A Common Sense Party

This got me going! 

It’s not like I got upset with their stealing the name of the party that I envision, “Common Sense” belongs to no man or at least it belongs to my great godfather, Thomas Paine, who wrote the immortal 47-page pamphlet called Common Sense and put it in the hands of Americans in January of 1776.  Rather, my idea of a Common Sense Party is no way MODERATE!  Thomas Paine was no moderate and neither am I!  Paine was an extremist in his day, preaching separation from Great Britain, while all the people – and especially the aristocrats who met in Philadelphia at the Second Continental Congress – really wanted was to be treated like full-class British citizens.  Paine convinced a nation to take the radical step of independence.

These turkeys in California would besmirch “Common Sense” by suggesting that the best approach to near everything is … compromise.  Compromise is too damned EASY for Democrats and too damned impossible for Republicans (I’m talking about TODAY’s sorry lot of partisan politicians).  It reminds me of King Solomon’s wisdom story: two women claimed to be the mother of an infant child, Solomon suggested that they split the difference (compromise) and award each woman half of the child, I guess right and left halves, not top and bottom halves.  The woman who said, “no, let the other woman have the child” was awarded the child, and you should know the rest of the story.

Some conflicts have a right side and a wrong side.  Like Putin’s Russia and Zelenskyy’s Ukraine.  Like Hitler and Mussolini vs FDR and Churchill.  Folks who would defend today’s Russia or yesterday’s Nazis have damaged souls, we can only pray for them, even if they should be isolated.

Many conflicts have two right sides.  Or two wrong sides.  Or two partially right and partially wrong sides.  Most conflicts are like this.  Without good will from both sides of the conflict, a conflict will never be resolved.  And conflict will escalate until war breaks out, even civil war.

So, what then are my notions of a Common Sense Party?  First, that its members are persons of good will, who would rather debate (formal debate where participants take turns talking, and are judged by a panel of judges, not a random audience) than fight.  Second, that they esteem FACTS above all else.  And LOGIC.  And HISTORY.  Third, that they truly believe that we are all equal, before the law.  If you are a moron, you are legally entitled to believe that blacks or women or gays or Mormons and Jews are inferior to your white ass, but you MAY NOT have different laws or different judicial verdicts for each.  This is what “justice is blind” means.  Fourth, that we believe in the Rule of Law, which simply means that EVERYONE charged with the same crime – with no extenuating circumstances – receives the same punishment.  That does NOT necessarily mean the same USD fine, as $10,000 means little to Bill Gates and quite a bit to most of us.  Rather, the same amount of inconvenience in our lives, like a year in the slammer.

A Common Sense Party also believes in a cardinal classical Republican principle, “the government that governs least governs best” (spoken by that great Republican, Thomas Jefferson).  It also believes, with that great Democrat Abraham Lincoln, that “The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but cannot do, at all, or cannot, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.”  Where these two immortal factions will meet will always be grist for our collective partisan mills.  A good example of both principles going terribly wrong at the same time is today’s Republicans’ disdain for government regulation except when it comes to regulating a certain class of people who they figure were put on God’s good Earth to reproduce and give men sons.

Good will, a demand for facts and logic and a respect for what history tells us are what EVERY philosopher of free governments has ever told us are essential to all deliberative legislative bodies.  Does this sound like a Debate Society?  Congress is SUPPOSED to act like a Debate Society, all else is chaos and a platform for people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Josh Hawley (those of you have read me at any length may have come across the notion that I believe that, while voting is a sacred right, it is also an individual responsibility.  If you are civically ILliterate, you can't vote until you become civically literate.  People who are civically literate would find it difficult to vote for those two).

What else are Common Sense practitioners (candidates for public office) to believe?

One, that he (or she) will always tell the truth.  Even when that truth is personal, he will always tell the truth, his truth.  The people are entitled to know that they can trust our candidates to tell the truth, no matter what.  When a candidate of our party lies, he is gone.  Maybe with a grace period of no greater than one day to make amends.  No candidate of ours will ever be a Holocaust denier.  Or an opponent of settled science.

Two, that he will always have his own political principles and that he will reveal them to one and all.  And, that he will always listen to anyone who engages with him, especially his (potential) constituents (this means lots of lengthy Town Hall meetings).  A candidate who puts his finger to the wind will never be a Common Sense candidate.  Do I mean that a candidate of ours will ignore the will of the people?  No, I mean that he will have figured out who he is and what he stands for before putting his hat in the ring, and that the people will choose him or his opponents based on their principles and on whom they trust to tell them the truth.  And, yes, he will always listen to his constituents; and either be convinced that he was wrong or be able to defend his own positions.

Three, a Common Sense candidate will be able to pass the standard U.S. Citizenship Test with a grade of 90% or better.  Will be able to pass a basic high school senior American History test with a grade of 90% or higher.

Four, a Common Sense candidate does NOT believe that money wins elections; he believes that messaging wins elections.  This is why Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton; it is why AOC beat Joe Crowley (look it up).  Messaging means a) knowing what you stand for, b) knowing how to speak it, and c) speaking it loud and often.  Comfort with social media is a must (at least someone on his staff).  Live Town Hall meetings are even more important.  It is hard for a person to not vote for you when you have given him five minutes of your time, listening, and engaging with respect.  Invaluable.

Five, a Common Sense candidate reveres education like it is air.  All Common Sense candidates for elective office will have college degrees or more.  Our candidates will universally believe that public school teachers should be properly credentialed, for their subjects if not for the subject of teaching itself, and they all believe that teachers are the most under-appreciated and underpaid human beings in our society.  Of all the professions, teachers are among the most important, the best educated and least well-paid.

Before we leave the subject of education altogether, it is time for a set of unexpected factoids.  Most college graduates who enter, and graduate from, Med School are … women.  Most college graduates who enter, and graduate from, Law School are … women.  For more than 40 years, more women than men have entered and graduated from college.  By 60% - 40%!  What are men better at than women?  Aggression.  We need more women willing to play political roles.

Six, all Common Sense candidates for public office support the passage of the 28th or 29th (the ERA could be #28) Amendment to the Constitution, that will restore power to the people, by stripping corporations of their Oligarchic right to rule, for their own benefit, at the expense of the people, and by declaring that money is NOT protected speech under the 1st Amendment.  “Overturning Citizens United” is a Trojan horse amendment that would give Congress the legal authority to write a second McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill, when and if Congress will ever agree to do so (don’t hold your breath; and it does nothing worthy of a Constitutional amendment). 

Seven, all Common Sense candidates for public office support Ranked Choice Voting in every state and municipality across the nation (rules of Voting belong to the states).  It will break the backs of the two major parties, destroy the unconstitutional Two-Party System, and restore the right of the people to really choose whom they want to represent them. 

Eight, no candidate of ours wants a culture war.  And if one of our own talks about culture wars too often, we will infer that he wants one; he is gone.  Same for a war on Christians.  Or a full-throated civil war between the Right and the Left (that the Right talks about all the time, and blames the Left for bringing up the subject, as though the Left could defend itself against the firepower of the Right).

Some Hot-Button Topics

None of the following positions are built into the Common Sense Party; they are MY ideals and I expect our candidates will embrace them.   But NOT necessarily.

Abortion

While the Common Sense Party has no official stance on this hot topic, the Pro-Life position seems religiously motivated (and therefore not a legitimate ground for legislation).  A Soul develops at the moment of conception, eight weeks before the fetus forms?  For a Soul to grab onto a few molecules that were created by the marriage of a random sperm and an ovum seems a bit … arbitrary.  In addition, the Pro-Life position disempowers the very person who will have to live by her decision for the rest of her life.  And many of the same people who are Pro-Life want to cut the social programs that a poor woman who was denied an abortion will now need, as a matter of life or death.  Personally, I would be less sympathetic toward poor people if their poverty was always, or even most often, their fault.  Anyone who believes that needs to go back to school, especially the schools that have been available to the poor people whom they condemn.

LGBTQIA+ anything

The Common Sense Party doesn’t give a fig what biases inhabit your soul.  But the Law must never discriminate (on the grounds of race, ethnicity, sex, sexual identity, religion, wealth or income, dress code, and maybe a couple more things).  PERIOD.

Economics

Many if not most of us applaud what used to be called “fiscal responsibility,” it was a classical Republican ideal.  It used to mean living within your means.  But with business cycles, it is not always possible or even desirable.  John Maynard Keynes, who was unjustly accused of being the father of deficit spending, was really an advocate of a variation that made good common sense.  The state should run a deficit when it must (the economy is in troubled waters and many Americans need a helping hand to survive) and it should run a surplus when it can (boom times where employers are hiring even more workers, and the state can pay back the money that it borrowed when it ran deficits).

Wealth and Income Inequality are issues that every American ought to rise up against.  The fact that we Americans ignore this issue in favor of "culture war" wedge issues is disheartening and disgusting.   The problem is in the hands of the voters, but they are often their own worst enemies.

But how about Modern Monetary Theory?  The jury is out on this one.  Above my pay grade.

Guns

Not often enough do I hear 2nd Amendment purists use this argument: at 28-to-45-thousand-gun deaths per year in the United States, and half to two thirds being suicides, the number of homicides by firearms per year is between 10,000 and 20,000.  Out of a population of some 330 million, that is one in 20,000, or 0.005%.  Over the course of a lifetime, the odds that you will meet your end through gun homicide are 1 in 265, or 0.375%.  In other words, the vast vast vast majority of gun owners will never be involved in gun homicides.  Curing cancer will do much more for longevity than curing homicides by firearms.  On the other hand, we are right to be outraged by attacks on children by nut cases who can carry firearms.  Everyone who commits mass murder by firearms is crazy out of his mind; but there is little reason to believe that they were unstable just a week before.  Life happens, and when a stable and rational man is confronted with a cheating spouse, or the loss of a job that he has held for twenty years, owning a gun may make all the difference.

This Common Sense Party empowers real democracy, it empowers voters, it empowers candidates worthy of the office that they seek, but it disempowers the two major parties.   I'd say, a good deal!

Enough for now ...