The Silent Majority

So far, my posts may seem to be slightly at odds with what I put in the header of this blog. If you read above, I mention what I call "the silent majority" in reference to the vast majority of Americans that I feel are being ignored due to their middle-of-the-road political views. My most recent post (before this one) specifically stated that a successful demolition of two-party system and its partisan politics would require all types of views, not just those of moderates. I argue that neither statement is wrong or at odds with the other. Indulge me:

The idea of the "silent majority" is that, over the years, the win/lose mentality of Americans has permeated politics. Even now, those fed up with President Bush's presidency are pushing for the Democrats to "win" the November elections. So what? That's been the story for years, right? The problem is that to consistently "win" an election, each party must try to make themselves different from the other. The result has been the Republicans pushing their policies ever more to the right to pander to the ultra-conservatives and the Democrats pushing their policies to the left, pandering to the ultra-liberals. Each claims they are reaching out to their "core demographic" and perhaps they are right. The problem is, though, that no one is reaching out to the core demographic in America - the Moderates (centrists, middle-of-the-roaders, call us what you will...). That the Moderates are never truly represented is part of the reason I refer to them (us) as "the silent majority."

The other reason for calling Moderates "The Silent Majority" is that that is generally what we are - silent. Not only are our views ignored but most of the time, Moderates don't bother to push their views. We either don't feel strongly about them or more likely, don't feel it's worth our time because we "know" we'll be ignored. The irony is, of course, if moderates voiced their opinion regularly, as a majority, we could not be ignored. I can't say for certain that moderates are the majority of Americans, but based on normal statistical distributions and a sampling of the views of my colleagues and friends, I think I can be safe in that assumption. There is also the consideration of the vast majority of Americans who do not vote. While some of that may be due to laziness, I can be relatively sure that the disaffected voters don't vote because they do not feel their voice is being represented by either major party candidate.

So why must the America Part include all Americans? To abolish partisan politics for good. Without the support of everyone, this cannot happen. Besides, if I what I said above is right, moderates and our varied views would rule the political landscape.

Let's Start from the Very Beginning

To begin with, I think I should say what it is that brought me here in the first place:

A little over a year ago, a friend and I were having a long political discussion about the true state of the union. The first thing we agreed on was that America, politically speaking, stands at a cross-roads. What choices lay ahead for America? Either something happens to take America into a new wave of true democracy or we simply let the country slowly slip into a totalitarian state. In short, we will soon see whether the "Great Experiment" lives or dies.

I cannot nor will not lay the blame entirely on President Bush. The problem has existed far before his presidency; he is merely the latest and perhaps the most skilled thus far at manipulating the failings of the system. The problem I speak of is commented on at the top of this blog: partisan politics. Why do I choose to view this as the worst problem facing America? Because such a system does NOT represent the American public.

The root cause of partisan politics is the desire and the need to "win" the election. If you don't "win" the election (as if it were some sort of prize rather than a public trust), you are obviously a loser and, under our system, losers get nothing. As a rather logical response, people wishing to run for office have banded together to assist getting each other elected. The black and white win/loss system has fairly well guaranteed that only two parties can truly be in power at any time in history. (History reminder: parties that have been in power have included Federalists, Whigs, Republicans, and Democrats.) By itself this would probably not have caused major problems for our country. However, each party has decided that it will only support members who agree with the ideals put forth by the party leaders. This has, of course, caused the traditional "party lines" to form with the Democrats on the left and the Republicans on the right.

Warning, statistical reasoning ahead.

Even without any party leaders pushing the party further left or further right, a party generated in a two party system that aligns itself based on political dogma cannot accurately represent the general populous. The reasoning is that of simple statistical distributions: if one were to survey the general population to gauge their views as left or right, it could be reasonably expected that the results would be a bell curve centered on the center of the political spectrum (i.e. the majority of the population hold moderate viewpoints, just a little left or right of center). Were a second survey conducted asking respondents whether they identified more with the republicans or democrats, the results would logically show distributions with the average no longer in the center but skewed towards either the left or the right.

So what? How is that a problem? Well, the leaders of the party (left or right) are elected by the majority of that party alone, resulting in leftward leaning and rightward leaning leaders, neither of which support the majority viewpoint of the American Public. This problem has been compounded by the fact that voters tend to be galvanized into action (i.e. voting) by a leader seen as truly radical and thus, even further from the center. Both parties have learned that people towards the center of the political spectrum have become disenfranchised by a system that never produces a candidate with centrist views and, as such, has resulted in a very low voter turnout indeed.

The solution, then, is a simple one: Get rid of political parties forever. Practically speaking, however, this is nearly impossible since neither party in power right now has any incentive to see such a thing happen. So how could this be done? By the creation of a new kind of party, one that does not align itself based on political leanings, but rather one that welcomes anyone who honestly wants to see positive change in our government. Left, right, center - as long as one is willing to listen to others, debate, and compromise, then he or she would be welcome in this new party.