The Day of Democracy - The Jacksonian Party

This is a position paper of the author The Jacksonian Party.

Today is the Day of Democracy the day of the National Vote for Federal Offices and is the highpoint of democratic expression in the Republic.

It is saddening to see that the two 'Major Parties' will again sweep through the Union and offer nothing better than tired old nostrums to the People of the Republic. As an individual I find very little to admire about these 'Major Parties' and much that I find revolting. On issues of Domestic Policy and Governance, the 'Major Parties' look towards Election Day as 'Bring Home the Goodies Day' in which one or the other will gain some advantage in GETTING the 'Goodies' of the Republic for their backers. On matters of Foreign Policy we have a situation in which NEITHER 'Major Party' actually HAS a Foreign Policy outlook that they can adhere to even in the sketchiest way. Not even a 'Walk Softly and Carry a Big Stick' slogan. They have gone Beyond slogans, Beyond statements and Beyond adhering to anything that will unite and build the Nation as it is faced with diverse enemies around the Globe that work together to bring the downfall not only of the United States but of ALL Nations.

And in only one area is there stark contrast between the two 'Major Parties' and that is in warfighting. One wishes to entrust the entirety of the military campaign to the Generals and military and do nothing more and the other wishes to run as cowards in the face of the enemy so as to give them heart and chance at success at creating their Global Empire. Neither of these 'Major Parties' wishes to address the division of civilian control of the military because doing so actually REQUIRES that there be something that is stated as worth DEFENDING. And neither of these 'Major Parties' has done that thing. Then some idiots bemoan that there is 'no way forward' and that 'it was a mistake' even though their putative goals for some sort of an International Community were being UPHELD by those who went to war. By criticizing this that entire Wilsonian segment of the population has now stated that they will abandon ANY foundation of their concept of an International Community at the drop of a hat. A single drop of blood is too much for them and they faint at the sight of it.

Without an underpinning for a Foreign Policy these 'Major Parties' now stand FOR nothing Internationally. And thusly cannot even begin to state what they are fighting FOR.

Being anti-imperialist The Jacksonian Party offers that the Foreign Policy of the United States is to support Our National Friends and Allies, Support those that We have lifted from the Tyrant's Grasp and, when in war and others join in to make things difficult, that they are taking Part in the war and need to be ATTACKED when they take sides against the United States. As it is on the Battlefield so it is on the Economic side so that Friends and Allies and those saved from tyranny and Empire are strengthened to JOIN THE FIGHT OF FREEDOM. Those who take no sides are left alone, but when they seek commerce with the Nation they pay the price of Tariff to enter the National market. And the United States should not be in the business of encouraging sales of low cost weapons and equipment and goods of any sort to Our Common Distributed Enemies. They must be targeted by economics AND warfare Combined.

No Political Party is willing to say these things and adhere to these things as this requires actually knowing what you stand for in Support of the Union. The 'Major Parties' are stuck in the 20th century and that has little relationship to the 19th in which foes that were so very similar were, indeed, targeted for destruction by the People of the United States, not JUST Our Armed Forces. These Political Parties are drunk on the infusion of cash and taxation into the conceptual bloodstream of America and wish to exploit them to their own petty causes and no longer Build the Union.

I have likened this to not choosing a 'lesser of two evils' but as a choice between two well known evils: Satan - who will use means of law and holding only to the word of agreement to achieve his ends, and Cthulhu - in which chaos is means and ends entire and the end of all that is good is soon brought by ITS followers. You can decide for yourself which Political Parties stand where on that scale, but note that their END STATE is not to bring any Good to the Union but to enhance their Own standing ABOVE THE UNION.

Thus for the Honest Oxymoron of a Party must start the business of actually figuring out how a Party of Honor, Friendship and holding dearly onto Liberty and Defending it with Our Friends and Allies can be formed.

The author of this text has examined multiple ways to try on look forward on this so that a means of distributed ownership of ideas can be performed and that none that adhere to the core concepts of Modern Jacksonian Thought will be left out. Jacksonians do not care about your religion, do not care about the color of your skin and do not care about how much or how little money you make. Do you support the idea of HAVING an Honorable Nation in a way of Honor, Trust, Friendship and holding those things as dear to you as your Family?

That is the major deciding question for Jacksonians and all else grows out of what is necessary to HAVE Honor from the Nation so that We can be Honorable within it. If any ideology is put before THAT, then We, as a People and a Nation, are lost forevermore. And this requires that, as a People, We understand that the rest of the World will have to make its own decision about Us and join with us or NOT in security liberty and freedom. Jacksonians do not care about being loved and adored overseas, We do care that the Nation be RESPECTED. And We also Respect other Nations, by and large, so long as they do not take up against US. Those that seek to grow close as Friends and Allies are WELCOMED wholeheartedly as the cost of securing liberty and freedom is HIGH in blood and the more hearts and minds coming together to BE FREE makes this burden less awful and yet far more intense as any Friend or Ally lost to tyranny is a dagger straight to the heart.

The way to start The Jacksonian Party off, then, is to find a means and method that is open to everyone who holds those things that this site has put forth on in the main and yet allow for freedom of expression and advancement of ideas, both pro and con, beyond that. Further this method or set of methods *must* extend beyond the confines of the Cyber Realm and into this more concrete place of the Real World. Very few things have moved from in that direction AND kept up communications in two way fashion between those that do not have or want cyber connectivity and yet hold these conceptions of how to create Honorable Government in common.

Thus, the Cyber Side offers many possibilities while the cross-over capability is distinctly limited. It is observed that as cellphones move out into wider acceptance, that they use packet-based communications that gets internet routing and, thus, connectivity. So even those who think they are *not* internet connected will be through ownership of a cellphone. Likewise, as more devices offer greater services and choices to consumers, internet capability becomes a bundled in feature as the use of the packet-based IP network model works relatively well for many of them.

So first given are the Cyber Models:

1) Link lists and blogrolls - These, as witness, offer some commonality and community, but are limited and are mainly used as a method to ensure greater visibility in the internet communities. To a degree this is wanted, needless to say. But, having been an avid reader of blogs and such for some time, I will state that my 'click through' to another site is well below 1% due to blogrolls, and such contrivances. Thus the utility is greater 'common visibility' but not necessarily 'greater community'. So a definite 'to do' for visibility, and as I am the one least able to do it, I shall do so. Coming soon, The Jacksonian Party blogroll.

Anyone have a favorite that is: a) easy to use, b) easy to install for those joining, and c) isn't on some splendiferous upgrade cycle that takes it down for a few days every months?

2) Webrings - These, while more common in the early days of the cyber community, have seem to have fallen by the wayside. The conception of having an interest oriented ring of like minded folks talking, in the main, about things of common interest is a good one. Today, however, I so rarely see them as I wonder at the actual 'community building' that is done by them. But, my experiences in their use and utility is limited, but their low observability is noted. I have not seen pro/con of this conception and would enjoy hearing of experiences, in general, in the use of same either for topical browsing or expanding ideas within a topic. So, not necessarily coming soon, as this author has little insight into them.

3) Wikis - This grand conception seems to be perfectly made to handle this sort of communitarian idea. It allows wide-ranging input, but also keeps multi-level editing available so that rollback can be done in case something goes awry. The negatives of this are seen at any Wiki site that has any popularity - Topic Hijacking and the need for active oversight. So the old style Wiki concept is turning into a higher maintenance affair as use grows. Further, it is NOT proven to be self-policing for holding ideas 'on topic'. So the older style of Wiki is not seen as a good concept for this.

4) TiddlyWiki - Now this seems to have the solution space of the Wiki in mind and allow for all sorts of side-tracks and ellipses and giving individuals freedom to express themselves while allowing linkage to a more centralized concept and having the user have the capability to formulate a multipart, non-linear review of ideas and work products. Here the actual work time is in the up-front setup of the original page so as to ensure that it can be properly broken down and re-built by those downloading it for their personal use and enhancement. Further, some sort of uploading and versioning of ideas based on authorship can be done and more common references of ideas above and beyond the main ones can be constructed. Add this to major communitarian contributors who EACH have their own ordering of conception and hold certain blocks of ideas to be good and others not so good allows for a flexible community within a framework to self-define. The negatives are the high up-front time of getting the individual blocks made and ready for expansion and cross-linking with some possibility of allowing a reader end version review so that alternate ideas and texts can be presented *together*. Three or four years ago my mind might have been able to handle this, but today it is beyond me. I adore the simpleness of the concept, but the underlying structure of it and how to create it are beyond my reduced capabilities. I would be more than willing to find a host for this, if necessary, and find some way to fund it in perpetuity so that it will never go down. But, do note, since it is *just a web page* the entire THING can be downloaded by ANYONE and then re-established ANYWHERE. A bit of cross-linking and suddenly it becomes a coherent whole until older services die off. ANY insight on this is wanted along with anyone that has any view of how it actually works.

5) Co-authored blogs and other more widely held blogging. Very possible and I am amenable to such. Note that I do not claim ownership over ANY of my words or ideas so long as they are fairly represented in full or kept somewhere for that to be done. I would note that Blogger is not wonderful for this and I have some ethical qualms with Google in any event. I expect I will be decamping if I can arrange for something as simple to use without the Blogger-Bogdowns that I have witnessed. Recommendations of services appreciated, and I will be looking into my broadband provider, Speakeasy, once I finally get their service up and running for personal use. This also goes for any other solution space online. If it can be done BETTER, not necessarily CHEAPER via separate hosting, then I will look at that seriously.

6) Other, more closed communities online. This includes such places as virtual worlds (ex. Second Life), various 'forums' which require registration and such for control, and other means of linking, cross-linking and community forum creation. Mostly, the added overhead of these things are a major disincentive to individuals. Virtual worlds, of various sorts, usually have minimal hardware requirements and discriminate there, first, beyond any sign-up necessary. Online forums that I have witnessed go into a few modes: stagnation, 'burstiness' of thought, and turning into spamvertising lists. Of all of the online forums that I have seen only the Baen Book's Bar has had anything like a continual and pointed interest capability that has only needed some minor community policing. But, science fiction fans have such a strong drive towards fun ideas that this is not surprising, as witness the take-off of their 1632 community. From all of my experience Jacksonians have a lot of fun in the 'doing' and less so at the 'thinking' part, although that is highly descriptive of the pre-modern and definitely pre-online Jacksonian tradition. The online Jacksonian tradition is morphing as We play with ideas of Honor, Responsibility, Trust, Friendship, and upholding those things for Ourselves and the Nation.


Now the offline part.

The existing 'Majority Parties' have put a high bar to entry and continuation of political parties against any expansion of the system as it stands. While smaller parties are on the ballot, the entrenchment of the existing 'Majority Parties' and their attempts to undermine new parties has rendered that schema one that is difficult to enter. By getting into control they have stifled the formation of new parties and co-opted some ideas from them so as to fully undermine them by picking up 'slogans' and saying: 'Well, we aren't for everything, but we like the one or two *important things* so just vote for us and you will get those.' That, in short, is the PROBLEM with the 'Majority Parties', by undermining entirely new conceptions of Honorable and Honest Governance they kill the chances of those conceptions coming into any meaningful form of being for the Nation. This has killed Socialism, Free Soil, Know Nothings, and other Parties and movements. Strangely by trying to adopt the 'popular ideas' the 'Majority Parties' have also tended to pick up those things most detrimental to the Nation even while they have short term popularity. Free Trade was a good 19th century conception, but with such low cost of manufacture now available it only makes cheap arms available on a Global Basis to Our Enemies. Subsidizing retirement, stolen straight from the Socialists, has now put in a money transfer system from the young to the old and removed responsibility and oversight of personal choice and direction from the People in that area and putting a huge burden on the Nation.

That is why The Jacksonian Party stands APART from other Parties. The Jacksonian conceptions are not ones that are amenable to slogans, not amenable to the 'complex' and 'nuanced' thoughts of the current Political Elite, but are on the much more profound basis of: Simple and Honorable ways of doing things lead to complex and rich ends while not endangering liberty. Every conception that this author has put forward is an attempt to demonstrate how We the People truly ARE this Nation and it is Ours to lose if We do not take responsibility FOR IT. All other Parties push doctrine and 'coalitions' as the way forward to 'majority' for the next election. They do not Build anything anymore and stand only for Themselves. Jacksonians stand for Ourselves, but as individuals and never want to see the responsibilities of Individuals to Guide and be a part of this Nation to be diminished by ANY ideology, concept or nostrum put forth to 'solve the ills of the day'. Much ill has come of THAT and such is no longer a way forward. So each and every idea given is SUPPORTED by its basic underpinnings to Honor, Responsibility, Due Process, Rights, Accountability and Individualism. Any attempt to 'steal the idea' and put it into a 'Majority Party' also drags the rest of the underpinnings right along with it. Shear out the underpinnings and the idea falls flat on its face.

Thus to gain traction in the population, the first thing to be done is to put forth these ideas in Honorable Means and Method so as to identify what it is Jacksonians stand FOR. Thus the Honest Oxymoron of The Jacksonian Party needs to actually come together at some point, but from the DISTRIBUTED MEANS that the current enemies of the Nation utilize. They use it to tear down, and We must use it to build and to demonstrate that Honest, Simple and Straightforward ideas that can be understood are Honorable for the Nation.

The traditional means of this and establishing 'idea space' is via the dead-tree method: books and pamphlets. This also means that The Jacksonian Party remains in conceptual space until enough people in a locale start to realize their commonality OUTSIDE of the Cyber Realms. Cross-over between these spaces does and should happen so that organizing can be a mixed hybrid of Cyber and Locale based.

Thus a book proposal to cover this. Many thoughts have gone through my head on this since I am the damned fool to have thought this up and I, apparently, can state a simple thing now and again while killing off an encyclopedia to do so. So be it. I have little left to me outside of this in my life and I should still be able to take a break now and again. Unlike Bill Whittle, I am *not* writing FOR book form or anything close to it. I am trying to encapsulate solutions and show how I think of the problems and the entire solution space left up to Us as a People. I disdain any 'two-sided' conception and never throw out anything unless it does not fit in the solution space. As others have noted: I seem to pack more ideas in a single paragraph than most people put into an entire posting. That is the encapsulation process at work, so that the entirety of the problem space, solution space and actual solution definition can be done in Open and Honorable means.

I have read quite a lot and can think of no other book that is written in such a manner. The Connections book, to mirror the series, did so, but only out of the original series necessity to have full encapsulation done for each television episode. One may recognize that the proposal space for The Jacksonian Party follows more in line with this and the knowledge web concept. That book, however, never sold greatly nor any of its follow-ons and constructing a book that is readable, comprehensible and still presents the original ideas in a cohesive manner is tricky.

Advice is necessary at this point because the time investment by me will be huge. I have scant few hours of minutes a day of coherent and cohesive thought and those are unpredictable. Much of when I am *not* posting is spent in that condition. And I also know that my grammer, syntax, spelling and all sorts of other wonderful things, like dangling participles and the such like, make my works very idiosyncratic: they reflect my thought process directly.

What I cannot do is write a book on the Historical Underpinnings of Jacksonianism.

I CAN address the modern, cyber connected Jacksonian and how adjustment is made to a 'Global Village' because that is something that is immediately comprehensible to Jacksonians: it is a village, somewhat lawless and there are limits as to what can be done. Sounds damned familiar to me, looking at the villages, cities, towns and neighborhoods of the Nation.

The other way is the 19th century method of 'manifesto writing'. Well, that seems to be a bit smaller than a book and a bit larger than an article. And, from the manifestos I have read, they seem more geared towards diatribe and the expounding over immediate ills rather than addressing the concepts being presented. Jacksonians use Honor, responsibility and Method to *address* ills, so those are forefront while the ills are seen as temporary until addressed. Note that this is NOT how the current 'Majority Parties' or other ideologies see the World. They put ideological ends FIRST and then use any means to get them. Jacksonians use honorable means FIRST to get to an understandable and JUST end. Yeah, we actually do seem to think that 'to do good we must do RIGHT'.

So pamphlets and 'manifestos', may be out of the question, save as the encapsulated documents of the type I have already described. Those are, basically, already written. So, if you like the idea you download it, fix anything that doesn't make sense to you in the way of spelling and such, post it and then give original credit, take the editors credit and publish it yourself! Hey, we are the craftsmen, tinkerers and such like, aren't we? Writing is a trade and craft and when the content is given away freely, then you are in DIY land. Want something local to distribute? You have a computer and a means to use it! Want me to sign off that I want NOTHING from anything you make? Fine by me! Drop me a line and will do that in writing. Or just throw this all under the Creative Commons license or some such. Any ideas in that realm greatly appreciated.

The small stuff I cannot DO for YOU. That is why the Armed Forces CAN'T waste their time going after distributed networks of terrorists: it isn't their JOB as We have given it to them. It is OUR JOB as a People. We should be doing it for THEM so that they can spend time getting rid of the ugly NATIONS while We the People take on these non-Nation State sorts of wartime threats. You, the reader, are NOT my co-dependent individual: you are an Individual and I want you to be free to promulgate good ideas to build the Nation. The Jacksonian Party will have NO TREASURY to rob blind: it is your money to spend, spend it YOURSELF. You know better than any damned party on how to spend your own money to get the things done that you see need doing.

The reason that making The Jacksonian Party is so damned difficult is that it is NOT top-down. It does NOT dictate ideology. It does NOT attempt to push itself on ANYONE. What it does do is give outlet for formulating Good Ideas for the Nation that are Honorable and Understandable and come to complex and yet fully comprehensible conclusions. By not wanting to ACT like the other 'Majority Parties' The Jacksonian Party must be something wholly different than has ever graced this poor planet of Ours in its weary time circling the sun. And because we do NOT hand responsibilities over to a 'Party Organization' that means the slack must be picked up by those doing the promoting.

That is a cost trade-off for ANYONE. For me to get a *book* done, that means my postings will be spare unless I can find some damned simple way of just siphoning my already written content over into book format. And since these ideas have so little espousal in Academia, the Press, and in Politics, I am damned sure I cannot find any HELP from a large publisher on that score. So it will not be a book with a press run of 10,000 copies, but some damned vanity thing that will sell a few tens of copies. A few of you have told me this is worth it.

Very well.

But realize that putting together new solutions will not be something I can do in ADDITION to getting a book done.

These websites will stagnate.

That is a damned hard choice to make as this Nation is heading into the most dangerous era it has ever confronted because it has FORGOTTEN how to BE a Republic that actually stands upon its foundations. This is a hard and dangerous choice to make, as regularizing what I *have* put out now will mean that I cannot concentrate on what is going on in the *present*. That is why I have not and will NOT make my ideas sacrosanct and try to make anything off of them: I want the widest and most free distribution of them possible. Steal them, make them better and give the minimal credit and go forward. I cannot control you, only you can do that. The only thing I can do is remove the legal overhead and feeling of wanting me to be *included*. The tagline in my emails only asks for fair representation and you know the two alternatives I give for attribution?

1) A Jacksonian
2) A Citizen of the Republic

Either of those is FULLY and HONORABLY acceptable to me. And, as I slog through trying to create a damned book, I will choose one of those or possibly alternate them since it is Print On Demand. And the only cost for them will be of the printing and delivery and not ONE PENNY MORE. Then I will make the resultant file, most likely in PDF, FREELY AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOADING.

And then, to top it all off, as I have ZERO want for recognition, ZERO want for attribution and ZERO capability to even ensure I can be coherent and awake for any appearance, this book will have ZERO marketing by me.

Even before my body placed me within the Land of Grey, that was my outlook.

There will be some posting as I try to figure out a way forward. Once started I will be present via my absence.

Because this is the Day of Democracy.

And I agree as one of the People to take the responsibility for Building something for the Republic seriously.

That sure, as hell, means more than JUST VOTING.