The election is coming up, and I read a lot of news, and I’ve very interested in the science of politics…i.e. sociology, psychology and what-not, so I thought I would post a guide to help some people who just listen to what the media tells them, and talk a little about the how a two party system benefits and hurts our country.
First of all, there has almost always been only two strong parties in American politics. It started with Jefferson disagreeing with Hamilton and it turned into the federalist and anti-federalist parties. It has pretty much been two since then. There have been periods of transition where one party steps in and starts creating a stir and then there are three major parties, but what happens is sometime shortly after that the weakest of the three (usually the one most closely resembling the new third party) dies out and it leaves two again. There are several advantages to this system, and more broadly how we elect officials in general. First off, we elect people directly, we don’t vote for a party and then they get a proportional number of seats to how many votes they got (thats the other system used), so individual people are accountable to their constituents. In that other system, they are just accountable to the party, but this allows for more parties, so it is a bit of a trade-off. Also, two parties means there is usually only two sides to an issue. One with the majority and one with the minority. The party whips are the people who try to make sure everyone in the party votes the same way. While on the surface this seems like a bad idea, because people aren’t always being represented, it can yield some good results. Such as significant legislation getting passed instead only wishy-washy changes happening, which is what happens when there is more than two parties. Two parties makes it easy to vote when you aren’t particularly concerned with what seems to be major election platforms. You know that the Rep’s are conservative and will elect mostly strict interpretationist to the Supreme court, so if you don’t care about much else, you can vote for republicans (or democrats if you like loose-interpretationist judges) All in all two parties provides balance, and keeps a broad range of people supported without giving the crazies on the end of the spectrum the ability to hinder laws passing that the majority of Americans want passed.
Alternatives to the two party system provide some interesting insight into this matter. Germany uses a system that ends up with more than two parties and manages OK. That system is a proportional representation like I mentioned before, where a party receives a portion of the seats in the congress based on how much of the populations vote they received. The advantage of a system like this is that it allows new ideas to be more easily introduced into the house and the congress. And it allows the fringe ends of ideological spectrum to be represented directly in the congress. This system also takes away the geographic factors that are normally present in government. That means that a third party has little chance of winning anything unless they are geographically centralized in America, but in a proportional system they don’t have to be to win seats in congress. This forces other parties to cater more to the new ideas, and to be a little more progressive instead of what we have here with our politicians afraid to rock the party boat because it will end up in political suicide.
To fix the problems and bridge the gaps in the US we have to take a new stand against our two parties. People in politics only listen to your votes, not what they will perceive as apathy…i.e. not voting, or writing in Mickey Mouse (what I almost did last time). So we have to vote for a third party to send a message. We must pick that third party that most closely represents what we would like to see the two main parties change toward and vote for them. Also, we have to help them campaign, and explain our positions about third parties to less informed people, to help them understand this is the best way to gain better representation in the government.
Now, the average American can’t handle a third party. It would confuse them, they grew up with two parties, and two parties is what they know. The people who can handle a third party aren’t much better in some ways because we will default to what we know in moments of indecision. An example is when I went to the polls last year I didn’t want to vote for Bush or Gore. I knew their platforms, and I was unimpressed by both, but I knew the party platforms and the general ideologies that each party stood for, and I voted for Bush because I knew that in the very least there would be judges appointed to the federal courts that were more conservative, and more importantly followed a more strict interpretation of the law, which is important to me. But if we threw a third party in the mix, a lot of people would either follow the party they “know” and blindly love instead of checking the actual issues. How many times have you walked into a booth and seen a bunch of people you don’t know anything about and just voted your party alignment. I’m guilty of that, because I didn’t have time to find out what the local city clerk thought about gun control, I was busy sifting through the ten pounds of BS that the news slants at me every day to figure out what a presidential candidates actual stance on the issues are. So I default. But if we could educate people, and turn them on to what a real third party could do to improve our current political system, we could actually change the nature of things.
Now, later tonight or tomorrow I’m going to write on voting the issues, because I think a lot of people idealize the parties they think they like, instead of finding actual stances on issues, but for now I will say that one way to get things changed is to enter into politics with at least your vote, and hopefully a little more than that so you can educate ignorant people who get their news from the Daily Show. So vote smart, find out the issues, try not to default as much in this political climate where the Republicans and Democrats aren’t listening to the people but the media instead. And don’t just by the hype….Bush isn’t stupid, Kerry isn’t the opposite of Bush so voting for him just to get Bush out isn’t a smart reason to vote for him either. A smart vote if you don’t want things to continue how they are currently (with or without Bush in office) is an informed third party vote this election, so check out the Green party, the Libertarian party, and of course Ralph Nader the independent candidate.
Siberian says
My re-write of your opinion my way (how pomo of me):
Now, the average American can’t handle a third party. It would confuse them, they grew up with modernist uni-axial thinking, and so two parties is what they know. The postmoderns who can handle a third party aren’t much better in some ways because we will default to what we like in moments of indecision. An example is when you went to the polls last year and didn’t want to vote for Bush or Gore. You knew their platforms, and were unimpressed by both, wishing there was a good alternative, but you knew the party platforms and the general ideologies that each party stood for, and voted for Bush because you knew that in the very least there would probably be judges appointed to the federal courts that were more conservative, and more importantly followed a more strict interpretation of the law, which is important to you. Since you’re really just an undercover coservative anyway. Maybe not so undercover.
But if we threw a third party in the mix, a lot of people would either follow the party they “know” and blindly love instead of checking the actual issues. How many times have you walked into a booth and seen a bunch of people you don’t know anything about and just voted your party alignment. Not that it’d be any differnt with three rather than two, but it’s an excuse to sound more pessimistic about our odds when you put it like that. Anyway, we’re all guilty of voting unilaterally, because we didn’t have time to find out what the local city clerk thought about gun control; we were busy sifting through the ten pounds of BS that the news slants at us every day to figure out what a presidential candidate’s actual stance on anything relevant to us was. So we default. But if we could educate ourselves, and turn ourselves on to what a real third party could do to improve our current political system, we could actually change the nature of things.
Which presumes of course that you could get a sizeable population to actually back the same third party candidate while compromising the votes of both incumbent parties. Otherwise you’ll just swing votes away from one party or the other and shift the balance to the party with solidarity. A la Perot, and the real giant sucking sound of Bush’s votes.
Ancient history, I suppose.
BigCat says
OK, so I like this alright, and it sounds good, but, and there is always a but, I am confused, and slightly tired of the modern / postmordern distinctions you make, but not because I think it is stupid or inacurate. I get postmoderns have a desire compartmentalize and look for interal themes instead of looking for ovearching themes and all, so call me a modern, but seriously I don’t think a lot of people you are exactly talking about, because I can’t find a theme in what you write sometimes other than modern = old and outdated postmodern = better but not perfect. (Over simplification of course) So I guess I’m saying the first couple of sentences confuse me somewhat…maybe more the second, because the word “uni-axial” does a good job of qualifing the word “modernist” in the first.
I think you just need to expand the word “modern” and “postmodern” into something that describes what you are talking about in a given situation. I think that would sound less like talking down at people who tend to align with modern thinking (and look for overarching themes), and clarify greatly what you are striking at. I know part of this problem lies at the definition of “postmodern”, which is so damned difficult to pin down, and our differences in the preception of modernism / postmodernism. But I did spend a lot of time a few weeks back trying to figure out what you were talking about by reading about artistic, cultural, intellectual, and psychological postmodernism is exactly, so I can relate to what you are saying. The one thing I gained from that was a slight change in my perspective. I read about the compartmentalization thing vs. the modern overarching generalizations, which changed some of what I thought previously based on Seths psychology definition which is “the qualified becomes the qualifier” (I think that is what he said anyway, but it might be flipped around). This made a lot of sense after reading that compartmentalization thing vs. what I used to think and how it confused me.
So, that was ment to be a minor critique of your choice of words, not like a personal stab, so don’t read it that way, but I would like to see those words expanded just because their definitions are so up in the air, and I don’t always agree with those words as distinguishing the two bodies you wish to represent (and it is probably because of differing definitions), but if you did expand what part of those broad people groups you are targeting, I would get it better.
Besides that I really liked the phrase in the second paragraph “Anyway, we’re all guilty of voting unilaterally,” cuz that really gets at the heart of what I’m talking about. But didn’t quite get the pessemistic part in the second half of the sentence. I think I get what you are trying to communicate, but it just didn’t ring clear in that sentence with the wording around it (my wording I believe, so that would make sense)
And the last part is soooo acurate. It is incredibly difficult to get any part of a sizable vote for a third party, which is why I might become somewhat of an activist at some point for a third party…but that remains to be seen based on my time available at a later date.
Finally, I don’t think I’m even undercover…I’m pretty out about my conservative financial ideals, and my ideas on how judges should interpret laws and not make them, but I’m pretty liberal about government involvement in our personal lives…I don’t want the government to tell me what to do in almost any case at all in my personal life, or to restrict my religion, my morality, or anything like that….they need to just leave me alone. (that includes speeding tickets….I think those are mostly stupid when your not in a city)
Siberian says
1. I’m not sure trying to define postmodernism against modernism would work very well. Besides, that would be a bit too modernist of me, and I don’t care to be that.
In this instance, I will say that uni-axial or unilateral thinking is typical of modernist thinking. Black/White, Right/Wrong, Up/Down, Left/Right, Personal vs. Economic freedoms plotted into a nice four-quadrant political graph. Other, more natural distinctions are harder to quantify, and moderns tend not to like them. In a three party system you’d be stuck with some sort of bizarre triangular plot. Just too messy for the modernist, quantified mind.
2. What I meant to say about pessimism is this. People will vote unilaterally regardless of whether there are two or three parties, or so you state. So saying people will vote unilaterally anyway in a three party system isn’t a statement about reality, but about your pessimistic perception thereof.
3. Ahh, you’re not undercover. Hmm. Well, if you say so.
4. For the record, I am not anti-modernism per se. I am just anti-elitism. If I offend you with my talk of postmodernism, my apologies. But I’m not going to just chuck my worldview because it makes other people feel unintellectual or somesuch nonsense.
We live in the world of postmodernity. Most of us are postmoderns already. We just don’t call ourselves that. Too pretentious and modernist. I don’t need to label myself, that would be a power play to convince you that I’m right.
Anyway, in this initial few years I will probably talk about postmodernism a lot. It’s like puberty. You think and talk about girls and sex and all that stuff because you’re so self-conscious about the change in you. Eventually you settle back into an easier self-identity.
Such is the case with my re-adoption of postmodernism, post-identity crisis, and I think was the case culturally last decade when everyone suddenly became so pomo-conscious in their writing. Now it’s old hat. The modernists are sick of it, the pomos have already accepted who they are (they just shrugged their shoulders), and the people on the fence are still trying to get their feet under themselves. Me? I’m back over the line.
Wow. I gotta go eat.
BigCat says
AH, now my understanding is increased. Thank you very much.
One question, on my endeavor to better understand postmodernism I found that it isn’t tenant of postmodernism to avoid labels, in fact I was surprised that instead of avoiding labels a typical postmodern would use more of them, none of which will completely and absolutely define a thing, or group of things. Hence why you so often use the terms “modern” and “postmodern” to describe the main people groups in America right now. Neither is a conclusive definition, caged in and absolute, but both are labels, and serve to group like-minded people together. But I might be misunderstanding, because often I feel as if those labels are tossed around and mean whatever the writer wants them to mean, and instead of qualifying those labels with the context around it, they are just placed there as if a reader is to alreay know the context in which the words are being used. But as I understand it, postmodernism breaking through in your writing would mean that whenever one uses the word “postmodern” the context around the label is more important that the label itself, so one must strive to make sure the context is securely qaulifying those words.
This leads to the other problem I have.
For the record, I am not anti-modernism per se. I am just anti-elitism
I know this is true, I’ve heard it from you before. But the way in which you write equates modernism with elitism by adding the context of the words “per se”. And from the definition of modernism as I know it that would make sense to equate those things sometimes. But as you say, modernism is not the problem…elitism is.
In modernism that takes the form of speaking in absolutes, always trying to define a middle which is better than the margins of the spectrum of life, instead of allowing each to occupy our own space which is all equally good. But the postmodern elitist says that anyone who claims their position is correct, or better than another is a fool. That there is no middle, no right, no wrong, no left, no right…no monkeys…damned monkeys…there just is what you feel there is, and all are equally good/bad/whatever. This isn’t true either. A rapist is not a good person, it is not good to kill people, it is not good to ignore human rights. But relativism is the inevitible conclusion of elitism in postmodernism.
While I get what you are saying in most of this, and it especially makes sense with the last two paragraphs, there are some problems. I know that railing against modernism is a part of artistic postmodernism, and it seemed to bleed over into cultural postmodernism, until people got tired of it, (like you said) but there is something in your writing that would seem to look to cast blame, or to stab at it at least, and equate all modernism to elitism. So I’m going to write a little here to explain how I read some of what you wrote, with my initial reactions, not to be an ass or anything, just because I can’t understand what you are trying to get at sometimes, and this might help pin down where the communication problem lies.
We live in the world of postmodernity. Most of us are postmoderns already.”
Wow, that sounds very modern, very much not what you said earlier of how defining what postmodernism is would be modern…this statement attempts to define what the world is…I suspose you could get by because of the word “most”.
We just don’t call ourselves that.
Of course we wouldn’t if we were postmoderns in the way you describe it. I know lots of people that consider themselves postmodern and are willing to say that, the don’t mind the label as modern or postmodern. Or is it maybe that a lot of us have adopted that postmodern elitism of relativism, but aren’t willing to acknowledge it, or is it maybe that we hold some modern type of value system for our personal lives but are somewhat uninterested in other peoples way of conducting themselves, so we aren’t completely postmodern, or modern…hmmm…I’ll have to ask why he thinks that later.
Too pretentious and modernist.
Again…why does he always write as if modern => elitist, especially considerning elitist !=> modern…maybe I’m too modern in how I view elitism…or am I to postmodern…I just don’t know, I’m so confused by this sometimes. I like absolutes…sometimes, does that make me a modern, and subsequently elitist….or am I just an elitist posing as a modern.
I don’t need to label myself, that would be a power play to convince you that I’m right.
Hmm…isn’t that taking a stance though, are you now saying anyone willing to label themselves into the postmodern bin is really enacting a powerplay? Context seems to support this, but I wouldn’t think James is trying to power play me anyway, even if he did label himself and try to convince me he is right. I would welcome a good logical definition and arguement…he might be right…I might have a completely wrong definition of pomo. But James did write it, and he is unabashedly postmodern in a lot of his thinking and writing, so that is now part of the context, and he knows I’m the reader, so that is part of the context….and now this part makes even less sense…I better quit before I get a headache.
OK, hopefully that helps some, maybe makes more sense about what I’m thinking a lot of the time when I read some of this stuff, and why I get confused.
Kel says
I think perhaps you have them backward. To use your words in the proper way:
“I [guess] [moderns] have a desire compartmentalize and look for interal themes instead of looking for ovearching themes and all…”
I was reading something by N.T. Wright, and he sort of expressed it by saying that moderns looked for central themes and quantification of those themes. Postmoderns search for the metatheme, and while they sometimes find themes interesting as tools to aide pontification on the metathemes, they don’t find their pontifications on the part or the whole to be terribly conclusive.
Another point that I thought I’d make is that moderns compartmentalized and fragmented everything in their attempt to explain and understand it – ideas, society, etc. Postmoderns are moving against that compartmentalization because they see a system’s health as more important than a particular part’s health.
But I don’t think you’re a postmodern. (I’m not a postmodern.) I also don’t think you’re a modern. (I too am not a modern.) Post-modernism is so difficult to pin down conceptually (it really is a nothing but a metatheme that can only be described by labeling it as the metatheme that came after the one before it), so this is going to be a pretty broad jump here. I think you are a post-post-modern. You’re a little younger than James and I (and Bob adn Jeff and everyone else), and I think you may be one of the first of a new group. I like to think of myself as one of the first of that new group, that group that can understand the themes and metathemes and fragmentation, and not really like the theory of any of it, but grab something useful out of the center that defines our lives a little better than their theories do. Mostly though, we challenge that there is a theory of life at all – not in the way that post-moderns do, of challenging all theories at all, but in a way that says “yeah, but you can make whatever theory you want, and it’s all good – a theorist should never be trusted in the same way that a statistician should never be trusted.”
Going back to what I said in the third paragraph, I think that our job is to show them that there is consistency in analysis, but you have to analyze your analysis just as much as you analyze your data. You have to use the metathemes to help you understand the themes and you can find real stuff out as a result of such study.
Anyway… that’s just my bit in the pile. The only reason I know so much about this stuff is b/c of VALT and all the reading I had to do for it (if you really want to understand what people mean by this, get the VALT reading list and pick a few of the books about church theory), and previously listening to Peter and Jeff spout things I thought were utter uselessness – I tend toward favoring production over pontification. Thankfully, God gives some of us gifts of thinking and some of us gifts of action, and sometimes has us talk to each other, because we need each other.
All of that said, your post and many others have recently left me with the question: “How exactly does one go about forming a political party?” I think we’re really in need of a Christian moderate party – one that has sense to know you can’t legislate morality, and one that upholds that killing people – fetuses or criminals, is wrong. The problem I have with the third party choices that keeps me from voting for them is that I can’t in all consciousness vote for someone that I wouldn’t want in office, when there is a Republican I would rather have in office. We need a good third party, not just one that has bits and pieces of stuff I support, but also has bits and pieces of stuff I don’t. I think there are a lot of educated Christians out there that feel the same crunch we do on election day, and I think they’d be more willing to make a change if they had a third party on the ballot that they actually wouldn’t mind having as president.
Dirk says
Funny, I just read a letter by C.S. Lewis on why there never should be a Christian party. Why? several reasons:
Christianity has split into many factions, Catholic, Protestant, etc. etc. so in order for a Christian party to form and agree on anything it couldn’t be just a christian party. It would be a Catholic Christian party or a Evangelical Christian Party, etc.. The party would be ruled by what ever sect of Christianity managed to push out the other Christian sects. This would make the party a minority of a minority and to small to survive on its own. Thus it would have to hitch itself to one of the other parties to survive. Now that we have a very small part of the Church claiming to represent the whole Church and quite possibly chastising any and all Christians who don’t vote for the party as rebels and backstabbers. Plus, the members of the party who are not Christians (remember the party had to hitch itself to another party to survive) can now push their agenda as a “Christian Agenda” even when it may not be even close to the values of Christians. In essence, we have given Satan the perfect disguise to hid under and act out his own agenda: a Christian Party that is controlled by non-christians, but that can still sway the christian vote and the future of this country. I’m sure there are many more points to why we can’t have a Christian party, but these are the ones Lewis pointed out.
Lewis believed it was more important to represent Christianity to what ever party you are a part of and to also influence those who represent us in Congress by writing them letters. I really agree with that statement and will probably do so (though probably through email) in the future.
Kel says
I’ve read some stuff that Lewis wrote, but I’ve also looked at politics in Germany and other places where they do not have just two parties, and in such cases, a moderate Christian party works. The key word is not really Christian. It is moderate. In Germany, this group is the Christian Democrats. And it is not just one particular denomination. Germany’s church is not quite as fragmented as the church in the US, but it is approaching it fast. In my Poly Sci 280 class (intro to international) we studied a lot of the party systems in European countries, and one of the things I remember noting is that the reason that the Christian parties worked is that they were platforms for Christians, each with their own beliefs, to run for office, so when you voted, you voted for the Christian individual instead of that Christian individual’s beliefs.
In the United States, it is especially likely that particular churches wouldn’t try to take over the party – they would be in danger of losing their non-profit status. If a church says “Vote this way,” or even “Christians should vote this way,” they are making statements that could mess them up royally. Note how seldom it is that you see a church backing a particular candidate (this Bush – Southern Baptist thing is a rare exception). This is because if Happy, say, were to say “And our very own Kelley Shimmin, is running for County Board – all of you in her district should vote for her,” he’d be doing something that could lose him his non-profit status. And he wouldn’t do that. Actually, I saw a PBS special on the 2000 election and how Bush took the Evangelical vote, during which they showed some things that pushed those boundaries a little too much. This election year, I have a feeling that such churches will be under a lot more scrutiny. Already, there are articles like the one Jeff linked to the other day. (Although it would be sad for a church to be penalized for doing what they think is right, I really think that the separation of church and state dictates that it be so.)
Also of note, in C.S. Lewis’ day, the issues at hand were seldom really Christian issues. England never had prohibition (good for them!), abortion hadn’t come to fruition yet, chemical weapons were only beginning to be developed, and all of the parties in England had given up on trying to legislate morality. If that is the case, his argument makes more sense. Right now though, we have the Republican party trying to legislate morality, the Democratic party trying to fight that, and at the same time pass laws that involve sinking more tax dollars into government managed programs that don’t work. In the present system, if you support government subsidized relief to the poor, you can’t be a “true” Republican (farm subsidies being a notable exception), and can’t be a “true” Democrat (and indeed might have trouble voting for most Democratic candidates b/c this one is a sticky issue) if you believe that life starts at conception.
Anyway… Ben, I hope you read this, because I do agree about not ever bothering to put the word Christian in the name. I figure that we could just be “The Moderates,” or something like that. Republicans, Democrats, and Moderates. That is all….
BigCat says
Thanks Kel, I liked some of that a whole lot, but I still am not sure on what all this is. I’m going to post something in a minute that I’ve been working on for a while that sorta lays out why I can’t grasp what James is saying a lot of the time in his writing, but this helped some.
There is a problem though, the things I’ve been looking tend agree and disagree in some ways on what postmodernism and modernism is. The meta-theme thing is kinda what I was thinking about. It is the way that a postmodern will take a lot of stuff from a bunch of categories and look for connections between them. But a modern would be more likely to look for the thing that ties each one to every other one, in a general over-arching theme. which ends up excluding important inter-connections…or meta themes, like you said, and a postmodern isn’t interested in a one size-fits all kind of theme or solution, but they believe the meta-themes, and their interactions are more important than the overarching themes.
Hmm…it is like a modern is looking for how all the pieces fit together to make one big picture and that is more important than the pieces…but the postmodern is interested in how the colors of each piece accent the piece next to it.
But at any rate…postmodernism is hard to define, because modernism isn’t easy to define, and postmodern really in a literal way is “that which is beyond or past modern”. And to get at modernism it is defined somewhat as an extention of enlightenment, and then my head goes around in circles and my eyes roll back in my head because I’m confused, and filled with too much historical context.
Other than that stuff, your not the first one to point out that people my age any younger are bumping into this problem of not desiring to be called modern or postmodern. It could be that a new philosophy is emerging like you said.
As for the political party, I agree with Dirk somewhat. But to solve that problem, we just won’t call our new “Christian” party the “Christian Party” it will be something like the social justice party…or I’m a fan of the comunist sounding “Labor” party. I think I might actually try something like that at some point. I’ve been interested in politics for a long long time now…longer than I’ve been interested in engineering or computers.