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This site is intended to accomplish a few things:
1) It is designed to help develop libertarian thought, and to be a source of discussion and information for all of those interested in such thinking.
2) It is designed to help develop Libertarian political strategy. Currently the LP has a reasonable platform, but it focuses too much on the ideal and not enough on the next step. A great deal must be done before the goals of the LP can be met, and while I agree with most of the official platform, I think that most people, even if they agree, do not find it realistic. More focus must be placed on how we get back to a place of freedom, instead of on how to define that final goal. This is how we will attract voters who are not already libertarian. Voters who want changes but desire realism. Voters who fear extremes but despise their current choices.
3) It is designed to help my own thought and my own writing. I have found that blogging is a wonderful way to test your thinking. Placing one’s thoughts out for all to see and scrutinize, and then opening up discussion to allow the thoughts and perspectives of others to contribute is a fantastic exercise in thinking. I have developed much of my thinking on blogs, and have found that I had to change many things, or think them through better, or find more facts to support my positions, or simply to say them better. Also, I think my writing gets better and better. Maybe my goal of writing a book one day will be helped along by putting my ideals down in short form first.
4) I like doing this. And I enjoy hearing the thoughts of others. It is with great joy that I engage in this global conversation. Thus the goal of this site is to bring some enjoyment to myself.
I hope that this venue presents information and thought that is of value to you. That is promotes thought and helps you in your goals as well. I hope that all here will respect each other and each others ideas and perspectives as they all hold value. This is an arena of ideas, a venue to voice thought.
Mr. Smith: I observe what seems to be a government that operates as rulers of the people rather than someone elected to a government positon with the promise to serve and protect the people. Efforts to solve current problems are fragmented and quarrelsome. Based on what I read in blogs, the majority of people no longer believe they can affect the government’s actions. This insecurity and impotence is manifest as hate towards anyone outside their immediate ’sphere of security’.
I don’t have a magical solution, but I have put the following document together and am sharing it via blogs. I apologise in advance if this blog is an irritant.
Victor Morris [http://www.constitution2011.com]
Oregon, USA
July 2009
Proposal: Renew the Constitution of the United States and use it as the focus for redesigning the government’s role and responsibility in supporting the Constitution.
Overview: This is possible due to the availability of the internet for open and rapid communication, performed by volunteers. All done online, with volunteers. Citizens could go to voting centers as usual to vote when needed for extended input and final decision making. All citizens should be required to learn how to use the internet.
Step 1: Set up a central communications system whereby any citizen can provide input, modify input and vote on final statements. All aspects of the project will be transparent to every citizen.
The Wikipedia approach provides a very workable model for collecting, disseminating, approving and archiving the input for this project.
Step 2: Begin developing statements of RIGHTS to be included.
The current Bill of Rights provides a good model. As individual descriptions of Rights are collected they will be categorized and made available for input/modification a la Wikipedia to the public at large.
It seems that there will likely be as many as 50 different categories of Rights. Volunteers will join one or more category designations to provide input.
This might produce a working list of upwards of 1,000 specific Rights. Cross-referencing will permit easy access to the information.
Step 3: Starting with the working list of Rights, move to developing RESPONSIBILITIES appropriate for each of the Rights. The intent here is to identify all possible Responsibilities for all citizens for all Rights. It is likely that the list of Responsibilities will be longer than the list of Rights.
Step 4: Create an ‘order of importance’ for Rights and Responsibilities. We will need some approach to setting values for Rights make decisions when conflicts arise.
Step 5: The next effort will be to describe when an ABUSE of Rights and Responsibilities occurs. How can one have Rights without corresponding Responsibilities?
Different categories of abuses might include not only civil and criminal, personal and public, business and arts, and perhaps moral and ethical.
Step 6: When an abuse occurs, what is the appropriate penalty?
A proactive approach should be developed to help citizens avoid abusing others. One requirement could be that every citizen be able to go online to a ‘Rights and Responsibilities Forum’. This Forum would be operated similarly to those that currently provide feedback concerning problems with computers.
Types of penalties can include punishment, incarceration, isolation, re-education, etc. Under what conditions does a citizen have the Right to choose to abuse other citizens?
Step 7: Develop the public structures that are most appropriate for meeting the needs of the citizens based on the above.
If this model is followed (and continually improved by using the same or a similar process) then the structure needed to ‘preserve, serve and protect’ should be much simpler than the current one.
An interesting concept. I see some potential issues with respect to the infrastructure cost and maintenance, a with the potential for democracy rule. It is quite easy to have the best ideas voted out by those who want a quick fix. Democracies end up being the tyranny of the majority. Still, it is interesting, I will look at this further, and perhaps comment again.