Idea Free Zone

I watched substantial portions of both the RNC and DNC Convention.

My first observation was that the conventions contained almost no new information. Both conventions were about positioning their presidential candidate, while framing the opposition in a negative light. The conventions themselves were idea free zones.

I feel that the parties are bringing our nation to the brink of failure and there is nothing that the millions of people who are disgusted with the parties can do about it. The corrupt parties have the people locked out.

I wish to emphasize that the parties were not part of the Constitution. The US Founders hated factions. Sadly, they failed to anticipate the two party system.

In my post on the Hegelian Left and Right, I argue that the parties (both Conservative and Progressive) seem to reflect the rational style of the royalist opposition to our experiment in self rule.

Both the DNC and RNC had the same form. Both conventions focused exclusively on the presidential race, and both conventions really pushed ideas to the back burner.

The political parties are top-down centralized constructs. The form of the parties creates a political dynamic that favors political and economic centralization.

Because of the structure of the parties, America is forces into an unending cycle of economic and political consolidation regardless of which party wins.

The president is the head of the Party. If Romney wins the presidency, his inclination will be to move to the center in preparation for the 2016 election. In his efforts to shift left, he will silence the free-market voices in the Republican party while passing legislation to expand the state.

To counter Romney's moving left, Democrats will move radically left.

The absurd structure of the partisan system actually means that it is better for the freedom movement to lose the presidency. If Obama wins a lame duck term, he will have to bunker down to defend the unwarranted government expansion of his first term. If Obama wins because Libertarians split the vote, we would have four years in which both the Democrats and Republicans competed for the freedom vote.

During the conventions, I kept vacillating between which candidate I want to vote against most. Voting against both presidential candidates by going third party is the best route.