The Realist Party

[Conservationist]

The Realist Party (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

We are not conservatives or liberals. We are people who think there are patterns to reality we should pay attention to. For this reason, we want politics guided by adaptation to reality and not debate over what "ought" to be.

* The root of all environmental problems is land overuse. If we want our environment to be healthy, we need to use one-third of the land and leave the rest in an unbroken, unfenced state for nature.

* While capitalism is not ideal, we need some kind of system that rewards those who are organized and dedicated and smart, and does not subsidize the others.

* Civilizations die when they accumulate lots of disillusioned, angry, directionless people.

* Liberalism takes a fundamentally negative stance toward collaboration by defending the individual. It encourages breakdown, which creates directionless, angry, disillusioned people.

* Mass media can be as destructive as bullets and needs to be regulated.

* Bureaucracies cannot fix problems. Having quality people with good brains dedicated to fixing them can. More bureaucracy means more state control.

* Without culture to say what should or should not be done, the profit motive of capitalism turns everything it touches into a lowest common denominator.

* Nations which have wealth are targets for those that do not. Our foreign policy should reflect this reality.

* Class divisions and struggle are inevitable as they are based on intelligence and dedication. Class warfare destroys nations.

* No product or technology should be created without a cradle-to-grave plan for handling its disposal and its side effects. Its effects should also be considered.

* Schools, hiring and other rewards should be strict meritocracies on the basis of competence only. No nepotism and no subsidies for those who are falling behind. Vocational education is a good idea.

* War, conflict, disagreement and being offended are a healthy part of life and we should never seek to eliminate them.

* People tend to like to live, work and play with people who share their values, culture, language, heritage and experience, and we should not inhibit this.

* Family-oriented people produce our future generations, and making our policies family-oriented is essential.

* Tolerance of exceptions does not mean everyone, universally, must be indoctrinated into accepting those exceptions.

* Drug use, alcohol use and excessive sexual behavior are signs of people who cannot control their own urges, and correlate highly with criminal activity.

* Government works best when it concentrates wealth and channels it into research and development of new technologies and building of new infrastructure.

* Because people who don't have what another person has will demand it from them, that person should never be compelled to give to others. They may be taxed so that wealth can be concentrated.

* All civilizations die, but this can be avoided with good decisions. If we get it wrong, we self-destruct. We should always remember what stakes we're playing for.

* The real challenge in life is not to get material things from others, but to improve yourself morally, intellectually, physically and in socioeconomic circumstance. Those who do this are the most productive members of any society.

Sounds good to me. I'm tired of political infighting, and our values no longer reflect anything approximating reality.

Our elites are manipulating those false values to make us approve of what they do, which is to give a little bit to charity and take a lot!

Most people are saturated in Big Media and totally confused. The existing opposition parties aren't actually in opposition to the problem.

I'm ready for a new option.

[themuzicman]

It's naive, it's vague, it's incoherent.

It's like libertarianism without objectivism: "If people would only..." Yeah, well, how are you going to make them do this.

If they actually got power, they'd be a horrid tyranny.

[hubcap]

I don't think I would like their "solutions".

[Nemesis]

I don't think I would like their "solutions".

Nor do I. I sense there would be some kind of moral police running around. Some of points are a nice thought (although many of them are contradictory), but the enforcement of them would be... not good.

[yoginimama]

Yeah, that platform is anything *but* realistic. The Realist Party? Not even close.

[Doppelbock]

I agree with themuzicman: it's naive, vague, and incoherent.

"The root of all environmental problems is land overuse." Evidence please?

"While capitalism is not ideal, we need some kind of system that rewards those who are organized and dedicated and smart, and does not subsidize the others." Are you saying capitalism is the system we need? I can't figure out what you are trying to say here.

Aaaand, it goes downhill quickly from there. Seriously, dude, WTF??

I prefer a Critical Thinking Party. You know, one that formulates opinions, makes decisions, and forms policies based on evidence and logic. Maybe I'll invent one since we don't have anything close to that now.

[jesse]

Some of the Realist Party points make sense to me while some do not. I was browsing through the pragmatism.us website, specifically the platform section.

The part regarding government spending would be similar to my line of thought excluding the part on self-sufficiency. Integrating and enaging others through trade is probably a much better item than constantly rattleling your sabres and dropping threats like they're going out of style because country Y refuses to tow the line set forth by country X.

I also found the manifest on how the state becomes a bureaucratic hellhole where a decision is made and it is applied on its citizens and residents through a bizarre mix of carrot and stick methodology. People _should_ make these decisions by themselves instead of relying on some bureaucracy and institution believing to have the correct answer for each and everyone which they will fail to have in every case.

The case against trade unions was also largely in agreement with my own views because they become a problem onto themselves by restricting and limiting the choice of workers and then lock them into a bureaucratic and centralized system where there is room for only one set of policies and values. I see no problem in workers joining up and voicing concern for their working conditions, however there is a limit to what is reasonable and what is outright coercion and blackmail.

These people are dead in the water; they would never get voted through even if they were the last party standing. The party also seems to be fully convinced they have all the answers to every single imaginable problem. Something I do not agree with, and besides, much of their rhetoric is more so ranting and raving rather than sound policy.

[Functianalyst]

Sounds good to me. I'm tired of political infighting, and our values no longer reflect anything approximating reality.

Our elites are manipulating those false values to make us approve of what they do, which is to give a little bit to charity and take a lot!

Most people are saturated in Big Media and totally confused. The existing opposition parties aren't actually in opposition to the problem.

I'm ready for a new option.Before I opened this thread, I had predetermined what Reality Politics would consist of. What is the difference in what you post and Conservatism? I think that at some point the Centrist Party (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) will need to be looked at since arguably about 70% of us share those views.

[hubcap]

Personally I didn't see many similiarities between the Realist positions and conventional conservative positions. There were some loosely worded positions that could be interpreted in several ways, but for the most part it appears that the Realist platform is a hodgepodge.

A practical application of many of their positions would necessitate eliminating a good portion of the Bill of Rights of the Constitution.

Personally, I'm not in favor of doing that.

[Mader]

Land overuse? no,

Land abuse. either direct destruction or using the land the wrong way - over hunting, dumping toxic chemicals, draining wetlands. Keeping 2/3 of land untouched would be ideal, now, how to do that - no more subdivisions, no more shopping malls, no more industrial parks, no more energy plants, no more water treatment plants, no more nickel or lithium mines. Responsible land use is the answer. 2/3 untouched is a great ideal, tho.


Limiting the press. Sorry, no.

Teaching classical thinking, yes, so the individual can weed out the crap. People can then vote with their remote control or computer.


No subsidies for those who are falling behind in schools. No.

Some children struggle with a particular subject or a particular part of a subject where a little extra help can make the difference between mastering the subject or always falling behind. Programs for those with disabilities are beneficial to society (making the disabled more independent and self-supporting) but mainstreaming may not be the ideal. Vocational training is a great idea, not everyone is college bound.

[Hamburglar]

Not to mention this would completely F up international relations theorists to NO end

we really don't need big R and little r Realism. And who gets the big R???? :(

[Night Runner]

Like all other political systems, this one has an inherent flaw: the human factor. If people were more like ants, we would be able to find a balanced system and make it work. But we're not, so we won't. Any political system, any imperial dynasty has its rise, its mid-age, and then a decline, brought upon by stagnation, corruption, and nepotism - or a combination thereof...

[Grimstad]

Nor do I. I sense there would be some kind of moral police running around. Some of points are a nice thought (although many of them are contradictory), but the enforcement of them would be... not good.

Yeah, that platform is anything *but* realistic. The Realist Party? Not even close.

Before I opened this thread, I had predetermined what Reality Politics would consist of. What is the difference in what you post and Conservatism? I think that at some point the Centrist Party (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) will need to be looked at since arguably about 70% of us share those views.
What they said. I am definitely looking deeper into that Centrist Party. Thanks for the link.

[Paul Siraisi]

Agree on more points than not.

The problem with reality is that people suck at understanding it and expressing it.

Building a political platform on allegience to reality contradicts a lot of what makes politics work--simple ideas that can get a big, dumb crowd behind them.

[Conservationist]

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I guess when you wake up and find out that, despite all the happy admonitions from people around you who desperately want to believe what they are saying, your society is in decline you realize you have a choice: either go with the decline, or try to stand against it.

New Realism starts with a simple principle: look at the world larger than the self. Even more, realize that it’s a smoothly functioning machine and therefore, we should try to understand it instead of yelling at it how we think it’s unfair or awful. It got us to where we are. We should take it seriously.

New Realism (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.************/2009/organization/new-realism/)


Probably too much for most of the lazy students of political philosophy here, but an interesting approach, literally reversing the modern time.

[themuzicman]

i thought we had a thread on this already, and it turned out that this was very onerous.

[firebee]

Actually, if you skip over the trendy "let's all sing the doom song" talk and the petty jabs at teh libruls, they do advance some ideas worth discussing.

Intelligence is innate and cannot be changed.

I can't be arsed to fish out my reply to Conservationist's previous "fwd: Fwd: FWD: Re: cliche-ridden conservative rantij" that dealt wholly with the subject of stupidity, but one of the points that I made in there was this: It seems likely that people do in fact vary in innate ability, and that a society of any given size is going to consist of individuals who are unavoidably gifted or non-gifted to varying degrees in varying areas. Therefore, we cannot simply write off people who lack innate intellectual gifts as needing to "get smart or die", but rather we need to find a stable social position for said people that allows them to contribute to society and prosper according to what merits they possess.

I shall refrain from quoting the Havamal. This time.

Furthermore, people should have roles according to their abilities, not their willingness to endure more workplace hours than others.

This is an interesting one. The capacity to work long hours is something of a talent -- or the result of a combination of talents, possibly. Unfortunately, it seems that time and friction have caused us to elevate said talent (or single-mindedness, or short-sightedness) above all others.

A truce would be a good thing. As Heinlein says: "Specialization is for insects."

Instead, all consumption should be seen as a means to an end, and any reckless consumption as a sign of mental derangement.

The workplace death grind, incidentally, is reckless consumption of people's time. These play into one another -- the model of seeing one's life defined by a ladder that one must inexorably climb rather than as a sustainable system to refine leads inevitably to climbing the ladder of acquisition in parallel.

If one falls off the ladder of career aspiration while having one's balls tied to a high rung of the acquisition ladder, the results are not pretty.

Seeks unity among each of its parts.

I would say, "seeks unity within each of its parts". In something of a paradoxical fashion, attempting to create a culture that encompasses an entire nation with all of the contradictions inherent therein has created a lowest-common-denominator no-culture, and has in fact fractured our ability to find and reinforce human-scale community.

Perhaps we should take the concept of federalism as a model -- where communities are run on a local level according to the needs of their members, and the overarching national culture is a minimalist system of providing a functional interface among these smaller components?