Eric O’Keefe

The Next Right has a great post on the political implications of the spirit spreading through younger Americans: The Independent-Entrepreneurial Society.

That post links to a Michael Malone opinion column from the Wall Street Journal titled The Next American Frontier.

Malone casts a vision of a glowing future of increasing freedom and independence because of the amazing ways Americans are applying the new technologies to restructure work and lives. He even sounds an optimistic tone about the implications for government. While he may underestimate the ability of government to suppress the benefits of liberty (see World History), here I want to take issue with his claim that “New political parties” will be part of the flourishing innovation of coming decades. Any new parties will not flourish.

Today’s dominant political parties are part of the government. They are entrenched in federal and state law in hundreds of ways; and they have no ability to deny their nominations to anyone. So they are both part of government, and by law must allow their label to be used by anyone with enough votes in a primary. They are both entrenched and without the power to exclude. So they can be treated as part of the background noise.

This was not always so - in the 19th century, political parties were private organizations which selected candidates and held them accountable to the party platforms. The parties were controlled by informed citizens. And they worked — they kept the government burden at close to 5% of the economy for an entire century, which was the greatest feat of constraining government known to man.

How can we recover the vigorous citizen control of politicians exercised by our ancestors?

We need a new way to describe our problem.

Our most leveraged political idea is not an issue or policy position, but a superior paradigm of the reality of contemporary American politics.

The biggest mistake of conservatives during the last half century has been to view Republican party organizations and candidates as the main defenders of liberty. This is an understandable error, as it worked for both parties in the 19th century. But the direct primary gutted party power below the presidential level, while decades of growing state and federal regulations have frozen the major parties in place.

What can we do to regain the discipline, the control exercised by responsible citizens over both political parties and politicians in the 19th century?

Privatize.

All of the essential functions of the parties must be privatized in a variety of independent organizations owned and controlled by patriotic citizens.

These three arenas of action need to be developed, linked, and coordinated to drive policy change: Issues, campaigns, and infrastructure. Our greatest weakness is infrastructure – the capacity to train future candidates; to run creative litigation; to investigate and expose corruption; to publicize and defend ideas and people; and to develop the specific policies needed today to solve problems and win votes while increasing freedom.

The policies pushed by campaigns should not come from consultants who get them by reading polls. They should be developed by our best thinkers working in coordination with independent groups that are politically savvy, tested in the polling and political arena, and then fed in marketable ways to our campaign operations.

What we have had is a failure of leadership, a failure to replace a crippling 19th century paradigm with one that accepts modern reality. The political parties are now part of the government. They are not suitable vehicles for protecting us from government.

This paradigm both explains conservative failures during the past generation, and lights the way out of the wilderness.

Mark Tapscott writes that “Noonan is right, the GOP is dying.” Noonan focuses on the GOP standing with Bush even on his frequent departures from conservative principles. But the GOP failure is much broader, and it has deep institutional origins.

Congressional Republicans thought they could entrench themselves in power the way the Democrats had for forty years– by spending lavishly on entitlement programs and pork. They were proved wrong by the 2006 election results.

Now their defeats in three special elections in conservative districts, along with polling results and fundraising efforts suggest they will face another rout this November.

Is that bad for the country? The Democrats promise to tax and spend even more than the Republicans have; they don’t even pretend to respect constitutional limits on the expansion of government.

The plight of voters this November reflects a stunning failure of leadership by the friends of liberty. How can both political parties be so enthusiastic about growing government? What has gone wrong?

The central error has been to rely on a political party as the defender of liberty for long after that was practical. In the 19th century political parties were privately run, and they held the power of nominating candidates; informed citizen leaders controlled the parties, and they worked to keep politicians and governments in check.

Starting with the mislabeled “Progressive Era” a hundred years ago incumbents began to erode the freedom of political parties; today they are mere shadows of the great parties of the 19th century. They are now quasi-governmental entities run by incumbent to expand their power. They offer no check on the power of government; and they are so heavily regulated by government that there is no prospect of reviving them.

The Republican Party collapse improves the long-term prospects for liberty. It means that more people will seek a workable way to protect liberty. No political party can perform the needed functions.

Liberty is in retreat because our political parties are controlled by incumbents in government whose goal is to increase their power over taxpayers.. Only private, voluntary organizations can hope to preserve and promote principles that limit incumbents to their proper roles.