Status Update

The new web page is up and ready for regular use. As a result this blog is being moved to the new web page. From now on the Thinker's Party blog is located here. Check in over there from now on for updates.

Beta Testers Wanted

The beta version of the website and forums are up and ready for use over at the new main page. Check it out, let us know where you find bugs, if there's content you think is missing, or if the layout gives you trouble. If pertinent, please include information about your browser and screen resolution so we can recreate your situation.

As long as the holiday doesn't push us too far behind schedule, we plan to have everything up and running smoothly over there by the beginning of next week.

In the meantime, updates to the blog are going to slow from a minimum of 1/week day to 1/week as, hopefully, discussion moves to the forums.

Happy beta testing, all. ;-)

Meet the Party

To cap off this week we'll introduce you to one of the founding members of the party. We'll do this periodically to give you an idea of who's working with the party. This time around we're introducing the Blog Maven.

Hi all. I'm the Thinker's Party's official Blog Maven. That means I'm responsible for maintenance of the blog, and updating it with content. I'm also working on our web page project and getting our forums set up to make sure we have a consistent visual appearance across all three spaces. Currently I'm doing research into the finances and logistics involved in running a school with the hopes of developing a model for privately-funded successful, free schools. I'll share more of that process later on.

As for me, I'm a Project Manager for a software company with a degree in Linguistics from the University of Chicago. I spend my free time reading, watching movies, and arguing about politics, social problems, and the world in general with just about everybody I know. I've worked as a volunteer TA in an elementary school and tutored high school students (in Geometry and Spanish).

I got involved with the Thinker's Party because I've lost any optimism that the government can be changed to take care of the major social problems we face today (My personal priorities being education and energy) and decided not to let that hold me back. If you want to talk about my background or experiences in more detail, or my work with the party, you can contact me at thinkers.party@gmail.com.

Those who've gone before

Having a knowledge of previous projects similar to your own, or previous attempts to solve the same problems is always useful in your own work. But you don't have to limit yourself to looking at direct analogues in order to find lessons worth learning. One story that is particularly interesting for its sheer complexity is that of the Almighty Vice Lords, a gang that grew out of Chicago and, while consolidating its stronghold as a gang, did a great deal of good for the community. We certainly aren't suggesting that any project associated with the Thinker's Party copy the model used there, but we do think it's well worth studying and thinking about. Here are a few links to get you started in your research:

http://chicagogangs.org/index.php?pr=CVL
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice_Lords
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=vice%20lords

Making the most of the salons

Yesterday we gave some tips for how to successfully get a salon going. Today we're offering tips for how to make the most of the salon.

1) Listen, and take notes. The note taking is particularly important if you are doing a series of salons because it will make it much easier to notice a pattern of complaints or issues across the groups. You don't have to do the note-taking during the salon itself, though. If you're more comfortable waiting until afterward to write down your observations, then do that.
2) Start the group off on talking about what they like about their community. Knowing what works, and why it works, is an important part of being able to figure out what doesn't and why. It's also helpful in figuring out the community's priorities. If the project you want to work on is a low priority for the community that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, but it does mean you'll have a different set of challenges you'll need to prepare for.
3) Help the people at the salon get comfortable with each other and the situation. Be welcoming, facilitate introductions, give people the opportunity to share a little information about who they are, why they're there, and their relationship with the community. This will make it easier for them to share thoughts and opinions later.
4) Just because somebody is timid or quiet doesn't mean they don't have something to say. Sometimes speaking in front of strangers is intimidating for people, but you don't want to lose their insight because of that. Try to actively involve the quiet people. Keeping one or two individuals from dominating the conversation can help with that, but so can reaching out to the quieter people and directing questions at them. If you get the sense that they don't want to talk, don't force them too, though.
5) Give out an email address or other way to contact you with followup thoughts. Now that you've established a relationship with these people you'll want to cultivate it.

That's five tips we consider important for a beginner, but there are hundreds more out there. Share any you have from similar experiences in the comments below.

Thinker's Party Salons

What does somebody interested in joining the party and helping out do? The first thing we'd recommend is let us know, either by commenting on the blog or sending us an email. Tell us a little bit about yourself, who and where you are, and what you're interested in working on. The tricky question is, if you don't already have a project in mind, say your community seems to be well supported in every way as far as you know, what do you do?

We've found that several answers to that question can arise from organizing a salon-style gathering in your community. Gather a manageable group of people together and get them to talk about what the community's strengths and weaknesses are - what's missing, what works badly, what could work more efficiently. These events are for you to listen to how others view the community, and begin to actively involve them in it on a small scale. You're there to ask a few questions and listen - save recruiting help and other members for later.

Here are some tips for how to run these salons successfully:
1) Know the area you want to work in and make sure to target all of it. Are you in a big city and want to focus on one particular neighborhood? Then set the salon in that neighborhood. But if you want to work on an issue that affects the entire city, move the salon location around to attract people from different parts of the city. This is a good way of learning different perspectives on an issue and developing an understanding of the big picture.
2) Try to set the salon in a comfortable public area. Bookstores, coffee shops, libraries, and community centers are the typical places, but don't be afraid to get creative. Go where the people are - they might not come to you. Wherever you do hold the salon, develop a relationship with the owners of the location first. Tell them what you're doing, how many people you expect to come, and make sure they are okay with having their place used that way. Business owners are part of the community to, and (in our experience so far) they're often willing to host these events if they have forewarning - especially if they sell food or beverages.
3) These are not recruitment sessions for the Thinker's Party. Don't invite people to come and talk about their community, then try to persuade them to join an organization they've probably never heard of. You can talk about it if people ask, or list on your publicity materials that the event is sponsored by the Thinker's Party (please only do this if you are working with us on it), but otherwise leave the salon for listening.
4) Advertise where people will see. That means fliers at the establishment where you'll be holding the salon and where members of the community frequent, Craig's list postings, ads in local papers or on local events pages, etc. Do not depend exclusively on the internet for your advertising since there are still lots of people who will never see it that way. If you contact us we can help you develop the materials you need and locate good places to display it.
5) Have fun. Getting involved with your community and meeting new people should be exciting. Remember that.

The Thoughtful Elevator Story

In a comment to our last post, square pegs said, "I would like to start telling people about the Thinker’s Party. I would love to be able to point to it and say, “This can be the real mechanism for positive change!” But right now, I’m just not sure what I would say." This is pulled out of context from a longer comment with other good points in it, but we thought this portion of the comment warranted a specific response. So we present to you the 30 second explanation for just what the Thinker's Party is.

The Thinker's Party is a networking organization designed to inspire and support individual attempts to solve social problems within local communities. They hope to develop not only a network of experts in various social issues and their potential solutions, but of sources of funding for these projects.

It has the same flaw as most elevator stories, i.e. it's a touch stodgy and dry, but it contains what we consider to be the most important message about who we are. We encourage you to make it your own and share what you find exciting about what we're doing.

That said, we'd like to thank everybody who has taken the time to provide feedback about what we've done and said so far. It's ranged from "Only kooks call it a manifesto" to "there's too much apathy for that to work," and we've appreciated every bit of it.

The Selfish Choice Revisited

It is now a week after we first addressed the idea of spending time with the Thinker's Party as the selfish choice. Much of the argument left off at urging you to run your own cost benefit analysis to determine the value of supporting the Thinker's Party for you. We aren't recovering that ground now, but will provide some sample scenarios that may simplify your decision-making process.

For purposes of these scenarios, let's assume that you are in all ways an average American. According to the Census Bureau, the average income in the United States in 2007 was $50,233. The American Time Use Survey put out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that men who work full time worked an average of 8.2 hours a day and full-time women worked an average of 7.8 hours a day. Since we're averaging, we'll call that an even 8 hours a day for 2080 a year on a 5 day work week. That makes your average working hour worth $24.

The following chart pulls data on time spent in leisure activities with figures for how much those activities generally cost. The time data is pulled from the American Time Use Survey and the cost figures are linked to their source.

Socializing and communicating .73 hours per day (This includes a wide range of potential expenses, but we'll assess it at $0 since there's no inherent cost)
Watching television 2.62 hours per day ([$75/month*12 months per year]/[18.34hrs per week*52weeks per year]= $.94)
Participating in sports, exercise, and recreation .32 hours per day ([$70 per month*12 months per year]/[2.24 hours per week*52 weeks per year]=$7.21 per hour). This puts the price of your time during working hours at $24 an hour. It's up to you to decide whether it's worth it.

If working time is too valuable to you, you could give up your leisure time. The leisure activities are effectively negative earnings meaning that if you do something else instead, assuming the non-fiscal value of the activities are equivalent, you get back that money. (Note: In practice this is a fallacy i.e. if you spend one less hour watching TV you don't get $.94 back) Right out if all you're donating to the Thinker's Party is time,and you're doing it instead of your other typical leisure activities, you are making money.

Keeping the Credit

Earlier today a Thinker's Party member received this question from somebody who'd just discovered the party: If people expect the government to administer social programs and solve social problems and our plan to push them out of that role is to do it ourself, won't people just think that the government is still doing it? How will we make sure those perceptions change.

This is a good question that goes straight to one of the Thinker's Party's long term goals, which is to have the social sphere completely divorced from the political sphere. In order for that divorcing to happen successfully, we argue, we must create independent programs capable of supporting and nurturing the social sphere. Once we've done that, the government will be free to withdraw back into the political sphere - but only if the people allow it. If they think the government is still controlling the social sphere, they won't let that happen, and we will fail to reach this particular long term goal.

To be frank, at this point we consider the likelihood that we will successfully take over and support all aspects of the social sphere minimal enough that ensuring we get credit for it when that happens is not a great priority. We consider it much more likely that we'll make a significant impact in one area or another, and the methods involved in doing that will be enough for communities to understand where the resources and efforts are coming from. To go back to yesterday's marching band analogy, the greater community surrounding school A might not realize that all of the band's governmental funding has been cut, but everyone intimately involved with the band will. Since they're the ones invested enough to fight for band funding in the first place, they are the audience where assignation of credit is important, and by virtue of the network and process in place they will already know. In other words, our PR will take care of itself where it matters through the very processes that create the need for it.

Of course we dream of wild success and major societal changes within a generation, and if we find that widespread ignorance of how those changes came to be is an obstacle, we will deal with it in the best way possible at the time.

Government vs Society

In our founding document the Thinker's Party makes it clear that our efforts will not involve the government as a part of the solution. Given that the government plays a significant role in many social programs, either through ownership, funding or distribution of information to the public, this decision would seem to cut off a significant potential resource, something we argued against doing just a few days ago. While this is true, the Thinker's Party has decided that the risks of accepting or allowing government help outweighs the potential benefit.

One of the major reasons we made this decision was that we do not want to be subject to the policies of an individual administration, or empowered group inside the government. For examples of this involvement affecting social groups, see the history of the Mexico City Policy which Ronald Regan put into place during his administration, Bill Clinton removed when the Democrats took the White House, George W. Bush put back when the Republicans reclaimed it, and Barack Obama is likely to remove it again when he takes office as a Democrat. This policy effectively dictates whether or not NGO family planning organizations will receive government funding, on which they depend, based on whether they present a solution acceptable to the current administration's moral sensibilities. The Thinker's Party believes that the best way to avoid having to choose between an optimally effective solution and government funding is to avoid the situation entirely. It is possible that we will never support a project that will conflict with a given political party's stance, but we consider this extremely unlikely. (Note: The Thinker's Party has a policy against becoming dependent on any particular source of financial for this very reason)

Another reason we reject government support is a difference in priorities. Our priority with respect to a particular issue or problem will not match that of the government which must deal with that issue, all of the other pertinent social issues, maintaining power, maintaining financing, etc. etc. Our modular structure allows us to specialize on that issue and find the optimal solution without fear of losing an election. While poor planning and sloppy execution can damage our reputation and trust in our communities, through being separate from the government we have the freedom to learn from our failures and try again.

Our final reason has nothing to do with limitations or risks of government involvement, but with the benefits of a program that is driven entirely by citizens. When individuals work together to find solutions to common problems they each learn and grow, becoming more aware of how the world works around them and how to deal with it. They in turn become a group of people with this knowledge which leads to a stronger community. Take for example a hypothetical case of two high schools, school A and school B, who each have a big marching band. When the state budget is tight school funding often suffers, and arts programs such as band are often cut as a result. However, school A's marching band is an award winning band that has the support of its community developed through fund raising for trips to competitions and prominently displayed trophies. School B's band still teaches its students music, but they've never been competitive and don't have the same community ties. Obviously school A's band will survive the cuts with the loss in government funding subsidized by community donations while school B's band will likely wither. The important lesson here is not that the competitive, winning band survived, but that the band with community support did. The community's involvement in band A ensures that their students will continue to have quality music education, with all of the benefits that entails. This isn't to say that dependence on government funding is bad, in our current society it is frequently the only choice, but that dependence on the community is better. It still isn't perfect - nothing is - but a community that is actively involved in these programs is more likely to be aware of their benefits, and therefore more likely to fight for them.

The Thinker's Party wants to build a society that takes care of itself, knows what that involves, and as a result values it. We probably won't achieve that in our life time, we might not ever completely reach that goal, but we can cause improvement and have not yet discovered a downside to our approach. If you see one we encourage you to share it so that we can adjust accordingly.

Who Needs Another Volunteer Organization?

“What does the Thinker’s Party do that other volunteer organizations don’t do already? This is a fair question all nascent organizations should ask themselves as they begin, and which they should be able to answer when asked by others. Given the Thinker’s Party’s desire to surpass the work of its predecessors, this is particularly pertinent for us.

There are a few different aspects to the answer, but the short version is that the Thinker’s Party is dedicated to self-sustaining solutions to social needs and problems which are implemented Independent of government help. We do not narrow our work to any particular area, though as we begin to sponsor projects we will develop specialized expertise in some things. A more detailed answer follows.

What are we doing now?
Right now the Thinker’s Party is building a base of motivated and dedicated people who are willing to handle the infrastructural needs of the party including building a web presence, wide-spread recruiting efforts, gathering of knowledge about community organizing, and seeking out projects suitable for support from the party. The results of these efforts will be seen over the next few weeks as recruitment ads go out and we announce our first projects.

One of the most important things we are working on now is networking ourselves so that we will be a beneficial place for others to gather. Today’s preliminary launch of our Facebook Page is just the beginning.

What are our next steps?
As the party grows and begins to support projects we will put a web community that includes documentation on planning a project, ways of finding the resources needed to implement a project, and people willing to help with advice, time, and labor. We will use contacts with charitable, volunteering, and community organizations to support our members in their efforts. Where these other organizations have already found a workable solution, we will support them and throw our own resources behind their project. Just because an effort was started as a Thinker’s Party project does not mean that the Thinker’s Party cannot support it. Our goal is to accomplish social change, not to make the Thinker’s Party the answer to all problems.

The Differences
Ultimately, the difference between the Thinker’s Party and the myriad other organizations out there is our flexibility, our focus on an ultimate goal that encompasses all social issues, our ability to address multiple issues in an integrated way where appropriate, and our ability to connect these other organizations on the ground and in the world. Membership in the Thinker’s Party does not necessarily replace membership in other organizations – we are all too small to manage this alone. That’s why we’re here.

What Doesn't a Thinker’s Party Project Look Like?

In our founding manifesto we say, “All plans for social change must be grounded in circumstances as they exist now, with the flexibility to adapt to circumstances as they will likely be tomorrow. Good intentions do not excuse poor execution or ineffective planning, and can harm progress towards goals across the board.” This is an extremely important point because it is the bedrock upon which our future success stands. As a case study, let us examine the “No to Proposition 8” campaign in California during this last election cycle. It is notable both for the national attention it received in the lead up to the election and the fallout of its passage.

To catch up anybody unfamiliar with the subject, Proposition 8 was written as a ban for same-sex marriage to be included in the California constitution after the California Supreme Court ruled that under the current constitution same-sex marriage was legal. This set off a great deal of national coverage and two huge campaigns, one in favor of Proposition 8 and banning same-sex marriage, the other opposed. On Election Day Proposition 8 passed dramatically. Polling showed that roughly 70% of African-American voters, who’d turned out in record numbers to vote for Barak Obama, also voted for Proposition 8. This in turn has lead to backlash against the African-American community for alleged hypocrisy on civil rights issues, and counter-backlash against the gay community for failure to reach out to minority groups.

The point interesting to examine here is that the backlash and counter backlash are based on a fiction created through improper reading of CNN’s exit polls. In this presentation of the results voters are broken out by a particular demographic such as race, political affiliation or religious beliefs, and then how they voted on Proposition 8 by percentage. Based on their polling, CNN claims that 10% of the electorate was African-American. Before drawing conclusions based on polling data, it is always advisable to check for how representative of reality the poll is. There is a posting on Daily Kos that refutes the percentage in detail by looking at the actual number of potential African-American voters in California, but there is a much more important point to be made from the polling data. According to SFGate Proposition 8 won by over half a million votes with the margins at 52.5 versus 47.5. That implies a minimum total electorate for Proposition 8 of 10,000,000. Using that number we get the following number of “yes” votes for each racial category: White – 3,213,000, African-American – 700,000, Latino – 846,000, Asian – 306,000, and Other – 147,000) bringing the total number of “yes” votes to 5,212,000, or right in the range the current counts indicate.

The important information in that data missing from the discussion over whether the African-American community or the No to Prop 8 campaign is to blame for the proposition’s passage is that the White, African-American and Latino communities each have enough “yes” votes to make up the difference between passage and defeat. Of the three groups, African-American’s have the fewest “yes” votes implying that whites and Latinos were more important communities for the No to Prop 8 campaign to focus on since they provided bigger hurdles.

There is a great deal of room for analyzing where the No to Prop 8 campaign could have improved their strategy for a different result, and effective outreach to the African-American community is likely a component of that. Anybody looking to work on a similar effort would be strongly advised to invest the time in that examination.

Despite that, the most important lesson for the Thinker’s Party lies in the post-election, and particularly the post exit-poll release portion of the story. What was framed as a civil rights issue on one side and a moral issue on the other is now completely obscured in blame, recriminations, and declarations that the whole argument is a secondary issue. This is a major setback for the No Prop 8 campaign. Where before they had to make the case that their cause transcended moral or religious concerns into being an issue of equal treatment under the law, they now have an insulted and angry group formerly poised for conversion based on shared political alliances and mutual struggle for justice. It is likely that those are 700,000 votes that are reaffirmed in their conviction, and therefore less likely to eat away at their 500,000 margin.

No reforming group can afford to throw away potential allies out of carelessness and a failure to examine poll data past its superficial presentation. This is the sort of poor decision-making the Thinker’s Party is dedicated to preventing. Perfection is forever elusive, but in making this a founding principle of our cause we guard ourselves against making the mistakes we see others from others.

Working for Social Change: The Selfish Choice

Why should you, Joe Schmoe who just goes through his day without worrying about being spied on by the government, far from the risks of poverty, poor education or social exclusion, spend your time working against these things? Whenever somebody solicits your time, energy or money, the "What's in it for me?" instinct is strong.

The simple answer is that these are your problems. The correlations between poor education and poor job prospects, between poverty and crime, and the combination of poverty and poor education leading to poor choices culminating in long term problems are well known. There is little room to argue that your quality of life is not improved through a reduction in crime, of unemployed and unemployable people, or a population educated enough to make savvy long term choices. Additionally there's the point that the lower rock bottom in your society is, the farther your potential fall.

Ultimately the question is: Will the payoff from your efforts be more significant than the payoff from what you would be doing otherwise? This is largely a subjective decision that will depend on your interests and priorities. Clearly we have decided that the payoff makes it worth it. To help you make your choice, the following is a list of potential benefits of work with the party. There are probably better reasons, but this is a good starting point.

1) You'll get a chance to work on that crazy pet project you've had, with support and advice from other people who've been that same road.
2) Resume building experience. Not getting management experience at work? "Managing a major project for a volunteer organization" always looks good.
3) Personal challenge. If you like learning new things, overcoming obstacles, and reaping success, this is a great way of doing it.
4) Fun and entertainment, not to mention meeting cool people.

What does it mean to be a post-political party?

If you look at third parties like the Green Party or the Libertarian Party, one thing becomes clear rather quickly. While the parties themselves might have national recognition, they have not yet taken power. Examining the history of presidential elections shows that while third parties can serve to split the vote enough to give one candidate or the other an advantage, they do not win unless one of the major political parties collapses. In an effort to have an impact on the national discourse and recruit support for their ideas, these parties run national campaigns in cycle after cycle. They do sometimes have success at lower levels of government, making it as far as Congress occasionally. But their successes are owed to circumstances at least as much as the party's efforts.

Take, for example, the Libertarian party and its platform of fiscal conservatism and social liberalism. Historically the Libertarian party has been closely aligned to the Republican party which lined up with their fiscal ideals. It is not uncommon to find Libertarians who vote Republican in major elections, or disgruntled Republicans moving to the "purer" Libertarian party. Despite this, during eight years were Republicans control all or most of the government, both sides of the Libertarian platform were ignored - significant deficit spending ending in a major government bail-out of private industry and a series of affronts to civil liberties including domestic wire-tapping and torture. In 37 years the Libertarian party has made a lot of noise on the political scene, but their voice is heard only when it's expedient for one of the larger parties.

The Greens, on the other hand, would appear to have achieved great success. With talk of clean and sustainable energy as a major issue in the recent presidential campaign, "greenness" becoming a trendy status symbol, and a general social push for more sustainable, environmentally friendly products, it would seem that a major cornerstone of their platform is being adopted into society a short seven years later. Despite that appearance, these issues arose mostly out of rising fuel costs and social concern over the detrimental effects of consuming chemically treated food and water. The Greens are to be credited with an excellent sense of timing, but the latest trends toward environmental friendliness most likely would have developed anyway.

Studying the obstacles before a fledgling third party is what led to the Thinker's Party's decision to form as a "post-political" party. Rather than wasting energy and effort on fielding political candidates for office, we are going straight to the heart of the problem, as we see it, and fixing it there. That means founding schools, creating and supporting charitable organizations, distributing information on public safety issues - picking up the slack wherever the government leaves it. Maybe someday our programs will supplant those run by the government, but it's more important to develop programs that work and spread them to other places with the same problems.

We hope to develop a society that depends on the government only for those functions that cannot find alternative fulfillment. We want to create a social sphere robust with the myriad forms of support needed to make a population as large as ours happy and safe. Our work lies in that sphere, and in doing this, we will affect the political sphere.

That's not to say we aren't engaged in the political realm. We might support candidates with platforms complimentary to our aim, but this is not a primary function of the party and should not become one. Political ideas should not be a barrier to participation in the Thinker's Party. If you share our vision of an independent society that takes care of its own efficiently and effectively, there's a place for you with us.

The Founding Manifesto

With the relentless expansion of government powers into the lives of the citizens, occurring over the course of several election cycles and with various combinations of parties in power, it is clear that there is currently no way within the system as it exists today to correct past, current, and imminent injustices, or to reclaim the rights lost. We have a politics grounded in fear and offers of escape or protection from it, and a population permissive of the circumstances. This situation is intolerable, and to permit its furtherance without working against it is to become complicit in it.

Thus it is resolved that we shall form a party of individuals dedicated to the following principles:

1. A government, being necessary for the defense of the nation against external forces, and the protection of the individual against violations of their rights from internal forces, has the right and responsibility to act in fulfillment of these duties. Its power in this regard is limited only by the necessity that it shall not violate its own purpose through impugning the rights of its citizens or rendering the nation vulnerable to outside forces.
2. As the government must be enabled to employ violence in fulfillment of its duties, and as institutionalized violence is a threat to the safety of citizens, the government's sphere of influence should be limited to those areas explicitly requiring the exercise of violence.
3. Individually, people have the capacity to evaluate a situation, discern an optimal course of action, and then take measures to follow it. As a whole, people frequently do not follow this process. A successful democracy requires a population of individuals who are engaged with the nation's social and political life, and qualified to play an active role in those lives.
4. Other attempts to limit the governmental sphere and increase personal responsibility have failed for a number of reasons including, but not limited to, a failure to create and develop the social sphere in lieu of misplaced governmental authority, and the absence of a population adequately equipped to handle increased responsibility for nation's success.

At this time we see the following as the natural consequences of these principles:

1. Success towards our goals cannot be achieved through political activism. The infrastructure (social institutions as well as the population's outlook) required for success through strictly political action are not present. We must create the necessary social infrastructure, allowing the political sphere to adapt as we go.
2. Individuals in society benefit from the various social services currently offered by the government, if not directly then through overall improvement of society created. Reducing poverty and hardship in society reduces disease, crime, discontent, and poor decision making throughout the population.
3. We can no longer afford to depend on the government to adequately provide necessary social services. That makes it the responsibility of every individual in society to find alternatives for their own benefit.
4. All plans for social change must be grounded in circumstances as they exist now, with the flexibility to adapt to circumstances as they will likely be tomorrow. Good intentions do not excuse poor execution or ineffective planning, and can harm progress towards goals across the board.
5. Modern technology enables innovation and creative problem solving. A social need may exist nationally, but the solution is not necessarily national in scope. Local groups can now interact and share experiences with ease, making it possible to create a solution with variant implementations that achieve equal quality. This should be encouraged where appropriate, passed over where it will be ineffective. In either case, this party should serve to facilitate the development and execution of a robust, efficient, and effective solution to all variety of social problems to the fullest extent of its ability.

The challenges before us are varied and complex. Nevertheless, we will carry forward, rejoicing in our successes, learning from our failures, and adapting to our circumstances. We are the Thinker's Party, and we will earn our lasting liberty.