Matt May and I, as well as a few others, have been talking about the new campaigns, Dean, open source, and other things.#

Matt May replies to Ryan Overbey's criticism of his style of writing and argumentation.#

Okay, here's where I have to come clean. I'm a sarcastic bastard. I'd registersarcasticbastard.com if it weren't already taken. You can call me a sarcastic bastard to my face, and I'll probably still buy the next round. If you don't like my writing style, no hard feelings. I wrote a column for a magazine for three years, during which time I was called both a "Misinformed Minion of Microsoft" and an "anti-Microsoft Linux bigot." In consecutive issues. The point being, I know how to piss off a diverse range of people simply by saying what I'd ordinarily say. I discovered early on that my penchant for getting people's blood boiling translated well online. Woohoo, I thought, this Internet thing is for me.

[...]

Okay. I am, technically, an academic. And I do, from time to time, write academic-ish papers. But outside of work, this site represents what I choose to write and how I choose to write it. Some people like it, and add my RSS feed. Others don't, and go away. This is the marketplace of ideas, and I as idea vendor get to choose how I offer my wares.

Matt May next replies to my response to him. The introduction game is so fun.#

One of the fundamental things that runs through this discussion is whether we are (and should be) talking about how things are now, how we'd like to be soon, or what the ideal would be. Both of us mix all these things together and not necessarily in a very clear way.

I feel that I focus much more how current trends are failing to properly assemble the ideal that I see in my dreams. (NB: The ideal is not a situation, it is a process to come to that situation. See Karl Popper and the idea of an Open Society.) So much of my approach is to point at how people who seem to promote the ideal are being hypocritical with the vast difference between their words and their actions.

It seems, on the other hand, that Matt focuses primarily on how great the incremental steps taken recently are compared to the past. While the vision is on the horizon, it is a mere backdrop that is not given much focus and is not something that people must be held accountable for.

Neither of these approaches is "better" than the other. They are both essential for the proper balance and proper end. As Matt May said, he is looking at now out of fear and I am looking at the future out of hope. Some quantities of these two will render the elixir... what ratio is unknown.

 

On the nature of politics...

The thing is, few of us are lawyers, and even fewer of us subscribe to the Congressional Record. We do not know -- we cannot know -- the content and context of the laws being proposed, not to mention the agendas of those involved. Things get twisted around. That's politics. What we can do, realistically, is follow the people and organizations who represent themselves to match our individual politics. That includes aligning oneself with a candidate, or, say, the Sierra Club, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, etc., in order to have a better grasp of things. Simply reading the paper, or watching TV, is insufficient. I think Jay will agree with me on that. But the point I'm trying to make is that politics are complex by nature.

This is a prime example of looking at the present and near future. The old system is confusing and the politicians and organizations currently in power have a clear advantages. Thus, the best solution is to work within that system by making organization member easier and more efficient as well as figuring out more "grassroots" ways of funding candidates. So, in this case the new strategy of many campaigns is great because it tries to make the best of a corrupt system.

But, when Matt says "we cannot know" I take great issue. It is not okay, in my opinion, to just say "Oh that's politics! They're going to screw us and we know it so just relax and take the chains with a smile." The only reason that it is hard to know the content and context of laws or that politics is complicated is because they do it on purpose. The political system is setup in a way that allows "stealth legislation" techniques; that makes it very difficult to get that Congressional Record without paying nearly $500 a year; that supports a media monopoly that would report whatever the politicians want to report; etc.

The system is not open enough and not good enough because the people in power did and we let them. This is the system that many believe is based on the "neo-con's" faith in the ideas of Leo Strauss: (whom Wolfowitz and Shulsky took doctorates under)

Something of a cult developed around Strauss during his later years at Chicago, and he and some admirers figure in the Saul Bellow novel, "Ravelstein." The cult is appropriate because Strauss believed that the essential truths about human society and history should be held by an elite, and withheld from others who lack the fortitude to deal with truth. Society, Strauss thought, needs consoling lies.

He held that philosophy is dangerous because it brings into question the conventions on which civil order and the morality of society depend. This risks promoting a destructive nihilism.

I do not want my government to think it is okay to lie to me, pat me on the head, and say, "You couldn't possibly understand the content and context of the laws being proposed, so just sign up with this focus group and one of us will take care of you."

 

I can agree with most of this comment about the Internet and technology not being panacea...

I don't think that putting everyone in front of a message board is a solution, either. Half of the country still doesn't use the Internet regularly, and even fewer use it daily. Jay, you and I are the exception. People will not on the whole voluntarily make time to argue politics on a Web site. Remember also that pegging participation in anything to the Internet is a heavy burden for those who can't afford computers or, say, free time, which means the current state of discussion skews rich. The use of technology and community in the 2004 election is a good sign, but not a panacea.

Technology is a tool and like any tool it matters how you use it. So if we want to continue using this tool then we have to protect it and promote its use. To me this is a core of some of Dave Winer's arguments and suggestions to the candidates:

The point being, if a candidate really believes in the vision but has doubts about it working today so they don't pursue it, then what they should do is support policies to make it a reality. I don't seem them making a stand for the future and would love to be proved wrong.

A few subtler points in this paragraph I want to underline. Just because the Internet is skewed towards the rich, it is important to note that old system is skewed towards the super-rich, and it is thus an improvement. Also, based on my Libertarian-ish ideas, if enough people do not feel an policy is important enough to "voluntarily make time to argue" about it, then maybe it shouldn't be a policy? Why are we happy with a government that does things to us we don't want it to do, and why do we let it do things to others that we could care less about?

 

Related to the tail of the last paragraph, but sufficiently distinct, is the discussion of how involved the people should be in the running of the country.

The entire purpose of representative democracy is to ensure that the will of the people is done in a calm, reasoned fashion. People get to make their elected officials listen at the rate of once every two to six years. Certainly, officials who doesn't listen at all while defying the will of the constituency will be removed in due time -- or immediately, if their offenses are egregious. [...]

But laws of physics, specifically relating to space-time, limit the ability of humans to listen to everyone around them. There comes a time when a politician has to make a call, and that's what we elect them to do. The best we can ask of candidates who need to reach out to voters is that they be honest, confident, and have some convictions upon which we can rely. We can give candidates our opinions, and vote on their stances on them, but eventually, they have to make decisions on a day-to-day basis, and each one is going to upset some group of constituents.

So this is the distinct between Delegate and Trustee, and further -- at what level should we delegate? I agree that there should not be a vote about every single issue. The best solution, in my opinion, would be to allow a vote whenever the people cared enough to make one. Currently, you can contact your representatives is a very ad-hoc, unreliable, and unresponsive way. I can call and get put on hold, email and not get answered, mail and get a template letter back, protest and be hidden from sight. This is not representative democracy. This is "electing" dictators.

I want to have a say. I want people who claim I'll have a say when they get elected to give me a say right now. I want to be more than a vote for an idea, I want to be a generator of ideas. I want to be more than a source of money. And I want all of you to be too!

 

Matt's closing comment on a 'direct democracy'...

I have a laundry list of problems with the social dynamics of the political scene. Many of them go away when the money is taken out of politics. Some do not. But on the whole, I'm happier with this than I would be with a direct democracy of 280 million people. If everyone voted on September 12, 2001, the entire Middle East would today be a sheet of glass.

This is probably a joke, but I comment regardless. Protecting ourselves from that sort of result is what a division of power and mutual restraint would be effective at. If the country had the right amount of information and foresight, I don't think that would even be proposed. But if it was, and if it was past, then that horrible country would deserve whatever they got.

The central concern of this whole thing is our values. Do we value personal freedom? Do we value human life? It seems to me that those who accept the chains of "our democracy" do not truly value freedom and Liberty, or else they would not accept such coercion. I think that in our hearts we care for our Liberty and the people have simply been enslaved and battered for so long that hope has been lost. But hope can be restored and I believe it will.

 

I'd like to thank Matt for providing a framework for me to think about these things within.