What is the Radical Centrist Party Political Platform?

At present, it consists of my core political beliefs, which are detailed below.

Economically, I must grudgingly admit that the Contract On America as actually implimented has worked beyond anyone's wildest expectations and in general terms as regards economic policy, I'm unabashedly Republican with the proviso that I think the present Tax Cut proposal is the most profoundly stupid clinging to outdated ideological planks that it has ever been my sorry privelege to witness. My other main disagreement with prevailing Republican policy is that I greatly favor small business, family farms, and inventive enterprise over corporate influence and interests.

I also believe in a very strong military, but I also think that the entire intelligence community (IC) probably needs to be completely dismembered and hung out to dry under the general theory that Sunshine is the best antiseptic. Clearly the US needs an IC as does any nation-state, but it would appear that large chunks of our present IC amount to a government-within-a-government that simultaneously runs roughshod over far too many citizens without much of a reason and almost no accountability, while providing far too little effective intelligence to policymakers. Also, the huge Cult of Secrecy which is indeed a more-than-significant element of local DC culture has got a Big Fat Head and at the very least needs to be distributed nationwide rather than being left all in one place to fester conspiracies against the electorate.

I'm extremely Nationalist. I think the US needs absolute and unquestioned control of the borders and ports and which noncitizens may or mayn't remain. This is less a question of ethnicity or racism (I'm not prejudiced, I'm a Mopey and hate everyone equally "just because") but rather of security, even the military and IC agree that the two greatest threats to US security are transnational criminal combines and rogue terrorists. Global trade is clearly here to stay and is a good thing -- but I don't think there's any reason to compromise national security or economic stability to avoid offending minor or midrange trading partners.

I'm also extremely Environmentalist, I'm an EcoPagan after all. It's an article of my faith that we are not the owners of our Homeworld but are instead the caretakers, and we've in-aggregate been doing a hugely crappy job of planetary upkeep for at least the last 50 years although in some places, things are getting better. But we need to expend much more effort regarding reaching a full understanding of Homeworld, its interlocking relationships and ecologies, and our own relationship with it. That should include extreme increases in ecological remediation where practicable, extreme aversion to new ecological disruptions, a broader focus on the various earth sciences, and if there's one single thing that we as a species need to do, it's to heal the Oceans, because after all, if this planet was properly named, it would be called Sea. The Oceans are very near to the state of entering an irreversable plunge into some state we can scarce imagine but which will almost certainly eventually kill us all if we do not act with all deliberate haste to remediation.

I am a Civil Society fanatic. I believe that Civility is an absolute prerequisite to any Civilization that hopes to advance. I believe that Civility as a concept is almost dead in the US. It's not taught in schools, it's scarcely taught in the homes and then is often taught only as a mere side-effect of religious instruction. Civility, along with Justice (Mercy will probably follow on its own from this), should be the subject of compulsory universal instruction, delivered in non-religious context. Citizenship will, I believe, thereby be improved. In any case, I call for more and better schooling, particularly in the hard arts and sciences; a complete end to the practice of "social promotion" in schools; heavy attention should be given to competence in English, along with emphasis on comprehension, dialogue, and classical logic and rhetoric. Any democracy is utterly dependent for its success upon votes cast by a well-educated and thoughtful citizenry capable of critical thought resolving complex issues, from whom very little information would be withheld. I believe that the US Constitution, in particular the Bill of Rights, is and should be the law of the land and I believe that the intent as well as the letter is something with which more citizens should be better acquainted. I call for much greater participation by the citizen in their own governance.

I am a Futurist. I believe that as great as have been the technical advances within the last century, the next century holds vast promise and equally vast risk. I believe that the US as a nation has given very short shrift to the concept of Foresight. While we possess some of the finest minds with some of the best educations, still the nation is essentially run as is any corporation, concerned only with the next quarterly profit statement, and little heed paid to long-term results. We need to pay much more attention to long-term effects of our present courses of action and we need to stop reacting to events, and instead make events occur in reasonably-predictable good order. We need to begin to anticipate the sciences insofar as is possible, instead of either reacting hastily to the inevitable arrival of the future, or dropping the ball and failing to react until reaction is unavoidable, and too late. The present debates on nanotech and sustainable compact fusion power should be the result of policy decisions made now, rather than unexpected earthshaking events to which no national government could react with sufficient speed without causing exceptional disruptions which might well be disastrous. These are merely obvious and easily-anticipated developments; we need more people at work trying to anticipate the non-obvious.

I'm a Humanist as well. We don't need profit-driven corporations holding the medical community hostage and preventing delivery of the best possible care to the citizenry. However, we also don't need the insane upward spiral of costs seen under the former purely fee-for-service system. I call for an expansion of basic health research under the various national institutes, with the ultimate goal being nothing less than the complete elimination of disease and all medical services other than research, remediation, and trauma-management/rehabilitation. We don't need more hospitals, what we need are more clinics where effective hightech solutions fix problems inexpensively and finally. We don't need networks of organ-donor finders, we need a large number of well-regulated mom-and-pop organ shops where there are vats of healthy perfect organs grown against eventual need. We don't need a huge industry selling eyeglasses, we need neighborhood clinics where you walk in half blind and walk out with 20/20 vision. We don't need vast pharmacological combines selling a pill for every complaint through a vast network of distributors and retailers, we need the ability to work on the body at the deepest levels of biochemistry, and make the problem go away. And if the government enables this at taxpayer expense, let's just say that since it's already paid for, access to effective and longlasting medicine should be as close to free as can be arranged.

I am very much for Law, and for Order, but I think that the War on Drugs is not only long-since lost, but was from the beginning an entirely flawed concept. All that the War on Drugs has accomplished is a boom in the prison-construction industry, and the enrichment of transnational druglords and their criminal combines. We must instead turn our attentions to discovering why people are taking drugs, and remove those reasons where this is desirable. If people are taking dope because they're dopes, that's one thing and there's little to be done about that, other than to do our best as a nation to see that nobody grows up to be a dope. See my remarks on Education and Civility. Ponder also that a universally well-educated and thoughful citizenry should have no problem either eliminating poverty as we know it, or their Civility should enable them to face their poverty with some gentility, while working for a way out of it. I believe that the US as a nation has all of the resources needed to eliminate poverty in any case. We must start by making sure that there is no hungry child anywhere in this country -- a well-fed child can be attentive in school. We must continue by assuring that any child who is capable of learning is indeed educated to the best degree practicable. We must finish by maintaining a robust economy, so that all of these healthy well-educated young adults we produce can lead valued and productive lives with careers that enrich not only them but everyone around them. In a land of plenty, who needs to do drugs, or to sell them? And in a land of plenty, if people really want to do drugs, take the bars off of most of the prisons, stick cheap cots in them, and let the fools move in and dream their lives away on the public tab, it'll cost less in terms of lives, disruptions, cycles of despair and poverty -- and probably in raw dollars -- than does the present unworkable and failing system.

Radical enough for you? Centrist enough for you? If so, consider claiming us as your party of political affiliation!

Please see the Radical Center American Party Website!