Before anyone gets a burr in their shorts, I too, and my entire family consider ourselves Independent in our politics. But speaking for myself I know that as an independent I do not have a base of similar minded voters that can represent in a cohesive and organized manner my views and values. As such, I am forced to choose between one of the two corrupt parties or else I can’t participate in our democratic process. In fact, no independent has any real substantive choice, or any real power to change the corruption in the Wall Street controlled Washington. At the end of the day, an independent votes Democrat or Republican, symbolically casts a third party vote, or stays home. Is that relevancy, or irrelevancy?
Anyone who has read any of my work either on iPolitics, or on my two blogs; the AmericanFederalistParty or CommonSense-PartTwo, knows I write from anger. Not anger at my country, but anger at the corruption and exploding size in our Federal government. My anger is at the co-opting of what once were two great political parties by the fringe elements on both the right and the left. One is just as bad as the other. The emergence of the conservative leaning Tea Party movement will only serve as a counterforce to liberal and progressive forces on the left. Nothing is going to change except the intensity of the polarization.
I guess this work is an argument designed to convince independents to unite and form along with middle-of-the-road Democrats and Republicans a new National party that represents core values, ethics, and our country; not just a faction or special interests. This can and should be done, and the sooner the better.
I write as Tpaine2009 because I too like Thomas Paine am a political nobody. And, like him, I write from anger at the rape of our freedoms, rights and property at the hands of tyrants, only this time the tyrants are domestic not foreign. Independents see this rape also, and the question is how to stop this political cancer without killing the person – in this case our democratic Republic. The only way is to unite, not like the Sons of Liberty, but rather as modern day versions of the Committees of Safety and using the Internet as another modern day version of the committees of correspondence. The committees of correspondence rallied patriot opposition on common causes and established plans for collective action, and so the group of committees was the beginning of what later became a formal political union among the colonies. Substitute political party for political union and independents for colonies and you have the formula for starting a new National party and a common sense appeal to independents for organizing and supporting a new political party.
I know the following is not right on point, but I think it does apply to support the need for organizing independents and middle-of-the-road Democrats and Republicans into one new party in order to recover the political voice of all Americans in Washington.
During 1777 debate in the Continental Congress over proposed state’s voting rights a delegate from Pennsylvania, and a Founding Father, Benjamin Rush said: “We have been too free with the word independence. We are dependent on each other – not totally independent states.” Today, this axiom can be applied to voters, not states.
Ask yourself, as I often ask myself, are we putting too much emphasis on the theory of being “independent”, and not enough on the practice of politics, American style. As an individual independent, regardless of what my ego says, nobody running for office has to listen to me; all they have to do is take anything I say to a pollster and twist it into something they can sell me for my vote.
Tpaine©
www.commonsenseparttwo.com
www.americanfederalistparty.com
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