself.

Human beings being what they are, political parties are inevitable just as religious affiliations are inevitable. But to the extent that a limited human being makes the effort to learn as much as possible and do their own thinking and testing of their ideas, they are less dependent upon political party affiliation to make decisions about how to vote and what to vote for.

This is what I believe distinguishes Ralph Nader from Kerry or Bush.

CF: Let me see if I get this straight. You pick one of the two major parties that approximate your view. Then you defend that parties policies regardless of whether you think they are true, simply so your side can win. Then you attack the other party’s candidate even if you agree with the job he is doing.

Is it any wonder politicians are held in such low regard.

PS: Sounds like a religion to me.

Bob,

I can contribute some thoughts on your premise. For me politics is alot like what sports are to other people. I have never been a sports fan actually, so I am assuming it is similiar. My team, your team. Rejoice when they win, let down when they lose. Sports fans know all kinds of ridiculous facts and details about players, games, teams, personalities. Political junkies search out facts for and against. Listen to the most boring committee meetings, pour through the minuitea of past and present laws, speeches, and political doctrine. Loyalty can verge on the fanatic, (in the most modern less violent sense of the term). I think the analogy is pretty close.

You can’t expect a sports fan to support the other team during a game, now can you?

Religion is not quite the same. Though I do see similarities to conversion and dogmatic beleif. Seeking to convert others and prove that your ‘team’ is the righteous and inspired one. Dogmatic beleif that others beliefs are not based on the facts or the truth. etc.

Party is the actual human organization to get members elected. So it is technically separate from the belief. Though in a real sense unconnectable because you have to get your members elected to be doing what you believe. After all ‘faith without works is dead’.

I have noticed in long conversations with ‘the other party’, that we both have the basic ends in common. Conservatives and Liberals both believe they want the best for everyone in general. Western civilizations’ contribution to political thought is the idea that government is for the people.

Ask yourself, do you want everybody to have a job that they love? A safe home? A good education? Clean air, clean water? Of course you do. It’s universal. You want those things, you assume others want those things, and you’re not opposed to anyone else having the same things you want.

Liberals want social justice and conservatives want freedom of opportunity. Both want people to be healthy, wealthy, and more free. I have noticed that at that level we can all agree. How that happens, how it can be brought about, how it can be done is where the arguments begin and the communication soon breaks down. After that we tend to polarize into us and them, and realize that if they disagree with us about our means, they probably disagree about the ends as well.
Liberals and conservatives have have diametrically opposed views of what means to use to acheive our ends.

Cf,

But beneath my party loyalty is a pragmatic motivation to save our country from the clutches of the destructive political organization Mr. Bloomberg has chosen to affiliate himself with.

One might argue that if your goal is being reached then the party affiliation doesn’t matter, especially at the local level. I would, and have, voted for democrats in local elections because I believed they would further my ends more than the other candidate. I would never do that in a national or congressional election, because the number of party members in the White House, congress, or legislature does affect more than that one candidate. Still, given the choice between two democrats I would choose the more conservative of the two.

David,

Political Parties are a shorthand and shortcut for the energy and work that would otherwise be needed to evaluate each and every proposal put forth by any and every politician, think tank, lobby group, or individual with an idea as to how to make society better. Thus affiliation with a political party is really little more than loyalty to a group one trusts to do the thinking, research, and idea development for oneself.

I do my own thinking, thank you. I think it’s more like a political union. You know, like trade unions. Pool the resources and present a more efficient and effective campaign for your cause. Some compromise is inevitable, but if they begin to disagree too much you can opt out. Don’t contribute. It’s freedom of association.

George W. Bush does not have a lock on my loyalty anymore than Kerry does my animosity. If either were to consistantly change, my feelings and loyalty would change as well. I think that’s true for most party members, R and D.

Eric said, “I do my own thinking, thank you.”

No, Eric, you don’t. And it says something that you are not even aware of it. It says you are in the same boat as the rest of humanity. None of us are capable of doing our own research to verify all we want to know. None of us are capable of knowing the breadth and depth of human knowledge. None of us are capable of assimilating all the variables and permutations of a given issue. You may like to think you are the most brilliant person second to none, but, if that were true, you wouldn’t be spending your time here - neither would I.

But failing to recognize one’s own limitations and failing to recognize how dependent our thinking and opinions are upon other persons, organizations, and interest groups whose “expertise” we take on faith, is a serious flaw for anyone hoping to reach for independent thinking.

I am sorry you dismissed what I had to say so out of hand without giving it a second thought. A second thought might have been enlightening. But, I recognize also that we are all parsimonious with our time and attention and use shortcuts to tell us when something, or someone, deserves our attention and thought, or not. We all miss out on a great deal though in our reliance upon such shortcuts - not to mention that such shortcuts are the very heart of prejudice and bias.

Is it any wonder liberals don’t spend much, if any, time listening to conservative media and officials and vice versa. It is a shame really, for much of our differences could actually cease if we really listened to each other instead of labelling and dismissing prior to examining. But, life is short.

David,

Eric said, “I do my own thinking, thank you.”

No, Eric, you don’t. And it says something that you are not even aware of it.

…None of us are capable of doing our own research to verify all we want to know. None of us are capable of knowing the breadth and depth of human knowledge. None of us are capable assimilating all the variables and permutations of a given issue.

…failing to recognize how dependent our thinking and opinions are upon other persons, organizations, and interest groups who “expertise” we take on faith, is a serious flaw for anyone hoping to reach for independent thinking.

I think you’re partially correct in that there is a lot of information today thanks to the miracle of capitalism and a free society, but I am missing the punchline here. I don’t think the fact that being dependent on others for information precludes independent thinking. What is your real premise here?

Are you saying that no one can think independently without getting information firsthand. Are you making too fine a distinction here about the value of information and party loyalty?

Thus affiliation with a political party is really little more than loyalty to a group one trusts to do the thinking, research, and idea development for oneself.

What I take issue with is the idea that political parties do the thinking for it’s members. I don’t know anyone who agrees completely with their party’s platform. Republican or Democrat. I would be willing to concede that Democrats and Green party members don’t think for themselves…

We are all dependent on other people’s knowledge and experience. You know what they say, “Those who know history are doomed to repeat it.” Hee hee, it’s so true. (Yes, I know, “He who does not learn from history is doomed to repeat it.”)

Science, for instance, is dependent on the theories, experiments, and conclusions reached by previous generations of scientists. Politics is dependent on history, as well as the experience of others involved in the practice of politics. There’s nothing wrong with this. We take it for granted.

What keeps everything in balance? How do we know if the information we are getting is correct. After all, at one time Europeans thought the earth was flat. In fact the Greeks knew it was round thousands of years before. Experience, observation, and testing. Does it work? Did it work? Has it ever worked that way? Applied to politics it is imprecise, only because the object of study is imprecise. That is, human relationships.

I don’t mean to be dismissive but your statement is entirely too flippant and dismissive itself. It is a representative democracy after all, and we must elect representatives to do the work of government. Organization is the hallmark of rational thought and cooperation. I’m not saying political parties are perfect, but human beings aren’t perfect. How can we expect any organization made up of humans to be perfect?

A two-party system forces the majority of people to make ideological sacrifices in certain issues, in order to follow the party that agrees with them on the one issue they hold to be the most important at the time of an election.

After several years of making these sorts of compromises, many people cease to search for a precision of correctness in any area except that one issue that still has them clinging to the party which represents them in that one important issue. After losing touch with a precision of correctness, a person can cease to think logically after a while. Some can even forget exactly WHY it is they believe so strongly in that one all-important issue that had them supporting that one side of the one official party, to begin with. It should be no wonder that the majority of the binary partisans are lobotomized morons. Precious few, if any of them, do any thinking for themselves at all.

Polarized binary politics is nearly as easy to manipulate by an unelected elite, as a one-party oligarchy. For example, if you want to transfer wealth from the middle class to a wealthy military-industrial aristocracy, it can work like this:

1) Launch Democratic campaigns trumpeting the need to raise taxes on the “evil rich”. It’s easy to get the lower classes all fired up over such rhetoric, and the electoral outcome is predictably easy for such politicians at times when more people are out of work or falling on economic hard times. The catch is that the “rich” talked about in the campaign end up getting subtly and very quietly redefined as anyone above the poverty line, in the fine print of the bills passed in Congress.

2) Once the Democratic majority has established a large revenue stream and a gigantic footprint of government ownership of middle class individual income (and the rich are still protected by loopholes and shelters in spite of nominally-higher taxation rates), the voters will feel squeezed and hard pressed by the taxation. If these voters have met with some recent successes in their jobs or businesses, they will want someone to cut those taxes for them. Enter the Republican politician, promising to cut those taxes. Cut cut cut, “it’s your money” right? Well, a teeny tiny pittance of it gets cut, for the middle class, but for the rich a gigantic amount gets cut. And then at the same time the Republican side of the one official party, rather than cut any spending, dramatically increases that spending on defense contracts (and more importantly, chosen defense contracORS, e.g., Halliburton).

Wash, rinse, repeat. It’s a two-stage pump of wealth from those who work, to those who don’t, and the welfare recipients, rather than mothers of many children in the public housing projects (the main group that gets blamed for where all the money went), the real welfare recipients wear Armani and drive Jaguars and have wedding receptions in Mediterranean islands with the spawn of other defense contractors.

You know how “good cop bad cop” works in police interrogations, right? That’s the two-party system.

Eric wrote:
> One might argue that if your goal is being
> reached then the party affiliation doesn’t
> matter, especially at the local level.

Yes, I agree that I could support a local Republican politician (and I have, years ago before I moved to NYC). The Bloomberg example is a bit bigger than “local”, insofar as Mayor Bloomberg presides over a greater population than the ten smallest states in this country. The Mayor of New York City, regardless of who he is, is a more important politician than almost any other politician in the nation in terms of the size of his consituency.

Bob wrote:
> You pick one of the two major parties that
> approximate your view.

Yes.

> Then you defend that parties policies
> regardless of whether you think they are
> true, simply so your side can win.

Sometimes no, but unfortunately, sometimes yes. Tipper Gore’s media censorship policies weren’t something I was prepared to stand up and die to defend, but I certainly didn’t let those failings undermine my efforts to try in vain to fight the Bush candidacy. You don’t have to defend each and every one of a party’s (or a candidate’s) policies to fight for that party or candidate in general.

> Then you attack the other party’s candidate
> even if you agree with the job he is doing.

That’s not true, and I’ve personally never done such a thing. On this very list I have praised Bush for the one thing I think he genuinely did right, however briefly: he got UN weapons inspectors back into Iraq. In the case of Mayor Bloomberg, I simply said that I wouldn’t raise a finger to support him - not that I would attack him. If the Democrats put up a very bad candidate for Mayor next year, in 2005, then I could very well vote for Bloomberg. But this year, in 2004, I will do my rhetorical best to make sure that Bush is unable to exploit Bloomberg as political lubrication to slip his way into re-election (double entendre intended).

David wrote:
> Human beings being what they are, political
> parties are inevitable just as religious
> affiliations are inevitable.

I agree. Which is why I think it is utter folly to vote as if there didn’t exist an enormously powerful organized party whose stated objective is to oppose and destroy almost everything you most deeply believe in. You call parties a short cut, but I call them political weapons. I hate to paraphrase Sean Connery, but: if they bring a knife, you gotta bring a gun.

-Cf

Hey Eric, you’re first comment was (mostly) right on. At a very high level, we do all want the same thing.

Unfortunately you lost me when you started characterizing: “Liberals want social justice and conservatives want freedom of opportunity.”

Democrats actually want both. Don’t Republicans?

Then you say, “Liberals and conservatives have diametrically opposed views of what means to use to acheive our ends.”

Fortunately, that’s not true. I can remember a time, before the Republicans got a majority in both houses, when there was a lot of horse-trading going on just to get something passed. Unfortunately, we reached a point during the 90s when Republicans would freeze out other Republicans for even talking to Democrats.

Now, of course, it’s only gotten worse on both sides, and it kills me when Feinstein sends me a letter where she states she’s “surprised” that her Republican counterparts won’t consider a compromise or even listen to her. I end up yelling, “Duh! Don’t you get it? They don’t have to!”

The “Lacey Peterson” law is a perfect example. If all the Republicans wanted was harsher penalties for people who murder pregnant women, they could have compromised with Democrats and refrained from giving a few embryonic cells the status of person (How is that law going to affect infertile couples who want children, I wonder? I’m pretty sure doctors inseminate several eggs and then get rid of all but the one they want. I’m pretty sure the law could be interpreted to make that illegal, now).

Anyhow, the point is, neither side is now encouraged to negotiate (though it’s mostly a moot point for the minority party), especially during an election year, but I can still hope the next president and congress will truly be uniters, not dividers.

If you really want to tone down the Partisan hatred, don’t vote to re-elect people who have a record of fanning the flames.

I think it helps to see peoples overall thoughts, feelings and beliefs as the result of smaller, more specific examples that act together to create more general, more sophisticated thoughts, feelings and beliefs.

Why? Put simply, it takes the problem of persuasion and allows some surprising and original solutions. It also means that small things can matter for the overall picture.

The Bush administration doesn’t quite grasp the position it’s in. They think blanket denials work. They do. If you’re part of the Bush choir, committed to banishing any doubt of the man. Otherwise, they often lack the specificity, the context that would make the effect more profound.

Bush’s tactics may put pressure on overall mood, but the way the facts are leaking out and manifesting themselves, a damning pattern emerges, a pattern that weaves a pathway of associations and reconsiderations through the minds of those who hear about them.

Then, the next time Bush’s people propagandize at those folks, Their message no longer finds the public it was intended to persuade.

There’s a bit of chaos theory in this, a bit of sensitive dependence on small things to determine big outcomes. It could hardly be any other way. Our conception of how ideas work in population are too rigid sometimes, to deterministic about an unpredictable system.

Modern parties, especially the Republican party, have the bad habit of trying to control what their members believe. The Republicans have created a situation where their people have become quite dependent on a few partisan sources, sources that unfortunately just seem to copy each other’s notes. These sources also have a tendency to jump the gun on positive developments, and discourage any kind of intellectual free-thinking approach.

What is that whole liberal media thing about anyways? One can see by the preponderance of the evidence, that the press is often as willing to tear down Democrats, as tear down Republicans. If the media was trully liberal, would Dean have been so ingloriously tossed over the side? Would the media have supported the Iraq war early on, cooperated with Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” stunt, were it liberal? No, the liberal media thing is instead just a bit of conspiracy theory. It’s not black helicopters, or crap like that, it’s this idea that the media is out to push liberal ideas on the populace, an idea so posed that even the absence of such pushing of opinions becomes evidence for its presence.

It’s effect is to crowd out critical thought, to prevent people who might change their mind, given a look at the real facts, from having to deal with that. It also, unfortunately, has the effect of distancing the Republicans from the real arguments at hand, preventing them from being on the same page as their Democrat opponents. Where a Republican might think themselves well informed if they read Hannity, Rush, or the other pundits, there are plenty of Democrats who would rather go to Woodward, Clarke, O’Neill, and others who are actually closer to the story. True, you have Al Franken and Michael Moore out there, but they aren’t necessarily the people that Democrats turn to first.

It use to be that conservatives were actually pretty good on the debate floor. Some still are. It use to be that being better informed, and more sure of one’s facts was most important. Some still do this. But as the politics of image and attack tactics took hold, it more important for the Republican leadership to gain control of the forum than merely win influence over it. Part of this is the connection to the religious right, a group that tends towards anti-intellectual rhetoric. Another part is the parties reliance on and relationship with special interests, who demand specific positions be taken whether or not they are verifiably sound when independent inquiry is made.

Taken together, the Republican party is becoming way too rigid in its thinking, way too dependent on one collection of party-safe facts, on official pronouncements from above.

This may end up bringing Bush’s administration to an end, and it may end up ensuring that Bush’s presidency is the pinnacle of Republican power, as that system has allowed a president to be elected whose lack of experience, and disregard for deep intellectual analysis of situations has gravely damaged the interests of our country. When the Republicans were the opposition to the excesses of the Democrats, the facts could be used to great effect on their side. But now, the tables have turned, and it’s the Republican’s turn to taste the bitter fruits that come of party orthodoxy and complacency.