New Political Party?

New Party Time, 9/20/00


Renfrew had just about had it with the current election season. The old hackneyed argument of more versus less government mouthed yet again by Democrats and Republicans, respectively, was of course easy to resolve and not philosophical in the least. Yes, it was purely practical. Two or three major ideas lay at the center of his crashing insight:

a) Bureaucracy is not a matter confined to centralized government. Business bureaucracies also exist, as for example HMOs, though that term is avoided like the plague in that context in the public arena.

b) Government bureaucracy at least claims to have a heart (when it dares to do so), while any such claim is clearly anathema to the bottom line approach of business.

c) Government bureaucracy is far preferable because its graft and corruption are far more visible to our watchdogs than would be the case if bureaucracy were dispersed amongst many private businesses out for themselves. Social Darwinism behind the closed doors of corporate privacy is clearly not in our public interest.

Renfrew knew that his next decision was therefore forced upon him by the operation of his intellect in a huge room where all the other lights had been turned off long ago — i.e., form his own political party as a beacon of truth. This was a frightening prospect inasmuch as he had never run for any political office, not even class president in public school. But nobody out there was championing the cause that called upon his action at this historical moment.

Would the Internet suffice to get his message out, and could that be achieved without recourse to SPAM mailings and with the very little money at his disposal? How could he hope to win any following under his new party slogan, “Let’s keep graft and corruption visible through more centralized government”?