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.