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The Rise of Open-Source Politics
Incognitius writes "There's a great article in this week's The Nation about the rise of open-source politics. Never before has the top-down world of presidential campaigning been opened to a bottom-up, networked community of ordinary voters. Applied to political organizing, open source means opening up participation in planning and implementation to the community, letting competing actors evaluate the value of your plans and actions, being able to shift resources away from bad plans and bad planners and toward better ones, and expecting more of participants in return. What do you guys think, is open source a good model for politics?"
Why isn't protection for open source software and limitation of intelectual property law a political issue? I never heard it discussed in the presidential election. What can we do to force politicians to bring these issues to the forefront? Don't we want to put all the FUD behind us?
Simon's Rock College
I think you mean anarchist libertarian politics which has been around for quite some time.
In other news the Republicans launch their "Get the Facts" campaign, more at 11.
I feel like I'm reading a Jon Katz story.
Enough with the buzzword bingo, please!
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
For instance, open-source style politics was the reason Howard Dean was leading before the primaries. It allowed him to reach out to more people than he otherwise would have. In general the Internet is causing the voice of the people to be heard, and we should expect more Howard Dean-style campaigns in the future.
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
Like it or not, modern day politics is a game for professionals. In open source technology related things, people who don't know what they are doing stay out of it. In politics though, everyone thinks they know what they are doing and everyone has an opinion.
Be better in bed. Wikiafterdark!
Funny.
I thought that was what the guys who wrote the US Constitution said when they were done?
Are we just saying we mean it for real this time, or are we just fooling ourselves?
Eternal vigilence is the only real way to keep the politics bottom-up.
It does help when the leaf nodes in the socio-political processes have as much access to the technology that controls information as the root nodes, of course.
I wonder how it is that we moderns have access to that technology when so much of history is full of examples of political and social systems where it was assumed that the masses must be strictly guarded to access to it.
Or are we fooling ourselves?
Ok, I saw no mention in the article of the echo chamber that Democrats lived in for the last 4 years. If we're going to take back the country, we need to instill some discipline: STOP ACTING LIKE THE GUY ACROSS THE DIVIDE IS AN IDIOT. Until we get every single Democrat repeating that in their sleep, nothing's gonna change.
Open-Source Politics means: "I think Republicans are idiots. What's this? Lord Omlette says I shouldn't treat Republicans as idiots? FUCK THAT NOISE! I'ma ignore him and surf a different website. Oooh look, this blog agrees w/ me that Republicans are idiots. Hurray for the Internet!"
All the nifty tools and new communications paradigms are not going to change a goddamned thing until we get back to recognizing that the opposing force are Americans, same as us.
[o]_O
... the two major political parties work very differently. The Liberal Party (who are the more *right*-leaning) have a top-down model broadly similar to how both major US parties work - decisions are made by the man/men at the top, and filter down to the underlings whose job it is to make them happen.
The Labor Party have a bottom-up model, where various factions (e.g. trade unions) push ideas, solutions etc. upwards to the man at the top. Infighting within the Labor Party is very much out in the open as the various factions try to win out, whereas infighting in the Liberal Party is almost exclusively carried out behind closed doors.
One thing that has been a pattern is that, when the Labor Party has been running the country, their leaders have almost always been extremely charismatic people. Keating, Hawke, Whitlam (and now we're back 30 years) have had very strong public personas. The Liberal Party, on the other hand, has had "grey men" in charge whenever they've been in power - nobody ever accused Howard, Fraser, McMahon, Holt or Gorton of being particularly visionary in the way they went about doing things (OK, Gorton is a slight exception, but he was nowhere near as charismatic as any of the Labor guys).
Here's my point, at long last: if you equate the open-source (bottom up movement) with the Australian Labor Party (bottom up model), maybe the thing that's missing is a highly charismatic leader for the open-source movement. Maybe FOSS needs someone who can present the vision, paint the future as rosy, etc. etc., while managing to galvanise the hard-headed FOSS coders behind the scenes to buy into the same vision. Someone who can stand up and convince a room full of sceptical businessmen and politicians that he knows what their problems are and FOSS can address them, while being able to stand up in a room full of C++ and Java coders and convince them his coding and design skills are on a par with theirs.
From what I've read, Miguel de Icaza would possible be the foremost candidate for that type of role at this particular instant, but I've got no idea if that's a role he sees himself filling at any point in the future.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Never shall I allow actors, competitive or not, to evaluate the... value... of stuff.
The Open Source model is the future of politics. In the next few election cycles, I think we'll see a Cathedral/Bazaar phenomenon take place. Whether that phenomenon supplants the current right/left paradigm or not remains to be seen. A lot depends on whether the Democrats pick up the mantle of "Open Politics" or not.
Open Politics is, in many ways, what grass roots politics is supposed to be. In the current system I think it has turned into the national parties manipulating the local people, though I speak only for my own locale.
The Republicans are just coming to terms with the notion that their base is comprised, to quote one Republican polster, of "theocrats" - people who believe not that a theocracy is desirable, but that the separation of Church and State has been overemphasized to the nation's detriment. That's who won the 2004 election, and it will be very hard to deny that movement. Democrats should not make the mistake of dismissing the theocrats or ignoring the intellectual and numeric strength of the movement.
The Democrats need new intellectual vigor, and tapping in to the Open Politics movement seems like a natural for them.
If the Republicans embrace Open Politics, I don't know what effect that will have. If neither major party embraces it, then a huge vacuum is opened up for one of the minor parties to fill.
sigs, as if you care.
The campaigns are not what is important. Before you can get a good populist candidate, one who favors egalitarian change, you need to get the right set of ideas (memeset) out into the political "air". The rightwing wealthy and the mega corporations have already done that over the last 30 years using their think tanks and foundations. See here:
w .opednews.com/kall%20starting_a_progress ive_counterpa.htm
/. will no doubt tell me that CBS, NBC, PBS, et al are the leftwing meme propagation machine. I used to think so, too. But I was wrong, and so are you. Economically Leftism and social leftism are two different things. One feeds the bulldog, and the other does not.
http://www.hnn.us/articles/1244.html
http://ww
So before you can get a "candidate of the people" you need to have the voters already aware of a set of ideas that reflect his politics. What you need is a Leftwing Meme Propagation Machine which needs to be up and running YEARS before the campaign.
If you want to get a real liberal (as opposed to faux liberals like Kerry, Dean, Edwards, et al., you need to sell the idea of progressive politics to the public.
Rightwingers here on
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Ok...Given that the article talks about using open source as a model to galvanise the 'grassroots' supporters, I don't see this as a model that can be applied so easily to politics.
Open Source as a paradigm relies pretty much on two things, a desire to participate, and the belief that well reasoned argument based on merit will ensure the implementation of the best solution.
In Politics, I think both things are lacking from the general populace (as opposed to the, for the want of a better word, intelligentsia(sp?)).
Joe Everyman doesn't vote based on a rational discussion of ideas and policies - he votes along pretty much strict party lines. And that's when he bothers to vote at all.
Open Source is about informed intelligent participation, and I think that sounds too much like hard work for Joe Everyman.
As examples, I don't think anyone could argue that between Kerry and Bush, or Latham and Howard, that either of them won or lost on their MERITS
...or maybe I'm just cynical...
Allow laws to be publicly editable via the web (in a Wiki style). The only power elected lawmakers would have would be to approve for a version of the page.
They've even convinced us that it even goes down to the very fabric of our being... Who are you? A Liberal, or A Conservative? So it's vitally important to *them* that *they* be the ones to draw the line... make the definition. But of course it's not true. You can believe whatever you want about any different issue. Son of Reagan shows up at the DNC to promote stem cells... and people are SHOCKED.
But no politician has to worry about the lines being blurred when it's a battle of Us or Them. Not until you destroy that paradigm can you begin to have influence.
Ever take notice of the KDE vs. GNOME camps? That's a political divide if ever I saw one.
The two projects could have merged long ago if only they didn't have such different models at the time. Can they merge now? Doesn't seem like it. And that division would seem to mirror the kind of division we might see in "open source politics" of the future.
I can only imagine that two camps out there might have "the best answer" to global warming, renewable energy, clear air, keeping the nation's unemployment rate down, managing terrorist threat, you name it.
I can see an open source model for research projects, however. The trouble is, people with money care more about profit than progress... then again, that's how they become people with money now isn't it.
I think the idea has merit but I can also see where it would be supressed or at the very least competed against by commercial interests so it wouldn't be enough that OS public activities would be competing against themselves but also against commercial interests. Is it a good idea? Yeah... I think so. If for no other reason than to maintain and incentive to keep politics close enough to the people that it's never completely out of the public's reach.
Time to mention CivicSpace Labs, a project started by Zach Rosen who had been with the Dean campaign (along with a few others who I don't know).
Quoting from the site:
"CivicSpace Labs is a funded continuation of the DeanSpace project. We are veterans of the Dean campaign web-effort and are now building the tool-set of our dreams. We are busily completing work on CivicSpace, a grassroots organizing platform that empowers collective action inside communities and cohesively connects remote groups of supporters."
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
Because of the lack of games which is what politics is all about. Until you change the market shares in playing games, MS has the best political model.
Now the news and editorials come from everywhere. We can discuss the same issue with hundreds of people in a day. Opinions can be formed with the help of a diverse and eclectic group of people. While this system scares traditional news outlets like daily papers, local tv and radio stations, it works very well. It is the bazaar.
Even though I don't think when Eric wrote his landmark article about the history of GNU/Linux it could or would be applied to politics, I think parts of it fit this issue quite well.
The Internet and FOSS have truly changed the way we live. Is it any surprise that it's also changing politics too? BTW, if you haven't read "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" read it soon. It's great stuff.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
I've actually been experimenting with open politics a bit myself. See my Journal. It turns out, I've started defining a political platform. I'd love some wider comments on it.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
Forget the Fox News affect and consider that the GOP had a kick-ass IT infrastructure and was counting votes down to the block level all across the country.
Using "IT" to photoshop a Hitler mustache onto a picture of Bush at Moveon.org can't compete with that.
The "Open Source" analogy is quite apt, because a million message board flamers means absolutely squat in the real world.
Here's what I hope.. The internet helps folks bypass the party tribe system, and that history is used as a lesson on which to base improvements of the future. That people can argue ideas on their merits, not on the tribal associations of those fielding the ideas.
:p
Unfortunately, there's something in the limbic system that makes people want to conform and seek the approval of others in their social groupings, something hardwired in the primate brain.
The one thing about opensource that I would want to see in politics is the concept of meritocracy. People earn respect and legitimacy on how correct their code or arguments are. That's pretty unique in the world of human endeavor. There's rarely an 'old boy's network' in opensource, there's rarely arguments about technology that last longer than a few testable patches. How much of that is applicable to things like socialized medicine, foreign policy, the environment, etc. I don't know, but I'd hope it's more than what we have now
They need to remember that the next election so they don't do a repeat of this election. The anti-Bush crowd did an excellent job alienating the Republicans and motivating them to vote for Bush. In the process they failed to build up the support they needed for their own candidate. Any rational argument against Bush was quickly lost by screaming loonies calling Bush, Hitler and insulting the intelligence of anyone who didn't have the same negative opinion.
They put the Republicans on the defensive which resulted in Bush being re-elected, the Republicans getting a larger margin in the house and senate and the minority leader losing his job. The first time that's happened in 50 years.
I think the problem was that the Democrats thought they were in the majority judging by all the various polls and world opinion and they didn't need "idiots" voting for their guy. Turns out they really were the minority.
Work Safe Porn
Please try not to mix terms here. Fascism and Communism are ideologically at odds; they don't mix. It is a common misconception that has been part of the american hyperbole ever since the red baiting of the cold war. Democracy / Fascism / Totalitarianism, is just as relevant. Thing is both democracy and communism have never been truly practiced. The russian revolution was probably the closest thing we had to a full working class based movement for equality. It was only due to the rapid industrialization and the war that gave Stalin power and the motivation / license to murder so many millions of what were once his comrades. Read up on your Marx to get an idea of what it could have been if not for Stalin and international pressure from outside of the russian state.
Now I can't comment on specific members of the open source community, but the open-source movement itself is, although with many metaphorical flaws, is a good example of a modern collective. Developing a stream of production and distribution for the common good, that is roughly equivalent to many other non-capitalist alternatives, growing in strength everyday.
I don't have time to clean up what probably were poorly worded, unsubstantiated statements, or dive further into what could be the subject of a doctoral dissertation, so I apologize if that was all completely incoherent or inaccurate.
"These are the same people that say Firefox is auwful before even trying it."
The fact is that people who state this aren't really what opensource is looking for anyways. Opensource in and of itself is a pretty much a violation of the key ruleset of capitalism. Therefore, people with money, who can throw it around - don't really care for something that isn't interested in making a substantial profit, and gaining power. These two in tandem are key for capitalism to continue. However, open source politics CAN make money. Why? B/c if people have the choice to put people in power, and more people are donating their free time to help a politician, more money will be generated as a result. For whom though? The political parties, underlings, and so forth involved in the effort. I do not think this is an original idea, but simply a swing in the opposite direction of U.S. Politics. It was not so long ago that people were much more activley involved in politiking, and seeking to help out their neighborhood politicians. It is only recently (within the last 35-40 years), that people have decidedly forgotten about U.S. politics. Increasingly over time people have been forced to forego their political ideas, and thoughts in order to attain marginal gain. This is dangerous, and I do think that more involvement is needed on behalf of the people's part. They should keep in mind though that what they say should offer NEW ideas, and improvement to already existing entity - not simply respewed zealotry. The last election was a prime example of such things though.
Help me, help you. - Jerry McGuire
First point: Why not run whole businesses that way, with open accounting and forcing renewal of corporate charters that have a limited "lifespan"? ...sounds a hell of a lot like a socialist plan except that, being based around the internet, it doesn't need the top-down heirarchy. So at least it gets rid of the weakest link.
Second point: if the government were going to be run in a bottom-up, buzzword loaded "open source" system...why elect anyone?
Open source is just a programming "contexted" facet of the regular behavior of information (Open/Free).
The fact is that, under real, tremendous stresses (like this election), this kind of information gets out anyway.
It has nothing to do with your software movement. Your software movement is a small acknowledgement of something bigger.
vk.
Consider the example of the "Kos Dozen." As the referenced article describes, Markos Moulitsas runs the Daily Kos political blog, and is probably the most successful blog fundraiser for democratic candidates, raising (according to his site) about $750K. Of that, $550K went to a list of 15 candidates he endorsed and targeted, the inaccurately named "Kos Dozen."
Moulitsas claimed that all these candidates could win, and bragged about helping some candidates that the Democratic Party bigwigs hadn't supported enough. For example, he raised a lot of money for Ginny Shrader, running for Congress in Pennsylvania's 8th District, and he said:
Maybe the DCCC was right after all, because in a Democratic district that Clinton, Gore and Kerry all won, Shrader lost by an 11-point margin. In fact, of the 15 candidates Moulitsas targeted for help, ALL of them were defeated. Despite his optimism about their chances, four were demolished by 3:2, 2:1 or even 5:2 margins, and five more (including Shrader) lost by 10-12 points. Only three races were even close.I don't know if there were more deserving candidates and races that Moulitsas could have directed the money to, but I suspect there were. It's great he could raise so much money from small donors (the average donation was about $100), but a lot of it may have been wasted because of poor targeting choices.
Morale of the story: Sometimes the party bigwigs really do know strategy better than the masses, and trying to "strategize by committee" through a blog is not necessarily a good way to help a campaign.
While I do applaud increased political participation in any form, I worry that the influence of the blog communities and new social networks formed on the internet may not have as much of an impact as the author suggests. Grassroots political organizations are relatively open institutions already. If you show up in person with a decent work ethic, and a willingness to help, they'll likely bring you onboard. By helping a campaign in person, you actively go out and seek likeminded individuals to join your cause, and can reach a broad array of people, including those who don't primarily use the internet to form political ideals, because of the variation in the quality of discourse (with a heavy concentration of low quality junk). If you look at the efforts of 'e-activists', I would argue that it would be far more valuable for online community participants to get off their desk chairs, and help a campaign in the flesh. There will always be a need for people to fold the fliers, and go door to door reaching beyond an insular communities that sap the already waning civic participation rates of the public. Ranting about politics on a blog is not a meaningful form of political participation, because it requires someone to stumble across it, and accept it as worth reading. And as Skocpol points out, participation is largely restricted demographically to the middle/upperclass, and largely white. The article glosses over this point, saying that increased internet usage by the next generation will level the field...but these kids are likely to be from the same demographic pool. The real value of using online communities in political activism is in supplementing 'real world' activities, like delegating tasks, posting meeting times and minutes, and a more open dialogue regarding policies and platforms. Parties need to embrace this change (top down) for it to have any effect, rather than being only clusters of unorganized opinion.
Similarities:
Most voters don't have a clue about the issues they're voting on, and couldn't state a coherent political philosophy if you put a gun to their head. I'd really like to see something more like the jury system used more broadly for political decision-making. Here's a straw-man proposal:
Find free books.
Let's do an experiment. We all sign this petition to get Howard Dean as head of the DNC, and we'll see if this really works.
Before Dean ran, no one thought the Democrats could possibly win (or even raise more money than the president). When he started campaigning, he was the only one landing blows on Bush at all. Shifting the party right is useless (see the past 3 decades). If we sign this, we might keep losing elections, but we'll be losing them for a party we want to vote for and respect. I'm sick of this GOP lite shit. As far as I'm concerned, if the Democrats don't nominate Dean, they have one chance left to earn my loyalty before I'm through. And I'm only 20 =/
-Oobob
This is nothing more than a rephrasing of the Jeffersonian ideas of strong local governments and weak federal government.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Anyway personally I wonder what the point is - this election was supposed to show the rise of the bloggers, digerati and all the rest of it. What's the point when Dubya just gets voted back into power?
As someone said earlier - open source politics is what democracy is supposed to be about. More properly, open source politics is what particpatory democracy is supposed to be about.
In Australia, the first mainstream example of participatory democracy was the Australian Democrats. They have party members elect their leaders, and even require party policies to be balloted by members. As such, they were probably the first member driven party since the early days of federation (the ALP probably began as a very member driven party - but that has changed).
Now, for those of you that follow Australian politics, you will no doubt have noticed that the Australian Democrats are not in a very healthy state at the moment. At the last federal election they received their lowest level of support since their inception and lost all three of their senators that were up for re-election (including OSS advocate Brian Greig).
The decline in support for the Australian Democrats can be traced partly to their support of the GST, which alienated a lot of left-leaning voters, but most substantially to a major public brawl within the party back in 2001 (I think). This brawl included the dumping of then party leader Natasha Stott-Despoja - an individually who was both popular within the Democrats and the electorate at large.
This public spat shows the biggest difficulty faced by advocates of participatory democracy. Democracy is both beautiful and ugly. It involves the resolution of sometimes diametrically opposed positions. Such resolutions are not always peaceful and rarely ever private. As such, when the Democrats faced such an ugly moment it was became the political drama du jour and was lapped up by the press.
Now here is the kicker - if you have a public spat, voter very quickly stop voting for you. The media portrays you as "deeply divided" and "unlikely to recover". Politically that is the coup de grace.
Politics is not like software. In software if you have an idea you can demonstrate that idea in practice and you can debate the technical merits of that idea using quantifiable data. This does not preclude personal ambitions etc getting in the way, but OSS development is the development of a technical product.
Politics is only part technical. For the main it is philosophy, morality, expediency, ambition etc - none of which are the subject of technical discussion. The GNOME-KDE flamewars might sound nasty, the kernel VM flamewars might sound nasty, but they are nothing in comparison to political disagreements.
Open source politics is great - but it is painful. Unless voters accept that it is painful, and ugly, and personal, open source politics will lose out to the great political cathedrals every time.
I come from a LAN down under
Where the packets flow and routers chunder
Until we have a robust "Internet website" location where anyone can post information without threat from any government, or anyone, with the information permanent (unlike the spineless archive.org project) and freely accessible, we will not have the very foundation for a liberal society. Where there are places to hide, the corrupt will do so. Think back on even just the most recent media exposes. Only because of whistleblowers (who suffered the old rule that no good deed goes unpunushed) did we learn of widespread abuse/exploitation. We need protection of information and true privacy. If the smart geeks only focused their efforts instead of getting caught doing stupid hacking stints, maybe we would one day get the robust P2P high-performance "freenetproject" that humanity truly needs. This resource must not reside anywhere physically, or be personally identifiable. It is the most important challenge that the capable among us must absolutely strive to create. Without this, humanity cannot move forward.
THe Nation certainly is leftwing in America. But in Western Europe they are centrist.
....eewwww, how extremist!
And in most western european countries, all citizens are entitled to healthcare. Here in America. 45 million go without, and someone goes bankrupt from medical costs about once every seconds (or thereabouts). In NW Europe, students do not get out of school loaded down with tens of thousands of dollars in debt, and have to work at McDonalds after that. In most NW Europe countries, their tax dollars go to things like state funded child care and education, instead of killing thousands of innocent civilians.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I thought this was going to be a story about the Debian project :|
If all politians say what ever it takes to be elected, they would all say, "Watch me kiss my wife. Watch me be just like you but also a great leader. Watch me shoot people trying to shoot you. Watch my oponent do the exact oposite of what I do."
Then they would be identical, and no one would bother to vote.
I think there would be more interest in this topic if someone was paying the politians to take a stand on it, even if it was Microsoft.
Simon's Rock College
We don't make it a noticeable issue. This past election I went to EFF.org to see what candidates they endorsed. I couldn't find any. I even bothered to e-mail them to see if they advocated anyone. No response. I did a bit of hunting around and could not find anything on it.
h p?can_id=CNIP0616
All the other issue groups rate the candidates & grade their past voting records. e.g. http://www.vote-smart.org/issue_rating_category.p
Until we start doing the same & start getting the information out to the public, it will continue to fly under the radar screen.
OK. You might say with all the other issues going on in the world why would any sane person make their decision based on EFF issues? It's easy, no candidate is ever a perfect match. EFF ratings would be one more thing to consider when rating a candidate. I know on one candidate race I was looking at information like that would have changed my vote.
I'd like to start by saying that this is my first Slashdot reply/post ever. It's nice to be here. Slashdot is a perfect example of a system that fuels off bottom-up rule and emergence theory. There's no almighty-person or group of people figuring out what issues are most important and need to be discussed. In a way, it's a miracle that I'm sitting here responding to this article. This article represents something that the entire Slashdot system has proved is important.
Politics without a doubt should be like this. No person or group of persons should ever be in control. Even with programming, it seems we're always best off when we build our systems to learn and take care of themselves at the most fundamental level. I would love to have an Emergence Party, both political and for fun!
Is this serious?
I think a nice way of putting it would be to say that Richard Stallman's charisma would appeal to a relatively small demographic.
And, no, I won't put it in a less nice way, because I admire a lot of what he's done.
Yes, but the instant dissemination of information renders the whole "enlightened leader" concept of democracy obsolete. No single group of people should have the burden of making decisions. If politics were really "open-sourced"(as in perpetual referendums), the current system of management would not be able to compete with it. The quality and quatity of ideas would be far greater if the masses were allowed to directly make decision, instead of just a few elected (closed-sourced) politicians. Open-source democracy is truly the will of the people - they get to decide instantly what gets done and what doesn't.
http://www.idea.int/vt/survey/voter_turnout_pop1.c fm
US Voter turnout on average during the 1990s fell between that of Chad and Botswana.
GO AMERICA!
Pfffft... We are so pathetic.
And not even RIGHT NOW. Idiot. If the campaign cycle were truly open source, Dean would have been the candidate.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Why not have all budgets viewable off the net.
One of the main stories of the 20th century is corruption in the munitions industry. Until that is addressed, we, in the USA, are at the mercy of the arms dealers.
It could also address the problem/myth of the 'welfare queens', slackers living off social programs.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
You want some rational arguments against Bush?
- He spends money with more abandon than any liberal in history
- He lies to the American public
- He lauches unprovoked attacks into third world countries
- He can't figure out how to win them once he's started them
- He shows no respect for the constitution
- He shows no respect for civil liberties
- He uses legal loopholes and questionable logic to rationalize going against pretty much every American Ideal, from "innocent until proven guilty" and "seperation of church and state" to "the right to a fair and speedy trial"
- He routinely places the good of corporations over the good of individuals
- etc., etc.
Before any Democrats reading this get to smug, ask yourself: was Kerry the best you could come up with? "I have a plan" and "Wrong, Wrong, Wrong"? Both parties have any number of sensible, credible people they could have run...and the real problem is they ran Bush and Kerry. The race was so close for so long mostly because neither one of them was worth voting for, except as a way to keep the other from winning.-- MarkusQ
The echo chamber did for Dean (especially when he sent in the Perfect Storm: 2000 volunteers with orange helmets with blue propellers on each one.) There's a nice rant on this at El Reg
Even if Jesus set up a blogging cafe in the center of Rockport, Texas and extolled the virtues of a woman's right to choose while snapping pictures of gay weddings with his Nokia, it would have made no difference to this election. All of the bloggers would have told themselves about the miracle, while Bobby and Bobby Sue went right along with their business ... George W. Bush kicked your blogging ass.
The phrases that come to mind are:
If you can't beat them, join them.
Embrace and extend (the Republican party into a more moderate future.)
I think you're forgetting about the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth - hell, and anyone else who spoke about against Kerry's stellar war record. They're the same people that tore into McCain in the 2000 primary.
I'll admit that Fahrenheit 9/11 isn't unbiased. But it does expose the ugly connections that currently exist at the highest levels of our government. Is it okay to have a president with family ties to the Saudi Royal family, ruling over the people who made 9/11? Is it okay for the VP's former country to get such huge government handouts - and even get caught over billing only to be told to give it back! Is it okay for the present to make a case for war which is untrue? You might not like Moore's editing, but the points I've made in this paragraph are all very true.
I'm really not even sure who you're refering to as a rabid democratic zealot, besides Micheal Moore. I don't even agree with you on Micheal Moore, because he can and does speak out against Democrats as well.
Maybe I'm a zealot. I believe its wrong that the president sold the country on a justification for war that simply wasn't true. I believe it is wrong that the president tells scientists that they can't study embryonic stem cells. I believe the prisoner abuse that occurred was a result of values expressed at the highest levels of government about the treatment of our enemy.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
Any point that movie was trying to make is completely lost because you know that if Moore had found evidence to the contrary of what he wants to believe, he wouldn't show it. How could any sane person trust someone like that as a source of information.
Has Bush been open with the American people about his failure to find the WMDs? Hell no. He just repeats that there was a certain threat. Based on what? He won't talk about it. Now why should people trust our president if he doesn't show us the other side of the argument?
I've read the rebuttals on F911 and the only points I can concede are based on tone. I think a lot of people didn't want to hear that the president did something wrong - after all, America only stands for good things. Now, if people write it off because its too far from what they want to believe, I'm not sure what the right thing to do it. Say the president only lied a little bit? Billion dollar no bid contracts to the VP's former company are okay?
Its absolutely silly to say that F911 "is the most blatant display of propaganda they have ever seen in their lives". How many americans have ever come across Rush Limbaugh? Ever read the New York Post?
Unlike your North Korea Korean war museum example, you CAN do research to find the truth about Micheal Moore's assertions. Perhaps too many Americans are too lazy to do it, but even the most anti-Moore people haven't be able to counter the claims I've made in my previous post.
If Americans are too lazy to find the truth, we're all fucked.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
Bush contunally avoided the 'What have you done wrong' question?
That's an easy one. How would you feel, as a solider serving oveseas being at shot at, if the President said: "Yeah, well, I really screwed up sending troops to Iraq.. I wish I could withdraw them but if I did the middle-east would collapse into choas and civil war even moreso than it has. I am really in a pickle.". That wouldn't do much for our effort in Iraq or for our soliders there.
Likewise if Bush said: "I really regret nominating John Ascroft for Attorny General. He truly is a big old mistake." Suddenly you have Aschcroft as a lame duck and posturing for his replacement and whatnot.
Admitting mistakes - big strategy mistakes - like that in office isn't a good idea. I researched this around the time people were bent on asking the question and came back with zero cases where any other sitting President answered such questions while in office. I'd love to see some quotes otherwise, but it just doesn't look like they exisit.
Yes. Will the party bosses allow it to happen to them? No way. Bottom-up politics is going to have to create itself *from the bottom up* until it is powerful enough to toss the top onto the scrap heap of history.
(And a generation later the most effective bottom-uppers will be the bad guys at the top and become the targets of a new generation of bottom-uppers.)
When the structure of American government was designed, the Founding Fathers never imagined:
1. That America would ever have 300 million people.
2. That the government would grow so large that it would employ 1 adult in 5.
3. That every adult over 18 would have the right to vote.
The gigantic disconnect between the government and the people is due to the reduction of the participation in government decision making per person. In other words, there are so many of us, that none of us can be heard above the crowd. If the Open Source Model is applied to govenment, it will provide that missing voice, and return control of our nation to the will of the people.
The meaning of your Life is up to you. Mean well. -- Me, 9/11/2001
Is there anybody here who actually RTFA!?!? Did EVERYBODY see the words "Open Source Politics" in the parent article and start blathering immediately about patents in a conditioned-response fashion?
1) It's not about gcc,
2) It's not about abolishing software patents,
3) It's not about mandating open-source software in govornment installations,
4) It's not about the DMCA.
Folks, It's about using the open-source organizational method in the political realm.
To which I can only say - in representative democracies, such as the U.S., politics has always been "open source"!!!!
Now, the recent rise of the "blogosphere" is starting to change the balance of power in various nations. Improved collaborationa and moderation methods result in a quicker method of collecting and filtering huge amounts of data, which has typically been the job of the media. (CNN/NBC/CBS/FOX) The "media" won't go away, but it's power is definitely dwindling. How far, only time (and the media) can tell.
The core concepts of end-user involvement, as seen in open-source circles, is the point of representative democracies!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I guess it depends on what you consider a "shambles". Our Vice President is what they used to call a war profiteer.
In early 2000, our president was warning about an energy crisis. I saw it on CNN, followed by a commercial for Enron. 18 months later it was clear that a) the shortage was engineered by Enron, and b) Enron was tightly connected to the Whitehouse.
That None of these issues were brought up in the prez campaign is not a good sign. That no one cares as long as they have enough cash for beer is a disgrace.
I guess it also depends on what you consider "moderate". If you think Bush is a moderate... either you aren't paying attention, or you think Mussolini-style Fascism mixed with bullheaded religious sanctimony is a good idea.
Sometimes seventeen/Syllables aren't enough to/Express a complete
Well, I am a developer, I have a lot of experience in the MSWindows platform, and I can tell you that I feel much less limited now that I have the power of GNU/Linux software.
Before, I needed to buy, or get through my friends copies of proprietary software to do trivial things I needed. Now I have the software to do everything I do, and I can even sell what I produce, without paying royalties to anyone.
That was a show-stopper, because a single project requires a lot of OCX components when developing for Windows, and it forces you to either reinvent the wheel every time, or to pay astronomical fees to develop software. Plus you need to study lots of strange licenses, and understand them. That, effectively, was limiting.
Add to that the fact that I couldn't pay most of the software I used, and you will understand why I feel much less limited now that I use only free software.
Even if I were rich, there is a limit to the amount of money one can reasonably throw at software.
Add to that the fact that the skills I learned on the GNU/Linux system give me lots of power over my computer that I couldn't dream to have on Windows. I can make my computer do exactly what I want, not just what some configuration wizard will allow me.
Absolute freedom cannot be attained. You (or at least somebody else) always have to lose some freedom in order to attain other.
I believe people are less limited, and more free when running a free system.
You haven't been keeping track of Libertarian political candidates, have you?
Seriously. Michael Badnarik, the 2004 presidential candidate, is a programmer. The http://www.lp.org/ web page runs on FreeBSD and Apache.
The things you complain about are not "political issues" because the mainstream press and their butt-buddies, the two faces of the Party of State Power, all agree that Copyright and Patent should cover everything and the mere "citizen" has no rights at all.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics