Political parties as we know them are obsolete. The unity that they ostensibly represent no longer exists, and possibly never did in the first place. In this age of lightning fast communication, organization and activism, we no longer need to cling to a party identity in order to make our collective voice heard and to exercise our power as American citizens. As was aptly pointed out on this site this past week (see Multipartisan Democracy) the Republicrats cannot hope to represent the diversity of combinations of stances on issues taken by citizens in this country.

However, we should not respond by creating more of the same obsolete structures. We should create a structure that works for our wider field of vision, and one that complements our modern tools. Our tools allow us to organize around finer-grained sets of issues, and finer-grained diverse stances on those issues. A citizen could be an advocate of tax cuts for the rich but not for the middle class, while also being for legalized abortion. Or one could be for strengthening social programs and public education, while also being for capital punishment and school vouchers. The Republicrats cannot adequately represent people who deviate in significant ways with one or more of their core platform planks. For these people, voting is always an exercise of choosing the lesser of two evils.

A group is headed for obsolescence when the importance of the group itself and the continuation and propagation of the group, become more important than the ideas that the group formed to represent in the first place. This behavior is clearly evident in partisan politics. The forced homogeneity of ideas, the territorial posturing and the lack of real debate on real issues is commonplace. There is no great tragedy or cause for alarm in the obsolescence of a group that has lived out its purpose. The tragedy is in not recognizing that the time has come for a new structure.

So a new group must form. This new party, if we wish to call it that, is composed of "platform planks" that transcend the tendency to speak for us on all issues in a homogeneous way. The new party is a home for citizens of all ideologies who are ready to move beyond partisan politics as usual. These are people who are beyond taking a particular stance on an issue simply because the party with which they usually identify has done so. The participants rarely agree with each other 100% on all issues, but they find an identity in the new party because they wish to understand each other and to grow beyond the futile and wasteful goal of domination over the other. They hold each other in the highest respect as citizens with minds that are free to think any thought and carry out any law-abiding action in the living of their life. The participants refuse to attack the character of others, either in the group or not, who may disagree with them.

The new party foresees that its members disagree in diverse ways on diverse issues. As such, it organizes itself into caucuses to coalesce the participants who hold a particular view on a particular issue. There are myriad caucuses. But modern communication and activism tools bring order and coherence to the structure, and allow caucus members to work together, as well as to debate the issues with opposing caucuses on relevant issues. In this structure a participant could be in your caucus on one issue, but in an opposing caucus on another issue. You work with them to advance a like-minded understanding of the issue in the former, and work to build a shared and evolved understanding in the latter.

The artificial line that has traditionally been drawn down the middle aisle of the chambers of congress blurs and vanishes. There are no Republicans and Democrats. There are only Americans, splendid in their diversity of mind, absolute in their unity of politic.

And coming in a century or two... there are no Americans and Japanese and Canadians and French and Egyptians and, and, and. There are only citizens of Earth. But I'm getting ahead of myself a bit...