Feminists Publicly Abort Jesus in Bloody Performance Art

A few days back I posted on Facebook about the recent obscene provocation to come from our demented feminist avant garde. My post garnered a few comments from friends sympathetic to my disgust, but also resistance from a British atheist friend which allowed me to explain some of my thinking on the key role the Christian tradition plays in our culture. I reproduce the comment thread here, having changed the names of the participants.

Go to this LifeSiteNews piece for an an account of what went down.



My caption on the Facebook post: “Horrendous, but not surprising. These people don't know the divide they're creating.”

Comment thread:

JOHN GREIST: This is just sick.

PAUL WILKS: If ever a group of assholes deserved a smiting . . .

GRACE LEE: Stupidity redefined.

KAREN DORN: This is appalling. I cannot fathom why so many women are choosing to speak out in such offensive, sacrilegious ways. This seems similar to the type of "speech" that is burning the American flag; there is something inherently violent about it. This will backfire. I am deeply offended and saddened that these demonstrations will only erode the diminishing options women will have, especially women of lesser means and resources.

DALE CHATWIN: Why not? Virgin birth? The concept does invite, even require, mockery. If a woman was given this blessing, then the question is why are women 2nd class citizens in most societies around the world? I am a feminist. Any woman who is not, has some pretty serious issues imo.

ERIC MADER: @Dale Chatwin: Don't be such a dull positivist vulgarian.

Two points:

1) If there exists a God anything like God as understood in Western monotheism, then the virgin birth as a literal event is of course eminently possible, as are any other miracles, including the universe suddenly folding up into nothing or being rearranged on entirely new laws. As an orthodox Christian, I view miracles in this lens.

2) There are however many Christians who do not believe in the virgin birth as a literal event, who understand it as a myth, but show respect to the story itself as an ancient part of their tradition, that Christian tradition that grounds some of the most crucial elements in their present-day culture: its legal norms, its concepts of history, its notions of justice, its critique of vulgar wealth and power.

On at least this second basis you might at least recognize that in mocking Christianity you are a little like the man high up in a tree sawing away at the branch he's sitting on.

In any case you should have enough of a sense of history to understand the following: All great civilizations have risen up on myths and died when these myths fell into disrepute. You as a person wouldn't be what you are today, and your country, England, wouldn't be what it is today if it weren't for Christianity. Many of the things you take for granted--the Western concept of human rights for one--arose from and because of the Judeo-Christian inheritance.

Which is to say: Westerners who think there's any virtue in mocking their own culture's religious tradition are like spoiled teenagers who scoff at their parents, the people who fed and raised and taught them. How do such kids look to you? This is where you're putting yourself with these kinds of statements.

KAREN DORN: Yes!

DALE CHATWIN: Did you mean The Vulgate? St. Jerome? I wager he would have been a laugh. Kind of bloke you'd be itching to share a pint of Guinness with.

Are you suggesting that The Life of Brian should be banned for mocking Christianity?

The Catholic Church: "Christian tradition...its critique of vulgar wealth and power." The Catholic Church is the epitome of vulgarity and obscene shows of wealth. The Vatican Bank. A church with a bank holding a minimum $8 billion. Very Christian. Jesus (or whatever his name was) would have been proud.

ERIC MADER: @Dale Chatwin. Typically, you haven't addressed a single one of my points.

DALE CHATWIN: Oh, dear. I thought I had addressed a few.

I find it difficult to take most of human history seriously, especially religious dogmas. I prefer a pinch of salt over everything.

Doesn't everyone scoff at their parents? Of course in religion, this is often terms for ostracism. Religious indoctrination begins in the home. The clothes worn, the food eaten.

I think you put too much emphasis on how tradition, both religious and secular, has formed my own personal belief system.

Anyone could write thousands of pages on what we, as a species, have learnt from history. The opposite is equally true.

The culture of monotheisms will also, given time, fall into myth.

Which points, specifically, am I missing?

DALE CHATWIN: Why shouldn't Christianity, or any other set of unsubstantiated, unproven, fanciful beliefs, be open to mockery like anything else? Are religious types that sensitive?

Poor dears.

ERIC MADER: Well, in fact if you go back and read my comments starting "Don't be such a . . ." I can't see how you imagine you've even addressed one of my points. Read those comments again, and then realize that your answer amounts to:

1) St. Jerome was a prude and would have been a bore to drink with (or, in another possible interpretation, would have been fun to tease over beers).

2) The Vatican Bank is corrupt.

One key thing that is preventing you from even seeing my points is that you don't understand myth in anything like a more anthropological sense. Your understanding of it is the common one (I dare say the vulgar one) as in: "People once believed the seasons were a result of Hades' rape of Persephone. Now we know that's a myth." In short, in your understanding, myths are essentially things that humanity overcomes via scientific advancements. In my understanding, this is not so, myth is still with us, and always will be. An enormous range of cultural phenomena is guided by thinking that is mythical; even the social thinking of secular, educated people is largely based on mythical constructs that can't be grounded in empirical research and in fact AREN'T grounded--but still prove decisive in culture. What is key, and in my view most dangerous, is that Enlightenment notions of reality have somehow convinced our contemporaries that their secular societies' norms are NOT grounded on myth, that they're based rather on reason and research, that their societies have largely left myth behind, and that progress means leaving more of myth behind. I say No. We have not left myth behind. We have just changed the names of the agents in our myths. Our very notions of the arc of history, of justice, of the power of reason as it relates to social reality and the universe, of progress, of human rights, etc.--all these are based on myths no less flimsy than the story of Hades and Persephone. And it will ALWAYS be so. Why? Because story and the stories we tell ourselves will always guide our group behavior. It is a fact that applies to Dawkins and Sam Harris as much as the Pope. The reason the former are shallow and the latter is not is that the former don't recognize this fact. They don't see the degree to which they're raising things discovered by empirical research to the level of guiding mythical principle. What science discovers about how the universe is structured (and it has discovered a lot) can tell us virtually nothing about existential or ethical questions. Those secularists who try to make science into a cultural guide are not practicing science any more--what they're doing is called scientism. Which is why serious philosophers, and many scientists besides, think the New Atheists are a joke and, in terms of the field of discourse the New Atheists are trying to enter, are in fact way out of their league.

So, to sum up: You still believe myth is something that is to be overcome. That's very 19th century of you. I however know that myth is something humans never overcome. You believe myth is inherently, to the extent it is believed, a negative thing. I believe we can't escape myth, that it is neither negative nor positive, but simply HUMAN, and the key is recognizing which myths show the deepest grasp of the human reality.

You write: "I think you put too much emphasis on how tradition, both religious and secular, has formed my own personal belief system." Sorry, but I think this is extremely naive. All of us, even the most skeptical, have been formed by tradition in ways we can't even fathom. That is what philosophy is for: to help us glimpse our own blind spots. In your case, even the nature and structure of your skepticism, how you see your skepticism as it relates to the relative naivety of others--even this is part of a tradition that you've internalized and modified in some ways. You say that you don't take history too seriously, that you take it with a grain of salt. Sure, but that doesn't mean you have escaped your inscription in history. To begin thinking is to think in language. To enter the realm of language is to be drawn into a lexicon of inherited concepts. End of story.

As usual, I didn't intend to type so much. I'll say one more thing. Given that you're a reader of John Gray, I'm amazed you seem so obtuse on this question of myth and how it is constitutive of culture, how it is inescapable on the social level. My point: On most of these issues, at least in terms of argument re: what myth is or how individual thinking can relate to traditions, Gray would agree with me.

Cheers. Since I took time to write all this, I hope you give it some thought.

DALE CHATWIN: That's a ten-course meal to get through . . . very French. Thanks.

A propos, I do not consider myself a New Atheist. I have no desire to proselytize one way or the other. I became an atheist long before the New Atheists took to the stage . . . long before I knew the meaning of the word atheist.

I searched for religious meaning on and off for years, but came to the conclusion that it really is all random, essentially meaningless, and misery for most of humankind. And who directs this misery? Well, humankind of course.

I believe humanity is a plague.

ERIC MADER: Bon appétit.

* * *

UPDATE: Rod Dreher at The American Conservative, writing on the same Argentine provocation, featured some of my remarks. In the comment thread that followed, various writers argued that I was mistaken in tracing so much of the political culture of the West back to the Christian influence. The real roots of our current institutions, so the argument goes, are classical Greece and Rome. You can check the thread there, but my basic response was the following:

ERIC MADER: Some here suggest that I’m mistaken in identifying Christian tradition as a key ground of our political and legal norms. And so Forbe, above, argues that the cloth of our political culture as Westerners is woven entirely of Greek and Roman materials.

Of course I’m well aware of the classical heritage. But I would say that this pagan heritage, while decisive in providing us most of our political terminology and many of our structural norms, does not finally account for certain huge differences between us and our ancient pagan models. Especially our concept of inalienable human rights, that political doctrine that all people, regardless of class or nation, are created equal and thus embody a fundamental dignity (before the law, before the divine, etc.) that is prior to accidents of class, race or gender. It is this doctrine that allowed the Christian West finally to defeat slavery, and this that explains things like the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The classical thinkers of Greece and Rome recognized no such thing. We have it because of the Christian soil from which we’ve sprung.

The earliest statement of such a fundamental equality is found in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. And really, there’s nothing else like it in in the ancient world: “So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3:26-28)

Race, class and gender are to take second place to a new fundamental equality? Gee, that stuffy old Apostle was quite radical, wasn’t he? Stop the presses, Slate and Salon! Your grounding social doctrine, the very litmus test by which you judge something progressive or not, is 2,000 years old. And, sorry to inform you, it came from one of those hateful Christians.

The Enlightenment, and the American Founders in particular, merely abstracted this “one in Christ” to “one in being created by the same Creator”. And so we have our modern concept of human rights.

When Rod suggests that these Argentinian feminists are unwittingly undermining the very conceptual ground on which they stand, this is what he means. Not just the radical feminists, but the whole sick SJW crew is bent on savaging the hand that feeds them. I agree with Rod on the stupidity of it. They certainly will not like what their hardball identity politics becomes once the other side begins to practice it. Which is already happening.

Check out my Idiocy, Ltd. at Amazon.com and begin the long, hard reckoning.

Bill Nye's Abortion Argument is Ethically Hollow

Just watched the recent short clip of Bill Nye the "Science Guy” lecturing people on why they should support abortion rights. Nye shows, yet again, the amazingly shoddy ethical understanding these “science guys” often have. It's almost embarrassing to listen to him. (I’m not going to link the video. Go find it on Google yourself if you like.)

Nye argues that we shouldn’t insist an individual’s humanity begins at conception because, consider, many fertilized eggs don’t attach to the wall of the womb and thus don’t survive anyway. Nye apparently thinks this fact of human reproduction carries ethical weight. His point seems to be: “See, if these fertilized eggs die, why not just give ourselves the right to kill those other fertilized eggs that do in fact attach to the womb and begin to develop?”

The "Science Guy's" easygoing demeanor in this clip shouldn’t obscure the obvious: His ethical logic here is appalling.

That many fertilized eggs don’t attach to the womb is merely an accident of nature. It does not carry ethical weight of any kind and cannot direct us at all in assessing the ethical status of abortion.

One can see Nye’s logic in all its glory if one merely applies it to a test case.

Suppose there is a mountain village in Guatemala that suffers a landslide which kills 85 of its 102 inhabitants. Earth tremors triggered the landslide, burying most of the village in the predawn hours. The traumatized survivors wait for rescue.

That landslide, like Nye’s point about fertilized eggs that don’t attach to the womb, is an accident of nature. That 85 of the villagers didn’t survive tells us nothing about the value of the survivors or how we must treat them.

How would Nye’s “humane” thinking apply in this landslide case?

In fact, according to Nye’s brilliant ethical sense, we might give ourselves the right to go in and kill those survivors rather than rescue them. After all, they 1) could easily have been among the victims and 2) it will be difficult to rescue and care for them.

At the end of the day, Nye might argue, we should “leave it up to the rescuers” to decide, because, after all, it’s their country.

If you think this kind of ethical logic deserves respect, well, you’re living in the right century. Welcome to the “scientific” understanding of ethics.

Nye’s ethics is not ethics at all, but merely a smartish guy talking out of his bow tie, if not out of some lower area of his person. This is the problem with so many science types when they attempt to speak on ethical issues. They don’t recognize that ethics is a branch of philosophy that requires serious questioning of premises and logical implications. They think they can just make it up as they go along, which is to say: They are no more qualified to speak on such issues than any old drunk on the street.

Bill Nye: Proving again that “science guys” have precisely nothing to tell you about what is right or wrong.

Eric Mader

Planned Parenthood? What about PLANNED RETIREMENT?

Imagine the year is 2035. And imagine that in most American cities one can find branches of a new national organization called Planned Retirement.

Planned Retirement has many defenders, and many detractors.

The organization’s policies are progressive. With help from the federal government, they provide low cost housing, food and limited medical care to people over 65. When a resident has reached the ripe age of 77, the organization sends a doctor to the resident’s room with the medical equipment needed to crush the resident’s head, thus ending his or her life. Any salvageable organs are sold to research institutes, and residents’ bodies are buried in landfills.

Many Americans, especially Christians, are strongly opposed to Planned Retirement’s practices. They argue that killing the elderly in this way is a form of murder and that the difficulty of caring for elderly people is no excuse to end their lives. They also argue that mass burial in unmarked graves and the marketing of the dead’s organs as “research material” is an obvious ruse to avoid facing the painful truth--namely, that each of these elders was a unique human being with the inalienable right to life.

In Congress there is a new effort to defund the organization because of its snuff policies. But liberals are up in arms in support of Planned Retirement. They want to focus the debate on the health care and housing Planned Retirement offers elderly people, thus diverting the public's attention from the issue that led to the push to defund, namely: Planned Retirement's practice of terminating human lives.

And so: “This is just another attack on elderly health care!” the liberals scream.

Besides being an obvious attempt to change the subject, there's a second element of dishonesty in this cry. Liberals actually mean to imply that those seeking to defund Planned Retirement are somehow motivated by a disrespect for elderly people. Which is interesting, to say the least.

But consider another detail of Planned Retirement policy: If the family of an elder resident chooses to terminate Mom or Dad or Grandma or Grandpa’s life before the age of 77, they can provide written consent for such termination.

The reasons people give for wanting their parents’ termination are various: “We don’t have time to visit her any more.” “We have a right to live our lives as we choose!” “The fees to keep Mom there are too much for my budget.”

In a widely shared rant in defense of Planned Retirement, liberal senator Elizabeth Warrick argues: “How can we dare interfere with these families when they are making what is probably the single most difficult decision of their lives? How can we dare?”

Senator Warrick seems think that the moral difficulty individuals might face in deciding to kill their parents or grandparents should carry more weight than the lives of those whose heads are to be crushed.

Again: Interesting argument.

My point:

If in the current American debate about defunding Planned Parenthood you’ve found yourself arguing that “This is an attack on women’s health care!” or “Abortions only account for 3% of Planned Parenthood’s services!” or “It’s a difficult decision! We shouldn’t presume to judge!”--well, congratulations: To me, as a Catholic, you sound precisely like those future liberals above arguing in support of “Planned Retirement”. Your arguments ring equally hollow are are equally beside the point.

The fact is that Christians and others are not opposed to Planned Parenthood because of some vague lurking misogyny. No, they are opposed to Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers because of one obvious truth: Just like the unfortunate elders in the above future scenario, the unborn are each unique human beings.

This is not merely Christian teaching, or some religious teaching, it is a scientifically demonstrable fact. Each unborn person has an integral human body and unique human DNA. As such, she or he is a unique human person and deserves the defense of the law, regardless of whether or not she or he has a name.

In terms of the ethics involved, my above dystopian tale of “Planned Retirement” offers a precise parallel to what the real organization Planned Parenthood is doing right now. Planned Parenthood serves the “health” of young mothers and their children in the same way that my fictional Planned Retirement serves the “health” of the elderly and their families. In both organizations, when people are judged to be inconvenient, they are snuffed.

Because of Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers, we already live in a dystopia. Defunding is the least they deserve.

What kind of wool is it, of what thickness, do American liberals have to keep pulling over their eyes to avoid seeing this? It must be morally exhausting to have to defend, for decades on end, such an Orwellian vision of humanity. Women's "health care"?

Last year Planned Parenthood ended the lives of an estimated 165,000 women, tossing their broken bodies, or at least those parts that couldn’t be sold, into the trash bin.

American liberals really don't get it. That wool must be damn thick.

Eric Mader

Human Tissue and the Meaning of sell

Planned Parenthood doctor Mary Gatter needs a new car.
Your child can help.
First, take a few minutes to watch the newly released video from the Center for Medical Progress. It’s embedded in an article at Breitbart, along with some transcripts.

What is going on here? Or rather: How can anyone continue to deny what's going on here? In their public pronouncements Planned Parenthood insists they don’t “sell” tissue from aborted children, that the clinics and their directors are making no profit from what they call “transfer” of tissue. But in the video, a senior Planned Parenthood figure talks about prices for human body parts being enough to make it “worthwhile for me”, and charmingly ends her discussion by saying “I want a Lamborghini.”

Critics of the first Center for Medical Progress video argued that the featured doctor’s remarks were taken out of context and that the video was pure spin. But who is doing the spin here?

Planned Parenthood’s has defended their practices so far by claiming that any money acquired for human tissue has been to cover the costs of “storage” and “processing". But consider the scenario being discussed in the video. The buyer comes to the clinic and takes what he/she wants, then pays the clinic per sample, $75 to $150 being ballpark figures. Planned Parenthood affiliated clinics are not “transferring” or “storing” tissue beyond a bit of refrigeration until buyers arrive.

A distasteful, but unfortunately accurate, analogy comes to mind. Any butcher could likewise claim that his business is not “selling meat”, but that his fees are simply to cover the cost of “storage” while the meat is “transferred”. For the butcher, as for the Planned Parenthood clinic, the “storage” referred to is the same cheap method you use in your kitchen: refrigeration.

And how much does an ounce of pork liver go for now? Is it 35 cents an ounce or 45 cents? Compare this to a human baby’s liver as per Planned Parenthood prices: 75 dollars per liver (being about $30 an ounce). That’s a business at least 100 times more profitable than the one the butcher is engaged in. And sorry, but profitable is the correct word here, because the clinic doesn't have to do anything but put these human body parts in a cooler for a day or two.

Here I can already hear the Planned Parenthood defender standing up to say: “You can’t talk about it that way! It's not just meat, it’s human tissue being stored. It’s for scientific experiments.”

To which I would answer: “Voilà! Now you’re starting to get it. It is human tissue; it is developed human tissue. And in this case a person was killed to get it. And the tissue is being sold for a profit.”

If Planned Parenthood's selling of aborted children's organs doesn't generate a profit, how exactly does it relate to this doctor's "wanting to get a Lamborghini"? Again, I think we're dealing with something painfully obvious.

Eric Mader

Dawkins Deficiency Syndrome

Third Party USA: A Radically Alternative Approach to our Fake Political Gridlock

About

Third Party USA seeks citizens eager to create a third political party capable of breaking the undemocratic alliance between the 1% and our government.

I. Preamble

Third Party USA is a principled attempt to return American government to the citizens. Third Party supporters believe strongly that American government has fallen into the hands of a wealthy superclass that is undermining the livelihoods of the great majority of Americans. The currently massive political power of this superclass threatens the American way of life.

Third Party will work to get corporate money out of politics. Its candidates will accept no corporate campaign contributions and will work to put average citizens back in the driver's seat. Accepting no money from corporations, Third Party will not be beholden to corporations.

Third Party does not subscribe to the debunked trickle-down economic theory that continues to make the super-wealthy wealthier while citizens fall further and further behind with each passing year. Third Party believes in strong public education and infrastructure all citizens benefit from.

Third Party neither supports nor rejects abortion rights, prayer in the classroom, same-sex marriage, concealed handgun permits. Most hot button issues now part of the "culture wars" will be left to individual candidates and their constituents to decide. Third Party will prescribe no position on such issues in its platform.

It is high time in our democracy to separate the "culture wars" from the more substantive systemic problems we face. Third Party's platform will focus on 1) wresting control of policy-making from the super-wealthy, and 2) resetting government priorities to put average citizens back in first place.

Working for middle-class Americans and those below them on the social ladder, Third Party will work unashamedly against the super-wealthy, corporations, and Wall Street, who have together made a shambles of our country.

Third Party does not work for 100% of Americans, but for 99% of Americans. The 1% already have their two parties. Third Party will fight them tooth and nail.

II. How we've been divided

I am not a political scientist, expert in American history, or former congressional aide. Even so, I have a very clear vision of what is wrong in my country. Many citizens with no more political expertise than myself can also see it.

Depressed to see America sinking ever further from what it should be, I am now convinced that the only force that might break this downward momentum is a third political party: a new party that would follow the ways of neither Democrats nor Republicans.

And no, I am not proposing a Libertarian Party here. Quite otherwise.

I am proposing a party that returns to fighting for the common citizen, the American citizen that is not on a corporate board and has concerns beyond merely maximizing corporate profits for shareholders.

Many of these common citizens are Evangelical Christians, many are atheist lesbians, some are white, others are black, Latino, Amerindian or Asian. Some of these citizens believe strongly that the right to life, others are pro-choice. Some want to fight for the right of two men to marry, others to protect the constitutional right to bear arms.

That is a very diverse group indeed, isn't it? Many citizens in this list strongly believe many others are morons or have a screw loose. Yet all these citizens have two things in common: they are Americans and they are quickly losing ground in a system geared to the super-wealthy.

So where are the real morons here? In my mind the answer to this is now unavoidable: To the extent these diverse average citizens continue to let their ideological differences over sex or family or firearms keep them divided--to that extent they are all morons.

I live and work in Asia and have for some time. The country I live in has its own problems to be sure. But in recent years nothing has been more depressing for me than to see my fellow Americans back home squabbling over second-tier issues while Wall Street and the 1% continue to turn their country into a banana republic.

So I am proposing a party that works hard for these people--one that, bridging their many differences, fights for their economic and social well-being in a nation run amok. I'm proposing a party that can harness what they have in common to create a new political force.

III. Sounds impossible, right?

It will likely be very difficult. Third parties face formidable barriers to success in America. Yet I think these barriers are not insurmountable in our current dismal state. Polls show Americans have never been more convinced for the need of third party than they are now.

I have another reason for hope. It is this: My basic strategy is simple as pie. It is based on simplicity and cutting right to the heart of the problem. It is a strategy that will allow Americans to fight for their differences while also fighting for their common good.

How can it work?

It can work because Third Party as an organization will take no sides in the culture wars now being used to divide us. This neutrality is key.

Political observers have for some time noted how the 1% and their corporate allies use differences among citizens over hot button issues related to sex, gender or ethnicity as a divide-and-conquer strategy. Given that Americans debate stridently over issues like abortion or same-sex marriage, and the two parties represent different sides on these issues, citizens are easily fed the illusion that Democrats and Republicans stand for significantly different things. But they do not--especially not during the past two decades. When it comes to voting on meat-and-potatoes issues (free trade, the minimum wage, how Wall Street is regulated, how much money will go to education vs. corporate bailouts, etc.) when it comes to these economic decisions, our two parties don't show any significant disagreement. Check the record. They nearly always side with the super-wealthy against the average citizen. And so our two-party scam continues--election cycle after election cycle. Our Democrats and Republicans actually make up just one party. One party with two flavors on offer: sexual/social liberal vs. sexual/social conservative.

This is not democratic politics. This is an afternoon talk show. The wonder in my mind is that Americans are still watching. And voting for these scammers.

IV. The monkey wrench we will throw

Third Party will focus on breaking the stranglehold the super-wealthy currently have on our legislature. Meanwhile, Third Party will encourage individual candidates to develop their own positions on second-tier hot button issues. Abortion, gay rights, gun legislation--on these candidates will be instructed to follow their own conscience and the wishes of their constituents rather than any party platform. Because Third Party will have nothing in its platform relevant to these issues.

Is the the idea clear now? Is it a foolish idea? Is it really impossible to unite "red state" Americans and "blue state" Americans in a common cause--resetting our government to working for the common good rather than always for the likes of Citicorp and Monsanto?

V. How would it look on the ground?

We might envision a Third Party candidate running in a conservative red state district who wants prayer in schools, wants Wall Street carefully regulated, and fights to force the wealthy to pay their fair share in taxes.

At the same time a Third Party candidate in a blue state race will be fighting to protect a woman's right to choose, fighting for green energy, and fighting to get Wall Street regulations that work while also fighting for bigger tax exemptions for the struggling middle class.

Third Party candidates will thus often vote on opposite sides of issues while also holding to core party goals: to put the citizens back in control of government; to ensure an even playing field for Americans in terms of public services, education and opportunities; to make America once again a nation centered on average working people.

VI. Of course Third Party is not for everyone

If you think the 1% should continue to run our country, then Third Party is not for you.

If you think Wall Street can manage banking laws on its own without government oversight, just keep voting Republican. Third Party is not for you.

If you really think the biggest problem in America right now is either immigrants, gays, rednecks with guns, Hollywood, or homophobia on campus--go ahead and keep voting for your party of choice, Republicrat or Demican. Third Party is not for you.

If, however, you are like me, and you see that gay marriage, gun rights or prayer in schools are all second-tier issues that have served the 1% by pitting average citizens against each other--then Third Party is for you.

If you are like me and think Wall Street executives, having gotten their massive bailouts at our expense, now mainly deserve to be jailed--then Third Party is for you.

If you understand that American democracy depends on a strong middle class and that countries completely ruled by a wealthy superclass are inherently undemocratic--then Third Party is for you.

On these various issues--gun rights, abortion, gay marriage, religious liberty in the public arena--do not misunderstand me. I am not suggesting they are unimportant. What I am suggesting is that we must decouple them from the more pressing battle we now face: the battle to save American representative democracy. Look closely at what has happened in our country. We are now approaching Game Over, and the citizens have lost. Call it oligarchy, call it the Deep State, call it corporatocracy--what you will. Washington's systemic problems are no longer just chronic; they are verging on fatal.

Where corporations are said to be people and money is said to be free speech, democracy will not long survive.

VII. But how can Third Party break into the halls of power?

Third Party will depend massively on social media and the efforts of community organizers and bloggers to turn out votes for candidates. Third Party will overrun the system with HOPE. And this time the hope will be justified. Third Party candidates will depend for their campaigns on individual citizens' contributions and the contributions of non-corporate entities (small businesses, etc.). No corporate money will be accepted. Because of this general party standard, citizens will be able to count on Third Party candidates to stay the course--to stick to implementing the policies they touted on the campaign trail.

Third Party candidates' TV ads will be few, but their presence in social media and elsewhere will give them a different kind of clout. It will be the clout of tens of millions of Americans fed up with the corporate-serving political theater that our government has become.

VII. Who am I to make it happen?

The answer is: Making it happen will require input from a huge variety of people. I myself am only offering this basic charter for a new party. It is time. Placing my charter here and elsewhere online, I hope it gathers talented people who might discuss possibilities, hash out ideas and slowly create an organization. Talented people are certainly out there, whether organizers or potential candidates. As for myself, I am only capable of seeding this idea. I certainly don't have the skills to organize a party, having only limited political experience as an activist. Besides which, my career is now overseas.

But I know there are tens of millions of Americans who see America's problems pretty much as I do. There are millions who hope someone will find a route to break this current phony deadlock between our two parties, both of which largely serve the same people: those people who have bought our democracy. And they really have. They have already bought American democracy.

Americans have been fighting over hot-button issues for too long. Distracted, we have let the wealthy superclass soak us for all we're worth. But we needn't give up any of our personal convictions in order to change course. We can continue to stand strong on "culture war" issues that matter to us even as we work to right the wildly careening ship of our state. We can do it by building a Third Party.

Fighting for Third Party principles is also patriotic. Around the globe people see that America is slipping. We will continue to slip if we do not break through the smoke-and-mirrors game corporate lobbyists and Washington continue to play against us.

And so: A Third Party already!

Our current two parties well deserve it!

VIII. How to proceed

Go to Facebook to "like" and join the Third Party USA page. Individually invite your friends to join. Start sending me items to provoke discussion, and I will post them. When a certain critical mass of supportive citizens is reached, we will begin the process of initial organization. We will take things step by step--but note: We'll only be able to take things step by step if we begin with the first step and keep moving through the second and third and so on.

So keep coming back and keep thinking on how to get this initial idea off the ground; how to give it traction and bite.

As I have said, I am not a political theorist. This rough charter is my idea, yes, but I myself do not know how to move it from idea to organization. I'd be very willing to give this over to a group of political theorists or organizers, people who understand electoral politics better than myself, who can formulate strategies for the first steps. I would only request that this opening charter remain as is.

As for the name I've given this project "Third Party USA", I recognize this may not be the best name for a party. It has advantages and disadvantages. Perhaps a better name would be "Citizens Party USA". Those who work to build the party will have to choose the most effective name.

Many essentials, then, are open for discussion. I am certainly not offering myself as the leader of this initiative and will not assume a dominant role. Only the very basics of strategy (no platform positions on culture war issues; no corporate support accepted) must remain the same for this project to be what it is.

I hope soon to be able to vote Third Party USA.

Eric Mader
Taipei
April 7, 2014