Paleoconservatives, Libertarians, Greens and Socialists
By Roger Copple
This is a tentative survey; the results of its final version can be used to help our nation, the United States, become the best that it can be. Proposed amendments and laws that have strong support from CAN’s voting participants will be used as the platform or foundation for upcoming regular Marches on Washington D.C. and protests at city government buildings until members of Congress act accordingly, or be voted out of office.
What is needed at this point is an official organization with a website that has the software capacity to assimilate the information below in a confidential way in order to prove to Congress, the mainstream media, independent polling agencies, and any other organization that the statistics gathered are accurate—and not fabricated—and can be verified with a paper trail printout. Participants should be able to go to the website, complete the survey, and cast their ballots online, on all the important issues. The organization’s website could be called CoalitionAgainstNeocons.com.
Article Survey
Definitions:
- Neoconservatives (Neocons, for short) are for an interventionist foreign policy: they believe it is necessary for our government to police the world with a strong and very costly military; this policy is supported by the majority of Republicans and Democrats.
- Paleoconservatives (Paleocons, for short) believe in capitalism, and they are socially conservative, but they are against the interventionist foreign policy of the Neocons.
- Libertarians are often laissez-faire capitalists and socially liberal, but they are against the interventionist foreign policy of the Neocons.
- The Greens are an environmental group who are socially liberal; promote social justice mostly through capitalism; and they are against the interventionist foreign policy of the Neocons.
- Leftists are socially liberal, anti-capitalists, who often support ecological wisdom; they either promote socialism, communism, or anarchism; and they too are against the interventionist foreign policy of the Neocons. See Paleoconservatives, Libertarians, Greens, and Socialists:
Circle 1 of the 4 groups below that you identify with the most:
- Paleoconservatives (Paleocons)
- Libertarians
- Greens
- Leftists (Socialists, Communists, or Anarchists)
For each of the following 26 potential amendments and laws that can be demanded of members of Congress:
- Write 1 in the blank if you Disagree with the Demand.
- Write 2 in the blank if you Agree with the Demand, but think it should be modified slightly.
- Or write 3 in the blank if you Totally Agree with the Demand, as it is written.
____ 1. Dismantle all nuclear weapons and nuclear energy power plants, simultaneously and voluntarily, the world over as soon as possible.
____ 2. Bring home all U.S. troops and close down the government’s 700-1000 military bases around the world. Even with such a drawdown, it would retain more than enough capacity to defend its own borders. The money previously spent on the military would be used to create jobs and rebuild our nation’s infrastructure: “[A]nd they shall turn their swords into ploughshares.” (Isaiah 2:4). Military ships, submarines, and planes can be used for low-budget travel and tourism.
____ 3. Establish Single Payer Health Insurance with the federal government as the single payer.
____ 4. Remove the influence of money from politics.
____ 5. Elect the U.S. House of Representatives through a system of Proportional Representation, and abolish the U.S. Senate: Why should California and Wyoming have the same number of senators when California’s population is about 70 times greater? The seven largest, national political parties will be empowered in a single-chambered, national legislature. Under proportional representation, the National Green Party may get 15 percent of the vote, for example, in the 435-member House of Representatives, and Indiana’s population allows it to have ten members in the House of Representatives. But it may be that of the seven national political parties, the Indiana Republican Party will get to select five of Indiana’s ten representatives in the House of Representatives because Indiana is a conservative state.
____ 6. Abolish the Electoral College System for electing a president. A president must win by a majority of individual votes (not just a plurality of votes) using the method of Instant Runoff Voting, in which each voter will rank slated candidates from most favorite to least favorite. And it may take two or more rounds of voting to eliminate the candidate with the least amount of votes, until eventually one of the remaining candidates captures at least 51 percent of the vote.
____ 7. Allow Congress–not the president–to select Supreme Court judges who will serve for 4 year terms. Judges may serve multiple terms.
____ 8. Implement a decentralized, non-hierarchical, or grassroots, approach to public schools: The neighbors who live within the boundaries of each public elementary, middle, and high school will democratically establish their own school philosophy and curriculum, using public funds. There will no longer be federal, state, county, or township control of neighborhood schools. This will improve neighborhood togetherness and community solidarity.
____ 9. Abolish the Federal Reserve. Congress will oversee a publicly owned banking system like the Bank of North Dakota.
____ 10. Strive to establish a democratic world government that provides equal pay for equal work, with no one earning more than three times the wages of the lowest paid worker. A system of workplace democracy will be instituted. The world map can be divided into 500 rectangular-shaped, legislative districts of equal population. The World Legislative Council could then make executive and judicial branch appointments.
____ 11. Implement a Progressive income tax up to 94 percent for any income amounts over $250,000 with a simplified tax code.
____ 12. Abolish compulsory education—learning is a choice.
____ 13. Phase out fossil fuels through government incentives.
____ 14. Provide free post high school, public education for students whose parent(s) have an annual income of less than $100,000.
____ 15. Reduce taxes for small businesses; increase taxes on large corporations.
____ 16. Provide more restrictions on the ownership of firearms–with comprehensive registration, background checks, and national standardization.
____ 17. Legalize commercial hemp, medical marijuana, and the private use of marijuana for adults, on a national level.
____ 18. Call for a new, independent investigation of 9/11 with subpoena powers, especially in regards to Building 7, which was not even hit by a plane, but fell at the speed of gravity into its own footprints at 5 pm on that tragic day. And Building 7 was not even mentioned in the initial Official 9/11 Commission Report, an investigation that was not done until 2 years later and then by government insiders, with an extremely limited budget.
____ 19. Provide incentives for local and organic food production and alternative health practices. Require that all genetically modified foods be labeled.
____ 20. Allow citizens of the 50 states to restructure their state governments from the bottom-up, not the top-down: from the neighborhood block club, to the precinct, township, county, and state levels. Each level of legislative government can make executive and judicial branch appointments. Representatives at a state level, for example, can be voted out of office completely at all levels by the voters in the precinct, township, or county that the state representative emerged from. Representatives at each level would vote among themselves to send a representative to the next level above it. State constitutions can be rewritten using a democratic process.
____ 21. Increase abortion rights and the rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered individuals.
____ 22. Empower the seven largest, national political parties, using a system of proportional representation to elect 100 individuals to meet at a Constitutional Convention to rewrite the U.S. Constitution, in which the delegates will work for three entire months to get a 51 percent or higher approval of any proposed, new constitution. (In other writings, this author has laid out a 23-month timeline for this process to occur).
____ 23. Establish workplace democracy in companies that have seven or more employees.
____ 24. Allow Americans to visit Cuba if they choose.
____25. Bail out the people—no more bailouts of the big banks.
____26. Stop the drone strikes, the Guantanamo torture prison, the abuse of the Patriot Acts, needless NSA spying, and excessive security checks at airports.
Readers of this article are encouraged to make comments to help this project get started. The author’s previous article entitled “Can Paleoconservatives, Libertarians, and Leftists Unite Against the Neocons?” provides more information as to why the Coalition Against Neocons (CAN) is urgently needed. Please print and circulate this survey, and discuss it among family members and friends. Submit it to your elected officials.
Anonymous says
Should survey participants post their answers in these comments, here?
Roger Copple says
Yes, even though the official survey is not set up yet, you can still make comments about survey items in the comment section. That would be appreciated. Thanks. Roger Copple
Michael Ossipoff says
Yes, abolish the proportionality-spoiling senate, and have a unicameral Congress.
Better yet, have a unicameral _Parliament_, so that we needn’t have the logistical burden of a national presidential election, and so that there won’t be one person with so much power.
Yes, if we care anything about justice for the victims of 9/11, and if we care about the justifiction of the drastic changes that have been made in this country (the loss of the Bill of Rights, the perpetual state of war, etc.), then, wouldn’t you say that it’s worth giving 9/11 as legitimate, good and genuine an investigation as any ordinary murder would get?
Yes, close Guantanamo and Abu Graib, and fully prosescute torturers and former torturers. And let’s get out of Guananamo altogether. Why do we need a base in another country that doesn’t invite us to have a base on their land?
Yes, if we must keep the presidential system (as opposed to a Parliamentary system), the abolish the electoral college, and elect the president by a direct national popular vote.
Open up the media, allocating air-time and print-space to groups in proportion to their numbers, as indicated by signatures or vote in elections. No more corporate control of media.
In order for your government to become legitimate, it’s necessary that our elections become legitmate. In order for our elections to become legitimate, it’s necessary that the election results become verifiable.
‘No verifiable election means no legitimate elections, no legitimate government, and no democracy. Will we ever haves democracy? Probably not, but everyone should be demanding verifiable vote-counting in time for the 2014 election.
Who knows who’d win the elections if they were legitimate.
Yes, a better single-winner voting system. Under current conditions (disinformational media, and a public who believe those media), Approval is really about the best that we can do. Score might be a little better, but Approval is considerably easier to implement, and easier to propose (being the most minimal change to Pluralitly)
But if we could elect a better government, a better party to office, then we would no longer have “current conditions”, for reasons that I’ve often explained.
Then the Favorite-Betrayal Criterion (FBC) wouldn’t be necessary, and we could optimize the voting system in other ways. We could gain a different powerful combination of properties: The Mutual Majority Criterion (MMC), and no chicken dilemma.
Instant Runoff provides that powerful combination of properties, which allows completely sincere ranking for members of a mutual majority.
But Instant-Runoff (IRV) isn’t perfect.
For one thing, it can force favorite-burial for voters who don’t think that they’re in a mutual majority. I say that’s ok, because if your policy-preferences are any good, then there will be a majority who support them. But, still,, iRV can be improved to better encouage _everyone_ to rank sincerely
For another thing, when iRV fails to elect the Condorcet winner (CW), the candidate who pairwise-beats each one of the other candidates, then IRV is failing to elect an important compromise. One reason why that compromise is important is: Failing to elect it can result in a dis-satisified, displeased majority. That’s what happened in Burlington VT, and that’s why IRV was thrown out in Burlington. That fault, too, can be fixed, by modifying IRV to elect CWs.
What would this improved IRV look like? It would consist of Benham’s method or Woodall’s method:
First, a brief definition of IRV:
Find out which candidate currently tops the fewest rankings. Delete or cross hir off from all of the rankings.
Repeat till only one candidate remains un-deleted. Elect hir.
[end of IRV definition]
Benham’s method:
1. “X beats Y” means that the number of ballots ranking X over Y is greater than the number of ballots ranking Y over X.
2. Do IRV until there is an un-deleted candidate who beats each one of the other un-deleted candidates.
[end of Benham definition]
Obviously, by #2, if there is a candidate who already beats each one of the other candidates, before any IRV is done, then that candidate immediately wins, without any IRV being done. That also applies to Woodall, defined below
Woodall:
1. “X beats Y” means that the number of ballots ranking X over Y is greater than the number of ballots ranking Y over X.
2. The “voted Smith set” is the smallest set of candidates such that every candidate in the set beats every candidate outside the set.
3. Do IRV till only one member of the initial voted Smith set remains un-deleted. Elect hir.
[end of Woodall definition]
Woodall is slightly better than Benham. Though Benham and Woodall both always choose the Cw when there is one, and they both always choose from the voted Smith set, Woodall is more particular about which member of the voted Smith set it chooses. So, ideally, Woodall is a little better.
But Woodall requires 3 statements to define it, while Benham requires only two.
And Woodall requires an additional definition, the definition of the Smith set.
Those two differences make Woodall more difficult to propose, offer, and get people to listen to the definition of. They make Woodall less proposable and enactable than Benham.
Benham is nearly as good as Woodall. Benham is fully good enough. Benham is a better proposal than Woodall, due to Benham’s greater simplicity and brevity of definition.
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As I’ve pointed out before, the only way we’re going to significantly amend the Constitution would be by voting into office a sufficient number of candidates of a better political party. Then we could implement that party’s platform, which could include changes requiring Constitutional amendment. That’s the only way that significant amendments could ever happen. it won’t happen under the Republocrats.
So what to do? Support and vote for the Justice Party.
Or, as I’ve suggested in other comments, vote for whichever progressive party you like best.
All votes for progressive parties will be seen by all as contributing to the overall progressive vote-total. When that progressive vote total becomes a majority, then it will be obvious to progressives that they should combine their Plurality votes on whicheves progressive party has received the highest vote total.
By “progressive” I mean:
Pro-humans, pro-ordinary people (as opposed to rich people and corporations), ethical, honest, non-corrupt, non-bought, humane in every way, domestically and internationally. Not supportive of unnecessary wars.
There are many progressive parties in the U.S. They include GPUS and the Justice Party (whose platform proposals are nearly the same), and many socialist parties, including two democratic socialist parties, G/GPUSA, and SPUSA, along with many other socialist parties.
So vote for the progressive party that you like best, and then, when the progressive parties, combined, have a voted majority, then we progressives should all vote for whichever progressive party has just received the highest vote-total.
_That_ is how we can get progressive govenment, and progressive amendments to the Constitution.
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I’ve tried to say “Yes” to all of Copple’s proposals that I agree with, but it’s entirely possible that I’ve missed one or more.
I think the suggestion of incomes not differing by more than a factor of 3 would be great. It’s more egalitarian than the similar proposals found in various progressive party platforms. i’m in favor of it.
No income tax on incomes below the mean. Income tax on incomes above the mean, starting at a low marginal rate, but increasing to very high marginal rates for the highest incomes.
It seems to me that Copple’s suggested 94% top marginal rate, for the top bracket, is similar to what we used to have, during the ’50s (but I wasn’t old enough then to pay any attention to such things–but I’ve read about earlier progressive marginal rate systems.). It seems to me that I once read that our most progressive marginal rate system, and our highest marginal rate for the top bracket, was in 1954. Let’s bring that back, but with zero income tax on incomes below the mean.
This country’s richest 1% owns 40% of the country’s wealth, and collects about 25% of the country’s income.
Our Gini index of income inequality, and of wealth inequality, are among the very worst anywhere, and the highest among industrial countries. Likewise our R/P10 and R/P20. (Those are the ratios of the combined incomes of the richest and poorest 10%, and of the richest and poorest 20%).
The Gini index is best defined as the average income difference in the populaton.
It’s the average income difference, what you’d get if you averaged income difference over every possible pair of earners or households in the country, and expressed that average in terms of the country’s mean income.
The Gini has another definition based a much less computation-intensive, equivalent, procedure.
The Gini isn’t perfect, but it’s the main inequality indicator in use. I personally prefer R/P10 and R/P20, but they aren’t available for all countries. The Gini is the more widely-available inequality indicator.
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As for your poll regarding classifications of political parties, I don’t agree with your lumping together Greens, socialists and anarchists. I don’t think that there are many anarchists anyway. If you want a broad classification, then use progressives instead. As I said, based on platform proposals, that includes GPUS, the Justice Party, and all the socialist parties. All of those parties have nearly identical pro-humans platform policy proposals,. Though the socialist parties differ from GPUS and the Justice Party in regards to their public-ownership, economic democracy, proposal, _all_ of the abovementioned progressive parties are virtually identical in regards to the pro-humans poliicies and policy-changes they offer and propose.
And, Mr. Copple, did you know that we here have done polls on political parties? Most recently, we announced a poll at the Condorcet Internet Voting Service (CIVS), regarding political parties?
But I point out to you that Democracy Chronicles now has a much more complete list of political parties, at the 3rd Party Central page.
So, Mr. Copple, I suggest that you start a poll, at CIVS, among the parties at that 3rd Party Central page, plus, of course the Democrats, Republicans, GPUS, G/GPUSA, and the Justice Party.
That would be much more informative than a poll among the broad classifications listed in your survey.
You can reach CIVS by googling “Condorcet Internet Voting Service”.
When you get there, you’ll find an easy automated procedure for starting a poll. Anyone can start a poll there.
Make it a public poll, so that anyone can vote. Announce the poll in a Democracy Chronicles article.
Anyone who views the poll results can have the rankings-so-far counted by any one of a variety of Condorcet rank-count methods.
IRV isn’t included among the rank-counts, because it isn’t a Condorcet method.
Howeveer, Benham is included among the rank-count choices. It’s listed there as “Condorcet-IRV”.
So, when viewing the poll results, click to select “Condorcet-IRV” as the rank-count.
Benham, as I mentioned above, shares the powerful combination of properties possessed by IRV.
Michael Ossipoff
Michael Ossipoff
Adrian Tawfik says
Id be happy to announce any poll like this on DC. I agree that inequality including as measured by the GINI index is one of the most important problems in the US and I do think a major increase in taxes for the wealthy is part of the solution. However I just would like to state my personal preference for helping address inequality (paid for party by taxes on the rich) is two fold: education and infrastructure. Education in this country is terrible and far surpassed by the likes of Singapore and South Korea and I think anyone willing to study Science and Technology should have a free education paid for by the government including college and post-graduate. If we truly educate our people, the country will thrive.
Infrastructure is essential as well. Example: Giving taxes back to the wealthy of Manhattan is ridiculous during a time when infrastructure investment has collapsed. NY has a large infrastructure system but it was mostly built in the 1930s (think Empire State Building) and has been for decades without significant investment being surpassed by other major cities around the world like Shanghai and Tokyo. Now anywhere around the city that has public transportation into Manhattan is crazy expensive and the poor are forced into areas without transportation or where travelling 5 miles takes 2 hours. New subway lines, highways, bridges, tunnels: NY needs all of this but our country’s neglect of infrastructure means less local jobs in building the crap, increasing transportation costs, and less access to everything for those pushed into areas without infrastructure. In China, they are investing in their major cities and connecting them together but the NY metro area with 30 million people (10% of the US) is being suffocated by a lack of investment. New subway lines like the 2nd avenue subway have taken decades while in the same time China has built entire subway systems for multiple cities (the 2nd Avenue subway is unfinished). NY subways, like the levees in hurricane katrina, is an example of this country’s government not being interested in its people’s welfare. This is entirely because our country has lost its democracy. I’m done.
Roger Copple says
Michael Ossipoff,
In previous articles I recommended that all progressive third parties—Greens, Democratic Socialists, etc.—have a primary to rally around the candidate who gets the most votes, and then all progressives would agree to vote for that candidate in the election. But, unfortunately, I could not find any third party interested in the idea. Maybe that could happen in the future.
I also promoted the four points of agreement in 2008 that Ron Paul, Cynthia McKinney, Ralph Nader and Chuck Baldwin agreed on: foreign policy, privacy, the national debt, and the Federal Reserve. It showed some agreement among third parties, but not much was accomplished by it.
So, I still agree with you. We should keep working to get progressive candidates in office and then, hopefully, some progressive amendments and laws that maximize democracy and promote world peace can be passed. But I also encourage large numbers of protesters to gather together in a unified chorus.
Unfortunately, third party members are still often divided over whether to support the lesser of two evils, or to vote their conscience. In the 2012 election, Noam Chomsky was saying that if you live in a state that is having a very close race, then you should vote for Obama, but otherwise you should vote your conscience. Living in Florida where there was a close race, I voted for Obama, but now I wish I had voted my conscience and voted for a Green or Socialist Party instead.
Michael Ossipoff, I appreciate all the research you have done on the fine tuning of Instant Runoff Voting (IRV)—the more precise IRV methods that you recommend I would not oppose. But the average reader often does not understand IRV in general, let alone the Condorcet Winner, Benham’s method, or Woodall’s method that you discuss.
In a recent revision of my survey, I listed 7 categories in which participants could identify: Paleoconservative, Libertarian, Green, Leftist (Socialist or Communist), Republican, Democrat, and Independent.
I agree that a very low wage earner in a progressive income tax system should not have to pay any income tax.
Maybe, at some point, you can elaborate on why you oppose some of the other demands (that can be made of Congress) in the survey.
Thanks for your response.
augustin says
For information:
An updated draft with the above demands has been posted at:
https://democracychronicles.org/27-demands-to-congress/