The Thinker's Party Blog

In our founding document the Thinker’s Party makes it clear that our efforts will not involve the government as a part of the solution. Given that the government plays a significant role in many social programs, either through ownership, funding or distribution of information to the public, this decision would seem to cut off a significant potential resource, something we argued against doing just a few days ago. While this is true, the Thinker’s Party has decided that the risks of accepting or allowing government help outweighs the potential benefit.

One of the major reasons we made this decision was that we do not want to be subject to the policies of an individual administration, or empowered group inside the government. For examples of this involvement affecting social groups, see the history of the Mexico City Policy which Ronald Regan put into place during his administration, Bill Clinton removed when the Democrats took the White House, George W. Bush put back when the Republicans reclaimed it, and Barack Obama is likely to remove it again when he takes office as a Democrat. This policy effectively dictates whether or not NGO family planning organizations will receive government funding, on which they depend, based on whether they present a solution acceptable to the current administration’s moral sensibilities. The Thinker’s Party believes that the best way to avoid having to choose between an optimally effective solution and government funding is to avoid the situation entirely. It is possible that we will never support a project that will conflict with a given political party’s stance, but we consider this extremely unlikely. (Note: The Thinker’s Party has a policy against becoming dependent on any particular source of financial for this very reason)

Another reason we reject government support is a difference in priorities. Our priority with respect to a particular issue or problem will not match that of the government which must deal with that issue, all of the other pertinent social issues, maintaining power, maintaining financing, etc. etc. Our modular structure allows us to specialize on that issue and find the optimal solution without fear of losing an election. While poor planning and sloppy execution can damage our reputation and trust in our communities, through being separate from the government we have the freedom to learn from our failures and try again.

Our final reason has nothing to do with limitations or risks of government involvement, but with the benefits of a program that is driven entirely by citizens. When individuals work together to find solutions to common problems they each learn and grow, becoming more aware of how the world works around them and how to deal with it. They in turn become a group of people with this knowledge which leads to a stronger community. Take for example a hypothetical case of two high schools, school A and school B, who each have a big marching band. When the state budget is tight school funding often suffers, and arts programs such as band are often cut as a result. However, school A’s marching band is an award winning band that has the support of its community developed through fund raising for trips to competitions and prominently displayed trophies. School B’s band still teaches its students music, but they’ve never been competitive and don’t have the same community ties. Obviously school A’s band will survive the cuts with the loss in government funding subsidized by community donations while school B’s band will likely wither. The important lesson here is not that the competitive, winning band survived, but that the band with community support did. The community’s involvement in band A ensures that their students will continue to have quality music education, with all of the benefits that entails. This isn’t to say that dependence on government funding is bad, in our current society it is frequently the only choice, but that dependence on the community is better. It still isn’t perfect - nothing is - but a community that is actively involved in these programs is more likely to be aware of their benefits, and therefore more likely to fight for them.

The Thinker’s Party wants to build a society that takes care of itself, knows what that involves, and as a result values it. We probably won’t achieve that in our life time, we might not ever completely reach that goal, but we can cause improvement and have not yet discovered a downside to our approach. If you see one we encourage you to share it so that we can adjust accordingly.

“What does the Thinker’s Party do that other volunteer organizations don’t do already? This is a fair question all nascent organizations should ask themselves as they begin, and which they should be able to answer when asked by others. Given the Thinker’s Party’s desire to surpass the work of its predecessors, this is particularly pertinent for us.

There are a few different aspects to the answer, but the short version is that the Thinker’s Party is dedicated to self-sustaining solutions to social needs and problems which are implemented Independent of government help. We do not narrow our work to any particular area, though as we begin to sponsor projects we will develop specialized expertise in some things. A more detailed answer follows.

What are we doing now?
Right now the Thinker’s Party is building a base of motivated and dedicated people who are willing to handle the infrastructural needs of the party including building a web presence, wide-spread recruiting efforts, gathering of knowledge about community organizing, and seeking out projects suitable for support from the party. The results of these efforts will be seen over the next few weeks as recruitment ads go out and we announce our first projects.

One of the most important things we are working on now is networking ourselves so that we will be a beneficial place for others to gather. Today’s preliminary launch of our Facebook Page is just the beginning.

What are our next steps?
As the party grows and begins to support projects we will put a web community that includes documentation on planning a project, ways of finding the resources needed to implement a project, and people willing to help with advice, time, and labor. We will use contacts with charitable, volunteering, and community organizations to support our members in their efforts. Where these other organizations have already found a workable solution, we will support them and throw our own resources behind their project. Just because an effort was started as a Thinker’s Party project does not mean that the Thinker’s Party cannot support it. Our goal is to accomplish social change, not to make the Thinker’s Party the answer to all problems.

The Differences
Ultimately, the difference between the Thinker’s Party and the myriad other organizations out there is our flexibility, our focus on an ultimate goal that encompasses all social issues, our ability to address multiple issues in an integrated way where appropriate, and our ability to connect these other organizations on the ground and in the world. Membership in the Thinker’s Party does not necessarily replace membership in other organizations – we are all too small to manage this alone. That’s why we’re here.

In our founding manifesto we say, “All plans for social change must be grounded in circumstances as they exist now, with the flexibility to adapt to circumstances as they will likely be tomorrow. Good intentions do not excuse poor execution or ineffective planning, and can harm progress towards goals across the board.” This is an extremely important point because it is the bedrock upon which our future success stands. As a case study, let us examine the “No to Proposition 8” campaign in California during this last election cycle. It is notable both for the national attention it received in the lead up to the election and the fallout of its passage.

To catch up anybody unfamiliar with the subject, Proposition 8 was written as a ban for same-sex marriage to be included in the California constitution after the California Supreme Court ruled that under the current constitution same-sex marriage was legal. This set off a great deal of national coverage and two huge campaigns, one in favor of Proposition 8 and banning same-sex marriage, the other opposed. On Election Day Proposition 8 passed dramatically. Polling showed that roughly 70% of African-American voters, who’d turned out in record numbers to vote for Barak Obama, also voted for Proposition 8. This in turn has lead to backlash against the African-American community for alleged hypocrisy on civil rights issues, and counter-backlash against the gay community for failure to reach out to minority groups.

The point interesting to examine here is that the backlash and counter backlash are based on a fiction created through improper reading of CNN’s exit polls. In this presentation of the results voters are broken out by a particular demographic such as race, political affiliation or religious beliefs, and then how they voted on Proposition 8 by percentage. Based on their polling, CNN claims that 10% of the electorate was African-American. Before drawing conclusions based on polling data, it is always advisable to check for how representative of reality the poll is. There is a posting on Daily Kos that refutes the percentage in detail by looking at the actual number of potential African-American voters in California, but there is a much more important point to be made from the polling data. According to SFGate Proposition 8 won by over half a million votes with the margins at 52.5 versus 47.5. That implies a minimum total electorate for Proposition 8 of 10,000,000. Using that number we get the following number of “yes” votes for each racial category: White – 3,213,000, African-American – 700,000, Latino – 846,000, Asian – 306,000, and Other – 147,000) bringing the total number of “yes” votes to 5,212,000, or right in the range the current counts indicate.

The important information in that data missing from the discussion over whether the African-American community or the No to Prop 8 campaign is to blame for the proposition’s passage is that the White, African-American and Latino communities each have enough “yes” votes to make up the difference between passage and defeat. Of the three groups, African-American’s have the fewest “yes” votes implying that whites and Latinos were more important communities for the No to Prop 8 campaign to focus on since they provided bigger hurdles.

There is a great deal of room for analyzing where the No to Prop 8 campaign could have improved their strategy for a different result, and effective outreach to the African-American community is likely a component of that. Anybody looking to work on a similar effort would be strongly advised to invest the time in that examination.

Despite that, the most important lesson for the Thinker’s Party lies in the post-election, and particularly the post exit-poll release portion of the story. What was framed as a civil rights issue on one side and a moral issue on the other is now completely obscured in blame, recriminations, and declarations that the whole argument is a secondary issue. This is a major setback for the No Prop 8 campaign. Where before they had to make the case that their cause transcended moral or religious concerns into being an issue of equal treatment under the law, they now have an insulted and angry group formerly poised for conversion based on shared political alliances and mutual struggle for justice. It is likely that those are 700,000 votes that are reaffirmed in their conviction, and therefore less likely to eat away at their 500,000 margin.

No reforming group can afford to throw away potential allies out of carelessness and a failure to examine poll data past its superficial presentation. This is the sort of poor decision-making the Thinker’s Party is dedicated to preventing. Perfection is forever elusive, but in making this a founding principle of our cause we guard ourselves against making the mistakes we see others from others.

Why should you, Joe Schmoe who just goes through his day without worrying about being spied on by the government, far from the risks of poverty, poor education or social exclusion, spend your time working against these things? Whenever somebody solicits your time, energy or money, the “What’s in it for me?” instinct is strong.

The simple answer is that these are your problems. The correlations between poor education and poor job prospects, between poverty and crime, and the combination of poverty and poor education leading to poor choices culminating in long term problems are well known. There is little room to argue that your quality of life is not improved through a reduction in crime, of unemployed and unemployable people, or a population educated enough to make savvy long term choices. Additionally there’s the point that the lower rock bottom in your society is, the farther your potential fall.

Ultimately the question is: Will the payoff from your efforts be more significant than the payoff from what you would be doing otherwise? This is largely a subjective decision that will depend on your interests and priorities. Clearly we have decided that the payoff makes it worth it. To help you make your choice, the following is a list of potential benefits of work with the party. There are probably better reasons, but this is a good starting point.

1) You’ll get a chance to work on that crazy pet project you’ve had, with support and advice from other people who’ve been that same road.
2) Resume building experience. Not getting management experience at work? “Managing a major project for a volunteer organization” always looks good.
3) Personal challenge. If you like learning new things, overcoming obstacles, and reaping success, this is a great way of doing it.
4) Fun and entertainment, not to mention meeting cool people.

If you look at third parties like the Green Party or the Libertarian Party, one thing becomes clear rather quickly. While the parties themselves might have national recognition, they have not yet taken power. Examining the history of presidential elections shows that while third parties can serve to split the vote enough to give one candidate or the other an advantage, they do not win unless one of the major political parties collapses. In an effort to have an impact on the national discourse and recruit support for their ideas, these parties run national campaigns in cycle after cycle. They do sometimes have success at lower levels of government, making it as far as Congress occasionally. But their successes are owed to circumstances at least as much as the party’s efforts.

Take, for example, the Libertarian party and its platform of fiscal conservatism and social liberalism. Historically the Libertarian party has been closely aligned to the Republican party which lined up with their fiscal ideals. It is not uncommon to find Libertarians who vote Republican in major elections, or disgruntled Republicans moving to the “purer” Libertarian party. Despite this, during eight years were Republicans control all or most of the government, both sides of the Libertarian platform were ignored - significant deficit spending ending in a major government bail-out of private industry and a series of affronts to civil liberties including domestic wire-tapping and torture. In 37 years the Libertarian party has made a lot of noise on the political scene, but their voice is heard only when it’s expedient for one of the larger parties.

The Greens, on the other hand, would appear to have achieved great success. With talk of clean and sustainable energy as a major issue in the recent presidential campaign, “greenness” becoming a trendy status symbol, and a general social push for more sustainable, environmentally friendly products, it would seem that a major cornerstone of their platform is being adopted into society a short seven years later. Despite that appearance, these issues arose mostly out of rising fuel costs and social concern over the detrimental effects of consuming chemically treated food and water. The Greens are to be credited with an excellent sense of timing, but the latest trends toward environmental friendliness most likely would have developed anyway.

Studying the obstacles before a fledgling third party is what led to the Thinker’s Party’s decision to form as a “post-political” party. Rather than wasting energy and effort on fielding political candidates for office, we are going straight to the heart of the problem, as we see it, and fixing it there. That means founding schools, creating and supporting charitable organizations, distributing information on public safety issues - picking up the slack wherever the government leaves it. Maybe someday our programs will supplant those run by the government, but it’s more important to develop programs that work and spread them to other places with the same problems.

We hope to develop a society that depends on the government only for those functions that cannot find alternative fulfillment. We want to create a social sphere robust with the myriad forms of support needed to make a population as large as ours happy and safe. Our work lies in that sphere, and in doing this, we will affect the political sphere.

That’s not to say we aren’t engaged in the political realm. We might support candidates with platforms complimentary to our aim, but this is not a primary function of the party and should not become one. Political ideas should not be a barrier to participation in the Thinker’s Party. If you share our vision of an independent society that takes care of its own efficiently and effectively, there’s a place for you with us.

With the relentless expansion of government powers into the lives of the citizens, occurring over the course of several election cycles and with various combinations of parties in power, it is clear that there is currently no way within the system as it exists today to correct past, current, and imminent injustices, or to reclaim the rights lost. We have a politics grounded in fear and offers of escape or protection from it, and a population permissive of the circumstances. This situation is intolerable, and to permit its furtherance without working against it is to become complicit in it.

Thus it is resolved that we shall form a party of individuals dedicated to the following principles:

1. A government, being necessary for the defense of the nation against external forces, and the protection of the individual against violations of their rights from internal forces, has the right and responsibility to act in fulfillment of these duties. Its power in this regard is limited only by the necessity that it shall not violate its own purpose through impugning the rights of its citizens or rendering the nation vulnerable to outside forces.
2. As the government must be enabled to employ violence in fulfillment of its duties, and as institutionalized violence is a threat to the safety of citizens, the government’s sphere of influence should be limited to those areas explicitly requiring the exercise of violence.
3. Individually, people have the capacity to evaluate a situation, discern an optimal course of action, and then take measures to follow it. As a whole, people frequently do not follow this process. A successful democracy requires a population of individuals who are engaged with the nation’s social and political life, and qualified to play an active role in those lives.
4. Other attempts to limit the governmental sphere and increase personal responsibility have failed for a number of reasons including, but not limited to, a failure to create and develop the social sphere in lieu of misplaced governmental authority, and the absence of a population adequately equipped to handle increased responsibility for nation’s success.

At this time we see the following as the natural consequences of these principles:

1. Success towards our goals cannot be achieved through political activism. The infrastructure (social institutions as well as the population’s outlook) required for success through strictly political action are not present. We must create the necessary social infrastructure, allowing the political sphere to adapt as we go.
2. Individuals in society benefit from the various social services currently offered by the government, if not directly then through overall improvement of society created. Reducing poverty and hardship in society reduces disease, crime, discontent, and poor decision making throughout the population.
3. We can no longer afford to depend on the government to adequately provide necessary social services. That makes it the responsibility of every individual in society to find alternatives for their own benefit.
4. All plans for social change must be grounded in circumstances as they exist now, with the flexibility to adapt to circumstances as they will likely be tomorrow. Good intentions do not excuse poor execution or ineffective planning, and can harm progress towards goals across the board.
5. Modern technology enables innovation and creative problem solving. A social need may exist nationally, but the solution is not necessarily national in scope. Local groups can now interact and share experiences with ease, making it possible to create a solution with variant implementations that achieve equal quality. This should be encouraged where appropriate, passed over where it will be ineffective. In either case, this party should serve to facilitate the development and execution of a robust, efficient, and effective solution to all variety of social problems to the fullest extent of its ability.

The challenges before us are varied and complex. Nevertheless, we will carry forward, rejoicing in our successes, learning from our failures, and adapting to our circumstances. We are the Thinker’s Party, and we will earn our lasting liberty.