Sometimes the best ideas come out of left field. I was sitting at home on Friday night reading Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat. Friedman was talking about the Open Source movement as one of the 10 things that "flattened the world." For those of you not quite geeky enough to know what the Open Source movement is, think Linux. Open Source is the opposite of Microsoft. Open Source depends upon the brilliance of individuals working together to continually create and improve software to meet a need, rather than buoy a balance sheet. Open Source is just that - open code, available for anyone to use (for the most part).
While I'm not ready to throw away my Microsoft software (don't laugh, you snob, I run enterprise systems and the stuff works great for us), the idea of tapping into the collective brilliance of individuals to solve problems made perfect sense to me. After writing my We're#1, We're#1? piece a few weeks ago, I've struggled with how we fix the problems we face as a nation. Then it hit me - if we can make software that rivals the the best that corporations can provide, why can't we make a political system that rivals, no, exceeds the best (or more often the worst) of the party system. In effect, Open Source politics.
I know I'm not original with that thought. A quick search on the web finds a bunch of references to the idea, especially as it relates to either Howard Dean's Internet fund raising, The Daily Kos, or Moveon.org. Certainly, the blogging community is a great example of empowering individuals to interact with the system. Also, the ability to raise money directly from the people has opened up financing to more potential candidates than ever before. However, neither of these examples is exactly what I was thinking of. I'm not looking for a way for the parties to communicate easier with the masses, I'm looking for a way to find solutions to problems, to fix what's broken, to use our collective intelligence to move beyond the parties.
We need to replace ideology with ideas. We need to replace partisanship with pragmatism wherever we can. We have to take a step back from the fighting and start looking at the fixing, or so help me God, America is a goner. The parties, BOTH parties, are too often closed source companies whose sole job is self perpetuation. Both sides are to beholden to a mix-mash of string pullers making sure that nothing really gets done the way it should be.
It has to start with realizing the guys in power now, in both parties, are a big part of the problem. Further, and no offense to my conservative readers out there, but you need to realize your party is the one with all the power, and your party has made a royal mess of the situation. I'm going to keep attacking Tom Delay, Bill Frist and George Bush because they are at the heart of why we need Open Source politics - institutionalized cronyism and illogical policies. You can't keep overspending and underfunding. You can't grow the deficit and shrink the revenue forever. You can't keep hiring people with no ability to do the job. You endanger the country. You sabotage the future. Is that fair?
Article comments
1 - Natalie Davis
"If you're a liberal you need to get over your hatred of vouchers, your desire to be 'fair' and your ass kissing of the unions."
Your opinion. Thanks, I will pass.
2 - Temple A. Stark
Late notice but,
This post was chosen by the section editor as a BC pick of the week. Go HERE (link) to find out why.
And thank you
- Temple