I've started an Australian political party based pretty much exactly along those lines (see sig for more info). Sadly I'm not getting any exposure and don't have the funds to get it, so I seem to be getting nowhere.
You may like to download my Party Constitution and read my other documentation/web pages. The Party is completely open in ALL its dealings, and it is constitutionally mandated to be so. Anything less, as you rightly elucidated, is a travesty of the political process as it should be.
Thanks for showing me that there are more than a few people who think the same way.
I find it highly disturbing that the US recoils in revulsion at the brutal beheading of one of its own, but bats nary an eyelid when superweapons designed to kill MILLIONS are announced. Just because you can visit death on people from afar, doesn't mean you are somehow morally superior. That is already painfully evident in Iraq and Afghanistan.
If we don't learn very quickly to put aside differences and work towards real peace, I fear we won't be celebrating the coming of the 22nd century, because we won't be around any more.
I remember when the story about mapping the fibreoptic infrastructure broke.
I also remember several months later, massive power grid failures in the US and UK among others, all within a reasonably short timeframe.
I thought even back then, while the two aren't directly related, that there was a possibility that someone had figured out the electrical grid chokepoints sufficiently to do a test run of sorts, to see if it worked or not, possibly inspired by the fibreoptic story.
My point is this - if you were a terrorist and wanted to hit hard again, why not follow standard military doctrine and cut off the enemy's power grid first? After all, we do it, so why wouldn't they do it as well? In all the confusion, that's when you conduct your real strike.
Thankfully, since the information is public, we too can look for potential chokepoints and demand of governments that they fix them or mitigate the risk by building in redundancy. If we don't keep this information public, we will not be able to hold governments accountable when they don't make the effort and the system fails when it's most needed. And if you can no longer hold your government accountable when they screw up, because you don't have access to the information you need to do it, then you are no longer in control, and they are ruling you, not governing on behalf of you.
I fix Windows computers onsite for clients. One of my advertising hooks is "Free CD" with every visit. How can I do this? Easy. I give them a CD full of free software, which I use every day so I can vouch for its worth and use. I show them that the only paid for software they need on their computer is Windows itself.
Most are convinced that free software is the way to go after only a few programs, notably Mozilla Firefox (no popups, browser hijack etc), Mozilla Thunderbird (no more junk mail after training the filters; no more virii) and OpenOffice.org (I simply tell them this works the same as MS Office, and set file saves to those formats if they need interoperability; if they think it's the same system, they amazingly seem to find the differences ok to work with, almost expected like in normal Office upgrades, whereas if you tell them it's a whole new system they seem to get stuck in the differences mindset).
After clearing off their virii with free alternatives, using Spybot S&D and Ad-aware to remove spyware (all free), they are more than willing to try the rest.
Note that this is only a first step. Start them with free (but not necessarily open) software. Users don't generally care about the difference. If they ask, show them how you can customise the css files in Firefox for example, explaining that open means you can create your own version to behave as YOU want it to.
Once you have successfully set up a Windows user with free software, they have embarked on the road to eventual dismissal of Windows altogether (except if they game, as I do!!).
If you want to go a step further, grab a Linux LiveCD (Slax is great because it fits on the mini-CD size discs which impresses folk no end!!) and boot them into it (GUI mode of course) to show them that an entire operating system which looks like Windows can run off the CD on their computer. If the LiveCD has an install option, leave it with them, and maybe, just maybe, you will have stirred the first inkling that there's a larger world out there.
To install Ad-aware and have it be up to date from the start, have a version of it on a known good machine, update that, then copy the reflist.ref file from your Lavasoft Ad-aware directory to your installer program location on CD or wherever.
After installing Ad-aware, copy the updated reflist.ref over to the install directory (make sure it is not set to Read Only if copying from CD), overwrite the old version and then run Ad-aware itself. It will have the latest reflist ready to go for you without needing to get online.
Yes, I know that Proxomitron development OF THE MAIN PROGRAM has stopped. However, development of the Filter Sets goes on every day, which is the REAL power of Proxomitron. As you say, JD's set is quite simply awesome, and he's working on the next release (I have the beta and it rocks). Unless the main program stops working on a future OS for some reason, there's nothing inherently wrong with it; certainly it's not to be dismissed because it hasn't been updated for a while.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Remember, Proxomitron's only purpose is as a proxy filter for your browser, accepting filter sets using its own language. It hasn't stopped doing that yet, so why move to somthing else? Just be grateful it hasn't bloated into some monstrosity and remains sleek and simple, fulfilling it's stated purpose admirably even today. I won't surf without it!
Finally, if you have a good filter set you've customised over time, why not save it as a ZIP or EXE (which I do), and then if you need to reinstall you can simply install Proxomitron, install your own filter set, and you're done!
Here in Australia, no matter which broadband ISP you go with, you need to pay our resident telco monopoly (Telstra) AUD$139 for the "privilege" of enabling broadband on that phone line. This make the economics of a free trial untenable unless you can convince a significant proportion of trial users to become full time broadband subscribers.
I'd love to see a few ISPs offer a free trial, but I fear that the ones who will are the biggest players, who offer the worst possible contracts compared to the real value ISPs. Not to mention that Telstra is able to defray the cost of enabling broadband 100% giving it an unfair competitive advantage (a subject for another post and the ACCC).
It simply is not being developed any more by the original author, Scott Lemmon. The heart of Proxomitron is not the program itself, but rather the excellent filter sets that people keep refining.
Here's the set I consider to be the best:
http://www.jd5000.net/
And here's some forums with constantly evolving filters:
"Antivirus software has become so beloated these days. I run Norton Antivirus on my Windows machine and it turns it into a lag terminal."
Norton certainly behaves this way. when I visit a client that has Norton on their machine, I recommend that to speed up their machine, they uninstall Norton and install the freeware antivirus checker called AntiVir:
www.free-av.com
They are always amazed at how getting rid of Norton Antivirus suddenly speeds up their system about 200%.
NAV used to be really good back in '99 or so, but recent versions have been bloatware hogs like nothing else I've ever seen!
Give AntiVir a try - you may be similarly amazed!!....and no, I have no affiliation with AntiVir, I just think it's the best and least bloated antivirus app out there (and it happens to be free which is a great bonus!)
"Only problem with SATA right now is that XP doesn't support it in the OS, so you have to download drivers to a floppy (a FLOPPY!) and hit F8 during boot to check for 3rd party drivers."
Not true necessarily. I have an Abit IC7 motherboard with a Pentium 4, which uses Intel's 875 chipset. The 875 (and 865) natively support SATA, so you don't need anything special to boot and install your OS. SATA RAID is a different animal (as are all RAID solutions), but straight SATA drives in my machine don't require any drivers at install time.
You may have an older board or a board with an add-in SATA controller, which often DO need install time drivers (F6 BTW not F8).
In short, native SATA support does exist, just not on your particular chipset I'd wager.
My Abit IC7 motherboard (and many, MANY others') had a northbridge heatsink clip fail due to bad soldering, which they used as a mechanical fastener. See the Abit forums for many examples with pictures:
http://forum.abit-usa.com/
In short, they used a U shaped clip (4 of them) and soldered the open ends into the motherboard. they then thought this would be a great way of holding high pressure heatsinks onto the northbridge chips.
Result - lots of people having one or more clips give way, thereby losing the heatsink from the northbridge, cooking it or destroying other components in the computer.
Suffice it to say that I used thermal epoxy with a passive heatsink on my board to overcome the problem. Other than the clip issues Abit boards have been very good, and I'm sure they've learnt their lesson for the next round of motherboards, but still, it created a lot of ill feeling towards them for the design in the first place.
Then grab the best filter set for it here: www.jd5000.net
The nice thing is, not only will it prevent popups, it'll tell you WHAT it killed. Makes it easy to work out what the weird popup is. I'd wager it's some form of JavaScript code which is written in stealth fashion to obfuscate it's true nature.
"Last I heard, the only thing you lost from being a convicted felon was your right to vote."
ONLY your right to vote? It's THE most important facet of a democracy.
This is such a ridiculous, anti-democratic law I don't know where to begin. Seems to be a law created so those in power who unjustly punished someone else back in the day don't have to worry about those people coming back and turning the tables on them by voting them out.
Suffice to say that the obvious solution for a government bent on tyranny would be to convict everyone of at least one crime, no matter how small. Voter problem solved, wouldn't you say?
Seriously, if you aren't filtering the web, I'd say you're not much brighter than those who don't filter email for spam. It's the same crap, just fed through a different medium.
Lots of arguments here for how to avoid a planetary extinction of the human race.
I'd venture a different line of thinking - are we worth saving as a species in the first place?
Think about it for a minute. The reason we want to save ourselves is a selfish one, not a necessary one. What do we contribute to the wider galaxy or universe? If we were made extinct, who would care? If you accept the possibility that the universe is teeming with life, then what makes us so special that another planetary species would consider us worth saving? After all, we continually kill one another, we look out for ourselves at the expense of others, we do whatever it takes to get one over the other guy.... we're not a really shining example of a species that deserves to survive, if you ask me.
Yes, I know that there are lots of good, well meaning people (I like to think I'm one of them). But on a planetary scale, if you were an alien civilisation, would you stop by and save us, or would you take one look at our barbarity and say "good riddance"?
Figures. Here I am at a client's house fixing his computer so the cable modem works again, and I'm trying to show him how good Proxomitron works with getting rid of all the Hotmail surrounding ads, and I can't even connect. He didn't believe me when I said that it was probably Hotmail being down....
Perhaps if it was some routine maintenance on Microsoft's part, they could forewarn people about it? It affects a lot of people's lives, whether free or not.
You may be interested in my political party (see sig).
Based on the internet, tech savvy, and certainly knowledgable about copyright concerns. Jump into our forums, become a member and actually shape our policies.
All Australians are welcome to become members and all international citizens are free to post in the forum and give your own views on subjects.
Installing Windows 2000 etc can be much faster if you slipstream the service pack and patches into the initial install CD, combined with an unattended install diskette:
http://www.geocities.com/ziyadhosein/
Then you carry around one more CD with all the programs ready to install, instead of downloading them off the net in situ.
I can have a naked(!) machine up and running with all programs and Win2k in about 2 hours.
Building is extra of course but that's a different kettle of fish.
Whilst that might be nice, we do need some sort of funding to generate advertising and meet setup costs. Donations are possible but it would be irresponsible to rely on them (this is not the US where donations are THE means for influencing party policy!).
Um, you did read our Membership and Forum pages didn't you?
We aren't charging any Membership UNTIL we get 500, that way no one is out of pocket until we are viable as a registered party. In fact, we even have an open poll in our forum asking people how much a membership fee should be, so those interested will have a direct say in how much they are paying, plus we have a clause in our Constitution to make sure the fee (whatever it ends up being) will not be raised by more than 10% in any calendar year.
Also, you can post in our forums regardless of whether you are a fully fledged Party Member or not. Simply register in the forum with a username and password and you'll be able to post. This goes equally for international citizens too.
I would say this though - the Constitution is a statement of principles. Policy is where the rubber meets the road. Our policies will be fashioned such that they abide by our Constitution; hence, there will not be specific implementations found in the Constitution itself.
The other difference is this - our policies will be shaped BY PEOPLE LIKE YOU. What I've tried to set up are the building blocks of a system whereby you with your own ideas can actually put them forth as suggested policy, which is then voted on by the Members. If you're a Member yourself, YOU can vote on the policy formation.
That's why the Constitution is written the way it is. It is idealistic because it has to be. The pragmatic stuff will be implemented as policy.
So what's the answer? Jump into our forums. TELL US how to implement your ideas. We'll listen, I assure you, and if the majority like your ideas, they WILL become policy. Then you can go into the election knowing that by voting for Net Effect, your policies will be acted on should we be successful.
" You'll have to do a bit more than just be politically correct. You're way too lukewarm (from the looks of your constitution) to gather any significant support."
Can you elaborate on what you mean? I don't think we are politically correct by a long shot....
Is your idea of a party that it must be radical and anarchistic, or some other adversarial system?
Slashdot Mirror
I've started an Australian political party based pretty much exactly along those lines (see sig for more info). Sadly I'm not getting any exposure and don't have the funds to get it, so I seem to be getting nowhere.
You may like to download my Party Constitution and read my other documentation/web pages. The Party is completely open in ALL its dealings, and it is constitutionally mandated to be so. Anything less, as you rightly elucidated, is a travesty of the political process as it should be.
Thanks for showing me that there are more than a few people who think the same way.
I find it highly disturbing that the US recoils in revulsion at the brutal beheading of one of its own, but bats nary an eyelid when superweapons designed to kill MILLIONS are announced. Just because you can visit death on people from afar, doesn't mean you are somehow morally superior. That is already painfully evident in Iraq and Afghanistan.
If we don't learn very quickly to put aside differences and work towards real peace, I fear we won't be celebrating the coming of the 22nd century, because we won't be around any more.
I remember when the story about mapping the fibreoptic infrastructure broke.
I also remember several months later, massive power grid failures in the US and UK among others, all within a reasonably short timeframe.
I thought even back then, while the two aren't directly related, that there was a possibility that someone had figured out the electrical grid chokepoints sufficiently to do a test run of sorts, to see if it worked or not, possibly inspired by the fibreoptic story.
My point is this - if you were a terrorist and wanted to hit hard again, why not follow standard military doctrine and cut off the enemy's power grid first? After all, we do it, so why wouldn't they do it as well? In all the confusion, that's when you conduct your real strike.
Thankfully, since the information is public, we too can look for potential chokepoints and demand of governments that they fix them or mitigate the risk by building in redundancy. If we don't keep this information public, we will not be able to hold governments accountable when they don't make the effort and the system fails when it's most needed. And if you can no longer hold your government accountable when they screw up, because you don't have access to the information you need to do it, then you are no longer in control, and they are ruling you, not governing on behalf of you.
I fix Windows computers onsite for clients. One of my advertising hooks is "Free CD" with every visit. How can I do this? Easy. I give them a CD full of free software, which I use every day so I can vouch for its worth and use. I show them that the only paid for software they need on their computer is Windows itself.
Most are convinced that free software is the way to go after only a few programs, notably Mozilla Firefox (no popups, browser hijack etc), Mozilla Thunderbird (no more junk mail after training the filters; no more virii) and OpenOffice.org (I simply tell them this works the same as MS Office, and set file saves to those formats if they need interoperability; if they think it's the same system, they amazingly seem to find the differences ok to work with, almost expected like in normal Office upgrades, whereas if you tell them it's a whole new system they seem to get stuck in the differences mindset).
After clearing off their virii with free alternatives, using Spybot S&D and Ad-aware to remove spyware (all free), they are more than willing to try the rest.
Note that this is only a first step. Start them with free (but not necessarily open) software. Users don't generally care about the difference. If they ask, show them how you can customise the css files in Firefox for example, explaining that open means you can create your own version to behave as YOU want it to.
Once you have successfully set up a Windows user with free software, they have embarked on the road to eventual dismissal of Windows altogether (except if they game, as I do!!).
If you want to go a step further, grab a Linux LiveCD (Slax is great because it fits on the mini-CD size discs which impresses folk no end!!) and boot them into it (GUI mode of course) to show them that an entire operating system which looks like Windows can run off the CD on their computer. If the LiveCD has an install option, leave it with them, and maybe, just maybe, you will have stirred the first inkling that there's a larger world out there.
To install Ad-aware and have it be up to date from the start, have a version of it on a known good machine, update that, then copy the reflist.ref file from your Lavasoft Ad-aware directory to your installer program location on CD or wherever.
After installing Ad-aware, copy the updated reflist.ref over to the install directory (make sure it is not set to Read Only if copying from CD), overwrite the old version and then run Ad-aware itself. It will have the latest reflist ready to go for you without needing to get online.
Yes, I know that Proxomitron development OF THE MAIN PROGRAM has stopped. However, development of the Filter Sets goes on every day, which is the REAL power of Proxomitron. As you say, JD's set is quite simply awesome, and he's working on the next release (I have the beta and it rocks). Unless the main program stops working on a future OS for some reason, there's nothing inherently wrong with it; certainly it's not to be dismissed because it hasn't been updated for a while.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Remember, Proxomitron's only purpose is as a proxy filter for your browser, accepting filter sets using its own language. It hasn't stopped doing that yet, so why move to somthing else? Just be grateful it hasn't bloated into some monstrosity and remains sleek and simple, fulfilling it's stated purpose admirably even today. I won't surf without it!
Finally, if you have a good filter set you've customised over time, why not save it as a ZIP or EXE (which I do), and then if you need to reinstall you can simply install Proxomitron, install your own filter set, and you're done!
Here in Australia, no matter which broadband ISP you go with, you need to pay our resident telco monopoly (Telstra) AUD$139 for the "privilege" of enabling broadband on that phone line. This make the economics of a free trial untenable unless you can convince a significant proportion of trial users to become full time broadband subscribers.
I'd love to see a few ISPs offer a free trial, but I fear that the ones who will are the biggest players, who offer the worst possible contracts compared to the real value ISPs. Not to mention that Telstra is able to defray the cost of enabling broadband 100% giving it an unfair competitive advantage (a subject for another post and the ACCC).
Another cost would be that of the modem itself.
http://www.proxomitron.info/
It simply is not being developed any more by the original author, Scott Lemmon. The heart of Proxomitron is not the program itself, but rather the excellent filter sets that people keep refining.
Here's the set I consider to be the best:
http://www.jd5000.net/
And here's some forums with constantly evolving filters:
http://www.computercops.biz/forum-cat14.html
http://www.cheatandwin.com/~proxo/forums/
"Antivirus software has become so beloated these days. I run Norton Antivirus on my Windows machine and it turns it into a lag terminal."
....and no, I have no affiliation with AntiVir, I just think it's the best and least bloated antivirus app out there (and it happens to be free which is a great bonus!)
Norton certainly behaves this way. when I visit a client that has Norton on their machine, I recommend that to speed up their machine, they uninstall Norton and install the freeware antivirus checker called AntiVir:
www.free-av.com
They are always amazed at how getting rid of Norton Antivirus suddenly speeds up their system about 200%.
NAV used to be really good back in '99 or so, but recent versions have been bloatware hogs like nothing else I've ever seen!
Give AntiVir a try - you may be similarly amazed!!
"Only problem with SATA right now is that XP doesn't support it in the OS, so you have to download drivers to a floppy (a FLOPPY!) and hit F8 during boot to check for 3rd party drivers."
Not true necessarily. I have an Abit IC7 motherboard with a Pentium 4, which uses Intel's 875 chipset. The 875 (and 865) natively support SATA, so you don't need anything special to boot and install your OS. SATA RAID is a different animal (as are all RAID solutions), but straight SATA drives in my machine don't require any drivers at install time.
You may have an older board or a board with an add-in SATA controller, which often DO need install time drivers (F6 BTW not F8).
In short, native SATA support does exist, just not on your particular chipset I'd wager.
My Abit IC7 motherboard (and many, MANY others') had a northbridge heatsink clip fail due to bad soldering, which they used as a mechanical fastener. See the Abit forums for many examples with pictures:
http://forum.abit-usa.com/
In short, they used a U shaped clip (4 of them) and soldered the open ends into the motherboard. they then thought this would be a great way of holding high pressure heatsinks onto the northbridge chips.
Result - lots of people having one or more clips give way, thereby losing the heatsink from the northbridge, cooking it or destroying other components in the computer.
Suffice it to say that I used thermal epoxy with a passive heatsink on my board to overcome the problem. Other than the clip issues Abit boards have been very good, and I'm sure they've learnt their lesson for the next round of motherboards, but still, it created a lot of ill feeling towards them for the design in the first place.
Join a nascent political party that will get a member who represents YOU elected.
See sig for more info.
Grab the program from: www.proxomitron.info
Then grab the best filter set for it here: www.jd5000.net
The nice thing is, not only will it prevent popups, it'll tell you WHAT it killed. Makes it easy to work out what the weird popup is. I'd wager it's some form of JavaScript code which is written in stealth fashion to obfuscate it's true nature.
Hope this helps!
"Last I heard, the only thing you lost from being a convicted felon was your right to vote."
ONLY your right to vote? It's THE most important facet of a democracy.
This is such a ridiculous, anti-democratic law I don't know where to begin. Seems to be a law created so those in power who unjustly punished someone else back in the day don't have to worry about those people coming back and turning the tables on them by voting them out.
Suffice to say that the obvious solution for a government bent on tyranny would be to convict everyone of at least one crime, no matter how small. Voter problem solved, wouldn't you say?
"But Tom's review is a little more drawn out"
Seriously, if you aren't filtering the web, I'd say you're not much brighter than those who don't filter email for spam. It's the same crap, just fed through a different medium.
www.proxomitron.info
or
www.privoxy.org
Do yourself a HUGE favour!
Lots of arguments here for how to avoid a planetary extinction of the human race.
I'd venture a different line of thinking - are we worth saving as a species in the first place?
Think about it for a minute. The reason we want to save ourselves is a selfish one, not a necessary one. What do we contribute to the wider galaxy or universe? If we were made extinct, who would care? If you accept the possibility that the universe is teeming with life, then what makes us so special that another planetary species would consider us worth saving? After all, we continually kill one another, we look out for ourselves at the expense of others, we do whatever it takes to get one over the other guy.... we're not a really shining example of a species that deserves to survive, if you ask me.
Yes, I know that there are lots of good, well meaning people (I like to think I'm one of them). But on a planetary scale, if you were an alien civilisation, would you stop by and save us, or would you take one look at our barbarity and say "good riddance"?
Figures. Here I am at a client's house fixing his computer so the cable modem works again, and I'm trying to show him how good Proxomitron works with getting rid of all the Hotmail surrounding ads, and I can't even connect. He didn't believe me when I said that it was probably Hotmail being down....
Perhaps if it was some routine maintenance on Microsoft's part, they could forewarn people about it? It affects a lot of people's lives, whether free or not.
You may be interested in my political party (see sig).
Based on the internet, tech savvy, and certainly knowledgable about copyright concerns. Jump into our forums, become a member and actually shape our policies.
All Australians are welcome to become members and all international citizens are free to post in the forum and give your own views on subjects.
http://www.proxomitron.info/
Grab 4.5j and add the following filter set:
http://www.jd5000.net/
JD is constantly refining his filters and they are a match made in heaven, I assure you.
Give it a try.
Installing Windows 2000 etc can be much faster if you slipstream the service pack and patches into the initial install CD, combined with an unattended install diskette:
http://www.geocities.com/ziyadhosein/
Then you carry around one more CD with all the programs ready to install, instead of downloading them off the net in situ.
I can have a naked(!) machine up and running with all programs and Win2k in about 2 hours.
Building is extra of course but that's a different kettle of fish.
If you don't want to pay a Disney tax then import Region 4 Australian DVDs (PAL formatted though).
a y. htm
Madman Entertainment and the AV Channel are the local distributors for Ghibli productions, and they usually have dual audio versions.
Here's a review of the Australian Spirited Away compared to the US and Asian versions (remove whitespace):
http://207.136.67.23/film/dvdcompare/spiritedaw
The entire Ghibli catalogue is not yet available but it's worth keeping an eye out on Australian DVD review sites, such as:
http://www.michaeldvd.com.au/
for reviews and specs compared to the US counterparts.
Hope this helps.
Whilst that might be nice, we do need some sort of funding to generate advertising and meet setup costs. Donations are possible but it would be irresponsible to rely on them (this is not the US where donations are THE means for influencing party policy!).
Um, you did read our Membership and Forum pages didn't you?
;)
We aren't charging any Membership UNTIL we get 500, that way no one is out of pocket until we are viable as a registered party. In fact, we even have an open poll in our forum asking people how much a membership fee should be, so those interested will have a direct say in how much they are paying, plus we have a clause in our Constitution to make sure the fee (whatever it ends up being) will not be raised by more than 10% in any calendar year.
Also, you can post in our forums regardless of whether you are a fully fledged Party Member or not. Simply register in the forum with a username and password and you'll be able to post. This goes equally for international citizens too.
Have another look
Thanks for the response.
I would say this though - the Constitution is a statement of principles. Policy is where the rubber meets the road. Our policies will be fashioned such that they abide by our Constitution; hence, there will not be specific implementations found in the Constitution itself.
The other difference is this - our policies will be shaped BY PEOPLE LIKE YOU. What I've tried to set up are the building blocks of a system whereby you with your own ideas can actually put them forth as suggested policy, which is then voted on by the Members. If you're a Member yourself, YOU can vote on the policy formation.
That's why the Constitution is written the way it is. It is idealistic because it has to be. The pragmatic stuff will be implemented as policy.
So what's the answer? Jump into our forums. TELL US how to implement your ideas. We'll listen, I assure you, and if the majority like your ideas, they WILL become policy. Then you can go into the election knowing that by voting for Net Effect, your policies will be acted on should we be successful.
" You'll have to do a bit more than just be politically correct. You're way too lukewarm (from the looks of your constitution) to gather any significant support."
Can you elaborate on what you mean? I don't think we are politically correct by a long shot....
Is your idea of a party that it must be radical and anarchistic, or some other adversarial system?