Post by TEAM_DERRICK on Mar 5, 2011 15:16:24 GMT -5
This is an election primer for the UASR, a fictional, multi-party democratic, Libertarian socialist version of America and it's time for you guys to vote! I just wanna see where you guys fall.
A basic election primer, circa 2009
Democratic-Republican Party (Mutualist, Libertarians)
Party Leader: Kevin Carson
Secretary-General: Ronald Ernest Paul
Founded: 1938
Ideology: Social liberalism, geo-libertarianism
Political Position: Right (UASR) Center-left (International)
International Affiliation: International Democrat Union
Official Color: Blue
Youth Wing: Liberal Youth Federation
Party Newspaper: The Free Republic
Political stances
Capital Punishment: The national DRP maintains no favored preference on capital punishment policy, by default favoring the status quo position, which reserves the death penalty for treason and espionage. Provincial sections have generally favored the abolition of the death penalty for most civil cases.
Civil Defense: The party platform calls for an end to the Civil Defense Initiative, which as part of the National Service, mandates minimal military training of all students as part of the required four year Civil Service after high school graduation.
Cultural Stance: Traditionalist, often aligned with conservative Christian groups. The party’s conservative wing often favors a return of pre-revolutionary cultural mores.
Defense: Since the end of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the DRP has supported a unilateral conventional and nuclear disarmament program, aiming to cut the size of the conventional and nuclear military arsenals by over one-half.
Drug Policy: The party general favors stronger restrictions on controlled substances, most notably criminalization of legally restricted substances such as heroin and PCP, and the institution of a 21 year age restriction on “softer” drugs such as cannabis, cocaine and LSD.
Economy: Considerable scaling back of the central planning in the American economy, including the privatization of the automotive, aircraft, construction and steel industries.
Education: The DRP favors increased local control of education policy, and the reduction of Union involvement in educational standards, including lifting the ban on parochial and private schools.
Environment: The DRP is a defector from the current “Environmental Consensus”, considering efforts to limit climate change and ecological devastation to be ill-advised, unnecessary and harmful to the economy.
Foreign Aid: The DRP often supports the cutting of foreign aid in an effort to trim the Union budget.
Foreign Alliances: Isolationist
Health Policy: Privatization of state and provincial owned hospitals and treatment clinics.
Immigration: Generally restrictive on immigration policy, though the party has in the past voted to allow complete open borders with Mexico and the Commonwealth of Canada.
Social Welfare: The party considers the Union’s policy of supporting rural and urban communal living projects to be detrimental to the private and cooperative sectors of the housing and construction industry.
Taxation: Champions the institution of a national sales tax, to encourage savings and investment.
Trade: The DRP is regarded as the party of free trade, even with capitalist nations.
Left Democratic Party (Episcopalian-esk, Super Charitable, Christian Socialists)
Party Leader: Raúl Juliá
Secretary-General: Brian Moore
Founded: 1933
Ideology: Christian socialism
Political Position: Center-left (UASR) Far Left (International)
International Affiliation: Socialist International
Official Color: White
Youth Wing: Student Left Democrats
Party Newspaper: Commonweal
Political stances
Capital Punishment: Almost universally opposed.
Civil Defense: Left Democrats consider the Civil Defense Initiative to be a relic of yesteryear, unnecessarily militaristic for modern society.
Cultural Stance: Since the 80s, the Left Democrats have wholeheartedly embraced Trinitarian Christianity, moving considerably to the left on cultural issues. The party has repudiated its past support for racial segregation, as well as its past opposition to feminism and gay rights.
Defense: The Left Democrats, since the 80s realignment, have taken a nearly pacifist stance on national defense, advocating a phased, multi-lateral nuclear disarmament agreement with both the Soviets and the Anglo-French.
Drug Policy: Maintain status quo policy.
Economy: Support a mix of participatory and central planning, though some support is given for market reforms in luxury goods.
Education: The LDP supports government initiatives to encourage more young people to take advantage of education opportunities provided by the state.
Environment: While it is a lower-tier issue in the LDP, ecological justice is considered to be an important part of the core value of social justice.
Foreign Aid: The LDP is opposed to the cynical use of foreign aid to benefit the state’s foreign policy objectives. They consider compassion to be the sole legitimate deteriminant in allocating foreign aid.
Foreign Alliances: While supportive of containment of the Franco-British Union, the LDP is categorically opposed to aggressive foreign policy and other destabilizing actions.
Health Policy: A mixture of tighter regulations and programs to encourage healthy lifestyles at work and at home.
Immigration: Generally favoring more open immigration.
Social Welfare: The LDP often styles itself as the party of social justice, and it has committed much of its efforts to turning the vast resources of the American polity to put an end to poverty at home and abroad.
Taxation: The LDP favors taxing socially destructive activities as part of its overall theme of social justice.
Trade: LDP trade policy generally favors autarky in essential industries such as agriculture, mining, steel and energy, but free trade in less essential, more luxury oriented markets.
Progressive Labor Party (Militaristic, Trotskyists. Think of the folks who want to bring the 50's back and you'll get the idea, just paint the idea red.)
Party Leader: Joshua Muravchik
Secretary-General: Bob Avakian
Founded: 1946
Ideology: Marxism-Sinclairism, Neo-conservativsm
Political Position: Center-right (UASR) Far Left (International)
International Affiliation: Communist International
Official Color: Orange
Youth Wing: Youth Progressive Labor League
Party Newspaper: Unite!
Political stances
Capital Punishment: The national PLP has continued to support the use of the death penalty in cases of infamous counterrevolutionary crimes. Historically, the party also opposed efforts in the Union and provincial governments to abolish the death penalty for civil crimes.
Civil Defense: The PLP continues to defend the tradition of American civil defense(1), and seeks to promote readiness among the citizenry.
Cultural Stance: The party champions the values of solidarity, militancy, equality and sacrifice that were at the forefront of the First Cultural Revolution. While the PLP has always crusaded against racial, political and sexual inequality, they often find the causes championed by the Left to be “decadent” or “hedonistic”.
Defense: The PLP often styles itself as the party of national defense, and platform explicitly supports sustaining the strength of the military even after the end of perceived threat from the Soviet Union. The party also advocates military intervention to support the interests of the American state and of socialist internationalism more broadly.
Drug Policy: Progressive Labor is generally the party of the status quo on drug policy. Key issues include maintaining the 18 year age limit on the buying and use of drugs such as cannabis and LSD, and the prohibition on the sale of narcotics without valid medical license.
Economy: The PLP champions a more state directed, centrally planned economy. The party is equally suspicious of the participatory planning favored by the Left and the advocacy of markets and privatization on the Right.
Education: The PLP has no national policy on education, preferring to leave the issue to provincial party sections.
Environment: While the PLP has made its own efforts to fight climate change and environmental degradation, it is very much a back-burner issue in the party.
Foreign Aid: The party advocates the use of foreign aid to build strong alliances to serve the interests of the American state.
Foreign Alliances: With the end of tensions with the Soviet Union, the PLP has advocated building alliances with nations in the Middle East, Africa and Asia to contain the Franco-British Union.
Health Policy: Proposed reforms include increased support for state directed medical research and tighter regulation of individual practice physicians.
Immigration: Generally restrictive, favoring tighter border security.
Social Welfare: The party proposes expanding state-sponsored child care programs and increasing food subsidies to urban workers and rural kibbutzniks.
Taxation: The PLP is most often the party of balanced budgets.
Trade: The PLP strongly supports autarkic economic policy.
Social Ecology Union (Communal Green Party)
Party Leader: Alix Olson
Secretary-General: Murray Bookchin
Founded: 1978
Ideology: Social ecology, communalism
Political Position: Far Left (UASR) Ultra Left (International)
International Affiliation: Green International
Official Color: Green
Youth Wing: Students for a Green Society
Party Newspaper: Telos
Political stances
Capital Punishment: The SEU is categorically opposed to the use of capital punishment.
Civil Defense: The SEU has supported current Civil Defense policies, though it is very much a back burner issue.
Cultural Stance: The SEU has worked to integrate ecological awareness to all facets of proletarian culture. While other members of the Green International might shrink away from the accusation of being watermelons (Green on the outside, Red on the inside), Social Ecologists find this to be the highest compliment.
Defense: The SEU has sought détente with the Franco-British Union, preferring to let the internal contradictions of its capitalist economy bring an end to the foreign threat.
Drug Policy: Total decriminalization, combined with awareness programs and programs to combat addiction.
Economy: Strongly in favor of participatory planning, though central planning to maintain ecological standards is often supported.
Education: The party advocates increased local control of educational policy, in keeping with the party’s strong support for participatory democracy.
Environment: The SEU advocates a total integration of the economy with the biosphere. As part of the philosophy of dialectical naturalism, it is humanity’s responsibility as nature made self-aware to promote biological stability and diversity in the biosphere.
Foreign Aid: The SEU advocates using foreign aid to promote ecologically sound economic policy in developing socialist nations.
Foreign Alliances: The SEU is philosophically internationalist to the core, and has often echoed the Socialists’ support for genuine proletarian internationalism.
Health Policy: The SEU supports public policy initiatives to promote healthier eating, as well as promoting exercise for both students and workers.
Immigration: Permissive
Social Welfare: The SEU has advocating using social welfare policy to promote ecological sustainability, such as massive renovation programs in public housing projects to reduce their ecological footprint.
Taxation: The SEU has supported the institution of a carbon tax to promote sustainable economic policy.
Trade: The SEU considers some forms of foreign trade to be ecologically unsustainable, and have supported the use of mileage taxes on many goods to support ecological localism.
Socialist Party (Hard Line Internationalist Communists of the more democratic variety.)
Party Leader: Lisa Edelstein
Secretary-General: David McReynolds
Founded: 1946
Ideology: International socialism, council communism
Political Position: Left (UASR) Ultra Left (International)
International Affiliation: Communist International
Official Color: Red
Youth Wing: Youth Vanguard
Party Newspaper: Appeal to Reason
Political stances
Capital Punishment: The Socialists seek to maintain the use of the death penalty only in cases of treason, and in grievous international crimes such as war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Civil Defense: The Socialists continue to champion the Civil Defense Initiative and its role in American society.
Cultural Stance: Like the PLP, the Socialist Party continues to promote the First Cultural Revolution and the traditions that it began. However, the Socialist platform insists that the job is not yet finished, and that the full development of each citizen requires further revolution in culture.
Defense: The Socialist defense policy is based around meeting extant threat of the Anglo-French Union, seeking to force their capitulation.
Drug Policy: The Socialists have lead many efforts to regulate and decriminalize drugs, while at the same time publicly supporting measures to combat addiction among the population.
Economy: The Socialists ideologically favor participatory planning systems, but most often have supported a mixture of central and participatory planning.
Education: The party advocates increased local control of educational policy, in keeping with the party’s strong support for participatory democracy.
Environment: The Socialists support attempts to contain climate change, and have in recent years worked to develop public policy to repair the ecological devastation caused by past industrial policy.
Foreign Aid: The Socialist Party is often seen as the party of foreign aid. The party uses foreign aid policy as a weapon against the Franco-British Union.
Foreign Alliances: The Socialists are both pragmatically and ideologically internationalist, and from the support for the Internationale and its humanitarian causes to the building of strong alliances among socialist nations, the Socialists have been the among the biggest proponents of genuine socialist internationalism.
Health Policy: The Socialists have continued to support public policy initiatives to promote healthier eating, as well as promoting exercise for both students and workers.
Immigration: The Socialists have favored highly permissive immigration policy, including offering asylum to anyone from war torn or oppressive regimes.
Social Welfare: The Socialist Party is the architect of the modern American social welfare system, from the near universal public ownership of housing, to the state system of maternity and paternity leave and other child support subsidies.
Taxation: The Socialists have remained categorically opposed to the institution of individual income taxes or general sales taxes, favoring union and provincial revenue to be derived from rents to publicly owned enterprises.
Trade: The Socialists have championed the development of free-trade blocs among socialist nations.
A basic election primer, circa 2009
Democratic-Republican Party (Mutualist, Libertarians)
Party Leader: Kevin Carson
Secretary-General: Ronald Ernest Paul
Founded: 1938
Ideology: Social liberalism, geo-libertarianism
Political Position: Right (UASR) Center-left (International)
International Affiliation: International Democrat Union
Official Color: Blue
Youth Wing: Liberal Youth Federation
Party Newspaper: The Free Republic
Political stances
Capital Punishment: The national DRP maintains no favored preference on capital punishment policy, by default favoring the status quo position, which reserves the death penalty for treason and espionage. Provincial sections have generally favored the abolition of the death penalty for most civil cases.
Civil Defense: The party platform calls for an end to the Civil Defense Initiative, which as part of the National Service, mandates minimal military training of all students as part of the required four year Civil Service after high school graduation.
Cultural Stance: Traditionalist, often aligned with conservative Christian groups. The party’s conservative wing often favors a return of pre-revolutionary cultural mores.
Defense: Since the end of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the DRP has supported a unilateral conventional and nuclear disarmament program, aiming to cut the size of the conventional and nuclear military arsenals by over one-half.
Drug Policy: The party general favors stronger restrictions on controlled substances, most notably criminalization of legally restricted substances such as heroin and PCP, and the institution of a 21 year age restriction on “softer” drugs such as cannabis, cocaine and LSD.
Economy: Considerable scaling back of the central planning in the American economy, including the privatization of the automotive, aircraft, construction and steel industries.
Education: The DRP favors increased local control of education policy, and the reduction of Union involvement in educational standards, including lifting the ban on parochial and private schools.
Environment: The DRP is a defector from the current “Environmental Consensus”, considering efforts to limit climate change and ecological devastation to be ill-advised, unnecessary and harmful to the economy.
Foreign Aid: The DRP often supports the cutting of foreign aid in an effort to trim the Union budget.
Foreign Alliances: Isolationist
Health Policy: Privatization of state and provincial owned hospitals and treatment clinics.
Immigration: Generally restrictive on immigration policy, though the party has in the past voted to allow complete open borders with Mexico and the Commonwealth of Canada.
Social Welfare: The party considers the Union’s policy of supporting rural and urban communal living projects to be detrimental to the private and cooperative sectors of the housing and construction industry.
Taxation: Champions the institution of a national sales tax, to encourage savings and investment.
Trade: The DRP is regarded as the party of free trade, even with capitalist nations.
Left Democratic Party (Episcopalian-esk, Super Charitable, Christian Socialists)
Party Leader: Raúl Juliá
Secretary-General: Brian Moore
Founded: 1933
Ideology: Christian socialism
Political Position: Center-left (UASR) Far Left (International)
International Affiliation: Socialist International
Official Color: White
Youth Wing: Student Left Democrats
Party Newspaper: Commonweal
Political stances
Capital Punishment: Almost universally opposed.
Civil Defense: Left Democrats consider the Civil Defense Initiative to be a relic of yesteryear, unnecessarily militaristic for modern society.
Cultural Stance: Since the 80s, the Left Democrats have wholeheartedly embraced Trinitarian Christianity, moving considerably to the left on cultural issues. The party has repudiated its past support for racial segregation, as well as its past opposition to feminism and gay rights.
Defense: The Left Democrats, since the 80s realignment, have taken a nearly pacifist stance on national defense, advocating a phased, multi-lateral nuclear disarmament agreement with both the Soviets and the Anglo-French.
Drug Policy: Maintain status quo policy.
Economy: Support a mix of participatory and central planning, though some support is given for market reforms in luxury goods.
Education: The LDP supports government initiatives to encourage more young people to take advantage of education opportunities provided by the state.
Environment: While it is a lower-tier issue in the LDP, ecological justice is considered to be an important part of the core value of social justice.
Foreign Aid: The LDP is opposed to the cynical use of foreign aid to benefit the state’s foreign policy objectives. They consider compassion to be the sole legitimate deteriminant in allocating foreign aid.
Foreign Alliances: While supportive of containment of the Franco-British Union, the LDP is categorically opposed to aggressive foreign policy and other destabilizing actions.
Health Policy: A mixture of tighter regulations and programs to encourage healthy lifestyles at work and at home.
Immigration: Generally favoring more open immigration.
Social Welfare: The LDP often styles itself as the party of social justice, and it has committed much of its efforts to turning the vast resources of the American polity to put an end to poverty at home and abroad.
Taxation: The LDP favors taxing socially destructive activities as part of its overall theme of social justice.
Trade: LDP trade policy generally favors autarky in essential industries such as agriculture, mining, steel and energy, but free trade in less essential, more luxury oriented markets.
Progressive Labor Party (Militaristic, Trotskyists. Think of the folks who want to bring the 50's back and you'll get the idea, just paint the idea red.)
Party Leader: Joshua Muravchik
Secretary-General: Bob Avakian
Founded: 1946
Ideology: Marxism-Sinclairism, Neo-conservativsm
Political Position: Center-right (UASR) Far Left (International)
International Affiliation: Communist International
Official Color: Orange
Youth Wing: Youth Progressive Labor League
Party Newspaper: Unite!
Political stances
Capital Punishment: The national PLP has continued to support the use of the death penalty in cases of infamous counterrevolutionary crimes. Historically, the party also opposed efforts in the Union and provincial governments to abolish the death penalty for civil crimes.
Civil Defense: The PLP continues to defend the tradition of American civil defense(1), and seeks to promote readiness among the citizenry.
Cultural Stance: The party champions the values of solidarity, militancy, equality and sacrifice that were at the forefront of the First Cultural Revolution. While the PLP has always crusaded against racial, political and sexual inequality, they often find the causes championed by the Left to be “decadent” or “hedonistic”.
Defense: The PLP often styles itself as the party of national defense, and platform explicitly supports sustaining the strength of the military even after the end of perceived threat from the Soviet Union. The party also advocates military intervention to support the interests of the American state and of socialist internationalism more broadly.
Drug Policy: Progressive Labor is generally the party of the status quo on drug policy. Key issues include maintaining the 18 year age limit on the buying and use of drugs such as cannabis and LSD, and the prohibition on the sale of narcotics without valid medical license.
Economy: The PLP champions a more state directed, centrally planned economy. The party is equally suspicious of the participatory planning favored by the Left and the advocacy of markets and privatization on the Right.
Education: The PLP has no national policy on education, preferring to leave the issue to provincial party sections.
Environment: While the PLP has made its own efforts to fight climate change and environmental degradation, it is very much a back-burner issue in the party.
Foreign Aid: The party advocates the use of foreign aid to build strong alliances to serve the interests of the American state.
Foreign Alliances: With the end of tensions with the Soviet Union, the PLP has advocated building alliances with nations in the Middle East, Africa and Asia to contain the Franco-British Union.
Health Policy: Proposed reforms include increased support for state directed medical research and tighter regulation of individual practice physicians.
Immigration: Generally restrictive, favoring tighter border security.
Social Welfare: The party proposes expanding state-sponsored child care programs and increasing food subsidies to urban workers and rural kibbutzniks.
Taxation: The PLP is most often the party of balanced budgets.
Trade: The PLP strongly supports autarkic economic policy.
Social Ecology Union (Communal Green Party)
Party Leader: Alix Olson
Secretary-General: Murray Bookchin
Founded: 1978
Ideology: Social ecology, communalism
Political Position: Far Left (UASR) Ultra Left (International)
International Affiliation: Green International
Official Color: Green
Youth Wing: Students for a Green Society
Party Newspaper: Telos
Political stances
Capital Punishment: The SEU is categorically opposed to the use of capital punishment.
Civil Defense: The SEU has supported current Civil Defense policies, though it is very much a back burner issue.
Cultural Stance: The SEU has worked to integrate ecological awareness to all facets of proletarian culture. While other members of the Green International might shrink away from the accusation of being watermelons (Green on the outside, Red on the inside), Social Ecologists find this to be the highest compliment.
Defense: The SEU has sought détente with the Franco-British Union, preferring to let the internal contradictions of its capitalist economy bring an end to the foreign threat.
Drug Policy: Total decriminalization, combined with awareness programs and programs to combat addiction.
Economy: Strongly in favor of participatory planning, though central planning to maintain ecological standards is often supported.
Education: The party advocates increased local control of educational policy, in keeping with the party’s strong support for participatory democracy.
Environment: The SEU advocates a total integration of the economy with the biosphere. As part of the philosophy of dialectical naturalism, it is humanity’s responsibility as nature made self-aware to promote biological stability and diversity in the biosphere.
Foreign Aid: The SEU advocates using foreign aid to promote ecologically sound economic policy in developing socialist nations.
Foreign Alliances: The SEU is philosophically internationalist to the core, and has often echoed the Socialists’ support for genuine proletarian internationalism.
Health Policy: The SEU supports public policy initiatives to promote healthier eating, as well as promoting exercise for both students and workers.
Immigration: Permissive
Social Welfare: The SEU has advocating using social welfare policy to promote ecological sustainability, such as massive renovation programs in public housing projects to reduce their ecological footprint.
Taxation: The SEU has supported the institution of a carbon tax to promote sustainable economic policy.
Trade: The SEU considers some forms of foreign trade to be ecologically unsustainable, and have supported the use of mileage taxes on many goods to support ecological localism.
Socialist Party (Hard Line Internationalist Communists of the more democratic variety.)
Party Leader: Lisa Edelstein
Secretary-General: David McReynolds
Founded: 1946
Ideology: International socialism, council communism
Political Position: Left (UASR) Ultra Left (International)
International Affiliation: Communist International
Official Color: Red
Youth Wing: Youth Vanguard
Party Newspaper: Appeal to Reason
Political stances
Capital Punishment: The Socialists seek to maintain the use of the death penalty only in cases of treason, and in grievous international crimes such as war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Civil Defense: The Socialists continue to champion the Civil Defense Initiative and its role in American society.
Cultural Stance: Like the PLP, the Socialist Party continues to promote the First Cultural Revolution and the traditions that it began. However, the Socialist platform insists that the job is not yet finished, and that the full development of each citizen requires further revolution in culture.
Defense: The Socialist defense policy is based around meeting extant threat of the Anglo-French Union, seeking to force their capitulation.
Drug Policy: The Socialists have lead many efforts to regulate and decriminalize drugs, while at the same time publicly supporting measures to combat addiction among the population.
Economy: The Socialists ideologically favor participatory planning systems, but most often have supported a mixture of central and participatory planning.
Education: The party advocates increased local control of educational policy, in keeping with the party’s strong support for participatory democracy.
Environment: The Socialists support attempts to contain climate change, and have in recent years worked to develop public policy to repair the ecological devastation caused by past industrial policy.
Foreign Aid: The Socialist Party is often seen as the party of foreign aid. The party uses foreign aid policy as a weapon against the Franco-British Union.
Foreign Alliances: The Socialists are both pragmatically and ideologically internationalist, and from the support for the Internationale and its humanitarian causes to the building of strong alliances among socialist nations, the Socialists have been the among the biggest proponents of genuine socialist internationalism.
Health Policy: The Socialists have continued to support public policy initiatives to promote healthier eating, as well as promoting exercise for both students and workers.
Immigration: The Socialists have favored highly permissive immigration policy, including offering asylum to anyone from war torn or oppressive regimes.
Social Welfare: The Socialist Party is the architect of the modern American social welfare system, from the near universal public ownership of housing, to the state system of maternity and paternity leave and other child support subsidies.
Taxation: The Socialists have remained categorically opposed to the institution of individual income taxes or general sales taxes, favoring union and provincial revenue to be derived from rents to publicly owned enterprises.
Trade: The Socialists have championed the development of free-trade blocs among socialist nations.
